Your Ex-boyfriend Wants To Be Friends? Why It’s A Good Sign And Why It’s Not?

If your ex-boyfriend wants to be friends, this is both a good and a bad sign. The reason it’s good is that your ex-boyfriend doesn’t need space from you and doesn’t despise you. He’s okay with occasional chatting and wants you in his life to some capacity.

On the other hand, it’s a bad sign because your ex only sees you as a friend and will most likely give you a lot of hope if you agree to be his friend. He’ll say things friends usually say to one another and by doing so, confuse you and make you attached to him for weeks or months longer than if he left you alone. How long you stay attached depends on what he says and does, how you interpret his behavior, and what you do about it.

If you tolerate everything he does, you will likely keep looking for signs of hope and delay your recovery. And if you see that your ex just wants what’s best for him (not you), you’ll likely pull away from him after a while and focus on yourself rather than him.

That will enable you to detach fully and understand that an ex who wants to be friends after the breakup has different expectations than you. He wants to be on good terms whereas you want romance and things to go back to the way they were.

Sadly, things likely won’t return to the way they were because friendship usually doesn’t make dumpers realize they’ve made a terrible mistake. More often than not, it just eases their guilt and prevents them from losing their ex completely.

You’d think that someone who doesn’t want you as a partner will never want anything to do with you again, but that’s not always the case. Oftentimes, dumpers cool off after a while and see things more rationally. They see that their ex means no harm and that it’d be a waste to cut their ex out of their lives just because they broke up.

By cutting their ex out, they’d feel like they’ve erased years of memories and lost the ex they like as a person (but not as a romantic partner).

That means your ex-boyfriend wants to be friends to keep you around for convenience rather than love. He wants to stay in touch to give and receive support and feel better about breaking your heart.

You must remember that your ex wants the best of both worlds (friendship and a breakup). If you know what he wants, you won’t assume that your ex-boyfriend wants to be friends because he loves you and thinks it might be possible to get back together.

Ex-boyfriends don’t think that way. They don’t plan a future with someone they abandoned. All they do is focus on the present because the present makes them happy. It distracts them from the past and enables them to put themselves first.

So if your ex-boyfriend wants to be friends, know that it’s just a so-so sign. It’s a neutral sign as it indicates that your ex doesn’t love you but has respect for you. Your ex just wants the things you can offer as a friend as such things lower his guilt and help him focus on the things he likes and wants to do.

In this post, we’ll discuss whether your ex-boyfriend wanting to be friends with you is a good sign. We’ll compare the positives and negatives of being friends with an ex and what you can do about the friendship offer.

Is it a good sign if your ex-boyfriend wants to be friends?

Although your ex wanting to be friends is definitely a better sign than your ex hating you and ignoring you, it’s not a good sign to look forward to. Friendship is a big inconvenience for dumpees as it constantly gives them false hope, reopens their wounds, makes them overthink, and disorients them.

It makes them even more desperate for their ex’s love and validation and hurts them when their ex talks to other people and does inconsiderate things.

Dumpers, on the other hand, sometimes like the idea of friendship. They want to befriend their ex because doing so reassures them that they’re doing the right thing. It helps them forgive themselves for abandoning the relationship and causing their ex pain.

Friendship also gives them relationship benefits for free (advice, emotional/financial support, or sex). But usually, they’re happy just to know that their ex doesn’t hate them and that they can talk to their ex if they want to. Knowing they’re allowed to reach out and talk when they’re bored helps them nurture the bond with their ex and keep the friendship going.

I know you’re looking for hope that your ex will come back, but try not to think much of friendship. A friendship offer coming from the dumper after the breakup is equivalent to a slap to the face as it’s an offer the dumpee doesn’t want to accept but often accepts anyway.

The dumpee is often too afraid to decline the offer and say he or she isn’t ready for friendship. That’s why the dumpee signs up for weeks of confusion and pain and makes the detachment process extremely challenging.

So if you’re thinking about giving friendship a try, keep in mind that friendship would help your ex more than it would help you. As a matter of fact, it wouldn’t help you at all as it would make you analyze your ex’s behavior and force you to keep waiting for your ex to return.

And that would hinder your growth as well as your healing process. You’ll find happiness much quicker if you learn how dumpees normally feel and what kind of issues they encounter after they’ve befriended their exes. That should help you see that being friends with your ex is dangerous and that you may want to think twice about what you want.

Here’s why your ex wanting to be friends with you is both a good and a bad sign.

The only thing you should consider a positive sign is if your ex is suffering and looking for a way to reconnect with you and apologize for dumping you. Pain, regret, and looking for attention would show that your ex is craving your validation and forgiveness and that your ex needs you back as soon as possible as a partner rather than a friend.

So try not to analyze whether your ex wanting to be friends with you is a good or a bad sign too much. All you should pay attention to is your ex inviting you out and telling you that he wants you back.

Should you accept your ex’s friendship?

As a dumpee who was abandoned and hurt, you must never act like your ex’s friend. You can accept the friendship if your ex asks to be friends, but don’t actually be your ex’s friend. As long as you’re hurting, you must stay far away from your ex.

The farther away you are, the less your ex will confuse you and the fewer emotional setbacks you’ll experience as a result. I know it can feel good to see that your ex wants to talk to you (especially if you didn’t speak for a while), but communication isn’t something you need.

What you need is exactly the opposite of that. A period of no contact will help you regain your emotional independence whereas speaking with your ex will force you to lose it. So think long and hard about whether friendship with your ex could even help you.

Think about the things you’ll gain and the things you’ll lose by reopening channels of communication. You should soon realize that it may be too soon for friendship and that you need to focus on yourself rather than your ex.

The only time you should consider being your ex’s friend is when you respect your ex as a person (if your ex treated you well during and after the breakup) and when you’re mainly or fully over your ex. That’s when you’ll have no more expectations of your ex and will be able to handle seeing your ex with someone else.

So if you’re not comfortable with your ex being happy with someone else and progressing in life, don’t become your ex’s friend. No one says you should be friends with your ex when your ex is ready for friendship. You can be friends later when YOU’RE ready.

But you likely won’t be ready for about half a year or so as you’re going to compare yourself to other people and try to figure out what your ex is doing. You’ll look for answers and in doing so, come across all kinds of hope-giving and hope-killing situations.

Here are two ways I can think of in which you can respond to the dumper asking to be friends.

1. I’m not ready to be friends at this moment. I’d like to focus on myself for a while and process things.
2. We can be friends, but I’ll need some time to myself first. It might take a long time for me to be ready, but please don’t message me while I’m trying to figure things out.

As you can see, you don’t need to directly say “NO” as that may come across as rude. You can just politely say you’re not ready to be friends yet or that you accept the friendship but that you’ll be needing some time to yourself and that you’d appreciate it if your ex didn’t reach out.

Your ex should understand what you mean and respect your decision. If he doesn’t, then you should remind your ex that space is important to you and that you’ll reach out when or if you’re ready.

Your ex decided to break up. If he wasn’t aware that friendship wasn’t a part of the deal, it’s his fault, not yours. He should have prepared himself for the possibility that you might never speak again. You needn’t feel bad about that.

You should remind yourself that you need to heal first and that you can always be friends with your ex after you’ve healed. But if your ex treated you badly, you likely won’t want to be your ex’s friend. You’ll realize your ex lacked sympathy and that he’s not the person you thought he was when he was in love with you.

Stop looking for good signs aka hope

Most dumpees are so hurt that they look for signs their ex wants them back or will want them back. They completely ignore the fact that they or their ex aren’t ready to get back together and interact as friends. Someone usually needs much more time.

That’s why they look for hope in everything their ex does and doesn’t do.

If their ex talks to them, they think their ex wants them back. And if their ex unblocks them and sends them a friendship invitation, they get hopeful and start thinking their ex may be warming up to them.

Whatever you do, try not to analyze your ex’s behavior and think of it as either good or bad. Most of the things your ex does are neither good nor bad. They’re just neutral as they’re a part of your ex’s personality. If you think of them as more, you’ll deceive yourself and hinder your healing.

So stay away from your ex and keep detaching. You’ll soon stop caring about the things your ex wants from you and start caring only about yourself and the people who support you.

Does your ex-boyfriend want to be friends and you’re still wondering if it’s a good sign? What kind of sign do you think it is? Comment below and let us know.

And if you wish to discuss friendship offers and similar things coming from the dumper with us privately, check out our coaching programs here.