Is it okay to stay close friends with an ex?

Anglican minister and prison chaplain · Manchester, UK

“I've seen friendships outlast romances and become something genuinely good — a steady, affectionate thing with the heat long gone out of it, and I'd not ask anyone to set fire to that on principle alone. The test I'd offer is simple and a little uncomfortable: is there anything about this friendship you'd change if your partner were standing quietly beside you? Not anything you'd hide — anything you'd change. The way you speak to them, the things you say about home, the small confidences that belong to your partner and not your past. If the friendship would look the same under that gaze, it's clean; keep it gladly. If some part of it would rearrange itself the moment your partner walked in, that part is the one to bring into the open and look at honestly.”

Senior product manager · Bangalore, India

“A friendship with an ex is fine; an undefined one is just ambiguity wearing a friendly face — and ambiguity is where almost all the damage in these situations actually lives. So define the specifics, out loud, ideally with your current partner in the room. How often do you talk? About what? What's off the table — the venting about your relationship, the one-on-one dinners, the 1 a.m. texts? People resist this because pinning it down feels unromantic, but vagueness isn't romance; it's risk you've simply declined to manage. A well-defined friendship with an ex is boring and durable. An undefined one runs on plausible deniability — and plausible deniability is precisely what lets a friendship drift somewhere nobody consciously decided to go. Name the boundaries and the whole thing gets safer for everyone, the friend included.”

Restaurateur · New Orleans, USA

“Sometimes a friendship with an ex is a friendship. And sometimes it is a door left standing open, in case the new thing fails — a small insurance policy you have not admitted to buying. I am not here to tell you which one you have. I am here to tell you that you already know, and that the not-looking is the dishonest part. So sit with it, alone, and ask the ugly question: if you knew, with certainty, that you and your current partner would last fifty happy years, would you still want this person in your life exactly as they are now? If the answer is yes, it is a friendship — keep it. If the answer wobbles, you have found your insurance policy. And it is unkind to make the person you are with pay the premium on it.”

Rancher and former state senator · Sheridan, Wyoming, USA

“I'm old-fashioned and I'll own it: when you close a gate, you close it. Keeping the ex around usually means one of you isn't quite done — and it's the new partner who pays for that, standing there being measured against a ghost they can't see and can't argue with. Now, I'll grant there's the rare clean case: kids together, a friendship that genuinely cooled to nothing, two people who'd no sooner rekindle it than rekindle high school. Fine. But that's rarer than folks claim when they're defending it, and a person knows the difference in their gut even when their mouth won't say it. If keeping this friendship costs your partner one minute of quiet worry, ask yourself plainly what you're keeping it for — then act like you've got the answer. Because you do.”