Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 9/27/83; site saturn.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!saturn!peters From: peters@saturn.UUCP (Liz Peters) Newsgroups: net.singles Subject: re: friendships with SO's Message-ID: <2537@saturn.UUCP> Date: Fri, 14-Dec-84 18:15:18 EST Article-I.D.: saturn.2537 Posted: Fri Dec 14 18:15:18 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 19-Dec-84 00:11:30 EST Organization: Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto CA Lines: 53 > What if your best friend is your SO? > I broke up with my SO about 2 months ago when she decided to start going > out with another person. I don't see her quite as much as I used to, but > I still enjoy a special relationship with her. We still are best > friends, sharing secrets and all the other silly things that best > friends do. In the mean time I have developed other relationships that > I never had before, but the point I am trying to make is that my ex-SO > was (and probably always will be) one of the best friends I ever had in > my whole life. > Now for the sad part. In the past two or three months I have witnessed > several breakups. In about 90% of them there is no more contact between > the two people who were once so close. Is it really possible to break > off a relationship like that without remebering all the wonderful things > that happened between two people? Or is it that I'm expecting people to > develop something deeper than a mere physical attraction when they start > "going out"? > Obviously it's possible to continue a relationship after a relationship. > What I'd like to know is why it is so rare, and why people don't try to > do it more often. > > -- > ihnp4--\ fritzz the Zebra > One reason it might be difficult to maintain such a close relationship with former SO's is that current SO's can be jealous of this other relationship. There are alot of insecure people out there, and it can be difficult to believe that there isn't something going on. Another reason (and to me the more important one) is that there is usually alot of pain involved when a relationship breaks up (or changes state, at least). It usually takes time for the pain to diminish. Thoughts of things that could have been keep fliting through your brain. It will often depend on the people involved. In all of the important relationships I've been in, we'd decided that our friendship was very important to us both, and that we'd want to continue, even if we broke up. In two cases we ended up seeing little of each other for about 6 months. It can be hard to stop thinking of someone in sexual and "possesive" terms (haven't you ever felt deprived when seeing an ex-SO with someone else?) and the time apart can be beneficial to the long-term friendship. In the last case, we ended up sort of sliding into a friendship state from a relationship, and things worked out well enough. There was quite a bit of pain involved for me (since I wasn't the one who had decided that the relationship wasn't working). I realized and agreed that it was better to break up, yet it still hurt. It's often hard to disassociate your logic from your emotions. Liz Peters hplabs!peters