So you’ve just gone through a breakup and your ex boyfriend or husband wants to remain friends.
This can be confusing…but I’ve seen and heard of this time and time again in my 14 years of coaching women, and I can tell you one thing:
A lot of guys actually do want to stay friends with their ex after a breakup.
Sometimes their motivations are innocent…for example, he just wants to make sure you’re going to be ok.
Other times, a guy’s motivations for being friends after a breakup are alarming.
It all depends on the kind of ex you have, and the type of history you have together.
But I think it’s important for you to note that for both men and women, motivations for staying friends post relationship usually relate to love, money, status, and sex, as shown by one study.
Recommended: How Secure People Handle Breakups.
According to Psychology Today, one study showed that men are more likely than women to want to be friends after a breakup.
This isn’t surprising when you consider a couple of factors that make post-breakup friendship beneficial for men:
I would argue that both men and women have motivations for keeping a friendship with an ex, men just have reasons skewed more towards sex and pragmatism than women do.
But let’s get really specific about the reasons he might be wanting to keep a friendship with you after breaking up.
The key here is you want to work out whether his desire to remain friends is self motivated (pure selfishness), or whether there is some consideration towards how you feel.
Staying friends after a breakup can be beneficial for a man, as having more women around him benefits him.
It’s like “social proof” of his value, if he still has at least one woman (you) in his life.
A guy who has no female company at all – or has never been in a relationship or married – hasn’t technically proven his value, at least in the eyes of women.
This is not to say that men who are “alone” can’t be of obvious value, because they can.
But there’s always a little bit of a question mark in the back of a woman’s mind. She may wonder: “is there something wrong with him?” or “is there something missing?“
This is why taken men are generally so much more attractive to women (yes, generally speaking). I talk more about that concept in my article: Women Who Date Married Men: 11 Hush-Hush Reasons They Do It.
Fact: Most women do not live day to day in their feminine energy. Are you? Answer the next 9 questions and discover exactly how much you are living in your feminine core...
1. Which of these comments make me feel the most alive?
"How would you like to travel around the world?"
"OMG You’re looking amazing in that outfit."
"I bet you can't figure out fit 2 cheeseburgers in your mouth"
"None of these"
2. In a high pressured situation, my natural instinct is to...
"Eliminate distractions whilst tunnel vision sets in."
"Create comfort by speaking to friends or eating something."
"Avoid the situation or feel depressed about it."
"None of these."
3. In the bedroom, i prefer someone who is...
"Bigger than me physically"
"Smaller than me physically"
"Same size as me physically"
"I have little or no preference"
4. If I’m in a supermarket, and I can’t find something…
"I politely ask the first shop assistant I spot"
"I walk up and down the isles until I find it"
"Don't care, whatever is most convenient"
"None of these."
5. If i had a deadline for a project in a month, I tend to...
"Start now and get most of it done so I don't stress later"
"Pressure is good, I'd rather start closer to the deadline"
"Plan out week by week what I need to do"
"I have no idea..."
6. When I am cooking, I can also carry on a conversation over the phone...
"Very easily, I can probably juggle at the same time."
"It's not easy, but I can manage if I really focus"
"no chance... one thing at a time for me"
"I don't know..."
7. Which of the following describes the kind of intimate partners you’ve had in the past...
"My partners have tended to assume they are right about everything"
"They tell me that they think I always think I’m right about everything"
"Things tend to go smoothly with my past partners"
"I'm not too sure..."
8. It would hurt me more if my intimate partner were to say to me:
"You are looking tired and run down lately"
"You seem to be losing your drive and your direction."
"You really treat men differently than you treat women"
"None of these"
9. In my ultimate dream world, I would rather…
"Trust and follow my own direction"
"Trust and follow my lover’s direction"
"We should both follow our own unique directions"
"I don't actually know..."
We are analysing your quiz results right now and preparing a comprehensive summary. (It's a 15 min read)
This in-depth explanation and analysis will give you all the answers as to how feminine you are and how that affects every relationship you will have.
Please enter your first name and email below so that we can safely deliver your results and explanation to you. (As well as give you $3,765 worth of coaching bonuses!) And yes, we'll treat your email like it was our firstborn.
Some men struggle letting go of a relationship. They may be afraid of dealing with the pain of loneliness.
As I mentioned above, there have been reports suggesting that men experience more pain after a breakup.
So even if he has no more romantic feelings towards you, he might still gain value from hanging on to you.
This is a source of connection and familiarity that can be hard to come by in life.
So unless you’ve done something awful, or you’re abusive and cause him a lot of grief in life, there’s little cost to keeping you around as a source of connection.
Plus, if he was very attached to you, it makes sense that it’s hard for him to let go.
Especially if the breakup was amicable.
There’s also the possibility that he is insecurely attached, and this adds another layer of complexity to this reason.
Insecure attachment can lead someone to have a lot of separation anxiety, or simply just want to cling onto you more.
If you want to delve into the attachment style a little more, read my article: The 4 Types Of Attachment Styles & Which One’s Yours?
You can also find out your own core attachment style with our free quiz. I’ve embedded it below:
Fact: 54% of all women have insecure attachment styles and it affects their relationships daily. Answer the next 10 questions to discover what your attachment style is.
1. When it comes to relating to people in general…
I believe people are generally dependable and kind
I get attached to people easily and they often let me down
I don’t believe I can truly trust anyone
People will always come and go
2. To me, the word intimacy intuitively feels
3. In my relationship, I tend to constantly…
Worry that my partner will stop loving me one day
Feel repelled when my partner gets too intimate and close to me
Want to learn more about my partner without fear of judgment
Find faults in my partner
4. In my partner’s absence, I…
Look forward to seeing him again
Feel anxious and don’t know what to do
Feel incomplete
Feel free
5. In my most ideal relationship… (choose the one you feel strongest about.)
We would have our own lives & wouldn’t have to depend on each other
I would receive constant love and attention
We would be deeply connected above all else
To feel safe, I would want to have more control in the relationship
6. If a man that I was interested in started to banter with me…
I’d effortlessly banter back
I’d freeze and not know what to say
I’d redirect the conversation because banter is childish
7. If I suspect that my partner has been cheating on me…
I would rather not know about it
I’d ask them about it until they confess
I’d investigate it & find out as much as I can without coming to conclusions
I’d instantly get stressed out of my mind and become angry
8. When it comes to sex… I’d rather have
Casual sex with uncommitted partners
Intimate sex with a committed partner
I’d rather avoid sex.
9. If I share my deepest feelings and thoughts
Perhaps no one would care
Perhaps people may no longer love me
Perhaps I can resonate with the deepest feelings of others
I would never share my deepest feelings
10. If someone I’m dating suddenly becomes cold and distant…
I feel indifferent, even relieved as they’ll need less from me.
I feel like perhaps I’ve done something wrong or perhaps they’ve found someone new
I feel like I need to delve deeper into what is happening without feeling sorry for myself.
I feel angry and vengeful.
We are analysing your personal attachment style results right now and preparing a comprehensive summary. On a side note, it is important to understand attachment styles as a sliding scale rather than a fixed set of categories. Here are the reason why…
1. Your attachment style is not fixed but rather plastic, meaning you can over time heal an insecure attachment style, just as you can create more insecurity in your attachment style if you hang around toxic people in your life. Having a sliding scale offers you a solid direction to move towards.
2. Attachment styles should be considered as secure or insecure attachment styles with levels of severity when it comes to insecure attachment. This helps you understand how your own attachment styles developed in the first place and what direction you need to take in order to heal from attachment style traumas. (We’ll explain this further in the first email you’ll get from us.)
3. Almost everyone with an insecure attachment style has multiple categories and patterns within that insecure attachment, (of course to differing degrees).
In other words, you don’t just have a pure anxious attachment style. That may be the predominant pattern in your nervous system, but there is also avoidant in there too when you’re nervous system is overloaded and sick of being anxious all the time. This is why it’s more important to see this framework as a sliding scale and not just a mere set of categories.
So your personal attachment style will fit along the scale you see below.
In order to get your personal attachment style score, please enter your best email address so that we can securely send this to you. (As well as give you $3,765 worth of coaching bonuses to help you cultivate secure attachment within yourself!)
And yes, we'll treat your email like it was our firstborn.
Some guys don’t want a genuine friendship, they just want control.
They will want to be friends after a breakup not because they want to be friends, but because they want control over:
What’s more is that they may want to control you because they are a narcissist or are an individual with dark triad personality traits.
Related: 17 Early Signs Of A Controlling Man.
True narcissists will not let go of control of anyone if they don’t have to, just because narcissists gain a lot by controlling you. Things such as:
Not to mention it serves an individual with dark personality traits to create a volatile environment for you.
They gravitate towards it and thrive upon it.
If they can control your environment in any way post-breakup, they will, and sadly, sometimes it’s to stop you finding anyone new.
It’s never nice to realize that you are someone’s backup option, but it happens.
Men don’t tend to keep backup options in the same way that women do. Women keep backup options in case they need to fall back on a man for a relationship in the future.
In other words, they want to keep resources related to commitment in a relationship.
Men tend to want to keep you as a backup option in order to gain more sex (from you or from others).
Of course there are men who do keep backup options in case they want to enter some kind of relationship with you in the future, but men’s motivations are inherently different to women’s.
My advice?
Don’t let yourself be kept as a backup option for sex, because that’s all you will ever be for this guy.
He won’t keep you around to take good care of you…because he wasn’t interested in anything more than just sex.
If you give off vibes that you’ll accept this type of arrangement, that’s how he’ll keep treating you.
By the way, did you know that there Are 7 Common Signs That A Woman is Perceived as Low Value to All Men. Do You Know What They Are & How to Avoid Them Like the Plague?
CLICK here to discover the 7 common signs that a woman is perceived as low value in the eyes of men in this special report. (Why is this important? Because men and women perceive value very differently and you don’t want to be making mistakes that would cause quality men to dismiss, abandon or alienate you.)
Even if your ex boyfriend or husband is not a narcissist, he could still just be downright selfish.
Selfish in the way that he wants to keep you in his life because he perceives more power is conferred to him that way.
Maybe it gives him more power in your mutual friendship group, more power over the kids, or maybe it just stops you from moving on completely.
There are many other reasons men can gain power by keeping you around, and you have to explore these possibilities in your own unique case.
Just in case the first half of this article is a bit dark and depressing for you, let me assure you that there are sweeter, more rainbow-y reasons why a man would want to be friends after a breakup.
That reason is sentimentality.
He loves your memories together. He loves what you’ve learned together, achieved together, and it’s hard for him to let go of those memories.
Aww, how sweet.
But it’s only sweet until this type of motivation starts to ruin your chances of success with a new person.
If you guys were already friends before getting together romantically, there’s a chance he wants to stay friends now because that’s simply how you guys work best.
Or out of habit.
Perhaps the friendship was the main part of your whole relationship, and the romance part was minimal.
It kind of makes sense then, that he would want to preserve the platonic side of your relationship.
SPECIAL REPORT: How to Become the World’s Most Attractive & Feminine Goddess (Even if you have no self esteem or no man has ever paid you any attention…) CLICK HERE to download it at no cost.
…And he wants to sleep with one or several of them.
You are the only chance he has to sleep with them, so why not preserve the friendship?
This reason shows just how insincere guys can be. But we’re talking about a specific type of guy here.
Probably not one you’d like to stay in a romantic relationship with!
Do guys really want to be friends after a breakup?
Well, if you guys have a group of common friends, then it may cause him less trouble to keep the friendship between you going.
No one wants to lose all their friends just because of a breakup. It’s extra stress with little gain.
If you’re still asking “do guys really want to be friends after a breakup?”, as in “really” really, truly truly?
Perhaps not.
Perhaps it’s not just friendship he’s after.
If he still has feelings for you, then it’s likely that he doesn’t want to be “just friends”.
But rather, he wants to keep the option of a serious relationship open.
If you were with a particularly saintly guy, or if he was truly in love with you at one time and values the relationship (or even the children you had together), maybe it just makes sense in his mind to keep making sure you’re ok.
This is what real emotional attraction can do for you with men.
If he was always emotionally attracted to you but your relationship broke down for other reasons, and even if you mutually agreed to the breakup, he may still want to take care of you.
This one is a bit of a no-brainer.
Sometimes, for the sake of something bigger than yourself (ie: the happiness of your shared children), he wants to be friends.
And that makes sense. Breaking up is already troublesome and even traumatic in some cases, so why make it more traumatic for the kids?
Plus, if you can stay friends with each other, you can cooperate and pool your resources together for the benefit of the kids.
Why wouldn’t any good parent want that?
Simply put, sometimes guys still want to be friends after a breakup in order to get information from you.
Whether it’s about you or who you date, or even somebody else unrelated to your past romantic relationship together, it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that keeping a friendship open means he has potential access to information.
Cutting off that access to information may feel like sabotaging something for himself.
If he broke up with you, it’s possible that he has some regret or guilt about breaking up with you.
Perhaps he knows deep down inside that he let a good one go, or that he broke up with you for the wrong reasons. It happens!
As such, he knows he hurt you, but doesn’t feel like he can get back together with you straightaway, so he wants to keep the friendship alive.
Some guys don’t want any bad blood with their ex, or they just want to remain civil. One way to accomplish these things is to let you down slowly by suggesting a friendship.
He may not even just want to let you down slowly. He might just want to keep the lines of communication open in order to minimize negative emotions after the breakup.
At least in the immediate future.
If your ex guy is the diplomatic type, you might want to consider this as one of the reasons he wants to be friends.
Now that we’ve got our answers to do guys really want to be friends after a breakup, it’s important to look at whether there’s actual value in remaining friends 0 and how to handle post breakup friendship.
SECRETS REVEALED… Discover how you too can use this little known “Dark Feminine Art” to weed out the toxic men whilst cultivating real emotional attraction with high value high esteemed men. (CLICK HERE to enrol in this free class before it’s gone.)
A lot of us romanticize the concept of remaining friends with an ex. We feel sad that just by breaking up with someone, we have to lose the friendship as well.
Plus, we all need resources in life. And sometimes we perceive that an ex is the only person who can provide those resources.
So we keep them around as a friend.
But nothing changes the fact that you were once together sexually and possibly romantically.
So we have to keep that in mind, because it can negatively affect any new relationship you may have.
There may always be that possibility that you’ll feel sexually attracted to each other, at leas in your new love’s mind.
But here are some situations in which remaining friends makes more sense than cutting your ex off completely:
Which one of these 8 feminine archetypes are you? Answer these 21 questions to discover which feminine archetype you are and how it positively and negatively affects every relationship you have. (Especially your intimate relationship with men.)
1. When I meet someone for the first time, I get a gut feeling whether I can trust them or not.
Very true
It usually takes me a while to figure this out
2. On a rainy day, I prefer…
The safety and warmth of my home
The excitement of a new exotic location
3. Confrontations are...
To be avoided if possible
Can often work in my favour
4. Regarding sex...
I prefer he initiated sex with me
I’m more than comfortable taking what I want from him in the bedroom
5. I can often feel other people’s intentions from a mile away
6. When someone hurts themselves...
I rush to see if they need help
I’d rather see them help themselves
7. It’s more important to…
Pursue my own dreams and goals
Live cohesively in my tribe
8. How important are other people’s feelings?
Super important to me.
Little importance to me.
Other people’s feelings are none of my business.
9. The thought of newborn babies make me feel…
Very emotional and tender
Terrified
Happy and calm
I’m relatively indifferent to newborn babies
10. I would prefer...
Pleasure of the mind
Pleasure of the soul
11. When I have to make a tough decision…
My brain always knows the better answer
My gut always tells me what to do
I will get all the facts and data and make a decision
Give it some time and the answer will come to me
12. True or false... A man and a woman should get along if they love each other.
True
False
I don't know...
13. In my old age, it’s more important to look back and know that
You’ve connected with others and created strong bonds
You’ve achieved all your dreams
You had truly cared about those around you
You ticked everything off of your bucket list
14. In terms of dancing…
I love to dance and move my body
I find it a chore
15. When I’m faced with something unknown, I trust
My gut feelings more than my thoughts
My thoughts more than my gut feelings
16. In social situations, I am...
The peacemaker who ensures everyone feels included.
The dominant personality who likes to lead.
The enigmatic figure who draws others in with mystery.
The observer who watches from the sidelines.
17. In my current or previous relationship…
I enjoy how a man is so different to me
I get annoyed that a man is so different to me
We are so different I often thought I’d be better off alone
His differences make me appreciate and love him more
18. When a friend is upset, my first instinct is to:
Run away, I’ve been used by enough friends
Give them some space until they're ready to talk.
Suggest practical solutions to their problems.
Give them a hug and listen to them
19. I believe in premonitions
True
False
I’m willing to entertain the idea
It’s a load of nonsense
20. I would prefer to be more...
Liked by others
Envied by others
21. Which is more true?
Conflicts serve a good purpose in my relationship
Conflicts are to be avoided in my relationship
Conflict will cause my relationship to die
With the right man, conflicts only strengthen our relationship
We are analysing your feminine archetype right now and preparing your personalised summary.
Here’s something interesting to know before moving forward…
Every single one of these archetypes has strengths and weaknesses. No matter how ego stroking it may be to identify with your archetype, know that it’s just a starting point.
It is your job to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses so that you can grow, evolve and become who you are meant to become.
Ultimately you want to become a full multi-dimensional human being. In order to truly become a high value individual, you want to tap into the value that every part of you has to bring to the table.
This feminine archetype quiz is one step along this journey to help you discover who you are, and who you will become.
So here is the next step.
Please enter your first name and email below so that we can safely deliver your feminine archetype results and send to you the extended explanation. (As well as give you $3,765 worth of coaching bonuses!)
And yes, we'll treat your email like it was our firstborn.
Let’s take a look at some other common questions on post breakup friendship.
Just in case he can get something out of the friendship with you, usually.
Think about what he might get out of keeping you around as a friend and you’ll have your answer.
Yes, it’s possible. As long as there are no lingering romantic feelings between you both.
But make sure you’ve ruled out the possibility that he’s staying friends with you because of other reasons such as the possibility or sex or having a friends with benefits relationship.
Some guys care after a breakup, and some do not care at all. It all depends on the kind of guy he is.
If a guy was never in love with you, he really may not care at all.
But sometimes they do care too. They may just be less likely to express their emotions to you, as they don’t want to look like they’re not in control or are somehow “less of a man”.
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Renee is the founder of The Feminine Woman & co-founder of Shen Wade Media where we teach women how to show up as a high value high status woman whom easily inspires a deep sense of emotional commitment from her chosen man. She graduated with a bachelor of Law and bachelor of Arts majoring in sociology and psychology. She has been a dating and relationship coach for women in the past 15 years and together with her husband D. Shen at Commitment Triggers blog, they have positively influenced the lives of over 20 million women through their articles and videos as well as 10’s of thousands through paid programs through the Shen Wade Media platform.
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