Crazy! How Science Can Predict If You'll Be Friends With Your Ex

The million-dollar question.

By Caithlin Pena — Written on Apr 24, 2022

Photo: Bogdan Sonjachnyj / Shutterstock

Science may now have the answer to this million-dollar question: can two people stay friends after a breakup?

In my experience, the answer was always no. It's still no.

I actually can't think of one ex I still talk to.

That's my way of coping at least and I was never good at science.

Researchers studied a group of 18- to 30-year-old heterosexual couples for a year. They were interviewed every 4 months and assessed satisfaction, investment, commitment, and available alternatives in their relationships.

Couples that broke up after the first interview were then monitored to see how often they had contact with their ex, and how positive or negative their attitude was towards them. If I was a part of this study, I would give them such varying results. I would be my own study.

According to the study, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, couples who had high levels of commitment, high satisfaction, and fewer available alternatives were most likely to remain friends with their ex.

In an interview with Mic, Kenneth Tan of Purdue University and co-author of the study says that commitment plays a role in couples maintaining a friendship after a breakup because commitment requires intimacy and attachment. And all of my exes had intimacy issues.

"However, when the romance ends, feelings of commitment do not magically disappear. Relationship partners who have grown to depend on each other to fulfill their needs may be reluctant to lose both tangible (e.g., shared friends) and intangible (e.g., emotional ties) connections that were developed over the course of the relationship," Tan says.

He also says that the existence of a friendship prior to a romantic relationship helps couples keep their friendship after a breakup.

This may be the secret to why your friends have been with their significant others for so long. Or maybe why you and Josh didn't end up working out.

"Previous research has found that post-breakup friendship is more likely to occur when couple members are friends before they were romantically involved," he said. So either way, you might break up, but if you were friends before you might get to have a friendship with them after.

So, there's the answer: yes, people can stay friends after a breakup if there's a basis of friendship and a deep level of commitment. If not, you might be better off just by yourself for a while.