It’s A Pleasure
I want to stay friends, but the situation is unbearable.
Q:How can I be normal around my ex?
I recently got into myfirst-ever serious relationship.
We have mutual friends and work together.
But I cant seem to act even a little normal around her.
What should I do?
Thats the key to all of this.
Very rarely in life is putting more pressure on yourself the answer.
Thats like tying three separate cinder blocks on your brain and asking it to swim!
Regardless of anyone elses mental health, your struggles are worth being addressed.
A breakup isnota competition over who is doing the lousiest.
That seems incredibly unfair to you.
Im not here to be the arbiter of who decides what information gets told to whom and when.
Not because it’s crucial that you warn people or anything like that!
But because that person is, ideally, a source of support.
(Fans at home: Notice a and not the only.)
Neither you nor your ex are at fault.
Using words to describe whats going on in our little baked potato brains is fraught!
Also, people with mental illness get very good at masking symptoms and struggles.
You are not a ding-dong for not noticing what someone else is going through internally.
Give both your ex and yourself a break.
Now, its Time Time!
I told you wed get here.
Of course you arent swanning into work with the unflappable poise of Grace Kelly right away.
Of course its awkward to be around people who know you two have broken up.
You are more than welcome to be Mr. Darcy levels of taciturn for a bit.
We are not meant to magically be capable of switching off romantic feelings and shifting seamlessly into platonic friendship.
I think being distant and polite is totally acceptable here!
Professionalism matters (unfortunately), but keep work interactions to whats strictly necessary.
Get coffee with someone youve been wanting to be better friends with.
Join an ice hockey league.
Talk to a medical professional about your mental health if at all possible.
But also, call your own friends!
Feel free to tell a couple of close shared friends about your plan, too.
Not because its gossip or anything, but so they can be there for you.
Because you will need people along the way.
The goal of this distance from your ex is not to cost you friendships or permanently alter dynamics.
Its to give you time.
Time to feel awkward and weird and sad about the breakup.
And then, a little further down the road, grateful and open and curious about what comes next.
But you have to give yourself time.
Its A Pleasure appears here every other Thursday.
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