The Ex-orcism: Relationship Afterlife

Welcome to Dumpsville, population: you.

Break-ups suck.

Even when we initiate them, they still suck. Each one is a black mark on our dating card, a failure that's sure to bite us in the ass when we least expect it.

Generally, they don't go well. The final plate-smashing argument is the icing on a toxic cake, and you have to move towns just to avoid bumping into them on the street. And if you do, it feels like running into Satan. Terrifying, and you just knew this day would come.

And sometimes it's amicable, so you can part using the same phrase at the relationship funeral as you did during sex—I'm so glad you came. Where our relationship goes where it dies often depends on us.

When the love is dead, do all good break-ups go to Heaven, and bad ones go to Hell?

Heaven

Staying friends with an ex - is it really possible? Or should we let that ghost haunt someone else?

Remaining on friendly terms with someone we used to bed and even wanted to wed is ambitious, to say the least.

Maybe we have a flame of love left burning for them, or maybe we were friends before all the love stuff happened, and we think we can revert to that.

It's not impossible.

It comes down to how serious our relationship was, and how we feel now it's over. If you're relaxed about it and ready to find someone who suits you better, then remaining friends and keeping the peace with them and their friends or family members can work out. After all, dating someone often means you're dating the whole family, and a break-up means you lose new friends as well as your partner.

Focusing on the future instead of living in the past is essential, but being peaceful with an ex can help you to move on, and shows new partners that you're mature and won't boil their bunnies if things go wrong.

Limbo

With clowns to the left of you, jokers to the right, you might end up stuck in the middle with your ex.

Messaging, calling and meeting up is like playing with a Ouija board - every now and again you play with the unknown and summon your relationship back from the dead. It looks horribly emaciated and doesn't feel the same, but it's something.

After a sex drought, it's tempting to upgrade your ex to a friend... and eventually a friend-with-benefits.

Realistically, it's not a great idea.

Using someone for sex and temporary emotional validation isn't healthy; it means you're both stuck in limbo - unable to move back into the old relationship or forward into a new one. It puts off potential lovers who feel uncomfortable with your ex hanging around, waiting in the wings for an opportunity to hook up again.

It's not easy so when being with your ex is like the good old days before the arguments, but sometimes, you've just gotta let it go for the sake of moving forward.

Hell

The Victorians used to bury their dead beneath an iron cage, in case they came back as zombies and tried to eat the villagers' brains. Yeah, really.

After a break-up, sometimes we wish we could put bars between us and toxic ex's so they don't come back to eat our brains.

When an ex hangs around on Facebook or in our social circle, it's like being haunted by an unwelcome ghost. They see everything we do, every place we go and who we talk to.

I myself had a few complications keeping ex's around. One or two thought it meant I was still interested, prompting constant booty calls and flirty texts. Others felt bitter about things that had gone wrong between us and insisted on digging up stuff I thought was dead and buried. Still others missed me and fell into depressions when they saw me move on with my life and date, rejecting their efforts to restart our relationship.

Either way, I had to eventually perform a social media exorcism to cleanse my life of negative spirits. It's a simple yet effective rite:

Delete, block, unfollow.

Life After Death

After exhausting relationship problems and break-ups, we crave simplicity to get our lives and heads back in order.

Our ex is someone we don't know how to handle. Do we keep the peace, stay friends, or get the hell out of there?

People change. Our circumstances change too, and after a few months we can both be in totally different places and able to re-evaluate the feelings between us.

Sometimes it's easy to downgrade our relationship with them to just friends, and that's okay. Remembering to keep them firmly in that place and not allowing them to usurp new partners is vital.

And sometimes it's better to call a priest and throw holy water on the situation. Know when to say NO and move on with your life, not letting yourself be haunted by the ghosts of your past forever.

Either way, there is always life after death, and we should keep our focus on the future, not the past.

In there is the key to happiness.