Six Couples’ Response to:

“Can we still be friends after divorce?”

When it comes to marriage, most women won’t choose divorce unless they’ve reached their breaking point. After all, their husband was their own choice, and there was probably some emotional connection to begin with.

But married life rarely unfolds exactly as we expect. Sometimes couples find themselves standing at a crossroads, where it’s time to go their separate ways.

After a divorce, some couples might stay in touch for the kids, while others cut all ties completely. People often ask: “Can divorced couples still be friends?” This question is tricky because, before the divorce, these two people were incredibly intimate and familiar with each other. Afterward, they might not have any contact at all — or even need it. So can divorced couples really be friends? Trust me, it’s not as simple as you might think.

1. Emily: “You have to cut all ties. There’s no room for friendship.”

I used to watch TV shows where divorced couples would remain friends, help each other out, and even get back together, living happily ever after. When I got divorced, I tried to follow those TV show examples. I gave my ex-husband another chance, and he acted as if he’d completely changed his ways. We got remarried.

But things didn’t turn out like some TV show with a happy ending. After we remarried, my ex was pretty much the same as before, maybe even worse. He tried to manipulate his way into my savings, and I later discovered he was seeing someone else on the side. I divorced him immediately. If you haven’t been through it, you don’t know what true despair feels like. Only when you’ve lived it do you understand heartbreak. Since then, we’ve become strangers who once knew each other best. It’s better if we never see each other again.

2. Mr. Johnson: “Impossible to be friends. You made your choice, now live with it.”

Back then, her mother complained that I didn’t earn enough money and strongly pushed her daughter to divorce me. My ex-wife left me when our son was three years old and never once came to see him afterward. All these years, I’ve raised our son on my own, and our life has gotten better and better.

My son missed his mom, so last year I contacted her to ask if she could make time to see him. She never showed up. I guess my ex’s life isn’t going too well either. At the beginning of this year, my ex-mother-in-law suddenly added me on WeChat, saying she wanted to see her grandson and that his mother missed the child. I rejected her outright, without giving her any face. You made your choice, now live with it. Right now, I just want to focus on raising my son to be a good man.

3. Jessica: “My ex and I had great chemistry, but after one meeting, I regretted it.”

My ex-boyfriend and I had a really good connection, but we broke up due to other circumstances and didn’t stay in touch. We both ended up getting married to other people. Ten years later, we met again, and those old feelings and mutual affection were still there.

But this meeting seriously hurt our current partners. I forced myself to endure the pain and cut off all contact with my ex-boyfriend for good. I realized that what’s past should stay in the past. You need to cherish the person beside you and not live in some in-between space. Especially when you’ve already betrayed your current partner — that’s when the consequences far outweigh any temporary satisfaction.

4. Mr. Chen: “No way we can be friends. I hope she ends up homeless on the streets.”

I divorced my ex-wife because she was seeing another man. When I found out, I tried to convince her to stay together for the kids’ sake. She wouldn’t listen. Before we even finished the divorce paperwork, she just stopped coming home. When we finally completed the paperwork, that other man was waiting for her outside. How could I ever be friends with someone like that?

Later, she came back begging to remarry me, saying that the man was only after her body, scammed her out of all her money, and never really loved her. Yeah, right. Where was that realization when it mattered? People like that don’t deserve second chances, and I don’t have the ability to forgive them. It’s better if we never cross paths again.

The whole divorce-and-remarriage thing is complicated. But generally speaking, divorced couples who choose to remarry are pretty rare — probably because no major deal-breakers were involved. After a divorce, each person goes on to live their own life. Even if kids are in the picture, that’s no excuse to stay friends, and you should never use children as bargaining chips to get back together.

You probably loved each other once, but when a relationship leads to divorce, it usually means someone was hurt badly enough that they had no other choice. Forgetting a past relationship might just take time, but starting a new chapter in your love life can help too.

Daniel: She told too many lies, and I cannot be friends with someone like that

Are the lies necessary? My ex-wife says we should both be able to coparent in harmony, even though we have since parted ways. But, during the divorce proceedings, all she did was lie. She fabricated tales about me, said I cheated when I didn’t cheat, and even said she caught me making love to a housemaid when nothing of such happened. How can we be friends when all she did was avoid the truth and make up unprovable lies just to paint me black on the court documents?

She said she bought properties with me and used a lot of underhanded tactics to make my life difficult after the divorce, simply because she wanted to be vindictive

She would do everything to deny me access to the children whenever I am civil with her, but whenever I go all out to get the children off her, she would play victim and describe me as toxic and unreasonable.

Being friends with a snake will only end up leading you to the grave

Keep as far away as you can from an ex like my ex-wife.

6: Fatimah: How My Ex and I Remained Friends After Divorce

One of the weirdest things about divorcing my ex has been the utter confusion from everyone else when they find out we’re still friends. Let me be clear, we’re not just “friendly”; we are still very good and deeply connected friends. I know this may not be possible for the long term, but for now, this is where we are.

If we each had told people our sides of the story, no one would have blamed either one of us for our anger and frustration and we were perfectly within our right to hold onto those feelings forever if that’s what we wanted. Thankfully, we both knew in our own hearts that this isn’t what we wanted for ourselves, each other, or us as a unit. We worked hard together and as individuals to see past the pain and into the person we were standing next to.

We mutually agreed that our daughter’s happiness outweighed our pain.

At the end of the day, our daughter was our top priority, which I think is true for most parents. Individually, we knew without a doubt that whatever we needed to do to make this as least painful as possible for her is what we were going to do.

We were both equally committed to a shared post-divorce vision.

I know this is rare and I am fully aware of the fact that most relationships simply can’t work this way. The fact of the matter is if both of you aren’t fully committed to a path of kindness, empathy, and most importantly, forgiveness, then this will not work. Luckily, my ex and I were on the same page. But this doesn’t surprise me; even at our worst, the other person’s heart took precedence. Yes, it certainly helped that there was no scandal in our marriage and nothing happened that would be considered unforgivable, and when the biggest transgression in a marriage is one of you simply falling out of love, forgiveness is typically achievable.