Why doesn't my ex boyfriend want to stay friends?

Dear Tazz13_632,

I recently broke up with my boyfriend, but I still want to stay friends with him, and he said he was cool with that, but he never returns my calls or emails. Why is that?

Signed,

Friend-less.

Dear Friend-less,

This is a complicated question, one that illustrates the differences between men, and honestly, it’s probably one of those issues that can never really be understood by either gender, but I’ll try and explain to you the guy perspective, on the dreaded “Let’s just be friends” or LJBF.

No guy EVER wants to hear a woman say this. Why? Good question. Many women seem to feel it’s simply a case of male immaturity. That it we were “real men” we would want to stay friends with our x’s.

How do I respond? With one word: BULLSHIT.

To a guy that’s all LJBF is. As far as we’re concerned it’s something a girl says to make herself feel better about dumping the guy, and/or let him down easy.

And if he’s lucky, it really is just a way to let him down easy, and the phone call ends there. Some aren’t though. Often a woman will keep going, and say that she still wants to hang out and do all the fun things that she did with him when they were still dating. This is really fucked up. It’s like telling him that you don’t want to date/screw/love him,but you are willing to let him wine dine and entertain you, and you ladies act as if that’s some sort of gift or priviledge that we men should some home be grateful or excited for. Like you expect us to say “Hot damn! I get to spend all that time and money on her so she can have something to do when she’s not off searching for some other guy! Oh, lord where do I sign?” See how it sounds, ladies? It feels you’re lying or using us. Why not just come out and say “You can’t give me what I’m looking for, so it’s over.” You seem to think LJBF makes us feel better, that the truth. It doesn’t.

I could never figure out why women did this. That is, until watching a Chris Rock HBO special where he literally said “LJBF is a woman’s way of keeping your dick in a glass case with a sign on it that says ‘In case of emergency, break open and use this.’”

Now I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I think you get the point. It’s a known fact that women use manipulation to get what they want, especially from men. So why does she want to keep the guy around? Simple. Because she might need him for something. Could be sex, a free dinner, entertainment, or maybe she wants to keep her options open with the guy in case she can’t find anyone else to hang out with.

So why does he not want to be your friend? Why should he? See, if he went out with you, there was romantic, not plutonic interest there. If you kissed, had sex, etc, there was at some point MUTUAL romantic interest. For what ever reason, you ended the relationship, probably for completely legit reasons. You still like him on some level and you want to keep him in your life. But you can’t have him. Doesn’t work that way.Think about it: what’s in it for him? Sounds cold, but can you really answer that question? You probably can’t.

“Not all guys are like that!” You say. “I have a sister’s cousin’s, niece’s manicurist and she totally stayed friends with her boyfriend after they broke up!” You say, as if to disprove my theory. Do guys stay friends with their ex’s. NO. Some pretend to. Why?:

1. They still have a thing for their ex and stick around, hoping that she’ll dump that guy she’s with and he’ll get back together with her.
2. It looks good to other women.
3. They’re hoping that if they stay friends with the ex, they can get with her hot friend/sister, etc.

I would say that 90% of the time, when a guy stays friends with the ex, it’s because of reason #1. Sad, isn’t it?

Still don’t get it? When you two were dating that guy it was fun, but it wasn’t fun for the sake of fun, it was for the sake of courtship. I think most guys have more than enough female friends, and if he wanted to be friends with you, he wouldn’t have asked you out on a date. And in a guy’s mind, change is never good. So if you started out as boyfriend and girlfriend, or were heading that way, you can’t just say, LJBF, because in his mind he’s like “Hey! That’s not what I signed up for!” As far as we’re concerned, relationships either end or keep going, they don’t go LJBF.

Why can’t he just be friends and you can? Women are different. They start mentally divorcing themselves from the relationship LONG before they ever actually pull the plug, and they do this with no discernable difference in their behavior. They’ll still sleep with the guy if they’ve been doing that, keep showing up at his important functions and still seem to be loving and supportive. So when the breakup happens, either the guy never sees it coming, or if he’ll wonder why it ended so “suddenly.” But the signs are always there, and it never ends suddenly. She was just taking her time to make sure that when she made the decision, she would be fine with it and never go back to him, but all of this just hits a guy like a baseball bat to the face when it happens, and he’s usually cool with it, that is until you bust out the LJBF, which is really like giving the guy a paper cut on his scrotum and then pouring lemon juice on it.

If you like the guy, it’s really best to just move on and leave him alone, so you can both find what your looking for. Now, I’m not saying you should cut your ex’s out of your lives completely (but I do it anyway. Kidding.) As a matter of fact I believe you should always try and end your relationships on the best possible terms. And I’m not opposed to staying in touch via myspace or email. But hanging out with them, going to movies, and doing all the fun stuff when you were dating? Sorry ladies, It’s not happening. Why? That’s selfish of you to ask that of him. You can’t have his cake and eat it too. It just doesn’t work that way.