No — its not as bad as it sounds (unless you live in Mississippi), but I’m sure you’ve all seen or been affected by the interesting phenomenon in certain friend groups where the girls/guys systematically work thru everyone datable in the group. To be honest, it’s always baffled me. I mean, I am friends with almost all of my exes but not to the point of lets all hang out and I can watch you smootchie all over my friend. And THEN, I get to hear her version of your relationship because, well, she’s my friend and listened to me when I told her all about the romantic date her ex took me on.
My heart is generous, but not armored for that kind of wear and tear. I’m more of the school — you dated my friend within the last 5 years, so its going to take an act of God to get us together.
But a lot of people I know engage in this kind of roulette style dating and don’t seem to think anything about it. One of my friends recently explained that she did it (before she married one of the guys in the group) b/c she walled herself off from strange men in an attempt to protect herself. So her guy friends were the only guys who got to know the real person under her famous smile and she relaxed enough around them to develop interest. And another friend sticks to dating friends because they developed a solid foundation to start.
On the flip side, some of my friends have been incredibly wounded by not knowing that one of those breakups isn’t going to be pretty, so they had to decide, do I lose my friends to save my heart or do I harden up to keep my friends?
And then there are those who only fish outside the group which makes it harder to really know someone before letting them into your life and at times the group newbie loses some great friends in the break up b/c the group insider knew them first.
My question is… for those of you who do this: HOW do you move on like that so quickly and do you really get a good chance for making a clean break of it before dating your next friend? Has it ever harmed your circle to the point of splitting friendships?
And for those of you who don’t … Do you have an unwritten code among your friends that exes are off limits or is it something you would consider if the right one came along? Have you ever wanted to date someone in your group and the break up dynamic is exactly what stopped you from pulling the trigger?
