Friendship After Dating

What someone claims about friendship between people who once dated often reduces down to what they claim about friendships between men and women in a more general sense.  If someone mistakenly thinks men and women cannot be platonic friends or cannot be friends if either party experiences sexual attraction to the other, they are likely to be suspicious of people who remain close friends after dating.  Inversely, if someone realizes that men and women are capable of friendship with or without sexual attraction being involved, they are likely to be more accepting when couples become aromantic friends.

The termination of a dating relationship does not have to mean that a former couple cannot still enjoy a thriving friendship after they decide to stop meeting with romantic intentions.  Friendship after dating is not only possible, but can even also be advisable when a man and woman have a a secure or promising relational connection that will not be destroyed in the transition from dating to friendship.  After all, why should former dating partners abandon each other if they can handle post-dating friendship?

The evolution of an established cross-gender relationship can be far more beneficial than simply discarding it when the couple learns that dating each other is not ideal for them.  Whether the dating period was brief or lasted for months, both parties might still be perfectly capable of having a mature, deep friendship despite opting to not pursue a romantic connection.  Indeed, some people might forfeit potentially deep non-romantic relationships by automatically wishing to never stay active friends with someone they once dated.

It is true that some people might have a much more difficult time platonically interacting with someone they once considered in a romantic or sexual light than others.  For those who cannot relate to this difficulty, though, there is no reason to not consider friendship a valid thing to pursue even with people who once dated them.  To not do so is to gratuitously limit one's pool of friends and exclude candidates who might be entirely willing to invest in a relationship that does not involve dating.  Unfortunately, this type of opposite gender friendship is not understood or encouraged.

It is commonly understood that friendship between men and women can sometimes lead to romantic pairings, but the fact that dating can also lead to strong friendships between men and women is usually not emphasized.  However, either relationship status is capable of leading to the other.  A friendship between former dating partners is not necessarily a lesser friendship, nor is it an inherent threat to the future dating relationships of either person, even if it is scoffed at by ignorant observers.