JEALOUSY NOT FRIENDS OF THE OPPOSITE SEX.

I saw a preposterous article by the ridiculous doctor who claims that men and women cannot be platonic friends that gave advice about how to get over your ex. The first thing I say is, there are six stages you go through after a relationship breakup and you cannot advise somebody to skip those stages and move straight to the growth stage!

Whitehead and Whiteside (When Your Lover Leaves You, 2000) outline the six stages: shock, hope, anger, despair, indifference and growth. Only if a relationship ends due to domestic violence can the hope phase be avoided.

The abovementioned authors talk about things you can do that can turn anger into something positive, but they don’t say, straight off, that you should bypass all that and move into hanging out with friends. If you have really good friends, however, they will come up with something they know you’ll like and invite you to it. Or, they’ll appeal to your expertise to help you feel like the competent helper rather than the one who lost everything.

This ridiculous doctor says that if a person has a friend of the opposite sex outside of the house that it can threaten a relationship, yet craps on about a person supposedly being hot (this doctor is in his 50s, not his teens) but not having everything you want in a partner. Firstly, if your partner is supposed to be your best friend, and you are finding something in someone outside your relationship of the opposite sex, it signals one of two things, to me. One, the relationship with your partner isn’t as secure as you think it should be, or, two, you are putting too many eggs in one basket. If two people from the opposite sex are in relationships with other people but are friends with each other, and their relationships are fulfilling, any association should have self-imposed boundaries and should not require professional advice!

Friendships with people of the opposite sex should NEVER be cut back on because you enter into a relationship.