Only Fuckboys Stay Friends With Their Ex

Man who is still friend with his exes
Unsplash / Chris Benson

They are not your friends. Those girls you used to intertwine your legs with at night and share your bed with. The women who used to have their fingers ruffled in your hair and their lips on yours as they told you how they felt, and you told them how you felt.

They are not your friends when they message you at 3 AM knowing that you have a new girlfriend, or when they ask to borrow money and to stay at your place.

When they lie about having something horrific happen just to have alone time with you, they are not your friends.

Keeping in contact with your exes is not called having friends, it is called emotional cheating and it can be more hurtful to your new partner than sexual cheating.

Imagine this. A girl falls for a guy, yada-yada-yada, they move in together. Throughout the relationship, every argument has involved a woman, who the guy would call a friend, who had previously been intimate with him.

Every one of these women disrespected, jeopardized, and attempted to seduce him. Now, an ignorant woman would assume it’s all these women who are the issue, they haven’t moved on.

Notice the sun to the galaxy of exes: it is the guy. He is the number one phone call to the women he hasn’t let go of. He has an ex as his emergency contact. He tells his now-girlfriend that he will, and I quote, “Not ice out everybody in his life for some new relationship.”

Translation: “I am not ready to commit and have no ability to get over these women I’ve been under. So you can either accept it or leave because I can’t end these relationships.”

This is the fuckboy boyfriend.

We all know the type. He calls five women, decides which two he would rather see when they all say they’re available, and somehow tries to back-to-back his “oops, gotta jet, babe” jackrabbit sessions with them.

He messages one girl that he’s busy working while his date is in the bathroom, and if she could just wait until later, he could come by.

He might start actually seeing a girl while seeing another girl.

He will stay with the one who has low enough self-esteem to stay and little enough of a mind to go after finding out that she is one of at least two.

The worst part is not him just having sex with more than one woman while not being 100% single or polyamorous, it is how he acts like the full-package to all these women. He gives them not just his penis, but his heart, and that is what makes the infidelity that much worse.

Your boyfriend is pursuing other women, women he never stopped pursuing. Emotional cheating is falling in love, being in love, and loving people romantically or intimately besides your partner.

He can’t stop. He’s a fuckboy and he will lie. But he also wants one woman to come home to at night, in case he ever gets his shit together — because let’s face it, if a woman will stay after all the crap that she has had to deal with, he better never let her go because fuckboys always end up alone (with daily company, but alone).

Reality check, though: he will never get his shit together and he will keep emotionally cheating, maintaining his past relationships, and if he says it’s not physical, well, try frying eggs without the house smelling like eggs is all I have to say.

He will get phone calls past midnight which he won’t answer. He’ll straighten his hair to work at a warehouse filled with men. He will update his Tinder account one month into moving in with a girl stupid enough to trust him.

It’s like a sick, twisted compulsion. The wifey girl cries, gets upset, but he does not stop messaging the woman who pressed up on him outside of a concert and gave him years of memories.

He will get an ‘I’m horny’ message a week before wifey and his 6 month anniversary from ‘a girl he’s never even met before.’

He says it’s trust issues, insecurities, that are the problem and damn, wifey’s lucky he puts up with her crap.

The fuckboy boyfriend is a rare breed. He craves actual intimacy and love. He’s a serial dater but doesn’t actually commit to any one woman. He commits to all of them, everyone he’s ever been with, and they all have as much access to him as a boyfriend ‘after’ (there’s clearly no expiry to their relationships, so not sure if ‘after’ can be said about something that obviously hasn’t ended yet) their ‘break up’ as they did at the time they were dating, regardless of who he is with.

The fuckboy boyfriend comes with a lifelong warranty. No matter who he is with, how much they love him, he will still be your boyfriend even after you broke up.

You can rely on him. His girlfriend probably can’t, but that’s why you’re the alluring, sexy ex now. You don’t have to put up with his crap, you’ll find a real man. But this one will always have the hots for you, now that you’re not together the fuckboy will make more effort than he ever did.

The fact that his girlfriend hates you makes the disrespecting of their relationship that much hotter. You might have moved on, but his messaging you with you knowing there’s probably the wifey asleep in his arms tells you that he hasn’t. He calls you a friend to her face, and tells you how much he wants you behind her back.

Most women see the red flags, the serious attachment issues, and run. Being a current is much, much more embarrassing than being an ex.

Friends are kind people who are there for you. Friend is not a mask for a crush, a woman you’re attracted to, a woman you never moved on from and are still dating, maybe without the happy ending (optimistic girlfriend thinking).

How does anybody put up with that crap you may ask? First off, by having a good heart, not being a sociopath, and by believing  everybody tells the truth, even the fuckboy.

See, the fuckboy, as soon as he’s spotted as a fuckboy, will smooth all the edges, cut out all the other women (or hide it better) to convince you that he is not a fuckboy, just to find more players to join his game.

No woman would ever date a man knowing that he has contact with all at least 50 women he has had sex with. So he lies but when the exes weasel out of their holes and he has to watch a ‘you’re in a relationship now’ hammer strike them away, he comes up with safety nets to keep those relationships and not threaten the success of the new one he’s yet to ruin.

So he calls those weaseling, once-on-their-knees-in-front-of-him, exes ‘friends’. It’s pretty twisted, I imagine many women felt disgusted with themselves after finding out who they were really with: that their dream boyfriend is actually a fuckboy, but it’s never a surprise.

It’s like that click in movies or books where all the clues fit together. Fuckboys use the the law of averages; dictating that statistically speaking, the more people are screened, the higher the likelihood of some of those people being interested in whatever you are screening that many people for (usually a marketing technique) to secure a few emotionally attached women out of the many emotionally detached instances they have with them.

Those attached women will stay no matter what, because obviously the fuckboy does not treat a lady right and they put up with it, greenlighting their desperation and dedication to the fuckboy.

The women who boyfriend the fuckboys stay because being lied to is less painful than being cheated on-and believing the lies makes the truth less true, somehow, as that’s exactly what lies do.

Being a woman who has a lying, cheating, scumbag boyfriend teaches a lot about self-deception and it is the biggest knife with which you could ever stab yourself with.

Staying for false promises and empty lies is less humiliating than leaving because of how much of a joke your relationship actually is to this man.

You’re being cheated on (emotionally or physically or both!) and because you love him, you stay even though you know the ‘just friends’ lies are bullshit and that he’s already finding his next victim.

Love isn’t to blame though, loving a fuckboy because he was so good at disguising it, is. Loving a fuckboy is painful, especially when the fuckboy does the fuckboy thing and denies being a fuckboy, despite an inbox full of nudes and sexy messages, while on another part of his page there’s his relationship status with you.

Don’t worry though, babe. “They’re just friends.”

I know what ‘friends’ with once-maybe-still-intimate relationships means. I was a mistress to an engaged man once. I had a rough past, made some bad decisions. He told his fiancée, when she saw my name in his phone, that I was just a friend from school and she called me and I went along with it.

I had sex with him a few hours after that call. I know ‘friends.’ I know past lovers. The second I’m off the market, I’m off the market. Not this guy. Not the fuckboy boyfriend.

The women who like the fuckboy, love the fuckboy, whatever, eventually get sick of being lied to, being treated how a fuckboy would treat them and end the relationship, move on.

Some of these women though, in the slew of women that there are, do not move on as he does not move on. He has a great recycling system, the fuckboy does. Even if he has somebody, that is not enough.

The line between a fuckboy and a narcissist doesn’t exist because they are one and the same. A technique known as triangulation sets up a romantic partner against past romantic partners, the great qualities of real or imagined past or current partners and that is used to instill jealousy and a sense of the fuckboy being ‘in demand.’

Pause. Take a moment. Is a lying, attention-deprived (despite taking all of it from a loyal person) idiot guy worth being jealous over? Is there really a drought of assholes that women will be willing to toss themselves at his feet for?

The newest joke of the fuckboy boyfriend is using the words “controlling and abusive” to describe the current girlfriend to his ex-girlfriends and past sexual partners, because the current girlfriend is not an idiot, has seen and been one of those ‘friends’ whose not-single anymore ex messages them at dawn and succumbs to the idiocy which is the fuckboy tornado of bullcrap.

Cheating isn’t the worst part, though. It’s the ‘hope you got home safe’ texts, it’s the women messaging him when they’re upset, it’s him being their shoulder to cry on when they make the loyal woman they have by some miracle cry all day and night and they leave her alone to tend to their other relationships they downplay as ‘friends’ because there is care, beyond the sexual relationships he has with those women.

The care and emotional depth makes these past sexual relationships, which are still currently maintained, actual romantic relationships and to be so blatantly disrespectful as to have never-ending relationships with exes and destroy an ‘actually could have a chance if he smartened the fuck up’ relationship over these exes is emotional cheating at the very least and if physical loyalty is the best a fuckboy can do as a boyfriend, still unable to cut out sexting and privately messaging past lovers all day, then see your fuckboy boyfriend as who he is.

Let the fuckboy be a fuckboy, and find an actual boyfriend because a fuckboy will always be a fuckboy and cannot be an actual, to only one woman, boyfriend having the fuckboy gene. It simply cannot be done.

To enter a new relationship and continue talking to past intimate partners and serious romantic relationships are two events no sane, morally-sound person would ever do.

Nobody writes a recipe for a healthy relationship with ‘ex-girlfriends’ as the second ingredient.

I once joked that what he was asking for, for me to not be ‘controlling and abusive’ by asking him to please not cheat on me or keep receiving nudes and being more than one woman’s good morning and good night kiss, is like asking me to give a guided tour of our apartment, provide pamphlets, and give his exes T-shirts so they can be caught up to speed on this relationship they’re apparently also a part of, since they’re also talking to and probably dating my boyfriend.

I’ve never had somebody solely be friends with women they’ve been inside of. I’ve never seen someone not give up a single booty call number despite being in a serious relationship.

That is because it is not a serious relationship to the fuckboy. He is being a fuckboy and will always be a fuckboy and probably was one when you met but you broke your own idiot rules because you believed the fuckboy — they literally lie and manipulate women for a living, and they never stop by literal definition of being a fuckboy.

Emotional pain can be devastating and to give your heart to someone who keeps a collection and tells you yours can join the shelf but they won’t clear the shelf for you, is a huge mistake not even worth exploring the slimmest odds of success for.

The fuckboy boyfriend: 100% fuckboy, 100% lying boyfriend. Find yourself something real, honey, because you’ll be chasing rainbows with naked, sexy exes at the end of them and your dreams are nothing more than finger paintings made by the adulterous hands of the liar you trusted to share your life with.

Fuckboys do not change. Pathetic, desperate exes do not have respect.

Walk away from the tangled orgy of exes which every fuckboy comes with and walk alone towards a genuine life with genuine love and no more late night booty calls from some Suzie (when you were worried about Heather, Mandy, Ashton, Katherine, Sarah and Liz) after you just finished explaining what emotional commitment looks like to you and how you don’t see it.

If you don’t see it, it’s not there: stop looking, pack up and move on. For the love of God, move on how he clearly has no idea how to and be healthy.

Leave him to the women he so  desperately clings to, and let them lick his wounds as they have for years.

You are not losing anything special: the fuckboy boyfriend mass-produced his affections for every woman to leave with a lootbag ‘post relationship’ which is — surprise — a never ending supply of his availability, physically and emotionally to them, which in relevance to a committed relationship, is a direct statement on his unavailability to be loyal and committed.

Dump the chump. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

Naive lover of that which everybody else knows better than to love.

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