Can people who have been in love remain friends?

“After breaking up, can we still be friends?”

Some say that staying friends after a breakup is a consolation for the relationship, a way to keep the company under a different role, offering another form of longevity.

Others argue that if you can remain friends after a breakup, it either means you never truly loved each other deeply enough to be hurt by reverting to mere friendship, or you might have ulterior motives and haven’t really let go.

Indeed, unless you never loved, how can you truly go back to just being friends if you deeply cared for each other?

People who have entered both your body and heart become difficult to revert to just friends after parting ways. There’s a saying that captures this well:

“True lovers can never go back to being just friends, for they become tender at a mere glance, fall all over again with a single embrace, and long to repossess each other with every lingering look.”

The person who once made your heart skip a beat can easily make it happen again;

How can you simply stop loving someone to whom you once entrusted everything?

We are not emotionless; the complexities of human emotions, love, and separation are the hardest to manage.

Saying goodbye doesn’t truly quiet the heart; nor does being friends again restrain the surge to love again.

Memories that are hard to forget make it difficult to just walk away.

Staying under the guise of friendship, yet not really leaving, is nothing but a tacit ongoing connection.

I know you are still in love, and you know my heart isn’t dead yet, pretending to be friends while failing to actually see each other as just friends.

This deceitful tugging at each other only makes it harder for both to move on and let go of the past.

Yet, we must look forward. Since we cannot embrace each other as before, why hinder each other?

Eileen Chang said:

“I thought love could fill the gaps in my life, yet, it is love itself that often creates those gaps.”

Emotions are too entangled, difficult to sort when stirred, and messy when separated.

Remaining friends after breaking up is merely an expression of reluctance and lingering regrets.

Unwilling to become strangers again, taking a step back to friendship seems better than having no connection at all.

You might think that friendship is more durable and longer-lasting than love.

Yet, those who have tasted sweetness, how can they settle for bitterness? Those who have been loved, how can they endure just being friends?

When you step back from lover to friend, it means there’s much you can’t do anymore.

You can’t wipe his tears when he’s sad, nor share in his joy when he’s happy.

You want to be as good to him as before, but he can’t accept it with peace of mind.

Because: you’ve lost the right to love him. Lovers can hold hands, embrace, kiss, and do everything intimate, but friends cannot.

Friends don’t have the rights of a lover; they can only be observers in his life.

His joys and sorrows henceforth have nothing to do with you; you can’t influence them, much less have the right to interfere.

The hardest part is, that you might have to watch him fall in love with someone else from the sidelines as a friend.

Then, you have no right to be jealous or sad; all you can do is smile and wish him well, swallowing your bitterness.

Instead of watching helplessly as he drifts further away every day and night after breaking up, it’s better not to stay friends from the start, not to harbor any false hopes.

Part ways amicably, finding peace in separation. Occasionally, in midnight dreams, recalling the past brings a bit more sweetness and less confusion.

Water can freeze into ice, and ice can melt back into water;

Dead grain falls in the fields, but the spring breeze can bring new life.

But emotions are not like any material in this world; there’s no cycle, only moving forward.

Friendship can turn into love, from admiration to falling in love;

But love cannot turn back into friendship, for the love and hate invested are deeply etched in the heart.

Either be lovers for life or revert to the most familiar strangers.

Beyond that, there is no second path to take.

The world is small, you cross through the sea of people to meet, to know each other, to share sweet moments.

The world is also vast; you held hands moving forward but still managed to lose each other, to drift apart.

Encounters and separations in life are just so; unexpected at the start, and unprepared at the end.

Some people are destined to walk only part of the way together; at the crossroads, you must part ways.

Some loves are meant to dazzle only momentarily; after the sparkles fade, the curtain must fall.

It’s not for lack of deep love, but such is fate; at the road’s end, no one can turn back.

This shouldn’t be so, not just this, but yet it must be.

In the adult world, everyone must be responsible for their choices.

If you loved, then love earnestly; if you let go, don’t cling unwillingly.

The sky is vast, the road ahead long; from here on, cherish each other separately, without entanglement, without regrets, without looking back.