After A Break-up - With No Kids Involved - Is It OK To Stay In Touch With Your Ex's Family?

Q: After a break up - with no children involved - is it OK to stay in touch with your Ex's family?

The answer is - it depends. There is no one-size-fits-all answer for all break-ups but here are some general guide lines.

If you are the "dumpee" and feeling shattered it is a terrible idea to stay in touch with your Ex's family. Ironically, however, these are the people who will clutch onto the old connections with the hope of learning any tidbit of news about the Ex - to their own detriment. If this is you, what you should do instead, is let those family members know that for a while you will need to lick your wounds and heal away from the former partner and when you are ready you will contact them again. However, in reality, when you have really moved on you will know that there is no reason for connecting with the Ex's relatives AND you will have no interest in them anyway.

If you are the "dumper" and your Ex is distressed the decent thing to do is to step aside. Let the family member's know that you will miss them terribly but you want to do whatever is best for the Ex and his/her healing.

If your break-up is very mutual; you have grown apart and everyone is on board with the idea of moving on, you can stay in contact with your Ex's relatives. If in fact the only reason you stayed together this long is your love for the other's family you should explain that to them. And, then expect things to change anyway. Once you are not related by blood or marriage you will no longer be a true part of the tribe. However, while you are working on restructuring and rebuilding your new life the old family members can still provide some level of support. However, while there may not be a need for a quick or clean break you should be moving towards replacing them in your inner circle.