Many people think it is a bad idea of meet up with a person you’ve loved romantically before.

That was my mindset too, before today. But I went ahead to meet him because he was a different case. Hear me out.

What we had was 3 years ago and we had significant time apart and reunited as friends a year ago. When we united as friends, we already had our own romantic relationships and we were really platonic. Trust me. We did not meet at all, apart from group meetings. I guess there was a mutual understanding that we could still be in each other’s lives but slowly and steadily.

We would usually interact through social media and hardly on private messaging. Take for instance if I were to post about a tiring day, he’d just send me a message on Instagram telling me to push on. Little things like that. I’d just reply with thanks or just read and let it be. We would also talk to each other about our own relationships and when he’d talk about how he likes to tease his girlfriend, I would even take her side and tell him off. That’s how much of platonic friends we were.

But you see, that was the beauty of it-almost a whole year, of being distant, yet still following each other’s lives, like guardian angels.

Through the little, yet frequent buzzes on social media or messages of checking up and support, we were able to build a trusting and stable friendship. Knowing that there’s always someone caring, even in the subtle ways, makes me feel very loved and he was able to make me feel that love, from a friend to a friend.

I wouldn’t call it a reversal or undoing the romantic part. We didn’t choose to forget what we went through and act as if nothing had happened. Rather, it should be called maturity.

Maturity on both sides, to know boundaries. This, in line with working on ourselves as individuals and respect for our lovers, makes for a successful platonic friendship.

With respect for the partner we love, temptations become insignificant. We don’t constantly have to fight temptations to fall back because we both understand that what had happened was meant to be. Instead, we look forward, to the future and we are grateful to have each other as friends.

If you’re curious how the day was like:

I was terribly late… We started off with lunch, in a pizzeria in the middle of the city, under the blazing hot sun. We had pasta, pizza and Coke Zero which cost about $68🙃

We started to catch up on university, friends, outlook on life, current relationships etc. Towards the end of the meet up, we ended off with talking about the law internship we were in together with a bunch of other cool people then we went deeper and talked about what happened between us. Honestly, it got me a little nervous as first. But as we were talking more about it, i started to feel at ease and just think of the whole thing like “wow young love”. And some parts of the story he shared, I honestly even forgot had happened. But at the end of it all, we concluded that, what we had was not lost, for if you truly loved someone, you never stop loving them.

After that, we parted ways and I met up with my significant other and appreciated my partner even more.

I am more than grateful to have met him. He’s a great person and I really, sincerely have faith that he’ll do many great things in life.

So to those who don’t believe past lovers can’t be friends, you’re wrong. For if you really wanted to be strictly friends mutually, excuses of “temptations” and “cheating” would not even be considered.