Get away from your friend’s ex

This article could be shorter. 

It could be: Nope. Don’t do it. Bad idea. 

In French: “arrêtez” and “non.”

If we were playing Monopoly, your chance card would read, “Do not pass go.” In this case, it’s “Do not pass that bedroom door if your friend’s ex is behind it.”

In Halifax, as any university student will tell you, friend groups and dating pools constantly overlap. A night at the Dome, scanning the crowd in a drunken haze, could mean seeing some familiar faces and realizing they may not be as off-limits anymore. 

While a survey from dating site Plenty of Fish shows 79 per cent of respondents think hooking up with a friend’s ex goes against “friendship code,” a sizable chunk of Dalhousie University students disagree.

The Dalhousie Gazette’s Dal Purity Test found that almost one-fifth of respondents admitted to hooking up with a friend’s ex. In a modern dating culture of homie-hopping and casual sex, do “bro code” and “girl code” still exist?

Maybe a friend’s ex becoming a fuck buddy comes with a generational emotional detachment towards sex.

But I’d like to think our friends’ emotions aren’t so easily neglected. That some “code” isn’t the only thing keeping us from being bad friends and abandoning human decency. 

Exes are extremely emotional subjects. If a friend you’ve confided in begins a relationship — even just a sexual one — with the source of your turmoil, it can layer betrayal on top of heartache. 

With a high chance of hurting a friend, consider why you even want to hook up with their ex.  

If it’s just that they’re attractive, you’re horny, or you want what you shouldn’t have, I’d point you back to my opening statement.

Hooking up with a friend’s ex is a potentially friendship-ending act. And in Halifax — where everyone knows everyone — everyone will know about it.

I’ve seen people go after friends’ exes with no shame. It becomes a defining part of their reputation. Massive fallouts follow: perpetrators are isolated, roommate relationships are strained and friend groups are fractured. 

Is that really worth a potentially mediocre performance? Unless your friend raved about the sex, you might’ve risked everything for an anti-climactic experience. 

There’s the other scenario where you’ve developed inconvenient feelings for your friend’s ex. This is murkier. 

We can’t help who we develop feelings for, and we shouldn’t feel guilty about having them. But how guilty we are depends on how we handle those feelings.

Seeing a friend’s ex behind their back is shady. It makes things even messier, and when they find out, they’ll have every right to be angry.

If you do decide to go there, honest communication is key. Explaining how you feel is hard, but it shows respect from the beginning. Some friends won’t be happy, but others may give the green light.

But proceed with caution. Sometimes people don’t anticipate how they’ll react until it happens. The friendship could still become strained.

Whatever you tell yourself, whether they’ve been broken up for years or there’s supposedly no more feelings, hooking up with your friend’s ex is trouble. 

At best, it can be awkward and messy. At worst, it can destroy friendships and reputations and hurt someone you care about.

In most cases, the risk outweighs the reward. 

If you find yourself making eye contact with a familiar face on a night out, save yourself the trouble and keep scanning.

There are always options other than your friend’s ex. Even in a city as small as Halifax.