Why do we sometimes stay friends with ex-partners? There may be many reasons, but according to a new paper in Personality and Individual Differences they fall into seven main categories – and men and women don’t quite see eye-to-eye on them. The research also found that certain personality traits were related to motivations for staying friends after a break-up.

From the ratings, Mogilski and Welling identified seven main categories of reason for wanting to stay friends with an ex:

• Reliability/sentimentality (e.g. “They made me a better person.”)
• Pragmatism (e.g. “They had a lot of money.”)
• Continued romantic attraction (e.g. “I still had feelings for them.”)
• Children and shared resources (e.g. “Me or my ex was pregnant.”)
• Diminished romantic attraction – which could cause a friendly relationship to lose its sexual aspect (e.g. “I lost sexual interest.”)
• Social relationship maintenance (e.g. “To prevent awkwardness in our friend group.”)
• Sexual access (e.g. “To keep having sex with them.”)

Overall, participants rated the reliability/sentimentality reasons as most important and practical reasons as least important.

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