The Law of Ex's

I have a dirty little confession.

I don't know how to be friends with an ex. Or even a we-were-barely-together-so-you're-hardly-my-ex-ex.

I've never had to be. The first boy I ever even came close to calling a boyfriend broke my heart so many times that I blocked him on every social networking website in the World Wide Web.

The second -- and he was bookended by the first clueless jackass -- dumped me after two and half days. By text message. For his ex-girlfriend. After the pictures of him and her kissing were put up the same day, and my sister helped me craft a deliciously wicked letter for him, it was cyanara, sucka! This one once attempted a friendship and I couldn't carry on with it. It disgusted me to look at his Facebook page.

Since him, another flame -- this one, weak, at best -- who I dumped because I just wasn't feeling him (especially given that he was given to talking about 'our' future and 'our' future made me want to vomit), did call me months later on my birthday to wish me a happy one but a few months after that, was tonguing my ex-best friend. Yeah, no meaningful friendship there.

Hmm, well the next one on the list... Him I want to be friends with. I need to be friends with him. When we were together, he was my best friend. I honestly, even if it was foolish, thought maybe, just maybe, I might actually marry him someday...

But how do you do it?

What are the rules? If you broke up with them, are you allowed to initiate conversation? And even if he starts it, do you need to watch what you say -- being careful not to brag about how great your life may be or having to hide just how bad it is sometimes because you don't want him to gloat that you didn't choose him and you got the short end of the stick?

And even if you're regularly holding friendly conversations -- and this is an 'if' cause it's never happened to me -- do you have to be careful to not write or say "you must catch me up on what I've missed" since you broke up with him and if you really cared about his life wouldn't you be part of it like you once were?

Seriously. Am I over-analyzing?

Instead of the theory of relativity, why couldn't Einstein have come up with the Law of Ex's? Someone just give me a concrete formula to follow.

God, then again, what about those times when you don't want anything to do with the other person, but he or she does and you're too chicken to just be honest? That's the worst I find -- only made more troubling by Facebook. I'm starting to believe that Facebook was created by someone who wanted to haunt an ex-girlfriend. Even when you're minding your own business, playing FishVille, and you decide to send your 20-something cousin a corral reef as a gift, you see his face. The face you're not sure you want to see.

And you can't delete him off your friends list because he's got your AIM screenname and he'll probably just IM you and ask why you deleted him. God, and you can't delete his phone number from your cell because what if he calls or texts and you answer unaware and yet you've got to see his name every time you scroll through your phone.

In one of these cases, it's simply the problem of being afraid to be mean but wanting to be. In the other, it's the case of worrying I'll look like a snobby bitch and really not wanting to. Don't look at me like that, like I just repeated myself. They're different scenarios, I promise.