Are you friends with your ex? You may have psychopathic traits
If you’ve been through a break up, you’ve likely heard this cliche before: “We can still be friends.”
Well, a recent study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences is giving you good reason to say “No thanks!”
The study’s findings revealed that people who had “dark triad personality traits,” such as narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy were more likely to maintain friendships with their exes for “practical and sexual reasons.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, men also rated the importance of said reasons as more important than women did.
The study first polled 340 people on the reasons for staying friends with their ex. They narrowed down the reasons to seven categories including “reliability or sentimental reasons,” “pragmatism,” and “sexual access.”
In a second test they asked over 500 participants to rank the reasons given in the prior study according to importance. The 500 participants were also given a personality test to identify levels of the dark triad.
Individuals with dark personality types ranked practical reasons for remaining friends as more important than sentimental reasons. In other words, your narcissistic ex may want to stay friends not because of how kind and caring you are, but because of how you can be of use to him and of what benefits he can continue to reap.
That said, not all people who maintain friendships with their exes have ulterior motives. Previous research has shown that whether one was friends with their ex prior to the relationship played a big role in determining if they remained friends after, no matter who broke up with who.
So if you’re ever on the receiving end of or if your find yourself asking someone “but can we still be friends?” you may want to ask yourself why first.
Do you think it’s possible to be friends with an ex? Let us know by tweeting @YahooStyleCA.
