We’ve all got them, right? Except, maybe for the virgins and the people who are still happily with your first love. But most of us have an ex of some sort, a date, a fling, a partner. Some of them near and dear, and some of them, well, not.

To quote a Maroon 5 song, “breaking up is hard to do”. Post-breakup is dangerous territory, where you still have something going on with your ex, but are not sure if you want to get back together. Where there might be sexual tension and residual emotions, plied together in a confusing melt where your hearts (and loins) take over your head.

Not that it is always a bad thing to get back together with an ex – just think of why you split up in the first place, and whether those issues have been resolved. If not, darlings… it is best to step away from it all, and look for new pastures.

Believe it or not, it is even more awkward for the friends of the two people involved. In addition to witnessing dramas, there will be the ensuing custody battle over friendships and loyalties.

This gets even more complicated if one person has cheated, been acting like an asshole, or just simply been idiotic. The situation should be familiar: Jim and Keith, both your friends, and Keith just cheated on Jim with a male stripper. Naturally you will want to be protective over Jim… but you are closer to Keith, and have been friends longer.

Hard to pick? Thought so.

It only gets worse when they drag you into the drama. Ever participated in conflict mediation? Try doing that with a couple, fielding calls and crying sessions from two people who cannot seem to talk to each other except through you. When you finally do break up, the group of friends might get fragmented or polarised, or one party may have had to leave.

Okay, after you have broken up beyond the strength of the best super-glue out there - what do you do? Friend them? Ignore them? Perhaps the most complicated relationships and feelings we have with people can be with our exes.

First of all, there is that period after the break-up where you are unsure of the place that person plays in your life. Is it possible to be friends with your exes?

Quite possibly – I maintain amicable friendships with all my exes, something I pride myself in. It is easy when the relationship was not that deep in the first place, but as the feelings deepen, and the longer you’ve been together, the harder it becomes to step away from each other. It is really a thin line between love and hate sometimes.

Breaking up and moving on are two different things. Probably the longest and hardest things we cry over, is our first real loves. Two can move on – but more often than not, one of them has not moved as far as the other one. Which, of course, leads to tensions and problems and drama, especially when one party starts dating again. I have heard of instances where people remain hung up over their exes for up to10 years, especially if it is their first loves. Not a good ground to remain friends, in such a situation.

There are good justifications for remaining friends with your exes – they are people who have really known you for some time. If your break-up was amicable, or rather, if it became amicable after a while, it is even possible for them to become a close friend. If he/she is a nice person, why lose him just because you did not work out as a couple, right?

But then there are equal justifications for not doing that. There might be tensions or unresolved issues. He/She might get jealous of your future dates. Or worse, your future dates get jealous of the ex, and become insecure.

And then sometimes it is absolutely impossible to maintain even a hello-goodbye relationship with your ex. This might be in cases where the break-up was explosive, and especially so when one party has been a complete jerk.

Worst-case scenario - one of them becomes a stalker/emotional-blackmailer/nightmare-ex-from-hell.

Something that might be unique to our community is that with our small size, we are bound to run into each other and have all kinds of incestuous liaisons, creating a bona fide web of connections that rival Lost.

A gay friend of mine once told me that two of his exes hooked up and were having better sex than he had with either of them. A girl friend of mine told me two of her exes (male and female respectively) were now working in the same company.

I actually did sit down one day and plot my chart (a la The L Word), and the freaky connections, just within the relatively small group, were mind-blowing. I cannot seem to meet a queer woman in my ethnic group without finding out we were connected somehow.

I shudder to think about the connections in the general gay male community (at least I can keep track – can you?). The connections would have to be categorised into Cruising, Sauna, Club, Random, Fuck-Buddy, Date, Fling and Relationship, and by the time you figure out that your exes have hooked up before, there will have been new connections already

Ultimately, ex-partners are guardians of our past, a treasure-trove of emotions and experiences, ups and downs, that we wish we could lock up and throw away the key. With every relationship, you grow and learn, and with every heart-break, you grow stronger (or in most cases, just jaded).

Love them, hate them, treasure them, ignore them, include them, block them… whatever it is that you do, it is an indicator of how much the person once meant to you. Or did not mean to you.

Can I hide behind you please? I think I just spotted my ex.

Author's bio: Indu is a bisexual Indian girl who is also a full-time law student and a part-time activist, a geek masquerading as a fashionista, a full-blown [no pun intended] fag hag, and entertainment-whore. She can also be found on Sayoni.