I'm friends with a lot of my exes, but it took time. We didn't

In the gentle yet piercing words of Rashida Jones, we hear a truth that belongs not only to lovers, but to all who have ever had to let go with grace: “I’m friends with a lot of my exes, but it took time. We didn’t just get into it. I don’t think you can be friends until you’re cool with them dating someone else. That’s when you know.” Beneath the calm simplicity of her tone lies the deep wisdom of the heart — the kind that comes only after wounds have healed and pride has been tamed. Her words are not about romance, but about maturity, about the long road from attachment to acceptance, from possession to peace.

To be “friends with an ex” is one of the great tests of emotional evolution. It asks whether we can transform love once rooted in desire into love that asks nothing — whether we can honor what once was without clinging to what can no longer be. Rashida Jones speaks of time as the healer and teacher in this transformation. “It took time,” she says, and in that phrase we feel the long ache of memory, the slow cooling of what once burned brightly. The ancients knew this truth well. The philosopher Epictetus taught that no person can master their heart in haste — that to release longing, one must first endure it. Time, then, becomes the alchemist of the soul, turning pain into understanding, longing into light.

Her wisdom deepens when she says, “You can’t be friends until you’re cool with them dating someone else.” This is the moment of truth — the final threshold between love’s past and love’s peace. Until one can see the beloved with another and feel no bitterness, no envy, only calm acknowledgment, the wound is not yet closed. In that moment, the heart is tested not by desire, but by detachment — the ability to love without claiming. The Buddhists would call this the perfection of compassion: to wish happiness for another even when that happiness no longer includes you. It is the act of transforming love from hunger into blessing.

History gives us countless mirrors for this lesson. Consider Abélard and Héloïse, the ill-fated lovers of medieval France. Their passion burned so fiercely that it destroyed their worldly lives, yet in their letters written years later — after vows of celibacy and separation — there is not only sorrow, but deep friendship and mutual reverence. In one letter, Héloïse writes, “We are bound by affection still, though not by desire.” It took them years, perhaps lifetimes, to reach that place of serenity — the very “coolness” Rashida Jones describes. What they discovered is that true love evolves; it does not vanish, but changes shape until it becomes something purer — respect, gratitude, remembrance.

The origin of Rashida’s words lies in her own life, lived amidst the modern storms of love and fame. As an actress, writer, and thinker, she has observed not only the glitter of romance but the quiet work of healing that follows its end. Her statement is not idealism; it is realism shaped by compassion. She does not say it is easy or quick. She honors the distance between heartbreak and friendship — that sacred waiting during which the heart rebuilds itself. Her message is not to rush forgiveness, but to allow it to unfold naturally, until love is no longer a wound but a memory held lightly.

Yet her insight carries another truth — that friendship after love is possible only when we have restored our own sense of self. The jealous heart cannot befriend; only the whole heart can. To be “cool” with an ex’s new love is not to suppress emotion, but to have transcended the need to compare or compete. It is to stand in one’s own worth, unshaken by what was lost. The ancients would call this ataraxia — the serene soul that is untroubled by external change. Such peace is not indifference; it is mastery.

Let this be the lesson: healing is not forgetting, and letting go is not losing. To be at peace with a past love is one of life’s quietest victories. It proves that the heart can expand beyond possession, that affection can survive even when passion has faded. Friendship, then, becomes the final form of love — purified of need, enduring beyond romance. To reach this state requires courage, patience, and honesty with oneself.

Action to take: if your heart still carries the memory of love, do not rush to erase it. Let time teach you. Let forgiveness find its way through understanding. And when the day comes that you can see your former beloved happy in another’s arms — and smile — know that you have achieved what sages once called enlightenment of the heart. For as Rashida Jones reminds us, the measure of healing is not how quickly you move on, but how deeply you can still wish good for the one who once broke you — and mean it.