When a romantic relationship ends, it can feel like a total loss. How do you go from being an important person in someone’s life to a complete stranger?

Experts say it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. If your relationship was healthy and ended on good terms, it’s possible to stay friends, acquaintances or somewhere in between. (However, if you were abused or felt unsafe in your relationship, keep your distance.)

“There may be reasons to be friendly, even if emotionally you’re not in a place where you can authentically dive head-first into a full-blown friendship,” says psychologist Marisa Franco, author of Platonic: How The Science of Attachment Can Help You Make — and Keep — Friends.

To figure out your post-breakup dynamic, “really check in with yourself” about what you want the next phase of your relationship to look like, says therapist Xavier Patschke, a psychotherapist with the Gender and Sexuality Therapy Center in New York.

Patschke and Franco share three questions to ask yourself before building a platonic connection with a former romantic partner.

Question 1: Why do I want to stay in touch with my ex?

There are many practical reasons why former partners choose to stay in each other’s lives, say Franco and Patschke. Perhaps you share kids or pets together and need to maintain a civil relationship. Maybe you’re part of the same friend group or small community and know you’ll run into each other. Or maybe you were friends before you started dating and want to continue that friendship.

Whatever the reason, be honest about your intentions. “You might realize you don’t actually want to be friends with them because they don’t look like the people you tend to want in your life platonically,” says Franco.

Question 2: Am I in a healthy place to stay in touch with my ex?

If you’re reaching out to your ex because you still desire them and are hoping to get back together, “wait until those feelings subside,” says Franco.

Same goes for if you’re struggling to accept the breakup and feel desperate to keep your former partner in your life, she says. You don’t want to treat friendship as a consolation prize.

Franco knows that’s easier said than done. “It can feel like such a loss [for a partner] to go from one of the closest people in your world to not talking to them at all.”

But keep in mind: it can be harder to get over your ex if you remain friends, according to a study on post-breakup friendships. “You’re more likely to desire your ex romantically, and they’re more likely to desire you,” says Franco.

So make sure you’re both ready for that next step. You’ll know you’ve reached an appropriate level of emotional distance when you want your ex to be happy regardless of whether or not their life includes you, says Franco.

Question 3: What do I want a platonic relationship with my ex to look like?

There’s a range of possibilities, says Franco. Do you want a close friendship that involves asking each other for dating advice? Does an occasional check-in feel more appropriate? Or would you settle on just being polite when you run into each other unexpectedly?

If there’s a mismatch between what you both want, respect the boundaries of the person who wants less intimacy. Just like a romantic relationship, you can’t force a connection.

And if you’re not sure what’s appropriate, you can test out different levels of friendship. “It’s OK for the boundary to start at, ‘I don’t know if I want to hear about your future dates,’ “ says Patschke. “ ‘But we’ll try it and we’ll check in again.’ “

“The nice thing about being friends with anyone, including your ex, is that you can decide how close you want the friendship to be,” says Franco. “It’s not like romantic relationships where it’s very all or none.”

We want to hear from you: Are you still friends with your ex?

How did you and your ex handle your relationship post-breakup? Tell us about how you made your decision and describe your relationship now. Send an email to lifekit@npr.org with your first and last name and we may feature your response in a story on NPR.org

This story was edited by Malaka Gharib. The visual editor is Beck Harlan. We’d love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at LifeKit@npr.org.

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A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: I’ve noticed something about the current cultural moment. Regrets is a bad word. Nobody has them anymore. Instead, the emotionally enlightened among us look back and see only “experiences and choices that made me who I am today.”

And I get that. We understand that obsessing over things we’ve done wrong in the past isn’t a particularly healthy thing to do. But I think we lose something when we don’t reckon with our bad choices. Somehow dismissing those things as just “part of my journey” feels like a cop out. There’s no accountability in that.

I talked about this with music producer Jack Antonoff. I told him that the biggest regret in my life was not being at my mom’s bedside when she died. At the time, I convinced myself that I could only be away from work so long — that my siblings could stay and I’d be the one to come back and be with my dad after she died.

Antonoff shared something similar. One of his biggest regrets was being gone on tour so much when his sister was dying of cancer. He felt like if he started turning opportunities down, they wouldn’t come back. We all justify the choices we make in the moment. It’s OK to regret those things. To wish we had made different choices. The key is to absorb the consequences of the choices and move beyond them.

Antonoff’s life is not defined by regret, but he told me that it is defined by grief. He didn’t say it in a sad way. Just as a matter of fact. It frames his songwriting, how he interacts with people and how he sees the world.

The grief, he says, makes things feel more precious. And he has much to feel grateful for. His band Bleachers released a new album earlier this year. He’s got a bunch of Grammy awards and has produced for some of the biggest names in pop music, including Taylor Swift. He also got married last year to actress Margaret Qualley. He’s made peace with any regrets he has and is taking nothing for granted.

This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.

Question 1: What is something about your hometown you’ve come to appreciate over time?

Jack Antonoff: The slowness of my hometown. I grew up in New Milford, New Jersey. That’s where I was until I was like eight and I just stared at the walls.

All I wanted to do was break out, I wanted to go everywhere and do everything and tour the world and, you know, make my mark. And that slow, slow, slow boredom of where I grew up made my imagination run wild.

I can’t recreate it and I can’t change it and I never would. I’m just happy I got to have it. My life existed in cars waiting for my mom to do whatever she was doing.

Question 2: What is proof that somebody really knows you?

Antonoff: Proof that somebody really knows me is if they understand my rituals around feeling clean.

Martin: Oh, so many follow ups to ask here.

Antonoff: It’s not basic. It’s not like, “He’s a germaphobe.” It’s very specific of my definition of what is and isn’t clean.

Martin: OK. Tell me an example of what that looks like for you.

Antonoff: My only concern with cleanliness is around my face. I haven’t touched my eyes, nose, mouth, or ears with my hands, unwashed, in probably 20 years. So it’s very specific.

Martin: But how is that even possible? I realized as you were talking, I was rubbing underneath my eyes.

Antonoff: That’s how you get sick. That’s how germs spread. I go play in front of people, but I have no need to rub my eyes, my nose, my mouth and my hands if they’re not washed.

Question 3: How has grief shaped your life?

Antonoff: Entirely.

Martin: Entirely?

Antonoff: I almost see it as an emotional lens. It’s not like a thing that happened that you sometimes feel. It’s how you see things now. My sister died when I was 18, but she was sick since I was five. So it was a big part of my life.

Martin: So how does that manifest in how you see the world?

Antonoff: The thing about sick people, people who are unsure how long they’ll get to live, especially kids in that position, is the lack of cynicism. The obsession with creation, joy, love, family. When you might not have a lot of time on earth, you don’t define yourself by the things you hate, put very simply. And so that just lives in me.

I’m not really doing a bit, you know, I feel very sincere about the things I’m doing and saying. And I think a big part of that is just being confronted with time and fragility and that was always on the table.

Martin: How do you feel most connected to her?

Antonoff: Probably through my family. I think when you have a great loss, people either run or glue themselves to each other. We definitely did the glue method.