Can you be friends with your Ex? A video game accidentally gave me the answer

A co-op game about a failing marriage became a quiet lesson in boundaries, growth, and what it means to choose friendship after love ends.

Still from It Takes Two (2021), Hazelight Studios

For a long time, playing video games was how we spent time together. Not competitively, not obsessively, but as a shared pause. When conversation felt tired and days slipped into routine, sitting side by side with controllers in hand became our version of presence. It required focus without pressure and attention without emotional labour. For us, it was an easy way to be together.

That’s how It Takes Two became part of our relationship.

Even if you have never heard of the game, its premise is simple. Two parents on the brink of divorce are magically turned into toys after their child wishes for their relationship to be fixed. Guided by an aggressively enthusiastic therapy book, they must navigate a series of surreal obstacles that force them to cooperate if they want to return to normal.

The most important detail is also the simplest. The game cannot be played alone. Every challenge depends on coordination. If one player rushes ahead or disengages, progress stops. The game doesn’t punish failure dramatically. It simply refuses to move forward.

When we first played it, we were very much together. We lived in the same city, in the same house, sharing a daily rhythm that felt secure. Playing a game about a collapsing marriage felt ironic at the time, almost amusing. We were not those people. We had proximity. We had certainty. We assumed we had time. Then life shifted.

External pressures arrived quietly but decisively. Moves, responsibilities, timing misalignments that weren’t dramatic enough to blame on love, but heavy enough to strain it. Two months after relocating to different cities, we broke up. Not explosively, not bitterly. The relationship simply reached its limit. What remained unfinished was the game.

Before we were a couple, however, we were friends. That foundation didn’t disappear after the breakup. We stayed in touch, but carefully. Respectfully. Friendly without closeness. The kind of distance that keeps comfort from becoming confusion.

Months later, around Diwali, we met again. Not with expectations, just familiarity. Conversation came easily. Laughter followed without effort. It became clear that friendship still existed without force or nostalgia pulling at it. That’s when we decided to finish It Takes Two. Not as therapy. Not as reconciliation. Just as two people completing something they had once started together. Playing the game again felt entirely different.

The first time we played, I struggled constantly. I remember the frustration vividly. Missed cues. Poor timing. The sense of slowing us down. At one point, I nearly cried, not because of the game itself, but because I felt incompetent. He was quicker, more instinctive, better at it. The imbalance was obvious.

This time, that dynamic had shifted. I moved with confidence. I adapted faster. I failed less and trusted myself more. And he, too, was different. More patient. Less hurried. Willing to wait rather than correct. We adjusted to each other’s pace without friction. The game didn’t pull us back into old patterns. It exposed how much those patterns no longer existed. That’s when the metaphor became impossible to ignore.

It Takes Two isn’t really about saving a marriage. It’s about cooperation without control. Progress without entitlement. Showing up without expectation. These are not romantic skills. They are relational ones. We often talk about being friends with an ex in absolutist terms. Either it’s emotional immaturity or proof of evolution. Rarely do we allow for neutrality. The idea that some relationships don’t fail, they simply change format.

For many people, staying friends with an ex would be unhealthy. It would reopen wounds or delay healing. Boundaries are deeply personal and context specific. But sometimes, when a relationship ends without resentment, what remains is not attachment, but respect.

The game didn’t mend our relationship in the way popular culture loves to frame healing. It didn’t revive romance or blur lines. What it did was strengthen our friendship. Not through nostalgia, but through evidence of growth. We weren’t recreating intimacy. We were practising cooperation without history weighing us down.

By the time we finished the game, it was clear that nothing needed fixing. What had broken didn’t require repair. What survived simply needed recognition. Perhaps the real question isn’t whether exes can be friends. Perhaps it’s whether the relationship, in whatever form it exists now, feels lighter or heavier to carry.

We didn’t rescue the past. We acknowledged the present.

And sometimes, that is enough.