How soon is too soon to date an ex's friend?

Dear Leanne,

A month ago me and my girlfriend of one year broke up. I'm wondering what are the 'rules' of dating someone else who might be a mutual friend to both of us. There are two girls that kind of like me right now. I'm sort of interested in one of them who is much closer to me than my ex. I'm still on decent terms with my ex though and want it to stay that way so is it a bad idea to pursue things with this girl?

Max

Dear Max,

There's no real right answer to this question. It depends on a few things. How much you like this mutual friend, how much you care about maintaining a decent relationship with your ex, how serious you were, stuff like that. Truthfully, if you're not still with someone anymore, you can't cross everyone out of your 'potentials' list just because they know your ex. It's about you at the end of the day. However, whilst some people are OK with sharing lovers/love interests, I say stay away from family members and very good friends, and from what you have said, this mutual friend isn't either of those things to her. Other than that, you can date anyone you want as long as they also want you.

But as I side note, which to me shouldn't be the side note but the main point, you just came out of a kind of long-ish relationship. Take some time alone! It's alone been a month! That's only four weeks! There's really no need for you to be jumping into another relationship or scouting for 'potentials' this soon. You need to be enjoying some time by yourself and use it to think about what happened in your last relationship which caused it to fall apart and if you had a part to play in that, try to better yourself so the next one is less likely to. On top of that, I don't really get the impression that you are seriously interested in either of those girls that are now interested in you and it makes sense because you literally just got out of a relationship which, I'm guessing, was at least a little bit serious if it lasted a year. It's gonna take more than a month to get over her and you don't want to accidentally end up using some girl as a rebound. Now if you've really managed to get over your ex that quickly, at least wait till a girl that really grabs your attention comes along before considering entering another relationship.

Best of luck,

Leanne