A stranger might be a friend you haven’t met yet, but in lesbian circles a stranger is a friend you haven’t slept with yet. Slept with, become girlfriends with, broken up with and then become friends with again.

But is it really so easy to switch being girlfriends to exgirlfriends to just friends? Kaite Welsh doesn’t promise it’ll be easy, but she does think it’s possible. Here are her 9 tips for staying friends with your ex:

1. Before attempting any kind of reconciliation, take a 60 day ‘she-tox’. That’s what the authors of It’s Called a Break-up Because it’s Broken recommend, and it works. I don’t care if your lesbian bed death lasted longer than your sex life and you’ve been living more like flatmates than lovers, you need to take some headspace to get the relationship out of your system before you can start seeing her in a new light.
2. Move out as soon as possible. And if you meet someone else before you do, the answer to ‘My place or yours?’ is never yours.
3. If you’re going to stay friends, set a statute of limitations. If you’re going to stew over that time she missed your Dad’s birthday or her repeated failure to take the rubbish out on time, your relationship will fester. Get it off your chest early on – and don’t be surprised when she reveals that you weren’t the perfect girlfriend either.
4. When you start seeing someone else, make sure she finds out from you, not a mutual friend. And certainly not from Facebook – that’s just tacky. A quick email to say that there’s someone on the scene is all it takes. And speaking about mutual friends…
5. Don’t make your friends choose between you. If you’re going to trash your former sweetie, do it to someone who won’t feel like they’re taking sides.
6. Don’t make things worse for yourself. If you know you’re going to drunk-dial her, order the next Coke minus the vodka. Even if the friendship falls apart, you want her to remember the sassy, dignified woman you can be instead of the emotional mess with smeared mascara.
7. Respect each other’s boundaries. You may be used to telling her every thought that goes through your head, but remember those other friends we talked about? You’re going to need them.
8. Divide your possessions like grown-ups, not toddlers. It may be tempting to steal the screws for her bookcase in a fit of petty rage just because she got to keep the cats, but don’t do it. Even though her increasingly frustrated Twitter updates as she tries to put it together will be funny as hell.
9. Make a list of reasons why you’re better off apart. Because when your friendship starts going from strength to strength, it’s tempting to wonder whether you’ve made a mistake. And if it turns out that you’re both crazy enough about each other to try again, you’re going to be really glad you followed points 1-8: if you move back in together, you’ll need that bookcase.

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