reminds me of seinfeld…after a breakup…and someone says “let’s be friends” because that’s what you say…
…who wants another friend?
i mean, really, you’ve stopped the main thing that kept you together…why keep it going? obviously, there are different circumstances, but the “friends” thing is very rare, and if you have it, well, that’s good, i suppose. but armed with this information that you’re taking him, what are your expectations?
Stonebow, that has a ring of truth to it.
All but the “wanting John to do something that makes him officially the Bad Guy [sup]TM[/sup]-thing”. I am not that easily deluded, not even by myself. 
Besides, I feel waayyy to responsible for every bit of pain I might cause.
No. I think even if Arwin isn’t the jealous type, it would mean a lot to him if you said “well, I told John tonight about our marriage plans. He wasn’t happy, but I don’t really care. I probably won’t be attending our weekly dinner as often anymore.”
If my girl would do that for me, it would make my month. I’d probably even say something like “oh honey, you don’t have to stop seeing him on my account! He’s an important person to you!”
For the record, stonebow hit the nail on the head with my girlfriend and her relationship with her ex. Drives me friggin’ crazy. I think a little distance between them would work wonders for their friendship and my relationship with my girl.
wasson, thanks. Indeed, many people talk a bit more altruistic then they feel. But I don’t think that applies to these two guys.
Maybe my problem is more one of ethics. I honestly don’t know what is better. If I was sure that I am the one being selfish, by “wanting to have my cake and eat it, too”, I’d be the first to cut off contact with John to let him “heal”.
The problem is that I don’t know *if * I’m being selfish. If I can rely on what both guys tell me, Arwin truly isn’t jealous (he also isn’t here on weekdays anyway) and John really prefers to continue seeing each other once a week. I can’t judge if he still misses me: he says he does, but also that his life, in general, is okay now and has been for some time.
Both guys are not the types to say something they don’t mean. If anything, I am the one who would like some time off from feeling guilty to John. But at the same time, I don’t want to estrange from John if that isn’t necessary.
Certainly, common wisdom says exes need to distance before they can be better friends. Now all I have to decide is whether that applies to my situation.
Anyway, I’ve casually invited John to meet me after work today at the gym we both frequent. Let’s see if I can work up the courage to tell him, if I see him there.
Yes, that was that typo I referred to above, sorry.
You mean I did or he did?
That sounds cruel - it may make him think it’s something positive. Unless getting together for coffee is something you do all the time.
I should have been born in the Netherlands/Holland… they are so civilized and liberal ! Open relationships ! Nice relations with Ex-BF/GF ! Argghh… I so hate living in conservative catholic Brazil… :smack:
No, when people tell you that they want to meet because they have something to talk about it’s never good news. If they have good news, they just tell you. He’ll probably know what’s coming, guys are amazingly stupid, but we’re not dumb.
I prefer the ‘scorched earth’ approach to breakups, myself. And I mean that. Literally.
I think both of you read rather more into having coffee with an old friend than I would! scr4, it was simply a suggestion, an alternative to springing it on him during their weekly dinner. Maastricht is in the best position to judge whether he’d interpret coffee as good, bad or neutral.
Well, I told John.
I lingered at the gym and was about to leave when John came in. We hi’ed and I walked with him to the rowing machine. We talked a bit about the rowing and then I excused myself while he went on rowing, to see if he could improve his 500 m. Then I just told him.
Me: " Ehm… there’s something I want to tell you, but I’m dreading it because it might hurt you. …I want to marry Arwin somewhere this year."
John was silent for a few seconds. Then he sort of grinned, I think to hide emotions, and he said: " Well, that was to be expected…was that it?"
Me: “Yes.”
John: “Are you relieved you told me now?”
Me: " That partly depends on how you react."
Then we both went silent. John shut of his rowing machine and went to another machine. We exchanged just one more glance and then I walked out of the gym room.
:: deep sigh::
So, all in all he took it well. But I’m still bracing for emotional impact. His impact or mine, I’m not sure. And I feel like absolute, absolute crap right now.
Tomorrow is our scheduled dinner evening. I’ll just go and see if he wants to talk to me or not.
Why do you care about how he feels about it? Don’t you think it’s sort of telling that you spend so much time worrying about his feelings or that you have to justify anything to him? He didn’t even congratulate you.
Seriously, I would be cancelling dinner right about now until you’re certain that the response will be “that’s great” rather than a lengthy dissertation on marriage blahdeblah.
Well done!
Don’t beat yourself up about this, John’s happiness is not contingent upon your actions. He’ll have had a bit of time to digest this news, so your dinner may go okay. I suggest you use it as an opportunity to talk frankly about the things you’ve been skirting around. You’ve done the hardest part.
Hhhmmm… I prefer peaceful break ups myself. In fact I still see one of my exes once in a while… and I talk/email/friends with all my exes.
As for the OP I think that if her Ex really likes her he will be supportive of her marriage.
Well one of my exes and I are still good friends, and my husband is fine with it.
However, if I EVER worried about the ex’s feelings as much as you worry about YOUR ex’s, I would seriously question the health of that friendship.
If I were your fiance, I would wonder about that too …
i know, i saw the typo thing. my apologies for plowing it into terra firma.
and yeah, he did some things that were above and beyond, according to today’s breakup standards. he helped you pack in a civil manner. i can’t think of many guys that’d go out of their way to do such things.
Pardon me while I jump in here.
What are you doing? What in the name of all that is holy are you doing? Let’s review:
What is with the deep sigh? You are supposed to be getting married to a man you profess to love-MORE than this John dude. Hello? Is this thing on? Can you hear yourself?
You do not own John in any way–you say he smiled when you told him the news. And then, you set him up–big time. Note his NON-reply when you attempted to hand him the responsibility for YOUR other relationship. You really want your cake and eat it, too. This is not nice. You are 35 years old? 
Frankly, the way you told it made me think that you wanted John to talk you out of it.
So John doesn’t believe in or approve of marriage?
So what? He can go live his marriageless life–that’s HIS choice.
Why the hell are you so wrapped up in this John’s approval? You disguise is as not wanting to hurt feelings, but ending relations DOES indeed hurt feelings.
You cannot avoid it.
I dunno Arwin --but I would be running for the door if my SO was doing what yours are doing.
Lemme put it to you this way: no good can come of you trying to take care of the feelings of two men. Of two anybody. It sound an awful lot like you want to keep 2 men on your string–and that is most definetly not nice when marriage is in the picture. And if you do have kids and name the boy John I will put you on my batshit insane list for all time.
Sorry for the rudeness, but IMO, you need a slap upside the head.
How long have you and John been over? Did you spend ANY time at all alone? Even a week? Something?
I do not think this is going to go well. And I don’t buy for a single minute the “poor me, I have 2 men aching for me, but sadly, one is cannot win the joust” nonsense.
Maastricht, I originally found myself drawn to your posts on the SDMB because I have some very fond memories of time spent in your namesake city. Your posting history shows me that you are a very intelligent and kind-hearted person, so I’m pre-disposed to want to see you happy. [I’m also insanely jealous that your command of the English language is so much better than any of my non-native languages!]
I think that it’s a noble and worthy goal to try to maintain good relations with someone who has been such an important part of your past life. I certainly don’t believe in the “scorched earth” policy. A lot of who you are today (i.e. the person that Arwin fell in love with) is due to the experiences that you shared with John. There’s nothing wrong with that. John clearly has problems with the very concept of marriage, whereas it’s something – together with raising kids – that I suspect you’ve always wanted, but you fell in line with his way of thinking. That’s OK; you were much younger than him, so it’s not surprising that you were heavily influenced by him. However, now you’ve grown into yourself, and his way of living is no longer yours. You’ve parted amicably, and I see nothing wrong with maintaining contact. I am in friendly contact with almost all of my ex-girlfriends, and I’m very happy that that’s the case.
So, as far as I’m concerned, your goal of having a loving romantic partnership (+ marriage +kids) with Arwin, while maintaining friendship with John is both worthy and workable. There are a couple of problematic issues, however:
[ul]
[li]You say that John does not want to meet Arwin. This is an incredibly immature position for him to take, given that you will be marrying Arwin and hopefully raising a family with him. It sounds as though John wants to still have weekly contact with you, while being able to disregards Arwin’s importance in your life. Let’s face it: if John met Arwin and they really don’t get along, you will have to drastically reduce the amount of time that you spend with John. Anything else is disrespectful of your relationship with Arwin.[/li]
As far as I am concerned, any additional time from now on that John is unwilling to meet Arwin (with you present, of course) should count as a major negative against John. A real deal-breaker.
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]You’re bending over backwards to avoid any hurt to John, even though he brought the situation upon himself. If he had expressed a desire to marry and have children with you (i.e. matching your own wishes), but you had eventually rejected him in favor of Arwin, it would be understandable for you to want to ease the transition as much as possible for him. You would, after all, essentially be rejecting him as a desirable mate, and (I assure you!) that hurts. However, that’s not how it happened. You came to realize what you really wanted out of a relationship: Arwin offered that, and John couldn’t. He really has no cause for complaint. I don’t mean to imply that you should be cruel to him, but you shouldn’t treat him with kid gloves.[/li]
John has his own rules for living, but he doesn’t get to set yours. It’s one thing for a more-mature male to talk a 20-year-old female out of the idea of having xhildren, but he has to have realized that other factors were going to come into play as the years went by. If he didn’t realize that, then he was just setting himself up for a rude awakening, and that is in no way your fault.
[/ul]
OK, that’s some blame in John’s direction.
Now, Maastricht, there are a couple of things that I’d really like you to do. It’ll only take a few keystrokes and mouse clicks, so bear with me…
[ul]
[li]Much of this thread has been about how things appear, and that can be very important. Your SDMB user profile gives your date of birth and your age, which together show that you were writing the info in 2002 or 2003. Nothing wrong with not updating your info – except that you say “…living with my hubby, and generally happy…”. Now, I understand if you used the term “hubby” for John (perhaps it’s a cultural thing; I suppose if you don’t believe in marriage, then you can call a live-in boyfriend a “hubby”, but it still seems a little strange to me). However, you don’t live with him any more. You now have a fiancé, and you will soon have a husband, and he is not the same person as the “hubby” that you mention in the user profile. I may be over-reacting to a small thing, but if I were in Arwin’s place I would be offended that the representation that you offer to the SDMB (which I know is an important part of your life) is of a time in which he didn’t exist for you.[/li][li]Since the above-referenced line in your SDMB profile really seemed to have hit a nerve with me, I went to your Web site (linked to in the profile). Nice site, [and BTW you’re beautiful as well as smart, but that’s not relevant to my point here :)], but I cringed when I clicked on “Mijn foto album” and saw… that the only picture of you with a male was captioned “With my hubby, Jack (2003)”. Seriously, you need to replace that with a photo of you and Arwin, captioned with him as your fiancé. By all means put the one of “Jack” (presumably John’s nickname – if not, then I’m really confused!) on a deeper-linked page, but call him “my boyfriend at the time”. If I were Arwin, and your current Web page were how you represented yourself to the world (and all of the other photos are fine, BTW), I’d take the “Jack” one as a major slap in the face.[/li]
IMHO as a male (which is what you asked for in the OP), you need to downplay earlier references to John as your “hubby” given that Arwin is actually going to be your husband a few months from now. His willingness to make the commitment merits a terminology different from that which you used for John, and in this case I think that means that John was your “boyfriend” or “partner”, not your “hubby”.
[/ul]
I don’t mean the above to be too critical of you, Maastricht. I really respect you as a Doper, and wish you and Arwin all the best: you’re lucky to have found him, and he’s lucky to have found you. John’s position is one that he really carved out for himself. If you and he are able to remain friends, that would be great (although please make sure that Arwin isn’t just being polite about this!), but if John expects too much from you, you need to be prepared to lay down the law in no uncertain terms. He is really lucky that he still has the possibility of having you in his life as a friend, and he may need to make some concessions in order to achieve that.
Sorry if I’ve blathered…
Phone him when he’s not home… leave a voice mail. Screen his calls for a couple of months. If you run into him by mistake, claim there’s something wrong with your phone but you’ll be in touch soon.
I have to say that this one piece is a bit silly. I mean, I’ve been here since, what? 2002 or thereabouts? I haven’t even looked at my profile or even the control panel since that same year. I suspect I’m like many many posters here. I seriously don’t think that her profile being outdated is some horrible or majorly important thing.