Are you mad? I never should have touched them to begin with!
Actually, my son’s father still sees him through a supervised visitation set-up. So I hear the news, but have no direct contact.
I have several ex-girlfriends that I’m on friendly terms with, but only a couple I talk to regularly. One I used to play squash with once a week and then we’d go out for coffee. She became a “dear old friend” instead of an “ex”. She came to my birthday dinner and has once in awhile hung out with my fiancee. One of my fiancee’s best friends is a guy she dated and even lived with for a few years. We all go camping together once a year and do a ton of other stuff together, sometimes we take care of his kids when he and his wife have a date night.
But otherwise, no. I’m not really in touch with any of the exes that were super-serious relationships. My “buddy ex” that I play squash with was more of a short-run relationship that never really got off the ground. We made better buddies than lovers. And my fiancee’s “buddy ex” is someone she has known since childhood.
I only have one significant ex. I was quite content to keep him out of my life forever, but I was also the one who contacted him first, out of the blue. Basically I felt I had treated him shabbily (and I had), and contacted him to apologize. Imagine my surprise when he said he also felt he had treated me badly, and did the same!
I think he would have liked a stronger friendship now. I keep him at arm’s length. There was a lot of drama in our relationship, and I’d like to keep it away from me. However, I did allow him access to my LJ; which I was unsure about, and occasionally we chat.
I do find it odd when people are close friends with exes that they don’t have kids with…I mean, whatever they want, but like the OP says, let me be different!
I keep in touch with my ex-husband and several of my other exes.
I don’t understand people who can just cut someone who played such a significant role out of their life like hey never existed.
Every person I’m close to has played a huge part in shaping my life and who I am, I still feel connected to them all in some way. I don’t go out of my way to force a continued relationship or anything, but I do try to keep up with them by email at least once a year or so to see what’s going on and we tend to share big news in our lives.
Edited to add: After the divorce, my ex-husband and I even hung out and “double dated” with our current spouses. I think his new wife is a doll and I’m so happy they wound up together.
Hell, no. My first significant ex beat the crap out of me at every imagined “infraction” and my second constantly pestered me, insisting I’d get cancer from eating any amount of fat over 5 grams per meal, forcing me to listen to classical music and actually quizzing me on it, then deciding that, to figure out if I was really the “one,” he’d of course have to sleep with other women.
People do horrible things to one another, especially when they’re (or think they are) in love. It doesn’t always happen and some people can keep in touch with an ex without wanting to throttle them, as indicated by many of the posts in this thread, but there’s no way I would want any form of relationship with either of the significant others I’ve had prior to my husband.
I dated a man whom I had been friends with for 7 years (off and on) and we promised we would remain friends even if that didn’t work out. Ha!
After I broke it off because it just wasn’t going to work, I tried to be his friend for almost 2 more years. I beat myself up trying to be his friend. My friends’ and boyfriend endured him for my sake. He guilt-complexed me much like the OP’s ex.
Finally, one day, he sent me an email with a passive aggressive ultimatum - that it was up to me whether or not we were still friends. And I just came to at that point, and calmly told him he was right - our friendship was too much work, and it would be better for both of us if we just moved on. I mailed back a CD I had borrowed and unfriended him from all the online places he had wiggled his way in to (lj, FB, Myspace, etc.)
My life has been much less toxic since then.
OTOH, I dated one guy a few times back in 2007 - and he and I have been really great friends since then. When I moved up here to Charlotte, he was literally down the street from my first job, and we still meet every few weeks or so for lunch or dinner. He’s met my boyfriend and my bf knows everything about our meetings.
My bf is still friends with a few of his exes also. At first I was kind of uncomfortable with that, especially one who seemed to still be very in to him. But then I realized that there was a reason why they were exes, and he chose to be with me now.
So, if you can have a positive relationship, go for it. But if it’s toxic (and it sounds like this one is), I agree with your desire to end it.
I have a few that I keep in touch with (and that keep in touch with me). All? FFS no.
But these few were good women that things just didn’t work out with: compatibility issues and all that. Even tho I don’t want to live with them and share everything I have all the time with them, they are still good people who’s company I usually enjoy. They have ideas and perspectives I value, and often encountering their intelligence helps me to remember to use my own. Plus, we shared many good times and made it through some bad ones together; I would not seek to lose either the connection or the connected lightly.
I don’t stay in touch with all of them, but I do have a couple of them that I consider to be good friends.
I have a boyfriend who cherishes me and who I love more deeply than any of the past guys, so that makes it easy to forget about the romantic aspect of my relationship with the exes.
I was interested in the exes originally because there was something I liked about their personality. There are still good things about them that make me enjoy their company. I feel it would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater just because we decided that we weren’t compatible for a lifelong romance.
This ex of yours sounds like the hippie-ish sort who wants everyone to be one big loving family. I would be cool with staying friends with him if we had parted on good terms. I think he’s right that as you get older, you begin to appreciate having friends from the past still in your life (and the less it matters that you were lovers once).
But I can understand why you might not want to (especially if you think your spouse might be jealous).
I probably depends very much on the nature of the relationship. Like the ex I hang out with a lot: she and I had a ton in common, we each thought the other was attractive, so on paper it seemed like a really good match… but, meh, no spark. We made much better friends than a couple. But the entire relationship was drama-free. No heartache, no betrayal, no big Hollywood moments, none. It was just a logical transition, absolutely no big deal. We had a ton in common, still do, and that’s the foundation of the friendship we have now. The relationship was more of a well-intentioned but misguided detour.
Not all relationships end in bitterness and disappointment. Most of my exes I don’t hang out with, not because of bad feelings or ill-will, but mainly because they just aren’t relevant to my life anymore. No friends in common, different activities, lifestyle change, whatever. There are only two that I genuinely have bad feelings for and actively don’t want in my life. Most of the others just rank a shrug. They were a part of my life during a different time and we’re just not the same people we were back then.
Not all of them. There were 2 or 3 short term boyfriend types that I don’t have any contact with at all. Not that I would mind any contact one way or another, but I feel no great need to look for or contact them, and I just assume they feel the same way. There are a couple of other short term boyfriends that email me every now and then just to keep in touch, say hi, etc. I’m totally fine with that.
I really only had 2 serious long term relationships before my husband, and I talk with both of them once a week or so. The first is the father of my children, and even though they’ll be 18 and 22 next month, we still have much to talk about. The second I dated for 5 or 6 years and while he wasn’t the best boyfriend, he was a great father figure to my kids, and he was a good guy and a family friend. We’re still great friends.
I normally don’t keep in touch because it always seems awkward to me. Mostly because I only knew them as boyfriends and didn’t feel we had much in common. Which usually was the reason for breaking up anyway.
I’d LOVE to keep in touch with my most recent ex because we have a child together but he refuses and I haven’t heard from him since we broke up in September. Ass.
Not all of them, just a couple.
I’m still in touch with wife #2 on a continuing basis because of our daughter. When the daughter is grown up, I don’t think that will continue.
Got an ex-GF who teaches in the room next to me. We maintain a friendship.
That leaves a bunch who I haven’t seen or spoken to in years.
For almost all of them, I’ve no desire to change that.
There is one, though, who I’d like to sit down with long enough to find out why she left me; since she never bothered to inform me at the time.
No. It’s usually too painful.
My (almost) ex-wife and I were very close friends before we hooked up. I still miss that, but it would really hurt to see her now.
I don’t let go of things easily.
Mind you, I think I have to add: the guy in the OP, sounds like a dork.
It reminds me of my one ex who went through a huge effort to “still be friends” with me. But due to different lifestyle choices, she became “non-relevant” really quickly. We had nothing in common anymore, nothing to talk about, nothing to share, etc. and frankly, it wasn’t worth the effort.
She didn’t contribute anything meaningful to my life. Going to coffee with her was, at best, just listening to her babble about stuff I couldn’t relate to and didn’t find interesting. So when I started declining her invitations and not responding to her emails, she did the whole (paraphrased) “but we used to be so close, don’t you miss our profound conversations about X, Y, and Z?”
I didn’t miss profound conversations about X, because I grew up, matured a bit, and X really stopped being important to me. As for Y, well I isn’t an activity I do anymore, and I haven’t been a part of the social scene related to Y in a years. And I never gave a rat’s ass about Z, that was her thing.
And it chapped my hide that she would wax on about how “more enlightened people” can find new roles for former lovers and never have to lose the people they are close to. A relationships evolve and “mature, sophisticated adults” can transcend the ill-will of relationships gone sour to salvage the meaningful ties…
It really took awhile to get her to fuck off.
Oh HELL no! God perish the thought.
I found that we usually needed a complete break for a while before we could become comfortable friends. Most of the time it wasn’t until both of us were involved with someone else or at least had been.
I’ve had three what I considered SO’s:
My high school boyfriend – I’ll always love him in that “first love” nostalgic way. (Which is not to say I’d ever go out with him again.) If he showed up tomorrow and needed a loan or a place to stay, I’d give it to him. We were in touch for almost 20 years, but a couple years ago he drifted away. That was his choice, not mine, but it’s not worth chasing him down over; after 20 years you’re just not that close. I hope he’s doing okay.
My college-law school boyfriend (the Pot Head) – I still know where he is because he’s still in the same college town, doing the same thing (working in a ski/skate shop). But I’m not in touch with him. I wouldn’t mind running into him but don’t care if I ever do.
My ex-fiance – Our relationship ended painfully and that was all my fault. I wasn’t honest with him about how I felt, or, rather, how I didn’t. I hurt him badly at the time, and though I hope to God he got over it (Google reveals he’s married now), I really don’t ever want to see him again. Nothing but bad memories there.
I have very sporadic contact with my ex-not-quite-boyfriend and none with my ex. In the case of the latter, we didn’t date long, so it’s not surprising. We parted on good terms, though, and he’s a great guy, so I would love to hear from him. The first guy was in my life for about 10 years, and it would be bittersweet if we completely lost touch. He has a young son now and I think he’s married.
My SO’s only ex was dumb and clingy and he’s relieved to not have spoken to her since the breakup.
No.
I tried to keep in some contact with my last ex, but she blasted me for it. We kept in touch for a while, but a year and a half later, it became obvious that she still wasn’t over it. She had to enforce a strict “no contact” rule. That’s too bad, because I still want to know what’s going on in her life.
GF before that, we stayed in touch for maybe 8 months, then nothing. A few years later I heard through her mother that she had passed away.
GF before that, we stayed on touch until I made it clear that I was unable to attend her wedding. She thought that that was a huge insult.
GF before that? When it was over, it was over.
With one I do but otherwise no.