I’ve never been married, so I’ve also never been divorced. No exs for me. Not even any exs from long-term relationships. I do have a number of friends that are divorced, as well as co-workers and people I read about on this board.
It always surprises me when I hear people say that they have no idea where their ex is or what they are doing. I can’t imagine having zero idea where they are. I’m not talking about a stalkerish kind of thing, but what city are they in?
I’m sure that (and really hope that) the situation is different when there are minor kids involved. Ideally, both parents would still be involved with the kids, which means being at least aware of each other.
So, do you know where your ex is? If there were kids involved in the divorce, did things change when your kids grew up?
Never been married, but been in long-term relationships. I know where the most recent ex is and some of what she’s doing, but only because I hear about it from mutual acquaintances. If I never saw or heard about her again, I’d be fine with it.
As for the earlier ones, well… life goes on. It’s not much different from losing track of friends you went to school with but haven’t seen in years.
I expect it would be different if there were kids, and thankfully I have none (that I know of!).
My grown children will let things about my ex slip out, but fortunately not much. I know the general area, but not the city. Found out the remarriage failed before I knew it happened, so that was an emotional bullet that missed me.
My ex and I do stay in touch, we are still parents of two sons and parenting doesn’t stop just because they kids are grown. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we talk all that frequently but in the last month we have since one of the sons has hit a really rough patch in his marriage. He’s asked us both for advice and we are talking to make sure we are getting the same information.
My husband’s ex wife probably does hear about him (one of her closest friends is married to a co-worker), but we don’t hear about her and we don’t ask. No kids in that relationship, and my husband refers to it as a starter marriage–five years, a house, a dog.
I was not married to either of the men I had long term relationships with before my husband and I got together almost 7 years ago.
But I did have children with the first, and the second helped me raise them. I talk to both of them at least once or twice a week, sometimes more.
My children are 20 and 16 now. My 16 year old lives with his father (as of December of last year), so we keep in very close contact, but we always did anyway.
The ex that helped me raise my boys also keeps in close contact with both of them, and talks to them every other week or so. He’s a very good friend to me and to my family; my mother, sisters, etc. So I always see him when I go back to visit.
My parents have been divorced for over 20 years, they talk to each other every other week or so and are pretty good friends.
I bumped into my ex-wife at the grocery store about a year ago. Before that I hadn’t seen her since the divorce (over five years ago) and we hadn’t had any contact beyond a few emails shortly after the divorce. I didn’t even know if she still lived in the area. We didn’t have kids, we had no mutual friends, and we have no financial ties. Though I have no animosity toward her, keeping in contact with her is not something in which I’m interested. I have pretty much forgotten all about her.
I don’t keep track of my exes but it seems that inevitably, every few years, one of them calls me. I don’t really know why they feel like they need to catch up with me. Nothing presently in common, no kids, years and years have gone by. But somebody’s always calling or e-mailing. In fact, just yesterday my college boyfriend called and wanted to get together when he comes to town. I said “No thanks.”
I may be weird, but I’m not sure if I feel it’s “proper” to get back in touch with an old flame. I’m not sure if THEIR girlfriends/wives/SOs would be too into knowing they call me every so often, and I wouldn’t feel right calling their houses to talk to them after so long not really knowing who’s gonna pick up the phone. Plus- what would I say? “So, fill me in on what you’ve been up to since we were knocking boots” Not sure what the point of that would be. So I just don’t do it.
I’m not a big fan of staying friends/keeping in contact, at least not until a long amount of time has passed. When a long-term relationship ends, I need a lot of space and distance to mourn the relationship and move on.
I kept in contact with one ex for a short time, but we lost touch about five years ago. Recently I found out he’d gotten married, which was kind of jarring. Not that I harbored any secret wish we’d get back together, but it was bittersweet. I guess I’ve always pictured him as the irresponsible, crazy college guy he was when I knew him.
I have an ex with whom I lived (without marrying) for about six years. We’re both married to other people now, but I know where she is. We parted on pretty good terms, though, and in fact her brother was a groomsman at my wedding. I called her earlier this year, eight years after our breakup, to let her know my mother had died, as she and Mom got along pretty well.
So “keep in contact” would be an exaggeration, but I know where she is. If either of us happened to be passing through the other’s city for some reason, there would probably be a dinner involved (with current spouses invited, of course).
Latest ex: Sometimes. I saw her the day she moved out of the apartment building. I spent a day at her house. I sent her a really nice birthday present. And we’ve had a few phone conversations.
Penultimate ex: We spoke a few times over 6 months. Five years later, her mother called me to tell me she’d died.
Antepenultimate ex: We spoke several times, and she even sent me a wedding invitation. I politely turned it down, and she got pissed about it. When I accidentally ran into her, she was pretty cold.
I’ve never been married. I have a former fiance, and every once in a while I’ll Google him out of curiosity. I know where he lives (the city), what he’s doing for a living (the same thing he was doing when we were together), and that he is now married.
I wish him the best and sometimes idly wonder whatever happened to him (hence the Googling), but I don’t really want to hear from him again. We have no more in common now than we did when we broke up (which is to say nothing). There’s no future there and our shared past is painful, so it would really be a pointless conversation.
The day my ex-wife signed the divorce papers was the last day I ever wanted to see her in this lifetime. If only she would stop showing up at my mom’s every couple of years I’d be happily rid of her.
Now there are some ex-girlfriends that I would like to see again after twenty or so years. It would be interesting to see how they aged.
I’m in regular touch with two of them - one (very short-term relationship) lives in the same city, and we meet up every month or so for drinks.
I emailed my (seriously long-term) ex a few weeks ago to ask her to say “hi” to her folks for me, because I miss them. I got a reply yesterday to say she’d just come back from Italy on vacation, and had been mugged. I was truly concerned for her. My wife and I were at her wedding two years ago, and she was at our wedding five years ago. We’re cool with things, ten years after splitting up.
I think that if one’s relationship was a strong one, then there was a good friendship. If that friendship is strong, it should be able to survive most hardships, including a breakup.
I’m still friends with and keep track of a couple of the ex’s. On my myspace, still see each other at parties, invited them to the wedding, stuff like that. After enough time passed, we were able to make the transition back to friends. It’s all cool.
I don’t see how an ex can be pissed when you don’t go to their wedding to another guy . . . that’s just awkward. And if you are barely in touch, why would she think you would even consider going? Seems to me like she only wanted you there to show you how happy she is with someone else . . . kind of like the ultimate “in your face” kind of thing.
Generally, I stay in touch with an ex-girlfriend for about a year or so and then it fades to no contact ever.
I’m not sure what her motivation was there. I was certainly not jealous, but it would have been realy uncomfortable. I think she truly wanted to stay friends, and share part of her life with me. For a while, we were more than barely in touch, we talked about twice per week. In fact, our relationship pretty much remained the same, just no “nunski nunski” (our term for it). Come to think of it, our relationship didn’t change at all, as we hadn’t done nunski nunski for about six months. The only thing different was that we stopped fighting.
But the fact that she’d met her fiance online before we’d even broken up was something I couldn’t deal with.
My ex husband and I divorced in 1993 after three years of marriage. I don’t miss him but I really liked his mother. I’ve only seen him once in the last 12 years (at my mother’s funeral) but he showed up at my sister’s house 5-6 years ago. He had remarried, was living somewhere down state and had one daughter and his wife was pregnant again. He mentioned wanting a big family which was funny - I have never wanted children and, had we stayed married, this would have been a big obstacle for us, big enough that I would have divorced over it.
C’est la vie. I am remarried and remain childless except for my black lab, a barn full of cats and seven horses. Want to see pictures of those kids?
I did hear from a mutual friend that my ex was completely whipped by the current wife.
I haven’t spoken to or seen my ex-wife since the final court date of the divorce. Things didn’t end well, but we tried to part as amicably as possible. That being said, I wish no ill will or harm on her, but I really don’t care to see or talk to her again in this life.
Because of mutual friends, I get the occasional news through the grapevine, so I know what city she’s in, but that’s about it.
