Well, yes, that’s certainly a viewpoint. Obviously only Mr. Krebbs can know whether his girlfriend is a Complete Skanky Ho who’s only out for sex from anything that moves, or whether she’s a normal, responsible adult who values her friendships and just wants to catch up in a social situation.
So ParentalAdvisory’s friend’s story does have some merit. And is a graphic caveat towards dating Complete Skanky Hos.
But really, unless said Ex was physically or mentally abusive, why wouldn’t you remain friends? Assuming a breakup of the general sort, where people just find that their life goals are not compatible or they’re not good for each other in a 24/7 sense, it seems pretty sad that anyone would then decide that the relationship was only ever valued in terms of sex - and that if you’re not putting out, there’s no other reason to be spending time together.
I mean, seriously! That doesn’t strike you as being pretty abysmal?
Perhaps I’ve just been lucky in my relationships, but I’ve always *liked *the people I’ve been involved with as well as loving them. :dubious:
Since you have nothing to worry about, your GF is not “creat[ing] situations.” She’s going to see an old friend and is letting you (the jealous one) know what she is doing ahead of time so that she is not accused of sneaking around, later.
Given that:
you trust her;
you know the circumstances under which she is going to meet the other guy;
the situation (lunch) is pretty benign
it would behoove you to pay less attention to those whose comments are based in situations where there was reason to not trust (or who are not capable of trust, themselves). (I particularly would not pay a great deal of attention to someone whose first response is that she is going to go to lunch for the purpose of performing fellatio. )
You are quite right to be concerned about her behaviour. However worrying about it will achieve exactly the same thing as not giving a shit about it. Just learn to shrug your shoulders and see what happens. Expressing any of your insecurity at all will prove to be the kiss of death for your relationship.
You may or may not be unreasonable, but obviously the GF puts you 2nd to the old flame. None of this “Would you mind?” stuff, it’s "I’m going. Don’t YOU get an attitude!"She’s telling you in advance not to be such a CREEP just because she’s going to see somebody she has had sex with regularly, and don’t parade your shallow insecurities.
Oops…forgot to add.
If you think that you shouldn’t doubt her unless she gives you a reason to doubt her, I think that she gave you a reason to doubt her.
If her primary motive were to cheat, she wouldn’t have told you. If she really wanted to hop in the sack w/ Mr. Oregon, she could have done so, right?
Maybe it is a little bit of a game, with her enjoying your jealousy a bit. Some people want a little drama in their relationships. And if you are the type to post about your jealousy on the internet, you may not be completely averse to drama yourself. Not really a big deal in small doses.
My husband and I are almost Vulcan in our aversion to drama, but the deal is you find a partner who’s right for you.
You might as well play along, ask how the lunch went, tell her it made you jealous, bring flowers when you pick her up at the airport, and make Hot Monkey Love to her when you get home.
Sorry but I just found this funny and had to share. To me this read that you were implying that Oregon was a state no one has heard of.
Ala "Rozencratz and Guildenstern are Dead"by Tom Stoppard. Paraphrased from memory.
R:England? I don’t believe in it.
G:What? Just a conspiracy of cartographers?
Anyway sounds like the OP has already sorted things out but I’ll add my two bits for the heck of it.
a. As stated, this was a trip to see family and friends, not to see the ex.
b. They’re having lunch. That doesn’t quite raise the “Fellatio Threat Level” as much as say, dinner and… well fellatio. If someone is going to meet their ex, this is one of the more innoxious ways to go about it.
c. She knows he gets jealous and it sounds like the whole “I’m having lunch with my ex, don’t be upset” was an address head the problem off at the pass. Now could she have done better with a, “Would it bother you very much if I had lunch with Ray?” Possibly. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with “I’m having lunch with Ray, don’t be upset” other then possibly inserting a “please” in there. Yes it could have been said better but there’s not nearly enough evidence to read anything into her phrasing; other then that she didn’t have it vetted by a comittee beforehand.
With what we’ve been told of their relationship he seems pretty safe. Totally safe? No. But no relationship is totally safe. Hell, she could tell him she’s going to the supermarket and there’s no guarantee she won’t blow the entire checkout lane. However Mr. Krebbs is certainly in that section of “safe” where worrying about it will gain him absolutely nothing in the area of security and quite possibly a great deal in worry and anquish.
I’ve stayed at the house of my husbands former girlfriend.
I would do it again, too.
She lives in England and is the British version of me. scary, huh?
Insecurity, IMHO, is from a low self esteem. I’ve never completely understood jealousy in relationships. When (hypothetical) you are comfortable with whomever you are inside, deep down, you will be able to handle anything life throws at you. If hypothetical you cannot handle a SO visiting or chatting an ex, then you haven’t given her your trust. Then there can never been the two of you really becoming one ( coupledom or the Crazy Thing Called Marriage.) because of the chasm created by jealousy, which is from insecurity which is from a low self esteem. Which means it is time for someone to grow.
If any of the above made sense it is by pure coincidence. It won’t happen again.
You know, if I were going to change every little habit or thing I did that bothered my husband or made him uncomfortable, I wouldn’t be me any longer.
I don’t like all my husband’s friends. I particularly didn’t like all of them twelve years ago. But I never told him he couldn’t see them. Some of the same people I didn’t like then I now really like. Others he has dropped as acquaintences over the years. And a few I still silently roll my eyes when he spends time with them.
If he finds her behavior intolerable, then he shouldn’t be dating her. But he shouldn’t try to change her or expect her to run her life around what makes him happy.
When I first began dating my wife, she told me that an ex-boyfriend wanted to see her for lunch. I told her that I suspected that he probably wanted to start dating her again. She went to the lunch but left early because my suspicion was right.
But the circumstances were that we were just starting to get serious and she and this ex hadn’t been broken up that long.
Still, I have to admit that if she went to see this particular ex again, I’d be upset because of his past intentions.
Okay. Brief synopsis of what happened last night. My girlfriend sends a text message shortly after I get home from work that she’s going to a movie and that she’s going to call when she gets done. Great; we both love film. She does call after the movie was over. She brings up that Ray had to work late, they couldn’t do lunch so it had to be dinner and a movie.
I get quiet, because the mention of his name bothers me. I’m also bothered that she did the whole dinner and a movie thing, because that sounds much more like a date environment than lunch at McDonald’s. My girlfriend can tell I’m upset and she asks why. I tell her that no, it’s not about work, and it’s not really worth discussing (because last time I tried, it was a trainwreck).
Of course, she gets upset. She proceeds to yell at me and tell me I’m being immature, selfish and controlling (what?). Keep in mind that I do not yell. I do not like being yelled at (I got my fill of yelling in the Army), and as soon as she finishes (and I listened, I did not attempt to get a word in edge-wise) she hangs up the phone. I text her and tell her that when/if she’s ready, she can call me because I still want to talk to her. Not surprisingly, we didn’t talk again last night.
Honestly, the more I think about this, if she had dealt with my irrational emotions kindly the first time I tried to bring them up, I don’t think this would bother me so much. But she didn’t, and this compounds those emotions with hurt ones that I don’t think are entirely irrational.
I’m sorry, but in response to Dangerosa’s post, I think that this is a whole lot different than a childhood friend one has always hung out with. This is a guy she hasn’t spoken to in four years. She knows it bothers me that she wants to see him, doesn’t care, and won’t talk calmly or rationally with me about it.
This really isn’t about trust. It’s about my feeling that her meeting with this guy for a couple of hours is more important to her than our relationship. I’m getting the impression that she doesn’t care how I feel, and that she expects me to be able to change my feelings just because she wants to do something without considering me. Frankly, I would be happy if she either A) had a reasonable dialogue with me and proceeded from there (ie, somehow included me in the decision-making process) or B) decided she didn’t want to see him because it bothered me.
I really don’t think my expectations are unreasonable. My feelings on this whole Ray thing probably are, but I think I’m trying to deal with them reasonably. I would appreciate any observations.
Not to mention her secret arrangements followed by the last-minute bombshell announcement. That doesn’t show much respect. My guess is that she’s put a great deal of thought into this meeting. I’d be interested in phone logs.
Just saw this. I’d dump her and find someone open, authentic, honest and respectful. She’s obviously more attuned to him than to you and shows little empathy with your feelings. Yes, she sure as hell did have a date with her ex. My guess it won’t be her last.
IMHO, you need to learn to speak your mind. Be gentle, but be firm and crystal clear. This relationship sounds doomed to me. Best you learned now, than later.
If I’m going to be in a romantic relationship, I want it to be based on honesty. I want to be able to tell my significant other how I feel about something, not because I expect them to change, but because I expect to be listened to. I expect that someone who gives a shit about me would want to understand how I feel. And yes, I do hold myself up to those expectations.
Obviously, I’m not always going to bring up every little thing that gets under my skin. However, if something bothers me enough that I feel compelled to talk to the Dope about it, I think it’s probably worth talking to my SO about.
I’m not entirely sure I agree that she had a real “date.” I left out her statement that “seeing Ray made me realize how in love I am with you” etc, etc. If I can say anything about my girlfriend, she is open and authentic. She’s not inclined to lie, and I trust my judgment on that. I doubt she sees this as more than old friends who haven’t seen eachother in forever hanging out.
At the same time, I think it might be an added bonus that this upsets me and she decided to push the envelope. I am getting the impression that she’s toying with my emotions a little bit. No, I don’t like it, and yes, I’m going to tell her about it.
Your analysis that she is not showing empathy towards my feelings is correct. I am also going to talk to her about that, and I’ll see how she responds. If this sort of shit continues, you’re right, I should (and will) throw in the towel. I’m not sure if that’s necessary yet, however.
Speaking Generally: Your girlfriend is out of town and decides to visit an ex while she’s around. I don’t see this as being any big deal. As has been pointed out several times already, she could just as easily have not told you she was planning to meet up with him. How would you have known what she did every minute while she was there? I’d think that her giving you fair warning was an effort to say, “I’m an adult, and I’m going to make this decision, but I don’t want to do it behind your back.”
Speaking Specifically: Her reaction to you on the phone is oversensitive, at best, and suspicious at worst. Seems to me like she was anticipating a fight over the issue, which also implies that there’s guilt there. Hopefully she’ll calm down to the point where you can discuss this with her. But I think that the lack of trust on both sides probably doesn’t bode well for the relationship.
But if it really bothers him, then does he really trust her? If her seeing an ex bothers him so much, then trust is, in fact, an issue.
Look, i’m not arguing that the OP has no cause for concern. We don’t know his girlfriend, we haven’t been privy to the day-today workings of his relationship, and, despite his reasonably detailed OP, it’s possible that there is stuff that he inadvertently left out that might be relevant to this situation. It could be that his concerns are well-founded.
But let’s not automatically assume that his self-confessed insecurity is a license to dictate who his girlfriend may and may not see. And, more importantly, i think that generalizations about there being no excuse for seeing ex-partners are completely off the mark.
What do you mean “open” and “honest”? This woman is nothing if not open and honest, given the information we have.
She’s in a completely different state, for og’s sake. She could have fucked this ex-boyfriend silly without the OP ever even knowing that they even saw one another. Instead, she tells him that they’re going to meet. Sounds pretty open and honest to me.
Authentic? What the fuck does that mean?
Respectful? Exactly how much should she limit her activities in order to placate the OP’s insecurity? Because, in my experience, people who are insecure in relationships don’t just have problems with their partners seeing former boyfriends or girlfriends; they get jealous whenever the partner talks to someone of the opposite sex, is late home for dinner, etc., etc.
I’m not saying i don’t feel for the OP. I do. It sucks to be worried about shit like this. But, Mr. Krebbs, you’re talking to the wrong people. Sit down with your girlfriend and have a good discussion about the issue, including your own feelings and what you would like her to do in order to make your life easier. Be honest, and tell her what you find unreasonable. This will give her a chance either to accept your concerns and promise to try and be more considerate, or tell you that you’re too insecure and that she isn’t prepared to live with that.
And that last bit is something that you have to be prepared for. Whenever you sit down with a partner and let them know that something they do bothers you, you have to be ready for the fact that they might say, “Well, that’s just how i am, and if you can’t accept it then we might have to part ways.” And she needs to realize that you might say the same thing, that you might tell her that if she can’t understand and accommodate your concerns then you’ll have to leave.
