My husband and I owe our relationship to one of his exes (and I do mean ex in the sense you mean, Diogenes – they did live together). She set us up together in 1995 which was, let’s see, it would have been around seven years after they broke up. We see her, her husband, and their daughters as often as we can. We stay at each other’s houses when we’re in each other’s towns. We made her an active part of our wedding. I consider her a good friend of mine now, though my husband calls her more often than I do.
Another of his exes, although I’m not sure they ever actually lived together, is another close friend of both of ours now. I’m out of touch now with my only ex (under your definition), but if that ex and I were still friends, I believe my husband would be fine with it. I certainly still correspond with various other semi-exes (ex-boyfriends I was serious about at the time, but never lived with), which my husband knows and thinks is normal, fine, and not to be worried about. He might be uncomfortable if I were close to the one who is now famous and wealthy, since my husband has this social anxiety / depression thing that sometimes makes him feel like a failure in life, but it hasn’t come up.
My husband’s best male friend and mentor is married to a woman whose ex-husband lives next door to them. The ex is remarried, and the two couples and their kids spend holidays and many weekends together. They’ve all been close like this for at least twenty years now.
Your assumptions really don’t hold up for my experiences, Diogenes, and I’m very glad of it – the exes in question are wonderful people and I’m glad they’re in our lives. I have no anxiety that my husband might cheat on me with his, and it would feel very wrong to me to ask him to avoid them. Your attitude makes me uncomfortable, and I’m glad I don’t have to deal with it personally, though I realize it works that way for many people.
My attitude makes you unfomortable? What attitude is that? That people should respect their spouses’ feelings? That opinion makes you uncomfortable? Seriously?
I took my ex to the movies, not long after I’d met the future Mrs M and just long enough into that relationship for me to know I wasn’t getting laid any time soon. My ex, fresh out of another break-up, made a grab for my crotch about half a minute after the lights went down. She got no sex that night, trust me.
Before, when said ex was still a girlfriend, the *previous *ex came calling on me late one night with pretty much an offer of sex on a plate. She got none either.
I am not really all that sexually charged I guess. I would prefer to remain friends, especially if I’m in a relationship with someone else. Then again I don’t have need to fuck different people depending on my mood. I also should mention I didn’t have sex with all of them when we were in a relationship in the first place.
I’ve remained friends for years and years with several my ex-boyfriends and at least on my part there was no sexual interest.
Yeah, seriously. I mean, I’m not all that uncomfortable since I don’t actually know you. I would be uncomfortable having to deal with it in my own life. Specifically, the attitude that it’s OK to ask your spouse to avoid all contact with an ex, since your spouse is likely to cheat on you with the ex. It’s not OK with me for a spouse to be that controlling, and it’s not OK with me for a spouse to make such unfounded assumptions about my relationships. Like I said, I do know that this particular assumption isn’t rare, but I would be uncomfortable with a spouse that made it, all the same. I would be uncomfortable if one of my friends or relatives, or their spouses, made it.
Just to be clear, my “attitude” is only that I don’t want to hurt my wife’s feelings. You are saying that people who don’t want to hurt their spouses’ feelings make you uncomfortable?
what should I do to hurt my wife’s feelings that would make you more comfortable. I wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable after all, I mean, where are my manners? Here I am giving a shit about my wife’s feelings while you sit there uncomfortable. Should I call my wife a whore? Would that help you be more comfortable?
I have a large group of pretty varied friends and we’ve had plenty of hypothetical discussions such as “Would you date a girl that you know I’ve fucked?” etc etc. You submit that it makes you uncomfortable, I submit that it’s a common feeling. I’d say that most people I know would not be comfortable with their SOs having regular contact with people that they’ve fucked.
Does not compute. How does assuming that people who stay friends with exes are likely to cheat with them translate to not hurting your wife’s feelings? It would be a false assumption for me – either about me, or for me to make about my husband – and that would hurt my feelings.
Not just “exes,” but serious exes, and not just “friends,” but close friends.
Having said that, there is no contradiction between my two statements. First, I didn’t say they were “likely to cheat,” I said they were likely to still have an emotional attachment and sexual attraction. If that makes your spouse uncomfortable, then the feelings of the spouse are more important. If the spouse is not uncomfortable then there is no issue. The issue is the feelings of the spouse (feelings which are not so irrational, no matter what some people here want to say). Nothing more.
I have declined friendly invitations from women who I would have had no sexual interest in because it made my wife uncomfortable. I haven’t so much as held hands with another woman in 20 years, and I am not likely to cheat. I still put my wife’s feelings first.
Nope. When I break up with someone, it’s usually because I’m either not attracted to them anymore, or they’ve been treating me like shit. Either way, don’t want to sleep with them again.
I’ve traveled down that road with one of my exes. At the time, we were both unattached and it was a case of better-the-devil-you-know. I wouldn’t even consider it since he married. We have only minimal contact now, at his wife’s request. I have to respect that.
Congratulating Diogenes the Cynic feels like being circumcised with a dull blade on a roller coaster, but the phrase “booty call on retainer” has to be set in stone.
Since I would never participate in a booty call, I would never be in this situation.
However, I do know that it’s really easy to still have feelings for an ex, and vice versa. Even to this day every girlfriend I’ve had has tried at least once to get back together. And I’ve been sorely tempted to take them up on it. The only thing that has kept me from doing so was my sense of ethics: either they had a boyfriend, and I will not help someone cheat, or I knew I would get tired of them again, and didn’t want to put them through that.
