Well I’m single because my wife died and the two relationships I’ve had since were bad fits. But go ahead and feel morally superior. The oldest of these are a woman who calls me once a month or so and lives about a 1000 miles away, so is the ex-wife I mentioned. The other two are recent relationships both women very much like the men described by Aangelica. None of these are booty calls. But like I said you go ahead and keep feeling morally superior. Look if you can’t keep your dick in your pants around women whom you’ve been previously involved with that’s your problem not mine. I don’t feel the need to splooge on every available female around me.
Exes are exes for a reason, right? Sometimes it’s because I’ve identified a fundamental flaw in them. Other times, though far less often :p, it’s because they found a fundamental flaw in me. Either way, we broke up because it was time to cut losses and move on to find more suitable partners.
I choose not to maintain friendship ties because I feel it’s best for all concerned to make a clean break of it and move on. I don’t seek closure or more thorough understand of what happened and why. I don’t need to feel better about myself by being your buddy. I don’t feel the need to help you feel better about yourself by letting you earn my forgiveness by being my pal. Let’s just both learn from our mistakes and move on, huh? Tell ya what, you can even keep the damned sofa.
If we happen to run into each other at some point, let’s nod politely and continue on our way. No need for the, “What are you doing here?! How long’s it been? You look great! How is so-and-so? Well gotta run… let’s stay in touch…”, bullshit. Better yet, if we managed to avoid eye contact, let’s just pretend like we never even saw each other, m’kay.
But hey, I’m a scorched earth sort of person. It’s clear some are not. I understand the desire to remain friends, but I question motives.
I’m good friends with two exes and a former FWB, and chatting-hugging hello-facebook level friends with a bunch of others.
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Ex from a four-year relationship. I had ended it because while I loved him, I couldn’t see us getting married, and it was time to fish or cut bait. We’re still quite close, I see him and his current GF of over 10 years fairly regularly.
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Ex from a two-year relationship. I had ended it because I was just not into him anymore. We don’t talk a lot, but we do email back and forth a few times a week, just shooting the shit.
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Former FWB. Ended because he met his wife and fell in love at first sight. He comes to my house every Monday night and we watch Doctor Who together (along with 1-4 other people, usually).
Honestly, as folks above have said - these fellows were my friends before we started dating, they were good people then, they still are whether we’re romantically compatible or not - there’s no reason we shouldn’t stay friends.
Note - in none of these did we go directly from “dating” to “just friends”. We let a couple years pass in which we weren’t in much contact at all, and then there was a little while while we rebuilt the friendship and remembered how to be friends instead of lovers. It was worth it.
Now, I have also dated a couple dudes who it turned out were not good people. I have no contact with them, because they are vile. But that’s a horse of a different color.
I get what you’re trying to say here, but here’s how I’m reading it. One or more of these must be true by implication of yours and MsSmith’s assertion:
I am incapable of maintaining a non-sexual relationship with the opposite sex (change this to fit whatever your sexual proclivity).
The opposite sex is incapable of controlling themselves in my Super Sexy August presence (I actually like this one).
People who fuck once are unlikely to stop fucking, no matter the other circumstances in their life or personal feelings about the other participant. (if this is true there are some phone calls I’d like to make )
You are incapable of trusting your intimate partner when they are around the opposite sex outside of your control or where he/she/they can be watched (again change this to fit your sexual proclivity).
If I’m wrong show me where.
FTR, I only think one of my exes is a horrible person, and in fact do not maintain a friendly relationship with her. I’ve mentioned her here at length. Nor do I maintain relationships with all the woman I’ve ever dated, but I don’t have a unilateral “No Nooky No Contact Policy. In fact such a policy seems off putting in how you think of gender. Good new everyone! Women: they’re not just for fucking.
I mean, if I were going to hang out with an ex, I would naturally have the courtesy to give my husband a head’s up that he was an ex before they met for the first time.
I don’t really understand cutting off all contact with an ex if you part on relatively amicable terms and they weren’t a jackhole. It actually kind of makes me wonder about someone who isn’t on civil terms with any ex, especially after some time has passed. I mean I have . . . Lord, has to be a couple of dozen exes. Most of them weren’t shitheads, it just didn’t work out romantically for the two of us. Mostly the reasons it didn’t work out weren’t anything that either of us were interested in dealing with or changing - and were things that were basically innocuous. Geographical issues, hobbies not shared, lifestyles that weren’t compatible for long term romance - nothing bad, just not right.
The guy who broke up with me because he’d up and fallen in love with someone else? I was pretty damn pissed at the time, but he didn’t do anything wrong. He used his words before he started anything with her - and honestly mostly my pride was hurt. He was upfront with me and it bothered him a lot he was hurting me (or my pride). I was pretty pissy for a while, but once I got over the mad and stopped feeling sorry for myself every time I saw one of them, we circled back to being friends.
Friends or not, if someone’s an ex, it’s deeply unlikely I’d start dating them again. Why would I? If things had worked out, I would still be dating them. Something wasn’t right, by definition. My husband has no particular need to concern himself because I’m friendly with a number of my exes - I’m mortally certain he spends precisely no time worrying about it actually.
You’re probably right. I think she’s just concerned because from what she’s told me he’s the kind of guy who keeps these women ‘on call’ and has often gone back to them more than once when he’s feeling lonely. He then breaks it off, only to once again return to them when he’s feeling lonely. And repeat and repeat. To be fair he has been upfront and honest with her about this, but I don’t know… even a simple Facebook like on any of his exes posts upsets her.
She said he seems serious about her and is ready to settle down but it kinda seems like he always has to feel wanted and will use whoever is there at the time to do that.
Quite obviously, you get friendship out of it. They’re people you know well, get along well with, are comfortable with, have common friends with, share interests with, etc…
Even simpler : there’s no much reason not to be friends with them. If the spliting went smoothly, you’d rather need to actively decide to avoid them if you wanted to.
Think of the recent threads about people who feel trapped in a relationship, who like and respect their partners, but don’t have anymore any romantic or sexual interest in them. Why wouldn’t they stay friends after an amicable divorce? Why deliberatly writing their former partner off?
Of course, separations are always a bit complicated, even when amicable. So it probably requires some goodwill on both parts, but IME, it’s often quite natural. Thinking of my first long term girlfriend, for instance, with whom I stayed in touch for twenty years or so, we had mostly the same set of activities/hobbies and the same set of friends. Not staying friends would have required us to actively avoid each other and change our habbits and activities.
I’ve got a couple of exes floating about out there that I keep in touch him. Not constantly, not even frequently, but maybe once or twice a year. I’m always thrilled to talk to them and find out how they are and what’s new on those bi-annual occasions, but then I forget about them entirely until the next time. They are not in my life for a reason, but it doesn’t mean I don’t think fondly of them in a platonic way and wish them well.
Then again, I’ve never had a really ugly breakup, just the type of relationships that run out of steam, so that probably makes a big difference in how I approach the matter of keeping in touch.
Is none of the above an option?
I’m just not an ex collector. I don’t feel the need for shows of magnonimity in this aspect of my life. I have exes with whom I’ve enjoyed life long hobies of mine: working out, cycling, skiing, sailing, etc… But I’ve long believed that I don’t need to hang on to my exes to continue enjoying these hobies. My spouse feels the same way. I know this because I just asked her and we’re both like, “Yeah, no… I don’t geddit… <shrug>.”
To my mind, all exes come with baggage of one type or another. I don’t like jetsam in my life. I realize many here don’t feel this way. So yeah, no… I don’t geddit. 
Actually, YOU are making assumptions. What you seem to be saying is that since YOU are not fucking your exes, then every Mature person is surely also Not fucking theirs. I held that naive belief about my ex and her several male exes that she kept contact with during our marriage, and also introduced to me. Let’s just say that I learned the hard way how naive I had been. Assuming that your significant other “Certainly is” or “Certainly is not” fucking his/her exes are both bad assumptions.
I am making no assumptions. You are way off. Of course some people are cheaters and screwing their exes. I never ever said that it was never the case. I never even said that it was very rare.
Look, dude, I am sincerely sorry about what happened to you. You certainly didn’t deserve it. Re-read what I wrote and you will see that I didn’t even come close to saying what you are thinking.
Re: your sincere sorrow, thank you, but it’s unnecessary. I have moved on to Much Better. In quickly re-reading, I don’t think you made any assumptions–so my apology to you for saying that you did; however you presented “evidence” of a healthy situation, which as far as I know (and as far as you know) is a really good counterpoint to someone assuming the worst about their spouse and their ex; however the “as far as you know” limitation is one that everyone should take into account. I hear a lot of people tell me so proudly that their ex never cheated; I would have been one of them about seven years ago. Now I just say “Hmmm, that’s really great!” It’s a good assumption to make if it keeps yourself happy–even if it may not be the truth.
In any instance where someone has “an uncomfortable” amount of contact with someone they had a sexual relationship with in the past, it should be considered a red flag.
This is what I said:
If someone has a bad (as opposed to good or neutral) with most (as opposed to one or two) of their exes, that it is a red flag.
If someone is good friends with some or most of their exes, it is not necessarily a red flag.
Well yeah sort of, but that’s kind of weaselish. You want to impugn my character, not that I mind, you’re just some dude on the internet after all, without consequences. That’s not very nice. But the implication is there in your argument. That is what you are saying to your mate.
Is it weaselish that I don’t get wistful about prior relationships? Is it weaselish that I’ve never once googled or searched any part of popular social media websites for names of women I dated in the past? Is it weaselish that I find moving on healthier (for me) than burrying the ax for the sake of some shared common interests?
But, by the same token, perhaps I’ve judged your motives too harshley. I am absolutely just some random dude on the internet whose opinion is of little to no consquence as to how you conduct your life.
What makes you think I do any of those things? This is what I’m trying to explain to you. You (and others) are projecting. You are reading motives into relationships that do not require one. You are making an assumption of ill intents based solely on a prior history of shagging. That’s all kinds of messed up.
Why do I need a motive to not shun someone? Do you have an ulterior motive with everyone you meet? Really? Do you not see it, your implicit accusation that I’m doing something nefarious?
You care too much what I and others think. 
Hmmm… This is different than just staying friends with exes. If he just has on-again off-again relationships with them, then I might feel weird but I wouldn’t be distressed about it, as long as he seems to be serious about the relationship. But if he really is keeping them on-call, that’s kinda gross to be stringing the women along like that. It would show emotional immaturity at the very least.
Personally I don’t think that having friends of [demographic] is an act that indicates untrustworthiness. Having friends is at worst completely neutral and indicates nothing at all. Might indicate that the jealous person has some insecurity issues that need to be addressed though.
That level of possessiveness, that desire to dictate who your partner is friends with, starts creeping up on scary-level controlling mindset, to me.
Well put.