Suppose he or she were out of town some weekend (a business-related or similar trip where your going along wasn’t an option). You decide you don’t feel like staying home by yourself Saturday night. Here are six scenarios: which of these would your SO respond to with a shrug, which would lead him or her to be less than delighted, and which would set off a major fight?
a) You go over to a family member’s house for dinner and to hang out for the evening.
b) You go out to dinner with a group of friends, most of them paired off.
c) You go out to dinner with a group of friends, most of them single.
d) You go to a movie with a friend of the sex you’re not attracted to (same, if you’re heterosexual, or opposite, if you’re gay).
e) You go to a movie with a friend of the sex you are attracted to, but this friend is now and always has been platonic.
f) You go to a movie with a friend of the sex you’re attracted to, and this friend is someone you previously dated but is now just a friend – no, really, just a friend.
None of those would even come close to being objectionable. Sometimes even when we’re both home, both of us don’t want to go out together. In these cases it’s perfectly fine if the other wants to go out with friends and/or former ex’s.
My wife wouldn’t bat an eye at any of these. She’d give me some good-natured harrassment about the last one, and try to parlay it into a back rub, but that’s about it.
a) and f) don’t apply to us, as I have no family for 1500 miles, and I’ve never dated anyone else in this country. The rest wouldn’t be cause for the slightest concern.
My wife would not mind any of those scenarios, and neither would I mind. The one caveat is if situation f became very common then it might create friction.
Over the winter, I was caught in an ice storm which closed the airport just before I was supposed to board my flight home. I called my wife, who wondered if I’d be able to stay with my old girlfriend from college rather than trying to find a hotel at the last minute.
True, my old girlfriend is now happily married, but I think spending the night 800 miles from home with an ex-girlfriend and her husband should be somewhere between A and F on the list.
By the way, her husband wouldn’t have minded, either.
My spouse wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about any of them except the last one. He has, in the past, been accountably sensitive about my ex-squeezes. Most of them have moved away and we’re only in sporadic contact, at best, but if I were living in the same town I think that’d the one he’d be less delighted with.
I don’t think it’s a trust thing, at least not with trusting ME. He’s just never quite got the concept of staying friendly with exes,. Perhaps he may suspect them (not me) of having Other Ideas.
Both of us would be (and have been) fine with all except the last one. It hasn’t come up, and another we trust each other, I don’t think either of us would like it.
Why would anyone object to any of these? My SO does in fact go on frequent business trips, and if I do anything like what’s in the OP, he only asks whether I had a good time.
f) would raise some questions just because I haven’t kept in touch with my ex-girlfriends in Japan for over ten years, so suddenly meeting up with one while my wife is away would be a bit unusual. On the other hand, I do keep in touch with my exes from college, and my wife even asked (sincerely) if I’d be meeting up with one of them during our trip to the states. If one of them were in the neighborhood and I met up with her for an evening, my wife’s reaction would be disappointment at not getting to meet her.
My husband wouldn’t have a problem with any of them, as I’ve done them all. So has he. It’s not a big deal at all to either of us.
I don’t see anything objectionable with any of the scenarios.
None of the scenarios listed would get my knickers in a wad, and I don’t believe they would be cause for my SO to become upset. Were it to bother either of us, we need to explore why and make sure there are no underlying security and trust issues.
A through E, absolutely no problem. F doesn’t apply, neither of us has an ex that we still see as friends, either alone or together. This makes it hard to say exactly how we’d feel, but my guess is it would be OK.