This reminded me: I mentioned that my BF became friends with this rabbi. He told me that my BF often went on and on about what a huge impact for good I had had on his life. Besides saving his life, and getting him back into music, and loving his daughters-- there were other things, too. That I was wonderful, meant the world to him, etc. I believe he said those things and meant them, but he never said any of that to me or gave a hint that he felt that way. He treated me only slightly better than crap. It took me a couple of years to restore my sense of worth after being with him. Again: why did I stick around so long? Sick puppy.
I’m turning 40 this month, which is very young for this board. As far as I know, all my exes are still alive. One of them, I believe, got pregnant out of wedlock shortly out of high school, and her mother died. I was saddened by that; I liked her mother a lot. Another one is a friend on Facebook but she never checks it, and I don’t know if she’s still alive.
Another one, the one I’d call the love of my life so far, I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing. We stopped seeing each other in 2000. And my most recent ex, I’m still in close contact with as part of my writing group. She and I share the same birthday, and in fact I just mailed her out a birthday card. She’s a little upset with me about something at the moment, though.
I have a VERY complicated relationship with one of my ex’s. She stole $1,500 from me and cut all contact with me after taking the money (she claimed she needed an emergency loan to stay in her apartment now that I wasn’t staying there, but then didn’t tell me she had actually already had moved in with her ex-boyfriend for a couple months by then and she never intended to pay that loan back) but then she died horribly in a really bad car accident that was no fault of her own 5 years later. I only learned of it seeing the local news.
None of them have died so far but I have a history of being on good terms with exes. I’m in (extremely) occasional contact with about half of them and any of them dying would be a gut punch.
It’s slightly interesting to think about which of them could die without me even hearing about it. I’ve totally lost contact with one. Another one who I’m actually in contact with every year or two I’d probably never hear about, simply because I don’t know her family or current friends so there is no obvious way I’d ever hear about it
Oddly enough, I just found out that an old high school girlfriend of mine passed away about 20 years ago.
Which was like 10 years since the last time I had actually seen her. So clearly we haven’t kept in touch. Really I just found out by accident because Facebook said I might know her mom who worked at my high school.
Still don’t really know what happened, other than she would have been about 28, was married with some kids, and lived near the town we grew up.
Still felt a little strange. Probably because of how little I actually care about it. Not in a callous way. Just in the sense that it is strange how a relationship can seem important (in a high-school dating sense) at the time and become so unimportant, the person could die and it would take me decades to even notice.
My bold.
Or even in a grownup, in-love, living together sense…
I was a gay man in NYC in the '80s, during the height of the AIDS epidemic. I experienced the deaths of more friends and lovers than I can count. I even sat with some of them when they passed, even emptied bedpans, etc.
There were times when I had to go to three funerals/memorial services at the same time.
I did the same thing a few years ago, and discovered that a woman with whom I’d had a very brief fling in college had just died. She was 40. We’d never kept in touch, but I still remember the goosebump-raising shock I felt.
OTOH, the woman who’d broken my heart at college was still alive but quite a bit heavier and no longer a dead ringer for Drew Barrymore. 
Wow. You are a survivor in many more ways than one.
Met a gal, my uncle’s neighbor’s daughter, whirlwind romance and marriage. The main reason for getting married was a promise she made to her grandmother, no sex till she got married. We also had other differences, she was black and 8 years younger than me. Something she also wanted to do was live in New York City. That is where she was born and lived till she was 14.
2 months before getting married, I was rehired by the big airplane company in Seattle. A week after getting married, she got a job offer in New York, a cousin got her a job at a largish law firm. We were torn but I did not want to stop her from her dreams. The marriage was annulled, she moved east and I was bummed. She loved living in New York, eventually married someone else and had a daughter. Between 1986 and 2000, we saw each other half a dozen times. The talk was always “what if”.
In 2004 her mother called and told me she had cancer. She passed in 2007. A few months later her mom called me again and told me someone wants to meet me. It was her daughter. She told me her mother never stopped loving me and talked about me all the time with her. She was never told I was white, that was quite a shock to her when we met. She said she felt like she had known me for years even though we had just met. We are still friends on FB and get together when she comes back to Tacoma to see her grandparents.
To this day, I still wonder “what if”.
I mentioned this in another thread but here it goes again. I subscribe to Been Verified so one weekend I started looking up out friends to see what was up. Four of my Ex’s had died! The news of my ex-wife passing was like meh, too bad for her. Two of my GF’s from 30’s passed away and I felt some sorrow for them as they were both good people to hang out with and they died too young. My GF from college death hit me hard as she was the love of my life, the one that got away and the source of much torment in life. A true giver of pain and delight.
I believe they all died of some form of cancer from I was able to piece together some details when I contacted mutual friends (again through the background check app), they were all smokers and heavy drinking/party type girls. Its a wonder I’ve outlived them. The one ex that still survives is the one who stabbed me, I still ponder that one.
As far as I know, all my exes are still alive (and only one of them lives in Texas). But several of my childhood friends with whom I had lost contact have died, and it’s an incredibly disconcerting experience. One of them happened to die in a kayaking accident within hours of his Facebook profile popping up on my list of “people you may know.” He was wearing some ridiculous hat in his profile picture, and I sent him a friend request, intending to open the conversation by playfully asking what the hell was eating his head. Someone, perhaps his mother, accepted the request on his behalf, and I opened his page to see multiple wall posts from people who had heard bits and pieces of what had just happened and were trying to find out more. It was awful. We were in our 20s at the time.
All of my official exes and one university fling are still around. There was one woman though…reached out to me though the internet personals from another city across the country because she liked my profile. We chatted quite a bit, and she even sent me a racy pic of herself. Still, she was a few provinces away and we never pursued anything. It was a bit frustrating, as she really seemed like My Type, but as the French say, that’s life.
Things got dramatic at her end. She moved to the U.S. and married a real POS who smacked her around. It was so rough that, while she divorced him before her Green Card process was finished, the INS let it go through anyway (a rare event indeed, if you’ve ever had to deal with U.S. immigration). I finally met her once, three or four years after our initial online encounter, on a trip to NYC where she was then living. Never saw her again, as a few years later she passed away from breast cancer, still in her early/mid thirties. Occasionally a comment she posted on my Facebook will show up in my Memories feed, and I’ll feel the heartstrings tug quite a bit.
Wow. That is so sweet.
I’ve loved five men in the last 45 years (one of them was my husband of 10 years). All of them are dead. The guy whose demise launched this thread was the last one to die.
I don’t have any deceased exes (that I know of!). But I will contribute this:
When I was in Junior High in the early 1970s, we had a new Social Studies teacher. Just out of college, and really pretty. Of course, all of us guys were pretty much captivated by her.
Well Junior High was only two years, and that’s all I was there, so I never saw her again after that. But I always wondered what happened to her. Did she stay in teaching? Move to another school? Who knows?
Quite by accident, while looking thru newspaper archives for something unrelated, I came across an obit that caught my eye. It was hers. According to the obit, she had left teaching after several years and had gone to work for various state agencies, and lastly the telephone company.
Died of cancer at 38.
I’ve lost friends while a relationship existed, and those sting bad. The one that jumps out in my mind was my fiancee (lost to cancer), and it still stings after 16 years.
Out of respect for my current, happy relationship, and my mental/emotional health, I don’t keep contact with exes. Thus, those I no longer have contact with? I see no sense in re-opening old wounds, or picking up old baggage I’d left behind.
Tripler
Lots of folks have moved on. I’m one of 'em.
Sometimes even when you’ve authentically and honestly moved on, you find out that a person from your past has died. Two of the five of mine who have died I wasn’t in contact with at all, nor did I go looking for them.
Opposite here. My exes are wonderful people, and get along great with my wife (they bond over laughing at my foibles).
The woman I’d assumed I’d marry back in college would be hard to ignore. Soon after we broke up, she married my best friend. All of us got together on a Florida vacation, and it wasn’t a soap opera.
This is a risk/benefit of social media. My ex-husband and I had had no contact for almost 30 years when I discovered by accident on FB that he had suddenly died at 57. No doubt it was heart disease and/or alcoholism, both of which were incipient when we parted. I was stunned, but not for myself. Based on what I could see on FB he had a daughter and they were very close. His sudden death was devastating for her. As a mom to two daughters I couldn’t help but think about how they would feel if their father suddenly dropped dead, and that got my attention for a few days. As for me, I guess I had always figured the ex and I would cross paths again someday and it is still something I find myself inadvertently thinking once in a while. Then I remember–nope.
Given my moves across the country, if one of my exes and my wife met, that’d be grounds for serious concern. I’ve got a couple ‘o’ potential stalkers out there–that’s one of the reasons why they’re “exes.”
One pulled my own (unloaded) firearm on me.
Tripler
Quickest. Breakup. Ever.
Not quite what you’re looking for, but I googled up the name of a college fling. I found a gofundme page started by his wife, because he had had a stroke that rendered him helpless. She even posted a picture of him in his bed looking horrible. When I knew him, he was a heavy smoker, so I’m not surprised that it caught up with him.