Let’s pretend:
You are married/deeply involved with someone – let’s say you’ve been together for five years. They are still friends with someone they were involved with, but that relationship ended eight years ago, three years before you met. Your relationship with your spouse is very solid, and you have no reason to believe that they would cheat on you (no ‘spark’ between them that you can detect, no history of it in past relationships, etc.). You know the ex, and they seem like a good, non-sleazy person.
Your spouse and their ex, as I said, are still friends – they will occasionally call or IM and chat just to catch up, and will go do things that the two of them enjoy that you don’t particularly care for. (ie, going to flea markets, or martial arts films, or operas, or some such.)
Now, based on past threads, many people would be uncomfortable with their spouse having this level of friendship with an ex, and many of those said that it would depend on how deeply involved the spouse and the ex had been.
So, given the above, how close would they have to have been before you would feel uncomfortable with the above friendship? I’m talking about only your own comfort level, here. Check all that apply, and of course same-sex couples please switch things around so they apply to you.
For me: I’d be somewhat uncomfortable with my spouse being close friends with someone they’d had a crush on, or made out with once or twice but never dated.
IME those cases are more likely to have unresolved sexual tension between the two. If they’ve been involved, broken up, and re-formed the friendship, or if they’ve dated a few times and realized they’re not compatible, then the sexual tension has been broken and worked through and there’s no tantalizing “I wonder…” issues.
But I think I’m in the minority on this one.
We might be in the minority, but at least we’re not alone. My husband and I got married at a <cough>mature<cough> age, so we’ve got lots of Exes in past. The friends that give me an occasional twinge are the friends he would have liked to have dated.
From my own personal experience, if you’ve had sex with a person, that window never closes completely.
I’ve never been cheated on (that I know of), but in my experience, during a breakup (both short term and final), it is common for the girls I’ve dated to have sex with one of these random harmless exes who were always hanging around in the distance.
This leads me to believe that exes are not as harmless as they might appear. So it doesn’t take much to make me uncomfortabls about a spouses friendship with an ex.
I think for me it would be if they had been married to the ex before. If they got along well enough to be married before, and then something made them split up, but yet they still got along well enough to hang out sometimes, that seems odd to me. I know some people split amicably, but I have a hard time imaging that. To me that would say they were really dumb when choosing the person they married, and then I’d have a hard time respecting someone like that enough to marry them. So it’s all hypothetical. Especially since my husband and I got married at 21, and he really only had one relationship that had lasted a significant amount of time, enough to bother with the term ex, and they really have nothing in common now. It’s not something I’m ever going to have to worry about, so I may have not put enough thought into it.
I voted on opposite ends of the scale. I can imagine having no problem with it at all, and I can imagine being bothered by even the unrequited crush. I don’t have a spouse currently, so I have to guess that it would just depend on the level trust I had for the spouse.
My ex-wife WAS friends with a couple of her exes during the early and mid parts of our marriage. Both guys, as I recall, were in their own relationships at that point. I had no issues with them hanging out. Later, there was another ex that she rekindled a friendship with, and that ended up being the beginning of the end of our marriage. Based on that, it’s a little difficult for me to predict exactly how I would react to being put in that situation again in the future. I’m inclined to be a very trusting person, and I wouldn’t marry someone I didn’t trust. But I’ve also been burned, so I might be much more squeamish now in a situation like that.
No problem with my spouse being friends with an ex, and he has no problems either. There is no level of ex that would make either of us uncomfortable.
I’m heading back to visit my family and friends next month, one ex will be picking me up at the airport, going to Mother’s day brunch with us, and just hanging out in general. Another ex will be driving my son down and will also be spending a day with me. I speak to both of them on a weekly basis and consider them very good friends. I couldn’t imagine not having them in my life, my children’s lives, etc.
If the situation were reversed, it would no doubt look exactly the same.
cwPartner has several ex-es who remained friends long after they stopped being partners. I’ve been comfortable with that in all cases but one. That was the ex with whom cwPartner shared some personal information (about me and about himself) that I had made clear I really didn’t want to go beyond the two of us. It’s the only time I’ve felt the need to say, “This person is off limits as long as you and I are an item.”
Based on what cwPartner has told me about this ex, their relationship was pretty unhealthy to begin with - a serious imbalance of power between the two of them, the ex cheating on his other partner(s), that sort of thing. cwPartner’s relationships with the other ex-es were more vanilla (for lack of a better term), and his continuing friendships with those people haven’t bothered me.
I checked married, I’d have no problem keeping in touch with an ex-spouse, sending birthday cards (I’d sign it too) and meeting up in a group. But if the two of them went off to watch martial arts films together without me, then that might be weird. My boyfriend doesn’t have an ex-wife so it’s all hypothetical. And really I’m a bit of a tag-along, there are very few activities that I don’t join in for the company. Marital arts films might be on that list, though.
I’m not a jealous person in romantic or other relationships so I checked that I would have no problem with any of the above.
If I trust the person I’m with then I see no point in worrying.
I don’t have any problems with anything my BF does, or who he spends time with - I trust him completely never to do anything inappropriate, much less cheat on me. He could be BFF with an ex and it wouldn’t be a big deal to me. That’s him though, my comfort level would definitely be different if I was dating someone else. His opinions on this are nothing like mine, as he assumes every man has impure intentions. I don’t have any exes to be friends with, and don’t enjoy spending time with straight men (I haven’t had a straight male friend since 2nd grade) anyway, but I think he’d be very uncomfortable if I did.
My BF is casual friends with one ex - it was a fairly serious relationship, she was the sister of a long-time friend, and he’s close with her parents as well. She’s married now with a kid and expecting a second. They don’t spend much time together but she’ll visit him at work, sometimes he’ll have dinner at her parent’s house, etc. She seems like a lovely woman. I am not interested in being friends with any of his friends, so I’ve never spent time with her.
I slightly mis-read … and it doesn’t matter. I originally read my choice as “if my spouse had an unrequited crush” rather than “if my spouse had had an unrequited crush.” And believe me, if he was still harboring a crush, I’d have a problem with it.
But if he’d harbored one in the past, I’d have a really hard time believing that this crush was 100% gone from his neurons. So it doesn’t matter that I mis-read!
I voted that if they’d lived together I’d be uncomforatable. I’ve been pretty vocal on the threads dealing with this issue (even starting one myself awhile back) so I won’t drone on and on about the reasonings. In a nutshell: I’ve had two SO’s cheat on me with their exes, therefore, any continued relationship with an ex rings instant alarm bells with me.
If it’s in a group (preferably including me), that’s one thing. But one on one? I just see no reason for that.
With same-sex couples it’s not unusual for both to have the same ex(es). Back when we lived in NY, we were always running into exes of one of us or both, and never a problem. Since we’ve relocated, the issue is moot.
Oh, the spouse’s ex.
:smack:
I saw the thread title and was wondering why the heck it should bother me if my spouse and one of my ex-partners became close friends.
I wouldn’t marry someone who I thought was going to cheat on me.
I would have no problem with my spouse having this sort of friendship with an ex at all.
In fact, at this point, I’m willing to encourage it.
sigh
Still up there on that high horse, eh?
Look, no one thinks their SO is going to cheat on them.
I trust my SO. I honestly don’t think he’d ever cheat on me. Doesn’t mean I’d be comfortable with him consistently being in what I might view as a tempting situation. I’d also prefer he not hang out in strip clubs with his buddies on a regular basis. That doesn’t mean I suspect him of cheating on me.
I wouldn’t marry someone who I thought was going to cheat on me either. And I’m absolutely positive it won’t happen. I do not accept promises of exclusivity so nothing she does along those lines could constitute cheating. End of problem.
Yup, still riding into the sunset of trust and respect!
If I’m to the point that I’m marrying someone, it’s certainly not going to be someone I didn’t trust in tempting situations. Furthermore, if I did marry someone who was prone to getting it on with their ex, I guess I’d want to know sooner rather than later! Cheaters are cheaters and they will find ways to cheat. Guys who don’t cheat won’t cheat.