my ex is affectionate w/ his ex's (including me). do i embrace it or stop the cycle?

[Wrenne]

i fell hard for a guy that i dated for 1.5 years. "luke" is 32 (5 years older than me)-- extremely intelligent, funny, charming, popular and the type of person people are drawn to (especially me). i have never been so drawn to one person in my life.

 

several months into my relationship with luke, i realized that he and i had serious boundary differences. he insisted that i needed to trust him. my position was that it was difficult for me to trust him when his boundaries were so non-existent/different from mine. he insisted that he had good boundaries and if a girl was inappropriate with him, he would talk to her about it. i was skeptical.

 

one of these boundary issues involved his exs. aside from keeping their gifts and regularly taking to them about serious issues (like relationship and family problems), he considered one of his ex's (EXGF1) to be his best friend, would tell her he loved her, and they would email each other flirty emails, simple poetry, etc. EXGF1 lived across the country but they communicated very often and were important parts of each others lives. throughout our relationship, he actively applied and interviewed for jobs in her area (without telling me about it), but never took a job out there. he repeatedly told me that it was O-V-E-R between them, that their 5-year relationship was a mistake b/c they are better off as friends, and that he had no intention of getting back with her. another ex (EXGF2), who i became good friends with, lived in our area and would hang out with him regularly (which i was ok with because i knew and liked her). EXGF2 had told me not to trust EXGF1 because she was manipulative and ruined EXGF2's relationship with luke. EXGF2 would babysit his pets when we were out of town and both exs would keep in contact with his mother.

 

eventually, the trust/boundary issues became too much to deal with and i broke it off 6 months ago. about 2 months later he started seeing a new girl, who he is still with. he still sends me gifts, tells me he misses me, and has told me he still loves me. i have told him that i am not like his exs and do not want to be a part of this cycle, but i keep finding reasons to talk to him, even though afterwards i always end up feeling terrible. i have gone NC, but it has never lasted more than a month at a time, because i will find reasons to talk to him. part of me feels that if i can work on improving myself and becoming more independent, i will be able to trust him more and handle his odd relationships with exs, and we will have a happy future together. another part of me doesn't want to lose a friendship with this person that i am drawn to so much. i have not dated since we broke up and want to work on myself for at least a few more years before i see someone else.

 

LS, should i embrace his unconventional love or stop this cycle of ex-devotion?? if it is better to stop, how do i do that??

[carhill]

Popular, charismatic guy.

 

He's a 'collector'.

 

Friendships are 'actions'. As a valued friend who loves you, I'm sure he and his current GF will be happy to join you and your current boyfriend for dinner sometime. Friends do such things. It's great to have friends...

 

My bet is he is feeding his ego at a very small cost and the reason he does this is because he can. For yourself, it will be difficult to focus your emotions and commitment on a man you can share you life with as long as this guy is in the periphery. It's not his fault he's popular and charismatic; that's a gift. It's your responsibility to let go of him and move on. How? Simply tell him that you value his love and friendship and now need to heal your heart completely and ask that he stop sending gifts and contacting you. Then, delete all his contact information and correspondence and erase him from your life. Reset the clock back to zero before you ever knew he existed.

 

I've done this. It's a wonderful feeling. In my case, the clock being reset had run for a quarter century. You can reset it any time you *choose* to.

 

Good luck

[cozenedindigo]

My ex's ex was an abnormally (at least in my view) huge part of his life. I'm talking Skype chats, emails, emotional entanglements, her finding out about us and blowing her top, logging into his gmail and reading all of our mail. At the point that I met him, they had been "broken up" for two years and still chatting and having fights like couples do. As soon as he met me he professes to have committed to me completely. Well, shoot me, if I don't want to marry someone I've known for barely a week. Then he chases me for an exclusive relationship, then proceeds to tell me he doesn't know how much of a part of his life his ex-gf is going to be. He was obviously still very entangled with her.

 

It took me a while to work out I may very well have been a rebound. Stupid me! In a fight that effectively ended the relationship, he wound up telling me he "of course" still had "loads of feelings" for her, not love ones but friendship ones. And these feelings involved thinking of her every single day. Some people can probably deal with these things, but I'm not one of them. He offered to be friends after we split but I implemented strict NC and I'm glad I did. The ambiguity and weird triangle was making it difficult for me to continue.

[New_Life08]

You may wonder if he has attachment issues with the women in his life. In a committed relationship the intimate/sexual energy should be with our partner. Keeping emotional strings with the opposite sex is inappropriate and risky. There is nothing wrong with having friends of the opposite sex if they are truly a "friend". This means the friend is not someone you would date if you weren't with your current partner.

 

It is all about emotional integrity. For most people in love it seems natural not to get involved in (or continue) emotional affairs. Then there are some who cannot detach from the emotional baggage and think they can have it both ways.

 

Most healthy people are not going to share their partner intimately with the opposite sex. I have a feeling that your ex bf is going to find himself in a lot of failed relationships if he doesn't change his behavior. There are very few people out there who will put up with it. The ones who do are likely people who have their own questionable social life.

 

The biggest problem is when your relationship hits a bump in the road the first one they run to is the "friend" who is going to stroke their ego. This behavior is what can lead to an affair.

 

I think you should stick to your guns about telling him you are not going to be in (what you consider) an inappropriate friendship with him. If you allow it to happen (while he is in a relationship) then you will compromise your own values with boundaries (especially in his eyes).