My female friend’s boyfriend of 4 years recently received a friend request from an ex on Facebook. He accepted, saying they were high school friends before they dated, and now he seems to be spending a lot of time talking with her. He has been honest with his girlfriend and has not been trying to hide the fact that they are chatting. He told her the other day that she wants to meet up with him to talk about some things that were left “unfinished.” According to him, the breakup was kind of bad and he feels they both need “closure.” He told my friend that she has nothing to worry about and they are going to meet up in a week or two (They now live about 2 hours apart.) My friend is not the jealous type, but she is extremely bothered by all of this. She asked me if I thought she would be out of line if she told forbid him to see her. I think this is perfect for our Cherries and Banana’s series
Matt: Kiersten (My friend that is the subject of this post), you should win an award for the “Most Tolerant Girlfriend in the World!” I don’t know of many women who would let their longtime boyfriend chat away for hours with an Ex – I know I wouldn’t want my GF to be talking to an ex-boyfriend for hours at a time. Hell, most of my Girlfriends have gotten pissed off if I unconsciously whisper my exes name in my sleep, but that has only happened once or twice.
Personally, I have never been in your boyfriend’s shoes. I haven’t really had a lot of online connections with my exes. Not sure if it is me or them, but I think I only have two as friends on Facebook and we really never talk. And both of them were my facebook friends before my currenty honey, so it wasn’t like I added them after we were dating. Now, I have had some of my girlfriends add their exes and I have to admit, I didn’t like it. I don’t think they talked to the exes that often. As a matter of fact, most of my exes were not super engrossed by Facebook, Twitter or any other Social Networking sites so I wasn’t that worried.
So I can kind of relate and I understand what you are feeling. Your boyfriend and this chick used to have a thing. They have spent a lot of time together, know each other well and probably saw each other naked numerous times. That is kind of where I draw the line…If you see each other naked then you have progressed past the “friends” stage. So you have the right to be concerned.
My advice to you Kiersten is that you should go to him and tell him you have a problem with this. You have been together a long, long time and I know you both have talked about marriage, so you are well within your rights to tell him that you do not want them to meet. Tell him everything and then see what happens. If he ends up not meeting her, then that is a good sign that things are back to normal. If he defriends her on facebook, even better. Start planning the wedding. But if he keeps chatting away with her and goes to meet her, then I would say it is pretty much over. You poured your heart out and told him how you felt and he basically said “So What! I am my Own Man and I am Gonna Do What I Want!” If he does that, he is not marrying material. I would end it and cut your losses.
There is one other option that could satisfy both of you…Ask if you can tag along with him to the meeting. Supposedly, they are just going to have dinner or something, right? You invite him out with your friends, tell him if they are just friends, then it should be no problem if you go with him. If he lets you go along, then all should be well. Hopefully that would put your mind at ease.
Lanthie, I think she could probably use a woman’s point of view on this…
Lanthie: In case you guys hadn’t noticed, we are very complicated. The short answer here is that Kiersten will be jealous – even though she is not the jealous type.
I have a good friend on Facebook and we share many secrets with each other. She has been seeing (and sleeping with) a guy for quite a few months now and they have recently friended each other on FB. He has loads of female friends on FB and it pains her whenever she sees one of these women comment or likes his status. And she quietly dies inside when he responds. She has no idea who any of them are – they may be colleagues from work or family or past acquaintances. She often finds herself stalking some of these women to see if any of them have a history with her guy. She has also been tempted to ask him who all these women are – it is not that he has given her any reason to mistrust him or anything, it is just that we are naturally curious and it gets the better of us.
I just love your analogy about seeing each other naked being the line in the sand. (Lol – makes Cybesex good to go – unless you see naked pics of each other of course!)
I am not the jealous type either and if I were in her shoes, I would be just as curious / jealous. If he feels they need some closure on their breakup, I’m sure he would be reluctant to agree to Kiersten tagging along to the meet. It would be a little more than awkward talking about what once was in front of her.
I’m not quite sure I agree with her forbidding him to see her either. I don’t believe that we should ever be forbidding our partners to do anything. If they are truly in love with each other, she should be able to trust him. Men think a little differently to women so I would love to say that he should be able to sense that she is not happy with the meet and possibly decline the meeting, but men don’t pick up on these sort of things. It needs to be spelt out to them. So she should definitely tell him how she feels about it all. There is no substitute for communication.
As far as him chatting to this chick over FB – well this is difficult to police in today’s world. If they don’t chat over FB, there are 100’s of other ways for them to chat. At least this way your friend is aware of the friendship and it is not being hidden. Personally, I would be worried if he were hiding it from her.
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