Exes

[andrewducker]

[Poll #436304]

Personally, I'm still friends with all of my exes, although I see Marianne pretty bloody infrequently, as she's now a few hundred miles away.

Just as a note - it's deliberately set up so that you can select multiple options, for those of you with particularly complicated exes.

Comments

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

I tend to drift out of contact with my closest friends, never mind my exes. I have one ex that I'd rather boil in oil than talk to, and one that I'd like to talk with again, but haven't been able to contact. The others, I drifted away from more than a decade ago.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Talking to people after you've had sex with them is wrong

How long after are you talking about? :-)

[sibelian.livejournal.com]

what she said.

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

I stay in touch with a lot of exes. I don't like to lose that closeness.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

There's not an option that fits me - I'm on speaking terms with all my exes, but most of them aren't in my life much/at all any more. They live miles away, I don't see them.

[kellibunny.livejournal.com]

*giggle*

[davidcook.livejournal.com]

Yup, that sounds like me, too. Drifted out of contact, then I moved interstate and they got married and moved to different states, and I haven't heard from them for years (the exes, that is).
I find it hard keeping in touch with friends too, especially since I'm now on the other side of the planet from most of them, but LJ helps ...

Re: exes

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

I sometimes still talk to all but two of my exes. I'd probably talk to her except she's on the other side of the country and we don't have much to talk about. I don't talk to another of my exes because he's dead and I'm not a medium. (usually an XL)

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

The answers don't really fit me either. I would talk to my ex if we ran into each other on the street, but that's unlikely since we live 3000 miles away. But we don't go out of our way to talk to each other because I just don't find him to be that appealing of a person anymore, and I assume the feeling is mutual.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

Only one tick that even gets close, and even then applies to only one ex.

I don't fit in your boxes.

[andrewducker]

So there are none of your exes you aren't friends with because you don't want to speak to them? And there are none you aren't friends with because they don't want to speak to you?

Illuminate me as to your alternatives.

[kimberly-a.livejournal.com]

My own situation wasn't very well represented by the poll, so I thought I'd expand a bit.

I used to rather pride myself on the fact that I was friends with *all* of my exes. But then some stuff happened.

1. Two of my exes turned stalkery and made me extremely uncomfortable with their obsessions with me. I cut off contact with both of them as a result.

2. One of my exes heavily pressured me to have sex with him without a monogamous relationship (which was a big thing for me at the time), then quite explicitly *used* me for sex, lied to me about his motives throughout, and then only a few weeks after our break-up callously rubbed his later relationship in my face. (Oh, and that last bit of "hey I'm in this great monogamous relationship now, even though I repeatedly told you I wasn't ready for monogamy ... a MONTH ago" was done over the phone ON MY BIRTHDAY.) I cried every time I was alone ... for about two months. It was the only time I really felt like my heart had been broken. The last time I spoke to him was when he phoned me almost 10 years ago to say hi, all cheerful like we were still friends or something, and I told him I had no interest in friendship with someone who would treat me so shabbily. He was confused. I reminded him in extensive detail the things he had said and done, to which he replied, "Well, when you put it *that* way, it sounds pretty bad." Duh. We haven't spoken since.

3. One of my exes -- who had become my best friend -- dropped me like a rock when his then-girlfriend felt threatened by our friendship and gave him an ultimatum to stop being friends with me or she would leave him. One day he was one of my closest friends, and the next day he flatly ignored me. Completely pissy-whipped. Wimp. Recently, he contacted me again in the same way "Ex No 2" did, with the "oh la la la we're still friends" thing. I told him I wasn't really looking to be friends with someone who would ditch me so lightly and never even bother to apologize or acknowledge what he'd done.

4. Two of my exes are still very close friends of mine. I would feel comfortable calling either of them in a crisis and asking for help. When I run into them on the street, we hug tightly and laugh and insist that we have to get together soon because it's been too long. They're both fabulous people and I hope we're always friends. One of them was even an usher at my wedding.

5. One of my exes prefers not to have contact with me because a mutual friend (well, *former* friend, on my end of things) got all pissed off with me and poisoned him against me. He's mostly tried to dodge me ever since, but we still occasionally run into each other at the comic book store and various places in downtown Berkeley. I try to respect the fact that talking to me makes him uncomfortable, so I don't force him into conversations. I hope someday we can get past this, because he was a good friend. A *much* better friend, actually, than lover.

6. I've written fairly extensively in my journal about my one truly evil ex. He's an acknowledged (and, apparently, proud) sociopath who goes through life with no basic understanding that other people actually exist and are affected by his actions. He lied, he manipulated, and he tried rather pointedly to destroy my marriage. He tried to reinitiate our "friendship" a few times afterward, but sociopaths just don't make good friends, so I declined each time. (That is to say, I said, "Stop contacting me," and Shannon added, "Or we'll get a restraining order.")

Yeah, I used to be friends with all my exes. And then I met some real jerks.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

The first one -- I simply don't know where she is now, and I expect she doesn't know where I am. Doesn't really fit any of the boxes.

The second one -- that's the one which earnt the tick. An unwise, unsafe, dangerous relationship.

The third one -- well, she died. No box.

[andrewducker]

Aah, I meant "Of your exes who you could conceivably have the opportunity to talk to", so yes, those fall outside of the definition, but also outside of the cases I was interested in. I was more interested in intent than anything else - whether people felt that talking to exes was a good idea or a bad idea, in general.

[gomichan.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty fair hook-up-for-sushi-and-beers buddies with all my exes, except for the one that ran like a little bitch. Made repeated attempts to remain on friendly terms with him, but it got harder over time until it wasn't worth doing. I think the problem was that he used to think of himself as this enormous Intellectual, this Great Writer, and the more novels I wrote, the smaller his one novella looked, until the dick-sizing got too humiliating for him. Me, I never felt like I was in competition with him. It's not like we were splitting up market share or anything -- he was writing experimental prose bordering on poetry, and I write genre adventure stories. But he was always insecure like that.

Or possibly he just didn't want to see me if he couldn't be my squirming uke... :D :D :D

Bad poll, naughty poll!

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Out of my exes (at whatever level you want to define "ex")

First I have no idea where she is (and am a little hazy on her name)
Second, er, same as first (can remember her first name!)
Third, I remember her name (grin!) but she really didn't want to talk to me the last few times I saw her (which was about 10 years ago) and I haven't tried since (assuming I had any way of getting in touch with her that would still work, even our mutual friends haven't heard from her for years)
Fourth, I see at conventions and I've played music with her, and would do so again
Fifth, really bad breakup and she moved back to Australia
Sixth, er, there is no sixth

(I'm not counting friendly liaisons or dates/good friends)

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

Not dissimilar from my situation. There's some I stay in touch, some I've lost contact with, and some I simply can't be bothered with.

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

Difficult - I'm still friends with one of my exes although he's dead, I just keep sending him the usual letters and emails etc. to piss his second wife off because she hasn't told me yet, and cut me out of all the obituaries. I don't even know where she buried him.

And I'm friends with some of them because if I wasn't it would tear down the social fabric of my life because they ended up with other friends and then broke up with them and went off with even more friends and it is all now TOO COMPLICATED TO EVEN REMEMBER so sometimes I want people to have a tattoo on their forehead that says YOU SLEPT WITH ME so I don't say something stoopid. And I'm probably Not Friends with some of them for similar reasons that are dim and forgotten.

Talking to people at all is wrong.

[steverogerson.livejournal.com]

I am still friends with all my exes I still know, but lots of them I no longer know or see, so none of those answers fits.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

A post about exes turned up on my friends list here.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I said 'all' but in reality, like many friends of yesteryear, actual contact can be infrequent. And unless you are religious/superstitious, one is beyond any talking :-(

Also, what counts as an ex? I'm counting people I actually had any sort of relationship (however brief) with but not the 1(2,3) night stands/purely sexual things that may have gone on intermittently for a few weeks, on the theory that not much talking went on with the latter at the time.