Dear Cary,
I'm getting married in May, but my fiancée is still talking to her ex-boyfriend. She tries to cover it up with maturity, saying that things are over, that they split up for practical reasons and that she no longer has interest in him, that I have nothing to be concerned about. I think it's bullshit. He obviously wants to be with her, and admits it. She even thinks that if we moved to the same city we have an obligation to have dinner with him. I would rather call Mike Tyson a sissy than eat dinner with my wife and her Porsche-driving ex-boyfriend pal.
Another of her exes lives in Tokyo and when I mentioned traveling there someday, she told me that we would stay with him! I definitely don't want to sleep in the same freaking house with someone my girlfriend used to have sex with.
Lastly, her latest boyfriend, whom she went on vacation with and had sex with while we were broken up last year, went to college with her. In the next few years, she will have a reunion with her old class, and she wants me to shake his hand and meet him.
We had a lot of on-offs in the first year of our relationship, and I don't want to see any of the men she used to be with. I want them to get hit walking across the street. She thinks this is immature. I think it's realistic. Don't I have a right to a wife who cuts everything off with her exes? Do I have to meet them? Do I have to be friends with them?
Immature, Selfish Fiancé
Dear Immature,
No, you don't have a right to a wife who cuts everything off with her exes. What you do have a right to is your own feelings and your own decisions. There is nothing wrong with feeling that it would be creepy to stay with your wife in the apartment of her former lover. You don't have to do that. You can say no. You don't have to meet her exes or be friends with them. And there is nothing wrong, frankly, with having violent fantasies about the ways that her exes might meet their final reward, though it would be prudent not to discuss these fantasies with her, because though you may consider her exes to be subhuman, they are, in reality, people she has held in high esteem. I know, that thought alone may be painful. But it's the truth. She actually liked these guys. There's nothing you can do about it.
All you can do is make your own choices about what you yourself are willing to do. If you don't feel cool about staying in an apartment with your wife's ex, you don't have to do that. If you don't want to meet your wife's exes and have dinner with them, that's cool. You don't have to do that. But you can't prevent her from seeing them if she wants to.
It might be a really bad idea for her to see them. But if she doesn't think it's such a bad idea, what can you do?
If she continues seeing them, it will no doubt raise certain risks and uncertainties. Well, OK, to be frank, it might make your life a bit of a living hell. And your concerns seem well-founded, I should add. You and she have not really built up a long history of sexual fidelity and clear communication to bolster your confidence. It's possible that your wife does indeed still feel connected and attracted to her exes. It's possible that if she visits them on her own she will be unfaithful to you and lie about it when she comes back. But do you really want to go with her as a policeman? I mean, you could. You could just tell her, Sweetie, I don't trust you. But do you really want to be married to somebody you don't trust?
You don't have to marry her. But if you do marry her, you're stuck with her for a while -- longer than a plane trip to Tokyo, anyway. So what kind of person is she, really? Can you trust her or not?
I think you two really need to talk. And then you alone need to go into a room and ask yourself if you really trust her and you really are going to be comfortable with her and you really want to go through with this.
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