On last night’s episode of Married at First Sight, we saw Craig make the very rookie error of bringing his ex to his faux reality TV wedding.
An ex he had been in a relationship with for 13 years.
And this ex was one of what appeared to be about a dozen cherry-picked guests for the ceremony held in New Zealand.
Naturally, Craig's new husband Andy reacted like any normal human being would.
He got pissed off. He labelled it a deal-breaker.
Top Comments
Totally agree. Absolutely no need to be friends with an ex, even if it ended relatively well, and especially once one or both of you have moved on.
With social media friends maintaining contact with an ex or old flame is a complicated mess nowadays.
I understand mature, genuine friendships with exes if that's what they truly are and were all along since breaking up. I.e. like any other friend, you catch up in person, you discuss your love life, you don't flirt, you know where the boundaries are (don't keep nude photos of them, don't discuss intimate details of your current relationship for example), and if you have a new partner you invite them along. It's open, it's real, there's no sneaking around.
What's not cool is staying in contact covertly, meaning without your current partner's knowledge, in a way that would be disrespectful to your current partner, or possibly where your ex isn't even aware of the 'contact'.
This happens sometimes through texting, but mostly on social media, such as Facebook or Snapchat for example, where you don't remove them so you can continue either privately messaging them getting updates and reminders of (sometimes flirting with) them years after you split, even once you have gotten into a far more serious relationship. Updates and reminder such as birthdays, engagements, new jobs, new hobbies, new location, holidays, the birth of their kids, searching their profile, perusing their photo albums.
Even if it was someone you dated for less than a year at age 18-25, and now you're 30 or 40 something... you continue to track each other's lives with no end-by date, yet no intention of ever seeing each other again as a real friend, let alone introducing your partner of arranging play dates between your kids. That is dangerous territory. It's obsessive, but social media has made it convenient and common now.
It may be a keyboard so everything is at your fingertips but let's face it with social media, would you get in your car and drive past their house and their work regularly so many years later, or would you start to realise you had a problem if that amount of effort was required to keep track of them?
My partner and I almost split over this behaviour last year. He searched 2-3 exes at one point every 10 or so 11 days. I had spent the week before talking to him crying, making notes, worrying, calling into question our entire relationship, his readiness to be in it, and the commitments we were embarking on - the future and the life we'd started to build. I spoke to a counsellor beforehand to plan the conversation, I felt devastated and betrayed.
I asked if he was still in love, or had unfinished business, and what was in it for him if our relationship was in a good place? He honestly didn't know, he just said things hadn't ended on bad terms all those years ago, but no they don't speak and wouldn't catch up, he said he'd gotten into a habit. He couldn't say what the hold was they had, or the intrigue.
Sure, remember your exes and those times fondly, but don't stalk them and allow their ongoing presence in your life for the rest of your life when it's not a real friendship and the presence is secret from your partner.