I am always learning and forgetting, what I can tolerate and what I can't.

I am thinking of one ex that I loved very much, but realize I couldn't have stayed with. (Of course, it isn't someone on this site, and she probably doesn't even know it exists.)

This particular lover, "C," kept a rifle in the cabin where we stayed upstate on weekends, while her house was being built in the woods. The cabin was next to a pond, and we lit candles at night and played dominoes and talked, and the frogs were so loud by the end of the summer, we could barely hear each other.

We slept on a mattress on the floor, and the rifle stayed in the crevice between the head of the bed, and the cabin wall. Sometimes I would wake with my head butting into it.

Even if someone dangerous had appeared at the door to our cabin in the middle of the night, she wouldn’t have been able to use the rifle—she was impossible to wake once she’d taken her “nightie-nights,” a handful of prescription sleeping pills and anti-anxiety meds for PTSD; she feared her brother—who had abused her for years—was going to find her and kill her, hence the gun.

We took a lot of walks in the woods, and she set up tripods to photograph trees, and then began a series on mushrooms, because I loved them so much. We turned rotting logs over, and found ruby salamanders writhing in the damp ground. She’s the only person I’ve known who loved watching insects as much as I do. She could make dozens of bird songs, and collected abandoned nests, and noticed rocks, filling her bathroom sink in the City with them, water running over them to the drain, which made me a little nervous when I brushed my teeth, though I did love the rocks.

C had alpaca blankets she kept in the cabin, and we would wrap ourselves and sit on the front steps and watch the moon and the pond. We kept going up there, even when we could see our breath, and the leaves were turning orange.

I tried to talk to her about her brother, and whether it really was possible that he would look for her and kill her. Her fear made me afraid. When we broke up, I felt guilty at how relieved I was to have him, even the idea of him, out of my life. And I was glad not to wake with that gun near my head.

But I miss her.

I've always taken the high road in breakups. I give away way too much stuff. I tell everyone it was mutual and amicable, even if it wasn't. I don't force friends to take sides. Custody arrangements are made for dogs, and I don't break my promises there.

Usually this means eventually the ex apologizes for being an asshole. I don't usually find that we can be friends, though generally we keep in touch for a while during the grieving period. The two big breakups moved away, which helped us both in both situations. Maybe the last one and I would be closer friends if she had stayed nearby, but the distance means we just touch base once in a while. We are friendly and polite, but distant. I find she mostly calls to tell me how great her life is, even though I know she's often lying about that. But I don't call her out on it, why bother? If it makes her feel better, then so be it.

I burn bridges, but I burn them nicely.

My ex and I used to be pretty good friends until a couple of weeks ago. Then in two seconds flat, she went and destroyed an almost six-year friendship. I honestly don't know if the damage can be undone, and honestly right now, I don't care. It's not easy to forgive someone who does things based on selfishness.

*The women i mention have never been part of this site, i highly doubt they know that there is such a site*


I've only been in 2 serious relationships, well 3 if you count my first lover. Yeah, I guess she was a real relationship, I met her at work, (hence the rule I live by now...'ya don't shit where ya eat'!!).

I'd never been with a woman before, I'd never even allowed my mind to think about it! But damned if I didn't fall head over heels in love with her. Long story short i told her how I felt and for the next 3 months she "teased" me. It wasn't 'mean' kind of teasing..it was VERY sexual..damn!!

We FINALLY 'got together' and in a week she was gone, she couldn't deal with it. Iwas absolutely crushed. That was 28 years ago, she's been in 2 long term relationships with women and is now married to a man..
It turns out my bff is a very close friend of hers so due to this, we have become very good friends! And now it's MY turn to tease her! LoL!! Just like she did me! IF ya catch my drift! ;)

My next relationship (about 3 years and MANY AA meetings later!) lasted for 7 years. We should have just been friends. I should have never had that kind of relationship with her. She was so loyal and generous! She was so generous that she bought me my first PC. She told me, "there's these things called 'chat rooms' and you can talk with people all over the world! You're gonna LOVE it!!"

She was right. I loved the chat rooms! I eventually found gay.com and I was off and running! I managed to meet someone and had an affair. I ended up leaving my partner for her. I'm so ashamed I did that to her!! I'll NEVER do that again!! I still haven't forgiven myself for that I'm so not sure that I ever will.

From what I understand, she has moved out of state and had twins with her partner. I've heard she is still very venomous when it comes to the subject of me.

I was with the 3rd one ("the affair"), for 14 years. We raised her 2 boys together and then karma raised it's ugly head, she is now with my ex best friend. I really thought we were "till death do us part". We had been married in our church! We were a family!

No, I'm not friends with her. I don't know if i ever will be.

I understand the venom that my second partner had! I feel the same way about the 3rd one and her current partner. I'm having a REAL hard time letting go of the anger I have towards both of them. Thinking about them everyday...being pissed.

Then a couple weeks ago, I was driving home from my mom's, she lives about 45 mins away by highway. The song "American Pie" was on and I had it turned up and was singing along when suddenly, I heard a voice..wait, I'm just gonna cut and paste what I posted about this incident on facebook..

i've been wrestling with a pretty big resentment and as the years go by...i seem to get more and more angry and resentful....today...i was driving south on 23...heading home from my moms...."american pie" by don maclean was on my ipod and i was singing along and suddenly...i had one of those..."God moments"...i actually heard myself reciting this:

...He said, in effect: "If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free. Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free. Even when you don't really want it for them, and your prayers are only words and you don't mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks and you will find you have come to mean it and to want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate understanding and love."

seriously WHILE i was singing along with american pie!! where in the world have i heard that particular piece?

this is page 552 in the "Big Book of Alcoholics Annonymous"....

so now...i will pray....


So I did what it said, I prayed for them everyday. I asked that they have a loving, long lasting relationship. I haven't forgiven them but, I go 3 or 4 days without thinking about them! I'm begining to feel some peace...

Most of my exes are very close to me. They are "aunties" to my children, good friends to my wife, family to my family, best friends to me. That makes me feel really lucky and blessed.

A couple are gone from my life, and I feel lucky and blessed by that too.

Inserting standard, No Exes Mentioned are Members here, statement...

I've a few exes. I won't rehash them all just the notables.

First ex I am not friends with. We tried at the end but we didn't have much to talk about. Life was pulling us in opposite directions. It was a fast and furious relationship of the uhaul quickly variety. We broke up. She did rehab, I moved away. I learned a lot and hope she did too.

One I am friends with. It took a long time to get to that place. Hurt feelings, strong personalities and all that to work through. She was who I was with when I had the General. I thought she'd be more "parent" like even at the end. It didn't go that way. Which has turned out fine. It has worked out so that the General has someone that still loves her and shares camping and wonderful experiences a couple times a year now. That Ex and I respect each others privacy and our friendship is based on mutual respect for the place they hold in the General's life.

Another I am not friends with. I tried, was just trying. Somethings do not change. (I am NOT saying people don't. I've experienced people that have.) We can't be friends because I can not trust her and the evidence supports that feeling. She showed up recently trying to make amends, show she is sorry, be friends. I think she is really trying. It has been 2 weeks of trying the friend route and I am exhausted and had more drama that I've had in months. She still has much to learn about boundaries and being appropriate. And I am not in the mood to teach that skill. She is obsessive about the General and that is just odd. Given the small span of time she was in the General's life it isn't appropriate. The General isn't comfy, I'm not comfy and my gy is super not comfy. With this one, I let go of the need to make the friends thing work just to see myself as capable of forgiving. I moved on and it is okay.

thanks for this. it's totally a great lesson. i'm gonna read it every day for a bunch of days.

I make peace by staying away. Sure if I run into an ex I'll say hi but I will do my best not to be friends or be near them.

I agree. That last one tried to gut me. She forgot that I have left everybody I have ever known. And, more importantly, I had the bomb codes. It has been a long time but I still can't think back on that breakup without feeling a snarl come on. Nah...there is no being friends with that two timing bitch!

I really do try but lately I've been seeing another side to an ex from long ago. Apparently this was there all along and I refused to see it. It's also hard when years later a good friend tells you something you wish you hadn't heard. I am beginning to think that ex's are ex's for a reason.

Nobody talks about lost friends as "exes," but I think it hurts just as much and sometimes more, to lose a friend than to lose a lover. The awkward negotiating of how to renew a damaged friendship is just as hard as trying to be friends with an ex—once trust is lost, or certain boundaries are crossed, it's sometimes just not worth it, and it's sometimes hard to know if it's worth it.

Kinda nerdy but I'm quoting myself here because I've been thinking about my ex-friends, which loom as large for me in the constellation of my life as ex-lovers.

When I first wrote I was thinking about my friend D from more than ten years ago, a gay guy I was incredibly close with, but my partner was threatened by our friendship, and was sometimes rude to him, for example, when she answered the phone and passed it to me—which was a real break in character for her, because she was, above all else, polite, and very concerned with outward appearance.

Anyway it took years for me to not feel sad about losing that friendship. I wrote him three sad letters over the years, trying to renew the connection, and he ignored them. I saw him once on the subway, and he ignored me. It was so liberating, his zany braininess, the likes of which I have encountered so rarely in my life. That kind of fun is not fun to lose.

I was also thinking about a recent loss of a friend, who came back into my life not long after he left. I'm talking about my elderly friend that I go to readings with, who cut me off because of a misunderstanding generated by his alcoholic daughter. The details don't matter, what matters is that he wrote me a few weeks later and said, "I'm sorry I banished you from life—if that's indeed what I did," and our friendship resumed.

But it doesn't feel the same. I just don't feel the trust anymore. I always knew he was a high-maintenance, difficult little snot, but it never mattered till it was directed at me. Now I realize he could cut off our friendship at any moment, and knowing that has affected how much I can invest in the friendship emotionally. I try to have a good time when we go to readings but I feel a little bit like I'm walking on egg shells.

And I'm thinking of all this because tonight, I'm having dinner with a woman who was my best friend, and moved to L.A with her new husband three years ago. It was so hard for me when she moved. I cried every time I heard her voice on the phone. And it was awkward because it wasn't as hard for her, not at all. She was swamped with people to see, including her family, every time she came back to town, and never had time to see me one-on-one—ouch. But I just went with the flow, and didn't pressure her or make an issue out of it. I figured any kind of connection with her was better than none at all.

And tonight I'm seeing her like I always do, at a big group dinner in the East Village. So I have mixed feelings, but I'll keep them to myself.

I know this thread is supposed to be about exes who were lovers, but for me, friends are just as important in the long run and sometimes, more so, and when they become an "ex," it can be just as significant a transition to negotiate.

what a mire. normally I'm pretty good with staying on friendly terms. I have even tried to stay on friendly terms with my detached wife (divorce impending) but I have now realised I'm nuts for trying to be be friends with her.

I'm also trying to be friends, and actually we are very good friends, with the person I turned to after my wife fucked off and her wife fucked off. Unfortunately, there's always a bit of sexual tension floating around; that's never happened to me before by the way, this is a first. It can confuse me.

My detached wife just sort of pulled the final straw with me. I can't cope with this anymore. I can't cope with trying to pay rent on a two bedroom house by myself and I can't get a lodger because I'm a sex worker (prodomme, just for money, not cause that's my actual role in my relationships) and I don't want a stranger in my house especially when I'm stressed.

I'm tired, I've fallen way behind in school, I haven't done any writting for my book in weeks, I don't believe or trust that anyone would want me for keeps. They all find me sexy and interesting for a few months and then when faced with a real person and not some fantasy ideal, they fuck off.

I want to dump school, dump this house, and fuck off. Go home. I'm tired of trying by myself, I'm not a citizen here, I've been here for 9 fucking years busting my ass and I have NO idea why anymore.

If I go home... I'll have lots tons of friends, I'll have failed coming over here, I'll have qwuit school, but jesus at least it will be easier. I won't have a the threat of constantaly maybe not making rent.

I have no credit rating here. My mates all live fuck off away. My wife is a fucking wankrag, I can't get laid except by crazy people. I'm supporting myself by kicking people across the living room. and I don't know why I'm here, aside from school.

BK, I was reading this, totally on the edge of my seat, not knowing which way it would go, and what a nice surprise, that it went the way it did.

HB, you wrote, "They all find me sexy and interesting for a few months and then when faced with a real person and not some fantasy ideal, they fuck off."

Ow, that hit home. I try to start as the "real person" but it just doesn't always happen that way. The way I see it, anyone who doesn't see the "real person" in you from the get-go is maybe blinded by something that doesn't have anything to do with you. But it disqualifies them from your attention, don't you think? Their loss, not yours.

I also know what it's like to feel like a failure. I always feel that way when a relationship ends, whether ending was something I wanted or not. And I've felt that way at times, around my work. But I don't hear a failure, in your words.

Not much to say here really, just admire how straight-on you see things, and how much I appreciate that you put it out there.

Ex-lovers, partners, friends are a funny thing in my life. Some partings have been painful but amicable and others have been quite painful and not amicable at all. I guess, for me, the ends are directly related to the amount of love, closeness and time I spent with a person. Although I don’t have contact with all of my exes, I do keep in touch with the ones who are capable of doing so. There’s really only a few. There are only two ex-partners that I have lost touch with. I love/d them both deeply and find myself in a melancholy “miss” occasionally when I think of them. Despite everything, I have a place in my heart for them both. Stories for another day…

The first woman I dated was of course, going to be the biggest loss of my life after we parted ways; or at least I thought so at the time and for many years after. It had to be. First loves are just like that. When we came together, I knew that I had emotionally “come home”. For the first time I felt authentic with another person. When we did part ways I found it far too difficult to keep in touch. We didn’t speak for a few years and for the life of me, I can’t even remember how we managed to reunite in friendship. It doesn’t much matter really. We spoke often for 3 or 4 years. I went to Florida to visit a few times. I think we both still very much loved each other we just didn’t quite know how to make it work. She wasn’t quite sure if she was gay, straight or bisexual. This certainly didn’t work in either of our favors. We ended up having another disagreement and that was it for, oh, another 10 years. I had always felt bad about that falling out and one day, while surfing the web for a vendor and a product I needed for work, I stumbled across her name. The great debate went off in my head and I stewed on whether or not to contact her. All said and done I eventually did. Her email address was on the web page and so I wrote her a long letter. It’s been a couple of years since I hit the send button and I am happy to say we are once again in touch and staying in touch. She has changed and so have I. It’s been great having that connection with her. Outside of my immediate family, she is really the only link to that time in my past. The only other person that knew me as well from that time in my life passed away back in 1995. I take great comfort in knowing that she knew me so well and now knows me today. I can honestly say that I still very much love her. Maybe that love has changed over the years but it obviously it still exists or we would still be a distant memory in each other’s mind. She comes out to Washington occasionally as she has family here. I have extended the invite. I’ll let her decide if that’s something she wants to do or not. I’m quite alright with our occasional online conversations if that’s what works best.

It’s amazing what time and space can do for people and their pain. I guess I just needed to understand that there is a direct correlation between our ability to love deeply and the amount of pain we suffer when love changes. Love and suffering are not opposites. They are indeed partners in life as well; a reminder to us that we can love again…deeply.
Thanks for letting me bend your “eyes” for a while!

Scoobs

Once it's over, it's over. I never pick back up the past.

Wit most...that is best...but there can be exceptions...