Do you know this feeling?

Interesting. I let go of an ex and I’m done. Never had any after thoughts. My s/o knows I have a past but has never brought it up or if she does a little, I shut down the discussion. I don’t care about her past. My past is my concern.

If you still have unresolved feelings about an ex, it is unfair of you to enter into a new relationship until you are completely over the previous ones. Tell the new guy that you still have baggage and need to work on it, and give him the option to bow out or to stand by you and take his chances.

@Adirondackwannabe this ex of mine and I are still friends….we write via Skype at least every week…which bothers my SO. My problem is that he will sometimes get caught up in memories of the old times…I think it’s inaproppriate, but it does sometimes stir up some nostalgia inside me. And that freaks me out, because I was definitely finished with him…
@hearkat I don’t know if it might just be missing him as a friend…because we never see each other in person and he’s quite important to me.
Is this really unfair? I guess it is. But if I tell him he will make more of it than I know there is to it. And he will be so sad. And I’m only worrying about having unresolved feelings…does that mean that there are unresolved feelings? :(

@scuniper I’m not sure you’re finished with him. You still seem to have some feelings. I don’t know where you go from here.

@scuniper – It is very difficult to remain friends with an ex – especially if there are lingering romantic feelings on the part of at least on of you.

Regardless, your current beau is not comfortable with you having so much communication with the ex. Simply out of respect for his feelings, it is advisable that you cut the ex off and focus on building that deep of a friendship with your current beau if you are intending to have a future with him.

It sucks to have to choose between people that you care about, but it is sometimes necessary to make one your past and the other your present.

@hearkat that’s true. And I am. Intending to have a future with him, that is. I should do that. I will try.

Thank you both for your advice.

@scuniper Yeah, tell the ex you need a little space and get things squared away with your current guy. When you have that done, it’s okay to be friends with the ex. If you current contact with the ex bugs your boyfriend you’re not in synch. It’s going to make things tougher than they need to be.

You need to let go of the ex. You are keeping the feelings alive. Concentrate on what went wrong—why you broke up with him not on the good times. Cut off the Skype contact.

You are living in a what if life. If I stayed or gave him a chance again, than maybe it will be right. If it wasn’t right the first time than I doubt it will be right a second time. He is bringing up the past to make sure you don’t move on. Maybe not in a concious way but it is still what he is doing. People naturally don’t like to think of themselves as replaceable.

If you really want this relationship to bloom with your new boyfriend than its time to say good bye to the old.
There may also be that you don’t want to let go and have your old boyfriend move on either because it would mean you are replaceable and not so special to him either.
But know this. Right now you are telling your current boyfriend that you have his replacement waiting in the wings.

You need to decide who stays and who goes but you can’t keep both. Especially since your current boyfriend is probably already feeling you may be more into your past than your future.

I think you should cut off all contact with your ex. Your boyfriend is right to want you to stop, he knows already what you are admittng to us here, you still have feelings for your ex. You aren’t fooling anyone. Your lack of focus on your current relationship means you will have discord in it. Your are emotionally cheating with your ex. Usually the symptoms of emotional cheating are very similar to actually physically cheating, so your boyfriend is picking up on it. You cannot be friends with your ex if you still might want some sort of romantic involvement with him. You need to choose. Do you want to be wth your ex, or with you current boyfriend? You cannot have both.

Honestly, it sounds to me like you are not really over your ex, and this current guy is going to wind up being your transitional boyfriend.

I don’t think you should tell your boyfriend how you feel yet. I think you should decide if you can stop communicating with your ex and focus on your current relationship.

Why is the ex an ex? Did he break up with you or did you break up with him? Are you carrying a torch for him, or having second thoughts about the breakup? Is the new bf just a place holder in case the ex comes back? Whatever, you need to be honest with your bf. Tell him you still have feelings for the ex, and you can’t promise him anything.

Not that you will do that. Hardly anyone can be that honest. Most people will continue the new relationship knowing they will go back to the old one if that ever becomes an option. So don’t feel too bad about yourself if you find yourself doing that. It is only natural.

@burntbonez we never really went out. I liked him and told him so, he liked me to, but we were both to afraid or catious to start a relationship. Because he was more reluctant than I was to start a relationship and didn’t want to ruin our friendship, I guess I was pretty hurt, So we didn’t have any contact for about a year. Then he changed schools and we were at the same school again, and he initiated contact. At that time I was single, and I didn’t want a relationship with him, I still don’t. I know now that we just don’t match. What I see as our relationship was basically just that I liked him and he liked me and we wrote all the time and saw each other a lot. We confided everything to one another….probably it was just a really intense friendship…..It’s hard to explain, and I know that my ex doesn’t know under what category it falls either. We were both just really confused because somehow feelings intruded our friendship…and we were only 16 at the time. Which is why I don’t regard those feelings to have been as sincere as my feelings for my current boyfriend are now, simply because I was younger. And I don’t think I would consider getting back together with my ex. It was too complicated.

Anyway, I told my boyfriend yesterday. I told him I was afraid of recurring feelings for my ex, and that I thought he should know this. I told him that I will break off contact with said boy, to get my feelings in order. He was worried and asked whether I had already fallen in love with him again, but I reassured him that I hadn’t, that I just know that there are unresolved issues, which is why I don’t want to Skype with him anymore.
I think he was relieved that I wasn’t lying to myself about this. And I was relieved after having told him, it eased my guilty conscience a little. And as soon as he was reassured that I really do love him, and I really do, he said he thought breaking off contact with my ex would be a good idea, and said he wanted to stay with me, if I wanted the same.
Which I do.

So thank you for nudging me in the right direction, I know it wasn’t fair to think those thoughts and not tell my boyfriend, I guess I was just too scared and needed a push.
And now I’ll try to sort everything out.

@scuniper – So the ex isn’t even an ex – he’s a ‘might-have-been’ – yet you say that all along you’ve known that you aren’t really compatible. It sounds as though the youth and romanticism of that age contributed to the feelings between you.

I’ve learned from experience that being forthright shows the other party that you truly love them since you respect their feelings enough to provide full disclosure to allow them the freedom to make fully informed decisions. Kudos to you for facing up to the situation.

I was going to say the same thing, the ex isn’t even an ex really.

I have a different school of thought; you relieved your guilt and now your boyfriend knows for sure your feelings had been pulled away from the relationship. As much as I am all for honesty, I also think sometimes we can hold onto a lie or omission to spare hurt to the people we care about. Relieving your guilt is the last of the concern, because you were the one doing to “wrong” thing. You don’t have to burden someone else so you feel better. The truth is you will stop skyping because it makes your boyfriend uncomfortable, your boyfriend already knows you had been in communication with him, and you let your boyfriend know he means more to you than this guy you call your ex. I think you could have left out that you do wonder what it would have been like to date the guy. Your boyfriend probably looks at hot woman all the time and wonders what it is like to have sex with them. Just a generalization, most young men do that is all I mean. But, it does seem like the conversation went well overall, so that’s good. I hope it all works out for you. Your willingness to look at this straight on and with honesty is a great quality. A lot of people would want to live in denial.

@hearkat thanks, it wasn’t easy, but worth it.

@JLeslie That’s true, but this wondering is pretty normal I guess, as you mention. Thank you, that’s nice of you to say, I really am glad I took that step.

@scuniper Good for you. I’ve always found honesty works best in the long run. It’s not always easy, but its the best path.

@Adirondackwannabe definitely isn’t always easy, but it’s also the path on which you stay most true to yourself.

@scuniper That was a brave thing you did. I don’t see it as @JLeslie does—that you were trying to relieve yourself from guilt. I see it more as you are trying to share your life with someone you care about. There was never a relationship there, but you do need to work through things, and you are including him in the process of working it through. That’s a big leap of trust. If he sticks with you, he will be proving himself to be understanding. That’s a big test you’ve put on him.

It’s not over, either. Telling is just the start. This will be an issue for a while. That’s because these things can take a while to settle out. Do not be surprised if you find yourself wanting to reconnect with your friend.

I don’t know if you should promise not to. I think the ideal would be to move to a place where you and he are settled friends, with nothing hidden from your bf. But if you have to cut him off, that’s what works for you. I won’t quarrel. Just be prepared for more feelings to work through, both yours and your boyfriend’s. This is all part of building trust for a longer relationship. I wish you luck. I’ve been through a lot of relationships in my life, and never did manage to stay in one long enough to get married. So I know a lot, but there’s also a part I don’t know.