A recent post over at I Date, Therefore I Am brought up the issue of exes with some friends of mine. The post was about an ex who had gotten in touch with the gal via email and brought up some painful memories. But in talking about the post, I said something about how glad I was that I didn't have those problems with my exes. I either don't talk to them at all or we've become now-and-again friends. One of the gals that was at the table with me responded to this comment with, "wow, my boyfriend would never let me talk to my exes".

I won't get into the issue of anyone letting you do anything because that's for another time and place. But it got me thinking about the issue of exes. My boyfriend and I both stay in semi-regularly contact with our respective exes. Neither of them live in the same town as us so it's mostly the occasional checking-in phone call and drinks together when we visit our hometowns. But it's never crossed my mind before that there's anything abnormal about this. The ex is an ex for a reason but there's no reason that we can't be occasional friends. (See the aforementioned post for a description of someone who may have valid reason not to be friends with hers; that happens too.) It's never occurred to me that I should have any reason to care whether or not my partner still knows his ex.

What do you think? Do you have a problem with having exes in the picture - yours or your partners? And if so, what do you do about it?