Vestiges of Exs

About a week ago, a girlfriend of mine called me up in a state of excitement.  An ex of mine had sent her an email.  Not to her specifically, but a mass email under the pretext of wishing people a happy new year in order to promote himself and look for work.  Now, I’ve been broken up with this ex for two and a half years and really couldn’t care less about this – she wanted to read me the email and I asked her not to out of sheer uninterest, but she was still rather offended.

When you go through a big break up, the kind where friends and families are involved, very few people end up friends with you both, mostly people take sides.  People seem to run the gamut on how severe they want the division to be.  I have friends that immediately delete all their ex’s friends from facebook, whereas, I just give them limited access to my profile, but either way, there’s a fine art to being respectful to your ex and his relationships with his friends and going overboard and coming off mean.  For some friends, like the ones you both knew in college equally, you definitely do end up splitting the baby and keeping mutual friends.

But my friend in this case, has been a friend of mine literally since we were two years old.  She met my ex only a handful of times in the few years we dated.  There was no confusion here, she definitely was my friend first, still is my friend, and like any loyal girlfriend will go on hating him more than I do.  So while, I couldn’t care less who he emailed (I found out later my sister ended up on that list too) she was rather put off by his gall. 

I see her point.  My ex kept her on this list because she has a cool job and is pretty well connected in town.  He probably figures he knows her so therefore he can keep her on the mass email and who knows maybe she’ll be so impressed with his website that she’ll decide his lying cheating past is no reason for her not to recommend him in an industry she doesn’t work in.  So while it doesn’t bother me that he’s emailing her, I get where she’s coming from in complaining that they’re not friends and she can’t understand what would possess him to include her in a friendly email.  I certainly would never include his friends on an email of any kind.

But then again, does there ever come a point in time, where we need to stop holding relationship grudges.  Is there a point in time, where we can all be friends?  I’m not saying I can be friends with my ex, but can I be friends with his friends?  I’m going to say no on this one because as long as their friends with him, they’re going to be his friends first.  And I’m ok with that.  But I think that means he needs to leave mine alone.