Adopted from a recent online discussion.
Dear Carolyn: My husband has an ex-girlfriend with whom he has stayed good friends for the 10 years since their breakup. (She refers to him as being “like a brother.”) She is now a single mom and doesn’t have much of a support system. The baby’s father is not local.
My husband has shown his ex a lot of support by bringing her small meals, sitting outside with the baby monitor for half an hour while his ex takes a jog, and other things that I would imagine she really appreciates as she teleworks while being a single parent. (We do not have kids.)
Though I generally trust them, I have become uncomfortable with the sheer number of hours he invests, and I asked him to stop. She has family who can do those things for her if she really needs them. He agreed to stop, but says he feels really bad about leaving her in the lurch, and suggests I take over and help her instead of him.
Is this absolutely ridiculous? I get that parents have it hard right now. I think my husband was very generous for six months. And I don’t feel that equals a commitment to keep doing it until the pandemic ends. But I probably just seem like a jealous Grinch.
Helping Husband’s Ex: Your concern seems legitimate about the amount of time and attention he’s investing — in any friend, be it male or female, always-friend or recent, or ex-girlfriend or not.
But asking him to stop outright is using blunt force where something surgical would work. And I don’t like that he just agreed to it when he didn’t want to. It warranted an in-depth discussion of questions, such as:
If it were a guy friend, would you feel as threatened? Is it the number of hours? The intimacy? That you’re (apparently) not also her friend? Does it create more work, or loneliness, for you? Do you sense rekindled feelings? Better to identify what needs fixing than to just wipe it all out.
Re: Husband’s Ex: The way you broke down the issues to explore is outstanding and so logical, but not something I could do myself. It feels like some of the questions I should ask myself are swirling around in my head but they never land. Do you have any tips on how to approach an analysis like this? — Asking myself
Asking Myself: It’s a skill like any other. You start with the thing that’s bothering you — in this example, “Husband helps ex with her baby more than I think is okay.”
Then you break it down into pieces. Husband, ex-girlfriend, time, baby.
Then you see whether your feelings change if you change each element, one at a time:
Husband: Does it bother you just that he’s not with you, and you miss him? Or do you think married people don’t do this on principle? Would you question it if one of your friends were helping another friend this way?
Ex-girlfriend: Is it that she’s an ex? That she’s female? Or would it bother you if it were a guy friend?
Time: If you changed the recipient and the type of generosity — into, say, volunteering for a charity — and he spent the same amount of time on it, would that still annoy you?
Baby: If he were there doing … say, yardwork, because she got injured, would you think differently?
