Staying in touch with exes via social media

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know I am going to get questions about our ages/maturity levels so here goes: we're well into our 30s.

C'mon, this stuff is for people in their early 20s. You're in your 30s? Pull yourself together.

That is exactly what I was thinking as I read this whole thing. The fact that you said "he is really into Facebook" was the huge turnoff to me. And proud that he's stayed Facebook friends with his past hook ups?
Like PP said, pull yourselves together. Way too old for this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know I am going to get questions about our ages/maturity levels so here goes: we're well into our 30s.

I've been dating someone for 6 months. We're committed, and exclusive and have discussed that we don't intend to date any longer than 18 months prior to an engagement. We've met each other's immediate family and friends, and within the next month b/c of the holidays we are supposed to be meeting colleagues and extended families at Christmas parties. Overall, our relationship is excellent.

Here's my problem: I'm uncomfortable with his FB. I'm very private online. I have always said that I won't change my relationship status unless I'm engaged (and I haven't, though he has changed his, but not tagged me in it at my request). I'm not FB friends with any guys I've dated except those who turned into long-term friendships. He has, literally, more than 3 times the number of FB friends that I do. He was a bit of a ladies man in the past (and like I said, we're not kids, so his "number" is relatively high) and several of his FB friends are past FWBs, flings, etc. Like more than 30 of them.

I know what his past is, and I've accepted it. He was upfront about it. I'm not jealous, and I trust him. But, I don't want my coworkers or cousins seeing a FB friend of his after the holiday party and asking their friend about him and finding out he slept with them a couple of times. I think that when a person is in a serious relationship, one needs to minimize the presence of their past "dalliances" out of respect for their current partner. I'm not suggesting that he de-friend anyone he's actually still actively friends in real life with, but anyone he's not, to my mind, should go. Girls he hooked up with in university, or only dated a couple of times, etc. As I said, he's got way more friends on FB than I do, and is obviously way more casual about who he friends at all.

I've kind of nudged casually at the subject, and in addition to just being way more into FB than I am, he's also quite proud of the fact that he wasn't a "player" to these women and they still want to be his friend. Oftentimes, the women were connected to his social group in some way (friend of a friend) so they were casual friends before sleeping together for a bit, and he uses this to justify it, too. Ironically, he's quite nervous about my family/friends liking him/thinking he is good enough for me.

I don't want to give him an ultimatum, or make him do anything he'll resent me for down the road. But I also feel strongly that if I'm serious enough about him to bring him around my extended family/coworkers (I haven't taken a date to a family party or work function in more than 5 years) he should be serious enough about me to clean up his profile (there are some pictures on there, too, that don't indicate "serious adult man in a relationship" but he's shown more willingness to remove those when I've nudged at it) and his friends list.

Am I slut shaming him? Or is it reasonable to expect that when you're in a serious adult relationship, you don't stay connected to half the people you slept with via social media? I'm not being hypocritical - I have no one on my FB that was a romantic/sexual relationship that I'm not actually friends with currently. I don't want people I know, who I have managed to keep my own personal life very private from, having the potential to find out all about his, for no good reason except that he likes having a lot of FB friends. Any men want to weigh in on how I can explain this to him so he understands where I'm coming from? Obviously, being I value privacy, I can't talk to anyone in my day-to-day life about this, so I came to DCUM.

You've been dating 6 months & have talked about an engagement once you date for 18 months... and you're upset about his FB friends. Wtf. You sound like a loon & he sounds like a frat boy.

[Anonymous]

Maybe you should both completely quit FB when you become engaged. It covers everything you need covering and it starts your grown-up life together off on the right foot.

What do you think, OP?

[Anonymous]

OP I think you are ridiculous, but that doesn't matter because I am not dating you. If it bothers you, you can ask him to unfriend folks. What he does after that will tell you everything you need to know. If he says no (and good for him if he does!) then you two should part ways. If he does, then I suspect we will see a post here from him in a few years about how he is cheating on his controlling wife.

[Anonymous]

I don't think your request is reasonable. Your Facebook behavior and criteria for friends is different than his, but that doesn't mean he is wrong and needs to unfriend people to accommodate you. If someone you know knows someone who slept with your ex in college who cares? As you said, you are well into your thirties now, finding out two people used to have sex isn't a scandal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe you should both completely quit FB when you become engaged. It covers everything you need covering and it starts your grown-up life together off on the right foot.

What do you think, OP?

+1
It is kid stuff you are talking about. Neither of you are using Facebook for mature adult purposes (seeing pictures of distant friends children, sharing pictures with family, occasional funny story).
You mentioned he actually questioned you about someone who "liked" one of your pictures. Seriously? Get off Facebook.

[Anonymous]

OP, I have a male friend from high school who is, and has been since he hit puberty, a Major Player. He continued to be a minor player throughout his (shockingly long-lived) marriage and now that he is divorced, he is back in the majors. We have been friends for over 30 years, and I think he is smart and funny and interesting and handsome, but I myself have always been the farthest thing from a player, and I think the player part of him is awful. There was never a time in our friendship when I would have even considered sleeping with him. (I'll fully admit to being judgmental on this score, and he's well aware that I judge him, lol.)

He has seemingly 1000s of friends on FB, many of them women. And I'm sure he's slept with many (most?) of them. Here's the thing: until I read your post, it never occurred to me to wonder whether "Joe" had slept with this or that FB friend. I read what he posts when it's in my feed, I read the replies, but I never stop to wonder, "oh, has he slept with that woman? What about that one?" And I sure as hell have never thought that other people were looking at me on his list of friends and thinking that he had slept with *me*. Lol.

I'm not saying that your BF is like my friend, but rather that even when someone has a looong history of this kind of behavior, people aren't jumping to the kinds of conclusions that you think they are. And even if they were, how are they to know if your BF unfriended the old lovers and only keeps the women friends he didn't sleep with? Will you ask him to make an announcement on FB? Will you proactively tell people as you introduce him? "Cousin Jill, this is my new friend, Jim Smith. If you look him up on FB, you'll see that he has a lot of women friends, but you should know that he's friends only with women he hasn't slept with." Srsly?

I personally think you are much too concerned with what other people think, and also are greatly overestimating how much other people --even people who are inclined to be judgy on this, like me--think about this. But I also think that your concern and overthinking indicates a level of incompatibility with this guy that is going to be hard for you to get past. And it's not going away. He sounds like an outgoing guy who makes friends easily, so even if he unfriended all these women, he will continue to add women friends as he moves thru life and this will continue to dog you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here again. No one sees being connected via social media to numerous people your only connection with is that you slept with them casually a few times as a bit of flaunting it? Getting more specific, when you run down your list of FB friends, and by the time you come to the end of the people whose name starts with "A" you've got 5 people you slept with, that isn't considered extreme?

How on earth are other people going to know this? Are your acquaintances grilling him about his Facebook friends? This is bizarre.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You seem very concerned with what other people think about your relationship OP, and yes that reeks of insecurity. You'very mentioned a few times, that you don't want people you know to find out who your boyfriend hasingle slept with or something along those lines. Why do you care what anyone think? You're the one dating the guy.


When we are insecure, we tend to respond by being controlling. And as others have pointed out, you are headed in the control freak direction.

As noted in my OP, I am concerned with my own privacy. Nothing about that has changed with this relationship. I don't want people to know who I've slept with casually (this is why I've kept my casual relationships offline), so I don't think it makes me insecure to not want people to know who he has slept with casually.

How are any of your mutual friends going to know which of his fb friends are past lovers? Does he have them tagged someway to denote this?

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure why this is a big deal for you. He's not seeing this people in real life, correct? If he wants to be facebook friends with them, and limit the relationship to that, it doesn't seem like a big deal. I really don't think most people would assume he had casually slept with facebook friends, or would care if they did make such an assumption. People are busy with their own lives.