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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]... [b]I remained friends with a guy I dated before DH[/b]

[b]It has been literally almost 10 years since I've seen the old friend, and completely cut him out like 2-3 years ago[/b] because he's a douche and I have told DH I should've done that years before but even then, all we ever did was talk maybe once a year if that.[/quote]

OP, you may not like to hear this, but you bear some responsibility in this situation.  You kept a former romantic partner around for years while in a relationship with your DH, which is likely going to create some amount of unease.  Why was the former romantic partner so important to you that you didn't cut them loose when you became serious with DH?[/quote]

I was young and stupid and inexperienced in relationships, and I was close friends with this guy and felt it would be unfair and mean and wrong to just stop being friends with him because a relationship didn’t work out. I still liked him as a friend, and he was part of a group of 4 or 5 of us who were close friends in college. It’s taken me time to realize who real friends are. I met DH and fell in love with him completely and have been dating, engaged, or married to him for almost 20 years. During that time though, it feels like he was living in a partial alternate reality where I would occasionally be with this person? It just kind of blows my mind, and I’m trying to accept that it’s his feelings and perceptions regardless of its basis in reality.

Now that I realize how much it impacted DH, it was completely not worth staying friends with the guy, who as I mentioned, I’ve barely seen or spoken to for many years, and completely cutoff a few years back. During this conversation I told DH this and acknowledged that his friendship wasn’t worth it, in hindsight.

But part of the issue is I had **no idea** it was bothering DH so deeply for nearly 2 decades. I knew DH never really liked him but if you had told me it’s because DH thought I was intermittently having sex with the guy outside our relationship and marriage I would have been absolutely floored. It was also in this conversation that he said part of him is upset that he apparently felt so strongly about it and I “never noticed.”

I’m not blameless but I’m definitely confused by this sharp left turn in our relationship work. [/quote]

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