A blast from the past
Oh what a weekend! I went to visit my parents since I didn’t make it there for Father’s day, and my dad’s birthday was also last week. I went to a couple of baseball games with him and my mom, did some shopping with mom, and since AW is out of town, I hung out with friends I hadn’t seen in a while.
After grabbing lunch with one of them, I went to a liquor store to pick up some beer to take back to her place for more hanging out. While in the store I ran into my high school boyfriend.
The back story here is that I didn’t date until I was about 17. It wasn’t that I was afraid or not allowed to, the opportunity just hadn’t arisen. A guy I had been friends with through my junior year of school and I started seeing each other that summer (he had just graduated) and through the next two years. He was my first boyfriend, and as teenage relationships go, my friends didn’t ever really like him, but tolerated his constant presence.
After about two years I broke up with him, he was rather emotionally abusive and had issue with the fact that I had gone to college in another city. Since I didn’t have a car the only way for us to spend time together was for him to come see me. He also seemed to resent me for spending a fair bit of time studying and developing a social life with new college friends.
Shortly after the breakup I started dating the guy who would become Hubs, but EX and I still managed to keep running into each other every few years. We would catch up, I would realize that despite everything we had talked about doing, he still wasn’t doing anything with his life. (Side note here. He was working dead-end jobs and talking about school, but never doing anything about either. I find nothing wrong with people who like working retail and have no wants to go into higher education. I had issue with people who do nothing but complain about their place in life when they have repeatedly passed up opportunities to do more) The last time he and I saw each other was 7 years ago and any last contact between us was about 5 ago when I emailed him to let him know a mutual friend had died. He never responded to that email.
So back to this past weekend. I ran into EX at the liquor store and we did the catch up thing, he commented on my hair which had been very long when he last saw me, but I have had short for about 5 years now. Things got a little awkward when he asked what Hubs and I were doing these days, I told him about all of our employment and basic success in life, not meaning to sound gloating or anything. He told me about his temp job. Then somehow he managed to bring up the fact that he is dating someone and told me that she was the jealous type and might be unhappy at him seeing me. This struck me as odd given that we broke up about 12 years ago. Then he wanted to point out that it was funny that she and I have the same first name, then listed off all the girls he has dated since me (I think the point was that he keeps dating girls with the same names).
I was kind of weirded out and let him know that I had to go meet up with my friend. We went our separate ways, and I have been a little weirded out ever since. When he brought up the jealousy thing I almost wanted to throw out there that Hubs and I don’t have anything like that, to the point of mentioning the open thing. I know it would have been very petty and low, but he did make my life miserable for a while, and I kind of wanted to mess with him.
Have you ever used your non-monogamy as a weapon to make someone jealous/uncomfortable? It is wrong to do so?
