Dear Sasha, I have had a tumultuous year in relationships. I was with someone for 5 years, most of those being long distance. He was charming, thoughtful and we talked for ages on the phone each day. HOWEVER, I only saw him once every 2 months or so for a long weekend, never met his family, and had to deal with him becoming increasingly controlling. Meanwhile, I met someone new who I connected with, who happened to be going through a failed engagement and the end of a near decade-long relationship. Long, messy story short, the new guy and I are now together. His ex thinks I'm a she-devil who prevented him from trying to get back together with her (and loudly voiced these opinions to his family and friends, all of whom she knows extremely well), my ex thinks we had no problems until I was "stolen" away from him and I am a ruthless, ungrateful monster. I was accused of many, many things. I know I couldn't stay in my previous relationship no matter how much I loved him, and I believe it when my current flame says he was completely broken up with his ex. But the exes have been so embroiled in our relationship that it's been hard to push them aside. I want to be in a serious relationship that leads to a family relatively soon, it would be nice if it ended up being with the person I'm with. But I wonder if I am just fooling myself, and because of how we started off we will never have something stable and that all his family and friends will hate me. All of his albums have pictures of her in them and most of his life up until this point has been wrapped around her. Is it silly to think that we can both start fresh?
I was watching something on Daniel Craig and Rachel Weiz the other day, and holy crap you guys, where the f-ck have I been? Who knew they were such heat scores?!
I guess we’ll never know if there was any unfaithful dick insertion on-set, but you’d have to have to have the brain of Gary Busey to not to know there was some emotional cheating going on.
Anyway, here’s where I’m going with this: while it’s always ideal to have a clean break before starting a new relationship, that’s not always the case. Cross-over is sometimes inevitable and when it does happen sh-t gets messy and L, unfortunately you happen to be knee deep in a steamer. The fact is you and your man have an entirely different outlook on your relationship than your exes do. And if I’m being straight up, if I were them I’d probably be majorly pissed too. You’ve got to know where they're coming from, right?
Now here’s where I’m confused – why is there so much interaction with your exes in the first place? Why is there still an open line of communication? Whatever the reason, the first step now is to cut them out. You say it’s to ‘hard to push them aside’, but it’s really not - just stop answering their phone calls and being party to the nonsense. There’s no way you can have a fresh start with old baggage trying to unpack itself in your new life, so shut the door. The next step is to actually give this relationship a fair go. If you truly are in love with each other then you need to stop letting other people define your relationship. It’s a simple as that.
