My pirate girl got to hear some of the earful I had from my old ex, during a long and plaintive phone call about her sucky life. If she's been insecure about the ex, I'm sure it doesn't bother her now... it's more like something I just have to endure.

Good advice, Amy. A once-a-month email with no other contact whatsoever (if there were, then LW would tell you so) is hardly a big presence. Her letter drips with insecurity.

Thank you for this!

I'm still friendly with my ex (who now lives across the country), and we text each other randomly, talk on the phone once a year and send each other funny links via email. My boyfriend doesn't care, and, in fact, corresponds with an ex girlfriend (via hand-written letters because she lives off the grid).

Anyway, I hear from friends all the time who think that my boyfriend and I are being "unfair" to each other by "holding on" to former relationships. You've written on this topic a couple times, IIRC, and each time it's so refreshing to read that healthy, adult friendships are OK.

He's been open and honest, and she says that its not romantic and only occurs [approx.] "once a month." Nothing unethical is going on. Sometimes relationships don't end so much as they change. And its not like the ex-is dominating his time and thoughts. He did the right thing in telling her about the contact, but maybe continuing to tell her about it is counter-productive. Being aware of something, and being presented with it, are two different things. Saying, "I don't need to know when you two email" should cover it.

I do Income taxes for my former girlfriend. Last May, my wife and I sat with my first wife and her husband at my daughter's Uni grad dinner. A few years ago, my wife's first husband was in town staying with their daughter at Thanksgiving. She asked if she could bring him for dinner. No big deal.

I get that you feel pretty strongly about this, LW, even though you have little evidence. Consider the possibility that what you're experiencing is a chemical thing.

My ex-girlfriend absolutely hated a woman I had known for dog’s years. She and I had been (very) briefly romantic before I met my ex-girlfriend. My x-gf was an otherwise rational woman - an engineer - who genuinely liked my ex-wife. She was absolutely sane about most things, but in spite of the fact that my friend was married and settled down with a man three-shades more handsome and rich than I was, she was absolutely sure that my lady friend was out to steal me away. Nuts. Could not be reasoned with. She pretty much trusted me on most things, but not on this issue. Every attempt to alleviate her anxiety was treated as a ruse to trick her into ignoring a clear and present danger to her love life, and for the time when I was talking to her about it, I was a willing part of the conspiracy against her.

My current Significant Other has the same problem the opposite way. She loves my old friend and her husband. We have them over all the time. She absolutely hates my ex-wife. She is as sure as she can be that my ex-wife is scheming to get me back after thirty years of a friendly divorce. Nothing dissuades her. She also is an otherwise sane person who runs her own business, does precision work that requires great attention to detail and rational thinking. She also trusts me on everything except this one issue. Thirty years of street cred gets me nothing - if I object to her suspicions, then I am part of the conspiracy against her. She will not hear any suggestions otherwise. Adamant.

Looks like drugs to me, LW. Some lobe in your hypothalamus has evolved suspicion of other females beyond what evolution requires to fend off mate poaching. You got in line twice for whatever chemical that lobe is putting out. You’re not crazy. You do have a drug problem.

Judging from your letter, LW, you’ve got a mild case of whatever the hell this is. Just so you know: Your suspicions are NOT flattering or romantic. Your behavior is jarring, disturbing, off-putting and weird. If you can, you need to get a handle on this. You’re vacillating from sweet girlfriend to a crazy lady straight out of “American Creepshow.” It’s not lovely.

Based on my experience, the LW has little to worry about if the emails are from ex-wives or ex-girlfriends. For the first few years after my divorce, my ex would phone me (a lot more often than once a month) to bitch about her life, until she found new friends to dump on. Neither of us had the slightest interest in getting back together.

In most cases there's a good reason the ex is an ex, and you need to trust that the reason still holds.

The one to watch out for (again, based on my experience) is the platonic friend who gets back in touch after a long absence. One of these contacted my wife three years ago, after they hadn't seen or heard from each other in 26 years. Within a year they were lovers, and have been ever since.

@"The one to watch out for (again, based on my experience) is the platonic friend"

Not to make LW more paranoid, but based on my experiences, the one to watch out for is the one they claim not to even be friends :/ ... I had one gf randomly drop comments about she dislikes so-and-so, I bought it, turned out she had something going on with him.

From the letter, the LW's husband though sounds like a trustworthy guy and it sounds like nothing is going on. If anything is going on, once you suspect something might be going on, real cheating behavior usually becomes quite obvious - a lot more obvious than most 'clever' cheaters think when they think they're hiding the behavior.