When it comes to relationships I tend not to care about a variety of things some might. Like strip clubs or porn or guy's weekends in Vegas.
(Yep, just said porn.)
(Hi, mom!)
When it comes to things like that, they're not issues until they're issues, you know?
I've been to more strip clubs than Mike has in the last six years, so strip clubs are not a recurring problem for us, and if something isn't a problem, why make it into one? I'll reserve my fighting energy for the real issues: HOW IS IT SO EASY FOR HIM TO JUST IGNORE A SINK FULL OF DISHES?
Ahem.
I also tend to think if a stripper is threatening your marriage, there might be a few (dozen) conversations you need to have.
All that said, I (now) look at exes similarly: they're not really an issue unless they're an issue.
Mike's lucky in that I am a horrible breaker-upper-type person. Back in the day, I would just stop calling the guys I was dating or I'd get really mature and have my friends do the dirty work for me (horrible, I know). I burned a lot of bridges in my day, and when I wasn't lighting the match, karma was kicking me in the ass when other boyfriends left me at bars or broke up with me via email or pretended I didn't exist in public (oh, that's a doozy of a story, trust me).
But, Mike came into our relationship with exes who were still in the picture, exes of many, many years and many, many feelings and it was a huge area of insecurity for me for so long, it's a wonder Mike and I ever made it through all that. He never did anything inappropriate, truly, but back then the train-wreck of my previous relationships was making me irrationally crazy and I simply didn't give him an ounce of credit. I'll always be sorry for that.
So, he had exes who called him and who he called and it all drove me batshit insane.
Then things got really weird when I decided, fuck it, I'm going to take charge of a few things in my life and stop letting insanity take up shop in my head. I reached out to Kristie, one of his ex-girlfriends, and became friends with her. Not in a day's time, of course, but over four years later, she's still a great friend.
See, your gut knows when an ex-girlfriend is an issue and it knows when it's not, and although I think it's our natural instinct to distrust anyone our husbands/boyfriends/partners used to be involved with, I think you can (should?) choose not to make a thing out of something unless it's clear there's a thing to be made.
Listen to your gut. It's smart.
We're friends with another ex-girlfriend of Mike's. She just had a baby, and I was sincerely happy for her and sent her a little something because she's always been lovely to me, and showing loveliness to people who are lovely to me is one way I'm righting all that shitty karma I have leftover from college.
Now, I'm not all cool-as-a-cucumber when it comes to the opposite sex, oh no, and if Mike is reading this, he just laughed. He just laughed OUT LOUD even. See, I don't always listen to my gut. Sometimes I listen to the weird, insecurity gene that makes me wonder if that cute girl he works with is cuter than me. I wonder if he ever wonders about his other exes. I ask for reassurance when I know I don't really need it. I don't know if some of that will ever fully go away.
But when it's really quiet, and I'm being really straight with myself, I have to admit that if someone else (from his past or present) comes in and wrecks our marriage, our marriage should have been stronger.
You can tell your spouse not to do a million things in order to prevent your marriage from falling apart, but I've found (through an embarrassing amount of trial and error) that happy marriages weren't created through rules and tight leashes and jealous outbursts.
The greatest gift I've ever given my marriage is my faith in it.
***
I'm curious to hear how you've handled exes in your relationships, though. Share as much as you'd like below.