(no subject)

[conuly]

DEAR ABBY: My fiancee has been married twice and insists on maintaining contact with four prior sexual partners (other than husbands). Most of the contact is by Facebook, instant message and cellphone. But one former partner is a high school classmate she sees every year at class "get-togethers."

I think what she's doing is inappropriate and will certainly be so after we are married. She insists they are just "friends" and I am being immature and "untrusting." She's adamant that she is unwilling to cease contact with these former sexual partners (now friends) under any circumstances. What's a guy to do? -- CROWDED IN FLORIDA

DEAR CROWDED: A "guy" either accepts what his fiancee is telling him -- that these old flames are just friends now -- or he terminates the engagement and starts searching for a woman he believes he CAN trust.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/dearabby/s-2728107

Comments

[julian]

This is a very 50s-style form of possessiveness. There really was a crapton of advice about not being close with former attachments.

It ain't the 50s anymore, guy. Cope.

[melannen]

There was also a difference in the 50s where people really were not expected to be at all monogamous until they were engaged. It was normal to have several romantic relationships going fairly seriously at the same time while you decided if you wanted to marry any of them, and it's kind of weird how we sort of silently lost that over the last couple of generations, to where now there's a norm of serial monogamy through your entire dating life. Which doesn't make the possessiveness any better, but it does read a little different in the context of "you need to *actually* break up with your other partners when you get engaged" than in a context where they are clearly already exes.

[castiron]

My dad tells the story of when he was 22 and dating three young women who were sisters; one day he took one of the sisters out in the afternoon, brought her home, and picked up another sister to go out in the evening. No one thought it was odd.

I've also heard a story from a college friend about two groups of girls from difference cultures in her high school in the 1980s -- Group A thought that Group B was promiscuous because they had sex with their boyfriends, and Group B thought that Group A was promiscuous because they dated several boys at once instead of going steady with one boy.

[cream_and_custard]

I think this may be coming back a little(or maybe that's just my circle)? It's not fully accepted but it is happening.

It feels like there is a distinction between 'talking' and 'dating'.

I know 2 people that are or have been 'talking' to multiple people at a time. Getting to know each other, small dates, etc. but not being fully committed as a romantic partner. There can be easily ended.

Then there is 'dating', which I would consider myself to be doing. We had the leg up of all ready being friends before asking each other out (mostly allowing us to skip any 'takling' phase). We see ourselves as pretty much a solidified relationship. We both want to get married but not seeing it as a must makes it feel more legitimate than it probably would have in the past.