AIBU about my boyfriends relationship with his ex?

[Ellad99]

I’m completely up for being told I’m being unreasonable here, I just thought it’d be useful to get an outsiders opinion to see if I’m making a mountain out of a molehill (I’ve named changed).

I’ve been with my boyfriend for 18 months (both early 30s). He was with his ex for a long time in his 20s but she’s now married to someone else. My boyfriend is best friends with her dad (her parents are fairly young so the dad is only about 15 years older than my boyfriend). He goes over for dinners and weekends away with the dad fairly regularly and the ex is sometimes there too.
I asked him last night “if she hadn’t have split up with you, would you still be with her now?” and he pondered for a while and then said “I’m not completely sure”.

This has thrown me a bit. She’s much more his type looks wise, he’s best friends with her dad, they have the same circle of friends and it sounds like they have more interests in common too.

I don’t know if I’m just being jealous and insecure so would appreciate being told if I am so I can try and sort out my feelings about this.

He does invite me whenever he goes to spend time with them, but I don’t really feel comfortable spending time with his ex and her family. I think I would feel a lot differently about the situation if he had wanted to break up with her, but apparently he didn’t and was completely heartbroken.
I know he’s with me now and she’s married to someone else, but I can’t help feeling like she was the one he really wanted to be with and now he has to just make do with me.

Any advice on how to handle this situation/my emotions would be much appreciated. Thank you

The answer to these kinds of questions is never going to be what you want it to be. Because the reality is that unless a relationship purely runs its course e.g. when you’re very young or purely dating the thought process is generally that we are in relationships for the long hall.

If you love someone, planned to spend the rest of your life with theM and they are the one who then ends the relationship then of course you are going to be heartbroken, and of course if they hadn’t ended the relationship and you were happy at the time you wouldn’t envisage that you wouldn’t be with them now.

But when relationships end we all have to move on, and invariably we then have to find happiness elsewhere.

That doesn’t mean that he’s only with you because she doesn’t want him any more, but of course it is true that your relationship has come about as the relationship he was in previously ended iyswim.

I think the upshot is that you shouldn’t realy be asking the kinds of questions that will feed into your insecurities.

It would be disingenuous of him to say that no of course he would have broken up with the ex at some point when during the relationship he had no intention of doing so. but it’s the past now.

@chaos thanks, that all makes sense. I just wish I could shake my insecurities about it. Whenever he says he’s spending time with them my heart just sinks. I hate to think he might still hold a flame for her.
I’d never stop him being friends with anyone though, especially people he’s known far longer than he’s known me. Think i’ll Just have to grin and bear it and hope his feelings for me are 100% genuine

Talk to him

She has moved on with her life and accepted that her dad and ex have a srparate relationship. So maybe instead of viewing him as spending time with his ex’s family see it as spending time with his best friend’s family and view it differently. Then re assess in a few months?

I don’t think you can hold him to what he would have done had things been different but he should have ideally said ‘but then i would not have met you’. Relax a bit. Talk to each other.