to not care about my past relationship that much?

[moonsnow]

When I was at University (almost 20 years ago) I had an on, off relationship with a boy on my course spaning around 2 years. It was a somewhat fraught at the time and while we both liked and loved each other in a way it wasn't an especially happy pairing with lots of alternate clinging and pulling away on both sides. It ended when after graduation I met someone new and finally moved on and away. My ex who had done badly on his degree dossed about for a few years on the dole, smoking dope and trying to be a dj. Then he eventually moved away and somewhere in the interim sorted himself out, got fit, got his masters and a new career.

Now he is back living in the same city as me and for the same organisation. We also have some mutual friend from uni here. We haven't personally stayed in touch for many years. He is single and I am married (for 10 years) and have a child.

Anyway I now have seen him quite a few times socially and through work and he is being so weird. After initally being friendly and normal he is now always saying how awkward it is for us both (it bloody wasn't for me until he made it so) and how we have all this tension between us, regrets and shame. But i don't feel any of those things.

Maybe when I was in my 20's I might have cringed when looking back to that time and some of the things I did or how we behaved but these days I pretty much let myself and him off the hook for it, I was just a kid as was he and we were both very immature and inexperianced at relationships so I've just chalked it up to experiance. I did care for him but I regard our relationship at the time as a good learning experiance more than anything else. He seems to think we should both feel awful about what went on between us and be filled with regret but i just don't feel that way.

I am starting to wish he would just sod off somewhere else!

Am I being unreasonable to just not care that much about it all?

After 20 years. Nah I wouldn't give a hoot. He's being precious.

Perhaps his life was just on hold or something for longer so he feels closer emotionally to that time than I do but while I feel I ought to be respectful of how he feels it just all feels so blood pathetic to me, if anything we should be able to have a good laugh about it now!

I think he’s trying to pull you back into the same old push me pull you crap. He might look like he’s sorted his life out... doesn’t mean he’s not an attention seeker. I’d limit contact as much as possible and if he mentions the past just laugh and say you can’t remember 20 years ago, it was no big deal - and do not get drawn any further it. He’s still a dick!

Maybe when I was in my 20's I might have cringed when looking back to that time and some of the things I did or how we behaved but these days I pretty much let myself and him off the hook for it, I was just a kid as was he and we were both very immature and inexperianced at relationships so I've just chalked it up to experiance.* you put it perfectly yourself - tell him exactly this.

Bold fail!

@Cocomarine That seems wise and thankfully shouldn't be too difficult at the moment to do given the circumstances!

@RobertaTheGreat I think I will, I think he will find me cold (as other men have when they discover I don't want to linger over the past) but we will have to work together at least so would prefer to nip this in the bud.

That sounds astute.

He is telling you how you feel, or trying to!

Telling you that there's tension when you're just thinking ''oh yey, small talk small talk weather is mild for this time of year, what's for dinner''.

It's like a way of forcing intimacy that just isn't there

@WiserOwl yep that sounds about right, oh well!

You just sound more emotionally mature then him.

Sounds to me like he's either trying to rekindle some sort of relationship with you or trying to get attention (probably both). I'd be a bit wary of him trying to make it in to gossip with other colleagues (eg. 'Oh yes, you should have seen what moonsnow and I were like when we were younger, didn't you know we had a big thing together, Oh it's so tense between us etc etc etc'). May be worth mentioning to a few select people that you knew him way back when and how different and happier your life is now- just to fend off any attempts to make you the subject of office gossip

@DillonPanthersTexas as far as I can tell our relationship has been his longest with anyone so I think he just needs to have a proper adult relationship but at this stage in the game i'm not sure many women his own age would have the patience for him (if he is indeed still so immature emotionally).

OK tough one because I agree he's done the wrong (and a weird thing) by saying that to you.

OTOH, I also have past relationships that like you I've 100% moved on from, but I still would hate to see them. So I don't think he's totally in the wrong to feel that way.

@boriselbow Lol, "him and moonsnow" back in the day was a total fucking shitshow

Perhaps his attempt to romanticize it is in fact laudible because it would take a hell of an imagination to do so. However i have no interest in becoming office gossip so will take what you say onboard.

@RaisinGhost I agree that his own feelings about the past are his private business and as such he should keep them to himself.

I was ok with seeing him again and not bothered about working with him until he started with all the weird stuff.

Perhaps he just wants us to avoid each other, in which case he has played a blinder!

@moonsnow LOL My advice comes from having a friend in a similar position. She ended up living in the same (very small) town as someone she had briefly been out with in sixth form (in another part of the country). He led everyone to think there was some sort of Romeo and Juliet thing going on and she'd been dragged away by disapproving parents then married to try to forget him. In fact they'd gone out together a few times before her family moved away and she got on with living the rest of her life without giving him a second thought.

@WiserOwl

That sounds astute.

He is telling you how you feel, or trying to!

Telling you that there's tension when you're just thinking ''oh yey, small talk small talk weather is mild for this time of year, what's for dinner''.

It's like a way of forcing intimacy that just isn't there

Exactly this. I had this once, too with a distant-past ex, also from my student days, whom I saw again when I moved back to my home country after years away. He was pathetically obvious in his clumsy attempts to convince me that he'd had a major impact on my life back then, and that in some way, I still carried a torch for him, despite my long marriage and decades spent in other countries.

When I cut him to the quick by saying that, to be honest, I remembered virtually nothing about that time, he had a go at convincing me that I must have suppressed the memories as they were too traumatic and tender.

At that point I think I had a sudden improvement in my memory and pointed out that I had dumped him.

I suspect he thinks you might let him give you one in the stationary cupboard if he convinces you that your younger selves were embroiled in some sort of passionate tumultuous angst riddled love affair.

Ha ha ha, he's a dickhead.

@boriselbow, @Sundries & @ChocolateCherrybomb

Ah so this seems a somewhat common ploy? Hmm what a dick indeed!

ChocolateCherrybomb, there is more chance of me hooking up with Michael Gove on the next series of Love Island than there is my letting him give me one in the stationary cupboard! Both are thankfully very unlikely scenarios!