Mentioning ex boyfriend and girlfriends once you’re married

[KarlWrenbury]

As far as my parents who married in the 50s led us to believe, they never had any boyfriends or girlfriends before each other, maybe they didn’t, but it seems rather odd.

On the other hand I think it’s strange when married couples go on and on about ex partners. What do you do? Do you mention other partners who might have lived with or previous spouses or do you do like my parents did and pretend there is only ever been one?

On and on would be odd but obviously we do talk about life before marriage in which other partners were involved so it would be odd to never mention them. For your parents perhaps there was no one before or at least not significant enough to mention - different generation

Somewhere in between? Occasionally mentioned as in 'oh I did surfing with my BF at uni' or 'I went to X place with Y'. But they are largely irrelevant.

My parents married at 16 and were childhood sweethearts. So truly the one and only's.
Dp rattled off her dating experiences when I met her, she volunteered the information. I still have exes popping in via social media.
Different eras innit.

We don't 'go on' about them, but we are perfectly relaxed about mentioning them, including in front of our dc. It wouldn't really occur to me to have a problem with it tbh.

People in the 50’s probably didn’t have many relationships before marriage and many would not have had a sexual relationship until they married. It’s unlikely they had many serious relationships. They got married in their early 20’s if not younger. They tended to stay married.

These days people get married much later. They are have ltr outside of marriage and children. Get married or cohabitate, split, have children with multiple partners. It’s nearly impossible for someone not to reference a past relationship. I’d say someone of your generation c 50+ would defo have had more than one serious ltr that can’t be avoided in day to day conversation. Simply because an ex might be the parent of your children.

My lovely nan had boyfriends before meeting my grandad and marrying at 19. She likes to tell us all about the west of england muscle man she was with and how stingy he was with a cigarette.

Surely it's normal to mention funny stories of your past?

If something has relevance to a conversation I don't see the problem.

It depends on the context. Certainly someone going on and on about an ex for no obvious reason, that would be strange.

Going on about them would be weird, but I was 26 when I met DH and had had 3 longterm relationships - one of which I'm still friends with.

So they come up from time to time, as DH's exes do, in the context of like... I dunno, "when I was on holiday in X place and Ex fell in a giant lake and I had to rescue him" as a funny story because we're talking about people falling in ponds or something relevant. Not "Did I ever tell you about how Ex was the handsomest person I've ever been with?"

In context, absolutely fine to mention exes.

Randomly and constantly, no way.