Would you feel hurt if a close friend worked with your ex?

[Holidaymodeon]

I don’t know if I’m being unreasonable, i suspect I am but I can’t see the wood for the trees sometimes.
i can’t change the title, weird new ai feature, its not about working with per se, its about linking up in a collaborative project when they don’t actually work together, full context below:

I had a horrible split with an ex, lots of things happened and I was devastated an very hurt. It’s hard to believe that he turned out to be such a different person than the one I thought he was.
a very close friend of mine is also a friend of his but not particularly close to him.
they are in a similar field business wise but don’t work together, she always said he and his cronies are real misogynists and they closed ranks against women .
When we split, my friend was really there for me, really kind and sensitive and supportive and we shared a lot, including how he had hurt her an made her feel bad in a transaction previously.
i then saw on social media that they are collaborating on something big together.
It took me by surprise, because she hadn’t mentioned it and I saw it by chance.
i told her I was surprised she hasn’t mentioned it given the discussions we’d had and
she said it just business and it means nothing and she still thinks he is not a great person .
i have not made a fuss because in the scheme of things it’s not really my business but if the tables were turned I’d have told her. In fact i have been very loyal and supportive in a few different scenarios around exes of hers.
I’m kind of moving past it, to all intents and purposes I’m over ‘it’ but please let me know, would you have felt the same,?

I’d have felt weird about it and unsettled but I imagine she didn’t tell you because she knew you’d say you didn’t like it and ask her not to do it…but presumably it’s really positive for her livelihood.

Yes. It is weird. Most people would feel the same way. Really odd she didn’t even tell you as well.

Definitely weird. So you suspect there's something going on?

I’d never have asked her not to do it, not in a million years! I’d just not expected it at all, given our friendship and things we’ve shared over the years, including my loyalty to her in similar ish scenarios, it was never about her doing it, it was just about the saying nothing.

no, not at all, I can say with my absolute hand on heart there’s nothing like that with her, with either f them in fact, but the way I know him it wouldn’t surprise me if he got a little thrill out of getting one of my good friends to go in on something like that with him, it’s quite a public thing and something she’s always criticised.
maybe she was critical because she couldn’t get an ‘in’ before. She’d also complained about him and his cronies to me years before I go with him.

Thank you for making me feel less weird. It just made it a bit awkward for a second.
I have said how I felt and she said she would be more up front in future.
oddly another friend do very similar with him whilst we were in the breaking up phase and she also didn’t tell me, but I know she had a huge thing for him so it was different but I’d confided all this with my friend at the time which made this move by her all the more hurtful because it felt like she really got where I was coming from .
Has also confided in me about things like this with other women and her partners / exes.
I have told her things that she would be hurt if she found out a different way.
i guess it’s always a surprise for me when people don’t think the way I do about things, if we were teenagers she would have definitely said ‘it’s not that deep’.
my ex is a big fish in a small pond and does kind of hog that pond so really if you want to make a name for yourself he’s a key player to get in with

She’d also complained about him and his cronies to me years before I go with him.

So although you knew he’d been blocking her professionally (I think you said that in earlier post) you went into a relationship with him. I can see why she might think she didn’t need to make a point of telling you.

Work is work, I can’t see an issue of her working with him just because he’s our ex. I do find it weird however that she’s stated how she hasn’t enjoyed working with him previously yet has gone to do it again. I take it this is fully her choice and isn’t something that she just has to go along with?

Surely if you are that close,she would have told you .

She’d also complained about him and his cronies to me years before I go with him

so you did the same, but actually got intimately involved?

She didn’t tell you as didn’t want to invite drama you’ve made an issue when you found out
tbh I’m never convinced about these i would of been ok if she’d me

It must have been a shock to find out like that, I'm not surprised you were taken aback. It would have been better if she'd been upfront in the first place. Presumably she felt awkward about it.

It sounds like she's been a good supportive friend to you so I would try to forget about this and move on.

She’d also complained about him and his cronies to me years before I go with him.

This does seem a bit hypocritical. You chose to date someone she had issues with.

Now she's taken the chance to work with him because there's little choice if she wants to do well in this small pond.

I don't think it's particularly fair of you to expect her to sacrifice opportunity when you didn't.

I expect he's loving all this tho.

Agree that it would have been much better for her to tell you. & then perhaps agree not to discuss it / him.

Business is tricky and presumably it’s an opportunity she deems a good one (apart from working with sexist men).

It sounds that, if she wants to get ahead in her field, working with him is a good move. I can understand though why she'd feel a bit ashamed and not keen to admit to it as she's having to compromise some of her morals / sounds like a bit of a sell out for doing so.

x

I don't think she's doing anything wrong by collaborating with him on a work project, it doesn't mean she approves of him personally. I suspect she didn't tell you because she knew you wouldn't be thrilled about it. However, as a good friend, I do think she should have bitten the bullet and just had the difficult conversation with you!

He will probably be loving the fact that he’s got her in his corner, i very much doubt she would tell him what I’ve said so he wouldn’t know that I was hurt but he has far higher social currency than me so a lot of my friends have stayed close with him following the split and I was friends with him when he split with his wife (we’re all childhood friends) and I know how pissed off he was about situations like this, like being really hurt when ‘his’ friends went to her birthday parties etc.

It was general issues about a large group and he was part of that group but we are talking twenty odd years ago, I didn’t know until after we split that she was still seeing those issues, decades later and tbh he’d changed so much and we all grow up , it took me ages to see through his ‘feminist’ , well completely intersectionalist mask

I will definitely move on and have done in terms of our friendship.i Only said one sentence about it and we have moved on per se, I just wanted to thrash out my reaction on here because of course talking to people irl I am going to get bias from my own friends!

Hundred percent her choice, in the past she’d have said no to opportunities like this due to the general vibe but I guess she has seen he’s saturated the market and she’s better in than out

i honestly would, it would be a case of my granting permission or approval etc it would be just thanks for letting me know, I appreciate it, good luck, enjoy etc, as has happened with other friends. I’d do it and I’m pretty sure she knows this but I overthink and am a people pleaser so would always be looking at every angle , hence this post I guess!

I'm not sure you have all grown up.
If you all live in the same area and move in the same circles, which is what it sounds like, of course your lives will all be intertwined.

No. I mean business is business and we all have had to work with people we’d rather not. It might be odd if she fought him out particularly? But if it was her company and his company doing a collab then it’s not her choice is it? And I’m not sure I’d tell you either as you have shown you feel weird about it (and but just get not telling you if you’re honest with yourself).

It’s more like self employed contracting so definitely an active choice but I think processing via here I can see all points mentioned and happy to just leave it here