When I woke up to 65 Facebook notifications, I already knew it was her.
“Her” being *Sharon, my ex-boyfriend *Reggie’s wife. She is the only person who would spend a significant portion of the night not only looking at the photo album I’d recently posted but liking nearly every single picture.
Sharon dated Reggie before I did, but I didn’t know her until he and I were already together. She was clearly on the whole “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” thing and went out of her way to talk to me. She would use my roommate, whom she knew from college, as a reason to be at my apartment. Sharon was nice enough, but pretty naïve for thinking that I would even consider being friends with her. The only thing we had in common was Reggie and having a man in common is hardly grounds for a lasting female friendship. I wondered what sort of masochist would want to hang around her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. “This chick cannot be trusted,” I duly noted while remaining at a polite distance.
She and Reggie were still “friends” but her persisting interest in getting that old thang back was thinly veiled — as was my disgust with the whole situation. The last guy I dated whose girlfriend wouldn’t let go ended up getting his former flame pregnant and not telling me for eight full months. There was no way I was going there again. I learned the hard way that often men who claim to be annoyed by an ex are not telling the whole story and likely doing something to keep her around.
Reggie played the bewildered, innocent object of Sharon’s affection and she refused to move on, so I dumped him. Win or lose, I wasn’t interested in being a contestant on “For the Love of Reggie.” Predictably, they reunited immediately.
You’d think that Sharon got the man she so desperately wanted, so she wouldn’t be interested in maintaining a fake friendship with me anymore, right? Wrong. Sharon still refused to leave me alone.
Months after Reggie and I broke up, my roommate had moved out and I was onto a different relationship, Sharon insisted on coming over to my apartment to talk to me. After “getting off her chest” that she had a problem with me back then (shocker!), the conversation resulted in me telling her, “He obviously wants to be with you since you two are together.” How did I end up trying to encourage this insecure person? I have no idea. As ticked off as I was at her manipulating ways while Reggie and I were together, at this point I didn’t even have the energy to play the Mean Girl. Apparently, she wasn’t interested in getting a taste of her own medicine and wanted the reassurance that I wasn’t scheming a way to get back with him. Luckily for her, I think Karma doles out revenge better than I ever could, and besides that I considered her to have done me a favor.
Satisfied that I was no longer a threat to her relationship, she continued to try to be friends with me. When she and Reggie were planning their wedding, she would email me and ask me my opinion about her potential dresses. She would text me and ask how my day is going. Or text me to talk about a TV show she knew I watched. She “likes” nearly every thing I post on Facebook and comments on pictures of me and my husband.
It is truly the oddest thing. If Reggie and I were chatting it up on a daily basis, then her actions would be (slightly) more understandable, but we’re not. Since he and Sharon moved, I think I’ve talked to him two times total. Yet Sharon still interacts with me. She texted me one day to inform me that she would be in town and suggested that we all hang out. “All” meaning her, Reggie, me and my husband. Ummm no thank you.
Sometimes I wonder if her concerted effort to maintain contact with me is because her relationship was founded in such a mess involving me. Or it may be because, even though she got who she wanted, she suspects I let her have him and thus doesn’t feel she “won” fair and square. I don’t know.
What I do know is they’re together now, living hundreds of miles away and therefore she has no real reason to talk to me. But then again I’m thinking like a logical person and she clearly is some jealous mixture of crazy and obsessed.
Could you be friends with an ex’s new woman or would you be weirded out if the woman an old boyfriend married was still contacting you? Suggestions on how to handle this?
Follow Alissa on Twitter @AlissaInPink or check out her blog This Cannot Be My Life
