I have a friend who's always giving me backhanded insults. The only way I've been able to deal with it is to dish it back to him. He doesn't seem to care either way - nothing I say appears to bother him (huuuuge ego) - but it's really bothering me. I find myself fuming afterwards at the hurtful and jerky things he's said. He's even dissed my dog, and my husband's cooking! Jeez. But look what I've done now - you probably think I just hate the guy. You're probably wondering why we're even friends. Well, we hang out a lot, and most of the time it's tolerable. In fact, most of the time he's pretty fun to be with and makes me laugh. Should I just chill? Am I over-reacting? Should I throw my mid-morning oatmeal and raisins at him next time he bothers me?
How many of my answers have opened with the word 'ugh'? I'm not sure, but here's another one: ugh.
That type of behaviour can be hurtful, rage inducing, but also annoying, and, dare I say it? Yes. Embarrassing. My 'ugh' is the ugh uttered when you see a serious misstep committed in earnest cluelessness. Don't waste your breakfast: I suspect your friend snarks just because he doesn't know what else to do. He may even act this way because he's afraid you won't like him if he doesn't.
Some of us don't realize that it actually doesn't take a lot of cleverness to make fun of people; it is, in fact, easier than being kind, especially if you are particularly afraid of rejection. It doesn't require you to go out on a limb, like sincere expressions of admiration can. It's a classic mode of manipulation by the insecure: if you're afraid of being rejected by people, you can try to create a situation where they feel in danger of being rejected by you, and, as a result, they come to believe that they like and admire you. Your comment on his 'huuuuge ego' fits in with this profile nicely.
Whether this is true of him or not, he's let his friendship with you fall into an unimaginative rut. We've all fallen into bad ruts with friends before, right? Maybe every time you get together with someone in particular you tend to gossip, or eat too much, or get drunk and yell things, or have long and deliciously affected discussions on politics or sex, or, hey, insult each other. Kind of bad things, but nice things to be able to indulge in with someone you like and respect every now and then, right? Sooner or later, though, maybe it just feels like what you do with that person, and maybe you don't really know how to feel comfortable enough to start doing anything else with them, especially if you didn't know each other all that well before you got into your routine, and you just keep following the formula you believe your friendship runs on.
Or maybe you're O.K. with changing things up in the friendship, and it's the other party who doesn't really know what to do, and maybe you end up feeling gross after a glut of the same old indulgent behaviour, and you come to associate the feeling with the other person, and you begin to think: 'this person is a problem in my life.'
Anyway, that would explain why it doesn't bother him when you come back at him with another insult -- it could be just what he expects, and even wants?
What do you do? This may sound a little parent-child, but show him the right way to act. Compliment him? Do nice things for him for no reason, if you don't already? And, don't be afraid to get visibly annoyed with him when he's being... visibly annoying. How do you, personally, act when somebody has just embarrassed themselves and doesn't yet realize it, and you are torn between wanting to smack them, and wanting to throw a blanket around them and protect them from humiliation? Act that way. Break the pattern, and show him that your friendship is not a one-trick pony; a sarcastic, dead-pan, potentially self-loathing, one-trick pony.
Anyone else? Thoughts? Comments? I'm wide open.
Showing posts with label bitterness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bitterness. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
More sucker punches than butterfly kisses
I’m a 30-year-old woman with a good job and a fiancé. I haven’t lived with my parents since I was 19 years old, and for good reason, because they drove me crazy, especially my father.
My father seemed to lose interest in me when I was around 12. He did not make any effort to spend time with me. He would not come to any of my sports games. My grandmother had to drag him to my high school graduation. At the time I got the impression that he was afraid that I would embarrass him, so you can imagine how I came to feel about myself.
If I ever tried to talk to him about something that interested me, it would turn into an argument for some reason. He couldn’t just talk to me, he had to treat every exchange between us as a time to show me how dumb I was. He is so arrogant and so sure of himself, and this is not a teenage brat talking: he is so ignorant about some things that it makes my head spin.
He has always found my boyfriends more interesting than me. He is friendlier, warmer and more affectionate with me now that I am about to be married. It’s as if I was not worth anything to him until another man endorsed me.
I never see my Dad, and I don’t think we’ll have another unpleasant interaction as long as it stays this way, but 20 years since the last time he said an unkind thing to me, I will still cry myself to sleep at night sometimes. The sheer anger I feel towards my father is overwhelming. I don’t know how to attack the situation after so many years. How do I bring this up to him?
Talking is important. I am all about talking, and a lot of what can be elements of a good talk: Dissecting, analyzing, explaining, listening, learning, excited nodding, high-fives. It’s probably my favourite thing of all time… when it goes well.
I bet (because this platform affords me the luxury of a good crapshoot every now and then) you wish you could just let loose on your Dad and release those two decades of hurt and anger and have him feel good and sorry and for everything to be fine for you after that.
Unfortunately, you may not get very far. He could just walk away from you or refuse to listen. He could say that you’re wrong and honestly believe it himself – you’d be surprised at how good some people are at that sort of thing, especially the ones we tend to call ‘arrogant’.
And then there’s the potential fallout: your Dad failing understand how much he’s hurt you in your life after you’ve made such an effort to express it can make your hurt that much burn-y. Also, twenty years is a long time to think and believe and feel a certain way about a situation. The anger would likely not go away overnight, and you telling your father where to get off would likely not be the end of it, even if you did manage to get through to him. You do not make yourself feel better just by making somebody else feel bad.
(And, as far as getting very emotional, because talks of this nature tend to go that route: Yelling or even just taking an excessively angry tone with anybody is pretty immature, but it looks especially bad and is even more ineffective when exacted on a parent, because it places you in roles that you don’t belong in anymore.)
When dealing with family and friends-like-family, being happy is more important than being ‘right,’ – in this case, insisting on bearing grudges and holding onto hurts. Also in this case, part of being happy can be finding it in yourself to be good to your loved ones over sore spots and points of contention and give them the benefit of the doubt: to believe that at least their intentions, where you were concerned, were good.
When you’re dealing with someone you love – because I am going there, yes, I am assuming that you love your Dad, because if you didn’t love him, you would not hurt so much – and you want to come to an actual solution, sometimes you have to be open to the possibility that the other person is innocent to some degree, because that is part of respecting and thinking highly of them.
I don’t know your situation completely. I’m not prepared to tell you that your father has a point because I don’t know what his would be, and I actually can’t imagine what it could be, because you do a pretty good job of painting him as a big fat jerk. But from what you’ve written here I can tell you are definitely not in a position to be open-minded about this. You can’t make people come around to your way of thinking and believing and feeling in every situation, and in this situation, where you are so very embittered, chances are slim of things going well.
He was a bad father and he should probably be called on it. I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong to believe that, because from here that looks to be about right. Maybe that’s a reason for you to be miserable, but it’s not an excuse. The actions of others can make us feel sad, but we make ourselves unhappy. I think before you even think of trying to bring this to your Dad, you need to turn your sights inwards and determine how much of your misery is created and maintained by you. For the sake of your future relationship and for your own good, wait until you can speak to him with some humility about it. Congratulations on your engagement! Sort this out before you have kids.
My father seemed to lose interest in me when I was around 12. He did not make any effort to spend time with me. He would not come to any of my sports games. My grandmother had to drag him to my high school graduation. At the time I got the impression that he was afraid that I would embarrass him, so you can imagine how I came to feel about myself.
If I ever tried to talk to him about something that interested me, it would turn into an argument for some reason. He couldn’t just talk to me, he had to treat every exchange between us as a time to show me how dumb I was. He is so arrogant and so sure of himself, and this is not a teenage brat talking: he is so ignorant about some things that it makes my head spin.
He has always found my boyfriends more interesting than me. He is friendlier, warmer and more affectionate with me now that I am about to be married. It’s as if I was not worth anything to him until another man endorsed me.
I never see my Dad, and I don’t think we’ll have another unpleasant interaction as long as it stays this way, but 20 years since the last time he said an unkind thing to me, I will still cry myself to sleep at night sometimes. The sheer anger I feel towards my father is overwhelming. I don’t know how to attack the situation after so many years. How do I bring this up to him?
Talking is important. I am all about talking, and a lot of what can be elements of a good talk: Dissecting, analyzing, explaining, listening, learning, excited nodding, high-fives. It’s probably my favourite thing of all time… when it goes well.
I bet (because this platform affords me the luxury of a good crapshoot every now and then) you wish you could just let loose on your Dad and release those two decades of hurt and anger and have him feel good and sorry and for everything to be fine for you after that.
Unfortunately, you may not get very far. He could just walk away from you or refuse to listen. He could say that you’re wrong and honestly believe it himself – you’d be surprised at how good some people are at that sort of thing, especially the ones we tend to call ‘arrogant’.
And then there’s the potential fallout: your Dad failing understand how much he’s hurt you in your life after you’ve made such an effort to express it can make your hurt that much burn-y. Also, twenty years is a long time to think and believe and feel a certain way about a situation. The anger would likely not go away overnight, and you telling your father where to get off would likely not be the end of it, even if you did manage to get through to him. You do not make yourself feel better just by making somebody else feel bad.
(And, as far as getting very emotional, because talks of this nature tend to go that route: Yelling or even just taking an excessively angry tone with anybody is pretty immature, but it looks especially bad and is even more ineffective when exacted on a parent, because it places you in roles that you don’t belong in anymore.)
When dealing with family and friends-like-family, being happy is more important than being ‘right,’ – in this case, insisting on bearing grudges and holding onto hurts. Also in this case, part of being happy can be finding it in yourself to be good to your loved ones over sore spots and points of contention and give them the benefit of the doubt: to believe that at least their intentions, where you were concerned, were good.
When you’re dealing with someone you love – because I am going there, yes, I am assuming that you love your Dad, because if you didn’t love him, you would not hurt so much – and you want to come to an actual solution, sometimes you have to be open to the possibility that the other person is innocent to some degree, because that is part of respecting and thinking highly of them.
I don’t know your situation completely. I’m not prepared to tell you that your father has a point because I don’t know what his would be, and I actually can’t imagine what it could be, because you do a pretty good job of painting him as a big fat jerk. But from what you’ve written here I can tell you are definitely not in a position to be open-minded about this. You can’t make people come around to your way of thinking and believing and feeling in every situation, and in this situation, where you are so very embittered, chances are slim of things going well.
He was a bad father and he should probably be called on it. I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong to believe that, because from here that looks to be about right. Maybe that’s a reason for you to be miserable, but it’s not an excuse. The actions of others can make us feel sad, but we make ourselves unhappy. I think before you even think of trying to bring this to your Dad, you need to turn your sights inwards and determine how much of your misery is created and maintained by you. For the sake of your future relationship and for your own good, wait until you can speak to him with some humility about it. Congratulations on your engagement! Sort this out before you have kids.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Usurper as sister: a reader’s response
One lady saw a red flag in Tuesday’s letter (about a girl who doesn’t like seeing her idiot ex spreading his idiot self to other potential idiots and then feeling like she’s watching them being idiots together), that she just could not ignore.
1) Love your use of Turd Ferguson
2) Love the t-t-t-tambourine.
3) I am real quick to feel bad for the new girlfriend in this situation! Not only is she potentially dating a well, Turd Ferguson, who would go after someone while still involved with someone else (does not bode well for the future, frankly), but also, the writer says that she doesn't know how much New Girlfriend knows about what went on. It is very likely that she didn't know about Old Girlfriend's very current status when Turd came on her scene. I'd like to give her the benefit of the doubt because I have been in that situation myself, and have found out later - it is super awkward (and makes you feel very guilty). I've also been the new GF getting the evil eye from the old GF during social occassions, and damnit if it doesn't freak a person out. She says she was never actually introduced to the girl, and actually, there is a reasonable possibility that the new girl doesn't know who she is, and was only looking her over because our dear question writer was throwing off hostile vibes. I guess it just weirds me out that she said she's so angry at the two of them, when as far as the letter indicates, this was really the guy's doing (harsh way to break up with her btw!). She doesn't have to be best friends with the new lady, but hating her just screams of girl-on-girl crime to me.
(And so, Wednesday is devoted to the following hypothetical situation: a girl is completely unaware of the circumstances of her boyfriend’s last breakup, in which he actually didn’t bother to make things final with the other girl until well after things were underway with the new girl, and the old girl is pissed.)
Yeah! Like I said, don’t be mad at the two of them. It’s easy to project the personality and attitude of the ex onto someone who will touch him after he’s done what he’s done, but the fact remains that she may not be privy to all of his shit. It happens, lots of us have been there, and if that is what has happened here, it sucks that he has put the new girl in that position… the one where a part in some drama she may not even understand is forced on her.
By the time a victim of this kind of shit can know what’s going on, everybody in town may have decided she’s a slag. All of a sudden, this woman is on par with our original Tuesday letter writer, with a similar compulsion to clear her name, and with only a faint notion of what she’s actually done, let alone what to do about it.
So, was my advice to the ex-girlfriend, to leave it alone and let her ex-boyfriend’s new romance take its course, wrong? Should she actually try to warn this girl about this guy’s character? One reader seemed to think so:
girlfriend needs to let the new girl know what she’s getting into. i wish my ex’s ex would have done the same for me, because then maybe i would have dumped him before he cheated on me. i just know that i would have appreciated it.
I don’t know. Maybe now you say you would have appreciated it, but there’s a lot to be said for perspective, a la, you didn’t feel then what you feel now, because you didn’t know then what you know now. I think it’s actually a rare woman who will trust another woman, especially an ex-girlfriend (and potential rival, in their eyes), criticizing somebody she really likes, to have their best interests at heart. But maybe you didn't feel all that strongly about the guy at first, and those feelings grew later on before you could find out the truth. In general, I’d say it’s best to stay out of the lives of exes, not antagonize new girlfriends, and let them learn their own lessons -- especially considering it's more useful for someone to hear information of this nature from someone they feel they can trust, i.e., not their romantic interest's ex -- but I suppose I will make this allowance: some girls do like to think they would like a heads-up.
I really think that anybody who finds out they’ve been tricked into dating somebody who will move on before he’s ended a relationship can either embark on a vigorous, conspicuous, inappropriate innocence campaign, and risk looking guilty and graceless… and really really weird… or! Try to forget about the whole thing and trust that people will get to know her well enough to know she’s not mean, or maybe that people will notice a pattern of deception in the ex’s behaviour that could explain the whole thing. Kind of like what I recommended for ex-girlfriend.
So yeah! I stand by my previous assessment: I still think the ex-girlfriend needs to stop the vicious cycle of giving a damn and resist the fear of judgment of others and live a nice life. Now! For the sake of all womankind, and that is how she can be fair to the new girl.
1) Love your use of Turd Ferguson
2) Love the t-t-t-tambourine.
3) I am real quick to feel bad for the new girlfriend in this situation! Not only is she potentially dating a well, Turd Ferguson, who would go after someone while still involved with someone else (does not bode well for the future, frankly), but also, the writer says that she doesn't know how much New Girlfriend knows about what went on. It is very likely that she didn't know about Old Girlfriend's very current status when Turd came on her scene. I'd like to give her the benefit of the doubt because I have been in that situation myself, and have found out later - it is super awkward (and makes you feel very guilty). I've also been the new GF getting the evil eye from the old GF during social occassions, and damnit if it doesn't freak a person out. She says she was never actually introduced to the girl, and actually, there is a reasonable possibility that the new girl doesn't know who she is, and was only looking her over because our dear question writer was throwing off hostile vibes. I guess it just weirds me out that she said she's so angry at the two of them, when as far as the letter indicates, this was really the guy's doing (harsh way to break up with her btw!). She doesn't have to be best friends with the new lady, but hating her just screams of girl-on-girl crime to me.
(And so, Wednesday is devoted to the following hypothetical situation: a girl is completely unaware of the circumstances of her boyfriend’s last breakup, in which he actually didn’t bother to make things final with the other girl until well after things were underway with the new girl, and the old girl is pissed.)
Yeah! Like I said, don’t be mad at the two of them. It’s easy to project the personality and attitude of the ex onto someone who will touch him after he’s done what he’s done, but the fact remains that she may not be privy to all of his shit. It happens, lots of us have been there, and if that is what has happened here, it sucks that he has put the new girl in that position… the one where a part in some drama she may not even understand is forced on her.
By the time a victim of this kind of shit can know what’s going on, everybody in town may have decided she’s a slag. All of a sudden, this woman is on par with our original Tuesday letter writer, with a similar compulsion to clear her name, and with only a faint notion of what she’s actually done, let alone what to do about it.
So, was my advice to the ex-girlfriend, to leave it alone and let her ex-boyfriend’s new romance take its course, wrong? Should she actually try to warn this girl about this guy’s character? One reader seemed to think so:
girlfriend needs to let the new girl know what she’s getting into. i wish my ex’s ex would have done the same for me, because then maybe i would have dumped him before he cheated on me. i just know that i would have appreciated it.
I don’t know. Maybe now you say you would have appreciated it, but there’s a lot to be said for perspective, a la, you didn’t feel then what you feel now, because you didn’t know then what you know now. I think it’s actually a rare woman who will trust another woman, especially an ex-girlfriend (and potential rival, in their eyes), criticizing somebody she really likes, to have their best interests at heart. But maybe you didn't feel all that strongly about the guy at first, and those feelings grew later on before you could find out the truth. In general, I’d say it’s best to stay out of the lives of exes, not antagonize new girlfriends, and let them learn their own lessons -- especially considering it's more useful for someone to hear information of this nature from someone they feel they can trust, i.e., not their romantic interest's ex -- but I suppose I will make this allowance: some girls do like to think they would like a heads-up.
I really think that anybody who finds out they’ve been tricked into dating somebody who will move on before he’s ended a relationship can either embark on a vigorous, conspicuous, inappropriate innocence campaign, and risk looking guilty and graceless… and really really weird… or! Try to forget about the whole thing and trust that people will get to know her well enough to know she’s not mean, or maybe that people will notice a pattern of deception in the ex’s behaviour that could explain the whole thing. Kind of like what I recommended for ex-girlfriend.
So yeah! I stand by my previous assessment: I still think the ex-girlfriend needs to stop the vicious cycle of giving a damn and resist the fear of judgment of others and live a nice life. Now! For the sake of all womankind, and that is how she can be fair to the new girl.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Love is a battlefield; keep this one a Cold War
I recently attended a party. My ex-boyfriend and his girlfriend were there. I'm still angry at the two of them because he pursued her before breaking it off with me [I hadn't any idea that things were going so badly, he just cut off all communication and left me in the dark on that one for nearly a month, but i digress].
I didn't say anything to them, because there were others around that I could talk to, and to be fair, they hadn't made any attempt to be friendly with me. She kept looking me over, which intrigues me because I haven't any idea what he's told her about me, and yet I'm concerned that she hasn't heard the full story.
I suppose if it ever comes up, I could plead "Well, you never introduced us" (which is true-- he never made an effort to introduce her to me or vice-versa) or "Well, what did you expect? To greet and be BFF with the girl you were pursuing while you were still with me PISS OFF" or something like that. Either way, I'm concerned that my name won't be clear in this situation, and I somehow come off looking like a crazy bitch because I have no desire to know and talk with either of them. It becomes difficult because my ex and I are within the same circle of friends, and will be invited to (and probably attend) the same gatherings.
It hurts enough to see them together-- if I can't protect my heart, is there any way I can protect my dignity and reputation?
The dynamic between the ex-girlfriend and the now-girlfriend can be one of the lumpiest, foggiest, most passive-aggressive things, especially if you’re not on speaking terms with your old flame, things didn’t end well, and you stand to see them around with any frequency at all.
Chances are only slim that he has been kind to your memory. People vent to others about their exes, or anybody else they share any disputes with. It’s an immature impulse that stays with many people all their lives. What’s good is mutual friends and acquaintances will decide for themselves if any criticism of an ex is valid.
True, a person who vents more and to more people may appear to be the more wounded and slighted in the relationship/bloodshed, but they’re perhaps more likely to appear bitter and vengeful if they’re going off on an ex with regularity, and for a period of time disproportionate to the gripes (i.e., if you’re still raving about fair comments an ex made about you in 2002, let me do you the favour of letting you know that you look like jackass. Ahem. ‘You look like a jackass.’ And, you’re welcome). Have you ever heard the expression, ‘give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves’? Basically, it means that in some situations you should let bitches bitch all they want because it’ll just drive people to side with the silent.
But, it tends to be in a current girlfriend (or boyfriend’s) interest to side with their S.O. when it comes to anything said about a predecessor. They want to please their new romantic interest, they want to come off the winner in any comparison/contest, and they likely don’t want to believe they’re with someone who would say something unfair, or, God forbid, untrue!
It’s better if a girlfriend can be a voice of reason; It's better to discourage pettiness and help him be realistic and reasonable, and see any error in his own actions, because then he can be a better person for her. A guy with any brain at all would come to appreciate and respect a girl who could act so genuinely and intelligently, because those are marks of a truly good person.
But you can’t trust that she’s like that. And you really can't take it upon yourself to try to enlighten her about this guy and your past relationship with him. It'll look crazy, and she's not likely to listen due to all the stuff I said above. Even if you make sense, it will not compute.
So, even though it might make you feel a little helpless, you should probably resign yourself to the fact that your ex has probably said something about his past relationship with you to his new girl, and that unless they’re already in the thick of a really frank and candid meeting-of-the-minds kind of match, she’s not seeing any crack in his reasoning. Yet.
All actual names, places and professions have been replaced with just as believable ones in the following anecdote:
My friend Minnie hooked up with Stevie, who had been recently dumped by Francie. One night, Minnie sat in the light of a single pine-scented candle in Stevie’s basement apartment, and listened to him pronounce all the emotional hardships that Francie had put him through, as a very serious, insensitive girl, always pressuring him to get a better job and go to the gym and stop making his clever clever fart jokes. Minnie laughed as Stevie dubbed Francie ‘beaver-teeth’ or some such rude name. And then they probably did it. You know. It.
A year later, a disillusioned Minnie left Stevie for Dickie, a very serious guy indeed, because, as Minnie found out, all of the criticisms Stevie rhymed off about himself as coming from Francie were pretty valid. Serious Francie is now an investment banker, and to my knowledge Single, Aging Stevie is working the graveyard shift at a KFC in rural Nova Scotia. Jealous?
People who date can’t help but learn a lot about each other. If your ex is not a great guy and if he is not saying fair things about you to this girl, she’ll realize it someday, and she might end up in the same boat you are in now, with a spectacular marine view of what an ass he is. Don’t be angry at the two of them because she might be completely oblivious. She wouldn’t be the first oblivious woman to carry on with a man for a while before things have been officially resolved with another one, for example.
By the time she’s in the boat you are in now, you will be in a different boat. A speedboat on the French Riviera, perhaps. Not giving a damn. You know that’s the outcome, right? In the future, likely the near future, whatever Turd Ferguson is telling his chick about you now won’t matter a whole lot. It’s not even important now (which is why it would look weird for you to try to talk to her about him, another reason to not bother trying to get your story out there).
I think it only hurts you to see them together because you feel like they're conspiring against you, and that you give undue weight to the issue when you think like this. Like you said, they are only two people that you don’t care to know or speak to. So take what I’ve said here, about the inevitable, and don’t know or speak to them (by this I mean, don't seek them out, and just smile and nod when you make eye contact), and don’t care about it. From here it looks like you only risk looking like a crazy bitch if you let yourself feel and act like a crazy bitch now.
Continue to be polite and fun to be around. If you’re cool and they’re jerks, people will notice. If you can’t feel cool, i.e. actualize to yourself the fact that it's not reasonable to care: think cool and act cool, and you’ll find the sensation will be along. If you have trouble smiling at them, just think of this. Always worked for me.
I didn't say anything to them, because there were others around that I could talk to, and to be fair, they hadn't made any attempt to be friendly with me. She kept looking me over, which intrigues me because I haven't any idea what he's told her about me, and yet I'm concerned that she hasn't heard the full story.
I suppose if it ever comes up, I could plead "Well, you never introduced us" (which is true-- he never made an effort to introduce her to me or vice-versa) or "Well, what did you expect? To greet and be BFF with the girl you were pursuing while you were still with me PISS OFF" or something like that. Either way, I'm concerned that my name won't be clear in this situation, and I somehow come off looking like a crazy bitch because I have no desire to know and talk with either of them. It becomes difficult because my ex and I are within the same circle of friends, and will be invited to (and probably attend) the same gatherings.
It hurts enough to see them together-- if I can't protect my heart, is there any way I can protect my dignity and reputation?
The dynamic between the ex-girlfriend and the now-girlfriend can be one of the lumpiest, foggiest, most passive-aggressive things, especially if you’re not on speaking terms with your old flame, things didn’t end well, and you stand to see them around with any frequency at all.
Chances are only slim that he has been kind to your memory. People vent to others about their exes, or anybody else they share any disputes with. It’s an immature impulse that stays with many people all their lives. What’s good is mutual friends and acquaintances will decide for themselves if any criticism of an ex is valid.
True, a person who vents more and to more people may appear to be the more wounded and slighted in the relationship/bloodshed, but they’re perhaps more likely to appear bitter and vengeful if they’re going off on an ex with regularity, and for a period of time disproportionate to the gripes (i.e., if you’re still raving about fair comments an ex made about you in 2002, let me do you the favour of letting you know that you look like jackass. Ahem. ‘You look like a jackass.’ And, you’re welcome). Have you ever heard the expression, ‘give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves’? Basically, it means that in some situations you should let bitches bitch all they want because it’ll just drive people to side with the silent.
But, it tends to be in a current girlfriend (or boyfriend’s) interest to side with their S.O. when it comes to anything said about a predecessor. They want to please their new romantic interest, they want to come off the winner in any comparison/contest, and they likely don’t want to believe they’re with someone who would say something unfair, or, God forbid, untrue!
It’s better if a girlfriend can be a voice of reason; It's better to discourage pettiness and help him be realistic and reasonable, and see any error in his own actions, because then he can be a better person for her. A guy with any brain at all would come to appreciate and respect a girl who could act so genuinely and intelligently, because those are marks of a truly good person.
But you can’t trust that she’s like that. And you really can't take it upon yourself to try to enlighten her about this guy and your past relationship with him. It'll look crazy, and she's not likely to listen due to all the stuff I said above. Even if you make sense, it will not compute.
So, even though it might make you feel a little helpless, you should probably resign yourself to the fact that your ex has probably said something about his past relationship with you to his new girl, and that unless they’re already in the thick of a really frank and candid meeting-of-the-minds kind of match, she’s not seeing any crack in his reasoning. Yet.
All actual names, places and professions have been replaced with just as believable ones in the following anecdote:
My friend Minnie hooked up with Stevie, who had been recently dumped by Francie. One night, Minnie sat in the light of a single pine-scented candle in Stevie’s basement apartment, and listened to him pronounce all the emotional hardships that Francie had put him through, as a very serious, insensitive girl, always pressuring him to get a better job and go to the gym and stop making his clever clever fart jokes. Minnie laughed as Stevie dubbed Francie ‘beaver-teeth’ or some such rude name. And then they probably did it. You know. It.
A year later, a disillusioned Minnie left Stevie for Dickie, a very serious guy indeed, because, as Minnie found out, all of the criticisms Stevie rhymed off about himself as coming from Francie were pretty valid. Serious Francie is now an investment banker, and to my knowledge Single, Aging Stevie is working the graveyard shift at a KFC in rural Nova Scotia. Jealous?
People who date can’t help but learn a lot about each other. If your ex is not a great guy and if he is not saying fair things about you to this girl, she’ll realize it someday, and she might end up in the same boat you are in now, with a spectacular marine view of what an ass he is. Don’t be angry at the two of them because she might be completely oblivious. She wouldn’t be the first oblivious woman to carry on with a man for a while before things have been officially resolved with another one, for example.
By the time she’s in the boat you are in now, you will be in a different boat. A speedboat on the French Riviera, perhaps. Not giving a damn. You know that’s the outcome, right? In the future, likely the near future, whatever Turd Ferguson is telling his chick about you now won’t matter a whole lot. It’s not even important now (which is why it would look weird for you to try to talk to her about him, another reason to not bother trying to get your story out there).
I think it only hurts you to see them together because you feel like they're conspiring against you, and that you give undue weight to the issue when you think like this. Like you said, they are only two people that you don’t care to know or speak to. So take what I’ve said here, about the inevitable, and don’t know or speak to them (by this I mean, don't seek them out, and just smile and nod when you make eye contact), and don’t care about it. From here it looks like you only risk looking like a crazy bitch if you let yourself feel and act like a crazy bitch now.
Continue to be polite and fun to be around. If you’re cool and they’re jerks, people will notice. If you can’t feel cool, i.e. actualize to yourself the fact that it's not reasonable to care: think cool and act cool, and you’ll find the sensation will be along. If you have trouble smiling at them, just think of this. Always worked for me.
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