We have a tall, sporty, friendly, slightly hyper friend who has big, beautiful hair and is also a model— I describe her as being like a golden retriever or Irish setter due to her universally admired good looks, enthusiasm in every situation, and high need for attention.

I once got irrationally (internally) angry at a woman I saw on the bus. She was with a friend and he was holding her and stroking her hair like she was the most precious thing on the face of the planet and he was gonna protect her with his life or something.

TOTALLY GOLDEN RETRIEVERS!!! Ah now I have a name for it and I love it. My husbands best friends have been together since highschool, they are now married and she’s always making me look like a negative nancy because I don’t want to do a 10 mile hike (I don’t hike at all why would that seem like something I would do,…

My ex and I are pretty good friends still but i lol at the idea of his new girl thinking he’s soooo great and perfect because he was a really big douche to me the majority of our relationship. I know he’s “changed” and stuff now but i always think girl, i could tell you some stories.

Goddamn.

Whenever my husband says something like this, I scream, “Buddy talk, this is Buddy Talk not Partner Talk!”. Sometimes if you have been with someone for a while you get so comfortable you forget that you aren’t best friends talking shit.

Don’t worry, I’m that tiny friend and I can assure you that she probably felt like a little child and was super envious of how tall and long-legged and etc etc you are. I always feel so awkward and child-sized when I’m around anybody that’s 5’ 3” and up.

It sounds like his ex had some “amazing” emotional manipulation skills. That’s probably what kept him there — not anything he liked about her. She sounds uncomfortably similar to one of my exes, and his skill with emotional manipulation is all that kept me with him so long. Ugh. Glad that is long in my past!

Golden Retriever is the perfect term for that girl and your are amazing for thinking of it and I’m stealing it and using it forever and ever amen.

I have a term for them! I call them Golden Retrievers, because they’re so friendly and cool and smart and game for whatever. I got dumped for a lot of GR’s in high school, my style icons being Courtney Love and Delores O’riordan... in Texas...

From what my boyfriend tells me about his last relationship (two years), he spent 1.5 years of that trying to get out. She was clinically depressed and had tried to commit suicide before (not while they were together), and was extremely needy and generally stressed him out and made him unhappy, but he felt like he…

SO TRUE, and so logical, really. Their exes were rejected for you, whereas you were rejected for your ex’s current thing (ultimately, or at least that’s how it feels.)

“...you can probably still find their old couples blog, the one where they share fun recipes and talk about how much they love each other.”

Same here. Recognizing and owning my jealous tendencies has improved my life and my relationships so much. Now I recognize when my jealousy is either completely irrational and fueled only by my own insecurities (which is usually the case). I’m at the point now where I just tell my partner I’m feeling jealous in…

You are me. I am you.

That he is a suicidal, bipolar nutjob that has been in and out of mental institutions, is currently armed and living in the mountains as a survivalist and is still obsessed over my wife.

But, yeah I can see why people might be concerned that the ex was more photogenic.

“The Blood is coming from inside the condom!”

I think finding out what went wrong is a fine impulse- like, did he learn from it? What happened? etc

I don’t know very much about my boyfriend’s exes and I mostly want to keep it that way. Like, I have the nosy, self-destructive urge to know everything so that I can a) know him and his life better and b) TORTURE MYSELF but I know I am very insecure and am quite prone to jealousy in pretty much all my relationships…

I will say that some guys absolutely care about the number in my experience. I had a guy get IRATE with me after finding out I’d had a few one night stands in the prior few months, even though we hadn’t even met when I had them. They also start caring a lot more if you’re white and your ex is black.