My Boyfriend Is About to Move In With His Ex

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Dear James,

I’m a 73-old-woman who has been dating a man of the same age. We get along famously except for one problem: His previous girlfriend still lives in his home, which he left to allow her to continue living there. For more than a year, he has been staying at a friend’s second home, but now it’s time for him to go back to his own house. This means he’ll soon be living with his ex, as he refuses to change the situation. Why? Her financial situation is not good, and he feels guilty. He doesn’t seem to understand why I would have a problem with any of this, as he professes to be in love with me. But I don’t think I can continue this relationship as long as he is living with his old girlfriend. Am I being unreasonable?

Dear Reader,

Well, people come to all sorts of bonkers arrangements to get through this life together, don’t they? Two in the basement, one in the attic; three days in this apartment, four in that; I’ll take the couch, you take the bed, she’ll move to Sweden, and the dog can sleep where he likes. But for the bonkers arrangement to work, all parties need to subscribe to more or less the same version of reality.

Which is not the case here. You and your boyfriend—and I’m painting a nice, possibly completely erroneous, picture of him in my mind: a hater of change, a pleaser of people, a postponer of decisions, slothful, benevolent, a man after my own heart, really—have reached the old Frostian fork, the place where the two roads diverge.

Why can’t we all just get along? he wants to know. You, me, my ex-girlfriend, and the mailman who stops in for tea. What’s so complicated about that?

But to you, it’s madness. His ex-girlfriend? Living with him in his house? Sharing a home with him, a domestic space that still has bits of their old relationship lying around in it like used car parts, a carburetor here and a windshield wiper there? It’s an intolerable situation. And I think you have to trust yourself here. Your boyfriend is acting up. He says he’s in love with you, but he’s not doing a very good job of listening to you—hearing you, as the kids say.

My advice: Kick him around a bit, metaphorically speaking. He may have developed thick, woolly layers of insulation around his brain to protect him from the painfulness and difficulty of life. You must penetrate them, batter or needle your way through them. Help him understand how silly he’s being. He’ll get it, eventually, or he won’t. And if he doesn’t, you’ll know what to do.

Dancing from one difficulty to another,

James

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