Mutually Exclusive: The one I thought was The One is now the only one who won't be friends

Dear Carolyn:
I'm getting married this autumn. My life is great after a long personal journey, including one broken engagement. My only problem is that my ex-fiancee, "Annie," is incommunicado with me right now, which really bothers me.

I'm friends with nearly all of my former girlfriends. Likewise, my fiancee is friends with nearly all of her exes, many of whom I've met. In point of fact, Annie is/was friends with most of her past boyfriends (including an ex-fiance). Her not speaking with me, even though she has my contact info, seems out of character.

I've spoken with Annie only once in the six years since we split. That was three years ago, when she was recently married. She sounded fine, too. Our relationship ended on a sour note, but last time we spoke she apologized voluntarily for the part she'd played in that. As did I for my part.
I've tried calling her, maybe four or five times, over the past couple of months. Annie won't answer or return my calls.

I'd like to make some peace and see if we can't cultivate a friendship. At what point do you give up on somebody? Am I unreasonable to pursue her friendship?

~Wondering in Seattle

Four or five unreturned calls in two months are two or three unreturned calls past the point when you give up.

As for how reasonable your effort was, that depends. If you were motivated by missing Annie's friendship, then that was reasonable. Still futile, at this point, but reasonable when you first had the idea. If you're motivated by pining or what-ifs, then it's reasonable to be concerned -- about your current, not ex-, fiancee.

If you're motivated, however, by a desire to remove the one blemish on your record of amicable breakups, then the reasonable choice would have been to nip the impulse in the bud.

You and Annie parted on a sour note, and so you're stuck with this: There is someone out there for whom you conjure painful memories, someone who thinks her life is better without you, who has declined your friendship, apologies notwithstanding (they're past anyway, not prologue).
It's not the kind of news anyone wants to hear, but we all have people out there who don't like us or don't remember us well. It's a natural, unavoidable byproduct of having a personality, opinions, a soul.

That you apparently have just one Annie is, in fact, exceptional; even you point out that Annie and your fiancee are friends with "nearly all" and "most of" their exes, respectively. As in, not every one.

So maybe your "only problem" isn't Annie's silence; it's that you won't accept that you made "some peace" three years ago. Unless you're pining (see above), please content yourself with that voluntary, all-is-forgiven, perfectly fitting goodbye.

Yikes--more people who just can't let go. At least he's not lamenting that she hasn't accepted his Facebook friendship! I think Carolyn totally nailed this guy's hang up: he doesn't want to be someone's worst memory. Although by calling repeatedly, he's only cementing himself as her "crazy ex"--in her mind and her husband's.

Speaking of which, the only reason that I can see that after years he suddenly feels compelled to make contact is his impending marriage. It seems he wants to "resolve" this issue before entering this new phase of his life. What he doesn't seem to notice is that she's already been there, done that. He doesn't say whether three years ago she called him as her own transitional soul-purging or whether he contacted her when he heard she was married. But in any case, she's clearly moved on--and considering she has not one but two ex-fiances, it's probably a good sign that she's showing commitment to her actual marriage, and not the potential ones that never came to be.

It's really, really, really OK for things to end, for people to move on! When we say "let's be friends," I think that MOST of the time we really mean one of two things:

1) "I'm so used to having you in my life that even though I don't want a relationship with you, I'm not ready to cut the apron strings"

2) "You're not a bad person and I wish you well in your future life. Though I don't actually care to be a part of it."

and very rarely

3) "I love you so dearly as a friend that I misinterpreted my feelings as something else, and now that we've moved our relationship that direction, I realize I was mistaken. I wish we could go back to the way things were, even though I know that's impossible." But I would contend that if you've gotten to the point of a (broken) engagement, this one's no longer viable

Speaking once in six years doesn't exactly speak to a deep desire to cultivate a friendship. Even if they got back in touch, I think he'd be surprised to find she's probably very different person than the woman he loved probably close to a decade ago, before their relationship went sour.

I wonder if this guy's current fiancee is encouraging him to make amends and peace and move forward, or if she's annoyed by or concerned about his obsession, or if, worst of all, she has no idea about it. It's a LITTLE odd, isn't it, that he doesn't have a single thing to say about her, except he knows she's friends with most of her exes--suggesting that he's comparing the two of them to each other, and even sought the new fiancee's input on why the old one won't talk to him. Really? That's a little strange.

Also, the ex "apologized voluntarily"? As opposed to what? The involuntary relationship he's trying to coerce her into now? I wonder what he has been doing in the intervening years, on this "long personal journey," and why it seems like it just took him in a giant circle?

And in conclusion, I am skeptical of people who say "autumn" in print when they would almost certainly say "fall" in conversation. Minus 2 points for pretension!

On being second to last....

Carolyn is on vacation, so she posted a couple longer letters from readers (ones that didn't require answers) to fill the space. I thought this one was really sort of lovely, on why your ex married the next person he met after you......(the cartoon was published in the Washington Post next to the column--there is typically one for every column. It of course is the property of the artist and/or the Post, and not me, but I hope they won't mind me sharing it since I link back to where it's published).

Not that you ARE my husband's ex, but if you were:

1. He liked you a lot, but he had quirks you kept trying to change, quirks he didn't want to change. And I thought the same quirks were delightful. I really don't mind hearing his favorite anecdote over and over -- he and I have been together for seven years, I think I've heard it a million times now. I can recite it. I still think it's a great story.

2. You had quirks he didn't mind in a girlfriend, but made him want to kill himself when he considered marrying you. And they weren't bad things -- your obsession with making task lists, for example -- so he didn't feel like he had the right to ask you to change. His one attempt at asking you not to make lists for him didn't go well, and that wasn't your fault, but that didn't make him want to spend a lifetime looking at a fridge full of lists.

3. Your sex drives were different (yours was . . . higher). His and mine are compatible. 'Nuff said.

4. You thought his family was kind of tacky. They are. But I'm from an equally tacky family, and so I fit better from almost day one.

You are prettier than I am, sexier than I am, and a better person than I am, if I'm going to be honest. When I met you I went home and cried, because I could not fathom why he wanted to be with me, with someone like you in his past!

But he and I are two peas in a pod, with the same sense of humor, approach to life, attitude toward marriage and chores and money, the works. You had none of those things, just love and affection. That's not enough. The only way you could have married him was to resign you both to endless counseling and a nagging suspicion that a marriage shouldn't be so hard.

~It's Really Not You

There were never such devoted sisters....

Yesterday Carolyn Hax (one of my new favorites) addressed an issue that, unfortunately, is more common than most of us realize: what happens to friendly and familial in-law relations in the wake of divorce? Everyone gets up in arms about the feelings of the children, when the real victims here are the ever-loving "I always wanted a sister"s-in-law torn asunder by the broken bond.

I shouldn't be sarcastic--it's a real, and potentially painful issue, if the intermediary spouse (sibling to one, ex to the other) chooses to make it one. Here's what I mean:

Dear Carolyn: My husband says that since my two brothers divorced, their exes are out of our family. I am nice to my brothers’ new girlfriends, but they were both married for 20 years, and I think of the exes as my sisters.

Also I’ve known my husband’s brother’s ex-wife since junior high school — longer than I’ve known my brother-in-law. We still hang out, and I consider her a good friend.

My husband says my loyalty should be with the new women and none of the exes.

I don’t want to be thought of as disloyal, but I have a very hard time with this situation. I don’t want to have to pick one side.

— Troubled

Carolyn gives a good answer, as usual: I don’t want to take sides, either, so I’m going to have to figure out a nonpartisan way to point out that your husband is being a complete tool.

In short, she says, unless the divorce was caused by "inexcusable" behavior on the part of the ex-in-law, the middlespouse (or middlespousal sibling) has the responsibility to be mature, polite, and respectful of the other parties' continued affection for one another. In Carolyn's more succinct words, "Memo to your husband: Where one spouse shows integrity [by treating friends with the same affection and respect, regardless of their familial status], it's on the other spouse to show some respect"

Things get especially thorny when it's the middlespouses themselves who caused the breakup of the marriage. I know someone for whom this is an issue: her brother was unfaithful to his wife (beloved by the extended family), leading to a divorce , and is now married to the other woman, whom none of them enjoy. She refers to both women as her sister-in-law, sometimes qualifying the ex as an ex, sometimes qualifying the current with a scowl. An ever-thickening plot...

How do you handle anger at a sibling, whom you love, for breaking the ties that bind you to the sister you never had? Worse, how do you forgive your brother for being the jerk that cheated on your friend? Is blood thicker than water even when it seems to be just messing with everyone?

Possible solution: brother and new wife move out of state, returning for occasional visits, while ex-sister-in-law remains nearby, coming over often for visits and graciously and lovingly accomodating niece and nephew sleepovers.

Almost everyone kind of sort of wins!