Well, are you okay with dating a man who is still in love with his xwife?

No way in hell would I be okay with that, and he's just feeding you b.s. He's trying to make you seem like a crazy person because it's "normal" since they have kids.

Love is a single word to describe a huge array of complex emotions. It can be over simplified to mean a romantic/sexual love when it does not always mean that (as you noted when talking about family etc).

I think there are two important issues here. The first is trust. Do you trust that your husband is over his ex and is fully committed to you as his sole partner? The second is how you feel about the words he uses with his ex, if you find them too strong, is he willing to modify the language that he uses to her (and in reference to her)?

If you do not trust him or he is unwilling to take your concerns and emotions seriously enough to try to change his future behavior then you two may have a lot of work to do to get back to a good place.

My husband told me the same thing near the beginning of our relationship, that he would always love the mother of his child. And although I was upset I related to it in a way that I too will always love my ex’s but it is not a sexual love but one that cares for a person I spent a lot of time with and grew with. These days my husband actively avoids anything to do with his ex and tells me he hates her. He had told me how everything would be easier if she were dead. I have not followed up asking him if he still thinks he loves her, as frankly I don’t want to know the answer and it would do me no good knowing it. I know that he loves me, I know he is devoted to me, I know that he would never go back with her. These are absolute truths I have no doubt in.

Really!!?? What a load of crock! He is playing you. There is no way in hell that I would EVER say that to my ex because..i no longer love him. We have 2 kids and if he ever said that to me..id tell him to get over it because I dont feel the same way.

If my partner said that to his ex (moot point cuz im no longer with him), I would be gone. If he still loved her..then he needs to not be with anyone else. Pretty damn simple.

This isn't about trust, this is about he buckets of bullsheet your DH is handing out. He clearly is still enmeshed with his ex. And he is dismissing your concerns because..you know...you don't have your own kids. So what do you know about any of it, right?

On the plus side, he is giving you a clear view of what your future with him will look like. Use that info wisely. Find someone else who puts you first.

The I love you doesn't bother me as much as this comment, "He has said many times before that he will always love his ex wife, that he had been with her for 10 years (separated for 5) and had two kids with her, that this means he will always love her." It's a red flag. He is a pig, plain and simple. He wants two wives, with you being the lesser one. Is he even formally divorced from her yet? You should not be wasting even one more minute on this man. Get out and go find yourself an available man with no children. And, you'd be better off alone than with some man who is going to be treating you and thinking of you as sloppy seconds the rest of his life. And, he is going to be teaching his children to think of you that way as well. With this guy, you might as well be his Handmaid vs. his SO.

☝this. Idvilen knocks it out of the ballpark.

I have kids with my ex and my husband has kids with his. The only I love you’s said are between us.

The kids have nothing to do with the relationship between the partners. My husband tried to say something like that at the beginning of our relationship, and I told him that was fine, that our relationship was just over then. I don’t compete with other women, never have never will. I am someone that needs absolute loyalty. If my other half can’t give me that then that is fine, I can and will find someone that will.

My ex husband once called me and told me that he would always love me, and this was after he had been living with his current wife (gf at that time) for a few months. I doubt she would have appreciated it. I didn't reciprocate.

My current partner would call his ex wife, "honey" and act all caring toward her on the phone. I told him he will not do this if he wants to be with me, and it stopped. Some men feel they are taking the high road, or they have the need to be a hero, or to be the loving, caring ex and father even after the divorce. For most of them, sex is their love language, so maybe he'd better think about how he'd feel if he caught you texting your ex that you were still hot for him, or calling him "sexy".

Maybe it is a male thing. But, he'd better change it for you when you ask him to. He needs to care more for how he makes you feel than how he makes her feel. If not, I'd be out.

He says he loves his ex??

My ex and I have utmost respect of each other. We are and have always been on best terms. I’d say we are the healthiest co-parenting exes I personally have ever met. Over the years we said some kind words to each other in particular contexts however if he said he loves me I’d be shocked because he has a loving wife. That wouldn’t be ok.

Recently my ex said to me that admires me and I am an amazing person. It was in a context of horrific event we had to go through. DD lost her DH in the most horrific event that I wouldn’t wish on my enemies. She was in a terrible shape and was on medical leave. We both had to be there for her in all kind of ways. It was the most horrible thing we both ever had in our co-parenting life.

My ex was totally impressed how I handle it and dealt with DD and continue dealing with it (she is ok now, it’s been a year). As much as he is there for DD he couldn’t always come up with ways to deal with. But even in his expression of gratitude he’d never say he loves me. Because he does not. I don’t love him either.

If my DH said he loved his ex I’d be done. My DH is ok with my good relationship with ex but not with LOVE.

If your SO is just separated he might get together with her if he still loves her. I’d run. Run fast

People can be so dumb. It's ridiculous how quickly couples who are having issues divorce and move on...but not really. He loved her and likely still loves her but has you to fill his sexual needs now while she is still filling his emotional ones. When I see couples like this I always wonder why they ever divorced and why the new partner doesn't see how much of a third wheel they really are.

At least he's being honest and letting you know that this is how it's going to be. If it were me I'd package him and his belongings up real nice and give him back to her for Christmas.

Sad to say it looks as though this guy is enjoying the duality of two women vying for his affections. Previous poster is right. He is still father and husband in his emotional head, and. You are the new source of sex while he plays games and continues to figure out wha happened to his family life.

You have already made your feelings known and he has chosen to gaslight you with crap about love. I call BS. You are absolutely right to question his behaviour, his choices. Ex sounds like she is enjoying the attention.

It reminds me of Clinton saying 'I did not have sex with her' simply because he chose not to define a BJ as sex.

Consider yourself lucky you found out now that your 'partner' doesn't define partnership the way you thought he did. Decide if this is the way you want to be treated. Most of us would choose freedom.

Your SO is using his children as an excuse and gaslighting you by saying "you don't understand you don't have kids" its his cowardly way of avoiding the real truth...he still is emotionally invested in his ex.

I just asked my husband if after 16 yrs he still loves his ex. He said ' No but sort of..." We clarified he 'respects' rather than loves his ex as the mother of their shared children, because without her he would not have his sons. I accept this explanation.

However saying you still love your ex and refer to her with a pet name .... an invasion by NoKo would look like a picnic compared to my scorn. He uses an example of why he 'loves' her in terms you have not experienced. That is unfair. This is like saying "You have never eaten ginger cake and I have so I know what it tastes like and you will like it and have to accept my decision."

Personally I would ask him to make a choice. Me or not me. This isn't about him still 'loving' his ex or referring to her in pet names. This is about being 100% committed to you and right now despite his explanations his ex still has part of his heart. I would ask that he considers how this makes you feel. Good enough as a bed warmer and time occupier but because you do not share children means his heart will in part always remain with BM. This is one of my deal breakers. I compromised for years and gave in to my ex and DHs feelings and wants. It wasn't until I got to 42 yrs old that I stood up to DH -then BF- and said that I was not compromising on my realistic and equitable expectations. And he was pretty damned lucky he had stopped smoking years ago or that was another deal breaker. Then I felt an equal partner for the first time ever. And I love it! DH only loves one other woman and that is his mother.

Sammi, If you do go, I would look at this as a test for your husband not your troublesome SD.
You know where this will go with her eventually. Watch what your Dh does when it happens. Has he learned anything? If he starts joining up against you that would be the last time ever, ever.

Your SO is still serving as an emotional outlet for his ex, that is what the problem is, in my view. He was telling her he loved her to make her feel better. That's something that is only about their personal relationship and has nothing to do with the children. When you divorce you are no longer "family" with your ex, so you shouldn't still feel love for them. You can respect them, but telling someone you love them when they are upset is reserved for very close friends and family in my book.

Do divorced people without kids still keep in touch and tell one another they love one another? No, typically, they don't even keep track of where the other person goes. Having a child with someone shouldn't change the adult aspects of the divorce, which is the breakup of an emotional relationship. It might change the interactions you have with that person, but adult relationships should still look the same. I'll caveat that by saying that I'm not friends with any of my exes and feel pretty strongly that friendships with exes can't work. In my younger years, I know there were relationships that broke up, but which I held on longer than I should have because the guy insisted on staying friends and I wanted to seem like it didn't bother me to stay friends.

The challenge with having children with an ex is that you never really get that chance to separate and have no contact, so it's easy to maintain feelings that would naturally go away once you had stopped interacting with an ex. I realize it's a tricky balance, but I think it's one of the reasons that co-parenting relationships become so fraught is because people still hold onto feelings from the relationship. How many BMs act crazy because they still love their ex husband or still feel hurt over the breakup? How many BMs still use their ex as an emotional support, thus preventing him from moving on to someone else? I'm sure the same is true to BioDads, as well.

When I met my DH, he was still taking daily calls from his ex. He was mostly serving as a whipping boy for her and listening to her complain, but he did also try to make things easier on her by giving in to her demands. I told him that I wasn't interested in being in a relationship with a man who was still in a relationship with another women. He stopped taking her calls. He had, had other girlfriends before he met me, but apparently, he didn't get serious enough with them for them to notice how tied he still was to his ex wife. His ex wife was already remarried at that time, too. I used to ask DH, "what does her husband think about the fact that talks to you for hours each week about her life? If I were him, I wouldn't be happy about it."

I'm not divorced, so maybe I just don't understand, but I can't really understand people who are divorced, yet say "we're great friends now" and "we still love one another". Why didn't they try to work things out and stay married, then? Married life isn't all about passion and feeling madly in love all the time...a lot of marriage is the "love as friends" that your SO is still sharing with his ex.

I was married for 20 years and have two children with my ex-husband. There is no way I would ever say I love you to him because I don’t love him anymore.

Love is a choice. You cannot force yourself to love someone, but you can stop loving someone if you want to (takes time). He is choosing to keep loving her. At least he's being honest with you that he loves another woman.

You can do what works for you with that knowledge. You can accept being one of many. Or you can choose to stop loving him and hopefully move on to a binary love relationship.

When people have a "love relationship" that involves bumping uglies one cannot just go back to this is a platonic "love relationship".

Also, people need to be aware, esp. young, naïve, single women, that it is very possible for a couple to separate, with the understanding among both that they can take a looksee and experiment and see what’s out there, and then if they can’t find anything better, then they’ll just get back together in the end and stay married. They don’t tell the people they are dating this is the plan. Their only concern is to have fun and see what’s out there. And, along the same lines. . . you hear all the time about divorced couples having a go at a "pitty poke."

Given that sort of environment, I would say it goes without saying that if you are dating a divorced person and that person even remotely implies in any way that they are still in love with their ex-, you’d best be served by packing your bags and leaving while you still have some dignity. Why would you even want to remotely risk getting horribly dumped or getting pregnant and having this man go back to his “ex’,” or why would you want to risk a past “pitty poke,” along with all the details, being thrown in your face later by a vengeful SO or his ex-?

My brother just got divorced after 25 years, basically because his wife wanted to go-online and see if she could find a better deal. The first time, my brother forgave her and was willing to go to counseling to work it out. Months later when his wife approached him with the “let’s stay married and still do others’ deal,” he said enough is enough and he/they proceeded with the divorce. He was smart, but not everyone is. Move on, is right.

There are some of the reasons. That people objected to people playing Happy Family. There is more to it than they let on

IMO, you are wasting your precious time and you should pull the plug!

Before marrying DH I was involved with a man who was divorced with 2 teenage daughters who he poisoned against their mother so I didn't have to deal with her ever. All I heard is what a whore this woman was and bla bla bla.
Except I did have to deal with her because despite what he said to me, I knew he was in love with his ex wife and pinning away for her immensely. He would recollect their happier times to me and never stopped to think how that made me feel. He talked about her so much it was nauseating. I ignored it and we continued on dating for about 3 years. One day out of the clear blue he dumped me like it was nothing. In fact, it was via text.

His ex went on to marry the man she left him for and that nearly broke him. He became so upset he couldn't find his own happiness. So I am glad now that he dumped me, there truly isn't enough room in the emotional human heart to be splitting those kinds of feeling among multiple people. Someone gets hurt and if he isn't over her after 5 years, he will probably always carry a torch and any children he has with her will remind him more of her especially difficult if the child looks like her.

"He had given his child support payment and she was emotionally distraught."

I'm curious as to why BM was "emotionally distraught" by receiving the CS? Why would BM be distraught over getting a routine CS payment? I could understand being distraught if she really needed CS and feared it wasn't coming or he wasn't paying and in arrears, but you indicate he sent CS (or at least sent for this month).

I could even understand stand a BM sending a heart ( hey, I imagine most CPs are loving the sight of the monthly CS check, yep loving that money). Doesn't necessarily mean BM 'loves' her ex, could just be BM loves getting CS

So the more I thought the more curiosity grew. So the BM sent a heart because she got her CS. Fine, dandy. But why was she "emotionally distraught" over getting the CS and why was your partner calming her distraught with " I love you , nerd" ?

That just makes no sense. *shrugs*

Was CS payment smaller or actually bigger than expected?

Was she distraught due to unusual amount?

My exDH sent me and my DH unexpected Wedding gift: check for 1k. I was shocked telling him that it’s too generous and he responded that he and SM are just very happy for us. No he didn’t respond saying he loves me. So was BM distraught due to unusual amount?