how does it feel?

So how does it feel to find out your ex is getting married? How does it feel to find out another ex is getting married? From my experience as both the ex getting married and the one whose ex got married, it's sort of hard to put your finger on it. For me, it's a mixed bag of feelings that would sound like "err", "umm", and "eeeesh" if I were pressed to vocalize through them.

I heard about the most recent on Friday. At the time I didn't register the impact but since it's been skittering around in my mind all weekend, I'm realizing perhaps that immediate self assessment was premature. I think it is a good thing I have a shrink's appointment on Monday.

So let's count em up. I count three. Sure, there've been other guys I've dated who got married by now. Plenty of them. My first time guy, Army Bob, married a woman with the same name as me (and I married a Bob, Dr. Bob - one of life's wee tiny jokes). But Army Bob and I dated for less than a year and were totally out of touch as soon as it was over since I took off for college and he took off for the bottom of a bottle and signed up for the Army soon after. We had a few very minor interactions in the years after we broke up, and I only found out he was married many years later when we emailed briefly during his divorce before he went back to jumping out of helicopters over post 9/11 Afghanistan.

There was A.B., but that was an "on again off again" multi-state kind of thing, with the sum of "on" times adding up to a grand total of about 4 months, with 2 of them long distance. I didn't leave that relationship with any delusions that he had ever felt about me as I had felt about him. His marriage and my hearing of it was years and years and years after anything romantic between us ended, with plenty of time in there for any remaining hurt to have formed a nicely smooth scar.

Of the ones I know were significant on both sides, involved some objective signs of commitment, and which spanned more than 18 months, that leaves three.
Crazy, Flounder, and Tom.

Crazy psycho ex boyfriend (F_____) married my apparently equally crazy ex best friend (L_____). Both were significant relationships for me. I knew L______ from about 7th grade, was friends with her from 8th, and was best friends with her from at least 10th grade until my sophomore year in college. I met F_____ the summer after I graduated high school and he was my longest lasting relationship to that point. Also the most fucked up one ever. It lasted 2 years and some months, but taught me a lot about myself. Like that even at the age of 19 during one of the darkest periods of my life, I had the strength and clarity of mind and heart to ditch someone who was hot, talented, charismatic, and incredibly abusive. F and L hooked up about 6 months after F and I broke up and they got married just this past Fall.

Ex hubby Flounder got married within a month of our divorce being final. That was an "ummm", especially when I heard he had given her an engagement ring the month I moved out of our house.

And now Tom. We lived together for over five years, broke up and he had a new lady within a month (she's been referred to in this here blog before as "ass like an ibook" or "ibook" for short) Tom was seen on my campus flashing around ibook's picture and his "promise ring" a very short time later. They are getting married this summer, I was recently told, after something like a 2 year relationship, most of which it seems they were engaged (or promised) for.

I realize the timeline, both egocentrically for me and internal to their relationships, is a nontrivial part of my feelings about my exes getting married. It's the "right after we broke up" thing in part. But it's also the "you've only known her how long?" thing also.

Take Crazy F and my exBestfriend L. They got together way too soon after I dumped Crazy. I lost L as a friend because I couldn't live with knowing what horrible judgement she had. Crazy was abusive and she knew it. But they racked up about 15 years of courtship, breakups, reconciliations, and staged cohabitation before they tied the knot. I have to say, out of the three of the exes, theirs seems like the most adult timeline for marriage. I suspect it finally dawned on them that no one but them would be willing to put up with their respective whole lot of crazy.

As for the other two, I can only say eeeesh. I don't wish them ill, but I do find myself wondering what the fuck. Admittedly in both breakups, I had a new beau in short order. In both situations, I was totally smitten with my new fella. And I'm not 100% against marriage for myself or others, nor am I 100% convinced I'll never do it again. But as the saying goes, once bitten twice shy. I've been bitten twice, so I get legit claim to some serious shyness. When I reflect on the impact of those endings along with my upbringing, I sometimes think it warrants applause that I haven't developed an overt "philo-phobia".

Which brings me to the "errr" part. I question whether what I tell myself is a not unhealthy dose of hesitancy and skepticism is in fact an indication that I am poised on the cusp of embittered and jaded distance.