"All my exes live in Texas."
- Country singer-songwriter George Strait (1952-)
"Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough."
- American journalist Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900)
Everyone knows couples who married just once and have been together for 50 years. How lovely for them. But for the rest, the world can be a Facebook nightmare of exes and exes once removed. Heartbreak happens. We lick our wounds and move on. A good many of us, dreamers that we are, keep searching for our soulmates. Again. And again.
Consider the following: Ottawa's Vanier Institute of the Family reports that 26 per cent of women and 37 per cent of men "enter into a new conjugal relationship within three years of marriage dissolution." After five years, those figures jump to 36 per cent for women and 51 per cent for men. And if a first marriage has lasted 20 years, 69 per cent of women and 82 per cent of men will partner up again. What's more, writes sociologist Ching Jiangqin Du in her thesis for the University of Western Ontario, serial cohabitation is significantly on the rise in Canada.
The fact is, if you've put a few years behind you, chances are you've put a few long-term partners behind you, too. This was driven home the other day when a friend casually referred to an incident that happened "a wife ago." He is now on his third. No one in the assembled group thought this at all odd. In another recent gathering, I discovered I was a relative marriage virgin - the only one to have done the deed a single time. (I did cohabit with a Cuban bongo player for a couple of years when I was in my 20s during my exotic boyfriend phase. I am now cohabiting again - so I'm catching up, but without the bling to show for it.)
The math is boggling. Think of the organigram involved, an exponential tangle of arrows and pointers and dotted lines. And all those exes out there are a testament to sweet folly or bitter failure, still lurking in a far distant corner of our brains and hearts.
Some exes, of course, are more significant than others. And these relationships can loom large in the minds of our new mates - especially recent couplings that consumed a good number of years. So if they haven't met in person, our fresh partners likely have a skewed version of their earlier counterparts. They hear stories. They make judgments based on faulty information. It's inevitable.
As honest as I hope I am in conveying my ex, I've no doubt gritted my teeth a few times when spewing out his name. Sitcom characters you never meet - think Maris, on Frasier - are much richer fodder for humour or derision than those who appear on the screen.
My current partner and I made a conscious decision, therefore, to meet each other's most recent ex. Was it awkward and a little intimidating? You bet. Did I calculate her weight in my head? Absolutely. But the meeting also demystified her and turned her into a human being. As for my partner, my meeting his ex represented a kind of closure that served to normalize us as a couple. If she's going to be a part of his life - and she always will be, in some capacity - it's important for all of us that I can put a face to a name.
As we transition to new partners, we have a choice. We can keep significant exes siloed and removed, or we can gingerly incorporate them into our doings. They don't - and shouldn't - take up residence in our back pockets. But they deserve a place in the landscape of our lives all the same. It's a show of respect for all parties involved and a reflection of our willingness to let the past go. I know the next time I meet her, for instance, I won't feel the need to size her up. She will just be a fact.
Baggage is us - but how much we end up carrying is a personal choice.
rharrisadler@hotmail.com
