After realizing his ex-wife was having an affair and divorcing her over a decade ago, this 42-year-old man fled his hometown for years. Yet, he eventually moved back, met his current girlfriend, Katie, and things seemed to be going fine in their relationship.
That was until he recently went away on a work trip, and when he got home, he found out Katie had actually invited his ex-wife, his ex’s affair partner-turned-husband, and their kids over to his place for a pool party. The real kicker? His girlfriend claims she had absolutely no idea she’d befriended his ex.
To give you some background, he actually caught his ex cheating on him 14 years ago, and he was understandably heartbroken. That’s why he tried to start fresh in a new place, but ultimately, he wound up returning to his hometown and buying a home with a pool.
Around the same time, he also began dating Katie, who is 33. They’ve been together for six months now, and he’s met nearly all of her friends. Obviously, though, his own ex-wife wasn’t included.
The bizarre pool party came to be when he traveled out of town for work, and Katie stayed at his house.
“We have done this before and never had issues. I trust her, and I need someone to feed my cat, so why not?” he reasoned.
Katie also eventually asked if she could invite a friend and their children over to hang out by the pool the same day he was supposed to get back from his trip. In this conversation, she mentioned her friend’s name, too, and he picked up on it being the same moniker as his ex-wife. But he didn’t read too far into it since it’s just a common name.
Anyway, he told Katie that it was fine, and after a long day of dealing with airline delays, he was finally ready to get home. However, he knew Katie’s friend was going to be there, so he put on his “game face” and tried to mentally prepare himself to be pleasant toward their guests.
Well, when he walked in the door, his girlfriend greeted him with a hug and a kiss. Next, she walked him into the kitchen to introduce him to her “friend,” and he came face-to-face with his own ex-wife and his ex’s now-husband, with whom she had an affair!
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He was so shell-shocked that he literally just stood there staring for 20 seconds before finally asking what they were doing in his kitchen. At that point, his ex-wife claimed she was Katie’s friend.
“I asked her and her husband if they realized that they were in my house, and they said yes. They said they didn’t know I was Katie’s boyfriend until they got there,” he explained.
He didn’t buy that and told his ex and her husband they should leave. This upset their kids, who were enjoying the pool, and his ex-wife’s husband didn’t make things any better. Instead, the guy just started making remarks to the children about him, like, “The bad man said you can’t swim anymore today.”
Even so, his ex’s family eventually left, and he was able to turn his focus to his own girlfriend. He asked her point-blank whether she knew her “friend” was his ex-wife, and Katie swore she had no clue. Apparently, they met at Alcoholics Anonymous, which doesn’t offer a lot of different meetings in their small town.
He admits that Katie was probably telling the truth, given she’s 11 years younger than his ex. Moreover, it’s not like he talks about his ex often, and he’s never shown Katie pictures from his previous relationship.
Despite that, he had a gut feeling that his ex knew Katie was dating him and asked whether his ex followed her on Instagram. It came out that his ex did, in fact, follow Katie, and to him, that was confirmation enough.
“If my ex is anything like she was back then, she lives her whole life on social media, and there is no way she didn’t know from the pictures on Katie’s Instagram that we were together,” he detailed.
Katie, on the other hand, was upset for a different reason. She felt like he totally overreacted and embarrassed her in front of their guests. This pushed him to point out that it was impossible his ex didn’t know they were dating and accused his ex of being creepy and using their friendship as a weird “power play.”
To corroborate his theory, he asked whether his ex had ever mentioned that he was her ex, and Katie confirmed that she never brought it up.
“Then, I asked Katie if she thought it was weird and creepy as [heck] that her friend had realized (beforehand or when they arrived at my place) that she was at her ex-husband’s house and decided to chill anyway, knowing I was on my way home,” he added.
Plus, if Katie and his ex had become close enough to spend time together outside of meetings, then the topic of romantic relationships should’ve come up. And a photo of him and Katie at a baseball game was even his girlfriend’s lock screen on her phone, which she admitted to showing to his ex at one point!
As he rattled off all these inconsistencies, it seemed like the gears began turning in his girlfriend’s mind. Nonetheless, she wouldn’t let go of the fact that he was “rude.”
“I was like, how do you not see the weirdness then?! Just, how can she not see how weird this is? It’s like a made-for-TV-movie level creepy. I literally can’t get my head around it,” he vented.
He truly cannot understand why his ex-wife, whom he hasn’t spoken to whatsoever in 12 years, has suddenly made a reappearance in his life now. As for Katie, she’s been staying at her own place, and they haven’t talked in days since the pool party incident.
This has left him “stewing” over the situation and actually considering ending his relationship. He’s just not sure if breaking up with Katie would be justified or a real overreaction.
Do you agree that his ex-wife likely knew he was dating Katie before the pool party? If so, why would she still go over? Did Katie do anything wrong here?
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By Katharina Buczek
Katharina Buczek graduated from Stony Brook University with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Digital Arts. Specializing in... More about Katharina Buczek
