exes

The man who raised Kate Hudson since she was a toddler and who she considers her dad, Kurt Russell, told a Canadian entertainment show that he loved all of her exes. He said he still loves the starlet's ex-husband, Chris Robinson, who's the father of her 7-year-old son, Ryder, and had a good time hanging out with ex-boyfriend ARod. Lucky for Kate, who is currently pregnant and engaged to Matthew Bellamy, her dad also thinks Matthew is a "wonderful guy."

I would think most fathers wouldn't be too keen on the guy who broke their daughter's heart, but maybe if the daughter was the one doing the breaking up, it'd be a different story. Also, for dads with only daughters, the boyfriends can act as surrogate sons, and losing them after a breakup can be tough on the fathers.

What does your dad think of your ex-boyfriends?

A good relationship is hard to come by, but falling for someone a friend once loved, liked, or entertained can cause a riff in the best of friendships. As friends, we'd like to think we'd rise above it — say something like "If he has to date someone, I'm glad it's you" — but emotional virtue is easier in theory than real life.

If we can't curb our emotions then we can at least try to control our behavior, leaving us with two options: keep quiet and hope it blows over, or ask a friend to put your friendship first by refraining from future flirtations. Exes and longtime crushes are obvious contenders, but platonic friends and one-night stands can be just as contentious. If you've ever drawn a line, what guy was it for?

This question is from a Group Therapy post in our TrèsSugar Community. Add your advice in the comments!

I've been asking myself this question a lot lately. I loved this man that didn't love me. We were never "official" but we had a "thing." I was amazed that I even loved him because I always actually doubted love.

Anyways, things went sour and he treated me like crap. I could make a huge list. But besides that he is a great guy. I can't help but to love everything about him, even his faults. Recently, after popular disbelief, he in fact did come back to me twice. The first time I put no effort into it, but now since the second time is occurring, I'm wondering if I should try. What I'm trying to say here ladies is would you let love control your choices? Would you do anything for someone you love? Despite his past actions and probably future actions, would you take him back? Or am I just a hopeless romantic whose head over heels crazy in love?

Have a dilemma of your own? Post it anonymously to Group Therapy for advice, and check out what else is happening in the TrèsSugar Community.

This question is from a Group Therapy post in our TrèsSugar Community. Add your advice in the comments!

I just started seeing a new guy (seriously — we've only been seeing each other for a week). He's great: smart, sexy, with an admirable career and a killer sense of humor. One thing has begun to bother me, though. On our date last night, and in several of the texts and e-mails we've exchanged over the last few days, he has asked several out-of-the-blue questions about my ex.

Full disclosure: my ex is my best friend, and we hang out all the time. There's no more sex between us, so there's nothing to worry about there. Still, I can't fully comprehend why this new guy keeps asking about what we do together (hang out), how our relationship works now (beautifully), what I bought my ex for his birthday (nothing), and if we did anything for Valentine's Day (nope).

Is this his way of sizing up the competition, or is he genuinely just curious? Of course, I'd love to flatter myself and think that it drives him crazy to think of another guy in my life, but it's still way too early for him to have developed those strong feelings. Right?

Have a dilemma of your own? Post it anonymously to Group Therapy for advice, and check out what else is happening in the TrèsSugar Community.

This question is from a Group Therapy post in our TrèsSugar Community. Add your advice in the comments!

I met my boyfriend studying abroad, and we fell in love and decided to keep things going between us (we were together for 4 months). During that time our relationship moved quite quickly, as we were both really in love and comfortable with each other. We're now together for a year, and he is currently serving in the military, and I am still at university.

OK, now for the ex; they were together for 7 years, and he was honest with me and told me that he had made her life hell, and he went to prison on drug charges and she left him. When I met him, they had been a part for almost 3 years. But when I asked about his past relationship, you could see the hurt he felt (he's clean and completely different to how he describes his old self). I knew he didn't have closure and could sense it, but he reassured me that he will never get back with her and that he loves me and wants to marry me, etc.

I'm not jealous nor am I intimidated by her, but I am of the opinion that exes are history. It annoys me when she sends him messages telling him she wishes he were there and sends him songs they once liked, etc. But at the same time she says she's happy for him. He asked if it bothers me that she writes to him, and I said that I don't like it but that I will leave it to him to make a decision. How should I handle this situation?

Have a dilemma of your own? Post it anonymously to Group Therapy for advice, and check out what else is happening in the TrèsSugar Community.

This question is from a Group Therapy post in our TrèsSugar Community. Add your advice in the comments!

I'm in a great relationship with a guy I've been with for a year and a half now, but recently a guy I used to like told me he's liked me for some time but is only telling me now.

I was really into him, but we never dated and I still wonder what it would be like if we did. I don't want to break up with my boyfriend because I really do love him.

But I just feel so torn up inside about this new information that my old flame has told me. What should I do?

Have a dilemma of your own? Post it anonymously to Group Therapy for advice, and check out what else is happening in the TrèsSugar Community.

This question is from a Group Therapy post in our TrèsSugar Community. Add your advice in the comments!

I met this guy last semester because he was a friend of a friend. I'll fast-forward through what happened: he liked me, I liked him, we got along really well/hung out a lot, then he started to ignore me, he dumped me for someone else, blah blah. Sounds pretty simple/painless, but it definitely wasn't (for me of course), and I'll just shorten the terrible experience because it's not my main problem anymore.

The problem is that since we are mutual friends, mostly every time I hang out with my friends, I have to hear about him, and that sucks after trying to get over him and having been hurt by him. My friends don't know what he did, because the whole time we were "dating" (if you could call it that) I kept it under wraps and presumably so did he. So no one really knows that I'm secretly carrying this burden, and I don't want them to know because I'm not trying to start any drama, and I don't want to spoil their friendship with him with my issues. Plus they're new friends (also just met them last semester), and I feel it would be too much too soon to be like "ummmm can you never talk about him around me? Thanks."

So what ends up happening is me nodding and grinning and bearing it whenever they speak about him (because they assume he and I are friends and that I'd want to hear). It's gotten to the point where I've heard about his sexual endeavors through them, and it's getting to be a little too much to handle. I don't want to stop hanging out with them because they're very cool people, yet hearing about him constantly and what he's doing stunts my progress in getting over him and puts me on edge when I'm around them. How do I handle this?

Have a dilemma of your own? Post it anonymously to Group Therapy for advice, and check out what else is happening in the TrèsSugar Community.

In this social networking world we live in, the pain and awkwardness of breaking up is no longer just shared between your closest confidantes, it's shared with your hundreds of Facebook friends or, depending on your privacy settings, 500 million-plus Facebook users as soon as you change your relationship status from "in a relationship" (or worse, "engaged") to "single."

But thanks to all this easily accessible information, we have studies and infographics like this one from David McCandless, who with his team pulled data from more than 10,000 status updates to find out what time of year couples are most likely to break up. According to this data, breakups are on the rise right now up until two weeks before Christmas, when I guess people are too busy getting into the holiday spirit (or maybe flights have already been booked and gifts bought?) to break up. Then promptly after Christmas, the day with the least amount of breakups, comes the steady uptick to the Spring break(up) peak.

This info seems pretty accurate to me, but I know a lot of people whose breakups aren't immediately made public on Facebook, and/or they've disguised the change by deleting their account altogether or hiding their relationship status. I wonder if this study took those loopholes into account?

What do you think? In your experience, does this data seem accurate?

Source

This question comes from a Group Therapy post in our TrèsSugar Community. Add your advice in the comments!

My ex-boyfriend broke up with me on Sunday, and then wrote me an email on Monday morning explaining why he wants to be single — he needs to grow and mature and hang out with friends.  I obviously didn't reply.  

I have had an excruciating week, as anyone who has been through a breakup can understand.  We had been together for a year.  Anyway, on Wednesday night he wrote me a Facebook message saying, "You just want me out of your life?" I then blocked him on Facebook, only to wake up this morning to find he had written me yesterday twice but through my email.  

He asked me if I had read his first email, and then said something along the lines of, "Did you delete me from your life permanently?  I never meant for all these bad feelings to happen . . . I just realize that I can't be in a relationship right now and I need to grow where I'm at and discover new things.  I hope we can still hang out and be friends. I want everything to be okay."  

To me, this doesn't make any sense.  How can you be friends with someone who you have been intimate with?  I was with him for a year.  To me it seems like a bad joke.  I haven't replied and I just want to get over him.  A part of me wonders if he is still interested because he keeps contacting me, but he contacted me to say that he can't be in a relationship, so I don't know what his deal is. Is he pretending?  Is he just waking up now that he realizes I'm actually trying to move on?

Sorry for the pathetic situation. I do want to move on with my life.  It is just terribly difficult and he is confusing me.

Have a dilemma of your own? Post it, anonymously, to Group Therapy for advice, and check out what else is happening in the TrèsSugar Community.

Last night Jon Stewart hosted Comedy Central's "Night of Too Many Stars" to raise money for autism (though to be clear, the network is against the disease). It was a mix of typical telethon antics with the advantage of being actually funny.

One stunt was an auction to hire a celebrity to do the winner's bidding. Two women held Steve Carell's hand while he simulated an orgasm, but the woman in the above video paid $20,000 to have Chris Rock curse out her ex. And when I say curse, I do mean $%*& curse, so NSFW in an audio way.

If money were no object, who would you hire to tell off an ex? I call dibs on Mel Gibson!