The Sisterhood of the Fellow Exes
[00:00:00] Lara: And while I'm very much about encouraging sister exes to meet and talk and form whatever relationships that are useful to them for whatever length of time they are, I also want to honor that it is a really vulnerable thing to do, I don't want to shame anybody who hears this and thinks I don't want to do that I can't do that. Legit it worked for me It has worked for a lot of women that I have talked to, and I encourage you just to assess your own situation, weigh the pros and cons, but what I am hearing and what I am experiencing is that it is an extremely healing, positive, thing to do as you process a relationship that didn't go the way you thought it would.
[00:00:45] Nina: Welcome to Dear Nina Conversations About Friendship. I'm your host, Nina Badzin. Today's topic is befriending your ex's ex. I was so intrigued when my guest, Lara Starr, emailed me saying that she has written extensively in her sub stack, which is called It's kind of a long story.
And again, I've, explained this before, but I'd like to make sure people know Substack is a website that houses a lot of newsletters. My newsletter is also on there, mine is dearnina.substack com. And Lara's is, it's kind of a long story. substack.com. And she's written extensively about her friendship with a few fellow ex girlfriends of the same boyfriend. And she's also collected some other stories from women who have befriended ex boyfriends, exes. it's a mouthful, right?
Ex boyfriends, exes. And this works, of course, in reverse, and it works with all kinds of relationships. it also is a way that some friends meet. sometimes being the fellow ex friends of the same friend. That's its own thing too, but it comes from the same concept of having something in common with someone.
I guess starting with a negative, if you think about it, being in a former relationship of any kind with someone and having that in common and needing to heal from that. our episode is actually not so much about, breaking up, although that is part of what we're going to talk about, but it's, that potential friendship that is there with someone who has gone through a similar experience being hurt by the same person. Now, there may be some drawbacks to that, right? Like if the relationship stays way too focused on that hurt and just dishing about it and exchanging all the juicy details, that's maybe something you do in one or two sessions that's not a friendship.
Maybe it would be ill advised depending on the situation. But we get in to all of that. Lara is a publishing publicist and a former radio producer. And she really is a character. I think you will enjoy meeting her as I did. Welcome, Lara. I'm so glad you're here.
[00:02:45] Lara: Thank you. I'm so glad I'm here too.
[00:02:48] Nina: We're going to dive into this friendship angle that I teased in the intro. It's one I've never covered on my show before, and with almost two and a half years, that's really actually a hard job to come up with a friendship angle I've never done, and that is the friendship between. two Xs. So just tell me your story, how did this come to be?
[00:03:08] Lara: it's so interesting that you say this kind of friendship between two women who have what I'm now calling a mutual mistake, is that it isn't something you've heard before. and I started calling my sister exes, my sister exes, you know, we've all heard of sister wives that's in the news, you know, especially right now as we're recording.
but I'd never heard of this term before. I looked at urban dictionary. I put it in AI chat. The only thing I got was some obscure punk band from, Washington, DC called sister X. so I'm here to make that a thing.
[00:03:41] Nina: You should copyright that.
[00:03:48] Lara: but it has been a surprising and extremely significant relationship in my life for the last six months. And as I've been thinking about it and talking about it, it is not Uncommon. The more I talk about it, the more people tell me that they have these relationships and not everybody forms strong, ongoing friendships.
Sometimes it's just somebody who comes into your life as you're unpacking. What you're taking away from this romantic relationship. And she is there to validate, support. Listen, understand, everything from, I know to like, well, where were you on Valentine's day, 2022, you know, that kind of thing.
um, so the more I talk about it, the more my friends have, told me about. Relationships like this that have helped and again, some of them gone on, some have been very short, but I really don't want this to be like a let's talk about our cheating ex because everyone's got those stories. I want it to be about the women who validate each other through this process.
So what's my story? I dated Chris and I'm using his real name one of the reasons I'm doing this, is part of what has been so significant is when I learned what I learned from my sister X. I learned about so many lies I had been told and now Chris has gone on, he's married. He's living his best life according to him. But the reason he is doing that is because I was keeping his secrets without my consent. And that is what is driving me. It is driving me both to celebrate the relationships that I've formed between the women who have helped me process this and to reclaim my power by not holding his secrets I'm anonymizing people I am not in touch with, and who haven't given me their consent to do that. So I just want to put that out there off the bat.
[00:05:42] Nina: Has Chris ever said anything about the Substack?
[00:05:45] Lara: If he knows about it and has read it, which I highly doubt, we don't have a lot of friends in common. no friends in common, really. It hasn't gotten back to me and he's been blocked on all my socials and stuff like that because I just I don't need to hear from him. I don't care what his reaction is. It's not about him. It's about me and what the story I need to tell.
[00:06:06] Nina: Okay, interesting. All right, so you have this breakup, but maybe you were in contact with this friend or wasn't a friend yet before you broke up, so I'll just let you keep going.
[00:06:16] Lara: Yeah. So Chris and I met. in, February, 2017, my husband had passed away the year before and I had been with my husband since I was 18. So I was like a new baby dater at age 46. I'll be honest, I was kind of excited about it. I had lost a lot of weight. I look great. I thought, Oh my gosh, I've got so many cool people in my life.
I bet there's all kinds of friends to meet. Five minutes on match cured me of that. But I did meet Chris, he was only the second date I went on and we hit it off, off the bat. Witty repartee of like no coward and Nora Ephron category, things in common, totally my physical type. He actually looks a lot like my late husband and he looks a lot like my son's boyfriend.
So there's a lot to unpack there too. Anyway, we all have a type. We, dated on and off for about, five years the offs were always because of his drinking. I didn't see his drinking show itself as significant as it was for almost a year after we met when we were on vacation together in Barcelona.
And he was literally like stumbling down the hallway in his underwear drunk in the middle of the night. so after that. I kept dating him, obviously, but I wasn't going to move in with him. I wasn't going to live with him. I wasn't going to take it to a more serious level until and unless he addressed his drinking, which he never did. And what was curious is that he would break up with me after a drinking episode. and at the time I told myself it was because he knew he wasn't good for me. He wanted better for me. now, you know, who knows, but that was sort of the dynamic of our relationship. after about five years, were moving into what I thought was a post romantic relationship, friendship.
You know, we were seeing each other, spending time together, sometimes leaning on the benefiting part of the friends with benefits, but less frequently, but I really thought we had a solid friendship. in, sort of the first part of 2022, which would have been about five years into our relationship, and I thought, look at us all sophisticated going out as like X partners who can. Go out and talk about our past and wish each other well. And that is what I thought was happening.
So the other thing about Chris is he is a raconteur. He is a great storyteller, a great talker. I joke about, when I go on dates, they have to pass the Netflix test. Would I rather spend more time with you or watch Netflix For all of his flaws, of which there are many, and more than I knew at the time, Chris passed the Netflix test every damn day for five years. even when he was revealed to be an alcoholic, and even when he wasn't there for me the night a giant oak tree fell on my house and pierced my roof, which is a whole other side story.
You know, even, even, even, I could not deny The strong attraction and how much fricking fun we had together and how much I enjoyed listening to him tell these stories. And he talked about his exes a lot. it was all in the context of, stories about his past or things he had done.
There was sort of this cast of characters that, Comes with Chris that, that are all of his exes. So I knew the name, Susan, I knew the name, Monica, I knew the name, you know, Tracy, like I knew these names but of course I had never met any of them and they were sort of these mythic figures.
And the one who loomed largest in our relationship was Susan because she was the one he lived with for two years before he and I met. So I heard a lot about Susan and unlike his other exes he talked about, it wasn't kindly. And I got a lot of his versions of the stories of their time together. But I'm at a goth fest in Vallejo, California, which, you know, look at me, I'm not a goth, but I thought it would be fun. And Vallejo is about, 20 miles away from where I live. I knew that Susan and Chris had lived together in Vallejo. She's lived there for a long time. She owns a house there.
So I always had a little thought whenever I was in Vallejo, which wasn't very often that I might run into her. And on May 6th, I did. I'm sitting outside a cafe with talking to a girlfriend and I see somebody walk in the door of the cafe and I'm like, That's Susan. I have to talk to her. I'm too much of a drama goblin not to. Drama goblin is another phrase I think I've coined. So we'll,
[00:10:32] Nina: I've never heard that. I like, that. Yeah.
[00:10:34] Lara: I know, right? I even did a little AI illustration of it. It's hilarious. I get up and it's like a scene from a movie. I opened the door to the cafe and she comes walking right towards me. She's leaving the cafe. And I said, Susan, and she looks at me and I said, are you Susan? I'm Lara. I dated Chris after you did. her face gets kind of serious. She puts her hand on my shoulder and says, I'm so glad you're okay.
I'm like, what the heck does she mean by that? I was so in the moment. And so was she I cannot even adequately have described how bizarre it was to be like standing here talking to the mythic Susan.
Right. I said, you know, yes, I'm fine, but I would like to talk to you about him. You know, would you be open to that? and she said, she totally would. So. I called her, you know, a couple of days later and we had a three hour phone call. among the first things she said to me was, Oh, he didn't tell you he owned that house in Santa Barbara, did he? And I'm like, yeah, he told me he owned a house in Santa Barbara and he sold it.
And his divorce and his wife got most of the proceeds. Cause he said that was the right thing to do. she goes, he never owned that house. He rented that house. And I'm like, he showed it to me when we were in Santa Barbara. why would he lie about that? because there were plenty of things he told me about his past and about himself that were.
Less than flattering and less than savory, so I couldn't figure out why he lied about that. we talked for three hours. She told me a lot of other things he had lied about. you know, obviously I was reeling and I wanted to know more. So we met for dinner, another three hour dinner, she greeted me outside the restaurant with a book about narcissism. She's like, this was, this is a gift.
This was very helpful to me. As we were talking over dinner, the lies he told got a little more serious and a lot more serious. She had been in touch with his ex wife and they had sort of sister exed for a couple of years. it was hard to hear, but getting the truth was so helpful.
She's like, I have been there. I am here for you. And a lot of my other friends were super there for me, but we're sort of like enough already. Lara, we've been with you with on the Chris journey for 5 years, move on. We're ready to move on. And Susan. Um, understood why I wasn't ready to move on in a way that nobody else really did.
I even asked my therapist, is my friendship, with Susan healthy? And she said, well, I hope you'll move on to talking about more about Chris, but it's kind of like siblings in a family. Nobody else really understands. And that was really helpful framing for me.
[00:13:05] Nina: Now this is good for listeners to hear too, because I think that would be the natural question most listeners will have and then I have too is, I could see how it's really helpful for processing, and I've done this myself with like ex, uh, not ex girlfriend, like fellow ex, exes, but like ex friends of a common friend, it is helpful to process then it makes you feel like it's not just you, but I, I love that your therapist made that point about siblings in a family, and it is true, like that fellow ex, would understand what you're going through in a different way. Whether that is a friendship beyond helping you heal is, you know, I know you'll tell us, I'm curious if that's possible.
[00:13:43] Lara: And it was also super validating, And even when Chris and I were together and I did the, you know, Facebook stalking of the ex that a lot of people do, like, I thought, you know, Susan seems cool, you know, I think I would like her, like, I know Chris doesn't have very many nice things to say about her, but she seems cool to me, and It turns out she really was.
And so, after that dinner and reading the book, she was just so super there for me as I was processing this to be like, well, what about, well, what about, and sort of validating and coming out with more truths and really being supportive of me through this process. she was also in touch with another ex, named Crystal who had reached out to her after a sort of wild weekend with Chris and was like, I know you're not together anymore, but can we talk about this?
I just needed more truth to counteract the lies. I reached out to another ex, who's sort of a middle of the night thing. Like, I know you haven't seen him in a long time. I just found out some lies that he told me and I'm really trying to piece together what is true and what is not.
Can you talk to me? And that was Monica my third, uh, sister X she, wrote back in the middle of the night, yep, I'd be happy to, let's talk when we talked, I said, how long have you got? She said, 20 minutes, three hours later, we're still
[00:15:02] Nina: Of course.
[00:15:03] Lara: She hadn't dated him in a very long time, although he re showed up in her life later, long story. But again, to have that connection, to have someone who understood, to have someone who was there to support me during this swirly time and, you know, all these women I was meeting were like. You're cool. You're bright. You're savvy. You're not some like shrinking violet, you know, mousy woman who the Lothario came and sweet talked and stole her inheritance.
Which was incredibly, uh, validating. Over the course, of this past summer, when I was sort of a combination of Nancy Drew and the crazy ex girlfriend, like I'm putting all these sister exes together, they, they sort of ranked in terms of how close we got, how much our relationship, moved beyond Chris. and Susan really became my most significant number one Sister X.
We live close by each other. She came to my house warming party. we just went to go see John Waters together. We went to a museum like we're just legit girlfriends. And the Chris connection is. Significant, but it's not the only thing our friendship is based on. I was right when I was looking back at her Facebook, she is cool.
She is awesome. She is funny. and I'm so, so very grateful for that to, to have this friendship and to have one that is so. significant for me because it touches on so many significant parts of my life and what I've learned and my journey, So, she's coming to hang out with my family on Christmas. We are friends.
[00:16:29] Nina: You know, as you're talking, this makes me think of how every friendship starts with some context. So let's say you're college friends. If you never, like, and then college ends. If you aren't able to move that connection beyond like, Oh, we lived in that dorm. We had so much fun. Or we had this memory together.
We went to this party. If it always stays in nostalgia, same issue here, where if you were to only have the Chris piece in common, it wouldn't really move forward. But just like in those other relationships, if you can move beyond the original context under which you met, that's how you stay longer term friends.
It totally makes sense, the ranking, because it's chemistry, it's location, it's all these things. And to experience, uh, I'm not in,
[00:17:07] Lara: So yeah, so Susan and I have become actual friends what is so significant to me about this whole episode and really, and I'm sure you find this too in the work you do is the story of my fifties is the story of my friendship with women, even my friends who are partnered, their friendships have taken on a hugely more significant role in our lives in our fifties and especially true for people like me who are empty nesters and I'm not in a relationship it just feels like.
Okay. Middle aged women have just sort of collectively and unconsciously decided to like rise up and connect and lift each other in a way I didn't experience, in earlier parts of my life. So this is all like feeding into that dynamic as well even the sister exes I'm not in as close contact with for all the reasons that you suggested, you know.
Proximity and, you know, interest level, you know, all those things at the core, we are recognizing the sisterhood in each other I am here to show up to help you. I have been there and I'm going to, hold your hand through this very difficult part of your path in a way that nobody else can.
And I might let it go again once our work here is done. But for this moment, I am here with you. none of the women I reached out to were hesitant to do that. even though it brought up some, memories and feelings that were not always pleasant, their initial impulse was like, yes, this is another woman, someone on the spectrum of friendship who I can show up for and I'm going to, and that has been, beautiful for want of a better term.
and I don't know that it's something that men. Do for each other or would do for each other, especially coalescing around a fellow Ex, gentlemen, you're welcome to correct me if I'm wrong But I think there's just so much more Ego involved in it and They just want to show up to trash the ex which is not what i'm here for I mean sure we've done some of that and again, so I think that is unique quality of the kinds of relationships that women are
[00:19:09] Nina: women are, um, are drawn to. I love how you stated that expression, the spectrum of friendship. That's another good way of saying it. That's right. Like you don't have to be best friends for the connection to be worthy, for it to add something to your life, to, you know, you feel enriched by it. And even if it's for a short time, you have helped each other heal, and I love that you've been able to keep some of that for longer. I'm curious, since you've been writing about this on Substack for a little while, I gather other people have reached out to say, Oh, this has happened to me. Can you just tell me a couple of those stories?
[00:19:38] Lara: People have, reached out to me, which is why I'm learning. This isn't as uncommon as you would think. a friend of mine, she told me, she was starting to date a new man after she was on the tail end of a very messy divorce. And she said, if, there is an ex in his past who has something to tell me. Bring it on. I want to know, she did she connected with this guy's ex wife and his ex girlfriend, learned a lot of shady things and was able to cut off a relationship before it got. Significant or scary. Another friend of mine, connected with a sister ex from a guy she was dating for several years and was on the verge of living with and was really serious about happened to find some mail that led her on a path to the sister ex who he was seeing at the same time.
And they were like legit comparing notes. where were you on this day? And what did he tell you about this? And what about, and formed, a friendship that lasted quite a bit, you know, they talked about going camping together and they had fun and they also sort of ganged up to ambush him in a way that was, pretty funny too.
[00:20:48] Nina: This stuff could be, a Netflix series, it really could. I liked your Nancy Drew thing. Yeah.
[00:20:53] Lara: There is so much material here and Nina, legit, we could talk for hours. And so my sub stack is not paid. I'm not making any money off of this, but let me just tell you listeners, I am scratching the surface. So if you are intrigued, I encourage you to read more.
[00:21:09] Nina: Yes. And I will have all the ways people can find you, especially on your sub stack, but also on social media in my show notes. Is there any last thing you want to leave with listeners before we say goodbye?
[00:21:19] Lara: I want to honor how scary what the potential is for reaching out to a sister X to not work out. I'm very fortunate. The people I've reached out to have shown up and been, incredibly supportive and incredibly generous. And the information that they shared with me while scary and sorted was extremely helpful to me in my healing going forward.
And while I'm very much about encouraging sister exes to meet and talk and form whatever relationships that are useful to them for whatever length of time they are, I also want to honor that it is a really vulnerable thing to do, and it might be Make you emotionally unsafe. It might make you physically and safe depending on the How bad your ex is I don't want to shame anybody who hears this and thinks I don't want to do that I can't do that Legit it worked for me It has worked for a lot of women that I have talked to, and I encourage you just to assess your own situation, weigh the pros and cons, think about all the ways that it might go.But what I am hearing and what I am experiencing is that it is an extremely healing, positive, thing to do as you process a relationship that didn't go the way you thought it would.
[00:22:33] Nina: A really good point. I'm glad you brought that up. Lara Star, that's such a great name too, by the way.
[00:22:39] Lara: When we were dating, my husband said to me, stick with me, kid. I'll make you a star.
[00:22:44] Nina: Oh yeah. No, you got to keep that name forever. And it's a way to honor him too. That's really nice. I really appreciate you reaching out. I'm so glad I wouldn't have found this story otherwise. It's a good reminder of listeners that you can always pitch me if you have a unique and interesting story.
And if it fits into all the shows I've done in a way that I've never done, like the way Laura did, that's. an amazing goal for me. So thank you. Thank you for reaching out and look forward to reading and seeing more.
[00:23:08] Lara: Thank you so much, Nina. And thank you so much for what you do to shine a light and celebrate friendships, which is so significant and important.
[00:23:17] Nina: thank you. Listeners come back when our friendships are going well. And you never know when you'll find those friendships. We are happier all around. Bye.