TELL ME ABOUT IT

Dear Carolyn: I have been dating my boyfriend for about a year and a half. Things have been going well but recently he began expressing to me that he was uncomfortable about the fact that nine years ago, I used to date the brother of my now-brother-in-law (through my sister’s marriage). My boyfriend said he is uncomfortable being around him at family events. It was a serious relationship at the time — we lived together — but both of us have more than moved on since then and even hung out as friends on multiple occasions.

My sister’s husband comes from a pretty fractured family and his brother is really all he has. Also, my sister is very close with her brother-in-law.

My boyfriend has not had many relationships and I’m not sure he has had many encounters with exes. I would like to keep up our family traditions, such as Sunday family dinners, which the brother and his girlfriend of three or four years attend. He and his girlfriend don’t seem to mind about our past at all.

How do I handle this? With a more mature boyfriend or a time machine. You handle this by not budging, in the kindest and unbudgingest possible way.

If nothing sketchy is going on between you and the ex, then the onus is on your boyfriend to accept that your ex has a valid place at your table – and if something sketchy happening, then the onus is on him to break up with you.

Your boyfriend may well be new to this whole dating thing and its complexities, but that’s grounds for sympathy – not license to bust up Sunday dinner. He’s also not new to you or to this situation.