Like it or not, ex-es are free agents

Who belongs to whom, and for how long after they are no longer both in love?

This is a question that did not used to be asked. In simpler times, as Miss Manners recalls, you were either engaged, married or free to fool around with whomever you pleased. Teenagers who tried to expand human property rights to such intermediate stages as “going steady” or “being pinned” received a lack of sympathy from their elders.

“Why tie yourself down?” they would demand in their stern, parental way. “You should be playing the field.”

Miss Manners is not quite so simple as to have believed that all the field players were unattached. But all of those who were, were considered to be in the game.

Well, times have changed, along with the definition of fooling around. The sexual revolution may not have created universal satisfaction and contentment, as it promised; it may not have made romance carefree, as it promised; it may not have rid the world of tension and jealousy, as it promised; and it may not have made people more likely to stay in marriages that they entered into for more serious reasons than lust, as it promised.

But it did expand the notion of human property rights. Miss Manners is astonished at what modern people now consider romantic poaching.

“The man of my dreams has come into my life,” writes one Gentle Reader, “and during the courtship, he revealed to me that 17 years ago he briefly dated my cousin, but that they were not intimate.

“Since then, my family has found out about our relationship, and this particular cousin says that she cannot believe that I would date this man. Please allow me to mention that this same relative dated and had a baby with this man’s brother.

“Do you feel that I should break up with this man out of respect for my cousin?”

A gentleman writes that he met “a charming and attractive young woman at a wedding I attended unattached. She was there with an entertaining gentleman that she introduced as her ‘friend.’ The two of them were chummy with each other, but I would not describe them as being very close. By appearance, it looked like a first or second date.

“I am very sensitive to the sanctity of the relationships of others, so I wonder if it is appropriate for me to contact this woman.”

There were many other such inquiries. The lady who undertook to comfort the gentleman her roommate dumped and now felt it would be a betrayal if she responded to his otherwise welcome overtures. The groomsman who was told by the bridegroom to stay away from his ex-girlfriend. And so on.

Miss Manners is all for romantic ethics, and she appreciates her Gentle Readers’ gentle feelings. But she is afraid that if romances can only occur with the sanctions of previous or tenuous connections, the world will go around a lot slower than it should.