Here's the thing. My current girlfriend has forbade me talking with my ex, which is difficult, as we pretty much grew up together and she's in the same friendship group I've had for 18 years.

I'm 33, my girlfriend is 39, and we have been dating for 2.5 years. I love her fiercely; we share a home and pets; and we've been on the baby-making wagon (for about 8 months now). Before I was with her, I was in my first lesbian relationship. My ex and I were together for 8.5 years (almost all of my 20s), and have known each other since being friends in high school and, later, through all the coming-out tribulations. By the time we broke up, the relationship had been dead for a while (no sex for months—never good!), and while she had fallen in love with someone else (who she's with now, and we're all on very friendly terms), I was technically the one who pulled the plug, and we both agreed it was best. We'd basically grown apart and become better friends than lovers. We had a good amount of time away from each other after breaking up.

Now, my current girlfriend has forbade me from talking with my ex, who I'll occasionally chat to on email about mundane things. ("How's the new job going?" "Did you see so-and-so's hair?") The thing is, this person is someone I've been friends with since I was 16, someone who is in my very close friendship group. There is zero attraction; and I'm very glad I'm out of that relationship.

While I want to be considerate of my girlfriend's feelings (for example, at the request of my partner, I sat down with the ex two years ago and told her I couldn't see her alone because I was prioritizing my current relationship), I also feel like I'm being controlled a bit. She still talks to her ex from a long-term relationship (nine years), and I have no problem with it. I love my girlfriend so much that we're trying to have children together; I keep telling her she has nothing to worry about. She also says that she doesn't want me talking about her to anyone at all whereas I just assume she occasionally talks about me to her friends—it seems healthy and natural.

What's your perspective on this?

Another Dykey Drama

My response after the jump...

Run, ADD, run.

Your girlfriend isn't worried about you fucking your ex, ADD, because what's at issue here isn't her supposed insecurities where your ex is concerned or a more generalized anxiety about sexual infidelity.

The issue is control.

You're smart enough to see that you're already being controlled "a bit," ADD, but you're either not smart enough to see where things are headed or you just don't wanna to see. By forbidding you to be around your ex, your current girlfriend effectively isolates you from from your ex and others in your friendship group. (You're not gonna be able to hang out with the old gang much if you're not supposed to see your ex ever, right?) By demanding that you not talk "to anyone at all" about your relationship with her (hope she's not reader!), your girlfriend prevents you from getting the kind of support, feedback, slaps upside the head, gut and/or reality checks, etc., from outside parties that we all need about our relationships and that are, in your words, only healthy and natural. (I'd include "absolutely necessary" and "utterly crucial.")

Isolating a romantic partner from her friends and preventing her from getting support—those are red flags, ADD, signs that you are in a relationship with a potential abuser. And here's my prediction: things are likely to get worse after you get pregnant and worse still after the baby arrives. The more difficult it becomes to extricate yourself from a relationship, the more demanding, irrational, and just generally batshit an abuser typically gets.

My advice: stop trying to get pregnant. Tell your girlfriend that, as much as you love her, you have dealbreaky concerns about the way she tried to isolate you and the double standards she's imposed on you. If she gets to talk to her ex, you get to talk to your ex. If she gets to confide in friends and family, you get to confide in friends and family. Both points should be non-negotiable and if she can't wrap her head around that—if she can't see what's wrong with the way she's been treating you—then you really have no choice but to end this relationship.

Protip: beware a sudden and potentially insincere 180. Your girlfriend might lift the ex-girlfriend fatwa just long enough for you to get pregnant and then start right back in with the controlling behaviors. I would urge you to unpack these issues with a decent couples counselor at some length, ADD, before you risk having a baby with this woman. Your girlfriend needs to see what she was doing and you need to witness her having a great, big, fat epiphany about just how shitty she was being before you risk the lifetime entanglement of having a kid together. And you need to tell her, with your counselor there to bear witness and help facilitate, that you are not going to stay in an abusive relationship. Make sure she understands that if her crazy and controlling shit ramps back up, you are out—baby or no baby.

Good luck.