Joining The Ex-Girlfriends Club?

It May Be A Good Thing

(CBS)  Is it possible to embrace and even befriend your boyfriend's exes? Conventional wisdom might suggest, "no way." That's the topic Contributor Lisa Birnbach tackles in The Early Show’s “Life Matters."

Imagine you're at a party and your boyfriend introduces you to, not one, not two but three of his former girlfriends. They're smart, sexy and you want to them to evaporate. But you begin to make small talk and discover they're well, nice, very nice. This is the story of the ex-girlfriend's club.

Andrea, Lori and Brooke are best friends with one thing in common. His name is Barron. First, he dated Lori. Later, he shared a passionate bond with Brooke. After that he connected with Andrea. But he didn't end up with any of them.

Lori remembers her first kiss with Barron. “I was impressed. I thought he was very good kisser,” she says. “Barron is a fabulous kisser,” confirms Andrea.

“We really connected on a very emotional level, adds Brooke.

If you are expecting to hear a catty tale of claws scratching and fur flying, you'd be mistaken. There's no jealousy here. These gals actually adore each other! It was Barron who introduced the very different women to one another. Lori is a writer, Andrea, a lawyer, and Brooke is an actress.

When Brooke met Lori she said she “wanted to hate her. I mean she's the ex-girlfriend. I'd heard wonderful things about her. She's so intelligent. That's all I kept hearing. She's intelligent, she's successful and I was like, who's this? You know, she's my competition. But we totally bonded.”

They never planned on becoming friends. But as it happens, Barron has great taste in women.

“Whenever you think about the exes of people that you've dated, you either want them to just have never existed or you want them to be dead," says Lori. “But the irony is that in meeting the other women, not just superficially but becoming friends with them, you get to know what it is that you do have.”

Psychologist Debra Cooper says it may surprise you to learn that it's healthy to hang out with your boyfriends' exes -- meeting them can calm your insecurities.

“We imagine that this person has got everything. They've got the best body, they've got the right job; they've got the money. They've got the admiration of their peers. And generally when you find out; they're just a real person, just like you with frailties, it makes you happier,” says Cooper.

“Brooke and I are very different,” says Lori “I mean, Brooke is this incredibly, you know, she's got this Betty Boop body. I have a boy body. We're just we're very different looking.”

“She's thin. I'm curvy. I'm jealous of her thinness,” says Brooke. “But we both have hair,” adds Lori.

But come on, it's normal to feel threatened by the woman who captured the heart of the man you loved and lost.

“The usual tendency is that there's jealousy about the ex. It's a more mature level to take your relationship to, to be friends with your exes,” says Cooper.

“We're women who are secure enough in our own right not be overly threatened by each other and be able to see that which is good in each other, says Andrea.

When asked if this is a way of his having control over their lives, all three ladies burst into laughter.

Perhaps most surprising, all three remain close to Barron, who declined to be interviewed for this story. The ladies are grateful for their friendship and have become a support group for one another.

“These are my biggest supporters with guys now,” says Lori. “So it's sort of like having insight into your relationship that you would never have otherwise.”

If you think you might not be "grown-up" enough to handle meeting your boyfriend's former lover, keep this in mind, the first step to being that "mature" is to recognize that it's OK to feel apprehensive. But after you meet the ex-girlfriend, the next step could be wonderful. You just might have a terrific new friend, a friend to help you understand the person you're in love with.

If your boyfriend doesn't want you to meet his ex-girlfriend, although he says they are friends, it may mean there are still feelings there. Either she has feeling for him or he may still have feelings for her. If it's over and they remain friends, you should be included.

The trick is not to be insecure. Women can be very intimate with other women. They can share things with each other that men wouldn't even think of sharing. If you have self-confidence and self-esteem, you could be opening yourself up to friendships that are more open and honest.