My (26f) boyfriend (30m) hangs out with his ex-gf when he goes home for the holidays. It upsets me. Am I being jealous and/or controlling?

Throwaway since my friends know my account name.

So I met my boyfriend ("Alan") in graduate school three years ago, and we have been together for 1 year. We have great chemistry, a happy/healthy relationship, and have plans for the future.

Alan has a tight-knit group of friends that he's known since high school/ college. This includes his ex-girlfriend (let's say "Jane"). Whenever he goes home, for the holidays or over summer break, he mostly hangs out with his friends and crashes at their places. They go to beach houses and drink till 5 am; he very much looks forward to this time.

I found out early in our relationship that he has a long history with Jane that makes me feel insecure. They dated in high school/college, but she cheated on him with his best friend. They stayed friends in college, and he even went to visit her in Europe when she studied abroad. She dated two of his friends during this time (who are part of the same circle). After college, Alan and Jane tried dating again for a year. It didn't work out. He started dating someone else (Chelsea) afterwards. He told me (when we were just friends) that he would have threesomes with Chelsea and Jane. The last time he had sex with Jane was two years ago (a year before we started dating) after one of those long nights of drinking, and it was just them two (he had broken up with Chelsea by then).

So early in our relationship, I put the pieces together and realized all the stories regarding the threesomes, his ex from high school, his ex after college, it was all the same girl who he still hangs out with. At this point, I was cautious about dating him. He reassured me it wasn't a big issue and that he would stop interacting with her. She texted him asking how his new relationship was and he told me he didn't answer her. I have no reason to distrust him. He's open and honest with me so far (although initially it was hard to trust him, as he pursued me while he was in a long-distance relationship with Chelsea)

Anyway, he's back home. He's at a friend's house and she's there. I'm upset. He tells me he didn't know she was coming, but he has no where else to go because all his friends are there and basically was like "what do you expect me to do?" I was pretty upset that he was hanging out with her within 24 hours of being there, so he finally agreed that he would leave and go visit his brother who lived a 1 hour train ride away. I felt terrible though, for making him consider leaving his group of friends. (He ended up staying because she left after two hours). So I want to know if I'm being overly jealous and controlling.

His mom wants us to move to his home town after our PhD (in a year and a half). I love the city and am seriously considering following him there since I know how much more his friends mean to him (than mine do to me). But I'm worried the situation with his ex-gf is going to feel worse. I can't imagine having to be at the same parties or events as them for the rest of my life and pretending like I'm ok with it all. But I also can't imagine forcing him to not hang out with his friends. So not sure how to resolve this. Any advice and/or insight from similar situations?

TLDR: my boyfriend has a on-again, off-again relationship that spans 12 years with a girl in his close group of friends. He hangs out with her when he goes home twice a year. I get overly anxious about this, but don't want to be controlling. How to resolve this?

Submitted December 22, 2019 at 04:52PM by thr0waway1288 https://ift.tt/2scJiWl