With the new guy?

First, before folks get to moralizing, everything about the premise is implausible and unlikely, existing exclusively in “What If Land”, so yeah, I’m just going to run with the premise. And jokes aside, I’d frame the question less crudely and more broadly, but for the purpose of the post it’s a simpler to say it that way.

I'd ask this to two specific exes, and only because I already have an idea of the answer, but with the guaranteed accuracy I’d like to know for sure. In both cases they cheated on me with the guy they left me for before they left me, and they married both of them. By all accounts both marriages were/are extremely unhappy.

The first left me for a fucking skinhead of all people and flat out ghosted me. This was after 4 years of a miserable off and on relationship I wish we’d never began in part because we’d been good friends prior and had known each other for years.

Wonder of wonders, they moved to Arkansas. Or Alabama. I forget. Anyhow everything I heard about them was all bad and dude wound up vanishing for a few years before they found him dead with his head still hanging from a tree.

She passed a few years ago. I went to the funeral was surprisingly greeted warmly by her new husband, who had nothing but good things to say about me and she apparently told him all about our prior relationship. Then her best friend told me she’d actually hoped we’d get back together for some time. So I’d ask her this question regarding the dude she left me for because, to a degree, I’d still like to know if all the things I heard after she passed were legit or merely amounted to a post-mortem head game.

The second, we maintained sporadic contact off and on for a few years after the fact and she’d always complain about how bad things were with him on all fronts and how much she missed me and all that. I generally believed her but in the back of my head I always wondered if this was just her way of getting my attention and sympathy. That sort of thing wasn’t really in her character but she was talking to me while she was married so who knows.

Neither answer would really “matter” in the grand scheme and it’s not a nagging question that must be answered or anything but again, if we’re playing in what if land on this subject, that’s what I’d ask.