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You all know how I love me some science, how I love me some empiricism, some data.

So it was with some shock and alarm that I read headlines all over the web last week, advising people to run from anyone who is friends with

an ex. There's an Esquire. It was an L. It was a guardian, vice, BBC everywhere. Run. If you're

with somebody, if you're dating someone and he or she, but mostly he is friends with an ex. Ron, that person is a dangerous psychopath.

Now, this contradicts advice that I've given routinely that when you are with somebody,

you're dating somebody and they're on good slash friendly terms with an ex,

not creepily close, not still fucking the ex, not spending all of their time with the ex, not dumping loads in you and then cuddling on the sofa and watching Game of Thrones with the X, but on good friendly terms with the X, that this is a good sign. Most of the people that we date over the course of our lives are going to be X's because you date a lot of people, some of us marry a lot of people, Donald Trump, and you end up with,

if you're lucky, one person for the long haul. So we have a lot of exes. Be good if we could be

nice and decent to our exes and on good terms with them. And I've always told people that if someone

speaks ill of all of their exes, if all of their exes are bitches and whores or all of their

exes are bastards and assholes or all of their exes are

bastards and assholes, they're the common denominator and a lot of shitty fucked up

relationships.

They're probably the bitch slash horrors slash bastard slash asshole.

And you should run from that person.

So I was alarmed to see this advice everywhere based on science on data suggesting on this new study suggesting that I had been wrong, lo, these many years, and that I would have to walk this advice back on a podcast and eat crow.

And then I did what we should all do.

I did what apparently none of the reporters who kicked out

these stories did. I read the study. And not only did I read the study, I called the lead

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