"The Ghost of Girlfriends Past"

The Claimant and Respondent are in a relationship. The Claimant brings this case seeking to restrict the Respondent's friendship with a former partner, citing the format and frequency of their contact as incompatible with the Claimant's position in the Respondent's life. The Respondent resists on the basis that the friendship is legitimate and that invitations to the Claimant have been standing and genuine. Both parties have made concessions on the record, and a prior structural concern — regarding how the Respondent's emergency arrangements were organised — has been resolved. What remains is a dispute about access, frequency, and a question each party is circling without yet naming.

1. 1.The emergency contact matter was a legitimate and identifiable concern. It has since been addressed. That resolution is acknowledged and counts in the Respondent's favour as evidence of capacity and willingness to make concrete changes when the concern is clearly put.
2. 2.The Claimant's primary remedy — restricting contact to group settings — is declined. A close friendship cannot be kept in formal configurations indefinitely without ceasing to be what it is. The Claimant has acknowledged the friendship may continue; the Court takes that at face value and will not award a remedy that achieves termination under another name.
3. 3.The Claimant's fallback is more defensible. A reduced frequency with genuine inclusion between meetings, and a Respondent who brings things home before they are brought elsewhere, addresses the structural complaint without extinguishing the friendship. This Court finds it workable.
4. 4.The Respondent's own fallback is notable: the proposal to ensure the Claimant hears about the Respondent's life before the former partner does was offered voluntarily and is the most honest acknowledgment in either submission that something has, in fact, been out of alignment. The Court receives that offer as sincere and treats it as a commitment, not a gesture.
5. 5.The Respondent's primary remedy — no change — is refused. The Claimant's concern is not unfounded, and 'the invitation stands' is not, by itself, adequate. An open door that a person has reason to feel unwelcome walking through is not the same as genuine inclusion.
6. 6.The Court notes that both parties are negotiating the surface of something neither has named. The presenting dispute is soluble. What sits beneath it may not be, until it is addressed directly by both parties in a setting more suited to that than this one.
7. 7.The Claimant's stated distress is acknowledged as real. The Respondent's stated investment in the friendship's integrity is acknowledged as real. Neither acknowledgment determines the ruling, but the Court does not discount lived experience as irrelevant to the construction of a fair remedy.

THE COURT DIVIDES THE MATTER

The Claimant prevails in part. The primary remedy — group-settings-only — is refused as functionally prohibitive. The Claimant's fallback, substantially aligned with the Respondent's own fallback, is awarded: frequency is reduced, the Claimant is genuinely included in the interval between those meetings, and the Respondent's voluntary commitment to keep the Claimant informed first is treated as a term of this ruling rather than a courtesy. The Respondent's request that the friendship continue unchanged is refused.

Within two weeks of this ruling, the parties are to agree a reduced schedule for one-on-one contact — fortnightly is the ceiling unless both parties later agree otherwise. The standing invitation to the Claimant is not performative; it requires active follow-through: the Respondent is to extend it directly and specifically, not leave it as a general offer for the Claimant to claim. The Respondent's commitment to bring news of their own life home before it circulates elsewhere is a live term: it applies to significant events, decisions, and developments that the Claimant would reasonably expect to hear first. The Claimant's primary remedy — format restriction to group settings — is refused on the basis that it achieves by structural means what cannot be awarded directly. The Respondent's primary remedy — no change — is refused on the basis that the status quo has already been found wanting by the Respondent's own account.