He did it with Riona and her stalker, and I don't even believe that one is solved yet, and while Riona's character feels more related to a main plot line (Quinn and her drugs), Nicole's relationship with the mc was pretty full on. But I do agree, Nicole's ex-husband shouldn't matter at all. We've still got Bella's (dead/AWOL/ex-)husband to be concerned about, no point in adding more of the same.
On the note of side characters and separate story arcs, there are quite a few:
- The new pregnancy scare (it's obviously not gonna be any of the main LI's and if it's not Lynette in a flashback, it's gonna be some side character drama)
- Mona leaving the HOTs was a side drama
- The Jade/Stephen marriage drama
- The Cathy Cluck
- The Dany/Jam Jam pregnancy scare as well as their on again/off again relationship problems
- The Dawe/Arieth infidelities
- The Heather/Tommy relationship issues
- The Lily/Quinn drug association
- The Magnar/Sally relationship troubles (although that could end up just being a throwaway line)
- The Melanie/Troy drama (I mean there was no need for anyone else to be involved in the Troy/Chad/Sage drama, but Melanie and Sarah were involved, as red herrings obviously, but still it's their own little side drama)
- The Steve family drama (don't know if we'll ever see Steve again anyway, it may have just been some lame Chick/DIK meaningless choice)
- Riona's stalker like I mentioned above.
- Derek & Wendy's love affair, with him avoider her and her getting all serious, and for all we know, she's pregnant
- And Finally Zoey, who, if she isn't a new LI, an entire fucking Interlude was spent on her and a bunch of dudes we'll hopefully never see again.
So on that note, there's no real indication that DPC won't introduce Nicole's husband just to add some grief in her story line.
That's actually something that I've liked about this game from the beginning. There are a lot of stories going on that aren't all revolving around the mc, but are interesting enough to stay entertaining.