-
Posts
-
I don’t know if I’m at the right place, since I’m really not expecting a reconciliation at this point, but I wanted to share my experience and hopefully get some insights as to what’s going on in my ex’s head. I guess I need closure so I can move on and maybe some answers will help with that. (Unfortunately this means I’m still hung up on him, because I still care what he thinks… damn it!)
So here’s my story: We got together at a bad time and there was stuff around us that made the relationship difficult to sustain. By stuff I mean we kept the relationship hidden because a mutual friend of ours was in love with me (I didn’t reciprocate and was always clear about that) and my ex felt bad for getting together with me behind the other guy’s back. Also, he didn’t know if he would be able to get a job and stay in my country or would have to leave in a few months. The other guy (the one who liked me) was a good friend and was trying to help him get a job, so my ex felt like he was cheating his friend and he was horrified by the idea that he could find out. Anyway, later, I realized this was really just an excuse and that he just didn’t love me enough, otherwise he would have tried a bit harder to overcome the difficulties, so it was pointless to continue. So initially, we broke it off amicably.
The trouble starts when we’re already apart. We continued to chat via Facebook and at the time I assumed that we’ve reverted back to being good friends. So I continued to show him support, but he started to withdraw and gradually became cold and distant. Also, I noticed he would act flirty and funny on FB with girl friends. Since he’s quite attractive, his girl friends are all also extremely friendly towards him. One time I thought it was really tacky that he used something I had said to him in the past, when we first started flirting, and parroted it to another girl. Anyway, I didn’t push it and decided to respect whatever he was going through, until one day it all went horribly wrong.
My aunt had died on my birthday and I decided to tell him because I thought we were – above all else – good friends. The part of me that still liked him was hoping he would show some support as a friend, as I had always done for him. That somehow we had messed up as a couple, but we’d continue to be there for each other as friends. Well, it turns out he barely replied, acting distant like he always did lately and I felt awful. All the time we were talking that day, I noticed he kept posting comments with laughs on public posts which were visible to me on my FB. I snapped and said I hardly recognized him and he wasn’t a real friend because he just wasn’t there for me when I needed him the most. He apologized and said he was having a really bad day (but I thought it was a lame excuse because of the public posts). I let things cool off for me and waited 3 days. And that was out last exchanged.
After that, and since he hadn’t said anything else, I unfriended him of Facebook, for self preservation. All was going well for me, as I was starting to heal, until yesterday (a month later) I noticed some tagged photos I had in my FB page were missing. I went to check our history chat and saw that he had blocked me! Why would he block me a month later if we weren’t even friends anymore? We don’t have public posts and just 2 mutual friends, so there wasn’t stalking involved. I just don’t get it…
Hi, Teresa. Thank you so much for replying to my thread; yes, I know it’s a long one! I should probably be smart like the other people here and make new topics any time something new happens….
I’m sorry to hear about this situation with your ex. Sometimes I wonder if people ever enter into relationships with a clear conscience or open heart? It sounds like it was really painful to see your ex’s interactions with other women on social media… especially how he was so cold to you after your aunt’s death. It seems like you tried really hard to be adult about the way things ended and that you were absolutely within your rights/reason to hope that he’d be a friend to you in your time of need but for whatever reason – probably immaturity and selfishness – he didn’t step up to the plate.
Sometimes when we break up with people, we like to assume that they’re in the same mental place we are. We think that what’s good for us is also good for the other person. I’m guessing that when you decided to be “friends” he was happy to assume that you were over the romantic part of your relationship and, like him, would be flirting with people in social media, not once thinking about respecting the fact that you had actually been together (parroting something you’d said to another girl? That was really thoughtless). Did you watch “How I Met Your Mother”? After Robin and Barney break up and decide to be “friends”, he goes right back to being a womanizing jerk, bragging about all the girls he’s dating now that he’s single again. Robin always excuses herself casually when he does this and everyone thinks she’s just going to the bathroom or making phone calls, but no one has any idea that she’s actually excusing herself so that she can cry… she seems “together” after the break up but she’s actually a mess. When Barney finds out he feels terrible, but he finally learns to be respectful of her feelings. That’s kind of what your situation makes me think of.
You’ll think this is crazy, but I actually think he blocked you because he finally understood that his actions on social media can hurt you. I did the same thing when I broke up with my ex five years ago. What happened was this: my ex was heartbroken and unfriended me a few days after the break up. But we still had mutual friends on facebook and I would post on their walls. Nothing flirty! Just liking their posts or commenting on photos. He went ballistic, though – he sent me a Facebook message that said, “how can I get over you if you’re everywhere on the internet???” He also started posting nonstop on our mutual friend’s pages, like a pissing contest to claim them as his own. I started to feel “observed,” like I couldn’t even like a friend’s status update without hurting him. I didn’t want to unfriend our mutual friends (no way!) so, as awful as I felt, I just blocked him. It seemed like the easiest way to continue living my life without causing him any pain. I also unfriended his mother and brother, which I still feel terrible about, but it was only so that he wouldn’t have to see our names together on his friend list.
I’m sure he’ll unblock you soon (I unblocked my ex, too, when I figured that enough time had passed that he might not be upset to see my name pop up on Facebook anymore). I really hope that the two of you can be good friends again, and that you’ll find someone soon who is with you 100% of the way!
Thank you for replying, Penelope! I really appreciate this.
I really wanted to share this story because I have trouble exposing myself and would feel really stupid telling this to my real life friends. Getting upset over FB stuff is just silly, but that’s what happened to me.
I honestly don’t think our 2 mutual friends are the reason for the block. One of them isn’t active and the other only posts generic stuff, hardly personal. Since you mentioned this, I went there to check and to my knowledge, I only liked one post of that mutual friend after the break up. I remember he did post a “hahahaha” comment a few days prior in another post, but that was it.
This blocking thing made me go back and check our history chat and I (re)discovered something about him. A long time ago, he wrote about how his exes tended to be jealous and he didn’t understand why and, at the time (we were just friends back then), I told him he was probably flirty without realizing. Another thing I found he wrote was that in the initial phase after the break up, he usually wanted the other girl to feel at least as miserable as he was, you know, like payback. I told him the worst someone could do to me was to erase me and forget about me.
So fast things forward, I do think he was being openly, consciously flirty and using that specific sentence I wrote him publicly just to get some sort of reaction. And this blocking looks like revenge too, if I take his previous word. I think he knows these would be the things that would get me and somehow he’s retaliating… arghh, I don’t know. I keep going back and forth. Sometimes I think he’d be too lazy to go out of his way to upset me (I always felt he never liked me enough to make any effort), and other times I believe that him being spiteful towards exes (in his own words) might have actually motivated him to click that button. 🙁
Rereading what I previously wrote paints this guy as a sociopath. He may be a lot of things, but he isn’t that horrible. Let me clarify: when he said he wanted his other exes to suffer at least as much was said in a specific context. We were talking about breakups and how it was best to overcome them (ironic, I know). He said it was unnatural and a bit fake to simply wish happiness to the other, when the fact was deep down we all want the other to miss us, at least in the beginning – which is a kind of suffering. So he wished his exes hurt at least as much as he did, it was a sort of comfort to know that they still felt something, even if it was a negative feeling. I hope this makes sense.
I understand! It makes more sense when you add that information. I didn’t mean that he was trying to block you because of mutual friends, just more that he might have blocked you to spare you the pain of seeing what he was doing on facebook in general. but now that you mention that he usually punishes his exes after a break up… was he very angry about the breakup?
No, he wasn’t angry. In fact, I don’t think we ever actually fought, even when we broke up. It was all very civilized. The only time I showed a negative burst was in my last exchange and I was very upset (my aunt dying on my birthday really shook me).
I hope you bear with me, because our story is very complicated and yet simple:
We met at a time when that other guy (I’ll call him P.) was in love with me. When I say in love, I say almost obsessed. I don’t think anyone has ever loved me like that and it was kind of scary. I always had trouble rejecting people and P. seemed oblivious to the fact that I simply only liked him as a friend (although he did ask us to be more and I rejected him twice).
Anyway, P. was so upfront and insistent about about his infatuation that I started inviting my ex, at that point a mere acquaintance, to cockblock our outings. So whenever P. asked us to go out as friends, I’d invite my ex as well to string along. I’m stupid, I know! I should have just said NO, but I had trouble refusing a good guy who made me feel good about myself. Anyway, eventually I started to confide in my ex and we became friends and soon enough we realized we liked each other as more than friends.
To put things in context, my ex is actually a foreign student and is only in my country for a short period just to get his PHD. I also need to say that P. became friends with him (he’s really that nice) and was helping him get a job to stay in this country. Long story short, we created this awful triangle. None of us wanted to hurt P., and my ex felt like a cheater. I also didn’t want to go behind anyone’s back, particularly since I did nothing wrong and was always upfront. So we had just 2 options: be together and tell P. or don’t tell P. but break apart. Considering my ex would only be staying a few more months in the country, he figured he didn’t want to ruin things with P. since we basically had no future either way. So, very amicably we decided to break before we got serious.
We slipped up a few times. We live in neighboring cities, so the few times we were together without being in the presence of P., we would end up making out and promising that it wouldn’t happen again. Because that was the thing, we got along really well together. He would pick his guitar and serenade me, kiss me hard and hug me tight, stuff like that. So we stopped meeting and stuck communication to Facebook only.
I went abroad on vacating 10 days without communicating with him and when I got back he’s more colder and distant (allegedly due to not knowing about his professional situation and whether he’d have to go back or not to his country). I asked if he started to like someone else and he said he didn’t (but he’s a bit of a coward and awful at confrontations – he tends to protect himself and shuts up or lies, so who knows?), and he added that didn’t matter whether he liked me or not and wouldn’t change our situation. In his own words: “I can’t like you”. I replied that we either liked people or not, we don’t choose to do it. He just said “it’s the only answer I can give you” and “don’t get your hopes about us”.
So I went NC for a bit (I haven’t read any of these things on the web at that point) and contacted him occasionally (I don’t know how many days, I didn’t really count), all the while watching those awful public interactions on FB. By the way the girls he talks to are in his country, so the only contact they have is online. He could have a deep emotional attachment to one of them, but I know for a fact he wasn’t sleeping around.
From then on, things only deteriorated. There were’t really any rows, just cold detachment. Now and then he would post romantic songs about missing loved ones which could be directed at me or some other person (who knows, really?). Whatever he meant, he never told me directly. And that day when I snapped, his apology was brief and rather lame. And the rest you already know.
Kinda lame, isn’t it?
p.s. P. is not in the picture anymore either, as he finally got the hint and has been in NC for over a month now. They’re probably best buddies at this point, I really don’t know.
Hmm, if the breakup was amicable, then i doubt he is trying to punish you or hurt you because it doesn’t sound like he was hurt. Maybe it’s got to do with P… Maybe by blocking you he removes the temptation to flirt with you or get back together with you, thereby damaging the relationship with P/his work possibilities?
Has P really never found out? It seems strange that he never picked up on the chemistry between you and your ex.
The reason why I don’t talk to P. these days is a mix of a third rejection (he played dumb and said he just considered me as a friend when I tried to clarify again he was acting like a boyfriend without benefits) and he probably realized something went down.
The last time I talked to P. he wanted to do another outing with us three – that is, until I explained I no longer talked to my ex and refused to give details on the matter. He was oblivious once, and even playing dumb, but I don’t consider him as really stupid.
I do know my ex is a natural liar. It’s his coping mechanism. He shared stories in the past where he lied through his teeth to get out of sticky situations (I guess I should have picked that up as a strong sign that he was wrong for me – I’m stupid like that). Regarding P., for instance, he found himself inventing a story about a girl he liked, just so P. wouldn’t suspect he was in a relationship with me! He kept digging himself in lies because he was so convinced P. loved me obsessively that I felt he was a bit afraid of the consequences if P. ever found out. Added to the fact that he would likely be gone in a few months and that P. was probably his only chance to get a job in my country, he didn’t want to take the risk of telling the truth. So, yeah, I was never really that important. He literally picked a possibility of a job over me. This really sounds like a crappy soap opera, but it is what it is.
Like you said, he’s probably not mad, but I can’t think of anything else. Our FB profiles are private and we weren’t friends anymore, so it’s not like I could check up on him when he blocked me. I was the one to unfriend him in the first place! There was nothing to stalk when we were not friends. Just a profile picture (which is the same if I log off). So yeah, I think it was some kind of retaliation for truly giving up on him. Perhaps he thought I’d add him again (I was always a true friend and very supportive, even when he cooled down significantly), and when I didn’t, he just blocked me like “ah, I can be even worse, see what is like to be erased”.
I think deleting from social media is imperative to the moving on process following the break up. 112 days post- break up and even after I have removed her and all of her friends and family from facebook (Oct. 12) She still hasn’t taken down “in a relationship” from facebook.
When we first broke up after 3 months dating in May 2014, I took down my facebook for a week. I put it back up and other girls made comments on it. I got a phone call from her after a week of NC apologizing saying she was wrong, and that she wanted to try again. I gave her another chance.
Fast forward July 2015. Break up out of the blue, we left it at we’ll talk again, and I told her I wasn’t going down without a fight, and she smiled at said okay.
3 weeks into the break up, I took down my FACEBOOK for 10 days thinking she’d have another change of heart. Then I wrote her a letter, she called me. She always referenced my social media in our texts and phone calls– I saw you were __________, or I was just going to text you I see you are ____________.
Anyways she used to search me all the time, and reference. But again something changed recently when I asked her to hang out.
From a male’s perspective and many on here can attest– facebook and social media can be used for the jealousy method. She was never big into facebook to begin with but since the break up has starting posting more– and finally I decided in order to move on completely I need to disappear. I deleted her from friends Oct 12 and just 4 days after she cancelled meeting me, she searched my facebook page at 730am. First thing she did in the morning probably.
Your ex is probably struggling. How long have you gone NC? Have you written a letter?
hey, so first of I may be biased when I say this but I think instead of unfriending, blocking and all that immature stuff on social media I think it’s better for you to deactivate your own social media.. but I don’t like social media so maybe that’s why.. I I mean sometimes its better to just unfriend Orr block them but I think there are few cases.. social media isn’t helpful in a healing process I feel. take a break from that so you don’t have to deal with who unfriend who and who is doing what. as we can see, ppl really use social media to one up the other in a mean spiteful way that they’ll regret later… so my advice would be take a break from it.. it’ll always be there.. you aren’t missing anything important. Also, I’m sorry to hear about your loss. Stay strong! that must have been hard especially on your birthday and then to have him react that way, I can only imagine how upsetting that could have been. he sounds like he is confused, hurt and decided to just trying to look out for himself and distant himself to see if it will make him feel better.. so I think you should look oUT for yourself and move forward and hopefully soon within the next few months he’ll realize his mistake and grow up. can I ask how long you guys were together for?
@Wondering412 Thank you for sharing your experience and giving me a male perspective! I really appreciate this. I haven’t written any letter nor do I intend to resume any form of communication. I started browsing the web searching for answers that would give me closure and found this forum by accident and posted here because everyone seems to be very supportive, friendly and intelligent. We’re all still hung up on our exes, so I knew no one would be harsh and make me feel ridiculous about this. I also know most of you guys are on a plan to recover your ex back. However my plan is to get closure and forget him.
I think that’s why I’m searching for answers in the most inconspicuous way I could think of (this is not my native language and he doesn’t even speak English – also my name is not Teresa either – I’m paranoid like that). I refuse point blank to give him any inkling that I saw the block and that it upset me. I think my last message (on my birthday) pretty much said everything I wanted to say: that he wasn’t a real friend to me as I had been to him and that I didn’t really know him, that I needed to accept that, give up on the friendship and move on for self preservation. He issued a curt apology in the next few minutes and that was it. Wait, he also posted a song on his FB about a girl who had been the best mistake in his life, the sincerest lie, the simple yet complicated affair that he would always revisit in his memories blah blah blah (there’s not an English translation out there, but you get the gist). I assumed that was for me, I don’t know. I think it was a really cowardly, half-assed attempt to convey a message, if that was the case. A bunch of people rushed to leave him comments, teasing him and he played along, laughing with them all the way.
Just so you see the kind of guy we’re talking here, in the early days, when he would be all flirty, he rarely exposed himself emotionally. I think he’s the type that is really proud and likes to keep everything buried and protected. It was me who said first that I liked him more than a friend and he fessed up saying he felt the same but he’d never have the courage to say that if I hadn’t. On another occasion, when we decided to break up, I said we had to keep a physical distance because it was hard for me to have him touch me as a friend and don’t confuse things, he replied with a “and do you think it’s easy for me?”. So, yeah, the only bursts of emotion usually followed some admission of mine. But beyond that, he’s a pretty cold fish.
In fact, the silence that followed the next few days showed me that I meant very little and that he had no intention to see how I was coping with my aunt’s death. He continued posting on FB publicly about trivial stuff (he’s very active there, because it’s his only means of communication with his friends from his country). That’s when I decided to unfriend him and make a clean break. Out of sight, out of mind I thought. I was doing well, too. That is until I noticed the block, because it was just so senseless and out of character. If he doesn’t care, why go out of his way to block me? And if he does care, what the hell did that mean? You guys have posted a few ideas here, and for that I’m grateful.
@starlight, thank you for your reply. I won’t remove myself from any social media because it would be another way of saying that he cut me deep and I don’t want to give him that satisfaction. It would be another ego boost for him and I gave him plenty already. I also don’t post personal stuff, only political things, scientific stuff, art, music, gaming, etc. I like to keep my private business private. Only a few friends in real life know I had this short relationship, since we never went public because of that other friend P. I guess it ended as soon as it started, since I couldn’t cope with having to lie and sneaking behind a friend’s back. I’m not a teenager and I wasn’t doing anything wrong and since he’d rather end things than to admit to P. we were dating. We were acquaintances since November 2014, started to hang out very frequently in May 2015, in June we sneaked around and couldn’t get our hands off each other, in July I said I couldn’t do that, but kept falling in the same traps whenever we got together alone, and by August we had cooled down because the job offer was imminent, and that was his priority evidently. My 10 day trip abroad also helped him significantly to distance himself from me, because when I came back, he was basically a wall of ice. September 10 was my birthday, so yeah, we’ve been NC for a month and a half. He blocked me only last week, though. And since that upset me, I’ve been trying to get answers to give myself closure. I’ve even used my mother’s account (she is not his friend either) to log in and confirm he was still there with no changes whatsoever – to everyone that isn’t his friend, that is. And since I was the one who unfriended him and couldn’t possibly see anything anyway, I saw no rhyme nor reason for his actions.But you guys have been excellent and at least now I have some clues. I also want to thank your support in this difficult time. I’ve been having trouble concentrating because I overthink things and keep analyzing past mistakes and feeling utterly dejected, when I should just be moving on and forgetting he exists.
Update: P. (the other guy) called this Sunday after a month of silence but I didn’t pick up since I was in a meeting. Called him later, he didn’t pick up and I texted him asking if everything was alright. He also replied with a text saying he was just checking up on me and seeing how I was doing. I replied cordially and thanked him, wishing him well.
I wish I could force myself to like P., but he’s not intellectually stimulating and he bores me to death. He keeps showing off, boasting about stuff that really doesn’t interest me, which makes us incompatible – there’s just no chemistry, but he’s a really good person and I’m lucky to have him as a friend. This sounds horrible, but it’s the truth. 🙁
I don’t know if anyone is reading this at this point, but I have another update.
The other mutual friend between me and my ex is his brother-in-law. Actually, I met him because I was friends with this mutual friend (I’ll call him H.) He lives abroad but today he is returning to my country for just a short period. My ex lives at his apartment so they will inevitably bump into each other.
I’m kinda terrified at this point, to be honest. Afraid I’ll never see him and afraid I will. Our mutual friend will likely visit me and I don’t know if the subject of this break up will be brought up or not. We kept the relationship a secret, but now that we cut ties, I’m afraid H. will realize what happen and want talk about it. I’m really confused and don’t know whether I want to open up about it or just shut up forever.
Anyone can spare me some advice?
Hi, Teresa…. I understand why the relationship was kept a secret from P but why was it kept a secret from H?
@penelope4 I guess at the time we (me and ex) were still trying to figure out the relationship and didn’t want to involve anyone else in our mess so we opted to keep things to ourselves.
Our chances were pretty low as a real couple. For starters, my ex wouldn’t be staying in my country for long unless he got a job. And if he got a job, it would be most likely with the help o P., which meant he would be indebted to him and going out with me with be a real betrayal. It was an impossible situation from the start, I suppose. So I think rationally we both knew it couldn’t happen, but we got carried away and got involved anyway. I was stupid, I know!
H. had been the one to introduce us and I think the reason my ex always felt so guilty about P. was because H. told him from the start P. was in love with me. So admitting to H. we had something would be like admitting we were going behind P.’s back and the thought alone embarrassed us both. We were both grown up people and we were acting like teens! It was awful.
In the early stages, my ex said he wouldn’t mind admitting the truth if he knew we actually had a real shot at being together, but by the time it ended, I think it was clear that the possibility of getting a job and finish his PhD was more important than anything else – which I get it, I really do.
Since I cut off communications early in September, I have no clue if he’s even still in the country (he probably is and that means P. helped him get a job).
Anyway, I have no clue if this subject will be brought up with H. or not, but if it does, what am I supposed to say?
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.