Devastated by ex, started dating someone else.. now he's back?!?!

[chelsea2011]

Hi all.. I just wanted to give an update of what happened in this situation, maybe you'll find it interesting or maybe it'll help someone else someday (there's nothing worse than an unresolved situation when you're seeking relationship advice, yes?!)

 

So, despite all of the warnings I received about going back to the ex, I couldn't fully let go of him again and he wasn't making it any easier- he started laying it on pretty thick, dropping the "marriage" bomb in his heartfelt voicemails, apologizing profusely for all the things we'd fought over in the past, etc. I finally decided to ask him to meet me for dinner, so we could sit down and really try to figure out what we both wanted and, if that went well, how we would go about giving our relationship another chance.

 

(Sidenote: I'm going to try to be as objective as possible about all of this, but to be honest, I'm still pretty floored by what happened and it's hard not to let myself get a little biased. But I swear I am doing my best to give the most accurate summary I can!)

 

Anyway, dinner was nice, we were laughing and having the old banter and light flirting and whatnot. I finally reminded him that we were meeting for a specific reason, and asked him what exactly he envisioned a "second chance" for him and I would be like. We talked for awhile and he was being pretty open and sincere. For every concern I brought up, he batted it away with all of the sweetness and romanticism that I fell for so long ago.

 

So by the time our waitress cleared our table I was feeling pretty good about the idea of being in a relationship with him again, and I decided to tell him so. I think I said something like, "I believe there's a reason we're sitting here today, together, after all that's happened, and still have such strong feelings for each other. I'm ready to give us another try." That's when it was literally- BOOM- I could SEE the lights go off in his eyes. He immediately started backpedaling, and suddenly I was the one being interrogated. Some of my favorite gems were "What do you mean by 'us'?" and "Does that mean you want to be boyfriend/girlfriend now? I'm not sure I'm ready for that." He even tried to blame his reluctance on ME, saying that I had hurt him really badly by dating someone else after we'd broken up and he "needed more time to get over it." According to him, he'd only had "shallow and meaningless relationships" (I I took that to mean, "as much sex from strangers as I could get") since we'd broken up, so apparently I had committed some horrible betrayal by meeting a guy I liked and starting a real relationship. All of a sudden I was trying to defend myself against all of these imagined atrocities against him, and even worse, it became ME who was trying to convince HIM to give our relationship a second chance! It was the strangest turn of events I'd ever experienced, and it made me so confused that my head was literally dizzy and SPINNING for days afterward.

 

So, yeah, the dinner ended awkwardly, and I wasn't at all surprised when the ex spent the next week avoiding me and making up excuses why he couldn't talk to me. It wasn't shocking at all, because he'd always done that when an issue became too "serious" or "complicated" for him, but it DID hurt like hell; I felt just as bad as I did the first time he'd dumped me, but this time I was also kicking myself for being the idiot who fell for his commitmentphobia and empty promises all over again. Eventually he started contacting me again about a week and a half after the dinner, mostly to text me stupid, meaningless crap like "Did you see how bad traffic was this morning?!" As if the serious discussion we'd had just disappeared into thin air. I tried to be polite and put up with his small talk for a few days, but I finally got so frustrated and angry that I went off on him and told him to go away and leave me alone. I kinda came at him out of left field and said some pretty harsh stuff, and I think he called me a psycho b-tch at one point, but I could just FEEL myself starting to fall back into that old, over-obsessing, insecure place that I struggled with for so long because of him. He does this super-manipulative, commitment-phobic double-talk that gets in my head and affects me really badly, and getting away from that is waaaay more important than his opinion of me.

 

Sooo... yeah. When I posted the original question, I got such fantastic feedback with the same underlying precaution: "be careful about going back to him." I guess I just had to see for myself. Anyway, we can officially chalk this one up as the one-hundredth-billionth example of why going back to an ex is BAD NEWS!

Also, anyone wanna help over-analyze why this dude would put so much time and effort into winning over his ex-gf, just to end up avoiding her and calling her a psycho ANYWAY? Seriously, the ol' "guys love the chase" just isn't a satisfying enough explanation for me in this situation!

 

Wow, this guy sounds really messed up. You really articulated this story very well; his personality came through loud and clear in your post. Thank god you decided to ditch him all together because this guy doesn't have his head screwed on right. This is definitely a block and walk situation! He doesn't even deserve the luxary of being able to contact you.

 

Hope things work out for you with the new guy.

[PegNosePete]

As for the new guy (Tom,) I had no idea what was going to happen with the ex so I did not end it with him, or give him details (though I did tell him I was still in contact with my ex, when we first started dating.) We'd never spoken about being exclusive or committed so I didn't feel I needed to end it with him because I went to dinner with my ex, do you agree?

No. Do NOT AGREE. If I were Tom then I would definitely want to know if the girl I was seeing had gone to dinner with her ex, been flirting with him, and asked him to try again.

 

If you want a relationship built on lies then carry on as you are doing. But if you want to find happiness in life then you need to start treating people better. It WILL come around and bite you on the arse one day.