Ex Calls 6 months later

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-20-2007
Ex Calls 6 months later
13
Fri, 08-03-2007 - 7:49pm
My ex boyfriend (we lived together for 5 years and were about to get engaged before he took off) called me six months after the breakup. I had never contacted him in the last six months and neither did he besides a couple of jokes he had forwarded to me via e-mail which I had never responded to. The call went something like this and left me puzzled: " I was driving by some of your favorite places and thought of you....How have you been?... Do you have a boyfriend?......I still want to be friends".
I told him I am really happy (not true, still depressed and can't get over him), that I am dating a couple of different guys (not true either- I am too depressed to date) and that I still don't want to be his friend because he treated me badly during the breakup (this is true, I don't want the friendship of such a selfish person).
What does this phone call mean? Is he looking to alleviate any guilt he is feeling because he totally led me on saying we are going to get married and then one day he snapped and said he would be happier if he was single? Is this another indication of a selfish person who wants to have his cake and eat it too? Has anyone on this board had an ex contact them months later? I miss him and I can't get over him but I don't want to start getting my hopes up with this phone call (it was 1 week ago).
Please help!

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iVillage Member
Registered: 02-22-2007
Fri, 08-03-2007 - 9:49pm

Hi, yes i have had this happen and so have many others on the board - exs coming back is very common, whats hard to know is why they do it. From what I have observed exs call for various reasons: they want to get back together, they want to alleviate their guilty feelings by making sure you are "OK", they dont want to be with you yet wont let you go so continue to contact you and stringing you along (IMO this is the most common reason), or they really genuinely want to be friends. I can't tell which one your ex might fall into - how did the conversation go in general??

What I can tell you is that its good you projected that you are happy and life is great. I know its not true (im still really depressed too and my breakup was 6 months ago) but its true - you should never let them see you sweat, so you did a good thing by saying what you did!

I am sorry you are still feeling down about your breakup; I sympathize so much with you - feel free to email me if you want.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-20-2007
Fri, 08-03-2007 - 10:53pm
Thank you so much for your response. The conversation was one directional: him asking questions about me and me answering i.e. pretending I am happier than I have ever been. I didn't ask him one question about him because I didn't want to hear the answers; too scared I guess to find out if he has moved on. He tried to convince me that we used to be best friends (not true) and that we should still be friends. I told him that apparently we were never friends, judging from the way he treated me and that I don't want his friendship. He asked if he can call again and I said: do whatever you want. That was last week- haven't heard from him since. Generally he wanted to know if I was ok because right before he broke up with me I was really depressed and treated for depression (he used the fact that I was depressed as a reason to break up with me which was a pretty low blow). So, overall his questions were regarding my well being and about whether I have a boyfriend. SO, I guess you may be right - he wanted to make sure I was ok because when he left me I couldn't even get out of bed.
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-14-2007
Fri, 08-03-2007 - 11:18pm

hmmm. Honestly, I agree with the above post. He probrably means one of those things.

What I think too though is that your phone call was too long. Like I posted somewhere else, if within the first five lines, he isn't apologizing or asking to get back together..he is looking for an egostroke. And since I don't see any of that in your posted conversation...it's an egostroke. Don't give him one. And the longer you stay on the phone, the bigger the chance you have of boosting his ego and losing your dignity. Why give him your dignity after you've given him 5 years of your life and your love?

And do you realize what he's done right now? I mean truly? He's got you hanging around the phone agonizing whether or not this one stupid pointless phone call might mean something bigger (and it doesn't).

Next time, your phone call should be more like this:
Ex - Hi Maribella
You - Hello
EX - How have you been?
You - Good. What do you want?
Ex - Just wanted to catch up, see how you were, I missed you
You - I'm busy right now. I'll call you back when I have time.
HANG UP.

And you can skip straight to the HANG UP if you like or follow it down to a script. This accomplishes three things as far as I'm concerned. a. You don't lose your cool. and b. It puts YOU in control. Instead of being chained to the phone waiting for his next call, you're free to go on with your NC. c. It'll (hopefully) let him agonize by the phone for a change. And frankly if you think that's mean, this is the guy that broke your heart after you lavished 5 years of love on him. He deserves it.

And if you feel you really need to stick it to him about the friends thing (which I dont' advocate btw), well here's a suggestion. My ex gave me some trash about how "even though we were boyfriend and gf anymore, he valued our friendship and wanted to be friends". I wrote back that I'd seen how he belittled and trashed his friends behind their back...and I liked to think I choose my friends with a little more care, thank you very much"

Lastly...I'm a little bit concerned about being depressed 6 months down. Depressed how? As in unable to get up and get on with life? Perhaps it's time to get up and try again?

Did you ever hear that story about the donkey and the old well? How this old donkey fell in a dry well and the farmer decided it was too much trouble to haul him out again? So to put him out of his misery, he got together with a few townsfolk and decided to bury him? So at first this poor donkey was out of his mind with grief. The farmer that he'd loved and toiled for thought he was too much trouble to dig out. However as the farmer and the townsfolk threw dirt on him, he refused to give it up. Every shovel of dirt that landed on him, he shook off and stepped up. No matter how painful the blows, or how distressing the situation seemed the old donkey fought panic and just kept right on Shaking it off and stepping up. And yeah, it took a while and a lot of pain and effort and determination, but that old donkey, dirty and tired, eventually climbed trimphantly out of that well.

The point of that story is not that I think you should be out of that hole of grief since that takes a long time, but are you stepping up?

*winks* I always wondered, though, what that donkey did afterwards. I'm pretty sure he didn't go back to that farmer.

cheers
Susanna

- There comes a point in your life when you realize who matters, who never did, who won't anymore, and who always will. So don't worry about people from your
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-13-2007
Sat, 08-04-2007 - 12:25am
I think you handled the phone call well. Congratulations!
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-20-2007
Sat, 08-04-2007 - 2:13am

Susanna,

I agree that the phone call was too long. It was actually 15 minutes long. I regret it now even though I didn't show any sign of weakness on that call. Well, maybe picking up was weak.
I know that 6 months is too long to be depressed. I feel that it happened yesterday. Maybe because it was such a shock, it was so emotionally violent and cold that I am still pinching myself to see if it was a bad nightmare or if it really happened.

Thanks so much for everyone's support.....

The donkey needs to start digging but it's a pretty deep well....

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-14-2007
Sat, 08-04-2007 - 4:58pm

Laughs, well I think you've been shaking it off already, even though you may not realize it. You're not spending your days in bed anymore, are you? You managed to keep it together on the phone, haven't you? These may seem like SMALL steps right now, but if you look back, they add up to a HUGE break through. It's a deep well, yes, but that's why you look back sometimes to see how far down you used to be and remember that you relied on nobody but yourself to get where you are. There are good things you've done that you should look at.

Congratulate yourself for realizing he's a jerk for dumping you over depression. I know this guy who had a girlfriend that was clinically diagnosed for every psychaitric disorder under the sun (I swear). He stuck it out with her for 3 years because he loved her. And eventually she was the one who dumped him. But my point is, if this fool can't stick it out with you when you need him...god knows what he'll do when you hit something big.

As for the phone call...not a huge deal in the scheme of things. It could have been break up sex or worse. Chalk it up to another shovel of dirt, and step up. For all you know, that phone call was a good thing for yourself. It proved to you that in six months, you went from hold up in bed, to being able to keep it together on the phone. It also sends the message to him that "hey it sucked when you broke up. I got knocked down and crushed. But, so what? I picked myself off the floor, dusted off, and I didn't need YOU to do it." YOu probrably crushed his ego in a hurry.

Keep working on yourself!

cheers
Susanna

- There comes a point in your life when you realize who matters, who never did, who won't anymore, and who always will. So don't worry about people from your
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-03-2007
Sat, 08-04-2007 - 6:23pm

Hi Maribella,

It took me 3 years to get over my ex-husband. I was married to him for over 13 years. I had to take therapy for over 2.5 years. I suggest you seek therapy, it takes a little time, but you will shake it off, and be back on your feet again. Remember this...time heals all wounds.

Good Luck,
Jessica

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-20-2007
Sat, 08-04-2007 - 7:30pm
Thanks Jessica.
What makes it very hard is that we were very compatible in terms of our lifestyles, we lived together and did a ton of stuff together. I thought we had a great relationship so it's harder to get over than if I was with someone that I didn't have a great time with. I think he got scared because we were together for 5 years and he felt the next step would be to propose. So he bailed..... And he used the fact that I was suffering from depression as the excuse. He said that depression was in my head (even though I had been seeing a doctor for it and I got on medication) and that I didn't try hard enough to make it go away. He said that he wants to be happy and being around a person who is sad takes away from his happiness.
So, I feel it's my fault. I feel that we were great together and we would still be together if I wasn't depressed.......
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-22-2007
Mon, 08-06-2007 - 12:03am

I think you handled the phone call well too, probably a lot better than most phone calls with exs go. So you have that to be proud of, no easy feat!

Im sorry he broke up with you using your depression as a reason. As the other poster said, if he cannot be supportive of you when you need it the most, then he is simply not good enough for you. Not good enough to be your boyfriend, and not good enough to be your friend. Its great that you are being treated for your depression; they say the best treatment for depression is a combo of medication + therapy - something maybe you want to consider if you are not doing it already? I can only imagine how much affect a breakup has when you are already combating the depression.

I know you feel like you are in a big hole right now, believe me, I know (trust me when I say I have been through some really hard things in my life, my recent breakup on top of it all), but you ARE going to get through this (the depression and the breakup!). When I first started posting on this board, one lady made the comment that if women can survive the death of a husband or child then I could survive my breakup. Its one of the comments I remember when I feel really down; that if everyone else on this board can go through their hard times, then that shows that you can get through yours too.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-18-2004
Mon, 08-06-2007 - 7:38pm

My situation is sadly similar. Ex-boyfriend was my best friend of 10 years before we got together romantically in 2002 - we were together 6 years and lived together for 3 years, supposed to get engaged soon when he took off. Fast forward 8 no-contact months later and he calls me going on and on about how much he misses me, how he can't get me out of his head, how he made a big mistake, how he still loves me and will do whatever it takes to be with me again. Hearing all that seemed like something out of an impossible dream to me, and sadly I fell for it and let him back into my life - although it was only on a long-distance basis, as he went back to North Carolina and I went back to California when he left me. We talked again nightly for about a month, then he tells me that "it will never work" because we still have the same issues we had before - mainly, that he puts the happiness, wants and needs of his overly-possessive parents first (he is the only child of Greek parents) and I can't resign myself to a life of doing everything according to his parents' plan. Mind you, he was the one who called me after all those months saying he was willing to do whatever it took to make the relationship work...apparently once it became clear to him that I was actually going to hold him to that, he changed his mind. But according to him, he "still loves me and always will" - ha, as if that is any consolation! I know it is my own fault that I am heartbroken all over again, and I'm just as mad at myself as I am with him for being such a sucker.

The saying "Fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me" is so true.

Shame on me!!

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