r/ExNoContact

Broke no contact after a few months. We had a mutual (yet painful) breakup.

I reached out asking if they would be open to talk. After a couple of hours (longest couple of hours of my life,) they respond "Okay."

I sent a massive message telling them about what I've been up to, all the lessons I've learned while away, apologizing for my mistakes, and then I finally informed them that I still would like to try again. That I still want them to be a part of my future. That I don't want to give up.

They read the message right away. It's been several hours and no response.

I can't tell if their non-response is THE response, or they're thinking about everything (again, they took a long time to even respond to my first text.)

I spent the first few hours pacing around my house and then tried to get busy with work. I feel so paralyzed and sick to my stomach.

I feel like I made a massive mistake. I just wish I could get any response. A rejection would hurt like hell but it'll help me move on.

I'm fucking exhausted

I burned all the letters you gave me, J. Watching them burn felt like cremating the years of love we shared. I can’t bring myself to look at those letters anymore. Even their silhouette made me cry. I can’t keep holding on to the past.

The ashes of your love now sit on my kitchen counter. I even breathed in some of the ashes, hoping I could keep a small part of your love inside my body.

I don't deserve someone who is hot and cold. For some reason, the things that are bad for me are what I find attractive. When I didn’t have your attention and had to fight for it, it felt like a game to win you back. If I’m being honest, it made me feel miserable more often than not. I was not made to play this game.

I was watching a video of you sitting in your car, smoking. That was a turn-off for me too.

You were turning into someone different from the person who loved me over the last two years. I didn’t want the sweet boy who was always there for me to become someone hardened by the influence of his friends. When I heard the sentence, "You can tell a lot about a man by the friends he keeps," it really made me think. I always struggled with the character of your friends, but I never felt it was my place to say anything at all. You are your own person.

Moving on with my life feels so strange. I feel lost and lonely. I feel like I may never truly move on. This hurts more than death.

I hope you're happy with your decision. Because if you're not, a part of me knows I would come back to you in a split second.

10 months since she broke up with me after a 4 year relationship unable to move on. I just today found out that she has a new boyfriend and I want to destroy them ... I'm enraged, sad and hopeless. I see people post "if she/him is happy then I am happy for them" what the fuck does that mean becuase no either something is wrong with me or you are coping becuase all I can imagine right now is walking past them by coincidence and beating the shit out of the dude.

I am angry she moved on becuase it means I wasn't that special to her as I hoped I would be becuase to me she was.

I am also angry becuase I am far behind in life, I struggle with serious anxienty and depression. I am very depended on people around me like my foster parents becuase I am unable to get my drivers license with my anxienty. I already know this guy is way more stable/regular/succesfull then me and it hurts becuase I never wanted to be a failure, I always wanted to be proud of myself and for her to look at me in awe but thats also the reason she left me becuase of how much further she was in life then me.

i asked him (the dumper) for my stuff (sweater I adore) back a couple months ago. sent a follow up just to realise i was blocked? he told me he'll send asap so why woul d he do this..? its not like sending clothes cost a lot either..

hi guys. quite a bit of a backstory as quite a lot happened in a short period of time. i (23F) have a friend (25M) whom i've known for quite some time now (about 3 years through another friend (24F)) but the 3 of us have been hanging out more often since he just recently got out of a long relationship (6 years). we got close by hanging out often after work, sending each other instagram reels and tiktok videos.

a week ago (last tuesday) he came over to my place to drink and have dinner, and this was the first time we hung out just one on one. a bit of talking and flirting, and one thing led to another where ended up hooking up (having sex). yes we had been drinking alcohol too so no real conversation was had before besides the fact that this had to be casual. the next day he texted asking if i regretted it and i said no and he felt the same. we didn't text more or anything but the same week friday, we hung out one on one for the second time and ended the day hooking up again. that friday night and going onto saturday, i had already been feeling some emotions as i knew i was getting my period soon (yes you can say im using feeling emotional during my period as a cop out reasoning), but i realized that his definition of casual might be different from mine.

on sunday, we already had plans to hang out the 3 of us and he also made plans to come over after we finished hanging out as a trio. when he came over that sunday night, i ended up spilling all my feelings to him and had a serious talk (about 10:30 to 11:30pm). long story short i told him my feelings and how i think our definitions are not the same. my "casual" meant that i was not looking for anything serious, no labels, but i would prefer something more exclusive, didn't consider it as a dealbreaker though. friend on the other hand's "casual" meant not exclusive and i think that scared him away. i tried of multiple things to make him rethink. he mentioned we shouldn't continue since he didn't want to hurt me, and i said that i wont be since i don't really have any expectations, and even if it comes to it, i could deal with it myself. he ended up saying he would sleep on it and think about it. (p.s. could not sleep that night and ended up getting my period 🙃)

yesterday (tuesday) at 12:30am, he ended up texting me , "I thought about what you said, I’m clear of your intentions, and it’s obvious I’d just be leading you on if we continued this". i did not try anymore to change his mind and just responded with "yeah i get where you’re coming from, thanks for being honest".

now, i'm just regretting bringing any of this up since the more i thought about it, the more i genuinely don't care if it was not exclusive as i really enjoyed the time (although short) spent with him, both sexually and not. i know it's only been a couple of days and i won't push him, or text him to make him change his mind, but is there a way that he could change his mind in the next coming weeks? i am holding onto the fact that it is possible due to the fact that i know he also enjoys the time spent with me and that we were friends before all this so it could be more comfortable.

It ended bad. Very badly. Don’t want to talk about it. I’m not sure if it can ever be fixed. I guess only time can tell. So for now, I need to move on. But I don’t know where to start. I feel like I can’t live without this person which is extremely over dramatic cause not like they have given me any attention. Attention to another woman which I ruined out of jealousy, (mind you I just told her the truth) so yeah I’m a piece of shit and now he hates me. I must be some sort of masochist because I still want him. Maybe I want the good times we had? How to I get over it? Stop looking at his social medias? Distract myself with hobbies? Talk to old friends? I don’t think dating is going to happen anytime soon. How do you heal? I want to feel less lonely..

now i don’t know what to do with it

It's been 3 weeks NC/since the break up. I just can't stop checking her twitter or IG. (I don't even really have social media) She just will publicly post to Twitter and before it was vague posts about me/love/being upset at me for reasons and not loving her. And the IG just seeing her follower count go up (I assume from dating around and talking to new people) Feels like I am hung up and stuck while she is thriving and I get everyone's healing is different I just feel like a dummy and a low self worth about myself at the moment.

Hi guys just really wanted to vent off and just need some kind words. I recently broke up with my partner, originally I was the dumper. The reason for me dumping him was his lack of support and just going out all hours switching his phone off and leaving me having no clue where he was . He did try and win me back for 2 weeks but his efforts weren’t great and I told him I wanted to see some change as they was just words. During this time he’s done a complete 360 and has been blowing hot and cold. Blocking me and making me the problem for expecting to much.

Now here is the tricky part I am 18 weeks pregnant with his child, he doesn’t seem to really be fussed about the pregnancy( hasn’t even mentioned it) and we already have a 9 year old daughter. He is meant to have set days seeing his daughter which he doesn’t seem to be consistent with some weeks he won’t see her at all. I am not sure why I am writing this post but I am really sad , I’m pregnant I feel so alone - this baby is very much wanted my end however I feel so stuck and alone. I feel like I have been left with all parental responsibilities, and trying to cope aswell as dealing with pregnancy hormones. It’s really hard my reasons for originally finishing with him weren’t because I stopped loving him, I love him very much this is why it’s so hard. I just needed more support and help from this man and i wanted to take an action to show him that I’m not prepared to keep doing this alone. However I feel like since then it’s all got worse and I’m just in a very bad place mentally . We are both 37 and do not live together. Sorry for the long post just need a safe place to vent.

For months now, too much of my life has been spoken over, summarized, distorted, softened where it mattered, and sharpened where it hurt me. It has been turned into something smaller and uglier than the truth.

The decision you made was not one mistake, one argument, or one bad decision. It was the collapse of context over time. It was a year of reality being flattened into a version of events that cut out everything that made my life make sense. It was my relationship, my intentions, my efforts, my past, and my pain all being stripped of continuity until what remained was a story that no longer looked like my life. I did not just lose freedom. I lost the right to stand inside my history while other people told it for me. 

Our relationship was care, support, conflict, repair, hope, confusion, and emotional dependence. It was not always clean, but it was real. And then I watched that entire reality get reduced to an image of me as a stranger, an intruder, an obsessed ex, a convict, someone returning from nowhere. That was not the truth. That was a frame. And once that frame took hold, everything else got bent around it.

What hurts the most is not only that you did this. It’s that the parts which would have made the truth visible were missing, ignored, or treated as if they did not matter. The mutual nature of the conflict mattered. The isolation of the conflict mattered. The ways we both escalated mattered. The planning mattered. The financial support mattered. The fact that this was not a dead relationship mattered. Those things were not side notes. They were the difference between one reality and another. They were the baseline, and when it was erased, everything downstream became easier to twist.

One of the cruelest parts is that once you put a lens over me, everything I said became easier to dismiss before it was even heard. My memory became suspect. My explanations became self-serving. My attempts to add context became manipulative. My pain became instability. My efforts to defend myself became more evidence that I was the problem.

I have lost more than I know how to measure. I have lost time, peace, trust, health, pets, property, stability, and safety. But underneath it, there is something I have not lost. I know that continuity matters. I know that omission is not neutral. I know what happened to me was not fair or whole.

There were things happening around the relationship that made all of this even more poisonous. The relationship was not always allowed to exist openly. There were ambushes of pressure. There was concealment. There was interference. There were third parties that did not have or give the full truth. That matters. It matters because it shows how something real could continue privately without being publicly minimized, denied, or recast. It matters because it shows how a baseline could feel believable on the outside while being false on the inside. It matters because it shows how a person can be cut off from the truth of his own relationship by a system that prefers a simpler story.

I know what I did. I know what I lived. I know what was left out. I know what was hardened. I know how much of the outcome relied on generalizations and what was ignored. I also know I was not weak. I was cornered by pressure, by omission, by distorted context, by fear. That does not make me cowardly. It makes me human. I made decisions under strain, under grief, under exhaustion, under a narrative I could not overcome. I hate that I made them, but I understand why I made them.

As I’ve spent time trying to clear my conscious, I sometimes forget there is a human being underneath. A person who loves deeply. A person who tries to help. A person who believes facts matter. A person who has been carrying pain far beyond what that legal document will ever capture. A person who is tired. A person who is still here.

What happened to me mattered. The distortion mattered. The omissions mattered. The pressure mattered. The fear mattered. The grief mattered. The loss mattered. I am not the summary that you made. I am not the flattened version of events that erased the year we spent together and my life that came before it. I am not the easiest interpretation of the worst moment of my life. I am the one who felt where the cuts were made. I am the one who has put reality back together. I refuse to surrender, and that’s what remains of me.

I forgave you months ago for everything. I loved you most for your sensitivity and playful devotion. I always felt safe to be vulnerable. I failed us by not giving you the same in return. I neglected the fact that my behavior scared you. I made it worse by placing my confidence in your emotions. I didn’t fully trust your feelings, so I don’t blame you for not trusting mine in return. I stopped noticing you were upset. I defended myself instead of protecting us. I lost you in pieces. Through defensiveness and distraction. Through choosing comfort over connection. Through moments where you needed my presence. You were hurting, but I thought love would wait.

The most abusive person in my life is my mother. Her chronic hoarding illness, the pain from her divorce, and my own stubborn personality resulted in verbal abuse throughout my childhood. I’m sorry I hid that from you because it felt inconvenient. I had mostly forgotten not feeling safe or heard in her home. Being forced to watch her act now has been like looking in an oversized mirror. It has been a constant reminder of the ways I mistreated you, how I made you feel, and my blindness to it. I developed fearful avoidant tendencies from her, and also from being abandoned in serious relationships. I’m sorry I dissociated from the truth of my trauma. I’m sorry I could not understand it or explain it to you well. I’m sorry I denied therapy or the help you were offering to me.

I’m accountable for my actions and doing everything I can to be better. I escalate conflict and withdraw. I’m working on listening and being present. I didn’t comfort you when you were upset with me. I’m working on building confidence and empathy. I made you feel scared and inadequate. I crossed your boundaries. I’m working on being patient and understanding. I let my fear turn to shame. I’m working on speaking to my emotions kindly and sharing them with others.

I also acknowledge that my insecurity was not the only to blame. Your anxious personality scared and hurt me during our relationship, especially how you ended things. Sudden displacement from my home, the legal consequences, and your abandonment were the most painful and traumatizing experiences of my life.

Our brains have been wired to have feelings of threat from one another when they shouldn’t. They’ve been wired to respond to those feelings in unhealthy ways. They’ve been wired to think the grass is greener on the other side. They’ve been wired to think a love like we shared is easy to find. I’ve been learning to better recognize when my brain is lying to me and stealing my energy. I’ve been learning to better recognize when the right choice isn’t the easiest one.

I’m sorry for breaking up with you when you needed me most. I’m sorry for my insecurity and harmful actions. I’m sorry for leaving you to pick up a multitude of pieces in my wake. I never intended to hurt or lose you. I loved you more than I was able to show. I still love you. I miss the family we were making. I miss hearing your voice and feeling your closeness. I miss being silly and going on dates. I miss your good ideas and the things you did to surprise me.

I miss the most when it felt like you loved me too. My last image of you celebrating as I scraped my life up in boxes has haunted me. I have fought through so much confusion and pain. And now I want an answer. Unfortunately, that answer can be silence. I will have no problem respecting it even if I struggle to understand it.

I still believe the love we share is invincible. That it’s deeper than the insecurity our relationship became stained by. That what happened is a speck on the glass of something infinitely clear. I don’t care that it’s hard to imagine us being together again. I don’t care that it feels like I don’t know you anymore. I don’t care that it feels like you don’t want anything from me. I cling to the wish that you'll honor the love and moments we shared. I pray the warmth of us is stronger than the storm. I'm willing to listen, to understand, and to traverse our feelings together. I want to find each other again.

I want us to be happy. I would be tired to continue trying to understand our relationship if you don’t care. I am able to walk my own path. I’m not sure how I will fare in my future with all that I’ve experienced and learned. I know being fully healed isn’t realistic. But I believe that I am ready to be present again. I am hopeful and excited for the future. I’m prepared for what I want most. I will always love you.

I've actually been doing okay, I'm dating consistently, been intimate with new people since we broke up, been travelling, go to the gym regularly, I skateboard and I've been heavily investing in that.

My ex got into a new relationship a couple of months after we broke up, and it's really hurt me. Like it's so easy for him to move on, even though i've been trying to date and also move on, I'm finding it difficult. It's been almost a year now and I'm so frustrated that I'm still so stuck and still so hurt. I feel pathetic

but today i was studying and my brother said hey your ex called like two times

i dont know what happend i snatched the phone my heart started beating so fast i dont know what kind of emotion i got i was sad angry or happy i dont understand but then i was it was someone else's number but then i was numb and silent then i started crying for 2 hours for i dont know what

for context in has been 8 days of nc but we have been broken up alot and i thought i have suffer a lot in these relationship and tbh this time i was going great otherwise in just 2 days i would gonw back to him but this time i was totally over him and i hate him from my heart but somethings are triggreing and i am really scared of my self that i might go back to him which i dont want to

he said his ex is dead

Hey everyone, I could really use some outside perspective.

About a week ago, I told my ex that I can’t be friends with her anymore because I’m still in love with her. It was really hard, but I felt like it was the right thing to do for my own mental health.

Now her capstone presentation is coming up, and I’m really conflicted. Part of me wants to go and support her because I still care about her a lot. But at the same time, I feel like showing up might go against the boundary I just set and could mess with my healing.

To make things more confusing, I’ve been seeing her like posts on Instagram about feeling ghosted, and I’m wondering if she’s interpreting my distance that way. I don’t want to hurt her, but I also don’t want to keep myself stuck.

I’m just trying to do the right thing without making things worse for either of us.

Appreciate any advice.

My girlfriend (24F) broke up with me (27M) about 2 weeks ago. We had only been dating for 5 months, but we were serious. Spent many many days at her parents’ place (she lives at home), they loved me, her and I talked about where we wanted to live one day, baby name preferences, things like that. All seemed to be going great.

Two things happened. First, one day, when we were saying goodbye to each other, I’m almost 100% sure she started to say “I love you”, but sort of stopped herself and trailed off. A week later, I said it to her, because I felt it, but also to give her the confidence to say it back. She said it back, but in the same sort of trailed-off tone she used the week before. I didn’t press her on this, and figured she did, but maybe had a hard time expressing this to me.

Then, school got harder. I watched her shut down. Her mom and I spoke about it. She told me that during stressful situations, she shuts down, and school absolutely brought her anxiety. I tried to be supportive without being overbearing. We went on a short vacation, and she was totally off. We didn’t have sex for a month. 10 days after we got back, she broke up with me. She told me I was “perfect”, but she felt like she couldn’t be enough for me. I told her I would be there to support her, but she felt like I didn’t deserve to deal with her essentially. She seemed despondent and defeated. And that was that.

Based on her intimacy at the beginning of the relationship, the difficultly handling stress, and the discomfort with showing strong affection (we had a great relationship, she was open with me, our sex life was great, but the L word scared her), I suspect fearful-avoidant patterns. I don’t know if she felt love or not. I think she was either afraid to admit it, or she truly never did. I really don’t know. I saw her mom, by coincidence, 2 days later. She told me she and her husband were so sad that things ended, and she was still despondent at home as well. She didn’t end things and immediately detach. We’ve been NC, but we (and her family/friends) still follow each other on IG. I intend to keep it that way for some time. I really want her to reach back out, but I also know that when she does, I’ll have to re-assess. Will she do this again? What has she done to lower the odds of it happening again? Will I have moved on? She’ll either realize she ran from feelings that made her insecure, or she never had those feelings to begin with. Even so, I miss her and I love her. She wasn’t my first relationship, but she was the first woman I loved.

i wish he would just talk to me one more time to patch things out. he was more than just my boyfriend, he was my best friend. when he cut me off i completely lost control of my life and i am still suffering the consequences of it

its like 3 years of my life is instantly gone and i can’t do anything about it

he was extremely manipulative to the point where i questioned my own reality - i began wondering if i have some mental illness my therapist said i absolutely do not have - and i don’t want to be with him again. at least i don’t think so. but i want to just talk again so it doesn’t have to end like this

he has me unblocked but i’m pretty sure he muted me which makes it even more painful. i wish i could go back in time and keep how i felt to myself. it ended because i asked him when he would be able to take our relationship seriously again and commit to me

Some days are just really hard when he is not around. He ghosted me 2 months ago and I can’t stop thinking about him. I just want to say everything that has been unsaid and what i truly feel.

It doesn’t help that he hasn’t blocked me anywhere. Should I just hope that he is coming back bc of this?

Me and my ex broke up 6 months ago on good terms and it’s been 4 months of no contact- her birthday is next month and I am wondering do I send a message to wish her as a sign of respect or doi continue the no contact journey ?

I am not looking to get her back but I do worry if I message her it may open some wounds or delay my healing journey but I don’t want to be seen as disrespectful if I don’t wish her ?

Sorry everyone, feel like I need to vent a bit.

Had an intense relationship for two months (I know.. Two months is nothing). She is an FA, after a high emotional peak she would always discard, ghost me and come back in a few days/week later. I know she has fear of abandonment (don't think she realizes) but she even said she was scared I would run away etc. When she would ghost/discard, I never chased, never got angry, never put pressure on her. She would always come back after a while.

Never had any arguments or disagreements. She said how rare it was, how easy it was to be with me. That I am the perfect man, scared to be really in love with me, cried when I needed to leave.Sunday she said she would wait for me and only needs to be with me and talked about our future together. Right before going to bed she finally said 'love you' for the first time.

I thought this was a big step and finally we could proceed into something real and meaningful. I echoed her statement that I only wanted her etc. The day after I said I thought a lot about the day before and that I love her too (actually forgot to respond this the night before).

Since then silence.. Not a word since her last 'love you'. I thought to give it time as usual but something in me says it is final this time. Also because due to the emotional intensity the barrier to return for her is so much higher than in the past. I won't chase but it feels like now it is really over.

I have been struggling to come to terms with this and has been a rough day. The worst is that I actually thought we were finally on the right track.

people are EVIL!!! romance is EVIL!!!! all the beautiful people here, you deserve so much more, you are so capable, so full of love, so tender. my heart is breaking for everyone here. you deserve better. why does love have to come with such such great pain? it will tear you apart. i’ve never known a pain greater than this, it feels like my heart is physically shattering. writing this feels immature and cringe, but i feel like i can’t stay sane without writing something and having the possibility of someone reading it. i feel a desire to run away from everyone and everything, to never seek love ever again. but i know that’s no way to live. i just can’t trust a soul. life is cruel. i feel so alone. i can’t sleep. i can’t eat. i can’t focus. i’m scared of losing touch with myself and with reality. i feel like i can’t talk about anything with anyone, and i am awful with my words, so i turn here in desperation. but i’m glad to share a human pain, a mutual heartache, i’m happy to cry with someone. let us love one another with no fear.