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Should I contact my ex boyfriend?

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Original post by joker12345
Yeah, I get what you are saying, I don't see why there's anything wrong with that. We were in a relationship for 2 years but best friends before that for 5 years before so I've lost that too.


Sorry to hear that... its difficult when you have been friends before that as well, as he's been a big part of everything. Its difficult sometimes to try and remember the things that happened and why you broke up in the first place, but at least you know you have done everything you can
Reply 21
Original post by Anonymous
Thanks for your advice...I'm finding it really hard as I keep thinking about him. Everyday I'm thinking about him a little more and more. Think it might be good just to chat to him and have bit of closure/ idea of whats happening with him

Yeh, it was more the idea that he didn't even take me into consideration before deciding to go away with just her. It also looks really odd and everyone I told at the time thought the same and said they would never do that. I'm still not over it all and whilst I may not have handled the situation in the best way, at the time I felt it was just easier to shut it all out because I was so distressed by it


Yeah maybe just to see how he feels about everything.
But again I say you are opening yourself up emotionally to him to hurt you again if you do decide to get in touch.
but it could work out well, I don't know the full situation and how good the relationship was before.
Personally i have got back with an ex before and its worked out great so it really depends on the situation lol
Original post by Vapor
Oh no poor OP.

Everyone should be concerned about OP, the one who treated her boyfriend like crap both during after the breakup. Some people are so selfish. OP chose to ignore my last comment but comment on jokers who has in the past done the exact same thing.

Regardless of your opinion on whether you feel he was wrong to go abroad with a female friend, that doesn't warrant OP breaking up with him over the phone and ignoring him two months later when he reaches out.

Their is nothing wrong with your boyfriend going on holiday with a friend who has a boyfriend herself. If he planned on screwing anyone he would have just gone with a male friend and banged a single local. Her ex boyfriend did nothing wrong.

Reaching out is completely selfish. If she had lost all interest in him, she wouldn't be apologising now. But because she wants contact from him, she uses apologising to initiate contact. It's not sincere.



Like I said, there were other reasons as to why I broke up with him:
- Struggling with the long distance
- Did not feel he was understanding of the fact that I was lonely and not settling in a new city/ whereas he was having a great time where he was
- We had had arguments in the past, where I felt he would always manipulate the situation to make me feel as though I was in the wrong and he was always right
- The fact that he hadn't even asked me if this would be ok (when it was just her and him) made me feel like i didn't matter. I wasn't worried he was going to get with her/fancy her etc.. I was upset about the fact he hadn't at least thought of me in his decision! Then made me feel as though there was nothing odd about him doing this

I don't think you know anything about our situation to say he did nothing wrong. Its not particularly fair since the fact that it upset me and affected me to this extent shows that it couldn't have been a minor thing

I didn't ignore him. We spoke for a long time about it on the phone - At the time I was still so frustrated by it all. And yes i was probably dismissive of how he felt, but I didn't know what else to do or how else to deal with it

And yes maybe its taken me 8 months to realise and feel ready to talk to him in a relatively rationale sort of way - that doesn't mean I'm selfish. I'm not reaching out to him just for my own sake. I want to know how he is...I care about him and he was a big big part of my life. I feel now that I shouldn't have been so dismissive, but its taken me time to realise that and to think about it..
Reply 23
Original post by Vapor
Oh no poor OP.

Everyone should be concerned about OP, the one who treated her boyfriend like crap both during after the breakup. Some people are so selfish. OP chose to ignore my last comment but comment on jokers who has in the past done the exact same thing.

Regardless of your opinion on whether you feel he was wrong to go abroad with a female friend, that doesn't warrant OP breaking up with him over the phone and ignoring him two months later when he reaches out.

Their is nothing wrong with your boyfriend going on holiday with a friend who has a boyfriend herself. If he planned on screwing anyone he would have just gone with a male friend and banged a single local. Her ex boyfriend did nothing wrong.

Reaching out is completely selfish. If she had lost all interest in him, she wouldn't be apologising now. But because she wants contact from him, she uses apologising to initiate contact. It's not sincere.


I think you're being unfair - OP has come here for advice not to have it pointed out every little thing which she already realises she has done wrong by the sounds of it.

What she wants to know is where she can go from here - if anywhere - and your advice is unconstructive and unhelpful.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the boyfriend going away with a female friend thing. Yes perhaps OP acted selfishly when ignoring him when he tried to get in touch a couple of months later. and perhaps he will not want to get in touch again when she tries to make contact. But I maintain that if OP was unhappy with her boyf going away with a girl by themselves, regardless of whether the girl was in a relationship or not, then OP's former partner should listen to OP over the random girl.
Reply 24
Original post by Vapor
None of us know either of you and any level-headed person will know it's not entirely one sided.

Yes, but do you know who else was long distance, found it difficult and still managed to reach out to you ? Your ex-bf.

You want to think that you're the victim in all of this and you just aren't.

Have you ever stopped to think how much it must of hurt him when he summoned the courage to contact you and you shot him down ? Do you think that was an easy thing for him to do ?

You want to contact him now that you miss and still love him. That's an incredibly selfish thing to do because you broke up with him, he probably had a really hard time picking himself up and moving on and now you just want to stick yourself back into his life again and confuse him.

You need to accept that you blew it and move on.


This is fair comment.
Reply 25
OP it sounds like the six hour distance thing meant things were doomed to fail. Perhaps try making friends and going on dates in your local area?
Original post by Vapor
You still just don't get it but I give up.

If you do choose to reach out I wish you the very best of luck with him giving you the time of day.

But if he's not interested and it's clear right from the start, take that as a sign that he's done with you and dont start asking him why he won't speak to you etc. Just leave him alone to get on with his life.



So for anyone who is curious - I called him and we had a long long talk about it all. He was actually really nice and seemed happy that I'd called... although surprised

I explained and said I was sorry for the way I handled things, and that I really missed him and had been thinking about him. He asked why now and I said I didn't really know but that I'd had time to reflect on things and was in a bit of a better place than i was before

He has a girlfriend who he has been with for 2months now. He said (that apparently this had nothing to do with me calling at this time) but he was probably going to break up with her. This is NOT the girl he went on holiday with, but one of her friends

I said that given that we had had a good conversation and that he didn't hate me, I'd like to see him sometime but obviously understood he couldn't really do much about that now
whilst he is with this girl.

He said he would call me in a week or so when he's had some time

I don't really know what all this means..but I felt the conversation went well. And in between all the crying and emotional stuff, it felt like the conversation hadn't really changed much between us
Original post by Anonymous
So for anyone who is curious - I called him and we had a long long talk about it all. He was actually really nice and seemed happy that I'd called... although surprised

I explained and said I was sorry for the way I handled things, and that I really missed him and had been thinking about him. He asked why now and I said I didn't really know but that I'd had time to reflect on things and was in a bit of a better place than i was before

He has a girlfriend who he has been with for 2months now. He said (that apparently this had nothing to do with me calling at this time) but he was probably going to break up with her. This is NOT the girl he went on holiday with, but one of her friends

I said that given that we had had a good conversation and that he didn't hate me, I'd like to see him sometime but obviously understood he couldn't really do much about that now
whilst he is with this girl.

He said he would call me in a week or so when he's had some time

I don't really know what all this means..but I felt the conversation went well. And in between all the crying and emotional stuff, it felt like the conversation hadn't really changed much between us


My immediate thought is that he still has feelings for you and wants to fix things. That timing is just too off. And if he didn't want anything, he wouldn't have mentioned that to you - it's almost like he wants to let you know he'll be single soon. Good luck with it all!



Original post by Anonymous
Sorry to hear that... its difficult when you have been friends before that as well, as he's been a big part of everything. Its difficult sometimes to try and remember the things that happened and why you broke up in the first place, but at least you know you have done everything you can


Thanks :smile: yeah, it really is, it does feel like life has just fallen apart. I do remember them but now I look back they just pale in comparison to what we had. I haven't really completely given up tbh, hoping he'll rethink.
Original post by Vapor
First of all, thank you for posting an update. Most people on this forum don't.

Secondly, you have my respect for actually ringing him instead of sending a facebook message or email. This wasn't something I really thought about before hand but I would be much more likely in his scenario to have a conversation with you if it was a phone call as opposed to an email.

I'm glad it's gone down well for you and that he doesn't hate you. He sounds like quite a laid back bloke, more laid back than me.

Ignoring everything that's been said before this latest comment of yours - are you sure about what you actually want from him ?

Do you want a friendship ? Do you eventually want him back as your boyfriend ?

Do you at all get the feeling, now that you've spoken to him and he seems interested, that it's enough for you and subconsciously you may have just been wondering if he would still be interested in you ?

From a male perspective I'd imagine he's probably keen to try and see whether or not he'd be interested in something with you. I'd imagine he'll come back to you in the next week or so and initiate a convo with the hope of it leading to a meet up and eventually more.


Thanks for your comment...Yeh I was really anxious before calling him, but glad i did and also glad that he answered!

To be honest..he was and still is such a big part of my life. We were in a relationship for 4 years and good friends for 2 years before that. I think this time has made me realise how much I miss him. And I felt when we were talking on the phone, there was obviously a lot of tears on my part..but I just remembered how much he understood me and cared about me

Its really difficult to know what i actually want at the moment, and I did tell him that I didn't really know what the purpose of my call was. I just said that i felt this massive need to talk to him and see how he was, to explain why I had gone about things in such a way and that i genuinely felt bad about the way everything had happened.

I said that given the conversation had gone well and that he didn't hate me, that i would really like to see him and speak to him again, but obviously understood at the moment he wasn't in a position to do that.

I don't think i want a friendship to be honest..I just wish things could go back to the way they were when we together at uni. The long distance has just been so hard and i definitely struggled with it a lot more than i ever imagined.It just makes it more complicated and harder to know how to go about things

We were in a very serious relationship..he told me yesterday that he thought we would be together forever (i knew this before) and that us breaking up was something he thought would never happen which really upset me, because it made me feel bad for just dismissing things and dropping things over the phone. He said that with time, he understood why I did it over the phone as it would been awkward travelling all that way, breaking up and then deciding where to go from there and would be logistically difficult..

I don't understand what you mean by
"Do you at all get the feeling, now that you've spoken to him and he seems interested, that it's enough for you and subconsciously you may have just been wondering if he would still be interested in you ? "
As in now that we've spoken, i don't feel its enough that i've just said those things. I really really want to see him and see how we feel about each other. Things were always serious and i knew when we broke up, that it was going to be hard for both of us. I don't think it was just a curiosity thing to check if he still liked me etc..

Yeh I'm not putting any pressure on him. Given he has this girlfriend at the moment, he needs to decide what is right for him. He asked me how I felt when he said he was with someone else... I was honest and said even though i have no right whatsoever to feel like this, it does upset me imagining you with someone else. But then I told him that given he doesn't seem to be that serious or feel that strongly about her (given he said he was going to break up with her), I wasn't too bothered. I guess the point is - what we had over 4 years isn't really comparible to what he has with her now. I said its not about whether he has a gf or not, its more how he actually feels about her/ how seriously he feels things are with them...from my impression, it didn't seem that serious
Original post by joker12345
My immediate thought is that he still has feelings for you and wants to fix things. That timing is just too off. And if he didn't want anything, he wouldn't have mentioned that to you - it's almost like he wants to let you know he'll be single soon. Good luck with it all!





Thanks :smile: yeah, it really is, it does feel like life has just fallen apart. I do remember them but now I look back they just pale in comparison to what we had. I haven't really completely given up tbh, hoping he'll rethink.



Yeh I think he feels we were together for a long time and there was a lot of good things to our relationship. Do you think he just decided when we'd talked? He said that he's been in a relationship with her for 2 months, but that he wasn't really happy with her for various reasons. And he said that actually the night before they had gone to bar with some friends and had had a big argument because she overreacted to something he said...and so he had decided he was going to break up with her... i don't know if maybe its some big coincidence??

Aww - i understand what you mean. Its horrible looking back and worried you have made a wrong decision (but one that at the time was the right thing for you).. i wouldn't give up if you feel strongly about him, and if your relationship was a good one and you were happy. give it some time and theres nothing to loose by trying to contact him again...
Sounds like a lot of unfinished business its clear you need to talk even if it's just for closure!
Original post by Vapor
I can understand where you're coming from, I've done both long-term and long distance relationships myself.

Something I've realised through experience, is that long-distance isn't as much of a problem if you start the relationship that way. For example, if you just met someone who was about to move away and you both decided to try anyway, it's a lot easier than if you're in a relationship where you've been close for ages then suddenly part ways. In the latter, you'll compare the new long-distance relationship with the old one and it just wont ever match up. In the former, you don't have that experience.

My point in the above paragraph is that now you've been apart from quite some time, if you were to start again on a long-distance basis then you may find it easier than the first time, but only if you are realistic with your expectations. Your relationship isn't going to go back to the way it was while you were at University and you should accept that before you enter into anything.

All I meant by the paragraph that confused you, was wondering if you getting in contact with him might have only been to obtain validation. You can ignore it though because I know now that it doesn't apply to you.

I skim read your last paragraph. Him and his current girlfriend aren't even worth analysing. He told you on the first phone call that you had in months that he was considering breaking up with his girlfriend. There is a very clear reason why he would bring that up, he's keen. He made sure he said that in conversation because he didn't want you to think they were serious.



Yes I see what you mean. I think if we had always been long distance, it wouldn't have been a problem... Even when we were at uni, we didn't see each other every evening..maybe just a few times a week - but I always knew he was only a short bus ride away. And what I've found hard is having that flexibility completely taken away with being long distance and having busy jobs etc

Yeh I know things will never be like they were when we were at uni as a lot has changed with starting work and being in a new environment. We didn't so much talk about getting back together, but I think it was clearish in the conversation that we still had feelings for each other. Maybe it will be different (having had time apart) and then starting afresh with the long distance I really don't know

In the least horrible way, I don't think he actually wants to be with his current girlfriend. And from what he says, it seemed to just happen because they were spending a lot of their time together and then got together and were in a relationship. I'm glad he was honest about her with me and told me..whilst I was initially sad to hear it, I know that he's not serious about her

Guess I will see what happens in the next week..but I literally cannot stop thinking about him.
Hello..

For anyone who was kind enough to comment earlier on in this thread - wev decided for him to come and visit shortly and stay with me for a couple of days.. to give us a chance to see how we are and talk things through

He broke up with the girl who he was with

I'm really looking forward to seeing him. But guess scared at the same time - given that if it all goes well, what would be the logistics of perhaps getting back together

The other thing that worries me is that with him staying, we will most probably sleep together. Is this just a recipe for disaster if it happens??

I would never sleep with someone unless I was actually in a relationship with them (don't do the whole casual sex thing) so worried this might happen as the temptation will be there

Thanks
Original post by Vapor
If he's agreed to stay with you for a few days and broken up with his ex then at least you know he's keen at the idea of getting back together.

It's hardly casual sex when you were with the guy for 4 years in the past. If he comes to visit and you both want to have sex, then have sex. Ultimately it depends on how well you separate sex and emotions. If you spend the day with him and have a feeling by the end of it that it's not a good idea getting back together, but know you're the type to get attached after sex, then don't sleep with him.

Trust me, unless there are some big unexpected obstacles that come up, like him announcing for example that he's soon moving away, then after an entire day or so of catching up on everything you will know by the end of it in your gut whether or not you want him back. You'll probably know after the first hour.

Oh and if you reply, please quote me. I only happened to stumble upon this thread by chance and haven't viewed it in over a week. Was simple luck that you only updated yesterday.


Thanks! Yes I guess the idea of us meeting will be to see how things are and see what we both want. I am still apprehensive about the idea of getting back together, given that I wasn't coping well before with the whole long distance thing (but maybe giving things a second chance this way might be a little easier)

No its not I guess - I think it will complicate things a lot more if we do have sex. And I will get more attached so its probably best that we don't to be honest.

I'm hoping us meeting up will help me and him figure out whats best to do. Hoping my gut instinct will help me in knowing if its better to give it another go or not

We were going to meet in my city (his home home is in a different city which is about an hour away from me, and he is coming up there as he has a few days off) so I'm thinking of suggesting we meet there for the day rather than definitely stay at mine
(BUT he is living and working 6 hours away from me hence LDR)
Original post by Anonymous
Thanks! Yes I guess the idea of us meeting will be to see how things are and see what we both want. I am still apprehensive about the idea of getting back together, given that I wasn't coping well before with the whole long distance thing (but maybe giving things a second chance this way might be a little easier)

No its not I guess - I think it will complicate things a lot more if we do have sex. And I will get more attached so its probably best that we don't to be honest.

I'm hoping us meeting up will help me and him figure out whats best to do. Hoping my gut instinct will help me in knowing if its better to give it another go or not

We were going to meet in my city (his home home is in a different city which is about an hour away from me, and he is coming up there as he has a few days off) so I'm thinking of suggesting we meet there for the day rather than definitely stay at mine
(BUT he is living and working 6 hours away from me hence LDR)


Hey, I'm really glad things are going well-ish for you! He certainly sounds interested in getting back together, I think you need to figure whether that's what you want as it'd be really mean to lead him on.
Distance is such a stupid reason to not be together IMO, and I've been there (though 3 hours rather than 6). It's easy to let it get in the way, but you should be able to work through things. But it's ultimately up to you.

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