Can anyone explain my ex's behaviour?

[Tricia13]

I dated my ex 'officially' for 6 months, although we had probably been together in a looser sense of the word for about a year and a half.

I know at one stage he was deeply in love with me, but towards the end we began arguing more often and things started to deteriorate. He was having some money issues, and that made it harder for us to see each other/do things together.

 

Then he cut me off very suddenly telling me on the phone that he 'didn't want to talk to me right now' when I called him. That was it. No explanation, nothing. That was 8 months ago.

 

In the time since I have attempted to communicate with him on/off (for closure more than anything else), but he has ignored everything. That was until about a month ago when suddenly out of the blue he sent me a text saying 'I forgive you'...for what I don't know.

 

I initiated some random convo on a text chat a few weeks after this, but he didn't seem very receptive so I left it.

 

Then more recently, my phone had been off for two weeks and when I switched it on I saw he had tried to call me. I left it, and then sent him a message asking him if he'd like to talk/meet up. He responded immediately with 'huh?', and I repeated the message.

 

He ignored that and I haven't heard from him since.

 

I don't think this man is worth any more of my time, but has anyone got any idea what he might be playing at?

[Standard-Fare]

No one's going to have the answers to this one, his behavior is legit confusing and contradictory.

 

But I will say it sounds like from HIS perspective there was a definite cause of the breakup that was your fault. I was almost wondering like, did this dude break into her email and see something he didn't want to see?

 

Option B, of course, is that he's just being cryptic to mess with you.

 

It would only be worth your effort to figure this one out you are still torn apart by the lack of answers, OR if you had some genuine desire to reconnect with him. It doesn't really sound like that's your situation, though. It sounds like you've moved on and you want to stay there, in which case you should probably just leave it alone and accept that you'll never understand.

[Tricia13]

No one's going to have the answers to this one, his behavior is legit confusing and contradictory.

 

But I will say it sounds like from HIS perspective there was a definite cause of the breakup that was your fault. I was almost wondering like, did this dude break into her email and see something he didn't want to see?

 

Option B, of course, is that he's just being cryptic to mess with you.

 

It would only be worth your effort to figure this one out you are still torn apart by the lack of answers, OR if you had some genuine desire to reconnect with him. It doesn't really sound like that's your situation, though. It sounds like you've moved on and you want to stay there, in which case you should probably just leave it alone and accept that you'll never understand.

 

Thanks for your reply.

 

He didn't have access to my phone, e-mails or anything like that and even if he did, there wasn't much to see.

 

I'm starting to think option B is the more realistic answer, because surely if you wanted to talk to someone, you wouldn't make contact...then ignore them?

 

I think the truth is I am partially over it after so long, but I still do want to know why. I feel a mixture of hurt and anger, and even if we did start to talk properly again I would never forgive how he ended it. Plus the fact I really poured my heart out immediately after and got no response back hurt me a lot.

 

I guess I will have to live never really knowing what happened between us.

[TaraMaiden]

You've known him a lot longer than we have, so it's hard for us to really come up with anything, but in my opinion, it's one of two things:

 

he either has a personality disorder and he finds facing responsibilities too much to handle;

 

OR -

 

he's a damn jerk, and he's messing with your mind.

 

On the face of it, I'm more inclined to think the latter.

 

Even after 26 years, divorcing my ex-H brought behaviour patterns up in him, I never knew existed.

 

Others, I suspected, or even noticed, but played them down, or ignored them....

 

I get, from his responses, a surprising level of immaturity.

 

He forgives you, then plays dumb?

 

That's the kind of behaviour I'd expect from a 15-year-old.....

 

Leave him be.

Dating a 'kid' is so not 'you' - !!

[Standard-Fare]

The lack of closure does suck. I've been in a similar situation before (dude cut it off abruptly with no explanation, and just completely fell out of touch) and it haunted me for a long time.

 

But you need to consider if a sense of closure is worth reopening this complicated can of warms. If he wants to communicate with you honestly and directly, he needs to be mature enough to take real actions toward that. He hasn't. All he's shown you is a cryptic, confusing jumble of behaviors that convey no clear "message" about what he wants.

 

It's not your job to decode his behavior to see if there's a kernel of something positive in there.