Is my ex trying to be ambiguous to keep me on the hook or am I misinterpreting?

[EStreetJC]

I have posted about her a few times already, yet this is a fluid situation and constantly leaves me confused and uncertain.

 

BACKGROUND:

My LDR girlfriend and I were together for a year and a half. We met in person a few times. She was in a dying marriage while we were together, and I spent a lot of time helping her through that, with therapy, issues with her own mental illness. Long-term was definitely in the cards, I thought. Crazy in love…the whole damn show. She broke up with me earlier this year for another guy whom she also met online and had been chatting with for a couple of months, and yet I had to find out by accident; she’d even arranged a meet up with him. She indicated my untreated mental illness was the reason she went elsewhere, It was kinda like she had mourned the end of our relationship without even telling me. I broke down pretty bad after that, and had to walk away to work on myself.

 

Two months of silence pass. I’m in therapy and working on getting her out of my system. She e-mails *and* texts me out of the blue to make sure I’m doing okay. I let it go for a couple of weeks, annoyed at the intrusion into my progress and space. I caved, though, because I still love her. When we started talking, she apologized for how she’d stonewalled me after I found out, that she always cared for me but had major issues around love and abandonment. I could not immediately offer her forgiveness, but the lines of communication re-opened.

 

THE MATTER AT HAND:

We quickly began texting most days, sending memes, and joking almost like old times, without the romantic aspect. We started voice-calling again, talking a lot about her new job, and even watched stuff together over the phone. Many of our old habits resumed, just without the romance. She never mentioned her relationship status, and I was afraid to ask.

 

This has been going on for a couple weeks. Yesterday, we had a long text conversation. I was talking some more about the pain I had felt in the aftermath of our breakup, and how her actions made me feel, and she said, to my surprise, that if I couldn’t forgive her so we could be friends, she would understand, but for her own recovery, she couldn’t keep rehashing it. I took a couple minutes and decided to finally forgive her, for both our recoveries. We talked of how there was always going to be love between us. She told me she’d always love me, and there’s a lot she can’t think about without relating it back to me. We agreed that kind of intense love we had doesn’t go away, that it was too intense and real to just disappear into nothing. Then, she said something interesting:

 

“I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I’m not ready for a lot right now. I just mean, I’m not ready to be more than good friends right now.” I told her I wasn’t ready either, that we both needed to do a lot of work on ourselves. Not gonna lie…it did give me a faint glimmer of hope of a possible reconciliation in the future, once we both got our **** together. But I was suspicious. She met that guy on Reddit, and I was too chicken**** to ask directly, so I checked her profile today. And like it was waiting for me — she wrote on a thread about all the ways she loves him, and how he makes her feel. The horrible thing is that she could’ve written the exact same things about me only a few months before she met this guy, and that was only seven/eight months ago.

 

Am I crazy, or does her statement to me yesterday sound ambiguously worded, like she’s trying to string me along/keep me on the hook without being direct about her status? My friends seem to think so, and that she is guilty of sending “emotionally complex” texts to me, wherein we talk about our love and all things we miss about each other/remind us of each other, in violation of her present relationship. They think she just wants attention from me, and that reaching out to me was about trying to assuage her own guilt. What should I do?

[d0nnivain]

What you should do is drift apart from this. There is nothing ambiguous about what she is doing. She is absolutely stringing you along for her own ego stroke. She's using you & she's going to hurt you.

 

One very important lesson: Stop with the long texts. You cannot build or sustain a relationship through text. If it's more then one sentence pick up the phone & call. You miss so much non-verbal communication though text. It's a relationship killer.

[The Outlaw]

You maybe her backup guy in case this should fail, but if it were me, I'd never given her the time of day post breakup anyway. Excuse my French, but dating is a b*tch these days, and half the people out there don't know what they want or when they want it. And it's almost like some of us are expendable for the sake of attention, stringing you along or as d0nnivain put it, an ego stroke. No way. This probably isn't what you want to hear, but she needs to cut the crap and let you heal. You think that since you had such a strong relationship with you she'd respect you enough to leave you alone, but evidently not. Just treasure the good times you had with her, and brush her off.

[Sunlight72]

Bad news dude. She feeds on the attention (and you do too, it's not just one sided). For her, that is all she actually wants from you. And when ever she gets more serious with some guy in real life, or she finds someone new to chat with online/text, she will fade out from you and you won't know why.

 

I'm sorry. It sucks.

 

 

She does not want to get 'back' with you. She does not want to see you again in person.

[bachdude]

And this is exactly why no contact is so useful. Case and point.

 

OP, you are WAY to nice, trusting, and naive. I don't believe a word she says. What's all of this love talk coming from her? Blah, blah, blah...

 

And she blames her...what is it..."issues around love and abandonment" for arranging a meet up with another guy before breaking up with you?

 

Why would you trust anything that comes out of her mouth after that experience?

 

You can forgive her but I wouldn't trust her. Forgiveness ain't earned but trust is, OP.

 

She's totally playing with your emotions with all the "intense" love stuff yet drops the word "friend" at least a couple times.

 

You think you've been confused over her in the past....you haven't seen anything yet. She will play with your head and give you false hopes and you'll be in worse shape than before. You'll be a wreck and back on LS asking what to do.

 

Forgive her then tell her you need to cut her off for YOUR own recovery.

[ExpatInItaly]

First things first, is this woman still married?

 

The fact that she started getting cozy with you while still married should have been your first clue that she is not some upstanding citizen. It doesn't matter if her marriage was dying. It should have been officially over before she delved into anything with you.

 

You also learned that she has not changed one bit. What she did to her husband, she did to you too - in other word, she is dishonest and self-serving and will seek a replacement for her current man before ending it. Not good.

 

Forget this person. She is a hot mess, and your friends are right that she is using you for attention and an ego-stroke. She isn't serious about you, and that is a good thing. There would have been nothing but heartache for you if you'd stuck around with her.

[Fekenaws]

This is a very dangerous individual you are talking too. She has no concerns about your feelings because if she did she wouldn't be contacting you without a conclusive statement of her intentions. If she said she wanted to just be friends? It would be conclusive. If she said she wanted to give love another chance? It would be conclusive. What she's doing now where she is dangling a carrot in front of you? That's emotional and mental abuse. You are her backup plan.

 

Tell her the following when she reaches out again, "Hey _____, I thought about it and keeping in touch doesn't work for me, but feel free shoot me a text if you change your mind about us in the future"

 

After that, you go NC and start rebuilding your life. If she reaches out, invite her to hang out at your place, if she says no or gives you ANY excuse, just say "Cool, lemme know if you change your mind"

 

Trust me, if she has no intentions of coming back she will get bored of this quite quickly.

[Marc878]

You are the biggest problem. She's shown you who she is.

 

You should have blocked her.

 

Why let others determine your life?