Ex Has a Problem With Boundaries

I'm having issues with my ex. I think I'm being really nice about it but he is constantly asking me to talk to him more, send him pictures, etc. and he has been checking my email accounts, etc.

I'm not really sure about what to do. I've explained to him many, many times things just aren't like they are and I have no desire to communicate with him as much as he wants me to or put all my effort into sending him pictures, etc. He doesn't seem to understand the concept of a break-up.

I feel like maybe I'm being too nice, but I don't want to be mean to him. He's already saying I'm mean because I won't talk to him for a few minutes everyday.

I did say that we could be friends but he equates friends to the same thing as relationship to me. He's still asking me if I miss him and love him all the time and telling me he misses me and loves me often, very often.

It's pathetic and I feel bad for him. I have gotten to where I kinda have to ignore him because he doesn't seem to understand when I am direct with him and tell him I don't want that kind of communication with him anymore.

One day he called me like 30 something times in a row.

 

Sounds like you need to restate your position, cut off contact for while and change your email account passwords.

 

I would definitely tell him to stop calling you. 30 times in a row is harassment and kinda creepy. It doesn't sound like he is understanding that you are broken up. If it were me I would cut off all contact with him. At least for a while until he can understand that what he is doing is inappropriate. Change your number if you have to. Definitely change your passwords. Explain to him that you have to do this so you can both move on. Maybe sometime down the road you can be friends but I think sometimes right away its best to make a clean break.

 

Ignoring him is probably a good idea.

I've been fairly clingy to dead relationships before, especially when I was younger.

Largely cutting contact is a good idea, but there's nothing wrong with the occasional response (sometimes it eases the blow a bit).

He'll probably slowly stop

 

Well, he keeps asking if we can get together someday and can he help me with this and that and my answer is always I don't know what's going to happen in the future and that I want to be independent but he keeps saying how he wants to help me, buy me this and that and visit me and stuff. At first I said it'd be fine for him to visit, but now I'm not so sure. I think I'd like him more in person, but through all this internet and phone communication I'm starting to really dislike him.

 

Obviously there is a reason why you broke up. He is using excuses and gifts to keep you around. Chances are as long as you feed his needs by talking to him then he will continue to do this. Making excuses for him won't help. It's up to you if you want this to really end. If you do then you should cut all ties. Just my 2 cents.

 

Shut him the fuck down

 

if you're really certain you don't want to be with him then... I think it's one of those situations where it's more considerate to him to just shut down pretty much all contact than to keep it going and have him thinking there is something there still.

Either way as I say, he'll probably get over it eventually.

 

Just make sure that he's not prone to violence. He is obviously stalking you. Explain your position to him, tell him to man up, cut all ties (as others have mentioned) and if that doesn't work, get a protective order against him. (And--see first sentence).

 

you need a clean break for a while. It doesn't sound like he's very mentally stable at the moment to be honest and he just needs time to deal with the hurt. Just tell him you think your relationship in its current form is really unhealthy for both of you and you guys both need time to process the break up.

 

go to the local magistrate and file a PFA.. in most areas, this can be done 24hrs a day..

 

I don't need to file anything with anyone. I think he is still a nice guy, he was just having trouble wrapping his mind around the distance I guess. I avoided him for awhile and I could see that he's been trying to have some restraint.

So he called me again and I ended up calling him back. We talked for a little bit. I don't answer back when he says things like "I miss you", but I do miss him. I just want nothing to do with trying sort any of those feelings out while we're apart. I don't know what to do at this point. It seems like every time I give him an inch he thinks we're back together again. I'd like to talk to him sometimes, as friends. I want to keep in touch.

The idea was that we would get back together someday. But now my memories of him are more the irritation with his inability to understand that I want and need lots of distance, rather than the good times we had when we were together. I don't want to think of him as this guy who won't let go, but I feel horrible just never talking to him and ignoring him, like forever.

I just can't seem to get him to really understand the concept of being friends, from my perspective.

 

I completely understand that you don't want to hurt him. I went through the same thing with my ex. I didn't want to cut him completely out of my life because he meant so much to me so we tried to sort out some kind of friendship while also dealing with the break up. I don't regret it because we both eventually moved on and we are still friends today, but I will say that it was an extremely difficult process. it worked out in our case but it took a couple of years of jealousy and interfering with each others lives every time we would try to start a new relationship with someone else. It can be done but a clean break is definitely the quickest way to move on.

also if you broke up with him with the idea that you might get back together, then he isn't going to understand the concept of friendship because he is always going to harbor the hope that you will get back together.

 

You are the one with problems with boundaries if you are still talking to your ex.

Your ex knows you are not into the chump you are with now, current chump can do all the hand holding and he'll just come over to bump uglies.

If it was really just about friendship, make friends with someone else, doesnt even have to be a guy

You still want to make squishy sounds with your ex

 

Yeah melial, I know it's hard for him to get it because that was our initial plan but it just seems so unimportant to me now whether sometime down the line we get back together. I am so disconnected from that idea and I've told him many, many times now. Like a week after we were done I said I wanted a break and then not long after that the break turned into a split.

It's not that I expect him to completely right away just forget everything but it seems to me like it's been a pretty long time and when I talk to him I make it perfectly clear this is just a friendly talk. I'm still keeping my distance but idk, I'm tired of rejecting him so I hope he can get it at this point. I guess I gave it another trial to see if things have gotten to a more balanced place. I understand that completely losing contact with him might make a lot of sense in some respects, but I care, I'm a compassionate person, I don't want to find out sometime down the road that something happened to him and I want to keep in touch and make sure he's alright. It's just not easy to completely have no communication with someone you care about, I just would like it to be casual and not a regular, all the time, every day kind of thing.

As for VG...I'm not with anyone now. So what the hell are you talking about? I don't think you understand the concept of friendship, it's not about having someone to talk to, it's about caring about a particular person and not wanting to hurt that person.