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My 5 year relationship with my ex-boyfriend ended about a year and a half ago. It was an awful situation that took left me in shock and disbelief. I was given the book Psychopath Free at that time and it was a life saver. I finally understood that I was not crazy… everything I believed had been a lie. It’s been a long, hard road of recovery, and I am proud of how far I have come. It’s taken everything in me to not respond to several texts my ex has sent to me over the last year… all of which I know were composed with specific intent on his part to get a response from me. Two months ago (14 months after he threw me out), I received a letter from him asking for a second chance. He took the blame for everything, yet he did not apologize for anything. I’ve worked so hard to move on and heal, I decided not to respond to the letter. I saw through his words and could not believe the things he wrote. Because I did not respond, I am guessing he assumed that I did not read the letter. A couple of weeks ago, about 5 weeks after I received the letter, he sent me an email with the identical letter he mailed. He’s now tried everything except showing up at my house to get a response from me. At this point, I am not sure what to do. I want to send him a short letter back, only to request that he stop reaching out to me, but I am afraid that will open the door for more contact from him – or give him some satisfaction from getting a response from me. I just don’t want to keep being surprised by texts and letters or whatever else he may do. Does anyone have any thoughts or advice for me? Thank you in advance.
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Hi, You are REALLY SMART to turn to this website before you do anything!
Here’s what I would do, and have done in a couple of situations. Ask others if they agree with me, or if they have other suggestions, etc.
The #1 thing is: DO NOT READ any communications from him. See more below. Just toss the communications — shred them! It may be hard at first, but I suspect it will give you a huge amount of satisfaction!!! Most likely, you will feel very powerful. It’s a concrete way of shredding HIM out of your life.
One guy I seduced (actually, I gave my body to him when I was a very mixed up person after a bad breakup!), then the guy stayed with me for a few days. Then he two-timed me with a sexy neighbor of mine, so I could not fail to see them together. I told him not to come over again.
Several years later, he shows up at my door. I calmly said, “Do not come here again. If you come here, I will not open the door. If you phone me I will hang up. If you write to me, I will not read it and will throw it away.” Well, that ended HIM.
With a husband I broke up with, I used a different tactic because the circumstances were different. A condition of our divorce was that he would pay my COBRA health insurance for 3 years. He signed that would do that. Then, after 2 months, he quit his job. Somehow or other this released him from that responsibility. Over the years, it cost me around $3,000 to pay the insurance. So…
After our divorce, we stayed in touch. Lots of problems, as you can guess. Finally, he’d call me, be cheerful and funny (he was a natural comic — kept me in stitches) But these calls always made me cry, when he’d turn them around after only 5 minutes or so.Finally, I said, “You owe me $3,000. You agreed to pay my COBRA. I paid it myself, for $3,000. DON’T CALL ME AGAIN, TILL YOU ARE READY TO PAY ME THE $3,000 you owe me.
After that, when he’d call, he’d say, “Hi! This is ________” The first words out my mouth into the phone were ALWAYS a very enthusiastic “Oh, Great!!! You’ve got the $3,000 to pay me now.” Uh, duh…he’s say. And as for me — I said NOTHING FURTHER. I remained silent till he gave up and said goodby. This “conversation” only happened about 3 times, and he was gone for good.
I’m sure you can come up with with something that fits your situation, that will just as effective, powerful, and permanent a brush-off.
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On the Other Side,
If you respond to him in any way, even with a short letter telling him not to contact you, he will see it as a victory. He doesn’t care what your response is – he cares that he has engaged you into playing his games. He has learned that it takes a letter and an email to get you to respond. Experience with spaths has shown that the best way to get them to stop contacting a target is to give them absolutely no response of any kind. It is especially important not to respond after a period of ignoring them. It’s effective to tell a spath not to contact you at the time of initiating no contact. However it will backfire if the target breaks a period of no response to respond to a spath.
They tend to come back and see if they can engage a former target even years or decades later.
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The best response is no response. I agree with Synergy – toss the letter. Block his email, his number, and any other form of communication he has.
Keep strong with the no contact. Annette’s response was perfect – any response from you will just keep him engaged because he’s getting SOME response. If you respond and tell him to go away, he’ll know he’s getting to you and it’ll just spurn it on further.
Stay strong. Be safe. Take care of yourself.
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As tempting as it is to show that you don’t care anymore, it will be seen as a challenge by him. Just put Return to Sender. Hang up the phone, walk away if you see him, get rid of anything that reminds you of him, just convince yourself that he was a figment of your imagination. Let go with both hands.
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