If your ex is ignoring you and showing you that you’re not a priority, that’s definitely not a good sign. It’s not a sign that your ex is realizing your worth and that you’re getting back together, but a sign that your ex has lost respect for you and that he or she doesn’t want to communicate with you anymore.
Your ex prefers silence over communication and isn’t working on improving his or her love for you.
Your ex is merely hoping that things stay as they are and is keeping you away on purpose. Doing so lets him or her feel relieved and elated and makes your ex feel free and not obligated to worry about your problems and emotions.
Ignoring behavior essentially shows that your ex doesn’t understand or care about your problems and feelings and that your reach-outs make your ex feel uncomfortable. “Uncomfortable” is probably an understatement.
They absolutely suffocate and overwhelm your ex and leave your ex with no option but to ignore you.
By ignoring you, your ex gets to think positive thoughts and feel positive emotions. Your ex gets to stay in control of his or her post-breakup life and not feel controlled and affected by you. For the first time since you became a couple, your ex gets to do what he or she wants and doesn’t have to worry about the consequences of his or her actions and inactions.
This is why your ex ignoring you is not a good sign. It doesn’t mean that your ex still has feelings for you but that your ex lost feelings and finally has the space and right to stay quiet. The breakup allows your ex to focus on his or her own wants and needs that have nothing to do with yours.
Now that the breakup happened, it’s all about your ex. He or she decides whether to communicate or not communicate with you. And since your ex chooses not to communicate, it’s evident that your ex isn’t thinking about you 24/7 and contemplating getting back together.
That’s if your ex is a dumper.
If your ex is a dumpee, your ex could also be ignoring you out of self-protection. The only difference is that dumpees typically want their ex back and resort to ignoring their ex because they don’t want to settle for friendship.
They want their ex to acknowledge their worth and take them back as quickly as possible.
Dumpees usually ignore their ex because their ex won’t leave them alone. Instead of letting them heal, their ex sends them breadcrumbs and confuses them. He or she doesn’t know that dumpees don’t want to talk unless the topic of the conversations is about getting back together and working on the relationship.
So whether you got dumped or did the dumping yourself, your ex’s ignoring behavior probably isn’t a good sign. It’s a sign your ex doesn’t have a choice but to forcefully keep you away and make you respect him or her.
If your ex is a dumpee, your ex lacks power and wants to feel better. And if your ex is a dumper, your ex has too much power and doesn’t see or care that ignoring you affects you negatively. Your ex ran out of care and only wants to focus on things that make him or her feel happy.
And talking to you doesn’t make your ex happy. It makes your ex feel forced to engage in a conversation he or she doesn’t have the energy, empathy, and care to engage in.
Clearly, you’re doing something wrong. Whether it’s the communication itself or the things you’re saying, you’re not giving your ex the space he or she needs to be happy. You’re expecting things from your ex that your ex doesn’t want to give.
You need to stop doing that and respect your ex so your ex can get the things he or she wants from you. And what your ex wants depends on whether he or she is a dumper or a dumpee.
If your ex is a dumper, your ex wants only one thing from you – space. Your ex wants you to accept the breakup and start treating it as such. And if your ex is a dumpee, your ex wants you to apologize for leaving, ask for another chance, and explain how and why things will be different next time.
Your ex doesn’t want to talk, especially about meaningless things that don’t indicate romantic regret and desire to reconcile.
In this post, we discuss why your ex ignoring you isn’t a good sign and what you should do about it.
Is my ex ignoring me a good sign?
Your ex ignoring you isn’t a good sign because ignoring depicts a lack of interest, respect, love, and care. It shows your ex doesn’t want to communicate or isn’t capable of communicating. Either way, your ex finds communication exhausting and dangerous and wants you to respect his or her boundaries.
Because you don’t, your ex is choosing to protect himself or herself by ignoring your texts, calls, or in-person interactions and showing you that you’re not listening and/or understanding his or her feelings and expectations.
You’re not giving your ex the space he or she needs to self-prioritize and live life the way he or she expects to live it. That must change both for your and your ex’s sake. The sooner it does, the quicker you’ll disassociate from each other and find internal happiness.
You can’t expect your ex to suddenly want to talk to you. Not if you keep reaching out and pressuring your ex.
So if you’re contacting an ex you left and you want to get back together, know that your ex’s ignoring could mean that your ex still has feelings for you and wants you back. You can find out whether this is the case by telling your ex you regret making a selfish decision to leave and that you’re sorry for hurting him or her.
But if you’re reaching out to an ex who dumped you, then his or her ignoring behavior obviously isn’t a good sign. It doesn’t show that your ex has romantic feelings and wants to reconnect but that your ex’s needs aren’t being met and that he or she doesn’t feel the need to explain them to you and make you understand.
Your ex is making you understand the things you mustn’t do indirectly. He or she is doing that by ignoring you and hoping that you’ll take the hint. If you do take the hint, you’ll leave your ex alone and stop making your ex indirectly reject you.
And if you ignore your ex’s warnings, you’ll keep making your ex lose respect for you and might even force your ex to block you and get a restraining order against you.
A lot could go wrong if you violate your ex’s right to privacy and need for space. For instance, you could make your ex angry and act hostile towards you and those who associate with you.
That would complicate the situation even more and make you feel even worse than you already do. It would destroy your hope of getting back together and make you extremely anxious and depressed.
So unless you’re a dumpee, bear in mind that your ex’s ignoring isn’t a good sign. Ignoring shows that your ex’s respect and care for you have plummeted and that your ex needs space to go through the stages dumpers go through.
Your ex needs to not think about you and interact with you for a while so that he or she can process the breakup at a pace that feels natural to your ex.
Once your ex has processed everything he or she needs to process, your ex could contact you and respond to you. Your ex could ask for friendship, forgiveness, or another chance.
But until that happens, you need to understand that your ex isn’t emotionally ready to communicate and that you mustn’t try to force your ex to be.
As an ex, you can’t make your ex want to talk to you and spend time with you. You can only make your ex feel trapped and annoyed. And when your ex feels annoyed, chances are your ex will react impulsively and push you far away.
This will increase your ex’s resentment and fear of communicating and decrease the chances of ever being on good terms with your ex.
If you don’t want that to happen and get hurt, you must remember that your ex would have responded if he or she wanted to. Your ex would have initiated conversations and shown that he or she considers you an equal worthy of being with romantically or as a friend.
Since your ex isn’t reaching out and isn’t ready for a relationship or friendship, you mustn’t be selfish and demand that your ex gives you what you want. It’s inconsiderate of your ex’s feelings and decisions to keep bothering your ex about things you want and aren’t getting.
Complaining won’t make your ex yield to your demands.
It will infuriate your ex for not respecting him or her and force your ex to respond emotionally. An emotional response probably won’t be very positive because your ex will feel a strong need to defend his or her stance and punish you for crossing his or her boundaries.
Always remember that an ex who left you knows what he or she needs to do to fix things. The dumper is aware of the fact that he or she is responsible for putting the work in and making things right. If the dumper doesn’t initiate, express regret, and give you what you want, he or she doesn’t want to do that and shouldn’t be forced.
The dumper should be left to his or her devices.
It’s not easy to do that and move on after being ignored, but you don’t have a choice. You can’t continue to rely on your ex for validation and healing. You must find your own way to feel secure within yourself.
This is the perfect time for you to become emotionally independent and reliant on yourself.
If you ignore the need to disconnect from your ex and convince yourself that your ex’s ignoring is a good sign, you’ll most likely stay hopeful and dependent on your ex for basic human needs. In other words, you’ll feel stuck and keep obsessing over someone who isn’t obsessing over you.
Although you’ll know your ex doesn’t want you, you’ll continue to crave your ex and waste the time you could spend on improving yourself, detaching, and healing.
That being said, here’s why your ex ignoring you isn’t a good sign.
What to do when your ex ignores you?
If your ex is ignoring you, you obviously shouldn’t keep doing what you’re doing. You shouldn’t keep trying to re-establish contact on your terms and forcing your ex to respond and care.
If your ex doesn’t care, your ex just doesn’t care. You won’t be able to make your ex care no matter what messages, voice calls, or videos you send. As long as your ex perceives you the way he or she does, your reach-outs will only annoy your ex and make your ex want to ignore you even more.
Therefore, what you must do is accept that your ex doesn’t want to talk to you. You may have gotten along well before the breakup, but now that you’re exes, this is no longer the case. Things have changed, so you can’t pretend that everything’s fine.
It’s better that you both accept the new relationship dynamics and that you let each other be for a while. How long you shouldn’t communicate depends on each ex-couple. Some exes need weeks of silence whereas others need years or decades.
If you’re not sure how much time you should give your ex, give your ex as long as he or she needs to respond. You must respect your ex’s unwillingness to communicate while your ex is recovering and let your ex reach out to you when he or she is ready.
If your ex wants to talk to you, your ex will do so regardless of how things ended. Your ex will overcome the reasons that are currently holding him or her back from talking to you. All your ex needs is to process the separation and find some kind of reason to talk to you.
If your ex sees you’re not dangerous and that he or she respects you as a person, your ex will contact you when he or she processes relief and elation and becomes nostalgic or guilty for the way he or she behaved.
Your job isn’t to apologize and speed up your ex’s process but to let your ex deal with unwanted breakup emotions. Once your ex has dealt with them, your ex will reach out and chat with you.
It may not be about reconciliation, but at least you’ll talk to the person you’ve been getting ignored by.
Do keep in mind that when you heal, you may not want to talk to your ex anymore. That’s because you’ll stop feeling rejected by the person you admire and see your ex for the person he or she is.
You’ll see that your ex treated you terribly when you were at your worst and needed help and that your ex doesn’t deserve you at your best either.
When that happens, you’ll regain your lost power and look forward to dating other people.
But in the meantime, try not to force things. I know you want to feel important and needed, but you can’t feel that way by forcing your ex to respond to you. You’ll love yourself much more if you stay away from your ex and show your ex you respect yourself and enjoy life.
Nothing will make your ex respect you and find you more attractive than you keeping your composure and moving forward with your life. So show you’re capable of letting go of your ex and that you can feel complete without your ex.
Are you still wondering if your ex ignoring you is a good sign? What do you think it means when people ignore you? Share your views below the post and we’ll get back to you soon.
However, if you’d like to go into detail about your relationship and breakup, click here to sign up for private coaching.
My name is Zan and I’m the founder of Magnet of Success. I enjoy writing realistic relationship and breakup articles and helping readers heal and grow. With more than 5 years of experience in the self-improvement, relationship, and breakup sphere, my goal is to provide advice that fosters positivity and success and avoids preventable mistakes and pain. Buy me a coffee, learn more about me, or get in touch today.
I hate when a partner don’t prioritize their relationship! And I don’t want even to run after that kind of person.
And you don’t need to go after a ex-partner. All this thanks to you Zan you opened my eyes
You deserve better Linda!