When an ex keeps texting you even though you ignore him, your ex doesn’t care that you need space and quiet. He wants what he wants, so he keeps talking to you despite his reach-outs making you uncomfortable.
The guy doesn’t take no for an answer because he thinks his reasons for talking to you are more important than your feelings and desire to recover. That’s why he always puts himself first and makes sure to check up on you whenever he feels that he could benefit from reaching out.
If your ex is a dumper, he could benefit by assuaging guilt, satisfying curiosity, establishing a friendship/friendship with benefits, and getting emotional, physical, or financial help. A dumper tends to text and call (aka breadcrumb) because he wants the best things the dumpee can offer him.
If your ex is a dumpee, however, then your ex is most likely looking for validation, closure, or a way to get back together with you. If your ex is really desperate for a response, he probably wants to hear that the relationship meant something to you and that you haven’t forgotten him and everything he did for you.
A dumpee feels rejected and miserable, so he wants his ex to show compassion and stop him from hurting. By talking to the dumper, the dumpee strives to regain his sense of control and importance and increase his hopes for reconciliation.
Regardless of whether your ex is a dumpee or a dumper, your ex shouldn’t be texting you and you shouldn’t be ignoring your ex. Post-breakup texting makes the dumpee put his hope into his and his ex’s responses and delays recovery (especially when things don’t go the way he wants them to go).
You and your ex should leave each other alone unless you need to talk about something important and in the interest of both. This can be children, mortgage, finances, and things you can’t decide or do without each other.
Everything else should be dealt with alone. This includes difficult feelings of reconciliation hope, pain, curiosity, guilt, shame, depression, and separation anxiety (unless the dumpee has suicidal thoughts and/or the dumper is willing to help).
A breakup indicates an emotional disconnection (often caused by overwhelm) and a desire to self-prioritize and focus on other people. If the dumper feels that he can’t do what the breakup was supposed to let him do, he feels suffocated and may react poorly (instinctually).
Poor reactions include any unhealthy response that aims to stop the dumpee from trapping the dumper. Often, the dumper will ignore and block the dumpee, respond angrily, turn hot and cold, ask for space, and say mean things.
When a dumper feels smothered, he’ll be much less patient than he was when he was with his ex. He’ll basically reveal his true colors and show how he deals with people who ask for time, attention, and affection that he can no longer give.
As for the dumper reaching out and getting ignored, the ignoring doesn’t hurt him as much as it hurts the dumpee. It just makes him more eager to talk to the dumpee and get what he needs.
It’s always best to discuss what the relationship will look like after the breakup so that ex-couples can distance themselves from each other and not feel trapped/disrespected and ignore each other.
In today’s post, we discuss why your ex keeps texting you even though you ignore him. Let’s first talk about why dumpees reach out.
Why does my dumpee ex keep texting me when I ignore him?
Your dumpee ex keeps texting you even though you ignore him because the breakup destroyed his self-esteem, increased his anxiety, and made him put you on a pedestal. It made you into a person who’s caused him pain and a person who can take his pain away.
Because you dumped him, you essentially triggered his biggest fears and made him hungry for validation. The breakup forced him to think of you as his savior and a person he truly values and wants to be with.
He didn’t feel this strongly about you when you were together. But because you rejected him, you indirectly told him he wasn’t good enough for you and that he had to do his best to impress you and made you want to be with him.
Since he’s in a world of pain, he’s now texting you all the time and seeking your approval. He wants you to tell him he matters and that you respect him enough to respond to him.
Nothing hurts dumpees more than ignoring and blocking. Being forcefully shut out of the dumper’s life when “all they want to do is talk” destroys the dumpees’ expectations and hope. It makes dumpees see that the dumper doesn’t care about their feelings and that they aren’t worthy of a response.
Sadly, this often makes dumpees spiral into depression and increases dumpees’ desire to converse and get answers.
So if you’re wondering why your ex keeps texting you when you ignore him, your ex keeps humiliating himself because you’re not giving him the attention or answers he needs. He expects you to act maturely and respond to him when he’s hurting and feels nostalgic, but instead, you keep seen-zoning his messages and making him worried for his safety.
At the moment, his safety is still with you. He wants to get back with you and feel accepted. But because you shut him down brutally (being ignored post-breakup hurts like hell), you fail to give him the acceptance he’s looking for and leave him dependent on you.
Although you’re not responsible for supporting him every step of the way, you do have a moral responsibility to respond when he’s suffering and hoping you would help. You have to let him down gently so he can slowly rebuild his self-esteem and wean off you.
Ignoring, blocking, getting angry, mocking, threatening, and belittling is immoral and completely unnecessary. It may help you keep your ex away and give you the space you need, but it doesn’t help the person who still has feelings for you and needs respect.
It’s also not good for your karma and conscience. You might get away with ignoring your current ex, the next ex, and even the one after that, but eventually, someone will confront you, call you out on it, ruin your reputation, or do something vengeful.
It’s best to break your cycle of ignoring exes (especially dumpees), so you can start helping them. By helping them once in a while, you won’t just feel better and improve your karma, but also make them leave you alone quicker. Your exes won’t bother you if they get the answers they need to gather the strength and determination to move on.
The only exes you should ignore are those who threaten your and your loved ones’ safety. Those exes should also be blocked and reported to local authorities. Getting a restraining order against them will protect you as well as those you love.
Why does my dumper ex keep texting me when I ignore him?
If your dumper ex is texting you even though you ignore him, your ex doesn’t know or care how you feel. Your ex doesn’t have the emotional intelligence required for putting himself in your shoes and letting you get over him.
He wants what selfish dumpers want, which is friendship, forgiveness, or recognition, and wants you to cooperate and “be fair.” Little does he know that his expectations are unrealistic and that you don’t owe him anything.
You certainly don’t owe him friendship. Friendship only keeps your hope alive and makes it easier for him not to blame himself for dumping you.
Breakups are a million times harder for dumpees than they are for dumpers. Dumpees deal with heartbreaking separation anxiety and fears of being forgotten while dumpers just think that losing their ex completely would suck and that they’d have to find a replacement buddy.
So if your dumper ex keeps texting you even though you ignore him, don’t expect the guy to understand what you’re going through and to know what he needs to know. The guy clearly lacks breakup knowledge and must be told what you want or don’t want.
You need to inform him that you don’t want to be his friend and that you’d appreciate it if he didn’t reach out anymore. If he does reach out again and mess with your healing and need for self-prioritization, you’ll block him and leave him blocked.
A guy who keeps reaching out as a dumper needs to know that he lost certain benefits by breaking up with you. He lost both a partner and a friend and needs to leave you alone and make a new partner or a friend. You can’t be the person who talks to him anymore and pretend everything’s fine.
Not after he broke a relationship commitment and showed how little you meant to him.
Now that he decided to leave, he needs to do what’s best for you, not him. He needs to acknowledge that friendship would be extremely challenging for you and that you’ve got better things and people to converse with.
You have people who don’t trigger your anxiety and make you want to reconcile. People such as your friends and family members.
An ex can’t be your friend after the breakup. He can give you closure (explain why the breakup happened) and support you when you’re having a bad day and need help. But for detaching and healing, you need to rely on yourself and find your own strength.
You can do that by cutting your ex off and rebuilding your life from the ground up. You’ll probably miss your ex like crazy for a while, but that’s something you must be prepared to deal with.
Dumpees need months to get over an ex. On average, they need 8 months to a year to get their ex out of their system and find other people attractive. It can take them even longer if their ex was a narcissist or someone who affected their self-esteem and put them through hell.
So don’t expect to get over an ex in the same amount of time as someone you know. It could take you longer or it could take you less time. The key is to be patient and willing to wait as long as it takes.
Just make sure not to tolerate your ex’s breadcrumbs. Ignoring may not be the moral thing to do, but talking to your ex makes you no hero either. It puts you in a position of weakness and delays your recovery.
The best way to get over an ex is to remember that friendship with an ex is difficult and that you’ll get over him quicker if you keep him out of sight.
Here’s what ignoring your ex does.
Will he miss me if I ignore him?
If you’re planning on ignoring an ex to make him miss you, you need to understand that your dumper ex needs to go through something painful to miss you. Ignoring him might hurt his ego and pride, but it won’t hurt him in the ways you want it to.
It will just make him see that you can’t communicate properly and that dumping you was the right thing to do.
You need to treat exes and people in general with respect. When you respect them, chances are they’ll respect you back. Or if they won’t respect you, at least they won’t hate you for acting bitter and vengeful.
Your ex’s admiration for you is already at an all-time low. Giving your ex more reasons to dislike you will just create more resentment and convince your ex that the breakup needed to happen.
Also, if you left your ex, then you also shouldn’t ignore him and expect him to come to you. Although some dumpees will beg and plead for a second chance, the strongest ones will cut you out of their life the moment you leave them. They’ll find your lack of communication and empathy disrespectful and might resent you for it.
So don’t try to make your ex miss you by ignoring him. It won’t work on an ex who dumped you when he detached from you and stopped valuing you.
Ignoring works on a person who loves you (your partner). But such a toxic behavior will only work for as long as he respects you and sees a future with you. When he realizes that you’re manipulating him and not caring about his feelings, he’ll lose respect, raise his guard, and become resentful.
That’s when he’ll stop taking you seriously and relying on you for happiness and safety.
Only insecure exes will chase you when you ignore them. But such exes will probably leave you when they get validation from you and realize they don’t need you. Therefore, it’s best not to ignore them or ignore them with the intention to hurt them and make them realize your importance.
You’ll leave a better impression on them if you communicate your emotions maturely and ask them not to reach out. That way, you won’t have to ignore them and make them think poorly of you.
Does your ex keep texting you even though you ignore him? Why do you think your ex is doing that? Share your views in the comments below.
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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. Learn more about me or get in touch today.
