How To Respond To An Ex Who Hurt You?

Most dumpers are so focused on how they feel and what they want to feel that they don’t realize or care they hurt you. They’re so done with the relationship and feeling miserable that they prioritize themselves and respond automatically (instinctually) to things their ex says and does.

This is how they protect themselves from unwanted thoughts and emotions and stay in control of their post-breakup life. Having control is very important to them as it allows them to keep their ex at a comfortable distance and encourages them to think of themselves as victims.

By presenting themselves as victims of their ex’s mistreatment or neglect, they reinforce their reasons for breaking up and justify their unprincipled behavior. The behavior they would disapprove of if their ex treated them in the same way.

Dumpers often say some pretty hurtful things to dumpees and look like completely different people to those around them. But in reality, they’re not any different at all as they’d always been capable of lashing out and acting mean.

They just never had a reason to treat their exes so poorly because they were in love with them and cared about their relationship.

They saw a future with their exes and needed to be on their best behavior for their exes, their/their exes’ family, and their own sake. Their happiness depended on how they expressed difficult emotions and resolved problems.

After the breakup, though, that stopped being the case. They no longer needed to mind their attitude and behavior and could just show their true colors. They had nothing to lose, so why wouldn’t they stop caring about their behavior and start doing what gives them a sense of control and makes them happy?

Why pretend to care and exercise self-control when they could push people with expectations away forcefully in the fastest way possible?

That’s the mentality many dumpers adopt. But should they embrace this kind of thinking?

Just because they can do something immoral and self-empowering—and escape punishment, is that the right thing to do? How would that affect their character development? If more people asked themselves this question, there would be significantly fewer toxic behaviors and traumas created by unhealthy behaviors.

If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

Abraham Lincoln

People will always show you who they are when they feel empowered, disinterested, and pressured. Observe their reactions to stress, overwhelm, anxiety, fear, and physical pain, and you’ll have a good idea of what friendship or relationship with them will look like.

Don’t only listen to what they say. If their actions are unconvincing or hurtful, forget about their promises and focus on their behaviors. Behaviors (especially repetitive ones – patterns) will tell you everything you need to know.

They’ll tell you how a person perceives you and what his or her intentions are.

Therefore, the main things that change within dumpers after the breakup are their attitude, respect, and self-control. These things stop them from preserving their image and maintaining the connection.

Instead of holding unwanted emotions and explanations back, they let them out and continue to feel an overwhelming need to escape a situation that expects them to do something they don’t want.

So if you want to know how to respond to an ex who hurt you, the response should in my opinion depend on how your ex hurt you, how much pain you felt (or still feel), and how much you care about your moral values.

Morals may not seem important if you’re hurting, but they do allow you to respond politely even if your ex responded impolitely and was in a hurry to ditch you.

Responding the “right way” will increase your self-control and make you into a non-vengeful (moral) person, which is someone your ex probably wasn’t trying to be.

In today’s post, we shed some light on how to respond to an ex who hurt you. We talk about responding to an ex right after he or she has hurt you and responding to an ex days, weeks, or months after the breakup when he or she reaches out.

Ways to respond to an ex who hurt you

First and foremost, if your ex betrayed you, physically or emotionally abused you, or tried to ruin your reputation, responding to your ex would be a bad idea. It’d be bad for your health and healing as it’d force you to relive the past and make you afraid of your ex’s impulsivity and unpredictability.

It may be better not to get back into the habit of talking to an ex who’s capable of abusing his or her power and hurting you. A relationship like that has to end completely (even the friendship part) so you can heal from your ex’s mistreatment and fall back in love with yourself.

That’s the only way for you to break the unhealthy attachment and disassociate from your ex.

Secondly, if your ex hurt you mainly by breaking up with you and appearing smothered, cold, and disinterested, your ex clearly couldn’t talk to you when you wanted to talk the most. Your ex felt extremely suffocated at that time and thought that the best thing to do was to self-prioritize and let you deal with your problems.

It wasn’t fair of your ex to treat you like you didn’t exist, but dumpers often act selfishly and respond in ways that are in their best interest. They don’t know or care that their ex is suffering because they’re dying to get space and want to feel relieved.

It normally takes them weeks or months to stop feeling overwhelmed and see that they overreacted and treated their ex poorly. This is especially true if their ex begged and pleaded with them for another chance and asked for lots of attention, support, and recognition.

Breakup mistakes tend to make dumpers feel uncomfortable and delay their ability to process the breakup. You must avoid breakup mistakes at all costs. Doing so will not only make your ex feel respected and relieved, but it will also avoid bringing bad reactions out of your ex.

Reactions that will make you feel rejected and worthless.

So if your ex appeared selfish during the breakup but realized his or her mistakes later and reached out, know that your ex has processed the breakup to some degree and probably deserves some kind of acknowledgment.

You don’t need to forget that your ex was nasty or completely useless to you when you needed closure and help, but you needn’t hold grudges against your ex either.

You must forgive your ex for your own good and respond to your ex’s reach-out to find out what your ex wants. Your ex might have found something that belongs to you or wants you back. You don’t know why your ex wants to communicate, so respond and find out.

If you learn that your ex has no intention of getting back with you or if you don’t want your ex back, you must do what’s best for you and ask for space. Your ex did the same thing when he or she felt cornered and tired of being in a committed relationship with you.

But because you’re a good person (or trying to be), you must push your ex away the ethical way and show your ex how to treat people you can’t benefit from romantically. You can show your ex you respect yourself and people in general by explaining things with words like a mature human being.

You can tell your ex you’re not ready to talk and that you’d appreciate it if he or she didn’t reach out anymore.

Should you even respond to an ex who hurt you?

If you’re trying to learn how to respond to an ex who hurt you, figure out whether your ex even deserves your response and if you’re ready to talk to your ex.

Talking to your ex too early (while you’re still processing the breakup) would make you hungry for your ex’s validation and could create more problems than it solves. It could make you feel rejected again and/or cause a fight with your ex.

That obviously wouldn’t fix anything. It would just make your ex less keen to talk and risk forcing a negative response out of your ex. That response would, in turn, hinder your healing and stop your growth as it’d force you to deal with the issues at hand.

That’s why you shouldn’t start talking to your ex the moment your ex breaks no contact and expresses the wish to talk. Your ex may be ready to catch up and be friends, but you probably aren’t. You’ll know you’re ready to befriend your ex when you’re happy to see that your ex is dating again and is doing okay without you.

This leaves us with the question of whether you should respond to an ex who’s hurt you badly. Should you risk getting hurt again? Sadly, I can’t answer with a simple yes or no answer because it depends on what your ex did to hurt you and whether you’ve set your breakup boundaries.

If you’ve told your ex not to reach out (especially multiple times) and your ex continues to reach out despite asking him or her not to, you not only have the right to not respond, but you can also block your ex. Multiple warnings not to reach out should be enough for your ex to understand that you’re hurting and not ready to talk.

The only exception is if your ex has some serious mental health problem that you’re aware of. In that case, you can probably be a bit more patient and understanding toward your ex and try to find a healthy balance between care and self-care.

You’ll never find the perfect balance, but regardless of that, you should try to help when your ex is in great need of help. Help should be given when the dumper is a danger to self or others.

Fortunately, most dumpers aren’t a danger to themselves. They’re a danger to their exes because they’re in a position of power and control. They’re okay with hurting their exes because they no longer like their exes romantically and see how they can benefit from them.

Conversely, they see their exes’ bad traits and say or do hurtful things.

It takes them quite some time to naturally process the breakup and stop feeling pressured and relieved. But when that happens, they often feel guilty and reach out to the people they’ve hurt (their exes) and clear their guilty conscience.

You can help your ex alleviate guilt if you choose to do so. But no matter what you say to your ex, your ex will most likely disappear for a while after he or she has talked to you and got what he or she needed from you.

If your ex stays, your ex will probably friend-zone you and make you regret talking to him or her soon.

It may be selfish of your ex to apologize months after the breakup when you don’t need the apology anymore, but if you want to do the morally right thing, respond to your ex and end the conversation. You don’t need to keep talking to your ex when the conversation isn’t heading in the direction you want it to go.

Your only job is to heal and be polite. And that’s for you, not your ex.

So determine whether it’s worth responding to your ex.

Do that by:

• thinking about your morals. Do you respond to people who have hurt you or do you hold grudges, ignore them, and take revenge?
• remembering whether you’ve set any breakup boundaries (asked your ex not to reach out). Dumpers don’t always understand they need to leave dumpees alone. Sometimes they want to be their friends or friends with benefits).
• determining how much respect your ex has for you and whether your ex is dangerous for you and your loved ones.
• analyzing your ex’s reach-out and learning if your ex’s reach-out even concerns you.

How to respond to an ex who hurt you?

If you’re thinking of responding to your ex sometime after the breakup because you feel hurt, know that there’s no need to respond to something your ex said during or right after the breakup. Your ex already told you everything he or she wanted to say and doesn’t have any more helpful answers for you.

If you dig deeper into your ex and try to get your ex to tell you things you don’t need to know, you’ll probably make your ex see that you’re in denial and that you’re going to stick around longer than he or she expected you to.

That will likely overwhelm your ex with expectations and demands and force your ex to give you more unwanted responses.

An unwanted response could be any impatient, angry, cold, or accusational response that hurts you and makes you even more eager to receive your ex’s attention and love.

You should avoid reaching out to your ex to respond to something your ex said or did and respond to your ex only when your ex reaches out. The purpose of your response should be to reconcile, befriend your ex, or get your unfinished business done (divorce, kids, living situation, finances, etc.)

If you want to be with your ex, you should quickly (in the fastest possible time) learn why your ex contacted you. Don’t entertain your ex and talk about unnecessary things you needn’t talk about. Leave such talks for later if you think your ex would make a decent friend.

During the reach-out, focus on matters that actually matter. Ask your ex why he or she reached out and what kind of relationship your ex hopes to have with you. This will coax your ex into opening up and telling you the truth.

Once your ex gives you the truth, think about what to do with it and be decisive. Your ex needs to see that you respect yourself and take breakups seriously.

With that said, here are 5 simple tips on how to respond to an ex who hurt you.

No matter what your ex says, be polite and respectful. Make sure your ex sees that you don’t hold grudges and that you’ve forgiven your ex for hurting you. That will send the message that you’re not looking for revenge and that you have better things to worry about than an ex who hurt you.

Are you thinking of responding to an ex who hurt you? What do you want to say to your ex? Let us know in the comments below.

And if you prefer to talk to us 1-on-1 and devise a healthy response, sign up for breakup coaching here.

Zan

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.