My Ex Is Confusing Me A Lot!

If your ex is confusing you with random messages or hot and cold behavior, know that you’re not alone. You’re one of many dumpees who have decided to stay in touch with their ex and tried to win their ex back through friendship, force, and perseverance.

You still have hope for your ex, so you thought you could slowly guide your ex back into your heart and make your ex feel something for you again.

But all you ended up doing was letting your ex confuse you and hurt you with flaky and disinterested words and actions. Instead of showing your ex strength and that you deserved another chance, you showed you’re going to wait for your ex for as long as it takes.

This is how you took your ex’s sense of urgency away and allowed your ex to explore life without you with the reassurance that you’re still interested in dating your ex and available as a backup plan.

And that’s something your ex didn’t need. Your ex didn’t need to know that you’re always going to be his or her most loyal follower and a lifelong fan. Fans just don’t impress their exes and win them back. They boost their egos and give them a sense of safety.

Safety that feels too good for them to regret their decisions and come crawling back to reconnect. You can argue all you want, but what makes dumpers come back is fear and respect. These two simple things tell dumpers that they’ve lost someone important and that they need to get back with their ex before someone else takes their place.

So if your ex is confusing you a lot, bear in mind that your ex doesn’t fear nor respect you as much as he or she needs to. Your ex is still certain that the breakup needed to happen and that there’s no reason to reconcile at this moment.

As for why your ex is confusing you, it’s because your actions or presence are overwhelming and confusing your ex. They’re telling your ex you’re still around and that you’re not looking after yourself. At least not in the right kind of way because you’re trying to help yourself by clinging to your ex rather than your own strength.

You may not see it that way, but your ex does, and it’s confusing your ex emotionally.

It’s making your ex get close to you on good days when your expectations are low and your ex’s perception of you healthy. But when your ex senses you’re too close and that you want too much reassurance, your ex raises his or her guards and appears stand-offish.

Your ex doesn’t know how to respond to overwhelming situations, so he or she responds instinctually by pushing you away.

Keep in mind that dumpers appear cold and distant when they get too much of something they don’t want. Usually, it’s their ex’s behavior that bothers them, but other times, it’s their thoughts and perceptions of their ex that ruin the fun for them.

They consider their ex unfit for dating, so they think they’ll be happier with someone whose love they would have to fight for. Such people don’t appreciate things and people they win over with little to no effort. They like them and find them worthy mainly when they have to put a lot of effort into them.

This means that oftentimes, dumpees don’t even do anything wrong. They don’t beg and plead, annoy their ex, and make post-breakup mistakes. They’re just their usual selves, but they still cause dumpers to become angry, cold, mean, and vengeful.

Dumpers just can’t and don’t want to abandon old perceptions of their ex. They would rather hold on to them and use them to fortify their reasons for leaving the dumpee.

Most dumpees don’t understand that the breakup is out of their control. It’s in their dumper’s control because the dumper has all the power. The dumper decides what he or she wants and doesn’t want, and as a result, gets irritated and repulsed when the dumpee acts clingy, needy, pushy, and desperate.

Nothing smothers the dumper more than an ex who directly or indirectly wants attention and affection as demanding behavior tends to make the dumper feel guilty, pressured, and victimized and brings out the worst in him or her.

In this post, we’ll talk about why your ex is confusing you and how you can handle the confusion in ways that are in your and your ex’s best interest.

Why is my ex confusing me?

Because you’ve invested more time and emotions in your ex than your ex has invested in you, you now feel undervalued and want your ex to reciprocate your feelings and be mindful of your emotions. You want your ex to show you care and respect and be consistent in what he or she does.

But unfortunately, your ex doesn’t want to be consistent. Your ex wants to minimize or completely stop spending time with you so your ex can focus on things he or she deems important.

Things like:

• hanging out with friends
• spending time with family
• focusing on hobbies and interests
• distracting from negative breakup emotions
• and even dating other people

These are the things your ex wants to spend more time and energy on as they make your ex feel good and understood. Talking to you and fulfilling your emotional needs, on the other hand, doesn’t. It makes your ex feel that he or she is required to finish responsibilities he or she resigned from by breaking up with you.

That’s why we can say that conversing with you makes your ex feel trapped and dissatisfied. It boils your ex’s blood because your ex would rather be anywhere else in the world. Anywhere that lets your ex enjoy post-breakup freedom and focus on self-distraction.

But if my ex wants space so badly, why doesn’t my ex just leave me alone?

Just because your ex isn’t in a relationship with you doesn’t mean your ex wants nothing at all to do with you. Your ex still likes you as a person and appreciates the things you went through as a couple. Your ex just doesn’t want to separate from you completely because at the moment, your ex wants the best of both worlds – friendship without commitment.

He or she doesn’t see anything wrong with staying friends because friendship doesn’t smother your ex. It’s your requests, demands, and expectations that do that. These are the things that suffocate your ex and cause your ex to act on emotions that confuse you.

With that being said, here are 5 reasons why your ex is confusing you.

If you don’t respect your ex’s boundaries, you don’t leave your ex any choice but to “punish” you for it and push you away. Always remember that your ex’s only way to defend himself or herself is cold and mean behavior. It’s how your ex can convey to you that you’re not listening to his or her post-breakup needs and that you need to be more self-aware and back off.

How your ex behaves after the breakup depends on your ex’s personality. But your ex can confuse you in many different ways.

Your ex can:

• Reply shortly
• Stop responding
• Ignore you
• Block you
• Get angry with you
• Tag you on social media
• Ask your friends about you
• Ask you if you have feelings for him/her
• Talk about your dating life
• Indulge in nostalgia
• Tell you he/she still loves you and is sorry for hurting you
• Call you pet names or mean words
• Refuse to meet up with you
• Keep your stuff
• Cancel plans
• Tag you on social media
• Stay in touch with your family
• Wear your jewelry
• And much much more

No matter what your ex does, know that there are only two reasons why your ex is confusing you after the breakup.

1. Your ex wants to stay in touch and talk about things that have nothing to do with the relationship. Your ex doesn’t know or care that you need to heal.
2. You’re taking the breakup lightly and are letting your ex confuse you by staying in touch with your ex.

If you don’t want your ex to confuse you and indirectly string you along, you have to stop giving your ex a chance to confuse you. You have to be strong and cease all communication right away. The sooner you do that, the sooner you’ll make it clear you’re not interested in getting friend-zoned and showered with meaningless texts and calls (aka breadcrumbs).

Breadcrumbs will delay your healing and push you deeper into the friend-zone with your ex. That’s why it’s better to ask your ex not to reach out and follow a rigorous regimen of indefinite no contact.

That way, you’ll let your ex know you’re moving on, regain your dignity, avoid false hope, take your ex’s ability to confuse you away, and heal as quickly as possible.

Don’t misinterpret your ex’s behavior

If your ex is confusing you, this most likely isn’t happening because your ex is still deciding whether to be with you. Of course, there’s always a chance that your ex feels somewhat attached to you and/or is deciding between you and someone else, but it’s much more likely that your ex just feels pressured.

Pressured into doing what you want him or her to do.

That would mean that your ex is confusing you because your ex is stuck between doing the morally right thing (helping you) and focusing on his or her own happiness (helping himself/herself). Some dumpees try to be nice for a while, but when their ex keeps demanding attention, they eventually stop being nice. They think their ex wants too much from them, so they change between hot and cold, interested and disinterested, hope-giving and hope-taking.

They don’t know how to focus on their post-breakup needs and give their ex what their ex wants at the same time, so they have moments when they appear to be friendly (almost too friendly) and moments when they don’t care about their ex and just focus on themselves.

Many dumpers struggle to find a balance between morality and self-care, which is why they indeliberately continue to confuse their ex until they get used to their ex or lose patience and leave.

More often than not, they decide to leave. Their pain and frustration continue to increase with time, so they discern that they deserve happiness and that they must do whatever it takes to find it.

So if your ex is confusing you with his or her changes in mood and behavior, know that your ex is likely going to emotionally exhaust himself or herself any day now. Your ex is going to continue losing patience and respect and become more and more agitated until emotions overpower your ex’s morality and cause him or her to run for the mountains.

The best thing you can do is to respond to your ex by saying you aren’t ready for friendship and that you’ll let him or her know if you become ready in the future. Until then, say you’d appreciate it if your ex didn’t communicate with you anymore and to reach out only if it’s urgent.

And that’s it. If your ex is mature or cares about you, your ex will understand and give you space. But if your ex lacks the understanding of why space is so important to you, your ex will probably get angry, guilt-trip you, and try to change your mind.

But don’t worry about that too much as it likely won’t happen. A hot and cold ex usually wants space way more than friendship.

His or her feelings are gone, so asking not to reach out anymore doesn’t hurt his or her ego. But if it does because your ex is attached or has expectations of you, you’ll cross that bridge when you get to it.

Is your ex confusing you or did in the past? What did you do/plan to do to stop being confused? Let us know in the comments section below the post.

And as always, if you need our help interpreting your ex’s behavior, check out our coaching options here.