My Ex Is Trying To Ruin My Reputation!

If your ex is trying to ruin your reputation by spreading lies and rumors about you and doing everything she can to damage your personal and professional life, you need to know that you’re dealing with a very vindictive ex-girlfriend.

You’re dealing with someone who thinks that the only way to be happy is to hurt you and bring you down to her level of misery.

This person doesn’t know that hurting you won’t improve her circumstances. It may give her a sense of satisfaction from the adrenaline rush that revenge gives her, but that rush won’t last forever. It will go away in a day or two and possibly even make her remorseful.

And that’s when she’ll either appear very regretful and apologetic or crave revenge again.

I can’t say what she’ll feel and do, but the two biggest reasons for her vengeful behavior are:

  1. She wants you to be miserable now that you’re no longer a couple.
  2. She wants to get back at you for the pain you’ve directly or indirectly caused her during or after the breakup.

Your ex wants to discover that you’re as hurt as she is and see that she can control your happiness and well-being.

This is a very primal human instinct that only the most reactive people act on. Instead of rebuilding their broken self-esteem and ego the healthy way by leaving their ex alone, they make their ex responsible for the way they feel and threaten, beg, or attack their ex.

This is how they try to regain their composure and get their happiness back.

They think that if they aren’t happy that their ex doesn’t deserve to be happy either. He should be miserable and regret getting on their bad side.

As they say, attack is the best form of defense. It helps your ex react to pain and anger and put you down before you create a fulfilling life without her and leave her behind for good.

So if the person in question keeps trying to ruin your reputation, bear in mind that she doesn’t know how to get your attention and repair her broken ego. She just knows that the quickest way to feel better is to act on anxiety, fear, and victimized feelings and bring a bad reaction out of you.

A reaction would tell her that she’s capable of manipulating your happiness, which would then encourage her to keep getting back at you.

The topic of this post is “My ex is trying to ruin my reputation.” We’ll discuss what your ex gets from hurting you and what you can do to neutralize her behavior and dissuade her from ruining your life.

My ex is trying to ruin my reputation

Why is my ex trying to ruin my reputation?

We’ve already established that your ex wants to bring a reaction out of you because any negative reaction you give her and anything you do because of her tells her that she has some power over you.

She may not be able to control who you talk to and what you do, but at least she can interfere with the things you enjoy and hurt you. She can get in your way of moving on and forgetting about her—and that’s enough for her.

Knowing that you’re on her mind (even if it’s by force) gives her a sense of accomplishment and pride and makes her feel good.

Another reason why your ex is trying to ruin your reputation is that your ex is envious of your happiness and success. She wants what you have, so she does what the most envious and jealous people do. She tries to bring you down and make herself look and feel better.

An insecure woman like this is on a mission to paint a black picture of you and present herself to your loved ones as someone you neglected or abused. She tries to bring them to her side and receive their sympathy and support so she can isolate you from the people you care about the most.

Isolation in relationships and friendships is a form of abuse and it’s what possessive people who lack control and happiness do. They destroy others’ relationships and celebrate their failures.

It’s also possible that your ex is suffering from some kind of mental illness. It’s usually those with extremely poor self-esteem and mental illnesses who get revenge on an ex because they feel very, very hurt by the breakup. They feel so devastated that they think they have nothing else to lose.

Of course, not all depressed, borderline, or narcissistic people take revenge on an ex. But people with mental health problems do tend to react to emotions of rejection in worse ways than mentally healthy people. This is because they lack control over their emotions and wish to gain control by inflicting pain.

So if your ex is trying to ruin your life, remember that there’s a reason she’s acting that way. She believes that you’re responsible for causing her pain and thinks that she should make herself feel better by hurting you back. She has an eye for an eye mentality and won’t stop unless she has the last laugh.

Here are 8 reasons why your ex is trying to ruin your reputation.

Why is my ex trying to ruin my reputation

What could an ex do to ruin your reputation and hurt you?

If your ex is extremely hurt and lacks control over her actions, she could hit below the belt.

She could:

  • spread lies and rumors about you
  • badmouth you
  • share your deepest secrets
  • ruin your friendships and relationships
  • get you fired from work or hinder your promotions
  • ruin your confidence and self-esteem
  • destroy your reputation in school
  • post your pictures on the internet

She could do anything that ruins your image, hurts you, and makes you unworthy of her attention.

As a vengeful ex-girlfriend, her goal is to make you look so undesirable to her and other people that she no longer feels inferior to you. When that happens, she would feel superior and think that you aren’t worth the trouble anymore.

But until that happens, you can expect her to use your weaknesses against you and say and do things that bring an angry reaction out of you. You need to play it smart if you don’t want to minimize the chances of her ruining your reputation.

What to do if your ex is trying to ruin your reputation?

When your ex tries to ruin your reputation, you have to understand that your ex wants to destroy what you’ve accomplished, humiliate you, but most importantly, ruin your happiness. She doesn’t like the situation that she’s in because you have the most important thing she doesn’t have.

You have closure, meaning that your life goes on while hers is stuck in the past, obsessing over her definition of injustice.

So to stop your ex from ruining your reputation and hurting you, the first thing you need to do is to stop reacting to your ex. Remember that it’s your bad reactions that encourage your ex to keep hurting you.

So do nothing. Appear stoic and pretend that her behavior doesn’t hurt you.

This may seem like a submissive approach, but that’s not quite it. It’s a passive approach that will allow your ex to cool off and rebuild her broken ego. It might take her some time to fully gain control over her emotions, but it’s the only approach that will stop angering her and giving her reasons to despise you.

Of course, some exes don’t like the silence after the breakup because they take the silence personally and get hurt even more. But despite that, it’s safer for you not to get involved with your ex than to talk to your ex about her behavior. If you start communicating with her, you’re most likely going to get into a fight and be forced to stop talking again.

And that’s then you’ll be back to square one with her.

So stop all communication with your ex if you haven’t yet and don’t change your tactics no matter what. Reach out only if you have unfinished business with your ex or if you need to talk about children.

You have to be consistent at what you say and do so your ex sees that you’re serious.

Moreover, don’t respond angrily to gossips and things she talks about to your mutual friends or family members. Instead of denying rumors and lies and getting upset about them, brush them off. Show everyone that you’re level-headed and that you can handle accusations morally and intellectually.

This will let your ex see that you have nothing against her and dissuade her from continuing to pick fights with you.

Another thing you should do is stop posting happy posts on social media. If anything hurts your ex and angers her it’s the way you portray yourself online. Remember that it’s easy for your ex to misinterpret your pictures and seek revenge when she sees that the breakup didn’t affect you.

And that’s it. These things will help your ex detach from you and allow her to focus on something or someone else.

However, if it’s been months and your ex is still attacking you and ruining your life, then there’s only one thing left for you to do. Involve the authorities and get a restraining order against her. It’s not the ideal method for dealing with a hurt ex, but when that ex is mentally ill and doesn’t care that she’s ruining your happiness and reputation, it’s the only thing that could get her to leave you alone.

From what I see though, a restraining order doesn’t always work. Lots of hurt people continue to communicate or destroy their ex-partner’s life even though they’re aware of the consequences of doing that. This is because such people can’t stop themselves from acting on anger and desperation and need help.

With that said, here are a few things you shouldn’t do if your ex keeps ruining your reputation:

  • show you’re hurt
  • take revenge
  • tell your friends how mean your ex is and ask them to tell your ex to stop
  • post about her behavior on social media
  • pretend to be happy or let her see that you’re happy

My advice is to try and solve this problem the nice way first by helping your ex get over the breakup. You can even talk to her family about it and encourage them to get her help. But if she keeps ruining your reputation and wants to destroy everything you’ve achieved despite being nice to her, report her to the authorities, delete your social media, and erase her out of your life.

There’s a time to help people, but that time isn’t when they do everything in their power to bring you down.

Is your ex trying to ruin your reputation? What’s she doing to get your attention and hurt you? Share your experiences below the article.

And if you’d like to talk to us about your vengeful ex via email or phone call, go to our coaching page to learn more.

16 thoughts on “My Ex Is Trying To Ruin My Reputation!”

  1. My ex decided to spill some of my deepest secrets to my friends and is continuously trying to make me look like a horrible person, even though I’ve moved on from my mistakes and stuff I did from almost a DECADE ago! I told the friend I was getting bad-mouthed to, to send my ex a message that I didn’t want to fight, and I wish only the best for both of us in the future–but I’m worried my ex is only going to further humiliate me to all my friends, because I felt genuinely safe talking about my past.

    I’m not really sure what to do at this point, because it does make me feel miserable to be humiliated like this and have to admit to my friends what happened a long long time ago. My ex has some severe mental illnesses, and I’m afraid that they will do everything in their power to ruin my life. The break up was very recent, but I’m wondering if I should get someone of higher power involved ,just because of how volatile my ex can be. What should I do?

    Reply
    • Hi Dan.

      Ignore her. If you fight her head-on, it will only enrage her and make her defend herself by ruining your reputation further. Eventually, she’ll give up and find someone else to trash talk.

      Best regards,
      Zan

      Reply
  2. This is an interesting one. I broke up with an ex over a year ago (April of 2022). After, we talked and tried to find closure – which I felt we did. In August that year, I was notified she was posting information about me on a Facebook Page ‘Are We Dating The Same Guy’. The post was embarrassing and she did a scathing job manipulating conversations or any evidence of our relationship to look absolutely brutal.

    And it hurt. I felt betrayed and uncertain of how this would reflect.

    Luckily I had great friends who saw the post and helped me in just shutting it out and refusing to react. They recognized that this was unbecoming behavior and reflected more poorly on her than me. The best reaction was no reaction. And she got none.

    One year later to the exact date of her last post, she did it again…and went even bigger. I learned of the post because my current girlfriend saw it and was concerned. But I had let her know many many months prior of my ex and her actions. And we agreed not to react.

    But what my ex manifested in writing to the FB group was far more embarrassing in the second go. She made the post look as if we broke up yesterday (hence why my gf was quite curious). I’ve never seen anything like this.

    So, alas, I feel this is going to be a continuous loop and I don’t know what to do. I just don’t understand her motivation in being vindictive to this degree. I want her to be happy and move on in building a great life.

    I suppose I didn’t realize her ideal life included actions like this.

    Reply
    • Hi Ethan.

      She’s still bitter and wants to present herself as a victim. It seems that she’s looking for sympathy from that group. If you were the one who left her, you probably caused her a lot of pain and indirectly encouraged her to focus on negative things and become vengeful.

      Leave the group and focus on your new relationship. It doesn’t matter what she says about you as long as she doesn’t bother your friends and family.

      Kind regards,
      Zan

      Best regards,
      Zan

      Reply
  3. LOVE THIS. NEEDED IT. You hit the nail on the head.. word for word. Thank you, again, because my ex’s behavior has crossed so many lines and is on the brink of doing irreparable harm to more than just me over the scorn of rejection. Everyone has a breaking point, I thought I was close to mine today. I really appreciate you reminding me (for myself) who I am, how I act, and where I stand.

    Reply
  4. My ex came back after 3 years. I don’t know what happened with her ex. But she came back vengeful. Ruining my reputation over social media. Make me look like a “dog” while she won’t accept that, I left her because of her toxicness and anger issues. When she gets angry she just see “red”.

    Anyway, I haven’t reacted. Told my current partner to not mind her. She’s trying to bring people other people to ruin my relationship. And top of that she created a fake Instagram page to ridiculing me.

    What should I do?

    Reply
  5. I have an extremely vindictive ex. The more he behaves in such a vindictive rageful manner,the more he convinces me to never look back. Someone who is sadistic while playing the victim is a complete turn off for me. I love him but I will never engage with him as long as he continues to be a negative,vicious , person. I don’t even know him anymore. And with this behaviour,I’m not sure if I want to. Truly shocking to me.

    Reply
  6. My ex (husband) is not over me I’ve been told, and is trying to ruin my reputation with my friends and especially clients and prospects. I am a Realtor and everything I do is based on my reputation, my relationships and connections and he is trying to ruin this. We have 2 young children together and he does not seem to realize that what he is trying to take away from me in terms of business opportunities he is taking away from our children.

    He is not paying me the alimony & child support he is supposed to because he says that his circumstances have changed and he does not have the money, and at the same time he is trying to prevent me from earning my own income.

    What should I do to stop this?

    Reply
    • Hi anonymous.

      Try to communicate with him a bit better. Show him you care about him as a person while still maintaining your distance. If he feels valued, he’ll stop. And if that doesn’t work, don’t react in anger. That will empower him. In that case, consider getting a restraining order.

      Best regards,
      Zan

      Reply
  7. Such a good article Zan, congratulations as always :))!!

    as dumpee I continue to rebuilding my broken self-esteem and ego the healthy way by leaving their ex alone… and all this thanks to your one-on-one help ❤️

    Reply
  8. Hi Zan,
    You have exactly described my situation with my ex-wife. She left me, and later I found happiness and success on my own without her. As you wrote: ” She is not happy, so she is trying to ruin my life”

    Reply
    • Hi Milan.

      You’ve done well and your ex-wife doesn’t like that. She’s envious of your happiness and independence and wants to bring you down to get some approval (satisfaction) out of it.

      Don’t let her affect you, Milan. You’ve got to stay strong!

      Zan

      Reply

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