When your ex leaves you on read, your ex’s behavior shows a lack of romantic and non-romantic interest. It tells you that you’re not a priority anymore and that your ex has different things or people to focus on. Your ex has hobbies or people who make him or her think positive thoughts and feel positive emotions.
Others make your ex want to communicate and bond whereas you (your presence or behavior), make your ex feel forced to respond and invest in. It could be that you’re texting your ex too much or that your ex isn’t ready to be your texting buddy yet.
Whatever the case may be, most dumpers need some time to themselves to process the breakup and see their ex as an equal. They need a few months to become curious about their ex and open to chatting with their ex.
A few months of space typically allow them to do the things they want to do and stop feeling smothered and irritated.
Exes aren’t friends by default. They have a lot of internal work to do before they feel comfortable and discover a good reason to converse. Usually, they have to see that their ex won’t say or do something they don’t want and that it’s safe for them to reach out and communicate.
If they think it’s not safe or that they need more space, they don’t reach out. They stay away from their ex, ignore their ex’s reachouts, or stop responding mid-conversation. They avoid their ex and do what’s best for them rather than what’s best for their ex.
If you talked to your ex and your ex left you on read, bear in mind that your ex currently doesn’t feel very strongly about you. Your ex doesn’t feel the need to talk to you and have any deep/long conversations. He or she is okay with no texting or just occasional/quick texting.
If you try to have serious or long conversations with your ex, your ex will probably leave you on read and get busy with other things. Things that fuel your ex with positive energy.
Don’t take that personally. At this point, your ex has different post-breakup expectations and hasn’t found a reason to converse in ways you want to converse. Your ex also hasn’t redeveloped feelings and desires to get back together.
If your ex wanted you back, your ex wouldn’t have left you on read, period. He or she would have bombarded you with texts and calls and made sure to get back together as quickly as possible. A quick reconciliation would have enabled your ex to stop feeling anxious and scared and start feeling accepted and loved.
It would have given your ex reassurance and empowered your ex with various positive feelings.
Since your ex isn’t interested in texting, let alone getting back together, it’s evident that your ex doesn’t want what you want. Your ex has completely different feelings and expectations—and probably thinks you want too much (too quickly) from him or her.
You want the attention your ex can’t and doesn’t want to give and leave him or her with no choice but to leave you on read and do other/more interesting things.
An ex who leaves you on read obviously isn’t as eager to converse as you. He or she may be busy, but even a busy person gets back to you after a while. He or she apologizes for not responding quicker as he or she doesn’t want to hurt you and damage the connection.
A disinterested ex, on the other hand, doesn’t apologize, nor care about the connection. In his or her mind, it was necessary to leave you on read as it allowed your ex to focus on more important or fun things.
Such an ex tends to justify his or her ignoring behavior by telling himself or herself that the conversation was boring, lengthy, or uncomfortable and that he or she doesn’t owe you any responses.
Since you’re no longer together, your ex can do as he or she pleases. Your ex can talk to you or not talk to you, depending on his or her thoughts, feelings, and priorities.
You must accept that things have changed and that your ex won’t give you the attention you received when you were together.
Your ex will likely prioritize his or her feelings and wishes over yours and make you feel rejected if you continue to communicate. This will increase your feelings of unworthiness and cause you to blame yourself for your ex’s behavior and lack of interest.
If you don’t want to feel that way, you need to understand why your ex left you on read and what you can do to minimize pain. You have to know that dumpers ignore dumpees because they feel overwhelmed and don’t want to engage in meaningless conversations.
They want to be left alone and only talk to people who challenge them and make them feel good.
Dumpees typically don’t make them feel good. They mostly smother dumpers and bring out the worst in them. This, of course, depends on what dumpees want and how they express wants and emotions.
If dumpees demand replies, dumpers tend to feel pressured and disrespected and either tell their exes off or leave them on read. They believe that when an ex makes disrespectful demands, they have the right not to respond with respect and care.
In this post, we discuss why your ex left you on read and what you can do about it
Why did my ex leave me on read?
The reason your ex left you on read could be because your ex was busy or felt overwhelmed by your requests or expectations. Your ex probably got distracted or figured that he or she wasn’t getting the space he or she needed from you.
As a result, your ex escaped the conversation and made you wonder why he or she left you on read.
Initially, you probably thought you said something wrong and made your ex ignore you. You thought you offended your ex and left your ex with no choice but to leave the conversation.
That probably wasn’t the case. Not unless you argued with your ex, said mean things, and demanded explanations your ex didn’t want to give.
It’s much more likely that you had a normal conversation and got left on read because your ex wasn’t getting anything positive from the conversation. Your ex considered talking to you a chore and stopped responding when he or she got bored or tired and found something better to do.
Something that your ex actually wanted to do.
You must understand that your ex needed time to disassociate stress and negativity from you and see you as an interesting individual. Your ex couldn’t instantly downgrade from relationship to friendship and act as if you never dated.
You may not be a couple anymore, but that doesn’t mean your ex can immediately process breakup emotions and switch off the negative associations he or she associated with you throughout the relationship.
Your ex can’t ignore the past and treat you as just a friend. Some people can (those who have fully processed the past), but your ex isn’t one of those people. He or she needs to be left alone for a while and not feel forced to converse and help you.
If your ex decides to talk and help, your ex should do so willingly of his or her own accord. Your ex should contact you and keep the conversation going. That would tell you your ex is interested in talking to you and/or supporting you.
So if you want to know why your ex left you on read, know that it’s got something to do with your ex’s lack of interest, respect, care, regret, guilt, and desire to converse and bond. Your ex wants space or privacy and thinks he or she can be happier by leaving you on read and doing things that interest him or her.
Try putting yourself in your ex’s shoes for a while and ask yourself what it would take to leave your ex on read. After some thinking, you’ll probably realize that you’d consider ignoring your ex after receiving a negative response from your ex.
A negative response could be any response that overwhelms you emotionally and forces you to think about the past rather than the present and the future.
Of course, not every person leaves others on read. Many people don’t believe in ignoring, blocking, and deleting. They’re convinced it’s not right and that they should at least reply to an ex who contacts them.
I think people (especially dumpees) deserve a response. They deserve acknowledgment and respect. But even though they deserve a response, they shouldn’t keep asking for it. Not from the person who left them and/or doesn’t want to talk to them.
If they keep talking to the dumper, they risk making their ex feel pressured and uncomfortable and doing something they don’t want.
So bear in mind that you’re partially responsible for being left on read. You probably said something you shouldn’t have and crossed your ex’s boundaries. Maybe it wasn’t your words per se that made your ex feel uncomfortable, but the fact that you initiated the conversation and/or didn’t stop talking to your ex.
If that’s what happened, you made the mistake of talking to your ex when you should have gone no contact instead.
Having said that, here’s why your ex left you on read.
What to do when your ex leaves you on read?
When your ex leaves you on read, the last thing you should do is reach out again and make sure your ex knows you’re waiting for a reply. You don’t want to tell your ex you’ve been checking your phone every waking moment and hoping to hear from your ex.
If your ex hasn’t replied in hours, your ex hasn’t forgotten to reply. He or she intentionally didn’t reply and decided to end the conversation. After the conversation, your ex found or looked for more captivating activities to engage in.
I don’t know what they are, but it doesn’t matter because they don’t involve you.
If you text your ex when your ex leaves you on read, you’ll show you need your ex to respond and that you don’t want to move on. You’ll prove your ex’s responses validate you and give you hope and that a lack of responses by your ex stresses you.
This will put immense pressure on your ex and force your ex to defend himself or herself. This is especially likely to happen if you accuse your ex of intentionally ignoring and mistreating you.
So don’t text your ex when your ex leaves you on read. Don’t post sad things on social media either. Avoid any self-pitiful/attention-seeking behavior your ex could notice and think poorly of.
Instead of expressing pain and sorrow, let your ex do what he or she wants and wait for your ex to respond. Never double-text an ex you used to be in a relationship with. It won’t change his or her perception of you or the outcome of the relationship.
It will just make you look miserable and desperate for recognition. When you text an ex who left you on read, he or she will lose even more respect for you and feel tempted to leave you on read again. Your ex may even tell you to stop reaching out, which will make you feel even more hopeless and anxious.
Hence, I encourage you not to let your ex know how disappointed you are with his or her behavior. Don’t tell your ex anything you wouldn’t want to hear if you dumped your ex and felt suffocated by him or her.
Remember that your ex left you on read for a reason. That reason may not be known to you, but it doesn’t mean anything nice. Even if your ex just got busy and forgot to respond (which is unlikely), it says a lot about your ex.
It shows how unimportant you are to your ex and how little he or she values the conversations between the two of you.
I can’t say how long you’ll have to wait for your ex to respond or reach out, but if it takes more than a couple of weeks, your ex probably won’t apologize for not responding sooner. He or she will probably act like nothing happened and focus on things he or she can get from you.
When that happens, you should consider your ex’s reach out a breadcrumb and ask your ex for space and time.
Did your ex leave you on read and make you wonder why he or she would do that? Did you find the answers you were looking for? Share your thoughts below the post.
And if you’d like to talk about your ex’s strange texting habits directly with us, subscribe to 1-on-1 coaching here.
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.
