My Ex Still Has Feelings For Me But Doesn’t Want To Be With Me

If your ex still has feelings for you but doesn’t want to be with you, you need to know that your ex’s feelings for you, aren’t romantic. What your ex feels for you is something entirely different. It’s mostly made of guilt, worry, and doubt, which your ex either mistakes for love or pretends that it’s love.

It’s hard to say whether your ex is aware that love is gone, but the two things making it hard for him to leave you alone are familiarity and connection. These are the things that confuse your ex and make him think that a part of him still feels something for you.

Whatever you do, don’t mistake your ex’s attraction, lust, or nostalgia for romantic attraction. Your ex isn’t in love with you if he’s not with you. He just doesn’t know how to handle the awkward post-breakup situation because he wants the best of both worlds.

On one hand, he wants to be friends with you and talk to you whenever he wants to. But on the other, he wants you to leave him alone romantically and let him date other women.

A guy like this is, unfortunately, of no use to you. He’s a hindrance to your well-being as he’s too self-centered to notice that he’s stringing you along for his selfish gain.

He can promise you a million things and say he still has feelings for you if he wants to, but the truth is that he doesn’t have the right kind of feelings for you. His actions prove that he wants to move forward with his romantic life and be with other people.

Maybe he doesn’t want a girlfriend right away, but when an opportunity presents itself, know that he won’t hesitate to take it.

I know it’s hard to hear this and even harder to walk away from a guy who no longer loves you. But you mustn’t stay in denial and delude yourself that the guy who left you has romantic feelings for you. Many dumpers don’t even know what love is and feels like. They just think that they must love their ex because they’re sad and feel sorry for breaking their ex’s heart.

That is not love, though. It’s compassion—something every person should have.

So as difficult as it may be, take your rose-tinted glasses off and judge your ex by the things he does and not the things he says. You’ll soon realize that your ex is either fooling himself or fooling you.

Either way, you’ll know that your ex doesn’t love you. Especially not if he’s with some other woman, going out with his friends a lot, and having the time of his life.

Your ex will love you and want to be with you when he actually wants to be with you. That’s when he’ll want your time, affection, and reassurance and invest in you and the relationship.

Let that sink in for a while.

This post is for all you dumpees who think your ex still has feelings for you but doesn’t want to be with you for some unknown reason. Some things won’t be easy to read, but if your ex told you he still has feelings for you, it’s time for you to get ready for your daily dose of rationality and come back to your senses.

The difference between love and feelings

Even though love and feelings are two completely different things, dumpers often mix them together and pretend that they mean the same. They do this because they don’t know how to handle the breakup properly. They just know that they must give their exes something to make them feel better, so they give them the second best thing they can offer which is friendship in disguise.

By giving their ex what THEY want, they cover their lack of romantic feelings with feelings of attraction, lust, or friendship and force their ex to focus on those things rather than the breakup itself.

If your ex did this to you, you need to know that your ex wasn’t concerned about what you wanted. He just wanted what he wanted, which was a swift transition from a relationship to a friendship or no relationship at all.

You likely already know what your ex wants from you. But if you don’t, watch his post-breakup behavior and attitude and study his requests, demands, and expectations.

If he’s messaging and calling you, you can tell he wants friendship. If he wants to sleep with you, he wants to be friends with benefits. And if he’s nowhere to be seen, he wants to focus on himself and date other people.

It’s easy to tell what your ex feels for you and what he wants from you as long as you think rationally. His initiation or a lack of it contains all the information you need to know.

With that said, the picture below will teach you how to tell if your ex is in love with you, has feelings for you (aka feels guilty and/or wants to be friends), wants to be friends with benefits, or none of that.

The only point missing is if your ex doesn’t want anything to do with you at the moment. But you already know it would mean that your ex needs more time to process the breakup. Either that or he’s already processed it and just wants to focus on himself.

My ex still has feelings for me but doesn’t want to be with me

If you’re thinking to yourself, “My ex still has feelings for me but doesn’t want to be with me,” you’re prioritizing your ex’s words over your own judgment. You think that somewhere deep inside, he still loves you and wants to be with you, but that he can’t be with you until he finds himself and realizes he wants to be with you.

Even though your ex definitely needs to discover your worth and find the incentive to be with you, don’t forget that the guy isn’t on a mission to find his way back to you. He’s on a mission to find happiness without you.

This means that he’s not working on himself and figuring out why he fell out of love with you. He isn’t communicating with you about his mental progress and the things he’d like you to work on to have a better relationship when he returns.

All the guy is doing is enjoying his post-breakup time and moving on because doing so keeps him distracted and stress-free.

You’re probably wondering why he would tell you he still has feelings for you if he didn’t feel anything toward you. Why not just tell you the truth and move on? That way he’d get you off his back and let you heal.

Although I can’t say with certainty if he was aware of the fact that he didn’t love you, I can tell you that he gave you this excuse because he didn’t know what else to tell you. He knew he felt something, but because he wasn’t able to distinguish romantic feelings from sympathy and care, he told you the first thing that came to mind – that he still has feelings for you and that he cared about you.

He did that because he was afraid of hurting you and you hurting him back. Yes, you could have hurt him back simply by responding to the breakup with tears, pleads, and anger. That’s why your ex decided to play it safe and left you without actually leaving you.

He just let the relationship fizzle out on its own.

The guy didn’t know that his insincerity would immediately empower you and make you think that there’s still hope for getting back together.

All in all, the guy was afraid of being 100% honest with you. Instead of saying he still had feelings for you, he should have said that he cared about you as a person and that he wanted to help you get over the breakup. This would have been the mature thing to do as it wouldn’t give you false hope and delay your recovery.

So if your ex-boyfriend broke up with you and said he still has feelings for you but can’t be with you, hold your horses for a minute and think. Think not with your heart, but with your head. I know it’s hard, but try to be rational about this.

Why else would a guy tell you he has feelings for you but do nothing to prove his assertion?

I can tell you it’s not because he has feelings for you but because he wants to get away with a breakup without facing the consequences of his actions.

I’m sure you know that guys can be irresponsible in many ways. This is just one way to prove how selfish they can be when it comes to dealing with uncomfortable emotions/situations.

To summarize this chapter, here are 5 reasons why your ex-boyfriend said he still has feelings for you when he actually doesn’t.

Now that you know why your ex “still has feelings for you,” let’s discuss how to handle the guy professing his feelings to you. Let’s first talk about the things you should do when a guy says he still has feelings for you while he’s breaking up with you.

What to do when your ex says he still has feelings for you during the breakup?

When a guy bluntly declares that he still has feelings for you even though he’s breaking up with you, you have to know that he’s full of 💩. If he loved you or had any romantic feelings left for you whatsoever, he wouldn’t have broken up with you in the first place. He would have looked for a solution to the problem and kept looking until he found it.

Love is more than just a feeling of desire (infatuation). It’s also determination, respect, loyalty, security, and a feeling of mutual understanding. When these things are gone, people don’t usually stay with their partners. They don’t see a reason to because they can’t benefit from them anymore.

That’s why they abandon them and focus on obtaining those things from someone else. From someone who can invest in them and make them feel good.

The question you should ask yourself is, “Why does my ex feel then need to tell me he has feelings for me? Why does he need to confuse me when he could have said he doesn’t have any romantic feelings left for me and helped me rebuild my self-esteem and get over him?”

If your ex cared, he would have been honest from the beginning. But because he was afraid, he told you one of the few things you really didn’t need to hear – that he still has feelings for you but doesn’t want to be with you. 🤦‍♂️

You know how silly that sounds.

The only thing worse than giving you false hope would have been to have taken all your hope away at once and hurt your self-esteem by saying something degrading to you.

If you want to help the person you left to get over you, you don’t tell that person that you love him, have feelings for him, or that you might get back with him one day. Doing that makes him wait for you whereas breaking up with him properly gives him closure and leaves him with no choice but to learn, improve, and move on with life.

So what to do when your ex says he still has feelings for you but doesn’t want to be with you during the breakup?

You tell him to be brave, honest, and to explain himself. Ask him to give you the truth and not some half-truth that he recited in his head 100 times before he finally mustered up the courage to kind of, sort of break up with you.

Encourage him to tell you what’s going on and wait for him to tell you the truth. He might still not tell you everything because cowards tend not to, but at least you’ll do everything in your power to get the most important information you need out of him.

What to do when he tells you he has feelings for you after the breakup?

When your ex-boyfriend says he still has feelings for you after the breakup (let’s say a few weeks later), but still doesn’t want to be with you, he thinks you still want to be with him. You either told him to get back together or demanded too much of his time, so he responded that way to tell you to back off.

He did this in a gentle manner, of course, but “gentle” isn’t always good enough.

There’s a difference between letting someone down gently and telling her you don’t have feelings for her anymore. Again, one gives hope and the other brings her back to reality and encourages her to keep moving on.

The dumper should always say that he doesn’t have feelings and let his ex-girlfriend heal. He should do it out of respect and consideration for her health and well-being.

When your ex-boyfriend still has feelings for you but doesn’t want to be with you anymore, there’s only one thing left for you to do. You stop talking to your ex and go no contact. It doesn’t matter if your ex will think you’re offended or hurt by his response.

You do it because it’s best for your self-esteem.

No contact doesn’t just mean no texting and calling. It also means no checking up on your ex on social media and asking your friends about him.

When you’re in no contact, you act as if your ex doesn’t exist anymore. The only time you communicate is when you run into your ex or when you need to talk about something very important.

Does your ex say he still has feelings for you but doesn’t want to get back with you? How does hearing him say that make you feel? Post your experiences with your ex below.

And if you’d like to talk to us about the things your ex said or did privately, consider subscribing to 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.