If your ex wants you back but you’re dating someone else, you probably feel conflicted. You don’t know if you should keep pursuing your current relationship or get back with the ex who broke your heart and made you crave his or her love and validation.
Although your new relationship is probably moving in the right direction, you’re not 100% certain your partner is the one for you. He or she doesn’t fulfill all your needs because a part of you still craves your ex and wonders what a relationship would look like and how you’d feel if you got back together.
If you still feel rejected by your ex, you’re probably more concerned about the “how you’d feel part” – the emotional part of the relationship. You’re wondering if the pain you’re experiencing could be replaced by positive emotions and if you could be happier and get more out of life with your ex.
How you feel about your ex wanting you back while you’re with someone else depends on:
- How good your new relationship is.
- How much you’ve processed the breakup.
- How you perceive your ex.
- And how long ago the breakup happened.
If the breakup happened less than a few months ago, you probably feel extremely tempted to hear your ex out and get back together. You haven’t yet taken your rose-tinted glasses off, knocked your ex off the pedestal, detached, and gotten over your ex.
You likely still emotionally depend on your ex for healing and self-love and want your ex to make the job easier on you by taking you back.
The more recent the breakup, the stronger your desire for recognition and the more tempted you feel to abandon your new relationship and be with your ex. Your ex’s rejection probably traumatized you and made it difficult for you to feel validated and secure with other people.
Others help you feel loved and needed, but they don’t fulfill all your emotional needs. They can’t help you deal with rejection pain, separation anxiety, and validation. Until you process the breakup and get over it, you can expect your heart to desire your ex even if your ex was a horrible partner.
You can expect your new partner not to relieve your pain and satisfy you the way your dumper did and still can.
So if your ex wants you back but you’re dating someone else, know that it’s normal to feel confused. Your ex’s reappearance triggered your post-breakup longings for attention, reassurance, purpose, happiness, and security.
It brought your unprocessed emotions back and made you doubt your new relationship.
If your new relationship was fulfilling and everything was fine until your ex came out of hiding, it probably isn’t a good idea to break off the new relationship for a chance with your ex. You especially don’t want to do that if you’ve already committed to the new person (agreed to be exclusive).
Your life may be yours to live, and you may not be 100% ready for a new relationship, but that doesn’t mean you should abandon and hurt your new partner. If the situation was reversed, you wouldn’t want someone you love to give you hope, string you along, and leave you the moment his or her ex reappears.
Betrayal would devastate you and make it hard for you to trust people (especially those who communicate with exes).
You must take relationships and people’s feelings seriously. Treat them with respect and do the morally right thing when doubts, temptations, and seemingly better opportunities arise.
It may not feel right in the moment, but you’ll be glad you listened to your morals once you’ve restored your rationality and realized you could have cheated (acted selfishly), destroyed the relationship, and hurt the person who wanted nothing but the best for you.
If your ex wants you back when you’re already in a serious relationship, tell your ex you’re not interested and to take a hike (in nicer words, of course). Say you’re in a new relationship and that you want space to focus on your new partner.
You can’t keep interacting with an ex who wants you back. If you do, you’ll friend-zone that person and use him or her as a backup plan for when your relationship experiences problems.
You can go back to your ex only if you haven’t committed to the new person and are still getting to know him or her. Your sudden abandonment will still hurt because you’ll be leaving during the infatuation phase (or shortly after), but it shouldn’t hurt as much as a long-term relationship, full of plans and vows.
Consider leaving if you’re casually dating and see potential in the relationship with your ex. Make sure to first evaluate your relationship with your ex from a rational standpoint and remember that you’ll likely face similar if not the same problems with your ex.
A few weeks or months of separation won’t change the dynamics of your broken relationship. Your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend might be more self-aware and see your worth, but that’s just the beginning.
The new relationship will take a lot of time and effort to fix broken trust, commitment, and unhealthy behavioral patterns.
Before you leave your partner and take your ex back, figure out why your ex wants you back all of a sudden. What could have gone so wrong for your ex that your ex had a change of heart and ran back to you for safety?
It’s important to understand your ex’s reasons for coming back and giving you power.
When you understand your ex’s reasons for returning, you’ll see if your ex wants you back to patch his or her wounds or to work on the relationship with you.
In this post, we explain why your ex might want you back now that you’re dating someone else and encourage you to think rationally and take the high road.
My ex wants me back but I’m dating someone else
It’s unlikely that your ex wants you back only because you’re dating someone else. You may be happy and moving on (which is attractive from an outside perspective), but that’s not the sole reason your ex wants another chance with you. Jealousy tends not to reattract detached, relieved, and victimized ex-partners.
Dumpers don’t feel very insecure anyway. They’re happy with their decisions and often even dating options.
What reattracts them is some kind of failure, followed by reflection, nostalgia, fear, anxiety, regret, and desire for a better life. Negative experiences and feelings make them look up their exes on social media and reach out to them for acceptance and relationship benefits.
Hurt dumpers don’t want to suffer and feel hopeless. Not when they can contact their ex and instantly deal with their problems and pain. Hence, they choose the quickest way to feel better and get back on their feet.
They contact their ex and see if their ex still has feelings for them.
If their ex has feelings, they feel relieved and loved. And if their ex doesn’t love them, they feel rejected and miserable. They have no choice but to work on their problems alone or with the help of someone else. This can be a friend, a family member, or a new dating partner.
So if your ex wants you back when you have a new boyfriend or girlfriend, it’s important to realize that your ex’s life hasn’t gone according to plan. Your ex expected to enjoy life without you, but instead, ended up failing miserably and realizing you were doing okay or perhaps even better than him or her.
Because you didn’t need him or her as much as he or she needed you, your ex developed an admiration for you and wanted to be a part of your happy/successful life.
His or her negative perceptions of you completely disappeared and were replaced with healthier thoughts and cravings. This happened when your ex encountered problems he or she couldn’t resolve and needed your help with.
If your ex wants you back when you’re dating someone else and you don’t understand what changed your ex’s mind about you, know that it was probably some negative experience and unmanifested expectations.
Your ex believed he or she would be happy and successful without you, but instead, failed on the quest to contentment and learned that he or she was happier and more successful with you.
Things were easier when you were together, so your ex engaged in reflection and determined you were a significant factor in his or her well-being. Your ex concluded that only recently because your ex had to first lose something to compare the present to the past and worry about his or her safety.
At first, your ex probably tried various things to fix the problems and deal with pain on his or her own. But because nothing was working, your ex gave up on looking for solutions and decided to rely on you for support.
He or she did that to skip dealing with pain the way most people have to deal with it – by working on accepting the unfortunate turn of events and improving self-love.
Having said that, here’s why your ex wants you back when you’re dating someone else.
Most dumpers aren’t concerned with whether their ex is seeing someone else. They’re dating other people themselves and don’t feel abandoned or forgotten. They feel forgotten and scared only when their life takes a toll for the worse and tells them they made a huge mistake.
That’s when they become unhappy with the breakup, reach out, express regret, and ask for another chance even if their ex seems to be doing well. Seeing their ex doing well usually makes them envious only if they have nothing positive going on in their life.
Don’t think your ex will give up on getting back with you if he or she sees you with someone else. It could happen, but it’s much more likely that your ex will want you back despite knowing you’re dating again.
Your new partner won’t stop your ex from reaching out unless your ex has doubts about being with you. But in that case, it’s better for all parties involved that your ex doesn’t try to get back with you as doubts tend to increase (not decrease) with time.
They get to a point where the dumper loses feelings and leaves again.
Should you take your ex back if you’re dating someone else?
If you’re still in love with your ex, you shouldn’t be dating anyone yet. You should be focusing on yourself, rebuilding your self-esteem, healing from rejection, weaning off your ex, and finding purpose without your ex.
You should be doing positive things that build your self-love rather than dating and putting your healing in someone else’s hands.
If you date someone just to distract yourself and feel empowered, you’ll use that person’s love for your selfish gain and exhaust the relationship. Sooner than later, you’ll realize the new partner isn’t anything like your ex and that he or she can’t fulfill your needs.
That will make you rebound with the new person and crave your ex even more.
If you’re not happy with your partner, you obviously shouldn’t be with your partner. Whether it’s because the new person isn’t right for you or because you’re not ready for a new relationship yet, you should be honest and tell your partner you got excited and tried to be in a relationship before you were 100% ready.
You’ll hurt your partner a lot, but at least you won’t string him or her along.
The situation gets more complicated when you’re dating someone only to keep yourself distracted from the real problem – your ex leaving you and hurting you. If your ex wants you back when you’re with someone else and you still have feelings for your ex, you’ll feel extremely tempted to dump your new partner and be with your ex.
That’s because you’ll want to heal and feel validated more than ever.
I don’t suggest leaving your boyfriend or girlfriend for your ex because that would be cheating and monkey-branching. In all honesty, you shouldn’t even be talking to your ex when you’re with someone else.
But if you’re not in a committed relationship and are just (casually) dating, you may want to be honest with your partner and say your ex wants you back and that you’re considering giving the relationship another try.
Tell your partner you enjoy his or her company and that you’re not leaving because of him or her.
Make sure to give your partner closure and avoid making him or her feel unwanted and replaced. You caused this mess, so naturally, you must take responsibility for it and do what’s right. It won’t be easy to do the right thing, but at least you’ll learn the importance of not dating after a breakup.
If you don’t love your ex anymore, however, then simply tell your ex you don’t want to get back together and that you want to focus on your new relationship. Make sure to also ask for space, so that your ex doesn’t interfere with your new love interest.
Whatever you do, don’t date to heal. Date to create something meaningful, beautiful, and long-lasting. Something you can be proud of, tell others about, and remember for years to come.
Does your ex want you back but you’re dating someone else? Do you feel tempted to leave your partner and be with your ex? Comment below and let us know.
However, if you’d like to talk to us about your ex wanting you back when you’re with someone else, check out our coaching programs and get in touch.
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. Learn more about me or get in touch today.
I’m probably a bad person for having these thoughts but I will at least be honest about it.
I genuinly want to fall in love again and be in a wonderful relationship with someone new. But I want it to be during a time when my ex would reach out for these specific reasons. Only because I want to tell her to take a hike, and not in any way sugarcoat it. I want her to feel at least a fraction of the pain and anxiety I felt when I found out about her monkey branching and that it was with someone who had been sort of in the picture already.
But I also know the universe don’t take favourites. She is seemingly happy/content with her new partner, they have worked out longer than our relationship did.
Meanwhile I am 38 years old and this was my first real relationship and it lasted 7 months. With those odds I don’t really hold any hope of finding someone new. This probably wouldn’t bother me if my ex was some random chick I met on tinder or something. But me and my ex have mutual friends so she will allways sort of be in my periphery
such a good article! And I may know how tempted it’s when a ex writes and you did process everything about the break!
But I would look to move forward without an ex.
Thank you Zan for always helping us 🩵
Hi Linda.
Sometimes it’s better to leave the past behind and start anew with someone else. Not all relationships should get another chance.
Best regards,
Zan
I’ve read a lot of your articles and like the honest content but I think this one grossly underestimates the effect on the current partner, of someone going back to their ex.
This has recently happened to me (6 weeks ago) completely out of the blue after a really lovely 5 month relationship where I fell in love for the first time in years. It felt reciprocated.
My now ex, called me a few days following a great weekend away that she was leaving me for her ex (who she said was now a ‘friend’), who I now know she’d loved all along. I’ve been through breakups before but this is really devastating – I’m thinking my ex has narcissistic tendencies and I was just the interim supply /rebound before being purely discarded. Whatever it is, it’s a betrayal which left me feeling bewildered, used, strung along, deceived, confused about my worth, now issues with trust and difficult to come to terms with.
– the ex who approached her is a complete snake for knowingly breaking up a good relationship and is something I’d never do. It’s a reflection on his values, but also hers as she was obviously open to it and probably pursued it. I never wanted to be part of an emotional triangle and that’s what it’s left me feeling; I’m trying to move on and let go but can’t help wondering where I fit in to the whole thing /with conflicted chances of getting back together
– my ex obviously cheated (emotionally and /or physically) and lied to me. It was a brutal ending.
If you’re in a relationship and thinking about getting back with your ex, think about the consequences on the person you’re with. If you have feelings for your ex either do the right thing and end the current one now, or tell your ex where to go and cut them out of your life. Exes can’t be ‘friends’, plain an simple – the inevitable will otherwise happen.
Get some proper moral values and ethics and do the right thing by the person you’re with, even if that means taking some personal pain in the interim. People are simply not a disposable commodity.
These are the tell tale signs of a narc. I hope you pull through John. This kind of thing happened to me a few years ago and although I have moved on, it still pops into my mind now and then and stings. It definitely created trust issues and made me fully aware of narcissism and how real it is. I feel like a part of me is broken after experiencing this. To be in a relationship for three years, the ex comes knocking, interfering like a snake, and then to be discarded and replaced in a week is total devastation. And they don’t care one bit. They can’t have real human connections which is why they can discard and replace people so easily. The person you thought you knew, just a facade. They truly are sick individuals. Not being able to feel real emotions or have real connections, that is their curse. All they see is supply.
Hi John.
Your ex did you dirty. She wasn’t honest about having feelings for his ex and went back to him when she got a chance to do so. Many people (especially dumpees) do that. They feel incomplete with their new partner, so they run back to their ex to feel valdated and needed.
Hang in there!
Zan