My Ex Won’t Leave Me Alone! It’s So Frustrating!

When your ex won’t leave you alone after the breakup, your ex doesn’t understand the inconvenience he or she is causing you. Your ex doesn’t see why you need space and how space can help you focus on the right things after the breakup.

All your ex sees are his or her own reasons for communicating with you and bothering you. Of course, your ex doesn’t find himself or herself bothersome, but your ex does think you should be more understanding and flexible.

Why your ex thinks that way depends on whether your ex is a dumpee (the person who got dumped) or a dumper (the person who did the dumping).

If your ex did the dumping, your ex likely doesn’t stop bugging you because your ex thinks you guys should be buddies or best buddies and that you owe your ex friendship. Your ex might also feel bad for leaving you and wants to make sure you’re coping with the breakup before your ex moves on to someone new.

What exactly your ex wants isn’t difficult to tell. You just need to observe your ex’s behavior and attitude and see if your ex feels guilty and keeps checking up on your health and well-being. An ex who feels guilty or is concerned about you will apologize, ask you lots of questions, and maybe even encourage you to reach out if you’re struggling.

A non-guilty ex who merely wants to be friends, on the other hand, will talk about random things that don’t concern you. This is because your ex will be ready to talk about anything unrelated to the relationship while you’re still recovering and trying to understand what went wrong.

Before you can even think about befriending your ex, you’ll need to heal first. It will probably take months or longer to make that kind of emotional progress because healing is like two steps forward, one step backward. It takes a lot of time to get your happy self back.

But what if you left your ex and now your ex won’t leave you alone to enjoy your space and independence?

In that case, you must try to understand that your ex is in denial and pain and needs help. Your ex is going through one of the worst predicaments of his or her life and thinks you’re the only person in the world who can take his or her pain away.

And sadly, it’s true.

You’re the only one who can instantly make all your ex’s problems go away. But to do that, you must take your ex back and validate your ex’s importance. You must show your ex you had a change of heart and that you care about your ex romantically.

Since you don’t have romantic feelings for your ex anymore, your ex notices it and now wants to feel loved more than ever. Your ex is searching for ways to get love and won’t stop searching until you give him or her love or until your ex detaches to the point where he or she becomes more emotionally self-reliant.

Most persistent dumpees normally stop begging and pleading about a month or two into the breakup. That’s when they regain some of their self-esteem and gather the strength to pull away.

Only the most hurt dumpees persist for months.

Such dumpees are extremely attached to their partner, never experienced a breakup before, or have some kind of mental health problem that prevents them from focusing on themselves and preserving their worth.

Whatever the case may be, they lack the strength to handle the breakup on their own, so they turn to their ex for closure. This means they chase their ex when they should be starting no contact and finding alternate ways to heal.

Despite that, dumpees need understanding and support rather than criticism and rejection. Rejections make them even more desperate for love, acceptance, and connection.

So treat your dumpee with care and respect. You don’t need to pretend you still love your ex, but you should express sympathy as that is what the dumpee is looking for the most.

You see, when the person you left won’t leave you alone, it’s because he or she feels rejected, unworthy, and anxious. If you ignore your ex, get angry, or do something mean, you’ll make your ex feel even worse.

You may even bring a bad reaction out of your ex that hurts you badly.

So be mindful of your ex’s feelings. Be caring even though you never felt so compelled to run away from your ex before. Your ex will appreciate it, but so will you when you think back and acknowledge that you helped your ex process some difficult emotions.

In today’s post, we’ll discuss what to do when your ex won’t leave you alone. We’ll show you how to handle a rejected/angry dumpee and a dumper who thinks you owe him or her friendship.

My ex won’t leave me alone

Before we talk about what to do when your ex won’t leave you alone, you need to understand that your ex has a reason for not leaving you alone. That reason may not concern you, but it’s clearly very important to your ex.

Your ex has certain expectations of you now that you’ve broken up, so you should at the very least try to understand what those expectations are. By understanding them, you’ll feel less emotional and be less reactive to the things your ex says and does.

You’ll be able to handle the breakup maturely and feel that you did everything in your power to preserve your worth and/or help your struggling dumpee.

If you left your ex, it probably won’t be easy to remain calm, do the morally right thing, and get your ex to leave you alone. It won’t be easy to ignore your feelings and pretend you’re okay. But fortunately, you don’t have to pretend everything’s fine.

You just need to control your emotions and express what you want and why you want it. Your ex will understand. And if your ex doesn’t, there are other things you can do.

If your ex dumped you and won’t leave you alone, however, then you can take a more direct approach. You can tell your ex to leave you alone (only in better words) as the likelihood of your ex getting anxious and falling into depression is extremely low.

It’s much more likely that you’ll stay anxious, depressed, and hopeful if you allow your ex to stay close to you.

So if your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend won’t leave you alone, know that the advice I have is slightly different for every situation. It particularly depends on who dumped who, how your ex is making you feel, whether you and your ex are dating anyone, and how you and your ex treated each other during the breakup.

If you showed no respect for each other, it may be better to leave each other alone and focus on your own lives.

Why won’t my dumpee ex leave me alone?

Your dumpee ex won’t leave you alone because of one simple reason. Your ex is suffering from the breakup and has a hard time staying away from you. Staying away from you gives your ex unbelievable separation anxiety and makes your ex afraid for his or her safety and future.

Your ex isn’t prepared to let go of you yet and live a life in which you aren’t in it. That’s why your ex does the only thing that eases anxiety and gives him or her a sense of control. Your ex contacts you and pesters you.

Therefore, the reason your ex won’t leave you alone after you dumped him/her is that your ex isn’t ready to get space from you. Your ex is used to being around you and wants to experience the love and comfort he or she felt in the past.

By feeling respected and adored, your ex can reduce separation anxiety and fears of the unknown and keep his or her reconciliation hope alive.

It can be scary to visualize the dumper not being a part of your life anymore. It can feel like you’re losing years of your life and that your ex is willing to throw away everything you have accomplished together. These kinds of thoughts can be anxiety-triggering and make your ex want to convince your ex to give the relationship another chance.

As a dumper who lost feelings, you needn’t take your ex back just because your ex is hurting. Heck, it probably hasn’t even crossed your mind because you felt smothered and disrespected. But no matter how pressured you felt and still feel, you should be supportive as much as you can so that your ex can heal and also leave you alone quicker.

You have to remember that dumpees stop contacting their dumpers when they stop blaming themselves and feeling rejected. You can help your ex with this not by telling your ex it’s not your ex’s fault and that you might change your mind in the future but by reassuring your ex it wasn’t an easy decision for you and that you’re happy to answer any questions he or she may have.

That is all you need to do as far as your responsibility as a dumper goes. The rest of the healing is your ex’s job as your ex needs to find a way to stop depending on you emotionally and get over the breakup.

Eventually, your ex will get stronger and stop contacting you. You just need to be patient and wait for that to happen.

Here are some things that determine how quickly the person you abandon leaves you alone.

Why won’t my dumper ex leave me alone?

If your ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend who dumped you won’t leave you alone, the very first thing you must understand is that your ex lacks the emotional intelligence required to understand how you feel when he or she reaches out. Your ex has no clue that your reach outs are giving you false hope and setting you back emotionally.

That’s why your ex keeps reaching out time after time and confusing you.

It’s also possible that your ex understands how you feel but doesn’t care about it. That would imply that your ex doesn’t care about your feelings and is prepared to hurt you just to get some things from you.

Some of the things your dumper ex could want from you are a break from guilt, emotional support, forgiveness, and a highly conditional friendship. A friendship that is convenient for your ex and inconvenient for you.

Dumpers often don’t understand that their ex isn’t ready for friendship as quickly as they are. Their ex needs months of time to process separation anxiety and all the problems he or she encounters after the breakup.

Once the dumpee has processed all those things, however, the dumpee might find his or her happiness and prefer not to talk to the dumper for a while.

The dumpee might feel so empowered by the new-found closure and peace that the dumpee might decide to stay in no contact. If that’s what the dumpee wants, the dumper must leave the dumpee alone until he or she has a change of heart or until the dumpee wants friendship.

So if your dumper ex won’t leave you alone, know that your ex is used to communicating with you and doesn’t want to discard the connection he or she has with you. The dumper wants to keep the friendship aspect of the relationship while rejecting the romantic one.

This means your ex wants the best of both worlds. He or she wants what you have to offer as a friend or ex-partner and give you very little of what you need in return.

Here are 7 reasons why your ex won’t leave you alone after dumping you.

What to do when your ex won’t leave you alone?

If your ex won’t leave you alone, your solution to the problem varies, depending on whether you’re the dumpee or the dumper.

If you’re the dumper, you need to keep in mind that your ex won’t bother you forever. As soon as your ex recovers, your ex will likely realize that contacting you is bad for his or her health and that it reduces the chances of getting back with you.

You can expect your ex to eventually leave you alone and lose interest. To make your ex leave you alone faster, though, you should avoid reaching out to your ex and initiating conversations. The only time you should talk to your ex for a little while is when it’s about kids (or something important) and when your ex reaches out to you.

That’s when you should answer your ex’s questions so that your ex can get closure and leave you alone afterward.

As we mentioned earlier, most dumpees are looking for reassurance. If they see that their ex cares about them (as a person only), they tend to accept the breakup, get out of denial, and stay away from their ex to avoid embarrassing themselves and ruining their image.

If you think that your ex doesn’t care about preserving his or her value and image, you should tell your ex you’ll answer questions and talk about the breakup if that’s what your ex wants.

But if your ex insults you or tries to make things difficult for you and your loved ones, then you’ll have no choice but to ignore or perhaps even block your ex.

The breakup may be difficult for your ex, but that doesn’t give your ex the right to hurt you.

On the other hand, if your ex is a dumper, then you should immediately take back power and control (at least as much as you can, anyway). You should tell your ex you’re not ready for friendship and that you don’t want to be friends right now.

Say you’re still processing things and that you’ll reach out if you ever think that it’s a good idea.

And that’s it. You’ll have to wait and see if your ex leaves you alone after that. Your ex probably will. Most dumpers do because they respect their ex’s need to disassociate from the dumper and recover.

I hope you’ve learned why your ex won’t leave you alone after the breakup and what you can do about it. Leave your thoughts below and we’ll get back to you soon.

And if your story is too complicated to share in the comments, subscribe to coaching for 1-on-1 guidance. See you next time!