When A Man Feels Guilty After A Breakup

When a man feels guilty after a breakup, he’ll reach out from time to time, take the blame, apologize, explain things, cry, and make himself look stupid. He’ll try to make it seem like he’ll regret his decision years down the line and that he’ll miss you and think about you like crazy.

Other times, though, he won’t express or do anything that directly exudes guilt. He’ll just talk to you as a friend and try to figure out how you think and feel about him. By having a normal conversation with you, he’ll discern if you hate him and never want to see him again.

Remember that a guilty man intends to directly or indirectly obtain your forgiveness. He wants you to accept his behavior so he can also accept it himself. This mutual acceptance allows him to relieve his guilty conscience and gives him the validation he needs to move on with his life and date other people.

You need to understand that guilt is an emotional response dumpers feel when they know they’ve hurt you and/or did something wrong. When they feel they’re responsible for ruining or complicating your life, they find it difficult to stop caring about you and start caring about themselves.

That’s because they keep remembering the inconvenience they have or may have caused you and question their choices and morality.

The good thing about guilt is that people who experience it are healthy individuals. By “healthy,” I mean that they aren’t narcissistic and incapable of putting themselves in their ex’s shoes. Guilt-ridden dumpers have a decent understanding of right and wrong and aren’t bad people.

Sometimes people just act on emotions and make bad choices.

That doesn’t, however, mean that they know how to handle the breakup properly. Many dumpers lack breakup knowledge and overprioritize their guilt. Because of this, they constantly reach out to their ex and try to make sure their ex is doing okay.

Their reach-outs severely impact their ex’s healing process as they confuse their ex and empower their ex with false hope.

There’s nothing the dumpee wants more than to see that he or she is cared for and respected. The problem with being so cared for is that the dumpee could misinterpret the dumper’s care for romantic care and assume the dumper is warming up to him or her.

Such optimistic perceptions can lead the dumpee on and hinder his or her detachment.

When a man feels guilty after a breakup, this seldom has anything to do with him not wanting to stay broken up. Usually (or almost always) it indicates that the dumper is disappointed with his behavior and/or the way things turned out.

If he could go back in time, he’d react differently, but he wouldn’t change the outcome. Guilt is not about canceling the breakup. It’s about wishing things unfolded differently and got to the end destination via a different path.

So if you want to know what it means when a man feels guilty after a breakup, it means that a man (presumably your ex) regrets saying or doing certain things. He doesn’t like hurting people (at least not those who have been good to him), so he feels bad for putting them through hell.

A guy like this is aware of his moral responsibilities and is suffering because of the choices he’s made.

His suffering, though, is not as severe as your separation anxiety and fears. It’s probably quite mild, which means he’ll be able to deal with it in a month or two. This depends on what he did to hurt you. If he cheated and he views himself as a very moral person, it could take him longer. In some cases, it takes dumpers years to forgive themselves.

You can forgive the guy if you want to. Just don’t stick around and put your healing and happiness at risk. That would be a big mistake because self-forgiveness comes from within. He needs to learn to forgive himself and live with it just like you have to live with the breakup and rejection pain.

When an ex contacts you because he feels guilty, that’s a very selfish gesture. The guy essentially wants you to help him forgive himself for hurting you so he can disappear into the unknown. Yes, he also wants to make you feel better, but that’s not his main objective, nor the drive behind his actions.

He’s not selfless.

A selfless person is concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with his own. That’s why an ex who genuinely cares about you won’t ask for anything in return. He’ll simply do what’s right. And he’ll do it because his moral values tell him to.

How guilty a man feels and the actions he takes because of it depends on many things.

The most common ones are his:

• moral values
• upbringing and education
• interpretation of his behavior
• perception of you
• and ability to forgive himself

If he can’t deal with guilt alone, he’ll reach out to his ex and make his problem his ex’s problem as well. Of course, his ex won’t know why he’s reaching out all of a sudden. The dumpee will likely assume the dumper has become nostalgic and is considering getting back together.

But in reality, the dumper just wants to close the breakup chapter and open a new one (with someone else). That’s the harsh reality of post-breakup guilt.

In today’s post, we’ll discuss what happens when a man feels guilty after a breakup. We’ll also share some tips with you that will help you deal with guilty breadcrumbers.

When a man feels guilty after a breakup

A man who feels guilty after the breakup may or may not reach out. This depends on how guilty he feels and how good he is at dealing with guilt. If he feels just a tiny bit of guilt and has decent coping mechanisms, he could quickly and successfully internalize his guilt and deal with it slowly on his own.

A man reaches out to assuage guilt mainly when he can’t deal with it on his own. He contacts you when he gets some space from you and starts feeling guilty. That’s when he tends to make an impulsive decision to reach out and check up on you.

Whether he feels guilty for a while or reaches out the moment he starts feeling guilty, a guilty dumper needs you less and for different reasons than you need him. He needs you to let go of the effects his behaviors had on you whereas you need him to feel validated and loved.

As you can tell, your interests don’t align. You want completely different things from each other and should not interact unless you can help each other. The guy can help you by explaining why the breakup happened (give you closure) and you can help him by forgiving him and letting him go.

If you don’t let him feel that he can forgive himself, a few things could happen. He could request your time and attention, guilt-trip you into being friends with him, ask you confusing questions such as if you’re dating anyone, and get angry with you and block you.

Guilt-ridden dumpers don’t have only one way of forgiving themselves. If they feel they’re not getting the desired results from you because you’re being stubborn, vengeful, or something else, they could think you’re being unfair and fight back.

That could instantly worsen their perception of you and make your forgiveness insignificant to them.

They don’t need you to forgive them when they feel you’re being selfish and mean. In their eyes, it’s perfectly acceptable for them to start thinking of themselves as victims.

Things can change very quickly for dumpers, so don’t assume you’ll always have the moral ground. If you don’t help dumpers relieve guilt, they’ll find a way to deal with guilt on their own. And they might do that the same way dumpees deal with breakups – by devaluing their ex and turning unwanted emotions into power.

That being said, here are some things a man could do when he feels guilty after a breakup.

If your ex feels guilty, he could reach out and talk about all sorts of things. Work, friends, hobbies, pets, and the news seem to be popular topics among ex-partners. Dumpers don’t want conversations to go deep and ask important questions, so they talk about unimportant matters instead.

By talking about irrelevant things, they attempt to take attention away from themselves and onto other things. This is a classic distraction technique dumpers use to break the ice, distract their ex, and keep their ex in the dark about the real reasons for reaching out.

So bear in mind that a man feels guilty after a breakup because he hasn’t accepted the way things ended. His conscience won’t let him do that yet. He first needs to talk about it and perhaps even change his perception of you or the breakup.

He basically needs to see that you’re doing fine or convince himself that breaking up with you was the only way forward.

When do exes feel guilty the most?

Exes tend to feel the guiltiest during or right after the breakup. That’s when feelings of guilt are the highest as dumpers are afraid for their ex’s safety, happiness, and well-being. The breakup makes them feel awful for breaking their ex’s heart and seeing their ex hurt, so they contact their ex shortly after the breakup and see how their ex is doing.

If their ex wants them back, they feel trapped and run away. If their ex is angry, they retaliate with anger or just walk away. And if their ex appears unaffected by the breakup, they talk to their ex for a while and assuage their guilt.

Dumpers may also feel guilty weeks or months after the breakup. When enough time goes by, they process the most difficult breakup emotions and stop feeling angry. This allows them to reflect on their behavior and realize they should have treated their ex with respect.

As a result, they start reaching out, gauging their ex’s pain and resentment, and trying to make their ex feel respected with the intention to receive forgiveness from their ex. Dumpers can be sneaky and indirect. They oftentimes reach out in ways that make dumpees wonder about their intentions.

Some are too prideful to apologize directly whereas others are afraid of opening up and being misunderstood. That’s why they talk about surface-level things and try to assuage their guilt indirectly.

Dumpers sometimes also start feeling guilty years after the breakup. This happens because they get hit by karma and realize they need to improve their karma. They can do this by apologizing to the people they’ve hurt, including their exes.

Dumpers who reach out after years of no contact do so because they learn some valuable lessons. They finally learn the lessons they needed to learn years ago and evolve as people.

They don’t necessarily return to their ex as romantic partners, though. If they just want to do the morally right thing, they usually just apologize and keep moving on. This depends on how they perceive their ex and what kind of help they need.

What to do when a man feels guilty after a breakup?

If you want to help your ex not feel guilty for dumping you and hurting you, you can help your ex with that. Tell your ex that you understand and that you have nothing against him/her. You’ve accepted the breakup and decided to get some space.

Space helps you process things faster and makes you feel better. Make sure your ex knows that so he doesn’t try to befriend you and stay in touch. Your ex needs to see that you won’t help him have the cake and eat it too if that means you have to get out of your way and sacrifice your happiness for his.

Your ex needs to deal with his problems and you need to deal with yours. You must get over the breakup and he must relieve guilt without you. He just has to realize why he feels guilty and accept the things he said and did.

It might take him some time, but that’s the cost he must be willing to pay. You won’t get over him in a few days either. It will probably take you months and months of self-focus.

So if you want to help your ex feel better about the things he did or didn’t do, let your ex know that. Express your forgiveness or acceptance and reassure your ex. But once you’ve done that, focus on yourself again and keep moving on.

Your ex will probably leave you alone if you express the desire to be left alone. If he doesn’t do that, reiterate your post-breakup demands and let him know space is so important to you that you’ll block him the next time he talks to you and disrupts your healing.

That should make your ex take you seriously and give you the space you need to detach.

Do you now know what it means and what to do when a man feels guilty after a breakup? Did your ex ever reach out to you because he felt guilty? Let us know in the comments section below the article. We’ll get back to you soon.

And lastly, if you want to discuss your ex’s guilt with us, sign up for a coaching session 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.