Why Do Guys Act Like They Don’t Care After A Breakup?

Many women ask themselves, “Why do guys act like they don’t care after a breakup?” They want to know why their exes nonchalantly continue to move on without a care in the world.

If you’re one of those women, you need to know that there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for your ex’s behavior.

That explanation is that your ex is hiding uncomfortable breakup thoughts and feelings and doesn’t want you or anyone else to know about them. If people knew how your ex felt for breaking your heart, he would feel responsible.

He’d feel bad for breaking your heart and think that he’s a horrible person for the way he handled smothering emotions and the breakup in general.

This is why instead of showing that he cares, your ex decided to put on a poker face and neglect the fact that he hurt you. He’s now pretending as if the breakup never happened and that you weren’t important to him.

This, of, course, makes him look selfish and tells people who know him that he doesn’t care about hurting you at all.

Today’s article is for women who ask themselves, “Why do guys act like they don’t care after a breakup?”

Do guys care about their exes at all?

There are two kinds of care when it comes to exes.

The first kind consists of dumpers who feel overwhelmed with guilt and shame and care about their exes’ emotional health. Such dumpers care about their exes, but they care mainly about their conscience, karma, and how they appear to others.

They essentially worry about themselves and not so much about their exes.

As for the second type of care, we talk about it when dumpers still love their exes and want to be with them. Of course, there aren’t many dumpers (male or female) who still love their ex-partners and want them back, but now and then, some do.

Usually, regret happens much later when they get enough space and time to process the breakup and improve the way they feel about their exes.

Most of the time, dumpers only say they love their dumpees to alleviate their guilty conscience and better their perceptions of themselves. They do it to prove to themselves and their exes that they’re good human beings with a heart.

This means that if the dumper has no intention of returning to the abandoned relationship, the dumper doesn’t care or love the dumpee. The dumper just wants a smooth and painless transition from the relationship to single life and not worry about how the dumpee is handling the breakup.

I know this was probably shocking to hear, but that’s the way breakups work. Your ex is either all in or all out. There are no other options when it comes to love because you can’t care and love your partner just a little bit.

The only time you can doubt your love for your partner is when you’re on the brink of detaching from your partner and falling out of love.

Here are a few more reasons why guys act like they don’t care after the breakup.

If you notice that your ex doesn’t care about you, don’t let that bring you down. Remind yourself that your ex has a life of his own and that he doesn’t want, nor deserve to be in pain no matter what he said or did to you.

Your ex just wants to leave his old life behind as quickly as possible—and likely wants you to do the same.

The truth is that most dumpers aren’t bad people. They aren’t narcissists who wish to hurt their dumpees for their own amusement. They just care more about their well-being than they do about their ex’s.

They want to take care of themselves and put themselves first. Most people usually do. Especially dumpers because they’re dealing with an extremely energy-draining situation.

So as much as your ex’s lack of care hurts you, try to understand that your ex has the right to be happy and that his thoughts, emotions, and actions don’t change who you are as a person. They show who your ex is at the core and how he treats people he no longer romantically cares about.

Whether your ex stands by your side during the most difficult time of your life or not has nothing to do with what you did for your ex in the past and how well you got along.

It has everything to do with your ex’s moral values, self-awareness, and the desire to help a person he’d spent a lot of time with.

How can you make your ex care about you after the breakup?

If your ex doesn’t care about you after the separation, there isn’t anything you can do to change that.

You can’t convince your ex to come back with words and you certainly can’t manipulate his feelings with desperate post-breakup behavior such as begging and pleading, threatening, and taking revenge.

All you can do and should do is allow your ex to process the stages of a breakup for the dumper naturally by letting him come back to you on his own terms.

When he’s finally ready to talk to you and maybe even be your friend, rest assured that you’ll hear from your ex. Your ex will contact you—possibly apologize for being gone for so long and might even tell you that he’s finally ready to be a part of your life again.

But until that happens, follow the indefinite no contact rule religiously and avoid making post-breakup mistakes. The fewer mistakes you make, the less you’ll annoy your ex, and the more your ex will want to speak with you again.

Keep in mind that you can’t force your ex to love you or even care about you as a friend until your ex comes to the realization that he respects you and wants to care about you. Your ex has a mind of his own and won’t change his mind until he discovers your true worth.

Besides, even if you could somehow force your ex to love you, would you really want to scream into your ex’s ear and tell him to care about you? Would you want him to care just because you want him to care?

Something tells me that you respect yourself more than that and that if your ex doesn’t care about you, you will. Right now, it probably hurts (especially if the breakup just occurred), but give it some time and you’ll stop caring about it. That’s when you’ll realize that you don’t need your ex to care about you and that there are plenty of other people who will.

There’s a very easy way to find out who truly cares about you after the breakup. And you don’t even have to embarrass yourself in the process.

You just have to keep in mind that a guy who really cares about you will show you that with actions, not words. He’ll offer support by encouraging you to reach out when you’re struggling and need help. But when you’re not reaching out and are doing fine, he won’t either.

He’ll instead leave you to your own devices because he’ll want you to recover from heartbreak as fast as possible.

Guys who act like they don’t care

Your ex may be hurting on the inside for treating you poorly during or after the relationship, but this doesn’t mean that your ex truly cares about you as his ex-partner. Your ex most likely just regrets making a few bad decisions and now has to pay the price for them. That price is a guilty conscience as your ex doesn’t want to be someone who hurts people.

Not now that he’s calmed down and sees he could have reacted to the breakup better.

So try not to confuse love and care for self-love and self-care. They are two entirely different things. Love is selfless and demands nothing or very little in return whereas self-love is self-caring and expects a positive reaction from other people.

A good example of self-love is when an ex reaches out after the breakup and breadcrumbs the dumpee. Such an ex has no intention of giving love to the dumpee.

On the contrary, the dumper intends to indirectly ask for a reaction that would empower the dumper and reassure him that he doesn’t have to blame himself for the things he did and didn’t do.

You can tell the dumper is asking for self-love when he reaches out to express:

• the desire to overcome guilt
• a wish to better his karma
• a strong need for validation and emotional support

As you can see, the points above are all of selfish nature and have very little to do with the dumpee. They are mainly about the dumper as they show that the dumper regrets acting a certain way and/or hurting the dumpee.

Regret and disappointment, unfortunately, don’t indicate that the dumper wants to give love and get back together. They indicate that the dumper wants to receive forgiveness or some kind of self-empowering response.

So unless you’re looking for an apology, closure, or an explanation as to why the breakup occurred, don’t take your ex’s messages and calls seriously. They aren’t about you unless your ex knows what he’s doing and understands how breakups work and where his emotions come from.

How can you tell if your ex genuinely cares about you?

You can tell whether your ex cares about you by watching your ex’s behavior and determining his interest in you (the way he interacts with you).

For example, if your ex continues to reach out just to express the wish to help you overcome breakup pain, your ex’s actions are likely selfless. They portray kindness and respect and show that he’s eager to converse with you for both his and your sake.

Your ex likely doesn’t know that reaching out is making things difficult for you, but an ex who offers help at the very least wants to help.

But if your ex reaches out one time, apologizes for treating you poorly, and leaves shortly after, then your ex’s behavior is most likely selfish.

That’s because the act of reaching out and disappearing right after procures forgiveness without giving anything in return. Your ex just takes from you strictly for his selfish benefits.

So when your ex seeks forgiveness from you and attempts to alleviate guilt for something he has done, I encourage you to forgive your ex and let him go.

Refusing to forgive your ex won’t make your ex chase you and magically make him care about you. Instead, it will probably just trigger his victim mentality and turn his lack of validation into anger and resentment.

This usually happens to exes who don’t get what they want. They get hurt and angry, so they find a way to stand up for themselves and retaliate with destruction.

So to avoid bringing out the worst in your ex, give your ex what he wants and distance yourself immediately. Let your ex do what he wants with your forgiveness and continue to focus on yourself.

You’ll feel better this way and your ex will no longer feel like a bad person. It’s a win-win for both of you.

But if my ex stops feeling guilty, won’t he just move on?

As a dumpee, you need to understand that your ex doesn’t need to feel guilty to come back. Your ex needs love. And love, unfortunately, is seldom present when guilt is sitting on the dumper’s shoulders and weighing him down.

Sure, once in a while, some dumpers come back because of guilt alone because they mistake guilt for love. But such dumpers eventually stop feeling guilty and sorry for their exes.

When they do, they quickly lose the love they thought they had for their partner and notice that they’d returned for the wrong reasons. That’s when they decide to leave and unintentionally hurt the dumpee once again.

They just don’t have the love and commitment that are the main ingredients for staying with an ex.

Did this article answer the question of why guys act like they don’t care after a breakup? As always, comment below and let us know what you think.

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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.