If you don’t know why you hate your ex so much, your hatred likely has something to do with the things your ex said and did during the relationship or after the breakup. You consciously or subconsciously remember your ex’s choices and behavior and believe your ex could have handled things differently.
Your ex could have expressed himself or herself better, acted more maturely, and avoided making you think unwanted thoughts and feel unwanted emotions.
If your ex treated you terribly and rejected you (broke up with you), you feel betrayed or abandoned and think your ex should have stayed with you and/or explained things empathetically. You expected better from someone you committed to and saw yourself staying with long-term.
However, if you broke up with your ex, then you probably feel angry with your ex for feeling unheard, pressured, and disrespected. You blame your ex for being mistreated, underprioritized, or overprioritized, and for being forced to leave.
Basically, your ex has made you feel unhappy and made it extremely difficult for you to love yourself and carry on with your life the way you wanted to. You now have to deal with the consequences of the breakup and slowly process anxiety, anger, and other difficult emotions.
Dumpees and dumpers both feel angry after the breakup. How angry they feel depends on how victimized they feel and how their ex behaves.
If their dumper ex starts dating someone else right away and ignores their feelings, they tend to feel extremely hurt.
At first, they feel unloved and discarded. But when they get through the psychological shock, they tend to feel angry and may even project their anger onto their ex.
Dumpers, on the other hand, typically feel angry when their ex makes their moving on difficult. When their ex reaches out and guilt-trips them, they feel they can’t focus on themselves and those who make them feel free.
This makes them feel trapped and annoyed and forces them to do something about it.
Usually, they ignore, block, or get cold or angry with their ex. Every dumper responds to overstepped boundaries differently, but in general, most dumpers push their ex away and do what they can to focus on themselves.
Post-breakup anger is a part of dumpees’ and dumpers’ healing process. Most exes feel at least some anger and resentment toward their ex. They’re not happy with the way things ended or the pain they suffered as a result of their ex, so they feel tempted to react impulsively and justify their behavior.
Some exes reach out and express themselves strongly whereas others internalize their pain. What they do depends on their coping mechanisms, personalities, and maturity. The worse their self-control is, the more likely they are to do something hurtful.
Believe it or not, dumpees tend to feel angrier than dumpers (especially weeks into the breakup). They feel more hurt compared to their ex who has already processed (most) hurt feelings before leaving the relationship.
Dumpees feel angrier unless they beg and plead with dumpers for another chance and suffocate dumpers.
In that case, they may annoy their ex so much that their ex loses his or her cool and shows them a side of his or her personality they aren’t used to.
Initially, dumpers look and feel angry, cold, and disinterested mainly because dumpees don’t give them the space they crave. They talk to them about their problems and try to ease their separation anxiety and pain instead of leaving them alone and dealing with their problems.
The longer they annoy their ex after the breakup, the angrier dumpers get and the harsher their response is.
In this post, we talk about why you hate your ex so much and what you can do to stop hating your ex. We share some tips for dumpees and dumpers who are open to regaining control of their emotions.
Why do I hate my ex so much when I dumped him/her?
If you just dumped your ex and feel a lot of anger for your ex, this is completely normal. It wasn’t easy to leave a person you felt pressured or victimized by. The relationship may have ended (you’ve solved some of your problems), but you haven’t completely let go of the past yet.
You still remember the things your ex did or didn’t do and hold on to anger for self-protection. You don’t want your ex to get close to you and make you feel and act the way you did in the past. Anger shields you from stressful situations and from changing your opinion of your ex.
It does so by reminding you that your ex has hurt you and that he or she isn’t a good romantic partner for you. Anger is a common defense mechanism. You use it to convince yourself that your ex is the problem and that you need to stick to your decision.
Your brain is doing everything it can to keep your ex physically and emotionally away from you. Space gives you peace whereas the thought of being close to your ex scares you and makes you uneasy.
If you left your ex and don’t know why you hate your ex so much, the most feasible explanation is that you don’t see your ex as someone who can contribute to your life and make you feel good.
Now that the breakup happened, you see your ex as a person who can bring back unwanted memories and feelings and trap you in the past. Your ex can open your old wounds and force you to deal with a situation you’ve been desperately trying to leave behind.
Most dumpers can’t be friends after the breakup. They take the breakup personally and feel too tired to want anything to do with their ex (for a while). This doesn’t mean they’re bad people but that the breakup pushed them to their limits and made them want to be alone.
They just want to focus on themselves and those who make them feel free and at peace.
If you can’t stop wondering why you hate your ex so much after the breakup, it could be because your ex disappointed you throughout the relationship. He or she hurt you again and again until you had no choice but to leave and protect yourself.
If your ex lied, cheated, abused you, or stole from you, you remember your ex in a very bad light and may even want your ex to suffer for his or her wrongdoings. That means you associate extremely negative things with your ex and think your ex deserves to suffer.
If you’re not angry about past events, though, it could be that your ex doesn’t leave you alone. Your ex might be contacting you and forcing you to respond. His or her behavior goes against your post-breakup expectations because you expected the breakup to free you from your ex and the moral obligations that come with it.
You’d rather enjoy your life freely than talk to your ex and help him or her deal with negative breakup emotions. Hence, your ex may be smothering you and making you feel stuck. He or she has expectations of you that you can’t or don’t want to fulfill.
Anger is a natural emotional response to a person you don’t like or want to talk to/be around. You feel angry when your ex forces you to communicate or do something you aren’t ready for.
Your ex should understand that you’re not interested in talking and bonding and that he or she should go no contact and let you go through the stages of a breakup for the dumper at your own pace. By leaving you alone, your ex will let you do what you want and encourage you to slowly stop feeling victimized and/or hurt.
It’s also possible that you hate your ex so much because you have unmet expectations of your ex. Maybe you expect your ex to return your stuff, pay you back, talk to you or your family, be your friend, support you, or do you some kind of favor.
If you want your ex to do something but your ex isn’t cooperating, you probably think that your ex is doing it on purpose to punish you for leaving him or her. You’re assuming your ex is being vengeful and that he or she deserved to get dumped.
If that’s what you’re thinking, you should keep in mind that your ex doesn’t owe you anything. You decided to terminate the relationship despite knowing a breakup would change everything for you and your ex.
If you didn’t know it would change things (let’s say because you lacked breakup knowledge), you need to learn more about breakups now. Accept that your ex is hurt and that your ex must prioritize his or her hurt feelings over the things you want.
Don’t forget that the breakup released your unconscious pre-breakup emotions. It overwhelmed you with repressed pain, made you stop loving your ex, empowered you with relief, and forced you to stand up for yourself.
You can’t instantly process those emotions, so you instinctually try to protect yourself from them. You do this by getting angry and hating the person you deem responsible for your inconveniences.
Many dumpers dislike or even hate their ex. They don’t like how their ex treated them and made them feel, so they hold their ex responsible for their feelings. They do so even though they hurt their ex more and for longer.
Dumpers don’t know that unlike their ex, they feel emotions of power (anger, resentment, contempt…).
They’ll process such emotions quicker than their abandoned ex will process anxiety, depression, and powerlessness. If they remember that their ex is a dumpee who will have to rebuild him/herself from the ground up, they can avoid competing with their ex and be more tolerant and supportive when their ex makes breakup mistakes and needs help.
So if you want to know why you hate your ex so much, know that you have every right to feel angry. Your ex probably wasn’t a perfect partner or an ideal ex. He or she made mistakes and hurt/angered you.
But despite that, you shouldn’t hate your ex with passion because resentment will hurt your ex and hinder your healing and growth. Hatred will make you blame your ex for everything and prevent you from reflecting and changing your life in positive ways.
With that said, here’s why you hate your ex so much.
Why do I hate my dumper ex?
If you hate the ex who dumped you, you probably feel bitter because your ex shocked you and turned your whole life upside down. He or she left you with little to no warning and showed you that your feelings, goals, and problems no longer mattered.
This made you feel betrayed and unworthy. It made you want your ex to explain things and reverse his or her decision. Because your ex didn’t, your self-esteem and ego took a hit and made you want justice or vengeance.
Now you feel that if you aren’t happy, your ex shouldn’t be happy either. He or she should suffer and take accountability for his or her actions. By seeing your ex struggle, you’d know that you’re not the only one having a difficult time after the breakup.
Some dumpees also don’t want their ex back. They just want their ex to regret leaving and to validate them so they can stop feeling rejected. Such dumpees want to reject their ex, hurt their ex back, and feel in control of their ex’s feelings and actions.
Dumpees go through the anger stage of a breakup. In this stage, they stand up for themselves and hate their ex for destroying their life purpose/romantic goals and putting them through misery.
They’re tired of suffering alone.
They especially hate it if their ex promised them the world, appears to be unaffected by the breakup, and is moving on with some other person. That often devastates them and makes them furious. They don’t want their ex to be on cloud nine while they’re feeling depressed and lost.
So why do you hate your dumper ex so much?
You hate your ex because your ex rejected you and put you in a position of weakness. Your ex forced you to love yourself and accept the breakup he or she has already done that and is enjoying life like nothing happened.
You expected your ex to show at least some sympathy toward you and not do anything that would make you think your ex has instantly forgotten you and moved on. So when you learned that your ex didn’t care very much, you didn’t know what to think and how to react.
You were bewildered and immediately found your ex’s behavior unforgivable. You found it so selfish that you got enraged and made your ex into a person who no longer had your best interests at heart.
Another possible explanation for your rage may be your ex’s breadcrumbs. If your ex is communicating with you and being flaky, your ex may be stringing you along for selfish reasons and prolonging your detachment. Breadcrumbs give you tons of false hope and stop you from moving on.
Obviously, I can’t state all the reasons why you may hate your ex so much, but here are some of the most common reasons I can think of.
- betrayal
- abandonment
- false promises
- breadcrumbs
- separation anxiety
- fears
- anger issues/poor self-control
- low self-esteem and inability to let go of control
- your ex’s resentment, lack of self-awareness/empathy, and poor behavior
You need to figure out why you hate your ex so much so you can do something about it. If you hate your ex seemingly for no reason, it could be that you feel rejected and that you’re going through the anger stage of a breakup.
In that case, you should resist the temptation to contact your ex and show your ex how angry you are.
Instead of making your problems your ex’s problems, stay in no contact and keep healing. Your anger for your ex will subside a tiny bit every day.
If it doesn’t or if you don’t notice improvements after a few weeks, consider looking for alternative ways to stop hating your ex. Consider giving therapy and journaling a try and remind yourself that hatred doesn’t hurt your ex as much as it hurts you.
Hatred gives you nothing but a false sense of control and keeps you obsessed with someone who doesn’t deserve you.
Aim for indifference and refuse to react angrily. I promise that you’ll slowly stop caring about your ex getting karma and find hatred an unproductive emotion. You’ll realize that your life doesn’t revolve around your ex anymore and that you have better people and things to invest your emotions and time in.
Do you still wonder why you hate your ex so much? What do you think is the reason you despise your ex? Mine was my lack of breakup knowledge and my ex’s insensibility and lack of empathy. Leave your comments below the post.
And if you’re looking for explanations and help with your emotions or breakup, subscribe to Magnet of Success coaching services. We help both dumpees and dumpers.
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.
