Why Is My Ex So Mean When He Broke Up With Me?

When your ex is mean after he broke up with you, his actions show that he doesn’t want to be near you and interact with you anymore. If/when he does want to interact, he wants to punish you for hurting him in the past and make your life as difficult as you made his.

Essentially, he’s being mean to you because he feels victimized and thinks you deserve to face karma and suffer the consequences of your actions.

The things you’ve done or haven’t done when you were together weren’t good enough for your ex, so your ex thinks it’s appropriate to express that and make you feel how he felt. Because he’s a dumper, he has no expectations anymore and has power over you. That means he can do what he wants, when he wants, and get away with it too.

He can call you names, blame you for the breakup, ignore your calls and texts, respond late, ruin your reputation, accuse you of things, and treat you like a stranger.

As long as you seek his attention and encourage him to remember the past and express himself, he feels tempted to take his resentment out on you and get back at you for failing to meet his expectations during and after the relationship.

An ex who’s mean to you after the breakup doesn’t consider the breakup to be the end of disagreements. He thinks you’ve hurt him more than he’s hurt you and that he must say and do some mean things to catch up to your level of meanness. He feels he’s a victim who needs to create justice by showing you a mean side of him.

This mean side is supposed to balance out the pain and disrespect he felt as your boyfriend and make him feel better.

A person who retaliates vengefully after the breakup has an eye for an eye mentality and can’t let you be happy unless he sees that you’ve suffered as much or more than him and that you won’t be successful and happy without him. He’s basically insecure and wants you to suffer simply because he had to suffer.

Suffering may have ended for him, but he now feels angry and in control and likes feeling that way. He enjoys using anger to control your thoughts, emotions, and actions (bringing a negative reaction out of you) and feeling powerful.

The question you should ask yourself is why are you letting your ex be mean to you? Why are you staying in touch with your ex after he dumped you and showed no interest in working together as a couple? Are you hoping that he’ll see your soft side and fall back in love with you?

That’s unlikely to happen now that he has so much power over you. Since he’s in full control of the breakup, he’ll probably continue to reject and mistreat you as long as you keep reaching out and asking him to say or do what you want. He’ll treat you badly because you’ll put yourself in a begging position and allow him to stay in full control of the breakup.

You must remember that the guy left you to stop communicating (at least as a couple) and that he doesn’t want to be talked back into a relationship. Relationship conversations bring back difficult memories and emotions associated with those memories.

So every time you try to change his mind, he feels unheard, disrespected, pressured, and annoyed. He feels he has to defend himself because you no longer have his best interests at heart. You have interests that were best for him in the past – when you were together.

Things have changed significantly after the breakup. The guy’s feelings have changed, and so has his behavior. He’s acting differently because he has nothing else to lose. He wants to stay broken up and feel liberated, so any attempt to stop him from feeling free and happy will have the opposite of the desired effect.

It will make him feel suffocated and disrespected, and in turn, bring negative responses out of him. Negative responses include anger, resentment, fear, contempt, or disgust, depending on your behavior and your ex’s ability to deal with negative perceptions and emotions.

The stronger the emotions your ex-boyfriend exudes, the more criticized, judged, hopeless, and unworthy you will feel.

So if you’re wondering why your ex is so mean when he broke up with you, it’s probably because you came on too strong and expected too much too soon or because your ex can’t handle you moving on (feels insecure) and wants to stay in control of you.

Whether you’ve done something to annoy your ex or your ex got annoyed because you haven’t shown weakness and submitted to his rule, you need to take your ex’s power away. You must do so by creating some distance between you and your ex and proving to yourself and your ex that you don’t depend on him for happiness.

Proving this will take time, but time is on your side. While you’re busy, working on yourself and detaching from your ex, adhere to the rules of no contact. Stick to no contact as no contact will reduce your suffering and dependence on your ex. It will prevent you from making unnecessary breakup mistakes that permit your ex to act mean and rude.

Mean and rude behavior coming from your ex will end either when your ex finally gets even with you or when you stand up for yourself and prevent your ex from saying and doing mean things. It will stop when you set some healthy boundaries and force your ex to respect you.

Until then, expect your ex to be mean to you and get in the way of your recovery process.

Today, we talk about why your ex is so mean when he broke up with you and how you can stop your ex from being mean.

Why is my ex so mean when he broke up with me?

Your ex is mean to you because you continue to interact with your ex even after the end of the relationship. You act like friends or as if you’re still together and make your ex feel a myriad of negative emotions. You force your ex to feel emotions he doesn’t want to feel, so he responds instinctually/defensively to them and pushes you away by force.

Dumpers are often impatient, rude, and mean after the breakup. They’re bitter and space-deprived and don’t want to communicate with their ex (especially about their ex’s pain, expectations, and plans to get back together). They left their ex so they wouldn’t have to talk to their ex and worry about their ex’s problems.

If their ex forces the conversation and makes his or her pain and desires their problem, dumpers feel disrespected and pressured. Depending on their maturity and ability to handle difficult emotions, they may lose their cool and respond offensively.

Their offensive response more often than not hurts their ex and causes their ex to crave their affection even more.

So keep in mind that you’re probably not doing something right. You’re probably forcing your ex to communicate with you instead of letting your ex talk to you when he’s ready and has a reason to talk to you. Your expectations are too high for your ex to consider you just a harmless friend. He sees that you’re not over him yet and that you want to talk because you’re still processing the breakup.

This makes your ex feel forced to communicate and trapped in a situation he doesn’t want to be in. He’d rather talk to friends and people who have no (romantic) expectations of him. Such people make him feel free and respected whereas your behavior suffocates him and keeps him stuck in the past.

You’re not necessarily saying something to annoy your ex. Your presence alone may remind your ex of the past and show him you still need him. It may be enough for your ex to lose his patience and act mean. The guy sees that you’re still around despite him dumping you and showing no signs of regret.

This makes it possible for him to treat you like an enemy rather than someone he was romantically involved with.

Exes shouldn’t be friends after the breakup. They shouldn’t stay in touch unless they have responsibilities such as kids and work that tie them together. But even in such cases, they should do limited no contact together rather than full contact and pretending everything’s fine.

If they want the best for themselves, they should keep some distance from each other and process the separation in peace. Dumpers need to forget about their ex for a while and enjoy their freedom whereas dumpees need to build themselves back up and be okay without their ex.

They both have to do their own things so they can learn and improve from the breakup and figure out their next steps.

If they give each other space, they can’t get mean and rude and delay each other’s healing. They can just focus on themselves and mind their own business.

Exes can be mean only when they refuse to treat the breakup as a breakup. When they act like they want the same things from the breakup, they can cross each other’s boundaries (need for space) and bring out traits from each other they haven’t seen before.

Such traits shock and hurt each other and cause each other to react.

So if you’re wondering why your ex is so mean when he broke up with you, ask yourself if you’re doing anything you shouldn’t be. Are you contacting your ex, begging your ex for time or love, promising change, arguing with your ex, taking revenge, sending your ex love letters, talking to his family or friends about him, stalking your ex, showing up at your ex’s house unannounced, or making any other breakup mistakes that limit his space, freedom, or happiness?

If you’re pestering your ex about things your ex expected not to be pestered about as your ex, your ex gets angry and acts mean because he had different post-breakup expectations. He hoped and expected you to leave him alone or not to concern him with relationship, breakup, or other topics. The guy thought the breakup would absolve him of all and any responsibilities and let him find peace in the quickest way possible outside of the relationship.

Instead, your ex learned that you still needed him and that he wasn’t allowed to be free.

Always remember that dumpers are tired of their dumpee ex. They want to distance themselves from their ex so they can live life on their terms and feel positive emotions. If their ex contacts them and drags them back into the past, they relive negative pre-breakup emotions and feel tempted to respond similarly to how they did before or during the breakup.

Therefore, your behavior is one of the most important things you need to pay attention to. The things you say, do, and expect determine how your space-hungry ex feels and reacts. The worse his emotional intelligence and self-control are, the greater the chance that he will respond meanly and hurt your broken heart.

If you’re not doing anything to anger your ex, but your ex keeps reaching out to you and picking fights with you anyway, then your ex just wants to get back at you for hurting him and trying to move on peacefully. He wants you to suffer and boost his ego. By arguing, your ex hopes to see that he can stir up trouble and your emotions.

Your emotions tell him you haven’t completely moved on and left him behind.

That said, here are 6 reasons why your ex is so mean when he broke up with you.

As long as your ex sees that you lack respect for yourself and that you’ll tolerate rude behavior, your ex will keep treating you poorly despite dumping you. Your ex won’t care that you’re hurting because he’ll think you’re annoying him and asking to be treated poorly.

Self-respect is essential. If you want your ex to respect and treat you the way you want to be treated, you must treat yourself kindly and stop your ex when he crosses your boundaries and tries to hurt you. Refuse to stand up for yourself and your ex (a person who abuses power) will stomp all over you and make you miserable for months to come.

How to stop my ex from being so mean to me?

You can avoid seeing your ex’s mean side by understanding that the relationship is over and that your words, actions, and presence affect your ex. If the breakup happened recently and/or if your ex resents you, your ex will likely lash out at you when you bother your ex and give your ex a chance to lash out.

If you contact your ex, express pain, or show up at your ex’s work, your ex will see that you don’t respect him, nor yourself and that it’s okay to treat you no better than you treat him and yourself. Your ex will essentially get the green light to take his frustration out on you and make you see that he doesn’t love you and want you back.

This will make it harder for you to love yourself and accept that your ex’s perception of you has changed.

Currently, you probably expect your ex to be as loving and nice as he was when you were together. You expect your ex to talk with respect and curiosity and avoid saying or doing anything that hurts you. But instead, your ex acts like a totally different person and makes you wonder if you ever even knew him.

You probably did know your ex (especially if you were together for months or years), but you never got to know the worst side of your ex. That’s because you never became obsolete to your ex. Your ex always loved you and needed you in his life.

The moment your ex stopped needing you, though, the breakup happened, making him treat you as an expandable ex whose attention and affection he no longer desired. Suddenly, your ex preferred to be alone or with people whose attention he wanted and/or had to fight for.

After the breakup, you gave your ex attention (power) for free. And that made your ex feel suffocated and caused him to be mean to you.

You must stop your ex from being mean to you. It will help you heal and get your happy self back. Do that by starting no contact with your ex. Cease all communication and take your power back by force. Your ex will respect you and perhaps even be curious about you when you prove that you love yourself more than an ex who left you and treated you like a bad person.

No contact will take a while to work, so don’t expect immediate results. You’ll probably forget about your ex for a while and enjoy your life before you hear from your ex and notice that your ex’s behavior toward you has changed. When your ex treats you appropriately, it will be when you’ve learned to respect yourself and left your ex to his own devices for so long that your ex misses you and needs to respect you if he wants to get something from you.

Something like information, advice, forgiveness, support, friendship, or reassurance.

So if you’re tired of your ex being mean to you after he broke up with you, show it to your ex. Don’t tell your ex you’ll stop talking to him, but just do it. Go indefinite no contact with your ex and let your actions speak for themselves. Your ex will think about you more often and more positively when you stop banging your head against a brick wall and change your aggressive approach to a more passive one.

In conclusion, start controlling your emotions and listen to your brain instead of your heart. Sooner than later, you’ll force your ex to stop being mean to you and improve your self-esteem.

Why do you think your ex is so mean when he broke up with you? Share your views in the comment section below.

And if you want our help with your breakup, reach out to us 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.