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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Learning to ignore your ex

by

Tricia St John
490 days ago
20240303

Tri­cia St John

Ex­es ... ex­ist­ing ex­am­ples of what not to do a sec­ond time.

Out of the blue, my ex mes­saged me and got straight to the point. No ‘Hi’ or ‘How is life?’. Not even a ‘How are you?’ What he did say is that he had seen me in and around the of­fice where he worked, au­to­mat­i­cal­ly as­sumed that I was ask­ing about him, and if there was any­thing I need­ed to say. Clear­ly, I am not al­lowed to have friends and the mere fact that I was out­side the of­fice, nev­er mind I was talk­ing to an­oth­er man, meant I was pin­ing away for him and, by my pres­ence, need­ed to say so.

Ig­nor­ing the fact that we worked for the same com­pa­ny, just be­ing at any one of our dis­trict of­fices could eas­i­ly mean that I was drop­ping off or pick­ing up a pack­age, re­as­signed, or, as I was do­ing, check­ing on a friend. I con­tem­plat­ed my re­sponse be­cause every time we re­sumed speak­ing, we end­ed up in com­pro­mis­ing po­si­tions, and I need­ed, if even just for the sake of my self-worth, for that to be­come the road less trav­elled.

My ex is a big guy. Taller than my six feet, one inch at least by three or four inch­es. As you can imag­ine, our hugs were heav­en­ly and gave me the safest feel­ing ever. He was gen­tle with me, soft-spo­ken, made time for me, and fed me (which we all can agree is very im­por­tant), but truth be told, those at­trib­ut­es are not enough to build a re­la­tion­ship. Some men can be such an­noy­ing crea­tures. All the time when I had a mil­lion things to say, he re­fused to lis­ten, but at this eleventh hour, he was sud­den­ly in­ter­est­ed in lis­ten­ing. Re­al­ly? He couldn’t pos­si­bly be se­ri­ous about life!

Some­times we hold on to peo­ple who were not meant to be in our lives, and the rea­sons we give our­selves are valid ones, but that doesn’t make them ben­e­fi­cial to our well-be­ing. Go­ing back and forth with your ex usu­al­ly does not yield pos­i­tive re­sults and is a tox­ic sit­u­a­tion. I spent a year be­ing sad, cry­ing, miss­ing my ex, mes­sag­ing, and be­ing the per­fect nui­sance. He re­spond­ed to every mes­sage. Pos­i­tive­ly for the most part, but that’s just like false hope and did me no good.

In ac­tu­al­i­ty, he was just bored, sin­gle, or test­ing the the­o­ry of whether or not he could have ac­cess when­ev­er he want­ed. The last time we spoke was in De­cem­ber and I de­cid­ed that I was not go­ing to mes­sage again be­cause it fi­nal­ly stopped mak­ing any kind of sense, all that go­ing around in cir­cles.

Fi­nal­ly, I re­spond­ed to him by say­ing that I had got­ten his ini­tial mes­sage loud and clear, am­pli­fied by his be­hav­iour so no, I had not been try­ing to get him be­cause I had ab­solute­ly noth­ing to say. I pro­ceed­ed to delete our chat which dat­ed back to the very first time we spoke, and then I delet­ed his num­ber. His pic­tures went next, along­side the videos he’d sent, so that way I would have noth­ing to look back at and rem­i­nisce. Noth­ing to pull at my heart­strings and make me want to say ‘Hi’ or ‘I miss you’ or some such non­sense I shouldn’t be say­ing. Some­times af­ter a breakup, if pos­i­tive feel­ings to­wards our ex are still there, we tend to miss the con­nec­tion, and some­times we con­vince our­selves that we shouldn’t have bro­ken up, even when it’s them that in­sti­gat­ed the ini­tial sep­a­ra­tion. Do­ing this is an ex­am­ple of re­ly­ing on one’s emo­tions rather than ra­tio­nal de­lib­er­a­tion and may land us right back in a place that isn’t good for us and of­ten times a place where we know we shouldn’t be.

So, when I say ig­nore your ex, I do not mean pre­tend they nev­er ex­ist­ed but rather, recog­nise you de­serve bet­ter. Spend­ing time chas­ing your ex makes it clear to them that they hold all the cards. Leav­ing the choice to make up with you or not in their hands leaves you at their whim, and they will, most like­ly, take you for grant­ed. Let­ting go does not mean that you will not find some­thing/some­one else. Peo­ple pan­ic at the idea of say­ing good­bye to their ex be­cause they don’t feel con­fi­dent that an­oth­er love will come in­to their life. This is very com­mon, and if you’re feel­ing this way too, it is noth­ing to be ashamed of. Giv­ing up on an ex is just that, and does not re­quire you to give up on love. In­stead, un­der­stand the dif­fer­ent nu­ances of your iden­ti­ty, and show your­self a high­er lev­el of care. I guar­an­tee ig­nor­ing your ex will be­come the best thing you do for your­self.

Tri­cia St John is an au­thor, mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence sur­vivor.


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