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Deleted from Facebook etc. by my ex
Former Member
Posts: 1,875,648 The Mix Honorary Guru
OK I won't go into too much detail because there's a lot of it. I posted my issue a few weeks ago on here but I have another issue now.
It's been almost 4 weeks since my girlfriend (22) and I (23m) broke up after 16 months together. In a nutshell, she loved me and I loved her. She was doing a teacher training course to train to be an English teacher which she was so excited about. But unfortunately the course didn't go well at all and she became crushed and defeated, confused about what she was going to do next. As a result, she broke up with me against her best wishes because she knew she needed to "find herself" and spend some time alone. I asked if we could work it out but she said she couldn't give me an answer.
A week ago I was thinking about her and asked her friend how she is doing. This is the first contact I had had with her since the 20th December (aside from a simple Happy New year text). I had been doing reasonably well at moving on at this point. She told my ex that I had asked about her and my ex came and messaged me. She was really cold towards me. She told me that she was doing "fine" but that I need to move on and hoped I knew we would never be more than friends. This took me aback slightly as it was totally unlike her. I told her that I was moving on but I just wanted to know where I stood. She said the breakup wasn't what she wanted but it was just "how it turned out." I believe it was a safeguard against her raw emotions at the time; in being cold towards me she was making sure she didn't fall back into comfort toward me.
Anyway, since then I have been doing well at moving on. I have had work experience this week which has kept me occupied and I have been going to the gym with friends etc. As for her, as much as this pains me to say (and as cruel as it sounds since I only want the best for her), I can't imagine she's doing as well as I am. We were deeply in love with one another for 16 months and nobody stops loving/thinking about someone in less than a month. She is back to normality now at her part time job and she lost touch a fair bit with her friends at home, meaning I was a big part of her social life. We didn't smother each other (we live an hour apart) but I meant a lot to her. But now she has lost me, and I think she is realising that I am filling my time and the hole left by her better than she had hoped she would have herself, especially since she broke up with me.
So a few days ago I noticed she blocked me and then (strangely) unblocked me on Snapchat. I assumed this was because she noticed I was just looking at her stories (she had looked at a few of mine but had stopped looking at them more recently) and didn't want to feel like I was hovering. But yesterday I saw she has deleted me from Facebook. She hasn't blocked me, but she has deleted all my friends too, and hers have deleted me. However, her profile is still public and I can still see all her photos and posts, and mine is public for people to see anyway.
I was wondering what you guys think her reasons for this are. At first my heart sank, but then a few moments later I was smothered by this relieved feeling. I still love my ex, and I find it extremely hard to believe she doesn't still love me (she said when she broke up with me that she never stopped loving me, she just couldn't handle a relationship). I would take her back if she assured me she was in a better place, but as it stands I can begin to feel myself standing on my own two feet again. She is a strong-willed girl, but she is easily broken by negative things. She rarely posts on Facebook and doesn't post many Snapchat stories.
My guess is she's struggling to move on and needs to delete me to stop herself from checking up on me. My good friend - who is experienced in this area - believes that this shows she is thinking about me enough still to want to try and get over me. If she had got over me and moved on already, she wouldn't have gone to this effort. As for another guy, she isn't with one. She was so honest when we broke up. She just can't manage a relationship now. At the very least there's a rebound, but honestly I don't think she has anything left to help her move on. Since New Year's with her friends she's likely just been back at her part time job and spending a lot of time alone. On New Year's Day she and her friends did write up a list of resolutions each, and my ex's had the usual "learn a new language/learn a word everyday/learn an instrument" crap on it. But she also wrote that she wants to teach English abroad and move to Sweden. A bit drastic I think, but emblematic of this "finding herself" phase she is going through. What do you guys think?
I should say, I have been commenting on other girls' stuff on Facebook. Not always in a flirty way, just about stuff we're interested in. A girl I know went to see a Shakespeare play the other night, for example, so I commented that I had been to see one in August (with my ex, incidentally). Perhaps it is this sort of thing she has seen that has made this too hard for her to cope with.
It's been almost 4 weeks since my girlfriend (22) and I (23m) broke up after 16 months together. In a nutshell, she loved me and I loved her. She was doing a teacher training course to train to be an English teacher which she was so excited about. But unfortunately the course didn't go well at all and she became crushed and defeated, confused about what she was going to do next. As a result, she broke up with me against her best wishes because she knew she needed to "find herself" and spend some time alone. I asked if we could work it out but she said she couldn't give me an answer.
A week ago I was thinking about her and asked her friend how she is doing. This is the first contact I had had with her since the 20th December (aside from a simple Happy New year text). I had been doing reasonably well at moving on at this point. She told my ex that I had asked about her and my ex came and messaged me. She was really cold towards me. She told me that she was doing "fine" but that I need to move on and hoped I knew we would never be more than friends. This took me aback slightly as it was totally unlike her. I told her that I was moving on but I just wanted to know where I stood. She said the breakup wasn't what she wanted but it was just "how it turned out." I believe it was a safeguard against her raw emotions at the time; in being cold towards me she was making sure she didn't fall back into comfort toward me.
Anyway, since then I have been doing well at moving on. I have had work experience this week which has kept me occupied and I have been going to the gym with friends etc. As for her, as much as this pains me to say (and as cruel as it sounds since I only want the best for her), I can't imagine she's doing as well as I am. We were deeply in love with one another for 16 months and nobody stops loving/thinking about someone in less than a month. She is back to normality now at her part time job and she lost touch a fair bit with her friends at home, meaning I was a big part of her social life. We didn't smother each other (we live an hour apart) but I meant a lot to her. But now she has lost me, and I think she is realising that I am filling my time and the hole left by her better than she had hoped she would have herself, especially since she broke up with me.
So a few days ago I noticed she blocked me and then (strangely) unblocked me on Snapchat. I assumed this was because she noticed I was just looking at her stories (she had looked at a few of mine but had stopped looking at them more recently) and didn't want to feel like I was hovering. But yesterday I saw she has deleted me from Facebook. She hasn't blocked me, but she has deleted all my friends too, and hers have deleted me. However, her profile is still public and I can still see all her photos and posts, and mine is public for people to see anyway.
I was wondering what you guys think her reasons for this are. At first my heart sank, but then a few moments later I was smothered by this relieved feeling. I still love my ex, and I find it extremely hard to believe she doesn't still love me (she said when she broke up with me that she never stopped loving me, she just couldn't handle a relationship). I would take her back if she assured me she was in a better place, but as it stands I can begin to feel myself standing on my own two feet again. She is a strong-willed girl, but she is easily broken by negative things. She rarely posts on Facebook and doesn't post many Snapchat stories.
My guess is she's struggling to move on and needs to delete me to stop herself from checking up on me. My good friend - who is experienced in this area - believes that this shows she is thinking about me enough still to want to try and get over me. If she had got over me and moved on already, she wouldn't have gone to this effort. As for another guy, she isn't with one. She was so honest when we broke up. She just can't manage a relationship now. At the very least there's a rebound, but honestly I don't think she has anything left to help her move on. Since New Year's with her friends she's likely just been back at her part time job and spending a lot of time alone. On New Year's Day she and her friends did write up a list of resolutions each, and my ex's had the usual "learn a new language/learn a word everyday/learn an instrument" crap on it. But she also wrote that she wants to teach English abroad and move to Sweden. A bit drastic I think, but emblematic of this "finding herself" phase she is going through. What do you guys think?
I should say, I have been commenting on other girls' stuff on Facebook. Not always in a flirty way, just about stuff we're interested in. A girl I know went to see a Shakespeare play the other night, for example, so I commented that I had been to see one in August (with my ex, incidentally). Perhaps it is this sort of thing she has seen that has made this too hard for her to cope with.
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Do you fully accept that (for whatever reason) she wants nothing more to do with you? If so, what she does or doesn't do in the future shouldn't be of interest to you.
I would accept it if she wants nothing more to do with me, yes. But I was not messaging her and it's been almost 4 weeks since the breakup. It's a strange time to do it. I'm just not convinced that she has filled the space left by the breakup as well as I have. Why just randomly delete me now? I understand that she's doing this to cut ties with me, but why?
I plan to just work on fully moving on now but I will try and speak to her in a month's time to see if she will be more cordial towards me. One of my friends said it's hard to go from loving someone like that to just being friends, and sometimes you have to go right to the bottom and work your way up again. Do you think she's testing me, trying to get me to react in some way?
Since your breakup, have you and/or your friends messaged (about) her and/or her friends on social media?
I don't think she's testing you or trying to get you to react (unless you know her to have done that type of thing for those reasons in the past). It seems clear that she no longer wants you in her life and she's closing the door on you.
I think it likely that she hasn't told you the full story in regard to her choosing to split up with you, so I understand why you feel puzzled. However, it seems that you're not going to find out much more. She's under no obligation to explain further and it's possible that she doesn't fully understand it all herself.
Continuing to view her social media activity may make you feel worse, especially if she starts a new relationship and posts about it.
Rarely. She hasn't posted anything on Facebook since New Year's Day. I text her on New Year's Day wishing her a happy new year (she replied) and then had the conversation I mentioned above just over a week ago.
I don't think she fully understands it herself, no. She was so confused by it all when she broke it up with me, and she didn't want to end it with me.
As I said, I am doing OK at moving on at the moment. But I have an inkling (for some reason) that she will come back and speak to me again in the next month or two when she has moved on. Whether or not I will want to speak to her in a month's time I don't know, but as it stands that is my plan. I'm not banking on us getting back together, but I'm fairly certain she hasn't filled her time as much as I have since the breakup. I have been posting a fair bit on social media that shows I am moving on, and I think this has got her subconscious mind worried that she isn't handling it as well.
I asked her for clarification on why she broke up with me when I last spoke to her and she emphasised the fact that her life just changed so much and she had to finish with me to sort herself out. She was so defensive towards me that, if there was any hidden reason for her breaking up with me, she would have just come out and told me.
You don't know how much she's filling her time. If she wasn't posting on social media frequently before, she's not likely to significantly increase how much she posts this year.
Since the split, have you posted on social media anything about her or about being newly single?
She doesn't post a lot on social media, but she does spend a lot of time on it talking to friends etc. If she's doing something with her friends, she does sometimes take a photo and put it up which I expected to see more of. She started an Instagram account but it hasn't really got anything on there.
You're right, but I know what she's mostly been up to from what she told me before we broke up. I know she's back at her part time job now. I know she's not that close with her friends back at home anymore. I know she doesn't get on very well with her parents at home. I just instinctively know what sort of stuff she's been up to because I know her. I just know that her life, at the moment, must be pretty empty without me because of how much we meant to each other when we were together.
I haven't posted anything about her or being newly single, but I have posted a fair bit about how well my work experience has been going, about spending time with my friends, and generally making it look like I haven't been struggling to move on. She's bound to have seen this stuff.
You don't know how much (if any) of your social media posts she has read.
Why are you giving the false impression on social media that you're doing fine? Do you want her and her friends to think you're doing well without her?
What do your friends and family think of your breakup? Do they think that you might get back together with your ex-gf?
She's definitely working long hours at her part time job now, probably to fill the time left by me, but this can't be a happy thing for her. I was able to tell because I know her shift patterns. It sounds creepy but this is just stuff I know from being with her. She spends most of the rest of her time active on Facebook Messenger. I don't necessarily mean her life is entirely empty, but I think she is struggling to fill the time left behind by me. Her profile photo is still one I took of her when I took her out for dinner in November. It's a lovely photo and probably doesn't mean anything, but surely just seeing that brings back memories of me.
It's true that I don't know how much of my social media posts she has read, but she must have checked my Facebook a few times. Something has to have triggered her to delete me. I know women (and men to an extent) like to take advice from their girl friends in a breakup. Perhaps she told them she was struggling to stop herself from thinking about me and they advised her to delete all trace of me.
It's not entirely a false impression. The stuff that I put up there genuinely makes me happy. I haven't moved on completely, but it's showing her and everyone else that I am filling my time and can stand on my own two feet. Even if I do want her back.
Everyone was shocked when we broke up since we had such a good thing going. My family have avoided the topic since the breakup and my friends just keep telling me to move on. They do agree that she has probably deleted me as a distancing method because she is still emotionally attached to me, perhaps more so than she would like.
I want her to be happy because I love her, but I just can't shake the feeling that she is struggling with the breakup more than me. I know a lot about her life and I can have a good guess at what her day-to-day life is like at the moment and it's not exactly exciting. She has plans to climb Ben Nevis with her friends and do a English Foreign Language course, but that is all later in the year. I'm on about the present.
Is she part of a tight-knit group of friends? If so, they'll probably be siding with her against you. There have been girls who were initially attracted to me, whom then rejected me for no real reason, just because their friends told them not to choose me.
She didn't block me, she just unfriended me. At the least, she wants nothing to do with me at the moment while she sorts herself out. Remember, she blocked me on Snapchat and could have just left it at that. But instead she went to the effort of unblocking me, probably so she could contact me again in the future should she want/need to. As I said, she already said to me that I need to move on when she was being self-defensive when I spoke to her about 9 or 10 days ago. Unfriending me wasn't her deciding that she definitely wanted to break up with me. She did that back in December. I think she needs time to get over the confusion of her feelings and to work out what she wants. Her emotions must still be raw just 3 weeks after she broke up with the boy she loves. Don't you agree? To see me apparently moving on and being OK with the breakup has surely upset her, at least subconsciously.
She basically has two groups of friends: her friends in her hometown, who are the ones who deleted me, and her friends from university, who I spent a lot of time with at university too and are awfully nice and like me very much. I only had two of her friends from her hometown added, one of which I had never actually met and the other whom I had only met once on a night out. So it's only reasonable that they deleted me. I don't think it's a siding-with-her thing. Her friends from university still have me added, and I doubt they will delete me. If she were getting her friends to delete me then at least one of her university friends would have deleted me. Her friends from home are the group she has drifited apart from in recent months and doesn't get chance to spend time with anymore.
Any blocking, unfriending, unfollowing etc. is a clear sign that she no longer wants you.
If you're still in contact with friends of hers, you could briefly and politely ask them about her.
We were in love for 16 months. She still loved me the day we broke up and it was as hard on her as it was on me. It would be inhuman for her - someone who is very in touch with her emotions anyway - to completely lose all feeling for me and not care at all about me in just 3 weeks when she has very little in her life at the moment to take her mind off me. I think you're being far too pessimistic.
Unfriending me isn't exclusively a sign that she no longer is interested in me. It could quite easily be her way of trying to heal the wound that the breakup left.
I have thought about contacting one of her friends and asking, but I did that last week and so don't want to appear needy or bear down on her.
Whatever she was thinking, unfriending is clearly a sign that she no longer wants you at all.
Maybe ask one of her friends next month. If you do, tell us what the reply was.
She didn't fall out of love with me months ago. As I have said, the breakup had nothing to do with her falling out of love with me. It had everything to do with her being completely confused and defeated by how badly her course turned out. She is very in touch with her emotions, as above, and so this affected her negatively. It's possible that she's fallen out of love with me since, but because we ended on good terms/there was no infidelity involved/she didn't want the breakup, I absolutely don't agree with this. I appreciate you giving me the hardest pill to swallow, but it's not the right one I'm afraid. I just know it. Even if her feelings towards me have diminished since the breakup, she is definitely still going through a rollercoaster of emotions at the moment, as am I. I am a strong person who tends to keep his head down and work through tough things like this on my own and even I am still struggling to fully move on.
Again, unfriending me is certainly a sign she doesn't want to talk to me, and I am not disagreeing with that. But her not blocking me on Facebook (which would have been the logical choice if she had moved on), her friends keeping me added and her unblocking me on Snapchat hint towards her hoping to talk again in the future.
Obviously that "future" is at least a month away, as far as I am concerned. Once I feel the time is right I will probably message her, but I could message her friend first I suppose closer to that time. In the meantime, I will work on myself. I have already begun to fill my time, as I stated, and I'm about to hit the town with my friend from work and hopefully pull a rebound
If there are updates then I will post them on here. Thank you for your input, but I feel that perhaps without a full understanding of the situation and what sort of person my ex is it is leading you to assume some rather brash things about her.
You're right that people do sometimes delete others as a way of getting more space! When you're trying not to think of someone, it's always hard if you see their updates on social media and it's tempting to look on their profiles etc... So that may be why she has deleted you. It is of course confusing when you get unblocked off one platform and then deleted off another but it could be a case of her maybe thinking blocking you was a step too far etc... Nevertheless, it's not always healthy to think this way because overthinking can lead to thoughts which could be far from the truth! If she has asked to not speak anymore, then it would be wiser to try to not contact her only as a sign of respecting her wishes. If she does feel the need to talk to you, then she would most likely send you a message, since she broke up you rather than vice versa.
It is really good that you're starting to move on and you're doing things to get your mind off this situation! Hopefully this confusing wont be a massive setback! You both deserve to be happy and should keep doing what you're doing! As cheesy as it sounds, time does heal wounds!
Hope you're having a great day and speak soon!
Drea
Thanks Drea.
She's a lovely girl and I can't imagine she would delete someone like this even if she had moved on. There has to be another reason and I think her space is her primary concern right now. I'm trying not to overthink it but she is still always on my mind. I'm always wondering what she's up to and I imagine she wonders the same about me still. I don't intend to contact her, at least for another month or more while the wound heals. I just have this nagging in the back of my mind that feels like there is more to come from her yet. To end a relationship as confused and defeated as she was, and with no animosity between us, and to just cut off contact instantly feels like it can't be the end. I know she was cold and defensive towards me last time we spoke, almost 2 weeks ago, but I think that was her putting up a wall between us for now.
I did think about contacting a mutual friend who speaks to her often in confidence, just to see if I can tease any information out. But I'm hesitant to in case the mutual friend tells my ex (her name is Emma) that I've been prying again. I'm also worried she would just tell me something I don't want to hear or that Emma has just moved on, but I find that difficult to believe. It has been almost a month since the breakup now. I wonder how she is doing.
I can feel myself standing on my own two feet again. I switch between feeling accepting of the breakup and being depressed about it. It really depends what I'm doing at the time. The more I think about her the more it hurts, especially when I don't know how she is coping. I imagine she is going through exactly the same thought processes since she didn't want to have to split up with me.
In a month or so's time I will try to contact her. I was considering contacting our mutual friend sometime this week.
I spoke to her 2 days after my ex and I broke up (22nd December) to tell her that I was worried about her and hoped she would keep an eye on her because she was so down on life.
Since then I haven't spoken to this mutual friend, no.
It was on Facebook since she lives a few hours away. She was very cordial with me, yeah. She said she hoped I was handling things OK. She told me that she thought Emma would be OK given the time and space she had asked for, that she would appreciate my "care and consideration", and that I need to let time do its healing and then what will be will be.
This mutual friend is one of our friends from university who still has me added on Facebook. I might even go as far as to say she's my ex's best friend.
Guess I just have to put up with it now.
To you, I'm sure it comes from a place of care, however, for her it may come across as stalking - type behaviour and it may push her further away.
If she wants to get in touch with you, she will, and she will initiate it. Unfortunately, she's deleted you from her contacts which is a sure sign and doesn't want contact at the moment.
No. There aren't really any.other mutual friends worth asking. The response I got from this friend was far more cordial than the last time I spoke to my ex though. I honestly expected her to just say "look, Emma doesn't want to speak to you so go away," but she didn't. She just said it wasn't her place to be a branch between the two of us because she is Emma's friend.
I think you're right. Obviously in hindsight I wish I hadn't messaged her friend today. I won't be doing it again. I'm aware the friend has told my ex that I messaged her, but the message was more for my sake than checking up on or stalking my ex.
You're right, she doesn't want contact at the moment and why would she? I don't know how long the wounds from a 16 month relationship take to heal. She's a strong girl but she's emotional too. I'm sure her cutting contact so suddenly is a sign she is just trying to heal at the moment.
I will leave it now and hope she will message me again in the near future. Honestly, I have a feeling she will when she is ready since our relationship was so good. But she needs her time to herself. I think if she really wanted me out of her life forever she'd have blocked me on everything, told her friends to tell me to f*** off and be done with it.
Like her friend said last time: I need to let time do it's healing and what will be will be.
Yes, when we broke up she told me that she'd been thinking about it for the past month. Not because she stopped loving me or because she wanted to, but because she was so confused and in a bad place mentally and emotionally.
But what I meant by sudden was her not contacting me, not breaking up with me. Often, couples who have broken up still speak to each other after the breakup and sort of gradually stop talking. This wasn't the case here. She just couldn't talk to me at all. Most likely because it was such an emotional trauma for both of us that speaking to each other just made it harder. I think that's still the case at the moment. That's what I meant by it being sudden.