AayuTheLegend asks: I’m contacting you today to tell you that recently my ex, who publicly insulted me and dumped for the dumbest reasons ever, has tried messaging me, calling me, DMing me on Instagram. I ignored it until I was fed up because it had been a week of getting these messages, so I finally picked up a call after declining 5 times and she said “sorry.” I don’t know why, but hearing that word just triggered me and I scolded her and cut off the call… I haven’t gotten a call since but I think I did “too much.”
What’s your opinion?
Hi AayuTheLegend –
Usually I’m all for being kind and polite. So I love that you’re worried you might have done too much.
But I don’t think you did.
Here’s the deal. First, she’s your ex, who insulted you in public and dumped you stupidly.
Second, she basically stalked you, not letting you take the space you clearly wanted, to the point of harassment.
And third, she hit you with “Sorry,” which sounds to me like “Oh you need to forgive me,” instead of finding out what you were feeling.
So you have all three of those reasons to be annoyed with her, and all three of those behaviors to stop in her.
And being too sweet wasn’t going to do it.
What you needed to do was to make it clear to her that none of these behaviors was going to work. And you did it.
And the behaviors have stopped.
So what’s to feel bad about?
Now there may come a day in the future when you and she talk, and you feel like apologizing to her for being so abrupt with her, while she apologizes to you for the insults, breakup, and stalking. Fine, I’m all for all that.
But for now, you’ve set a clear boundary, that you don’t want to be treated like this. And to me, that’s that’s … um … Legendary!
All my best,
Shirelle