My ex-boyfriend texted me, what should I do?
The other day one of my sponsees called me and said “So my ex-boyfriend is texting me out of the blue. I really want to talk to him, but I KNOW that’s not going to end well for me to open all that back up again and all….. But I don’t want to be rude or anything. So what do I do?”
Such a modern dilemma, right? Texting out of the blue can mean so many things after all. Is this just a casual “what’s upppp homie” kind of text? Is this a “I can’t get you out of my mind but am too scared to tell you” kind of text”? Or probably something in the middle. As the sender of the text we get to hide in the ambiguity of those possibilities. As the recipient of the text, we can be lost in the vortex of playing out every fantasy of possible intents of the initial out of the blue text.
No Response Required
I advised against responding at all. Just because someone texts you does not mean that you must respond. You are allowed to just simply delete that text or leave it unanswered. Pretend it got lost in cyber space. Whatever works for you. I promise, if it’s that important, someone will get back in touch with you.
As happens sometimes, she didn’t take my advice and swapped a few seemingly innocent short “how are things with you” kind of texts with him. But once it got past that initial small talk, she got uncomfortable with their conversation. So she asked me how to stop responding without being rude.
This is where boundaries come into play.
I told her she could just ghost him now and not respond, but that did seem a bit rude since she had been responding. So another option would be to respond with something like this: “hey it’s been good to hear from you, but I’m not in a place to continue this conversation in a healthy manner. So I need to end things here for now. I wish you the best.” She liked the second option but also said that she didn’t think she had the strength to do that. I gently reminded her that 1) we can do hard things (shout out to Brene Brown) and 2) she wasn’t cutting things off forever and ever but just saying that she couldn’t go deep with him right now. With that encouragement, she agreed.
It’s healthy to set boundaries with folks in all kinds of relationships. If someone from your past reaches out to you via text or social media, you don’t have to be fake and you don’t have to be rude. You can be honest about your ability to interact with them. Be true to yourself and you will rarely go wrong.
