Breakups are hard enough, but when your ex comes crawling back and asking for a second chance, that makes it even harder. Do you forgive them? Agree to forget that they left in the first place? Or do you double down and tell them to get lost – again?
Here, 33 people who had to make that choice share how it worked out for them.
1. She kicked me out of our apartment at 2:00 am because she found another guy the day before. As I was leaving, she tried to take my guitar that my dad had passed down to me because, “I love that guitar and I’m better at playing it.”
I responded with, “Back off and lose my number.”
She did back off, but I guess that she didn’t lose my number. She texted me 3 months later saying that the other guy left her, she loved me, she was sorry, and that she needed a place to stay. All I texted back was, “Good luck.”
Reddit_user
2. My wife left me for a neo-Nazi scumbag whose job was dealing out of his apartment. It was definitely a blow to my ego. We had just moved to a new state and I had just started a new job. It took me about six months to get myself together and quit beating myself up. I had become a star employee at the job, lost 20 pounds, got custody of the kids, and a new girlfriend.
Well my ex-wife comes strolling over to my place about a year later while the kids are at school, breaks open a bag of chips, and starts rattling off a list of a bunch of things I need to change about myself if I want to get back together with her.
A few moments pass is silence. I laugh, open my door and tell her to get out.
The look on her face. Crushed expectations? Failed dreams? I still laugh when I think about it.
Damnyankeeintexas
3. She didn’t want me back. BUT, we (OK, more specifically, I) had tickets for a big concert a few months later.
She called me a couple days before the show to say, “I’ll still go with you, if you want.”
She hung up at some point while I was laughing.
Frehsprints
4. She broke up with me sort of out of the blue, and I wasn’t really prepared for it. Never quite got over her, but time passed, and I was living with a girlfriend several years later. My ex had kept in touch with me, and we were still friendly. She went through a break up and I suppose she was emotionally vulnerable.
She started talking to me a lot out of the blue and began to tell me all sorts of things about how she regretted breaking up with me, and it was just immature insecurities that had lead her to it, and how jealous she was that she couldn’t have me. As flattering as it was to hear all of that, I was still spoken for, so I kindly deflected the issue until she got her head on straight and mellowed out, got her life together, that sort of thing.
We’re still friends 7 years after that (and presumably, she’s moved on. At least I hope she has since she’s looking at buying a house with her fiance).
FenrirSM
5. Ran into my ex a couple months after she broke it off with me for someone else. We ran into each other at a bar. She approached me while I was buying drinks and made some comment about the girl I was there with.
She then said something like, if it doesn’t work out or you get bored with her hit me up. I laughed and said ok. She asked if I was being sarcastic. I was, and walked away after that.
Toastio11
6. Him: I don’t even remember why we broke up.
Me: I believe you dumped me because a girl fell asleep on you and you dumped me to ask her out… And she said no.
Him: Oh yeah..
Me: Yeah….anyway nice talking. Buh-bye.
[deleted]
7. “You have permission to ask me out again.”
“…what?”
Kavalist
8. I actually laughed in his face. He was at my place picking up his furniture at the time as he was moving to his new place with the girl he cheated on me with. Why he thought that was the best time to discuss trying to rekindle our relationship I’ll never know.
TeeggieBeeggie
9. My girlfriend and I had a great laugh at the text my ex sent: “I know you don’t want to be with her, come back to me I love you.”
She broke up with me due to her cheating on me. Text came 6 months later.
Dyliotic
10. She broke up with me because I got glasses and wasn’t attractive enough for her. A few years later and I’m wearing contacts and had grown into myself a little better and suddenly she’s texting me again.
Ironic thing is she was recently single because she gained weight and her bf didn’t find her attractive anymore. I just laughed at the schadenfreude and told her to stop contacting me.
TorchedBlack
11. He sent a pic of his junk out of the blue, then asked, “Want that again?”
Me: LOL
funkiifresh
12. It was a Friday night when she asked to meet up at the local mall. I ended up picking up a game (Castlevania, my love) while we were there. We ended up going back to house and watching movies, she ended up asking if I would be willing to be her boyfriend again. I said yes, despite my instincts telling me not to.
That night, I ended up going tobogganing with a group of friends. I ended up smashing through a fence and don’t remember much of the night. Ended up with a concussion, long hospital visit blah blah.
Anyways, she calls me the next day and the biggest bull-crapper in the world took over my body. Before she could even speak I was yelling into the phone, “WHOA LONG TIME NO TALK WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO?!”
She was chit-chatty and asked about my day. I told her I got a new game and a concussion the night before, and that’s all I remember.
She cried on the phone and insisted we spent the day together. But I insisted how crazy and unlike me that was.
Ghalian
13. Horrified.
I couldnt put myself through that pain all over again; knowing there was a good chance he would change his mind again and leave for a second time.
Plus I was resentful that he broke up with me because he didnt want to deal with a medical issue I had. Someone that bails at the first sign of weakness is not a good candidate to build a life with.
Toasty_feet
14. We started talking on the phone regularly again and planning a visit (we were two hours apart), and then I went to re add him as a friend on Facebook and found out he had a girlfriend.
So like the classy lady I am, I drank two Olde English 800s, called him up, and scream/cried at him until he started crying too.
Then he moved to another country and I met my husband.
Thegibbler
15. I didn’t respond.
I was in college and my wife’s roommate liked me, but I just didn’t like her more than a friend. I already liked my wife, but she wouldn’t date me because she didn’t want to dis her roommate. She and my wife and I hung out a lot. Eventually, she got another boyfriend, leaving my wife and I alone a lot. We eventually got married about a year and a half later, and she married my next door neighbor, who was a pretty cool guy.
18 YEARS after we were married, and she is still married, she sent me an e-mail wanting to get back with me, saying that my wife stole me and I should have been hers.
I let my wife respond…
PRMan99
16. “Hey, can we…”
“No.”
call ended
Drakaris
17. “LOL.
To this day, she still hasn’t replied (but she had a kid since I sent that text), and that was about 7 years ago.
GlockTheDoor
18. She initially called me (from another college) to tell me she thought we should see other people. A month later she called me to say she “hadn’t found anyone better” so we were a couple again.
I politely told her I was seeing someone.
That was the day that I learned that “we should see other people” meant “I should see other people while you wait around for me to maybe come back.”
She also used all sorts of descriptors for the girl I was then seeing, and told me it wouldn’t last because rebound relationships never do. She didn’t know that this girl and I had been trying not to fall in love because I already had a girlfriend, and my ex inadvertently gave us the opportunity. That “rebound” relationship started almost exactly 20 years ago, and we’ve been married for 17.5 years.
Sysiphean
19. Well it was more or less a mutual agreement, a year later we started talking again and she said she’d like to start again. It went this way :
Me : Do you really think there’s any chance for this to work out ?
Her : Yes, why not ?
Me : Give me one reason to believe that.
Her : …
Legend says she’s still thinking.
Reisanae
20. Her: Can we talk?
Me: Ya, ok.
Her: He cheated on me, you’re my only friend in the area.
Me: You don’t have any friends in the area.
I did a lot for her to get her life started, she slept with some mutual friend in my bed while I was at work.
TytleFight
21. We dated for 3 years in high school. I was 19 at the time we broke up. We were broken up for 6 months. I took her back for about two weeks. When my dad noticed she was coming around again, he gave me the best advice I have ever gotten. My dad told me, Don’t sleep with her until you are 100% sure she is clean and not pregnant.”
For once, I listened to my dads advice. Turns out she was a little over a month pregnant, not showing at all, and was planning on pinning it on me. I’ll never forget her crying, “I thought you loved me enough for this not to matter,” as I kicked her out of my house. It hurt terribly, I did love her, but Jesus I was only 19 and in college, no thanks I’ll find another.
Plus, in that 6 months we were apart, I met the best group of friends a guy could ask for, which really made it that much easier now that I knew there was life beyond that one girl.
Alk3PrivateEye
22. I was bitter for a few months but we became alright friends and hung out / hooked up when I was back from college on break. I think we both knew that it wasn’t going to work and just took the mutual attraction for what it was.
We’re still on alright terms but have drifted apart since.
swaggatracin
23. Ran into her at a bar after 6 months of no contact while she was out with some other dude. Almost ran away from her. Had that flight response for sure. She grabbed my arm and said please talk to me. Chatted with her for 5 minutes. Left her and went to another bar and then got home where she called me and we talked till 4am. Next afternoon agreed to hang out with her and she was all over me and I was holding back. Dropped her off at her place and by some miracle we didnt have sex as she got completely naked and was kissing me all over.
The next morning I get a collect call from the county jail. It was her asking for a ride. Apparently, after I left she got into a fight with her mom and assaulted her. Picked her up and told her that I can’t ever hang out with you like that ever again. She nodded and I dropped her off (continued).
Kept in touch with her since I think I was the only guy who cared for her. She told me she was going to move to the west coast one day and I agreed to hang out with her the night before she left. She ended up crying all over me as I was dropping her off, saying how much she loved me and messed up and how she didn’t ever want to lose me in her life. I promised her that I’d always be there for her.
While she was on the west coast we ended up talking on the phone on a daily basis, quite frequently. She was a great friend. One morning on the way to work I realized I didn’t hear from her the night before. I called her phone and it was disconnected and I find it odd but didn’t think too much of it. Get home from work and I get a phone call from a friend who was friends with her mutual friends on Facebook as I never friended her on Facebook after our break up saying she died. She had overdosed on too much booze and pills.
He didn’t realize that I was still talking to her on a daily basis. It floored me. I thought back to that night at that bar and how I would have missed out on the last year of her life if I had ran out instead of actually talking to her and just being there for her.
Sometimes no matter how or why they left you, it’s not a bad thing to just be there for someone. I wish I could’ve been there more somehow, maybe she would still be here.
ZackMorris78
24. My ex only wanted me back when I told him I was going to go on a date with someone else. This was after he had 12 affairs in the span of our 8 year relationship then left me seemingly at random.
He cried and threatened to kill himself. I was very calm and gentle with him, and told him I would like us to keep being friends, as we had been in the last 6 months since he dumped me. He kept telling me I was the best person on the planet, and that no one but him would ever “make me happy” or “treat me right” (hahahahahahaha). Then he punched my bed frame.
I said I wasn’t going to compromise my happiness for his, which I had done for many years, and he blatantly asked me to “just pretend”, and said I’d never whinged about my happiness before, and he couldn’t believe that I was so selfish, and I was “half the person he thought I was.”
He cried some more. For the first time in my life, I stuck to my guns.
Then he called me a wh***.
Joke’s on him. Went out with the other guy, fell madly in love, am now deliriously happy. Ex’s next girlfriend cheated on him.
NotEsther
25. I was the ex that called back. Long story short, we were dating for about 3 years. I didn’t feel like I was ready to commit to marrying her and she wanted to get married.
She gave me an ultimatum, I broke up with her.
I missed her terribly, so I called her 6 months later, she agreed to meet. We get married a year later. 15 years and 3 kids later we are still happy together!
Itisgandhinotghandi
26. I told her I can’t be with her again after knowing how she really feels about me. Then she started crying and saying she couldn’t stand me being alone without her and for some reason this made me really upset.
All I could say was is, “Why are you crying? I will be fine without you. This is what you wanted!”
lolinyerface
27. An ex girlfriend of mine cheated on me multiple times and I kept taking her back. Eventually I realized I had to completely cut her off.
I drilled it into my head that we were meant to be together… she was from my hometown, lived right down the street from me but we didn’t meet for 20 years in a totally different city. I took that as a sign, we HAD to be together.
After all that I met my wife, who treats me like a real person and genuinely loves me… I thought I loved my ex-girlfriend, but I had no idea what love really was till I met my wife.
Fetter_indy
28. First time, I heard him out and said yes. Second time, I let him talk his head off and realize himself that he didnt want to actually be with me and nothing about him had changed.. And then I said no.
[deleted]
29. I’m the one who had to go crawling back after leaving. She said “I’m glad you finally came to your senses.” We are now 6 years into a happy marriage and have 2 wonderful children.
Fred_Zeppelin
30. After dumping me, he admitted to having feelings for someone else. When he said he wanted me back a week later, I told him no. He cried a bit and said he loved me and that he didn’t know what he had until it was gone (blah blah blah). I asked him about her and he declined having feelings for her. Sure enough, four days later he dumped me again and began dating her.
Ayoh-river
31. You’ll hear a lot of people tell you it’s a mistake to say yes. Those people are not wrong, but they’re not right either.
I met this girl in high school – at a conference for over-achievers in math. We hung out at the conference. Did other things teenagers do when parental supervision is limited at the conference. And then went back to our homes – about four hours drive apart. We kept in touch – long distance was expensive, but ICQ and mIRC worked really well. She went away to a Math Camp for the summer. I went off to work. But we both made plans to get together in the fall and just hang out.
Didn’t work like that, of course. Leaving aside all the teenaged, hormone driven stuff I really liked being around her. And, while I can’t speak for certain, she really liked being around me. So when I visited her and she visited me – well, things just seemed to fall into place such as it was. The distance was daunting, but we said we’d give it a go.
It lasted about a month before she wanted out. I didn’t blame her and it wasn’t acrimonious or anything. She just had problems dealing with the distance. We still enjoyed being around one another, so we kept in touch. And over Christmas break we made arrangements to spend some time with one another again.
You can guess what happened.
That run made it until July or August (can’t remember). I was away working again. She was getting ready to go off to university – she was going out of province while I was going to be stuck doing first year transfer work at my local college. She decided she wanted out before that distance became real.
That one made me angry (continued).
She dropped it on me while I was away working. It made things difficult for me to deal with. On the other hand, being away probably helped too, since I could throw myself into what I was doing and just push it out of my head for a time. I flirted with some of the girls there – half-heartedly, perhaps, but I was trying. I came home and went on a few dates. But nothing. She tried too, but found like me that it just didn’t feel the same. We kept in touch and we found, oddly enough (or perhaps not oddly at all) that we were jealous when we talked about trying to move on in our relationship. When she came home at thanksgiving I went to visit her and we fell right back into our old habits.
So we had a serious talk about it. And we realized that like it or not we were in a relationship. A complicated one, but it was a relationship. If we wanted to move on from it we would have to cut ourselves off from one another. Or we could just deal with the distance.
Dealing with the distance seemed like a better choice than cutting a close friend out of our lives. So we dealt with it. I’m not saying we did it well, but we did it. We made lots of time for one another. I went up to visit her when the school year ended. She made arrangements to come visit me during her short visits home. We both altered our plans so that we could cut down the distance the next year (I changed universities, she changed co-op locations).
And now, 18 years after we first met, we are seven years married and have a wonderful daughter. Because I said yes to my ex.
Mbean12
32. How did I respond?
I didn’t.
I dropped a good job and moved for her. I was going to marry her but hadn’t proposed just yet, was going to wait for her 22nd birthday. I walked up on her telling her ex before me that she still loved him over the phone and she got mad at me for ease dropping. A couple of weeks later she dumped me after she cheated on me. She still doesn’t know that I know this. Asked her if she was talking to him again and she straight up lied and denied anything romantic, just “friends”.
Left broken and piecing myself back together, I get a text from her weeks later yelling at me to stop doing whatever it was I was doing. Bewildered, I quickly find out that her now again bf was pissed about some pics that were tagged months before the breakup that I forgot about.
About 6 months after that, I start getting messages from her saying she made a mistake, she wants to talk, she deserves anything I have to say to her and how she wants closure for me, she wants me back, etc..
Thankfully I had enough time to open my eyes to see what really happened and never responded. Each message getting more and more desperate. She even tried to add me on Facebook a year after not responding to those messages.
She’s happily married now and I’m happy for her. I just hope she gives him the loyalty and respect that I never received.
33. She called crying and instead of telling her I had moved on I just told her the mozzarella sticks I was cooking were done and that I had to go.
What she didn’t know was that I was a vegan at the time.
MZ603