Facebook has brought ex back into my life unfortunatly

LegacyUser

Hi all,
I need someone to slap me across the face but my head is a mess at the moment. I didn't even want to join FB but my friends were at me to do it for the craic, didn't realise though eventhough my page is private that anyone can request to be your friend or send you a message. Ugh!.
So here goes, my ex and I broke up in 1999!!..yes that long ago, it was messy though. I was 21 at the time, he was 28. We were together 3 years, living together for 2 and were very happy until about 3 months before we split up. I felt very smoothered by his family & friends who were so in our faces, everything involved them and not just socially.He was a very good looking guy but I'm not the worst looking myself so it was pretty even except he knew how good looking he was. When his mates came back from Oz things changed, two of them broke up with their OH's while away and were out on the scene with other girls and he was with them and being encouraged to do the dirt and he did it once, got caught by my friend so I left him. He denied it, tried to win me back, but I just couldn't eventhough I loved him to bits. I can honestly say he was the love of my life.
I moved on though, met my now husband about a year later and we have 2 kids now and all is fine. I would never cheat on him or meet an ex behind his back. Dublin is very small!!.
Until, ex found me on FB and everything came back up again. He is also married now aswell but no kids. I didn't accept his friend request, no way, he keeps sending me emails thru facebook though. He wants to meet up for a coffee and see the girl he never stopped loving and broke his heart. I replied to the first one, a one liner really, saying "great to hear you are keeping well and life is treating you well. I'm a busy wife & mother now so emails wouldn't be my strongest point at all, take care".
I met him about 2 years ago in Liffey Valley Shopping Centre when I was pregnant on my 2nd child & had my 1st child with me. I got a shock, so did he and he got visibly upset and I just kept going about my shopping. I just couldn't get away from him quick enough, my best friend was with me thankfully so I knew he wouldn't pursue me there.Thing is though, he broke my heart to and I know part of me always loves him. I wish he would go away, since all this started again I am even dreaming about him, jesus christ why??.
Has this happened to anyone else with an ex and how can I cop myself on, stop dreaming about him and not have any feelings for him.
I'm a horrible person to, thinking about someone else when I am married. I feel sick to my stomach that I feel this way, just needed to get it out.

prinz

Ignore him. Time will change things, like it did after you first broke up. Try not to dwell on it.

Chocoholic84

Woah. That's crappy OP, I really feel for you.

You say you didn't want to join FB - why not cancel your account? Feck what your mates say! If this guy keeps hassling you over it, you have no other option.

Good for you for leaving him when he cheated, being egged on by his mates is no excuse, in fact, he's a very weak man and that's not a very attractive quality - imagine if you took him back, you'd be paranoid every time he went out with his mates! Breaking up with him was the best thing you could've done, just remember that. And he was 28 FFS!

And now you say you've moved on. You have a hubby and kids. Are you happy? You love your husband?

Try forget about the other guy and focus on hubby for a minute. Ask yourself do you truly love him, and if the ex returning is a minor blip in an otherwise great relationship.

neuro-praxis

Block him on facebook, then you can't receive any more notes from him.

Keep yourself distracted - don't allow thoughts of him to overtake you. There is nothing you can do about the dreams - that must be very distressing. But be kind to yourself - you are not at all horrible - and give yourself time to move on again. Soon these feelings will fade and normality will resume!

meditraitor

Unregistered wrote: »

I'm a horrible person to, thinking about someone else when I am married. I feel sick to my stomach that I feel this way, just needed to get it out.

No your not, its common enough. Just use your head instead of your heart when dealing with him.

Still loving someone from your past is not a crime.........

LegacyUser

Thanks for the replies, I started to cry reading them and the kindness in your replies as I feel like a nasty piece of work at the moment.
I am happily married, have our ups & downs but who doesn't, wouldn't be a marraige if we didn't!. I love my husband and I have even said to myself to imagine life without him and I just couldn't, it would be too painful. That's what would happen to me if he knew I was thinking about an ex and I wouldn't blame him.
I prefer life with my husband than a life with my ex, that's for certain. I am going to cop on to myself and try and block those dreams out, that is the worst part of it all. I am terrible for talking in my sleep aswell, so god knows what I could blurt out and destroy my marraige and my families life!.
Silly girl me!:-(

martyc5674

Facebook is a great way of diggin up the past...ditch it...its a load of nonsense that a lot of sad people hide behind.
I think he sensed your reaction when u saw him out shopping and may think hes in with a chance of (sorry for being crude here) getting the leg over, hes married now and is obviously prepared to cheat on her.
Ignore his mails/and block him on FB or better still get rid of FB and ghet on with life with your 2 lovely kids and husband.
Marty.

SarahSassy

This is a very difficult situation and I dont envy you. You did the right thing in your response to him and maybe its time if he contacts you again to ask him to stop..

He is being selfish and there is nothing to gain other than heartache by getting closer to him. It will get easier day by day once you get him to stop contacting you. Good luck

Puddleduck

Hi OP,

Wow, I dont envy you. Id agree with other posters, either ditch facebook or else block him as a contact. Youve shown you arent interested which he hasnt taken any heed of. That dosent say much for him, it also suggests in all the time he has had to grow up, he hasnt, at all. To say you love someone else in a private message when you are married is a really low thing to do. Count your blessings that you got out fast and have someone thats worth your time. Id also say stop beating yourself up, when someone cheats on you it can really leave a scar, and you can go over and over things in your head. Youve said you love your husband, thats all that counts.
You could be feeling bad because your tempted with the excitement and memories of before, but things will never be the same and your risking destroying your family. Dont romanticise him.
Give yourself some time, youll get over it. The dreams will stop. Id strongly reccommend that you distance yourself from this guy.

neuro-praxis

You haven't done anything wrong, you know!

prinz

Unregistered wrote: »

Thanks for the replies, I started to cry reading them and the kindness in your replies as I feel like a nasty piece of work at the moment.
I am happily married, have our ups & downs but who doesn't, wouldn't be a marraige if we didn't!. I love my husband and I have even said to myself to imagine life without him and I just couldn't, it would be too painful. That's what would happen to me if he knew I was thinking about an ex and I wouldn't blame him.
I prefer life with my husband than a life with my ex, that's for certain. I am going to cop on to myself and try and block those dreams out, that is the worst part of it all. I am terrible for talking in my sleep aswell, so god knows what I could blurt out and destroy my marraige and my families life!.
Silly girl me!:-(

Best of luck OP. Perhaps you should consider doing something for your marriage - a weekend away just the two of you, romantic evening in, even go on a date - cinema, dinner, concert whatever. Get the spark going again, and soon your husband will be the only man you'll be thinking about.

LegacyUser

Op here!. We are going to a wedding next weekend so really looking forward to that and the break away, and we always have a great time together. We're a bit mad when we get a night away without the kids, as it doesn't happen much at all, so we make the most of it and have a ball!.
Thanks for listening and replying to me, really needed to get it out as it's soul destroying all this.
On blocking him on FB though, I didn't accept him as a friend, hit cancel when he sends them and he is not on my friends list. So, is there a way of blocking him sending emails to me then??.

shellyboo

Unregistered wrote: »

Op here!. We are going to a wedding next weekend so really looking forward to that and the break away, and we always have a great time together. We're a bit mad when we get a night away without the kids, as it doesn't happen much at all, so we make the most of it and have a ball!.
Thanks for listening and replying to me, really needed to get it out as it's soul destroying all this.
On blocking him on FB though, I didn't accept him as a friend, hit cancel when he sends them and he is not on my friends list. So, is there a way of blocking him sending emails to me then??.

Log in, go here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/privacy/?ref=mb

Go into 'Profile' and set everything to 'Only Friends'; then go into Search and set that to 'Only Friends' as well.

That means only people who you already have added as friends can see your page, write on your wall, send you messages etc. Amazes me how many people leave their whole profile open, it's so dangerous.

LegacyUser

Thanks Shellyboo, eventhough my FB is private, obviously he can still search for me, so I have done those changes. I just need to make sure he cannot send me anymore emails and just go away!.
He must know by this stage he is getting nowhere with me as regards contact yet still persists on spilling his heartbreak to me and the biggest mistake of his life. I suppose if it wasn't for FB he would never have been able to get in touch with me again. I had to tell one of my friends to make her page and photo's private coz she wasn't and she has pics of me on nights out etc that he would be able to see.

Ginny

log into facebook, under settings at the top hit privacy settings, and enter his name into block person bit in the second half of the page, he won't be able to contact you, or even see if you're on Facebook at all.

Amazotheamazing

Tell your husband you're being hassled by a guy you used to go out with, that way everything is out in the open, not that you've done anything wrong.

LegacyUser

I don't want to do that coz I know that he will find him and confront him and tell him he will go for him if he comes near me ever again and that could make things even worse and knowing my ex he would love that and continue to pursue contact. It would get really nasty and I just want him to disappear and know nothing about me and my life 10 years on.

Curvy Vixen

OP if you actually use the 'block' button to block them, they can't even see that you exist on FB, whether they search for you or otherwise. They are also not able to send you a mail...they will get a message saying that this function is unavailable or something along those lines if they try.

I don't see why you should give up FB...just use it wisely and believe me the block button is your friend

Taltos

At the same time marriage is about sharing worries. Tell your o/h but explain you do not want to feed into thus guys delusions - so leave him alone.

Wonder how his poor wife would feel........

You are not at fault here at all and as for the dreams - they are just your minds way of dealing with these buried emotions. You should not feel guilty about your dreams at all - only a rare person can control those.
I too used to have dreams of an old girlfriend - on an almost weekly basis for months - it took some nerve for me to talk to my wife about this.
Her reasoning was that I was feeling guilty or under pressure about something else and my mind used this old flame as its release. Dream have since really decreased and I am feeling alot better about it now.

But this guy really sounds a creep - gawd help his o/h and his next o/h and the one after that....

Taltos

You can also stop anyone but a friend from emailing you.

Settings > Privacy Settings > Search (under profile on main page) > UNCHECK Link to send me a message; this will stop anyone not a friend from emailing you - they can still send friend requests though.

LegacyUser

taltos, thanks a million for that info, just did it so hopefully that should work now!!. Fingers crossed. Also, when you told your wife you were having dreams about an ex, did she not feel that you didn't love her anymore or something was going wrong between you?. I know if I tell hubbie he will think something is wrong with me and that I don't love him anymore. I just know it and it's not the way it is at all.

LegacyUser

martyc5674 wrote: »

hes married now and is obviously prepared to cheat on her.

Yup, and if things had worked out differently, chances are he would be out there doing with someone else what he's been doing to you.

beth-lou

He was an ass cheating on you and he's still the same ass prepared to cheat on his wife and kids. Nothing has changed. You made the right decision the first time around. Remember that.

Leave him be. You've done way better.

Taltos

Unregistered wrote: »

taltos, thanks a million for that info, just did it so hopefully that should work now!!. Fingers crossed. Also, when you told your wife you were having dreams about an ex, did she not feel that you didn't love her anymore or something was going wrong between you?. I know if I tell hubbie he will think something is wrong with me and that I don't love him anymore. I just know it and it's not the way it is at all.

It was that fear that kept me quiet for so long. Was eating me up inside - I had almost convinced myself I still had feelings for this girl after 20 yrs (saddo I know)... Was weird my dreams even gave me her old phone number.
But no - my wife is normally really good at seeing through my dreams - once I told her the context - me usually feeling guilty - hey presto.

In all seriousness though - the stress this guy is giving you - it is no wonder you are dreaming. Explain it like that to your o/h, hopefully he will get it. At least he should feel relieved and happy that you can share everything with him - including your dreams. Just choose your time wisely.

Look at it this way - what if that guy bumps into your o/h and drops you in it - even lies about the emails. No good comes from trying to protect your o/h from stuff like this. Show him you trust him and again - share the load - it really does help. As with me it just might take a while for the dreams to stop.

Taltos

Just remember your ex is being a bully here.
His attention is unwanted and you have asked him to stop.
And this attention with the rest going on in your life is just stress you do not need.

LegacyUser

I decided to sit down and tell my husband about it all last night and showed him all the emails that have been sent to me and the one I sent back. He was furious at the thoughts of someone having the neck to try and steal me from him and trying to re-kindle something that died 10 years ago, especially when I just walked away and got on with my life.
We discovered something else aswell, a friend of his knows my ex so we started adding a few sums together and wonder if his friend knows what your man is up to. We coped on coz hubbie looked at exes FB and one mutual friend thing came up and we were stunned!. What we think may have triggered this is that we had a dip in our marraige last year, which was very short and we sorted things out (he was drinking alot after his Dad passed away) so perhaps my ex knew all this thru the other bloke.
So, hubbie emailed my ex asking him to stop harrassing me or we will take legal action against him, simple as. He wrote that he can easily find out where he works and inform an employer that he is using their company internet to harrass me.
He was not angry with me at all, he felt sorry for me trying to tell someone to get lost without sucess.
Hopefully, this will stop it all now. I told him about the weird dreams and he reckons it was the stress of me trying to sort it out myself. He always says I am too soft and quiet, perhaps he is right and I should have been a bit tougher towards my ex.
I feel alot better today, he even went into work late to make sure I was okay before he left.
Thanks a million for all the advice it really helped me and was glad to realize I was not as horrible as I felt.

Bluetonic

Why are you even opening the emails/messages to read them? Can't you just delete them prior to reading them?

Bizzare to be honest.

Taltos

Unregistered wrote: »

I decided to sit down and tell my husband about it all last night and showed him all the emails that have been sent to me and the one I sent back. He was furious at the thoughts of someone having the neck to try and steal me from him and trying to re-kindle something that died 10 years ago, especially when I just walked away and got on with my life.
We discovered something else aswell, a friend of his knows my ex so we started adding a few sums together and wonder if his friend knows what your man is up to. We coped on coz hubbie looked at exes FB and one mutual friend thing came up and we were stunned!. What we think may have triggered this is that we had a dip in our marraige last year, which was very short and we sorted things out (he was drinking alot after his Dad passed away) so perhaps my ex knew all this thru the other bloke.
So, hubbie emailed my ex asking him to stop harrassing me or we will take legal action against him, simple as. He wrote that he can easily find out where he works and inform an employer that he is using their company internet to harrass me.
He was not angry with me at all, he felt sorry for me trying to tell someone to get lost without sucess.
Hopefully, this will stop it all now. I told him about the weird dreams and he reckons it was the stress of me trying to sort it out myself. He always says I am too soft and quiet, perhaps he is right and I should have been a bit tougher towards my ex.
I feel alot better today, he even went into work late to make sure I was okay before he left.
Thanks a million for all the advice it really helped me and was glad to realize I was not as horrible as I felt.

Fantastic - glad it is working out for you
Your o/h reacted really well to this. If your ex does not desist though you could always seek legal advice for stalking, but the big battle is over now. Great job on having the courage to open up on the dreams especially - it took me a long time to tell my o/h but like you I am really glad I did.

Hope this is the end of it all and you can get on with your marriage without some weirdo obsessing over what could have been.

Ginny

Did you block him? Obviously not if you were going through his profile with your OH, for the life of me I don't know why you didn't just block him, it seems like a lot of drama and hassle getting your OH to email your ex, it just turns it into a whole bigger matter.

Wibbs

TBH I agree with Ginny. Just block the guy. End of. Getting your husband to email him strikes me at least as somewhat childish, running to teacher kinda deal, an overreaction and defo adding to the drama of the whole thing.

The guy was emailing you and you engaged him in one email yourself and told him game over pretty much. That should have been that. OK then the dreams. We all have weird dreams sometimes, but we deal with it, we don't or at least shouldn't bring someone else on board to rev them up just because it'll take the weight of us. A problem shared is not always a problme halved. Indeed in my experience in relationships it's often a problem doubled.

Then we get the escalation of your partner going off on one and threatening legal action and such, which again IMHO was taking it too far. As Ginny noted the pair of you wound yourself up even further by putting two and two together and getting six, while doing a sherlock holmes on the exes facebook profile and a mutual mates.

Way too much drama IMHO. Maybe it's me but I figure life is way too bloody short to be actively looking for drama. Life brings enough drama of it's own. Anyway now that hopefully he's actually blocked, you can both just get on with your lives and leave it at that. Also a good plan would be simply to stop using facebook and be done with it.

pookie82

Wibbs wrote: »

Getting your husband to email him strikes me at least as somewhat childish, running to teacher kinda deal, an overreaction and defo adding to the drama of the whole thing.

The guy was emailing you and you engaged him in one email yourself and told him game over pretty much. That should have been that.

Then we get the escalation of your partner going off on one and threatening legal action and such, which again IMHO was taking it too far. As Ginny noted the pair of you wound yourself up even further by putting two and two together and getting six, while doing a sherlock holmes on the exes facebook profile and a mutual mates.

Way too much drama IMHO.

I think that's a bit harsh to be honest. The OP sounds like a nice and (as pretty much described by her husband and mentioned above) maybe a little bit too soft sometimes, as in not having the balls to just tell someone to eff off. It sounds to me like if this guy was so persistant via FB it wouldn't be long until he tried other means of getting in touch, maybe even personally. I think it's no bad thing that he was told under no uncertain terms by her husband that he had over stepped the mark in a big way. It's not like they were dealing with a few teenagers here - this ex was trying to wreck two marriages - his and hers - if he got his way.

OP I think it's great you came clean and that your husband took it so well. Hopefully now that your ex knows your OH has been informed, he's on a road to nowhere and will just give up. If you are the kind of person who doesn't always readily stand up to someone then your ex would know this and would most likely be trying to wear you down and manipulate you. Fair play to you for having the guts to show your husband all. It could have gotten very nasty if he had somehow found out about all of this from a third party.

I wouldn't worry too much about the dreams. The ex stirred up a painful past and caused you a lot of stress in the process. Just your mind's way of trying to sort through it.

LegacyUser

OP here, just to clarify I did block him once I knew how (thanks to advice on here) but hubbie could still have a look and why shouldn't he??. I had just told him what ex was at, so he wanted to see what your man could be up to.
All is fine now, well he cannot contact me and he never replied to hubbies email so obviously he got a fright.
I just feel sorry for his wife, she hasn't a clue what he is really like obviously if she married him. She is lucky they don't have kids really with him behaving like this.
FB is terrible for nosey parkers from past lives though, half the time people are contacting you to see what you look like now etc, quiet funny really. I have changed my privacy on mine though,eventhough it was private,anyone could search for me. So only friends now can see my profile, much better!.
Thanks for all the advice and good wishes though, it really helped me because if I hadn't posted here I would still be feeling terrible and wondering what to do!.