My ex came back to apologise ~

For context : My ex and I dated for about 1.5 yrs. He completely blindsided me with the break up, told me he lost feelings and proceeded to date another girl within a couple of weeks. It’s been 1 yr 2 mo since then.

I dealt with a lot of self doubt and insecurity as a result. But I remained single and focused on building my career and working on my physical health as well as mental health. I made new friends who align more with the type of person I want to be.

Of course, change was not at all easy and one of the harshest periods of my life. My ex’s family treated me horribly and their negativity had a major impact on how I perceived myself at the time. My ex’s sister was my best friend who also betrayed me the moment he left. It definitely hurt for a very long time.

My ex reached out to me on text randomly (I never block but we were NC since day 1 and never broke it). He said he needed to speak to me as a friend. He’d been stalking me on insta for a few weeks before.

I considered giving him a piece of my mind since he never acknowledged how he treated the me with 0 respect when he left and that he pursued other women while in the relationship (I have proof). But I decided against that since I had moved forward with my life and did not want to give more of my energy to him. I spoke with him to gain some closure for myself.

On call his voice was tremble-y and he seemed terribly anxious. He expressed going through mental health issues and what he described sounded a lot like mild anxiety/depression. He admitted that his current relationship was not going too well and that he doesn’t feel like himself anymore. He didn’t know why, but he thought talking to me would help. He later on went to apologise for what he put me through and said I didn’t deserve it and that it wasn’t my fault.

Whatever answer he needed from me, I didn’t have. I didn’t really know how to help him and frankly I’m not sure if I wanted to. So I let him continue and we closed the call on neutral terms.

The most significant thing I realised was that : if you’ve been honest in a relationship, gave it your all and genuinely loved the person then they WILL regret treating you badly/leaving you. They KNOW what they’ve done is wrong on atleast some level. They know they hurt you when they shouldn’t have. And the biggest truth is that they’ll realise it in their own time. There’s nothing (much) that you can/should do to change that. And yes, they do only come back when you no longer need them to.

A similar thing happened with my first ex as well where he blindsided me and left, but regretted his decision and came back to apologise almost 3 YRS later, admitting that he still had feelings for me. In both cases I’d been loyal and genuinely worked on the relationship whereas my partners gave up and left. So I can safely assume that most dumpers do feel the regret if they’ve been in the wrong.

Both my ex’s have struggled maintaining any meaningful connections because they did not take the time to work on themselves before jumping into another relationship hoping it would complete them or fill that hole in their lives. What made it worse was probably that they did not have supportive friends or family to give them good advice or help them out.

After months and months of grieving through the break up I realised I made a much better life for myself because I decided to make changes instead of hide from the pain. It does pay off in the end. Don’t give up and don’t stop

Tl;dr Two scenarios where exs came back to apologise. Sometimes you can find the closure you’re looking for. :) Leaving this sub. This community helped me a lot. I wish my story gives someone the hope that they need to feel alright.