How to Spoil a Skirt-Chaser’s Fun
We’ve enjoyed reading all of the positive responses to the last blog, “Facebook Fiasco,” where I discouraged women (and men) from reaching out to reunite with ex-lovers with “friend requests.” It’s simply a bad idea!
However, some have asked, “What do we do if an ex pursues US?” First, there’s always the delete or ignore button. That’s what those keys are for – to get rid of things you don’t want to deal with, and who wants to deal with an ex-boyfriend who’s come back around to get his big fat ego stroked?
Perhaps you fear appearing rude. So what? Wasn’t it rude of him to reach out to you after he ripped your heart out and stomped on it, or cheated on you, or simply stopped calling (or however it ended)? If women were more comfortable assertively guarding both their physical & emotional boundaries, we wouldn’t have to waste so much time and effort licking the wounds we allowed other men to inflict on us.
But if you simply can’t ignore him for whatever reason, here’s the best strategy I know of…
Make it completely UN-FUN for him!
Don’t play his little game. In fact, it’s okay to make him feel stupid for even trying if he refuses to keep interactions as superficial as they should be. Remember, you teach people how to treat you, and you need to teach him that you’re NOT his little plaything that he can come back around to whenever he’s lonely or bored.
For example, several years ago an ex-boyfriend from high school (I’ll call him “Tim”) came calling — literally – calling me on the telephone several times during the day while my husband was at work. (The inventor of Facebook was still going through puberty at the time, so I guess telephone calls were Tim’s best strategy.)
He was singing a sad song about how his wife was being unfaithful to him and he was calling me under the guise of, “What should I do to win her back? Help me!” But based on what I knew about this guy, and how many times he’d cheated on his wife long before she cheated on him, I knew he was just a skirt-chaser, and I was his next would-be-victim. So I just made it incredibly UN-FUN for him.
He’d say stuff like: “She’s never really understood me like you did!”
to which I’d respond, “Oh, I think she’s understood you far better than you think!”
When he said, “Remember what great times you and I had together?”
I replied, “I’ve had much greater ones with my husband.”
He tried, “I saw your face on your website – you’re even prettier now!”
I retorted, “Thanks, but I’m smarter too. I have no desire to be your marriage counselor, Tim. You’ll need to find someone you’ve never dated for that.”
He didn’t keep calling. And why should he? He wasn’t getting his ego stroked like he’d planned.
I also remember receiving an email shortly after my first book release. It was from an older man who used to pursue me inappropriately when I was a teenager, singing cheesy songs like “I’d make love to you in a New York minute, and take my Texas time to do it!” In the email, he gushed for several paragraphs about how wonderful it was to watch me grow up and blossom into an incredibly beautiful woman. I wanted to barf when I recalled how he used to paw at me like I was a piece of meat.
I responded to his email, “This is Shannon’s husband, Greg, managing her email box while she’s traveling. God has certainly done a lot in Shannon’s life, and I’m so proud to be married to her.” I blind-carbon-copied Greg on the email so he’d be aware of my defense strategy, and he was happy to comply.
Funny, this man didn’t keep emailing back. Did I feel guilty over my little trick? Not at all. Even if you did feel guilty for such a thing, I’d rather feel guilty over posing as my husband than for cheating on him.
Remember, the internet can be a powerful tool to help you reconnect with old friends, but be smart! Keep your romantic strolls down memory lane limited to those memories you’ve made with your husband!
Wishing you nothing but the healthiest of relationships,
Shannon
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What about the simple and direct approach? “I have moved on in my life and built my life with another. While I hope you work hard to keep your marriage and find a good counselor to help you two work it out, I will not be that person. Please do not call me or contact me again.”
I have to agree, Laura. I wouldn’t drag it out at all. As soon as I learned who it was and what they were up to, I’d end it there: “Your intentions are evil, and I refuse to have anything to do with you. NEVER CONTACT ME IN ANY WAY AGAIN.” And then I would hang up. (I did this once with a liar and gossip that I knew, though romance was not a part of our relationship)
But I like the e-mail response you mentioned. We did something similar with one of my husband’s ex-girlfriends. She wanted to be a FB “friend”, saying she was an old friend of my hubby’s. (My husband was the one to point out she was an ex) With my husband’s okay, I went ahead and added her, after we saw that she claimed to be happily married. At first she was nice to me, but as soon as my husband joined FB a few weeks later, she showed her true colors at once via wistful comments on his wall, then slanderous ones on mine. After we both de-friended her (we didn’t realize we needed to “block” her – YET.) She wrote me saying she didn’t mean anything by her comments (but didn’t apologize), WHILE she was writing my husband and playing the “Your wife made you de-friend me! Add me back!” In a short, to the point message, he told her that HE was the one that de-friended her, and that it was completely because of the her own actions, and that he had no interest in ever hearing from her again. So when she wrote him back before we could even block her, berating him for “hurting her” and utter CRAP like that, he didn’t even reply. I DID. I wrote her a one sentence message before we both blocked her: “I wonder what your husband thinks of you chasing after your ex-boyfriends.”
We haven’t heard from her in any way since, and we couldn’t be happier. Well, unless we could go back in time and just click on the “ignore” button!
The ex-boyfriends ALWAYS come crawling back. For years, I was a fool and gave in to them everytime they came around. I let myself be convinced that they were coming back for ME, not for themselves.
When my husband and I had been dating for about three months, I received an email from an ex, whom I’d had rocky sexual relations with in the past. I had learned the week before that his girlfriend of a year had broken up with him after she discovered he had been cheating on her, so I knew EXACTLY why he contacting me.
He said he “just wanted to see how you were doing.”
I boldly told him that I knew all about his cheating problem (I had actually been hearing about it long before his girlfriend had), so I knew he was just looking for the next easy ticket. I told him I was no longer it, and that I wanted him to, once and for all, stop trying to contact me. I told him how happy I was in my current relationship, and that it was such a blessing to finally know how a real, Christian man (something he always claimed to be) treats a real, Christian woman.
WOW – what powerful examples, and kudos to you ladies for NOT falling for those lines again!