My ex and I are in NC yet he comes back, even in little ways.

My ex and I broke up around 11 months ago. He keeps coming back to me in one way or another. I’m not looking for advice, but just wanted to share my story!

Keeping the details short, our relationship moved fast. Was given a promise ring and he moved closer to me less than a month into our relationship. I hadn’t known what love bombing was and later on in the relationship he had slowly become emotionally manipulative, starting fights with me, putting me on do not disturb and purposefully ignoring me for days, shaming me and making me feel dumb, etc. He had a very, very rough past and had admitted this was the reason for his actions. I would always try to be there for him, hoping to make things better. However, he wasn’t willing to get help for it, and we both agreed that his rough past was not an excuse for treating me this way, so we broke it off (this was our second breakup, as we broke up a month into our relationship for this same reason. He reached out to me a day later begging to get back together). Furthermore, I knew I deserved better, and I could not fix someone who didn’t want to be fixed. We agreed to indefinite NC.

A month later, he reached out to me, letting me know that he’s been working hard on repairing the issues going on in his life. He wanted to meet up to offer me closure and a more valid apology. Originally, I hadn't wanted to, but I wanted to hear what he had to say. We met up and it was nice to hear how great he was doing, and we talked here and there for about a month. One day, I found a flower on my car with a little note on it from him. This began to make me feel conflicted, questioning if we could do this and work at this again or if this was bad news. The next day, he told me he was still in love with me. Not even giving us a chance to talk about this maturely, he put his phone on dnd, told me he didn’t want to talk about it, and told me to forget it. By this point, I was right in my intuition that he was bad news. Three days later, he sent me a paragraph telling me it wasn’t me he was after, but the attention and love I gave him that he was seeking. Given I had not “reciprocated” the love (despite us not being in a relationship at this point), this reassured his decision to continue our NC, and he blocked me. I noticed this paragraph was written a little too well, and put it into an AI detector. To no surprise, the detector gave it a 100% probability of being written by ChatGPT. By this point, I wasn’t upset, and I thought this was really funny.

My ex had an app that would generate new phone numbers, and he told me that he once created a few bogus numbers and practically blew up his ex's phone with calls. There was one day shortly after we went back into NC when I received over 50+ phone calls from 2-3 unknown phone numbers. I took a screenshot of my call log and sent it to my friends and family. The first thing they all said was his name and how he was definitely behind this.

I thought it would be the end, but in August, I received a nasty comment on one of my TikToks posted months ago. When I clicked on the profile it said it was a person I might know. My ex had multiple TikTok accounts and when I saw this account, I remembered it to be one of them. For further proof it was him, when I went into my people you may know list, all of his accounts were there, as they weren’t there before. Aka, he unblocked me to stalk me. I know he does this because, when we were together, a girl he was with before me would constantly reach out to him. In one of her messages, she asked him why he blocks and unblocks her, because sometimes her messages go through, and sometimes they don’t. I responded to the comment with a funny and unbothered remark, and the comment was deleted 5 minutes later, and all of his accounts were gone again from my people you may know list.

Last week, I received a text from his coworker whom I vaguely remember meeting. She said she got my number from my ex and wanted to inform me that their company was expanding and opening a location near me. My ex told her that I live in the area and spoke highly of my great experience in their field (he and I pretty much do the same thing career-wise). She wanted to know if I was interested in interviewing for the new location. I was nice about it and politely declined. One, because I already have a job that I like, and two, I wouldn’t want to take this opportunity knowing it has ties to him. It’s one thing if it's a coincidence, but knowing this person knows my ex well, you just never know what the intentions could be, even if they’re genuine.

There are so many details that I didn’t include (bc it’s too much and too personal) but know that this has been the most baffling experience of my life and has taught me so many valuable things, both good and bad. Over the last year, I’ve been working with a therapist on navigating how love bombing and manipulation works. Looking back, I know it was a mistake to take his offer of speaking after a month in NC, but now I’m confident in the fact that I will not put myself through that again!