My ex-husband left two years ago and moved in with another woman. He stopped paying the mortgage, threatened to sell our home (he couldn't because the home was jointly titled), brought his mistress to my home several times to pick up our child, eventually stopped visitation with our child for 11 months, tried to get thousands and thousands of dollars from me in our divorce and then one month after the divorce was final he sent a happy birthday text to which I didn't respond. He has every other weekend visitation with our child and we text to make arrangements for pick-ups and drop-offs, but he constantly finds other reasons to text and includes annoying "lmao" and "lol"'s when it's not even necessary. He still lives with that other woman. What on earth would possibly make this creaton think I would be friendly and chatty with him after all he's done to me and our child?
He shows all of the signs of being a narcissist so I haven't told him he's annoying because that will just cause him to be nasty and argumentative, and I don't need the stress. I just don't understand this sudden friendly behavior. It was better when we didn't speak for close to a year when he abandoned his relationship with our child. |
He’s faking like he is super happy, but secretly dying on the inside. He is probably suffering from you being unfazed. |
Continue to detach - gray rock his ass. He's trying to keep you engaged because he needs to be the center of attention. |
Because if you can all be friends now, it means he wasnt so bad after all. |
This was my immediate thought. |
SO here. Thanks for the replies. Narcs don't care abt appearing as the bad guy. They own no guilt. But they are all about manipulation so I don't think it's that. I was just wondering if anyone had experienced this behavior before. I have been using the gray rock technique and respond w/very short and flat responses. It just blows my mind that the same person who called lied/cheated/abandoned the marriage and then called me a peasant, after referring to himself as a king, would now think I would be friendly towards him. What does he want? He supposedly has the woman of his dreams now! |
Mine too. Continue to detach, OP. Good luck with your new life. |
This. |
I would suspect that dream woman isn't so dreamy. Sit back and wait. |
I think all of the replies are correct. He’s unhappy. He wants your attention. He needs to retcon the breakup. |
He feeds off of engagement. The other woman isn’t feeding him enough, so he’s turning back to a prior source.
Grey rock. |
+1 |
He fought dirty during the separation/divorce in order to win the best possible settlement/position for himself possible.
Now that everything has been settled during the divorce and he is no longer fighting to protect his own self interests, he feels no need to be contentious with you. And he is not going to put his energy into fighting you. The divorce terms are laid out, child custody has been determined and that's good enough. He's being "friendly" because you share a child together. If it wasn't for your son, he probably would just go his separate way and be done with you and that phase of his life. And that's pretty much it in a nutshell. He basically DGAF, which you already knew. |
Do your best to sustain the anger and the battle. Your child will appreciate it. |
+1 every pp is correct. Well done, op!! Keep it up! |