My Ex Is Back After Erasing Me from Her Life – Do I Respond?

Question: My ex is back after erasing me from her life, what do I do?

I can’t tell if my ex is a fearful avoidant leaning anxious or just anxious. Here’s my story and I need your help to decide whether to take her back or let her go and move on. We were together for about a year. The first six months were total bliss. We spend almost everyday together and never argued or fought. The last five months were he opposite. Constant arguments and fights. We’d break up for a few days but always managed to work it through and get back together. Am anxiously attached and take full responsibility for my role.

So this is what happened almost sex months ago after we had one of our breakups. She deleted my number in front of me, unfriended, unfollowed, blocked me you from all social media. The whole shebang. I tried to contact her through unblocked numbers and got blocked there too. We met at a mutual friend’s birth party and she completely ignored me. It was like I wasn’t there. She changed gyms from one we shared and removed her name from the phone plan we shared. It felt like I had been completely erased. It hurt so bad at first, but slowly I started to pick up the pieces and was starting to fully move on when 8 months and two weeks after the breakup I received a text from her.

She had unblocked me. It’s been two weeks since she reached out and I haven’t responded. My question is: Should I respond and if she wants to get back together do I take her back?

Yangki’s Answer: That’s a question everyone who had been erased after a breakup should ask themselves — whether you’re anxiously attached, an avoidant or securely attached.

There are many reasons why people cut an ex off – and sometimes space after a breakup is necessary whether one wants to heal and work on themselves uninterrupted by contact with an ex or just wants time to reflect and get clarity before reconnecting. Nothing wrong with that.

But complete erasure is a whole other level. Someone completely erasing you out of their life is sending a clear message: You don’t exist anymore.

Someone who just needs “space” on the other hand doesn’t completely erase you out of their life. They step back, they create distance, but they don’t act like you never happened or never existed in the first place.

Whether or not you should take her back depends on if you want her back. But before you take her back, think real hard what her behaviour says about her and about your connection. It doesn’t matter if she’s a fearful avoidant leaning anxious or just anxious, you should never normalize certain behaviours. They become an integral part of your dynamic and over time, it becomes so hard to change it.

And that’s the real risk here. Not just what she did, but what it sets up going forward. If disappearing, erasing, and coming back without consideration of how you might have felt becomes part of the dynamic, then you’re always going to be treated like what you feel doesn’t matter.

If you decide to respond to her text, don’t respond with the same energy she had after the breakup. Show up as the “adult in the room” and set the tone for how you expect to be treated going forward.

That means not rushing back into getting back together, not skipping over what happened, and not pretending everything is fine just because she reached out. You can be open without being overly available, and respectful without ignoring your own feelings and needs.

They were quick to erase you out of their life, take your time letting them back into yours.

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