NC here as this is both outing and I’m kind of embarrassed to be even asking.
WWYD if you discovered that a toxic ex, whom you’d hoped never to see again, was now working and maybe also living in a new town that you were moving to? Don’t know anyone else there, which wouldn’t be a big issue to me in itself, but if I’d had to pick one person from my past whom I wouldn’t want to be the only person I knew in town, this guy would be high on the list!
He’s someone I was with for five years, 20+ years ago and it was the Big Drama relationship of both our lives. It was initially a workplace fling that got out of hand and dragged on. Looking back he was just a commitment-phobic dick who didn’t do anything truly terrible, and I was a young, naive romantic fantasist who couldn’t accept what was in front of my face, but at the time I was pretty unhappy and it left me with a lot of MH problems for a long time. In different ways the relationship was also life-defining for him.
I eventually ended it when I finally accepted we weren’t compatible, and was instantly much happier and glad to be shot of him. I moved away to do a postgrad course, but when I moved back I saw him a couple of times (once by accident) and he kept accusing me of stalking him, saying I’d moved back to try and get him back, warning me off applying for a job with our old firm because it would ‘harm his career’ etc.
This was all completely crazy because not only did I have no desire whatsoever to get back with him, and was by then dating the man who went on to become my D(now X)H - but the XBF had been the one to do stalkerish things after we broke up, like call my mum to track down my new phone no and ask me to meet him for coffee, or drunk dial me late one night when he also had a new GF.
Anyway I told him to piss off and get over himself and avoided him the next time I saw him. Last laid eyes on him in about 2006 and had no idea he’d since moved away from our home city. I had seen from a mutual friend’s FB that he had got married (to the GF after me) and had at least one DC but that was it. I assumed he was still in home city which is where he was working when I last heard. Now I find he’s actually the boss of our old company’s branch in this other town.
WWYD? Would you still move there? It’s not like I strictly have to, because I run my own business which I can do from anywhere so it’s not like I’m going there for a job as such, but the move is semi-arranged bc it was supposed to happen pre-Covid and just got postponed. DC have a place waiting at a really great school (which unfortunately happens to be right by XBF’s workplace) and are expecting to go, and I was looking forward to the fresh start.
I’m in my early 50s, as is he, and the idea of this past relationship affecting my current decisions feels utterly absurd, but I’m dreading being back on his radar. It’s water under a very big bridge but at the same time there’s no denying that the out of sight, out of mind situation over the past 15 years has been a relief.
The worst part is that he’s never going to believe I’m not stalking him! On paper it looks like the plot of ‘Crazy Ex Girlfriend’ - single woman moves across country on a whim to where her ex ‘just happens’ to be. Except that in my case it genuinely is a coincidence! But I’ve no way to prove that, and if his ego has convinced him that I’m on a lifelong mission to lure him back to my bed, then this move doesn’t look good on me.
Just hoping that I won’t bump into him is pointless because it’s a relatively small place and his job is such that we will cross paths sooner or later, for sure. I don’t want to spend my whole time skulking around town, dreading the day he spots me (no doubt doing something embarrassing, knowing my luck) and gets a nasty shock, but there’s no good way to pre-empt it. Turn up at his place of work to say hi? Stalker. Message him ahead of time with a friendly ‘what a small world!’ type warning? Stalker! You see my problem?
I want to not care, I feel like I’m too old for this shit and it’s really his problem not mine, but I just feel so stressed out at the prospect of having to deal with his bullshit again. If I was going there as part of a couple it wouldn’t be so bad but the fact that I’m single (and middle aged, and fat which I wasn’t before) makes me look like a desperate weirdo.
Sorry for long post but this was the short version! Any thoughts please?