My boyfriend has an ex who plays the whole I'm just looking out for you. I just care. If never lie to you thing. He was extremely vunerable at the end of their relationship and suicidal. All I know is they were having a row and they screamed that's it we are done. Little things had been going on around both of them before which I presume led to the end!
It's over 3 years later and she's not going anywhere. They don't meet up. They don't ring. But she sends him a message every now and then to get into a conversation with him. He thinks they have fallen into a pleasent friendship. He had another very short-term not even a relationship after his ex. This was way before he met me. That woman was contacted by his ex at the time and she told his ex that yes they were involved. When the ex found out he had sex with this woman she started to get upset and was kicking off at him. After eight mum's he left the home they shared. They were in separate bedrooms and never went nearly each other after the original split anyway. Any moved out and the ex started helping him in a supportive way because he was sad and struggling with this new life. You went into hospital with extreme depression in the end and she sorted his house out for him when he got home. But they didn't get back together. And about 4 months after this he met me and we started talking. That ex-girlfriend didn't back off in regards to messaging him but she stopped visiting him. When we officially got together about 9 months later she got jealous. She started to try and convince him I was not right and she started to to try to see if he emotionally still missed her and stuff. He showed me the messages and he was always open and honest. But he still said oh she's just worried about me and she just cares. He said I don't think she'd have anything nice to say about any woman that I got with anyway. I was confused why he felt he was getting anything from her anymore but I tried to bite my tongue a little bit. She then started to message the other lady before me and that lady got in touch with me. The XX was very much trying to create problems and then she went to my boyfriend and said oh she's talking to your new girlfriend and sending screenshots to me. After speaking to the lady that had the relationship with him after the ex she told me that his ex was always contacting her and asking her what they had done together. she's very good at convincing my boyfriend that she's never communicated and never encouraged this woman. But the things that I've been said that she could only possibly know because of his ex.
Last Weekend we were sat together and the ex's name flashed up on the screen with loads of kisses at the end of this message. I took his phone out of his hand when he wouldn't show me and I said to him you told me haven't spoken to her for months what is this? He opened the message and and they have been reminiscing a little bit it about the past. Nothing sexual and nothing inappropriate just remembering the past. I was here and I went home for a few days to clear my head. When I came back to talk to him yesterday he had been in bed the whole time had no food in the house. He was looking broken and basically had given up. He told me he was devastated that I thought the worst of him. He says like he always says I don't want her she doesn't want me we don't want a relationship anymore. We're just friends. I said to him that it's becoming like he hasn't dealt with the past. He said to me you're the only person I want how can I not be her friend when she was there for me when I was suicidal? How can I just cut her off when she was the only person who helped me when I was ill?
we went on to have a further conversation and he went back to talking about the relationship he had had after the X. He seems really distressed while she was talking to me and said he couldn't handle all the screenshots and women talking about him behind his back. I said to him look you had a little fling after a long term relationship ended it happens all the time. It does not make you a bad person. But what you've got to understand as you need to put that all to bed now in the past and leave it there. You can't spend the rest of your life trying to make it right to your ex that she was hurt by it. He then said to me I still don't believe to this day that my ex lied to me about what that woman said. I said to him your ex did communicate with her whether you want to accept it or not, I just think you don't want to believe it because you'd be gutted to know she was lying to you. He then said to me he really didn't think she would lie. I gave him solid evidence why she's lying and where conversations happened that couldn't have been known unless the ex was saying stuff. He still didn't seem to want to believe it, but eventually said I don't know no but I get sick of it it does my head in. He looked broken having that conversation and quite distressed.
I said to him you are a good man and you need to get out of this frame of mine you owe her anything or you need to be nice to her for the rest of your life because xyz.
I can't make him see she is trying to convince him not to be with other women by hiding behind this care and friendship.
What would you do to help him? I know he's not wanting her back. She just seems to get inside his head