MYNIPPON

Summary

Read below the case of a woman desperately trying to find her bearings after breaking up but her ex-boy friend deliberately likes to hurt her feelings by parading his new girlfriend in front of her.  How can she learn to ignore him?

Melanie is still secretly in love with her ex-BF who has not forgiven her for dumping him but because they are colleagues, it has been harder for her to completely erase him from her life.  She says that he is always trying to hurt her and make her jealous.  Melanie writes, “I ran into them (as bizarre as it may sound, he is dating yet another colleague) on my lunch break; we were standing in the same line at Starbucks, he was really nice to her, offered to buy her stuff, but with me he was never that respectful.  When he left he looked at me and smiled really sarcastically, because he knew I was hurting seeing them.  He saw me later drinking coffee by myself and started to come over, but I got up before he could reach me.  He knows he hurts me, but I think he likes the fact that I like him so much, that seeing him with another girl makes me upset and jealous. I could have been rude to both of them or called Human Resources, since she is a subordinate and not allowed to date her boss, but that would just make me look petty and mean. I’m a classy girl, and would never make a scene, but I really wanted to. It’s agony to see her with him.  I don’t know how to get past this.”

Yes, his behavior to mistreat you or deliberately make you jealous is consistent with the behavior of a jilted lover; a lot of people when they fail in their relationship get very upset and angry and instead of looking inside them to find out what went wrong and learn not to do that again, they want to retaliate by hurting their ex.

I empathize with you that not only you have to see and talk to him often even after a breakup, you also have to tolerate seeing him with his new GF and he is insensitive enough to show off her to you.  My divorced sister-in-law has to work with her ex-husband because they both worked in the family business and it is not possible to get rid of him because he is not only a very high level and critical employee of the firm, he is also a sizable shareholder.  Obviously, it will be perfect if you can find another job,  but if you cannot, what she told me is that you should keep it professional; she treats him like a colleague at work and not as an ex or a dad to their 3 kids together.  They have both moved on too.