Why Does My Ex Want to Hurt Me So Much? (9 Possible Reasons)

Relationship cycles are tricky. You think that you have ended it by breaking apart from your ex, but apart from the haunting memories, you discover that your ex is still hell-bent on making life difficult for you. This is primarily because they want to take revenge on you. 

The wrath of vengeance, many times caused by misunderstandings, has brought downfall and suffering to many. If you find yourself in such a pickle, don’t get restless. Life can be difficult but when approached rightly, things can settle down as quickly as the storm had emerged. 

In this blog post, I will help you understand the science behind your ex wanting to hurt you so much and will help you to figure out ways to fix such a behavior.

Reasons why your ex wants to hurt you so much 

Only a person in pain can inflict pain upon others. Hence, it has to be that your ex is in tremendous pain and wants to part with someone else. If they are behaving in this manner with everyone sounding them, he needs some time to come out better.

However, if they are only targeting you, they must have a reason for it. Whether the reason is valid or not, and how you make up for it, read below to find out.

#1 They are heartbroken 

Your ex might blame you for their heartbreak. It could be because of one of the following reasons:

• If you had ghosted your ex before the breakup, that is, in your mind, you had decided that you don’t want to continue the relationship without giving them a chance to resolve your doubts or prove their worth, they might feel utterly disheartened by your treatment and disappointed in their choice of picking you up as their partner.

• You didn't give them closure, and to date, they are haunted by the idea of why you broke apart in the first place. Remember, we all seek an explanation. We like to take it in the form of feedback to ensure that we don’t repeat the error.

• If it was your call to break up perhaps because you had to change cities and you decided that a long-distance relationship is not your cup of tea, you did not consider the feelings of the one involved with you very precisely.  

• If you played your ex by cheating on them or using them, their heart will sink and they will feel miserable about themselves for allowing you to bring their ruin. As such, the wrath and intent to take revenge will be way stronger than any other emotion that they might have felt for you before.

#2 They are savage

You might have been dating someone who enjoys inflicting pain on others despite their nature or conduct. The traits of typical pleasure-seekers can be identified in various ways:

• They are mostly too dark in their thought process, convictions, anticipations, predictions, and analysis of character.  

• They were always kinky in bed. They like to use ropes, and handcuffs, and go the dominative way to force you into submission.

• They are fascinated by dark stuff, they enjoy watching things that are considered taboo, and they have an eerie taste in reading.

•  They have had shallow childhoods, or have mixed with the wrong crowd. You will see that they either talk about these so much that you have memorized the tales yourself, or so little that there were days when you felt that they are a stranger to you.

If your ex had shown more than one such behavior, they have a psychological problem and can use the help of a counselor. Group therapy sessions where people from different walks of life come in to share their devastating experiences, loss of relationships, and opportunities that do them well could be an option here.

Don’t think that why should you care about all this because you are happy that finally, you are out of trouble. For all you know, the trouble might have just begun. Rather than wishful thinking or leaving everything in the hands of destiny, try to take control of the situation. Remember, conversation makes everything possible.

#3 They like to take revenge 

Perhaps in the eyes of your ex, everything is a game. This will happen when they are game addicts and enjoy viewing things in that light. A game addict might look at their life as the form of a game where if they let anyone bail off easily, it is a matter of shame for them.

Even if you haven’t done anything or are not at fault, the fact that you seek a breakup or decided to ditch them because neither of you was happy, while they kept pondering as to when to make the move, they will not forget the matter easily. 

It will hurt their ego and they might act as a chauvinist. Don’t be too surprised to discover that all your theories about them so far have been incorrect. If anything, they are a vice human with vicious motives. 

Stay alert and aware of your surroundings. Don’t keep free passes to everyone around you. Learn to thoroughly check the profile of the people before acknowledging their presence. You should not trust everything you see and every word you hear. 

#4 They are an alcohol addict 

If your ex was an addict and that was among the primary reasons that caused the breakup, you should be careful. Don’t open your door to everyone. Install security cameras. Do everything that one should do to ensure safety.

You might feel that this is a bit too much. However, prevention is better than cure. You can’t tell what gets into the mind of a person. I’m not saying that your ex is a vampire, or blood-thirsty for you. However, in the flick of a moment, one might commit crimes for which they will be damned eternally. Perhaps once the matter rests, you can move on to your usual lifestyle. 

An addict is often unreasonable and senseless. They don’t think before committing an action. They are very impulsive and lack a moral sense of duty that would have punctured their life events with reality. They dwell in a make-believe world and feel that everything is under their control unless proven otherwise.

#5 You are dating someone in their friend circle 

Perhaps after the breakup, you started dating someone mutual or worse, from their friend circle. If your ex hasn’t started dating yet and finds it very difficult to get over you, they will not be able to take the fact that you didn’t even blink before switching partners.

They will burn down with jealousy but their rage will get the better of them. They will rise again to take revenge on you and hurt you. They will try to embarrass you in front of your date by passing private remarks or by revealing the loopholes in their life. They will not miss any opportunity to expose your weakness before someone you have taken as a young partner.

The idea here might be to destroy a budding flower in the early stages by depriving it of the elements so that it never gets the opportunity to bloom. You can prevent such situations by disclosing everything to the partner you take in your life after your ex. If they are ready to date you despite being a mutual, it means they already think highly of you. Use this to win their absolute trust.

#6 They haven’t moved on 

Perhaps your ex still gets nightmares and is having sleep deprivation. They blame you for all the mishappenings in their life. They are still stuck in the loop where they hope that you will come to their rescue.

This makes them needy and they don’t like it. They want you to repent for what they are feeling. They want you to feel the same sense of loss. Since you are not affected or influenced by this behavior, they are jealous of you. 

You need to see to which level would they go to hurt you. Don’t challenge their audacity. They are already too pissed off. It is better to change your location so that they don’t get to see you every day. 

#7 They feel that you toyed with them 

Your ex might believe that you were never serious about them from day one and exploited them and their resources for your benefit. They feel used and discarded. Such an overwhelming sense of getting single-handedly exploited in a relationship happens when: 

• Your cost of living was afforded by them. You never contributed to paying any bills. You were always extravagant in your needs, and you posed as if you are working hard towards your dream while all you did was waste time.

• You are a shallow hypocrite. Your words and actions never matched. In most cases, you said something and did something different. You even went about backstabbing the person if it could buy you a momentary advantage.

• You would keep bills due in the name of your ex. Out of embarrassment, they were left with little choice but to pay the bills. This process has been so much that they were forced to give their cards and share their pins and passwords with you.

#8 You hurt them during the relationship 

If you were abusive in the relationship, and you defended your treatment on grounds of experimentation and domination, your ex might want to get back to you by abusing you in different ways. This could be:

• An abuse of privacy as they might threaten to leak your private pictures in public. 

• Making the thread of chats on someone close to you where you held an unfavorable opinion or disclosed certain pieces of information about the concerned party would lead to a conflict of interest.

• Going after the people you love and care for, including your family and friends just to harass you. This move could get your nerves crawling and you would react badly when they come before your eyes. 

There can be many more dimensions and ways in which your ex might decide to hurt you. It could be by posting hurtful messages or sending you screenshots and voice notes of memories when they used to mean everything to you. This nostalgic trip could be taxing to a level beyond your imagination.

#9 To see your reaction 

Perhaps all your ex wants to do here is see your reaction. If you can put up the graceful, cultured, soft behavior, for the lack of which, perhaps, you had split apart from your ex in the first place. If you would rush back to them and plead with them to stop this behavior, they might consider it a win. 

If by the study or understanding of their behavior, you feel that they would be satisfied by the harm they have caused and would stop here, well and good. If you feel it will only aggravate their emotions into wanting to aggrandize you further, they deserve to be given a stern warning from your end that you will not tolerate such cross behavior and the consequences would not be something that they would like.

#10 They may be struggling with their issues

There are things that you do not know about. For all you know, your ex might be suffering from things that he never revealed to you or made you a part of. As a result, they were always the lone wolf.

While you might think that they are hurting you, what they might be doing is protecting you from something you have no idea about. We hardly ever know the sacrifices others make at our cost. Hence, unless something very palpable in action is committed against you, stay calm. Words might hurt and trigger but won’t cause physical wounds. Your ex might be someone with a secret and dark motive, out on a mission, of which you are just a puny piece.

What to do when your ex wants to hurt you?

Running away from the situation might not prove to be as helpful as confronting it would. This is because when you do the former, you are only giving more reasons to your ex to chase you. However, when you do the latter, you are bringing the opportunity to your ex to talk and resolve the matter.

How to do either, read below to find out.

#1 Set boundaries 

You might wonder how to set boundaries with someone you are not even seeing anymore. Well, the fact that your ex is still able to exercise the power to hurt you means that you have yourself given them the liberty to do so perhaps by keeping in touch like a friend rather than ghosting them like a stranger. 

If you have committed such an error, it is because you are a noble human who likes to believe in the potential of others. However, doing let your nobility set a poor example. If your ex has mistaken you to be a naive someone who will tolerate all kinds of behavior just because they feel that you feel guilty about ditching them, show them that they couldn’t have been more wrong.

Confront your ex to let them know that their hurtful behavior will not be entertained. Just as you have given them the right to be in your life despite breaking all concrete ties, you can as well kick them out of your life to make sure that such novelty is not entertained.

#2 Help them 

If you feel for your ex and you are convinced in your belief that they are a good-natured human, but it is the sudden overlapping of disastrous events that were perhaps set in motion by your breakup but continued divorcing them of all the great people whom they had to hold dear in life, they might need a true friend who is selfless enough to ignore their superficial behavior and help them.

If you want to be that friend to your ex, for old times’ sake or because you know had they been in your shoes, they would have done the same, you can help them by taking them to a counselor. Although you might feel that visiting a psychologist or opting for counseling should be an individual choice, many people are still too narrow-minded to emerge themselves into accepting their situation and endeavoring therapy. 

If you don’t want to over-invest yourself but want to help them indirectly, you can seek help from their friends or report to their family. Most relationships these days are superficial and hollow. Even the parents are not aware of what goes about in the life of their children. 

Hence, this mindful gesture and spending time with one’s family in their native land will enable one to flood back happy memories and give one the courage to give up on resentments rather than allowing them to drain them further. Although you don’t have any intention to make them feel grateful for you, they might realize how substantial a role you have played in their journey.

#3 Change the environment

If you share the workspace with your ex and they have suddenly become too much of a bother or an attention seeker for that matter, who would cross all limits to bag all praises and awards and seek promotion in a way that you are constantly teamed either with them or under them and the experience is humiliating, it is time for you to switch the job.

Don’t think twice before doing what is right. Learn to trust your gut feeling. Even if you go wrong you can always make amends. But regrets are not easy to overcome. Hence, a change in environment will do you good. The point that you are not interested in dealing with or working with your ex will become crystal clear. However, make sure that it doesn’t happen at the cost of your company, or else your name in the market will be tarnished as someone who doesn’t know how to draw lines between personal and professional. Hence, be clear about your motives and smart enough to not make it very distinct.

#4 Go no contact

Your ex won’t be able to bother you if you go no contact with them. It is more than ignoring, blocking, or ghosting. It means you are deleting their memories from your mind in such a way that you are not even conscious that you are ignoring them. 

No deliberate effort from your end is to overcome the deficit created by your ex. You are just okay with the way things turned out to be and you have jumped into the next stage. The straightforwardness and acceptance will prevent you from pulling backward. 

Even if your ex shows up with new hurdles, you will be able to take it one step at a time rather than taking a guilt ride or getting all nostalgic and weak about it. Remember, as long as you keep control of your life, everything else will be mere variables, your agenda shall remain constant.

#5 Seek help from friends and family 

You can involve your family and take help from your friends if you are unable to handle the situation all by yourself. The more the people get involved, the more demotivated your ex will become.

You don't have to think twice before revealing things in your close circle. Always remember that they are your people. They would support you and walk that extra mile to help you. It will enhance your confidence.

#6 Talk to a therapist 

All the fear begins with the mind. If your mind is calm, you will be able to handle the situation better. Hence, talking to a therapist might help. 

You will be fearless when you are revealing to your therapist your actions and deepest fears. Once everything that has been weighing over in your mind finds its way out through an effective outlet, you will be more at ease.

It will stun you to have discovered the best remedy yourself because it is you who knows your heart and your ex better than anybody. Take it one step at a time with self-affirmation, and you will get the strength to fight off the evils.

Tips & Life-Hacks 

• Someone wanting to hurt you is very different from you getting hurt. The intent has hardly ever found a desirable outcome. Hence, unless your ex has done something taxing enough, you should relax and try to smoothen the equation with them. 

• Ex or no ex, you should try to maintain a good relationship and strong terms with everyone. We live in an interdependent community where you cannot thrive unless you are certain that the people around you are supportive and caring. 

• You don't need to return what is served to you. Learning to acknowledge, accept, and appreciate rather than demean, disregard, and desensitize is easier and stronger. It will take you toward success. Treat humans like humans, and sooner or later, they will overcome their flaws to match your level of selflessness.