Really proud of myself tonight

I'm really proud of the way I handled an awkward situation tonight.

Tonight, my ex-boyfriend from high school (go back 35 years) sent me a Facebook friend request. No message, just a request. I paused and reflected on why he would do that:

1. My profile came across his newsfeed of people he knows based on mutual connections

2. He's having marriage problems and reached out to me b/c I'm an easy to reach online distraction

Either way, neither is a good reason to just Facebook friend request me 35 years after he 1) cheated on me with my best friend and 2) didn't apologize for it and shunned me socially afterward telling people I was emotionally needy and not to date me. He was a popular football player too who knew everyone.

So, you can imagine the mix of feelings I had when I saw his Facebook friend request sans message.

I took the high road. I sent him a mesage, telling him bluntly, that I appreciate the friend request but with no message, and 35 years of silence, and the way he treated me from the past, there was no reason for him to reach out to me.

His response made me roll my eyes. He responded that he just suddenly thought of me and wanted to see how I was doing and wished me a Merry Christmas. Never even bothered to address my points in my Facebook message to him. He just completely ignored my points, my boundaries per se with his response. It made him come across arrogant and entitled to me.

Sorry, but if you cheated on me and then gossiped about me to everyone in our highschool class about me, why would you think I would be happy to hear from you 35 years later?

If someone randomly friend requests me on Facebook without bothering to explain why in an accompanying message, I take that as a HUGE red flag. Huge. That's rude, first of all, not to tell me why you want to be my Facebook friend. Do you want to get something from me? Do you want to be friends in real life? What?!

Red flags abound with this guy. No message to accompany his Facebook friend request. Ignored my response to his Facebook friend request and did what he did to me in high school; ignored my feelings and was only concerned about his own feelings and what he could take from me.

Nope. 35 years later, I think I have some boundaries now. I know it sounds silly but I felt empowered to stick up for myself with a lousy high school ex-boyfriend thinking he could just pretend the past didn't happen and message me without any context or explanation and just ignore my response as though it didn't matter.

I actually wrote to him, "I have peace in my life that I plan to protect at all costs. I have no desire to be Facebook friends with you."

I couldn't care less what his real reason was for contacting me on Facebook. Clearly, his intentions weren't transparent or good, for that matter. Who the heck contacts an old ex from high school when he's married with children? Not someone who respects me, thats for sure.

I deserve to be treated with respect. Period.

The gossip part, telling others now to date you because you are emotionally needy, is horrible.

I think contacting an old ex from high school for someone who is married with children is per se very typical behavior. Social media and internet have made these old exes infinitely findable, something that did not exist 35 years ago. And the draw to find out how those exes are doing now is hard to resist, whether one is single, happily married, or unhappily married, or anything in-between. So that curiosity by itself is not a show of disrespect for you and approaching Christmas as a general cue for connection is plausible, too. If one wants to connect, having a superficial reason to do so (to wish one a Merry Christmas) makes it a little easier.

He should have sent a message to accompany the friends request for sure. Facebook, unlike LinkedIn, does not have the functionality to embed a message inside a connections request, but he could have simply messaged you saying that he was thinking of you, regretted how he had treated you, and wished you a Merry Christmas. To that message he could have added that he would appreciated being Facebook friends.

That he did not address the points you had made in your Facebook message to him does not mean that he ignored them. He may well realize that they make perfect sense, but he does not know how to respond and how to address them and he may not have enough prowess in difficult conversations to know what to do. So he thought that he could get away with pretending that he did not notice your points. I know you see him as arrogant and you of course know him very well and most likely are right, but it also could be that he is simply unskilled and not particularly smart.

How many Facebook friends do you have? I get random friends requests and I usually accept them without considering them rude. There have been a couple of cases when women who are local service providers (hairdressers, "life coaches" etc.) sent me requests and I accepted without realizing that they were trying to expand their client base. If they are not aggressive, I do not unfriend. If they send me promotional offers, I unfriend. But I have more than 2.5K Facebook contacts so I do not particularly care, a few more or a few fewer. I consider them contacts, the word "friend" on Facebook is too ambitious. If you have a small circle of Facebook friends and they are all your real friends, of course I understand that you would be choosey about whom to accept into that circle. I just wanted to offer a perspective from someone who does not see friends requests unaccompanied by a message as rude.

I can give you an example: a member of my youth group sent me a friends request unaccompanied by a message and I was overjoyed. We live on different continents and I last saw him in 1986. I now follow him on Facebook and he follows me. He has a young son (he must have gotten married late in life) who sings in a famous children's choir and he posts videos from the performances and I always watch; they are utterly amazing. If I go back, I will be sure to see him. But he did not do anything bad to me in the past. We were on perfectly good terms, although not very close. So I think the real reason behind your indignation is not the friends request out of the blue, but the past unresolved hurt for which your high school ex never apologized.

(Just to acknowledge that in general, yes, of course, you are right, attaching a message when wanting to connect is better. When I send LinkedIn connection requests to people who are not my colleagues and whom I do not personally know, I customize the message so that the requests do not come out of the blue. Say, I mention that I was at a web conference, they were presenters and I was impressed and now want to connect. When I connect with colleagues, I omit that extra step.)

At this moment I wonder if you would benefit from his apology. If the answer is yes, then your response to him was too blunt. You also told him that there was no reason for him to reach out to you, but does not he know better whether he has a reason or not? You can decline and are well within your right to decline given the outrageous past mistreatment by him, but you are not to tell him whether he has reason to contact you because that it about his frame of mind which he knows better than you do.

You can write to him now that you might reconsider his request if he is willing to reflect on his behavior in long past and offer a genuine apology. Offer him an olive branch and see what his reaction is. Say it coolly, just to give him a slight chance. If he needs an explanation, you can offer a hypothetical in which the tables were turned, you were the most popular girl in high school, you knew everyone, you told everyone that he was emotionally needy and not to date him... how would he react? He might have never been thoughtful, might have never considered another's feelings... you can give him a chance. It can be done without making him win and without losing your sense that you took the high road. That, of course, if you see value in having him see that he hurt you and apologize for that.

I do not want to detract from you feeling proud of how you handled it, but believe that you exhibited the bluntness that you recently wrote about when you called yourself an external processor. And your theories are simplistic. For instance, you surmise that he might be having marriage problems and find you an easy to reach online distraction. But a popular football player who knew everyone in high school has many more available online and offline distractions–he does not need to reach for you. People usually do not change that much: if he was popular back then, he probably is popular now. There must be many women he can reach out to very easily, without taking chances that an ex-girlfriend whom he mistreated 35 years ago might not respond or respond angrily.

He might simply be suddenly nostalgic, not about you per se but about his youth which you might personify for him on some level. And the approaching New Year when people think about where they are in life and are keenly aware of the passage of time might cause him to be nostalgic. At least it seems likelier to me than the "marriage difficulties" hypothesis.

I hope you do not mind my offering alternative theories. If you want to craft a message to him that would be cool but would give him a chance to reflect and apologize and show you respect, I think as a community here we can do a good job.

When I was younger, I used to give people benefit of the doubt and think they change and this and that and I should be polite erc. Life is too short. No need to waste time on this guy.

What’s with high school boyfriends? I had one myself who was a pain in a neck. To this day don’t know what I was thinking when I was being polite every time he resurfaced years later, one time with inappropriate proposition (supposedly was drunk when called), one time with unsolicited apologies etc. Bizarre. I won’t hijack your post because I could go on and on. In my experience men contact random women from the past when they’ve been drinking and horny. Gross.

But that’s not only men, women do that too. Gross. I have some stories about that too

Oh here is another story. Once I was contacted by a former classmate (never dated or was friends with, just friendly) asking me for money. According to some people he had a problem with some criminals or the law. It was so crazy. We aren’t talking about “I am homeless do you have 5 bucks for bread”. Do I have money to pay off mafia or something. Really? He didn’t even know anything about me at that point.

Now keeping up with former classmates is all good. I keep in touch with a couple myself. See them when I am in the area and so on. But this random contacting someone you dated in high school and never talk to is weird.

And no married men don’t sit around contacting former ex girlfriends of years ago for no particular reason. Thats not what most people do.

Good on you for not friending him back. He sounds like a tool. Yes, you do deserve to be treated with respect, period!

Hey thanks you guys for your responses to my thread about my ex-boyfriend from high school reaching out to me on Facebook out of the blue.

I took "polls" from my male rideshare passengers today and they all agreed that his behavior was atypical for a man (married or not) to reach out to an ex-highschool girlfriend so randomly, 35 years after they dated.

The ex had 35 years to apologize to me and initiate the offer of real friendship. He chose to get married and have children instead. So, I was never his priority; always just an option. Once someone makes you an option, your emotional and physical needs will never be their priority. This dufus reached out to me 35 years after-the-fact for god knows what reason. I don't know and I don't care.

@Tart Cherry Jam thank you for your different perspective. I don't need him to apologize to me now, 35 years later. I gave myself closure after he dumped then slandered me in high school. The fact that he wouldn't write a message with his Facebook friend request is so characteristic of his personality and the way he views me as just an option three and a half decades later. He doesn't deserve the time of day from me, in any time zone.

@divine1966 I'm with you on the 'life is too short' attitude. Like you, I used to give people the benefit of the doubt when I was younger (and codependent). Now, I don't give people a second chance. Definitely not going to waste time on this dufus. What IS it with high school boyfriends? Exactly!

Sounds like you had one of your own experience like mine, when yours drunk dialed you out of the blue. Your former classmate reaching out to you to ask for loads of money is also a boundary invasion and wow, the nerve of that guy. And you are correct, married men don't sit around waxing nostalgic about their high school ex girlfriends unless they want something (akin to an emotional/physical affair/online distraction from their own miserable life).

@WovenGalaxy thank you!! He was and clearly still IS a tool. One I have now blocked on Facebook so that he can't randomly contact me again. I didn't let on to our mutual high school friend who I'm Facebook friends with that he reached out to me.

Why should I share that private information with her? You know? She did tell me that they have little gatherings here and there (main group from our class) and yet I'm never invited by her or the others to join them. Pfft. Fine by me! I don't want to get stuck in the past meetingup with old high school aquaintances because my emotional health can't take it. Those women were such bullies to me. Thank you for your encouragement. Yes, I do deserve respect.

Which brings me to a happy accident. Last summer, a very cute neighbor moved into the condo building next door to me. He was sitting on the front stoop waiting for his friend and saw me feeding the birds on my apt balcony so we chatted.

Yesterday, he remembered my name when he saw me. I was unloading my car with groceries. He asked if he could help me so I let him. We chatted while we stood outside my apt door and I boldly asked him to coffee. He said he had a girlfriend but took my cellphone number anyway, b/c he said that he would like to be friends with me.

That my friends, is a classy guy who respects me. Sure he's taken. But he's the complete opposite of the high school ex dufus. I'm glad the universe timed it like that for me - showing me that there are definitely better men than my ex high school boyfriend in the world who will respect me.

I'm also older than my neighbor (i.e. I'm a cougar, rawr). It was nice to be treated with respect buy a cute guy, nonetheless. A nice end-cap to that crappy experience with the ex-high school boyfriend contacting me on Facebook.

rawr, a new word I have just learned! A good story about the younger guy! Happy holidays!

I'm a rawr lady too, Motts! Woo hoo! Merry Christmas to you!