Why am I getting crazy/threatening phone calls from my ex's new girl?

June 10, 2013 9:49 PM

I've started getting threatening phone calls from my ex's new girlfriend and I'm trying to figure out what's going on.

I've spoken to the ex twice in the last two weeks, both phone calls initiated by her where she told me she missed me, was thinking of me, etc. Around a week after her last call, I called and texted her to let her know one of my dogs had passed away, and she (was) one of the closest people I knew to call.

Two days later, tonight, I get a call from a random number saying to "leave my fucking girlfriend alone. You've messed with the wrong person." I text the ex asking if she's asked someone to prank call me, and I get a text back from the same number as before saying to leave her alone and she's "done with [your] nut ass." Note... this is the first time I've heard of any girlfriend or anything, in fact two weeks ago the ex told me she was single with no prospects.

So I call to ask what the heck is going on. The girl answers, puts the ex on the phone, and the ex just says "She's calling to tell you to leave me alone." Then the girl starts blabbing on about how she understands we want to be friends but nothing will come of it and if I keep calling Ex she'll block my number, blahblahblah. I told her I haven't actually spoken to ex in weeks. She goes, "You called the other morning." I told her it was because my dog has passed, and she said I'm a psycho and making the story up and if my dog did pass I probably killed her [!].

I don't understand this craziness and aggression. Also, this is very strange because the Ex I knew was incredibly assertive and would never let someone call me like that for her, and not bother to speak to me herself. But really... why? Why couldn't Ex just say hey, being friends isn't working out? I haven't initiated contact with her in around a month anyway... Why not just let it fade away?

I feel incredibly creeped out, weirded out, like I made some major sin that suddenly made Ex hate me and have no idea what it is or why. The girlfriend also mentioned something about my workplace, not anything directly but she offhandedly mentioned the place in an unrelated comment which further served to freak me out.

The thing of it is, this isn't the first time I've had someone make a dramatic exit from my life with no explanation given. I feel like it's something I did wrong, but what?

My question is, what the heck motivates people to do something like this? And how do I just forget this and move on? I was already feeling pretty much over the ex, didn't think of her everyday, etc etc, but for some reason this feels like a setback. I feel a hint of jealousy, but mostly I just feel hurt because I've lost (yet another) friend for some reason that I'll never actually know.

posted by Autumn to Human Relations (24 answers total)

You so don't need this shit in your life.

Disengage.

Stop calling/texting your ex. Give it as much space as humanly possible.

Maybe at some future time, you guys can all be friends or whatever. But for now? No contact.

This feels like a setback because you're picking at a scab. Let her go.

(And, of course, also keep track of this and any further contact from the new girl. She sounds scary, and you never know.)
posted by Sara C. at 9:57 PM on June 10, 2013 [21 favorites]

Could there be some third person who knows you and both of them who might be conveying or reinforcing the idea that you're unstable?

In any case though, even if there is, Sara C.'s advice seems like the best way to deal with it.
posted by XMLicious at 10:02 PM on June 10, 2013

Why couldn't Ex just say hey, being friends isn't working out? I haven't initiated contact with her in around a month anyway... Why not just let it fade away?

Because having two people (or even one person!) fighting over you is way more exciting and flattering than just settling down into a new relationship and arguing over who gets the remote?

Listen, don't worry about it. Your ex is all twitterpated because her new gf is "protective" of her, and the new gf is a crazypants drama llama. There's nothing for you here; move along. (It is entirely permissible to giggle, though.)
posted by fingersandtoes at 10:02 PM on June 10, 2013 [34 favorites]

It doesn't matter why people do this. Just block her number and her emails.

Don't waste your energy trying to figure out what's wrong with those two. Block contact, disengage completely and move on to more positive people
posted by 26.2 at 10:03 PM on June 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

You did nothing wrong. The new girlfriend is crazy.

My question is, what the heck motivates people to do something like this?

Being straight-up crazy.

And how do I just forget this and move on?

By reminding yourself that your ex has chosen to involve herself with someone who is straight-up crazy.

I was already feeling pretty much over the ex, didn't think of her everyday, etc etc, but for some reason this feels like a setback. I feel a hint of jealousy, but mostly I just feel hurt because I've lost (yet another) friend for some reason that I'll never actually know.

Okay, this is a little trickier...it's always kind of a mindfuck when your ex moves on; my best friend pinpointed it once when I called with the same kind of "I was okay until I saw they'd met someone and then I was all depressed" complaint; she said "well, yeah, we always expect them to not get over US. They're supposed to just stay there and not date any more and we're the ones that move on from them." It's a very human thing to feel like it's hard to accept that your ex has also started moving on too.

However, in this case you can again look at the fact that the person your ex has moved on to is straight-up crazy; and if crazy is what she wants, then...okay, yeah, good luck with that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:05 PM on June 10, 2013 [23 favorites]

The fact that ex was involved makes me think that they're having a bad time, ex has badmouthed you in the way that most people do their exes, etc. So, ex called you, ex's new girl found out that she'd called you, and ex's story is that actually she was just calling to tell you to leave her alone! Because you're crazy! Yeah! Don't believe that crazy chick who might say that I called and said I missed her!

In other words, this is so not your problem. Stop speaking to either of them.
posted by Sequence at 10:13 PM on June 10, 2013 [10 favorites]

The girlfriend doesn't need a reason to be crazy. But your ex isn't doing anything to mitigate it. Time to move on.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:34 PM on June 10, 2013

1. The new girlfriend is a bit of a nut job. Stay completely away from her.
2. Your ex is cheating on her with you (emotionally) and refusing to own up to it with her. Stay completely away.
posted by SLC Mom at 10:35 PM on June 10, 2013 [5 favorites]

Has it occurred to you that your ex's new girlfriend overheard her telling you that she misses you and then saw your text to her and now she's convinced she's lost your ex back to you?

Seriously, you need to cut off all ties here. Your ex is out of line.
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 10:35 PM on June 10, 2013 [4 favorites]

Block this nutter on all comms channels. And stop talking to your ex, because she's exposing you to this nutter.

You can't understand crazy. That's why it's crazy.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 10:36 PM on June 10, 2013 [8 favorites]

There is simply no reason to have contact with either of them anymore.

Whatever you do, do not contact them to tell them you're cutting them out or anything. Just ignore.
posted by Ironmouth at 10:41 PM on June 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Yup, block the crazy chick. Doesn't matter whether she is jealous crazy or overprotective crazy or just plain crazy, you don't need that. Don't speak to your ex anymore either, she has now been tainted by crazy chick and any contact will only increase the drama and the overall craziness level.

What did you do? Nothing. I hate to say it, but it has been my experience that there's a lot of us women-loving-women who tend towards the drama. (Not me, nope never. Uh-uh. No way.) Spend approximately 2 more minutes feeling sorry for your ex for getting caught up in the new girl's crazy drama, shrug and move on. It's her loss, her problem, not yours.
posted by Athanassiel at 10:42 PM on June 10, 2013

“She said I'm a psycho and making the story up and if my dog did pass I probably killed her”

I can't think of anything meaner that she could have said to you in that situation. Can you? Do you need to?
posted by oceanjesse at 11:12 PM on June 10, 2013 [6 favorites]

"My question is, what the heck motivates people to do something like this?"
I suspect some enhanced craziness is going on. What exactly it is I'm not sure but manic episode, bath salt type novel hallucinogens, meth, would be the beginnings of my speculation. Fortunately for you, you don't need to figure it out or try to solve it.

" And how do I just forget this and move on?"
You move on emotionally, by accepting. Accepting includes being OK with not knowing exactly what happened. The forgetting or at least the not running mental scenarios about what occurred will follow. Don't engage in self talk where you say things like "I just got to know what happened". Its OK to not know. If you did find out you might well be wishing you hadn't. Its really OK that this is over.

"The thing of it is, this isn't the first time I've had someone make a dramatic exit from my life with no explanation given. I feel like it's something I did wrong, but what?" Happens to a lot of us. No reason you should think you are a cause. Unless it has something to do with how you are meeting people, selecting people to be in your life. People have told me before that they'd lost ever relationship they ever had to a partners alcoholism. Talking to them about how that happens two things became important. They met all their partners in bars and they had a strong attraction to alcoholics. So the question becomes, do you have a special attraction to people prone to make dramatic exits?
posted by logonym at 11:50 PM on June 10, 2013 [5 favorites]

I've seen this type of shitty behavior in my friends' circles.
I think it's likeliest a combination of anxiety about establishing oneself in the new "spot", and a strong turf-defending reflex, in people who have not fully understood that relationships begin and end without anyone necessarily being "the bad one."

The last bit here is crucial: it invites these people to make use of the situation as a free zone for unedited assholery, because they can construe the exe's ex (you in this case) in any negative way they want, while not having any emotional attachment to that person. To a random voice on the phone that they have decided they are "allowed" to hate, they can be just as nasty as their little minds dictate them.

So. That's my explanation and attempt at answering the first part of what you're asking. The second part: what I described is not merely an individual phenomenon that has to do specifically with you, your ex, nor that new person. It's a mechanism triggered by a given set of circumstances. It makes that certain characters feel free to act in not-so-hot patterns.
The way to move on is to realize that people who fall into the described assholery trap are unlikely to have any edifying function in your own life other than that they teach you to avoid them. Don't waste time on them.
posted by Namlit at 12:11 AM on June 11, 2013 [2 favorites]

This completely sucks and I'm sorry you have to deal with it in any way but this sounds like one of those trumpet blasts from the universe that just lights up the sky with how damn LUCKY and SMART you are to be well away from that big pile of crazy over there. The bright side is that the crazy exes in our lives, once out of them, make the most amusing and illustrative stories later. So there's always that.

I'm also so sorry for the loss of your dog. The local SPCA had a support group I went to once when I was dealing with a pet's death and that helped a surprising amount. Far more than being accused of making it up or murdering him would have.

Hang tough. People are crazy but with some distance, it's all so entertaining.
posted by janey47 at 1:29 AM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

When I look back at your past questions, this seems to have been a pretty high-drama, lots-of-wrong-on-both-sides relationship. And you're in your late teens/early twenties, right? These two facts together suggest several things to me:

1. You don't have quite enough data to say that it is "something you are doing", both because you're still comparatively young and because, IMO, everyone gets a drama waiver for their teens since folks are just figuring things out.

2. Your ex seems like a pretty drama-prone person coming off of a fairly high-drama relationship. She has chosen someone else who is also high-drama. And some of the things you describe about your past relationship (assuming this is the same one) could be spun rather negatively to a new person. Your ex could easily be describing the drama-and-wrongs of your past relationship as stemming exclusively from you, thus giving new girl an exaggerated idea of your character.

3. Your ex could also have some pretty bad memories of that relationship, based on what you described. She could be processing these and freaking out a little bit and that's why she's letting new girl have all this crazy contact with you. It's perfectly possible for two youngish people to have a high-drama-mutual-fault relationship which is none the less pretty hard to process for one of them afterward - not because any one person was more at fault but just because one person has more trouble processing stuff like that.

Basically, this sounds like the blowback from a rocky relationship and rocky break-up - not your fault, not something to beat yourself up over, but also a reminder to avoid all that stuff in the future.

My suggestion: obviously, block this girl and don't worry about it, but also think through what led to all the drama with your ex. Visualize what it would be like to have a good relationship with a kind, stable person - what would that person be like? how would you interact? what would you do together? This will help you work towards that better relationship and keep focused on the future.

Again, in my experience having a couple of early relationships which are all kinds of godawful does not mean that you won't move through those and have good ones in the future.
posted by Frowner at 5:25 AM on June 11, 2013 [6 favorites]

Your ex likely felt guilty that she was speaking to you, so she told her new girlfriend. New girlfriend went overboard and sent you the warning when you tried to contact her. Your ex likely felt she couldn't say anything to stop it because if she defended you, then she's making it look worse to her new girlfriend.

But it ultimately doesn't matter. Your ex is your ex and you can no longer be friends. She made this choice when she allowed this to happen. Disengage. Do not contact. Do not respond. You don't need this.
posted by inturnaround at 5:43 AM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Well, it turns out your ex kind of sucks after all. The nice thing about learning this after you've already broken up is now you don't have to worry about dumping her. I would just shut down all communication with her -- the fact that she couldn't try to talk down the new girlfriend's crazy rhetoric is clue enough that your ex sucks. Maybe she's lonely or desperate or something, but that doesn't mean she should be allowing this drama and fight-instigating. I know lesbians have a reputation for staying friends with their exes, but that's not always going to work out and sometimes it's a bad idea. It's clearly a bad idea in this case. Just completely disengage.
posted by AppleTurnover at 6:14 AM on June 11, 2013

Block your ex, and be happy that you're well out of the drama and the crazy.

You are never going to understand why your ex is attracted to a nut-job like this, and you're never going to understand the nut-job.

Normal people are often befuddled with crazy-pants situations.

Thank your lucky stars, and move on.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 6:18 AM on June 11, 2013

So, this is the same ex from your other questions, right? In addition to what everyone else has said above, what has happened is that this conflict is making her feel loved and wanted. So, in both overt and subtle ways, she is encouraging this behavior. I imagine she talks about you often, even if all she's saying is "I wish Autumn would stop calling me, I'm so over her!" She's dropping hints to get new crazy girlfriend upset so she can watch her go nuts and savor the evidence that someone cares.

I know this because I did the exact same thing in my early twenties. I did it because I was insecure and needed endless affirmation. Partner jealousy is a great for the ego.

Also, even if you guys were straight right now I'd be calling dyke drama. Seriously, it's like this new girlfriend watched every horrible teen lesbian movie and L Word episode from the last two decades and is reenacting the script verbatim.
posted by Lieber Frau at 8:19 AM on June 11, 2013 [4 favorites]

Considering only your welfare, you should turn away from these two and never look back.

However, their relationship is extremely likely to turn abusive if it hasn't already, and your ex could-- probably will, in my opinion-- end up desperately needing any help she can find to get away from this person.

When that time comes, a police report filed by you now and detailing the threats the new girlfriend made against you could prove invaluable to your ex if she needs to get a restraining order, for example.

Your ex sounds like a weak and dependent person who seeks out stronger people as partners, and such weak people rarely have the strength to confront their mates when they want to break up and often simply abscond.

That you've been left standing before this may mean such weak personalities are drawn to you, or you to them, or both.
posted by jamjam at 11:40 AM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

So sorry about your dog. But re your Ex and the crazy girlfriend, you dodged a bullet. They're both nuts, and you are lucky that the new woman showed her true colours early on so you can stay away from the drama and angst.

You did nothing wrong. Now is the time to walk away and find some people who can appreciate you.
posted by rpfields at 3:08 PM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Er... not to dig too deeply into your previous questions, but...

You once mentioned, "I was feeling suicidal at one point and poured myself a glass of antifreeze in front of her. Then I picked up a knife and put it to my wrist."

If this is the same girlfriend you did that to, even though it may have been part of a larger pattern of bad behavior on both of your parts in that relationship, it's... not unexpected that the stories she tells her current girlfriend don't paint you in a very good light. So the girlfriend is probably only hearing part of the story (which details some quite scary behavior) and is primed to think poorly of you.

You will not win this battle, and really should just cut all contact with the ex.
posted by MsMolly at 11:31 AM on June 13, 2013 [2 favorites]