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Hi,

I wrote an update to this previous thread of mine https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=227113.0 but I then thought that I had better start another topic as the dynamic has shifted somewhat. It has become some sort of weird power struggle.

Brief background: My uBPDxbf has avoided me for more than a year since the breakup and has been angry with me ever since. Initially I went NC for 4 months and then there was some necessary contact and then I tried to reach out and make peace a couple of times. He told me to not contact him anymore or even say "hi" if I bump into him but then recently he has started to appear where I go for instance at this dance course. Mainly my crowd but our social circles overlap a little. The first time I saw him there I went home to not cause an upset and texted him to let him know and ask how he thought we could co-exist since he has told me to not even greet him if I see him out. No response so I wanted to make sure he'd be prepared and hopefully stay away.

Update: I texted him simply saying that I have no idea why he is angry and then letting him know that I will not pretend to not know him. I will say "hi" and he can respond if he wants to and then clarifying that I will not leave again should he be there. I felt certain he wouldn't want to expose himself to that and it felt good to be able to just have a fun time and not worry about him.

So what happens... . he turns up with a couple of people, that didn't participate in the course themselves but were just spectators, and it was obvious they were there as his support or whatever because they kept looking over at me. He stayed with them to begin with but when it seemed he could be in a different group from me he joined in but then they switched groups and we had to interact with each other. I said "hi" and he blanked me. And when we had to interact one on one and this is a dance thing so you have to hold each other he was quite rough with me and jerked me around a little. I said nothing.

In fact I was fine and all in all it didn't bother me that much apart from one incident where we were waiting for instructions and we had ended up as partners and he just left to go and stand on the other side of the group. So I said to him, using his first name, and in a very friendly tone, that he was supposed to stand next to me. He replied that he changed partners - though there was nobody available there as we were even couples - and I asked why. He didn't respond. All this in front of the other people in our group.

I felt OK during the course although coming home in the evening I felt so so sad. I am not sure he will want to subject himself to that again, but if so, what should I do? It's not OK for him to disrupt this course. It is open to anybody but if there you obviously can't single people out and refuse to interact with them and more importantly you can't manhandle your dance partner.

I just want things to be OK and for us to be able to function around each other and I have no idea why he is doing this. Did he come to deliberately upset me? And if it really is only to dance, should he not also want to be able to co-exist? And why is he still so angry? Does he want me to still have feelings for him and is angry that it seems I don't or does he want me to simply not exist? Or is this just some BPD paradox... .

It seems likely this situation will repeat itself and I want to have some kind of strategy.

I understand that I am split black to him, and I understand that my trying to resolve this in my texts must have been triggering to him and invalidating because basically he has a distorted view of reality (what I have done, what I am doing, my reasons for doing it etc). So is there anyway I can defuse all this, by using SET for instance, to make the situation less threatening to him so that we can both be there? Or do you think his whole reason for going is to mess with me?

Anybody has any advice for me?

Hi, miiti. I'll take a stab only because I remember your posts from a time when you were in a relationship with this fellow.

If I remember correctly, the relationship was a bit ill defined even then. (Like maybe he wouldn't declare you publicly as his partner, at least in some situations.) You may be able to count on him only for more confusion and ambiguity.   

So I think all clarity and boundaries are going to have to come straight from you. I personally wouldn't talk to him, talk to his friends, or even worry about times when you will encounter him until those times are upon you.

I confess that I do not understand this last encounter that you described. Were you somehow, literally, his dance partner or something? Probably not, because that would be one crazy "dance" indeed.

Have you moved on emotionally in your life yet? Any new guy in the picture? . . . . I think a strong new life is what you will need to put your ex truly in the past.

I just wanted to say, further, that your ex may have gotten something like a feeling of power from the relationship you two once had, and he may be missing that sensation now in his life. Unless you really are "undecided" about this relationship (and maybe you are), then this is a great opportunity for you to take back your power and freedom.

Hi KateCat and thanks for your response,

Yes, about halfway into the r/s he started triangulating me with this new abusive and controlling friend of his and after we got back after a long break he had problems admitting to his friend that he was back with me. This friend is the reason why I left him.


Yes it must sound like a crazy scene to dance with a man who has declared he wants nothing to do with me and who then turns up at a dance where he knows he will have to be doing just that. That's what's so crazy about this... .

This is a ring dance (Rueda) so you switch partners. You have to dance with everybody and if one person refuses he ruins it for everybody because all the people in the ring are dependent on each other person. So you can imagine how bizarre it is that he deliberately puts himself in such a situation but refuses to be civil.

I never imagined he would turn up at this course because it is organised by people I know. But I am also making new friends there (not friends of his) so this is an important thing for me as I am now having my life back. We have some mutual friends and so there could be lots of scenarios where this could end up weird and uncomfortable. Pretending he is nobody at all could be even more uncomfortable for me, and others, and in the long run I would prefer, if he is going to insist on going, that we can co-exist there.


This group of people is part of that, moving on. I used to consider moving away but I have a very good job and I don't want to give him the power over whether I stay or leave.

I have dated some, but so far I haven't met anybody that I have any deeper feelings for. Funnily enough there was another man at the course that I have never seen before that was quite nice. :)


But I have no idea what it would mean to take back my power and freedom in the situation at this course. I don't want to leave. I have more friends there than him, I know the organizers and this is something I enjoy doing. I guess my strategy was that if he behaved disrespectfully to me in front of others to call him on it, like when he left me standing there without a partner. It was awkward for me but it must have been uncomfortable for him also.

I am undecided as in that I want to make peace and not have this “weird argument” between us, especially if we are now going to be at the same events where we have to interact with each other. I am not angry with him at all anymore and that is freedom for me.

OK, I think I really get it. And it sounds as though you are doing just about all the right things. Good for you. |iiii

I think you'll bring this all to a good conclusion if you can be really strong now and not try to "control" him at all. (I know you're not trying to control him or anything, but there does indeed seem to be some power struggle going on in his mind, so you are not quite free of it all yet.) Hard as it is, if you can avoid personalizing it and endure the immediate embarrassment of his strange behaviors, you can overcome this I think.

Will a dance instructor or someone else step in and ask him to leave if his behavior is disruptive enough to the group?

(ADDED: If he proceeds to clear stalking behavior--and maybe he won't--you might take the legal route that a number of forum members have taken. First step might be a letter from an attorney requesting he stay away. After that, a visit by you to the local courthouse asking a civil judge for a restraining order, requiring him to stay a certain number of feet away from you, etc. If you do this, he will either have to comply with the order or actually show up in front of a judge to explain his actions. Either way, I think you would win, as it sounds as though you have truly moved on from this relationship.)

Could it possibly be as simple as the fact that he is trying to impress his friends by a public show of how much you are still pining for him?   

Thanks KateCat, and that makes sense. He hates feeling somebody is trying to control him. I will try and remain objective and not take this personally, or if I do, at least from an angle that "wow, I am this important to him" lol

Yes, if he disrupted the class for others they would ask him to leave, but I doubt he would go that far. I have never seen him cause a scene. He is avoidant and passive aggressive, so there would never be anything for me to put my finger on. I am not worried at all that he would take this so far that I would have to seek legal advice.

I don't think he is trying to impress his friends. I think he is still angry with me that I left him, although it's not that simple of course. The terms of our r/s (his terms) were just not acceptable to me any longer and he would not discuss it even. So when he had a tantrum over it one day and told me he no longer wanted to talk to me again, like he had done so many times before and never meant it, I decided to treat it like a breakup and I actually believe this is why he is so angry with me. He had got used to my always fixing the r/s and this time I handed over the responsibility to him.

mitti, his behavior at this particular time seems so different than the BPD-ex behaviors usually described here! (And I'm not saying he's not BPD or anything. Just an unusual version.) I think you are doing just as well as is possible under these odd circumstances. Keep up the good work.

Do you think so? In what sense?

I would have thought this behavior would be quite typical BPD, with the punishing, with having me painted black for over a year and still feeling it somehow is worth his while to deliberately disrupt my world, with the refusing to address, messed up boundaries... .

Sorry not to be more clear. What I've (I think) never heard described on this forum is a male borderline ex who shows up in a public venue to make the type of scene I think you're describing. Lots of guys report female exes popping up at their gym, their fun runs, and so on, often making displays of new boyfriends they have brought with them. Yours is the only description of a man doing this that I can immediately recall.

(Hi KateCat!  Hi Mitti!)

This behavior makes sense to me actually -- maps onto a number of BPD male reactions we see a lot.  He is being super passive aggressive.  He is angry but not in the going-away sense -- he is focused on Mitti.  He's mad at her for the reasons she stated (she changed the rules, didn't fix this for him, accepted his rejection when he blew up at her when she tried to enforce a boundary).  In a way this is a super prolonged extinction burst.  A year of silent treatment didn't do it (bring her to the point of apologizing for having messed everything up) so now he's provoking uncomfortable contact, thinking at some point she is going to have to approach him to work this out.  To ask why he's so upset.

I think he wants her to show she cares that he is so upset.  That just crystalized.

My ex acts similarly.  When due to some blow up by him, we have split or are not in contact (this has happened several times) -- basically because I believe what he says about being done -- it turns out later that he was preoccupied during the time apart because he didn't really want to be apart but he didn't know what to do about it.  Calling or writing and saying "wait a minute, I regret what I said, can we try again" seems utterly beyond anything he would consider doing.  He cannot initiate this process whether due to fear of rejection or otherwise.  So what he needs is for me to take some sort of reconciliation step.

I'm in a similar position now to Mitti -- I haven't been willing to make that reconciliation gesture this time, because the terms of the r/s he was offering don't work for me (much as Mitti said about her story).  So we may never communicate meaningfully again.

But yes, my analysis is that he needs to be in control of the rejection cycle: he is kicking things up to a new level trying to get her to be the one to initiate a "this sucks, what would we need to do to fix it" conversation.  Then he can regain control by rejecting the offer again or setting terms that will probably be unappealing.

Nice analysis, patientandclear.

I see what you mean now. He actually, in a fit of anger, threatened to do exactly that a couple of times.


Thank you so much Patientandclear,

You just explained to me something that I hadn't figured out but it makes total sense now. He is not really angry about what I am doing now, he is still upset about what I didn't do then and whatever I do now just seems to aggravate the situation. Do you think that is actually what he wants, for me to continue to attempt to contact him, because by making it uncomfortable for me he feels in control?

It's not by making it uncomfortable for you that he regains a sense of control. I don't think he feels in control at all right now. I think he is trying to get you to do something. Especially, express that you still care in some way. Say that you want him not to be unpleasant to you. Say how sad you are it has come to this.

The key point though is that after you do that -- which will soothe a hurt place for him -- he will then be positioned to reject you. To say you care too much about what he thinks. You are still hung up on him and he pitied you for that. Whatever. He just needs you to say you care first, in some fashion, and then he can reject or scapegoat your caring.

Thanks P&C,

Yes, it's probably true that he doesn't feel in control, and that is why he is going to such ridiculous lengths to upset me. Although it makes total sense that he is trying to provoke some reaction from me, it also feels strange as he has so clearly expressed to me in a text a few weeks ago that he never wants to hear from me again. I guess he has no plan but that it really is only about regaining some control.

He used to tell me that he liked for me to pursue him, when he was giving me the silent treatment, so that he could reject me. Even though he actually wanted me back he could not bring himself to respond.

The other thing of course is that I have told him all those things. About 8 months ago I wrote to him expressing how much he had meant to me, that I felt sad that it had come to this and that I wished him all the best. I have owned my part, I have forgiven him, even told him there's nothing to forgive, I have let him know it's ok to contact me should he want to. He must know there's nothing more I can tell him now.

I have no idea how to change this dynamic at the dance. The way I see it there can only be two solutions: either he stops going (or I do but I won't) or he will have to start treating me like he does the other people there. How could he keep this up, people will notice and a smear campaign won't work since I know more people there. What ought to bring him around to being civil the fastest - that I continue to say "hi" and ignore that he is rude or change and ignore him? If I choose the latter that will change what he is counting on, my saying hello to him and doing what I have told him I was going to do. I don't particularly want to behave that way but I have felt pretty bad this week and I want this to be resolved asap.

I went to the class today and it was just as weird as the last time. He had a woman with him, one of the same two people as last time. She didn't dance but was filming really odd sequences of the first part of the dance, which is a very very basic course. I only saw it because I was a little early. I am surprised he participated in that because he has been dancing for a few years and really doesn't need it. She might but she was filming it... . ? People usually film technically difficult parts to watch later and remember but this.

I don't know if she saw me approaching of course but I was wondering if perhaps she might have been filming me. I know I must sound paranoid but the whole thing is so odd I have no idea what to think. I actually went up to wait right next to her because that was the only place where I wouldn't be caught on camera.

I wasn't planning on taking the first class but they were one girl short so I was asked to join in. My x then left the ring. They came back about 20 mins later because it started raining to pick up the car so presumably he had planned on coming back to the course.

When they drove off I felt quite shaken up, like last week and I didn't stay long after they had left. This thing is proving very difficult for me to cope with and I am not sure I can handle it. His insisting on being there, with some woman who doesn't dance, refusing to acknowledge my existence. I feel like I am falling apart. I am not sure what is happening with me. 

Mitti, a few thoughts. In answer to the second to last post, about why he is doing this having instructed you to back off ... . I think you are overlooking that incredibly valuable intelligence you got from him in therapy, about how when you were split up, he wanted you to reach out SO HE COULD REJECT YOU. So it all works in the same direction. He tells you to back off=he is rejecting you=valuable. But if he can maneuver so you have to show you care in some way=he can reject you=valuable. So he can WANT you to make some show of caring, even if what he would do then is rejecting and humiliating for you. That doesn't mean he doesn't want you to ask.

On what to do about the class ... . It seems likely he'll stop attending if you do, doesn't it? I know that seems like letting him win a power struggle, but if you can't have fun as you intended while he's there, and this becomes a preoccupying theme of those nights, why not skip it for a few sessions and then go back?

If you were me, you'd have very mixed feelings about all this :) You've cared so deeply about this man and suddenly he's presenting himself as (albeit weirdly) preoccupied with you.

I think the problem for you is that his agenda at this time may be primarily about control and making you uncomfortable so you have to engage with him.  I'm not sure what the road would be from here to a reconciliation if you wanted that. I'm wondering what your deepest hopes are about this situation at this point.

This is true but I still find it strange as he has avoided me for so long and now, although seemingly bothered by it (he left the ring today), insists on being at the same dance course as me. It feels as though he wants to outmaneuver me from there. Yes absolutely, it is valuable to him to be able to reject me when given a chance but I am not so sure he wants me to ask. Or it may just be that this has been going on for so long. I feel confused.


Not sure if he would stop going if I did... . The first time I saw him there, when I went home, he was there first. I never used to go which he doesn't know but neither did he because he doesn't really know anybody there except for a few people. I have danced for many years but started dancing with these people this winter and he never attended then. Also the whole thing is arranged by people I know since years back, and that he knows.

I am wondering if it may be a territorial thing also, so if I didn't go he would start to network around these people... . I have been considering writing to him and just spell it out plainly what he is doing to me and just admit that I am finding it extremely uncomfortable and if he can't find a way to communicate and interact with me there then I see no other way but to ask the organizers how they think I should best resolve this situation. Not sure how he would respond although it is safe to assume it would piss him off to no end. It may get him to see that he can't possibly gain anything from being accused of being a bully.


I am having very mixed feelings about it all. Seeing him there after such a long time of NC was hard and brought a lot of emotions back. Since last week I have felt pretty bad and today I was really hoping that he wouldn't be there. I am having such a hard time seeing that he is actually wanting me to engage with him. I am not sure what I am hoping for or what is even possible, mostly in terms of my ability to get past all that has happened. But I know this, that apart from having him treat me with respect, I would like to have a conversation with him.

Full stop.

firstly i wanted to mention that although my avatar is the same as patientandclear that i am a different person (name's goldy, goldylamont :)) just didn't want you to get confused.

secondly, patientandclear is so spot on with her analyses. this guy wants to get under your skin, get a reaction from you so that he can have the pleasure of rejecting you again. to feed his ego or need for drama.

thirdly, i want to congratulate you on how well you've handled things thus far. you seem to have a healthy amount of detachment, you're thoughtful and connected to your common sense.

what worries me (and i think should be of concern for you) is your last sentence--that you want to have a conversation with him. any single one of us would love to have a decent conversation with our exes, i feel the same. but as we all know he's not interested in having a decent conversation, he's only interested in hurting you in some way to make himself feel better. the moment you give into this (understandable) urge, you will feel even more horrible when he turns the table with whatever rejection he's waiting to give.

mitti, it sounds like you are well established in this class. you have more friends in the class than he and are more involved for your own healthy reasons. if leaving the class seems ok to you, then, ok. but honestly i think you should think about staying. i'm saying this because you seem to be pretty solid with your detachment and also you have a strong foothold here. if i were you i would start from the top and bring everything to light. first talk to the class organizers/instructors--let them know your ex recently started taking the class. and mention it to your friends in the class. you don't have to make a big deal about it, just let them know who he is and that it's a bit weird because you feel as if he's uncomfortable dancing with you. if you end up having to partner with him, let them know you won't only because you don't want to make him uncomfortable. if however, you enter the dance floor and then he leaves, then he's just acting like a little b**ch in my opinion, let him tuck tail and go and enjoy yourself. don't acknowledge him or initiate any conversation--you've tried this already so we know he's already wanting you to do this so he can be weirdo of the night. if he says hi to you, cool, say "hi" then ignore him. your stance of power is one of unconcerned detachment.

this all boils down to being able to deal with conflict. he's bringing conflict. and of course you don't want it and we wouldn't want to do something to stoke the fires. but honestly, at some point you have to have your limits. for me i reach a point where i will try and avoid conflict but once i reach a boundary then i just have to bring things to light and then let the person figure out for themselves if they still want to keep playing games. in my opinion the more people you tell in this group about the situation the better. you will want to be confident and of course let them know you aren't frazzled or worried about any outcome and this will put them at ease. manipulative people are able to operate because of secrecy so by just putting things out in the open it forces them to put up or shut up.

i'm a musician and like 1.5 years after our breakup my ex tried coming to an important show of mine. there were tons of friends there that used to be our mutual friends but really she only knew them because of me. my friend texted me telling me my ex wanted to come with her to the show--i could have tried to avoid all conflict and act like i was ok, but honestly i didn't want my ex there, especially with the pressure of performing. i knew her only purpose there would be to try and reclaim my friends, to spread more of her lies, or try to latch onto and sleep with some people i knew. so i told my friend that honestly i didn't want my ex there, that i suspected she would cause drama, but that also i would respect her decision and not hold anything against her if she decided to show up with her. luckily for me my friend just ignored my ex so she never showed up.

sometimes you have to hike up your leg and pee on that fire hydrant :-) thoughts... . ?

Hee hee Goldy.  Nice exhortation.  I'm not sure I know what the fire hydrant is in the metaphor but I love it! And also, it's nice to share the avatar with you.  "That's why I wear the short shorts."  (For our friends who are not cheetahs on BPDF, Goldy posted a You Tube link a while back showing a state patrol officer growling like a cheetah and saying "that's why I wear the short shorts."  It's the hardest I've laughed on BPDF.  Maybe we need more of that.)

OK, back to regularly scheduled programming!  To be clear about my real question: Mitti, from your posts from a ways back, my sense was that you wanted to reunite with your ex if possible, and if you could have some reasonable assurance about your boundary issue.  And at the time when you were trying to open the door for that, your ex was non-responsive.  This was what, 9 months ago or so?

So I'm wondering if you are actually as detached and gung ho about maintaining detachment as folks might glean from reading just this thread.  If you aren't, I think that may make it hard to take some of the advice here about how to shake off your ex's odd appearance at this class, which involves appearing indifferent, "outing" him as your ex to others in the class, and not responding to him.

Because if what you really want is engagement but on better terms than just before the split, that may call for other strategies.

Hi goldy,

Thanks for clarifying about the avatars, I never would have realised you are a different person from P & C otherwise. I always get confused when seeing another little kitty like mine – you'd think I know what I post myself, but no. 

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences and for some great input. And I know exactly what you mean and I feel the same, I don't really want my ex there with what has happened the last two times I went to this class. It's all so puzzling though. I know he wants to reject me to somehow soothe the pain of my not fixing this for him when we broke up. I understand he doesn't feel in control and it shows when he is there. He seems so uncomfortable in his own skin and downright fearful which makes it so much weirder that he insists on coming. I know for him to be avoidant which this isn't.

I have been thinking about this back and forth. I am feeling a little worried that I might be the one to come off as unreasonable or exaggerating. Sometimes I get the feeling that many people are more ready to believe that a woman would behave in this manner rather than a male and he has admitted in T that when we got back together after a break in 2011, he was - among his friends in his social circle - making me out to be his psycho girlfriend. I know I usually come across as a very independent person who has everything under control and isn't worried about a thing and that's not true at all of course but with him giving off these vibes of being insecure and anxious, it might be easier to accept that he is the victim.

The other thing is that there are usually more women than men at these classes and as it is a partner dance that puts women at a disadvantage, and so they might subconsciously be more inclined to take his side simply because he is more important to keep around than me. On the other hand I am starting to know these people and some I already know quite well. I guess I have been conditioned to feel that people around him would imagine things about our r/s.

I also like to keep my own personal life private and shame is one of the reasons why very few people know just how tricky our r/s was.  At the same time, if this continues I have to do something because this situation is unbearable for me. I thought it would not be so hard but it is.

I do not want to give this up. Dancing was a big part of my life before I met him and I had most of my social life through dancing. During my r/s with him I became isolated and lost friends. He is extremely jealous and even though he never said anything out loud, it was just so much easier to not go out, either with him or without him. The few of my friends he met he was a little off with. He assumes that people don't like him for no particular reason. Anway, I am now slowly taking all of that back so yes, this dance class is very important.


I have worked a lot with myself these past 6 months and I started feeling so much better and stronger but during that time I never saw him, I never ran into him (which is weird since he lives a 5-minute walk away from my house) we never spoke and he never answered any of my texts. Detaching is so much easier when NC. But all this time I have wanted to have a conversation with him, that is true also. And the other thing, and one that I was not prepared for, was how hard it would be to see him and to dance with him, to touch him. My emotions are a little all over the place and I am not sure what I want – truly – at this stage.


Haha, exactly, but what I am not sure about yet.  :)

You are right P & C that I wanted to reconcile if we could have come to some sort of agreement about this one boundary, an agreement that would feel acceptable to me. And after about 4 months of NC and then another 2 of some texts re stuff I tried to reach a place where he would consider meeting me to talk. He sent me a reply to a text in August of last year, very brief but friendly, but then refused to interact with me at all until May of this year when he told me he never wanted to hear from me again. For the most part I have not tried to communicate with him at all but I did send him some texts and one email, all friendly and validating.

Silent treatment is painful. This Spring I ended up calling his closest friend to ask why he was so angry and the conversation I had with her was not what I expected at all. She had wanted to talk to me since we broke up but hadn't my number. Long story short, she was very friendly, invited me to her house, told me he hadn't got over me and seemed to want us back together. After that conversation I sent him a couple of texts asking to see him to talk and this is what provoked the response from him in May. A month later I see him at the dance.

All this time though I have at the same time worked really hard at feeling better, at putting myself first, at forgiving and making peace with the world and I have dated and been open to meeting somebody else.

Talking to the friend made me feel there was a real chance to talk. It felt real in a way it hadn't before. But after his text to not even address him if I saw him out I had no idea what to believe. And then he started appearing at places where he is likely to bump into me and then seeing him at the class and dancing with him, yes, I feel very confused. Confused about my own feelings and confused about what he might be up to and confused about my options.

I still want to talk to him, but I have no idea what strategies might serve me better or whether this may even be a realistic hope.

Update: There have been some new developments and this new experience of being given the silent treatment right in my face is starting to feel quite difficult.

For now he has stopped going to the ring dance but I think this has less to do with me than a falling out with the people he brought with him. Instead I have seen him out at clubs and last week he turned up at one of my friend's dance classes. This is one of the few friends that know some of our backstory. In all fairness, my x can't have known I would be there because I have never been before although the instructor is a former dance partner of mine. But my x has also never been before.

This experience was a new kind of weird.

As soon as I saw him come in I walked up to him with a smile and suggested we greet each other if we attend the same classes. He didn't even look at me. As he went to pay for the class I walked up to him and my friend, the instructor, and reiterated my suggestion - twice. He then turned to me and smirked. That was the extent of the acknowledgement he would give me.

This particular dance is quite sensual with a lot of body contact and close up sensual moves. He had a partner with him but you always have to switch partners as there are hardly ever even couples. He knows this. So we are doing these body rolls chest to chest while he at the same time refuses to acknowledge me as a person. He interacted and laughed with other people there but just not with me.

This weekend I saw him out both days. One day at a dance place where basically none of his friends go because the play a different kind of music. But he was there by himself, not dancing very much but although I caught him looking at me, when he thought I wouldn't notice, he refused to look at me to say hi. I left him alone, didn't approach him in any way at all. I have seen him out other nights as well but this night was strange to me because having bumped into me a lot lately at various places, he must know this would be the sure place to find me.

I am finding this whole experience of such blatant silent treatment out in public among my friends and in my social circle quite difficult and keeping it together feels increasingly harder each time I see him. The last time this happened when he walked straight past me not even so much as looking at me although he passed so close I could touch him, I felt compelled to leave or I would have broken down. I have seen so much of him lately that I find myself wanting to see him.

I badly need some advice... .

New update: My former dance partner sent me an invite to a new school he has opened up with a friend and I went there last week and ended up having a really good time, good vibes, people that I knew and some people that I quickly became acquainted with. The class was filmed and put on Youtube and the FB group that former dance partner has. My ex is now in that group because he is attending the other weekly classes.

This week he turned up there also. Still refusing to greet me, but dancing together he seems to have calmed down a little but still not interacting with me. He is really trying to impress my friend and this bothers me because he at the same time is so adamant that he will show me I don't exist. It is abusive and it feels abusive. I feel powerless though this is done in public and even obvious to my friend.

My x turned up at the other classes as well and so it seems we will now regularly meet twice a week.

At the second classes this week though I found it impossible to not have it affect me. It has a very negative influence on how I interact with the rest of the people there. My mind is drifting, I feel easily irritated and nervous all the time.

After the class I decided to try and talk to him. He ignored me to begin with but I guess his anger towards me triggered him to answer back in the end. So he turns to me and says he will not treat me respectfully after all I have done to him. When I asked what that was that I had done he just said I had done lots of things to him. I asked him to specify telling him that all I could see, painful as that is, was that we broke up. He got more and more agitated raising his voice and swearing at me. I did argue back for a brief moment but then realized the futility and left.

I talked to my friend. He has said he will talk to my x but also that there is not much he can do. He wants me to just not think about it, not let it affect me but still come to the classes. I feel that I am being made the problem here solely because I am reacting to my x's abuse. I danced long before I met my x and only gave that up for him. Now I am taking it back and he is placing himself in my space and has even admitted that he is doing it to hurt me. I don't have a problem with his being there but I won't stand for this treatment anymore. His stance against me is really affecting me badly both mentally and physically.  To be on the receiving end of this treatment is so detrimental. It slowly eats away at your soul.

What can I do? I understand my friend doesn't want a conflict but it seems to me there already is one.

I will start a new thread about what to do since I am the only one writing in this one :)