What if she's too afraid/ashamed to reach out?

[Ichi]

Well, after 5 months of no contact and contemplating whether I should or shouldn't contact my ex, yesterday I was kind of 'forced' to contact her. Apparently she ordered something from a webshop and had it delivered to my address, which is very strange since she moved out to a new place 5 months ago and we've been no contact ever since. So either she accidentally gave the wrong address with her order, which I think is highly unlikely, or she did it deliberately to have an excuse to contact me or 'force' me to contact her. I actually think it's a deliberate action to force contact or have an excuse to drop by to pick up the parcel and see me.

I became anxious because although I've been hoping for months for contact and maybe to reconcile with her I felt very 'cornered' and I'm not sure I'm ready to see her just yet.

So I decided to forward the package to her new address and decided to send her a message to notify her. I purposely didn't wait for her to contact me first because since she's also received a notification that the parcel was delivered to my address I was afraid she'd suggest to drop by to pick it up or even worse decide to drop by unannounced. And besides that I thought it would be kind of awkward her knowing I received the parcel and me not notifying her. So I decided to send her the following message:

Hey ****, I received a parcel for you today from ****. Guess something went wrong ;-)

I forwarded it to your address, the track and trace code is: ****

I hope you're doing well :-)

I tried to keep the message neutral and to the point, but friendly enough to show the door is still open and I'm not mad at her.

However I'm still not sure if I made the right decision to forward the parcel instead of meeting her. Since I was still hoping for a reconciliation down the line this might have been a good opportunity to see her and talk to her and in a way it feels like I blew my chance. But on the other hand I feel like I'm not ready just yet to meet her and if she wants to meet me I want her to just be honest about it and not 'force' me.

Anyway, she didn't respond yesterday, but this morning she sent the following reply:

Thanks Ichi, yes apparently something went wrong :-/

I'm doing well, hope you're doing well too! :-)

So a pretty neutral reply, still can't figure out if it was an accident or a deliberate action, and if she was hoping for contact or not. Any opinions on this? Also I'm not sure if I should respond to her text and tell her I'm doing well too or leave it at this, keeping in mind I'm still hoping to keep the door open for a possible reconciliation in the future.

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[once removed]

i dont think you blew anything.

this was a short, professional/business like exchange. it didnt leave a lot of room for further interaction.

it would be chasing to then try to make more of it, after the fact.

if you want to talk to her, why not just do it, directly?

[Ichi]

this was a short, professional/business like exchange. it didnt leave a lot of room for further interaction.

Do you think I should have handled it differently, less professional and more upbeat and spontaneous?

it would be chasing to then try to make more of it, after the fact.

I haven't responded yet, still considering it. I was thinking just replying "Good to hear, I'm doing well too". Or do you think that's too much, too eager and I should not reply at all? I'm afraid if I don't reply she takes it as a rejection or like I don't care to answer her? I don't want to give her the feeling I 'closed the door in her face' when contact is finally established and it maybe took her some courage to reply to me. If the parcel delivery was a deliberate action to try to meet me maybe she was irritated or disappointed her plan failed?

if you want to talk to her, why not just do it, directly?

What do you mean by that?

[once removed]

Do you think I should have handled it differently, less professional and more upbeat and spontaneous?

that depends on what you want to achieve. one could try, but i dont think that returning her mail is much of a way in. id have handled it exactly the same way.

I'm afraid if I don't reply she takes it as a rejection or like I don't care to answer her? I don't want to give her the feeling I 'closed the door in her face' when contact is finally established and it maybe took her some courage to reply to me. If the parcel delivery was a deliberate action to try to meet me maybe she was irritated or disappointed her plan failed?

ichi, i just dont think shes giving it the same level of thought. you returned her package to her. you both said "hope youre doing well".

if it were her plan to have something deliberately delivered to you, the wrong person, in hopes that you would reach out to her, its a very convoluted and confusing plan, and it might cause her to rethink her planning.

What do you mean by that?

i mean if you want to talk to her, then talk to her. send her a text and ask how shes doing. i would wait a few days, and not use the package as the way in; "good to hear, im doing well too" is not a way in, it doesnt give her anything to respond to.

[Ichi]

i mean if you want to talk to her, then talk to her. send her a text and ask how shes doing. i would wait a few days, and not use the package as the way in; "good to hear, im doing well too" is not a way in, it doesnt give her anything to respond to.

Doesn't that kind of go against your earlier advice to not 'intrude' in her new relationship? And I'm still not sure if she's open to any real conversation and in what mindset she's in. I mean at least she responded to my message, but it was pretty neutral and not really something I could gauge her feelings with. I don't want to give her the impression I'm chasing her. Also, I think it would be weird to ask her how she's doing since I already did and she already responded to that.

I know it makes no sense but I keep overanalyzing her short reply and everytime I read something different in it because it's so neutral. She says she's doing well but one moment I'm convinced she's just saying so and she's not really happy at all and 10 seconds later I'm convinced she's perfectly happy and everything's going great for her. It just doesn't give me anything to work with or how she's really feeling.

And to be honest, although I would really like to talk to her, maybe I'm afraid of the outcome of the conversation. I'm not sure if I could handle her talking about her new relationship, how happy she is and that she maybe totally moved on and fully closed the chapter of us.

Before the parcel issue I had kind of hoped that our first conversation after no contact would have at least given me some more clarity, but I'm not any wiser now.

[once removed]

Doesn't that kind of go against your earlier advice to not 'intrude' in her new relationship?

im not telling you to send her a message. im telling you that if youre going to send her a message, be straight up.

I know it makes no sense but I keep overanalyzing her short reply

it was a warm reply, directly proportionate with what you sent her. "im doing well, how are you?". "im doing well, hope you are too". it was exactly what was called for.

Before the parcel issue I had kind of hoped that our first conversation after no contact would have at least given me some more clarity, but I'm not any wiser now.

Ichi, i want to get across that i was a hardcore ruminator. every direct interaction, every indirect interaction.

this was an exchange that would only tell you the most obvious things about the exchange. i got your package, here you are, hope youre doing well. thank you, i am, hope you are too. theres really no more to read into it, or less to read into it. very professional, very business like. at most, you can read into it that she has positive feelings toward you and sees you as a nice guy. thats not a bad thing, and its something you can work with. but you have to put that into the context of the fact that shes been with this guy for 5ish months. its not a question of intruding. you cant compete with a new relationship in its honeymoon period, no one can, it is what it is and its something that has to play out.

its not an exchange i would try to build on, whether i was you, or her. it was a positive exchange. you have that going for you, and that has value.

[Ichi]

Thanks once removed, your post helped me to put things into perspective somewhat. I decided not to respond to her reply as, like you said, it wouldn't give her much to reply to anyway and it isn't something to really build on.

Haven't heard from her after that. However, 2 days after the parcel issue my niece, who is a really close friend of mine and also got along well with my ex, told me that my ex's father had sent her a friend request on Facebook. Which is really strange since they hardly know each other, only seen each other once years ago, and I can't come up with a reason why he would want to contact her. She didn't accept the request, however I'm wondering about all of this. First the parcel thing, then the friend request. It could all just be a coincidence, but I really doubt it to be honest.

My brother came up with the following possible scenarios, which I think are kinda interesting:

1) He thinks either my ex actually isn't really doing that well, hence the possible deliberate parcel delivery as an excuse to meet me and talk to me in person, which failed. Then she started to have doubts whether I was avoiding her or willing to see her at all. She talked about this with her father and since she was afraid to ask me about this directly or check with someone close to me herself, for the fear of being rejected, she asked her father to contact a close friend of mine about her wellbeing and to check about my current mindset towards my ex.

2) Or, he thought, maybe my ex planned the possible deliberate parcel delivery as an excuse to meet me and talk to me in person in the hope to just catch up as 'friends', since she mentioned at the breakup that she didn't want to lose me. This plan failed. Then she started to have doubts whether I was avoiding her or willing to see her at all or maybe even started worrying about my wellbeing since I didn't reply to her about how I was doing. She talked about this with her father and since she was afraid to ask me about this directly or check with someone close to me herself, she asked her father to contact a close friend of mine to check about my current mindset towards my ex or about my wellbeing and how I'm doing.

Don't worry though, It's not that I'm driving myself crazy about this, just thought they were interesting scenarios. It still could be all a coincidence, but strange it is...