Under normal circumstances there’s nothing wrong with staying in contact with your ex.
They were the person closest to you for some time and even if you’ve decided that romantically you’re not a good match, you may still be good for each other in a different way.
Things are quite different though when you’ve been dating someone who abused you.
What is no contact?
No contact means ceasing all kinds of communication by any means - in person or digitally - with someone.
Why is this necessary?
You may think the abuse is now over, they will move on, and this will all become a distant memory. However, abusive people function in quite different ways. They lack the emotional maturity to understand that a break up is part of life and the next step is to find a way to heal, learn from their mistakes and potentially find love again. What they feel is that their ego is hurt and you are the person who caused that. They want to go back to the state of pleasure - and their pleasure comes from drama, volatility, and keeping you as close as possible, sucking all your emotional energy by any means.
Here are a few things your abusive ex may do:
Hoover you. That’s trying to pull you back to the drama by various techniques including love-bombing and empty promises.
Start a smear campaign against you. That’s them trying to “win” the break up. Again, they have a very fragile ego and poor self-image. They do not like themselves, and they’re scared of other people finding out about who they truly are. This is why it’s very possible they’ll say you are “crazy” - because then you will lose all your credibility. To make sure no one believes that they abused you, they may try to emotionally manipulate your friends and family by sending “nice” messages. Of course, these will just seem weird to your friends and families. Why would they be in touch, it’s not like they were friends. That’s because what they’re trying to do is portray themselves as “nice guys” - then someone “so nice” would never abuse someone.
Stalk you to either keep the relationship going or to instil fear in you. Read stats on stalking in the UK here.
Use you to triangulate others. They could be making their new partner jealous by exaggerating the closeness between you two.
Maintaining contact with an abuser will make it impossible to heal and move on. To heal you need kindness, stability, safety; they can only provide cruelty, chaos and danger. Going no contact is the only way to protect yourself.
How do you go no contact?
You may think that asking them to give you space or ignoring their messages will do the trick, but no. Remember, abusers do not respect people’s boundaries. They did not give a damn about your needs when you were together, they won’t suddenly develop empathy and a conscience now.
Abusers respond to consequences, not pleas.
First of all, try to contain your anger if they bombard you. Replying with anger will only fuel them to disturb you more. These people crave attention - even if it’s negative. Your emotional outbursts, even if appropriate, will only feed their “tale” that you’re unstable.
As long as you see signs of them not getting the message and continuing communication, you have to block them from every digital outlet including blocking their number. You do not owe them an explanation. On most email platforms you can’t block someone - instead you need to add a filter that deletes or moves their emails to spam. I also added an automatic reply “Your email has now been deleted”.
Avoid circumstances that would bring you in their presence. This will cause a disturbance to your routines, and may lead to very reasonable anger - why would you need to change your life for them? This will all be worth it later on when they will leave you alone.
If the harassment escalates, remember to document everything by screenshots or photos so you have evidence to build a legal case against them.
Isn’t this like ‘silent treatment’, and therefore unkind?
This is the lie they will tell you to guilt-trip you.
Having unhealthy boundaries is more common than the other way round. So it’s very possible that you’ve been taught to please, put your needs second and maintain a pleasant environment. Keep mummy and daddy happy. Keep your teachers happy. Keep everyone else happy but you.
This is called being compliant; you ignore your needs and desires to please everyone else around you. Your radar for what is good or bad for you is off. Being nice does not mean allowing everyone in your life. We simply cannot allow everyone in our lives and we need to choose who suits the life we want to lead. If you allow harmful people in, that’s because you’re afraid of the consequences of establishing boundaries with them. Having someone yell at you, diminish you, or even hate you.
The first person you hold a responsibility towards is yourself. You first need to protect yourself. You first need to take care of your needs. You first need to show compassion to yourself.
To do that, you have to keep away the people that will harm you at every chance they get. This is self-compassion and not an act of hate towards someone.
Imagine that someone kept pushing you. Wouldn’t you move away to protect your body? Why would protecting our emotions be less important?
Abusers will try to call you unkind, mean, a bitch. They know that the last thing you want is to be a bad person. Remember that you’re not harming anyone; you’re a good person practicing self-compassion and self-defence. You’re setting your boundaries, and boundaries do not hurt people, they only cause discomfort to those who want to take and ruin what’s not theirs.
You’re choosing love when you take a step away from people that destroy love, and that’s good company to be in.