When your ex starts dating the person they told you not to worry about, it’s a clear sign that your ex’s feelings have grown since your ex assured you that he or she had no intention of dating this person. It’s a sign that your ex kept getting closer to this person, crossed the friendship line, and developed emotional and sexual cravings.
Due to increased communication and bonding, your ex “forgot” about his or her promises to you and decided to explore things with this person. It was only a matter of time because they fell in love and developed romantic expectations.
Your ex was probably honest when he or she told you not to worry. But because your ex and the person in question stayed in touch and kept bonding, their attraction soon grew into infatuation. They developed strong desires to connect intimately and wanted to be together.
That was when you noticed your hunch was right and that they bonded behind your back.
Suddenly, your ex no longer cared about the things he or she told you. The feelings he or she had for this person were too strong to resist. Not only was resisting them tough, but resisting them also didn’t feel right to your ex.
It was too late for your ex to do anything about them because your ex’s brain was already wired to want validation. It was starved for attention and affection, so it made your ex want to keep getting to know the new person despite telling you nothing was going on between them.
Bonding felt right to your ex. It felt right from the moment your ex told you not to worry about it to the moment your ex crossed the point of no return. The point of no return wasn’t when your ex physically cheated but when your ex got attached without realizing it and failed to do anything about it.
Deep inside, you knew something smelled fishy. But because you trusted your ex, you let your ex keep talking to this person and waited for their connection to grow.
Eventually, it grew to the point where they flirted and could no longer pretend to be just friends. That was when they knowingly or unknowingly made the transition from friendship to romance and pushed you out of the relationship (or replaced you if you were already broken up).
There was simply no need for them to do the morally right thing as your ex had put a higher priority on his or her feelings and happiness than morality.
I think the majority of people who say not to worry about another person mean what they say (at least at that particular moment). They don’t mean to cheat and hurt their partner, but because they keep getting closer and closer to their crush, they do just that.
They allow feelings and cravings to grow out of control and create a situation where the new person captivates them and becomes more important than their partner.
We call this emotional cheating. It happens to many people because they seek deep emotional connections with people outside of the relationship. Although they initially don’t intend to cheat, they don’t exactly do anything to prevent cheating either.
They just wait, enjoy the moment, and watch their interest slowly shift from their partner to someone else. Once they’ve noticed they’re attracted to the new person, it’s often too late to pull away as they’ve already developed cravings and expectations.
They’ve created desires they urgently want the new person to fulfill.
Bear in mind that emotional cheating happens without most people’s awareness. Most people don’t know they’re cheating because they mistake their “good connection” for friendship. They don’t realize they feel attracted to the other person and that their partner should be the only person they feel obsessed with in such a way.
That’s why we can say cheating happens way before people even notice they have feelings. It happens before they feel connected too. Emotional cheating begins when people refuse to set friendship boundaries and keep communicating in ways they should only communicate with their partner.
This includes meaningful conversations that make them feel valued and their conversationalist look special.
New people are always more interesting than the person (their partner) they to talk every day. That’s inevitable because things are still fresh and exciting.
If people act on their feelings of excitement, find common interests, and bond regularly, there’s a big chance that they’ll eventually develop feelings without realizing it and emotionally cheat on their partner.
After they’ve established a strong bond, it’s often only a matter of time before they physically cheat as well.
Therefore, the reason people cheat is that they lack relationship boundaries. They don’t understand that cheating is bound to happen when they develop a strong connection with a person who isn’t their partner.
I’m not saying you can’t be friends with the gender of your preference. But if the person you talk to makes you feel understood and validated, it’s obvious that you’re putting more than you should into the friendship and that your cravings will likely keep growing as you continue to bond.
If you don’t recognize this early on, chances are you won’t pull away when you realize you have feelings either. That’s because feelings create attachment and temptations. The stronger the temptations, the harder it will be for you to do the morally right thing.
Your morals need to be strong and you need to be self-aware enough to notice that you’re getting too close to your “friend”.
So if your ex told you not to worry about someone and started dating this person shortly after, bear in mind that there are only two explanations for his or her behavior. Your ex either lied to you and shouldn’t be allowed near you or your ex kept bonding with this person without your awareness and unknowingly developed romantic feelings.
Sometimes exes lie to avoid hurting you, but most of the time, they have no idea what’s going on with them emotionally. They think they and their crush are just good friends and that they’re going to stay friends.
This changes quickly when someone starts flirting, complimenting, inviting the other person out, and taking their friendship to the next level.
In this post, we talk about why your ex is dating the person they told you not to worry about.
When your ex starts dating the person they told you not to worry about
If your ex met this person after the breakup and then told you not to worry about him or her, your ex either lied to you to stop you from prying and guilt-tripping or genuinely believed they were going to stay friends.
Regardless of what your ex believed and when your ex started dating this person, your ex didn’t keep his or her promise because your ex cared about himself or herself way more than you. Your ex thought that he or she deserved to be happy and that your opinion and feelings didn’t matter anymore.
They stopped mattering because your ex found someone more exciting to plan things with.
Because of that, you should remember that you didn’t push your ex toward this new person but that your ex developed feelings and cravings because he or she didn’t realize where his or her infatuation came from.
Your ex didn’t understand that he or she felt validated and that unregulated continuous desire for validation made him or her want to be with the new person.
I strongly believe that when people tell you not to worry about someone that they mean it. They don’t have the intention to leave you for that person and have a happy ever after with him or her.
That doesn’t, however, mean that they won’t leave you for that person!
People don’t understand their emotions and feelings as well as they think they do. They often think they like someone just as friends, but in reality, they’ve already established a meaningful bond that is built on much more than innocent friendship.
Oftentimes, it’s built on trust and mutual dependence. And that’s very dangerous as such friends need each other emotionally and can easily cross the friendship limitation.
Cheating doesn’t just happen instantaneously.
It happens in various stages. First, your ex slowly becomes reliant on the other person for happiness. When your ex becomes reliant, your ex realizes the other person’s importance.
And when your ex realizes his or her importance, feelings soon ensue. From start to finish, it normally takes weeks or longer, depending on how they communicate and what their relationship with their partner is like.
If they communicate daily for hours, cheating and monkey-branching tend to happen very quickly. A few weeks of bonding normally suffices because they neglect their relationship and prioritize the new person.
But if they communicate infrequently, then they tend to wait for their romantic relationship to deteriorate before they jump ships.
People leave relationships when they’re certain they don’t like their partner, when they don’t like themselves (feel depressed and feel unworthy), or when someone else makes them feel stronger emotions.
Usually, they make it seem like the problem is with them or their partner even though they’ve cheated and left their partner for the new person.
So bear in mind that when your ex starts dating the person he or she told you not to worry about, your ex no longer cares about old assurances and your feelings. Your ex only cares about his or her new relationship and the feelings the relationship creates.
The new relationship makes your ex feel excited whereas reminders of the past smother your ex. That’s why your ex would rather focus on things and people that make him or her feel good.
The new person makes your ex feel infatuated as they’re going through new relationship stages. You can expect them to be on cloud 9 for a few months. Most new couples are as they’re excited and want to feel validated very badly.
That being said, here’s why your ex started dating the person he or she told you not to worry about.
What to do when your ex starts dating the person they told you not to worry about?
When your ex starts dating the person they told you not to worry about, remember that your ex didn’t mean to start dating this person. Your ex just got along with him or her and liked spending time together.
But because your ex underestimated the power of emotions and attachment, your ex soon developed romantic cravings and fell in love. He or she wanted more validation and bonding and decided to monkey-branch to the new person when an opportunity presented itself.
By leaving you for this person, your ex felt empowered and desired and thought that life just got a lot better.
Emotionally, it certainly did as your ex was able to feel infatuated again. The last time your ex felt this good was when you started dating.
That’s why with the new person, your ex gets to once again experience the infatuation stage of a new relationship and not worry about you for a while.
Your ex gets to be free, so don’t expect their relationship to end anytime soon. It probably won’t because they want to get to know each other intimately and see where the relationship takes them.
For them to break up quickly, they’d have to be extremely incompatible. Either that or someone would have to be emotionally unavailable. Your ex probably isn’t unavailable that way because your ex isn’t in a rebound relationship.
A rebound relationship is when an ex can’t bond with the new person due to unprocessed feelings for an ex. Usually, it’s the dumpee that fails to establish a bond after the breakup as the dumpee is the one who’s anxious and depressed.
The dumper, on the other hand, is elated and relieved and ready for a new relationship.
That’s why you shouldn’t think that your ex will break up with the new person just because he or she started a new relationship quickly. Your ex will have to get to know the new person and stop feeling empowered. Once he or she does, his or her relationship skills and maturity in general will be put to the test.
Your job is to give your ex space and avoid getting angry with your ex. Don’t reach out to your ex’s partner and tell him or her what a lying cheater your ex is. That won’t help you at all. Especially not if you still want to be with your ex.
Instead of arguing with your ex and warning the new person about your ex’s true colors, distance yourself from them and let go of control. Let them have fun if they want to while you figure out how to recover emotionally and fall back in love with yourself.
Once this is over, you’ll be glad you didn’t give them more time and attention than they deserved.
Did you learn why your ex monkey-branched and what to do when your ex starts dating the person they told you not to worry about? Let us know in the comments below.
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