Woman's ex wants to reconcile; has list of demands 'if I want to be his wife.' Updated!

'My (27M) ex husband wants to reconcile with me (23F) but on his terms.'

My ex and I divorced late November of last year. I would share why but it’s a super long story. Just know that it was really messy! Anyways, he came back a month ago wanting to reconcile. I asked him kindly to give me time to consider things and then us time to rebuild and take things slowly if I decide to proceed.

However, he’s giving me ultimatums stating that he wants to get back together sometime this year soon or he’ll just marry/get engaged to someone else. But he’ll “propose anyway just to give me the opportunity remarry him”.

Like wtf. I just came out of a whole marriage with him I’m not looking to remarry him or anyone else in the near future.

I’m just super confused as to why I’m being rushed to reconcile with him. I would be more receptive to start all over and build everything back up. However, this is a huge turn off because I’d like to be able to see real change from him then make a sound decision.

Here's what people had to say to OP:

egomechanics writes:

Someone who actually loves you wouldn't tell you 'do xyz by this date or I'll marry someone else'. You already know this. We don't bring trash back into the house once it's been brought to the curb.

Chrizilla_ writes:

Lmao tell him to shut up and spend this energy raising his child 😂

Competitive_Yam_5263 OP responded:

I did! I told him his focus should be on our 10 month old infant! Not remarriage. He sounds desperate asf honestly.

mauve55 says:

Just ask him why he wants to remarry you. Ask him what will he gain from your guys remarriage.

Competitive_Yam_5263 OP responded:

He claims he knows I’m the person “God put before him” and would love to try again because we could’ve done things so much more differently. The marriage was super emotionally volatile and at times we were both toxic. But idk I’m in a totally different frame of mind.

mauve55 writes:

You ultimately have to do what’s best for you and your child. If your guy’s relationship was volatile and toxic from both ends. You guys are not a good couple together.

Update from OP 1 month later:

My ex husband and I spent time over the weekend and we were having a conversation. Then he mentioned that, “I need to do xyz if I want to be his wife.”

I cannot remember what we were talking about exactly, but I responded out of annoyance, “I’m not trying to be a wife.” From that point on I noticed his demeanor changed a little but not so much and we carried on with the day as normal. He went home later on.

The next day I had to work. For context: after 5 months of complete silence from him and no financial support for our daughter, he came out of the woodworks begging to be a family again and promising to step up to the plate and take care of his financial responsibilities including, child support and much more.

We agreed to him paying for our daughter’s daycare which is $120 a week (until I started working, then we’d go 50/50) along with his $264 court ordered child support that was supposed to go into effect May 1st of this year.

So yes back to the story, the next day I had to work. He never sent the daycare money which he usually does the night before. I heard nothing from him. Thank God, I work from home so I was able to kind of manage work with my daughter at home. But barely. I blew his phone up all day.

He finally responded and told me that he will no longer be paying for her daycare anymore because he pays child support and because I have a job now. I asked him what does that have to do with anything and told him that I have yet to receive the child support and that he should have a bit more compassion because I’m just now getting back on my feet.

He then told me that it wasn’t his problem. He’s done what he’s supposed to do. I told him that as a parent he should want to do more than the bare minimum. To which he responded, “What our child’s name gets from me is from child support only. That’s it, unless she’s with me.'

I responded, “Well $264 a month isn’t sufficient and you were financially absent for 5 months up until the point where you decided to re-enter our lives.” He then responded, “that’s not my problem.” I immediately cursed him out and blocked him.

There will never be another us. You all were right. He wasn’t sincere with his intentions.

Here's what people had to say after the update:

IWasPrettyCool writes:

I am glad that you quickly figured out that this guy has no integrity. He seemed to demand reconciliation in your last post, which was really weird.

Veridical_Perception writes:

Get a divorce and get a court mandated order for child support, including back support. He's just playing this game to make your life difficult and pay less money. Stop engaging with him, don't let him manipulate you with guilt, and force him to do what his conscience clearly doesn't make him do.

Second update from OP 8 months later:

Now that I'm out of the relationship with my ex....I can see that his logic is just not logical and nothing he says and does never makes any sense. Our marriage was very hot and cold as well as our now coparenting relationship. He will go months without responding to any of my calls/texts about our daughter.

Now all of a sudden, he's being nice and 'active' in her life for now. He dropped her off from school the other day and stated that I looked good, he loved us both, misses his family, and continuously insisted on me hugging him.

The next day I called and asked him what exactly he meant by all of that the other day and he said he never said I looked good and that he doesn't know what I'm talking about & that we should just focus on being coparents.

So then I told him to stop playing his twisted games and to respect my peace. He said okay and that he didn't mean to hurt me. Well this was two days ago. Yesterday and today, I just refocused & continued to live life...didn't contact him about anything. Then he calls me tonight stating that he's checking on my daughter and I , which he never does.

It's just so weird. I'm still healing from him although I still somewhat love him....so this kind of set me back. Anytime I'm doing well and not worried about him whatsoever , he pops up.

Here's what people had to say after the second update:

[deleted] writes:

The nice bits and the mean/withdrawn bits are all sides of the same issue. The 'nice' is manipulation to either control you or control his self-image. If he really changed and understood his behavior & its effects, he 100% would not be acting this way. He would not:

1. Center his feelings with 'I' statements and emotional dumping

2. Center his perspective by evaluating and commenting on your appearance

3. Try to manipulate you into letting him cross your boundaries (hug)

4. Contacting you outside of the set times (boundary crossing) to perform care - if it was genuine care, he wouldn't impose on your personal time

He wants you to second guess your discomfort, while demonstrating that he indeed has neither changed nor grasped the effects of his behavior. I hope you can safely enforce your boundaries (maybe incrementally?) so that you don't get backlash and are able to protect yourself.

Competitive_Yam_5263 OP responded:

I'm not a narcissist so it's very hard for me to understand how someone is just so careless and will take different angles/approaches to harm you. It's like I know all this yet still lowkey fell for the narcissist tricks.

One thing that I did notice is that he can somehow cross my boundaries or atleast make me vulnerable but I can't 'cross' his at all. Not that I've tried.....but the withdrawn act feels kinda like that.

[deleted] writes:

I totally get that. You have a healthy response to someone communicating their boundaries (albeit nonverbally). You instinctively understand and respect them. On the other hand, narcissists feel entitled to disrespecting boundaries for self-serving reasons (even if they insist that they're doing it out of love).

The key is whether they care to understand and change, which unfortunately your ex does not. I hope he will get bored and cease his attempts to re-entangle you :(

Competitive_Yam_5263 OP responded:

Thank you for you insightful responses! Exactly that smh! I'm not going to be apart of his mess. My thing is, outside of narcissism even, if you're not interested in a person, don't go out of your way UNPROVOKED to say you are then retract it once they engage. Omg I can't make this up 😂. I will go back to enforcing my boundaries for sure! So done with it all.