How to convey that you’re just not that interested in him

Q An ex-boyfriend whom I dated in high school has recently been in touch.

He was seeing someone else for a while, but now that he’s single again he messages occasionally. We’ve gone out for coffee together maybe once or twice a year.

Now I recognize that our annual “catching up” is making him interested in dating me again.

I’ve already made up my mind that our relationship’s strictly platonic. But I think really he’s hoping we can date again in the future.

How do I tell him that I’m not interested in him anymore without feeling like I’m reliving our past breakup?

Repeat Performance

A Tell him soon.

Hesitating to have this conversation with him when you’ve already made up your mind suggests to me that your past pattern together may have been for you to drag out the news about breaking up last time.

That was then. You’re presumably more sure of your decision now.

You don’t dislike him, but coffee and chat is all you want from this relationship.

What he needs to hear, clearly, is that you enjoy being just friends.

Don’t apologize, don’t hesitate and don’t list reasons why you don’t think renewing a relationship would work.

You’d only be allowing him to present a counter point of view and try to convince you that he’s right for you. That would be misleading and unfair.

You both deserve to be treated with more respect than that.

FEEDBACK

A response regarding the adult child’s side of grandparent estrangement. Reader: As someone who was irreparably hurt by my parents right after I gave birth, I had to walk away from the relationship for some time.

My son and I are a package deal.

I learned through therapy that my parents were not capable of seeing the situation from my perspective due to their narcissistic traits (the same traits that started the issues).

However, had they sued me for grandparents’ rights it would have made everything so much worse.

I likely would have never come around to seeing them again because launching such a lawsuit shows such a total disrespect that you need space away from toxic people.

Ellie, in some jurisdictions (for example in Ontario, since 2016) the rights of grandparents to have access to or custody of their grandchildren are considered depending on whether the grandchildren have an existing bond with their grandparents, and also on the stability of the child’s environment.

Such decisions also take into consideration the child’s preference (depending on his or her age).