Is It Your Job to Warn His New Girlfriend?

Guy meets girl.

They fall in love. Something goes horribly wrong. Guy and girl break up.

Guy moves on in two seconds flat.

I know I’m not the only one who has experienced this. Watching an ex move on with someone new is painful — no matter the circumstances.

But it can be especially upsetting to see a toxic ex appear to have a wonderful new and perfect relationship after all the havoc he wreaked when you were with him.

Like, where was all this good energy when we were together?

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A woman might assume that if a man treats her badly, he is just incapable of love.

We assume that our experiences with him speak to his ability to maintain a relationship overall. It’s easier to think of it in this context than to question or admit that maybe he just didn’t want me.

So we pivot.

He was clearly too immature, selfish, fill-in-the-blank with whichever adjective you’d like, to maintain a happy healthy relationship with me — so he must be incapable of doing it with her.

Especially in cases of apparent rebounding, when the guy (or girl) moves on in a relatively short timeframe, we tend to assume that he’s up to his same old games.

And so this begs the question — is it our responsibility as women to warn whoever he decides to be with next?

Should we warn her about his narcissistic tendencies?

Should we warn her about his depression, anxiety, anger issues, alcoholism, or porn addiction?

Woman-to-woman, should we tell her that she can absolutely do better than a man who used, left, or hurt us?

I’m going to share some advice that was given to me:

You don’t belong there.

You don’t belong in other people’s relationships — past or present.

You don’t belong in other people’s love stories, or in their experiences that have nothing to do with you.

You don’t belong anywhere except in your own relationship in your own life.

Although that may be hard for many of us to accept, it is important that we do. Otherwise, we will spend all of our energy inserting ourselves in places we don’t belong, and none on what truly matters — finding our own sense of purpose and belonging.

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Are people capable of change?

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that how a person treats you is exactly how they’ll treat everyone else.

People are capable of change.

A man who might have been toxic or problematic in his youth is perfectly able to grow and mature. For some, that happens over years of reflection. For others, it can happen sooner than you’d expect.

Either way, it is not your job to police other people’s progress or to dictate how fast or how slow they can reinvent themselves.

The truth is, no two relationships are the same.

A relationship dynamic with one person can be completely different with another.

There are cases where a person might treat you badly, and then go off and treat the next person they date like a queen.

It’s called growth.

It’s called realizing your mistakes and deciding to be better in the future.

People are allowed to grow and change. Just because they made mistakes with you does not mean they will make those same mistakes with everyone else.

It is not your job to police your ex’s new relationships.

Although it may have ended poorly with you, every relationship is going to be different. His new girlfriend is within her right to decide who she dates and the type of relationship she has.

It is not your job to “warn” her of the ways that he’s mistreated you.

She is not you. Maybe he will treat her differently.

Either way, their relationship is none of your business.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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