That is odd. Leave her article of clothing outside her door with a card that reads. “Welcome to the neighborhood”
or,…the card could read,…
for the rest of your housewarming gift please bring wine to unit X at midnight
too much?
A lovely women told me just a few days before Valentine’s day that she’d lost interest. Bummer.
I had planned to bake her a special heart shaped cake and she knew it. After the 14th we met to return a few items to each other and I included a box of cake mix , some frosting, and a bunch of those little message candy hearts.
Fortunetely she has a wonderful sense of humor and we both got a laugh out of it.
Yeah, not creepy at all. 
I was thinking of sending her a welcome e-mail, but even that might be too much. If I run into her in passing, I suppose I could just mention that I still have something of hers. But I don’t know her situation. She wasn’t alone when I saw her – she was with a guy. It could have just been her last roommate. And her new apartment isn’t really big enough for two. And I know that she has been wanting to live alone. But still…
She was a loud mover-inner, but otherwise she seems pretty quiet. Maybe I should thank my lucky stars that I no long have a tap-dancing elephant living above me.
Except she was already planning to move into the building before they went out (and from the phrasing had already signed a lease), and they only went on two dates. It’s not like they were swept up in a passionate whirlwind romance for a few months that just ended in tragedy and tears, and now she’s stalking him with no warning.
I dated this guy pretty casually, really, and we broke up with no rancor on either side. The issue from my perspective was that he really had no ambition. He just wanted to make enough money to keep himself going, meanwhile spending most of the time on his hobbies (playing his guitar–and he didn’t care if he never got very good; playing chess–and he was really good at that but, again, he didn’t care; etc). The relationship was like that, too. Fun, but kind of going nowhere.
So, some years later–maybe 10? I was a journalist and I had a lunch interview (which I hated, because there’s really a limited number of things you can eat while also asking questions and writing things in your notebook) with a big-shot CEO, and it happened to be my birthday (again, I dislike working on my birthday, but it was a good deal getting the interview). So we went to the kind of place I never could afford on my own, because Big Shot owned it or something.
Went in sat down, and here’s Jim. He comes up, grins at me, and says, “Hi, I’m Jim, and I’ll be your waiter. And by the way, Hilarity, Happy Birthday!”
(He remembered my birthday because it was a couple of days away from his birthday.)
This really impressed the Big Shot because it sounded like I was a regular at this place, so it gave me some kind of cred. Anyway it was a successful interview. Even when Jim had the kitchen send out my baked potato with this (melting) birthday candle on it.
All true except for the part about the lease. At the time I had met her, she was trying to get into the building but nothing was opening up.
Oh man, was that an *intentional *fake-out? Because I totally thought the CEO was going to turn out to be the ex-boyfriend.
After my ex-husband and I separated, I discovered the big, wide world of the interwebs. What a revelation! I made the acquaintance of a really swell guy who lived in California, and after being e-friends for a while, he decided to come visit me for a weekend. We had so much fun together, and OMG was he HOTTT!
We decided to go to a movie, and stopped at the mall beforehand so he could grab some fruity-smelling products at The Body Shop. We popped in to see my friend Tia, who worked at Macy’s, and we chatted with her for a few minutes and then continued on.
Next day, after CA fellow had flown home, Tia phoned me and said, “Oh, my God, did you see (my ex)???”
“Uh, no, I haven’t seen him in months, and I don’t want to. What are you talking about?”
“He was AT THE MALL when you were there with CA fellow!”
“WHAT?”
“He was RIGHT behind you two as you walked away from my counter! And it was obvious he saw you! He did NOT look happy.”
Oy. I had not seen him, and I would’ve been completely freaked out if I had. To this day, I think it was sheer coincidence; there’s no way he could have known we’d be there, or even that I’d be with anybody.
But I do wonder what he thought when he saw us together, given that CA fellow was pretty much the exact opposite of my ex: 5’9" thinnish white guy with long, burgundy hair, as opposed to 6’1" black musclebound dude with a shaved head. I’m sure it blew his mind. 
Pretty much everytime I run into the girl I dated during my senior year of high school is a weird experience.
We met because we worked together and after we broke up we continued to work together. She was a true nut to date (we broke up because she lied to me about attempting suicide), but a very good friend. We ended up breaking up exactly three months to the day we started dating, but in true nut fashion, she sent me a letter after six weeks that was a laundry list of questions all asking “Where are we going?” I thought it was weird, but I was 18, so I we dated for another six weeks until the fake suicide attempt (which is a whole nother weird story).
Anyway, she starts dating this new guy and after six weeks she shows me this letter she plans to send to him that’s a laundry list of questions all asking “Where are we going?” They end up breaking up exactly three months to the day they started dating. Like I said, total nut when it comes to dating.
We end up going our separate ways and we run into each other again a few years later. We go out for lunch and she brings along one of her friends from college. The whole thing turns into a weird setup lunch where ex-girlfriend starts telling me how great her friend is over and over again: “She loves SPORTS and you love SPORTS! Her FAVORITE TV show is Buffy and so is yours! Did I mention she loves SPORTS?” Just uncomfortable all around.
I ran into her again about a year later and she’s just broken up with her boyfriend. She keeps telling me how LONELY she is and how it would be great to HANG OUT, just the two of us. I kept waiting for her to finish with “I just really need to get laid” but she stopped hinting after I mentioned I was seeing someone.
There’s more, but that’s probably enough.
This was a weird one. I had a bad breakup with a girlfriend in college, in my junior/her senior year. I was pretty heartbroken, and probably crossed a line or two, the worst being dropping in on her unexpectedly at the campus library where she worked, trying to “win her back”. Finally I started going out with someone else, and pretty much forgot her.
The next year, I was taking the subway into class and saw her on the train. I thought that was odd, but whatever. Soon I started seeing her on the train at least once a week. Then I saw her walking around the building I worked at on campus. Turns out that after she graduated, she got a job as an admin assistant working for my boss’s boss. And she hadn’t even gone to that college. The weirdest thing was when I had to see my boss’s boss to get my end of semester student research project signoff. I walked in, ex looked me in the eye and said “May I help you?” as if we had never seen each other before. I played along and said “Yes, I’m here to have Prof. X sign my end-of-semester paperwork, is he in?” She replied “Let me check, may I have your name?” I slowly and carefully told her my name, she walked in, came back out, and told me to go in. When I left, as I walked past her desk I said “Thanks, Petunia” ( I used her real name), but she completely ignored me.
Yeah, I thing pretty much all of us were on the edge of our seats, wondering what was going to be revealed about how the slacker propelled himself to hotshot CEO status.
Weirdest for me had to be one day a few years ago when I was watching The L Word. Sitting there watching it I said to myself “Huh - the tennis coach looks just like my high school girlfriend.” So I checked IMDb - it was my high school girlfriend. I had no idea she was even considering going into acting.
And of course since then I’ve seen her a few times popping up here and there - the mistress from One Hour Photo, Dexter’s jerky neighbor with the dog, etc etc. Every time I do, my wife says something like “Yes, yes, there’s your high school grilfriend, yes, awesome dude.”
I’m not sure this really counts as a “worst”, but timing-wise it was pretty sucky:
When I was 19 I met an absolutely stunning girl - beautiful, smart, funny, basically waaaay out of my league, and somehow she fell for me. We went out for two years, then the inevitable happened, she came to her senses and ditched me for someone a little closer to her on the dating food chain.
Well, I was pretty heartbroken and it took me a long time to get over her. For the next four or five years I thought about her on and off, wondered what she was doing and whether I might ever bump into her. Then I met another wonderful woman, we got together, and three years ago, on the last day of our summer holiday, I asked her to marry me. Result!
When we got back from said holiday, what was the first email in my inbox? A friend request via Facebook from my ex who I hadn’t seen or heard from in almost nine years. Who had recently got divorced. And who made it pretty clear in the accompanying message that she still thought about me lots.
None of this changes the fact that my wife and I are very happy, and will soon be celebrating our second wedding anniversary, but I had to give the gods of irony credit as I reflected that at one time I would have given my right arm to have this girl contact me, and that she finally did on that exact day…
I wouldn’t call him my “ex” exactly…but I answered a personal ad, and it turned out to be a guy whose personal ad I’d answered two years earlier. He’d never called me after our one brief meeting, and in fact I found that so insulting that I swore off personal ads as a way to meet people. I finally regain the courage, and who do I meet? The same guy.
This time we got married, though.
Another awkward ex meetup: I was hugely pregnant, I ran into a guy I’d sort of hooked up with a few years back when I was single. We’d lost touch, and I know he had no idea I’d gotten married. It was just weird. He looked like he wanted to run for the hills, frankly.
I dated a girl for a while during my last year of medical school. There was a lousy, uncomfortable breakup, my fault entirely. She wanted to get together and talk it out and possibly salvage the relationship. I didn’t. My selfish, immature plan was to simply avoid her until I finished the semester and then move away.
The plan was proceeding successfully until the final part of my OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination - you are presented with a room-by-room sequence of “fake patients” and while observed on closed-circuit TV by a panel of judges, you interview, examine, diagnose, and discuss treatment). The last “patient” I had to see was there with the complaint of morbid obesity / needing to lose weight.
Walking into the room, I see my ex with a pillow under her shirt. I had forgotten that she made extra money by working as a simulated patient for the medical school.
We both just sort of deer-in-the-headlights stared at each other for an eternity, feeling the pressure of the panel of hidden observers, and then went through with me counselling her for ten minutes on how to lose weight.
Did you reset your relationship status to engaged before you accepted the friend request, or immediately after? 
I hadn’t even been on Facebook at all. I did accept and then reply to her saying, among other things, that I had recently got engaged; I didn’t say how recently!
Long story short:
Jonesy and I were friends for over 9 years before we briefly dated (4-6 months). I tried to remain friends after we broke up, but grew weary of having to apologize for moving on with my life, especially several years after we had broken up. So after receiving a particularly whiny email from Jonesy, I wished him well and de-friended him in all the usual online places where my status updates seemed to torture him so.
Fast forward to this past June when he attended the local sci fi convention, not realizing I was on staff. Poor guy! I worked the registration line when Jonesy checked in, I was working the Browncoat booth when he stopped by to check in there, and I was working the Dealers room when he stopped by to check out the sales.
This wasn’t the first time we had seen each other - and whenever I saw him at an event I would always wave hello and smile without stopping to chat. But he looked so uncomfortable every time he saw me, that I finally had enough. He tried to sneak past me while I was minding a table for one of the celebrities - and I finally just called out his name and demanded he come say hello.
I said hi to him, asked why he was avoiding me, and he just said he didn’t know what to say. I looked him in the eyes and said, “Jonesy, we have the same hobbies and attend the same events - we are just going to run in to each other. It’s been 4 years since we broke up - and we were friends long before that. Let’s just remember the good stuff and forget the bad stuff. There’s no reason why we can’t be pleasant acquaintances or at least friendly. Life is too short and you pay too much money to attend these things to be miserable or worried about seeing me.”
Then I stood up and gave him a hug and said, “See - that wasn’t so hard.” He did a little smile and then mumbled about having to go find his friends. I waved him a cheery goodbye and went back to my volunteer duties.
Last week he friended me on LinkedIn and this week he re-friended me on FB. I accepted both - but didn’t do anything beyond that. It wasn’t necessarily the best experience I’ve ever had running in to an ex, but it was certainly the most confident I’ve ever felt in that situation.
Here’s hoping we can just move on from here. I’m really not big in to passive-aggressive behaviors.
A while back I met this beautiful Norwegian girl when I was over in France, and I fell for her really heavily. We had an amazing few weeks together, and she told me she loved me. On the day we were leaving Paris, I arranged to meet her at the train station - but she never fucking turned up. I was absolutely gutted.
A couple of years later I was running a bar in Morocco, and one night she walked into it. With her husband - who it turned out she’d been married to the whole fucking time she and I had been together.
Awkward.