When you have a hater ex who ruins your reputation. How should you as a guy respond to a woman who tries to destroy you with words? Maybe she’s making everybody in your community think that you are a horrible guy and she’s portraying you as one big problem, while she is taking zero accountability for her own actions? There are many ways how ex-girlfriends can destroy your reputation, so let’s talk about it.
Hey guys, welcome back to the Breakup Corner, I’m Andi Galster. Here I teach men how to move on from their ex-girlfriends. Man, it’s gut-wrenching when an ex-girlfriend tries to paint you like you’re the worst man on the planet after a breakup. Very often, that kind of viciousness comes out of nowhere, or at the very least, you didn’t see it coming.
Most men who have a breakup with a woman tend to look back quite fondly towards their ex-girlfriend, at the very least within the first years when they didn’t get enough distance from the relationship. I think most men, and also most women, are genuinely kind individuals. I think even among people who are easily irritated, grumpy, mean, etc., often that’s just pent-up anger. I believe in the good in people, and so for most good-hearted men, seeing such a reaction from an ex-girlfriend is hard to believe when it’s happening.
A good-hearted man will automatically also look kindly towards others, and try to see the good in others, and of course, especially within an ex-girlfriend. So when it’s the woman who you love the most who is the one who’s trying to destroy your life or at the very least, make it as difficult as possible, how can you recover from all that stress?
The problem as a man is that it is very difficult to respond to an ex-girlfriend who’s throwing out all kinds of allegations. An ex-girlfriend doesn’t even have to outrightly paint you as an unhinged man, like someone who’s violent, abusive or so on. Often, all that’s needed for an ex-girlfriend is to say that you were an awful boyfriend, who would never listen to her, didn’t make time for her, you didn’t fulfill her needs, etc. and all of a sudden, she will make everyone in town believe that you are a terrible guy that nobody should associate with because you don’t know how to properly treat a lady.
This is even worse when your ex is very liked by many people in town. In such a case, unfortunately, society has begun to adopt the mindset of “believe all women”… Often, people will automatically side with the ex-girlfriend, even if they don’t know the full story. Even if your girlfriend has made many mistakes in the relationship, and even if there was a lot of drama during the end, or a lot of mistreatment by you towards her, there’s probably a high chance that she has been equally guilty of many mistakes within the relationship.
Of course, it’s usually extremely unrealistic that all the blame in a relationship is only to be put on one person, whether it’s on the man or the woman. After all, if the blame was so one-sided, then why would that person stay in the relationship for so long in the first place, right? So if your ex-girlfriend is portraying you as the villain, I assume she carries some blame herself because no reasonable woman would have stayed with you for long if all the allegations were true.
That’s why there’s nothing that can make you feel worse as a guy than an ex who acts like a hater. It sucks when everyone starts to believe that it’s all your fault. All of a sudden, you no longer feel welcome in your community, and just being in the same space with your ex with other people who now have a certain perception of you makes you feel uncomfortable.
I’ve experienced this before. I know how stressful that is and as I said, unfortunately, it’s very difficult as a man to do anything in such a case. Stereotypically, people believe that if a relationship failed, that it was only the man’s fault. And while there is some scientific evidence to the fact that men are often unaware of problems in relationships, of course, that does not mean that it’s only men who are responsible for breakups. In fact, it’s been researched that both men and women have a strong influence on relationship satisfaction, despite the one-sided narrative. But that’s not how most people see it. If the relationship failed, and then your ex-girlfriend starts talking badly about you, then she has to be justified.
Of course, you never listened. Of course, you were childish. Of course, you were abusive, easily irritated, or unable to solve your arguments. Of course, you were the one who always made her feel like shit. Certainly, she was perfect, and none of your bad reactions had any relation to her own actions. You were lucky to be blessed with her presence. No woman is better than her and of course, all the people who know her agree, because look how positive and friendly she is now that the relationship is over. She’s acting as if her life finally has been freed from the evil oppressor who made her life miserable.
It’s a tough and unfair treatment towards men, and worse, it’s difficult to fight back towards female reputation-destroying behavior. This is a woman’s territory. When a woman wants to really cause damage to a person, then her words can cut like a thousand knives. As a man, the only thing you can do in such a situation is to not let it phase you, and perhaps try to gain some space from the places where you feel unwelcome.
Not necessarily forever, but it’s best to avoid the places or people who make you question your self-esteem, confidence, and so on. I wouldn’t want you to feel worse about the breakup than it already is. When your ex-girlfriend makes everybody believe that you are a terrible man, then this can weigh even more on you than the breakup already does. All of a sudden, not only do you feel broken because of the breakup, but on top of that, you may start to question whether you are truly a bad person.
I mean, it’s pretty wild to go from trying your best to be a good boyfriend, and probably of course not always succeeding, but at least trying, and you’re spending lots of memorable moments with a woman that you love, and all of a sudden, you are enemy number one. It makes you question how anybody could be this heartless and want to hurt you this badly.
Especially if the relationship has already ended and any wrong treatment that you’ve given each other is over, and to keep going after the breakup is like twisting the knife that’s already stuck in the wound. It’s just not necessary and when an ex behaves like that, it can really break your heart beyond anything you could ever believe to be possible. It’s painful, but you know what, here’s how I see it:
In the end, people are judged by their actions, not their words. I don’t think that a woman who is hating on you after a breakup, and continuously talking badly about you is a good ex-girlfriend. Don’t get me wrong, of course, everybody can talk badly about an ex, often justified, but very few people will do this to an extreme degree to let everybody know how much their ex made them unhappy. The people that your ex-girlfriend is trying to convince that you are a bad man will judge you by your own actions, and if they are easily swayed by what she has to say about you, then these are not people that you should associate with in the first place.
Actually, let me share some of my own story… Back in the day, my ex-girlfriend painted me as the worst guy you could possibly imagine, and to be fair, I don’t think I knew what I was doing about relationships back then. I could have done MUCH better, which is kind of obvious now that I’m a relationship expert and multi-book author…
But even from a, in quotes, “normal” person’s perspective who doesn’t study relationships, I still had a lot to learn. So sure, I wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But honestly, when you look at the grand picture of how bad boyfriends can be… Abusive, chronic cheaters, violent, and so on… I was just a beta male who couldn’t communicate clearly and I became more confrontational the worse our communication become, that’s about it.
Back then I was about 26 yeas old… And my girlfriend tried to really paint me as a horrible guy, meanwhile, she had been fucking around, and right after the breakup, had a new guy, and well… she basically kept on screwing around for weeks. It was such a hard time, and meanwhile, I was the horrible guy who dared to actually struggle with my girlfriend being a complete party whore.
And there was this guy, he must have been maybe in his 40s… And he was on her side, acting as if I was the problem… Which in hindsight really makes my stomach turn, how a man at such an advanced age actually supported my ex-girlfriend in some of the extremely crazy things she did back then. In hindsight, who knows, maybe that guy was even having sex with her. The point is, that a good would NEVER just believe an ex who is trying to ruin your reputation. Someone with common sense, and with a fair and balanced approach, would probably not take any sides at all. They would just recognize that they don’t understand what really happened, and wouldn’t believe that you were good, nor would they believe that you were horrible.
That guy should have known that my ex-girlfriend was behaving in extremely inappropriate ways. I’m not sure if it was to his benefit, whether he was really that naive, or if he just had no backbone. But the bottom line is, you shouldn’t concern yourself with the people who easily are swayed by the reputation-destroying words of an ex-girlfriend. If they so easily believe something, or worse, are on her side, especially if your ex has done some pretty bad things, then paying any attention to their opinions is pointless, because their opinions aren’t worth a dime in the first place.
But of course, I understand that despite all of this sounding very logical, it’s still not easy to feel like an outcast all of a sudden. Can you recover from such a situation and restore your reputation? Maybe, maybe not. The best thing you can do is to just let time do its thing, perhaps not hang out in the places where you are most likely to feel unwelcome, and perhaps in a few months from now, when you let time do its thing, most people won’t even remember anything your ex said, and as I said, most good people will probably judge you by your actions and they will notice that you are kind, friendly, and whatever other good qualities you may have.
So I know that you are probably looking for some magic bullet instant solution that is going to fix your entire situation instantly and make everybody ignore what your ex has to say about you, but that’s probably not going to be the case. Most people will probably side with her for a while, especially if she was very vocal about your flaws.
As they say, when someone goes low, you go high. Remain graceful, don’t stoop down to her level, and try to live in a way that you can be proud of. You may not know this, but when people call me bad names, it does affect me emotionally. Words actually affect me a lot because my mother used to be quite critical in my teenage years, so I’m quite sensitive to these kinds of influences.
But no matter what bad things somebody has to say about me, I will still live through my actions. I’ll be kind to the people I meet, friendly to everybody that I order food from, I will protect people who I feel are mistreated, I’ll volunteer or help where I can, and so on. In the end, whatever your ex has to say does not reflect who you are as a man through your daily actions. And if she wants to make everyone believe that you are a terrible man, just prove her and all of them wrong through your actions, and more importantly, show her that it doesn’t even bother you. That’s the best revenge. Her seeing that you will just keep on going and living the best life and being a good influence on other people will drive her insane. So, always be good to people! Live strong, kindly, and don’t pay any attention to your ex’s bad words.
That’s the only right way to live forward when an ex wants to mess with you. Stay focused on what you can control, and how you want to be a force for good. Don’t let others, especially not an ex, screw with your self-perception and all the good things that you can do for others. I am sure you are a good man, so always act like it, and when others say you aren’t a good man, just keep going and live through your actions.
