Email from an ex - Dismiss or Respond?

Hey loveforum, I hope you guys are having a wonderful day!

My story is really long but I'll try to make a quick summary of it here and follow-up with my question(s). This is about my most recent ex and I. I'm a male. We're both in our early 20's and still in college. We were in a relationship for about two years and broke up about 2-3 years ago. The relationship wasn't the healthiest as we were both pretty young and naive (I would say we still are) but we both made mistakes and that's totally expected. The relationship got really rocky at the end and she dumped me. The typical "Let's be friends" line got shot out and I fell for it. We were friends for several months and then she started seeing a fling. I stopped being friends with her at that point. A couple of months later, they broke up and then she contacted me shortly before getting into another (serious?) relationship. They were in a relationship for a little over a year and then broke up late 2014 or early 2015. Anyways, the last time we had a conversation together was late 2013. The last time I spoke to her (no response as she ignored my messages) was early 2014. I decided to truly establish No Contact at roughly around that time. Fast-forward to early 2015 and she contacts me out of the blue. The message didn't have any significance, really. Over the past half year or so, she has been consistently contacting me 1-2 times each month wanting to see if I'm okay and that I don't hate her and stuff like that. She has contacted me over many different ways and accounts so blocking doesn't really help. I've just been ignoring the messages and half of them, I haven't even read or just straight up deleted.

Here is my problem now: She has recently (couple of days ago) sent another email to me but this one looks like she actually spent more than five seconds on it as it's several paragraphs long. She apologized for some of the actions she did and explained why a couple of things happened the way they did. She said she didn't care back in early 2014 and that's understandable as she was in a relationship. She says she isn't looking for anything but wants us to be on good terms and not have me hate her. She told me that she never stopped loving me and she always will. She would like a response but would leave me alone if I didn't.

I'm not quite sure if I should give a terse response or not. I've always just dismissed the messages/emails but this one seems at least (half?) genuine so I'm not sure. For the record: Not a single thought of her comes up in my everyday life now, hearing stories about her doesn't bother me anymore, my life has dramatically improved since, I'm very physically fit, have a good education and a wonderful job. One could argue that I'm in denial since I'm writing this post in the first place and honestly, that's completely understandable from that point of view. It could be true that I have suppressed issues about this (although they'd be REALLY deep since this doesn't bother me on the outside anymore) so I could see both sides to this. Anyways. My goal here is to NOT get back into a relationship with her. I don't really care whether or not we become friends down the road or we never talk to each other again, I'm kind of neutral on that part.

So what would you guys advise me to do? Respond or just keep going on in life like I am right now? Sorry if I left out any important details, I'm trying to keep this brief so I don't make a huge page and also to keep some anonymity. If you guys need more details, I'd be happy to provide them or message them to you.

Personally, I would say that is decision you would really need to make. I know that doesn’t exactly help, but it is true. I don’t think any of us could/should tell you what to do in this case. Hopefully, though, I can at least help by providing you my thoughts on the situation. In my opinion, you could honestly go either way and I think you’d be fine and perfectly in the right.

If you feel it would just be better to move on and forget the whole situation, then you are perfectly within your right to do so. You two were together in the past, but you broke up and you both moved on. You don’t owe her anything, nor she you. So, if you chose just to not respond, that would be perfectly okay.

All the same, if you feel it would be better or would make you feel better, you can go ahead and respond. My personal recommendation to you would be to just keep it short, simple, and make it clear you appreciate her reaching out and there are no hard feelings, but you think it best if you two just move on. I don’t think it would necessarily be a good idea to be friends with her. Again, that is just my opinion. You may feel differently, so that would be up to you.

If I were you, here is what I think I would do. As you mentioned, her most recent e-mail did seem very sincere and heart-felt. The others, you said were pretty short and to the point, so you could have easily dismissed those as you wouldn’t really be sure how sincere she was. The last message, though, you felt was very sincere. So, were I you, I think my decision would be to message her back. Just something short and simple, but also equally heart-felt and sincere. All the same, I’d make it clear that I wanted us to leave it at that and move on with our lives. I’d let her know there are no hard feelings, and that of course I don’t hate her, and that I wish her the best in her life.

Again, that is just my personal thoughts on the situation. You will have to do what you feel, in your heart, is the right thing to do. Just make sure it is also the right thing for you. For example, if you feel it would be better for you to just not respond, then don’t worry about how that will make her feel. Again, you don’t owe her anything. She’d appreciate a response, but if you think you’d just risk opening up old feelings in yourself you would rather not, then perhaps it is not worth the risk. Good luck to you either way.

It's totally up to you how to respond. I don't get the feeling that you still have feelings for her that might get out of control if you say hi to her. It does sound like she's sincere, or she wouldn't keep trying to reach you over this much time. It clearly still bothers her how things ended.

You have all the power in this because you are not the one that is still hung up on the past. If you care for her on a friendship-type level, there's no harm in emailing back, thanking her for thinking of you, No, you don't have hard feelings, you are well and hope she is too. If she tries to drag you into a deep discussion rehashing the past, stop her and let her know that you've moved on, don't think about that anymore, and hope she has as well. Don't dwell on what has already happened.

You have no obligation to talk to her, so you don't need to respond unless you feel right about it. If you feel wrong about it, don't feel guilty about ignoring her.

Here here! Good advice from Nicole, as always.