Why is my(22F) ex (23M) acting out on social media after the breakup?

He and I were together during college and for a year after we graduated. I thought he was the person I would spend the rest of my life with but I have to admit I was having doubts towards the end. I was shocked by the breakup, but haven’t cried and I felt relieved after about a day or so and like I can go on to do so many things. A part of me believes the relationship ran it’s course and another part of me believes I stayed only because I was scared of the unknown/never finding “the one” again. I don’t have a case of the grass being greener because I’m not interested in dating, but I will definitely miss my person. When I met him, he was fresh out of a relationship in which his ex would block him for the whole day, and then cheated on him. I wasn’t looking for a relationship at all. He slept through our first date, I was ready to call it quits but he was remorseful and kept actively pursuing me. Our first birthdays together (his birthday is three weeks before mine) – I planned and threw him a surprise party and he did nothing for mine.

When he and I got together (I was 18, he was 19) he followed his ex girlfriend – and stayed following her for 1.5 years of our relationship despite her cheating on him. Eventually we had a talk about it, he said he didn’t see it as an issue but would unfollow her for my sake etc. The second we broke up, he unfollowed me, my family and deleted every trace of me from the past four years. He then left all gaming chats we were in together, unfriended me on gaming platforms etc. Why was it so hard for him to unfollow his ex girlfriend but it was instant when it came to me?

My issues is, he always talked down on people who took things to social media. I deactivated mine, and went to visit my family and took some time off work. When I came back, he was talking trash about me. He was liking tweets that went along the lines of

\- the worst person you know because a nurse (keep in mind he knows I came from an immigrant household and it’s more nuanced – I had no choice in major or my parents would not pay for school to keep it short. I had a traumatic upbringing and I’m still healing and learning from it. He’s an aspie and I’m NT and we trusted each other with so much but it just sucks to see him throwing all my trauma and secrets I shared with him back in my face)

\- never dating a girl who needs constant reassurance (my love language was words of affirmation and his was acts of service)

\- something talking about why are you still thinking about your ex (this doesn’t even make sense because he’s liking and tweeting awful things about me – is he not the one outwardly showing he is thinking about me?)

\- never date a woman who hates her family (this sucks because like I said, I grew up different from him and he always seemed willing to learn the culture I came from and integrate into my world – same for me to him – and he knew it’s not that I hated my family but we got along better when we lived separate and came together to visit) and that all women become just like their parents

\- how he wants a 50/50 household later and nothing else (when we were teenagers it didn’t matter but once we got out in the real world we started having more conversations, and I would ask him hard questions about women’s health, pregnancy, childbirth etc. – real things I would see in my work as a nurse – and he would always drop hints that he wanted to be a stay at home husband or dad and would tell his mother he’s glad he’s with someone who can provide for him if he wanted to stay home – I made it clear once I started working that if I was to have children that wouldn’t fly)

\- dating someone with low self esteem is draining and once they gain self esteem they’ll leave you in the dust (he met me when I was at a low point. I lost 50lbs, got fit and back into my sports/hobbies, cleared my skin, found my style and stopped tolerating nonsense people – but I thought he would’ve liked me at my best too)

I’m starting to doubt that he actually respected women. His dad constantly would tell my ex to tell me that if I got pregnant I would be abandoned/on my own/they wouldn’t help me – up until I cried about it years into the relationship and the ex finally said something about it. I was treated like I was trying to trap him, but that was never my intention. I’ve talked to my mother about it, and we believe that he’s adopting his fathers beliefs when it comes to women and how he saw me.

When we had the breakup, it was over three days. The first day, he asked me who I had posted on my Instagram story (I shared a photo of a friend who graduated) and I told him who he was. He was upset by it because he said I never posted him for graduation last year (which I did, so I went to my archive, screenshotted everything and sent it to him – he’s not on IG that much and didn’t see the posts last year).

The next day, he brought up how I had done something to him in the past that made him unsure – and we talked through it and I said what I would do going forward. Keep in mind, during these convos he was working from home and I was doing my 12 hour shifts/could not respond quickly/in full sentences. That evening, I had some wine and he was trying to tell me about his hurt knee from playing basketball and I had jokingly downplayed his knee – he shut down after. Eventually once he told me what I did bothered him, I apologized but he wasn’t having it.

The next day, he started liking tweets about how women want you to show your emotional side so they can manipulate you etc. Our deal was we can’t comment on what someone else likes/shares on social media without asking first so I asked him if we could talk about his social media, he said yes, and once I brought it up he literally exploded. He was sending paragraph after paragraph about how I’m manipulative and an emotional abuser. I tried to talk to him as best as I could while at work but then told him this conversation would have to continue after work (I can’t mess up at work). I was an anxiety ball and got out of work almost two hours late because I was so distracted but when we got on the phone he was shouting at me. He hasn’t shouted at me once during the past four years. He then continued to bring up a lot of issues from our past that were resolved (our deal was to not bring up resolved issues or we will live in the past forever) and he kept going in circles when I would try and say “this is the problem, I apologize, this is what I’m going to do to fix this going forward” and wasn’t taking my responses for an answer. I started crying at that point because I wasn’t being given a chance to defend myself and he only got more and more heated. He then kept saying how I stopped going to therapy (I’ve been between jobs, no health insurance for a while and hadn’t been paid from my newest contract yet) and how he’s constantly anxious when talking to me. I tried to explain I legit had no means of paying for therapy (he went last year but through his parents insurance) and that I am just as bad if not worse than I was last year.

We had a break in our relationship last year, and when we got back together we had 8/9 months of healthy communication and progress. I understand I shouldn’t have downplayed his feelings when it came to his knee, and posting my friends graduation photos but I wasn’t seeing how I was just as bad as previously. 1.5 years ago I was not a healthy girlfriend when I was drunk, but I’m completely different now. Either way, he ended up completely calming down – or so it seemed – and said he’s really heated so he’s going to sleep on it and we can talk tomorrow. I went home, spent three hours figuring out the most affordable therapy I could get and signing up for it, planning a trip to see him for the weekend so we could talk face to face, and writing an apology for how I’ve treated him during the relationship and how I would do better going forward. I sent him everything, slept and went to work the next day. He seemed normal in the morning, I told him to drive safe (he gets in quite a few car accidents) and he said he would respond when he got the chance. I was optimistic because I thought he had calmed down and would be able to talk through this with me but he ended up sending me paragraph after paragraph again, and every time I responded he would say “But why?”. In the end, he said that I’m too emotionally manipulative and abusive, that all my words are empty promises and that I’ve broken every promise I made to him over these few years.

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How did I go from being his person to being nothing in his eyes? I wanted the split to be amicable but it seems there’s no point in trying. From me being the only person he turned to with all his problems (he has a hard time trusting people, is extremely stressed living at his parents house, his sister married and left home, and he has a few solid childhood friends who he doesn’t really confide in, doesn’t talk to anyone from our college), calling me after every devastating car accident because he was too scared to face his parents (he still lives at home), the person he – just 1.5 weeks ago – wanted to marry, the person who’s decided on our children’s names and our vacation homes and the type of ring he was going to be saving up for – to nothing.

Is he doing this to intentionally hurt me? Or is he just extremely hurt and wants somewhere to vent? I unfollowed him and blocked his number last night. I had all the respect for him after the breakup, but after seeing his reaction, all sense of missing him and respect went out the window. I don’t feel anything towards him now because I think it’s quite childish how he reacted to it all. I have been radio silent about the breakup.

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I think I feel okay because I did a lot of the grieving during the relationship – especially before the first break. But why is he so adamant about saying and liking such awful things about me – after spending four years together?

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**TL;DR** :

Ex boyfriend acted mature throughout relationship, relationship crumbles after a few days of bad communication, reacting negatively on social media and trash talking me after four years