Little test of personal strength today, and learned some things I need to improve on to avoid pickme temptation.

So, YEARS ago I was involved with a LVM in college, didn't work out, reconnected years later n got ghosted. That details of all that are not important.

We have a mutual friend who we both met in college, and I've maintained contact on and off throughout the years. Just friendly banter, life stuff, and indulging in the occasional gossip. Of course time to time, this mutual would come up (my friend still talks to them on occasion) and we'd have a good chuckle at his expense.

Well recently, my friend tells me that this guy's marriage is falling apart (no surprise there) and that he wanted to get away for a weekend. Apparently during the course of their conversation, it came up that the mutual friend still talks to me on social media. My friend then informed me that this LVM (who hasn't used social media in years) created a profile and added them. Thanks to a few years of wisdom and FDS, I knew exactly what was going to happen next and a few hours later, they sent me a request and a message.

Now I'm not going to lie, I struggled with the amusement of it all. Our seemingly harmless gossip came into real time, and a good part of me was simply curious what this person would have to say to me after all this time. And another part of me really, really wanted to gloat/ tell him off for thinking he could try to waste my time. I left his message ignored to mull things over.

I already know what he's looking for, and nothing satisfying can come from entertaining this. I'm not going to gain anything from talking to him, but he will if I allow him to emotionally dump on me. I'm annoyed that I was ever dumb enough to let him play me and that he thinks it's acceptable to try it again. The only message I can clearly give here, is to block him.

I think I need to analyze some feelings that led to me hesitating on this, and to cut out the gossip. It wasn't a lot, but enough to stir things up again when it popped back up. I'm also thinking of telling the mutual friend to just not mention this person to me at all, and to not tell them anything anything about me.