Depressed boyfriend on the rebound

We were together just a over 10 months. It was honestly an amazing relationship, both of us were romantics and focused on the meaning behind gifts rather than gifts themselves, and experiences together. We would write eachother letters, surprise eachother at our houses with homemade baking, do surprise dates… shared passions of art and everything. Absolutely perfect. I am a 19 year old male and he is 17, with a 2.5 year age gap.

Unfortunately for the last two months of our relationship my boyfriend was suffering from depression. We would get into little arguments that he always seemed to pick, he was failing a class, missing school, getting behind on homework, and absolutely miserable at his job. I did not notice this unfortunately until the day we broke up. We ended up breaking up shortly after our 10 month anniversary. For our 10 month, I had written him a small book with all of my feelings towards him, good memories, and everything I fell in love with, and put it in a hand painted box. He broke up with me randomly through text the night before; which is when I put the pieces together that he was depressed. “It’s hard to love someone when you can’t love yourself” “I just need to be alone, I still love you” “Please keep hoping for us to pick up where we left off one day, I’ll keep hoping for that too”. I read the book to him the next day in person when we met and our connection was definitely still there; this is when I tenderly approached him about his depression issues and he opened up to me about them. He was not breaking up because he wasn’t in love anymore, he needed some time to himself to get over the negative feelings in his life before he could reciprocate the love I was showing him. We were going to do no contact for a few weeks just so he could get himself together again and work through his self demons; both of us knowing this was just a break and neither of us would see anyone else.

Things got worse after this point. A “friend” made a fake facebook account to flirt with my boyfriend, while manipulating me to give information about my boyfriend to him such as his work schedule so they would have something to talk about. My “friend” was sending me horrible messages on this account as well, saying he was flirting with my boyfriend and exchanging nudes. After a week of this, I finally contacted my boyfriend to let him know what was happening, which is when he told me the fake account was messaging him as well asking for nudes etc. The day after I found out it was in fact my friend doing this, so I contacted my boyfriend to explain the situation to him. My boyfriend unfortunately accused me of doing it with him and has not contacted me since, and I have contacted him on two separate occasions to get no response. The first was a week after the events, in which I apologized for my friends behaviour and that it appeared like I was not taking the situation as serious as it was, and asked for forgiveness and a response. The second time was a week after that, when I had gotten a written text message admission to creating the fake Facebook from my friend, which I screenshotted and sent to my boyfriend with a message again apologizing for the events and saying I would like to talk about it.

A few days before sending him the screenshots, a mutual friend was talking to my boyfriend about what happened. He was adamant about not contacting me ever again, and saying how he knew that I had something to do with it. Thankfully my friend has had situations with the guy who created the fake facebook before, and had tried to talk sense into my boyfriend letting him know that this has happened in the past to other people before due to this guy. Not listening to reason, my boyfriend instead started to go into defence mode saying “we were broken up already anyways” “this doesn’t change how I feel” “please stop talking about him”.

I can see that he is extremely hurt. To him, the situation was a chance to hurt me in a sense for how much I hurt him in the past; 9 months into our relationship he had been chatting to a guy online for a day, not especially flirty but the guy did send a compromising picture and my boyfriend continued to respond (In hindsight it was clear he’s very emotionally depressed and desperately needed some kind of positive attention; we were arguing a little at that point) So, when he “cheated” on me, he took my reaction personally over time and it hurt him severely to see how much he hurt me. This was an opportunity to release his pain and put it onto me, and he does not want to let this opportunity pass. He is acting out in passive aggressive behaviours, and ignoring me because it leaves him in control, writing immature passive aggressive comments on instagram in his photo captions. He unfollowed me on all social media (did not block me, however, so I still followed his instagram account up until yesterday)

Now, I find out he is in a relationship again. Him and this guy met on tinder 2 weeks after our breakup, chatted for 5 days and then met in person. My now ex boyfriend had even texted this guy clingy things before they met (this guy posted some of their texts online, unfortunately I have heard of this guy and know he is extremely clingy and desperate for a boyfriend and will do anything to show one off if he gets one) saying “Trust me, I can’t wait for the day we meet either! I’m the lucky one, you are absolutely everything I would ever want in a guy and my standards are very high. Goodnight beautiful boy xx” They’ve been on a few dates since then, and this guy is making sure everyone knows the trophy boyfriend he found. They’re doing things that we planned to do such as kayaking. To make things worse, this person is not someone my boyfriend would have gone for at all. He’s obsessed with pop culture, loves to post on social media, constantly has his phone in his hand when they’re together taking pictures for snapchat (my boyfriend actually mentioned before he HATES when people snapchat when they’re out with friends, especially on dates!) this guy calls him “bae” (my boyfriend hated that word as well), drinks, smokes weed, goes to bars, the list goes on and on… complete opposite of me, and complete opposite of my ex. I could not see them as friends never mind dating.

I am not sure what to do or think at this point? This is so self destructive of my ex to be seeing someone right now, especially someone who is such a bad influence.

Our one year anniversary is coming up on August 18th, when my ex will actually be on a cruise and unable to text his new boyfriend to distract himself from thinking about me. Also, my birthday will be August 29th, again another day that I will hopefully be in his mind.

Due to the situation, I am not sure if I can even follow the 30-60-90 day no contact rule? I feel like I am totally helpless. The one thing I can think of is that when he cheated on me I was drawing him a picture of our favourite memory together with watercolour pencils he had given me; I told him I threw it out when I was upset but I did keep it, planning to give it to him on our one year anniversary. I could maybe drop it off in his mailbox sometime in September hopefully when he has cooled down a bit, but that might be a bit too forward. That might be best saved for after we have contacted eachother hopefully once or twice; but it may also be a realization for how much I cared for him and still do.

Please let me know any advice or if further clarification is needed!

Just to update, I’ve been keeping an eye on his rebounds Twitter profile… He constantly tweets about getting drunk and smoking weed (things my ex hates) as well as finding it annoying when people have depression and anxiety problems (two things my ex has)… It’s so unhealthy and it hurts me to see my ex seeing someone like this

Edit: Anyone reading this might be interested in these article by Kevin

Is he in a rebound relationship

or

Get Him Back When He is Dating Someone Else