Romantic desperation makes you do the craziest things. If it’s not leading you to manifest a partner, it might encourage you to stay with one who sucks, or, if you’ve managed to avoid actually texting an ex, lovelorn despair may motivate you to publicly bemoan the break-up on TikTok instead. But have you ever been so hopelessly heartbroken that you’ve tried to buy your ex’s affection?
Where once this particular affliction may have manifested as flowers on a lost love’s doorstep, these days it’s the arrival of a penny in their Monzo account. Over the last year, an increasing number of (usually) women have taken to TikTok to express their disbelief after being sent money by their exes. Typically, it’s small amounts – 10p here, £1 there – though one TikToker’s ex sent $5,000 with the message, ‘miss u xoxo’. No matter the amount, it always tends to be a last-ditch attempt by the scorned lover to get in contact after being blocked everywhere else.
For sex and relationship coach Lucy Rowett, the phenomenon brings to mind the saying, ‘modern problems call for modern solutions’: “I think of this as the modern version of sending something like a glitter bomb or a turd in the mail to your ex,” she says.
In some cases, though, receiving 3p with a pleading message to ‘unblock me pls’ isn’t so much a bag of shit in your mailbox, but rather a funny gesture, or, more rarely, even considered a sweet show of undying devotion (à la the toxic mantra: if he wanted to, he would).
When it happened to 29-year-old Marissa* from London – with two (!) of her exes – she saw the funny side. “The money wasn’t enough for me to sustain myself, or even buy a takeaway, but it was amusing,” she says. “It’s indicative of my relationship with both these men, like I don’t take it that seriously.”
The first time was with a long-term ex, who Marissa (the dumpee) had blocked in order to set boundaries for herself. At first, he just sent 10p, along with a note asking if he’d been blocked, but then he bumped into Marissa and one of her friends. “Afterwards, he sent money for us to get a drink,” she recalls. “But it was like, why are you doing that? Who asked you for that? It’s giving stalker. But I did keep the money, obviously, because that’s just reparation.”
Marissa’s next ex did the same thing, only this time the break-up was messier, so the money was, shall we say, more loaded. “I blocked him and removed him as a collaborator from our shared playlist, which had been the sound of our relationship,” she says. “You don’t want someone adding sad or angry songs, fucking up the playlist feng shui. Then I received 1p asking me to reinstate him. He already thought I was leaving him secret messages in that playlist, if I allowed him to be a collaborator, best believe whatever he added would have been some sort of pointed message, and I didn’t need that.” She sent the penny back, marking it as ‘personal care’.
Other blocked men (and it seems to usually be men) have got back in touch with exes by sending money for specific reasons. Arista, whose TikTok about the incident has over a million likes, was sent multiple payments on Venmo by her ex-husband, ranging from $1, accompanied by the note, ‘You’re seriously only talking to me through money payments? Lol’, to $10 with ‘Let me call you’, and $60 with ‘Whatever’. Although the notes don’t reference it, Arista’s ex was actually sending her the child support he owed.
“We were in the midst of arguing about him helping when I found the conversation to be pointless, so I blocked him,” she says. “That’s why he was sending money via Venmo. He was going to send it anyway, he just broke it up into small amounts to be funny, and I did find it humorous. He’s proven that it’s best to keep him blocked, but now he knows how to get hold of me if he really wants.”
In 25-year-old Lala from New York’s case, her ex sent money that he owed – only he didn’t owe it to her, but rather to someone else completely. “He sent me 60 bucks for someone’s Uber,” she reveals. “I was like, ‘Okay, I guess I’ll send it to them for you?’” The Venmo deposit was the final contact Lala’s ex made with her, after he’d spent weeks calling, texting, and emailing, before finally asking her to block him everywhere for his own sake – though she didn’t think to block him on Venmo. As she explains on TikTok, this final straw even inspired her to write a song about the experience, aptly titled, “Love Letters from my Ex”.
While much of this might seem harmless and lighthearted, receiving a barrage of messages from someone, especially a person who you’ve purposefully blocked, can be extremely distressing. Though Lala didn’t feel threatened by her ex, she says that every time she saw his name pop up on her phone, her heart dropped. “He wanted to keep me stuck,” she adds. “I do think it was about control – to [make sure he was always on my mind].”
People reach out to their exes for all sorts of reasons – to return their stuff, for closure (or a booty call), or just because they miss them – but, as Lucy Rowett says, this method could be “a way to get under someone’s skin, and potentially to continue the abuse that they’d originally been blocked for”. Case in point: last year, a Warrington-based man appeared in court accused of stalking after he repeatedly paid money into his ex-girlfriend’s Monzo account alongside abusive messages, including urging her to unblock him.
The same thing happened to 22-year-old Mary-Rose from London, whose emotionally and physically abusive ex sent an estimated 50 to 150 payments via Monzo after being blocked everywhere else. “He was sending mainly pennies at a time and would write very abusive messages in the references,” she explains. One such message, shared by Mary-Rose on TikTok, opens: ‘You need to stop being a [sic] such a hoe’. “Monzo only recently added a block feature on the app [in 2022], so I felt powerless. I really wanted it to stop,” she continues. “It also made me feel unsafe because the content of the messages were very threatening, so I was worried he’d turn up at my house, which he had done [in the past].”
Mary-Rose also believes there was a darker manipulation behind her ex’s payments – a way of exerting financial control over her as a form of revenge. “I’m not from a wealthy upbringing, so any money that comes my way is difficult to refuse,” she says. “Because he was sending me a fiver here and there, it was hard for me to view it as abuse because he was helping me out at a time when I wasn’t working and was grieving [the death of my mum].” Her self-esteem took a hit, too, as she began to see the payments as a reflection of her worth. “This is how cheap he thinks I am,” she recalls thinking. “This warrants him to say all these horrible things to me. It took me a while to realise that I’m not actually benefiting from these little bits of money.”
Ultimately, whether it bothers the receiver or not, it is a form of harassment. But, as Rowett says, “it’s all about your ex and nothing to do with you”. She adds: “It means that the relationship ending was the right thing, because they obviously have no concept of boundaries or respect.”
Abusive dynamics excluded, Marissa believes this method is “just so typical of men”. “Instead of having useful conversations, they send money with a dumb note,” she says. “They obviously want to talk. Wouldn’t it be so much better to [wait until they’re unblocked], then put the pride aside to have some difficult conversations and salvage whatever relationship is left?”
If they can’t do that, the least they could do is send enough for some post-relationship therapy.
*Name has been changed