Have you been struggling to get your ex back?
Have you tried everything you can think of only to have them “sort of” be in your life but not in the satisfying, full relationship that you used to have?
Are you wondering when it’s time to give up on your relationship with your ex and finally move on?
“When is it time to give up on my ex?” is a question I get a lot in my work as a coach.
From the outside, the answer to whether or not someone should move on after a breakup seems like it’s so simple.
For people not in your particular circumstances, it’s easy to say, “they’re an ex for a reason.”
But I get it, when you’re involved in it, things aren’t always so cut and dried.
And, I must admit, I have a different view on getting back together than most.
I was mentored by a salty, 92 year old counselor who saved marriages for 60 years. I’m in a (now) happy relationship that I thought was completely over twice. I also help people fix, create and save their relationships through relationship coaching.
I know that when you really love someone you expected to spend your life with, it’s not a trivial decision to move on for good.
People usually ask this question when they are feeling pessimistic and starting to give up hope that anything will work.
The fact is, whether or not it is wise to give up on getting your ex back can be tricky and very situational.
There are a few realities at play here.
First, when people completely give up on saving their relationship too soon, it can’t happen at all.
If they treat their ex coldly or like trash since deep down, they have lost faith a good relationship is possible because of what happened already, it will go terribly and the doubts will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If they try and get mixed or bad results (like most people do, myself included), the emotional rollercoaster can be too much while they ride out the process.
These folks usually quit in frustration or let the uncertainty get the best of them and confront their ex.
To compound things, I’ve never met anyone who could just choose to not have feelings for someone else.
They might try to bury the whole thing and box up the emotions, but hope is usually the last thing to die.
So this whole thought process, “should I, or shouldn’t I give up on my ex?” lands people in a catch-22.
Sometimes it feels bad to keep trying since there is usually not very much positive reinforcement– especially in the beginning when people are also most likely to feel the worst.
Then again, giving up feels hopeless too.
However, if you keep trying way past time when it makes any sense, you’ll waste your precious time, life force, and emotional energy.
Unfortunately, in my experience there are definitely situations when you should stop trying to get your ex back even when you still really love them, and that’s what I want to talk about today.
Here are the definite, deal-breaker signs it’s time to give up on getting your ex back and start the process of getting over it once and for all:
1. Your ex is in a committed, monogamous relationship with someone else.
You are not doing yourself any favors by scrolling through their wedding photos on Instagram.
It’s time to give up on getting your ex back when they start living with someone else, get engaged or marry another person.
Them moving on is a powerful sign that it’s time for you to give up and start the process of getting over them.
Plotting to get them to dump their new flame in favor of restarting a relationship with you is petty and not usually very successful once things get serious.
Allowing yourself to hold onto the fantasy that one day they’re going to leave their wife or husband and realize how much they miss you will just keep you super stuck.
The unfortunate reality is that even though you might feel one way about your relationship, they do not feel the same about you anymore.
2. Your ex has serious, unsolvable deal-breakers.
Here’s what I mean by unsolvable deal-breakers:
- Untreated drug or substance abuse.
- Only one of you wants more children.
- A pattern of consistent dishonesty.
- One or both of you has a pattern of true unwillingness to negotiate as a team member in the relationship.
- You want somewhere completely different for the long term and can’t come to a reasonable compromise.
These are all reasons to give up on a relationship permanently– whether it’s with your ex or someone new.
Keep in mind that when you’re striving to get them back it can be easy to gloss over these things.
However, even if you succeed in getting your ex back into your life, you’re still going to face the same serious problems you had before you split up.
If those problems are unsolvable or you can’t find a way to compromise, it’s not worth your time and energy in the long run.
3. Abuse.
Abuse in a relationship includes:
- Physical abuse
- Emotional abuse
- Financial abuse
- Sexual abuse
According to research, it takes people an average of seven tries to leave an abusive relationship. It doesn’t matter what your ex promises you, or whether they say they will change.
If you have left, or been dumped by an abuser, you have my deepest empathy and encouragement to move on once and for all. You will heal and recover. It will not always feel like this.
But you must stay away from them for healing to begin to take place.
4. You lack respect for each other.
Lack of respect for one’s partner is poisonous. It will seep into a relationship and poison it over time.
If you’re having a problem seeing how important disrespect is to avoid, consider whether you have (or are planning) a family.
Do you really want your children to grow up thinking it’s okay to belittle and disrespect their mates?
Or be so afraid of relationships that they struggle to create a good one for themselves because of the way they watched you and your ex treat each other?
Probably not.
People often rationalize this kind of thing, thinking, “well it isn’t so bad” when they’d be mortified if their mate said these things in front of their children or family.
You both deserve to be treated with respect in all of your relationships.
5. Your ex dumped you by abruptly ghosting.
I want to be clear here. I don’t mean they told you they were leaving (even if their breakup method sucked, like they chose email) and now your ex is ignoring you.
You found out you were breaking up because they disappeared.
They left without telling you they were done with the relationship.
In my coaching experience, trying to get back together with someone who has left by disappearing is one of the most difficult and nearly impossible situations to turn around.
Getting a quiet ex to respond to messages is a nightmare, and the whole reconnecting process is like pulling teeth before they are ready to talk.
Doing anything directly to try and get someone back when they abandon the relationship this way is brutal. In fact, trying anything usually doesn’t work and going too far is a good way to have a restraining order filed against you.
Also, even if you got the magical, true answer about why they left you, it doesn’t change the fact that they had so little regard for your feelings that they thought abandoning you was the right choice.
When someone doesn’t want to talk to you at all for an extended period of time, you need to hear the message in their behavior and leave them alone.
It doesn’t matter what you want right now.
Also, say you magically get back together and everything goes super well… how do you trust they won’t leave again?
You can’t.
And if you are still interested at all, you have to be able to make peace with that.
The opportunity to spend more time with them has to be more appealing than the possibility they might leave you again.
Usually, this is enough to keep people feeling on edge and unsafe in the relationship, which is a tough position to hold emotionally for any period of time.
It is hard enough to get back together successfully for the long term when you’re wondering whether they’re going to leave you every time they go to the grocery store.
The second time my partner and I broke up, he moved away (this part he told me about) but then basically disappeared after I took a trip out to visit him.
It was a year and a half before I heard from him again, and I was barely interested in talking to him by that time.
One thing you should know about an ex who leaves by disappearing is that they want control in the relationship.
I don’t mean “control” in a nefarious, “they are a narcissist scum” type way.
I mean control simply and literally.
An ex who leaves by disappearing has such self centered and out of control thinking that their state of mind has taken priority over absolutely everything else.
Whether this is justified or not, or even about you at all is a whole other discussion.
Either way, you have to willingly give up control and let your ex go completely to have any chance of things working out. And usually it’s not worth it to “wait” or “try” for an ex who has done this at all.
When my ex returned, I happened to still be single and interested. None of it happened when I was trying to do anything except mind my own business.
6. Trying to get your ex back has taken over your life and eroded your self esteem.
I’ve said it before, but it deserves repeating:
Heartbreak can make us do crazy things that would not seem normal or healthy to our non-heartbroken self.
It can seem perfectly rational to drive over to your ex’s house to sob on their doorstep and try to convince them that what you two shared was real love.
Your non-heartbroken self would cringe.
If you stay in this place of heartbreak, hanging on and constantly plotting, you’re wasting your life. You owe it to yourself and future you to move on.
It’s one thing to know for certain that you want to revisit your relationship, even though it seems impossible right now.
It’s a whole other thing to constantly spend your time plotting how you can get them back with zero positive reinforcement or willingness to try from their side.
Staying in this emotional place does a number on people’s self esteem and it’s deeply unattractive.
And you going all “fallen soldier of love” on your ex is frankly, not sexy to your ex either.
This cringy, needy emotional position is one I help debug in one on one coaching right away.
This is because if you are still in the “I would do anything for love” phase of break up, it doesn’t matter what you say or do with your ex, in this mindset, nothing will work to help you get back together.
It doesn’t matter if your ex actually might want to try again, it’s going to push them away– maybe not right now but eventually.
Ultimately only you can decide when it’s time to move on.
However, if you’re still holding out hope, you need to know that there is a difference between, “surrender,” “not trying,” and “moving on.”
It might sound like I’m splitting hairs, but hear me out.
Sometimes even a hint of “trying” actually hurts people’s progress with their ex because they are in the wrong headspace to succeed romantically with anyone right now.
This could be because they are too focused on saving their relationship with their ex and not on themselves or it could be a combination of things.
Either way, getting an ex back is usually an emotional minefield, so “giving up for now,” letting your ex take their direction and focusing on yourself is usually the right choice.
If you want my help after a breakup, you can check out your coaching options with me here.
