A reader asks if she should leave her ex alone or keep trying to get her ex back.
Hi,
About 7 months ago, my ex (2 year relationship) broke up with me out of the blue, saying he needs to fix his job situation before he can be fully present in a relationship.
I didn’t understand why he wanted to break up when he said it and still don’t. I was completely blind-sighted. He was never mean to me and didn’t really give me any other reason for the breakup beside that. It’s like one day he just decided not to see me anymore even though he had seemed so in love with me even the weekend before that.
I’ve been hoping he would come back and want me back, but I’ve been at a loss. I’ve tried calling, writing him messages, explaining how good we were together and he just seems embarrassed. At first he responded which made me feel hopeful, but now he’s blocked me online and doesn’t respond anymore.
Should I leave my ex alone or keep trying to make him understand how good we were together? I still love him and want him back.
I’m so sorry. Nothing hurts quite like a good relationship ending abruptly without really understanding why.
I wish I didn’t know what it felt like to get dumped this way.
Anyhow, you mentioned all of this effort that you’re going through to convince your ex to revisit the relationship.
Now, effort, logic and reason are really common strategies people use when they want their ex back, but it does not work and here’s why:
People make decisions emotionally and then use logic to justify them.
That’s why all the logic in the world won’t make your ex have a feeling except annoyance that you keep trying to change their mind.
Positive emotional response is what any ex needs to be magnetized toward you.
He has to feel like he misses your energy, not that your energy is angry and trying to get him to do something he doesn’t want to do.
This is why when people go it alone to get their ex back, they usually try to do it backwards and then wonder if they should give up.
Since they think the relationship was worth doing and already have their own logical reasons in place for wanting to save the relationship, they appeal to their ex in a logical way like a lawyer making a case.
The problem is that your ex already justified their decision to dump you using their own emotion —> logic cycle.
For your relationship to get to a crisis point, your ex felt bad (for whatever reason— maybe you, maybe something else in their life) and then attached their feelings to SOMETHING (in this case, you) and decided to get rid of that thing that was the supposed cause of that emotion.
They might have told themselves that they would come back to you later or that once they “sorted everything out” then things would work out with you.
The unconscious dream was to dump you and prance happily off into the sunset, having gotten rid of all of the negativity in their life which was dragging them down.
Your ex decided that the best way to feel better (at least right now) would be to say goodbye to you. And that stings no matter what the circumstances.
Now, I didn’t major in mind-reading in college— I majored in psychology which is the closest you can get. I don’t know what your ex is thinking right now.
But, when you leave a relationship because you are unhappy, for better or worse, you take yourself with you.
When you appeal to your ex using logic, you’re fighting directly with the logic that they used to get to the idea that they should leave you.
You’re essentially disagreeing with them.
And when you share your disagreement with their decisions, they have no choice but to fight back. Their ego usually won’t bend over and let you run the show.
Even if your ex magically thinks you are right that the relationship was good —deep down— they can NOT show it right now since their ego won’t allow it.
They’ll simply use their feelings of being disagreed with (see where I’m going here) to come up with even more logical reasons that you are not right for them.
Humans approve of people who agree with them because the ego likes agreement.
When you disagree with your ex, you’re risking your exe’s disapproval which solidifies their position against you and makes them feel even worse. And the worse you make someone feel, the greater the lengths that they’ll go to get rid of you.
So if logic and reason don’t work to get your ex back, what works?
Making your ex feel something positive toward you.
Even the most unemotional, detached ex will care about breaking up with someone they loved.
Even if they TOLD YOU they don’t care.
Even if they were super mean to you during the breakup.
Even if they act cold and distant and unavailable before and after the breakup.
Even if they blocked you on Facebook, Instagram and every other block-able place in the social media world (actually, what they do on social media is irrelevant, it’s as difficult to read as tea leaves).
Now, making them feel something is going through the back door. They don’t expect that their own feelings will change on them.
So, how do you make your ex feel something positive toward you?
The absolute most effective way to make your ex miss you is to genuinely not want them at all.
Ever noticed how those people you don’t care about keep popping into your life?
The lack of wanting is super powerful and tells the universe that you’re perfectly okay as-is. When you want, all you get is more wanting.
You can’t want something you already have.
When you wake up in the morning, you don’t anxiously worry about whether you’re going to have enough air, right?
And… air is a basic requirement for sustaining your life.
Without air, it’s all over in 5-7 minutes. Unless you’ve had a medical condition where you struggled to get air, you are probably usually blissfully unaware of air as a minimum requirement in your life.
But when your airway closes, you’d better believe you’re going to worry about air.
Relationships are similar.
People don’t worry about losing their relationship until something threatens it.
By the time they’re worrying about the threat, that anxious, needy, dependency energy of WANTING (them back, things to be better, more sex, more emotional fulfillment) kicks in and they are on the way to torpedoing the whole thing.
As much as I would like a unicorn and some magic beans, expecting you to actually just stop wanting your ex is an impossible thing for me to ask of you— especially when you’re heartbroken.
That’s why I can help you do the next best things to get your ex back.
1. Always be positive around your ex
If they want to talk about the breakup, agree with them, be quiet and stop yourself from showing negative emotion. They can’t mirror your negativity if you don’t show them any.
This might sound manipulative, but it’s not meant in that spirit.
If you can avoid sharing your feelings with the waiter at dinner or the cashier at the market, you can avoid sharing your pain with your ex.
2. Focus on yourself
Use this pause in the action as an opportunity to make your own life as happy as humanly possible.
Take your attention off of your ex and put it on yourself whenever you find yourself going into that negative, painful, “why don’t they want me?” wanting energy.
Making yourself truly happy without your ex will serve you well forever— whether your ex comes back or not.
Your happiness also gives your ex an opening to potentially fix whatever it is that they’re struggling with without your judgement, “help” or worrying about what you think.
If they think you’re unhappy because they’re gone, it simply inspires them to feel guilty and stay away from you.
Now, let’s talk about how your ex is floundering in the “career and life purpose” department.
For men, this life purpose problem is a big deal. When men struggle with their life purpose, they HATE having women around watching them—whose respect they want.
It’s really embarrassing and painful for a man to lose your respect. Career and purpose are tender emotional territory for them. Men get a great deal of strokes from women from their place in the world.
So, when a man’s place feels shaky or uncertain or not the way he wants it to feel, he’s not going to be able to give to a relationship the way a woman wants since his ego is at risk.
A man can’t approach a woman on his knees, unless he’s proposing marriage.
When something’s wrong in a man’s world, it’s cocoon time.
Men will absolutely leave you to chase their own purpose.
This tends to be the opposite of what women do, because we enjoy emotional support during our journey.
A man who already has a shaky relationship with his feelings might think that having a woman there to watch his struggle diminishes him, even though you may or may not actually understand or be critical of what he’s going through.
It’s one of the times when a breakup truly isn’t all about you.
That’s why it doesn’t matter what you are actually doing at all.
If he is struggling with respecting himself, he will struggle with loving you.
If he feels like he’s in the one-down position with you, he will not treat you or the relationship the way you would hope, because since he doesn’t feel good about himself, he can’t feel good about you either.
It sucks, and hurts, but since the only thing you have control over is yourself, take this time to make yourself the absolute best you can be— whether or not he eventually decides to get in touch.
So to answer your question, “should I leave my ex alone or keep trying to get my ex back?” Yes to both.
But trying to get your ex back in this case means is a complete lack of trying.
To get my help getting back together or saving your relationship, check out your coaching options here.
