Listen as Chris Seiter helps women through breakups and recovery. The Ex Boyfriend Recovery Podcast is one of the most popular self help and dating podcasts online today. Seiter takes real life situations on one by one and provides valuable advice that have helped thousands of women find success and peace with their love lives.
Talking About CPTSD And Breakups With Anna Runkle
Sep 12, 2023
If you’ve ever heard of the crappy childhood fairy then you are in for a treat. I had the pleasure of interviewing Anna Runkle who is the founder of the very popular YouTube channel,
We talked about all kinds of amazing things,
Intro to the crappy childhood fairy. 0:03
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder. 3:28
What Is abandonment? Melange? 7:54
How to deal with emotional flashbacks? 11:13
Rec repetition compulsion and repetition compulsion. 15:59
Dealing with the fantasy element. 23:01
What does limerence feed off of? 25:53
Twin flame and codependency. 31:04
The importance of telling your story. 33:32
How she changed her approach to dating. 38:45
Dating a man who met her. 41:45
The difference between value and value in relationships. 46:47
Chris Seiter 00:03 Today we’re gonna be interviewing Anna Runkle, who has perhaps one of the most clever names or monikers she’s known as the crappy childhood fairy. So if you’re not familiar, she literally runs this YouTube channel called the crappy childhood fairy that has over half a million subscribers. So I just want to say thank you so much for coming on and doing this, there’s so much I want to ask you. But perhaps we can start a little bit by giving me the origin story about how this all came to be.
Anna 00:36 Where I’m, my channel has so much to do with relationships. That’s why I’m really excited to be talking to you. And I think we talk about a lot of the same things. And I talk about it from the angle of people, mostly women, who went through abuse and neglect as kids, which really affects the way we have relationships. And I learned about this through the school of hard knocks, I grew up in a commune with a drug addict, alcoholic mom. And a lot of the stuff that just goes with that with having a alcoholic family, the like cars in the yard and poverty and you know, nobody really looking out for you and nobody supervising. And so I had really common symptoms for kids who grew up that way. But when I was growing up, and even as even 10 years ago, people didn’t really know a lot about this. They knew that kids who had a rough childhood were prone to depression and anxiety. But gradually, the research has been coming out that there’s so much more to it, that there’s a neurological injury that can happen when kids aren’t taking care of properly, when especially the emotional neglect, like we know that physical abuse and sexual abuse are horribly harmful. But there’s this specific thing that happens in all of this. And especially with the emotional neglect, where there’s a the there’s a glitch in the neurological development, and actually connecting with people, you know, and this is where it really does affect romantic relationships to connecting with people feeling a sense of calm in your body, instead of like too agitated, or just completely bla, all of that stuff gets thrown off, it also throws off your immune system, your hormones, your, your heart, your lungs. And so gradually, it’s coming out that chronic chronic disease, the risk of it goes way up, if you were traumatized as a kid. So there’s a lot of research going on on this. And it’s sort of all over the place. And a lot of people say, Oh, I’m trauma informed. But I always say, you know, this is a really emerging science. And so what what I really recommend for people who have been through trauma and feel like it’s affected them, is to really be in charge to be their own researcher and to be sovereign over their own healing. And if they’re trying something that doesn’t seem to work for them, or they don’t feel like the big problem in their life is getting recognized. That’s how I used to feel, it might be time to find a different approach a different therapist or a different approach. So I’m not a therapist, I’m somebody who didn’t benefit from talk therapy. As it turns out, I thought there was something wrong with me. And it turns out, that’s a really normal thing for many people who are traumatized as kids that talking about it kind of makes it worse. And so there’s ways that you can process your feelings and your memories, and then get on with changing your life. And that’s the most important thing is changing your life.
Chris Seiter 03:28 So what was interesting is when I was going through your website, specifically, there were two things that stuck out to me. I’m just going to kind of follow my my intuition here. So the first thing I did when I’m with your website is I’m looking at you know, like the little sidebar or whatever, and it has this term called CPTSD, which I believe is complex, post traumatic stress disorder. But I started reading a little bit it seems like you kind of created your own childhood Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, do you want to talk
Anna 04:05 about PTSD, it’s sort of a colloquial, colloquial term. Everybody understands what I mean when I say childhood, PTSD, PTSD, we know what that is. So from childhood, that makes sense. And technically what it’s called is complex PTSD, and which is not only from childhood, but it’s the kind of PTSD that you get, which has it has a slightly different set of symptoms from say, straight up PTSD, which might be a combat veteran who went through this very bad couple of days, you know, or somebody who had a card car accident. Complex PTSD comes from chronic ongoing exposure to stress when it goes on all the time, like trauma is going to influence your body, your brain, your memories, all that stuff. When it goes on all the time, it starts to kind of get in there and affect how you develop. And so it has a slightly different set of symptoms. And a lot of people are walking around with it right now.
Chris Seiter 05:00 Yeah, so I actually think this is completely relevant to our audience. Because one of the things that I research a lot is breakups, right? And breakups can be quite traumatic. And what’s interesting neurologically or neuro chemically is that cortisol shoots way up. You know, cortisol is a stress hormone. But, you know, on average, if you get stressed throughout the day, it should take around three to four hours for your cortisol to kind of come down to normal, but to your point like this, this constant complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, if you’re engaging in activities, or you’re obsessing about your ex, you’re looking on social media, and today’s day and age does not make it any easier. Cortisol has a tendency to stay elevated. And if it stays elevated for a long period of time, it can take as long as six months for it to level out. So I think even the science is backing up what what you’re saying here? How do you think, oh, sorry, you go ahead,
Anna 06:00 I was just gonna say there’s a real disadvantage for somebody who was going through all that cortisol and a lack of like mirroring and touch and everything when they were little kids. And so already, there’s a, you know, that’s what that’s where the neurological dysregulation stems from, is, you know, you know, mirror neurons, I’m not a neurologist, but mirror neurons, they develop in response to, you know, meaningful connection with your mom with your caregiver. And if you were neglected, there’s part of your brain that can’t develop. And it might, you know, some of the symptoms of C PTSD, in some ways look like autism, it’s not autism, it’s a very different cause. And, but there’s some symptoms in common. And it might, it would be like difficulty connecting. And so that anxious attachment that you teach people about so much, so often goes along with neglect from childhood. And it’s not just psychological, it’s neurological.
Chris Seiter 06:57 So a lot of times when we’re looking at the attachment styles, specifically, the anxious attachment styles, I try to give people like the Cliff Notes version, like I try not to overwhelm them with too much. But one of the things I always harp on is this idea of core wounds. And specifically, the core wound of an anxious attachment style is someone who is terrified of being abandoned. But I guess what you’re arguing is that even you know, it’s all stemmed from childhood and the mirroring neurons and the lack of it,
Anna 07:27 well, not all of it, but it’s, you know, it sets you up your brain is developing your body and brain and, you know, intrinsic, we can’t develop in a vacuum, we develop in the arms of the people who love us, and through their talking with us and working with us and guiding us. And so like the way I grew up, for example, my mom, when I was a month old, she just took off with some new boyfriend, and my dad was stuck by himself. And he was working and he had to hire somebody to come in. And I don’t remember any of this. But this happened again and again. And it starts to explain a lot of stuff that I struggled with later, which is extremely anxious attachment, horrible abandonment wounds. What Pete Walker calls abandonment Melange, which is kind of like a special intense emotional cocktail, that not everybody gets. When you know, when abandonment occurs, when the end of a relationship occurs, even thinking about ending a relationship with somebody I couldn’t stand would like, set me off, and then I wouldn’t do it. So the the attachment with the insecure attachment kind of drives people who would that childhood trauma, it can drive, it’s this is nothing is across the board. But it’s a very common trait, to go rushing into relationships, sleep together real fast, how that whole bonding thing happened, you know, and then like two days into the whole thing, you’re just like, Oh, my God, what am I done? I don’t even like this person. But the abandonment wound is there to go, but don’t you leave because if you leave, you’re gonna get thrown into the worst depression that you’ve ever known. And so people are like, held hostage by these emotions that are at the beginning driven by this neurological dysregulation. So the approach I teach is first to recognize which part of all this trouble is the neurology and the neurological injury. And I only you know, this science is pretty new. It came out about 10 years ago, and there was a word for it dysregulation and the name Complex PTSD, it’s pretty recent that this stuff has had names. And I read the books that came out pretty early. And it was the hugest thing, and I had just gotten married for the second time. And I was going through a lot of upheaval and roller coaster with him, you know, in the first year of marriage, and then this information came out and I found out the name for what’s wrong with me and for me, because I’ve worked hard on myself for decades. I’ve been in Al Anon for 25 years. That’s the 12 step program for families of alcoholics which I certainly qualify. My you know, most of my family was alcoholic AND, and OR drug addicted. And I was going there and I, I mean, I really worked on my Self and I had written self help books, but I just really struggled around relationships in ways that made no sense. Like, I was a nice girl like me having problems at this level. And my husband, he’s, he’s a really good guy, I did not want to screw it up. But I realized, like, if I couldn’t figure out what was really wrong with me, I was gonna blow it in this relationship. And I and I looked at these books, and when I read them, I mean, I just about my, my jaw hit the floor, when I found out it’s called dysregulation. And I knew like, that is exactly what I have. No one had ever described it before. And it’s part of complex PTSD. And I, I remember, I just was like, Honey, honey, I gotta tell you this. And at the time, he was like, this, just you know, I don’t trust this, this doesn’t set. You know, this just sounds like one of your excuses. But luckily, he gave me time to figure it out. And I was able to radically improve, I had healed a lot from my childhood, but I had these crucial wounds around relationships, where I would kind of, like if something made me feel upset, I would just, I would be too mean, I would sort of pop off on him. And I would say things I didn’t mean, and it’s called emotional dysregulation. See, PTSD isn’t the only thing that has it. But it’s really common. There’s, it’s it’s a neurological thing when you take a kid who was intensely stressed a person, an adult who was intensely stressed as a kid, and you get them thinking about something stressful, like an argument with the spouse. Left brain, which is reasoning just starts to go dim and right brain, which is emotions just starts lighting up all over the place, which is exactly what it feels like. So in my mind and argument, it’s sort of like a switch flips, and it just seems much worse than it is. And then I’m saying things like, well, obviously, you don’t love me, and obviously, I shouldn’t be here anymore. And I go pack my suitcase. It was like some sort of coping mechanism. And once I had a name for it, I was able to completely stop all that. I just, I was like, Oh, it’s a thing. And I read a really good book by this guy, Pete Walker, see PTSD from surviving to thriving. And he said, This is an emotional flashback. And when it’s happening, the first thing you do is say, Oh, I’m having an emotional flashback. And he gives some steps of what to do. And I’ve sort of added some of my own over the years. But the first thing I do is stop trying to make pronouncements about what what’s wrong right now, or whose fault it is or what we’re going to do about it just stop and get reregulated. And then you can work out so much. And it was just utterly life changing. And so I started to make videos about it. And that’s the origin story is I began I found something that just was so revolutionary, and it built on and I’ll tell you about this in a minute. But it started 30 years ago, I learned some techniques that are very reregulating, I just didn’t know, I didn’t have a framework for like, why does this helped me so much? And therefore, why should I make sure I keep doing it every day, I would sort of do it when I felt like I needed it. And so now I do it twice a day, and I can stay it helps me just stay it’s like WD 40 For all your problems, you know, just loosens them up so you can start changing that what needs to be changed, release what needs to be released. And I teach that free. I’ll give you a link to that to share with your listeners.
Chris Seiter 13:15 Is that the daily practice that? Yeah, do you? Do you mind talking a little bit about like, what’s part of that daily practice?
Anna 13:24 Yeah, um, so I had sort of like hit rock bottom. I somebody. There was this time where everything went bad at the same time. I call it a trauma storm. But I got attacked on the street. This is 30 years ago now. But I got attacked on the street. I was beaten unconscious, just like randomly by strangers.
Chris Seiter 13:43 That has to freak you out. Yeah, it freaked me out. I
Anna 13:46 had a head injury and my broken jaw broken teeth. And it gave me PTSD.
Chris Seiter 13:54 Let’s slow down here this Yeah, yes. So you’re just walking randomly down the street and someone just attacks you.
Anna 14:00 So I was on a first date with my friend had set me up with somebody. I liked him. I thought maybe, you know, I was trying to get over like a major heartbreak. I was it was like really hard year where the person I love the most had decided not to be with me. And and so I was on my first first date. And we were walking home from having coffee. And it was it was dark out. But it didn’t seem like I mean, it was the sort of thing that we did in that neighborhood all the time is walk home after dark from a cafe. And just out of the blue. These four guys jumped out of a car and beat us unconscious.
Chris Seiter 14:34 And I know where they tried to steal.
Anna 14:37 Like, it’s funny, that kind of hurt more because it wasn’t about money. It was it was
Chris Seiter 14:41 just like yeah, wow. Do they? Do you ever get any information if they caught these individuals or they just kind of
Anna 14:50 you ask I they know they never got busted for what they did to us. But we learned that this was happening all over I live in the San Francisco Bay Area you So we have our ups and downs here crime wise, and it was one of those bad years. And I guess for two years, people were getting beaten on the street randomly like this. And it was never reported in the news. And, yeah, and so but the the police told me that I was just like, am I the only person this has ever happened to? They’re like, No, sadly, it happens all the time. And they tried so hard to get the guys in later, I asked the Berkeley police, I said, did you ever get the guys who did that to me? They said, We didn’t get the guys who did it to you. But we, the whole thing stopped happening. Like it happened enough. And we caught enough people that it no longer was happening. So in the end, the net caught them. Yeah, but funnily enough, like my, like, the thing that I internalized about all that, like, I don’t really think about the people who didn’t much, you know, like, objectively and now I’m a mom, I just think all those poor screwed up, guys, they’re probably like, I don’t know, late teens, early 20s. And, you know, they, they’re, I’m sure they’re in prison now or dead. It’s just like, you can’t start life that way. It was probably a gang initiation, there was like graffiti on the sidewalk afterwards.
Chris Seiter 16:05 See, that makes sense? Like, I have a hard time believing it’s just a random thing. So like, if it’s a gang initiation, beating up some civilian or something, then yeah, some logic there just seems like, like to beat someone random. But anyways,
Anna 16:21 I know I digress. But in the, in the in what I thought about it, I can sort of, you know, I was such a brief encounter, and I was unconscious for most of it. But in a weird way, I was very in touch with myself and I had to wake myself up and scream and you know, something in me kind of kicked in. And this was a time when I was very depressed, my mom was dying, like in that two weeks later, she died. And I had my heart broken. And then this happened, and my medical care and my I was going to a therapist and state of California, like gives you all the money, you need to go to all the therapy you want when something like this happens. So but it wasn’t helping the thing that was wrong with me, it was beyond all of this. But I will say that a little bit getting in a weird way. I wouldn’t be doing what I do today, if this hadn’t happened. And I don’t wish it on anybody, including myself. But it was a pivotal moment, in my experience, because I had this very tenuous belief that I should be alive at the time I was really depressed. And so I think when you’re that depressed, sometimes when your life is threatened, it feels a little bit like, I don’t know, maybe it’d be better if they just take me. And I had to make that decision while I was out. And I it’s a weird kind of memory and hard to explain, but something and then we just was like, No, I do want to live, I definitely want to live. And I woke up and I screamed really loud, and they went away. And you know, it was very survivable. In this case, but the part that was hard. And so I wasn’t, I didn’t end up with like lingering fear about going out or anything, I had PTSD. And I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. What happened was, I had a really rough childhood, and I was somebody who did a very good job of like packaging it up, compartmentalizing it, putting it over here being very high functioning. But where it was really showing up was in my romantic relationships. So there were so many things I did, right. But there was this one thing that was like my Achilles heel, and I’d get into these relationships. And when they went bad, they went so very bad. And I was getting involved with worse and worse people, drug addicts, you know, chasing a married man, you know,
Chris Seiter 18:33 was it like a with the drug addicts? Was it something cute with your mom, like trying to recapture or
Anna 18:39 connect with that. So it’s, you know, it’s a bit of a mystery to me, because I would never consciously want somebody like my mom, she, you know, she was a pain. She was really incompetent and a mess and unreliable. So I wouldn’t want somebody like that I had a different idea of what I wanted. So there’s this thing that therapists call repetition compulsion, under the belief that we unconsciously pursue and repeat the trauma from the past maybe so we can work it out again. And in my typical fashion, I sometimes question these orthodoxies about why we do that, in my experience, in who, you know, I can’t really speak for my unconscious because I’m conscious, but it’s more like in the process of like meeting somebody and feeling attracted to them. And I talk about this a lot on YouTube, and so many people resonate so I know it’s not just me. It’s like this weird level of electric excitement comes that’s accompanied by this cloud of unknowing, and it makes you like a zombie. And here’s the thing, like, what’s so attractive about unavailable people? Is that you so little is required of you, it’s not going to work out. And you you can pop up into the realm of fantasy, which is a lot like fantasy. He is like, so exciting. And so if you can never really have the person, you can live in fantasy about it and pining away for them. Yeah. And, you know, I did you know, my dad, my parents were like, here and there and not always there and my dad died when I was a teenager. So sure, pining was part of it. But it’s not a recreation, it’s a weird, just like, I can’t cope with real intimacy. That’s kind of what my wound was, I can’t really cope with a real person. And it would stress me out quite a lot. Like a healthy person who liked me would just it would be it would feel like such a demand or kind of icky and just just weird and so I couldn’t really cope with it. And so there was this weird also, when you grow up in such a rough childhood, there’s a affinity that you have with other people who had it that bad. And a lot of people make a lot of people who grew up in a childhood as rough as mine, are drug addicts. So there was that affinity of like, yeah, I’ve never really been loved either. And I need to smoke cigarettes, for sure. And
Chris Seiter 21:02 well, I guess it’s like, it’s like someone who understands you. But yeah,
Anna 21:07 on this very primal level, you feel it. But it’s not really what you want. You don’t really want to be with an unavailable person alone on your birthday, as you want. And you don’t Yeah, and, and you don’t really want to be with somebody who’s, you know, nothing but trouble and somebody to be ashamed of, and you can’t introduce to your co workers or anything, what you want is just sort of those are the sorts of unintended consequences of seeking that comfort level. And trying not to get dysregulated. So that’s what I’ve noticed is this neurological dysregulation, when it kicks in, and it kicks in it can, when I say the word trigger, I don’t mean like the common Oh, I feel upset. I mean, a stimulus inside you are outside of you happens that triggers this neurological dysregulation. And there’s stuff it does to you that you can’t feel like hormone secretion. But there’s stuff that you can feel like, I feel clumsy, when I’m dysregulated I can’t find my words, I feel discombobulated, I might drive off from the gas station with the pump still in my car, and just flustered, my handwriting changes. So it’s dysregulation and just regular that’s the neurologic, your neurology governs not just your emotions, physic, there’s emotional dysregulation, and that’s other people can see that. Because you’re, you know, you’re throwing a tantrum, you’re very angry, whatever. But but these other aspects of it, like how it’s affecting your hormones, how it’s darkening part of your brain, how it’s how it’s changing your ability to feel your hands or to feel the consequences. That’s one of the things that research, that’s just one of the many things, a history of childhood trauma makes it very hard when you’re dysregulated. To assess, what are the consequences of what I’m saying and doing right now. You get very bad judgment, you normally have good judgment, but then you get very bad judgment. That’s where the bad boyfriends get in. You know, I feel attracted. I don’t see any I don’t see the problem. Right. The
Chris Seiter 23:01 chemistry is narrow, you see the problem, but
Anna 23:03 you can’t leave now.
Chris Seiter 23:06 Yeah, it’s interesting. I also really resonate with what you said about the fantasy element. So like, probably the one area of study that I feel like my team and I has done has been actually on the actual exes that a lot of our clients are trying to get back. And so we found that around 67% have dismissive avoidant tendencies. And one of the things that I always find really fascinating about dismissive avoidance is the fact that what usually works on them is giving them a lot of space so that they can fantasize about you. So you need to actually move on. And then as you move on, they’re like, Oh, now I feel comfortable enough to miss you. And it’s all that nostalgic reverie and that fantasy that you were talking about. Yeah, I was actually kind of curious to get your thoughts if you had any like wow that on that.
Anna 24:00 I’ve never heard that and it’s so intriguing to me that the dismissive avoidant that 67% are dismissive avoidant, I mean, I know the type so I like like the back of my hand. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 24:13 So that’s just our little our little shell of the world but I mean, yeah,
Anna 24:18 and the little drama plays out well what I’ve heard about this combination of insecure and dismissive avoidant is that it’s a very stable coupling really because no one will
Chris Seiter 24:27 it is so the only other coupling that stays together longer secure secure Yeah, but if you have anxious and avoidant together that’s the second longest but inevitably the flaw is there because like what what ends up happening when you have this coupling is the anxious person wants so badly not to screw things up that they inevitably just overcrowd the avoidant and the avoidant starts to avoid, I guess, and ultimately is the one that breaks up after a long period of time together and then And they actually go through the second honeymoon period on the breakup because they’re like, Oh, I got my independence back. This is great. And this is so hard for our clients to hear because it’s like, like, one of the questions I get all the time is like, is he thinking about me? Is he missing me? And I have to sit there and say, no, really happy to be away. But don’t worry, it will hit after that separation elation kind of wears off. But often, then you’ve moved on to someone else. And that’s why you see all these exes coming back. Like when you’re when you’re moved on and happy. It’s because they’re, like, romanticizing, and making you the Phantom X, you can finally
Anna 25:38 feel their love. Yeah, right. Yeah. Well, that makes a lot of sense. I’m very Yeah. Cool. Good one. Yes. Um, so I’ll tell you my take on that is a lot of content that I make is about limerence. Have you ever heard of this? Yeah, I
Chris Seiter 25:55 did an article. Like, months ago, I did an article limerence. And I did all like so much research on it. And then I hardly can remember what I wrote about it and older
Anna 26:09 feeling. I know the feeling why I do it a lot. And it’s a, you know, you take the feeling of falling in love that anybody would have, but then it just goes on and on and on. And it’s not matched to what’s going on. And it it turns into, like an obsession or infatuation that it is more like an addiction. And what limerence feeds off of is not having the person reciprocate the feelings. So if they reciprocate the feelings, you get together, you have a relationship, you deal with all the like, you know, toilet seats and toothpaste and all that stuff of relationships, right? And you’re not like, oh, magical, you know, yeah. It’s just a guy. And you You love him. But yeah, and so you don’t have a chance to ever develop that earthly love. And it’s all up in this fantasy realm. And I believe, I think, you know, a lot of research has been done about this sort of like neuro chemistry of that. There’s a genetic component, there’s chemistry, but I believe that comes from an attachment wound and I get it, you know, people write me letters, I answer letters on YouTube, and I just have hundreds and hundreds of letters that come in, and so many of them are from, it’s mostly women who write to me mostly women who I think men get I know men get it too. I’ve had men do it to me before but but it’s a they grew up in a family often with an alcoholic, almost always with just utter emotional neglect. And I think it’s a it’s an it’s an adaptation. It’s a survival technique of a child to go. That’s okay. Mom and Dad. I know you love me. I know that this you love me like normal parents do. And you develop this magical thinking, you know that? And, and it feels it’s like what you grew up feeding on? Is this magical love, like, yes, but it’s special and and in fact, when they’re in fact not there and they’re not giving you what a parent should and so you’re simultaneously handling the shame of being the kid who’s not picked up after daycare, you know, and and just rationalizing it all in your mind and it Prime’s you to tolerate neglect abuse, you know, dismissive avoidant partners it Prime’s you to take it and keep dancing around trying to fix it or trying to come up with ways that you could look at this that justify staying because leaving is impossible. You have this attachment wound, you can’t leave, you know. And so, a lot of what people do is they get into straw ology, the idea of twin flames. Tarot cards. I mean, people make a fortune. Oh,
Chris Seiter 28:45 yeah. Psychics Yeah, he used to run this Facebook group of all of our, of all of our people who had like, purchased our programs. And the one thing we learned really, really quickly was psychics would. So our clients, you know, they’re anxious individuals struggling with breakups. They pay a psychic, right? And then the psychic will tell them to go into the group and start promoting the psychic thing so we had we like create this rule like no law of attraction, no psychics, you know, I don’t think we’ve ever like clamped down on astrology too much. But you know, I’ve never really made any kind of articles or any, any research on it, because it’s, it’s,
Anna 29:31 well, like, Can I use the same way to just tell people what they want to hear? Yeah. And charge money for it? Yeah, psychics people get hooked into that. And there’s a lot of when I you know, like YouTube shows me like, where are most of my new subscribers coming from?
Chris Seiter 29:47 Oh, do you also get the spam comments from doctor so like, I get like the spam comments for like spellcasters spellcasters.
Anna 29:55 Yes, yeah. Psilocybin. Yeah, yeah. Bitcoin Yeah, the whole thing. Yeah, we get that, but But I get a lot of sincere followers. They’re following me because I talk about limerence and attachment stuff, but they’re trying to like hold on to two worlds. Yeah, they’re like, Yeah, but the twin flame thing is real. And for anybody who doesn’t know, dear listeners know what that is. It’s a it’s a new age that a soul splits into and this person who you wish would come back to you is actually the other half of your soul. And they just don’t really. Yeah. And it’s, it’s like a form of psychological torture to just sort of hold on and be like, but I know they’re coming even if I have to wait till the next life. And, you know, people have often reminded me it’s like, well, any spiritual thing and for that matter, ideological thing can trap people in a magical belief system that are cults, right. religious cults, you know, it’s like, yeah, where you’re being abused. But actually, this is for your greatest spiritual good, so people can really get messed with especially traumatized people. Trauma really predisposes people to get mind controlled. Yeah. Yeah. I
Chris Seiter 31:05 mean, like, waited and look at there was like that HBO documentary on? Was it like, Nexium are something that are near guy? Yeah. But what was interesting about it was you got to see how really intelligent individuals could be essentially controlled. And yeah, yeah, but the twin flame thing, the thing I always think that’s unhealthy about it is it’s essentially making you believe in codependency. So, like, you need this other person to complete you. And it kind of like, makes you believe that instead of coming into as having an interdependent relationship, you’re coming at it with like, I need this other person. And that’s not necessarily the most healthy approach to any kind of
Anna 31:53 relationship. It gets so much worse. I mean, I had to get police involvement a guy thought I was the other half of his soul. Oh, and I it kept escalating like nothing I could say would make him go away. Yeah, I had to get the cops.
Chris Seiter 32:10 That’s frightening. Yeah, was that was come up here. But that was in the past. I’m assuming past in the past, not some crazy watcher of your YouTube channel, like showing up a little bit of that. Occasionally
Anna 32:21 people get limerence on me. Yeah. And somehow, there’s a form of limerence where people do it on friends, or they are a mother figure. And I think to some people, I’m a mother figure. Or, you know, it’s weird. I handle this very carefully. Because sometimes people are like, I just think if I could talk to you, I could heal. Yeah. And that’s a like, that’s a really like, careful line that I walk, because it’s like, well, I can’t talk to everybody, but I’ve made all these videos and courses for you. Right? My sincere hope is that you, you can use them. But there is, you know, there’s actually, there’s, it’s interesting, because I started doing live shows a couple of months ago, I just did one in London last weekend. And, and you know, there’s a lot of like, we hug and we talk and people are crying, there’s just coming together with other people with the same thing. And, you know, when you’re a YouTuber, it’s a, it’s almost like, television person or something. Like you really represent something to people. And so it becomes this intensely healing environment. And, you know, in a way, I think seeing each other in person corrects a lot of that, but I suppose it could go the other way. It corrects magical thinking, yeah, it’s gonna that it would be this or that. And one of the things I’m teaching people anyway is telling your story is not really the it’s not the end all be all of your healing. It’s, it’s really like what you do to change your dating patterns, either dating course dating and relationships for people, for people with childhood PTSD. And that’s where I teach some very tough love, you got to, you know, like, nobody’s coming to save you. It’s not men’s fault. It’s not society’s fault. It’s, you know, the people who abused you, when you’re a kid, it is their fault that you got wounded. But nobody’s going to come and fix this now, right rail against this or that all you want. But it’s not going to change the wound that you’re carrying, and you got to heal that wound, you got to be working on yourself. So I teach people to get very clear, who is the person you really want to be with. And a lot of people who have been through the wringer around relationships they can’t remember. And they’re afraid to define that and be strong about it. And you’ve probably found this to in your own work, you know, like, they won’t say marriage, and I’m like, well, so you don’t want marriage or you do and they will they’ll say life partner or yeah, I’ll be like, Well, can you be more specific? Like, what do you want? So I can talk to you about what you want? And they’ll be like, well, but it just seems to them. It seems like marriage is too much to ask. So when they say life partner, I say, Well, do you mean like an open relationship? Like your money is separate, or do you mean that it’s not permanent? And they’ll be like, No, I want it to last forever and everything else Gather I’d be like, like Americans, right? Click a marriage. And it feels like too much to ask. So a lot of this healing begins with like being really clear. This is, you know, this was what I want, it may not be what you grew up with, it may not be what you ever got before, but you can, you can define it as such. And for me, that’s when things really changed is when I had mentoring to just really write that down, I wrote down 200 qualities that were like, they were in like three categories, I must have this, I this is pretty important. But I could live without it. And this would be nice, you know? Yeah. And, and write that stuff down. Like one thing I could I must have is this, my person can never have have have now or have had a drug or alcohol problem. And I think people who are sober, clean and sober can be great partners, but not for me. Because I had such a blind spot going into it. Yeah. So I just said none of that. And that was one of them. And they had to love my kids. You know, I was a divorced mom of little kids, and they had to love my kids and be a really good person for them. So those were like, must haves, and you know, and on down the line, and then I had to really, really work on you know, like, I can’t, I’ll never be able to tell you what’s the draw of unavailable inappropriate people. I just knew what happened. And then I had to use guardrails to make sure that’s not what was happening. And that I was getting, you know, that I was basically like sitting back and doing no, definitely no more than half and in the early part, less than half of the initiating of like,
Chris Seiter 36:29 just literally like what we teach. Yeah,
Anna 36:33 yeah. And just let information come to me. And so with my now husband, he’s the first person I, you know, I went, I spent two years working on this big transformation and myself and I was in my early 40s, divorced mom. And so it’s not, you know, it wasn’t too late at all, I thought it probably was. But I really got to the point where I was willing to have no relationship rather than get into the the just like, horrible situation I was in I couldn’t do that to me or my kids. And, you know, it’s really it was affecting my finances. It was affecting my job like it was it was a real problem. And the what had happened, the relationship that was the ultimate one that caused me to go into this deep period of reconsideration was it was a drug addict. I didn’t know he was a drug addict when I got together with him. And when I gradually found out what was going on, and I was making my lame attempt to get out of the relationship, which was messy and incomplete and dragged on for a long time, he flipped out and he took his own life. And I’ll never be sure did he take his own life? Or did he accidentally overdose but either way he made it. So I found him. And it was a terrible, like, I was re traumatized all over again. And so when you grew up with trauma, these you end up kind of drawn to and attaching to see people say, Oh, I attract narcissists. And that’s one of my little catchphrases. It’s like, No, you’re attracted to narcissists, and you sleep with them, and then get bonded with them, and don’t leave them. That’s the problem. It doesn’t matter who’s attracted, you know, because you’re probably very pretty. People are going to be attracted, but it’s who you go for. And so I had to stay very transparent, you know, with the people who were helping me. And I was in a 12 step program, and I had a sponsor, and I had, I had a series of mentors in different aspects of my life. And I was very honest about the nature of my problem, like, I can’t see these problems coming. I never want to do it again, I want to do it differently. And so I learned, so I finally started dating again. And the only person I ever sincerely dated was the man who I’m now married to, because he popped up with those characteristics that I had already defined as important to me. And then I teach people to do this in my dating course. But I felt very strongly about him. He was so cool that he had it together on every level, he still does. And we’ve been together 15 years and married for 10 now, and and I still, like really, really believe in him as a good man. And like such a good thing that happened in my life that I was able to change my approach to dating and be with a good man. And so I was trying to answer a specific thing for you. And I sort of was getting into the details there. But here’s what I changed. This was what we were talking about not rushing in. So the first two months we were dating, right, he was being super careful to we’ve been on nine dates, and he hadn’t kissed me. And one day, I was like, Listen, I am starting to have a concern. Yeah, you know, what, are we are we just friends? Yeah, you’re straight. Right? And and he said, No, no, I’m interested. And, but I just know that I want to go really slowly. Which he told me on the first date, but by nine dates, I was like, okay, good, right.
Chris Seiter 39:50 Yeah. Nine days is pretty slow. It’s like it’s like a caterpillar crawl.
Anna 39:55 Yeah, worked for us. But so he said he just got slow. And I said, I said to him, then I go, Well, that’s okay. Because I already know how this is going to end. And I sort of I had a very strong feeling about him. And I had a mentor who I said, I think I’m just doing that thing again, like having magical thinking about an unavailable guy. But my mentor said, You know what, I think this is different. My mentor met him, you know, under different aspects. You know, my, my now husband didn’t know that this was
Chris Seiter 40:22 out. You did the whole audit thing. I was very careful. I didn’t
Anna 40:26 have a dad to do this for me, you know, like, like I was supposed to learn. Yeah, so. So we, so we’ve added him and we gave them a lot of time. And eventually he came around, but early on, I came on too strong. I was grasping, I was trying to push it forward. And that’s my anxious attachment. Also, I was a single mom, and was like, yes, very anxious to get this kind of like lockdown and solve a lot of problems. But, but he got put off, and he broke up with me. And we were in this course together all that time. So I would see him every week. But we were broken up and I was dying. And my mentor helped me with this just said, Well, this is good. This is a chance for you to just like, hang out. And I was told don’t go talk to him. Don’t go ask him how he’s doing. Just mind your own business. Just sit there and do your thing. You know,
Chris Seiter 41:15 sounds like a limited No Contact Rule, which is what we tell our Yeah,
Anna 41:19 yeah, I did keep going. And I looked just as cute as I could every time I told you that too. I didn’t do it. And then, and then he started taking an interest sort of, and then he called me called me once on Saturday at 5pm. And he’s like, do you want to hang out tonight? And I was like, No, sorry. I’m busy. Maybe another night. And of course, between you and me, what I was busy doing was not saying yesterday. It’s like somebody who’s not valued. And it’s weird. Like, I only had to do that once. And I remember he was really like, taken aback like, Oh, wow. And then he always asked me in advance. And I’d love to tell the story. Like it was just all smooth sailing from there. But when you have a task more interesting.
Chris Seiter 42:02 Yeah, yeah. So what specifically about him was attractive was just those non negotiable things that he was hitting on your list, or
Anna 42:15 he had he, you know, I was able, he was very serious about relationships, he wasn’t looking, you know, just for a good time, he was looking to get married like I was, and he was willing to go slow to pick the right person, he didn’t want to go with somebody who didn’t meet the criteria. So it’s such a godsend that the first person that I really felt feelings for felt the same way about these, these things that I intellectually wanted. But when it came right down to it, my insecure attachment would kind of made me try to push through and lock it down, you know. And, but some that one of the, before I realized I was attracted to him, I met him I, you know, we tell everybody that we met in a Al Anon meeting, and Al Anon is usually women mostly. And that’s not normally where you would think, to go meet men, but he just happened to be in my meeting. And you he, he was so happy. He he worked really hard at his program, he would go out of his way, when he was sharing in that meeting to say things that were helpful to others. He didn’t just like, you know, cry about his own life or anything, he was very directed towards serving the group and what they needed by telling them, there’s a way to do this. And, and I could tell by how he described his own 12 STEP program that he was, you know, he was a formidable person who had really done self reflection, when I went on a first date with him get a lot of books on his shelves, and I was fascinated by what he was interested in some of it, I totally agreed. And some of it, I was like, How can you say that. And he was really, like, intellectually challenging for me, which is important. And he’s gorgeous. I always, you know, he’s just, he looks like Cary Grant to me. And so that didn’t hurt any dress nicely. And as I got to know him, I found out that he used to have social anxiety. And he was sort of dressed down, and he didn’t have confidence with women. And he had, you know, he had done his own work. And he just, he dressed very nicely. He took good care of himself. He had he had a good career. And on our first date, he showed up, he smelled good. He just like I remember he, like turned around and he was like, shining, he just, he really put a lot of effort into being available. And then when we were in our early dating phase, he said, I’m going to tell you something I’m doing. You don’t have to do it, too. I just want you to know I’m doing this. But while we’re dating, the reason I’m dating you is to see if we’re compatible for marriage. And this wasn’t like a dictation. It was a you know the result of a conversation. And sometimes when I would talk to friends, they’d be like, he sounds like some sort of like old school Dominator or something, but he’s not and it’s very hard to dominate a person like me, but he just knows he’s he’s a very moral person. He knew his own values, and he stuck to them, you know more than I he ever did. And more than anybody I know ever did. He was just very clear about himself. And he never forced me into anything. But he just said, because I, I just want us to have really good conditions for me to get to know you. I don’t want you to have to feel jealous. So I just want you to know, I’m not hanging out with ex girlfriends. You know, I’m not dating other people. I’m not, you know, and you don’t have to, you don’t have to do this for me. You know, you can you can tell me what you’re doing or not or do do whatever you’re doing. But I just I want to see what you’re like when you feel secure. And I was blown away.
Chris Seiter 45:32 Yeah, you know, what’s interesting about that, it’s actually your friend’s reaction. Because to me, it just sounds like someone who’s being upfront about the conditions like, Hey, I’m not trying to lead you on like, I’m not dating anyone else. I do want marriage. And what’s interesting is your friend’s reaction is there’s something wrong with him. And I think that says something about our society, which is that’s so unique. But that’s actually the way I think it should be when you’re dating.
Anna 45:59 Yeah, I mean, for me to be freed of the burden of jealousy. And that he taught me also was that, because in my culture growing up in Northern California, when you break up with somebody, this is what you’re supposed to do. Okay, instantly, now, we’re friends, and that will hang out with your new girlfriend, and I’ll be really cool about it. And then go home and just be like, Oh,
Chris Seiter 46:19 that sounds it sounds familiar, passive,
Anna 46:21 aggressive, or vicious, or have a have a cow right in front of everyone. And I just, he’s just like, no jealousy is like, that’s what it feels like when you’re, you know, in love with somebody, they don’t want to be appearance jealous, or, and so you when you’re dating somebody, you don’t make somebody jealous. And so he had this really clear thing about, like, to this day, he doesn’t hang out with ex girlfriends, you know, it’s great. And he just, he doesn’t cause jealousy. And he taught me about that. And so the way I grew up, and, and this value were two really different things. And my culture here thinks that that’s like crazy religious, you know, ultra extremism. But I was like, You know what, I’ve been waiting for this all my life, to just like, if I’m going to be in a relationship, I’m going to be in a relationship. And so one of the things I teach my people and you teach this to it’s like, when it’s over, it’s over. Yeah. And,
Chris Seiter 47:13 you know, the challenge is getting people to buy into that.
Anna 47:16 I know, I know. It’s tempting to be friends. And it’s hard to let go. But, you know, do you know the concept cab light, I learned it from Sex in the City, but it’s a good concept.
Chris Seiter 47:28 So I have watch Sex in the City, but I have not watched that episode, where they’re talking about that.
Anna 47:33 I didn’t even watch it. Somebody told me I ripped it off the city. But let’s just make it ours cabling. It’s like the light that’s like, magically, sometimes you want to be dating, but nobody takes an interest. And then one day, everybody takes an interest. And how you keep your cab light, shiny and attractive, like that is you don’t, you don’t stay emotionally leaking out all over these exes. Or people who are interested in you. And you’re not interested in them. I call them lab rats. You know? Like, I, you know that I don’t want a relationship with you. Right? And they go, Yeah, and I’m like, okay, so we can hang out, you know, and go to the movies and have fun and watch TV and, and all that. And I’m just using them to fill my Saturday night. And that is emotional clutter. And it’s not attractive to healthy people. Yeah, all these like, people hanging around. And, and so it’s not how I grew up. But changing that immediately changed my own emotional availability. And it made me have to like really face reality. And reality is where you want to be like here, and now is where real love can reach you. And nowhere else.
Chris Seiter 48:42 So we were talking before we started recording, about you have like a free course called the daily practice, right daily practice.
Anna 48:50 So this is a it’s a set of techniques. The first one is a writing technique very specific. So I teach it, it’s, you know, you can learn and try it in about an hour in my free course. And it’s a way to get free of the fearful, resentful thoughts that are always I mean, everybody has them. If you’re if you have anxious attachment, they’re going like a bag of cats, you know. And they’re going all the time. And a lot of us were trained, like if you’re feeling like I’m feel really anxious, like, talk to me, and you start talking to your partner about it. I feel really, I feel like you feel like maybe you think that I think and all that stuff that nobody can do anything about that because it’s fear and it’s resentment. And so, it’s a way to take those feelings and start processing them all by yourself. So you can clear away a lot of the stuff that’s unnecessary, it works remarkably well. And then then there’s a little left that maybe you do need to talk about. And it’s also like a it’s like an a it’s like a emergency oxygen mask. When you’re you think you’re about to get into a big scuffle a big you know knock down drag out process for five hours you know, argument You, you can stop and say I’m sorry, I feel like I’m getting really dysregulated and my emotions are getting so much I don’t want to lash out at you can I take 20 minutes and just go do my writing right now and then come back and finish this conversation. So it’s this way that you can release a lot of this emotional intensity that’s going on and, and psychological, you know, bag of cats. We follow it, we do it twice a day. So you do the writing, and it’s got this thing at the end, I learned it as a prayer. But I also have an adaptation for people who would prefer a secular way of doing it where you release. I’m too too. I’m like a bulldog with that stuff, I don’t release very well. So I luckily became a spiritual person. And that helps me. But once you’ve done it, then you sit down and you go into a really, really simple meditation, the purpose of which is just to rest, rest your body, rest your mind, and let your mind recompose itself. And so I learned this 30 years ago, it just, it was so dramatic the difference it made for me to have these really easy things to do. I turned around very quickly, I had a lot long way to go to learn the life lessons about how to do relationships. But I could stop freaking out inside, I could stop being depressed inside. And right there, now you’re on a level playing field. But I had to catch up because like, relationship wise, I just, you know, I was way behind. So I had a lot of learning to do. As you carry on with it, it’s really like a way that you can begin to just become your real self, just less of the, you know, what does everybody think and less of this? You know, poor me I you know, or, you know, the world today is going to hell in a handbasket. What’s the point and even trying, you know, just these ideas, they just keep getting out of the way and you can start to be who you are fruitfully and happily, fewer problems, less drama, you know, gradually you have fewer dramatic characters coming into your life, there’s less to be upset about it just builds and gets better.
Chris Seiter 51:54 Yeah, I really think our audience can, especially when they’re going through the breakup. This seems like a really great way of sort of regulating and and sort of calming down. But I wanted to say thank you so much for coming on and doing this. I know I’ve already taken up. This is supposed to be 30 minutes long. turned into an hour, but it was great.
Anna 52:16 We had so much to talk about. It’s been great
Chris Seiter 00:03 All right, today we’re gonna be talking to Julia Kristina who holds a master’s degree in counseling in psychology. She’s also helped hundreds of men and women break through their biggest struggles with anxiety, worry, low self esteem, self doubt, I got this, this list just keeps going on through. But today, we’re gonna basically be talking to her about codependency how to improve your communication skills, or basically the boundary setting abilities that maybe you feel like you’re lacking in relationships, but I just wanted to say, thank you so much for coming on and doing this. It’s such a pleasure.
Julia 00:35 It is my pleasure, Chris to be here and having this conversation. Thanks for having me.
Chris Seiter 00:41 Okay, so the first thing I typically do when I have interview kind of coming up, I always like to do a little bit of homework, you know, a couple of hours before I come on, so I’m going through your YouTube channel and you have like 300,000 subscribers so it’s, it’s not like one of those small YouTube channels, you’ve got a pretty large audience, but the one video that stuck out to me was basically your so like, Do you ever do that thing on YouTube where you go to someone’s YouTube channel and you always just like, sort it by the most popular videos. Were totally sponsored other videos is about codependency and I immediately clicked with this one because I think it’s a perfect topic to talk about. So why don’t we talk a little bit about how to identify if you are in a or if you are basically in a codependent relationship or you are codependent yourself?
Julia 01:32 Oh, gosh, I mean, it can look a lot of different ways. So to talk about what codependency is, I think first we need to talk about that more what codependency isn’t and what it looks like to not be in a codependent relationship. So the opposite of codependence isn’t independence. The opposite of codependence is interdependence. So when we are in an interdependent relationship, it means that both people are there for each other. And both people have a secure sense of self within the relationship. So both people do need each other has to be a certain element of needing the person in your life or else what’s the point? You’re just living parallel lives, as opposed to interdependent lives? And so yeah, just really think about that. What does it mean to be interdependent? It means that I need this person in certain aspects. So I just got to throw a frog in my throat.
Chris Seiter 02:37 You know, it’s a good, it’s a good, it’s alive, we are alive.
Julia 02:42 We are not we are not this is not AI.
Chris Seiter 02:45 Unfortunately, or fortunately, rather, it’s not it’s not AI. Yeah.
Julia 02:52 And so really just looking at how do I be dependent on this person, but also be dependent on myself kind of in that same mix. And so what codependence is, is it’s really becoming overly dependent on someone else, for our sense of self. For our identity, we think that somebody else is going to sorry, Jerry Maguire, but you were wrong, complete us. And so we go, and someone’s gonna solve the right thing, right, and we think someone’s going to someone is going to solve our problems and make everything better. Interestingly enough, research shows that people who are in a relationship are only Contrary to popular belief, slightly happier, overall, in general, than people who are single. So that’s just a stat which basically tells us that just sort of, in general, people who are in relationships in like a committed relationship are, in general, are happier, but not as much happier as we thought because no matter where we go, that’s where we are. We bring ourselves into any circumstance or situation. And so you’re gonna bring yourself into a relationship, there’s certain things about being in a relationship, they’re going to make your life better, you’ve got a built in friend to do things where if you’ve got someone to plan with, you’ve got someone to, you know, go through life with the person to talk about the mundane mundane things about your everyday life with. But then you also have someone to navigate and negotiate and problem solving someone else’s schedule and someone else’s preferences and someone else’s ways of doing things and like all of the other stuff that comes with it. So you kind of get you know, you get the pros and the cons. Same with being single, you get the pros and the cons. So they can really just look at that. When people think about being codependent. They’re convinced that they need this person in their life in order to be okay. And that’s just not true. And I think
Chris Seiter 04:59 That is where most of our audience is, you know, I I like to run polls with the audience. So one of the big things that we’re we look at is the attachment styles of individuals. So we asked our audiences like, hey, what what is your attachment style and overwhelmingly the attachment style they had was anxious, preoccupied, but I also asked them hey, what do you think your exes attachment style is? Because most of the people here are going through breakups. And they said overwhelmingly, like 70% said, their ex is a dismissive avoidant. So you have that anxious pairing and that dismissive, avoidant pairing, which I would assume is kind of a breeding ground for these type of codependent relationships. Do you think you could talk a little bit about that?
Julia 05:43 Yeah, so it’s like it’s almost like this thrill of the chase, the more unavailable something is, the more you want it, and the other side of codependent so there’s a one side of codependence where you kind of rely on someone in need them. But then the other side of the codependence is if you’re someone who needs to be needed. Right. So So one person is the needy one, right. So that would be the anxious and then one person is the needs to be needed, which would tend to more be the avoidant where they want to be needed, but then end up feeling suffocated and then push that person away, which causes them to feel rejected, which cause brings out more neediness. And so the dance kind of goes on where there’s a lot of push pull, where you might want to be you know, you need to be needed, you need to feel important, you need to feel essential in someone’s life, like you are the strings that are holding that person together. But as soon as it gets to be too much, you push them away, and the more you push them away, the more their neediness flares up, and it becomes this sort of this sort of dance of a push and pull. And so that’s that’s often how that can show up with anxious and avoidant attachment styles. And also understanding that avoidant attachment is also an anxious attachment. Right? It’s a different iteration of anxious attachment attachment. It’s more the anxiety of letting someone get too close. Because, you know, there’s a whole bunch of experiences and ideas and stories about what that means if we let someone get too close to us. So all of us desire closeness, but then there can be fear that shows up and prevents that from happening in a healthy way.
Chris Seiter 07:23 Well, you know, what’s really interesting about that is your like the third psychologist that I have a I have interviewed that has said that the avoidant sort of attachment style stems from anxiety, and it doesn’t make so much sense because you know, that whatever avoidant mechanism that comes into play usually is coming during some sort of trigger point where their independence is feeling threatened and they grow anxious, and their avoidance is just basically a symptom of that anxiousness.
Julia 07:54 Right. It sounds good.
Chris Seiter 07:55 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I find so interesting about it is to me, so I’ve interviewed a lot of people. And that’s like a common theme that keeps popping up. But it seems like the literature that is online when you read like a Psychology Today article never really mentions the fact that there’s this really intricate connection between dismissive avoidance and the anxiety. They just talk about dismissive avoidance and black and white terms.
Julia 08:27 Yeah, I mean, dismissive, avoidant, all just really understanding that when it comes to human behavior, all of it is purposeful. Right? All behavior is purposeful, there’s always a reason why someone is doing, what they’re doing acting, how they’re acting, interacting, how they’re interacting. And so what the research shows that people who have more the avoidant personality or sorry, avoidant attachment style, is that they were, there was a lot of emotional neglect, or even physical neglect as a child. And so as children we are, we need attachment, like we need to attach to our attachment figures. That’s why they’re called attachment figures. And this is where so much of this stems from, we need that secure attachment. But in the absence of that secure attachment, little brains are so incredible, the way that they will adapt, the human brain is built for survival. And so if you are not able to depend on someone, if someone is not there for you, when you need them, if they are not able to meet your emotional needs, then that part of your brain will kind of like shut off and get pushed aside. Because it would be it would it wouldn’t make sense to keep clamoring for something that isn’t available. And it requires too much energy to keep clamoring for something that doesn’t available. So that adaptive these incredible little brains of these little beings of children will just kind of stop seeking that and it will kind of shut down and they will learn to kind of keep themselves held back because it’s not safe to to attach it’s there’s nothing there to attach to. It’s not safe to tell Ain’t no there’s nothing to lean into. So they will become more sort of independent within themselves, more kind of self sustaining within themselves. Although the craving for love and connection never goes away, it just doesn’t ever really feel safe to get close. Now the mistake a lot of people make, they’re like, oh, there’s this guy, I know, we had this, you know, traumatic childhood, and I can see that he really just wants love. So I’m going to be one, the one that brings it out to him, I’m going to be the one that changes him, I’m going to be the one that like he finally the bad boy, or the, you know, the kind of fix, right, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be the one that makes him because there’s just he’s got so much potential, right? We’ve heard that so many times, I’m going to be the one that he finally gets to live out his full potentials and feel safe and be this, you know, wonderful, attentive, present consistent partner that I know he can be. And so that is the codependent thing to is just been like, I’m going to be the one that fixes this, because I see it in there. And it’s not they’re not wrong, it is in there. But you know, the mistake we made is like, you didn’t cause it. You can’t fix it. Yeah,
Chris Seiter 11:10 I mean, so what’s really fascinating about about what you said, just going back, actually, to the yearning for connection and how adaptable young brains are, I mean, you even see that I think in like Russian orphanages, or Ukrainian orphanages, like you’ll go in, and the babies are just quiet, you know, because they know, no one’s going to come get them. So the brain sort of is adapted. So if you, if anyone’s sort of skeptical about the attachment aspect from childhood, I mean, there’s a prime example or an extreme unfortunate, unfortunately, extreme level. But most of the people listening to this, I feel like will push back on believing they are in a co dependent relationship, even when a lot of the signs are there. So what do you say to people who kind of, I think in their heart understand or maybe logically understands, like, Okay, I have a lot of these signs of being sort of codependent. You know, like, the, basically the, the connection you just described, if like, I’m gonna be the one to fix them, you know, I’ll be the one to get them to turn the corner. And then, but in their heart, they just won’t accept it. How do you get people to have this paradigm shift to where they’re like, Okay, I need to work on recovering from this.
Julia 12:26 Yep. So if your partner not responding to calls or responding to texts, you know, you don’t know where they are all the time. But they’ve never given you any reason to mistrust them, but not kind of being able to have a handle on where they are, what’s going on and whether or not respond to you. And you immediately go into anxiety, or fear or panic, or desperation. That’s a sign of codependence or an anxious attachment style. Your listeners, right, unless they’ve given you reason to mistrust them, right. Or they’ve shown themselves to be
Chris Seiter 13:10 people here that have not, I’m just letting you know. Yeah, that’s unfortunate. But yeah, yeah, yeah, I love.
Julia 13:17 Yeah, really clear sign. Another really clear sign is if your partner is just like needing some quiet time, they’re not being rude to you, but they’re kind of quiet, or they’re just like, after a long day, they just need kind of time to like, tune out or shut off, and you take it personally, and you’re automatically oh my gosh, what did I do? Why are they mad at me? Or why are they punishing me? Why are they doing this like this, like, they can’t do this, this is so bad, this is so selfish of them, right? It automatically goes into like you taking it personally and and either thinking you’ve done something wrong or thinking that they are being wrong or unfair for needing to just have some quiet time to just need to like unwind and not have a big you know, debrief immediately at the end of the day. If your partner you know likes to have friends or hobbies that are outside of the relationship now, not to say that they’re you know, if you’re in like a long term committed relationship, they’re going out like five or six, six night nights a week and never actually like investing in the relationship doesn’t ever want to seem to be around or never really planning things for you to do not that but if your partner’s like maybe some like sometimes I want to go out with the guys or the girl is sometimes she’s like I want to go out with the girls or wants to like have a hobby that separate from you. This is this other part of interdependence. I’ll speak on that a little bit more after I finish this. This part is if you start to be like oh well why did they want to do things without me must mean that they don’t really love me. They don’t really care about me like we have to do everything together or else that means that you know, they don’t they’re abandoning me or they don’t really care about me if that’s happening. If you Find that them having other friends, just friends completely platonic friends of the same gender, if you’re in a heterosexual relationship of the other gender, if you are in a, in a homosexual relationship, like whatever that is, and you start to feel very threatened by that, right, my partner has other people that they want to spend time with, even if it’s, you know, completely platonic, you start to feel threatened by that start to feel insecure around that. And that is a really clear sign of some codependence, and some anxious attachment. Now, what I was gonna say as well, sort of, I touched on it, but go back to this whole aspect of being interdependent in the relationship and understanding that a relationship is not two partial people coming in to make a whole, it is two whole people coming in to navigate and negotiate and work through a life alongside each other. And so as soon as you start to think that somebody else has to complete me, then you become completely dependent on their choices on their actions on who they are on their mood. If you notice that if your partner’s ever gets in a bad mood that you kind of take that on and start to feel really anxious, right, you kind of carry the weight of their emotions is another really clear sign. So we want to be looking for to complete people coming into a relationship to navigate and negotiate equally and together.
Chris Seiter 16:25 I love that. I love that so much. Because I think a lot of people who have these codependent tendencies don’t actually view it with that paradigm. They view it as I’ll get into this relationship, and this person will complete me that’s the missing part of me. And what you’re basically saying is no, you should already come into the relationship being a complete person, and this other person. This is maybe the poor analogy, but I, when I was when I write articles, sometimes I’m talking about codependency, I always try to describe codependency as people who are in codependent relationships, you are just simply revolving around your exes or your partner’s Son, your like a solar system revolving around their sun. And what you need to try to do is kind of break away out of that solar system and create your own, and then you can kind of like totally in tandem. It’s a ridiculous analogy, but I do think it I do think it works. But I actually want to switch gears here, because this is the thing that I think is much more valuable. And that’s setting boundaries. Okay, so let me just set the stage here to give you like, because setting boundaries, I think in a relationship is going to be different, potentially than setting boundaries during a breakup. Most of the people here are going through a breakup. Most of them want to get their ex back. And my job when they enter into my orbit is to teach them, the best way that you can make that happen is to outgrow your ex try to get over them. This creates the environment that makes them more attractive to you. And I think it kind of harkens back to that point you just made with codependency it’s about understanding, you need to become your own person before you re enter into relationship with them. The problem is, people will say they buy into this concept, but they don’t have the boundary setting skills that are necessary. So what are some tips you can give to someone in this environment to make that happen?
Julia 18:27 Yeah, I think often we want to get back together with someone, because the transition into something different is very overwhelming for our brains. So I’m gonna just let me speak on this a little bit. For those of you who are like no, I actually really love the person I want to be with them. So if you have been in a long term relationship with someone your brain is used to that, it you know, you know, that person is there you have you talk to them regularly, you see them regularly, you shared a life with them, you’ve considered them in your plans, like your brain is just very used to this person being in your life, and all of a sudden, usually breakups are fairly, fairly momentarily. It’s like one minute together, we’re together. The next one, we have a conversation and we end everything is cut off. And that cutting off in such a dramatic extreme way is very jarring for our human brains. Our human brains do not like change, we are one of the most adaptable creatures or species on the on the on the planet. But we also hate change because it’s it’s we don’t really know how to start that we don’t know how to exist in the newness. We don’t know what to expect. We don’t know how to be and those neural pathways in our brains have to recalibrate and that takes time. It doesn’t happen immediately. Once the act is done once the severing of the relationship is started. You don’t all of a sudden have all the new kind of ways of being in your brain just as far as just not even the person aside the actual emotional attachment. It’s just the habitual attachment. It’s it’s the expectations. Right that are that We’re no longer being met, we don’t know what to expect, we don’t know what to do. And so a lot of the times, we can think we want to get back together with the person simply because it’s so uncomfortable being in this brand new reality that we haven’t adapted to yet. And sometimes, yeah, we can think we’re still in love with the person where we’re really just in love with the predictability and the routine and the idea of just having someone there. So usually, this isn’t a hard and fast rule. But what tends to be a way to override this and really figure out if you want to be with together with the person is to give a few months of no contact, you just complete no contact.
Chris Seiter 20:46 I mean, that’s literally like, Paramount. And I always tell people, like, the point of no contact isn’t to make your ex miss you. And I’ve even ran polls and showed people, it will not make your ex make you more. So like there’s this sorry, I’m nerding out over here.
Julia 21:03 I a lot more nerding out about it, Chris. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 21:08 So a lot of people who buy into the No Contact Rule will actually sit there and claim Well, this is actually a lot more likely to make your ex reach out to you. And they’ll like, talk about the psychological reactance of everything. But when I actually ran internal polls from people, my audience who have actually done the No Contact Rule 70% of exes did not reach out to them. And I mean, I always talk about okay, well, maybe that is because they have dismissive, avoidant tendencies, and you’re giving them exactly what they want, you know, but the point of no contact isn’t supposed to be about making your ex miss you. It’s supposed to be about finding yourself by outgrowing her. Okay, so, yeah, well,
Julia 21:44 and even just at a more nerdy level, it’s just about giving your brain an opportunity to create comfort in a reality without that person, just daily routine, giving your brain a chance to establish you to establish yourself as a human being without that person for your brain to just kind of get used to not having that person. So if you’re calling if you’re seeing each other, if you’re continuing, your brain doesn’t have a chance to adapt to the new reality. So after you have spent that time to really just establish yourself and and giving yourself the the experience, right, giving yourself the experience of not having this person in your life, and letting your brain get used to that, then you can think with a more clearer mind and decide, is this a relationship that I would like to re entertain? Right? Is it actually the person that I want Was there enough there in the relationship that I really do truly believe that we could work through that would be worth fighting for outside of that emotional, or that initial emotional reaction, or you know, that severing of the attachment in the moment, and then your brain kind of freaking out because that attachment has been removed within a moment? So really just deciding, and you can look and see more rationally like, Yeah, is this was this relationship actually good? And sometimes, it might be? Yeah, it was. And I realized that I had a lot of stuff that I needed to work through and sort out for myself. And I feel like I could go back into this from a healthier state. And I think we could have a better relationship. And we could have some better conversations, to see if this is something we both want to do. And sometimes you might be like, you know, what, actually, now that I’ve sort of reestablished myself and my life with myself, I’m good. Like, I’m good. And I realize it wasn’t, you know, if it was the right person, then we would have been able to figure it out. But, you know, it wasn’t, and so we couldn’t.
Chris Seiter 23:43 So here’s my question for you. And we’ll get back to the boundary things because I have like specific boundary based questions I want to ask about about the No Contact Rule. But timing of the No Contact Rule, how long is this period? I’m curious to get a psychologist opinion because I certainly have my own but I do not want to pollute the waters here. I’m what, what is a significant amount of or the acceptable amount of time that it takes your brain to kind of reset and recalibrate for you?
Julia 24:12 Okay, so I’m basing this off of science in other areas. And so I’m taking a kind of this, it sounds like a good theory, but I’m gonna say 90 days, okay, right. When you think about 90 days is the probationary period at a new job, that’s how long it takes, you know, to kind of get your handle on what’s going on in new job to start feeling settled, understand what’s happening, when it’s, you know, that hold that level of newness 90 days is what they say a lot of the time, you know, 90 days to establish a new habit in your brain, although that theory has been somewhat debunked, but you know, 90 days to break a habit 90 days to really establish a habit.
Chris Seiter 24:48 I’ve heard different things I’ve heard 90 days I’ve heard 66 days.
Julia 24:53 So you say what’s your timeframe for no contact?
Chris Seiter 24:56 Okay. So also to kind of stipulated here Um, people are hiring me to help them get their exes back. Like that’s like most of my audience. So I’m always having to juggle with that. So I always tried to tell people, it’s gonna actually depend on your ex’s attachment style. So you have to kind of manage your own recalibration with your ex’s attachment style. So we’ve actually found that if your ex is like, has an anxious attachment style themself or a fearful avoidant, if you’re not there to nurture that they can actually just self destruct specifically a fearful avoidant, if you’re not there to nurture the anxious side, when their anxious side is getting triggered, they’ll actually trigger back to a more avoidant side and it can take them longer before they sort of trigger back to the anxious. So I always tell people usually want about 21 to 30 days to recalibrate. Most of our clients, though, we’re recommending 45 days, so roughly around half the time. But I will say that people are like, they want results really quick. So a lot of times what’s happening for our clients is they are actually waiting 90 days, they just don’t really realize it, because they’ll make it 30 days, and then they’ll break no contact rule. And we have a hard fast rule, which is if you break the No Contact Rule, you gotta get started from the beginning. So usually, by the time they’re getting back in contact with their ex, or making that choice, it’s been around 70 to 90 days. And what’s really interesting is when we look at our success stories, people who’ve gone through our program gotten their exes back, usually it’s around five to seven months total from when they start working with us, which is really fascinating. But anyways, your tag, you’re it?
Julia 26:40 Yeah, no, and that is really interesting. And it does take work, right? Like if the relationship is workable, it takes work to come back together and to really sort things out, because there’s a reason why you broke up in the first place. And so you know, getting back together and working things out if both people are willing to put in the work, right, put in the work to, you know, to invest in a relationship. And that’s what it is. That’s what so much of it is it’s just really working on becoming aware of what someone else needs. And being respectful of that. And just really understanding that people are different. And is the person willing to do that? And are both people willing to do that. Right? Are both people willing to do that.
Chris Seiter 27:24 So the other interesting element here is like people who get back with their exes, we found that about half of them break up within a month or two, again. So they’re not necessarily putting the work in or they are recognizing, I’m not willing to put up with this anymore. But what’s really interesting, I did this study where i i started contacting my clients who had gotten their exes back like, a couple of years after the fact. And I started looking how long it took them to get their exes back. And we found that the couples that were still together, had the longest time apart. So they’re broken up for more than like a year or so. So I think that goes and kind of proves what you’re saying, which is both parties are kind of sitting back and thinking through things or maybe evolving or improving. So anyways, yeah, it’s interesting. But to get us back on course, here with the with the boundaries element, what are some tips that you can, that you can, I don’t know, have to set these clear boundaries about not contacting your ex, because this is the biggest issue for for our client base. So what are some clear things that you can do to prevent that from happening?
Julia 28:40 I’m really asking yourself, what’s the point? Right, if I we’ve been broken up for a week, because of issues that have been recurring, and that we haven’t been able to work through. And now all of a sudden, I’m going to call them. What’s the point? What am I hoping to get from this? What sort of could it be? Right? I might be like scratching an itch. Let’s let’s play get Am I gonna be opening a wound?
Chris Seiter 29:07 I’ll pretend I’m the client. So the point is, I want to convince them to try to win to come
Julia 29:11 back. What would you say to that? Have the issues in the relationship that caused you guys to break up in the first place? Have those been resolved and worked out?
Chris Seiter 29:22 That’s pretty good. I think at this point, they would say well, the breakup was just a misunderstanding.
Julia 29:31 Okay, it was a misunderstanding big enough to cause a breakup to happen. Do you think that in this one conversation that you have with them that the misunderstanding could be cleared up and then you could just peacefully move forward?
Chris Seiter 29:45 You’re like a clone of me. I don’t know what it is. Literally said this exact piece. I said this exact thing to someone in our community earlier today. It’s always it’s always interesting to because One of the things that we try to recommend to our clients during periods of no contact is to go see a therapist or counselor, or psychologist like yourself. And it’s always really interesting to me to see that therapist or psychologist reaction to the No Contact Rule. So we had this like one client, in particular, whose ex, this individual was living with his ex. And what, what my wife and I were noticing was that the ex would just basically use this person for emotional support. And then, you know, go on a date with someone else. And it’s just like, became this negative feedback loop. And so our argument was, hey, I think you need to move out of that place and kind of do a no contact rule from there. And so he started pulling away, and he started getting his own place. And he started having some success with this approach. And his question to us was like, Well, should I break the No Contact Rule now? And we were kind of like a stern? No, it’s working, like, let’s focus on you. But he was also seeing a therapist at the time and the therapists take was, Well, why would you want to do that? You’re starting to see some positive results, you should engage. I’m curious to get your take on the situation, what would you say? Where do you kind of stand in the in the spectrum?
Julia 31:19 So what is that mean, by positive results, his ex was starting to reach out to him and wanting to spend time with her each
Chris Seiter 31:25 show wasn’t explicitly stating that they wanted to get back together. But it was more like, I miss you, type type of thing. But I, so I’m also very jaded for the fact that I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I’ve seen this exact scenario play out so many times to know what happens if you actually engage?
Julia 31:46 Well, I think it’s a cookie, right? It’s like a cookie. They’re like reaching out a little bit cuz they want to get that cookie of attention. Of course, they want the attention from the person. It’s manipulation, whether or not they’re aware of it, the X might actually miss them. But they’re not offering anything other than, you know, an emotional conversation to be like, I missed you. Right? They’re not offering anything. That’s it. Yeah. So that’s, that’s what that means. Just ask for clarity. What does that mean, I miss you, I miss you. I want to spend time with you, I miss you. I want to work things out. I miss you. I want to rebuild our relationship. What does that mean? And just asking for that clarity. And that is part of boundary work as well, is to ask for clarity. Right? saying, you know, and being able to say, if you are not offering one of the above, then please do not contact me. Do not text me? Because that’s selfish. That selfish, you’re getting an emotional rush from getting my attention. And it’s not fair. Okay,
Chris Seiter 32:47 so you’re saying ask for clarity? What it like? Do you have any specific ways that you would phrase the asking for the clarity? I mean, you just gave an example. But do you have any more examples of what the person’s like I miss
Julia 33:01 you say? Thank you, no. thing. Great to hear from you. Why are you telling me this?
Chris Seiter 33:08 Okay. I like that. Oh, cut to the chase. Recording this because I’m going to point to this interview and be like, see, it’s not just me saying this stuff. This is an actual psychologist saying that?
Julia 33:21 No, I mean, at the same time, like if someone’s very adamant, they’re like, I want to contact them. I want to and I’m like, I would just say, You know what? You I am not holding you back from that. Try it, see how it goes. Right. And sometimes we need to kind of like, get beat up a few times before we’re like, oh, yeah, this is a pattern. So we this is the cause and effect. And then we learn and it’s okay. We don’t have to be like, if someone’s like, I have to contact my ex, I’d be like, You know what? Absolutely like your life, you have to make your own choices. Just understanding that there’s cause and effect and you have to decide whether or not you are willing to live with that effect. You can do whatever you want. You just have to have a conscious conversation. Am I willing, and some people like you know, I’m willing to put myself through that pain, the potential pain, potential heartache of getting back in contact with them and having my heart broken again. I’m willing to do that. Okay. Okay.
Chris Seiter 34:16 So I’m going to ask you a question now directly from one of our community members about setting boundaries. All right. So this person says, Can you provide some examples of how to set boundaries with friends and family when they push you toward marriage or having children when that’s not your priority?
Julia 34:35 Yeah. And so that is just having a conversation to saying, Hey, we haven’t made any decisions around this. I’ll let you know when we do. In the meantime, could you please stop asking?
Chris Seiter 34:47 So do when someone is when you have like a family member that’s prying in this way. Your approach is to acknowledge it and then set the clear boundary so acknowledge and set the boundary. So you’re going ology by basically saying, like, hey, we haven’t made any decisions about this, but stop asking me, basically, is that kind of the formula to approach?
Julia 35:09 I’ll let you know we do in the meantime, you know? Or if you’re like, you know, we’re not sharing that, you know, we’re not, we’re not, that isn’t a decision that we’ve made. Sometimes I would. And this is kind of a little bit more of a passive approach, but it can work. But bear with me on it. If someone asks you a question, or makes a comment that you’re not comfortable answering or that you don’t want to engage with. This is kind of a funny way to handle it. You can kind of just laugh and then like, redirect your attention somewhere else. Okay. TAKE THE BAIT, if someone’s like, okay, so when are you having a baby? When do you guys gonna have a baby just being like, Huh? So what are your plans for this summer?
Chris Seiter 35:53 Would you say? Would you go? Would you laugh? And then say like, Hey, you’re funny. And then redirect?
Julia 35:59 No, I just kind of I’ve done before, where you can tell someone’s just trying to, like, get it in there? And yeah, I’m no, no. Yeah. Almost a little bit ignoring it sometimes. Um, usually people won’t ask again. Sometimes they will. Usually they’ll take the hint, if you’ve kind of, like, ignored the question or just, you know, even kind of laughed off. It’s a more of a passive approach. But it works. Because it sends a subliminal message that I’m not answering this question. Some people won’t take the hint. And they’ll continue asking. And then you know, it can be hard, it can be hard to like, call something out, it can make everyone feel a little bit uncomfortable. And so And often, it’s not that the person’s trying to be nosy, they just are interested and want to know the information. And you’re, they’re allowed to ask, and you’re allowed to not share that. That’s one of the things that I think is so important, especially for those of us who have been socialized as women to believe that it’s our job to make sure everybody is comfortable, to make sure that everybody is taken care of. And so we think it’s our job to give people what they want, when they ask us for it. Stereotypically, I’m sure there are men that feel that way as well. But stereotypically, that throughout history, fact, case in point, women have been socialized to believe that it’s our job to take care of everybody else, and to make sure that everybody else is comfortable. And so we think that if someone asks us a question, our only option is to answer it, even if it makes us uncomfortable. Because we don’t want to make them uncomfortable by saying no. And so it’s our job to do our own work on being like, you know, what, I’m not going to make myself uncomfortable by trying to avoid making someone else uncomfortable, when I could just simply let them know that I’m not comfortable answering that, that I’m not going to answer that. And it’s okay. If somebody feels uncomfortable with our boundary. That’s okay. Right, that’s okay to say, you know, what, me not giving access to this part of myself. If someone doesn’t like that, I’m going to leave that with them. And that’s okay. Because the other option is, for me, to neglect myself in this process of giving someone what they want, just because they want it. They don’t need it. It’s not going to change their life in any significant way. But it is going to be not good for me if I betray myself in that way. Yeah, I think that
Chris Seiter 38:33 also sort of harkens back to stoic philosophy. I’ve been reading a lot of Marcus Aurelius meditations. I don’t Yes, please. Yeah. Right. But yeah, I mean, he’s like really big about kind of just not taking on other people’s problems, or not really spending your time wasting energy on things that is deemed non essential.
Julia 38:55 And I think you can do it in a kind way, because so many of us, like for me to be rude. Yeah, I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, but I also don’t want to betray myself. So it’s finding that dance between how do I, you know, set this boundary and state this thing or not engage in this way if it’s going to make me uncomfortable, while also considering the other person’s experience of my boundary, I’m still going to set the boundary, but I’m going to consider the other person’s experience of my boundary when setting it which is probably going to make me set a boundary in a kinder way and that’s why I say I teach people how to set clear yet kind boundaries.
Chris Seiter 39:32 Okay. That’s the distinction the kind aspect, because sometimes I guess people are a little too stern with their boundaries and it’s off putting in creates, but all right, I got I got one for you here. Are you ready for this one? All right. Ready? You provide examples of boundaries to set when an ex you have built rapport with asks for sexual intimacy without commitment. Do you want to do that? Yes are our clients a This is nothing against our there’s nothing as anyone listening. But it’s been my experience that if our clients put themselves in a situation where their ex invites them into the house, they usually end up sleeping together. So I’m gonna go out and limb and say that most people will want that because they want their exes back. And they’re thinking, Okay, well, if I sleep with him or her, this will be create the commitment. But usually what ends up happening is it just creates like a friends with benefits type scenario that you’re stuck in limbo on for a while.
Julia 40:33 Yeah. Ask yourself, just play it out. If I go in here, and if this happens, if I’m honest with myself, is this going to change anything? And make my decision accordingly, there’s no such thing as a right or wrong decision. There’s just the decision with the reasons we like best. That’s a great quote.
Chris Seiter 40:57 I love that.
Julia 40:59 And so it’s not wrong to go in and sleep with your ex. It’s just what is the consequence of that? What’s good? What’s the outcome of that? And do you like those? Are you okay with that? Can you accept that? Right? And be honest with yourself, if you’re like, the only reason why I’m having friends with benefits, is because I hope eventually they’ll come around. And the other person has clearly stated, I just want friends with benefits, I will not come around, but you keep hanging on, you know, believe what people say, just believe what people say. And you don’t have to say stay in a situation that you’re really not okay with, and lie to yourself, saying that you are. And it’s a codependent belief. This is going to this is not going to sit well with some people. But it’s only codependency that’s telling you that I have to because I can’t lose this person. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. You cannot keep yourself in a relationship, no matter how attached or how much potential or how great the PERT you think the person is getting can’t keep herself in a relationship where you feel like shit a lot of the time.
Chris Seiter 42:14 Yeah, I mean, that’s what you can’t do all the time. Yeah. I think half the battle is just kind of making people realize that because it’s not something that we can sit here. I mean, we can. I’ve tried, I’ve tried to sit here and talk directly to people and say, like, Hey, this is most likely what’s going to happen. But it’s a whole different thing when they experience it and believe it themselves. And I think that’s kind of like the, what you’re essentially trying to say,
Julia 42:39 Yep. And sometimes we do like, sometimes we do have to go back for more and more and more and more and keep, you know, and until we finally realize, Oh, this isn’t going to change, this is not this is not a work in progress. This is a pattern. This is just what they are offering. And not to say that they are necessarily bad or wrong. But what they’re offering is out of alignment with what I truly want and need in the relationship. That means it’s not the right fit, and just having that honest conversations with our with ourselves. But if you’re truly like, you know what, I think that there’s some fundamental things in this relationship. And if we are both committed to working them out, and showing up and having the hard conversations and figuring things out, not where one person has to kind of lose themselves in order for the relationship to work, that’s not going to work very well. But if it’s honestly like, you know what we’ve had some you we do, really both are committed to each other, we love each other. And there’s enough there, we want to work it out. And yeah, great. Try, really try. But you know, and that’s how I think Chris too, is like sometimes I’ve been in that place where I just keep coming. I’m not gonna sit here on like a pedestal and be like, one and done, right? I am like, 50 and done. Please, like, let this be different this time, please let this you know, come on. I’ll change what I want so that I can be with you. I’ll be something else that I can be with you. I won’t get upset about these things, or let them bother me just so I can be with you. And I’m like, no, no. And then finally it’s like, okay, no, no, it’s a no. But you know, if you need to keep going back until you kind of realize, but just be honest with yourself when it isn’t No, be honest. What is this person offering? And is it in alignment with what I want and need? It’s not necessarily that someone is a bad or horrible person. They just might not be offering what you want and need and to be honest with yourself about that.
Chris Seiter 44:43 So what I really liked about what you’re saying is kind of inherent to setting really good boundaries is self reflection. You need to have a strong sense of self of what I’m worth and what you know where the line is essential. Lee. So I was obviously looking at your YouTube channel before we started, and I was watching, I think the codependent video that you did, and you kept talking about shifters and I’m like, okay, am I missing something here? What is the shifter? And then I, you know, halfway through the video, I’m like, oh, it’s like it’s like a movement type thing. So I want you to tell us a little bit about the shifter movement that you’ve sort of created. Yeah.
Julia 45:27 So my VA membership creates a monthly membership community called the shift society, where we have a membership portal with the foundational course, which is a my five step mind and emotional management tool. We really teach people how to build that emotional intelligence, how to understand what’s going on with them, how to become just more conscious, because so much we’re going through our life, unconsciously acting and reacting to life, we’re not consciously taking a step back, and getting curious and content contemplating and then engaging with life in an intentional way. And it sounds kind of dull and boring, you’re like, oh, Julia, that does not sound exciting at all, there can be both, there are times to just fly by the seat of your pants and just see what happens. And there’s times to really just take a step back and be intentional with the choices you’re making with the people you’re engaging with, with how you’re engaging with other people, with how you’re showing up in your day in your life, what what you’re creating for yourself in your life, and really being intentional about that. So that you can be living the life that you want for this one, you know, time this short time that we are here you can make this a wild and precious life. And so much of that starts with the inside with learning how to manage our minds and emotions. Not in like a stoic, like, you know, that typical kind of like non reactive kind of way, but just really learn how to work with yourself. Instead of letting your your feelings and your in your like kind of your urges just kind of take over and more often than not create a mess just about really working to have less mess in our lives. And yeah, to be able to feel like we are a lot more in charge of our minds and our emotions and our choices and then thereby our outcomes as a result. So I teach that and then there’s also oh gosh, there’s so much in the membership, I have masterclasses on specific topics when you first join, you’re gonna masterclass on deep lasting confidence, like truly learning how to build like a deep sense of self, one on self compassion, which I firmly believe is the missing tool and so much of the work that we do and so much of the cognitive work we do, we need to have self compassion that’s been really broken down by Dr. Kristin Neff, who is the pioneer of bringing the concept of self compassion to the masses and looking at the three elements of self compassion and how powerful it is for really transforming ourselves from the inside out. I have massive classes on how to stop overthinking we’ve had incredible guest speakers and they’re on polyvagal theory on just like hacking basic hat habits for wellness. It’s kind of like a one stop shop. We have a masterclass series on boundaries. We have one from healing from shame dealing with triggers, we just did one on Attachment styles, really learning about different attachment styles, and understanding what kind you are. Gosh, yeah, we have one on creating you know how to create your future, how to heal from your past, I think I said, we did a really fun one on the hero’s journey and how to be the hero of your own story. So
Chris Seiter 48:39 Joseph Campbell, yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Storytelling is like my ultimate jam. Like when I’m not. Yeah, so anyways, yeah.
Julia 48:49 But anyway, so that’s just mindfulness exercises, we have an EFT, tapping practitioner that comes in, they went to bed, I don’t see it’s not like, it’s not like an eight course. You know, fine dining meal. It’s like a buffet, where it’s like, wherever you’re at, whenever you want to do some work on internet or
Chris Seiter 49:05 the Netflix model, you know, you just have a lot of stuff in there, you can kind of choose your own adventure, so to speak. And I feel like painting
Julia 49:11 though, is the core lessons everyone has to do before anything else unlocks in the membership. You have to do the
Chris Seiter 49:17 eight core lessons. And then you can kind of have the Netflix buffet where you can do the attachment style, the story stuff. I actually really liked the confidence thing. And I’m assuming the shift society is all about like shifting your perspective, paradigm type thing.
Julia 49:33 It’s really about understanding that major transformation does not happen in a moment. It happens one key shift at a time.
Chris Seiter 49:41 Ah like that. This sounds amazing. Yeah, it’s good.
Julia 49:46 It’s great. Chris, it is great. We have an incredible community. I mean, the people in there so it’s supported by a Facebook group. So we have people like you have your membership portal, and they do live sessions every week. We have a q&a Twice a month where anyone can I submit questions and I usually get to most of them, believe it or not. We have a hot seat session. So like a live laser group coaching session where I coach people live, we and then we have some kind of special session every month. It’s either in an in depth on one of the tools I teach, we have a guest speaker or I teach a masterclass on a specific
Chris Seiter 50:17 topic. Sounds amazing. Yeah, it sounds very similar to what we offer as well. So I feel like anyone who’s like digs, what we’re doing here in the community, or, you know, throughout ex boyfriend recovery is probably gonna love what Julia is talking about here. You also we were talking a little bit you said you wrote your book, which is drive your own darn bus, right?
Julia 50:40 Yes, yes, drive your own darn bus, where I do give a pretty solid understanding of a lot, a lot of the concepts that I teach, it’s a very good foundational place to start and kind of open up your brain to understanding how the human brain works, how thoughts impact our emotions, which drive our behaviors which create our outcomes to a greater or lesser extent, and just really learning how to start to kind of it’s kind of like emotional intelligence. 101.
Chris Seiter 51:06 I love that. And so people can find you basically, you have a counseling website, which I’ll link to in the show notes and everything. But also I really want to recommend her YouTube channel. It is out of this world. Good.
Julia 51:21 Thank you. It is a joy to just sit Yeah, build out that platform. I’m on Instagram as well. I show up there and show up on stories and do little quick snippets of teaching inspiration connection. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 51:37 Hey, thank you so much for coming on and doing this.
Julia 51:39 It has been my pleasure. I could talk about this stuff all day with you, Chris. It’s nice to geek out with another you know, psycho nerd
This Is How To Handle Anxiety After A Breakup
Aug 19, 2023
This is Tati Garcia,
She is a licensed professional counselor specializing in helping individuals with high functioning anxiety.
What’s high functioning anxiety?
Well, I had the pleasure of asking her myself:
One of the primary distinctions is that someone experiencing high-functioning anxiety may appear to be doing well externally. This could be someone who is successful, able to maintain a job, and can handle their day-to-day tasks efficiently. However, internally, they are grappling with anxiety. The symptoms can be consistent across different types of anxiety, such as overthinking, excessive worrying, and feeling constantly on edge or tense.
Honestly, Tati is a perfect guest to have onto our podcast because not only is our average client anxious,
But she gave some incredible advice on how to cope with the anxiety you may be feeling after a breakup.
Important Things Tati Talked About On This Episode
What Is high functioning anxiety? 0:03
How high-functioning anxiety is related to attachment styles. 5:34
How to label your emotions? 11:42
Redirection technique to help with anxiety. 15:31
How does one manage to control anxiety? 25:04
Has anxiety gotten worse with the advent of technology? 30:07
Chris Seiter 00:03 Today we’re gonna be talking to Tati Garcia, who is a licensed professional counselor and coach specializing in high functioning anxiety. She has 13 years of experience in mental health. And she runs the very popular YouTube channel slash podcasts calmly coping. So I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming on and doing this because we have a lot of anxious listeners, and I’m sure you can give them all kinds of tips.
Tati 00:27 Yeah, thank you so much for having me here. I’m excited to get into it.
Chris Seiter 00:31 All right. So high functioning anxiety, how is that different than just normal anxiety? What are like what, what’s the distinction between those two? Yeah, so
Tati 00:41 one of the main distinctions is somebody who is experiencing high functioning anxiety, if they appear to be doing well on the outside, so maybe somebody who is successful, who’s able to hold a job who is able to go about their day to day and often do it very well. However, on the inside, they’re really struggling with anxiety which you know, the symptoms can be similar regardless of what kind of anxiety is but it’s, you know, BB overthinking things worrying a lot, feeling on edge, and tense. Assuming the worst case scenario and situations, there can be a lot of physical symptoms that go along with that, like digestive issues, tension in your body headaches, shaking, and you know, it can, you know, the main difference is that with anxiety, just in general, it often tends to hold people back in avoidance. And so, you know, people, if there’s something in particular that you’re feeling anxious about, you might tend to avoid the thing and not want to do whatever it is that that thing is. So if it’s, you know, public speaking, you’re gonna want to avoid public speaking. But with high functioning anxiety, the fear and anxiety actually propels somebody forward into taking action, and into oftentimes overachieving or busyness and difficulty with relaxing. And so you know, somebody who has high functioning anxiety could potentially meet the criteria for a mental health disorder, but many times they because they are like, on the outside appear to be doing well. And other people may not recognize what they’re going through, it can be more difficult for them to seek out help, and they may not feel as understood.
Chris Seiter 02:40 So what’s really interesting as you were talking, so last night, I was doing, you know, the whole scrolling through Netflix looking for something. And I stopped on this documentary about this professional cyclist named Mark Cavendish. And he’s, like, known as maybe the greatest sprinter and like the Tour de France, like he would just went all the stages.
03:01 But he was doing really incredibly.
Chris Seiter 03:07 But then something, something happened, he got some sort of like endurance disease, I forgot the technical term for it. But he just continued, like, spiraled and pretty much exactly what you were talking about what the high functioning anxiety was, like him to a tee, to the point where he was avoiding getting any kind of help, he would just sort of double down and try to, over achieve to to accomplish those goals. So I’m kind of curious, like, this high functioning anxiety that you’re talking about. It’s not like someone just like wakes up and you know, maybe you’re like an anxious person to begin with. But is there like a slow progression toward the high functioning anxiety? Or is it just like, like a switch, like a light bulb? Going off?
Tati 03:52 Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, that’s something that’s hard to say I what I’ve noticed in the clients and students that I’ve worked with is that there tends to be similar characteristics and personality traits that those with high functioning anxiety have, like, you know, being somebody who is hard working and somebody who is reliable and persistent. And so the kind of those traits that will result in like continuing to take action and keep going. However, you know, they’re like, any other personality trait or like any other mental health disorder, like it falls on a spectrum. And so, you know, there can be differing degrees to which people experiencing it, experience it and there can also be different contributing factors. So it could be you know, the way that somebody was raised, and you know, they were maybe in school did really well and we’re a perfectionist and focused on getting the best grades and then you know, kind of continued with that approach into adulthood. You know, it could be something that is gradual. I don’t know if there’s necessarily like, kind of a flip switching overnight. And oftentimes, it is the thing where many people don’t really recognize that they’re struggling with it, because they just feel like, well, this is just the way that I am. Because this is how they’ve lived their life for, you know, whatever period of time.
Chris Seiter 05:34 So, in our coaching practice, we study a lot of attachment styles, you know, we look at the kind of behaviors that people’s exes are exhibiting and the kinds of behaviors that our clients are exhibiting. And what’s really interesting is something that you said about the high functioning anxiety is they tend to avoid confrontation or things that I think will trigger their anxiety. But I’m curious, does that have anything to do with you know, like, typically, with the insecure attachment styles you have, like the dismissive avoidant, and the priyad, anxious, preoccupied, you know, the fearful avoidant and everything? Do you? Do you like tend to find that people with high functioning anxiety or avoidance or preoccupied, like, have you done any research on that? Or is that just there’s not enough?
Tati 06:24 That I’m not aware of? And I and I think that as far as I know, now, I’m no expert on like attachment styles or anything. But the way that people behave in relationships is oftentimes, like there can be parallels, of course, but you know, I think that it’s it’s not necessarily correlated with the types of personal or individual mental health stroke struggles somebody have has, of course, I think there can be contributing factors and reasons as to why somebody behaves a certain way in a relationship, but I think it’s it’s really rooted in like, you know, attachment theory says, In those early relationships, yeah, that somebody has with a parent or caregiver or, you know, other adults in their life. That’s going to result in, you know, the way that they are experiencing other relationships into adulthood.
Chris Seiter 07:39 Yeah, I mean, that that seems to track were one of the things we notice is that a lot of the exes that we study tend to have very avoidant approaches to the breakup. Whereas a lot of our clients tend to be on the other end of the spectrum where they are just trying to problem solve. A lot of times you have to get them out of the mindset of, hey, I want my ex back and start like saying, like, hey, stop being so codependent, let’s work on you being sort of independent. So I’m curious, someone who has high functioning anxiety? What are some of the tips or coping mechanisms that you often work with? Like if someone were if I were to sign up? If I have high functioning anxiety? Let’s say I do I have high functioning anxiety Totti? Fix me what what are the top tips that you would give me?
Tati 08:31 Yeah, so first, it’s addressing like the underlying root causes, and and looking at what is getting you in this place and keeping you stuck here. And a lot of times, that’s going to be emotional awareness, and just like a general understanding and recognition of how you’re feeling. You know, many people, unfortunately, it’s not something that we’re like, taught in school or educated on how to recognize and process different emotions, and especially if somebody’s going through a breakup, there can be a lot of emotions present. And it can be very challenging and destabilizing and unsettling. And, you know, studies demonstrate that just the act of labeling your emotions actually helps to deactivate the, how strong you’re experiencing them. So there’s a part of the brain that’s called the amygdala that’s responsible for you know, the anxiety reaction, but also for strong emotional reactions. And so when people just are able to name an emotion that they’re feeling, it actually how strongly the amygdala is activated in the brain decreases. So that is kind of like one small thing that seems like might not make a big of a deal but in the long run that can really help Just in general, being verbal about how it is you’re feeling or getting it out in some way. So maybe it’s writing things down in a journal, you know, when you can get what’s in your head out, that can really help you to understand more what’s going on inside and help to give you more of a sense of control as to what you’re going through. And then it can be something that you can look at, what are the thoughts, what are the beliefs that you’re having a lot of times with high functioning anxiety, also, with somebody that’s going through a breakup, there can be a lot of negative thoughts and limiting beliefs that people have. Maybe it is, you know, with a breakup, somebody might be personalizing things and saying, like, This ended, because you know, it’s all my fault. You know, I could have done something differently. And so, you know, with somebody with high functioning anxiety, there could be this belief that I’m not good enough. Or there’s, you know, something wrong with me, or, you know, they maybe they have something coming up, and they think, the worst case scenario about the situation. So, one helpful step can be to look at your thoughts, and actually question them in NSS, do they actually match the evidence in the situation? Like, if you were to take a third person’s perspective, is this actually an objective way of looking at things and oftentimes, when we’re in a state of strong, heightened emotions, our thoughts are, tend to be very exaggerated and often focused on the negative, especially when you’re in a place of anxiety.
Chris Seiter 11:42 Yeah, there’s a lot of negative self talk, unfortunately, that we see in our community. What are your thoughts on? So like, you mentioned labeling your emotions, and I’m assuming, like you mentioned, labeling your emotions, and then you mentioned sort of just getting your emotions down. But I kinda want to go back to the labeling emotions aspect. Is that a specific act that you’re just doing internally, like a lot of self slash shadow work, where you’re trying to figure out like, Okay, I’m feeling I’m having this irrational thought right now? Or is that something when you’re labeling your emotions, you need to actually write it down in the journal to actually make it? I don’t manifest it, or in some way, what is there, I’m assuming writing it down would probably be the correct approach.
Tati 12:30 Yeah, and you know, there’s no right or wrong way. I think for a lot of people writing it down helps. But everybody’s different. Not everybody likes to write things down. And I like to recommend a tool called the emotions wheel, you can just Google it. But basically, it’s kind of like a visual representation of different emotions. That can help you to identify how you’re feeling. And really, what that does is, it’s just validating when you can see that and label that and recognize that, and it’s a way of helping you process it, and work through it. Because oftentimes, people will tend to have like their go twos for how they’re feeling. And it’s really just like building the vocabulary, of an awareness of how you’re feeling, because then that will help you to better understand yourself. So then you can better understand what tools to use. Because if you’re feeling frustrated, the way you’re going to cope with it might be different than if you’re feeling anxious or overwhelmed. So
Chris Seiter 13:40 let’s say you are feeling really, like one of the behaviors that I noticed a lot of our clients is they’re obsessing about what their ex is doing. And what I tend to tell them is, when you go through a breakup your cortisol, like spikes, like insanely, and cortisol is associated with stress. So the stress often makes you more anxious. And the more you engage on social media, or spy or do things like that you’re actually keeping your cortisol in this elevated state. So my challenge when I’m coaching people is trying to get them out of this negative feedback loop where they’re constantly going. Maybe they see their ex on a date. Oh, horrible. And it’s just like, they’re, they just kind of keep coming back from it. How do I get them out of that cycle and maybe redirect them onto something a little bit more positive?
Tati 14:29 Yeah, I think when when somebody gets in that obsessive cycle, it’s because our brains are information seeking and we don’t do well with uncertainty. And so you know, when somebody is experiencing a breakup, that’s a huge level of uncertainty, a huge level of destabilization. And like you mentioned, like stress levels, cortisol levels go up and so what we have to do in that type of situation is start to just even recognize when somebody engages in this behavior. How is it making them feel? Because oftentimes there can be the urge that okay, I just need to see how my ex is doing or check in or, you know, because now there’s been like, breaking communication, so you have no level of understanding of what’s happening with them. But kind of assessing, okay, is this actually helping? You know, if we look at this is kind of the obsessive behavior. It’s, it’s not OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, but it’s kind of like, it’s a trait of OCD. And so it’s what happens with OCD. And again, I’m not saying that these people who are going through breakups have OCD, but like, the way that the behavior works is that you know, you have an obsession, you have these thoughts, that, okay, I need to check or do something in order to decrease my anxiety in order to help me to feel better or more certain about the situation, and then you engage in the checking behavior. And that helps to relieve the anxiety for a little bit, but actually, it it prolongs it in the long run. And it just maintains the anxiety. And so what’s really important is to look at what is again, like getting to the root, like, what is driving that urge and that obsession and that desire to check? And assessing? What are the fears, worries, thoughts that the person is having? So maybe it’s, you know, I’m worried that they’re moving on without me, you know, I just want to make sure that they’re okay. And so sometimes just looking at, what are those thoughts and worries that are going on? And asking yourself, is checking actually helping? Or is it just making things harder, because many times, it’s just, it’s just confronting you with that situation. And it’s going to, again, like prolong those difficult emotions that the person is experiencing?
Chris Seiter 17:12 Is there something that they should be doing, like, recognizing, like, once they recognize, okay, this is not maybe the most healthy use of my time, is there some sort of redirection technique that you tend to recommend to people?
Tati 17:29 I think it can depend on the person. You know, one thing that can be helpful is when you find that it’s hard to recognize your thoughts and change the way you’re thinking when you’re in this anxious state of really worrying. And it’s hard to think about anything else, that’s when it can really help to go into your body. And what I mean by that is doing things that are going to bring your focus into your body, in the present moment help to calm your body physically, because what those things are doing, it’s helping to reverse that stress response, like you mentioned, the cortisol release. And when we’re in a state of anxiety or body goes into fight or flight. And so your body is in a state where your heart is beating quickly, you’re breathing more shallow, you know, you’re looking out for danger. And so something as simple, even though it’s probably been said a million times before, like just take a deep breath. But it can be very helpful in those situations, the important thing is to take a deep breath all the way into your belly and slow the exhale. Because when you slow the exhale, like and what I mean by that is like, slowly exhaling out and making the exhale longer than your inhale, you’re activating your body’s relaxation response. It’s the parasympathetic nervous system, but it’s basically the opposite of fight or flight. And so doing that is then going to calm your body, which in result will help to calm your mind. And so sometimes, you know, taking a few deep breaths isn’t going to automatically gets you out of a state of anxiety, it could be maybe setting a timer for five minutes, or doing things like guided meditations or yoga or, you know, going for a walk or anything that’s basically going to get you out of your head and into your body. And, you know, maybe leaving the phone behind and kind of not scrolling through social media.
Chris Seiter 19:37 That’s a hard thing to do for a lot of people. What do you have someone who is like not buying into that concept, because I completely buy into it because like, if you’re looking at it from a chemical level, you’re just combating the cortisol heightened state with more chemicals to kind of bring it down so you’re doing things that are going to kind of, you know, chill your body out, but what if you have someone and I’m thinking you’ll one person in particular I coached a couple of years ago, they would just not buy into it. What do you say to someone like that?
Tati 20:09 Yeah, I think there’s a lot of people. It’s funny, I was just talking about this earlier. That, you know, there’s some people who as many times as I tell them to, like meditate, like, I promise, it’s, it’s helpful. And you know, they just don’t want to do it. And that’s fine, because everybody’s different. So if that’s the case, then maybe for some people, it’s doing something more active. You know, maybe it’s like I mentioned, going for a walk or exercising. Because actually, you know, when your body goes into that state of anxiety, your body is getting you ready to move to be physical. You know, sometimes there is that freeze response, where we kind of get stuck in action. And yes, yeah, exactly. But a lot of times, it’s, you know, there’s blood pumping to your extremities, you’re either ready to fight or run away. And when you don’t use that energy, it can build up in your body. And so, exercise actually, and studies have shown that especially cardiovascular exercise, like going for a run is just has been found to be just as effective as antidepressants. And I know when you say when I say antidepressants, a lot of people think depression, and they are used for depression, but they’re also one of the number one medications used for anxiety. And so anything that’s going to get you moving is another way of like, getting into your body and like releasing that energy that might be building up.
Chris Seiter 21:40 Yeah, to be honest with you. My own personal experience with this is anytime I’ve grown incredibly anxious, the only thing that’s ever worked for me is going on a bike ride for like, 50 miles so that I am so dead by the end of it. I don’t, I literally just stopped caring about what I was worried about before. You’re just like dragging home, you know? So I’m curious, is there like? Do you need to go that insane? Because like, it works for me, I’m not sure that’s the maybe the most healthy thing to do. But what works for me is like going out there. And just pushing myself to such a level that where you just don’t care about what you are worried about anymore. Is there like a CERT is that I guess what I’m asking, Is that healthy? Or is that unhealthy? What?
Tati 22:24 Well, I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s, it’s unhealthy. It depends on your fitness level, you know, yeah, that’s gonna go out and ride 50 miles. For some people. That’s nothing, you know, and for some people, it would be like, you know, kill them. So, you know, so I think it depends on that. And also, you know, is it sustainable, because then, like connecting this back to high functioning anxiety, there’s the tendency, when you’re somebody who wants to go all in on something and like, give 150% to get in a place of burnout. Because of that, because you’re continuing to try and do and stay busy and do more. And so if you’re like overdoing it with things, then that’s not necessarily going to be good, because everybody needs the rest to recover. Yeah, that
Chris Seiter 23:10 makes total sense. You know? And that kind of brings up an interesting point, which is someone who’s a high functioning, has this high functioning anxiety, I’m assuming this whatever coping mechanism you need to have needs to be some sort of repeatable working thing, just based on their nature. Do I have that? Right?
Tati 23:30 Yeah. And I think that it’s not just that there’s like one way of coping, it’s gonna depend for different people. And I think if I can say, kind of to add on to that, and I think this applies also, with somebody going through a breakup, kind of an overarching message that I like to share is being able to practice self compassion. And that is the act of being kind to yourself. You know, somebody with high functioning anxiety tends to have high expectations be really hard on themselves be really critical. Somebody who’s coming out of a breakup maybe is being hard on themselves and wondering, where did I go wrong and beating themselves up? And so when we practice self compassion, a lot of people think that, Oh, you’re being too kind to yourself, like you’re letting go and not trying anymore. But really, studies find the opposite, that when we’re able to be compassionate to ourselves, we’re actually better able to cope with failure, and better able to overcome adversity and difficult experiences. And so, something as simple as asking yourself, okay, how would I speak to myself if I were talking to a friend, because many times it’s easier to be kind to yourself, or it’s sorry to be kind to a friend than it is to be kind to yourself. And so kind of using that practice as a way of trying to be more understanding and compassionate with yourself because oftentimes when we’re hard on ourselves, that goes back to like the negative self talk. It’s not helping, and it’s just making you feel worse.
Chris Seiter 25:09 Okay, so let’s switch gears and take some of the questions that I got from the community. I think there’s five here that I have. Okay, the first one you might have already answered, but just to make sure that someone doesn’t yell at me for not asking it, I’m gonna ask it to you. Besides training and doing more sports, how does one manage to control or even overcome anxiety? Are there any tricks or book recommendations you have?
Tati 25:37 Yeah, so actually, one book that I just read pretty recently, is called good anxiety, I believe, by Dr. Wendy Suzuki, but she goes into like the neuroscience of anxiety. And what she explains in the book, and what’s also supported by neuroscience research is that there’s two ways to address anxiety. So one is through the amygdala, which I was describing before, that’s that part of the brain. That’s, it’s the primitive, just automatic reaction that’s going to go into anxiety before you’re even maybe even consciously aware. So like, if you’ve ever woken up in the middle of the night and seeing like, a shadowy figure and your heart starts to be, then you realize it’s like a jacket hanging on your door or something. I’ve definitely had that happen.
Chris Seiter 26:26 Unless you’re watching like some sort of ghost story on a small iPad and keep looking or like some sort of serial killer documentary, you keep looking over your shoulder.
Tati 26:35 Yeah, exactly. And, and the way to address that is through the physical route, like I mentioned, so you know, this person mentioned exercising, but also could be, you know, especially if it’s before bed at night, a lot of people have trouble sleeping because of anxiety, because they’re overthinking things. It can be calming techniques, like, you know, listening to relaxing music, or podcast or listening to a guided meditation or something like that. And then the second approach is through the cortex. So that’s the part of our brain that’s responsible for, you know, all of our cognition, like our thinking or decision making, our impulse control. And so that’s looking at the way you’re thinking about things. And so things like just starting to bring more awareness, to your thoughts to the way you speak to yourself to, if your thoughts tend to be focused on the negative, just starting with recognizing that can help you to combat anxiety, because, you know, once you start to recognize why I’m really hard on myself, where I really focus on the negative, then you can start to change and challenge those thoughts. And something simple, I recommend to people is just like writing, making a paper with two columns. In one column, you write down, what are the negative and anxious thoughts or the negative self talk? And then in the other column? How would you replace these thoughts? We can go back to thinking of what would you say to a friend who was saying this? Or how would you look at this more objectively? And realistically,
Chris Seiter 28:17 I love that. I love that. All right, ready for the next one? This one’s a little bit of a long one. All right. I have always been an anxious person. I think a lot. I overthink, I bite my nails trying hard to stop. I usually don’t sleep well, because the second something is not going how I like in my life. There’s this hamster running nonstop in my head. But I want to live free of that in a near future. So what can I do?
Tati 28:46 Yeah, I think a lot of people can probably relate to this. And one thing so you know, a lot of what I already suggested, and I think one thing is connecting back to that uncertainty that I was talking about before. With anxiety, it’s this fear of uncertainty, or the unknown, or what could go wrong in the future. And so easier said than done, but something that can be kind of like an underlying practice. And, you know, sometimes I like to make post it notes as like reminders for myself if there’s something I want to focus on. And one thing that I think is helpful a lot of times with anxiety is focusing on what you can control and then letting go of the rest. And so maybe like writing this down, as opposed to No, I choose to only focus on what I can control because like I said, it’s something that you need to constantly remind yourself of, because it’s easier said than done. But you know, many times anxiety comes from Oh, what is he thinking? Or, you know, what if I did the wrong thing and the situation is something you can’t change anymore or what What if, you know, I look stupid when I run into my address on the street or whatever?
Chris Seiter 30:07 Like a fear of the unknown in the future? Sometimes I see a lot.
Tati 30:12 Exactly. Yeah. So bringing that focus back to, okay, I can’t predict what’s going to happen in the future. I can’t control what my ex is thinking about me or what he’s doing. I can only focus on, you know, the way that I’m thinking about things and the things that I’m doing.
Chris Seiter 30:28 I’m curious, have you ever read meditations by Marcus Aurelius? I have not, but I’ve heard of it. Okay, so a lot of what you’re talking about, like the coping mechanism of only focusing on the thoughts in your head, and like focusing on what you can control. That’s, like, straight from him. But what’s really fascinating about Marcus Aurelius is he wrote meditations. Okay, so the Italians or the Romans had their own language, but they were, they were like, in love with the Greeks. And so Marcus Aurelius wrote, meditations by himself in Greek. So no one would read it. And it was just like a private journal to them. So like, you know, like, some of the journals that you’re talking for our clients to, to do as a anxiety coping mechanism. This was literally his journals. And you can actually see these meditations. He’s talking a lot about, I had a really stressful day today, but I didn’t let it get to me, I only focused on so it’s really fascinating that even someone from ancient Roman times was using this and it’s actually he was considered one of the greatest men of his time. So if you don’t, if you don’t buy into what, to what talks he’s talking about here, I mean, literally, it’s, it’s there. And also, I think it’s interesting, because a lot of the anxieties that you I mean, that we are all struggling with in this day and age, people back then had it’s a very human nature thing. So I’d actually kind of get curious, do you think anxiety has gotten worse with the advent of social media? Because I definitely do think it has.
Tati 32:13 Yeah, definitely not one. Okay. One thing is that separate from social media, what you’re saying the reason anxiety has survived is because it has been helpful for survival. You know, anxiety, just as essence is helping us to avoid threatened danger. And so those traits are going to be passed down, because the people who are more cautious are typically going to survive more than the people who aren’t. Obviously, that’s a generalization, but like,
Chris Seiter 32:39 no, no, right? Yeah. Like it’s a law of the wild, you know, out there, like you’re, you see a lion or something, you’re gonna run that exactly the that’s that that’s the function I think it’s supposed to play but social media. What you have to say, sorry,
Tati 32:56 yeah, no, no, that’s okay. I think, definitely, because, you know, one thing with social media is now we have access to see, you know, how many hundreds of 1000s of billions of people’s lives. And so that can result in things like, you know, comparison itis and, because especially because of social media, people are constantly sharing like that highlight reel, they’re not sharing the struggles, they’re not sharing the failures. And so you’re comparing your day in and day out to everybody else’s kind of, like pristine life that they’re choosing to share. So, you know, there’s definitely the tendency to then compare yourself to others to feel like you’re behind to feel as though you need to do more to keep up. And then there’s the separate fact, of just the constantly having access to all this information in, you know, on a smartphone, that it’s not inherently a bad thing. But you know, sometimes people can become addicted to it, and then start to go to social media or go to checking their phone as a way of avoiding uncomfortable emotions or thoughts. And so they don’t learn how to actually sit with them and be with them, which is an important part of being human. You know, sometimes we need to just be with how we’re feeling. Sometimes we just need to take some space and time away from like constant inputs and information in order to process and work through what’s going in our mind. And when we don’t have that when there’s a constant kind of bombardment of information. It’s going to result in you know, my opinion, more anxiety, more depression, just more mental health struggles in general.
Chris Seiter 34:48 Yeah, I think, at least the line of work. I’m in dealing with a lot of breakups. I actually think social media. It’s like a double edged sword. People can use it really he effectively after a breakup, but in most cases for the clients, I find it just exacerbates their anxiety because they’re constantly checking. And to kind of, to kind of segue into our next question, this person asked, what are some methods to help regulate anxiety during these pullback periods with my ex. So what she means by that is like, things are going well, she’s trying to reconnect with the ex after a breakup and then boom, out of the out of the blue, he just pulls back, or she just pulls back and doesn’t want anything to do with them. How does she regulate that anxiety that she has? If that happens?
Tati 35:35 Yeah, yeah, I think what can help in that kind of situation is kind of what I was just touching on, but just being aware of how you’re feeling like this. seems simple, but it can be really challenging sometimes just like, sitting with and experiencing your emotion. Where do you feel it in your body? A lot of times anxiety can show up? Because our emotions are physical, they’re experienced by our physical body, not just in the brain. Okay? Do you feel anxiety in your chest? Do you notice there’s a tension? Do you notice it’s harder to breathe, you know, like just bringing awareness of what you’re feeling? Because then the saying is you need to feel it in order to heal it. And so if you can feel and tune into that and recognize what am I feeling physically? Also, what are the thoughts that are coming up? Maybe there’s fears like, he’s never going to want to talk to me again. And so maybe you’re focused on the worst case scenario, bringing it back to Okay. Is the worst case scenario, likely? And if it did happen, could you cope with it? And you know, a lot of times we fear that with with, like, what these worries are, we won’t be able to handle them because they’ll be too bad, or too devastating. But the reality is that you’ve handled this before, and you can handle it again.
Chris Seiter 36:58 So typically, to kind of piggyback off that, feel it to heal it, concept. I try to tell my clients that it’s okay to feel stress, and anxiety and everything like that, but it’s not okay to dwell too long into it. So one of the I’m actually just want you to check my strategies. So I’ll be happy to alter it if it’s wrong. But I tell people to get like a timer and set a 15 minute timer and then just allow themselves to feel everything during that 15 minutes. But then when the 15 minutes up. All right, let’s focus on this other thing. Let’s kind of move on with their day. Is that an effective approach? Or can you improve upon? Or is that like, cool, that got the Totti stamp of approval?
Tati 37:40 Yeah, no, that’s, that’s definitely effective. I’ve suggested that to my clients, like the way I’ll frame it is, you know, set this time of day aside to just worry about things. And then you know, that can actually be effective, because then you’re, rather than having these emotions, worries and thoughts going traveling with you throughout your day. If they do come up, you could say, alright, now I’ve set aside this time to work through these things, and I’m going to address it then. Because you’re right, like, if you dwell on it too long, then it’s kind of turning into this can turn into this downward spiral of, then you’re just feeding into the anxiety.
Chris Seiter 38:20 Yeah, I guess it takes a lot of discipline to be able to combat the high functioning anxiety, because a lot of this is like self methods, you know, there’s nothing like, there’s no computer program or AI program that can kind of keep you in check. It’s all happening in here. So I think it takes a lot of discipline and courage to be able to do this. Okay. Last question. What are some good ways to maintain composure in stressful situations?
Tati 38:48 Yeah, so I think that it’s a good question. It’s gonna depend on the situation, but you know, one thing can be having, like, what are your and let me backtrack, like, first, it could be to understand in a non stressful situation, what is it that you enjoy doing to relax or de stress? Because when we’re in a stressful situation, it’s going to automatically be harder to access the tools that we use, because you’re in a state of stress. And so you’re not thinking about, okay, what can I do to cope with the stress, you’re thinking about? How can I survive this situation? So I like to recommend that people practice the tools that they’re going to use in stressful situations when they’re not stressed. So that, you know, it’s the same way it’s like building a muscle the same way you would go to the gym, in order to like build your muscles and become stronger. You’re building your muscle of accessing these states of relaxation and de stressing. And so, if it’s in a stressful situation, and of course it’s going to help to be Eat something that you can do like around other people. So maybe it’s just like taking those deep breaths. Or maybe it’s before you go into the stressful situation, just, you know, setting a timer for five minutes and doing some deep breathing or doing a guided meditation, or I’ve recommended to clients with social anxiety in particular that like, Okay, before you go into this situation, let’s write down some, like positive statements that will help to prime you and put you in a positive mindset. So maybe it’s, you know, depends what it is. But if you’re going to an interview, maybe it is preparing as much as you can for the interview, and then also writing down you know, I’m going to focus on doing the best I can. That’s not a great one, but just like kind of anything that
Chris Seiter 40:53 that’s why Yeah, I mean, a lot of these a lot of these questions are just, we’ve already kind of answered them, you know, like like so anyways, Tati, you have a podcast slash YouTube channel. But you also coach and you have a few courses, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your coaching practice in your courses?
Tati 41:19 Yeah, so first of my podcast YouTube channel, you can find it on both is called calmly coping, and I speak there more about high functioning anxiety. So if that resonates with you, then you will find I have this point more than 150 episodes over there. And then I coach, high achieving professionals with you know, performance executive coaching to help them to achieve their potential and stop fear, anxiety and burnout from holding them back so they can live a more calm, balanced and confident life. And, you know, I also teach my curriculum in my online course calm, balanced and confident. And I have a an online community for high achievers experiencing high functioning anxiety, the calm and ambitious community.
Chris Seiter 42:07 So if you’re listening or watching this and you’re interested in checking out her podcast, or any of the coaching practices or the courses, I’m gonna have a link to those in the show notes. Or I guess the YouTube description or if you’re in the community and the little community thing, but there will be a link in there. But I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming on and doing this.
Tati 42:30 Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It’s great conversation.
Success Story: This Woman Got Her Ex Back After Finding Herself
Aug 05, 2023
I had the pleasure of interview Lee a few days ago and I was blown away at her approach to her breakup.
Not only did she really buy in to putting the focus on herself (as opposed to her ex) but she absolutely KILLLED IT during the texting phase.
Check out some of the things we talked about in our interview,
The beginning of the breakup. 0:02
Getting back into the game after a breakup. 3:35
No contact for 45 days. 7:41
How she got into the coaching world. 11:57
Coffee grinders and coffee. 17:12
The importance of the internal part of the process. 23:40
Not cool things that were not cool. 28:54
There’s no such thing as an innocent cup of coffee. 33:40
The most important epiphany she had. 39:23
Interview Transcript
Chris Seiter 00:02 All right, today we have a another success story. We have Lee here who is going to tell us all about her situation. And specifically, she wanted me to highlight the importance of the work she did during the texting phase. So I’m eager to get into that. But thank you so much for coming on and doing this.
Lee 00:17 Oh, thanks for having me. Actually, thank you very much for creating this program. I purchased. Probably all of the programs I could think of five, perhaps in addition to yours, so
Chris Seiter 00:31 yeah, you were saying that, you know, the big ones.
Lee 00:33 The big hit heavy hitters,
Chris Seiter 00:36 right? You always you always I find it’s like sometimes people, you know, they just jive with different things better than than others. But I’m, I’m blessed to have you here. So, again, thank you for doing this. Why don’t you take us back to the beginning of men? I don’t know, if you want to take take it from like the beginning of the relationship or the beginning of the breakup. One. I’ll just leave that to you.
Lee 01:02 So I had met my significant other online. We had a long texting fees. About three months before we met in person. The first time around, we call that the first relationship. And then we met, it was like a fireworks type, relationship and person. Things were really heavy. I had had a surgery, he was there for me. He met my son, he was in my family. He started living with me, but he still had his own apartment, which is a very avoidant thing to do.
Chris Seiter 01:46 So did you guys move in together? Like, way too quickly? Like how long did that take to unfold? Exactly?
Lee 01:53 Well, so we’re in our mid 40s, he’s a year and a half younger than me. So I mean, I would say about 45 minutes, 45
Chris Seiter 02:01 minutes, 45 minutes. That’s the
Lee 02:05 relationship. He was there No, five months. And it was, um, you know, he was here all the time. But he wasn’t like, contributing as much. And we had problems, but I was afraid to broach the topics. Um, he had sort of done this. He had had kind of some money relationships with his, his ex wife and I have a son. So it’s like, I have a co parent relationship that I also needed to kind of work out the kinks with. And that sort of, I think kind of gave him some
Chris Seiter 02:41 pause difficulty. Yeah, I mean, especially so you mentioned that he might have been dismissive avoidant. How did he handle that? Okay, sure. Okay. Well, so he, so how long did it take him to actually start running away? And what was his reasoning during the breakup?
Lee 03:01 So the first time I think he technically ran away, he helped his ex wife move across the country, and I had a very anxious reaction to it and, and pushed him away. So out of like a protest behavior.
Chris Seiter 03:16 I mean, you could easily argue that’s not anxious behavior. That’s normal behavior, but okay.
Lee 03:22 Yeah, no. Well, yeah, I mean, I had some. Yeah, I mean, that is normal behavior. I was like, What is this? Yeah, there were things that were chipping away at my security throughout the relationship. And that had kind of driven me toward, like, these points of feeling very anxious. In the so when then November, I think, so we had met in June, was when he first broke up with me. And I, like begged and learned him back. Second time, was in December, and I had purchased this program and another one, and I had read that other one, and then I had gotten him back. And then in April 29 of the next year, I so we had been together for 11 months, we’d had a couple blowouts and one of which I had like a kind of like a meltdown in public and I had lost a lot of emotional control. So two weeks after that I came home from work and all his stuff was gone.
Chris Seiter 04:39 No explanation at all just like the actual ghosting there in person for you to see. Right. Okay. So I just work texted, I
Lee 04:54 netted or you know, I was like, are you why are you doing this to us like what the hell Oh, and what am I gonna say to my son? And like, you’ve left a family basically, like you became a part of a family, and then you left it. So like, what’s up with that? When, and I saw him and brought all of his stuff. And he said that he never wanted to see me again. And he never wants to talk to me again. He was like, smoothing out his clothes. Like, he’s obviously still attracted to me. You know? Yeah.
Chris Seiter 05:26 I’m very nervous in this moment.
Lee 05:29 Yeah. And I did not bring any peace. Probably what I should have done in retrospect, is just not say anything. I can give myself some time to calm down. But I did not. And I kind of like went after that situation to the very anxious thing, which is like, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? But knowing that, you know, he had already made up his mind. And so
Chris Seiter 05:59 he’s left you, you approach him at his work very anxiously. You do everything basically, you’re not supposed to do. I’m assuming this does not work out well, for you at first.
Lee 06:10 No, it doesn’t. He just pushes me away. And then yeah, I’m like, Well, can we talk about this in seven days, you know, this is like, an from another program that I read, it’s like, okay, now you’re doing damage control, you know, you’re trying to like, reestablish trust. And ultimately, what I didn’t realize is that, like, both of our nervous systems were on like, super high alert. And like, I really should have just backed off. And let it kind of smooth over because I had heard through his roommate that he was really hurting in May. And if I had done the, the break, and like, let myself calm down and not not and just let him do it, probably things would have gone a different course. However, what I feel this program did was forced me to look at myself with like, the ungettable girl content, doing the Trinity. Just sort of like applying these things. Because it’s very easy to just like, sort of like, focus everything out on them and say, Oh, well, this is them. And that’s their fault. And that’s what they did wrong. But at some point, I had an epiphany of like, oh, this is what I’ve been doing wrong. So
Chris Seiter 07:36 at this point, when you’re focusing on this stuff, have you already implemented like the No Contact Rule.
Lee 07:41 So I went into the No Contact Rule. And then, about 12 days after I sent like a goodbye, text, and vacated with music. I just start the No Contact Rule all over again.
Chris Seiter 07:57 Alright, so you made it 12 days, you sent the way you said, like, you communicate with like, some sort of music video or something like that. So I sent like a Yo, La Tengo song that was very sad. And like, you know, where are your emotions on your sleeve? Like?
Lee 08:13 Yeah, you know, thank you so much. And I hope you find all the happiness you’ve ever wanted, okay. And I found like, myself on the anniversary of our, like, the, the day that he told me, he loved me, which was the third of July, I found myself calling or no, the second of July I like, called him and totally just was like, I’m doing great, and
Chris Seiter 08:43 overcorrecting is the correct term there. You know, overcorrecting, trying to be like, Okay, and how does that go? How does that how does that approach work?
Lee 08:54 Horribly, he’s just like, I can’t be with you. And, you know, he told me that he couldn’t see me and that, you know, I was being silly by thinking he didn’t love me. But he just, you know, and he doesn’t have any social media. There’s no way I can really keep in contact with him. There’s no way he can really keep tabs on me. He’s kind of atypical in that way. So yeah, that was a big thing for me. So I’m like, Alright, no contact for 45 days.
Chris Seiter 09:29 So you’ve had maybe a couple of false starts during no contact? Yeah. Is this the one that kind of like sticks?
Lee 09:37 Yes. Okay. So then, you know, I do the things and I look at me and I go to therapy and I look at myself and my anxious behavior. I try and pick apart him trying to figure out a is this is am I in a narcissistic situation like, is this you know, and I kind of like distill that it wasn’t which was good. I kind of ruled out that he didn’t have any mood disorders or anything like that. He is a slightly neurodivergent or both have like tinges of ADHD I have a diagnosis of ADHD. So yeah, me too. So it’s like, I have some workarounds. But you know, the things changes, you know, as you know, and with a kid, it’s like, oh, but yeah, I spent a lot of time being pretty sorry for myself and feeling like the victim, and then, you know, having to re empower myself and feel better about myself and surround myself with people that understood. So the community was super helpful, because I wasn’t killing the resources that were around me as far as friendships with constant, like conversation about him. Yeah. So the battle battle buddy aspect of this program was super helpful. And, you know, I met some friends. And I was able to utilize that resource. And that was super helpful. And then, I guess what, like, you know, working this program in the sense of, like, keeping with the battle buddies keeping, it was like an exercise in self control. Like, I have to wait until I have the ability to talk about things clearly and or articulate, like, what it is that I need from this community, because a I might not get a response, or be, you know, like, Is this necessary, and like, I have to wait until x time to think about it. So it’s like, I can’t like ruminate as much. So it was like, sort of that was like, very integral to like, creating sort of a self control. modality. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 11:58 I mean, you’re, you’re, I’m assuming you’re doing the Trinity work. And you mentioned earlier that you that was something you had started before, maybe the false start happened.
Lee 12:10 Yeah, I got a personal trainer, got new therapists started therapy right. Now, some career goals, they switched. You know, I started interviewing for different careers
Chris Seiter 12:20 like so. I mean, like, theoretically, you’re doing everything you’re supposed to be doing during this no contact period. You mentioned you were doing like a 45. Day one. Did you actually make it all the way through the 45? days? Yes. Okay. Now we get to the fun part. Yeah. Phase,
Lee 12:39 I had gone through professional coaching through your group, gotcha. I had created. I was kind of on the fence. I’m like, do I want to do this? I don’t know. Um, so I talked to the coach. And I’m like, Okay, I got a call from a place that we had gone to like to get IVs. And apparently, he had forgotten that it was on AutoPay. And I had like, a couple months of membership, or three months or whatever membership left. And they call to remind me and saying that, you know, he had let’s just, you know, calm David. So it’s like David had left you. Three months of IV membership, he doesn’t want you to pay it back, if you you know, but he has cancelled it, and so on and so forth. And so I kind of utilize that is like, Thank you for the IVs I was hoping that at one point, we could talk because I had really broken and that was one of the things I talked about in coaching is I had really broken and, like his trust in me by going to his place of work by nagging by, like those things kind of would make anybody feel unsafe. You know? Yeah.
Chris Seiter 14:01 I mean, it also builds, this is how she’ll react from now on, like, that’s the perception he’s gonna have. So that’s, like, the headwind you’re going to be facing when you try to, and as you’re correctly, assuming, he’s a little wary at first.
Lee 14:19 So then he said, Well, why would we need to have contact? And I said, Okay, well, we and this was, you know, something I came back to the group with, and I had gotten a response from the coach, saying, well say that you had had a relationship where you relied on each other for a while, but you know, you respect his point of view. And you’ll give him some time to think about it. So I use that we and I left it alone for two weeks. And then I went in with the exact like, texting phase model. Yeah, you know, like Question The homes or distress sort of thing, right? And the first one was about so he sent in, like, he’s a weightlifting enthusiast and are a power lifter. So it was like, hey, I need help about pre workout. And it was like a slew of information.
Chris Seiter 15:20 Okay, so you hit his interest, right on the mark. Too much, maybe.
Lee 15:27 I was like, wait a minute, like it’s positive response. And like, I get like, 300 let you know. That’s a positive response. Like, are you doing tide theory? I’m like, Well, I just got a tidal wave. So I did create it. That’s hilarious. So, um, you know, then I had, you know, I tried to cut them off with like, something like, Oh, I’m doing this you know what I was I was inquiring about getting sailing lessons. And then the next time I had asked him about a weightlifting shoes. Well, that was that was just like intense. I mean, I got all the different fabrics and the different heel lifts and why you need this shoe for this thing and that and I was just like,
Chris Seiter 16:22 a really loves his weightlifting, right and a lot. Yeah, well, and
Lee 16:26 also, he just feels like, he’s done so much research like it. He’s like, the nice guy who’s like, Oh, I’ll help any disseminates information. But sometimes it can be a little overbearing, because that’s a wonder if
Chris Seiter 16:38 it’s also maybe like, he put so much work into the research. And like, I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but no one really cares. So it’s his way of like, saying, like, well, look how much research I put into it. I’m willing to put it out there.
Lee 16:53 Right now. It’s true. It’s like the weirdest thing, like, and I’m like, Okay, thank you, you know. And then
Chris Seiter 17:04 what’s amazing is that he initially gives you the cold shoulder on that first thing like what, like, we shouldn’t be talking and then you bam, you hit his interest. And it’s like, boom, like, just so message after message. And what
Lee 17:17 I didn’t know is that at this time, he had met somebody, and was kind of dating them. So I was like, like, just sort of
Chris Seiter 17:29 wonder if that lowered the barrier. Maybe like, well, I’ve already moved on to this new person. I don’t have to worry about a potential get back together with Lee.
Lee 17:41 That’s interesting. Yeah. So then, I just kept on that. And then it was he’s really into coffee. So it’s like coffee grinders. And it seems so benign, right. And like, was
Chris Seiter 18:01 there a question mark there, just like coffee grinders?
Lee 18:05 I was going to need, or I was like, Can I get your professional opinion or something like that? Yeah. And he was, and I’m like, well, it’s about coffee, David. So like, come on, in because he’s like, Well, I don’t know about professional. Yeah, you’re professional coffee drinker, I think and. And it was just like, here’s this do you want to do you want to like manual grinder? Do you want this grinder and it was just like, wow, like, again, and I was taking interest in the things that he had always been interested in. So it’s like, okay, it took me a little bit to kind of bridge into, like, normal conversation.
Chris Seiter 18:49 And do you think, ah,
Lee 18:52 probably, so that was we started on August 31 was the first text two weeks after then we started doing that, like every 10 days. I was kind of getting
Chris Seiter 19:03 you’re really slow. I mean, it was doing this. Got it.
Lee 19:07 And it would take him sometimes 24 hours to respond. He would like drop off
Chris Seiter 19:12 it’s good to know to have like
Lee 19:15 information
Chris Seiter 19:16 you’re pretty confident he was a dismissive avoidant.
Lee 19:19 So we had done many tests after. Okay, when we got back together. Yeah. And so that’s the thing like he had so when and what’s interesting is like, after we got back together, his and I, like there were things about me because my confidence had changed. And I had moved into secure attachment in the beginning, and we had gone to couples therapy when in the beginning, but like, it came out like he was actually kind of anxious when we got back together. I thought that the getting back together process brought out some of his anxious attachment style, and fears sort of like because The Keys disorganized like he was true, it seemed like he, because I kind of feel like we change over the continuum of our lives.
Chris Seiter 20:07 Yep. That’s 100% Correct. So like,
Lee 20:11 I think that, you know, given some of the things that had happened in his childhood, and the way that he was raised in relationships, and then also, because his marriage, I mean, was like, 20 years long, they’ve got, yeah,
Chris Seiter 20:23 that’s definitely gonna have an impact on your attachment style, especially towards the end.
Lee 20:28 And they were like, together for a really long time. So that created that was a secure part of his life. And then, you know, as II moved into single life, that’s when he sort of got back into that avoidance, you know, sort of style, because when we first met, he really put me at ease. It wasn’t like, he wasn’t there would disappear for days, you know. So yeah, but
Chris Seiter 20:54 before we were recording, so sorry, anyone listening to this? You didn’t, you didn’t hear this, we were talking about your attachment style. And you said you got professional checked out. And you’re fearful attachment style. And you were talking about how he kind of maybe fell in love with the avoidance side of that. So I’m actually just wondering if, if that sort of was the allure when you first met? You know, and
Lee 21:22 I think it could have been, I think it was that. And the fact that we had, we had a lot of things in common that a lot of people find, like, we have a very esoteric taste in music that has a term or like it just an eclectic taste. Oh, yeah.
Chris Seiter 21:41 I mean, you see, I mean, like, we like, Yeah, little text, the fun text message,
Lee 21:47 like, be listened to, like Darkwave. And like, shoegaze, all the stuff that like when we were like, I was younger, in the 90s. You know, it was kind of like, not everybody liked. And now it’s kind of gets resurgence and things and we’re like, wow, like, wow, but it, it goes beyond that. Like we were both raised in st part of the country, when we moved to another part of the country. There were same motivations behind that. So there were a lot of like similarities that we had. And in the beginning, like, I was just like,
Chris Seiter 22:23 like, then somewhere somewhere along the way that changes throughout your relationship to where you’re like, desperate to keep it together. Yeah, at the end, which is really interesting to look at maybe your attachment style throughout that relationship. You might have started out, maybe a little bit avoidant, potentially. But then slowly, but surely, which is the case with the fearful avoidant side, you know, bouncing back and forth. Did you ever feel like you were bouncing back and forth a lot throughout the relationship where you go from anxious to went into anxious, avoidant?
Lee 22:55 Yes. And then I mean, reading and learning about protests behaviors and what they were, and just sort of understanding that I wasn’t like trying to make them jealous and trying, you know, certain things like that. Really, just, that’s a protest behavior. That’s just something that I learned to sort of irritate his nervous system and kind of get a response in a certain way and how it doesn’t work if that switch isn’t turned on. Yeah. So yeah, it was it’s this has been like a super fascinating journey. For me.
Chris Seiter 23:40 I like that you’re so self aware of it. Because most of the people I talk to, they only focus on the x, x x x, and they kind of neglect the internal stuff. And that internal stuff, I think, is the most important part of the entire process.
Lee 23:54 Well, because this program isn’t about the X. It isn’t about you, it’s about it’s about me, and when that light got turned on, which wasn’t immediately, like it took a good that 45 days of my nervous system kind of M that was what I found interesting about, like, there, there is a scientific approach to the way that you have, like things laid out and also in the way that the materials are laid out. It’s like for that anxious brain. It’s just like, like, you go through it, and just get it but what I realized is that anxious brain did not learn a lot and I had to go back and reread them. Because we’re being the information, you know, wants to go into the texting phase, like right? It’s like no, and then when you’re in it, you’re dying. You’re dying. You’re bound it’s been
Chris Seiter 24:58 going on, it’s like Yeah, yeah, you know, there’s like a couple of things to bring up here. The first thing I would say is like, psychologically or I guess, neuro chemically, what you’re what the No Contact is meant to do is lower your cortisol levels. So they’re a little bit more normal. But I think the mistake a lot of people make is they’re doing things that constantly make them stressed and anxious and obsessed about the X. And that keeps those cortisol levels elevated. And the longer they stay lol, I think there was like a study I found that said, like, if your cortisol levels stay in this constant state of elevation, normally, it should take like three to four hours for them to come back down to normal. But if they are constantly used, it can take six months for them to come back down to normal. This is why I think so many people struggle in the post breakup period, because they’re just checking their exit. No. That’s interesting, though, because Alright, so the number one thing I noticed that people do is they check their exes, social media accounts, boom, cortisol level, like, what are they doing? Your ex didn’t have social media, you didn’t have any choice to find.
Lee 26:02 That’s all I have. Spotify was like, you know, like, combing the Spotify plates hilarious or things that he added? Like, what does that mean, you know, and then I realized, like, he had taken me off a joint playlist, and I was like, Oh, my God, you know, because the only thing we had
Chris Seiter 26:21 been the best thing for you, though. Right? Is it probably helped this cortisol levels come down without you realizing it.
Lee 26:28 Interestingly enough, the first time we actually talked on the phone was six months to the day of us breaking up.
Chris Seiter 26:37 Interesting. That’s kind
Lee 26:39 of that’s kind of interesting. Well, how were
Chris Seiter 26:41 you feeling during it, though? So obviously go through this period of no texts, no contact and texting for a long period of time. But like when you get to that phone call phase? How are you feeling? Do you feel like, do you still want him back at that point? Are you just kind of like, okay, whatever happens happens?
Lee 26:57 Well, and that’s that, is it like, I did the 45 days. And then after the two weeks, I kind of was like, Okay, do I want him back?
Chris Seiter 27:08 Yep. That’s the secret sauce of everything.
Lee 27:11 I I’m a wonderful person. And there’s no way that a wonderful person is going to be single forever. So. And that was like, that was really it. That was when I knew I was like, I had to be willing to let him go. And let go of the idea of what he was and who he was. Because if I maintained holding on to that idea of who he was, and what he was, I don’t think that we could have continued this second relationship. Because I wouldn’t have been able to forgive him. Because I was I was abandoned in my mind. He abandoned that little he
Chris Seiter 27:50 literally did abandon you showed up to your house and his stuff was gone. That’s a definition of abandonment. Yeah.
Lee 27:57 And like, my, that I have friends that are like, Well, I’m not going to do David anymore. I’m not going to be friends with him anymore. I don’t want him to show up. At you know, x y party. And, you know, and this is to this day, because of that action, you know, and it’s like, I think he’s proven himself. But, you know, it’s not just me in my life, you know, and I get those are the people I exhausted. Yeah, you know, and it’s like, so that was why I felt like this. This program, like was super helpful and integral to my own personal healing, because it propelled me on a journey of trying to figure out why I was a accepting substandard treatment from another individual. Because in combing through my memories, I realized that there were things that weren’t normal like him taking his ex wife back
Chris Seiter 28:54 to not cool. Not cool. Yeah, knuckle right.
Lee 28:58 Things that were not cool. Were coming to the fore. And I was like, oh, oh, yeah, he wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t this person that I like, you know, yeah,
Chris Seiter 29:09 he kind of had them on a pedestal, I think, especially in that post breakup period, where you’re desperate to get them back. Everything they do is on a pedestal on spot and kind of bringing them back down to your level.
Lee 29:18 And it’s like, oh, he’s, you know, he’s the only one and blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, no, there’s no granted, it is hard to meet people. And I found that out because I did start dating. But he needed to also start dating too, because that’s what made him miss me, you know, and these texts that I was sending him, reminding him that I knew who he was. I like that, ya know, like, who he really was, like, the things that were really important to him. And I know that it sounds like, oh, well, it’s just weightlifting and coffee, but it’s more than that. Because like the moment you know,
Chris Seiter 29:57 it’s empathy. Like you you’re having a conversation with someone, I think you might have also benefited from the fact that he was dating other people. And maybe they’re not asking the type of questions that is going is like nurturing for the soul. Whereas you pop in and you can know exactly because you studied him, and you were with him for a long time, and you knew him for a long time. I mean, that’s an interesting take on it. I liked that actually, a lot. A lot of times when I’m, I’m doing these interviews, I’m always looking for ways to frame things for the people who haven’t bought in yet. Because what you basically said is, once I outgrew my ex, that’s when I started to see the snowball effect really start occurring. But it’s, it’s really about convincing people to outgrow their ex, because so many people do not want to outgrow their ex, they just want to fix the problem get their ex back. So a lot of it is hearing from people like you that I think helps the light bulbs go off for them.
Lee 30:59 I did not I was so resistant.
Chris Seiter 31:03 I didn’t know scary, there’s no guarantee. Yeah, there’s like,
Lee 31:06 yeah, I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t. And not only that, it’s like I’m older. So I was like, oh, there’s nobody out there, you know, and it’s like that, you know, but that’s also not true. And, you know, it’s
Chris Seiter 31:23 just your, I think anxious fears talking, you know, that voice in the back of your head that knows exactly what to say to like, really got you.
Lee 31:34 Everyone has that. And then, you know, there was like, there are a few things that I knew when I had him. And it was like I had had these conversations with him about coffee about, you know, his top interests, I asked him about other things and got sort of like, sort of brush off. Like I asked about nonfiction books that he’s very literate. And like, I kind of got like a little on that. And then I asked about workout playlists, like have you heard anything new. And once he started sending me music, I knew that I like
Chris Seiter 32:22 that was like your inside way of talking to no other people might have had that you connected on that level.
Lee 32:28 Right? And so then once and then we had a conversation and then we ended up having like a FaceTime. And he saw my face and he started to tear up. And I was like, okay, you know, like, this is really happening. Like, I’m getting my ex back. I’m getting my ex back, you know what I mean? Like in my mind, on myself down. So it’s like, alright, just because you don’t cut your chickens before they like you kind of calm down and like, and like slowly smooth and smooth as fast. You know, I’m just like, Alright, all the things the outages are like running through my
Chris Seiter 33:13 that’s funny.
Lee 33:14 But it’s like once I had gotten the music and gotten like the things that were like the flowing of communication that was probably like mid October. And then, you know, the FaceTime conversation was six months of the day, but like we had talked on the phone. And then it was like after that probably excuse me with the likes and things. We had met in person, he had asked me for a cup of coffee. And I remember him telling me, you know, there’s there’s no such thing as an innocent cup of coffee. And so
Chris Seiter 33:51 you’re like, No, there’s, there’s What are you talking about? You know,
Lee 33:55 like no cups of coffee. And but no. It was
Chris Seiter 34:03 unfortunately, fortunately for you, it was not an innocent cup of coffee.
Lee 34:08 And what I found like a month or No, I want the month after we are a couple of weeks. Yeah, it was a couple of weeks after we had been seeing each other. He had put in his calendar because he was putting something else in his calendar that that day that we met for coffee. It was new anniversary.
Chris Seiter 34:28 Oh, that’s how you knew, huh? Yeah.
Lee 34:32 So but I knew because when we first met in person, he’d asked me to be back together. So it’s like I’m skipping the value chain in terms of like the conversation.
Chris Seiter 34:41 I mean, he’s skipping it for you. You’re not really skipping it. Right.
Lee 34:46 Right. And so then I’m like, Well, you know, I’m wondering what am I supposed to do mice to slow them down so that resistance again. And that emotional control on my part was like this Did you know he did? So?
Chris Seiter 35:01 did? Did you slow him down? Yeah. Yeah, I did interesting how that correlates with when you first met how avoidant you were specifically.
Lee 35:12 Yeah. And then being physically intimate I was, I said, we have to go see a couples therapist before that happens.
Chris Seiter 35:19 Smart. Very, very smart. I’ve interviewed a lot of success stories, who it’s like half and half for them. Sometimes they sleep together too soon, sometimes they do what you did, it always seems to work out quicker for the people who have that boundary, as opposed to the people who kind of end up in this friends and benefits limbo for a
Lee 35:40 while. You know, I have baggage, I have a child. And so you
Chris Seiter 35:48 have to think for more than just you. Right. And I know, it’s not just you.
Lee 35:53 And then you know, to be back in my life, he had to be back into my son’s life. And because I have him 50% of the time, ya know, that also imposes a boundary, because I would not hang out with him with my son for X amount of time. And then I had to make sure that my ex husband was okay. Because a lot of our safety in, you know, my son and my safety in the way that my son felt about himself, I had to discuss that with him. I had to discuss how I felt about myself in that situation with my son,
Chris Seiter 36:37 but I love that these are all hoops that you’re making David, jump through, you know, and he’s doing it. He’s jumping through time after time.
Lee 36:47 And he’s doing it and he’s proving it. And he’s, you know, when I went when we went to therapy is when she said, You know, I could see his anxious side, because he is clearly to you. And he wants to please you, he’s just, but it’s like, is that anxious. And now we’re in a very secure attachment. But it took us a little bit to kind of like work out the kinks and to shake them through. And it also took a lot for me to say, these are the things that I want, these are the things that I don’t want, because I would there are times that I was just, you could steamroll over all of my needs and wants. And that’s just not who I am today, I was in a relationship with it with a narcissist, who talked himself out of therapy for seven years at one point in my 20s. And it pretty much ruined my sense of self and set me up for, you know, accepting, you know, substandard treatment from the nicest people who hadn’t figured themselves out. And then I tried to save them and things of that nature. And yeah, yeah, no, you know, and since it’s like, I have this, this history, this long history of life, you know, I’m 46. So it’s like, I see me and what I’ve done wrong, and what I can do better. And I don’t think I could have seen it without this particular program. All of the other programs. Thank you. I mean, and I work in Psych. I do this, like, I deal with people with all these different problems, that see things that aren’t there, you know, what I mean, and have been deeply, deeply, deeply hurt from childhood and have these like, injuries and to their psyche. And it’s just like, I have to choose as a human being the power I give somebody else, and how they affect me. And if you can, like help somebody realize that they have that power within themselves to make themselves change, to make themselves see something to not accept bad things and look for the good because there were good things in that relationship. I had done a great job of mucking a lot of good things up. And he did too.
Chris Seiter 39:26 I think, would you say looking back at the entire experience, the most important epiphany for you was realizing I just need to get myself right first before I try to get him back.
Lee 39:38 Absolutely. Because I could not I was just going to head back. Because here’s the thing, they do always come back in my history. I mean, and I’m not joking. I’m talking 20 years down the line. They come back, they find you on Facebook, they find you on Instagram, like they’ll say Search for you. The they always come back. They do men and women. You know, I’ve also been guilty of that, you know, where I like, tag somebody after, you know, 15 years? And it’s like, yeah, they do. So I had to make sure that I was right. Because if I’m not right within myself, then I may be making the wrong decision. And I’m trying to learn somebody back into my life who may not be well suited for me, or my life or my son.
Chris Seiter 40:34 I mean, it seems like you did an amazing job.
Lee 40:36 Yeah, I mean, we live we’re living together. Now.
Chris Seiter 40:40 I would argue it’s not the program that did that. I would argue it’s you. The program was just like, hey, do this. You’re the one that actually had to do the work.
Lee 40:46 Agreed. But I mean, like, I don’t think I would have had a systematic approach to it.
Chris Seiter 40:54 Yeah. I mean, we just basically gave you the the bumpers to the bowling lane. Right, exactly.
Lee 40:59 Like, and, I mean, I did the work. I’ve been, you know, and that’s the thing like, was it Elizabeth Gilbert, who says, I haven’t met anybody who wanted to change who wasn’t sick of their own BS, you know, and it’s like, I had to really get sick of myself and sick of the crap that I was putting myself through. And that’s really what I had to remember, I’m not a victim here. I allowed some of these things to happen. There are bad people out there that do bad things to people.
Chris Seiter 41:27 And unfortunately, it seems like you did encounter one of those bad people in that seven year relationship. And that might have ruined your perception of other relationships.
Lee 41:39 Absolutely going forward. Absolutely. Dan,
Chris Seiter 41:44 thank you so much for coming and doing this. I know, you have to you have to leave soon.
Lee 41:50 After picking up my son, the one thing I did want to say is like an you know, is, it was the it was the group. It was the practice, practicing being a part of an unrehearsed authentic self, the practice of taking risks, that the practice of, you know, observing some sort of self control, emphasizing the role of having self control. That was really big, and putting the emphasis on yourself as the, you know, the person who needed to change because I, there are things that have happened in our relationship. Of course, there are we always have kinks. But I’ve, you know, I learned to speak up for myself, I learned to say things like, Hey, we’re not going to go to this point until we have seen a couple therapists, you know, and we do we see a therapist once a month. And we and they’re like, they’re, you know, I make sure that we read the books. And yeah, it’s important. So thank you, and he thinks you so
Chris Seiter 43:04 well, thank you both. Thank you for coming on. Because this interview already has so many golden nuggets that I’m going to refer to in the community.
Lee 43:15 And honestly, I’ve only been out and not helping, you know, be could just because of my own personal stuff. But as soon as that kind of comes down at
Chris Seiter 43:23 no pressure, you’re in the golden era. Now you’ve accomplished your goal.
Lee 43:28 You know what, like, I feel like there are things like, I don’t mind talking to people about this stuff, because it’s like, I’ve suffered with this for so long. And if I had figured this out earlier on in life, like who knows, but I can’t go there and I can’t do that type of shoulda coulda woulda, so, right now, I, I’m just grateful that I had the community that I had people. You know, it was just, it was really good. And, you know, the reading lists that were recommended and things like that, just like amazing stuff. Amazing stuff. So,
Chris Seiter 44:04 thank you so much. Thank you. We’re playing Thank you tag. Thank you. Thank you.
Lee 44:12 Yeah, but I gotta go pick up the little. And, ya know, we’re, you know, it was really funny, because when I had, I had started to introduce the idea of bringing David back. And one of the things was he had to apologize to my son. Any, any did? Yeah, that’s scary to do. But he had to, because if you’re going to be a person who’s a representation of what our relationship is, for another, and you know, for a little growing person,
Chris Seiter 44:46 I don’t know. I just love that. You made him apologize. But
Lee 44:49 did I made I mean, there was a lot he had to do. And he did it though. You did it. You got to know we’re doing and we’re doing it and It’s like we’re in this so thank you again and thank you to the group and everyone that helped me because I know they know who they are
Success Story: She Started Setting Boundaries He Started Coming Back
Jul 29, 2023
I had the pleasure of interviewing “So.” A member of our community who has just gotten her ex back,
In the interview we talk about things like,
The breakup that led up to the reconciliation. 0:01
Meet the woman who got back together with her ex.
The dark times.
The first Christmas apart from her boyfriend.
The first serious boyfriend.
The grieving period before moving forward. 3:32
Being kicked out of the house.
The grieving period after the divorce.
Crying, ice cream and watching movies.
How long it took him to give it his all.
How did you find out about the other woman? 7:22
He got back in contact in January this year.
He wants to change relationship dynamics.
Being kicked to the curb again.
How to cope with the no contact situation.
What were you doing during the no contact? 11:35
No contact, meetup groups, gym, therapy and therapy.
End date for no contact.
Breaking the no-contact rule three or four times.
Building up a relationship.
How to deal with the fear of rejection. 16:00
Mentally and emotionally affected by the cycle.
Holding boundaries for yourself.
Cold turkey, no contact, no explanation.
Fearful avoidance, anxious and avoidant responses.
What happened with the other woman? 19:27
What happened with the other woman.
How his ex is handling his grief.
Holding boundaries and not ignoring calls and texts.
No contact for 45 days.
Setting the boundary on no contact. 23:22
Breaking up with her boyfriend.
No contact, no contact and no contact.
Coming out of his shell and asking for her back.
Being upfront and honest.
Holding boundaries and setting boundaries. 28:54
Hedging his bets with probing questions.
Lying on the hook for a bit.
The fear of loss aspect worked on him.
The difference between this and the previous go-around.
Advice on how to get help. 32:16
Getting professional help to make the relationship stronger.
Taking responsibility for the relationship.
The most important tactics that got her to success.
The no contact rule.
Interview Transcript:
Chris Seiter 00:01 This meeting is being recorded. All right, today, we have a very amazing success story we have. So who has been kind enough to come on here and basically give us the rundown of her entire situation on how her and her ex have gotten back together. So thank you so much for coming in doing this. Yeah, cause so is this is this pretty recent? Like I noticed, like a day ago, you posted in the community? Like, yeah, I got back. He wants to like go seek professional help to kind of work through things. So is this like, are you still riding high? A little bit on on it?
So 00:44 Yeah, no, but yeah, it was. Honestly, very unexpected. And you’re literally right, a day ago, pretty well. So. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 00:55 Okay. So I mean, why don’t we go back to the dark times? Can you can you kind of take us through the play by play of the breakup and how that went down? And everything that kind of led up to this point?
So 01:11 Yeah, so it was Oh, my God, like, honestly, reality TV drama, almost the Ricoh it was, it was a border poll, a lot of things. A lot of it was just arguments, not even getting a relationship. It got to a point where my partner was unemployed for a couple of weeks. And obviously, finances not a great topic for you know, potentially relationships that are breaking down, you got into that topic. And it was just explosive, and just kind of walked away from that. And that was back October 2022. So that was quite a while ago. That was all going on. So yeah, that did mean that like for majority, I think of like Christmas time and everything. It was just first Christmas without him, which was very weird. But
Chris Seiter 02:04 How long had you been together before that point?
So 02:06 Three and a half years.
Chris Seiter 02:10 Okay, so And how old? Are you?
So 02:14 So I’m 2222.
Chris Seiter 02:15 So, like, was he like your first serious boyfriend? Yes, yes. So so that first Christmas apart must have been really, really difficult.
So 02:29 Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just yeah, it was not a great point. I mean, luckily, obviously, you have family around me. So that was pretty nice. But yeah, it just felt so weird. Cuz another factor was our family’s live, like five minutes away, driving time. So it was just kind of knowing the fact that he was so close five, but obviously, you know, we’re not in contact. And that’s the breakups happen. So it’s this kind of single family thing.
Chris Seiter 02:59 Yeah. So he initiates the breakup. What does he actually say during that conversation? How does he do it?
So 03:08 Um, yeah, so that was very spur of the moment. It was very much we got into an argument about finances and how it’s not marrying up. And it got to a point where he literally talked me out of the house, because we were living together and he was just like, pack of things and go, and I was like, Oh,
Chris Seiter 03:28 right. Oh, man.
So 03:31 I mean, obviously a lot more upset. I was, yeah, it’s kind of tearing up. I was like, Okay, I got my sister’s picked me up and just
Chris Seiter 03:38 Batman. So alright, so you guys have this argument about finances, which obviously, is such a huge stress for not just, you know, like a young couple, but even like married couples, and you know, that, that, that almost always seems to be a huge, huge point of contention. So anyways, you’re kicked out of the house, your sister picks you up? What happens next? Do you immediately start thinking like I want to back or is it more of just a grieving period before you get there?
So 04:10 Um, so for that, yeah, for me, it was a grieving period because it was so another thing, it was my first kind of proper relationship as well. So it was kind of understanding where my headspace was that and kind of experiencing actually kind of always being single for like, the first time in quite quite a while. But yeah, my headspace was definitely just kind of like just keep away focus on yourself. Focus on friends and family and just Yeah, hold your head above the water as best you can.
Chris Seiter 04:44 I imagine that must have been really difficult, though. To do that. Did you have any like big setbacks?
So 04:51 Um, yeah. So I mean, I wasn’t. I think the setback for me was that the house you were in was actually over. by his dad. So it meant I had to be back with my parents, like, time. That was kind of a setback conspicious obviously, not particularly one thing that I think it’s also just, for me, it was just kind of privacy in the sense of like, I want to grieve. But obviously, you know, parents as much as I love them, they kind of want to pry. So your cadence is like I am, but I just need this time to grieve myself and just get out of my system. Yeah, there was a lot of days of like crying and like Ben and Jerry’s ice cream watching movies.
Chris Seiter 05:36 All right, we did the whole Netflix thing. So what point do you I’m assuming? So you mentioned to me off off air that you you listen to the podcast? Is that was that like, your entrance into our community in our space? Or was it mostly just like a Google search that that led you?
So 06:03 It was a bit of both. It was a bit like I was listening to the podcast, and also some days by you do I do the whole like, Oh, I really wouldn’t back and kind of Google search it. But I think in both those times, I was trying to be as hard as it was, I was trying to be kind of logical and say like, just take a step back, see how you’re feeling. And if you want to do this, do this, but do it for yourself. Not for like anything else, do it? Because you’re nervous, right? And that’s something you really want. And I listen to the podcast really helped with that kind of understanding my mindset and kind of initially being like, Yeah, I do want this. And I think it’s something that we could work through. Kind of
Chris Seiter 06:51 so so basically, you’re listening to the podcast every once in a while you’re kind of doing the Google search thing. Do you have any idea of like how long that went on? Before you were like, Okay, I actually want to give this my all.
So 07:06 So there, I was kind of initially searching, I probably should preface this by saying this was a very long process. So in terms of Christmas time, December, when all of that was happening. It was back in January this year that he got back in contact, and was like, Hey, let’s have a relationship again. And I was like, at this point, I think I’d signed up to the course I looked through kind of a few of the classes by hopefully, like gone right into it. So I was, at that point, I probably I probably should have been like, let’s just, like, slow it. But I was just like, Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s go on in. And
Chris Seiter 07:53 oh, my God, this is like, wow, this was easy. I didn’t have to do anything. He comes back. And I’m assuming it does not end well.
So 08:00 No, no, no. So it was quite a weird one. It was He wants you to change the relationship dynamics. We know from relationship. The person that he was kind of in this other relationship with didn’t want to know for relationship. I made that very clear. And that is some awkward times where essentially, he definitely for her.
Chris Seiter 08:27 Oh, did you find this after the fact? Did you find this out after the fact?
So 08:33 Yeah, so it was it was a weird one where I have a kind of inclination. And yeah, he just just outright he said to me, Oh, I’m leaving you for her. And I was like, wow,
Chris Seiter 08:48 my gosh, okay, so So let me get this straight. He breaks up with you in before Christmas, last year. You’re grieving. You’re kind of like in and out of the podcast. At some point, you sign up for the program, like right after you sign up for the program, boom, like a bolt from the blue. He comes out and he’s like, Hey, let’s get back together. And you think like, oh, yeah, absolutely. But then he drops another bombshell which is saying like, hey, I want an open relationship. And then you’re like, No, I do not want an open relationship. And then he leaves you for some other girl who is willing to do an open relationship. Yeah. Yeah, I literally cannot say I’ve ever interviewed anyone with that situation before. Your first.
So 09:37 It was weird. I mean, I met the other person and we like kind of hang out this was for it was started to be a thing. And there was a whole phase where my ex boyfriend at a point was just like, yeah, that’s all kind of get involved in those sorts of things together. Which Oh, don’t don’t ever do this. But I was restarted to kind of casual thing. And it just ended very badly. And the other person made it very clear that they just wanted my ex boyfriend for themselves. And I was just like, well, that’s not how relationships work. Got it. And it was the whole thing of just.
Chris Seiter 10:24 So there’s this other, there’s this other woman involved. Yeah. And he basically leaves you for her. Now, obviously, you’re kind of doubly you know, you’ve been kicked to the curb one time now you’ve been literally kicked to the curb again, but he’s also with this other woman. How do you cope with that?
So 10:49 Um, I, this is where I just I use the whole no contact thing I just witnessed like, right? I’m, I’m not why didn’t say this. But in my head, I was just like, I’m not going anywhere near you. And I’m not going anywhere near you. Yeah, I guess. And that was it was another car for here. It was a lot of things. When that whole dynamic started. And it was going well. I made the decision to say I don’t want it with my parents. But I obviously I can’t live with you. So how about we live in the cities that kind of together, and I live, still do 20 minutes away in a different house. And a week after it helped me move in was when he drops the bomb just out of? I’m leaving it for this other woman. So which was
Chris Seiter 11:37 like helping you financially to get that place?
So 11:41 No, no, it was literally just helping me move my furniture, things up. So
Chris Seiter 11:48 you’re independent enough to where you’re not having to rely money wise on him. But obviously, now you’re devastated because you just moved to be near him. And now he’s kicked you to the curb again. Okay, so obviously you do no contact, you’re like, I’m not going near you. I’m not going near you. What are you doing during that no contact to kind of help cope.
So 12:15 Oh, um, so I know myself very busy. I signed up to all these meetup groups. It’s a thing we have, I’m not sure if it’s in the States. It’s a UK kind of app where you can go to local groups that have a similar interest. So I was going to like kind of meeting up with people who have like minded interests, like Dungeon and Dragons, or just like meeting restaurants. I started going to the gym, I started therapy. And just trying to do all the things that keep you busy. I’m just focusing on my career at the time. And just getting out of my mind.
Chris Seiter 12:51 Yeah, so, so. So you did the No Contact? Did you ever have like an end date? Like, you know, usually we have like those three timeframes. 2130 45 Did you ever have like a specific end date on how long the no contact was gonna last?
So 13:04 Yes. See, this is where I tend to look like a very bad student. And I wasn’t very bad student at that point. Okay.
Chris Seiter 13:14 In my experience, most students that I’ve coached are not good stuff. It’s, they don’t, they don’t stick to the no contact. So good. But anyways, go ahead.
So 13:23 So it was an going back to the fax that it was I think, end of March, but he said I’m going live the other one. I did that no contacts about three to four times last thing about 30 days.
Chris Seiter 13:41 Okay. Last 30 days. Sorry. Did you actually last 30 days you did it like three or four times? So it’d be 30 days reach out? That didn’t work. 30 days reach out? Oh, that didn’t work like that.
So 13:57 There was a specific reason why it’s time that it never works. And I had to restart the no contacts. Okay, which was, you see,
Chris Seiter 14:11 I’m getting worried.
So 14:13 I did the whole thing which you say you should have which you really, really should earn, actually at all. And so I start with my axe.
Chris Seiter 14:22 Like each of those times. Yeah. Well, hey, you got it. This is okay. All right. So it was very,
So 14:31 um, I think this was also the time where I just started therapy. I was working through some things and I think mentally I was just kind of I was listening to classes, but obviously not fully taking it on being like, no, it’s fine. So good. And then being like, oh, no, no, it’s really not.
Chris Seiter 14:54 Okay, so you’ve broken the no contact, so it’d be 30 days. And then you would reach out, was there was it like an immediate like reach out, then you would sleep together? And then you’d be like, Oh, no, I need to go back into no contact or was there like a little bit of a grace period where there was like some attraction being built?
So 15:13 There was actually so I think this is the second or third time that I think it’s the third time where he was actually like, oh, that’s like, that’s our relationship again. And I was like, we’re okay. Potentially. Why don’t we? Okay, let’s like, text, let’s, let’s do it that way. Let’s take it take it slow. And we started off that with the whole kind of like texting phone calls going on dates, kind of building up like a value ladder or something. I’m sorry, I’m getting totally wrong. Yeah. And two weeks afterwards, he was just like, actually, no, no, I don’t want to be in a relationship.
Chris Seiter 16:00 So what does that do to you? Because it’s like, you’re getting this hope. And then it’s being pulled out from under you? Like, How are you coping with that? Like, mentally I feel like that has to be difficult because like, you sleep with them, you feel like you have this hope. It feels like oh, hey, I got it back again. He wants to try the relationship. And then boom, third time now he’s saying like, Ah, no, I’m not feeling not feeling that anymore.
So 16:29 Very bad. I was, yeah, a lot of nights. But I was just very much like crying, very depressed. Very, doing the whole kind of repeated, I’ll go, I would like route with my friends, we’d go walk. So we’d meet up. And it was the same story. And it was it was them being like, Sophie, you’ve just you’ve got to focus on yourself. Like, really just got to do your own thing. And just focus on going to the gym, go to therapy, focus on your career, and just put it out of your mind because it’s just, it’s not good. It’s not mentally, and emotionally, we can feel broken down.
Chris Seiter 17:08 It seems to me like you’re caught in this, almost like this negative feedback loop where you get like this hope you get back together. He sleeps with you, then he discards you, and then you kind of like go through the whole cycle again. And again. So at what point did does that like stop? Like, like, or is it like about holding boundaries for you? Like when? When did when does things turn into a more meaningful thing?
So 17:36 So I think it was when the whole Alessia relationship lasted for two weeks. And it was I actually know, at that point, I was like, Okay, I just completely went cold turkey, no contact, no explanation. And just focus on my thanks. I was like, I can’t, you’ve done this so many times that I just don’t have the energy to deal with this. And I’m not going to deal with error. So, goodbye. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 18:08 So you basically decide, all right, I’m going all in on this no contact, but he’s not getting a warning. This time. Were you wanting him prior to that?
So 18:17 Like, Hey, I was never wanting, which was, which was weird to me. That had a very weird thing of every two to three weeks, he would be would like start a conversation. And it’d be very every time two to three weeks.
Chris Seiter 18:35 Yeah, so the you know, if if we were in a coaching session, I think I think I would say is like that sounds like very fearful avoidant response. So like, you know, they’re they have both of those core wounds, anxious and avoidant. You give them the space by the No Contact Rule. And they’re avoidant side kind of likes that at first, but then over over time, that anxious side begins to take hold, and they can’t contain themselves and they reach out. So he’s like a consistent practice. I think that may have been what’s happening also, one of the interesting things about fearful avoidance is they tend to have very rocky relationship histories. They also tend to jump from person to person, they do kind of do open relationship type things. So he’s sort of checking some of the boxes here. I never asked throughout this period, what happened with the other woman? Did she discard him? Like what what’s what’s the lowdown there?
So 19:36 Um, so yeah, that was so at that point. We were kind of so let me go back. So yes, that was we were in a casual relationship was the other woman and then up for her. At that point, I blocked her I blocked him. Yeah, so she very much was was was like blowing up his phone being very active. Sorry. Yeah. I think after a couple of weeks, the end of things, not after, she called me up, kind of accusing me of potentially going going out with him to a club, which I wasn’t I was just out with friends, but it was on my Instagram. And she didn’t know that. And where apparently she was kissing other women at a club. And I was just on the phone like, I look, I can’t help you if you need to talk to him talk for him, but I’m not involved in this. And then for the books on America’s Yeah, I did.
Chris Seiter 20:40 Let that anxious energy come through. But also it’s interesting. Your ex is almost like volatile and how he’s handling his grief of the breakup. So he’s with you for three, three and a half years before the initial breakup. And it seems to me like he’s not coping with the breakup very well. Like he’s trying to grasp at things that will distract it, you know, him from feeling the grief. You know, there’s the other woman, obviously, but he still kind of keeps coming back to you like, you’re the one consistent touch point. And that, okay, so I’m just kind of like, like, trying to grasp all the puzzle pieces here. I feel like what’s what, what makes a difference for you as you started holding your boundaries? So like, you know, it’s like, clearly once you call me twice, yeah, for me three times. Yeah. Not the fourth time. That’s it. You know, you stick the boundary. And what starts happening when you start doing that?
So 21:42 Yeah, he does a whole thing. He starts like, kind of sending me texts, hawks texting me. They are like, Hey, you up by what’s going on? Again, shy, ignored. Like, there was like miss calls, which, yeah, just ignoring it. Yes, it’s does a whole thing of just starting to blow up my phone through that. Which made it actually a lot more difficult because of all those kind of no contact periods. He hadn’t basically done anything, and then just had the whole thing of like, oh, that’s like exchange items. That’s meetup and then one thing led to another, which again, shouldn’t do. But this Yeah, this time, it was funny blowing up my phone. I just, I was just like, I just have to ignore this. So that was really, really difficult.
Chris Seiter 22:33 So did you have a set? Was this for you like an indefinite period of no contact? Do you have a set endpoint this this last? No contact that you did?
So 22:43 I think the start when I was trying to make it 45 days, I think it’s just because after the whole 30 days, not working, I was like, Okay, let’s make it even tougher. Let’s do 45 days, and that’s really just focus on you and not him and just, yeah.
Chris Seiter 22:59 Okay, so, did you end up making it the 45 days?
So 23:04 I made it to 35. And that’s
Chris Seiter 23:07 more than 30 You know? Alright, so what happens with day 35?
So 23:12 Day? 35? Okay, so this goes back? Quite a lot. there a reason why no contact sign? unsuccessful? Um, I think that is when that’s when he basically was just like, I are wanting relationship with you. But not yet. Oh, oh, right. Could you elaborate? And he was basically saying, Yeah, I just don’t think I’ve mentally dealt with this breakup very well. I don’t think I fully processed the fact that, you know, like, I broke up with you, you could be leaving. So there was a phase where I potentially was going to university this September. And it was, I think it’s just actually got to me that you’re going to university, I’m not going to see you. You’re actually going to be gone from my life. That’s really true. And it’s me and I just need to work through this. And I was like, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it’s surprising because very much thought he would just turn around being like, oh, let’s just be that was his that was his whole go to was, Let’s just be friends. But can we be friends with benefits because those are working through the breakup?
Chris Seiter 24:42 Okay, that was done the previous versions of No Contact. This was a little different, where he’s starting to admit like, I don’t know how to cope without you. Like, I might lose you forever.
So 24:59 Yeah, I think goes actually hitting him that. Yeah, I could potentially I could be like gone. And I was like, and that was when I hit the boundary of like, I’m, I’m not going to be friends with benefits. That’s not what I want. And I don’t think it’s good for both of us working through this breakups to do that. That’s just not healthy for both of us. And we can’t. But past that just keeps happening. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 25:28 Yeah. Yeah. So you start setting the boundary, how do things progress after this date? 35. No contact where he seems like he’s starting to MIT like, this is the real reason for why I’m like struggling.
So 25:46 I’m completely ghost. He says that we have that conversation. Because I think he pointed that in person. Yeah. And just never met with each other. I think for like, a week or two. I just completely like nothing. No, like sending me tech talks or any messages. Yeah. Okay. is completely off the radar. So yeah, so which I was just like, Okay, well, then I’ll just do my own thing. I’ll just leave you to it. Because I think it was just pulling back because he was like, so vulnerable, and was just don’t want to talk about it more. But yeah, just very, very much mixed signals that I just really was very.
Chris Seiter 26:32 Yeah. Yeah. So what, at what point does he start to come out of his shell?
So 26:39 So this was actually yeah, this was kind of recently, I think about Yeah, we can go where he saw it’s kind of like, Oh, yeah. Can we can we talk? Can we talk in person about everything? And that’s when he kind of says about, oh, I actually think I want to be in a relationship. And almost kind of says, I’m actually not sure if you bought me. And this has to be and I’m just like, sorry. It’s like, I don’t think you want me. I don’t think you’d want a person who’s done all of this. I was like, oh, so that is the reason you’re actually guilt? Guilt? Yeah. Yeah, so it’s like, Hmm, interesting to
Chris Seiter 27:28 see how he asks for you back.
So 27:31 It was yeah, it was kind of a weird one where I think he was trying to ask me back, but also kind of go through the reasons of why he wasn’t sure. I think he was trying to kind of understand where I was, where my mindset was out before potentially asking because he’s not. He’s not great with like, variabilities, which is the way that that kind of conversation happens of that’s the real mindset. And then also, it’s the same as fine then I’ll say, which, yeah, phone conversation of just, oh, I didn’t think he’d want me. I think I I think I’ve been acting crazy. Honestly, I calmly I’ve done all of this. And you’re is still here? And like, do you want to be with me? And artists like, wow, okay, we’re really, really getting into it here. Right. Which kind of caught me off guard a bit. But I just literally flat out looks at him and was just like, yeah, I worked. And he was like, right. Great. I would too. And I was like, right. It’s a very old one, where it’s say they seem to kind of avoid talking about the feelings, then also, what used to be very upfront and honest. I think that was a difficulty.
Chris Seiter 28:54 I mean, I guess my take on it is he’s trying to hedge his bets to where, before he becomes fully vulnerable, he wants to make sure that you’re not going to reject Him. So that’s, I think that’s what those probing questions are like, you know, why would you want me that’s like a way of him soothing himself to try to get you to like, say, like, oh, no, I do want you. Did you like I’m curious, did you actually sue them in that way? Or did you just kind of like, let them lie on the hook for a bit?
So 29:22 That was so there was a little bit of lying on the hook. So when it was kind of good, though. So there was like a conversation we had beforehand of like, potentially going into relationship then he went cold turkey. And at that point, I did the whole thing of like, right. If that’s the case, then I’m going to start going on going on dates and doing things and just not posting everything but some of it on my social media just to see how things are. And lo and behold, all his friends are watching my stories like Looking at my posts, liking my posts, and I’m just saying like, Okay, right? You’ve never liked my posts before at all, who’ve never looked at my stories at all before. Interesting. And then a week later, he’s just like, oh, yeah, can we talk? Okay. I think that was the time, but he was just like, yeah, I, you know, started seeing you with other guys. And I don’t, I don’t want to do that. And I was like, well, we’ve broken up you. You can’t do anything like that. Is that Well, no, but I actually do want to be with you. Ah, okay.
Chris Seiter 30:50 Okay, fear of loss aspect really worked on him.
So 30:56 I think it’s just because which, which was, I think he kind of knew this from we were kind of doing the whole, no contacts, and then stuff happens is I kind of had an inclination that I wasn’t moving on. And I think he was just like, Oh, she’s not moving on. It’s fine. She’s there for me. I don’t have anything to lose. And I was like, No, I’m actually like, fully moving on. Like, I’m going on dates. I’m talking to other people. I think that’s when it really hit him like, oh, like she’s actually gone, gone.
Chris Seiter 31:31 Yeah, I guess it’s like the question of steaks. Like there’s no stakes involved, if they think you’re just going to wait around forever. And I guess that’s the pattern that had been established by you sleeping with him, each of those no contact rules. Like he’s always in the back of his mind saying, yeah, like, Yeah, but, you know, I can always get her. And I think when you actually hold the boundary, or at least create the stakes of like, Oh, I could lose her. She looks like she’s actually moving on. That’s when it that’s when it triggers but I guess my main question for you is, what makes you think this go around is different? Like what’s, what’s the big difference other than the boundary holding in the whole fear of loss thing we just talked about? What for you stands out about this go around? The big difference? So yeah, actually, like, talk to me about getting professional help with a therapist to talk about the breakups or work through things to see if we’re compatible. That is something he’s never, he kind of also already wants to go to couples counseling together. And I was like, oh, maybe that kind of brushed it off as like, oh, but you know, we’re broken up. Maybe it’s just to get through things. Whereas this time, he was like, No, I want professional help. I want to talk to the breakup, I want to make this relationship stronger. And I was like, wow, okay. And actually really wanting that, and even saying, Oh, before we go to relationship, I want a couple of long conversations where we go through literally everything. And I was like, okay, all right. Wow. Yeah, you should, you should have moved on quicker than it would have sped the whole process up. Yeah. But yeah, it was good to see kind of bite taking that kind of responsibility in actually having kind of maturities to think, oh, yeah, let’s do this. And again, it was just surprising because it’s just from his previous actions, it was hard to understand. Like, where he where he was at, in terms of like, the relationship and then he said that and I was like, Okay, that’s a bit of a turnaround, like, what makes you think that and he was just like, well, I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want you to I want to be in a relationship with you. And I think it’s taken me this long to read eyes. Mm hmm. So when you look back at your entire experience throughout this very rocky up and down roller coaster process, what really stands out to you as being some of the most important tactics that you employ that got you to the success
So 34:17 got reached? Okay. No contacts. And actually doing that kind of successfully on the fourth time? No, see, yeah, the No Contact is very helpful. Just kind of focusing more on like focusing more on yourself on just like friends, family, gym, therapy, hobbies, whatever, just focus on your own thing. And just kind of increasing that part of you and not tying everything to your like, boyfriend. I think that was the mentality I had to really switch up. And that was really helpful. I think also just kind of going through your classes and oh my gosh, the Facebook bulk like a lot Facebook and Mobile community. Yeah, it was so helpful. Yeah, the amount of times I was posting in there being like, oh my gosh, my ex is calling me and they’re just like,
Chris Seiter 35:09 Don’t contact don’t go on.
So 35:13 Yeah, that was so nice. And just to like, see people who are kind of in similar situations and how they figured out. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 35:23 Yeah. Okay. I mean, I would argue the, I guess this will be the final, the final thoughts before we end here. But I think when I look at your situation, you tried the No Contact Rule, essentially, four times. But I would argue that the difference is the fourth time you actually got to the essence of what makes it work. And that has outgrown your acts like you put forth those signals. Like I feel like maybe you were doing a little bit of the Holy Trinity stuff in the failed the failed. And I put that in quotes, no contact rule, because you kind of like got him back. I mean, you slept with them. And then you had to go back into the no contact, but I feel like you were doing some of that Holy Trinity stuff. But maybe the thing that wasn’t present was the outgrowth mindset. Like, I don’t feel like it was until he started seeing you out with other people, or I think the university thing created a really nice clock that works in your advantage, because now it’s like, oh, wow, I could like lose like, it’s it’s happening. She’s going to this university. I think that all plays into that, bringing him to the table thing. So that’s my take on what really worked. Obviously, you were better at having the boundaries by the fourth, the fourth time of no contact. And you also made it a little bit longer in that period of no contact, which I think also exacerbated his stress, because he does seem to have some anxious tendencies throughout. But yeah, this was a really interesting success story. Thank you so much for coming on and doing this
Talking To A Psychologist About Your Exes Body Language
Jul 16, 2023
Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. John Garrison.
A clinical psychologist and body language expert who runs the YouTube channel Dr. G explains.
In our interview we discuss,
How do you know when someone’s behavior is Ocd?
What it means to be caught in the honeymoon period.
Understanding body language at its core.
How to identify if someone is lying
The body language of someone in love with you.
How you decipher the body language of aggressive people
How can you tell if someone is being serious
Understanding narcissistic traits and narcissistic personality disorder.
Interview Transcript
Chris Seiter 00:11 so today we’re gonna be talking to Dr. Garrison, who has an MBA and Doctorate in clinical psychology is considered a body language expert and specializes in took specialized training and counterterrorism. His work has been featured in numerous media outlets, including Business Insider, Forbes, vice, Huffington Post, Yahoo News, real, some real simple and fatherly. I mean, I was just sort of like stumbling over myself with how how often you’ve been featured places. Thank you so much for coming.
Dr. G 00:40 I’m super happy to be here.
Chris Seiter 00:42 So we were talking a little bit before we actually started recording a little bit about how you have a background in diagnosing clinical disorders. Like, I guess, specifically, what I think is interesting to me here is the narcissistic personality disorder. And little bit of the, let’s just talk about the narcissistic personality disorder first, because I have noticed a lot of people in our community will say, Oh, my ex is narcissistic, but I’m not actually convinced to that. I think they just have some narcissistic traits not sure. Can you maybe speak to that a little
Dr. G 01:16 bit? Sure. So to make sense of that, I’m going to try to explain what personality disorders are because personality disorders are a little bit different than mental illness. And the way we differentiate that is something like depression, anxiety. The more common disorders that we hear about those are considered mental illness. A personality disorder is a dysfunction of the personality, they’re missing parts of their personality, that allow them to be a whole person to learn from interpersonal interaction, to get better to have a full satisfying life. So people that are missing these parts, they’ll have one part that is very dysfunctional, and it dominates their whole personality. So for a narcissist, for example, for someone with narcissistic personality disorder, grandiosity dominates their entire personality, they are genuinely pathologically grandiose. Historically, people have said, now it’s low self esteem being masked, it’s like no, they have pathologically high self esteem. They genuinely believe if someone is an actual narcissist, they genuinely believe they are better than other people, and other people are there to serve them in a very real way. So when we throw around the term narcissist, I think that can be used as a late term, it can be used casually, but oftentimes, it doesn’t actually mean narcissistic personality.
Chris Seiter 02:23 Yeah, I mean, we still, you know, obviously, we’re dealing with a lot of people who are heartbroken. So you know, there’s a lot of blame going on the other side they’ve been broken up with. And sometimes when I’ll talk about narcissists, I’ll talk about how they almost have like a supply Rolodex, where they’re just going from person to person getting their supply, and then moving on to the next person and kind of just they always have like someone for the different areas of their life that they need their, quote unquote, supply for, but I think people will sometimes take it too far and don’t under understand or differentiate that aspect of it.
Dr. G 02:58 Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of people and I think fairly so will describe someone as a narcissist, just because they seem focused on themselves. They don’t have good empathy. They’re not caring about their partner or former partner’s feelings. So I get why people use that term. I use it sometimes to describe somebody even if they don’t literally have narcissistic personality. So, you know, I think it’s pretty common that we use that term and I get why people use it.
Chris Seiter 03:20 Yeah, Yeah, same. So the other really interesting thing, or at least one of the things I wanted to ask you about is we talk a lot about attachment styles when we’re trying to diagnose or at least like take educated guesses on like, Hey, this is why we think this x is acting this way. And after polling our community most of our community believes that their ex has an avoidant attachment style, but there’s a there’s I think it was like 60% believe that their ex has an avoidant attachment style and then around like 25% believe that their ex has a fearful avoidant attachment style. But everything that I’ve read about fearful avoidance and understand about fearful avoidance, this is incredibly rare. And sometimes it can be mis classified as multiple personality disorder. Kind of just curious want to get your take or thoughts on that.
Dr. G 04:06 So when we talk about and I’m not a specialist in attachment theory, but I’m familiar with it. So you know, if we may discuss this a little bit more as we go with when you think about avoidant, avoidant is anxiety really, because anxiety is built around the concept of avoidance, we can’t be anxious and not avoid it just comes with the territory. So someone like a narcissist, they’re not anxious. So if we see someone that we think of as being a narcissist, and that we think that there have avoidant attachment, that’s actually I mean, it’s possible but that’s typically not what we would associate with that. Same with, when we think of the fearful avoidant, there’s a lot of people that think of that as being closer to borderline personality disorder, which is an unstable personality, like that’s the characteristic of borderline personality, this most prevalent is the instability because they struggle being proportional and stable. That’s the challenge there. So actually, though, Even though people oftentimes think of that, because I’ve discussed this with people, borderline personality actually, if that’s Take this too far sideways is actually more of the preoccupied anxious, preoccupied style of attachment because they get obsessive and preoccupied with things.
05:15 Okay, so can you maybe even like talk a little bit more about that or dig a little bit deeper for me about that. That’s interesting, because most of the people that we’ve polled in our community, not only they believe that their ex is avoidant, but they believe that they’re, they’re anxious and preoccupied. Anxious. So like, can you maybe even just talk a bit about that multiple personality disorder aspect from the anxious perspective? And like how that stir of it, I guess,
Dr. G 05:40 definitely. Okay. So. So, when you’re talking about multiple personality, are you talking about somebody who is kind of like Jekyll and Hyde, who was like, nice, one minute, and me the next or someone who literally has multiple personalities, just to be super clear on the fact.
Chris Seiter 05:53 Okay, so I want to dive into both. But I will say this that most of the time, what our clients would be really interested in is understanding whether X X Hot one moment cold the next moment, got it. So I guess dive into both.
Dr. G 06:07 Okay, so. So I’ll talk about the diagnostic piece first, because this is what I’m sure is a little bit less relevant to your listeners. But for someone who has multiple personalities, we call it dissociative identity. It’s where they literally phase between different personalities that don’t recognize each other. I mean, it’s a really serious diagnosis and a very rare with so probably not a lot of
Chris Seiter 06:28 people. Have you ever met someone with multiple personality disorder? One that
Dr. G 06:32 claims to have it so whether or not I’ve ever met an authentic person with it? I can’t say I’ve, I’ve, I’ve evaluated one person that claims to be experiencing that. But I couldn’t even really fully get clarity on whether or not that was legitimate. So it’s pretty rare. It really is. But but as far as, like someone who is hot, one minute cold the next. So just to get some clarity from you, would it be like that? One minute, they’re, they’re caring and close? And then one minute, they’re angry and aloof? I mean, is that sort of what you’re talking about?
Chris Seiter 07:10 Yeah, usually it’s, you know, they’re doing something that makes the client believe, Oh, they’re interested in coming back. And then, and then, I mean, I certainly have my own thoughts about like, why this is happening. But I’m just curious, and I don’t want to like, infect your your thinking at all. But basically, they’re doing something that makes the client believe like, Oh, they’re interested in coming back, and then all of a sudden, they disappear, or they even just lash out and grow angry.
Dr. G 07:37 So one of the things that can make somebody do that? Well, it’s kind of okay, so here’s where I’m struggling with this. Because I’m thinking about this, as we’re talking, I see a lot of couples, and there’s always there’s so many reasons for people’s behaviors. But one of the reasons that we see when someone is hot and cold like that, it can be because they’re manipulative, and because they want to have control. So they want to maybe throw some strings out and lead people on. For some people, it’s because they are anxious, and they just don’t know what to do. So it really depends so much person to person, but there’s there really is a wide variety of, of behaviors that can explain what we’re talking about.
Chris Seiter 08:14 Yeah, I think I think the context here would be going through a breakup. Okay. So the way I’ve always kind of tried to explain it to people, and maybe you would just sort of correct me if I’m wrong. Sure. I’ve always tried to explain to people that oftentimes, indeed, your ex is avoidant like, you think that it would make sense that they have this period where they’re kind of grown nostalgic, especially if they feel like you’ve moved on, or there’s enough space or whatever, that they, they grow nostalgic, they kind of paint you as the Fantomex, they, they start to gravitate back towards you. And then when they realize, Oh, someone’s here to take my independence again, they kind of bail and they freak out. And that anxious aspect kind of comes up. That’s why I’ve been interpreting it.
Dr. G 09:00 Okay, that makes a lot of sense to me, because I work with a lot of men who deal with this very thing, which is, they will, I mean, I’ve worked with couples trying to get married, where the guy would just couldn’t do it. I mean, I
Chris Seiter 09:13 swear to God, that’s like, 90% of our of our weapon. Okay.
Dr. G 09:17 So, so, you know, and I’ve seen in very real ways, where and I’ve actually helped people work through this. So I’ve been in the trenches, and this can take a lot longer than you might think. Or maybe you know exactly how long Yeah, so, so I’ll have someone come in. And they have these unreasonable fears about, well, what if this happens in the relationship and what if that happens, so then they were like, Okay, well, now I feel good about the idea of being together so yeah, so they come closer, they go, alright, we can do this. And then the other person is like, Hey, you’re coming back and then they go, hey, you know what, maybe I can’t do this, you know, maybe things are gonna get terrible and they run away. Okay, now we’re on the same page. Now I get what you’re talking about. And that is now this is not universally true. But there can be a form of OCD actually, that’s related to this, this can be an obsessive compulsive disorder process. And so what happens is, is that it gets to be the cycle where there are different neural pathways in the brain, ADHD, OCD, these other multiple disorders that overlap this pathway, but they have to do with being obsessive. And so some people call it our OCD like relationship OCD. Some people call it just call it OCD, because it’s the same thing. Our OCD is not technically a diagnosis, but if it’s relationship focused, it helps people, you know, Google it, or talk about it or whatever. But it’s still the same thing. But in essence, it is, you know, when someone’s obsessive compulsive, they have obsessive thoughts, and then they engage in compulsions to relieve those obsessions. So in other words, if someone’s obsession is, like, if I get to be with somebody, and I commit to them forever, if their obsessive thoughts, then oh, God, I’m going to lose my independence, then the compulsion is to withdraw or to pull away. And so and then they try to get close again. So then they get stuck in this loop. So it really can be and this is not universally true, but it can be a form of obsessive compulsive disorder, it really can.
Chris Seiter 11:09 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me, because one of the things I talked about is sort of the lifecycle of the cycle that a lot of exes we’ve observed are caught in there, which is they really liked this honeymoon period, because there’s no threat of a deeper commitment. But when that deeper commitment starts to be expected, they start to grow scared. And to your point. I think it’s almost like, this is just my opinion. But I think it’s almost like they’ve always learned to cope with this problem this specific way. And so it’s like this behavior that’s ingrained in them, maybe even from childhood. And so and so they just, they just, like, get caught in this cycle, where they’re just doing this from relationship to relationship and jumping from, from relationship to relationship, and can be really difficult for people too. And, you know, our clients are very particularly anxious. So they’re natural problem solvers. They want to get in there and just fix everything, which is the wrong thing to do sometimes, because that just exacerbates the problem.
Dr. G 12:09 Right? It’s the solution is not always obvious. And that’s the problem is that it’s like, if if the solution was logical, then yeah, your clients would probably be doing the right thing. The solution is not always the logic that the logic doesn’t always apply the way you think. So you go, yeah, this is what I should do to approach somebody who is running away or someone who’s anxious in this situation. And but then it’s not working. You go, Okay, I now I really don’t know what to do. So it’s very confusing, very, very confusing to know what to do.
Chris Seiter 12:36 So someone who’s in that specific situation, if they’re sitting down and have paid for like a session with you what what I’m just curious, like, what advice and by no means if it’s completely different from what I said, go for it. Because I’m I want to learn?
Dr. G 12:50 Sure, sure. So what would I so just to work through this example? So in other words, if it’s a couple that comes to me, and they say, this is the issue we’re having, like,
Chris Seiter 12:59 yeah, so the the woman comes to you, and she’s saying, um, you know, I’m trying to get him to commit, he won’t move in with me. Every time we talked about, he just sort of disappears or even threatens to break up with me, what do you typically advise to someone in that situation?
Dr. G 13:16 So the first is to figure out and presuming that I’m sure there have been plenty of discussions about this, because oftentimes, these things have been talked to death through through the couple already. But to find out, what’s the motivation behind that, is it because he’s, is it anxiety? Is it because he’s controlling? Is it because he’s angry? I mean, that’s the first step is to know okay, what’s motivating that behavior? If it is that someone’s anxious, then we got to figure out what life experiences are they’re basing this on? What is it that they’re afraid of losing, right? Because there’s always a fear of, okay, I’m gonna move in with somebody, what do I lose in that situation? Am I losing independence? Am I losing my ability to go with my friends, whatever it is, like, what would motivate what sort of loss is going to happen? By moving in, if we can really pinpoint what the anxieties are, we can figure out how to how to approach them and how to work through them. Because that really is in a very real way, for the ones that are for relationships that could be healthy, oftentimes, it’s anxiety motivating that, for relationships that are not so healthy, it’s oftentimes anger that’s motivating it. So when it’s if it’s the somebody’s too angry, and they need control, and they refuse to move in with you. That might be a very different discussion that we’re going to have than somebody who just like get so nervous.
Chris Seiter 14:27 Yeah, so basically just get out of that relationship. Time to move on.
Dr. G 14:31 I mean, that yeah, basically, that’s, that’s the long and short of it. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 14:35 Okay, so I’d like to actually switch gears here. So I mean, obviously, I told you how we came about my wife basically just obsessively watching through your YouTube videos. But of course, what makes you unique not only do you have this background in almost couples counseling, and obviously all of the clinical psychology elements but you also are a body language expert. And you are going through like some of the More recent like I think the with the Gabby Gabby PITINO?
Dr. G 15:06 Gabby petite O’Brien laundry case. Yeah,
Chris Seiter 15:08 I went through the Right. Right. And I think the the really horrible one in Colorado I
Dr. G 15:14 could see. Oh, there was Chris watts, Leticia Stella. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 15:18 Basically you’re going through all the footage and basically saying, oh, yeah, they’re lying here. They’re lying here. This is why I actually want to dive into that and apply it to breakups. Sure. So I actually went to our listeners and compiled a huge list of questions. So I’m just going to read you the questions. And
Dr. G 15:36 we’ll go from there. Go for it, please. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 15:38 So let’s start with maybe the lowest hanging fruit that should be easiest is how do you tell if someone’s like,
Dr. G 15:44 Yeah, okay. So, a couple of things that I want you to understand about this. So understanding body language, at its core, is recognizing a couple of things. One is that our feelings are connected to our bodies, you’ve got to recognize that if you believe the body language is even readable, you have to be able to believe that when you’re feeling angry, it’s going to show in your face, your body anxious, and so on and so forth, is that our brain and our bodies connected. Alright, that’s good science to show that that’s true. But you have to agree with that, to believe that body language is reasonable. The other part of it, if you want to really read lying and deception in particular, is to recognize most people don’t like to lie makes us anxious, we get nervous when we lie, at least for those of us that are not psychopaths, we get nervous when we lie psychopaths don’t. But that’s a whole different discussion, which we can get into if you want.
Chris Seiter 16:32 I’m already thinking of Ted Bundy. Yeah, and the reason I bring him up is because one of the things that people often said about him was how convincing he was. Sure. And if that whole, you know, your your brain, you know, your your feelings are kind of connected to your body. If that showed up for him.
Dr. G 16:51 It does. I did a video on him, actually. So it does sweet. But it’s also
Chris Seiter 16:55 super disturbing. So sorry, if you’re listening, but yeah, very disturbed individual well,
Dr. G 17:01 but one thing I will say before I finished explaining body language, because part of the relevance for true crime with this is that true crime, body language is often just an exaggeration of the same stuff that we see with everybody else, they might show a little bit less in some ways, or show exaggerations, and others, but it’s still human behavior, it’s not as different as you might think, actually. So the people are more disturbed, they’re doing more awful things, but the body language is still relatively similar. But it but in terms of the idea that people need to be anxious to show deception. And lying means that when you’re uncomfortable, you’re probably going to want to protect yourself in some way, like our head and our body are very vulnerable places, if we’re talking about things from a survival standpoint, because not to try to take these to get to try to explain too much. But I do think this is another important part is that the body is really good at survival. Like we as humans, we want to survive. So we do a lot of things to protect ourselves. So oftentimes, when people feel uncomfortable, they protect their abdomen, in their chest, they protect their face, or they do things to suit themselves, like our lips have lots of nerves in them. So he will do this kind of stuff a lot when they’re feeling nervous, because it makes them feel calmer. Same with men to the stroke their neck a lot. Women tend to touch their face, there’s things like that, that
Chris Seiter 18:14 are making me self conscious. Like I was doing that when we started the interview.
Dr. G 18:19 And so it’s so the important thing to recognize is that no body language is random. It’s all connected to something it’s all about a matter of how do I interpret it? I don’t want people to overeat body language, but also it can be used to keep yourself safe. It can be used to prevent people from manipulating you, I think they’re really important ways we can use body language. So
Chris Seiter 18:39 So okay, so obviously, feelings connected the body how, like, Are there any specific signs you need to look out for if they’re deceiving you in some way?
Dr. G 18:50 The one is, okay, so if they are just being manipulative, and they are just lying, but they’re not being asked questions, if they’re, if they’re sadistic, and they like hurting people, I mean, if we’re talking if someone is really someone who is good at lying, and it’s just them getting to act out wise, it’s harder to read, if you’re asking them questions, then it’s, that’s when things will show up that you can see. So in other words, like if somebody just, you know, I’ll use infidelity as an example of somebody cheating, right? They come home from cheating, and then they just say, oh, yeah, I just got back from the gym, and they’re just talking about it. They might not feel a lot of anxiety about that. But if somebody asks them, Hey, where were you, then they’re going to feel more anxiety. There’s a difference. So they can be deceptive and be convincing when they’re just in control of what they’re choosing to say. But once they’re under a microscope, and somebody has asked them questions, that’s when the body language comes out. But what we’re going to see with lying oftentimes is pacifying behaviors and defensive behaviors. And those can appear in many different ways, which we can talk about, but that’s what we look for.
Chris Seiter 19:56 Yeah, so this may be a dumb question to ask. I’m just an add on to the users question here. But, you know, a lot of our users are not at a place, usually when they’re interacting with their ex, or they’re doing it in person. So they’re either texting back and forth. Sometimes they’re sending voice notes back and forth, she can kind of hear the tone of voice, or very rarely do they do the FaceTime or Zoom type things. Sure. Is there any way to apply this to a text messaging medium, which I realized might be a stupid question? Yeah,
Dr. G 20:26 no, no body language expert. But no, I mean, you know, I’m a psychology expert, as well. So I mean, lying. And deception is also a very psychological manipulation as well. So yeah, they’re there, it would be a different set of rules. In terms of what you would look for, I can’t think off the top of my head, the best way to identify if somebody is is lying, other than learning to trust your gut, because that’s one thing that a lot of people don’t do is they’ll go, I know, this makes me feel anxious, but I’m going to ignore how I feel. Because I shouldn’t feel this way. I think really learning. If you have if, if you trust how you feel, to to learn to trust your gut to learn to see red flags, which I’m sure we’ll get into more of that as we go. But learning all of those things, I think, is important when it comes to texts and voice messages and those kinds of things.
Chris Seiter 21:09 Okay, so what if you have someone who is lying to you, but they have literally convinced themselves that the lies the truth? Is, does it still show up for them,
Dr. G 21:23 if in a very literal sense, they believe it at that point, it would be less likely to and I know, this is maybe slightly less relevant to your clients, but but I would say, and it probably is for some people, but like substance abuse, for example, that’s a good example of where people do that. There’s people that can be deeply into using substances that really do get to a place where they lie so much, they do start to believe their own lies sometimes, so they would show less of the anxious body language around that. When I’ve worked with people in substance abuse in the past, they can lie better than anybody I know. Truly. That really, yeah, absolutely. So somebody that’s had a history of pretty significant addiction. I’m pretty good at reading people. And I oftentimes won’t believe them if I know their past, but not because of their body language is but just because I know the logic of what they’re likely lying to me. But they don’t show it in the same way. So yeah, if somebody truly believes their own lies, they’d have no reason to show because they don’t feel anxious about it if they believe it.
Chris Seiter 22:19 Interesting. So I guess that kind of goes back to that Ted Bundy example. You said you did a video on him. He always struck me as someone who believed his own lies or was so good at manipulate, so narcissistic, he knew how to, you know, not have the tells? Well, I’m curious, what did you find with someone like that?
Dr. G 22:41 He does have some tells it’s interesting. His I analyze the video right before he was executed. So that’s trying to get to more of it. I know, sorry. But that’s just the reality of what he’s talking to somebody. And once you understand the context of why he’s talking to them, and you watch for patterns, you can start to figure out his tails, his tails are with his eyes, he closed his eyes a lot when he was lying. And he started doing that everybody’s got little tail, so his tails will be smaller and less frequent, but they’re there. So for him there, because the parts of the brain and psychopaths are less developed that get activated. When people lie, you can still see it, there’s just less of it, but he has cells too. So
Chris Seiter 23:25 that’s interesting. You know, the first time I ever learned about Ted Bundy was like, through some sort of Netflix documentary where he was, it was like the tapes he had recorded or something. And he was referring to himself in the third person or using some weird way to kind of like not be liable. Yeah, I don’t know. So is that what you ended up kind of like studying through those tapes? Or was it some other footage?
Dr. G 23:51 It was different footage. Actually, it was this was footage, the it was the final interview he chose to do, which he had his own reasons for wanting to do, you’d have to get into a lot of specifics to make sense of it. But But point being is it was something different, and it was, it’s pretty interesting.
Chris Seiter 24:07 Okay, well, okay, so after that more bit, no, let’s completely shift to the other end of the spectrum. Sure. All right. So what is the body language of someone that is actually in love with you? Okay,
Dr. G 24:19 so what we see with people that want to be connected, you know, I talked about how the most vulnerable parts are our chest or abdomen, our head, people that leave those open. Now, if somebody covers that a lot, that can also be that they’re very anxious, but we’ll talk about in a second. If you’re someone who feels true love, true vulnerability, they will leave this open. I mean, you think about somebody going in for a hug, they leave their arms open, right? Like that’s as vulnerable as we’re gonna get. Also leaning in, but it’s a little bit complicated. The language of love. Being close to people physically, is also unfortunately the same language, body language wise, it’s used to manipulation. So when you see somebody, I did a video on Charles Manson recently when he had a point to make he would lean in to talk to Diane Sawyer, and make sure that he got his point across. So I’m sorry to keep bringing this back. But I just want to point out that like, I don’t want people to be like, Oh, good, you know, my ex is leaning in, that means they’re feeling closer to me, it might be what it means it might also mean that they’re being manipulative. So that’s the challenge with this, but the but the body language of love and of closeness oftentimes is, we physically react the same way that we feel emotionally. So if you and I are talking and I start turning my body, it’s probably because I’m feeling uncomfortable talking to you, it’s because I’m not feeling connected to you. If I’m leaning in, it’s because I am feeling emotionally connected, or I want you to feel emotionally connected. So it is, in a very real way, for somebody who is comfortable with physical contact, who is comfortable being with people, they will engage in those kinds of behaviors when they feel real love.
Chris Seiter 25:46 Do you subscribe to the mirroring concept? You know, I took this class, I think it was a psychology class in college, where they showed us this video of these couples that were in love with each other and one would lean in the other was lean in when one would lean back. The other would lean back. Do you see that at all?
Dr. G 26:05 Absolutely. That’s very real 100%. And that’s actually something we learned as therapists when I was in grad school is when we’re talking to clients, when people are feeling when there are certain times where we do use our bodies, we might lean a little bit further forward if they feel if they need that kind of support. So very much in a very real way. Mirroring is very important. That’s part of the reason why people on the autism spectrum spectrum struggle in relationships, because their mirror neurons don’t work the same way as everybody else’s. So they struggle to mimic in that way. So it can make them seem withdrawn or make them seem aloof. Even if they feel really intense love or caring. They don’t know how to show it in the same way because they’re not good at mirroring. So yeah, mirroring is a huge part of the human experience actually.
Chris Seiter 26:47 Interesting. Okay, so let’s switch gears with the so this, hopefully you can answer this one sure is a long one. How do you decipher the body language of someone who squares their body and stares directly at you while taking an aggressive tone. But when I do the same, he cowers and looks to the side will make eye contact and softens his voice also swaying side to side to avoid eye contact.
Dr. G 27:11 Right? So if I’m understanding this, right, it’s like when this guy talks to somebody, he has an aggressive body posture, but when it’s when it’s flipped, and this person does it back to him. They don’t like it so much. Right? So it looks
Chris Seiter 27:26 like it’s the square their body staring directly at the girl. Yeah, while talking in an aggressive tone. But when she does the same to him, when she tries to mirror that back, he cowers and looks to the side. I mean,
Dr. G 27:41 it’s obviously it’s the dominant stance, right? Like when when you’re going to have, you’re going to square your body, you’re going to speak in a dominant way. The purpose of that is control. Obviously, I don’t know these people, I’m not saying that specifically is his intent, but that’s how I would interpret the way it’s described. And so when somebody tries to take any sort of similar position, and they, they seem uncomfortable with that, that sounds like somebody who needs a lot of control. It sounds like somebody who doesn’t like it when somebody else tries to assert control, and it makes them uncomfortable. And so they turn away. Interesting. Control dynamics and couples is very complicated, like control and all that is yeah,
Chris Seiter 28:17 a lot of it, I think requires a lot of context and nuance to like give the perfect read on it. And so it’s hard with just like one paragraph of explanation without knowing, like, every every element. But I mean, what you’re saying makes total sense to me. Like, the interesting aspect to me is like when she mirrors it back to him, he sort of cowers but I guess that would make sense because he doesn’t have control of her. And so he’s reacting to that.
Dr. G 28:44 Yeah, so some people that feel uncomfortable will cower. Some people that feel uncomfortable, will double down and get more aggressive, right? Everybody’s a little bit different, or will handle that type of thing a little bit differently. But that speaks to an unhealthy dynamic, right, like, hopefully that would that that doesn’t speak to the positive things about those interactions, I
Chris Seiter 29:03 think, yes. I mean, we are dealing with a breakup here. So obviously flawed relationship. Yeah. This next one. I’m actually curious to hear what you say. Do you believe it’s possible to fake confidence? Like to fake it until you make it?
Dr. G 29:17 Definitely, absolutely. I think half people out there faking confidence. But since I’m so sure, I teach people all the time, how to fake it until you make it because having real confidence and I don’t mean like bravado and like going over the top with feeling confident. Sometimes it can do with your posture and how you say things. And when you get used to that you go, hey, you know what, I actually feel more confident doing this. I’m going to do it again. A big part of working through anxiety is going hey, I know this makes you feel anxious to ask you to do this anyway. Just see, see how it feels afterwards and we’ll talk about it. So absolutely. Faking confidence is something I encourage people to do when they’re comfortable to do it.
Chris Seiter 29:54 So what are your tips for faking confidence from a body language person?
Dr. G 30:00 octaves? Well, I think part of it is, you know, taking on not a rigid posture, but having a being aware of what your body’s doing. Because oftentimes we don’t sit and go, Hey, am I relaxed right now my tennis right now, doing all of that is such an important part of being able to feel calm, being able to feel confident, recognizing how you’re going to come across to others. A big part of anxiety is avoidance, as I said before, so if people are avoiding certain situations, they’re avoiding confident body postures, they need to ask himself why why is he standing up and, and looking confident looking straight ahead, not looking down those types of behaviors? Why am I uncomfortable with that? And if I am, I’m going to challenge and try it this time and see how it feels afterwards. So oftentimes, it is saying, What am I comfortable doing right now? Can I try and experiment and do this differently this time? You know, what’s the worst that can happen? If I do this? I walk away later go, Yeah, look, I felt foolish doing that. I don’t want to do it again. Okay, fine, but nothing catastrophic is going to happen. So let’s try it out. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 30:56 All right. Can you tell if someone is in love with you, by the way, they look at you, I’ve heard something about pupils dilating. So
Dr. G 31:03 there is truth to that arousal is tied to pupil dilation. So I mean, you gotta have some really good eyesight, but I suppose. So sit still, let me look at your at your pupils. Now. I mean, there that is true. Although I would be hard pressed to imagine that you could, you could actually see that. So I mean, you can see it in a picture, but it’s hard to see like when you’re looking at someone.
Chris Seiter 31:27 Okay, going back to the cheating example that you use, if someone believes that cheating isn’t wrong, does reading body language still work? Are the cues still the same?
Dr. G 31:36 Everybody knows it’s wrong. Yeah. Still the same. They’re just like, I mean, honestly, like, nobody doesn’t think cheating is wrong. They might legitimize it or they might, you know, do it anyway. But there’s nobody that’s not gonna feel some level of discomfort when being confronted about cheating.
Chris Seiter 31:52 I mean, the thing I always tried to tell people is, if your ex is feeling the need to hide something, that means inherently, they understand on some level, it’s wrong. And it’s going to hurt you. Yeah. So yeah, absolutely. So the cue viewers saying basically, no matter what, it’s most likely, they’re just lying when they say cheating isn’t wrong?
Dr. G 32:13 Yeah, I don’t think there are many people that truly believe that unless that’s some sort of relationship rules that people have made. And they’ve agreed upon. But like, as far as just like, guys were like, Yeah, Cheating is not wrong. I can do whatever I want. You know, I think that someone’s lying to themselves if they’re actually saying that nobody actually believes that.
Chris Seiter 32:33 So I mean, that’s pretty much it for the for the main questions. The other two questions that have were basically already answered, how can I appear more confident? I literally asked that just organically. And how can you tell when someone is being serious, even when their words are the opposite? Which I feel like is, well, okay. Yeah, that last one? Yeah. Okay.
Dr. G 32:51 So how can? How can you tell if someone is being serious if their words are the opposite? That’s a good question. I guess the question, is it? Well, here’s a question I really want to pose to people because I think it’s important is, do I want to be with somebody who’s like that? Right? Like, if they’re, if they feel the need to be deceptive? Is there a point where I go, you know, this, these are red flags, I should probably pay attention to these red flags and not lean into them. I should say, you know, what, maybe this person, I know, I feel a kinship with this person. I feel close to them. I want to be with them. But why am I ignoring these red flags? I think that that’s the better question, honestly.
Chris Seiter 33:31 Yeah. So I mean, just giving you some of my impressions of our audience. Sure. I’ve been doing this since 2012. So for 10 years, we’ve been running the community for six or seven years. So I’ve had a lot of time interacting with them. And one of the things that I’ve noticed, or at least one of the trends I’ve noticed is how codependent like a lot of my work. When I work with someone, they’re hiring me to say like, Hey, how helped me get my ex back? And I’m saying, Well, before we worry about that, let’s actually get used to that you’re not so codependent on them. So then you can make the decision on whether or not you want to get back with them or just move on with your life find someone better? Yep. So I feel like a lot of the time, what you’re what you’re saying is like, Well, why would you want to be with someone like that? I think our audience is so stuck in that codependent, you know, was rolling around their world that they can’t break free. Do you have any advice for someone who is stuck in that?
Dr. G 34:25 Yeah, I that’s that’s a great point. Because it’s not that I think that people can’t have flaws. And they can’t have exes with issues that you guys can’t work through. I think that that’s a very common and normal and healthy thing. But I think that there’s a point where you go, how big are the red flags I’m looking at, right? Because that’s one of the issues I see with people like the people that ended up with a narcissist. There’s a variety of people, reason people end up into situations and sometimes the flag the red flags will be right there. I’m gonna go I see those. I’m going to choose to ignore them. And it’s like, that’s fine as long as you know what you’re doing. And so I think you really have to measure the severity of What’s going on and go if the if I’m trying really hard to get them back, and they’re really resistant, and there’s just a lot of dysfunction there? Yeah. Is this worth it is are these red flags? Should I be paying more attention to these? So that’s it’s always a matter of magnitude and whether or not these are bumps in the road, whether or not they were genuine red flags if for whatever reason you’re just insisting on ignoring.
Chris Seiter 35:20 Yeah, and I think that kind of comes back to that narcissistic aspect you’re talking about. One of the pairings that we see a lot is, you know, someone who’s very codependent being in relationship with the narcissistic person because the narcissistic person is just like, ooh, jackpot. You know, I could just sort of like continually use this person. I’ve always tried to explain it like, I don’t think someone who has narcissistic personality disorder views you as a human being normally they view you as like, oh, they are the person who can give me sex, they are the person who can I can come to for emotional support, and then just ditch them. Is that do you think that’s an accurate way of looking at it? That is
Dr. G 35:59 an incredibly accurate way of looking at it because what it is, we use the term like terms like objectify, you know, like this, like people are objectifying other people. narcissists literally see people as objects, like in a very literal sense. And so that’s the thing you got to understand these are not people to them their ways to get their needs met, just like you’re describing. So that is very accurate, unfortunately. And it’s hard for people to recognize that that aren’t narcissist because they go, what? Who thinks like that? It’s like, you’d be surprised some people really do.
Chris Seiter 36:27 Yeah, it I think we’re getting into this really complicated discussion is the fact that everyone has I feel like some narcissistic traits, but they’re not narcissistic person like diagnosis and Narcissus, you know, like, yeah, so I feel like sometimes our audience just sees like, Oh, my ex did this, this thing in this thing, which a narcissist does. He’s a narcissist. And that’s not always the case. They’re they’re pretty rare. Yeah, they’re
Dr. G 36:55 about let me think the percentage, I think it’s about one and a half to 2% of the population. So they’re not like, super rare, but they’re rare enough to where everybody’s boyfriend or ex is not a narcissist.
Chris Seiter 37:08 Right? Well, so Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Well, so obviously, you run this really amazing YouTube channel. And I’m going to 100% link to it and all of the socials when this interview goes up, but do you want to tell us a little bit about your YouTube channel and kind of pit yourself?
Dr. G 37:24 I would love to Yeah, so my YouTube channel is Dr. G explains. And basically, it is me Dr. G, explaining different aspects of mostly true crime nowadays, I also cover some about personality disorders. I’ve done some videos on narcissism. I’ve done some videos on on relationships, but for the vast majority, 95% of my videos are covering current true crime, reading body language, understanding behavior, and understanding the psychology behind these various heinous acts that happen. Oftentimes, I watch parts of trials and analyze interrogations, all sorts of interesting stuff that intersects in ways that you may or may not realize, with your clients, because 90% of the people who watch true crime are women actually. And it’s because people feel like they’re equipping themselves with knowledge to protect themselves by watching true crime. And that’s part of the part of the attraction to it. So what I My goal with my videos, really is to help people learn how to not get manipulated. So I’m pointing out, these are masters of manipulation, here’s how they’re doing it. So if you can watch for these kinds of behaviors, then you are less likely to be manipulated. So that really is my goal. I don’t do it. Because I think that serial killers are interesting or cool. I really don’t. I think they’re very flawed and broken people. And what I’m showing you is how they’re broken and how you can avoid interacting with people like this.
Chris Seiter 38:46 Yeah. And identify, I mean, I think that’s spot on for anyone listening. You know, I don’t know how good of a review I can give you other than my wife literally got so sucked into his YouTube channel. She could not sleep. So go watch it. Thank you. Thank you for coming on and doing this. I really appreciate it. Yeah,
Dr. G 39:05 no, it was. It was my pleasure. I had a lot of fun.
Chris Seiter 00:02 Okay, so today we have a another success story interview. Today we’re gonna be talking to Ashley. And the interesting thing about Ashley is I know probably as much about her situation is you listening to this? So this is gonna be an awesome interview. But thank you so much for doing this actually.
Ashley 00:21 Yeah, of course.
Chris Seiter 00:23 So like, why don’t you just sort of take us back to the beginning and tell us like a little bit about your relationship and your breakup? And what happened after that?
Ashley 00:32 Yeah, so um, we were together for 206 years at the time that we broke up. So we were together for quite some time, literally, since end of high school senior year we’ve been together. And we’re kind of
Chris Seiter 00:49 going so you’re like, high school sweethearts? Yes. Oh, that’s awesome. Okay, sorry.
00:58 No, it’s okay. And we are going through a transition in our life to where we, we bought a restaurant at a time, we both pretty much quit our jobs to do that, we had to move at the same time. It was also the time when the market was going crazy. So while we were trying to find a place near the restaurant, we were staying with his family. And I’ve always been on my own, so kind of been with, like, confined like that. I guess it just, I didn’t realize I would take a toll on me as well as our relationship. But once that started happening with the stress of the restaurant stress of being a whole new environment just being so when I felt like constricted, it puts so much tension on our relationship, and just ourselves as individuals. And it just kind of spiraled out for the both of us. And for his way of coping things as he’s from what I read from your program is a distance. avoidant or
Chris Seiter 02:14 dismissive. Yeah. But, you know, I could see, you know, the distant, dismissive, you know, same depth, right?
Ashley 02:25 Yes. For me, I was an anxious attachment. So, when there was conflict, I would be the one that was like, Okay, let’s, let’s figure this out. Let’s figure this out. And then my nerves will get high. Meanwhile, he would just shut down and be like, No, I don’t want to talk. And he would go days without talking. Meanwhile, I’m like, suffering in silence. Yeah. So I knew that that wasn’t good. Dynamic, ended up, blowing up. And I went and stay with some family out like two hours away from where we were, and for the weekend, and when, during that time, I was staying with them. He pretty much was like, come get your things. I’m gonna I’m gonna leave them on the side of the road. Like, I want to, I want you out. Like, now, and I, at that time, and these were all text messages. So I, I couldn’t even fathom just reading them. So I had my, my family. I was like you, you read them? And you tell me if I need to, like, do anything. And they were pretty much were like, yeah, so we got to figure something out. So I went and I picked up all my belongings, and I
Chris Seiter 03:47 like he literally kicked you to the curb. Like even your belongings. Yeah, everything. Well, yeah. Okay.
Ashley 03:54 So, yeah, so it was it was not, oh, it was not good. I like, and at that time, I didn’t have a place to go. So I was bouncing. Back from my family. I was two hours away and staying in my brother’s place. And by this this same time, like we had already given the keys back for the restaurant, because it was just, there was too much drama with that. And I was reminded,
Chris Seiter 04:22 do you mind if I ask you a question about that? So you guys, yeah. Did you sell this restaurant back? Or like, how did that dynamic work exactly with buying this restaurant? Yeah,
Ashley 04:31 we pretty much we were like in a contract before because it was already in a lease with the previous owner. And so we were in a contract with her. And at the end of that lease term, we were going to pay the remaining off of the restaurant and resign everything into our names. So at that point, it was just conjoined ownership with the previous owner. Right was signed as like a silent partner. But she wasn’t very silent. So we were like, okay, they’d never open. She wouldn’t let us. Yeah, she wouldn’t let us hire people or anything like that. And when we walked in there, it was just me my other half, and then we had one, one server. So we had a lot to build up on.
Chris Seiter 05:24 But and so obviously, that creates a very stressful environment.
Ashley 05:29 Yeah, especially when he has one way of thinking, I have one way of thinking when it comes to business. So very two different entities. But it was just too much. And then the landlord on top of it was just seeing too much. So we’re like, you know what, here’s the keys. Good luck, have fun. So I decided I was going to take some time away from work and go back to school full time, because I took time away off from school, to run the restaurant. And so I didn’t have a job at the time that I was kicked out, I also didn’t have a place to stay. So I had to, like rebuild everything. Which helps me in the time of not communicating, not reaching out, it was really hard to not reach out because I just kept questioning in my head like how, like this is it? This isn’t like him, like this isn’t his character? Why? I just, you know, I had so many unanswered questions. But I just kept religiously, just going through your podcasts and reading everything trying to keep my mind occupied. And then on top of that, I had to focus on school, I had to focus on finding a place and everything else. So that was kind of a little bit of a distraction. Yeah, but it was pretty strenuous.
Chris Seiter 06:55 So. So you’ve obviously kind of come into the orbit, you started learning about the No Contact Rule and the attachment styles, and you’re listening to podcasts and everything. So you’re, you’re kind of implementing what you’re, you know, the no contact at this point of the story, right?
Ashley 07:11 Yes, yes, I was actually implementing it prior to being kicked out. I did. I was reading things prior. So I had an idea, but I was also kind of being forced into it, because he wouldn’t talk to me, and we were under the same roof. So I did the best I could to not cross paths with him. While like I was staying in a completely different room. And whenever he would come home, I, I wouldn’t be seen I would be in my room. And when he left and as typically, you know, I would try my best to not cross paths. Now there was a point in time it was I was doing the no contact before I actually discovered your program, because I was just doing research of like, how can I get myself like, in a in a better spot with when, when there’s like kind of a breakup, essentially, it’s what it was at that time. And I heard the No Contact Rule. So it’s like, okay, you know what, let me just create this distance, because we’ve never really had that distance. And it was a fun day. I think like 16 the first time. Before I got before I left the house. We actually crossed paths in the gym. And he, like I’ve never said anything I didn’t even turn around to acknowledge him. I just kept going on walking into the gym, and I was doing my thing. I had a hair appointment later that afternoon. And shortly after that, he texted me saying, Hey, can we talk? And it took me a few hours respond, because I didn’t know if I wanted to respond yet. And he just he sent me like question mark. So I’m like, holy can’t keep ignoring him.
Chris Seiter 09:04 So you broke you broke down on day? 16?
Ashley 09:08 Yeah, yeah. So I broke down day 16. I said, Yeah, we can talk. So when I came home, we did talk and he was saying how he didn’t want me out of his life, things like that. But shortly after that, it’s all rolled out. And that’s when I started back on the no contact. And me being out of the house definitely made it so much easier to not be able to do that. He also had blocked me on social media. So it wasn’t, I couldn’t reach out to him. Well, it’s
Chris Seiter 09:43 interesting. You’re taking off so many boxes here. I have your high school sweethearts. You worked together. You live together. Now you’re telling me you were blocked. Yes. And you kind of you kind of got it seems like to me, you kind of got like minigames get back together. After the 60 days, he kind of asked for you back, but then that obviously didn’t last. Is that accurate?
Ashley 10:06 Yeah, it was not entirely. He was pretty much just saying that he needed to figure themselves out. But he knew that he didn’t want things to end maybe to just slowly, like get back into.
Chris Seiter 10:21 Oh, so he’s keeping you on the hook, essentially, then
Ashley 10:24 yeah, that’s exactly what that was. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 10:27 So okay, so you spiraled out of control. Now, you’re telling me that you’ve moved out? Yeah.
Ashley 10:34 And from that point, I just, I kind of just had in my mind that I needed especially with all the anxiety that I was struggling with, I knew even from prior to that, that I wanted to get rid of this anxiety there was, it was not how I was prior, I was like, this isn’t who I am, I need to change this. So taking that separation, I start focusing back on school, like I said, I was finding a place I did find a place and I got a job. And then I started working out a lot more I was I was having some some anxiety in the gym. So I just kind of forced myself with that. And I started just getting back into a routine of things independently. And I was I, at first for a little while. I wasn’t posting on social media. I was active on social, like, I would be scrolling through social media, but I didn’t post anything. I was kind of a what I consider like a go lurker. Yeah, okay. Yeah. And, like, I also wasn’t, I wasn’t searching like anybody’s knee, like, I wasn’t searching to see if he was if I was still unblocked, or, or if I still was blocked, or anything like that. I was just kind of scrolling, naturally. But I also tried to keep myself off social media in case like, because I did have someone whose family on social media. So I didn’t want to see anything in passing that would upset me. So I do my best to kind of stay off of it to not trigger myself. And then, what was it? One day I did go on, on social medias probably like, three weeks into my second, like my official no contest. And I went to go search a friend, and I noticed that his name had popped up in my search bar with his icon. And I was like, Oh, did he unblock me? And behold, he did unblock me. So I was like, Oh, interesting. I was like, what does that mean? But I kept my I kept my composure, I didn’t want to reach out to him or anything, and then just be blocked again. So I just kept and once I noticed, I did like, unintentionally notice that I was on black. I did start posting on social media. But I did it very rarely, I would post on a story. I wouldn’t post like a picture. I posted like a story of me at the gym, and things like that. But I also would, I didn’t really show my face too much. I would show just like my feet.
Chris Seiter 13:21 I also had our feet at the gym. Yeah,
Ashley 13:23 like my feet at the gym. I had friends I would post about fun their stories, because I knew that they would be friends. And well, they actually were like, Oh, let me post a story of us. You know, he’ll see it. And I was like, Alright, let’s do it. So and he would see that I’m be I’m out with like friends and like guys that are with us. And
Chris Seiter 13:48 you get that jealousy going a little bit.
Ashley 13:51 Yeah, he wasn’t he wasn’t too fond of that. But, but yeah, I just started, I started just focusing on myself. After about like two weeks, I wasn’t too focused on the relationship. There was some times like we had our cellphone plan together, we had our insurance plan together, like there were several things that we still had to figure out. But I wasn’t focused on that. I was like, it’ll, you know, when that time comes, we’ll come. And then it came down to the round the 45 day mark, and he messaged me asking about the phone plan. He said, and well, prior to that, actually, we backtrack. I got a job with a cellular company. And there was like a strenuous training that we had to do for like, several weeks. So that was also kept me pretty occupied. And when we graduated from that training, we all took a class photo essentially. And I posted that so that was like my first thing in a while that I posted and cuz I thought that was pretty like, as big as he could Yeah,
Chris Seiter 15:04 like that. That’s a base most.
Ashley 15:08 Yeah. So I posted that and then I went back to being a ghost on social media. And around that 45 Day marquee messaged me asking about the proper cellphone plan because he knew that I was working for a different cellular company. And I was like I said something along well, first, I did posts on on the group asking for advice, like, what do I say? And realize like, Oh, you gotta you gotta keep at it. And like, Oh, but I am kind of around that point.
Chris Seiter 15:44 Yeah. 45 days. Yeah, yeah, you take it.
Ashley 15:47 Yeah. So. And so I did wait a little while to respond. I think I waited maybe like, a couple hours. And then I said, I’m not. I’m not too worried about it. At the moment. We can figure it out later. And then I did. I meant I mentioned to him saying, I didn’t ask him I did say, I would like to maybe sit down for dinner. And and, you know, talk about some things whenever you have creatively
Chris Seiter 16:21 worded it, you worded it very carefully.
Ashley 16:26 I wasn’t like asking him right then and there. He said, I would like that. And he asked me, how about that night? Like, later on that evening? And I was quick. Okay. So, yeah, we
Chris Seiter 16:44 got yourself like an instant date?
Ashley 16:47 Yes. Yeah. And so we sat, we sat down for several hours talking at dinner. And we talked about everything like because I never was able to say, like, my side of the story of, of when things spiraled out. And I know, like he had family as well, that were kind of interfering in, you know, putting words into his ear of what their perception of everything was, and without my my story of anything, so I was he we didn’t even get into that. At first, I was just saying, how are you? Like, how’s everything going? His brother was off at boot camp at the time. So it’s asking, and he recently graduated. So I was asking how his brother was. And then he was the one that actually initiated saying, like, you know, I talked about this. So I just listened to what he had to say. And I just continued, I would just nodded, I didn’t intervene, which was hard, because there’s some things I just wanted to like, interject, but I didn’t want to cut them off. And so I just let him talk, and then everything out. And then afterwards, after he said, everything he needs, say, I said, Well, let me you know, say my piece. And so I did. And he even said, once I said everything that I needed to say it was kind of like a light bulb, light bulb. That kind of went off for him to where he was able to switch his perspective. And realize that it wasn’t entirely like, my fault those how things went about. And not saying that, like I, you know, I wasn’t at fault for anything. So, but I definitely like especially being like kicked out and things like that, you know, there’s lots things that I know I was not at fault for. So having that, that that piece, you know, but we ended up just hugging it out and went on about our evening and I went back to my brother’s uptime trust the waiting for for my place to be ready. And and then that weekend, actually, he I waited a couple of days, and I messaged him, well, that evening after dinner, I did say like, you know, thank you for dinner. It was it was nice seeing you or nice talking with you and you know, getting some things off our chest. And he or she appreciated the same way. And a couple of days later, because we both really like cars and car shows. There was one going on where I was near where I was, and I reached out to him and I was like, Hey, I’m going to this I plan on going to this car show. Just wanted to see if you’d like to go along with me. And he responded saying that he wasn’t sure if he was ready for that. And I was like completely fine. You know, I understand and He actually I ended up not going to the car show. He actually did decide to go to the car show thinking that I was gonna be there. When he saw that I wasn’t there, he messaged me and was like, Hey, do you have plans for today? And I go, No, not that I can think of. And then he invited me out that evening.
Chris Seiter 20:29 So, after you stood him up at the car show, he invites you out later that evening.
Ashley 20:37 Yeah, but I didn’t. I didn’t necessarily
Chris Seiter 20:44 look at my perspective from the optics, you invite him and then you don’t show up. So But what’s interesting is it really worked you got so obviously you go on this. I guess this is more of a romantic date. If he’s inviting you out at night. Would it be is that you kind of took it.
Ashley 21:02 That’s not really how I like it. Because we went to um, are you familiar with like, Halloween Horror Nights?
Chris Seiter 21:10 Yeah. Okay. It’s around October.
21:14 Yes. So though
Chris Seiter 21:15 you can easily argue that can be like, like, you know, you go into something scary. And it kind of, you know, makes you want to grab on, you know, I’m just saying, yes. You know, it’s
Ashley 21:29 something that we’ve always done. Yeah, no, he definitely didn’t know what he was doing. But it was something that we always we did every year with each other since we started dating. And we even said, when we’re at dinner, we were talking about the Halloween Horror Nights. And we were both like, yeah, just, you know, I was planning on going with some, some friends myself, but it just didn’t seem right. Didn’t feel right. Not going without him. He said, Yeah, that’s exactly how I felt. And so I, when we went, in my mind, I was like, you know, this is strictly going to be platonic. I don’t want to push anything, I don’t want to rush anything, to where he’s going to get pushed away. And so I didn’t like reach for his hand, we had a few drinks prior to going in. And that’s exactly how I kept it was strictly platonic. And then we ended up getting some drinks, and we sat on a bench, and we’re just sitting there just kind of people watching. And he went over and kissed me. And I was like, whines I was, like, where did that come from? And he said, it just felt right.
Chris Seiter 22:41 Okay, so what, though? What happens next?
Ashley 22:45 Um, so basically, from there, what’s gonna happen next, actually, from there? I’m,
Chris Seiter 22:51 like, I guess I’m getting as how long did it take after that point, to get a commitment out of him?
Ashley 22:59 To actually see the opposite. So, at that point in time, I was pretty secure with where I was, to where I, I was like, okay, you know, if you want this, you’re gonna have to show me once this because I’m not going to continue Chase. Yes, like that clearly wasn’t working. So. And I think it scared him a little bit. Now, like seeing that I was going to school, I got this new job, I got this place by myself. Like I was doing all these things without him being there when we were next, you know, hip to hip with each other throughout several years prior. And I think that that scared him a little bit. And for a few months, after, actually about a month after that, we only would meet up for dinner every so often, or go get dessert together. Every so often. And we would text each other but we weren’t like kind of going back into old habits to where we were seeing each other every single day, you know, staying the night. This scenario like that.
Chris Seiter 24:14 Were you texting each other every day though?
24:17 Not really.
Chris Seiter 24:19 So it was just like sporadic here and there as friends with text.
Ashley 24:24 Yes, because I I refuse to text first. For a little bit, for a little bit. I was having him reach out to me first. For like several weeks to, I’m like, Okay, do you really want to have a conversation with me, you know, trying to see like where he was at with everything. And then it just started gradually progressing and progressing. And then I moved into my place. And he would come over every so often and then go back to where he was saying And then he started saying a little bit more and more. And then he asked me, he was like, you know, I just want to know, like, where you’re at, he was asking if I was talking with other people. And I said no, like, not at all. I’ve never wanted to talk to anybody else. If I wasn’t talking to you, I wasn’t talking to nobody. And so he got a little worried. But that’s kind of where that commitment came by. And keep in mind, I didn’t mention this prior, but we were engaged. Before we initially split up, we were actually supposed to get married that November.
Chris Seiter 25:41 That seems like a big Ashley, that seems like a very big detail to kind of leave out out there.
Ashley 25:49 Yeah, so we were actually engaged. And he, he called it off, but I still had the engagement ring when we split up. And when we rekindled when we had that conversation that he initiated, he initiated a conversation. I told him, I’m like, I’m just kind of going with the flow with things, seeing how everything’s going, I’m trying not to, you know, bring bring any old habits back. And he was the same way. Like if there was a disagreement or not really disagreement. It was more of just a conversation. It was like, not how was in the past where this disagreement was turned into some sort of conflict. I would say something he didn’t, you know, didn’t see it that way. He would actually want to talk about it, versus before he was being so avoided. And so I started seeing that change as well. And I was like, okay, yeah, he’s really, he’s really trying to make a change. And for this to really work, I did end up giving him the ring back. Once I felt comfortable, I was contemplating it for a little while. But I sat down with him. And I gave him the ring back. And I said, when you are 110% Ready, to, you know, to be committed. Right? Yeah. And, and to plan a wedding and you’re 110% understanding or believing that I’m going to say yes, then you can ask me again. I feel like that was 100%.
Chris Seiter 27:30 That was a smart move on your part. That’s the right way.
Ashley 27:36 I, I felt, I felt pretty confident about it. I like I said, I thought about it first.
Chris Seiter 27:41 That’s sort of a sort of a think like, you know, you’re making a bet, like this ring is gonna come back to me. Like, it’s still really around your finger. But you know, it’s just a while before it arrives.
Ashley 27:53 Yeah, exactly. So, but now, we’re just kind of, we’ve had the conversation several times, you know, what we what we want out of life. And, you know, he definitely wants to have marriage within the future and, and for us to buy a house together. But I told him, I was like, You know what, before we go on with the marriage, I wanted to be able to be settled, and, you know, stable before we do that. And we’re both on that understanding of it.
Chris Seiter 28:26 So the thing, just your story that struck me so much was how patient you were, which is interesting to hear you describe yourself as having an anxious attachment style, because that is like literally the antithesis of someone with an anxious attachment style. But I feel like towards the end, just have extreme patience. Like, most of the time, if a guy would kiss our clients, they would be the ones to kind of rush to the commitment conversation, but you literally just kind of stayed cool. And I guess my my question is, how, how did Were you always this patient? Or was this something that you made a conscious decision to do after the breakup?
Ashley 29:09 It was just a conscious decision. I’ve had I’ve been patient, you know, prior to certain to certain extent, like if we got into an argument and he would just go sleep, or sleeping on silent treatment for several days, like, I would try and like let him cool down. But then it would get to a point where I’m like, alright, we need to talk, you know, but this time, you know, of course, now that we’re split up, like there’s no reason for me to reach out. But with I just because of the program and like everything that I was reading, I was just trusting the process. And that’s, that’s what was helping me and it was distracting me of saying like, okay, yeah, what’s your feeling right now? It’s valid, but you don’t want to be react. active on it.
Chris Seiter 30:02 I wish you could
Ashley 30:03 have reminding myself,
Chris Seiter 30:05 I wish you could just tell that to every single person that comes to the program, because that’s what they need to hear. I mean, you kind of are but on a personal basis, but no one has that kind of time. There was one other question that sort of struck me. Did you ever talk to your ex when you got him back about why he blocked? You?
30:28 Know, oh, man,
Chris Seiter 30:30 so I’d be, do you have any idea or guesses, because there’s a lot of people who are feeling completely helpless in a situation where their access blocked them. And the only thing I can usually tell them is like, hey, the statistics show that if you do nothing, and just kind of stay patient, to your credit, they’ll unblock you without you having to do much. But that’s a lot to take on faith for a lot of people. So do you have any idea like what was going through your head during that time.
Ashley 30:59 Um, I will say my assumption as to why he blocked me was because in the past, because I was so anxious, and I was the anxious attachment, I was always reaching out. And he didn’t, he didn’t want any, any sort of way for me to reach out to him. And which I really respected. In regards to trying to cope with that, on the receiving end, is, it’s hard, it’s hard to say, because it really is just coming down to trusting the process. You have to, you have to trust the you know, whichever way it’s gonna go. Whichever way it’s gonna go. That’s what’s meant to happen, you know, and as long as you’re following the program, and you’re doing the things you’re gonna need you need to do in the end is just, you’re finding yourself, and that’s where the person, you know, come once you find yourself, they end up coming back.
Chris Seiter 32:11 No, I, I try to tell people that exact thing, but it’s the whole faith argument. Like, it’s really hard for people to hear that. And I’m sure at one point, you were there, too, you know, like, there’s moments of doubt, and everything like that. How do you feel you? Because you like just listening to, you know, your story? It seems to me like you had just a lot of mental strength. Because as you’re talking, I’m writing down notes, you know, you had so the there’s three adjectives that I wrote when I was listening to your story, patience, independence, and outgrowth. So it’s like, you were incredibly patient. You you outgrew your x, or you outgrew the previous relationship. And what I noticed is you started doing things that show that you could be independent on your own, like, you got the job, you started going back to school, you got the apartment, you mentioned that you had always done things together with him, like hand in hand. And for the first time, he’s starting to see oh, wow, she can survive without me. How did you I guess, like, what was your mentality to start achieving these things? Because it’s, it’s impressive, quite frankly.
Ashley 33:28 Um, well, I, I personally, I because I grew up, like I said, I grew up by myself prior to us. And when I was super young, while I was a super young, I was 19, I had lost my mom. And that’s how I had to, like, start really growing independently, and like I had to find a place I had to do things on my own. And what I kept telling myself is, I’ve been through worse. And I’ve done this before I can do it again.
Chris Seiter 34:05 Confidence, basically, you had confidence with yourself, like you’d be able to get through this. And I think maybe that’s the difference between someone who’s struggling and someone who’s not because you’ve been through war before essentially you knew that no matter how bad it got you there’s a light at the end of the tunnel whereas I feel like sometimes we get clients who are completely codependent on their axes and they don’t have that confidence to brave the storm, so to speak. So do you have any advice for someone like that? Like how did what works for you, I guess is what I’m asking.
Ashley 34:41 When the time so I felt like that I was just kind of crying to myself and the anxiety was high. I kept like just reading and I was reading about you know how how to pretty much better yourself. mentally and emotionally. And those things helped me with a competence. When I felt the lowest thing was, like, you know, working out and things like that I just, I had to push myself, I really did have to push myself to do those things. Because a lot of the days, I just didn’t want to do anything, it was just, there’s too much anxiety for me to even handle certain day to day, things or even a conversation because my head was just going a million miles a second. But I just had to, I had to find my other ways of, of distracting myself to within, of course, a ways to grow. So it wasn’t just like, simply distracting my mind, I was distracting my mind and things I worked with that were going to better myself. That was gonna make me happier. So like, you know, working out reading, I was, you know, going to school, I was just trying to do things for myself. I was trying to take it day by day also. And each day, I was doing at least one little thing. It didn’t matter if it was like a bath or, you know, a shower. You know, I went and took myself out to dinner I was doing one thing was taking
Chris Seiter 36:17 care of yourself. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you’re bettering your circumstances, you’re taking care of yourself, you’re improving. And I guess it has like a cumulative effect. You know, like, day after day of doing these little small things, it starts to add up and you start to get more confident. And I guess you kind of had a really beautiful snowball effect, where you almost got even like an interesting little hint around, do your first no contact like day 16 You said, where you kind of see where his head was, like he he was sort of like 70% out, but 30% still wanting to hold on it maybe it wasn’t until you moved out and you started doing all of that stuff, that he started to recognize the opportunity cost of being without you was worse than being with you. So you know, that? So let’s let’s get down to the fun details. Has he proposed again yet?
37:22 No, he has not right. Shame on him.
Chris Seiter 37:26 That’s, that’s the next mile. So we gotta get you that ring back.
Ashley 37:30 Yes, it is, is me I’m the one that’s not pulling on off on it. Because you said many times, he’s like, you know, I just want to, you know, focus on us, and, you know, the wedding and this and that. And I go well, hold your horses. You know, we’re not quite there yet. It’s only been several months, since we’ve really rekindled. So. I want to give it some more time. And you know,
Chris Seiter 37:54 it’s for good this time. You know, no more. Yeah. breakups.
37:58 Yes, exactly.
Chris Seiter 38:00 So any final words for anyone listening, that you’d like to impart words of knowledge.
Ashley 38:08 Um, I would just say it’s this, this breaking up, you can’t focus on it’s so hard not to, but you really have to push yourself to try not to focus on the other person or the relationship or what happens then you have to really take that time to rebuild yourself. And like I said, the feelings are all valid, you know, being hurt frying, that, like, everything is all valid, but you have to take those feelings and utilize them for your strength as becoming a better person, for yourself. And once once you do that, you know, you’ll start having the confidence to where you’re like, Okay, well, I can do all these things on my own. I don’t need that person. And if they come back, it’s up to you. Like do you know, do I still want them to be in my life? I don’t need them to be in my life.
Chris Seiter 39:09 I love that. I mean, that’s just thank you so much for coming on and doing this.
Reason #1: Allows You To Take Them Off The Pedestal
A few weeks ago my wife and I partnered up on writing an article about codependence and noticed that many of our clients exhibit codependent tendencies.
Basically their entire world revolves around their breakup, their partner, or their ex.
This creates what I call the pedestal effect.
Here’s a video I did on it,
So what we’re always trying to caution our clients against is the idea of putting your ex or partner on a pedestal.
You want them to be equal to you or perhaps a little bit below.
The goal is not to punch above your weight class, so to speak.
However, in some codependent relationships, things can shift. What might have started as you being above or equal to them on the pedestal can change.
Suddenly, you find yourself below them on the pedestal, and you have placed them above you on your own pedestal.
Essentially, by walking away, you can attempt to reclaim your position and knock them off that pedestal, so that you both stand on equal footing.
Reason #2: The No Contact Triad
One of the things we always recommend to our clients after a breakup is to implement a period of no contact, which can also be interpreted as walking away.
This can be scary for a lot of people, but what many don’t realize about the no contact rule is that it incorporates three specific strategies:
The theory of reactance
The informational gap theory
The Zeigarnik effect
Let’s do a quick breakdown of these.
Theory Of Reactance
The theory of reactance is based on the psychological principle that people don’t like it when their behavioral freedoms are taken away.
When this happens, they are more likely to respond in a way that seeks to regain that freedom.
By initiating the no contact rule, you are not engaging in communication with your ex, effectively taking away their behavioral freedom to converse with you.
This can trigger some exes to take actions to regain that freedom, sometimes resulting in unexpected reactions.
Like this,
(Yes, this was a real screenshot from our community!)
However, it’s important to note that most exes don’t reach out at all during the no contact period.
Thus, reactance actually does seem to be the exception to the rule.
Information Gap
This suggests that what your ex doesn’t know about you creates curiosity and prompts them to seek answers.
They may not directly approach you, but instead, observe from afar or even enlist friends to gather information.
This has happened to me.
Back in 2008 when I was around 18 years old, I went through my very first breakup.
During that time, I used to never talk to my ex’s best friend. However, all of a sudden, the best friend started calling me and probing for information about “how I was doing.”
It turned out she was doing so on behalf of my ex, trying to gather details about how I was doing.
All because of the information gap.
Last but certainly not least is…
The Zeigarnik Effect
This states that people remember interrupted or incomplete tasks better than completed ones.
The desire for closure or to finish unfinished business can become a strong driving force. By denying your ex the opportunity to gain closure, the unfulfilled task of achieving closure can upset them and potentially increase their desire to come back.
Reason #3: Success Stories Consistently Cite Outgrowing Their Ex As Key
It’s often said in the breakup industry as a cliché that if you should
“Just move on from your ex.”
Do that and they’ll come back…
Simple, right?
Well….
Ironically, this cliché is often proven to be true.
One aspect I take pride in, particularly within our community, is making the interviews I’ve conducted with success stories readily available for listening.
During these interviews, my main goal is to uncover what strategies worked for them.
It doesn’t matter to me whether they used our program or not; I simply want to understand what led to their success.
Over time, I’ve noticed consistent themes and patterns that emerge.
The no contact rule is a major theme in every success story I’ve interviewed. While it’s possible that this emphasis on no contact is because of our influence in their lives, we can’t ignore the fact that implementing no contact and walking away appears to be crucial.
However, the larger theme that I’ve observed is that those who are able to successfully outgrow their ex reach a point where they question whether they even want their ex back.
It’s at this stage that things start to fall into place for them.
Outgrowing an ex becomes a pivotal factor in their journey.
Reason #4: It Gives The Avoidant Nostalgic Reverie A Chance To Kick In
I want to bring up coach Amor here because she raised an important question that her clients often ask her when she tells them to outgrow their exes.
The question was, what if walking away makes your ex give up on you or forget about you, or it makes them move on because they can sense you’re moving on?
My response: You actually want them to think you’re moving on.
Statistics and internal polls within our community indicate that many of our clients have avoidant exes.
Avoidant individuals typically don’t allow themselves to miss someone until that person becomes unavailable, once they’re out of the relationship.
The code is essentially this: once you have moved on to a point where the avoidant thinks they don’t have to worry about getting back together with you, that’s when the avoidant starts experiencing nostalgic reverie.
I basically made an entire video on my YouTube channel arguing this singular point:
Ironically, it is during this period of nostalgia that the concept of the phantom ex comes into play. It serves as a mechanism for avoidant individuals to maintain distance, avoiding commitment while engaging in daydreams from a safe distance.
As strange as it may sound, we have discovered that the reason outgrowing your ex is so effective in breakup scenarios is due to the avoidant aspect.
When you outgrow your ex, they perceive that you no longer desire them.
This realization can trigger a sense of longing and daydreaming about you, resulting in that nostalgic reverie. This state of nostalgia often leads to a specific action that we frequently hear about: when someone has moved on, found happiness in a new relationship, and suddenly their ex, whom they once wanted back, starts texting them.
However, the irony lies in the fact that, by that point, you no longer have the same desire for them.
Reason #5: Setting Firm Boundaries
Once again I’d like to bring up that article that my wife and I worked on together, we discussed codependency and the struggles individuals with codependency issues face when it comes to setting boundaries.
This is particularly evident in on-again, off-again relationships.
The on-again, off-again cycle occurs because one person walks away, and the other person chases.
By setting firm boundaries, you prevent this cycle from continuing.
I understand it’s easier said than done, but often the reason boundaries aren’t firm is due to a lack of accompanying actions.
To use an analogy, it’s like rewarding a dog with a treat after it bites you.
If you have an ex who consistently mistreats you and behaves poorly, why would you continue chasing after them?
Instead, set the boundary and back it up with action.
Let them know you won’t allow them to treat you that way, and instead of telling them the consequences, show them the consequences.
Often, the consequence is walking away and being okay with it.
Reason #6: It Finally Gives You Space To Heal
By starting the no contact rule, walking away, you get out of the picture and gain a clearer sense of what has really happened.
It doesn’t mean you’re going to be totally okay afterward or that your feelings will vanish. It’s not like that, but you will become less emotional about it.
It will be easier for you to establish a new routine if you stop talking to the other person because you’re not really helping yourself start over if you keep doing what you used to do, if you keep talking to your ex and placing yourself in the friend zone.
When you keep talking to them, you’re giving them your attention and time, which are two of the most valuable things you can give to another person because time cannot be retrieved.
It’s literally the most valuable resource you have.
That’s why, when it comes to commitment, I believe that the most important aspect of gaining a commitment from someone is obtaining a share of their time.
If they invest a lot of time and energy into you, giving you their attention, it usually indicates they are more invested because we want our time to be used wisely.
Reason #7: It Allows You To Remove Yourself From A Toxic Situation
There are countless ways to approach this, but the prevailing thought that comes to mind is that many people come to us believing that our sole purpose is to help them get their ex back.
However, that’s not entirely true.
What we’re actually trying to do is help you get yourself back.
To go from this:
To this:
My team and I are not going to sit there and encourage you to pursue getting an ex back if you’re in a highly toxic or even life-threatening environment.
We have advised countless individuals to distance themselves from such people because what truly matters isn’t necessarily getting an ex back, but rather healing and regaining yourself after the breakup.
Our goal is to help you become a more secure individual from an attachment style perspective, and part of being secure is recognizing when you’re in a toxic environment.
Many people don’t realize they are in one until we point out the patterns and behaviors of narcissists or highlight how they are being mistreated.
The first thing you need to understand is we need to set the stage for what’s going on inside of your body.
And to set the stage for what’s going on inside your body, we need to look at the various chemicals or, rather, the various players.
And ultimately, those boil down to:
Cortisol
Dopamine
Norepinephrine
And Serotonin.
All right, so a quick crash course on each one.
Cortisol is considered a stress hormone.
So often, you’ll find that it’s exceptionally elevated during breakups.
Dopamine is actually associated with pleasure, reward, arousal, and desire.
We often see this often with the honeymoon period at the beginning of a relationship.
Norepinephrine is about increasing memory for new stimuli, but it just makes you extra excitable.
Once again, very common to see this during the honeymoon period.
And then, finally, we have serotonin.
Serotonin is cortisol’s foil. So cortisol is the stress hormone that makes you almost obsessive-compulsive after a breakup.
Serotonin is considered a mood stabilizer, and it helps stop OCD from occurring.
Okay, now that we have sort of the stage set, let’s talk about what happens at the outset of a breakup.
So at the very beginning of a relationship, a lot of the chemicals your brain will release into your body are elevated.
Cortisol will be slightly elevated, but dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin are significantly elevated.
And this is what creates the euphoria of a honeymoon period.
In the middle of a relationship, those various chemicals come back down to normal levels.
Heartbreak is a little bit different.
When you go through a breakup, dopamine, norepinephrine, and, most importantly, serotonin go way down, and cortisol goes way up.
This is important because cortisol creates a potentially significant issue for you when it becomes highly elevated.
So one of the best quotes I’ve seen on cortisol after a breakup happened was from this particular man named Jamie Lee, who was featured in an article for bodyandsoul.com.
He argued that, on average, it can take three to four hours for your cortisol levels to return to normal after a stress response. So let’s say you get into an argument or have a high-stakes meeting, and your cortisol shoots up, but after three or four hours, it returns to normal.
But if your levels have been high for some time, it can take up to six months to balance them out.
On average, it’s only supposed to take you three hours. But imagine you’re going through something so stressful that it keeps cortisol in this elevated state.
In that case, the cortisol takes so much longer to level out. And this is the core foundation for why people struggle so much during breakups.
The breakup is obviously stressful.
It triggers cortisol to stay in that elevated state for an extended period.
And if it’s in that state for a long time, what happens?
You will be very, very stressed for the next six months. There’s just no way around it.
Let’s move on to the eight stages of grief after a breakup.
Understanding The Eight Stages Of Heartbreak After A Breakup
This one requires an introduction. I was inspired by this article I found on Psychology Today, written by a clinical psychologist named Susan Lachmann.
She argues that we always know the five stages of grief after a breakup.
But when it comes to breakups, she claims there are seven grief stages.
And I’ve written about this in the past, but the more I’ve sat and thought about it, the more I would like to alter her stages.
It’s not that I disagree with them.
I actually do agree with them.
I just think they’re not ordered correctly.
And there’s one stage that is missing. So to give you a reference, her seven stages are as follows,
Desperate for answers
Denial
Bargaining
Relapse
Anger
Initial Acceptance
Redirected Hope
I love these stages, but for me, there are eight stages.
So, here are my eight stages.
Desperation
Pain and Guilt
Bargaining
Anger
Depression
Initial Acceptance
Relapse
Actual Acceptance
So let’s take a moment and go through each one of these because I feel like each one merits an explanation.
Stage #1: Desperation
So stage one is considered the desperation stage. This is where you are desperate for answers after a breakup.
The most common marker you are in this stage is frantically going to Google or YouTube to search for breakup information.
Why you’re feeling, what you’re feeling,
how to get your ex back,
ways to trick your ex back,
You find yourself typing into Google all these things that you would never have thought you were capable of typing. And it’s all just because you’re desperate to understand what happened.
Here’s the funny thing. My team and I have found that most of our clients have anxious attachment styles.
And the fascinating marker for someone with an anxious attachment style is they are very big on trying to solve problems.
And it fits, you know, if you’re desperate for answers, you’re going to Google or YouTube to solve a problem.
So that’s the desperation stage.
Stage #2: Pain And Guilt
This will be where you start to notice many of those anxious triggers coming into play.
Desperation
Fear of abandonment
Begging
Pleading
Seeking re-assurance
But more than anything
I want to turn your attention to what I consider to be codependent shaming.
We personally believe many of our clients tend to be too codependent. And as a result, they shame themselves and have these negative self-beliefs that they trap themselves with. And this is pretty common for someone who is codependent.
They rely too much on that particular relationship for their well-being and self-esteem. And when that relationship ends or that specific person who their entire world revolves around leaves them,
They find themselves dwelling on every perceived problem they believe is their fault, consequently driving their anguish and guilt to unbearable levels. The emotional aftermath of the breakup is excruciating; they’re grieving, deeply immersed in the mourning process. They’re laden with guilt over issues that may not even be their responsibility.
Stage #3: Bargaining
The third stage is where you enter into my orbit.
This is where you determine that you will get back with your ex.
You think to yourself;
I’ve been doing all the searching.
I’ve read Chris’s stuff.
I’ve listened to his podcast.
I’ve listened to his interview success stories.
And you know what?
This is possible.
I can do this for myself.
I know the path forward.
This is the bargaining stage.
Now, it’s not to say that you can’t succeed. I’m not insinuating that at all in this discussion.
I’m just working through the journey that most of our clients typically go through.
So this is where you are set on returning with your ex.
Simple as that.
And then, of course, at some part, stage four is going to occur. And that’s anger.
Stage #4: Anger
If I’m candid with you, I put anger in here because it is a normal part of the grieving process.
But a lot of times, I find that our clients do not get angry with their exes. As I mentioned earlier, most of my clients find their way to me during the bargaining stage, typically when they’re trying to reconcile with their ex. For many, the perspective is not that their ex is incapable of wrongdoing but that they harbor no significant resentment towards them.
The onset of anger usually emerges when their initial attempts to win back their ex prove unsuccessful. This is a common experience among those who seek my guidance.
Then they get angry, not at their ex, but at the situation. They lash out. Sometimes they blame me. Recently, there were a couple of examples in our community where I didn’t get back to people quick enough with answers, and they grew incredibly frustrated.
I see this all the time; it’s pervasive. And I don’t even take it personally because I understand everyone’s going through this.
Stage #5: Depression
I don’t know if I should go deep into this because you need to understand the roller coaster someone is going through up to this point.
They’re incredibly desperate initially, so they’re at a negative. Then they feel pain and guilt; they’re even more negative.
Then they enter that bargaining stage. As odd as it sounds, bargaining gives them some hope.
They start looking online and at stories of people who have succeeded in getting their exes back.
So that is looked at as a positive.
And then anger occurs, which is in between a positive and negative because there are instances where anger can make you feel better.
But obviously, it’s not great as a whole to live in this angry state.
So after that roller coaster comes depression, and what I’m finding at this point is that your cortisol is incredibly elevated, as we talked about in the science of heartbreak section of this discussion.
And one thing we know about elevated cortisol is it makes you so much more susceptible to depression.
So one of the jobs I’m constantly working on with my clients is helping them find ways to lower that cortisol because we don’t want them in a depressed state.
Stage #6: Initial Acceptance
The stage of initial acceptance essentially arrives when you decide, “I’m not sure I can get them back anymore.”
This realization is entirely normal, often culminating in the thought, “I think I’m okay if I don’t get them back anymore.” Much of what we’re discussing here parallels the traditional five stages of grief.
However, we’ve repurposed them for the context of a breakup.
But here’s where it becomes particularly intriguing: initial acceptance differs from true acceptance.
The former involves convincing yourself that you’re okay, that you’ve moved on.
This notion is something I’ve seen repeatedly in the private community I’ve been running since 2016.
Members often post about their newfound happiness post-breakup, only to share their feelings of depression and sadness a few weeks later.
They had convinced themselves that they were over their ex, didn’t want them back, and were okay.
Yet, deep down, they were not.
This is the complexity and challenge of initial acceptance. At the moment, it feels genuine, like they have genuinely moved on and are comfortable with the reality of it. But often, it’s just the surface-level feeling and deeper emotions are still at play.
Stage #7: Relapse
But then comes stage seven, relapse; something happens, something triggers you, and it causes you to start the entire grieving stage over again.
You go through a desperate stage where you look for answers on ex-boyfriend recovery or ex-girlfriend recovery.
You go to YouTube, watch the videos, and listen to the podcast.
You feel pain, guilt, and anger.
You bargain with yourself.
You’re incredibly depressed.
You’ve accepted it again.
And then, guess what happens once more?
You relapse again.
Relapse is the worst thing possible because it’s arguably the stage that takes the longest. When I often talk about the relapse stage, people think, okay, stage seven relapse. That means we’re starting over from stage one, right?
Well, no, not exactly.
The way relapse works is sometimes you can get caught in it for two, three, or four revolutions where you’re convincing yourself you don’t want them back, only to relapse and want them back again.
And it makes that cortisol stay in that elevated state, which makes your life more stressful, which makes you more susceptible to depression.
And it’s only after going through relapse a bunch of times that, at some point, you skip it.
You go from initial acceptance to our final stage, stage eight, actual acceptance.
Stage #8: Actual Acceptance
Now actual acceptance is where you actually accept the breakup. It’s the real thing this time.
You think,
“I’m over them. I’ve accepted that this breakup has occurred. I wouldn’t mind them returning to me, but I don’t need them back.”
And it’s authentic.
You don’t relapse anymore.
You’re ready to move on with your life.
Not a ton more to dig into here, if I’m being honest.
Instead, I would like to talk about is what I consider to be the hardest stage.
What Is The Hardest Stage Of Heartbreak?
Without a doubt, the most challenging stage is the relapse stage.
What’s complicated about it is its partnership with the initial acceptance phase.
So initially, you accept that you’re over the breakup. You convince yourself that,
“Hey, this is it. I’m done!”
Only to relapse and start over from the beginning. It can feel like an unyielding negative cycle that you’re trapped in. You’re stuck in a hole you can’t climb out of and just when you’ve gotten to the top, just when you’ve seen daylight.
Something happens and you relapse, you get pushed back down to the very bottom of that hole again, and it’s time to begin your climb once more.
Over and over again.
But why the struggle to get to “actual acceptance?”
Well, I have found that when I interview success stories,
People who get past these relapse phases and into these actuall acceptance phases that have the greatest likelihood of getting their exes back.
It’s the common thread we’ve seen through almost every success story, not every single one, but nearly every success story.
So my goal as a breakup coach is help move you past the obsessive-compulsive thoughts that you’re having about your ex and help you work through these stages of heartbreak so you can arrive at stage eight more quickly.
How Long Will These Heartbreak Stages Last Total?
Looking at our success stories can give us some insight.
We found that the average success story falls between five to seven months. It’s around 5.2 months, but a range of five to seven months provides a more comprehensive and ideal perspective.
But even that is just a “range.”
For years I’ve been trying to come up with a formula that can be a one size fits all formula. But ultimately, I realized there’s no one-size-fits-all formula to figure out how long you’re going to be heartbroken or how long you should expect to be heartbroken.
Nevertheless, I continue to try.
So I will teach you my makeshift formula, and you should take this with a massive grain of salt.
This is not going to be accurate all the way. There are things that could be improved with it. I’m happy for you to point out the flaws in the comments, but as a general rule, I have found it to be the most accurate metric you can fall back on.
But again, no science is backing it up, and it’s using my polling data.
So with that disclaimer out of the way here’s the formula,
X/Y + Z = Time in months you’ll be heartbroken
X= Time you were together in months
Y= 6 months (our average success story timeframe)
Z= 3 The standard post-breakup processing period
Let’s use an example for clarity.
Assume you were together with your ex for seven months.
In this case, ‘X’ equals seven.
Divide that by six
and add three to the result.
7/6+3 = 4.2
This calculation suggests the typical recovery or heartbreak period is roughly 4.2 months. That’s generally how long it takes to reach an emotional state where you feel settled and okay.
Like I said, it’s not an exact science but it at least creates an expectation for you.
This is a complete list of the top female behaviors after a breakup.
And no, the items on this list weren’t randomly chosen just because we felt like it. Each and every one of them was either experienced firsthand by me or one of our coaches, or I actually found research to back it up.
Here are the common behaviors females are likely to exhibit after a breakup,
More susceptible to anxious behaviors
Are better at emotional expression
End up recovering more fully after a breakup
Won’t go on the rebound as often as men
The glow down phase
The glow up phase
Getting stuck in the relapse stage
Let’s dive right in
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Behavior #1: More Susceptible To Anxious Behaviors
So, the first thing I’ve noticed is that women tend to exhibit more anxious behaviors or engage in certain actions.
While researching for this article, I realized that I hadn’t answered a fundamental question about attachment styles. It has always been apparent that most of our clients have anxious attachment styles, while their exes tend to have avoidant attachment styles.
Anxious client,
Avoidant ex,
However, I wanted to explore the breakdown of these attachment styles based on gender roles.
Do women tend to have more anxious attachment styles compared to men? I delved into research and discovered that it argues,
Women indeed tend to have more anxious attachment styles than men.
This finding sheds light on the next aspect we’re going to discuss, which further supports this notion.
Women, especially after a breakup, tend to display more anxious behaviors.
If you aren’t familiar with what that looks like then allow me to give you a quick crash course,
They’ll seek constant re-assurance
Become overly clingy or dependent
Constantly fear you’ll abandon them
Get jealous
Become possessive
Overanalyze
Be quick to emotional fluctuations
But by far the biggest thing I’ve witnessed women do after a breakup is exhibit what I refer to as “Gnatting” behaviors, which is an acronym I came up with for G.N.A.T. (Going Nuts at Texting).
G- Going
N- Nuts
A- At
T- Texting
But this leads me to my next question: Why? Why are women more susceptible to anxious behaviors?
Behavior #2: Women Are Better At Emotional Expression
Is it the concept of the core wound?
Well, ya that’s part of it. But I also believe another factor is the second significant behavior we’ve noticed women experience after a breakup. It’s the fact that they are generally better at emotional expression.
Women tend to openly express their feelings more compared to men. Consequently, after a breakup, they often discuss it with their friends or family members, which can aid in processing their emotions and facilitating a quicker healing process. On the other hand, men have been socially conditioned to suppress their emotions, which can prolong the healing journey.
The study revealed that women experience more pain during a breakup but eventually achieve more complete recovery. This finding, to me, highlights another significant behavior exhibited by women.
They may initially feel greater distress, but ultimately, they recover more fully.
Behavior #3: Women Recover More Fully After A Breakup
What’s fascinating about these first three behaviors in women is the synergy that exists among them.
Think of causality.
The cause and effect of the situation.
Females tend to be better at emotional expression. (which leads them to) Exhibit more anxious attachment behaviors (but because of that outward expression) They tend to get over breakup more fully.
Have you ever come across that meme depicting how men and women handle breakups?
It portrays men being initially ecstatic and women in tears, but then it reverses as time passes.
Surprisingly, there is often some truth to these memes.
The Binghamton study suggests that because men internalize their emotions and lack open communication and support systems, as dictated by societal norms, their healing process is prolonged.
In contrast, women feel the full spectrum of emotions, possess better emotional expression, and have support systems in place, leading to a more thorough recovery from breakups.
So, while they may feel worse initially, the positive aspect is that they tend to overcome it more completely.
Behavior #4: They Tend NOT To Go On The Rebound (Men Do)
The next significant behavior I’ve noticed among women after a breakup relates to their tendency not to engage in rebound relationships, whereas men often do.
Although we don’t encounter many women or men attempting to recover relationships after marriage, it has occurred. However, when it comes to breakups, we have frequently seen female clients implementing the “being there” method.
The “being there” method is a strategy we developed for situations where one’s ex has moved on to someone else.
Interestingly, we have noticed a higher number of women utilizing the “being there” method compared to men.
I believe this relates back to the fact that women tend to refrain from entering rebound relationships as frequently as men. It’s not to say that women never engage in rebounds, but men appear to do so more often.
I attribute this pattern to the avoidant cycle, which I often discuss using my “avoidant death wheel” model consisting of eight stages.
As individuals progress through these stages, the avoidant (who we often find to be the exes of our clients) reaches a point where they start missing their former partner, and the grief from the breakup begins to surface.
At this juncture, they have a choice: either confront and process their emotions, something women tend to excel at, or distract themselves.
Rebounding is often a way of seeking distraction. We have observed that fearful avoidants are more susceptible to rebounding, although avoidants in general may also engage in this behavior.
Interestingly, according to the research, rebound relationships tend not to last very long.
They have a relatively low success rate, with only 19% of rebound relationships lasting beyond two years.
So, in the long run, a rebound relationship is unlikely to endure for an extended period. Nevertheless, men are more inclined to pursue rebounds as a means of temporarily forgetting or processing their grief.
Behavior #5: The “Glow Down” Phase
Now, the next two breakup behaviors exhibited by women are closely interconnected.
The glow down phase
The glow up phase
They care considered separate, but they can almost be combined into one simple behavior if that makes any sense.
To truly understand this, we need to explore a crossroads that individuals face during a breakup. At this crossroads, one can either experience a “glow down” or a “glow up.”
Let’s first discuss the glow down phase.
What is the glow down phase?
Essentially, it’s when someone reaches a crossroads and allows the grief and trauma of the breakup to negatively impact them. They may engage in unhealthy behaviors such as excessive drinking, smoking, or seeking validation through multiple casual encounters.
Ultimately, these behaviors serve as distractions.
Similar to men who may be inclined to pursue rebound relationships, women also resort to unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with the pain and trauma they’re experiencing.
Unfortunately, they neglect what we refer to as the Holy Trinity, a concept we emphasize emphatically here at Ex Boyfriend Recovery.
Instead of actively working on improving different aspects of their lives, they engage in actions that may provide temporary relief but do not contribute to long-term growth.
For instance, Coach Amor (in the podcast attached to this article above) shared the story of her friend on our podcast, who thought drinking socially would help her relationships, but it ultimately influenced her social circle negatively and hindered progress in other areas of her life.
This phase, known as the glow down, worsens one’s situation as it involves engaging in behaviors that do not lead to genuine improvement.
Now, let’s turn to the other side of the coin, the glow up phase.
Behavior #6: The “Glow Up” Phase
Coach Amor made an insightful point during our discussion about this phase.
She mentioned that sometimes one has to go through a glow down before they can experience a glow up.
It’s about allowing yourself to be broken by the breakup, hitting rock bottom, and then beginning the journey of self-recovery.
This is where the glow up phase comes into play.
During this phase, individuals wholeheartedly embrace the Holy Trinity concept.
Amor herself generously shared her own breakup experience, describing how she initially went through a glow down phase, engaging in negative behaviors and neglecting the Trinity, despite being aware of its importance.
However, once she reached rock bottom, she shifted gears and decided to rebuild her life.
She focused on balancing different aspects of her Trinity, creating momentum that gradually gained strength.
Ultimately, her self-confidence grew.
This is the key we strive for when assisting our clients through breakups – helping them reach a point where they are not only okay with their ex, but also content with being single.
They become confident in the knowledge that a successful relationship awaits them in the future. This is the essence of the glow up phase.
By working on oneself internally, positive external changes begin to manifest.
Finally, let’s address the last significant behavior,
Behavior #7: Getting Stuck In The Relapse Stage
This is going to resonate with many of you.
Let’s start by discussing the stages of grief commonly associated with breakups.
While experts often talk about the five stages of grief, according to psychologist Susan Lachman, there are actually seven stages of grieving a breakup.
The seven stages are as follows:
being desperate for answers
denial
bargaining
relapse
anger
initial acceptance of the breakup
redirected hope.
I’ve noticed that many people tend to get stuck in the relapse stage.
During the podcast episode for this article, she shared her own breakup story, describing how she went through the glow down phase and then repaired herself by going through the glow up phase.
However, she recently found herself in the relapse stage, where she constantly cycles through different stages of grief, desperate for answers, getting stuck in denial, or growing overly angry.
Her argument was that her momentum was negatively impacted, causing her to regress.
Instead of focusing on the negative aspects of her past relationship, she started reminiscing about the good times. This is an important concept that is often overlooked.
And that’s the thing, the stages of grief are not experienced in a linear fashion.
People often find themselves jumping from denial to anger to acceptance and then back to bargaining, constantly relapsing.
The relapse stage itself is characterized by this jumping around, tricking oneself into thinking they have fully accepted the breakup, only to realize that they haven’t truly done so.
It becomes a cycle that people can remain stuck in for a significant amount of time.
It’s crucial to recognize that this is a normal part of the grieving process that occurs during a breakup.
However, if you want to move past the relapse stage, there are three things you can do.
Accept your circumstances
Distract yourself
Re-appraise your ex
Accept your circumstances
Acknowledge that the breakup has happened and that you need to adapt to this new reality.
Distract yourself
Take a page from Amors book and find healthy distractions, such as going to the gym. It’s important to note that if the distraction is removed, as in Amor’s case when she couldn’t go to the gym anymore, a relapse may occur.
This brings us to the third point.
Re-appraise your ex
Take a comprehensive look at your time together and acknowledge that while there may have been good moments, there were also significant challenges and negative experiences.
Focusing on the negative aspects will help you detach emotionally from your ex.
Strangely enough, even if you want your ex back, falling out of love with them is often an essential part of the process.
Consistently the most effective approach is to outgrow your ex and move forward.
Chris Seiter 00:00 ready? Okay, today, a more and I are going to be talking about the push pull method of flirting as it relates the breakup situation. How are we doing today? We’re
Amor 00:17 doing great. I’m excited for topic today. It’s very interesting.
Chris Seiter 00:22 So I want everyone listening to this to know that more, and I spent an hour. And I literally, I don’t know if you know this more, but I timed it. You can see my screen here. I timed it below. It’s an hour and five minutes. Yeah, this outline. We barely have anything. No, I’m just kidding.
Amor 00:40 We had a lot of arguments. We did.
Chris Seiter 00:43 We did. And actually, what a great segue. Our very first argument was revolving around defining push and pull. Yeah. So so we had a fundamental difference on what push and pull meant. So I believe I think you need to
Amor 00:59 adjust that. Okay. Some people might have the same idea as I did.
Chris Seiter 01:05 Yeah, you know, it is kind of confusing because of the way they I’ve also heard it referred to as rubber banding, which might actually be an accurate way of looking at it. But of course, push and pull is the keyword people type into Google. So that’s the one we got to play with. Anyways, basically, this is funny, this is the big argument that I’m worn, I had basically for like 15 minutes. And I think I won the argument after I pulled up like multiple references, or at least a reference. But basically, I believed that pushing was essentially the kin to ghosting someone or avoiding someone and pulling was kind of like love bombing or showing a lot of interest. But a more had this wacky other way of thinking about it. And now tag your it because I don’t even know how to explain that.
Amor 01:53 In my point of view, when you push, it’s not your it’s your time of giving so much investing so much giving attention, you know, texting a lot, calling a lot, showing up a lot. And then when you pull, you suddenly take it all back. It’s a very toxic way. But that’s how manipulators do it in their mind. They’re investing investing, investing in the receivers point of view. That’s the push and when they pull away when everything is gone when they’re bread, crumbing or ghosting, that’s the pull away stage. That’s actually yeah, I realized that’s wrong. I mean, that’s not the right definition. I just really did it that that.
Chris Seiter 02:35 So the thing is, I see what you’re talking about. But for the purposes of this discussion, we’re gonna go with my definition, since I think that’s probably the most accurate one. Not to say you’re wrong, but you’re wrong.
Amor 02:52 I am wrong. Okay, but defeat.
Chris Seiter 02:55 Finally, God only took an hour. Okay, so basically, for the purpose of this discussion, push is going to be ghosting. Polling is going to be kind of love bombing. And we kind of came up with this fun little equation about really, I don’t know, maybe if equation is the right word, but basically a frame of reference to look at pushing and pulling. And, and it was actually a Moore, who had this really intriguing way of looking about how girls and guys kind of handle relationships. Yeah, so why don’t you go ahead and take that.
Amor 03:33 I used to hear this a lot from other women. not that old, but since high school. And you know, how, you know, how is the courtship starts with men pursuing the flirting stage. And we don’t know this that, at first, the guys are, sometimes they’re always into it, like, they move too fast. They give everything and when they’re excited, you know, they want to do everything they plan everything they want to see you always what the girls are not aware of is that the guys set the direction of the relationship or the courtship stage, but the girl should be the one that’s deciding about the pace of how, you know how everything goes, That guy set the direction the girl set the pace. So in that way, you’re both incorporating the push pull equation, because if you’re, but most of the time, girls are not aware of that. They just let the guy pursue and pursue and then in some cases, if if the guy is toxic, if the guy is manipulative, they know that the more they invest, they’re gonna, they’re gonna hook you in and then that’s when they ghost you or they read Chrome, you now you’re confused. There’s only one person is implementing the push and pull. The guy is setting the direction and he’s also setting that He’s so yeah, just to share girls, you need to be aware of that you should be the one setting the pace. And I think you gave a better example on how to implement it equally, because I didn’t I wasn’t even. I didn’t realize that we can. You know, the guys are the one that’s the guy should allow the girl, I think you need to talk about that more. Okay.
Chris Seiter 05:27 So yeah, I mean, believe it or not, I’ve been doing this for 10 years. It was the first time I had ever heard this take on relationship dynamics, and I loved it. So
Amor 05:37 I think it’s more of a cultural thing. Because in Asian, you know, in Asian culture, the guy should be the pursuer. It’s not encouraged for the girls to pursue. You’re allowed.
Chris Seiter 05:51 Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can’t tell you how often people want to crucify me for saying like, Oh, yeah, no, you reach out first, especially if they’re women. They’re like, No, but no. So I don’t necessarily think it’s just Asian culture. I think it’s almost as a universal thing. But yeah, so
Amor 06:04 basically, your wraps in the topic of, you know, feminine and masculine energy. right into that.
Chris Seiter 06:12 I think they are
Amor 06:13 interrupting you. Okay, good.
Chris Seiter 06:17 So yeah, basically, the argument you were making is like, Guys, in general, in relationships, they’re thinking about the direction you know, where to go, what to do natural. So like, they have this, this natural inclination to want to move really fast. They, they’re kind of in love with this pursuit stage. Whereas girls, on the other hand, they’re all about the pace of the relationship, which I really love that you talked about that. So like, you know, oftentimes they’ll say, you know, that date doesn’t work for me, or I’m not ready for that. So they kind of dictate the pace, but
Amor 06:45 we’re worried about it, but we love it, that you move fast, but we are worried about it.
Chris Seiter 06:51 You’re kind of like slow down their head honcho? You know, we’re not, we’re not quite ready for that yet. But yeah, more than I had this really another one of the big debates we had when we were kind of like outlining this topic was the healthy ways of push pull, and the toxic ways of push pulling. And I think that was that was an idea that came up with you. So basically, like, she was asking me like, Hey, what is the healthy way of of implementing this push pull thing, and I was arguing that I think there needs to be a reset in the way that we’ve looked at pushing and pulling, you know, we often look at the pushing and pulling as his way of manipulating this person to feel a certain way about us. Instead, I think a more healthy way of looking at it is the mirroring approach, you know, so when they pull back, you pull back. And what often happens in healthy environments is guys, they’re allowing the girl to set the pace, and girls are knowing when to set the pace. So oftentimes, this push pull mechanism, these two elements are present. But on the other hand, a more was talking about this toxic way of pushing and pulling. And we actually had a really long spirited debate about like, Okay, well, let’s define what the toxic way of pushing and pulling is. And the toxic way is, basically you’re trying to manipulate the person with selfish intent, so you only care about what you feel. So you’re kind of like in love with this high being chased. And we see this a lot with guys specifically, who are not allowing a girl to pace and girls not knowing that they are allowed, they let the guy dictate the pace. And these are kind of like the this, if you look at this equation of like, Okay, girls, set the pace, guys try it or think about the direction. And if that is present, you tend to have a more healthy way of looking at this push pull. But on the other hand, it’s very toxic. If guys are setting the pace, or yeah, basically, guys are setting the pace and direction. So to kind of bring this back to that masculine feminine energy or a yin and yang, both of these elements need to be in place for a healthy relationship to potentially develop. Yeah. And I do you want to take the implementing the because really, you so I want
Amor 09:15 to be more clear that go over I know, I mentioned this earlier, but if the toxic way is leaning more on what the intent is, for example, if it’s a long term relationship, and just like what we talked about, once you’re bored, you pull away everything, just because you’re bored. But sometimes, you know, I don’t know how you would react to this stress, but sometimes a little bit of that for me, for me, it’s okay just to spice things up, but don’t do it in a routine way. Like you need to you need to set it so that when you know there’s an imbalance in the relationship. Like you’re giving way too much. You have to pull back. And that’s that’s although the intention is more for yourself. You’re thinking about I like how we advise the UG hours because some of them would think so the UG hours or more for myself than that it’s toxic right?
Chris Seiter 10:08 Now you can easily argue that this is girls just setting the pace.
Amor 10:13 Yes, yes, exactly. But if they do it, is it also toxic if they need more time for themselves?
Chris Seiter 10:22 I don’t think so.
Amor 10:24 Right? Because yeah, they are basing it, but it’s not. I just want to make it clear that it’s not black and white. But you would know that if it’s toxic, if it keeps happening, if it becomes a pattern. Ghosting, you know, right bread crumbing. That’s a push and pull tactic. And they’re doing it for fun, not because they want to be want to grow, they need time for themselves. No, they’re doing it for the height of the feeling of being chased. Some because I want to address that this people, some people are, they’re not really into this, because they feel like they’re manipulating their ex. So, yeah.
Chris Seiter 11:05 But yeah, I mean, I think certainly that’s the case with a lot of people, I think the the long pole in the tent for people to understand, I guess the thing we’re trying to get out here is probably the mantra you should be having when you’re looking at pushing and pulling is instead trying to approach it from a mirroring perspective.
Amor 11:27 Racing,
Chris Seiter 11:29 because, like, if you think about it, like if you’re marrying someone, it allows a relationship to kind of unfold organically. And really to kind of hammer this home, you know, a more was asking me like, Okay, you, you’re arguing, Chris, that the the push pool concept is sort of not even the right way of looking at it. Instead, the mirroring concept is probably the better way, you know, when they pull away, you, you pull away when they pull back, you pull back. But how do you actually implement it? When you’re building rapport? And you do it? Exactly. And so my argument there is, it’s important when you’re in the rapport building stage with an ex, or I guess, just in general with anyone. We’ve had actually a lot of interesting. People in the Facebook group specifically telling us like, yeah, you know, I’m not trying to get my ex back anymore. But I use some of the stuff that you’re teaching to get exes back on, just like normal dates, and it’s working. So I do think there’s some applications here with just non breakup situations. But it’s important that you have a framework like the value ladder, and within that framework, be implementing the mirroring approach with some guardrails or bumpers. And to kind of, we kind of created a chart, I guess, to help with that. Do you want to just set up the chart? And then I can kind of go into it?
Amor 12:58 Yeah, we we talked about how do you really handle it in the real world? Because that’s probably what your concerns are, how do you implement the push pull while you’re building rapport? And with the responses that, you know, you’re gonna get? So how do you implement the push pull when you get a positive and negative and neutral and no response? That’s, that’s what you’re gonna encounter, whether you’re trying to build rapport with your ex or with a new person. So the first at first, I thought, if you always, you know, get a positive response, which what we all want in a fairytale setting your positive response? Yeah. And everything’s good. And you’re getting back faster than everyone else.
Chris Seiter 13:41 It’s true.
Amor 13:45 In real life, specially with our listeners who have avoidant access, or let’s say fearful avoidant, let’s say you get a positive response. This, does that mean, you’re not going to implement the push pull? Well, how do you? Yeah.
Chris Seiter 14:02 Are you asking me more?
Amor 14:04 Yeah. Okay.
Chris Seiter 14:08 So yeah, I mean, this is actually something like not to belabor the point here. But this is actually something I struggled with a long time. Because we see it a lot in the group. This concept of people really falling in love with being Eugene, and a lot of times they associate being Eugene with being unavailable. And that is a huge part of it, you know, but if you’re unavailable all the time, that’s not going to foster necessarily the best environment for attraction to happen. You have to be available some time for attraction to happen. And so yeah, one of the reasons why I like the mirroring approach so much is actually how it handles positive interactions. So oftentimes, what I see people or a mistake I see people making in the group is they get a positive response from their ex And then they’re almost trained. And a lot of this is my fault for the way I had the program set up in the past before we kind of like had it evolve, but they’re trained to like, Okay, I got the positive response. Now I’m gonna kind of go back into my bunker and wait a little bit, and then I’ll come back out. But what’s interesting is, when I’ve interviewed a lot of success stories, I found that it’s usually the people who take advantage of the momentum that end up having the greater successes in the end. So in my opinion, when you get a positive response with someone, it’s important to keep going. But you don’t want to match their exact enthusiasm. So if they’re like, if their enthusiasm is at a 10, you want to match their enthusiasm, but a bit at a seven. So you give them a little something, you acknowledge how they’re feeling, and you can kind of keep the momentum going, but you’re not matching them. Exactly. So you’re there’s always like a little, little sum. So I think that’s kind of the thing that makes the biggest difference. And that that is that is my way of being available while being unavailable.
Amor 16:02 Like what I basically you’re basing it, you’re trying to take it slow. Yeah. But you’re not totally pushing them away. By being predictable. You’re there, you’re like, you have to validate, but also take the lead of taking, taking everything. So because the tendency for some of the excess is that they get excited, because they get the attention back. Yeah. And then they realize later on, that they’re overwhelmed. So to avoid that, you need to give just 75% As you say, yeah, not blowing them off. Yeah,
Chris Seiter 16:33 right. I think the one other caveat I would have with positive responses is we’re talking about positive responses after the no contact rule. And after you’ve already engaged in some conversations with them, this does not apply to our rules for first contact text messages after the no contact rule. Because in that case, you usually want to give them a day or two before you reach out again and slowly. This is like when you have connection built up. But you’re kind of stuck in a stagnant limbo. But anyways, you want to you want to set up the next one for me.
Amor 17:06 Okay, I think this one’s the, when you’re getting a negative response, this is more of the concern of probably a lot more of the listeners, what you do when they’re really negative.
Chris Seiter 17:19 So when they’re really negative, how do
Amor 17:21 you can can you still implement the push pull? Yeah, like they don’t want to talk to you?
Chris Seiter 17:27 Yeah, like I said, our version of push pull is we’re trying to shift it more towards mirroring. So it’s a more organic approach or more organic unfold. So when you’re getting a negative response, the mirroring approach would actually not be perfectly correct here, because the mirroring response would have you be like, you know, they say something mean to you, and you say something mean back? Well, especially if you’re trying to get your ex back. That’s not necessarily the best thing. But instead, you want to, quote unquote, mirror that as you don’t want to reward negative behavior. So you give them space, but the question becomes, how much space and how many days depends on how negative they were, and how often they were negative. So like, for example, let’s say your ex was just kind of negative, they said something snarky to you, maybe you would just say, Okay, I’m gonna wait a week before I try to reach out again. But let’s say this is your fifth attempt to reach out to them and every time you reach out to them, they’ve been incredibly negative. Well, each time that they’re more negative, subsequently, you want to extend the amount of space that you give them. But a more you brought up a really interesting question, which is, okay, well, let’s say when you’d like you have to reach out to them. Yeah, remember, you were you were asking me, like the negative? Like, if they’re incredibly negative, you give them the space, and then you have to reach out to them again. Yeah.
Amor 18:52 How do you watch out again, how do you initiate? Like, if they seem like they’re, they really don’t want to talk to you? How do you start again? What kind of message do you send or open up in a call?
Chris Seiter 19:05 Yeah, so that’s another really great question. And I think the answer to this can be found once again by looking at our success stories. So if you Oh, well said a few years ago, a few weeks ago, I was interviewing this, this girl who ended up using our program to get our ex back. And she told us really interesting story. And maybe this isn’t an apples to apples comparison. But it gave me kind of the perfect essence of oh, this is the correct way to approach this. She told the story of how she reached out to her ex and got him to be incredibly interested back. And basically, it was during the World Cup and her ex’s favorite team got a big win during the World Cup. And she texted him like, hey, congratulations. And when he was in this really highly, I don’t know euphoric state. He responded to her in a so like, it’s finding like sometimes you just have to wait for the universe to provide the correct answer for you. So for her, it was matching something newsworthy that was going on with a happy, positive emotion. And if you can kind of find those two things and craft a text around it, you’ll tend to get better results. So that’s the best, I
Amor 20:16 actually messaged him right at that moment. She didn’t wait for, like, a few days after they won. That would be weird, because the expectation was that her ex was probably also very happy about it. And you have to give the opportunity of that moment. So you have to, yes, you have to be present at the time that when you’re about to reach out, find out what’s currently happening, that’s going to be interesting for them, even if it’s not just, I think for me, it’s also about their personal lives, you know, if there’s nothing newsworthy, you have to like, be more observant on what’s more pressing for your ex so that it comes off natural. what’s currently going on in their life.
Chris Seiter 21:01 Yep, that’s like the common theme that’s coming up here, a more which is like, natural, organic, you want things to unfold in that way
Amor 21:10 natural? Yeah. So
Chris Seiter 21:11 it doesn’t feel forced.
Amor 21:13 But with the next one with the neutral responses, when you’re not sure if it’s positive or negative? does that also mean it’s easier? Or is it harder compared to negative and positive ones? Because you’re not sure?
Chris Seiter 21:27 Yeah, I think probably the challenge lies in figuring out if it’s positive, or negative, or neutral, or like basically just defining what neutral looks like, for me, neutral is like they gave you the bare minimum. So they weren’t mean to you, they weren’t overly happy to see you, they just gave you the very bare minimum, oftentimes, this is going to be very short, quick responses, sometimes one word, they’re giving you something. So it’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world. But if you’re going to approach the when they pull back, you pull back approach, the neutral can be construed as them pulling back a tiny bit. So to mirror that same behavior, you want to pull back a tiny bit and a tiny bit. And this frame of reference is anywhere between three to five days, you’re just going to have to pick that based on your your gut on that. I don’t know if there’s too much more to talk about. Do you have anything else on neutral that you want to
Amor 22:26 know, I just realized something that in a way, it’s kind of hard because it’s kind of harder compared to negative responses. Because when someone gives a negative response, it shows that they’re still emotional about you or with you. But with a neutral one, you’re not really so sure. So, but it also shows that they’re not angry. So yeah, they’re just pulling back a little bit. They’re less emotional. So you just have to mirror that if it shows that you have a chance, a little bit. They’re not totally closed off. But in comparison to the next one there no response. Does that mean? It’s a total loss? Like, they really don’t want to talk to you anymore? Yeah, emotional and they’re not neutral? It
Chris Seiter 23:11 it’s dependent on on a lot of factors. Usually, it’s dependent on factors that lead up to your
Amor 23:17 Yeah, with no response, is there something to mirror with? Nothing.
Chris Seiter 23:24 I think the only thing that you can do is you’re texting them something. So the first thing I would always try to do is diagnose if the text messages the problem, because sometimes I see text messages in the community that people are sending. And I’m like, that was clearly a problem. Where they’re just not, you know, it’s just not good enough to get a response. And not to make this about me. But I’ve been thinking a lot about this ever since chat GPT came out. One of the interesting, maybe positive ramifications of chat GPT is the fact that it’s going to require quality content to go upwards. So now articles that are going to be picked or stand out will be higher quality, because everyone’s going to be using chat GPT to just mass create these articles that don’t have any life to them. And to kind of relate that to text messages if you just do the bare minimum in your text message. And that that in you kind of expect the response because hey, you were together at one point, this is your ex they used to respond to you all the time. Well, the rules are different now. And if you just did the bare minimum and you’re expecting a response, and you got no response, that might not necessarily be indicative of like, oh, they hate you. It might just be indicative of you sent like kind of a lame text that’s not going to get a response. So right. The first thing I would always do is diagnose if the text message is going is essentially the problem. If it is then I would fix it and try again in about a week. If you get another no response, then you’re going to want to go into like a no contact like a straight up 21 Day
Amor 25:00 For, oh, not because just 21 days, okay?
Chris Seiter 25:03 Because in that case, then it’s not your text message, that’s the problem, it’s most likely they’re really holding a grudge based on the relationship, and they need more space. Okay, and, and the most important through line throughout all of this is, I wrote this article today where I was talking about, you know, really, the strategy for getting someone back is the same, if you want to get over them, you know, consistently, we’re finding the most meaningful thing that you can do to get your ex back is to move on from them. So if you’re not
Amor 25:35 specifically has to be genuine. Yeah, you can’t really
Chris Seiter 25:39 fake it. I used to think you could, that you know, if you actually go and read any of my articles from like, 2013, or 2014, it was like, well fake it till you make it. But after talking with people, and just through authentically saying, Yeah, I, I actually had to move on, I had to get to this point where I got to this place where I was like, you know, what, whatever, I’m okay without them. And that’s when they came back. I’m not one for the masculine or feminine energy type thing. But if you want to make a case for its existence, you know, it’s there.
Amor 26:10 Yeah, I want to share something personally, because I decided to move on from a recent ex, but that doesn’t, but when I broke up with him, I still loved him. So Emotionally, I was still there, there was a part of me, that’s wanting him to get, you know, to reach out to try to get back together with me. But what I noticed is when I’m really because because I mean, this, like we’ve you know, feeling like there are times that I want him back, but I’m logically decided that I don’t want to get back together with him emotionally, there’s this wanting from me. And every time I emotionally accepted that we’re not going to get back together, okay, I need to focus on moving on, I need to focus on that I need to cut the hope. And just really focus on myself. That’s when he reaches out and it throws me off. And I have to remind myself, you have to help them avoid. So even from someone that surgically decided that they need to move on by being by saying genuinely, you have to both emotionally and logically decided to get you have to move on guys.
Chris Seiter 27:16 Well, okay, so this is an interesting thing, because you were talking and it made me think of what the article I was writing today, because I was making this point that you’re basically making, but I found some research to kind of back it up, which is really cool. So basically, these these scientists were, were looking at romantic breakups, and essentially what caused people to heal from them. And they found that there’s like this triad of strategies. So they took 24 Heartbroken individuals who had recently experienced a breakup. And they basically tested these three strategies on them. And then they would show them pictures of their acts and measure their brainwaves or what have you. And the three strategies were really interesting. So the first strategy was like negatively reappraising their acts. So basically, like, like a more think of all the horrible things about your ex. And just think about that all the time. That was strategy number one. Strategy number two was called Love reappraisal, which is essentially like accepting like, okay, we’re broken up. This is my new reality. Strategy number three was distraction. Okay, so here’s the mind blowing thing. If you do all three of these things, it can make a huge difference for you, authentically getting over your ex,
Amor 28:27 but you need to publish that.
Chris Seiter 28:31 By but these three strategies are not all created equally. So for example. Yeah, I think it was like
Amor 28:39 the negative segue for the next podcast, like a sneak peek. No, no,
Chris Seiter 28:45 I just literally wrote this article today. So it’s really top of
Amor 28:48 mind just thing.
Chris Seiter 28:50 But basically, distraction was maybe basically the most effective approach. But when they conducted brain scans, they showed that it didn’t look like distraction did not remove how they felt about their ex. It helps them get their mind off the experts did not help them what helped us get over their ex or like stop loving them as much is
Amor 29:21 perfect definition
Chris Seiter 29:26 was okay, here’s the here’s the thing. Distraction works to get your mind off of your ex, but it doesn’t Yes, prevent your love for them doesn’t go away as quickly. What makes your love for them go away is negatively reappraising them, basically thinking about all the horrible ways they treated you And so essentially, those are the two important strategies to remember
Amor 29:47 stop missing the good times. Because logic can be as you said, Yeah, I’m good with distracting myself logically. I know I’m not gonna get back together with him. But the feelings of missing the good times is still there. I want that back. And I’m like, No, you’re not. Instead, we’re having an argument with myself every day. You should,
Chris Seiter 30:06 like try to remember the experience as a whole, according to this research by him.
Amor 30:11 Yeah. In short, vilify him
Chris Seiter 30:15 if you want the love for the go down, but also, I think it’s more than that, you know, the one thing that they didn’t really talk about was that middle strategy, which is just kind of accepting this as my new reality and being okay with it. And that is what we’re trying to teach our clients. Yeah, be okay have
Amor 30:30 a new reality. Yeah, I have another take on that. Because I heard another one of those advices from I can’t remember if it’s YouTuber tic toc that it’s harder, because when we tend to remember the x, we remember the beginning or the middle. And then we don’t remember how it ended when the mask came off. When when the problems arise. And that’s, I think, how I should remember him. So that, I’m reminded that
Chris Seiter 30:57 that’s similar to the peak end rule, which is like, we don’t really remember experiences so much.
Amor 31:05 Yeah, we remember difference, the highs and,
Chris Seiter 31:07 or the ends. And so was this. The other thing, though, with the peak, enroll the people that people mostly think like the peak, like, oh, the most exciting moment of the experience, but actually peaks can also be peak negative moments in the middle. And so it can swing both ways. But what I found, like you just said is most most of our clients, they tend to only romanticize those really positive moments, but it’s important for you to realize, not all of it was perfect. And that will actually help your coping process.
Amor 31:38 It does unconsciously mean unconsciously, unconsciously remembering the bad times, but I have to keep reminding myself that you have to remember why it ended, no matter how good they look like with his current girlfriend. It’s probably not. I’m not seeing everything.
Chris Seiter 31:56 No. And I think also, there is indication in statistics and science behind people who post a lot on social media tend to be more unhappy. So I think there’s a lot of facts, I think, this going and I think also, you know, if you want to get really technical, like cortisol is not. So cortisol, when you go through a breakup it shoots way, way up. And if it’s in this elevated state, then it will stay in that eldest elevated state much longer. So normally, it takes like three hours for it to kind of come down to normal. But if you’re checking social media, thinking about that, their cortisol up, and now all of a sudden, what should go away in three hours take six months to go away. And that’s not what we want. So a lot of what we’re trying to teach people is getting them to that emotional place. But I think that’s a perfect place to end this podcast.
Amor 32:51 We went way off topic we did. So they got a sense of how to move on. So
Chris Seiter 32:58 but a more. Okay, how many coaching session availability spots do you have for this week?
Amor 33:07 This week? I have to check, but I think I have a lot of someone. I have some news this week. I have a few.
Chris Seiter 33:17 Cool? Do you want to tell people how they can sign up with you? Or potentially what coaching sessions look like with you?
Amor 33:26 Okay, guys, so are you going to put in my Calendly link in the show notes
Chris Seiter 33:31 that they have to pay to get access to that? Unfortunately, yes. We will put in a coaching page.
Amor 33:39 Yes, you have to put in the coaching page. So yeah, if you want to like if you need more one on one coaching and with specifically with your situation, you can check out the coaching page that Chris is going to put in the show notes. And if you want to know how it works, usually, we you send in a summary of your situation. And I talk about the perspective of you know, I’ll give you an outsider’s perspective and strategies and techniques on how to increase your chances, though we cannot guarantee that you will get your ex back, but it will help. I’ll help you have a more logical perspective on what’s happening with your situation. Because the tendency is most of the clients or all of them are very emotional and they can think straight and you know what, sometimes they actually know what to do. They just need like a reminder and a different date because your friends, your co workers, your family, they’re also emotional about your situation. So even if they’re giving they’re probably not. They’re not going to give you a sound advice when it comes to you.
Chris Seiter 34:50 They’re also not maybe everybody else. When they find out you want your ex back to
Amor 34:54 yes, they’re not going to be as supportive. So yeah, if you need more professional, maybe not super professional, I’m not a therapist, but a more experienced point of view and a logical point of view to see if you have I don’t want to see if you have a chance, but to assess on what the real situation between you and your ex is on which one of your thoughts or just, you know, you overthinking. So, yeah,
Chris Seiter 35:30 I can see incredibly, was incredibly authentic with her
Amor 35:35 with your coach on this. Need to see this. But how are we doing?
Chris Seiter 35:45 I’m a real person, you know, you’re not an AI.
Amor 35:48 I’m not chat TP. I wish I am. Because
Chris Seiter 35:53 knowledge base would be pretty impressive, but you would also hallucinate data and give me so I went to church. So last thing, before we leave, I want to chat GPT extremely excited about its potential of looking up studies because I was like, this can be a great resource for me to like, look up studies to prove the points I’m making. And it it came up with like all these studies, and I was like, blown away by this. Yeah, every single study it came up with it made up it was lies. It just made it up. Oh, no, I found out later that that’s a very common problem with these chatbots. They hallucinate data, but they’re so confident with themselves, that they make it 10 pages on websites. And so I click on that, I’d be like, Hey, give me the source for that and click on the link and be like, Where the heck is the page? It’s, it’s a broken leg.
Amor 36:39 That’s scary. Yeah, so they hallucinate. So they’re like imagining pains now. Oh, my God.
Chris Seiter 36:46 Yeah, they are. They’re very confident about it, too. So you always have to check when you’re like asking it stuff. The only thing I’ve ever been using it for so far is is proofreading. But even if proofreads I’m not loving, like the results, I get with it when it proofreads because I’m like, like, hey, proofread this, but don’t take away my voice just like check for grammar and fix all the run on sentences. Yeah. And it it makes me sound like a robot and I can’t stand it. But it’s so yeah, that’s what I’m like.
Amor 37:15 Yeah. That’s what I don’t like actually, with chatty be, you have to be really clear with your instruction. It’s like programming. You’re like a programmer, because if you’re not near, they’re going to decide decide on what to give you that it’s kind of weird, do not create deciding, but just based on their algorithm. It’s pretty impressive though the church Yes. chatbots. And it’s scary. It was scary. They’re still different with human interaction is very different. Because with us, of course, it’s authentic and there’s feelings involved. You know, we understand what you’re going through that the AIS don’t, they’re gonna give you made up solutions or logical solutions, it’s probably gonna hurt your situation more than help you
Chris Seiter 38:04 because they don’t understand what you feel. So you sign up with a more she’s not an AI chatbot and all that. I think that’s the perfect place to stop.
There Are Actually 7 Stages Of Grief When It Comes To Breakups
I mean, we’ve all heard of the five stages of grief, right?
Well, according to Suzanne Lachmann Psy.D., there are actually 7 stages to grieving a breakup,
Desperate for answers
Denial
Bargaining
Relapse
Anger
Initial acceptance
Redirected Hope
To be honest with you I did a blow by blow of these seven stages last week in this article and in this video,
So if you want understand how those seven stages work then definitely check out those resources (cause lord knows I don’t have the patience to write another 800 words describing the stages again.)
I bring this up though because really the meat of this article is the typical behaviors that men will “show” after a breakup and each of those behaviors fall into one of the seven stages of grief above so I feel like having at least a working knowledge of those seven stages is important.
Thus, do your research ladies (or gents.)
Alright, let’s get to the reason for why you’re actually here.
Here’s How Men Typically Behave After A Breakup
Below is a list of the 10 most common behaviors we have observed men exhibit after a breakup.
Distract themselves
Separation Elation
Social Media Creeping
Self Destructive Behaviors
Uptick In Social Media Posts
Trying To Make You Jealous
Going Back To The Phantom Ex
Ask for you back (Bargaining)
Angry (Lash out)
Your fault (demonize you)
Let’s start from the top.
Behavior #1: They Distract Themselves
It is common for men to distract themselves, whether they are the ones who ended the relationship or the ones who ended things with you.
Some common examples of post-breakup behavior that I have observed in men include,
partying excessively
playing games (both mobile and PlayStation)
and spending a lot of time with friends.
Interestingly, some men may not post much on social media. Still, when they do, they almost overcorrect as if trying to “prove that they are ok.”
The reality is that they may have spent the whole day playing games or going to a party for only an hour but made it seem like they were out all night.
By focusing on other activities, they try to avoid feeling the pain of the breakup. Still, they may also need to hide their emotions from others
Behavior #2: Separation Elation
God I feel like a broken record.
I swear I have talked about this everywhere on the website but perhaps none more famously than this video and article,
As you probably know by now most of our clients believe that their exes have an avoidant attachment style,
Which means that most of our clients exes probably experience some variation of the following cycle,
This is the relationship death wheel of which there are eight main stages,
I want someone to love me
I found someone my troubles are over
I’m noticing some worrying things
I’m thinking of leaving
I’ve decided to leave the relationship
I’m so happy that I left
I’m starting to feel kind of lonely
Why can’t I ever find the right person
It’s really that sixth stage that concerns us here. The whole “I’m so happy that I left” stage.
This is known as “separation elation” or as my favorite avoidant resource, Free To Attach likes to put,
After a relationship ends, people with an avoidant attachment style tend not to show much anxiety or distress, often feeling an initial sense of relief at the relinquishing of obligations and the sense that they are regaining their self-identity, and not tending to initially miss their partner – this is “separation elation” as the pressure to connect is gone.
So, all those times that you are worried about your ex boyfriend looking happy without you, well, it’s real.
But in almost every case it doesn’t last because stages seven and eight of the death wheel are right around the corner.
Behavior #3: Social Media Creeping
Let’s talk stats.
According to the Veronica Lucaks and graduate student who conducted a study on Facebook creeping as part of her Media Studies Masters thesis,
Close to 90% of exes admitted to “facebook creeping”
So yes, your ex will probably be spying on you post breakup. If you want to know how you should be handling that I recommend you check out my social media guide.
But ultimately the question almost always turns to some variation of,
Well, my ex is different, they’d never do this. (Yes, yes they will, the statistics bear it out.)
Or my personal favorite,
Well, my ex isn’t even on social media. (I have heard DIRECTLY from exes in success story interviews that they either used a friend or signed up JUST to spy.)
Behavior #4: Self Destructive Behaviors
I’ve been playing around with Chat GPT lately.
(Don’t worry I’m still writing my own articles.)
But I got curious about it’s ability to find me research to back up my points and it DID. Problem was all the research it “found” was made up.
But the one consistent thing that it would always relate to breakups and men is that they are very prone to exhibiting self destructive behaviors.
See for yourself,
It’s actually pretty accurate.
Substance abuse
Reckless behaviors
Isolation
Avoidance
Promiscuity
But the real problem with chat GPT is that it usually spits out generic information (right now at least.) So, allow me to add my own spin to destructive behaviors.
All throughout my life I always wanted a tattoo.
My mom said no.
My dad said no.
My very first girlfriend looked disgusted when I told her I wanted one.
Hell, even my best friend didn’t look all too pleased when I dropped a hint.
Well, during my very first breakup ever to my first girlfriend in my anger and grief I decided THAT was the best time to get a tattoo.
My way of rebelling was to get this tattooed onto my left shoulder,
It means freedom.
Behavior #5: You See An Uptick In Social Media Posts
This one is kind of interesting and it has a direct connection with separation elation.
Basically when a guy is “feeling himself” after a breakup one of the behaviors you’ll notice that he engages in is that he’ll start posting on social media, a lot.
Yes, sometimes they can be posts like this,
But very often they won’t be direct “call outs” about you.
It’ll just be an increase in posting frequency.
Maybe your ex would post once a month on facebook or instagram when you were together but now they are posting almost every day.
The question is why?
I think there are many possible explanations,
They feel lonely
Trying to make you jealous by “winning the breakup”
But for me the most likely reason is that they like the attention from other people.
That finds that receiving likes on social media can activate the brain’s reward center, similar to receiving a monetary reward. However, this effect was stronger for likes received from friends compared to likes from strangers.
Thus, as a way of “self soothing” or making themselves feel better after a breakup by relying on the attention of others.
Behavior #6: They Are Trying To Make You Feel Jealous
I’ve talked a lot on this website of this childish concept that men often fall victim to, winning the breakup.
I mean, they’ve even made entire movies about this concept,
One look at our community is enough to see how many exes can fall victim to this behavior.
But really “winning the breakup” boils down to,
One person looking more successful after a breakup than the other.
As you can probably tell this behavior is correlated to the one above it. Usually exes who are posting on social media a lot are doing so because they want to “win the breakup.”
Which is why I chose to place the two behaviors together.
Behavior #7: Obsessing About The Phantom Ex
Now we get to the crazy stuff.
Alright, if you want a full breakdown of the phantom ex and how that works I suggest you read my article on it or watch this video,
But basically avoidant exes will often fall victim to something called “a phantom ex.”
Officially, the phantom ex is a past partner that you can’t seem to stop thinking about. Instead, you hyper focus on them and romanticize your time together. Even when that time together wasn’t all that great.
But one of the things I’ve noticed that almost no one seems to talk about is how often your ex will start obsessing about their “phantom ex” while they are still with you.
And this is really on brand for avoidants.
For them, the ideal relationship is one where they don’t have to fully commit. One where they can daydream from afar.
And sometimes the pull of this phantom ex is so strong that they find themselves actively trying to re-pursue this person only to lose interest with them when they finally DO get that person
And around and around we go.
Behavior #8: They Try To Ask For You Back
Do you remember when I said that all of these behaviors can be linked to the 7 stages of breakup grief.
Well, this one is firmly linked to “bargaining.”
One admission, this one tends to be rarer but it does happen. In fact, every once in a while during my interviews with success stories you can find that an ex will ask them back during that no contact phase like in Jenny’s situation below,
Essentially she didn’t even have a chance to complete a full no contact rule because he showed up to her porch and basically begged for her back.
I do want it noted though that this is the exception to the rule.
Most exes will NOT do this.
Behavior #9: Anger
Once again pulling from our those stages of grief.
Here’s the interesting thing about anger that no one thinks about. Very often after a breakup it’s easier to hold on to anger for it’s cathartic release.
BUT IT’S A TEMPORARY ONE!
Research suggests that holding on to anger for too long can cause you to go in a cognitive decline as opposed to those who are more likely to forgive.
Basically the following functions become negatively affected,
Memory
Attention
Perception
Problem Solving
All things you don’t want to decline.
Behavior #10: They Demonize You
They make you the bad guy.
And yes, that’s even including situations where they were the ones to break up with you.
It’s so much easier to blame someone else as apposed to taking ownership yourself for problems you may have created.
This is often why you’ll hear them saying bad things about you behind your back. It’s all a deflection mechanism their ego has in place so they get to remain as the “good guy.”
How Do Men Show Their Emotions Differently Than Women After A Breakup?
I get asked this question all the time and the answer is actually really interesting and has a lot to do with the societal expectations of how men and women are supposed to handle breakups.
Women tend to feel more comfort in relying on friends and family after a breakup where men don’t want to give in to the stigma of “needing help after a breakup.” which ultimately means they hold on to the breakup longer.
This is why, over the long term men tend to have a more difficult time “moving on” from breakups as opposed to women.
They feel all this outside pressure from society that they should “have it handled.”
But the “handling it yourself” approach doesn’t really help you process your emotions.
Women have it right. They seek help from others. They talk to others. They process their feelings and this allows them to more fully let go when the time comes.
But then why is it that some men seem to move on quickly after a breakup, while others struggle to let go?
Well, I think attachment styles might play a role in explaining this.
Anxious exes: Obsess and try to fix. They don’t move on quickly.
Avoidant exes: Avoid and suppress, initially seeming to let go quickly.
But make no mistake, statistically speaking, men struggle with more long term effects related to breakups than women seem to.
Success Story: How This Woman Got Her Ex Back After He Blocked Her (And Then Decided She Deserved Better)
May 03, 2023
Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Chris (yep, she has the exact same name as me.)
Her situation was really intriguing because she actually met a new guy during the no contact rule and decided to pursue him. Of course, as these things typically go, right as she gets the new guy the old one comes back.
So, if any of this sounds interesting to you,
A unique look at how our program can work on people who aren’t exes
What being unblocked by an ex usually looks like
How to thrive during no contact
The importance of letting go of an ex to get them back
Then you are definitely going to want to listen to this interview.
Interview Transcript
Chris Seiter 00:02 All right, today we are talking to Chris, which is funny. But Chris, Chris has kind of a unique success story. She came through our program. I don’t know too much about her situation, actually, which is, which I think is gonna make for a great interview. But from what I understand she came through our program to get an ex back about a year ago, and decided that she didn’t want him back anymore. But now he’s blowing up her phone. Do I have that? Right? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, interview over let’s we’re done. Yeah, right. Worked. Follow the program. Yeah, right. Okay, so why don’t you take us back to the very beginning and, you know, take us off, I was devastated. I dated this guy for
Chris 00:47 three months, it seems like a short amount of time, but it really felt like we were moving in the right direction. And then one day, after we came back from a short, like, vacation, he broke up with me, and then blocked me on his phone. And I went all like emotional on him, you know, last night, etc. And went to his house and was like, What’s going on, and I don’t get it, you know, and just didn’t feel it anymore. And didn’t think he could be the guy I needed him to be and all of this. So I was like, okay, and I left and was devastated and was looking for something to help me get through it. But at first looking for something to help me get him back. And that’s when I stumbled upon your program, and started learning.
Chris Seiter 01:39 Okay, so he basically breaks up with you after this vacation, right? And doesn’t just break up with you, he blocks you. On the phone, I couldn’t text him. And then he dropped me on Facebook, and he just dropped me everywhere. I was like, What is going on? It was so odd. That’s intriguing. Okay, I mean, that’s not that’s obviously horrible and everything, but it’s intriguing, because we know where we’re going to kind of end up right. And lately, for some reason, in the community, I’ve noticed a lot of people panicking because they’ve been blocked on the phone. So I feel like your story can help those type of individuals. But so you go and do kind of the typical thing. You go to Google, you go to YouTube, you start searching frantically for how to get your ex back, you somehow stumbled into our ecosystem? Did you stumble into any other ecosystems and try any other programs first? Um, no, I didn’t really try any other programs.
Chris 02:36 I think I think what I liked about your program first is that you had that Facebook group that I could kind of kind of like sit in and kind of hang out and just watch everybody else and kind of what they were doing and then then jump in, you know, what else I liked about your program was the audio. I could listen to your audio books. So I’d be like, you know, getting ready listening to yours for the day listening to your stuff, or in the car driving listening to your program.
Chris Seiter 03:02 It’s kind of cool. Yeah. Did you listen to the podcast at all? Now that you’re on the podcast?
Chris 03:09 Right. Um, actually, I listened to one I think, that wasn’t like, mostly it was the books that I was listening to. And the Facebook group,
Chris Seiter 03:19 for sure. Okay. So you’re kind of one of those those lurkers in the Facebook group that took a while to get your toe. Right, you know, dipped in, but obviously at some point did you dip in did you get like a battle buddy? Did you do I did.
Chris 03:35 I got a battle buddy. She was great. Um, then I actually somebody else latched on to me through the group, and then we became messenger, you know, Facebook Messenger, buddies about it. And so the community is just really great. And being able to tag people on Facebook when you have a question. Yeah, have them answer you right away and help you through it. All of that was key, for sure.
Chris Seiter 04:03 Okay, so obviously, we’re skipping over some important stuff. You’ve, you’ve resolved to get your ex back, you’ve taken the step of getting the program you’re in the community. But you’re blocked. So what is your no contact look like? Do you how do you text him when that that kind of goes about why don’t you take us through that?
Chris 04:25 So um, after I had looked into your program, I was deciding okay, I need to, I need a 30 to 45 day no contact because I lost my emotional control on him. I went to his house. He was still texting me a couple of days after that, but it was very, like blah. After he unblocked me, so he blocked me and then unblocked me the next day.
Chris Seiter 04:51 Okay, so it was kind of a quick unblocking walk you again at any point,
Chris 04:55 um, you know, I don’t remember if he did I know he did. didn’t block me on Facebook. He just unfriended me. And I know from my brief history with him, that he was somebody who checked other people’s Facebook pages, because he was like, Oh, check on the plane home from this vacation. He was like, Oh, check that person out, you know, because I think I’m blocked. And it was just one of our mutual friends or whatever. I was like, okay, so I checked it out. And he was like, oh, there’s always a way to just so I remember him mentioning, there’s always a way to find things out. And I was like, okay, so I knew he would be checking out my Facebook page. Yeah. And he tipped his hand to that too, because at the end of March, and we had broken up at the end of February, when I had just started a new job and inland a huge deal. And I posted about it, and he did reach out a day later and texted me and said, I saw you got a deal. Congratulations. And I was like,
Chris Seiter 05:54 even though you’re not friends on Facebook at this point. Right. Yeah. Just I just heard through the grapevine. Is that is that the whole the whole show?
Chris 06:02 No, I would I just assumed, you know, I was friends with his son’s girlfriend on Facebook still. So I don’t know. You know, he, I guess you could have heard it from her.
Chris Seiter 06:15 But he could have, he could have taken her phone and looked it up just yet. Right?
Chris 06:19 No, I think he, um, I was still open. I didn’t change anything about my Facebook, kind of like your program said, don’t make any huge changes. Leave things the way they are. And my Facebook was never like closed, it was open to friends of friends. And so if his son’s girlfriend was a friend, he had access, and I knew that so I was going to be as big as I could be throughout this whole thing. So you basically are going through the No Contact Rule? Did you struggle at all with that? Absolutely. Because he reached out, you know, he texted me. And I was like, oh, you know, I want it so bad to text him back. I mean, I did goof up at one point, in the very beginning, it was probably two days in. And I just basically said thanks to that text, write about the deal. And then after that, I was like, Alright, I can’t do that anymore. I had to restart. I had to restart the whole nine, no contact thing. And then I was good. But it was hard. I’m glad I had the battle buddy. I had, I’m glad I had the community to fall back on because I could, you know, go on there and say, oh, you know, he texted me and everybody’s like, no, no, don’t text you back. You know?
Chris Seiter 07:43 So. So that’s interesting. You basically said you were kind of doing a 30 This 45 day, no contact. He reaches out to you day two of that you say thanks. You started over from the beginning. Did you end up breaking it again? Or did that support system of the battle buddy or the community kind of helped bring you through that?
Chris 08:05 Yeah, I didn’t break it again. So I was pretty proud of myself at that point.
Chris Seiter 08:09 Okay. Did you what kind of changes do you feel like you made during the no contact?
Chris 08:15 Everything I was, I was bound and determined to get my life in order and to be somebody who would be attractive not only to him, but just anybody. I was still going to go date I decided I needed to date other people, just to kind of distract me. From the whole thing. Was that pretty horrible?
Chris Seiter 08:39 Most people say it’s horrible.
Chris 08:40 To date. It can be I mean, I did. So fast forward, I ended up finding this great guy,
Chris Seiter 08:46 right. But initially afterwards, did you struggle with it? Yeah,
Chris 08:50 I did. I mean, it only took me a month to meet this great guy that I thought was great and start falling for him. But he was also one of those that was kind of off limits, not sure what he wanted. So this whole program helped me you know, kind of keep myself from texting my ex ERP, but also helped me on the other side with being really emotional and having emotional control. And not being pushy. And being very patient on the dating side, too. So okay, great.
Chris Seiter 09:27 So this is interesting. So you’re basically saying you met the new guy, like a month after no contact ended or like right when no contact right when no contact ended?
Chris 09:39 Oh, actually. Actually, I met him. I gotta say I met him probably two weeks after we broke up. So I met him during the no contact phase. And things just maybe started amping up. Okay, as a contact.
Chris Seiter 09:55 Did you like meet him at a work function?
Chris 09:58 No, I met him online. I met him Man online dating to me that was like the, that was the thing that I needed to get over the hump of. Yeah, Guy and it’s so funny, I signed up, like maybe a couple of days after we broke up. I was like, Fine, I guess I’m gonna go back on to dating where I met this guy to, you know, my ex ERP. And then I go on, and the next morning, I’m flipping through and they’re his face pops up. It was just like, dying. I was like, oh, first I was like, devastated. And I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me. Like, already, you’re on here after, you know, dumped me. So,
Chris Seiter 10:38 but aren’t you on there too?
Chris 10:40 I know. But I wasn’t the dumper. You know, it was kind of like it’s true. It’s kind of like, okay, you dumped me, I guess I have no other alternative and to get back out in the dating pool, but so it was kind of interesting. And I think he blocked me on the dating site, which is fine. But um,
Chris Seiter 10:56 okay, so you eventually are on this dating site, you during no contact, see this new person? Do you immediately start dating him during no contact? Or at least taking him out on dates? Or him taking you out on a date during no contact? Or did that wait until
Chris 11:14 we went on date? We went on a date. We went on a date during no contact.
Chris Seiter 11:20 Okay, that’s interesting. How did that go?
Chris 11:24 It was great. Actually, I was really, so I was really attracted to him. And we hit it off really well. And it’s funny the first day I had with him. I left that date because it was a very impromptu date. Like, it’s like, Can we meet after work today, I really want to meet you because we were texting and doing the whole messaging thing. And so I was like, I guess I can squeeze you in. And I did. And then when I left him, I went to my real date that I had set up with another individual that I did not meet online, he and I were friends and decided to go out on a date. So yeah, I was busy. I can’t busy. I kept myself busy with dating. And I also kept kept myself busy with all of the hobbies that I started. And all of the improvements I was doing in my life. So I was really busy.
Chris Seiter 12:15 Did you post about the date on social media?
Chris 12:19 No, I did not. Well, I did not post about the date I posted about where I was, like going out to dinner. Okay. I posted like a check in.
Chris Seiter 12:31 Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Okay. So no contact ends, you’ve been on a date with this new guy, you are actually feeling like you’re attracted to this new person, which, interestingly enough, Chris. That’s kind of rare. Like most people who come through our program who go on dates actually dread it, they hate the dates. Use first
Chris 12:55 date. Okay, I went on a couple of other dates, which were bombers. And I was like, this sucks.
Chris Seiter 13:03 But you kind of found a winner in the guy. And then how does that look? You come out of no contact? Are you at that place where you’re kind of like confused on if you want your ex back? Or if you just want to go forward with the new guy.
Chris 13:17 Yeah, I was still confused. I mean, if maybe, you know, at the end of a no contact if the guy would have been open to because I did. I did the whole program. I did the reach out for you know, help text, you know, or advice text. And he was he responded, but was very short. And by the way, on his end of the spectrum, he also linked up with another woman not too long after he broke up with me and was still, you know, pursuing her. So I was like, okay, he must be done with me. He’s with this new girl. I’m gonna reach out and see what happens. And he would respond with some help. But then that would be about it. You know, it would be it would kind of end there. I’m
Chris Seiter 14:04 sure that that kind of further push you into the new guys. Yeah.
Chris 14:08 Okay, I guess you’re not. You’re really not that interested. I don’t know. You know, I know you’re still dating that other woman. So I didn’t you know, I didn’t go crazy about it. I guess at that point. It was interesting. I mean, I still want to entertain dating him, he would have asked me out at that point, but he he didn’t you know,
Chris Seiter 14:31 okay, so at some point, or maybe a better question is at what point? Is it like an organic process of getting to this point where you’re like, you know what, I’m gonna put most of my focus on the new guy. Or is it just like after that initial attempt to reach out and almost like his coldness. Did that almost push you into the arms of
Chris 14:52 the new guy? Yeah, I would say it did for sure. It wasn’t like I put all of my energy into the new guy either, because how odd is that? Right? Yeah, I am. And he wasn’t ready either clearly, to be in a committed relationship with Me, either I could tell that. So I was still dating him and still dating other people, even though I knew that I wanted to be with him.
Chris Seiter 15:24 If that makes any sense, yeah, no, I mean, the does. So the new guy. You mentioned a little bit earlier in the interview that you had to use some of the techniques on him. He almost had some avoidant tendencies himself. Can you maybe walk us through that?
Chris 15:42 Sorry, I think the whole social media posting thing was huge again, because he’s, uh, he’s on social media all the time. He still is.
Chris Seiter 15:50 What’s these guys that you’re dating? It’s like, yeah, social media mavens or something like that.
Chris 15:59 Yeah. And I think the new thing now especially on Facebook, or and probably anywhere, but I’m just more on Facebook. These guys throw out these dicasteries nets to ask for all of these friends from their friends groups, to all these different women. I think they sit there and like, go, oh, that she looks cute. She’s with what she knows my friend, I think I’ll send her a friend request. And so I mean, with him I was looking at is the s like cheese? How many new friends can you get in one month, you know, like, 30 different women and guys, too, but it was like she’s, you know, a heck is going on. So I just knew he wasn’t in the mode to be somebody who was in a committed relationship. At that point. He was really still searching and trying to get over his, his breakup, probably his divorce. And, and so I was just going to be patient with him. I was like, okay, you know, I really liked him, but he’s obviously not ready. And I’m just going to keep living my great life and posting about it. And I know he’s on social media all the time. So he would see it, and like it. And you know, even text me commenting about some things. So that’s just kind of how I, I feel like I helped if the program helped me land him too, because I didn’t let myself lose emotional control with him. I was very patient knowing he was fearful avoidant of being in a relationship, especially after all he went through. So I focused on having great times with him, when we had the times I focused on sending those texts that were going to grab his attention, you know, that I learned through your program, and make him laugh or smile or whatever. So I’m building up those moments with them in those times with them to make the relationship stronger that way.
Chris Seiter 17:52 Did you you mentioned you, you sent text messages. And you’re kind of you’re kind of putting some effort into pursuing him. And but you’re mentioning he wasn’t at a place emotionally where he was maybe ready to enter into committed relationship? Did you also start dating other people while you were trying to approach it?
Chris 18:15 I did. I had, I wasn’t intimate with anyone. All right. But I had to start dating just to kind of like, stay open because I didn’t want to fall in that trap of this is the only person who’s going to receive my energy when I’m, I know, I’m not the only person receiving some energy from him. So there had to be that mutual, you know, understanding there, even though that’s not what I wanted. I could tell it clearly wasn’t what he wanted. By
Chris Seiter 18:45 literally what I was gonna ask is, did you notice he him start to chase a bit more when you started doing that?
Chris 18:52 Yes, I mean, chasing in the way that people think is chasing? Maybe not. But I mean, we would, we would have a run of maybe two or three days of texting, or maybe meet up and then two or three days of texting, and then I might not hear from him for two or three weeks even. But he might like something on my Facebook page. And you know, I might like something on his or whatever. But there was no real communication. Maybe for two or three weeks, the old me would have lost my mind would have been like cheese, the weeds come on, you know, we just talked for two or three days. Where are you? The new me was like, I guess you need some space right now. And I’m just going to have to hold out and wait till he responds to me or until something happens in my life. That’s so fun and funny that I want to share with him. That’s going to make him reach back out to me. So I did those things.
Chris Seiter 19:44 Okay, I mean, it seems like you’re doing you’re like holding your boundary. Perfect. Right? So not to jump in between the two guys, but you’ve gotten pretty far down the road with a new guy and you’re kind of slowly getting closer and closer. Did you Do did you kind of like what’s happening with the with the exit this point did? Is he starting to kind of re pursue you? Or is it still radio silence for him? No,
Chris 20:10 there were probably three or four months of maybe radio silence from him. And then all of a sudden, it was like, boom, text out of nowhere. Just checking to see how you’re doing. I haven’t talked to you in a while. You know, even wanted to meet me out for coffee. You know,
Chris Seiter 20:28 I started kicking in. Yeah, I agreed
Chris 20:31 to meet him out for coffee, because I thought to myself, you know, maybe he needs? Yeah, maybe he needs closure. I mean, I really, at that point, I was so into the new guy, I was thinking, you know, I don’t think I could go back to that. That guy, you know,
Chris Seiter 20:45 oh, that’s music to my ears. Because it probably worked. So so like, how did the meeting go when you did meet him for coffee,
Chris 20:53 and met him out for coffee. And I, you know, in my mind, again, I thought maybe he just needs closure. Like maybe he thinks he was really awful person to me. And he just needs closure, and he just needs to hear that I’m okay, and see that I’m okay. And, and we could still be friendly, whatever and call it call it a day. But we met out for coffee. And he started dropping hints that you know, he had made a mistake. And he was just afraid at the time and didn’t think he could do be the guy I needed him to be like he said, and he really looks back and knows that I was the best match for him. Even though again, I think he’s still dating this other girl at this point. So well, what’s going on? I thought you were dating someone? And he said, Yeah, I think she’s going through a lot of issues. And I don’t know that she’s the one for me, and
Chris Seiter 21:47 rest isn’t so green on that other side.
Chris 21:53 So I mean, it’s interesting, the whole timing of it. Because if he would have done that, I don’t know, three or four months prior, I probably would have taken him right back. Yeah, I would have said, well, let’s give it another shot then. But where I was at that moment, I was very secure and telling him you know, I’m sorry that this all happened. There’s no hard feelings on my end. But I’ve already, you know, into the start of another relationship with someone else that I care about very much. And, and I did tell him, I said, Well, you deserve the best. So I mean, I would hold out for the best if you don’t think you’re getting it. And that’s all I said. And, you know, we hug goodbye and went on our separate ways. And I thought we were done. But no, since that coffee meeting, I’ve probably gotten a text from him every month. Since then,
Chris Seiter 22:46 try it again. Try it again. Try it again.
Chris 22:49 And the last one amazing, I posted my most recent one on your page. That’s what
Chris Seiter 22:54 what prompted my wife to get to get the interview to get
Chris 22:59 on the group page. But the one right before that, you know, he had reached out to me about some pictures, he saw that I posted and said You look great and all of this and I was like Okay, thank you. But so he posted he sent me a text he was he was on vacation in Costa Rica with his new girlfriend. And, and some other friends too. But I was like, how can you text me from your vacation? With your new girlfriend, your new girlfriend, you’re texting me? And it wasn’t anything? I guess overtly flirtatious. But it was, you know, I was talking to his friend there who lives there about you. And just wanted to say hi, you know that I was thinking about you? And I said, Oh, that’s great. I’m glad you to her. Okay. Now, you know, or because they had a little tiff going when I had known him before. And it was just I don’t know, it’s just weird to me. I’m like, seriously still. So I don’t know. I don’t I I feel for this other girl.
Chris Seiter 24:01 That she’s kind of getting the short end of the stick. He’s not fully in.
Chris 24:05 Right. And they’re even building a house together. I saw I saw on Facebook. So yeah, I don’t I don’t I think maybe even the next time. I’m just going to say, you know, I think you should concentrate on your relationship. And, you know,
Chris Seiter 24:23 probably for the best. I mean, yeah, yeah, sorry. Sorry. No, I think in a weird way, you’re just kind of getting a glimpse of what life would have been like if you had gotten back? Absolutely. It’s kind of alarming to see that he’s hitting up with the girls while he’s really heavily invested into this new person.
Chris 24:46 And I want to ask him that almost. I want to say, you know, were you doing this when we were dating three months because that’s not cool. You know?
Chris Seiter 24:55 What is I’ve been doing this for 10 years. So I’ve been able to To study breakups and relationships, and specifically post breakup behavior, and specifically, when someone moves on to someone else, and enters into this really tense relationship with them, or intense relationship with them, how often they end up coming back to the x. And you know, I’ll never forget my wife, right? When we got married. One of her co workers who was married, started messaging her on Facebook Messenger to try to ask her out on a date. And she’s like, aren’t you married? So it’s, it’s really indicative of this concept that I talk a lot about, which is that investment aspect, you know, like, sometimes if you’ve invested a lot into a relationship, even if you’re unhappy with it, you can’t bring yourself to leave it. And so you mentioned that they’re building a house together. I’m wondering if that, you know, obviously, that requires a certain amount of financial investment. And that kind of gets him sticking. But he’s he, I mean, people who are happy don’t typically reach out to the Rex is found, you know, and he is a lot every month. That’s right. So in a weird way, you you kind of dodged a bullet, and looks like you got the guy that’s treating you correctly. How’s that going?
Chris 26:30 It’s going good.
Chris Seiter 26:32 We kind of skipped over that part. How did you how did you get the guy
Chris 26:36 I finally got the guy again, just by being patient. And Og, I think he was in a place where he wasn’t ready to commit for all for probably about six months. And at that time, he probably wouldn’t have committed either. Had we not had a kind of enlightened, enlightening event happen. And I say that the universe was kind of working in my favor, even though at the time it didn’t feel like it. You know, I was on probably on Facebook and hit a button I shouldn’t have because I was, you know, one of those that scrolls on Facebook on my phone a lot. And so I got a text from him one day, and he said, question, and I said, Yes. And again, this is when we weren’t talking every day. And I said yes. And he said, one of my Facebook friends says You sent her a friend request. And I said, I did. I said, I don’t know who that is. And he gave me her name. And I was like, I don’t know who she is. So then I went on my Facebook on my computer to see you know, what friend requests I had sent. And then there it was. And I was like, Oh, I didn’t mean to do that. I said, I really didn’t mean to do that. I said she must have come up in my suggested friends as I was scrolling and I accidentally hit the button or whatever. I don’t know, I still don’t know. To this day, I really think it was the universe intervening, intervening on my behalf or our behalf. Because then this girl started to message me. And I was and I had texted him that I said, Oh, great. Now she’s reaching out to me. And he’s she Do
Chris Seiter 28:18 you know who this girl is to him? Like,
Chris 28:20 No, I didn’t know anything at all. Like I said, he was he was one of those guys who probably added 3040 Girls a month. So I had no idea who she was. And out of out of 1000s of Facebook friends. This is the one that I you know, hit the button on right? wishes he has like over 1000 or 2000 Facebook friends. So right away, I tell him this that she’s messaging me, I go, Oh, great. Now she’s messaging me. And he knows right away. I went on a date with her a few weeks ago. And I was like, really? And he was like, Yes, just one date. And I said, why? And he said, because of not knowing what I want. And he had expressed that to me, or, you know, before. He was honest with me about where he was. And I said, Well, I and I told him, I said, Well, I’m really upset right now. I don’t know if I can talk about this right now. I said, but if you are still searching, and you don’t know what you want, then it’s obviously not me. And that’s okay. And then I went, I said, you know, we just need some space right now. And he agreed, and then we had no contact.
Chris Seiter 29:37 So essentially, what you did is you did almost like a breakup with him.
Chris 29:43 Right? Right. So I had so I decided we needed no contact for a while to think about things and where things were and for me to get my head on straight. I knew I still wanted to be with him. Even though this happened because, again, we weren’t in a committed relationship. He was very upfront with me about where he was. I knew still, I still wanted to be with him. But I knew I couldn’t continue on this path of not knowing anymore. You know what I mean? So we did, we went on this no contact for a couple of weeks. And then I after two weeks, I just sent all the while he was still liking things on my Facebook page, by the way. And I was not responding. And, and he did ask me a question. And one of my Facebook posts, like, how did you do it was golfing? And I said, fine. And then that was it, you know, so I wasn’t, I wasn’t kind of feeding into all of it, I was still trying to stay kind of low key about everything. And then after two weeks, I had texted him, you know, just checking to see how you’re doing. And that was all he needed to say, Hey, I’m doing great. You know, I saw your project you’re working on on Facebook? Um, can I give you it? Can we talk about it? Can I help you with it? And I was like, I mean, I guess Sure. If you want to help me with it, that’d be great. Because Okay, how about if we meet after work? It was like, the next day after work you wanted to meet? And talk about this project? And then we did. And then we talked, we had a really good talk about. I mean, we’re probably saw each other for three hours talking about, okay, what are we doing? Are we going to try this? Are we going to move forward with this? So, um, you know, it worked. It worked out for the moment, you know? Yeah. So,
Chris Seiter 31:38 do you do? Like, how did the actual relationship ask go down? Was it him than initiative? Was it you that initiated,
Chris 31:48 um, he was initiating when he was talking about his feelings about everything he had told me that he had missed me. And he had told me and I didn’t, in my wildest dreams, never thought I’d hear that he missed me. Even though I knew he did. I knew he, he missed me, but I didn’t think I would hear it from him. And, and that he was sorry about everything. And that, you know, he didn’t want to not have me in his life. So I was really again, not putting my foot down looking for a, Hey, are we going to be committed then kind of conversation? What I did is I just accepted what he had to say. And then I also said to him, you know, I have to apologize to you told me that you weren’t ready for something. And, you know, so it was upsetting to me to find out that you had went on a date, but I really had no right to, you know, I guess be upset about that. So I was really under a lot of emotional control, which is programmed taught me, you know, and, and when you’re when you really want to be with somebody who’s in that position, you know, a fearful avoidant, who’s afraid to kind of put their heart back out there, because of their past. I guess you have to be prepared for all of that. So. Um, so then it wasn’t until maybe three days later, or four days later, when we saw each other that he wanted, he was kind of pushing for intimacy. And I was like, Yeah, I don’t know, I’m not going to do that. Because I don’t know where you are. And I don’t, I’m not going to do that with someone until I know that they’re, I’m the only one suing perfect.
Chris Seiter 33:36 How do you respond to that? Did he commit to that?
Chris 33:39 Yeah. And then he knew he was like, you have all of my attention. I am not going to be dating anyone else. I’m not going to be pursuing anyone else. And I was like, great. Now we have now we’ve got something so good. So that was a long road. You know, that was? I met him in late February. And that was that was August. You know,
Chris Seiter 34:01 you mentioned he had gone through a divorce was that a relatively recent divorce?
Chris 34:07 Um, he had been officially divorced for about a year was broken. I mean, separated for probably three years prior.
Chris Seiter 34:16 Okay, so things were not going well between those two, but I’m sure that creates some sort of like wound or scar. Oh, yeah.
Chris 34:23 And I think honestly, I think guys are more scarred than women. When it comes to broken relationships.
Chris Seiter 34:29 Statistically, you’re correct, actually, that one of the big differences between men and women after breakups is women tend to struggle with it more initially, but over the long run, they tend to get over it more fully. Whereas men tend to not struggle as much initially, but they really have a hard time getting over it in the long run. So statistically, you’re correct.
Chris 34:52 That’s been my experience anyway. But yeah, Fast Forward August to today, we still went through some some things but met his family more involved in each other’s lives. Now we talk to each other every day. You know, but we had another bump in the road, maybe, you know, six months at well, and that’s six months, maybe five months after that, where I had to talk to him about Facebook, you know, like opening up his stop
Chris Seiter 35:25 adding these people.
Chris 35:26 Yeah, stop. I don’t want to see any more. I mean, I couldn’t see the people because he had closed off his friends list after that happened. I think he didn’t want things to happen. You know, me to hit on suggested friend requests, and you know, any of that happening, any other women may be seeing me or seeing that He’s liking my stuff or whatever. So I had to have that talk with them. You know, like, okay, it’s been six months, like, when? When are you going to open up your friends list and open up your Facebook to me, I said, I could see people who like your, your posts, and who are they like, Who is this girl? Page and said, like, Who is she? Like, do you want to date her? Like, who is she? Do you want to date her? And he was just like, looking at me dumbfounded because I didn’t think they meant anything to him. I honestly didn’t. I almost feel like it was just like a buffer between really committing and committing, you know? Yeah. And right away. He was like, I don’t I don’t know. I guess he said I, okay, I need to clean up my Facebook. I apologize. I’ll open up my Facebook page. I didn’t realize it was still closed. I it didn’t really didn’t think about it. And I said, well, it bothers me. And this bothers me. And so when I left his house, which was funny, I just left his house and he was texting me when I was still in his driveway. Are we okay? And I’m like, Yeah, we’re fine. We’re fine. He says, Well, this means a lot to me, You mean a lot to me. So I’m gonna go ahead and do all of these things. And he did. And he has, and nothing’s in, Everything’s been great since that point on.
Chris Seiter 37:03 Well, that’s what they actually recommend the when it comes to relationships is bringing a problem to the forefront as opposed to letting it fester. So if you sense a worry, or something, maybe within reason, some people I know will go overboard with that. But I think he did the exact right thing, which is like that was bothering you, you bring it to the forefront, allow him to address it. And he did. And now you’re good.
Chris 37:27 And I had honestly, it had been bothering me for a while. But again, I was just like, You know what, I’m gonna let him handle this. If he wants to be with me, then he needs to handle this. I don’t even know that I want to bring it up. Because I don’t want to look like the insecure, you know, girlfriend who’s now like, looking at everything he’s doing on Facebook. But um, I guess at that point, I was just like, done, like, I was like, okay, and my friend had just gone through a similar issue with her boyfriend, they went up and down and, you know, broke up and got back together over this whole thing. And I just said, You know what, I’m a little tense about this given my girlfriend’s situation. So maybe that’s making me a little ultra sensitive about this, but it’s bothering me. And then it was like, no problem. I will delete, and he went through and deleted a ton of women. Right? And, and open his friends list to me. And it’s been like I said, since then, that it’s been great. And I think we’ve been talking about a lot of things together since then. So it kind of opened the door to more intimacy like emotional intimacy, and a better relationship.
Chris Seiter 38:37 It meanwhile, the ex is still texting me every month, like clockwork.
Chris 38:44 Yeah. And I, you know, I don’t feel. I mean, I feel bad for the other woman. I really do feel like next text, I have to say something. Yeah, I don’t feel like I’m being disrespectful to my boyfriend now. Because I know how I feel about it. It’s not anything to worry anybody over or to even mention, you know what I mean? Yeah. If he asked, it would certainly tell him but he’s just he’s not an insecure guy about that at all. So yeah, I think that’s what I have to do about that. But it made me laugh because I’m like, this program really does work and and they will come back if you just start improving yourself and showing that you’re okay. I think that’s that’s what they need to see is like, Oh, she’s okay. She must be very stable. And I think in this, this dating world where there are tons of unstable people, unfortunately, and people who haven’t healed from past hurts, whether they’re relationships or childhood or whatever. You know, that’s like the gold. That’s like a gold standard out there to have your shit together. I’m sorry. I can’t swear.
Chris Seiter 39:54 I think we’ll be okay
Chris 39:56 to have your you know your life together. tend to be well put together and in charge of yourself. That’s, that’s Ultra attractive. because not a lot of people are there. So that’s where this, this program really helps whether you get the ex back or not. Because you might not want to back like I didn’t, this program really causes you to look at your own life and take inventory and make yourself better make yourself into that, that ug, you know, a person and and so if you don’t get that guy back, who cares? Look, you’ll get something better. You know,
Chris Seiter 40:39 I think that’s sort of the long pole in the tent. Most people don’t realize, most people come and they think they want their ex back. But I don’t think that’s what they really want. They want a really healthy, happy relationship. Like, like you found. And the weird, roundabout way of getting that is oftentimes you have to be willing to let the X go. And then that’s when things start happening for you. And I think you kind of are a perfect example of that. You know, like, I’m sure you you go to the outset of the breakup. You’re sitting there thinking, There’s no way he’s blocked me he’ll even contact there’s no way he’ll ever want me back. Now fast forward a year, you’ve moved on. All of a sudden, what’s happening, he’s starting to reach out even when he’s supposedly in a very committed relationship with someone else, which I think says more about him than anything else. But if you want my ultimate opinion, I think like, you’re just getting a glimpse of what probably life would have been like, had you gotten back with that person.
Chris 41:45 I feel like I dodged a bullet for sure.
Chris Seiter 41:48 Yeah. And there’s, I was reading a study yesterday about people, scientists, they’ve been looking at the effects of getting back with an axe and have found often that not necessarily getting back with an axe in general. But getting back with an axe, where there’s an on again, off again, type situation going on, they found that that tends to make people not only more anxious, but more depressed. And it’s a huge problem that, that I’ve found with helping people get their exes back, because a lot of times they break up again. And as this leaves the person to even to a darker, deeper depression. So a lot of times, maybe a couple of years ago, I started switching to like, Hey, I think the important thing here is to let go of your ex because not only does it help you get them back, but you might find, you know, the happy ending that you stumbled across. Right. So completely. So you obviously kind of just slayed your life and got pretty much everything you wanted. Do you have any extra things that you feel like we’re really helpful and important for you during the during the breakup process?
Chris 43:06 You know, like I said, I just kept busy, I made new friendships, new girlfriends started, you know, concentrating on that my girlfriend started concentrating on my, my life, my work, my you know, extracurricular activities, things that I’ve always wanted to do that I never did before. So I learned how to, to go shooting, shooting a rifle. I’m actually starting my first competition this Sunday. So good luck. I’m excited about that. I know, that’s kind of controversial for some people, but just target shooting. I
Chris Seiter 43:51 grew up in Texas, you know, everyone hasn’t gotten there. So yeah,
Chris 43:56 it’s just it was just, it’s just a fun competition to hit targets and, and some I’m challenging myself that way but, and did some art classes, took some music courses, I mean, just stuff like that. Like, I feel like I’m a more well rounded person. I don’t mention my kids, but I was able to delve into their lives a little bit more to and not worry about outcomes so much, you know, and I’m showing them what you can do, you know, it’s like you’re at the end of your relationship, you don’t have to fall apart, you know, when you can right,
Chris Seiter 44:32 start new setting the right example. Right.
Chris 44:35 So, um, I think all of those things were, you know, and, and reading as much as you can about it, you know, learning how to do those, and learning how to respond when your emotional control is running, you know, running low and knowing that you’re going to have that issue and what you should do when you when you feel it coming up. Um, I mean, that was huge for me, for me to be I am not a patient person at all. I want things to happen now I want my life to happen. Now. That’s been my entire life. And then this happened. And then meeting this fearful avoidant man who I knew I was, I wanted to be in a relationship with having to force myself to be patient. And to you know, my needs are going to take a backseat for a minute. I mean, they really didn’t, my needs in a relationship, maybe took a backseat. But then my other needs got said, No, while I was waiting, waiting for that to happen, and concentrating on just being that fun, well rounded individual, so that the other person had those experiences with me, my new boyfriend, had those fun experiences with me and didn’t want me to go, didn’t want me to leave it because he didn’t feel like I was reliant on him for everything. But knew that when we were together, we just had this awesome time and connection together. I love that.
Chris Seiter 46:06 Yeah, you know, thank you so much for coming on and doing this.
Chris 46:09 Yeah. Thank you for the program. I’m so glad that I found it. Really, I still need to, even though I’m in this great relationship, I still follow the program. I still, you know, when he gets busy, like I haven’t seen him all week, we still talk every day, but I still manage to find things to do where I’m not, you know, reliant on that. And even tonight, it was like we were, he was saying I have so much to do to get ready for, you know, work that he has to do on Saturday. And I said, Well, you know what, it’s Don’t be pressured and don’t feel pressured. We don’t have to see each other. You know, Friday night, you can do what you need to do and I’ll do what I need to do and I’ll just catch up with you Saturday night. That was all you needed to hear to maybe Calm, calm himself down and say no, I want to see you on Friday. So we’re going to make it work. I love you when you pull back, they move forward. You know what I mean? Yeah,
Chris Seiter 47:04 that’s what we always say when they pull back you pull back and that’s kind of If you abide by that you tend to get the positive results. Right. But again, thank you so much for doing this awesome name. Chris. The two pieces having a super cool conversation. We haven’t met a crispy haven’t liked yet. Right? Exactly right.
Chris 47:25 There. Thank you, Chris. I really appreciate it. Thanks for what you do. No problem.
Success Story: She Got Two Exes Back With Our Process, Here’s How!
Apr 24, 2023
I had the pleasure of interviewing Nina. A woman fresh of getting her ex back. What’s really interesting about her situation is that she ended up using our program to get not one but two of her exes back.
Believe it or not this isn’t uncommon.
Sometimes we’ll have someone come through our program and either succeed or fail, ultimately move on and then years later they’ll come back into our orbit after they’ve gone through another breakup.
But what really struck me about Nina was just how patient she was throughout the whole process.
In this interview you’re going to learn,
Nina’s story with her first ex
Nina’s story with her second ex
Ultimately what she believes the optimum way to get an ex back is
Being wary of this idea of immediately wanting to fix things
How she got through the holidays
Letting the universe dictate your texting reach outs
Looking at if her ex had the grass is greener syndrome
Pinpointing exactly how long it took to get her ex back
Let’s dive in!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Chris Seiter 00:02 Okay, today we have a another success story with a really interesting woman named Nina, who not only, I mean, you originally came on here to tell me about the 1x, you came back, but then I get on here, you’re telling me you actually use the program years ago to get another ex back. So we kind of got to to one special here. But thank you for doing this.
Nina 00:25 Yes, of course, happy to be here. So I’m not sure Should I just start from like, the first year, I’ll try to make,
Chris Seiter 00:32 it was literally about to ask you like, how should we tackle this? I think maybe just going back to the very beginning with the very first success story, and then kind of taking us through that first.
Nina 00:44 So my first ERP, we dated for like, a year and a half, and things were great. And then out of nowhere, he kind of had like a commitment issue. He freaked out a little bit on me. And what space?
Chris Seiter 00:56 Hmm, how long did you?
Nina 00:59 Yeah, or like a year and a half? Okay.
Chris Seiter 01:04 What space after a year and a half?
Nina 01:06 Yeah. And then like, like a year and six months. And then he got a little bit scared of a commitment. He needed time for himself and his hobbies. He’s just like those guys that have a million things going on at once. And he had space. And he kind of wanted a break. And I said, I don’t do breaks, you’re either in or you’re out. So I was pretty determined in that sense. I’m not going to stand in limbo. So he said, Well, I need space. And I said, Okay, we’re done. I was a little drastic. And he freaked out a little bit on me. But we still broke, we broke up. And I didn’t, but I still obviously loved him. I didn’t want to end things. But I wanted him to be sure. So that’s when I looked online ways to get your boyfriend back. And then that’s how I found ERP. But I didn’t join the group or anything. I just listened to the podcast. And I found out about NC, no contact and this whole process of working on yourself and giving it space, the situation the relationship him. So I follow through it. I did 30 days. But the thing is that he reached out to me, like consistently, he would text me he would call me well, he didn’t call me right away, he would just text. And I wanted to respond. But the program said not to. So I didn’t. And it was hard because he was pursuing me a lot. Like I want to talk I want to know how you’re feeling I miss you. I didn’t want to break up I wanted to break. But I stuck to no contact. And then after 30 days, he called me. And I didn’t pick up. Because I mean I still wanted to do more. I didn’t just want to call it wasn’t gonna be that easy. And then he sent me a message saying, Hey, can you pick up the phone? Because I want to get together with you to talk because I want to get back with you. It was very straightforward. So I was like, Okay, that was fine. I can I can Yeah. Right. And it was, I mean, he pursued me for like a month. And I was like, Well, okay, so I gave in, we talked it out. When we got back together, then COVID happened, and we realized we weren’t a good match. So we broke up and I didn’t pursue him anymore, but it worked the first time.
Chris Seiter 03:04 So basically, what you’re telling me is all you really did was a 30 day No Contact Rule. And that Yeah, didn’t come back. Yeah, that’s amazing. But
Nina 03:13 yeah, but the thing is that usually people don’t do no contact, like it’s it’s easy to fall back into the Oh, okay. Let’s talk about it again. And again. What like, what did we do wrong? How can we fix it like, it’s normal, everyone wants to talk it out and see if you can figure it out by talking more about it. But sometimes you don’t have to talk, you have to let the other person figure out what they want on their own. So I’m definitely a fixer. Like, if problems happen, I want to talk about it. And I want to fix it now. But no contact forced me to let him really make up his mind. And he did. So it worked. So then, two years later, I have my current ERP. And the relationship was very healthy. I’m from South America, and he’s also from a neighboring country in South America. So we have the Latin American culture in the sense that we speak Spanglish to each other and it’s great. And then we reached the year we had a very healthy relationship, no really big problems. And he freaked out another one with commitment issues, which I seem to pick without realizing
Chris Seiter 04:19 was there was there like Okay, so this is interesting to me. You have two guys, both of what you got back, both of which are starting to pull back around the same time, you know, like a year and a half of the first one a year. Yeah. Second one. Was there. Like, were you trying to push for a bigger commitment, like moving in together getting married? Things like that? Oh, actually,
Nina 04:40 not at all. I am old now. I don’t know if it’s relevant. I’m 31 back with my other europei I was 2827. But I never really pursued any type of bigger commitment. Obviously, I would like to get married at one at some point, but I was never pushing for that or living together. I’ve always been very independent. But I think, I don’t know, maybe they can sense that I’m more ready in a way. That’s what, that’s what my europei from now told me. That’s why he’s kind of
Chris Seiter 05:08 like it was just like a inherent feeling that like, Oh, she’s more ready two years. Okay. 2129 You said you’re 31? I’m 31
Nina 05:20 I mean, there’s still a big difference. I felt different at 29.
Chris Seiter 05:24 I mean, when I turned 30, my whole body broke down. So that’s how I knew I was.
Nina 05:29 One has to go to bed at 1030. And I’m already hungover the next day. It’s It’s terrible. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 05:36 But okay, so commitment issues from the current ex boyfriend. Does he immediately break up with you? How does that work? You said, You’re a fixer.
Nina 05:47 Weird, because last last year, which is our main year together, we traveled to Europe two times I went to visit his country two times, he came to visit mine. And we both live in New York. So it was it was big moves. And we were always great visiting each other and like, it was never a problem. And then last year around like Halloween, he told me he wanted to go to go back home to his country for the summer as in like our winter because he’s remote and I’m not. And he’s like, I want to go back and work there. And I said, Well, I can’t because I’m not remote anymore. And he said, Okay, well, I’m gonna go. And I was like, What? What do you mean, you used to have you bought a ticket, or you just bought a ticket so clearly had
Chris Seiter 06:28 been on his mind without not assaulting you at all just kind of sprung it? Yep.
Nina 06:32 He’s like, I’m gonna go to Argentina. Oops, the country, whatever.
Chris Seiter 06:36 You do Latin American country. Well, yeah, we’ll have to tag this. Yeah. I told you, I told you need to happen. Well, so
Nina 06:50 he got a ticket. I was in shock. And I was angry. I because he did this out of nowhere. I was like, You should discuss this for a couple. And then he’s like, Yeah, about that. I feel like you’re in a different stage in your life you want, I feel that you are ready. And if things go well, in a few years, you would expect the ring or marriage. And I’m not ready for that. I always imagined myself settling down at 38, which would mean I’m 40. And yeah, I was like, what, and I never discussed this. And he’s like, and I’m just scared because I feel like you’re ready. And I just I’m not I’m not ready to plan my life of someone. I just want to do what I want to do. I was like, Okay, why didn’t you ever tell me this before? He’s like, I don’t know. I never really realized until now, because I don’t know. It just all. It was little things that just kept packing up until he just exploded and he bought a ticket home. And he’s like, I’m leaving in two weeks. And I was like, wow. And he’s like, I have doubts. And I said, Okay, well, I mean, I was shocked. I really thought this was it for me. Because we had a very healthy relationship. And I went, I remember reading back in ERP, I was like, you don’t nag you accept that? And I said, Okay, you want to go you have doubts. You can go, obviously, it was really hard. We cried. We both sad because he was still like, I love you. But I have so many doubts. And I feel like I can’t be with someone when I have doubts. It was hard. And so we were still together for those two weeks. It was weird and miserable, because I would have like crying attacks randomly during the day. And then the data he left we say goodbye. And that was it. And I stuck to no contact. But days again to reach out. Which he didn’t at all. Ah,
Chris Seiter 08:23 so you did it. Was it a 30 day no contact that you did?
Nina 08:27 30 days? Yes.
Chris Seiter 08:29 30 days. Okay, but this time, like the very first X, he did not reach out at all
Nina 08:34 at all zero. So I was like, wow, does this mean something so I was comparing I couldn’t help it. Because I had done this before. But the other guy was texting me and texting calling. And this one was zero, like nothing. So it freaked me out a little bit. But I was like, It’s okay. I don’t I don’t know what he’s doing. It’s fine. It’s better with no contact is figuring himself out. He told me he was gonna get therapy. I was like, Okay, maybe you will maybe it’s all talk, but I had a little bit of hope. So yeah, the first 30 Days came by, and well, this aro is going to be a little bit related to it’s gonna give me a way. But whatever, it’s fine. So, um, the thing is that for the for the 30 days that ended it was the World Cup. And his and I had like a bet.
Chris Seiter 09:25 One of the team was in, in that world cup. Not saying any zoom. Yeah, as a fan feeling. What are the two teams?
Nina 09:35 Yeah, one of the two teams, I was like, if his team wins, I’m going to text them because it matches the time. Yeah. And I’ll just say like, congratulations, because he’s a big soccer player. He’s like diehard fans. So yeah, it’s gonna be important for him. So his team won. I’m not saying who it is, but you know,
Chris Seiter 09:52 yeah. Or what stage of The World Cup it could have been early stage or late stage. We don’t know. You know,
Nina 09:58 we don’t know. So whatever the point is that they want his team, and I reached out, and he was like, wow, I he said, I was hoping that you would text me today. It’s one of the happiest days of my life. And now all I could do was think of you I was expecting that positivity. I was shocked. We hadn’t spoken in 30 days, I was like screaming in my room. I was like, wow, I would never have expected that. And I just responded like, I hope you have a great day celebrating with your country. So that’s it done. But yeah, that was my first row. I didn’t want to do another one. So soon, because I knew that he would be gone in this country for like four months. And I didn’t want to pressure. I was like, I know he’s very set on his ideas I didn’t want to be chasing around them. 30 days seemed like too little to start, like building rapport and start talking to each other. So then the holidays came, and it was hard because I was I knew he wouldn’t reach out, but I had a little bit of hope. Or you didn’t. I was miserable Christmas to reach out. New Year’s he didn’t either. It was so sad. I remember texting the Facebook group. And I was like, I’m so miserable like I’m but it helps you know that the Facebook group helps so much. I think that’s what got me through it. Besides your podcasts, which I would listen to, at first, the first few weeks, like non stop in my work, because I needed someone to talk me through it. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 11:22 So they know who you are a full circle, listen
Nina 11:24 to music. Yeah, you can’t listen to music. I can’t listen to anything else. So I just needed someone to talk to me about like, getting over this or what he’s thinking. So the products was the first step and then the face. And then in January, I went home for a little bit for like two weeks. And I thought okay, now I’m going to do my second Auro. And since we had visited this place in my country with him, I decided to send them some photos.
Chris Seiter 11:50 That’s a good move. I like that one. Yeah,
Nina 11:52 I know, I know, the first reached outs are supposed to be about like advice or something like that. But I didn’t want to go there because I thought it felt a little
Chris Seiter 12:01 personalized in your situation. So the first one is like the diehard fandom, which like, okay, so I’ll try not to put the teaching hat on here too much. But basically, like, one of the tenants of like the first reach outs is always engaging them in an interest that they have. And you kind of did right? You did that right moment when he was at a high point. And then the second reach out seems to be more of an emotional nature type text. Yep, I’m assuming like, the pictures were places you and him went together and had good memories. Yeah. Or,
Nina 12:34 like, for us, it was like blueberries because he loves blueberries. And we want them to like the last time so I sent them a photo of the blueberries. And I was like, Look what I found on news like wow, like, it’s unbelievable. He always responded very fast, which I liked. And it was very engaging, asking me questions, like, I tried to keep it short. Like, look how beautiful and you’d be like, how are you how’s your family how’s work. And I would just, you know, put a stop to it. And it was hard because I didn’t want to talk. But I remember about having to do an accent. So after a few exchanges, I’d be like, Well, I’m gonna go to the lake. I have no signal by and then I just put my phone in airplane mode.
Chris Seiter 13:11 Oh, that’s amazing. You know, the one thing that’s already striking me is really interesting about your situation is you are really patient. And that is a rare, rare thing in in this kind of an industry because most people are really anxious, driven. But you actually had the patience to wait until the right moment to text him. And then when you did get him and things were going well, you did the one thing that’s probably the hardest thing is as the end the conversation when it was kind of at that point, and it seems like you did
Nina 13:44 it is it’s hard. The thing is that for me, I know a lot of people were stressing out about NC and do we say that in a Facebook group? But I don’t, I don’t. So I didn’t suffer through that. For me. The anxiety points were texting him. I hated it. I hated texting because I didn’t know if he would respond. I hated being at his mercy. Like, what if he does
Chris Seiter 14:05 not? Control? Exactly.
Nina 14:07 So for me, no contact was easy. I’m like, Oh, I’m ignoring him. I mean, I’m in power. And then the second that I had to reach out every time I felt that was losing control. So I hated the anxiety that I felt I wanted to cry every time I would text him.
Chris Seiter 14:21 You know what’s really, you know, what’s really interesting about that, what you just said is that in my experience, it’s an either or type situation. You either get a client that struggles mightily with no contact but kills it at texting, or you get the client that kills it at the No Contact Rule but really struggles with texting. I’ve never seen someone that that thrives at both. It’s it’s like an either or type thing. Oh, thanks. So you’re the No Contact queen. Not so much. The texting thing was hard.
Nina 14:53 I mean, let me tell you i was really putting in the work though. I was like, Oh, I have therapy. I also was doing meditation. And I was like, do breathing exercises before I texted him, I’m like, You’re gonna be okay. Even if he doesn’t respond, like, whatever, like I would play scenarios in my head, I’d be like, okay, even if it takes three hours, what are we gonna do? We’re gonna freak out? No. So I was really like putting in the work, to not get overwhelmed like, and it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t just
Chris Seiter 15:17 hard to do, though, like, like you say, as if it’s a flip thing. But when you’re in that anxious stage, and it’s like, your your mind is sometimes your own worst enemy, because you start like, oh, he doesn’t text right away. Is he with a girl as he would this is this is not happening. And it freaks you out. So it’s really, I mean, kudos to you for keeping calm during the during those that time.
Nina 15:40 And I was, I was still having a bad time, that adrenaline rush and feeling sick, you would take an hour to respond. I’m like, wow, I’m really not a priority. We we have 30 days, and it’s still not respond like, wow, it hurt. And I was miserable. After every reach out. Even when it was positive, it would still open up like the breakup. So it’s still hurt. It wasn’t easy. Yeah. But um, but yeah, I did like the second reach out while I was home. And I know that I have to start closing the gap. But I still didn’t feel that it was natural. So I was kind of playing it by ear. I was like, whenever I have good content to ask him, or to make our reach out, I’ll do it. I’m not gonna force it. And then another week went
Chris Seiter 16:16 by I was smart. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Do you want to keep going?
Nina 16:19 Like, yeah, no, it’s all good. So then another week went by and I was so home. And then I had another content that I could I send them another photo I made I we used to make pies last time that we went into like DME into summer. So I made a pie and I send them a photo. I was like, Oh, look, look at this. And he was like, wow, like, that looks amazing. And then that was like my third reach out. And then after we did a couple exchange, he would always say like, it’s really good to hear from you. And I was like, great, like, why don’t you? I mean, I didn’t ask that. But
Chris Seiter 16:50 I was like, why aren’t you reaching out to me? Dope cup, like, Yeah, I
Nina 16:54 mean, I did ask him later on. So I do have an answer for that. That’s good. But um, but then that was my third reach out in early January. And then I was like, Okay, I’m not gonna reach out again. I just feel dumb. Like, he can reach out but, but I needed I needed a break from the anxiety of texting him. And also I was back in New York, and I had no nothing to talk to him about. I felt like I was good. So I waited and I did another no contact with like, 45 days. Super easy again. I was like, Oh, I was chillin. I was so used to not texting him. I was like, This is great. I was sad. But I mean, time was passed out enough that I wasn’t like, completely miserable. I would get a little bit sad sometimes, but it wasn’t terrible. And then after 45 days, mid February, let me think i
Chris Seiter 17:40 Were you part of the Facebook Lives that I did. I feel like
Nina 17:43 yeah, I was sometimes. Okay, good.
Chris Seiter 17:47 I’m like, I know, you’re like, I was just like, trying to think like, your situation. sounds so familiar. Like the second period of no contact is what triggered it for me. Sorry.
Nina 17:59 Oh, no, no worries. I mean, I was every I have no, like main plan, because I only knew that he would be back in the city and like mid March, and I said, Okay, I got up, time it properly. So it’s not too soon. Not too late. That’s I needed to give it space. So I was but I was playing all the reach outs right here. And then mid February, I thought like he had been 45 days now with no contact at all. We still had each other on social media. We hadn’t deleted any of each other’s photos, which I would check that was like my one thing I would check every day because he deleted photos. That meant something. Right? So I was like, as long as he still follows me, we neither of us did anything he wouldn’t, he would occasionally view my stories, which I would freak out about. And then sometimes I would, I would reward him with my own view. You know, I was like, if you viewed me maybe, like,
Chris Seiter 18:48 it’s like the dog treat, you know, like, you can have a treat,
Nina 18:50 but I would never live first. Never first. So then mid February, I thought it was like time to reach out again. And I needed it. I roll but I was like I need to come up with something that feels natural. And then my mom messages me and she goes, Hey, I’m going to this city, which is his city for the weekend with your dad and we wanted some new restaurants any that you recommend? And I was like wow, perfect disguise. Oh,
Chris Seiter 19:16 thank you. Provides Exactly, yes.
Nina 19:19 Right. I was like waiting on something. I was like, this is perfect. So there we go. So I reached out. I was like, Hey, can I use your advice in your area of expertise? Yep. But first he goes, whoa, and I’m like, Well, what is like it’s great to hear from you. Like Wow, thanks. I was like, you know, you can reach out to me he says I could but I shouldn’t Wow, okay, that ruined my day. I was like you shouldn’t
Chris Seiter 19:43 I must oppose the Facebook group that seems so familiar.
Nina 19:48 Oh, yeah, I did. I did. Actually I posted screenshots because I was hyper focusing on that and like he hates me because he shouldn’t
Chris Seiter 19:55 feel like I saw that. And I was like, I feel like he may even commented that That seems so familiar to me.
Nina 20:03 Yeah, yeah, I definitely commented about that, because that was like the thing that stuck to my head for weeks. But I asked him advice for my parents. And he was, he loved it. He was giving me all these tips of restaurants and he’s a foodie too. And then he would throw in some information, like, I wouldn’t know which bars because I’m not going out. I’m like, Okay, I didn’t ask for bars, but got it. So he was giving me all these little like, insights that he was, you know,
Chris Seiter 20:26 seeing the bar comment is also like, hey, I want you to know, I’m not going on a date with anyone else. Yeah,
Nina 20:33 I was like, Okay, I didn’t ask. But yes. So, um, so that, so that was good. And I said, Okay, well, thanks for the tips. Bye. That was it. Um, then. And then I was like, Okay, I could reach out and oh, and then three days later, he did his first reach out ever means you went to a museum, which was the first I was like jumping out of joy, because he, he knows that I love poetry. And he went to a museum and there was a poetry installation. So he took photos and sent them to me. And he was like, I know I shoot. I said, I wouldn’t text but I saw this, I thought of you. And he sent me photos. And then later, I found out that he was on a date. And he sent us photos to me.
Chris Seiter 21:13 Oh, so he did. He did go out with other Shame on him.
Nina 21:18 He’s like, nothing happened. It was a day day. I was miserable thinking of you sending you pics? Like, are you kidding me? Like, of course, I didn’t go anywhere with Elsa. That girl. It was like, I was like,
Chris Seiter 21:27 like, just between you and I and Nina, that poor girl. She’s on a date with this guy. And he’s taking pictures and sending them to his ex you know?
Nina 21:35 I know.
Chris Seiter 21:36 I mean, it’s good for you. But I feel I feel for the other girl too. Yeah, I
Nina 21:41 was like, I was shocked. He’s very honest. And I was laughing about that. I was like, wow, I would have never suspected that. But, but yeah, that was his first reach out. And I laughed about it. I was like, Oh, thank you for thinking of me. I love this photos, whatever. That was his first record ever. And then I wanted to keep the conversation kind of open because it was in one week. We have spoken two times. So it’s like, okay, I need something else. And then the Lord provides again, because my mom that went to his city went to the same museum as him and took photos of an installation to me, and I was like, guess what? So so then we had another conversation. I was like, Look, my mom went to the city museum. Isn’t that funny? And that was it. And then after that, I was like, I’m done with reach outs, I’m not gonna reach out again, because it’s mid February. I know he’ll be back in mid March. I’m done. If he wants to talk to me, he will. But I’m like, I’ve initiated over four or five contacts. If he doesn’t want anything else. It is what it is. And I waited on Skinput. And then in mid March, he came back. And he reached out to me, but his first message was a little weird, because he knows back to the poetry thing he knows that I love and I to read and write. And it was like National Poetry Day and I posted some like poems and like my Instagram, and he reached out like, hey, like, I admire your writing so much. It’s taught me so, so much. I don’t know. I appreciate that about you. But the way that you wrote it sounded like he was saying thank you for the teachings goodbye, like. And I was. I was like, wow, yeah, he was like, thank you. For all you’ve taught me. I was like, Excuse me, like, that’s it. So because he was back in New York already. So I missed I responded. And I said, um, that’s it. I lost. That’s the only time that I ever lost like, like, What do you mean? That’s it? I’m like, that’s all you have to say. You’re back in New York. And that’s the only thing you say to me.
Chris Seiter 23:36 I feel like he did that on purpose. That’s just me. He said, What do you
Nina 23:39 mean? He’s like, um, he’s like, No, that’s not all I have to say. But I was just like, seeing that I appreciate this about you, blah, blah. He’s like sending me paragraphs. And I was like, I’m done. Because I thought he was like, just saying, bye. So I stopped responding. And then he’s like, No way. I want to see you. You didn’t take it the right way. I want I meant to some other way. And I was like, Oh, wait, what? And he’s like, are you bad? Like, I want to, I want to see you when can we meet? And I and I was angry. So I was like, sometime next week. And then he’s like, next week? We can we see each other this this weekend? I was like, wait, wait, wait, hold up. I was like, we maybe I’m, maybe I read it wrong. So then I said, Okay, maybe this weekend, and then a day later, he was like, let’s meet on Sunday. And we met on Sunday. And
Chris Seiter 24:24 I wasn’t nervous. Well, obviously.
Nina 24:26 Yeah, it went really well. I still wasn’t sure because he had never reached out. It was all me and I thought I mean, I had hoped but as a side of me thought maybe he would say hey, like I need more time or I love you but I’m not ready. You know, like I will always have love for you. But this isn’t it. So I was a nervous wreck. I was meditating and breathing like crazy that day. And we met at the park and they’ll second that we saw each other I literally lost all emotion. Like I think I don’t know I just my my I went like turned off emotion. And I just stopped being nervous, which is great. But it was freaky. And we were just walking. And he kept staring at me looking at the giving me these romantic looks. I was just like, what? And he’s like, No, I’m just taking in the moment. I was like, what? And then nothing. He told me that he this time apart, he had realized what he had the he knew he had like commitment issues, but he really cared about me had never felt like this about this way about anyone in his entire life. And even though he’s still scared, and he doesn’t feel like 100% Ready, he wants to be and he’s ready to work on these things together if I’m willing. And I was just sitting there kind of like numb to it. Like, what’s what is happening? Like my head couldn’t process because I had imagined this moment in my head for so many months. But I was like, Wait, this is really this is real. I know is like Yeah, sure. I mean, if you want, like we’re gonna try it was playing it’s so chill. When it was like months of planning. So yeah, you and this was like two weeks ago. And I told him, like, it’s gonna be hard, you know, because I lost trust in you. Because you literally got up and left me. You created a problem that wasn’t there before, as in me trusting you. But it’s going to be a lot of work, you’re gonna have to be persistent in with me giving me reassurance. And we’ll see how it goes. And he’s like, No, I want to live my life. Like, let’s build it together. Like if you want to move a move, I think we should move in together. At the end of next year. I’m like, Whoa, this is day one, like, relax. But things are going great. So yeah, I never really expected it to be that Well, I mean, we’re, what two weeks and we don’t know how it’s gonna go. Right. But But I have a good feeling about it. I think things are going to be okay.
Chris Seiter 26:49 Yeah, I mean, the thing that really sticks out to me so far about your situation, moreso. The second one is just how patient you were. And also, I love this concept in I’m not ever sure I’ve ever recommended that. But it’s actually such a such a poignant one, which is like just not texting until you actually have good content to provide, you know, like, like, every one of your text messages was pointed, had a point. And it was pretty successful. And I think it only worked because you had something interesting to share each time as opposed to what I think happens a lot in the community is people make up stuff, you know, they do. But yours were really always authentic. But also the thing that really sticks out to me is how patient you were, you know, you weren’t afraid to like, oh, I’ll just wait another 45 minutes. You were also I feel like you really were the definition of that concept where you’re like, you know, if I don’t get it back, whatever. Because you literally I think by the end of that 45 days, or maybe even at the beginning of that 45 days, that second no contact that you did. I think you were kind of already there. You know, you were just sort of like well, I’m not going to push things, which I think is a huge problem in the community. I see people always wanting to give into those fix it mentalities. But you I mean, I’m impressed. I don’t say that.
Nina 28:11 Oh, my gosh. But I mean, I wasn’t always like this, I was more anxious. Like with my other ERP X, the first one. I was very warm, emotional, I guess I would snap quicker. I had less patience. So I think also that drove him a little bit to want that breakup, originally because I was very dependent on him.
Chris Seiter 28:28 And very dependent. You said, Yeah,
Nina 28:31 dependent on him. It was like living here from a new country. And he was he was American, he was from here. So I think being patient and not overreacting or or like acting on a whim is very important, you know. So instead of freaking out right away or wanting to text or wanting to respond when I feel you mean something, I’m I try to pause and think okay, because every time that I’ve acted fast on I’ve reacted in the moment, usually I regret it. So that’s why I’ve tried to take my time with things now. And that usually ends with a better result. So
Chris Seiter 29:05 yeah, the only thing that can really teach you, sorry, the only thing that can really teach you something like that is if you actually live through it. I feel like so the fact that you had successfully gone through the progress you had successfully kind of manage those emotions one time already, but the second time it happened, you at least had some sort of a framework to fall back on and help you through that. And I feel like that helped getting you to that safe space emotionally. Which is so hard to achieve. Do you feel like the oh so before that us You said you got some dirt from him? Like why he likes you and everything what can you give anyone listening like like yeah
Nina 29:51 we’re very open with our in the sense that we talk about like he told me he went on a couple of dates. It was miserable. I mean, I went on dates to when I told him that not that many not not a lot of detail. But you know, the general idea. And I did tell him I was like, I’m so pissed that you never texted me in these four months, and I’m there sending you photos reaching out for the World Cup, like, come on, like, why didn’t you reach out? And he said, Well, I was really he’s like, I took all of me not to text you every day. I thought of you in the morning at night. It was awful. But I wanted to give you the space to heal because I was the one with doubts, and I’m the one that left. So it would be unfair for me to keep texting you and stringing you along. When I left you, I felt it was unfair. I didn’t deserve to text you. Because I left you. So even though I wanted to know how you were doing, and I wanted to tell you, I miss you. I love you. It just wasn’t the right thing to do. And I was trying to be a good man to you and let you maybe like, possibly move on. But I didn’t want you to. But you know, I wanted what was best for you. And I was like, Okay, well, you could have texted me for New Years. He’s like, No, I mean, I was I wanted to but
Chris Seiter 30:56 so did you ever, like quizzing him on? The reason he had those doubts in the first place? Like the commitment doubts that caused the breakup originally? Yeah. Well, he
Nina 31:07 said, like, he didn’t really believe in marriage, much. His parents had went through a bad break, divorced when he was a kid. And he just, I don’t know, he just felt very young. You know, he was like, I thought maybe I would get married. But it would be very late in life, I was still very focused on having fun with my friends and going out. But then I realized this time apart that like, I was, like, not wanting to do the same things. You know, I didn’t want to just go out to a bar or be with my guy friends, I want to my partner, I want you. I want to go home and be with you and hang out and like have conversations and like, I don’t know, like do more wholesome things. And I guess that comes with like, maturity and not having you around that made me realize that. So like, Okay, well, the time helped. And he even said himself, he’s like, I’m not I don’t regret the time away. I needed that. Because I did have doubts when I left. I did really not feel ready. And then in our time separated, I realized what I had. So I needed that time away from you. And I actually thought that you had done when we got together at the park since like, we spoke three or four times because I felt like very, I don’t know, I felt very naggy with my reach out. I still felt very bad about it. I was like I have such a losing power, even though I reach out once every 45 days. But he thought I moved on. He was like I was terrified. When I invited you to the park, I was sure that you were going to tell me like you were dating someone new and you were happy and like, by like, our thing was in the past because even though we texted and you gave me like photos, and you were nice, it felt very like just friendly. You were never giving me emotional like responses like I miss you or like nothing romantic. You would just say hey, here’s a picture of a pie made like a cute Okay, bye. Have a nice day. So yeah. In that, in that sense, I guess it’s important to not give too much emotion because he really thought I was being friendly. When clearly I wasn’t, you know. So? No,
Chris Seiter 33:02 what’s interesting is I think of your situation almost sort of like he got the grass is greener syndrome, but not necessarily with another person with a with a life type thing like, right, like with the freedom aspect. And then I think the beauty of it is, once he got over there, he realized, you know, the grass isn’t so green so much anymore, like, and I think that’s so that’s so common, where people kind of build up this fantasy in their mind about how like, oh, well, you know, if I didn’t have Nina, I could go out with my friends more and have more fun. But then like sometimes when you actually engage in that you realize this isn’t as fun as I thought anymore. Life doesn’t have a purpose. And then that’s when the missing starts to kind of kind of happen. And I feel like weirdly enough that helped you? Which is, which is I guess interesting. Just hearing his
Nina 33:56 Yeah. 100% Because at first we had never spoken much about I mean, we knew we wanted sort of like a future together. But we hadn’t spoken that directly about okay, next year, we’ll move in together in two years. If things go well, we’ll get married. It wasn’t like that exact. And now, I mean, I never even brought it up. He brings it up now. So now I feel I’m the one that’s like, Okay, wait, relax, okay, because I gotta learn to trust you again. But he brings it up all the time. Like next year, when we move, we have to get this type of apartment, or I would like a view. I’m like, Whoa, it’s it’s two weeks in and he’s already like making plans, which is great, you know, like talking about the future and everything. But he had never done that before. So it’s great that he came to this conclusion on his own, without me having to force him to stay. I just let him figure it out on his own. And I think that’s the best way to have someone because, you know, you didn’t have to convince them.
Chris Seiter 34:48 Yeah, it’s authentic. You know, they know that you they want to be there. They’re not being forced to be there. But I think the challenge with that is you you have to give up power. And that’s the hardest part you have to be able they’ll kind of give your heart to someone else and kind of be like, Okay, I trust you with it. Don’t Don’t screw it up. And when that person has screwed up in the past and has broken your heart, it’s really hard to do that again.
Nina 35:12 Oh, yeah, I’m struggling now I’m not gonna lie. It’s a struggle. Like he says, all these things now. And I’m like, This sounds great. But really, like, it’s that easy. Like, you just come back. And now we’re just gonna live happily ever after there’s gonna be a catch somewhere.
Chris Seiter 35:26 Yeah, it might be a little bit of the honeymoon period kind of sparking, we find that when couples get back together, the real big risk is that we’re trying to avoid any kind of on again, off again, situation. So it’s really important to take everything at the beginning with a little bit of a grain of salt. And I think the advice I’m constantly giving to people who get back together, is that whole adage of, hey, when you see that they’re pulling back a bit, you pull back as well. Let them let them lead. And so far he is leading things seem to go going incredibly well. But where I feel like most people get in trouble is they fall back into sensing, oh, my partner’s pulling back, I need to fix this. As opposed to giving the partner because a lot of what you described is very dismissive, avoidant behavior, not to kind of break someone down to to an attachment. So I mean, people are far more complicated than just their attachment styles. But he literally moved away. He didn’t reach out to you at all, during the No Contact Rule. It took them a long, long time before he was willing to reach out we know, you know, only when the ex thinks that you have moved on, do they start to get that nostalgia? All of those things have happened for you. So I’m pretty confident saying he’s got dismissive avoidant tendencies, we often see that and exes who have childhoods where they witnessed or parents go through divorce, they have kind of this traumatic experience with commitment and things like that. But overall, I think he played your hand brilliantly across two axes, really, the the first x, I’m not even sure we can count because it happens so easily. For you, Nina, that’s like, it’s like, you don’t usually get that simple of a thing. The second x is more indicative of what I’ve seen consistently across the platform with success stories, and so on and so forth. Out of curiosity, how long did it take from the start from start to finish before when the breakup occurred to when you got him back?
Nina 37:23 Well, it was a total of like, four months, told me Well, the second he told me, like, I’m having doubts. I was like, this is done. You know, when he when we were having this conversation, like, wow, this relationships over no matter what we talked about. So that was like, early November, and then he left in two weeks. So like, November 15. And then he was back around mid March. So 15. Yeah, to like March 15. Exactly. Yeah. Like, wow, much.
Chris Seiter 37:52 Yeah, it’s actually a little quicker than our average or average is like, right, around five to anywhere between five to seven months is sort of the sweet spot, the Goldilocks zone,
Nina 38:00 if you will, yeah, I saw that. And I was like, Oh, God, I don’t know if I can wait that long. Also, because I get over people like, I’m not seeing you. I’m not talking to you. I just don’t see you. I kind of forget, like it was already getting difficult. At the end of March before he arrived. I was like, I’m starting to fade with the memories. And I was also going out see meeting new people and having fun. And even though I missed him, it wasn’t that like, desire to get him back like crazy. He was more of like an acceptance, like, I would love to have you back in my life. But if not too bad, um, that’s literally when they come back, which you would always say I’m gonna happen. I was like that.
Chris Seiter 38:34 But the the key component that everyone always misses, and I know anyone listening to this probably has heard, like anyone listening to this is going to be like unida where they’ve read it, or listen to everything. But it’s not the kind of thing you could fake. It has to be authentic. Right? Because, literally, I
Nina 38:52 would hear you say it all the time. And I was like, When am I gonna get there? Because I don’t know if I can. And then I got there. I’m gonna happen. I was like, wow, it’s like clockwork, it’s crazy.
Chris Seiter 39:00 What would you say helped you get to that place?
Nina 39:03 Um, well, I was, Well, besides like, your podcast, and meditation and therapy. So, um, yeah, I was I was using every tool to help me I was like, I’m not going to fall into despair because no one’s gonna get me out. So I gotta be okay. So I was okay, to Jay Shetty a lot, who’s great with this podcast about like, helping me cope, just love and kindness and, and I remember I’m watching this guy like all these people on like, Instagram that helped me with breakups. And he was just teaching you about acceptance that it was and he was saying the story of like, if you feel that you lose a love of your life, that wasn’t the love of your life, right? Because the love of your life is not going to leave you that’s not it. You can be disappointed that you lost them and that they weren’t the one but if they are the one, they’re not going to leave you and it’s going to work out.
Chris Seiter 39:57 So it’s sort of like a paradigm shift like shifting I was like, you know, this isn’t the one if they’re not going to come back. So don’t don’t shed tears.
Nina 40:05 sad about it, but my life isn’t over. So I mean, I talked to myself a lot about elves, like, you’re gonna be okay. Like, I know you love him and you felt like he was the one. But it’s okay. V is it, you know, like you felt like the previous what might have been the one two so. So I would put a lot of things in perspective. And I was also going out with other people. To me, it was hard to to not compare, I would compare a lot. You know, a lot of times, I was like, damn, I wish I was with my ex. But you still have to push yourself to not fall into that hole of despair. And I was just being active and like, making my life not revolve about my ERP X, you know, it was more about just doing other things and being busy. But I still gave myself the first month and a half to be sad. I wasn’t forcing myself to do. I didn’t drink for like a whole month because I didn’t want to be under the influence and be sad. I would just give myself two time to cope. And then it’s time to be active. I’m pushing myself. And yeah, I guess time. It’s just time. And then I mean, if you’re, I don’t know, if you if it’s been four months, and you’re still grieving, you’re excellent sobbing yourself to sleep. You need any therapy, like for real? Because I was new with my other ex. And the breakup. The misery part lasted six months, and I needed help. And it helped. And that’s why it didn’t happen again this time.
Chris Seiter 41:27 Yeah, absolutely. somebody to talk to. I mean, I think you’re selling yourself short, a little bit with all the other meditation work. And I don’t know, it seems like you’ve kind of developed a lot of healthy habits that you kind of embedded during the No Contact Rule. But like I said, I It’s impressive. You know, I feel I feel like you have nothing but pride, you should feel nothing but pride because pretty much I don’t really think you made a mistake at all, which is rare.
Nina 41:58 So I appreciate it. A lot of work to be here. I mean, yeah, I was not allowing myself to fall into despair. And I was latching on to anything that would help any podcast book, meditation session friends, so and I feel like you have to not be scared to ask for help. Like you don’t have to go through this alone and even on days round. And when I was extra sad, I would go on the Facebook group and the Hi brother people up because it helps to put your situation in perspective, when you see someone else is also in this sphere. And I also have battle buddies who I will talk to a lot. That helped a lot too. They’re a great
Chris Seiter 42:34 man, I’m super glad that you found value out of those resources and everything but the thing that stands out to me was just the internal confidence that you had to know that okay, I’ve been through this before it’s going to be okay, you know, I know what to do. So just thank you so much for coming on and doing this.
Nina 42:54 Yeah, of course. Thank you. I wouldn’t be here without the program. I honestly it helps me so much. So I hope this can help others too.
Success Story: How One Woman Got An Ex Back Who Ghosted Her
Apr 18, 2023
Today we have another success story hitting the presses. I’d like to introduce you to Stacia!
She has one of the more interesting situations I’ve encountered.
Her ex literally ghosted her and when I say ghosted I’m not doing it with “air quotes.” I mean, he straight up ghosted her out of the blue with no explanation for two months.
Here’s some of the things we touched on in this interview,
Stacia’s story (from start to finish)
How she got back on speaking terms with her ex
The one thing she did to get through the contentious time
Our shared love of running
Dealing with death during a breakup
What it was like when he was away from her
What she believe is the key to her success
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Chris Seiter 00:02 All right. Well, today we have another success story with someone with perhaps the most unique name imaginable. This is Stacia, which is kind of a mix between Stacey and Alicia put together. But yeah, she’s got one of the more interesting success stories. I kind of don’t know much other than a few briefing points that I’ve been given. So I’m just going to be exploring as you’re listening. But thank you so much for coming on. And doing this. Stacia.
Stacia 00:32 Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Chris Seiter 00:35 All right. Let’s go back to the Dark Ages. Let’s let’s let’s go back to the sad stuff. Can you take me back to before you found the program before you entered into the community breakup? Just catch me up to it. Your floor is yours.
Stacia 00:51 Okay. Um, I had had our son,
Chris Seiter 00:56 July of 2020. Obviously, that was just a horrible time anyway. Um, because I was like, in the midst of it, too.
Stacia 01:03 It was it just was one of those like,
Chris Seiter 01:06 so you gave birth at the hospital during the day, they make you wear a mask? Because my wife was not wearing a mask. She was in a lot of pain when
Stacia 01:16 it didn’t make me but I had friends at other hospitals that did and I
Chris Seiter 01:20 was terrified. Yes, well, you made it through. I did. And unfortunately, we’re about to hit with something even worse.
Stacia 01:30 He was there through the birth. He took a new job that started like, right, as soon as the school year started, so we were both like in education. And the new job didn’t really pan out, well, he’s a coach, so they let him go. before the school year was even halfway done, he knew that he was gonna have to look for a new job. And so he kind of went down depressive hole. There was no pulling him back in new dad and just lost a job. And he just kind of shut down. He disappeared, changed his number. I didn’t hear from him for two months until I was served with custody paperwork for our son at my friend door.
Chris Seiter 02:12 And were you guys married? engaged at the time? So? Yes, yes. So you’re engaged but not officially married yet? Right? Do you kind of think, like, okay, new. So, you mentioned you have other children as well? Or at least off camera? Were they all his? Or was it just this one?
Stacia 02:37 No, man, two daughters was my ex husband, and it was his
Chris Seiter 02:42 first child. So we have a first child for new time dad, which is pretty scary. I can attest to that. And then getting laid off all happening at once, not to mention during COVID and everything. And you think that’s like you kind of skipped over what I feel like it’s an important thing. So he just leaves no explanation. Did he block you? Did you did you try to reach out to try to figure out what the heck is going on?
Stacia 03:09 I did. It was May 22. I only remember that because it was my grandmother’s birthday. And I was waiting for him to come celebrate with us. And he said that he was on his way. And I never heard from him again for two months. He shut down his number obviously tried reaching out but his phone number was gone. And he was not at the address that he had, you know previously live because he had moved into like a rental for the new job that he had taken that I did not know about. So he’s off the grid. Completely Mia, he did not have social media, any sort of contact at all.
Chris Seiter 03:48 Okay, this this is a good story. We don’t really get we don’t really get like a successor that comes on that as this far. Like, I don’t know if blocked is the correct word to say it was like cut out and like ghosted to the extreme. Had did this happen before the birth of the child her
Stacia 04:12 after, after our son was almost one. Okay.
Chris Seiter 04:17 So he had been a new dad for almost like 1112 months. Yes. So that 1112 month period was were there any like signs leading up to this at all? Did you notice anything?
Stacia 04:34 Yes. He was obviously avoidant, and he would pull away. He started staying with his parents, because where they lived was much closer to his work like 10 minutes as opposed to 45 and they’re much they’re much older and in really bad health. I mean, they’ve only given us dad like another two months possibly to live so it’s been hard with that situation going on to on top of everything else. I Um, that he started staying over there. And I would notice that he would cut his phone off as soon as you would get back from either, you know, practice or work or whatever it was. And he would not answer were call me back until the next morning. And I could just tell he was pulling back. He didn’t seem as interested in coming around and seeing the baby. Even had convinced himself that there was a possibility that it wasn’t his child and had served me with like DNA paperwork to later when we find
Chris Seiter 05:32 out the first time I’ve heard that one. Unfortunately, I have heard that one before.
Stacia 05:37 Yes, it was it was mortifying, because I mean, I’ve never stepped out of our relationship. So understand his whatever was going on in his head at the time, probably chemically imbalanced. But yeah, he he just went off the grid, and did not I did not hear a word from him until I had paperwork on my front door, stating that he wanted to go to court for a DNA test and custody pending the DNA test.
Chris Seiter 06:06 Geez, it’s always really difficult when you hear stuff like this, because, you know, the the innocent, that’s getting hurt is really the kid. Fortunately, I mean, 11 months old, you’re not going to really remember too much of that rocky time in the life. Okay, so he serves you these papers. He doesn’t think the kid is is he wants to go to the DNA test court thing? What is your next step? Do you go to a lawyer do you like? Or do you just go to Google and fix something? I don’t know.
Stacia 06:43 I did have an attorney for my, for my divorce for my ex husband. So I just went to him. He was all I knew. And I handed him the paperwork. And he was like, Okay, I mean, he was just as in shock as everyone else was. And he got in touch with his attorney. But there was still no getting in touch with my eggs. There was like, still this gap there. And even with the DNA tests, like I could not get in touch with him to schedule it. And of course, I would email my attorney and he would email back like, this is something y’all need to get together about. And I was like, Well, I can’t get in touch with him. So can you ask his attorney to please let him know that you need do
Chris Seiter 07:24 number? You didn’t even have like an email or anything like that? No, I did not. Who doesn’t have an email nowadays, he had
Stacia 07:34 stopped using his previous like, went from like Gmail to Outlook or something like that. changed it so that I can get in touch with an old account that he wasn’t checking it. That I know of?
Chris Seiter 07:46 Yeah. So very hardcore, dismissive, avoidant tendencies here. All right. So your lawyer basically helps in that weird regard to get in touch? I’m assuming?
Stacia 08:02 Yes. And no, I love my attorney. But he was just kind of more like, he’s very much a dad, too. And he didn’t understand the situation. He was like, but he’s the one that wanted this. So why is he being difficult to work with? And he just, he took like, those two months off to just disappear, and I guess, find himself or whatever it was, or hit rock bottom, whatever he went through during that time.
Chris Seiter 08:27 So does he eventually reach back out to you? He
Stacia 08:30 does, um, only because I had a friend who was she was crazy. They called the new school that they found he was at and pretended to have a son that was interested in football. And he called her back on his personal cell. So I called his cell and reached out, and I guess I probably shouldn’t have done that and let him come to me. But that kind of got the ball rolling. And I just kept it very nonchalant. Like, hey, you know, we need to get together over this DNA test and our court, you know, you’ve served me papers, so we need to figure this out.
Chris Seiter 09:07 You did. You did need to figure that out. Like legitimately, you’re in a lot different of a situation than the average person who’s just trying to like get their ex back. You know, you haven’t. You were engaged. You’re sharing a child together. He’s not talking to you. He just serves you papers, your lawyers doesn’t seem to be able to get them on the phone for you. It seems just incredibly difficult. And what you’re saying is you had to have the trusty old friend go undercover for you to cultivate the phone number and then you you basically just call it out of the blue.
Stacia 09:43 I did, I was at work and I I blocked my number. He knew it by heart, so I knew he wouldn’t pick up and he answered, and as soon as he heard my voice, he was like, oh, no, but he was like, I was gonna call you sooner or later. Okay, well and easily sooner because we’ve got to get this ball rolling. We’ve got to figure out something for our child.
Chris Seiter 10:06 Okay, so I’m assuming he responds kind of okay to that that phone call before things. Like, what happens next? Are you do you eventually get back on speaking terms with him? Or is there is a little slow going?
Stacia 10:22 It was a slow roll at first it was very, you know, textbook like, this is what we need to do for our son. And then, of course, some of those phone calls, he would just hang on a little bit longer and ask a few more questions and get a little more personal, just to kind of feel for where I was. He did admit later to stalking my Instagram during that time, even though he did not have an Instagram. Oh, yes.
Chris Seiter 10:49 So everyone listening who doesn’t believe me? When I say exes stock when they don’t have social media. Stacia is helping us here.
Stacia 10:57 Yes, I hate and he has none. None at all. And I made it public like you had recommended. And I said, okay, like, I’ll try it. And sure enough, he didn’t tell me that and probably till three months ago. And so I had no idea. But he had gone and looked on and seen some fun that I was having met summer with friends smiling, laughing. And so he started getting curious and questioning what I was up to.
Chris Seiter 11:24 I love that. Right. So at some point, when you guys are kind of getting back on speaking terms, it becomes less about the court date and more maybe more generalized record building? And is that is it at that point where you start thinking, I want to repair this, I don’t want to go to court and kind of Yeah, have a break?
Stacia 11:46 I did. And he felt the same. But you know, with the ball rolling, and we went ahead through with the DNA test. And of course, no surprise, it was his child. And once he saw that,
Chris Seiter 11:58 like an episode of Jerry Springer, or something, you know, like, You are the father.
Stacia 12:06 That’s what I said the whole time. But, you know, we kind of laugh about it and laughed about it, then too, I was like, I mean, if this helps with your, you know, peace of mind.
Chris Seiter 12:16 You’re an amazing woman, I’ll tell you that, because most women are not going to be thinking that he’s so mad. You know,
Stacia 12:24 it was but I tried to handle it, because I had already found the group at this point. So I tried to handle it a little bit better. And like, I found the group, right after the paperwork was served, really, I think it was the next morning and I was just at rock bottom. And I was online looking for, you know, what do I do? How do I fix this, and I found your program. And I got on it. And I was like, okay, like, this sounds like it could be for me. And I started saying, you know, you say like, build on your Trinity and work on yourself. And I’d already consider going back to school for my doctorate. But like that was kind of my sign. And I just contacted my university and got started. And now I’m halfway through that. So I’m really proud of myself on that. We’re talking
Chris Seiter 13:14 to a doctor here in a couple of years. Actually, I know a little bit about that my brother, he’s about to get his doctorate history or something. But I told him when he’s a doctor, I’m gonna come to his class and just heckle him. Of course, I’ll get thrown out of the university when I do it. But
Stacia 13:35 evidently, I’m I went back for psychology, my Bachelor’s, I started at Auburn, working towards a psychology degree. And then I went for my master’s in early childhood Elementary Ed. Just because I was my ex husband was Army and it was a fast course like an 11 month program. And I love children. I love working with children that have always just felt really strongly compelled to go back for psychology. And I’ve been debating for about six, seven years, whether or not I should just go for it. And I mean, once I was right there starting the program and saying, you know, I was like, I’ve just got to go for it. And it’s um, yeah,
Chris Seiter 14:21 well, I think I think that’s probably the most amazing part because not only are you going through this really contentious time, but you actually do the one thing so like most people when they go through the contentious time they get really consumed by it. Like that’s all they think about. I’m sure you had your bouts of that. But you also had an a foresight to be like, You know what, I’m going to invest in myself. How, how do you do that? What’s your secret?
Stacia 14:49 I had a lot of crass of I think I hit rock bottom. I cried for maybe three or four days. And then I just woke up one day kind of angry and ready to just get my life fit together and do all of the things. We had actually always planned on taking a trip down Route 66. So I got my best friend and my kids and I loaded up my car and we went down Route 66. And it was just one of those, like, spur of the moment, I started in Chicago, and I drove through the night, just went, yeah. I wanted to just do all the things and I was like, I might as well, you know, I’ll everything that I’ve wanted to do I need to stop putting off and just go for it.
Chris Seiter 15:31 Well, also, I think, weirdly enough, just looking at your situation, what I feel like helped you the most was the fact that you couldn’t contact him. So you almost had no choice but to do the things that you know, the Trinity work that I always talk about, that everyone in the group always talks about. You just kind of did it because you didn’t have the opportunity to being like, oh, let’s break no contact? No, like, what’s he up to? You wanted to but you had no way of getting in touch. You had to have a friend basically pretend, you know. So. Yeah. So that’s, that’s kind of amazing. And I feel like that maybe your superpower that you’re able to overcome that through the action of just sort of investing in yourself and investing in your own mental health? And I’m sure it didn’t feel like it was an overnight, like, Oh, I’m fixed, like I feel better. Now. Can you talk a little bit about your process and how your thoughts are during that time, and like how long it took for you to feel like you were kind of leveled out.
Stacia 16:33 Overall, I would say about three months to level myself back to just kind of being mentally stable, I would have my highs and you know, that was when I went with my children and had the best time and we really had a great time. And of course, we took all the photos and I would, you know, hang out with more friends and you know, spend time with those that I had neglected, you know, while I was dating, and it was just a process of finding me again, and learning who I was before the relationship and kind of falling in love with myself again, instead of putting everything that’s my self worth in someone else. And that’s when honestly when kind of the the shift changed. And I felt like I was back in control of my life. And he kind of saw that and he started like, you know, getting interested and coming back around. But it did it. I had nights of just absolute crabfest I felt like I was you know, at rock bottom. Of course, I was seeing a therapist two times a week. And I would have you know, moments of elation. And then I would just have times where I threw myself in studies or exercise. I’m a runner. So I love to run. And I just go for a long run.
Chris Seiter 17:52 Oh, what’s your what’s your longest run you’ve ever done?
Stacia 17:57 I’ve done a half marathon. Nice, nice. Night.
Chris Seiter 18:04 You know, it’s hard because actually, the kids make it hard. You know, it has to be there for the kids and training for that marathon takes hours. From experience. That’s how I screwed up my knee and had to get a knee surgery training for a marathon. Really? Yeah, I was running like 10 miles a day. And I had like a hole in my cartilage and it just kept getting worse and worse. I’m like, hey, my knee kind of hurts. Oh, well, I’ll just keep running on it. So then I went in, they said I had the knee of an 84 year old. And I said, I said there’s no way I have any of an 84 year old and then you’re like okay, well, we need to come back after you get your MRI or something because they have like the X ray. And I remember going back in and there was like literally this like nine year old guy. And my knee was seized up and he outpaced me in the walk too. So I was like, well, maybe I do have the knee of an 84 year old. Sorry, I don’t need to make this about me. Sorry. I just geek out over running. Oh, I
Stacia 19:01 didn’t do before I had my son. It was one of those like I could give that time because my girls would either run beside me I did a lot of Treadmill work just because I was at home single mom, Swift. Do it.
Chris Seiter 19:16 Do you have Swift? No. Is that like an app or something? Okay, so this interview we’re way off course but indulge us listeners. Okay, so swift, it’s like for people who want to ride on a bike trainer or on a treadmill. You can get a special treadmill and it will connect up to this app. And the app is like a social media network where you can run in like volcanoes and stuff. It’s like it’s like a very immersive experience. So it’s a lot easier to run inside on the treadmill versus just like it’s kind of like a peloton but on steroids, I guess where you can kind of like go into this world, or I think I did a bike ride the other day in France. It simulates the incline. So if you’re going up like a hill, it simulates the, what do they call it the gradient of the of the rise? So it does that too with treadmills. That’s worth looking into for you.
Stacia 20:13 Yes, I guess I would get on the abs like I have Strava and a few others and see if they cool. And I could never find anything. But
Chris Seiter 20:21 if you do Swift, it will automatically upload your workout to Strava and Nike Run or some of the other things. I just use Swift to keep track and I have like an apple. Okay. Anyway, so at some point your ex comes back. Can you like, explain how that occurred?
Stacia 20:40 Well, it started with like meeting up for the DNA test. And obviously having to discuss court, we did end up just kind of talking and he would come over a few times. He is not a texter, I tried the whole tech space. He is a good decade older than I am. And he is not from the social media text generation. He was like if I had to text it was pushing the number five, like seven times just to get one letter. So he does not do all that mess. So he was like, I’m a caller. And so I had to come to learn how to do the phone calls and get off the phone first and, you know, not be such a distraction, because I’m one that I can sit on the phone for hours and just talk about anything. But I had to you know, keep up and work on my Trinity. And if that seemed busy, he got more curious. And he was like, Where are you going? I was like, oh, you know, I’ve just got plans, and I gotta go. And I would just try to be nonchalant about it. Which I mean, I feel like helped a lot. Then he became a coach at a new school. And the coaches obviously wanted to meet his son. And I brought him around for some of the coach days. And of course, they were like, hey, you know what’s going on with y’all like, she seems nice. And of course, he started like, Well, yeah, and kind of read guessing everything and wanting me at more events. And the more we I guess, acted like a family, the more it felt like when. And then our court date was honestly the most hilarious because I had my mom with me, and he had his mom with him. And we were all sitting together and laughing the whole time about other cases that were going on. And we were talking about it and just having a good time. And it was just like, my mom and his mom looked at each other and said, Why? Why is this not working? Are
Chris Seiter 22:33 we here? Exactly. So sometimes you need the parents to come in and solve the problem.
Stacia 22:44 And that’s what that’s when I felt like it shifted. I feel like things just kind of changed. For one, the custody agreement was totally, it did not work for him because he wanted every other weekend. Well, he’s a coach, and he’s got football on Friday nights and trainings on Sundays. And so became where I would have to meet up with him just to let him have our son for a few hours or one night and then get him back real quick. And so there was a lot more seeing each other through that. And I think when he realized how willing I was to just work with him, and you know, not make a big deal out of it. He he he saw like, okay, like this is something that she’s not out to get me she’s not this horrible person. He used to find me was scared of me. And
Chris Seiter 23:31 so how does the actual conversation go? Where you’re like, hey, let’s just let’s just go back to the way things were before I actually initiated that was that him? Was it you?
Stacia 23:45 It was me I kind of just said, Hey, let’s let’s just start right back at the beginning, like let’s just go back to the way it was which we we were best friend’s first we did not date or anything for the first several months that we knew each other, we would just hang out, we weren’t together. And so we were just talking, you know, the job and have conversations in the hallway. And then it just kind of got to where he was calling and, you know, sending random text messages. So we just went back to that. And it was dating again. And we made plans to just date and made it a point to call each other on the phone at least once a day for you know, 30 minutes or so as much as we could. But time is obviously very hard to manage. So it was difficult to find that time which was usually on our drive to work in the mornings was the best time.
Chris Seiter 24:42 So do things unfold more when when you kind of like are you guys living together now? How does how’s that situation unfolded? So
Stacia 24:53 he he works about an hour and a half away, and I work 30 minutes this way So if we move to one city or the other, we will be two hours apart. So he stays here on weekends. And he tries to make it like if it’s spring break or whatever holiday he’ll try to say more. But He’s also getting a lot of time to his parents because he’s the only sibling that cares for them. And so it’s been a hard divide, really trying to you know, do that sandwich generation thing where you got older parents and then a young child and you’ve got both
Chris Seiter 25:33 Yeah, pulled between but in a way the if he’s like, me, he is probably a dismissive avoidant, like, really hardcore, dismissive, avoidant, this kind of an outcome might be best for him, you know, to where he doesn’t get overwhelmed. And also, I mean, if, if his if one of his parents is in the process of passing away, and it’s kind of a long drawn out process that can be really difficult to deal with emotionally and everything. So seems like it’s it’s working pretty well for you. How long have you guys been? Have you yet? Like had the official talk talk yet? Or?
Stacia 26:11 So he did re propose? I see it was
Chris Seiter 26:16 okay. So you got the ring on your finger again? Yes. There it is.
Stacia 26:21 He I think it was February, it might have been March. But he officially proposed again. And it was just one of those things like we’ve never, we’ve never dated. We didn’t date other people during the time that we were apart. But we just needed that break from each other. And we’ve known that it was us the whole time. We just needed to rediscover it. So it’s but it’s been good, because I feel like it happened right at the time it needed to because he found out the news about his dad, and he really needs that support system too. So I’ve been able to help a lot. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 27:03 Did you end up after you got him back? And you got you got your nice little ring? Did you end up like asking him at all? What was going on in his head during that time? Why he kind of like ghosted you the way he did? What I’m curious to see what his explanation was. Yes.
Stacia 27:21 So when he left, I was dealing with severe postpartum depression. And he didn’t know what that was. And so there was a night that he like, came over and like the middle of the night, and I’m, you know, in nursing, and I’m barely getting sleep, and I was just angry. And so it just kind of got screaming ish. And he just ran out. And it was like, he became fearful of coming around. Even though like several, you know, other dads were like, you’ve got to understand, like, when women are going through these postpartum hormones, like they are different person, and he did not,
Chris Seiter 28:04 there are a lot. My wife and I, we have a theory. So she got postpartum depression with our first and then with our second not so much. So at first, we were like this really tiny apartment. And the hospital scares you. They make you sign all these papers that like if you sleep in bed with the baby, the baby could die, basically, you know, sudden infant death syndrome. And we were so terrified. So we took turns and everything and she got like, neither of us got any sleep, but she got very little sleep. And we think the lack of sleep really contributed to that postpartum depression versus with the second time around, we kind of had our shit together, so to speak. So she got more sleep and didn’t really have much postpartum depression, but also with the first one, she wasn’t able to breastfeed. I don’t think our our first daughter never learned to suck, she would just bite. And so with the second one, she still bites, but she learned to suck a little bit better. So the milk came in. And that was way better because she could just like nurse her to sleep and then boom, everyone’s out. And she also wasn’t afraid to co sleep with the with the baby. So that helped a ton. But I’m kind of curious. Were you were you having any issues with like, breastfeeding, sleep deprivation? Do you think that kind of contributed to the postpartum depression?
Stacia 29:28 I did. I was severely sleep deprived. I was the only one you know, caring for
Chris Seiter 29:34 him. But once you have your other kids to write
Stacia 29:37 shakily, and they were in grade school and needing homework done and you know everything, so it was it was a lot. I think it’s freezing out. Can you hear me?
Chris Seiter 29:54 I’m back. Sorry. And I was about to say that COVID hits on top of it, you know, so you’re dealing with like, crazy changes. And then kids, your kids probably had to do home school too. So they’re at home during the day. And then he decides he’s not the father anymore.
Stacia 30:22 I think that’s when he was like, oh, gosh, like, what if this isn’t even mine. But yeah, I struggled also to nurse my first she wouldn’t latch. And my second did and she was pretty much a dream to nurse. But then my third, he, he was difficult, but I also started back to work and then with the shortage of teachers, we didn’t have anybody to relieve me. So I couldn’t pump as much as I needed to. And so I you know, had my milk dried up and that was difficult. And I think that’s when my hormone Dawn kind of happen is when I stopped nursing.
Chris Seiter 31:00 Yeah, those factors really make make a huge difference. It’s almost like a perfect storm and, and it’s also hard to like, leave your newborn baby to go back to work, you know, so, okay, so you think it all kind of cultivator are culminated in that screaming match during during the thing and he walks out? And ever since then it was kind of like, but did he ever like tell you like when he was away from you what that was, like, from his perspective, like during the two month blackout period.
Stacia 31:32 He did. He said, He went inside a hole, he had moved to his family’s like property, and it’s very isolated on like, 50 Something acres. And he, when he wasn’t helping coach practice, he was just in a depression in that lake house. And he wouldn’t call anybody, he lost a lot of weight. He didn’t eat much, very depressed. And so that was a lot of it. And he said, Of course, he thought about me all the time. And he didn’t know how to handle it, because he does have some paranoia. And he was worried that, you know, I was becoming somebody else. And you know, what if we end up together, and then she turns into this monster, I guess?
Chris Seiter 32:17 He was what exactly caused that type of paranoia? Was it something that he misunderstood? Did he ever like, elaborate on like, why would he think you’re becoming someone else?
Stacia 32:29 He, um, his, from what I understand his mother has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. And so I know it’s like 75% genetic, in at least one child. I’m worried that he might have a little bit of that. He’s, he’s been paranoid since we met. But like the older he’s gotten, the more that that’s kind of surfaced. So I think he had gotten in his head. He said that his mom had had a dream that I shot him. And so he took that dream and, and ran with it. Okay. Yeah. So that was
Chris Seiter 33:10 I don’t, I don’t picture you as the shooting type, but
Stacia 33:13 not like weapons at all. So
Chris Seiter 33:17 there you go. Okay. So okay, things, you’re kind of back together, now you’ve got the ring? How have things been, from your perspective? since you’ve been back together? Has it been really, really good? Or do you feel like you still have work to do?
Stacia 33:33 Honestly, I think that we’re the best that we’ve ever been, even when we first started dating. It’s like, it really did become a new relationship, it was different. Somehow, we were actually able to just kind of leave that and become to new people. And, you know, we had both grown and changed a lot. So he was able to see that growth in me. And of course, you know, no more postpartum depression and as you know, become a happier person, just overall and better able to manage. And he’s made it more of a point to come around and stay and take me on dates and spend that quality time. And so now it’s like, you know, he wants to call he wants to send a text, even if it’s three words, or, you know, he wants to go do things and has, you know, wanted to even try to start a podcast and I’ve just laughed at him like, okay, like, that’s fine, whatever you want to do, but he’s like, happy and I am tell you, it’s, it’s really good.
Chris Seiter 34:35 When you look back at the entire situation, what do you feel like was the most important factor for your success?
Stacia 34:41 I really truly believe it was throwing myself into me. And as you mentioned, I had a wonderful battle buddy, and she and I, we live two states apart. So she was like, Hey, this is crazy, but like, I’m gonna come meet you. And she did and she’s actually here right now. She it’s our spring break. So they came Uh oh, it’s exciting. Yeah. And so you know, we’ve become really great friends and able to connect and you know, talk about it and help each other with any situations. And I’ve also met another group member, that’s not but like 45 minutes for me. And we’ve talked about possibly getting coffee, but it’s just not happened yet. But this group has been so helpful in just throwing myself and learning that Trinity and working on me and trying to not think about what was going on as much as possible and get out of my own way, I guess with what he might be doing or not be doing.
Chris Seiter 35:38 Yeah. Like, overall, I would say you have one of the more unique success stories, and I think it’s good for anyone listening, who has been sort of ghosted in this way, like, we don’t see that a lot. We see like these these blocks, but you can still kind of contact them through email. I mean, you were just like, you were he was, I mean, DNA test and everything. You kind of pulled victory from the jaws of defeat. And I think, for me, the key to your success was that two month period of the black hole period that he talks about, you had no choice but to run through your emotions, and then kind of invest in yourself. And then I think through doing that, you felt like, oh, wow, I am not this relationship. I’m, I have other aspirations. And now you’re going to be a doctor. So you’ll be coming back on the podcast when you get married as Doctor?
Stacia 36:34 Absolutely. Yes, I agree with you. I feel like him falling off the grid and me feeling like, Okay, this is done. Like, it’s just, I had to accept it. And I’d never had to accept it before if we had like, had a little break up here, there. But this time, I was like, it’s it’s over. Like, there’s paperwork on my door, saying, like, it was like a divorce, like we’re done. And I had to accept that. And it was hard. It was definitely not easy. But it made it forced me to build myself back.
Chris Seiter 37:06 Do you feel like if the same thing ever happened again, you’d be able to know exactly what to do how to handle it, you’d have the confidence to survive?
Stacia 37:14 I do. Yeah, I really do.
Chris Seiter 37:17 See, to me, that’s the key. And I think that’s the lesson that most people don’t ever really use or get. I think a lot of and I’m kind of curious to get your opinion. Like when I often go to the group, I see a lot of people trying to manipulate their way to get their exes back as opposed to investing in themselves and kind of that ex coming back as the symptom of that, or do you feel like that’s kind of on the mark with your experience?
Stacia 37:43 Absolutely. Like, I feel like if you’re trying to manipulate somebody else to get them back, like you’re not doing that work for you. And when you become that better person that you are, they they’re just like addicted to it, they can smell it, and they come back around. And I feel like just personally for my situation, if I tried to manipulate him, he would catch on to it and then it would go right back into the same cycle. And it never changed. Like he couldn’t see you know, the change and I didn’t see the change because I was being manipulative to get what I wanted. So I feel very much like that’s what made her break broke my situation.
Chris Seiter 38:27 Thank you so much for coming on and doing this. Your story blew me away. It was so
Stacia 38:34 thank you. I mean, I’ve loved being a part of the group like this has been an amazing group. It was the best thing that I could have stumbled upon.
Chris Seiter 38:42 I’m so happy to hear you. Thank you.
Success Story: He Said “I Don’t Feel In Love With You” And Then Came Back
Apr 12, 2023
I had the pleasure of interviewing Kelsey who had a pretty intriguing breakup story.
Basically her ex gave her the whole,
“I have a lot of love for you but I’m not IN love with you.”
So, for those of you who have ever had an ex say that or,
“I’m not sure I see a future together with you”
Then you’ll want to pay attention to Kelsey’s success story.
Summary Of Our Conversation
Kelsey’s Personal Story
How She Found Out About The Program
The End Of The No Contact Rule
The Food Delivery Aspect Of The Breakup
How The Breakup Changed Their Relationship
How She Got Her Ex Back
The Issue Of Codependence
How To Be Content With Not Getting Your Ex Back
Skipping The Value Ladder
Interview Transcript
Chris Seiter 00:02 All right, today we have another success story. This is Kelsey. So thank you so much for coming on. First off and doing this, Kelsey.
Kelsey 00:11 Thank you for having me.
Chris Seiter 00:12 All right, so let’s kind of roll back time and go back to the beginning. Why don’t you give us kind of like a breakdown of of your situation? Okay,
Kelsey 00:23 yeah. So this started last year of 2022. And me and my ERP ex, at the time, were together for about two and a half years. And so we broke up on February 1. And pretty much like I was pretty, really confused at what the reason was the time and obviously, I was in a very emotional state. And I wanted to know why. And the only answers that I kept getting were like, Oh, I just, I have a lot of love for you. But I don’t feel in love with you, those type of things. And like, I don’t really see a future with you anymore. And so I was just like, panicking on the inside. And I went home after the breakup, and I tried to look up things online, just like some tips on how to get your exes back and stuff like that. And then I came across the ERP, the Ex Recovery Program. And I thought it was so interesting, because the layout was so different than other websites that I looked at. And it was actually really easy to navigate as well. And it showed a lot of the success stories on the page. And I kept reading that and, and it gave me hope. And I was like, maybe I can check this out and see if it works. So I signed up for that I took the quiz that it has on the website, and I think I got I think it was 80% something like that.
Chris Seiter 02:02 Turns out it was a it was 100%.
Kelsey 02:07 Exactly, sorry to interrupt. Oh, no, no, that’s fine. But yeah, it gave me a lot of hope that it would work out. So I was like, why not, I don’t have anything else really to do. Because it was I had like spring break coming up at the time, too. So I had all this time to just do all this research and stuff. So one thing too was that I didn’t want to talk too much about it with my close friends, because I know that they have very strong opinions of like me getting hurt. And obviously they don’t want that to happen. But at the same time, I still wanted to get him back because I knew that there was something special. And that’s something that nobody else could understand other than me. And so I was just starting the program. And I think I did a 30 day no contact, I tried that. First, I was still very new to it. And I was like I don’t know if I’m doing this right at all. And one thing that was different from a lot of the other stories that I saw was that I would actually see him every week, like once a week at church. So it was a lot harder for me,
Chris Seiter 03:23 even though it’s kind of like a limited no call. Yeah, type situation. Yeah,
Kelsey 03:28 yeah, exactly. And so I was just trying to figure out how to deal with that, because it was definitely pretty difficult seeing him and having all these emotions. And I actually set up an appointment with Anna, who used to be part of the program. And I had, I think it was an hour appointment. And she was talking to me about it. And she gave me this whole plan. And she suggested that I do a 45 day limited no contact. And basically, the value chain was very different for me because of that. And so like there was no display starting off with like texting, and then phone calls and stuff like it was a little different because I already see him in person. So I started off with just like the smiling and the waving. At first he avoided me at all costs. And that made me feel even worse. And it was really hard at the time. But I had faith in the program. And I had actually two battle buddies that I talked to at the same time, which helped me a lot. And I really appreciate the Facebook group for the program. And I’m still in it and I love just looking at other people’s stories and just reading what they’re going through as well because I totally understand now. And so it really helps me talking to other people going through the same situation. And so yeah, we started off like smiling and waving and Let it got to like saying hi to each other. And then he, oh, yeah, in the, in the 30 day no contact. Before I talked to Anna, he would he reached out to me like, I think it was four days into the no contact. But I knew that I couldn’t respond, because obviously I not supposed to contact him at all. So I didn’t, and I, I just saw the message. And then he messaged me like three other times after that. And I was really surprised, because I didn’t think he would message me at all. So that happened. And then when it got to the end of the no contact period, I replied, I can’t quite remember what I said. But it was just a short reply. Like, I think he asked me how I was doing. And I kept it neutral. And I was like, I’m good. How are you? Something like that. And and then he was a lot different than I planned, because he asked to meet up and just talk about what happened and how things were. I agreed to meeting up with him. But I was really cautious about talking about the relationship, because I know that when I watched your videos before, I think in some of them, you advised us to like, try to avoid talking about the relationship. And so if he brought it up himself, like I would just answer him was like a short answer, but I would kind of change the topic, redirect it to something else. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think he noticed that a lot. Because he just kept asking more deeper questions like, oh, because I never, I never knew if he ever, like thought about me, because he kept ignoring me all the time. I never knew how he felt. I thought he was like, completely over me. And then he would bring it up himself and be like, oh, yeah, I watched I always watch your stories. And I saw you went to this place. And I was like, Oh, I didn’t know you paid attention to that. But it really proves that they do pay attention when you post something online. It may seem like they’re not looking, but I feel like they right.
Chris Seiter 07:20 I try to tell people in the group that all the time and it’s like, in one ear out the other. They don’t really believe me, but having you come on and say it. Yeah, I think that’ll be helpful for them.
Kelsey 07:32 Oh, for sure. I’ve like I 100% thought he did not care what I was posting. So to hear him say like, oh, yeah, I remember. And he would remember little details to like, I remember you went to this park. And so I was really amazed. And I was like, Oh, wow, he actually pays attention to my stories. So yeah, that was really great. No, and after that we would. So he over here, so I live in Vancouver, BC in Canada. And so like it’s been a really big thing with food deliveries and stuff with like, us, like skip the dishes. Uber Eats. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that. I don’t know what it’s like. Yeah, I
Chris Seiter 08:15 mean, unfortunately, I feel like I live on that much. I’ve had to cut back. Yeah, yeah. DoorDash is pretty popular here. Not so much. Uber Eats DoorDash GrubHub. Okay, okay. Yeah, guys have that up there. I’m sure, right.
Kelsey 08:30 Yes. Yeah, we do. Yeah. So with the food deliveries. I thought there were definitely like times where it was on and off when I would see him and he would be the complete opposite of like, being really happy to see me he’d look like kind of depressed. And he would tell me Oh, I don’t think we should hang out or be friends or something like that. And I was like,
Chris Seiter 08:55 hot and cold. Yes. Yeah. Go from like meeting you in person saying like, Oh, I’m watching your stories to just sort of like giving you the brush back.
Kelsey 09:05 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it was so annoying at times, because I was like, I don’t know where this is going. But I have to like respect what he’s asking. So I don’t want to push too much. So can
Chris Seiter 09:18 can ask a clarifying question. Yeah, yeah. Where? Where does the food delivery aspect come in?
Kelsey 09:24 Oh, yeah. I was just getting to that. So he so he would be like, Oh, I don’t want to hang out as friends or anything like that. But he would find a way to hang out with me somehow. And that’s where the food delivery would come in. Because he would be like, Oh, I think we could deliver food together and it came out of nowhere. Because, ya know, it was even work. I know. It was so weird because, yeah, because he would usually deliver food like in his spare time on his scooter. But like he wanted to deliver food with me in my cars. I see. Okay,
Chris Seiter 10:05 so he works for like a DoorDash GrubHub Uber Eats type thing. And he would invite you along to as you go on the runs. Ah, yeah. Okay. Now it makes sense.
Kelsey 10:17 Yeah. And at first I was like, oh, maybe he’s just being friendly. But I would like talk to my battle buddies. And they would be like, No, I think he just wants to spend more time with you. Because it wasn’t just one time. Like, he would always ask, Oh, let’s let’s deliver this day. And then he would want to always meet up like every single day. And there would be a point where I’d have to be like, no, because I don’t want him to get used to me being available all the time. So yeah, so but it was really interesting, because he would always be like, Oh, I don’t think we should hang out. And then he would always find a way to, to hang out somehow, like, food delivery. So yeah, it was really, it was really weird. But it was really interesting, too, at the same time. It’s like he was very hot and cold, like you said. But then eventually, we we started hanging out more. And there were a lot more positive interactions. And he even told me because I actually, I think, was it I’m not sure if it was the book, was it? I’m not sure. But I downloaded something of becoming UG. I forgot what that stood for. But I Oh, yes. Yes. That ungettable Yeah. And so I remember, I downloaded that. And I kept reading that every single day. And like, just doing new things on my own. And I hung out with my friends so much, that was probably the most I’ve ever hung out with them. But when I saw him, he would actually tell me, oh, like, I noticed, you’re like a completely different person. And it’s so cool. So I was like, Oh, wow, I didn’t. That’s amazing that he’s noticing these changes, and I didn’t even bring it up myself.
Chris Seiter 12:04 You were posting on on social media, though.
Kelsey 12:08 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I would just like post different places of like, where I was going, and whenever I was out with friends, and apparently he noticed that a lot. So he would bring that up. And he would, and like, I started going to the gym as well. And he would point that out as well, like, oh, I can see you’re becoming so fit and so healthy. And then I feel like he definitely at the beginning of the breakup, I saw, he was really trying hard to look good. Like you started going to the gym every single day. And then after about a month after the breakup, he looked like he became so depressed. And I feel like it’s so related to the videos that you’ve made, where the breakups hit them harder, like later on. And it just that it really proved that to me like it for like for girls. It’s so different because we go through it right away. And I, I still think that he was in a fearful avoidant, because of like, he like he kept pushing me away. And then he still wanted to hang out with me. And so like, it was really interesting. It was hard to because it like it felt like there was no progress at all some at some points. But then it started picking up a lot more and I think it was in late May. So I think that’s, I think that’s four months or
Chris Seiter 13:43 Yeah, February. March. Yeah. But three and a half months, probably three,
Kelsey 13:48 yeah, three and a half months, something like that. So yeah. So that’s when we started hanging out more. And then we actually decided to go on this trip together to the island, which is not to it’s like an hour ferry ride. Because we used to go to the island before and he thought that it would be something fun. So I just agreed to going on the trip to see how things would be if it was just us. So it ended up being one of the best trips that I’ve been on. And I feel like our relationship now is so different from before because I know that before in our previous relationship, I know that I was very clingy. And I can admit that I was very clingy. And I was very dependent on him. And I think he saw that as well. So I would say that the breakup really taught me a lot of things and like finding the program and reading the UG stuff and just talking with other people going through similar things has helped me so much because I feel like the program is not now necessarily to get your ex back, but it’s to like find find yourself and like, find your self confidence. And while you do that, like it’s a bonus to get them back. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it was really nice.
Chris Seiter 15:19 So, at this point, you’re, I mean, your story is kind of interesting. So you are, let me just kind of summarize this far, you originally tried to do a 30 day No Contact Rule way back at the beginning. But that shifts into a 45 day no contact, when that 45 days is up, he asks you to see him, you obviously see each other. And then he kind of starts, you know, being a little hot and cold, which is kind of typical after a breakup and invite you on for the Uber Eats, drive along, which is kind of funny. And then it kind of it kind of grows from there and eventually coalesces into this trip. Yeah, where which I guess can be kind of considered more of a romantic type environment, you’re going to an island together, just the two of you. It’s a romantic type thing. At any point, you’re acting like a couple here, but Oh, yeah. You haven’t really gotten the confirmation or had the commitment talk just yet.
Kelsey 16:21 Yes. So on that trip, actually, it came up. Because I don’t know I wanted clarity for myself, because I didn’t want to be stuck in this position where, like, we were acting like a couple, but we weren’t a couple because that was ultimately the goal. So I wanted to bring that up really briefly. And he was very open to talk about it, too. Like he was actually getting really deep into it. And he was telling me how he enjoys being around me. And he realizes that he’s like he’s tried to, that’s another thing I didn’t add like he was he tried to talk to like a, like another girl from his work or something. And that didn’t work.
Chris Seiter 17:07 greener. He sort of realized, Oh, I had Kelsey.
Kelsey 17:12 Yeah, yeah, exactly. So he was like, I just know that we were together for a reason before. And he and he admitted, like even today, he he felt he felt like he was in denial a lot of the time. And he just didn’t want to, he just didn’t want to admit it to himself. And I didn’t even ask him about that, too. You just said that to me. So.
Chris Seiter 17:39 So do you mind if I ask you a few questions, because it’s interesting. I had a coaching call with a woman last Friday, and she’s really close to getting your ex back. Like, okay, yeah, like super. But the one thing is they’re basically doing everything No, intimacy row, you know, they’re not crossing the the sleeping together line. But they’re pretty much doing everything that a couple would do. But she’s having trouble getting a commitment out of him. She She’s worried of engaging the talk, and that’s in he’s gonna reject her outright. So how did you approach that? Wasn’t him that brought that up? Or did you end up kind of bring it up? And if you didn’t bring up did what was like the moment you chose to bring it up?
Kelsey 18:24 Um, so it was me who brought it up. So I chose to like we had like a really fun day. And I chose to bring it up. Like, right at the end of the day, when it was just like, when the sun was going down. And the view was looking nice. Yeah, so see, you’re
Chris Seiter 18:39 you’re like, perfect. Yes, exactly what I advised her, it’s us a little a little tentative, but I understand why she’s afraid of getting rejected. But how did that go for you when you did it that way?
Kelsey 18:51 I was honestly, so nervous on the inside, because I didn’t know what he would say. But I felt like I had nothing to lose because I knew it was going really well. So if he actually was like willing to get back together with me, then he would be open to talking about it. And so I just went for it. And it ended up going really well. And we came home and and he just he just started calling me as partner. So yeah, yeah, it was easy. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 19:26 Okay. So but I mean, that’s one way is to look at it like you had nothing to lose. But I would argue you had a ton to lose because you’re stuck on an island with you, you’re stuck with someone. But in a weird way that might have worked in your favor, because it wouldn’t make him take it more seriously then. Yeah, and but what’s interesting is before we kind of started this interview, I was trying to get a little bit of a backstory on your situation, but I couldn’t find much but I did find that your two battle buddies they didn’t get their exes back but they moved on to someone new and are happy with those new people. Which I think harkens back to what you were just saying, which is like, the point of the program that we teach isn’t necessarily to get your ex back, it’s kind of get yourself back. And if you can do that, usually the circumstances you either Attract Your Ex Back or you attract someone better than your act. So it’s kind of a win win. Yes,
Kelsey 20:20 yes, exactly. Yep.
Chris Seiter 20:23 Okay, so you have this very romantic getaway to this fun Island, which is such a cool, I’m gonna have to try to recommend someone to do the coaching. Take them to an island. So you take you go to the islands, you’re back together? And how does the rest work out from there? Like how have things been since you’ve been official? Again,
Kelsey 20:50 it’s been really like, I, it’s been so great. Like, it’s completely different from before. Like, I think it’s because I don’t depend on him as much. And I can do things on my own now. Whereas before, I would always do things together with him. And I think it’s very important to realize that you have to be able to live on your own. And when you do have someone that you’re with, it’s like kind of a bonus, like they’re just an added part to your life, but you can’t make them your whole life. Because then you become too dependent on them. But also working as a team together to just become better as people too.
Chris Seiter 21:39 Do you mind if I dig in a little bit on this? Because really what you’re talking about is sort of the issue of codependence and why it’s not sort of a good outcome if you’re too codependent on each other. But what I’m what I want to dig in about is actually to go back to your kind of how you caught it, or how he courted you. Were you pretty dependent? Like when you look back before all the breakup, and when you’re getting your first relationship sort of set up? Yeah, he’s sort of wooing you, so to speak. You weren’t dependent or anxious at all? Were you? No, no, I wasn’t. So my argument would be that he fell in love with that type of a person. But over the course of a relationship, you probably got triggered with your anxiousness or triggered with your dependent so much. Oh, yeah. And that may be repelled him. But what’s interesting is you got a lot of like on the breakup, he said, like, I’m in love with you, but I’m not in love with you kind of. Yeah, yes, yes. Right. Did you ever like after the fact when you got him back kind of asked him about that? Like, what was the feeling in the breakup moment?
Kelsey 22:51 Yeah, I mean, we talked about that. And he did say that, he felt like he couldn’t have his own space. And I do you remember, he would always ask for space. And I never gave that to him. And that was something that I really regretted after the breakup. And so now, like, we’re really good at giving each other space now, so it’s, it’s so different?
Chris Seiter 23:14 Well, that’s kind of amazing, because all right, so I’m going to tell you a couple stories. Number one is the space thing. So when someone signs up for coaching with me, Jen, or one of our team members, or coaches, they’re asked to fill out kind of a breakdown to their situation, not like too long, but enough. And what’s really interesting is I’ve been doing this for close to 10 years now. 10 years exactly, which really makes me feel old. But I’ve been doing this for 10 years. So I’ve seen like a ton of situations. And I started I think I started coaching in 2015, or 2016. But we started getting these these Intake Forms coming in. And the one consistent pattern I’ve noticed is what you just said like identical, the ex asked for space in the relationship and the person wouldn’t give it to them. Like you’re actually not alone in that that is super, super common. But what what I find more inspiring about your situation is the fact that a lot of people, we can get them, we can help them create an environment where an ex is conducive to come back. But the work doesn’t really stop there. Because there’s issues in the relationship that are present that you have to kind of address. And to me, it seems like this was the big issue, the dependency that you had on him or what have you and his inability to need space or what have you. But you seem to have actually corrected it. You seem to have like made the change and stuck with it. And I think you’ve been together with him for a while now. Yeah,
Kelsey 24:48 yes. Yeah. i Well, it’s been since late May and and now it’s like it’s already Yeah, it’s already it’s already been like past Two years since the breakup, too, so, yeah,
Chris Seiter 25:03 that’s funny. I mean, like that, to me is a real success story. Because we, you know, sometimes we’ll get on these interviews and we’ll talk to people and they’ve been back with their ex for like a month. We’re just getting them sort of during the honeymoon period. So it’s kind of hard to sort of check back on them. Yeah. But what what I did another interesting study, sorry, I’m rambling too much. But I did another interesting study a couple of weeks ago, where I went, I picked 12 success stories, then I went and audit them, I went and either asked the person or knew enough from their postings in the group to see if they were still together with their ex. And I was trying to figure out, like, I knew how long it took them to get their ex back. And I was trying to figure out the people who took longer to get their exes back. Do they end up staying together? versus the people who get back really, really quickly? And what we found is that there is actually a pretty interesting correlation between people who take longer to get back together and having a better chance of staying together. And I don’t know, it just seems interesting, because you’re kind of, you’re kind of proof of that, you know, you’re still together after a year, and things seem to be going really well.
Kelsey 26:13 Yeah. Really well, it’s, it’s been amazing. And it did feel like a really long time, because I like after the first month of being broken up. I, it was hard for me to still have hope, because I felt like he was just drifting away. But then I use that time to just work on myself. And then those months went by a lot faster than then it felt like before, and then just everything just fell into place. And it was really nice. When you look back
Chris Seiter 26:47 on your entire breakup recovery, ex boyfriend recovery experience, I guess, what would you say was the most important factor for you.
Kelsey 26:59 Um, the most important factor, I think it was definitely finding myself more like, I felt like, I kind of lost myself in the relationship before. Because I felt like he was part of my identity. And so I thought, it’s very important for me to find what I’m good at, find what I enjoy doing, and just continue doing that. And in the process, it would be nice to get him back at the same time. But also, just being happy with who I am. And I know that we all have like things we can improve on. And, but just knowing that I’m content at the end of the day, whether I get him back or not. And I even told him that too. So yeah,
Chris Seiter 27:52 yeah, I mean, what a pattern that we see a lot when we talk to success stories like yourself, is that getting over them? aspects, you know, it’s kind of like just having the confidence to know like, even if you don’t get, like what you just said, you know, I’m content if I get you back or not. And being authentic with that, and I think that’s the challenge most people struggle with. Because as I’m sure you’ve experienced, we go through the breakup. What is it you want more than anything, you want to fix the situation you want to get back? But yeah, it’s hard to take on faith that you kind of have to authentically be content with not getting them back before you can actually get them back. What would you say? You felt was the most impactful thing that you did to achieve that type of a mindset.
Kelsey 28:42 Um, well, it did help me to journal my feelings down, I would just write down how I felt every single day. And I would look back on it, to see my progress and seeing my progress really inspired me to keep going, and that I was getting somewhere because it felt like I wasn’t, but I saw the differences from the beginning and like, maybe a month later. And then I was like, Oh, if I if I can do this, like, if I’m happy right now, then I could be a lot happier in another month. And like, I won’t have to always think about getting him back. And I can just be happy on my own. So that that kind of thing.
Chris Seiter 29:25 Yeah, I mean, I just your success story. You know, I told you before we went, like I don’t even care if you use their program, and I just want to find out what you did that works. But a lot of what you’re saying is kind of what we recommend, which is sort of that yeah, get to that place emotionally where you’re able to let go before you try to get them back. And I’m sure a lot of people struggle with that. Oh, yeah. When we one interesting deviation that you seem to have made is you sort of skipped the value ladder you kind of like went to the meet up way quicker than normal. But I wouldn’t even argue that you didn’t so much because You were kind of forced into this limited no contact. So it already felt like you were kind of seeing each other every week. You said church, right? It was church that you would see.
Kelsey 30:10 Yeah. What was?
Chris Seiter 30:13 Can you take us back to some of those moments on? Was it just you waving? Or was it? Was there more to the limited contact that you did have in those 45 days?
Kelsey 30:24 Um, well, we have like this young adults group that we’re both a part of, and it’s just, it’s quite a small group. Like, there’s only about 10 to 1212 of us in it. And so it was really awkward at the beginning. Because, right when, when the breakup happened, like, not everyone knew that we weren’t together anymore. So it was really awkward for me. And so like, when it got to that point where we were, like, smiling at each other like it, that took a long time, and that was probably not until like, two months after the breakup, where he would feel comfortable waving at me, I felt like he was the one who was to, like, he didn’t want to make eye contact at all. So
Chris Seiter 31:14 he’s like, overcorrecting, you know? Yeah,
Kelsey 31:16 yeah, I could tell that he looked nervous. And like he looked really anxious to whenever I was around. So yeah, it did start with just waving and then eventually, he was able to say, Hi. But yeah, I felt like it was a lot harder for him to do that. And like, not just me, like, for me, I felt like I could totally just say hi, anytime, or wave at any time, because I felt very confident in myself at the time. So, but I just, I wanted to mirror his actions, too. So I just waited for him to feel comfortable in doing that first.
Chris Seiter 31:58 Plus, you’re posting on social media, you were kind of getting to that place emotionally. And you also made mention of kind of the meme thing, which is like, you know, like, There’s that famous meme of how girls react to breakups versus how guys react to breakups. Opposite will like you kind of I felt like he kind of lived that, you know, you’re really struggling at first and then over time, he got better than he’s sort of like partying at first and having fun. And then over time, he realizes how miserable he is. You kind of are proof that that meme does exist and has some validity.
Kelsey 32:32 Yeah.
Chris Seiter 32:35 I just wanted to say thank you so much and kind of coming on and sharing this really inspiring story.
Kelsey 32:41 Yeah, of course. I really enjoyed talking about it because it is really cool. Still to me like to this till this day. I find it amazing on how it turned out. So it’s really cool talking about it.
Chris Seiter 32:54 Next is marriage. Next is the baby’s fence. We got to we got to get you there.
Success Story: A Deep Look At An On Again/Off Again Relationship
Apr 06, 2023
Today’s success story is going to be unique.
Avid listeners of the podcast will have probably heard me say,
On again/off again relationships are among the easiest situations to succeed in but one of the hardest situations to keep together
Well, my interview with Kimberly today kind of proves this as she takes us through what it’s like to be in one of these situations. So, what starts as a success story kind of ends up as a pseudo coaching session by the end as we go over how to prevent an “off again” phase from happening.
Summary
Here’s a quick summary of our conversation:
The breakup and how she got her ex back
Rekindling the relationship after the breakup
Going over the factors that drew him back in
The on again/off again experience
Setting boundaries
Mystery vs. stability
Planning a spontaneous family outing
The importance of being ungettable
Interview Transcript
Chris Seiter 00:02 All right, today we have a success story interview with Kimberly. Kimberly ended up. I don’t know how we found you. Exactly. I think my wife found you instead of the interview between us. Yes, she did. Okay, so somehow my wife found Kimberly. So I’m just for the state of honesty here. I’m coming into this completely blind. I don’t know anything about Kimberly success story. So that’s gonna make for an excellent interview. But I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming on and doing this Kimberly. No problem. I’m excited. All right, so let’s go back to the Dark Ages back when you’re going obviously, through this breakup? Can you give us a little bit of a background on the breakup and how you came into the Ex Recovery orbit?
Kimberly 00:45 So we broke up and it was pretty bad one. I did the netting a lot of probably for about a month before I found the program. And I was just online looking up, you know, ways I could progress myself so that I could get him back. Or ways I could, you know, it was more manipulation, trying to get him back type thing. But I found the group or found the program I paid for it joined. And then immediately, well, within like half a month, maybe within joining the group, I went into no contact, I didn’t do very well with it, it was not a very good experience for me, I will get several times
Chris Seiter 01:28 how many is several times
Kimberly 01:31 I think it was three. Oh, since I joined the program. But it was within a short period of time. And the last time that I broke it, he actually put another girl on the phone who told me that she was his girlfriend, which I later found out she was not that he just did that to get me to leave him alone. But that’s kind of put it into it for me. And I was like Okay, so I’m going to I’m going to finish my new contact and I did the Trinity. I did the calendars. I had a calendar right next to my Work calendar, and I would do all the activities I put on it every day. I actually forgot to do my reach out. It was time for my reach out. And I had drafted it, put it in the group. But I was so busy doing stuff that I just completely forgot. And then I did it. He didn’t respond. I waited the time did another one he didn’t respond. And he and so I just decided not to do it any anymore. after that. I just I went you know without moving on.
Chris Seiter 02:37 Gave up base. Yeah. Do you? Do you recall what the reach outs were? Were they kind of like the ERP type reach outs or did you put your own? Yes,
Kimberly 02:45 they were the ERP. And they were his top interest it was in regards to recording music. Because he’s a DJ or he does DJ and does music. But I didn’t know he did not at all. I don’t know if he I don’t even know if he changed his number. At the time. I didn’t even know if he changed his number because I was hard blocked everywhere. I forgot to say that I was like everywhere, like tick tock, Snapchat, everything. He bought me everywhere. So he
Chris Seiter 03:15 blocked you. But you still felt like you had the phone. He didn’t block you texting wise.
Kimberly 03:23 He did. But I thought that maybe after all that time past, it was possible that he unblocked me. So I went ahead and did my reach outs via phone. But I could tell from other places that I was heart blocked. So I didn’t do it that way. I just did it over the phone. But he didn’t respond to either one. And then within like two months, he just reappeared. He was like, Hey, how you doing? You know, like, I just disappeared for eight months. But hey, so it was just kind of interesting, because that was the first time and then we broke up again. And I kind of messed that one up. I didn’t follow the
Chris Seiter 04:06 let’s, let’s hit the let’s hit the brakes here for a little bit. So he he basically has you heard locked everywhere. You’re not even sure if he even got the original DJ type text messages. And then after a couple of months, he just reaches out to you and you’re able to rekindle things and get back into a relationship. Yes. Okay. And then he breaks up with you again.
Kimberly 04:29 Yes. And he admitted that he got my texts. We did. Okay, so we’ve got my
Chris Seiter 04:35 blocked on the phone, you know, we kind of assumed correctly. But did he give any insight about why he didn’t respond to the texts?
Kimberly 04:45 He told me that he didn’t feel like he was in a good place to talk to me at the time. I think that his life was just going downhill. And he didn’t feel adequate enough. I guess he didn’t really say that but just the way that he told me If that’s what it seemed like, and then I gave up, and he told me that he could feel that pull away because of the fact that I reached out. And he didn’t respond and I stopped reaching out.
Chris Seiter 05:15 Were maybe in the past you had done that just came.
Kimberly 05:20 In the past, I was constantly like trying to get a conversation over with with him.
Chris Seiter 05:27 Okay, so obviously, you’re back together, yay. And then how long does that relationship lasts before you kind of hit the off again phase
Kimberly 05:34 that lasted four months, the first time we lived together the second time we did not. We took it, I took it a lot slower the second time. Not in the beginning. I didn’t, but we kind of slowed it down. And he actually wanted to take it slower as well. But I don’t know if he had some things going on in his life in the background that I didn’t know about. Because one day he was just like, this is way too much for me. And again,
Chris Seiter 06:02 any signs at all that you kind of picked up on or what for you? Was it out of the blue?
Kimberly 06:09 Yeah, there were signs he started pulling away, he started not wanting to see me or canceling plans. He started not really talking as much because in the beginning, he was very much wanting to rekindle things and then he would kind of fall away.
Chris Seiter 06:27 How did you personally react to that? Were you did you kind of fall back into the anxious tendencies when he would pull away like that?
Kimberly 06:36 Sometimes I did. And sometimes I really stuck with being more secure and just let him have a space. It really depended on the issue. Like sometimes he was a little jealous about things, and then I would kind of get more anxious. But if it was just like, hey, I’m busy. I really can’t deal with this right now. I would give him a space.
Chris Seiter 06:59 The irony of the guy who put the fake girlfriend on the phone being jealous is funny to me. Yeah.
Kimberly 07:05 He’s an ironic man, for sure.
Chris Seiter 07:09 Okay, so basically, you’re going through another breakup, you’re kind of back to where you started again, what happens next.
Kimberly 07:16 I immediately when I went in, and a contact, he actually broke up with me over Facebook Messenger. And I didn’t actually get to see him. Because the first time we broke up, I physically saw him and we talked about it. But the second time, he was just completely in avoidant mode. And he just did it over text and blocked me immediately. So I didn’t try to reach out, I just left it at that. And we immediately went into no contact, did the process all over again. Did my reach outs I did to reach out, he didn’t respond. And this time, I think he changed. So it’s deja vu, right. And it’s kind of funny, because we were together eight months, the first time and apart eight months. And then we were together for months and apart for months.
Chris Seiter 08:02 Okay, you’re saying this guy’s got a pattern
Kimberly 08:05 he does. He definitely has a pattern. Um, but he didn’t reach at it and respond to either one of those, as well. And then he reached out to me within because it was added a month, no contact, and with it. So within three months, because we were apart for four months, he reached out to me from a different phone number, didn’t identify himself. And I think it was a burner phone number or like a text now phone number because I have a friend who has one of those apps that can pull it up. And it wouldn’t pull up who the owner was, while two days later, I didn’t respond to that. Two days later, he reached out again with his actual phone number and told me who he was. And then he
Chris Seiter 08:51 wanted to ever get some insight into why he did that. No,
Kimberly 08:55 I didn’t. I didn’t even ask him about it. Because I didn’t want to assume that it was him. But just the fact that he reached out two days later. Just told me it was him. So yeah.
Chris Seiter 09:09 He’s thinking about you for sure. So obviously, he reaches out. I’m assuming you begin to rekindle things from there.
Kimberly 09:18 Yes. And we are together right now. But we’re still we’re still having a lot of problems.
Chris Seiter 09:27 Okay, so this is interesting. So basically, you are together. How long have you been together?
Kimberly 09:34 We got together right after Thanksgiving. This past Thanksgiving.
Chris Seiter 09:39 So you’ve been together a pretty longer stint this time than last time. Yeah, the last off again face. So before we kind of go into the problem areas, I’m actually kind of curious into helping people listening to this understand what you did that You felt worked? Like? What were the factors that kept drawing him back in kept having him be the one to reach out first Do you feel made the biggest difference?
Kimberly 10:10 I think that giving him that space and focusing on myself, the whole idea of being ungettable is probably the biggest thing because I went skydiving, and I put that on Facebook. And I went to a concert. And I, you know, I put that on Facebook. And I think that he was watching me through that I were a no, he was watching me through that, because he knew I went skydiving when we work together. And so it’s, I really think that that’s it because he seems he’s always been the kind of guy who, like, wanted a girl who was a go getter. And that was not who I was when we first got together. And so I really worked on those things, when we broke up when I found the program. And I think that that is a big part of what drew him back in. Because the cutting and the the constantly needing reassurance type thing really is the biggest things that he would run from. But when that wasn’t what I was doing, he was coming back.
Chris Seiter 11:22 So it was sort of like you projecting that go getting ungettable attitude through the social media that would throw him back in. And I mean, obviously, we’re kind of also skipping a few parts here with the rekindling aspect. How did the actual texting phase meet up phase, all that stuff? Go? Did you have any special strategies or tricks or tips for anyone who’s sort of stuck in that Limbo area?
Kimberly 11:52 We didn’t see or I didn’t stick straight to the program in that phase. But I did take bits and pieces out of it. Like I didn’t meet up immediately. I kept him wandering on things, I took a while to respond back to texts.
Chris Seiter 12:08 You were like unavailable, right? Even when even when you were really available.
Kimberly 12:12 Right? I was really, and I’m always available. I’m a State lot. I work at home, and I’m a single mom. So I really don’t do a whole lot. But I look like a
Chris Seiter 12:24 single mom. I mean, I got two kids my own. And that’s like a full time gig right there on top of work. So don’t sell yourself short, you’re doing a lot.
Kimberly 12:36 Well, I don’t do a lot of outside of that, I guess I should say. But in my process of becoming ungettable, I started to do more adding more things to my life. And so he kind of picked up on that when we first started talking again as well, because I wasn’t I wasn’t running to his every need. I wasn’t right there. Every time he wanted to see me I was doing things for myself doing things with my friends saying no to him, so I could go hang out with my friends. That was a big thing that I changed that I think really helped him realize I had made a change. And I think that’s a big part of why we rekindled but we did move a little bit too fast the second time. And this time has probably been even faster because he’s back living here with me. So
Chris Seiter 13:31 he’s living so the first time you didn’t. So you’ve been sort of the on again off again, couple four to go rounds. Now you’ve kind of went around that circle twice. So the first time was a four month stint. And you felt like you move pretty fast then but you’re even faster now. Yeah. With how things have progressed.
Kimberly 13:54 Yeah, cuz the first time we lived together for eight months, or we didn’t live together for eight months, we were together for eight months. And we’ve lived together for two months. And then he left and we were together for for the second time. And now we’ve been together for since November. And he’s been here for two months.
Chris Seiter 14:13 Interesting. Okay, so do you mind if I ask who asked who? For who back out of that sort of let’s be back together conversation unfold.
Kimberly 14:24 Oh, he asked those times. Both times.
Chris Seiter 14:29 Okay. So I guess what’s interesting is, this is a classic case of the on again off again, sort of situation being kind of one of the easier situations to get an ex back in, but I guess the problems that you’re having are well, how do I stop it from being off again? Is that do I have that kind of right? Yes, definitely. Okay. So what what is like the catalyst of these, these breakups that would occur?
Kimberly 14:54 I think the first time it was both of us, it was the A lot of pressure from me because I am a single mom, I have a mortgage, I have a car payment, I have all these things. And he I mean, he is responsible. But he doesn’t like he doesn’t have a child, he doesn’t have, you know, he doesn’t have a mortgage, he was only paying rent somewhere, and he just doesn’t have a lot of pressure on him. And when he was staying here, I was putting that pressure on, and I think he just couldn’t handle it. And so we were fighting, and I wasn’t handling this fights properly either.
Chris Seiter 15:34 Well, so he’s not the biological father of the child, right? Yeah. No. Okay. So the reason I say that is I was reading this really into, or rather, I was listening. Yesterday, I had to go fill my car up for gas. And I was listening to podcasts on the way to the gas station. And I was listening to this really interesting discussion about fatherhood. And what happens to the male brain when they see their child for the first time. And there’s like, there’s something that happens with the male brain where they become less impulsive. And they’re almost because they know like, Okay, well, that child’s reliant on me. And I kind of assume, I haven’t been able to verify this, but I assume the same thing kind of happens for women. But it’s interesting, because he’s not the biological father, he still might be caught in that zone, where he’s a little bit more wants to be more spontaneous. Do you feel like that’s a correct thing? Or is he kind of one of those, stay at home stay in type introvert individuals? Or is he always wanted to go out and you’re just not able to come? Is that a friction issue?
Kimberly 16:44 It is, he’s kind of a mix of both. He likes to be at home. But he also loves to be out with his friends doing things he loves to go to, he listens to drum and bass, and he loves to go to drum and bass shows. And I’m not real big on the club scene. So I’ve been to one with him. And that didn’t turn out very well for me and did for him, but not for me. But, so he’s a little mix of both. But he definitely has that spontaneous. He’s a very creative minded person. And he’s always got projects going on. And I’m like, I want to sit still, when I get off work, so we would clash in that area?
Chris Seiter 17:29 A lot. Yeah, I mean, I can come at it from your point of view, I’m a dad, I’m very close with my wife, I can kind of see what it’s like to be a mom, I sort of don’t want to go out a lot. You know, when you have kids, I think especially maybe you’ll resonate with this, you know, you’re working all day, and then you come home, and it feels kind of like you don’t ever get any off time. Because, you know, kids are kind of a 24 hour type deal on top of work. And I’m not sure he kind of understands that. So I think, really, the way to handle any kind of arguments about that situation isn’t necessarily to accuse him, but you help him understand your point of view a little bit better. But ultimately, for the relationship to thrive, you’re going to have to or both of you will have to compromise a little bit. I’m not saying you have to go out with him. But I’m saying well, if you go out with him, he should also do something that you want to do that he kinda doesn’t want to do. And but I think like when there’s a kid involved, you always should prioritize the kids well being and what I think probably will help the child is a more stable, consistent relationship. But it seems to me like you guys have lasted longer this stint this stint, I guess, what do you feel like has been the cause of that?
Kimberly 18:58 Ultimately, I think it’s the work that I’ve done on myself. And we had a discussion the second time we got back together or the after the first breakup, when we got back together about the fact that I was working on these things. I was in therapy. And I was like, you know, when we’re together, you’re gonna have to work on these things, too. And I think he actually picked that up a little bit and started working on some things he doesn’t know about the group. I’ve told him a little bit about attachment styles. So it’s always better
Chris Seiter 19:30 that it’s, it’s always better the attachment style stuff coming from someone else that’s not you. It’s like literally like a shoot the messenger type thing, because it can come off accusatory if you say it the wrong way. But if someone you know, like quickly explains it to them. Then it clicked for him. I found sorry, so sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.
Kimberly 19:53 Oh, you’re fine. I’m sure that he probably did some research after I mentioned it. And that’s probably What sparked some of these changes? But I’m just speculating. He’s not very open about stuff like that. And that’s another big part of why we can’t talk about these things, because he’s not very emotionally open. But I really do you think that this time around, he did a lot of work, I did a lot of work, there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done. But he’s realizing that, when he make it makes a commitment like that he needs to stick to it. And I think that’s a big part of it. Well, I
Chris Seiter 20:36 think that goes back to the boundary thing. So if he doesn’t stick to it, you have to set the boundary of Well, I’m not going to be with someone who’s not willing to do that for me. And that’s kind of what a secure person would do anyways, they’re not going to allow themselves to be put in a situation where they’re taken advantage of, or things are kind of completely unfair, or one sided. So the scary The scary thing is, it’s one of those situations where if you find it’s completely one sided, then you might need set the boundary and basically be like, hey, look, like I get that you want to do all this stuff and go out and have fun. But I’m a mom, I can’t always do that. I’m happy to accommodate that every once in a while. But if you’re not going to get with the program, I can find someone else better. And being able to act on that and him feeling that can all can sort of create the boundary for what she can realize, oh, this is really serious. I need to buckle down a little bit here. So a lot of is going to be setting boundaries and setting healthy ones and fair ones. I mean, I’m sure one of the things that you’ve gotten a little bit better at is not giving into your anxious side, potentially when he starts pulling away. Have you felt like that has made a difference? This didn’t? Yes,
Kimberly 21:50 it definitely has. Cuz before it was, you know, I would lay on the texting the when he lived here, it was like I wanted to have that conversation right then. And he’s like, immediately I want to run away. And now it’s when he comes to me and he is expressing that he does not want to talk about something or he’s not ready to deal with something, I just find something else to do. Or I go and hang out with my friends. And it’s it’s really helped a lot because he will actually then turn around and come to me when he’s ready.
Chris Seiter 22:25 Yeah, I mean, I think kind of the thing I see people struggle with the most when they end up successfully getting their exes back as you have is that whole sort of idea of you know, when they pull away you pull away because it’s so hard for a naturally anxious person to do they just want to fix the problem write that in there. But the way I try to always explain it to clients is it’s a lot like speaking a dismissive avoidance language. Now I’m not sure if he’s dismissive avoidant he seems kind of dismissive avoidant to me, but did you ever kind of ask him to take one of those attachment style tests to see where he came he kind of came out as
Kimberly 23:07 I’ve asked him to, but he wouldn’t do it. And but I right. I told him that too. I was like, it’s fun to find out, you know, what’s your coping mechanisms are but he he wouldn’t do it but I did take one for him. Just so I could get a better idea and it came out dismissive avoidant.
Chris Seiter 23:29 Yeah, I mean, a lot of what you’ve described here is sort of very classic dismissive avoidant behavior especially on again off again, relationships for finding any kind of fearful avoidant and dismissive avoidant, they’ll tend to have specifically fearful avoidance actually more than dismissive avoidance tend to have more volatile on again, off again, relationships. But I have noticed certainly a pattern of dismissive avoidance falling into these on again, off again, relationships and really the thing that I think most people mess up with, is not being patient. With the dismissive avoidant, you almost have to learn to speak their language when they’re pulling away, the worst thing you can do is kind of badger them. It’s exactly what you’re doing is kind of you finding something else to do until they’re ready to have the conversation. So I mean, I think that is an important thing to do for the survivability of that relationship. But I also do think in order for it to work, you’re going to have to play around with that stability and mystery scale. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard me talk. Have you ever heard her? You talking about that before? Some Yeah. Okay, so Well, the reason I bring it up is he probably subconsciously views you as the Stability Mechanism. And that’s good, but what’s probably lacking is some of the adventure spontaneity, or whatever. And what’s interesting is he was drawn to you when you did those things. You’re posting the skydiving stuff. What else did you What else would you say you did? You posted? Not to comment.
Kimberly 25:00 hurts. Yeah, I went to concerts. We did like some mountain hiking, I posted that, just so a few things.
Chris Seiter 25:10 Yeah. But I mean, all those are very spontaneous, adventurous type things. And I’m assuming his soul yearns for those type of experiences. So I would say one of the smart things that you can do if you want to tap into that a little bit is do any kind of outdoor activity together like going on a hike together, like work those into the routine. So I think just by nature, you’re you’re a mom, you have a job, there’s a certain aspect of you that is just naturally going to be more stable than more mystery based. But that doesn’t mean you can’t sprinkle mystery in and I think that’s kind of what he’s yearning for. And I bet you what will happen is if you can come consistently create these patterns where you’re having the stable time, but also doing these small, adventurous type of spontaneity is spontaneous. I can’t talk today. You get what I’m saying? Spawn spontaneity type things, I bet you’ll find he starts to open up to you in a way that he hasn’t before. Especially if you kind of stick to the when he pulls back, you pull back type of coping mechanism for him. Because I think the real trust is built when you actually trust someone and dismissive avoidance takes a long time to build their trust to where they’re comfortable enough opening up. I kind of get the sense he’s not even open to going to any kind of therapy, like couples therapy together at all.
Kimberly 26:35 No, we’ve talked about it. And he, he agreed at one point to do like one of those apps where we would answer questions to communicate like that, but we never actually did it. I’m in therapy, he will not go to therapy. And I don’t know what his reasoning behind that is. He has a lot of trauma that’s caused his dismissive avoidant behavior. And I don’t know why he won’t get therapy, but it would be great if he would, because it would be really good for us.
Chris Seiter 27:12 Yeah, I mean, I’ve I came out as a dismissive avoidant, I didn’t really have much of a traumatic childhood. But I did have a couple of very traumatic relationship experiences. And also some life experiences and different things throughout your life and experiences can can shape your attachment style. And I was even resistant to getting any kind of therapy. So the only thing I can really bring to you is my point of view. And as weird as it sounds, for dismissive avoidant, agreeing to go to therapy means you have a problem, and dismissive of what it’s like to be independent by nature. And they don’t like relying on other people for help. And that’s what therapy really is. So I think that’s kind of a difficult thing to go or agree to. But what I bet will happen is if you continue to gain his trust, that might be a step he’s willing to, to do. I mean, what what I think we have here is a classic. Yeah, your success story. But you’re also kind of worried about falling victim to that on again, off again, phase that I’m always talking about. You don’t you’ve already actually experienced it. So I think the challenge for you is, from what I’m hearing, you’re doing kind of the right things. I’m just wondering if maybe one changes, you can maybe plan some sort of family outing where you do something spontaneous, to kind of feed that aspect of him. Do you feel like you’ve done that? Or have you been pretty stay at home type? Since you’ve gotten back together?
Kimberly 28:54 Yeah, in the beginning, I did. But it’s been, especially with our fighting, it’s been pretty minimal, of even wanting to go out and do anything. And we seem to be on an opposite spectrum all the time. Like when I do want to go out he doesn’t. And when he wants to go, I don’t. So
Chris Seiter 29:13 I mean, sometimes you just kind of have to force them. My wife is a lot like that, you know, say I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do that. And then she’ll force me into it. And I’ll hate it until I actually started doing it, then I love it. So sometimes you just have to kind of force it to happen, because it’s for his own good to get out there. Which is which is interesting that he doesn’t want to that you’re on the the opposite schedules. But I think it kind of goes down to having honest conversations with one another and you being able to understand his point of view and repeating that back to him and also articulating your point of view. And I’m wondering if the disconnects potentially happening there, but you seem to be taking all the correct steps. He seems to not be taking any steps So you have to kind of LoL him with like, the analogy that always comes into my head with these kinds of things is, is the dog whisperer, or he tries to low dogs, he won’t come out of the crate with like treats and stuff. That’s kind of that’s kind of what I feel like you’re gonna have to do if you want him to kind of play a little bit. God, I gotta get off the dog analogy he’s.
Kimberly 30:25 And that’s a good idea, though. I mean, in the heat of the moment, you don’t really think about that. So I really need to take some time to pre plan for stuff like that. But I completely agree, I think it would really do him some good. If I was able to be more spontaneous.
Chris Seiter 30:43 Yeah, I mean, you can include your, your kid in the outing as well, you can do something together to kind of bond together as a family. Because I think the other thing that you really want to do is going back to that podcast I was listening to as you want him to look at the child as if it’s his own, so that he will actually start to be less impulsive and less spontaneous and be more stable, which I think is, from what I’m seeing, from my point of view, that’s where the big disconnect is, I think he’s kind of wanting more adventure and stability, or adventure and spontaneity and mystery, and you want more stability. And so you’re coming at it from this end of the spectrum, and he’s coming out of this end of the spectrum, and you kind of have to figure a way to meet out in the middle. But here’s the thing I’ve always learned as I’ve gotten older in life is the adventure and spontaneity is fine, but only in small doses. Because it’s, it’s, you can’t maintain it forever. And if you do have too much of it, it actually becomes boring, and you want to crave more stability. So I think you’re kind of on the right end of the spectrum. If you asked my opinion. He just also is there an age gap between the two of you?
Kimberly 31:58 He’s 34. And I am 36 actually
Chris Seiter 32:03 a little bit older, does he have any, any kids of his own or z.
Kimberly 32:07 So I said he doesn’t have he doesn’t have kids, but he does have a daughter, he just doesn’t have rights to his daughter. He has a he has a past in drugs. And he lost her eight years ago when she was a baby. So he’s never been a parent. Except or, you know, the first few months of her life.
Chris Seiter 32:26 I’m assuming that also has an impact on his attachment style and his coping mechanism and regret and scared of getting close. I’m assuming he’s taking care of all the substance abuse issues. Yes. Okay. Has there been any of that type of a situation when you’ve been together? Had that been a fight? Or is that kind of a long gone thing?
Kimberly 32:51 I’m not really I’ve had some suspicions, just because I’ve been with an addict before and I know kind of some of the behavior but they never played out to be true. Just but I think it’s just, I think it was just his be your in general having, you know, being an addict. I don’t think he was actually using, but he still has some of the like, secrecy behaviors. And he, you know, he’ll keep secrets about things that don’t even matter type thing. And just not not opening up being really closed off. But we haven’t had any major issues from that.
Chris Seiter 33:32 Okay. So I’m assuming also your experience in the past has led to some trauma and anxiety as well. And so what’s probably happening is you’re, you’re projecting your great fears onto him, when you get suspicion which aggravates your own anxiety, which causes you to not back when you were nodding. I will say, for the most part, it seems like you’re doing everything correctly. I mean, it’s one of those just difficult things that will take time. It’s not going to happen overnight. And I think anyone who assumes that there’s like some sort of special trick to it is just lying to you or giving you a false hope. It just takes time of you consistently creating the power of the patterns. I will also say it’s really important for you to maintain your boundaries. So you need to have your non negotiables if there’s non negotiables are crossed, then you need to drop him immediately. And that will do you a world of good not only from him realizing oh, she’s serious, but also you realizing, Oh, I could do this. I am cool on my own.
Kimberly 34:43 Yeah, I definitely got to that point in this process, or I was like, I kind of like being by myself. But yeah, I also love him a lot. So there’s, well,
Chris Seiter 34:56 I mean, I think there’s enough there to where it’s like you You just need to keep doing what you’re doing in a weird way. Maybe add in the spontaneity aspects to kind of feed that beast a little bit. Is there like a common theme among the fighting that’s happening? Is it always about him wanting to do more, and you’re not being able to?
Kimberly 35:20 No, it’s, it’s some that and then it’s some there are things that I expect. And he’s not used to, like I said, he doesn’t, you know, he doesn’t have his child. He doesn’t, he was always renting, but he would have a roommate. So it’s not like, he doesn’t understand the doing everything on his own. And when he’s here, there’s a lot of things that I expect out of him other than just going to work. And when I come to him and talk to him about that, I think that a lot of times, he hears me in a view of his trauma. And he doesn’t hear I need you to do this, but he hears like, you’re not doing this, and you’re a piece of crap, because you’re not doing it. But that’s not what I’m saying. And that’s usually what we end up fighting about.
Chris Seiter 36:08 Do the fights get into yelling? Or is it just raised voices? Like, how, how bad are we getting here. Um,
Kimberly 36:16 so he has yelled before, and I have yelled before. But most of the time, it’s just a little bit of raised voice, and then he’ll walk away. And he’ll go either leave, or he has like a workshop in my crawlspace. And he will go down there, I have a walk in crawlspace. So he will go down there and work on his, his paintings or build something. And usually he comes back, and we talk later. But it’s, it’s like, any type of hearing, I need you to do something or I need you to do something you’re not doing currently triggers him. Yes,
Chris Seiter 36:55 he feels like he’s being attacked. The weirdest advice that I’m gonna give you today is to, like 99% of fights happen because of your tone of voice. If you come, like, if you come with an accusatory tone, that can trigger it. But if you come with a calm as if you’re not even upset tone, as you accuse him, he’s going to be actually a lot more receptive to that. So I actually think that’s one thing that you can do. But the other thing that’s really important for you to do is set your boundary just be like, look it, you don’t have to tell them the boundary. But like in your head, if, if you consistently see that you’re having these conversations with him, and he’s not, at least doing something positive to meet what you feel is fair. It’s okay to walk away. It’s okay to be like, Okay, I love you and everything, but this is not working out, I need to think about what’s best for myself. I’m a big believer into the show, don’t tell approach. So a lot of people like to fall victim to the I’m going to tell my ex or my boyfriend or husband or whatever, my boundaries, I’m going to tell them the boundaries, I’ll tell them, I’ll tell them, I’ll tell them. And then they tell them so much the person eventually tests the boundary, but then they don’t get any kind of consequence for for breaking the boundary, if you will. Now I’m not I’m not I’m suggesting that if things get really, you know, difficult and you’re fighting all the time, but I think probably the the idea here is to foster communication so that you can have an honest conversation about what you’re needing and what you need from him. And I think the important thing that’s maybe potentially missing is is literally understanding what he’s feeling and why he won’t do what you want him to do. And then just telling them that because what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to make him understand that you understand him better than anyone else and that’s what will get him to open up and maybe spark a change. I’ll say this one thing a lot of times it can feel really disheartening when you feel like you’ve done the things that I just said you still haven’t gotten the change but what’s interesting is I was recently actually just really posted a video on YouTube that’s actually doing pretty well usually my YouTube videos don’t do very well so so
Kimberly 39:36 think we froze faculties here. Hopefully we we come back.
Chris Seiter 39:49 But let’s hope Let’s hope I fix the Kimberley. Can you hear me? Yes. Where did our cut off for you. I’ll start over. Um,
Kimberly 40:03 you were talking about? I can’t even remember now. Oh, yeah, I was trying to fix this.
Chris Seiter 40:10 No, the problem is with me and my dumb computer, not you. So, basically, I was talking about this concept of change, and if eight exes are capable of change, and what they’ve found, especially with people who are trying to recover from addiction, is that relapses are a normal part of the process. So don’t expect your ex to change right away. And kind of like, you know, you’re like having a conversation with them, you want them to do something, it is normal for them to resist it at first, it’s a relapse type thing. But if you stay at it, and you have the right approach, then eventually change can be fostered and can occur. So I think the approach I would have for you is the tactical empathy bit where you’re repeating his worldview back to him, as well as the tone bit, just don’t come at it with almost come at it with the tone as if you’re not even bothered by it. But you’re gonna have this honest discussion with it. And I think probably you’ll find he’ll be a lot more receptive, then.
Kimberly 41:12 Yeah, that’s great advice. I’ve done a little bit of that. But sometimes it’s really hard to stick to when you’re, like, totally fed up with, yeah, what’s going on, but that he has reacted better to moments like that, than when we just fight. So I’m gonna work really hard to implement some more of that.
Chris Seiter 41:36 But overall, I mean, when we go back and look at your success story, I think what’s interesting is, or the thing that really sticks out to me is what you posted on social media, because you’re like, full out blocked, and each time you got him to unblock you. So I when I look back at your success story, and like kind of trying to pinpoint the hard stuff. So the hard stuff is actually keeping the relationship together as you’re finding out in these type of situations. But what’s interesting is you can always learn from what you did, and I think the posting of the ungettable type stuff, the Trinity work really worked well, in your in your case, do you? Do you feel on the mark with that statement?
Kimberly 42:20 Yes, it was a big part of it. I actually had one of his friends. That was friends with me. And I mean, I don’t know how much communication they had about my posts. But I’m sure that that was part of it. But yeah, I know that he told me, he felt my changes when we talked again, and he felt me pulling away and moving on. So I 100% Because I didn’t do a whole lot of dating. So I 100% know that that came from all the ungettable stuff I was doing.
Chris Seiter 42:56 Yeah, and I mean, it does also match up with what we know about avoidance, you know, avoidance don’t really begin to miss you until they feel that they that you’ve moved on from them. And then they give themselves permission to miss you. So I find that interesting that you posting those things, even though you didn’t date anyone else was a way of being like, well, I’m moving on with my life. And that’s what triggered him to reach out in these really interesting ways. But when you look back at like the actual success aspect of your success, where what do you feel like stood out as the most important part for you personally?
Kimberly 43:32 Definitely my own growth. I mean, I loved us, you know, getting back together, I love the fact that I was able to keep that relationship, but I found myself in that journey. And that was a really big part of it. And you know, the group and the people I’ve met in the group, were a big part of that because I am a very stable person, a very homebody person and pushing myself to get out and do more things really did help me grow and really did help my anxiety. And you know, it pushed me into therapy too. And which I go every two weeks and that has been amazing. I’ve found my perfect therapist first time. And so yeah, definitely. Yeah, that is pretty rare. And I actually plan on moving out of state in the next couple years, so I’m gonna leave here. No, no, not it’s kind of funny. I I’m moving to be near my battle, buddy. No, yeah. Yeah, me and her have become best friends. And she wasn’t my assigned battle buddy. But she was like my, my picked battle buddy, because my battle buddy was like in another country, and we were on different time zones, time zones, and so we never really talked a whole lot. But yeah, I actually love it, where she lives and I’m planning on moving there. But uh, uh, definitely, just that growth and getting myself out there like going to where she lives is the farthest I’ve traveled. And so it’s just, it’s definitely the whole idea of being ungettable was my biggest part of my success story, you know, yeah, I got my boyfriend back. But you know, that’s just like the icing on the cake, I guess you can say
Chris Seiter 45:23 that that’s a good way of looking at. It’s kind of like you got yourself back. And then as a result of that, the boyfriend came back and he’s just kind of like the sprinkles on top of that. So Kimberly, thank you so much for doing this.
Kimberly 45:38 No problem. I was excited to do it. I know. I’ve watched probably every single success story when I first joined the program when I was in that anxious like, looking for a way to get through this. So they’re definitely helpful and I’m glad to be a part of it.
Chris Seiter 45:54 Well, you’re gonna be the newest one. So congrats on that. Yay. And I again, thank you so much for coming in doing this.
Kimberly 46:05 You’re very welcome. Thank you for what you do as well.
Success Story: This Woman Decided To Move On From Her Ex Now She’s With Someone Who Treats Her Right
Mar 24, 2023
Most of the time when I conduct one of my success story interviews it’s with someone who worked the program and got their ex back.
But I define success with our program in multiple ways.
For me, deciding NOT to get your ex back and moving on to someone else is every bit of a success as actually getting an ex back.
Especially if moving on to someone else causes you to realize just how poorly your ex was treating you.
Such was the case with Ellen in my success story interview with her.
Not only did she move on to someone new but,
She realized that her ex was a hardcore narcissist
She found a life long friend in our battle buddy program
She gained more confidence
Listen to her story in our newest success story!
Interview Transcript
Chris Seiter 00:03 All right, today we’re gonna be talking to a really interesting success story. This is Ellen, who ended up posting in our community last week or sometime around there. But she’s not your typical success story. She joined the program to originally get her ex back, and then decided that Well, I guess she found a better guy. But thank you so much for coming on and doing this. Thank you. So why don’t you take us back to the beginning of when you’re going through your breakup some of the emotions that your feeling and kind of what led up to you moving on and finding someone
Ellen 00:42 different? Okay. It was like, one year and three months ago, it wasn’t the beginning of Yeah. To to make 22,002 is
Chris Seiter 00:57 like a pretty long time ago.
01:02 And we actually broke up with me, I think it was last Saturday, and he texted me, it was a really bad breakup.
Chris Seiter 01:15 What did he say exactly? In the text?
01:19 He didn’t want to meet me. And I asked him why. And he said that he wanted to break up with me. So was nothing more than that. But he called me and we talked about loss really bad. Because I have been with him for four years. was out of the blue. Sort of a
Chris Seiter 01:48 out of the you didn’t like notice any signs about him becoming distant up until the breakup?
01:54 No. Nothing like that. No, no, so much.
Chris Seiter 02:00 So obviously, he breaks up with you. And then I’m assuming you go to Google or YouTube or wherever to try to find ways to get your ex back. And is that pretty much how that went down?
02:11 Yeah, that’d be I looked up. Almost every video you have on YouTube
Chris Seiter 02:19 every day. That’s like 600. Ellen.
02:23 Yeah, almost every.
Chris Seiter 02:28 So eventually, you come into the program. And you start, I guess, the program to try to get your ex back. How did that go?
02:41 It didn’t go good at all. I was too anxious. So I couldn’t handle it. And I needed more time. And he wasn’t nice to me. So we started to fight all the time. And he started to date another woman.
Chris Seiter 03:01 So he’s, so he starts to date another woman. I’m assuming at some point, you do like a No Contact Rule. To them. Do you remember how long you made it?
03:15 60 days, I think both 60
Chris Seiter 03:17 days you did 260? Day in Hong Kong? What was the thinking behind doing that? The 60 days?
03:25 was the longest time you can do according to ERP. So I did it, because they
Chris Seiter 03:31 did. So you did a 60 day No Contact Rule, which is actually a little bit longer than we recommend. But what’s what’s interesting is, I’m assuming you kind of broke it prematurely a few times. Yes. What? So how many times or what was what prompted you to break it a bunch of times like that?
03:58 I was sad and anxious. That’s all it was really hard to stay away. Okay.
Chris Seiter 04:06 So, so you you break the No Contact Rule? I’m assuming it doesn’t go well.
04:11 No, it didn’t answer or he told me to stop writing or Yeah.
Chris Seiter 04:17 Okay. So what do you do after that when he tells you basically, like, leave me alone? Stop writing. What what’s your approach after that?
04:27 I left him alone for like, one week, and then they wrote again, he did it again. Yeah, I did all the mistakes. You can you can do.
Chris Seiter 04:39 So like at some point, I think you decide to give up, right. Is that is that kind of what ends up happening?
04:47 We’ll see. You during Christmas. Last year. I applied for a job at a big bank in Sweden and he worked there and When I told him about it, he threatened me and was really angry. You told me around you? Yeah. Yeah. He told me that. If I started working there, he will quit his job and he will sell his apartment and move in with his parents and everything is my fault.
Chris Seiter 05:22 I see. Yeah. I assume did you end up taking the bank job? No,
05:28 I didn’t take it. But it was. It was too much for me. He even blocked me. So I think he was too immature. I mean,
Chris Seiter 05:38 yeah. Okay, so So basically, at that point, that was the last straw for you, the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.
05:47 Yeah. I couldn’t talk to him after that, because I was blocked almost everywhere
Chris Seiter 05:52 and everywhere. Are you still blocked to this day?
05:55 Yes. Not on Facebook, but everywhere else. So.
Chris Seiter 05:59 So he still wants a small window into your life on Facebook? Yeah. But what’s interesting is, the story is about to take a good turn. So eventually, you meet this new guy, you basically give up on that axe and start moving on.
06:15 Yeah. How did that happen? I actually got a lot of help from my battle, buddy. I have one from the ERP group. And she helps me a lot, and also the group read almost everything in it. And I think it’s really good for mental health. And I wanted to meet someone better, someone which I can have a family with. So I started to date, but it was not a good in the beginning. I had Tinder, but it’s not that good.
Chris Seiter 06:54 So you tried Tinder, it didn’t work out so well.
06:59 So I actually downloaded a more mature app. And a guy brought me and we saw each other after like three days.
Chris Seiter 07:10 Do you remember what the app was called? Yeah. match.com. Oh, match. Okay.
07:17 I’m sure it’s an international app. I guess.
Chris Seiter 07:21 No, no, we have match.com here in the States. It’s just not as popular. I guess. Tinder got the dating market share something. But I remember match.com. And it was going on. So eventually you you meet someone on match.com.
07:36 And
Chris Seiter 07:39 and how did that go?
07:41 Well, he was really nice. And he’s actually a gentleman. It’s not that common. It’s pretty rare in my age, and he actually holds every door for me. And he pays for me when we are out and eat at restaurants and even holds my bag. He does everything for me. It’s
Chris Seiter 08:06 so I’m assuming your ex boyfriend did not do those things.
08:11 And maybe it didn’t even buy me a Christmas present or what? No Christmas presents? No, it was really mean to me.
Chris Seiter 08:22 So that’s interesting to me. Why do you think it took you so long to get to that place where you’re like, you know what, I deserve better?
08:30 I think it is because you have a vision. You can see a future retirement, really liked his family and his friends and his life. I wanted to be a part of it. But you don’t see the bigger picture. You don’t think about it in that way. It’s more like a dream. And it’s hard to lose that. I think that’s
Chris Seiter 09:00 disappeared. It looks like we’re having some technical difficulties. And my back. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, I think that was a really poignant way of putting that, that you kind of like, hold on to that vision. And you kind of don’t want to let it go. Obviously, we’re doing this interview to kind of really speak to people in the group and show people that there’s light at the end of the tunnel, even if you don’t get your ex back the way you want. What would you say to someone listening to this, that struggling? Holding on to that vision? What what what are some words of advice from because you’ve already made it through you’ve made it to the promised land so to speak, what do you tell people who are struggling?
09:52 Give it a lot of time. It took me over one year and do things you like for example Meet new friends and start a hobby. For example, I started training at a team, and the new guy even trains with me and I have a new friend, which I trained with. So do things you like and meet new friends and just keep busy and try to be patient takes a lot of time. And I think almost like 80% of the people in the group deserves so much better. Yeah. It’s really important to look after red flags and be and don’t use Tinder, for example, you can use it but you need to be very, I don’t know, either. really careful. And
Chris Seiter 10:55 well, let’s talk a little bit about that. You say you need to be careful on Tinder. What’s what’s informing That? That? Words,
11:05 a lot of guys. They only want sex. So they do will say whatever they want. They try to make you think otherwise. So you think they want a relationship or a future with you, but in and when they get six, they disappear. So I think you should. It’s actually my battle buddy. From ERP, she actually taught me this. She actually made me wait a long time and to look after more serious guys and
Chris Seiter 11:42 older guys. So I guess essentially, the battle buddy. So when you look back at your experience in, in the community, you would say probably your connection that you made with the battle buddy was the most impactful aspect of that.
11:57 Yeah, she’s a friend of mine. Now, we talked a lot, so she helps me a lot.
Chris Seiter 12:05 So that’s interesting. Are you guys both nearby each other? Have you ever met in person yet?
12:11 No. She’s in Switzerland. So it’s no, yes. I think it’s Switzerland. So it’s not here, but it’s in Europe. So it’s the same timezone. So that’s the same
Chris Seiter 12:23 timezone. Yeah, for sure. So you meet the new guy. Things are going really, really well. And by comparison, I guess it feels like, Oh, this is what a relationship is supposed to be like.
12:38 Yeah, I feel really secure and calm and happy. It’s like heaven.
Chris Seiter 12:46 So how long have you been with the new guy for?
12:49 I think three weeks. So it’s pretty new. But we are always talking about winning together in the future.
Chris Seiter 12:56 Wow. moving in together. Have you ever talked with someone that quickly?
13:03 No, actually not.
Chris Seiter 13:07 Have you guys said that? told each other that you love each other yet?
13:12 No, but he’s in love with me. You told me that?
Chris Seiter 13:15 Well, I mean, that’s, that kind of counts in my book tells you that he’s in love with you. How often do you guys see each other?
13:24 Like for three days a week? Wow.
Chris Seiter 13:29 four to three, three to four days a week. So obviously, you’re over your ex. Yeah, that’s, that’s kind of the interesting thing, I think is that we’re not really talking about here is how long do you felt like it take it took for you to get to that place where you got over them? Like officially,
13:49 like one year and one month or so it was 13 points? Yeah.
Chris Seiter 13:58 Do you feel like there’s any tips or tricks you can give to someone who wants to get over their ex on what actually worked for you?
14:08 We’ve been talking about it with other people. Because when I talked about him, they all saw a lot of red flags and a lot of abuse. And so it made me think about him in a really bad way. I think that’s important, and also to be really occupied and starting a new life.
Chris Seiter 14:33 Well, that’s the interesting what you said about talking to other people. Yeah, because I think I think there’s more to it than just talking to other people. I think it’s talking to impartial people. Because sometimes, like when you talk to your friends or family who don’t like your ex, you’re not going to ultimately get an authentic reaction from someone who can just look at a situation but when you’re talking to someone who doesn’t have any skin in the game, and they’re looking at your situation saying hey, these are some really major red flags are emotionally abusing you hear. It can, I think maybe was it? Was it the fact that you were talking to like a battle buddy? That was saying like, Hey, these are red flags, you need to watch out for this? Yeah. Was that when it sort of started clicking for you?
15:18 Yes. And before that I have talked to my family and friends that know him. So it’s
Chris Seiter 15:25 both sides. Oh, so they hadn’t met him before?
15:28 No, not my new friends. So it helped a lot.
Chris Seiter 15:33 Okay, so obviously, this guy was really rude really mean emotionally using you? You kind of got out of that situation. And what I think is really hard for people to maybe understand is some of the red flags. So could you take us maybe through some of the red flags that people need to be paying attention to that maybe they’re excusing? Because they are holding on to that vision?
15:59 One big red flag was that it was really rude and mean to other people. For example, if we were in a store, or the restaurant he talked about about people he doesn’t know. And he started to be mean to me as well. And he always talked about yourself in like, he was on a pedestal.
Chris Seiter 16:23 Narcissistic type. Yeah.
16:26 Yeah. And he actually hide me from his friends and family for four years. So
Chris Seiter 16:34 four years. So did you ever meet them?
16:38 No. Wow. Okay. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 16:42 Do you? Do you know if he also was seeing someone else at the same time?
16:48 No, I don’t know. Because we didn’t see each other that much. It could take like two weeks between or so I don’t know. Maybe, but I don’t think so.
Chris Seiter 17:03 But so is your so he’s rude to other people. Was that just like rude to the waiter or something? Or was it talking bad about people that you’ve worked with?
17:12 Looks bad about people all the time? All the time? Yeah. I couldn’t even watch TV with him or stand in line at the store anything. He talked bad about people only all the time.
Chris Seiter 17:26 Wow. Was there any other red flags? Other than than those two?
17:32 Maybe that he felt bad about me my clothes and my weight? And
Chris Seiter 17:40 it sounds like it sounds like a narcissist. Yeah,
17:43 I could do what I want that I couldn’t do what I wanted.
Chris Seiter 17:48 Yeah. Sounds. He sounds I mean, I’m not a licensed therapist or anything. So I can’t clinically but he definitely sounds like a narcissist. Because like a narcissist will have the idealization stage where they like, idealize you at first, and then make you feel super special. And then they have what’s called the devalue stage where they do everything in their power to devalue you and talk down to you. And it seems kind of like a classic case of him sticking in that. And it seems to me like you had a difficult time holding yourself out of that situation. Here.
18:24 Yeah, it was really hard. I was actually depressed. And so yeah, I went to therapy for like, half a year, I think. So it was hard.
Chris Seiter 18:36 In the therapy help,
18:38 we have it. Now. The thing that helped me most was finding new friends and doing other stuff. But it was really hard because you are attached to people. I don’t know why you like the space you like, when they are nice to you even do they really mean it’s really hard to describe and it’s actually a bit embarrassing?
Chris Seiter 19:06 No, I don’t think you’d be embarrassed at all. I think actually, you’re just by having these open, honest discussions about this, I think, to effect people. Probably the most important thing that you said there is the thing that worked the most was attaching to other people, surrounding yourself with other people. Do you feel like that was because you’re able to form a connection with those people or if it was more about an accountability aspect where they are holding you accountable for like, maybe just even holding the mirror up and saying, Hey, look what he’s doing to you and making you realize you deserve better.
19:40 Yeah, all my friends actually does that because if I’m in a store, for example, and they show me very colorful t shirt, for example, I wasn’t allowed to wear color four pounds. For example, I can say I’m not allowed to use that. And they always say that it’s yo, or Egypt or anything, they always tell me the truth.
Chris Seiter 20:08 Wow, that’s so. So he had such a hold over you that? Yeah. I mean, he sounds kind of like a really hardcore classic narcissist whose. So I think it’s really the thing anyone listening to this I think the really big lesson to take from from it is if you are dealing with an ex who’s doing these things, do not try to get them back, try to move on from that. And understand that there’s light at the end of the tunnel like Elon is basically living right now now that she’s with a new guy. It’s sort of like, I guess the highs are higher, because you’re like, oh, this it’s like to be in a in a normal relationship. Yeah.
20:48 Yeah, I was really anxious before, but now I’m secure. I don’t I’m not anxious. All I know that he will answer me or he wants to see me. I don’t need to wait for his replies. And, yeah, it’s not that hard anymore. How do you what do you think
Chris Seiter 21:09 was the biggest factor from taking you from the anxious personality to the secure personality?
21:14 I think it was AARP, looking at your videos and learn about attachment styles and reading in the group. new hobby and new friends, I think it was a lot like a mix of everything.
Chris Seiter 21:32 Okay, sort of a slow mix, you’re making slow progress steps forward. But even it even took some challenges to get you there. Because you still wanted a back for a longest time.
21:44 Yeah. It’s slowly went down. I wanted him back, like 100% or like, half a year, then it went slowly down. So you don’t detach that easily. But I think you need to meet other guys. And for example, training helps a lot. Yeah, feel strong. And that helps.
Chris Seiter 22:11 In your advice to meeting other guys do not do Tinder, do match.com.
22:18 But look out for all the red flags and be more patient.
Chris Seiter 22:24 So looking back at your whole experience, if you could just go back in time and talk to yourself, what what advice would you give yourself,
22:32 actually to be patient? And because it was really hard, but I’m more secure. Now when I’m stronger? And I like myself more now? I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m not depressed anymore and anxious. And I’m happy now. So I actually think it was a really good lesson. It was. Yeah, that’s good in some way.
Chris Seiter 23:02 Yeah, I mean, I think that’s, I think that’s the right way to look at it personally. Because a lot of times people get too hung up on this idea of oh, I wasted all my time trying to get this person back and failed. Instead, you’re saying, I took all that time and it took all that time to learn. This is how I choose a partner. I was
23:22 actually really introvert. I didn’t talk to people I was I was always home or with my ERP ex, I think social and outgoing now when I talk to everybody you’re
Chris Seiter 23:37 doing interview.
23:38 Yeah. Me. So I think it was a really good lesson. I think. I don’t regret it at all. And I don’t know what the future would hold if I didn’t. If I leaned or, yeah, it’s hard to know if future without him.
Chris Seiter 24:03 Yeah. Well, I mean, I think I think the future you you’ve created for yourself is pretty, pretty solid. You’ve you’ve got a new partner who’s treating you well. You do you feel like confident with yourself now? Like let’s say the new partner that didn’t work out? Do you feel like you’d be okay after that?
24:23 I’m really confident now. Okay. So it’s not a problem at all. I even told you guys about this, and He supports me. Amazing. I called him before this interview and he calmed me down and told me that it will go really well. You know, it’s
Chris Seiter 24:42 we’re talking it’s great. Do you do you have any last words for people listening?
24:53 Things I said before Be patient and actually buy the program because You need the ARP group in Facebook. It’s really good. And you need a buddy. It’s you, you really need it. It’s the best thing about your product, I think. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 25:17 The community aspect, the accountability aspect, but the battle, buddy, you know, there’s people who are still lifelong friends because they’ve partnered up in that battle buddy program and it seems like you took it seems like we paired you with the right with the right person.
25:32 Yeah, I think that too. So I think I think everyone should buy your product. So they can Oh, thanks.
Chris Seiter 25:38 I promise guys. I’m not paying her at all say that.
25:45 The earpiece is really good and fun to actually read. Although people are not always talking about VIP access they talked about are things that well, new guys, right? You can get help with other things. Yeah,
Chris Seiter 26:03 that’s gonna mean that that’s true. I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming on and doing this, Alan.
Let’s talk about how to convince your ex to meet up with you. It’s funny, when researching for this article I had a ton of trouble finding examples in our community of people spilling details on exactly how they got their meetups.
Alas though, after half an hour of searching I found four real life examples of people who successfully convinced their ex to meet up with them.
The Well Timed Facebook Post
The Damsel In Distress Meetup
Just Simply Trusting In The Value Ladder
You Simply Initiate A Low Investment Meetup
However, before we really take the time to get into the examples I feel its important to cover the basics of why exes can say “no” to a meetup.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
A step by step process for re-establishing contact with your ex and communicating in a way that makes reconciliation more likely by strategically making your ex recognize your value for themselves.
The way it works is simple.
Before moving from one stage to the next you must first build up enough value.
It’s similar to a video game in that regard.
You have to complete the level you are on first before moving on to the next one. Except instead of dodging bad guys or obstacles like in a typical mario game you have to build value.
The #1 reason that exes will say no to a meetup is if you try to advance to the meetup phase by skipping the climb up the value ladder.
It’s too fast too soon.
Though lately I’ve been noticing an interesting phenomenon where exes will say yes to a meetup but only cancel at the last minute.
Ok, so with that explanation out of the way I think we can move on to the real tactics that clients have used to get their exes to meet up with them.
Real Examples Of Tactics Used To Get Exes To Meet Up
One quick note though before we get started.
I like using real people from our community to prove my points. In pretty much every example I’m going to use to prove my points today the community member didn’t rush the value ladder.
The results were only possible because they slowly, methodically worked their way up the ladder.
Think of it as the pre-requisite that must be met before you can try any of these tactics.
Ok, with that out of the way let’s begin!
Tactic #1: The Well Timed Facebook Post
I’m pulling from one of my clients a few years ago for this one.
On our coaching call she mentioned that she really wanted to meet up with her ex. She was having a work interview in his home town (they were kind of long distance) but she felt a bit awkward outright asking him to meetup.
I suggested that her best approach would be to post something on social media about it and find a way to combine his interest.
Thus, my next question was,
“Well, what’s he interested in?”
He response was quick and authoritative,
“Game of Thrones”
To which I responded,
“Well, this may sound kind of corny but what if you were to have someone photoshop you on the back of a dragon riding in to his town.”
This was the resulting post,
Here’s the coolest part though.
She posts this to her Facebook Account and within an hour her ex had commented on the post and then even privately messaged her that they should catch up.
This worked for a few reasons.
Yes, it was an interest based approach where you are engaged in your exes actual interests but the more relevant part is that she actually had an interview. She didn’t make that up.
She was authentically working the trinity and making big strides.
Tactic #2: The Damsel In Distress Meetup
One of the most popular text messages that our community likes to use (especially women) is the damsel in distress text messages.
You know the ones, they look like this,
You have this burning question that only your ex can answer.
Well, it turns out that the damsel in distress approach can also work for meet ups. In talking to a moderator of our community they had this to say about what worked to get a meetup for them,
“I also used a damsel in distress in this case. I told him I needed his expertise in making a certain pool shot and of course he wanted to help me.”
What I find really clever about this approach is her damsel in distress approach actually had an embedded meetup included.
Tactic #3: Just Simply Trusting In The Value Ladder
This one might be a little self serving but I promise it does work.
When searching through the community looking for exact examples of tactics used to secure meetups I noticed a trend. Most people would talk about what happened on the meetups but not necessarily talk about how the meetups were secured themselves.
And it dawned on me that most of them probably didn’t have to do anything.
By simply trusting in the value ladder their ex would initiate the meetup,
It’s that last phrase mentioned that I really want you to pay attention to.
This program really works. Stick with it, work on yourself first, do the no contact, the texting phase, the phone call phase, the meetup phase… do it all, take it slow… it works!
It goes back to what I was saying that if you skip the value ladder or advance up it too quickly you tend not to get the results you want.
So yes, sometimes all you have to do is just stick to the approach and your ex will ask for a meetup themselves.
Tactic #4: You Simply Initiate A Low Investment Meetup
Of course, sometimes no matter how patient you are during your climb up the value ladder your ex won’t ask for a meetup.
Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands.
“I think it’s ok to initiate the first meetup. Then you want to see that they are at least talking about meeting up again and making plans with you.”
I’ll preface this by saying that this technically only works if you’ve done what I’ve been saying all article long and slowly worked your way up the value ladder.
How do you know when the right time to ask is?
I think by simply looking at your progress in your climb is a great indicator. If you are talking on the phone and texting pretty much every day it’s time to move to the next stage.
This whole graphic might actually be the reason for why your ex says no.
It’s called, “The Value Ladder.” I think I’ll actually let my official guide, The Ex Boyfriend Recovery Program describe what it is,
The Value Ladder (Noun) A step-by-step process for re-establishing contact with your Ex and communicating in a way that makes reconciliation more likely by strategically making your Ex recognize your Value for himself.
Put simply, it’s the slow methodical approach to getting an ex back.
Now, I’ve been on record saying that most of our clients have an anxious attachment style. If you don’t believe me take a look at this poll,
And the thing about extremely anxious individuals is that they tend to be extremely desperate which causes them to try to “jump” the value ladder.
Let’s take a deeper look at the ladder,
Now, the point is to stairstep your way up to the top.
You can’t advance to the next level until enough value has been provided at the level you are currently at. The mistake most anxious people meet is they jump the ladder all the way to the “meetup phase” without actually having provided any value in the texting phase, phone call phase, etc.
Usually when an ex says no to a meetup it means you’ve skipped the value ladder.
You’ve rushed the process to see them before they are probably comfortable seeing you.
And it can be soul crushing to be told no.
It can feel like a mini breakup is happening all over again.
The question now becomes…
How To Handle It If It Happens To You
So, story time.
If you didn’t know I’m actually married to the woman of my dreams but I want to go back in time to when we weren’t married. I want to go back in time to when we weren’t even dating.
We were still in that fun “talking phase.”
Let me give you a little on the logistics of our situation at the time.
I lived in Texas
She lived in Pennsylvania
Which meant that in order for us to officially meet in person one of us would have to go to the other or both of us would have to meet in a neutral location. Maybe a few weeks into “talking” my soon to be wife suggested that we meet up at her parents beach house in Florida.
I said “no.”
Why?
It was too much too soon. It was scary. I had known her for two weeks.
So, how the heck did she end up bagging this guy (I’m pointing at myself here.) Well, she basically went back to the beginning of the value ladder and worked it.
She went back to basics.
And that sets the stage for the process that I think you should be doing if you find yourself in this situation,
Actually go out and do something on the planned meetup.
Preferably with someone else (Friends for non jealousy, Other person for jealousy)
Wait a day and then post about the great time on social media
Then you would continue to act normal and unbothered (work your way up the value ladder)
Let’s start from the top.
Actually Go Out And Do Something On The Planned Meetup
You ask your ex up for a meetup and they said no.
Sucks, right?
Want to know what 99% of my clients end up doing?
Nothing.
They sit at home, feel sorry for themselves. Maybe order an ice cream.
Want to know what they should be doing?
They should be going out on the exact day they were going to meet up with their ex and actually doing a fun activity.
This leads me to my next point.
Preferably Go Out With Someone Else
Don’t go out on the planned meetup alone.
Go with someone else.
But who?
Well, you really have two options.
If you don’t want to make your ex jealous then pick your best friend
If you do want to make your ex jealous, you need to go on the date with someone else
By doing this you are going to accomplish a few things.
You will show that your time is valuable and that you are sought after by other people.
Take Pictures Of You Having Actual Fun
I mean, we have to capture the fun, right?
Here’s my best tip for this.
The pictures you take with whoever you bring to wherever you bring them need to be authentic. Don’t fake it. Go out and actually have fun with them.
Wait A Day And Then Post About It On Social Media
Statistics have shown consistently that close to 90% of exes will be stalking your social media accounts. Thus, it’s highly likely that your ex will be encountered with the opportunity cost issue.
They chose to not go out with you.
So, instead they are forced to see someone else go out with you.
Thus, they can literally see what they are missing out on. You can prove that the missed opportunity to go out with you was something that they may regret.
I want you to wait a full day before you post any pictures though. You need to not seem like you are trying too hard.
Continue To Act Normally Towards Your Ex And Rework The Value Ladder
This is another area I see people in our community going wrong.
People fall way too much in love with the no contact rule and while it’s great. It’s not always the answer.
Sure, if you haven’t even done a no contact rule then that’s probably something you need to do right away but most of the time the people who are in our community are falling victim to an ex saying no to them after they get out of a no contact rule.
If they reject you the worst thing you can do is act bothered by it.
It just shows your ex that you still want them.
The smartest thing you can do is just simply rework the value ladder and almost act as if they didn’t even reject you in the first place.
Which I realize sounds a little ridiculous but if you really think about it, it kind of proves to your ex that you are so confident in yourself that you don’t really care about their opinion of you.
That you have the confidence to invest in yourself.
And to me, that’s what truly makes someone ungettable.
Success Story: How This Woman Got Her Dismissive Avoidant Ex Back Using Attachment Theory
Mar 15, 2023
I had the pleasure of interviewing Regina, one of our latest Success Stories for the podcast and learned a ton about the importance of patience.
What struck me as particularly interesting about her was that she got her ex back over seven months ago (as of the writing of this excerpt.) Yet, she didn’t really post in the community about her success until her ex actually said the three little words we all long to hear.
I love you!
Only then did she consider her success story an actual success. It really goes to show the amount of patience we are dealing with in this amazing woman.
Enjoy our conversation!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Chris Seiter 00:00 All right, today we’re back with a really interesting success story, we are going to be talking to Regina here, who’s going to take us through start to finish her situation, she ended up posting in the community, what, like last week or something. But what’s interesting is she didn’t have like, usually when you see these success stories, they’re like really long write ups, hers was kind of short. But one thing stuck out to me. I believe the breakup was in 2021. And you didn’t really get them back until maybe like a year, a year and a half later. So we’re here to kind of explore the journey that it took that that whole process took you on. But thanks for coming on. And doing this. I really appreciate it.
Regina 00:46 Yeah, not a problem. I mean, it’s my honor to get to share with you and you know, as thank you for helping me get to, you know, reach my goal and my relationship with my, my partner, my potato is you will?
Chris Seiter 01:00 Yeah, what was it? You said from spud to stud? Yeah.
Regina 01:07 I used to just remind myself of that, through this whole process to like, you know, I’m worth something. So I really do need to start, and if he’s not going to be it, then that’s okay. But, you know, here we are. So,
Chris Seiter 01:19 it just took a while to get them there that
Regina 01:23 did, that’s okay. And me too. You know, it’s, it’s a journey for both of us together. And in order for it to work, we both have to be on the same page. So I was also a huge journey for me. And I think that for me, it was what, what led me to here. And where I am today is the steps that that you showed, and the little processes that you have throughout the program really helped me view it from a different perspective that I haven’t seen before and even thought about for myself. So it was really valuable. So it really, it really did change my mindset, and then my ability to like proceed not only myself, but relationship from a different standpoint. So it was really great for me.
Chris Seiter 02:02 Well, thanks so much. Obviously, more of this is the ego stroke that I needed. But why don’t we actually go to the dark days the like, going back a couple of years, you guys break up? Why don’t you take us like from your journey from the get go?
Regina 02:17 Yeah, so we were actually in a very, like nonchalant kind of relationship for about eight months prior to the breakup. So I mean, we were exclusive, but it was, you know, just more like friends that hung out. And we’re a little bit of intimate, but you know, not so much a deep connection. And, you know, I come from a place where I have a lot of children, and they’re all teenagers. So I was married for a long time over a decade. I’m not, you know, I don’t want all that crazy marriage and things like my idea of a good really done that. Yeah, so like, I just want to focus on my children and being a good mom. And, you know, if I have a partner that’s willing to step in and help here and there, like, just be a part of that, that’s great for me, but you know, I don’t I don’t want that intertwined relationship again. And so when we first David, I would try and like reiterate that to him, because that’s not what he wants, either. So I feel like he was really scared because he started to get deep feelings for me, and then thinking, hey, maybe she’s gonna change her mind. So he broke up with me. Very sad. He, he broke my heart a little bit. And I was completely faded. I mean, I, I was hurting.
Chris Seiter 03:34 Okay, so what was his reasoning in the breakup talk to actually end the relationship with you.
Regina 03:42 Um, he told me that I was the perfect woman for him. I was absolutely amazing. And every aspect, you know, I, he’s like, You are absolutely perfect, but you deserve better than me. Because I don’t think I can give you marriage. And I don’t want to give you any more kids and things like that. And I don’t want to live with somebody. And I was just like, but I didn’t like, what,
Chris Seiter 04:07 I didn’t ask for that. So it’s
Regina 04:10 awkward. It’s just a part of my language is just like, okay, so I was like, it’s gotta be something else. Like, there’s no way that’s what it is. So, I was like, you know, whatever. You know, it really hurts. But, you know, if it’s meant to be it’ll, it’ll be meant to be, you know, and I just looked at her and I said, you know, what, what happens when you decide that this isn’t what you really want? And he was like, I don’t think I’ll change my mind. And I said, I’m pretty sure you will. But I wish you the best. And I left it at that. And then I cried for about four days, and I didn’t leave my room. It’s really bad. very heartbreaking.
Chris Seiter 04:48 And at any point during those four days of locking yourself in the room and crying, do you at least start going to YouTube or Google and start scrolling? At what point do you kind of like a I want to explore how to fix this.
Regina 05:02 I think it was like, it was like the last day and I was just so in my own head and just in my own just sadness. And, you know, I always strive, and I pride myself in the fact where I go by, you know, if you can’t change it yourself, then you can’t really complain about it, like, do something. So I was like, What am I doing just whining and crying, like, I’m gonna do something like, I can fix that, like, there’s something I can take from this. So what am I going to learn? How am I going to fix this? Like, I know him and I are meant to be together, like in my soul, like, there’s just this connection that I just couldn’t ignore, like, I have had my heart broken a million times, and I never really, it never bothered me, but for whatever reason this one did. And so I was like, there’s a reason for that. And I need to figure out what that is. So I was looking on Facebook, I was looking on YouTube, I was reading books, and like, all the things like me, you know, like, he’s just not that into you. And, you know, like the bitches guide to revenge that had some good points, you know, and like, you know, and so I was like, Well, it’s kind of be a me problem. And, you know, and then I stumbled upon a couple of podcasts that had your program in it. And it was, you know, I mean, in your basis is, you know, get the guy back, you don’t get that partner back. And while that’s like a really good goal, and that’s like the motivating cause, I could see in just the way you described your program, and the steps, and the empowerment that you offer people to like, really think about it differently. I’ve really, that’s what really, ultimately drew me to your program. And so I did a little bit more research. And I watched, like, probably every single video, I could find a view on YouTube. Like,
Chris Seiter 06:48 went back to the old ones, or I’m just like reading off a script and like trying, and I don’t have the fancy microphones and everything. You went back that far.
Regina 06:57 I like all the way back to like, 2001 when we were still in high school, you know? Like, I just aged myself, but anyway. Yeah, so I found that and then I signed up immediately. And then I just dove right in, I just ran into the materials. I was like, Okay, I gotta figure this out. And then it broke my heart to learn that I had to cut contact off for 45 days. Yeah, so I was like, no contact, I’ve never done that before. Like, I usually just leave it what is it is what it is, and if they like want to hang out or whatever, and be friends, whatever, no big deal. But I just for whatever reason I couldn’t do this, I knew I had to do something different this time. So I painstakingly did the 45 days of no contact. And it was brutal. But I kept a lot to myself, I just found myself again, like you said, you know, you got to go back out there and become the ungettable person that they’re gonna miss. You know, and that’s really empowering when you go from a place of feeling unworthy to taking that feeling and those emotions and then creating self empowerment out of, you know, things you enjoy. And that is such good medicine for your self worth and your being. And people really don’t. Like they really underestimate the power of just self care. You know, even on the basic level, like going for a walk, like, Hey, I’m going for my daily walk with my dog, you know, and that’s the kind of stuff I would post because I love my puppy. She’s cute. Yeah, she is. So those are the things I would do, you know, when I was helping with my, my job at the time, and helping build entrepreneurs up at the at the time. So, you know, I was giving myself to other people while also trying to work on myself and that, in conjunction really helped my own person. So I was able to just become more confident with myself and know that I don’t need somebody to tell me that you know, I love you because you’re here for me or you do this for me like I’m solid on my own and you can either join and appreciate all the great things that I have vowed offer us not only human but as a partner. But also you know, I I’ll be fine without you if you don’t want to. It’s okay. You know, and I think that was the one thing that really made his mind switch. Because after that 30 days and I the 45 I don’t remember exactly how many I did. I think I responded to a text of his or something to get our stuff back. So I had to start over because I was like I wanted to show him my golf swing. It’s great. When I restarted it wasn’t a big deal. You know, and I it’s hard as it was I just completely blocked him out of my mind. I didn’t look at his social media. I didn’t look at his work website because he owns his own business. Like I say it out of his circle. We have a couple of mutual friends. I didn’t, I didn’t intervene. I didn’t ask about him. I just kind of cut them off, you know? And I just wanted him to see, okay, you don’t want me to be a part of your life? Well, this is what that looks like. This is me not being your life. You know, just like you said that you wanted it. Here you are. So after that 45 days, or whatever I was, it was hard for me to come up with like that first reach out hook. That’s what really difficult for a lot of people. Yeah, nice, like a lot in your comments. So that’s a big question like, What do I
Chris Seiter 10:43 Yeah, it’s still it’s still is, I can’t tell you like every day as I’m going through the community and answering, like, I’ll spend like 30 minutes a day just answering people I’ve been trying this year at least to be better about that interacting, doing more Facebook Lives and stuff. But I’m always like, it’s always a text thing. Like, there’s always one question in there. Like, I don’t know how to do the text. So I’m kind of curious. How did you how did you handle it?
Regina 11:09 I mulled it over for quite a while. Three days, and there was a lot of questions on the Facebook community about hey, how does this sound? Can I work like this? This is my backdrop. But I know the one thing he’s really, really geeked out about, and that’s board games. And yeah, I come from a really big nerdy family to like board games
Chris Seiter 11:33 is right up my alley. Yeah. So I was like,
Regina 11:37 it couldn’t he owns like a million. And we’ve played a million and I’m on a million games. So it’s like I had to be good. So I was like, Okay, well, I knew I had to be up his alley, and that he couldn’t resist. And I you know, it’s kind of like a pickup line, almost, but a personal pickup line, because you know them essentially. So that was kind of my angle. I was like, I have to give them a bite. He can’t resist. So
Chris Seiter 12:01 So what was the board game that he chose? I didn’t choose
Regina 12:05 one. I put it in his hand. So it’s made it even better.
Chris Seiter 12:09 So what was the exact text? You remember?
Regina 12:11 I asked him, I said, Hey, I could use some help from the resident expert. I was like, I’m in a pickle, I need I need I need an expert. I was like, it’s my turn to pick a fun game for our group game night over at my friend’s house. We do game night, once a week. So which he knew. And it’s
Chris Seiter 12:30 kind of an ungettable activity that you can kind of really weave in,
Regina 12:34 like, I’m going to do me things. Yeah, I could
Chris Seiter 12:37 help me out with it a bit.
Regina 12:43 So I was like, you know, I need a fun game. That’s good for this group. And you know, we’ve played all the other fun games, so I gotta bring a new one. What what is what do you recommend? And then he just opened up the floodgates he gave me like, 30 games. And then he was like, Well, what kind of people are they? He was asking me a million questions, like, Are there new people who’s all gonna be there? And I was very, very close. Like, I was very short and sweet. And just try to keep it about the game so that he didn’t get any more information because he was kind of trying to peek. Yeah, like, gonna be there now.
Chris Seiter 13:19 Or is this a day is is that more romantic? Meet up with them? Well
Regina 13:23 see, I wanted to make sure it was clear that it wasn’t a date. So he threatened because he was very close. Not just like,
Chris Seiter 13:34 avoidant, when it came to that, like, he would just sort of go inward instead of Yes. Got it. Yeah,
Regina 13:39 definitely avoid it. So like, I knew I couldn’t do like jealousy posts and things like that, because he’s very sensitive that way, and that would have hurt his heart. So I didn’t do any of that. I just kind of I kept it at just, you know, I’m gonna be the best version of me and you’re gonna see what my life is like without you in it. And so I did.
Chris Seiter 13:59 Well, you kind of gave him a glimpse into game night and he’s missing his favorite activity which board game so it kind of works out.
Regina 14:06 So you know, and the reading about the like, your emotional. Like if you’re dismissive, dismissive, avoidant, and like, yeah, the
Chris Seiter 14:16 attachment styles, the anxious avoidant, fearful secure.
Regina 14:22 Yeah, that was really helpful information, not only for myself, but when I thought about potato as his own person and what his journey has been up to this point to where we’re together. So if I can understand a little bit about where those wounds come from, it was a lot easier for me to be a better partner for him. Yeah, and just like, kind of just I kind of just showed him very nonchalantly, like, I am a good partner for you. I care enough about you to want to like make it be safe, and like let you open up in an organic way. You know, well, yeah,
Chris Seiter 15:01 it’s sort of like you’re learning to speak his language. Like, if you come at it from me even a secure standpoint, sometimes secure. Most people are not aware of the attachment style stuff. So when you kind of explain it to them, it’s like, Oh, that makes sense. But you have to kind of learn with fearful avoidance, like when you need to nurture the anxious side, versus when you need to pull back with dismissive avoidance, you just kind of need to accept, gotta pull back, give him some space, it’s sort of like speaking their language. And they, they really appreciate that. And that kind of gets them to come out of their shell. So it seems like you just kind of figured that.
Regina 15:35 It was very difficult, but I was like, you know, if I really love him the way that I feel like I love him, then I it’s only fair that I am as gentle as possible. And like coming from that place of understanding as much as I can without him like opening up because that’s difficult for somebody who’s a dismissive avoidant, like, they don’t want to talk about anything. And it’s very difficult for them to feel that safe. So I just really wanted to get him that, you know, and just be like, Hey, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be here. But if you if you decide no, then no, you know, and with using those tools, our timeline was drawn out because I didn’t I, I let go of the end picture. Like, for me, I don’t want to get married, I already have children that are grown. And I’m not looking for that part of my life to be fulfilled again, either. So as far as like, the end goal for me, it was basically just are we going to be able to rebuild a solid foundation for when all that’s gone? You know, when there’s no more kids? And when there’s, we’re just looking at retirement and we’re alone all the time? Like, is that going to be enough? Like, well, we care enough about each other. So for me, that’s once I let go of all the other pressure moving in together, I need a baby daddy, and he realized it. Also, that’s really kind of like the turning point for us when we were like, Okay, so like, we can just define our own relationship, and then build this looks like and not really care about what the outside world or our families are, like, why aren’t you getting married and moving in? Like, well, we don’t care.
Chris Seiter 17:18 If you really think about it, it kind of is perfect, because dismissive avoidance, if he is, indeed just a dismissive, avoidant, then any kind of marriage, kids that kind of loss of independence would freak him out. And you are kind of just making yourself the least threatening type person to him, which is certainly a drawl. So yeah, I’m actually thinking that just kind of helped you. But it’s interesting, because if you go back to your breakup, he mentioned. Like, I’m not, you know, I can’t give you what you want. I can’t give you marriage. So it’s almost like he didn’t believe you. At first that you, which is really interesting to me.
Regina 18:03 Yeah, well, and I get it, especially from his point of view, because I’m a single mom, and I have five children. And
Chris Seiter 18:14 I got two and that’s already like,
Regina 18:17 now put yourself in the position of being the male role model for that, that female and then also feeling obligated to help care for her children. I mean, it’s a lot of pressure. Yeah, it is. It’s a lot of pressure for a man in this kind of dynamic and what the majority of the females in our time right now like what they expect from their male partner, you know, to be cared for, and like they want them to take care of everything and I’m just not that person. You know, if
Chris Seiter 18:51 you’re, if you’re no damsel in distress, you’ve kind of know you’ve kind of figured it out that you can play a good damsel in distress with your game. Nice stuff. Yeah. Nice keys. Yeah, right. So obviously, this first text works extremely well. We kind of skipped ahead to kind of the the reconnection. Yeah, like, what was that? What was that? I guess how it worked with like, you getting back together and him opening up and what was that? Like?
Regina 19:25 It was very tedious and strenuous? Like mentally it was very hard for me because I knew I was in this program, right? But nobody else around me knows that like, this is what I’m doing. So like, No, I didn’t tell a soul like none of my kids knew and like me and my girls are we’re pretty close. So like I didn’t tell us so none of my sisters nothing nobody did
Chris Seiter 19:51 you have you still have you told them now are coming out video type
Regina 19:58 apparently. Yeah, so I didn’t tell anybody. So it was kind of lonely and but I just really wanted to make sure that it was authentic. So, and also, I’m working on myself at this time too, because, you know, I’m not a perfect human and obviously if you if he soft was with me and I have continuously have the same issue with partners saying the same thing to me, I just don’t see anything long term. And I’m like, but like, am I not, I’m not being I’m not showing you that what I’m saying is matching. So I’m telling you, I don’t want to get married, but then my actions aren’t exactly matching, because I’m a little needy and a single mom of five, you know, I’m lonely. I’m an extrovert I, I like quality time. So like, it can seem a little bit like a stage three clinger. When really, it’s just that emotional connection I’m looking for, I don’t need that physical, we need to be together all the time. It’s just that deep emotional connection is what I want. So, you know, I knew it was going to be difficult, but I just, I kept pushing and being patient. So after that, first reach out, he gave me lots of good insights. And then I caught him off, you know, I did the hook line and then disappear. So I was like, I’ll go game night getting ready out the door, I’m out. And then I didn’t talk to him again, for like another week. I like just let it go. Like, and he’s very much a fearful avoidant, and detached. So our timeline, a lot of that is because I wanted to give him the space he really needed. I mean, when, when we were in a relationship, and he’d be like, you know, I’m kind of having difficulty. And he did this a few times. And he needed like, four or five days to just think about what was going on, and then like, evaluate our relationship internally. And so I’d have to give him that space, because he deserved it, you know, I’m not going to harp on him, he needs to fight, you’re gonna have it, you know. So I just really tried to remember that, you know, it’s not about everybody else is like, Oh, two day three day with their tide theory. And I was like, Well, I have to adjust my tie theory to a relationship. Yes, you guys are talking about two, three days or like, wait an hour, and then hook them. But if I go by that, I’m gonna sink my own ship. And
Chris Seiter 22:21 such an excellent point. And this is, this is between you and I, it’s something that gets on my nerves. So obviously, I wrote all this stuff up, I created it, tested it and everything. But people seem to think my word is like the word of God. And it’s not, you know, the one thing I’m very clear about is you need to adjust everything to your situation. And like you rightfully did that, you know, you knew like, this isn’t the way it’s written is not going to work for me. And my situation might work for you and your situation, but you adjusted it, and it seemed like it. But obviously, things heat up again. So are you just saying it’s kind of like this, this like, he’s hot one minute, and then kind of needs that space, or you just worked at into it with the foreknowledge that it was going to be that way.
Regina 23:07 I just kind of worked into it knowing it was going to be that way. Like I knew he was going to be very hot and cold. I mean, we’re both very independent people. So like, we don’t need to talk every day. And like, even when we were in a committed relationship, we would go two days without texting or calling or seeing each other. And it was not a big deal. Like it’s just how we roll. We’re both very busy. We both work strange hours, I have a lot of kids. So like, there’s always like that. It’s like, what your time is filled? Yeah. Is three days, you know? So like, I don’t I don’t get worked up over. Like he didn’t call me today. I don’t care. I didn’t call you either. I’m busy. I’m sure you walk, you know. So it’s like, our dynamic is just that way. So I had to adjust all of those tools to fit into that. And so for me, it was sometimes difficult asking people for advice, like, Hey, I’m right here at this point. You know, like, when I had a big fumble, and this was like, 10 months later. So the first reach out was in October. He had broken up with me. That may
Chris Seiter 24:16 2021, October 2021.
Regina 24:19 Oh, yeah. And then the first reach out was like, I believe I said July, somewhere. Yeah. late July. And then I it was maybe one text a week between the two of us here
Chris Seiter 24:32 and they’re just very slow. Go.
Regina 24:35 Hook, I’d ask them a question. And then I leave it at that. Or like for Halloween, I sent him a funny meme. And that was just like, Hey, happy Halloween. I know what’s your favorite holiday? So I just wanted to be like, Hey, I saw this and thought of you. This is so fun. Remember when we were going on this when we went Halloween, blah, blah, blah. And that was a good time. And he was a cat. That was a good time and then we left it at that. And then he would he started at that point he started out asking me questions. And I kept it very, like, oh, gotta go, I’m in the meeting, I gotta go, I gotta be out of town. I’m traveling this week. And you know, entrepreneurs shit I got sorry,
Chris Seiter 25:12 no, you’re good, you’re good.
Regina 25:17 You know, and I was traveling a lot at work at that time helping all the entrepreneurs and building that ecosystem for early stage founders. So I was all over the state all the time. So it was very easy for me to be, hey, I’m being super ug, I’m meeting all these new people. And like, I know you actually
Chris Seiter 25:34 were doing that stuff. So you didn’t have to make it up.
Regina 25:38 That really helps, you know, because I don’t have to be threatening, and I’m not looking to date. And I didn’t really date I went on a few dates, just because that’s what you’re supposed to do. When I was like, Well, I have to go on a few dates just to make sure. Like, I really want to make sure that this is what I want. And if I’m still thinking about, if I’m feeling okay to think about somebody else, then I know this isn’t my right path. And I should just move on. But that wasn’t the case. Every time I was on a date, I couldn’t just I just felt guilty. And I was like this, this doesn’t feel right. I feel like I feel like I’m cheating. But I’m not
Chris Seiter 26:12 really common. Yeah, I mean, I find going well, I mean, I find people go on dates have like one of two reactions, either they really love it. And like, Oh, this is great. Someone’s actually treating me like nicely, or the vast majority hate it. And they do feel exactly like they’re cheating, even though they’re not.
Regina 26:31 Yeah, like, and I knew it was okay. But I just felt like I wasn’t doing my long term goal, any justice. If like, you could pretend my goal as a person over here, I was like, sorry, I’m letting you down, man. I got the slide. So we did a lot of texting. And then he started reaching out more to me. And like, you had asked me more questions. And he’d be like, do you want to go for a walk? And I was like, yeah, we can go for a walk, that’s fine. I could probably fit you in, you know, I’ll take the ducks together and walk around the lake and stuff. So we would do that. Maybe twice. We did that and then fall hit. And. And then I was like, Oh, it’s too cold for me. And he has a business in Florida. So he went there for for a few months. And then he was on his way home. And he was driving. And he had found out terrible news that his family member had passed away. And he was very close with. And I was the first person he thought to call. And so he called me and asked me to come and be with him. He’s like, I really just need a friend. I don’t want to be alone. And I was like, Well, I can’t say no, even though everybody in ERP was like, no rules. And I was like, but it’s been 10 months. Yeah, I mean, like, this isn’t like two weeks ago, like we’ve been there. And you know, and if I’m supposed to, like, be there, even though I know he’s not dating anybody, like I’m gonna be there for him. So I met up with him. And I took him out to dinner, and we just hung out. And then I had you know, I was just like, whatever you need. I know you don’t want to be alone, but like, whatever you need, like we’ll do it. Like, do you want to get drunk? Do you want to like hang out, you want to go bowling, you want to just go crying, be a puddle, whatever, I’m here. I don’t know how to do this. You know, so I was just there for him. And we ended up he just wanted to get some drinks and get a little bit drunk and just forget about it. And I was like, Okay, I’ll be your sober cab. I mean, okay, got it, I can do this. I let him just do his thing and brought him back to his house. And then he just kind of broke down at that point. And so he asked me not to leave and I ended up just we just held each other and fell asleep and then things happened in the middle of the night that you know, we’re fine. He I don’t need to divulge too much more. I think you get I think
Chris Seiter 29:05 we can we can take the context clues and figure that out.
Regina 29:09 Yeah. So then then, I felt so guilty because I was like, This is not what I wanted. Like we got an even talked about a relationship or anything like we were just hanging out and he was so vulnerable. And it was really the first time he had like, emotionally opened up and really connected with me on like that super deep level like, and like that I needed. And it was that for me. It was super. But that was like a really big turning point for me. And I also think it was for him because he had never been able to open up like that and just share those feelings. So that just kind of turned the point and you know, I gave him a space I left before he even woke up the next day because I was like, oh like I go poof and I’m gone. That’s actually
Chris Seiter 30:01 one of your smartest moves. Because like, technically speaking, you’re not supposed to sleep with your ex before you have that relationship. But things happen if you do, the best thing you can do is make it feel to them. Like it didn’t mean as much to you as it probably really did. And I feel like you leaving sort of did that. The other thing that’s kind of interesting to me about this is I’m wondering if the death of that friend or family member caused him to look at his own life and realize some of the threats and like not wanting to regret, like not trying or seeing things through with you? And that’s what sort of spurred him to have these emotional conversations with you just food for thought.
Regina 30:48 Fast forward, that is actually accurate. Yeah, we have talked.
Chris Seiter 30:53 Yes, right.
Regina 30:55 That’s exactly what he was just in that was the first like really close family member death that he had ever experienced in his life. And it was his grandfather, and they were very close. So for him, so that just it didn’t it just and he was on his way home, and he still had like 13 hours to drive alone, after just finding this out. So he had a lot of time on his hands to just think
Chris Seiter 31:16 you think in your your sort of wanting to live your life without any regrets. You know, Regina comes up to your mind.
Regina 31:28 Yeah, so yeah, that was that was, I think the biggest turning point for both of us. And then after that, he just, he kind of started pursuing me. And I didn’t have to do any, anything at that point. Other than just continue to be me and be fulfilling, hang out with my friends. And he just kept wanting to, like, absorb more of me and more of my time. And he just, I don’t know, there was a switch and I, I gave him a space. And I mirrored him a lot. And that for was really difficult to for me because I’m like the person who’s like, if you text me, I’m going to text you back, you know, or like, I will reach out to you like, Hey, I haven’t talked to you in a minute what’s going on? Are you okay? I’m gonna check on you. So that was hard for me to like, when he didn’t text me for a few days, then I have to leave him be, you know, I still use that in our relationship. Now, it’s super helpful to not let them feel like I’m overbearing, because I can be and that’s okay. I’m an emotional, like, exuberant, vibrant person, so I can totally understand also,
Chris Seiter 32:37 like, you seem pretty normal to me. I’m actually kind of curious how you handled the intimacy aspect of it. So you guys did stuff that night, you left, which I think was probably a really smart move. Did you at any point feel like, oh, I need to do what I can to avoid Friends with Benefits type of a type of scenario or situation? How did you handle that?
Regina 33:02 Absolutely. Um, it was very difficult for me. Because A, I was like, head over heels with this man. So that was very difficult to have to, like, come up with enough courage to tell him like, this is not gonna fight for me. So I waited like about four days before I even tie like, didn’t talk to him at all. I just avoided the whole situation for three days.
Chris Seiter 33:30 Like I said, brilliant stroke, that no, you probably were a mess. In those four days, I’m telling you, that was really smart. So I
Regina 33:37 waited till the day of the funeral. And that’s the day I reached out because I knew he would probably need a little bit more like love. And like, I wanted to ease his mind a little bit. So I was just like, hey, you know, thinking about you today, you know, if you need to talk later, or you need somebody let me know, I am free. I’ll be around. And so he ate that. And he’s like, Absolutely, I will let you know when I’m back in town. And I was like, Cool. And so again, I took him out to dinner. And I just told him straight up. I was like, I adore you. I I adore you. And I, I respect you a lot. But you know, and that was really great. What happened the other night, but if you don’t want to be in a relationship with me, then I can’t continue to be intimate. And that’s just what it is. Like, I have no problem being friends with you. You know, I love having you in my life. You’re a great friend to me, but like, that’s all it can be right now. And you know, and that’s okay. And he was like, but Okay, so you friendzone them for sure.
Chris Seiter 34:41 In a nice really you you worded it really elegantly like like I was just listening to and thinking oh, this is kind of nice. But then I sort of read between the lines of just like no, she’s certainly
Regina 34:53 I said it very eloquently. Yeah, I was like, Yeah, but you know, I enjoy hanging out with you. We have a good time like, and we were still like hanging out You know, once or twice a week, we could spend a couple hours together, you know, so he was just like, wait, what? Like he didn’t realize like I had, I had mad, like, the picture I painted in his head was like, We were friends the whole time. When I feel like in his head, he was thinking we were trying to rebuild this relationship. And then I was like, No, friendzone. And then he’s like, what? And then he realized he had to step it up. And so that’s what he was like, Okay, now I need to do more. And I need to really, like, Be the person she needs. Otherwise, I’m gonna be a friend. I have to show her I don’t want to be friends. So it kind of started there.
Chris Seiter 35:41 And he started doing those things, I’m assuming. Yeah,
Regina 35:45 yeah. Like we would go out and then you know, he would be get a phone call from his sister. Whatever music I’m with my girl. I’m with Allison. Or Regina.
Chris Seiter 35:57 You know, you’re awful at this secret identity thing. I’m just letting you know. Now I’m gonna have to go and edit this part out and the reason I’m bringing it up so I know where to fuck to edit this thing out. Sorry. Nice interview, I’m not gonna have to worry like about like, sometimes I have to go back and edit it out and everything. I’m just like, oh, this can be simple. I just you know, download it kind of edit the beginning and end to kind of kind of know I’m gonna have to go search for the Alice in named drill
Regina 36:34 with me. Help me. Hello, my name is Regina.
Chris Seiter 36:41 You have to write it down. I’ve learned this. I’ve done a lot of these before. Because it’s been sometimes it’s been me that screwed up. And I’ve been like, Oh, man. Don’t worry. I’ll have to edit that out. But all right, Regina, let’s.
Regina 36:55 Do you understand? The reference? Yes. Okay, I should note my dog’s name is Phoebe. IFIP a friend fanatic.
Chris Seiter 37:08 I love friends so much. It’s the best,
Regina 37:11 you know, just it’s the best.
Chris Seiter 37:15 Alright, so we were talking about? So he’s basically saying that he’s with his girl kind of insinuating your girlfriend boyfriend. But how do you get to that point where you actually who like who asks you? How do you get out of this? Pseudo girlfriend boyfriend thing?
Regina 37:35 Yeah, I really thought a lot about this. This part was, again, another one of those difficult times when being such a dismissive avoidant. Him even coming up with the idea or starting that conversation was never going to happen. So I had to, like, really think about how I can gently bring this up, and then get him to feel safe enough to talk about it. So you know, when, when we were hanging out, he would try and ask me to come hang out at his house. Or when I would, he’d be like, Well, do you want to stay the night? And I would just finally just like, I just made little, very blunt. drops, like no, that’s sorry, that’s saved for my boyfriend. Like, we’re friends. Like, no, that’s only something I do with the boyfriend. I’m sorry. Or like, that’s the boyfriend flip edge of you don’t have that anymore. I’m sorry. No, like, sorry, we’re, that’s not what this is. And he was like, oh, and then I would just be like, Nope, that’s something a boyfriend gets for me. And we’re just,
Chris Seiter 38:41 essentially you just stuck to your boundaries. Again, it’s
Regina 38:44 so hard. It was so hard. Because you know, it’s like, the love of my life and handsome and like, adorable and devils and suave and, like, genuinely just like the best human ever. So it was very difficult to be like, No, I don’t get it. No, you don’t get to
Chris Seiter 39:02 say no to Brad Pitt. You know, it’s not many women do that.
Regina 39:08 Very difficult, but also at the same time, every time I told him no, even though I knew I didn’t want to or like I would hold my boundary. It was really self empowering. Like, I felt so powerful in those moments. Because a she was respecting them, which was amazing. because not a lot of people will do like, they’ll just be like, Oh, no, no, it’s okay. It’s okay. But no, not him. He was like, oh, okay, well, if that’s how you think, okay, like he would never push me on it, which was super awesome. But also I was just like, oh, I can tell people No, this is amazing. I do know what I need to do. Okay. Got Alpha. Regina. Good job I don’t know who this other Alpha Girl
Chris Seiter 40:03 stop saying the name. Oh god, you’re making my job so much harder I have, I don’t have someone who can go and edit these, you know?
Regina 40:13 I’m gonna have to edit it for you and be like, I’m sorry. Oh, I know a guy. I know a lot of guys, like a whole entrepreneur community that owes me at least a favor.
Chris Seiter 40:25 Yeah, to edit out the Virgina sort of philanthropy thing. You know? Okay. All right. So, eventually, though you held strictly to your boundaries, and I’m sorry, I need to stop. This is this is this is what I love about interviews. Okay. So eventually, you basically hold strict to your boundaries. But you eventually have to have this talk. So who initiates this talk? Is it him falling victim to the sort of like, I’m just going to, like, plant my eye. Wag is maybe the wrong term to use, but you get what I’m saying like the like, like commitment flag, I guess.
Regina 41:15 Um, that happened around my birthday. So he saw me hanging out. I had no plans whatsoever. My boss didn’t need to launch alone for the day. He was like, Hey, you go have lunch. It’s on me. Just go take a break, have a long lunch, have a cocktail, whatever. I don’t care. Go have fun. It’s your birthday. You shouldn’t be spending like here. Well, boss, I know. Right? And so he sent me and I went to just like a block away and downtown area. So I just want to block away to the place and I’m sitting there and waiting on my pizza. Just type in on my computer. Because of course I got to work. I’m not that person. I took my laptop anyway. And so I was just sitting there, wait, and then lo and behold, here comes potato.
Chris Seiter 42:05 He’s coming in.
Regina 42:07 I didn’t know he was there. He didn’t know I was there. It was just by chance meeting. He came in to do something for his own business at the it was like a hotel. So he was doing something for the hotel. And then he saw me sitting in the restaurant alone. It was like, Well, what are you doing here alone? It’s your birthday. And he insisted on hanging out with me. And so of course, I was like, It’s my birthday. Of course. Yeah, you can pay me and sure enough. He insisted. We went back to my office, told my boss, I wasn’t coming back for the day because I had fun plans. And he was like, Sure have fun. Bye Happy Birthday. So we left spent the whole day together. And he just took me on the most amazing birthday day. And we just had drinks and dinner and played shuffleboard and did stupid things. And so eventually, we were both a little bit tipsy. And he was just like, what are we doing? And I was like, we’re hanging out what are we mean, what are we doing? And he finally was just like, No, what are we doing? I was like, okay, so you want to have this talk? And he’s like, Yeah, I was like, Okay, this is gonna be rough. Just so you know, like, I’m gonna full disclosure, like, I’m gonna drop some bombs on you right now, if you want to like, and he was like, No, I do. Or then I said, Okay, well, I think that you broke up with me prematurely. And I don’t think you gave us a very fair chance. And I think that if you’re wanting to try again, I would totally be willing to do that. But you have to, like, you have to be able to know that I’m not gonna go anywhere. And like, you have to try and be here for me, like you have to try, like together and you can’t, you have to be vulnerable. And I’m being vulnerable right now. It’s really hard for me to say this, too. And he was like, Oh, okay. And he told me about how he felt and about, you know, me being a single mom and and feeling obligated to help me with my kids. And, you know, and, and I can’t fault the person for that, that is fair. And, you know, I can see why he would feel that way, having a couple other relationships, and it failed, you know, because of the same reason. And, you know, I just had to reiterate, I’m not that person, we have the same goal in mind, like our vision of a relationship is the same. So we just have to focus on that and not let the other outside perspectives get in our way. Or try and make us feel guilty for doing things differently. You know, because we have to be happy. So it’s okay. They don’t have to live our lives. So we just have to be okay with that. And I think that was his biggest struggle was everybody else’s perception of what our relationship should look like versus what we needed. And so we’ve just been working on that ever since. You know, it’s been very slow. All very slow. And, you know, we just do our best to try and be there for each other. And, you know, and then this last fall, I mean, we’ve been dating, we were like, after my birthday, we had that conversation. We hung out a few more weeks. It was probably like two months later, he was finally like, Okay, I want you to be my girlfriend. I mean, like, it’s a very long time between all this. So we move very, very, like, I mean, it’s been, what, two years? I think he’s met my kids like four times, Max,
Chris Seiter 45:42 even today. Yeah. Yeah.
Regina 45:45 Like, I’m very much like, I don’t need somebody to help me with this, like, I
Chris Seiter 45:49 got that your Do your kids know, you’re dating him.
Regina 45:54 They like him. He he’s come over a couple times to play games, but I don’t want their perception of me to be with other men. I want my kids to be streamed on one with them. Got it. Now, and their dad isn’t in the picture, we have a great relationship. He comes in and I house all the time, he hangs out with them make some dinner while I’m at work. So like, that also is a little bit difficult for people to like, with potato being in a relationship with me being comfortable with their dad kind of like just having free access to my house. Does I want my kids to stay comfortable. And that means that they stay here. I don’t want them back and forth, back and forth. So yeah, I am very protective of my children and I have my little should be Yeah, I have I run things and I I’ve been doing it for so long by myself that it’s very selfish of me to try and ask somebody to fit into what I already have established. You know, like, we just
Chris Seiter 46:57 got to put in two years of work to get them slowly kind of integrate them into the into the Allison Regina bubble I was gonna say this has been one of the more unique interviews that you know what, it’s your fault.
Regina 47:28 In that, like, I’m gonna believe
Chris Seiter 47:30 no, it’s a it’s a really good unique. Now there’s three points that I have to remember. All right, so So he basically asks for you back after this two month. Wait, after you have this kind of long, deep, let’s have a talk conversation. And how have things been since
Regina 47:56 things have been slow still sense. And you know, that I had some tragedy of my own, with my dad suddenly passed away in September. And that was awful. And because him and I were extremely close. So that was really bad. I was just a nightmare. I still kind of am a little bit of a nightmare, but I’m better. So him seeing me go through that and like losing my person. Because like, you helped me with my kids. And sorry, I’m gonna cry a little bit.
Chris Seiter 48:39 That’s okay. No, that’s okay. Him and
Regina 48:43 I were very, very, like, we were best friends. So it was very, very hard. Shoot, sorry. Okay. But potato was there.
Chris Seiter 48:58 And he helped throughout that really difficult time.
Regina 49:02 He didn’t leave my side like he insisted, like, the family. My kids like he hadn’t met anybody, because I’m very private, with like, and have a huge family. And I’m quite boisterous. I’m the quiet one of my family. So you can imagine, take myself and like six more octaves of volume and extrovert ism, and then multiply that by 12. And that’s my immediate family.
Chris Seiter 49:28 That’s your family. So he basically went into the hornet’s nest to be by your side during that difficult time.
Regina 49:36 Yeah, so he,
Chris Seiter 49:38 I was like, I don’t know. It’s a big deal for an avoidance so if you think about it, it was huge
Regina 49:43 for him. Yeah, he was there through everything funeral planning. The Whole Nine Yards like he did not leave my site for close to two weeks. And and, like, that’s when I really knew like he really really like Even though I knew he didn’t say it, but like, I knew he loved me at that point, because that for somebody you don’t yeah, the actions
Chris Seiter 50:07 are kinda threw up. Yeah.
Regina 50:11 And so that moment, for me made me more secure in our relationship. And I was then after healing a little bit and coming to my senses. Use that as, like, I don’t get so anxious now, like, if sometimes, like, you know, when you have a relationship with somebody, you’ll have your little quarrels and disagreements, like no, I don’t want to do that, or, Hey, you didn’t follow through with this. And, and the way you communicate that with people, when you’re anxious, and you’re not secure in your relationship is completely different from when you understand, and you want to understand how you hurt that person. Because you are so secure, you know, they’re not going anywhere. So you don’t need, you can set that aside, to really figure out the root cause and how you can fix it versus just putting blame and like, Oh, what did I do wrong? Or, Oh, I’m the worst, you know. So just having that. Knowing for me how he cared without him saying was really big, and being able to just finally relax and feel secure in our relationship. Like, I don’t have to use these tools. And I don’t have to think about how am I gonna book him again, I just now I know that he really does care for me, you know. And now, I mean, that was in the fall, my dad passed, and it’s February and he was finally like, I love you. And, like, for me, that was like the end
Chris Seiter 51:46 all that was, that’s when you decided to like, post the success. So
Regina 51:53 I succeeded. Yeah, like, I didn’t even care that we were in a committed relationship anymore. I just wanted to hear though, like, for me, that was it. Like that was me being successful, like, you know, going from, I don’t want to be with you anymore to like, let’s really change both of our Dynamics and grow together. You know? And then now, we’re just, I don’t know, we’re ridiculous.
Chris Seiter 52:20 What, what’s really interesting to me is you seem to be an incredibly patient person, you know, like, you look around the community, and you see a lot of people struggling with their breakups. And they’re not able to have that same level of patience and that patience is really what’s needed. If you were dealing with someone who’s like a pretty severe, dismissive avoidant. And you seem to have had that. What’s your secret? How do I bottle up that patience and give it to other people?
Regina 52:52 Oh, gosh, I you know, I’m asked this a lot. I don’t even know where it comes from. But you know, I do have a lot of kids, and that’ll teach you patience. Definitely. Or it’ll X exacerbate the fact that you don’t have any.
Chris Seiter 53:06 But yeah, I feel like that’s my wife. And I, you know, like, I feel like I felt She’s like an incredibly patient person. And I felt like I thought I was until you have a baby screaming at you and a seven year old running around and you’re trying to get work done. And you’re just like, Just be quiet. I’m trying to focus. Best investment ever is noise cancelling headphones.
Regina 53:30 velcro shoes.
Chris Seiter 53:33 Yeah, for real, real.
Regina 53:35 tight shoes. That’s that takes some pain. Yeah. No, my, I think the my own personal like mantra for patients that really it helps me in a lot of different aspects of my life. But patients is the one thing that really helps me with is I have to like break it down. Like, especially because I’m an anxious person, and I get anxiety really easily. I always just have to break it down and think to myself, Okay, is this going to matter to me in five minutes? Is this going to alter my life in five minutes? If this isn’t gonna ultimately life in the next five minutes? I need to let it go. It’s nice. I don’t need to waste energy on it. And then I think about okay, how about the next 30 minutes? How about the next hour? Now? I think about it, is this gonna affect my life a week from now it for the worse? Is this gonna like really? Jungle in My World? And then three weeks, three months, five years? If I answer no to all of those, I let it go. And I’m just like, I give it away. Like you can have a world I don’t need it. Like just it’s not mine to carry. You know, it is just things happen. And if it’s not going to alter your whole world, there’s no sense in just like freaking out about it because that’s only internalizing, hurting you. You know, the rest of the world doesn’t care that your kid doesn’t know how to tie a shoe. I don’t care are that you’re 30 minutes late, you know, got the Velcro,
Chris Seiter 55:02 you got the velcro thing, and yeah, you’re right. I mean, we often worry about being late to functions and everything, but no one’s gonna care about that. No one’s gonna sit there and you know, in three months be like, oh, man, I really wish I was 30 minutes early to that one function. So yeah, you’re right.
Regina 55:19 Yeah, you know, I just, you know, and like, I’ll go back to the container shoe, you know, is, is it gonna matter to me in five minutes, whether or not this kid ties or shoe, no, but if I’m upset and like, frustrated, my child is going to internalize that forever. So like, I have to learn to let things go for other people, too. And that creates a lot of patients like, this isn’t for me, this is for them. So like, I can’t get worked out because they need to learn this a. And if you do it gently enough in the right way, then they’ll it’ll come from a better place. And they’ll remember it. They won’t be like anxious about I can’t tie my shoe. And they’re like, Mom, I need help. You know, and I’m like, tried twice, Friend, friend. It’s good parenting advice.
Chris Seiter 56:07 Well, you got five kids. Like, you ought to listen to this woman. You know, that’s, that’s my philosophy. I too. And I’m telling you like, I can’t imagine five, but we’re getting off topic. Sorry. No, no, no worries. So basically, looking back at your entire situation, if you could pick one thing that made the biggest difference for you? What would it be?
Regina 56:40 The one thing that made the biggest difference? Yeah. I think it was probably learning about the attachment styles. Interesting. I think that a lot of people don’t think about how your upbringing really affects your need, and your ability to love other people. And what that looks like, I think a lot of society has an ideal, based off of propaganda, and you know, social status of what they think a relationship should look like, and feel like based off of movies and things. And if you just try and understand the person and their journey, you really appreciate that person a little more, and you can give them a little more grace. Yeah, I could have been really upset and mad when potato didn’t text me right away, or when my hook didn’t work, you know, or I had to wait. I could have been really upset. But because I took the time to understand myself and my anxieties and my insecurities, and then his as well. I think that was, for me the biggest thing, because it’s just understanding where somebody comes from, so that you can meet them there. You know, and I learned that in my entrepreneur circle and teaching entrepreneurs like, I always say, I will meet the entrepreneur, where they’re at, and then we bring them forward. So if I don’t do the relationship, I can’t really help these entrepreneurs either. Because, you know, what, am I doing? Translate? Practice
Chris Seiter 58:24 what you preach type thing, but yeah, yeah.
Regina 58:29 I just tried to differently, like, what is what is the end goal? It’s really, because I’m not looking for marriage. And I don’t want to have any more children, because I already have mine. So my end goal is the human connection. And I’m doing myself an injustice if I’m not trying to find that true thing.
Chris Seiter 58:52 You know, I think what you’re really trying to find vs. My opinion is a partner. You’re trying to find a partner that you can be with pretty much for the rest of your life sounds kind of corny, but that’s kind of it, you know, someone that you can trust so implicitly on that level that you can rely on? I think that’s what you’re after.
Regina 59:14 You know, I told him that too, you know, I don’t I don’t want a husband. I want a partner I want to I want somebody that we can both learn and love and grow in love together and share our lives with not intertwine and create something new. I already created my life.
Chris Seiter 59:31 Well, you know, it’s interesting, I’ve been doing a lot of research on narcissism. And I promise this is not going to relate to your to your potato at all, but it was something you said just kind of triggered me. It’s interesting because as you’ve experienced in your life, as you age, grow older, getting new experiences, you change. You’re no longer the person necessarily that that person eventually fell in love with and usually what happens in the breakup of marriages Just one person changes a lot. And the other person doesn’t grow with them, like you said. And it’s interesting because when you when they study narcissists, the narcissists literally cannot handle the other person growing. And that’s one of the reasons why they start devaluing the person consistently, they’ve tried to keep them the same person. But if you I don’t want to say this, because I don’t ever condone it, but they’ve actually done research on what works to get narcissists attention. So like, there’s like the cycle that they’ll go through, you know, though, they’ll shower you with gifts, and they’ll devalue you, then they’ll kind of like break up with you, and then they’ll hover. And then it just kind of like the cycle repeats over and over. Yeah, so But what’s really interesting to know,
Regina 1:00:51 it should be recovery program for that too. I think
Chris Seiter 1:00:56 I think there is, but what’s interesting is what they when they studied narcissists, they found that what worked to get them like intrigued in you, again, is if you change so dramatically, that actually, like captures your attention. So one of the reasons I’m, I’m researching this is because I need to make sure to help men and women, like figure out if their exes are narcissists. Because like, a lot of the advice that we give to people like yourself is like, Hey, we’re not asking you to change, we’re just asking you to kind of max out your stats, if you will, in your life. And as a result of that people will be drawn to you. And as a result of that your ex may be drawn to you. Unfortunately, this is also what works on narcissists. And we need to give people the tools necessary to identify Yeah, that person’s narcissist, you need to avoid them like the plague. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, so that was a weird, no. Weird thing.
Regina 1:02:05 Totally relatable. Because I mean, my ex husband is definitely fits that bill. I mean, it was not a good marriage by any means. And I endured it for a very long time. So yeah, I totally understand. That’s also part of the reason why I am so independent. Now this because I need that to feel like I’m okay. From being in that situation for so long. So,
Chris Seiter 1:02:34 what’s interesting that that situation probably made you anxious, you know, like, like, it exacerbated your anxiety. Would you say that’s accurate?
Regina 1:02:42 Oh, yeah, I was a wreck. I was a wreck through that whole relationship, but it was not good. I ended up having a heart condition and like, bad things happen. I’m fine. But like, like, I just, I could never live up to the expectation of my partner at that time, my husband, so I just over exhausted myself trying to fit the mold that was ever changing, to just feel like I was accepted by him. And it just, I just got tired of it. And I got worn out. And I just said, you know, I can’t do this anymore. And then, once I left, it was very difficult, got really bad. And then he went away for a while, disappeared, figured it out his own things. And then now we’re good, which is great, because now we can have like a good co parenting but yeah, it’s even still. We’re not together anymore. But now that I have kind of had that time to step away from that kind of relationship. And being in that narcissistic, abusive place, it’s so much easier for me to see it now. Like, in our conversations and like the way he’ll he’ll still do it to me, and I don’t let him do it to our kids, which is good, but like, the one thing I’ve noticed is boundaries. a narcissist cannot accept boundaries, no even smallest of boundary. It’s, you know, and like, that’s what I tell my kids, you know, and they’re starting to date and explore relationships, even though I don’t want them to but they’re, they’re young, they’re gonna do it anyway. You know? So I just tell them, you know, be true to you and have a boundary and if people don’t respect that, that’s a very good indicator that they don’t need to be a part of your life. And they shouldn’t because even the simplest thing, you know, like hey, could you just give me an extra inch here? Yeah, yeah, and if you go away and somebody is a narcissist, they will still gonna come back. Yeah, it’s weird. But
Chris Seiter 1:04:55 it’s interesting because I think what that experience and a time away a lot she’d have some perspective and look at it like, but it’s interesting because when you look at people that are in relationships with narcissists will often make excuses for them or there’ll be so wrapped up into it. And it’s actually hard to get them to have that perspective because they’re in love. They’re like literally in love and you don’t think clearly when you’re in love. So I think like, one of the things that’s really important to do before you decide to date anyone is like, go through the I think this is like one of the prerequisites I’m going to start having people do just between you and I before they try to get their exes back. I think they need to first figure out what their exes attachment style is. To the best knowledge. I mean, there’s no way we can guarantee it without their ex actually taking a test and everything, but also figure out if their ex is a narcissist. Narcissism is rare, it’s possible to have, you know, a dismissive avoidant with some narcissistic traits, everyone has some of the narcissistic traits. But a narcissist kind of has, like, Was it like seven out of the nine or five out of the nine or something like, like a lot out of the amount? So I think that’s kind of should be a prerequisite, before you get back with an ex, because those are the red flags. And that’s what no one teaches you about dating. There’s no no course for that in school.
Regina 1:06:20 They don’t teach you common life scenarios in school. It’s just all education, but book education. And that’s life it no ends at high school, basically, and that it’s real life. And I was like, oh, figure it out. And they’re like, yeah,
Chris Seiter 1:06:35 yeah, that’s pretty much it. Or college where they’ll put you in debt for the rest of your life. And, yeah,
Regina 1:06:41 I just tell my kids just be happy. Just I don’t care if you’ve never stepped foot in college. I don’t care. Just graduate high school, and be a happy, healthy, productive member of society. That’s all I require. That’s it graduate high school and be a productive member of society. I don’t give a crap what you do after that, yeah, I’m here. Happy day, I’ll make it dinner.
Chris Seiter 1:07:00 You and I have a lot of the same philosophy about college, but
Regina 1:07:04 I did call it I went to college. Three times, actually be a doctor.
Chris Seiter 1:07:14 So, Regina, thanks for coming onto this. And doing this success story interview, it was actually really illuminating for me, not only the patients, but also you’re kind of a model example of how you handle someone who has an X that has dismissive tendencies.
Regina 1:07:35 Yeah, it’s you definitely off the charts and the whole thing, I mean, took him almost a year to tell me you love me. And he’s like, I’ve been wanting to tell him forever. And I was like, Well, how long forever and he’s like, seven
Chris Seiter 1:07:49 year old. But he did. And that’s what matters.
Regina 1:07:57 And now he says it not only to me, but he says in front of other people, which is really big. Like, for me, that’s a huge milestone, you know, whatever it is like why
Chris Seiter 1:08:05 I love that you didn’t consider it a success. Because for anyone listening to this, I know we’re getting to the end and everything. But this is important. She did not like I went before this interview to like, look at the timing of your of your historical community posts and everything. You like. There was like a year where you just didn’t post you were together in that year. You did not consider like you got him back like almost a year ago. Right? Yeah. Or seven, eight months ago, whatever it was. You did not post your success story until last week. And yeah, only after he told you. I love you.
Regina 1:08:46 Yeah, because that was that was the end goal. You know, like God, I don’t want a relationship. I want a partner and I want somebody to love and care for me and I want to love him and this is a purse, I choose him. I choose him and I even told them that I was like I pick you you’re stuck with me too bad.
Chris Seiter 1:09:06 Thank you so much for coming on to doing this.
Regina 1:09:08 Yeah, thank you. It was amazing. I not even a problem like I the least I could do is give you a little bit of my time for everything that this program has given me and I’ve really appreciate it so if you ever need anything, let me know. Or at least a laugh. I’m here for doing it.
Last year I wrote a rather controversial (and self admittedly flawed article) where I was trying to figure out the recovery time it took to get an ex back based on situational circumstances.
You don’t do a no contact rule after the breakup (1 month) *I believe this is an outlier
You have a long distance ex (1.5 months)
You’ve been blocked by an ex (1.5 months)
You act overly anxious after the breakup (1.5 months)
You go “all in” on the no contact rule (2 months)
They break up with you (3 months)
Your ex is extremely fearful avoidant (6 months)
You’ve been ghosted by an ex (10 months)
You are in an on again/off again relationship (10 months)
Your ex breaks up with you when you are pregnant (15 months)
Your ex moves on to someone else (36 months)
I say the article was flawed mostly because there really wasn’t enough data per situation. Since most of the success story interviews I have conducted either are inconclusive with their “situation” or are considered to be in a “general” category, it was impossible to definitively pin point a timeframe based on situational circumstances.
We’re getting there though.
However, the one good thing that came out of it was that it allowed me the time to go through and pinpoint a time frame based on non generalized based breakups.
Looking At The Statistics From The Study
When you average the twelve success stories above together you actually find that the average time it took these successes to get their exes back was,
7.2 months
Which is interesting because it’s a little different than our 5.2 month marker we have on this page.
Why?
Well, the most obvious answer is that it’s because the 5.2 months takes into account the entirety of our success stories whereas the twelve situational cases I listed above only looked at a sample of each of the cases.
And the hardest cases at that.
In general the assumption of a 5.2 months average is still your best bet.
But this brings up an interesting question.
You see, if I’m being brutally honest about our program and successes the big issue is that most of the men and women coming through it have no intention of ever breaking up with their exes ever again.
Yet, they do.
It’s Not Just About Figuring Out How Long It’ll Take To Get Your Ex Back, It’s About Not Breaking Up Again
The question we are really trying to answer in this discussion is figuring out the very best time frame to get an ex back in.
For example, it may be true that you can get your ex back in as quick as 5.2 months but that might not actually be ideal if you break up again.
I want to learn if waiting a longer period of time to get an ex back is actually ideal.
My gut tells me it is but I want to check the research.
Luckily we can do that by doing an audit of the 12 individuals I interviewed to figure out if they are still together with their ex.
You break up with them (1 month) (Still Together)
You don’t do a no contact rule after the breakup (1 month) (Inconclusive)
You have a long distance ex (1.5 months) (Not Together)
You’ve been blocked by an ex (1.5 months) (Not Together)
You act overly anxious after the breakup (1.5 months) (Inconclusive)
You go “all in” on the no contact rule (2 months) (Not Together)
They break up with you (3 months) (Not Together)
Your ex is extremely fearful avoidant (6 months) (Still Together)
You’ve been ghosted by an ex (10 months) (Still Together)
You are in an on again/off again relationship (10 months) (Not Together)
Your ex breaks up with you when you are pregnant (15 months) (Not Together)
Your ex moves on to someone else (36 months) (Still Together)
I’ve divided the twelve into three categories.
Still together (meaning as of the writing of this article the couple still remains together)
Not together (another breakup between the couple has occurred)
Inconclusive (I couldn’t determine if they were together or not)
Here was the breakdown.
33% (4 out of 12) were still together
50% (6 out of 12) had broken up again
17% (2 out of 12) were inconclusive
So, like I’ve been saying all along, half of all the couples that we get back together break up again. Not exactly the stuff of legend, if you ask me but I believe in honesty and that’s the honest truth.
It’s by looking at those 33% of individuals who ended up staying together where we can potentially find our answer to if there’s an ideal time frame in which you should be getting your ex back.
The Tortoise And The Hare Approach
For simplicities sake I would like to dive our twelve success story study up into two categories,
The hare (they got back together quickly)
The tortoise (they took their time)
This of course is a direct nod to Aseop’s fable of the Tortoise and the Hare which, as you’ll see, turns out to be an apt comparison.
So, let’s take a look at our hares.
You break up with them (1 month) (Still Together)
You don’t do a no contact rule after the breakup (1 month) (Inconclusive)
You have a long distance ex (1.5 months) (Not Together)
You’ve been blocked by an ex (1.5 months) (Not Together)
You act overly anxious after the breakup (1.5 months) (Inconclusive)
You go “all in” on the no contact rule (2 months) (Not Together)
Basically these were the individuals who got their exes back within 2 months of starting our program.
If you actually throw out every inconclusive all but one of them ended up breaking up again.
Now let’s take a look at the Tortoise.
They break up with you (3 months) (Not Together)
Your ex is extremely fearful avoidant (6 months) (Still Together)
You’ve been ghosted by an ex (10 months) (Still Together)
You are in an on again/off again relationship (10 months) (Not Together)
Your ex breaks up with you when you are pregnant (15 months) (Not Together)
Your ex moves on to someone else (36 months) (Still Together)
It’s an even 50/50 split.
Still not great.
However, they outperform the hares in longevity.
Thus, in the case of breakups, it seems Aesop was right. Slow and steady does end up winning the race.
Chris Seiter 00:03 All right, today we have an interview that is one of the more unique ones that I think we’ve ever had on this is Thida. And not only did I believe the the group posts that you posted in the community was like, I didn’t just get my ex back. I’ve had every ex come back since I’ve started going through this. So her and I are just gonna have an organic conversation. But thanks for coming on and doing this Thida.
Thida 00:29 Thank you for having me. Like I told you earlier, I completely manifested this. I literally, when I was writing that little post on Facebook, I said, the moment I write this, I’m gonna hear from Chris and I’m gonna be sitting with him having an interview. Right? Yeah.
Chris Seiter 00:44 And that’s pretty much exactly what happened. Yeah. Okay, so why don’t you take us back to the dark days, one year ago? Exactly. Around this time, I think. Just take us, take us through the journey.
Thida 00:59 Okay. So my husband, I, we were together for seven years. We broke up in June of 2011. I’m sorry, not 2011 2021.
Chris Seiter 01:08 We are back 10 years
Thida 01:12 2021. I found your videos, I started binge watching everything. It seemed like nothing worked for me to get I wasn’t utilizing any of your, you know, the programs. And it wasn’t until April of 2022 is when I actually signed up for the program. And I had, I was on a trip overseas. And I literally read the whole book like three times, within a two week period that I was overseas, and I like found your podcast downloaded and listened to everything like probably two or three times within those two weeks of me traveling overseas to Europe. So it was like I wanted to like immerse myself in the program. I joined the Facebook group with mashed up with a battle buddy, her name is Bianca. I were like the closest friends now we talk like all the time, so it’s amazing. It’s awesome support. Nothing seemed to work out. And I would you know, when they say don’t do like the, you know, during no contact, like don’t respond and all that I completely broke no contact, I wasn’t. It wasn’t me reaching out, it was him reaching out. And then me being like, Oh, I’m getting some type of attention. So I should at least respond back. And I literally broke no contact, no contact probably five or six times, like, you know, within like a few weeks in or whatever. And it wasn’t until it was August of 2022 is when I said I’ve had enough and Oh, during this time too. I did everything like they said not to not to do like stalking, paying attention to what he’s doing. Just focusing on him. Like, I don’t know what was going on with me at the time, I was just focused on him. And it wasn’t until like I said, August was when I don’t know something snapped in me and I was just like, Okay, I need to change. This isn’t working for me anymore. So I’m just gonna leave him be go completely, you know, no contact forever. It was for me. And I literally he messaged me again and I literally told him to eff off. And I was like, you’re out of my life eff off. And I just focused on myself. And then that’s was last year and it’s been like six months. And my my life has like take taken like leaps and bounds. Like quantum leaps. I’ve, you know, my career took off people that were meant to be in my life. I feel like people who were like they just matched with you on on a you know, on that level. I came into my life things that were like, you know, synchronistic happen. So, yeah, that’s basically what
Chris Seiter 03:45 happened. So I feel very well, no, no, no, you wouldn’t
Thida 03:50 give up. It wasn’t until I gave up that he came right back into my life. So
Chris Seiter 03:54 why don’t you talk about that, like that the decision that you made to basically be like, Screw this, I’m not doing this anymore. Like I’m doing. I’m doing me instead of yeah, maybe, maybe I should find a different way of phrasing it. No, you’re
Thida 04:07 fine. You’re fine. So like I said, I broke no contact, like five or six times and five or six times and one of my favorite things I always say is in order to change the dance, you have to change the song. And I felt like I was just repeating the same song over and over to where nothing was happening. And I felt like alright, this is too crazy. I just need to let them go. So like I said, I told him eff off and I completely dropped off the face of the earth to him. i He never heard a peep from me. But my social media was still active, I was posting where I was going what I was doing, like I said my career like took off. And and during this time he never from what I thought he was not paying attention. And but somehow he was so somehow he was finding this or somebody was telling him and with after like maybe 60 days of complete silence he messaged me and and basically said like everything a girl in my opinion Listen would have wanted to hear was like I love you. I you know, I regret everything I want to get back together and want to, I want to work this out literally everything or girl could wish in that situation. And I just said no.
Chris Seiter 05:13 So had you guys this is your ex husband? Correct? Okay, so had you guys had sort of an on and off again type relationship. So it was just like you you’re divorced. You’re kind of like, I want to try to find a way to fix this after the divorce. And it’s interesting, did you? Did you ever take one of those attachment style tests online to figure out like what your attachment style was and try to figure out what his attachment style was
Thida 05:40 secured. He’s anxious.
Chris Seiter 05:42 Okay, well, that’s interesting. So he’s anxious. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So
Thida 05:47 the process I kind of flipped from secure to anxious, if that makes any sense, because I was secure before and then it became anxious during the breakup? Well,
Chris Seiter 05:55 obviously, yeah, I think that’s a big thing that most people misunderstand about attachment styles is like, your life circumstances have a huge impact on it. So you can be completely secure. But if you’re in a relationship with someone who’s like an anxious person or an avoidant person, or you go through a very stressful time in life, you’re paying your secure side. Time. kind of anxious. Yeah, it seems like that’s what happened to you. Yeah. We don’t get many anxious exes. So what about him? made you think or realize, oh, he has an anxious attachment style? Maybe marriage? Yeah.
Thida 06:32 always anxious. He was always like, making sure I was okay, making sure that I was happy. Just he had very anxious tendencies, like little things would make him very anxious. So including me, he was always wondering, like how I was doing in the relationship if I was happy, or whatever, you know.
Chris Seiter 06:48 Okay. So this is another interesting question, I’d like to ask you. So you go through this mindset shift, you know, maybe three or four months after you get into the group or the community, you’ve been paired with battle, buddy, everything seems to kind of be like not working for you. And you change the song to use your own words. When you did that, what was his reaction? Was it just radio silence for however long it took before he reached out and told you everything he wanted? You wanted to hear?
Thida 07:15 It was radio silence from him? Yeah. First for that. 60 days.
Chris Seiter 07:20 And those 60 days, were you checking his social media. You just sit
Thida 07:26 there going? Yeah, by then it was 35 or six times it failed, you know, no contact. And I was just like, I give up. And it was like the moment my energy shifted, and I like went off the grid of that relationship. That was when he came like he’s now back like a rubber band.
Chris Seiter 07:44 Yeah, it’s kind of amazing. I often talk about that a lot on the YouTube channel, which is like, hey, it’s almost you have to like kind of fail and just throw your hands up in the air before, like, all of a sudden, something different happens.
Thida 07:56 something to be said about that. What do you think
Chris Seiter 07:59 it is, I’m curious to get your take because it happened to you.
Thida 08:03 I feel like he felt it energetically the same with like, I like I said, in my post, I, literally every guy from my past within the past four or five months, like even people that I’ve went on, like maybe one date with who don’t even have my number anymore, I don’t even live in the same side of the country. All of a sudden, they found me on social media. And I’m not even saying like, Oh, there’s a handful. I’m talking to like, 2030 people that I haven’t heard from all within a short span of that time. So I felt like there was like, shockwaves that went out into the world. And here they are.
Chris Seiter 08:35 Do you think that was more of an energy based thing? Or do you think it was more of you posting a little bit more frequently on social media and then take paying attention and sensing the energy?
Thida 08:46 I think, while I was my posts have been the same amount. But I feel like it’s energetically because I haven’t changed. Like how many times I was posting or anything like that. It was I the only thing I can attribute it to is energy they sensed it.
Chris Seiter 09:02 Yeah, I mean, you must have been doing something different in the posts, maybe. I don’t know, I’ve always
Thida 09:09 my career took off. Like, you know, I started getting like really big media contracts. I was posting that. So it went from like literally as cuz I do a little bit of modeling on the side. And so I
Chris Seiter 09:19 was just couldn’t tell. So I was doing a little bit of you know,
Thida 09:23 and then I got these really big magazine contracts that like wanted to work with me so I was posting stuff like that. I was making trips around the world like showing different areas of the world that I was going to I was literally just having the time of my life.
Chris Seiter 09:37 Okay, so I guess the content of the post is the most important thing like I guess it’s more intriguing and in your doing more high value things I guess for for men. And so obviously your ex husband was the first one to kind of like, start crawl back to you a little bit
Thida 09:57 but I was a guy too and I broke up with him and he was actually also watching my stuff somehow incognito as well. So
Chris Seiter 10:06 okay, so after you would break up with your dad, let’s talk about this boyfriend that you broke up with I only obvious for
Thida 10:13 for two months he had abandonment issues and I guess to him it was either it was easier to just dump me first than to have me abandoned him later on. I don’t know.
Chris Seiter 10:23 That’s kind of an avoidant. Definitely an avoidance tactic, I guess.
Thida 10:28 But you think it was free to getting hurt? So, you so
Chris Seiter 10:31 you’re saying you all you really had to do to get these guys back was just like, kill it in life? And that just by association
Thida 10:39 100 100%.
Chris Seiter 10:41 That’s amazing. You know, that’s, that’s, that almost seems so simple. So what like, what, what, what did you do to start killing it at life? Because obviously, I mean, if we back up to the breakup, you quite clearly made a ton of mistakes, broke no contact, we’re stalking him on social media and things like that. Was it a gradual process to get to the, you know, like, Alright, I’m done attitude. And I’m just gonna focus on me like, What are some of your tips for someone listening to this that’s going to be struggling with that aspect of it?
Thida 11:12 For me, I did struggle between April and August, I did, I did struggle. But something snapped. By the time I had failed. No, no contact, like the fifth time that I was just like, I need to, I need to give up because this is crazy. And I felt like I was stuck in a cycle that I couldn’t get out of. So it was when I decided to choose me first. That was the first thing was that there was something energy energetically about me that I needed to focus on myself. Because I couldn’t be giving my energy away to him. It wasn’t benefiting meeting me in any way. It wasn’t making any personal growth. So the moment I decided to pull myself out of there, focus on 100%. Like, I literally did not even think of him I, I I started. People things I did, I started calling them shiny objects. So I needed like different shiny objects to like, fill up my time, so I wouldn’t think of it. And eventually, I think it didn’t get easy until around like 40 or 45 days to where I completely forgot about him at all. So you know, the first one to like 45 days, you know, I would think about him intermittently.
Chris Seiter 12:23 And it took like, what you said like six months? 60 days? 60? I knew. Yeah. For him to come back, I guess. Okay, that’s interesting. And obviously, you said no. So how did that conversation go?
Thida 12:41 He literally just said, you know, like, like I said, everything that a girl would want to hear in that situation. I love you. I want to get back to you. I made all these mistakes. I’m willing to do anything. And I just lit I literally said, I don’t want to do it anymore. I can’t do it anymore. I’ve moved on emotionally.
Chris Seiter 12:58 Okay, so here’s, here’s the big question. You had that conversation with him? After you had the conversation with him? Did he give up?
Thida 13:05 No, he’s, of course not. He actually is one of the very first people to wish me good morning and one of the last people to wish me good night. And throughout like every single day since then, this is probably back in maybe September. I hear from Him every day. He’s he’s one of the first to watch any of my social media posts to comment on them to ask how I’m doing. He’s literally one of my biggest fans now. So it’s actually yeah, it’s actually pretty funny.
Chris Seiter 13:37 So your advice to someone who wants that kind of an outcome is weirdly enough? Kill it at life. Give up on trying to get that back?
Thida 13:45 Yes, absolutely. 100% If I could do it over, or any advice I could give to the ladies and gentlemen. It’s just a complete, no contact, don’t even like bother. Like, it’s not even worth your time you if you want to be stuck. Focus on yourself. And you know, that eventually the universe will give you the ability to choose between what you want and maybe it’s not you choosing them anymore.
Chris Seiter 14:12 Okay, so basically, your tactic is interesting to me, because you I often talk about this concept of like, you know, a lot of our success stories they’ve let go, and then by the time they let go that’s usually when the X sort of comes back. So I’m always trying to teach people to let go quicker so that they can kind of like speed the process up a little bit. And you seem to have Yeah, and I guess that’s the really difficult part. And you said like, all your exes came back though, every single one
Thida 14:45 and more wasn’t just my it was every literally everybody I’ve known from my whole entire existence.
Chris Seiter 14:51 Okay, so this is really interesting because they weren’t coming back before.
Thida 14:55 No. What do you think that was? I can only attribute to energy Okay, do you think? Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Chris Seiter 15:04 Oh, all right. Do you think it had anything to do with the fact that how long were you guys divorced before you try to enter the program? Sir? I’m just asking. So it
Thida 15:11 was October of 2021 was when at the end of October 2021 was when we divorced. I joined the program April in 2022. So that follow up.
Chris Seiter 15:22 All right. So I mean, it’s all relatively quick, do you think? Okay, so, I want you to think back. I know divorce is kind of a hard thing to look look at. But I’m actually really cute. I’m just following my own curiosity here. All right, so you go through this divorce? Did you see an uptick? And then a number of men sliding into your DMS exes coming back then? Or it was just silent completely?
Thida 15:43 Well, I didn’t let anybody know that I was divorced. So I didn’t even tell my family. I was divorced until six months later. So yeah, so it was it was very, it was a hard thing for me to tell them. And I generally don’t keep my private life on social media. So like, nobody knew for the longest time.
Chris Seiter 16:04 Okay, so do you think the exes coming back had more to do with the fact that they realized, Oh, she’s single now? Versus the fact that oh, she’s married? I need to back off?
Thida 16:14 No, because they did? No, no, they didn’t know. Because even then, when I was married, I didn’t post a lot of him because I kept mostly my social media was for business.
Chris Seiter 16:24 Okay. That’s interesting. So basically, your social media strategy was doing well at work, I guess. And I guess even the modeling thing would be work too, right? Yeah, you’re getting paid for it. So. So you get well at work. And I’m wondering if there’s also like, a social aspect to it. Like, you know, there’s like a certain prestige to getting a magazine contract as a model thing. I don’t know what you do. And so that’s not your full time gig, right? No, I’m a marketing director. Okay, so you’re killing it at work getting these contracts and everything you’re posting about them. So you clearly got the wealth aspect of the Holy Trinity down, did you do anything like health and relationships related?
Thida 17:05 I lost like 30 pounds. Within that time, I got into like, the best shape of my life. Like I said, I I did things within that short year, that probably I like, I couldn’t have done within 10 years, like prior. Like, I felt like everything was just like, condensed into that one year. So like I said, I lost weight. I my career, like skyrocketed didn’t just take off, it skyrocketed. Everything that I said I was going to accomplish. I did all within that year.
Chris Seiter 17:39 Okay. So and you did go on dates with other people too. Yeah. Right. I did, how many dates Okay, so basically, you just went all in on this trinity concept and posted about it on social media, which created the energy necessary for the ex to be like, something is different. Yeah. Okay, that’s interesting. Why did you guys break up originally,
Thida 18:11 he had a, he also had to had abandonment issues. But he had an ex, he just kept coming back year after you’re at, you know, like a kind of like, the one that got away type of thing. And I just felt like there was always something off. So that I mean, he didn’t cheat on me or anything. But you know, I broke it off because I said, you know, if she’s always going to be there in the background somewhere, you need to go and figure that out. So that was why we divorced. He actually did go back to her and figured out that’s not what he wanted. Of course. Yeah. So.
Chris Seiter 18:44 Yeah. Okay. That’s interesting. So how long were you guys married? Five years together? Seven, five years together. Seven, you break up you broken up maybe for like, seven, eight months by the time he’s coming crawling back. But
Thida 19:02 dating multiple other girls too. So they were multiple other women.
Chris Seiter 19:08 Okay, but I guess they never compared to you.
Thida 19:11 Yeah, I guess not. Especially you’re so Yugi right.
Chris Seiter 19:16 Yeah. So basically, you just killed it. So what was the motivating drive to because I think the hardest thing for people in the community is like, doing the stuff like taking that first step because they’re they’re just so crippled by grief, depression and everything that goes along with the breakup. Would you like like so you lost 30 pounds, right? What is your motivation to get up in the morning? Go to the gym when you’re just like, I don’t want to do it today.
Thida 19:44 Yeah, at first I didn’t. I felt like I had to hit rock bottom first, in order to stick with the program because even when I read through the program the first time when I was on that flight, I even like kind of just skimmed through the Trinity. Hey, I’m admitting it because it’s like, because you know, it’s easier to not work on yourself, right? Because people were like one of everything but work on yourself. And it wasn’t like it. Like I said, it wasn’t until like, I really just had to be so fed up that I wanted change so badly that I was just willing to say, Hey, I love myself more right now than I love him. So I need to dedicate the energy I was putting into him into me. And for me, I had to hit rock bottom.
Chris Seiter 20:30 And for you hitting rock bottom, that just caused a shift of was there any kind of like revenge aspect to it? Because no. Okay, so for you, it was just all about myself, like, I’m done thinking about him. I just need to take that energy and put it into myself.
Thida 20:47 Well, yeah. And plus, if you’re putting that revenge energy out there, it’s kind of a negative energy. I didn’t want it out. And so I wished him well, I wish you know, I don’t think ill of him at all. Like I said, because we talk like every
Chris Seiter 20:59 day now, you’re a lot kinder than most people, I’ll tell you,
Thida 21:02 I mean, I don’t like putting that bad energy that bad juju out there, because eventually it’ll come back to you. And I just focused like said on 100%. Everything to do with me. And I saw I wrote a list of all the things I wanted to accomplish. And literally everything on that list, including having this conversation with you, is complete, you know. So it’s like, well, what else now? I can have another list?
Chris Seiter 21:26 Yeah, I think so. I mean, like, what, what is it that you want at this point? Do you want to get remarried to someone like, what’s your overall relationship goal?
Thida 21:36 You know what, I’m actually really happy where I am right now, I’m still single. And I’m not in a rush to be in relationship. I’m not even looking, I’m just focusing on feeling good every day, and making sure I’m being the best human that I could be. So that’s where I am at in life. I’m just happy where I’m at.
Chris Seiter 21:54 I feel like your success stories, one of the more important ones that we’ve had, because it really hammers home the point I’m always trying to make, which is like you really before you talk to your ex, you really need to get to that place. Mostly, we’re just like, I’m okay. All right. And you seem to have embodied that. But it took you hitting the rock bottom. And that took a while, you know, so I guess the the big thing that I’m curious about is that journey for you to actually hit rock bottom, you know, making a lot of the mistakes like what? Why would you keep making the same mistakes? You know? Like, why wouldn’t Why did it take you so long to change? The song, I guess, is what I’m asking.
Thida 22:39 For number one, because time, you know, as time goes by, during this time, like I said, I failed probably five or six times, you hear from them after not hearing from them. And you’re so wishing that the relationship could be back to where it was that you’re you’re basically forgetting yourself just to do something that you think would bring them back into your life. And like I said, it was after being hurt for so much seeing him try to move on to with other women, you know, he’s dealing with things his own way. And it was just just being hurt. At some point, you got to be tired of being hurt. You got to be tired of feeling sorry for yourself. And what’s not working for me like that timeframe was just too incredulous to be upset or sad or angry. So like I said, it was like one day a light switch just went off. And I was a completely different girl the next day.
Chris Seiter 23:32 What about your battle buddy? Did your battle buddy like also she’s
Thida 23:35 in a relationship. Now she’s, she’s great. Oh my god. She’s the best thing to come from that program. She She is awesome. We talked to each other a lot. She’s in another relationship. Now we would we would have conversations where like, she’s like, Okay, girl, you need to talk me into not texting him or whatever. And we back and forth, or, you know, so many hours with her many, many hours.
Chris Seiter 23:59 Did her ex also come back or ask for her back? At some point? Actually,
Thida 24:02 he didn’t. But she moved on. So I don’t know if he would have because now he’s all you know, she’s in a better relationship. And he’s all over her social media. So I don’t know if he would come back.
Chris Seiter 24:13 So I guess it’s a it’s a happy ending for both for both parties. Which is great. Yeah. So the battle buddy, you felt like the battle buddy aspect of the program and the community was the best. The best part that that level of accountability, I guess is is there?
Thida 24:31 Yeah. Because, you know, during any type of like a big breakup, you kind of feel like you’re going crazy, right? None of your family members want to hear you talk about it. You feel like there’s nobody to talk to. And so so to be in a community of 1000s of individuals who are going through the same thing, you feel less crazy. And you feel like you know, you have something that you can talk about because you’re all going through the same things whereas your family members, they’re only going to tell you just move on but it’s like they don’t have to Anything that come after that, you know, whereas, you know, you actually have a program of the steps you do after, you know,
Chris Seiter 25:08 right? Well, you know, I think the the community aspect, I’ve been thinking a lot about the community itself. And I think the reason it works so well is that there’s like three layers of accountability, you know, you have the peer to peer accountability, which is like you in the battle buddy. But then you have like the veteran accountability, which is like people who’ve been through it, and are still there and kind of providing their advice. And then you of course, have like, the coaching accountability, like the experts that are coming in and doing that. And I think that’s really the real big value of, of the, of the community as a whole. But it seems like you, the big part of your journey from understanding is like hitting rock bottom, having that be the realization that I need to move on. And then actually moving on and then seeing the results, but not just seeing the results. Like oh, I really wanted this like seeing results like crazier than you ever expected, like every single guy you’ve ever dated trying to ask for you back. Which is pretty,
Thida 26:07 pretty fake moving on, you know? Because like, yeah, you it’s like the moving on without moving on. Right? Yeah. There’s something to be said for that. And I did try to move on. But it like I said it was moving on without moving on. And that didn’t work. It literally something must have kicked in energetically. It wasn’t until that snap in me happened, that light switch happened, that everything else fell into place.
Chris Seiter 26:32 Yeah, so that you can’t this isn’t a fake it till you make it type thing. This is like you actually have to do it. And then once you do it, things will be better for you. But I think the hardest part for people listening to this is taking it on faith because it’s like, it’s an outcome that they they don’t know, there’s no guarantee that will happen. You know? So what can you say to someone like that, you know, you’ve lived through it,
Thida 26:57 for me like holding on is like adding resistance to that wire, right? The more resistance, the more resistance you add to a wire, the energy can travel through it, because there’s resistance, once you let go, once you release that resistance to energy flows better. So I kept thinking that during this program, I said I just need to let go because I’m adding resistance. And I mean, I did it for months, kept telling myself that for months. And like I said, you have to reach for me, it was important to reach rock bottom. And I I don’t want everybody to reach rock bottom, because it’s a really dark place. But for me, that is where I can say, hey, this is where I changed. It wasn’t before that.
Chris Seiter 27:36 I love the story. You’re like, you’re like parenting everything that I’ve tried. But see, here’s the thing, like, I’ll do a YouTube video and I’ll say in making the exact points you’re making, but I don’t feel like it gets through to people. And I think that’s because if we’re going to use the energy terminology, I have a too much of a masculine energy. And sometimes you need to have a feminine energy come and like be like, oh, yeah, works. Like this is the way to do it. And I think for you it worked almost a little too well. Like you almost have too many options now.
Thida 28:09 Oh, my God, my girlfriend’s joke about that all the time. Because literally too many options now. Whereas before, it was like nothing. And now it’s it’s incredible, like my life completely flipped completely.
Chris Seiter 28:22 Yeah, I mean, what is it like now for you? Like going forward? I know you you don’t have any plans to kind of get married, which of course is what everyone says before, right? Before they find that guy and
Thida 28:34 I am. I am opening open to anything the universe brings my way. I’m not gonna stick with my abundance anymore. But I’m gonna do what feels natural, you know? And what feels good.
Chris Seiter 28:46 Okay, well, here’s the hardest question I’m gonna ask you. Let’s say you are in a situation where you find the perfect guy, and then he breaks up with you. Do you feel like you would make the same mistakes over again? Or do you feel like you’d be quicker to hitting that rock bottom and doing what worked last time?
Thida 29:03 No, I would let him go. Because Because if he wants to go, he’s not mine. You know what I mean? I can’t I can’t keep him there. And yeah, we’re relationship like it’s a two way street. So I just got to let him go. And that’s one of the things from the program to that I’ve learned it’s releasing things that are not meant for me. And you learn that like I said, through all the failures of you know, the things before that and so yeah, I’m, I’m better at releasing things now. Not just people but anything.
Chris Seiter 29:34 I mean, I don’t know what to ask you. We’ve summed up everything so perfectly. Is there any like final words that you want to tell people struggling through these breakups like to help them and help them see the light but there is a light at the end of the tunnel?
Thida 29:47 Yes, for me, it was I failed so many times. And I know something you can tell people that but they most people they learn through their own, you know, through their own trials and tribulations for me if I could do it all over again. And I would go, no contact right away. Like I said, for me, it didn’t start getting better, I started feeling better until day like 40 to 45. So but before that, you know, those days prior, they were horrible. And for me like the last time, the things like that made going, no contact better was finding like shiny objects like start, like save your Trinity finding, make a list of things you want to do places you want to go, I traveled the world within this short timeframe. So I just started checking off everything on my list, just anything that I could do to take my mind off of things. So the days would go by and after, after a while it you know, you don’t realize oh, it’s day 45 Or day 50 and 60. And it was it was when I least expected it was when he had sent me a message asking, it was like, because for me, I was like, I’ll never hear from him again. And so it was really surprising. And it’s the same with the last guy that I dated for a few months. i The moment he broke up with me, I just said okay, and that was the last words here for me was okay. And then it wasn’t until like, I didn’t fight didn’t anything. I just let them go. 80 days later, he came back the same. I still love you. I want to get back together. And by then I I had already Wow. Yeah. So
Chris Seiter 31:21 So you have been through it again. Where are you?
Thida 31:25 I said, Okay. I said okay. But I would have no argument.
Chris Seiter 31:30 I think that I so this is my take on it. I think it worked because that is a secure response to a breakup. Okay. And then you didn’t give it to any of the anxious side that maybe like, I’m going to try to win him back or anything, which is like pestering him instead, it leaves more of an impression to have a girl say, okay, and then go off into her life. Yeah, it was
Thida 31:55 that radio silence for me. Okay, two to two letters, radio silence for 80 days, like I was, you know, he didn’t, to my knowledge, didn’t check my social media. But he was somehow checking my social media so they know what you’re doing. And what do you think they don’t? Yeah, yeah. And reporting it back to other people, you know, but it wasn’t like I was going and asking for it. Other people would come to me, but um, yeah, I just said, Okay. And then 80 days later, he snapped back and just in against that I want to work things out. I still love you, blah, blah, blah. And, again, I said, I’m sorry, but I’ve emotionally moved on.
Chris Seiter 32:35 That’s great. Yeah. Well, I mean, thank you for coming on and doing this.
Thida 32:40 Thank you for having me. You like filled another checkmark bucket list.
Chris Seiter 32:43 The bucket list. The final checkmark, you read. You’ve reached the top of your list. No,
Thida 32:49 you have to make another one. I know this is crazy. This is absolutely crazy.
Today I’m going to answer the age old question on if 4 months of no contact is too long after a breakup.
Let’s just jump right into it,
I personally believe that 4 months of no contact is too long because most exes will have begun to move on from you by that point.
So really, I guess it’s a function of figuring out what you want out of your situation.
Do you want to get your ex back? If so, then you might want to employ a shorter no contact period.
Do you want to get over your ex? Well then, 4 months of no contact might be right up your ally.
But let’s jump into the discussion portion of this because what I thought might end up being an incredibly boring one turned into a fascinating one when I ended up starting the research portion.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
So, the crux of my argument is going to center around two concepts.
The average length of time it takes to get over a breakup
The habit rule.
So, generally there are three time frames we associate with no contact.
The 21 Day Rule
The 30 Day Rule
The 45 Day Rule
These three time frames all have different “situational” implementations which I cover here.
Fun fact though, a little later in this discussion I’ve actually started toying around with the idea of shifting how you choose the ideal no contact for you.
But notice how none of the three timeframes even kiss close to the 120 days of the four month mark. This is very much by design.
The Average Length Of Time It Takes To Get Over A Breakup
It doesn’t take much to figure out how long it takes to get over a breakup. All one needs to do is simply go to Google and type the phrase in and BOOM,
When looking at the timeline of breakups, many sites refer to a “study” that’s actually a consumer poll a market research company conducted on behalf of Yelp. The poll’s results suggest it takes an average of about 3.5 months to heal, while recovering after divorce might take closer to 1.5 years, if not longer.
So, 3.5 months to heal.
Interestingly, healing from divorce takes longer, 1.5 years.
I’m assuming that this is because the length of time you are together with a person is a resulting factor for this.
On average, couples will be together 2 years before getting engaged.
Compared to couples who are married 8 years before divorce.
This seems to suggest that how long you were with a person dictates how long it’ll take to heal from the breakup.
Since this site focuses more on dating and relationships as opposed to marriage we can assume that the 3.5 month mark is a great benchmark to use.
This means that a four month no contact rule (120 days) will end right around the time that your ex has gotten over you which is great if you don’t want your ex back but most people coming to this website do want their exes back.
The Habit Rule
The next black mark on the four month rule revolves around my own creation, the habit rule.
It’s notoriously tricky to nail down how long it takes to break a habit.
But let’s play devils advocate here for a moment. Let’s say that we wanted to identify the most difficult ex to get back. One that would fast track getting over you.
Well, the habit rule might give us some insight to how long it would take to get over you.
Modelling the habit formation process in individuals allowed us to calculate the time taken for automaticity scores to plateau; operationalized here as time to reach 95% of asymptote. The average modelled time to plateau in this sample was 66 days, but the range was from 18 to 254 days.
I know that’s a lot of technical talk but the study found that it took an average of 66 days for a new habit to form (or be broken.)
But the ranges were pretty wide. For some it only took 18 days, for others 254 days.
Technically speaking if your ex wanted to really get over you it could happen in as little as 18 days but it’s far more likely to hover around that 66 day mark. Going no contact for 120 days therefore might actually help speed your ex along that process if that’s not what you want to have happen.
So, this leads us to the big question.
What is the perfect no contact time frame?
The Trick To Finding Out The Perfect Time Frame For No Contact
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
I’ve never been particularly happy with how my program currently recommends clients to choose a no contact time frame. I basically ask them to fill out this worksheet, do this quick calculation and then based on their answers determine the no contact rule.
I call it the no contact rule assessment,
I actually don’t like it.
In fact, when applying it to real world coaching I’ve found that often it comes up with the wrong time frame. Instead, I believe I’ve found a far simpler and more effective method for assigning your no contact time frame.
It’s a simple formula that takes into account your exes attachment style.
Figure out exes attachment style + Adjust NC time frame based on that
So, your ex will have one of the four core attachment styles.
Secure – Exhibits no major core wound.
Anxious – Exhibits a fear of abandonment
Avoidant – Exhibits a huge desire for independence
Fearful – Exhibits both anxious and avoidant core wounds
If Your Ex Has A Secure Attachment
Then you are going to want to do the industry standard 30 days of no contact. Nothing really shocking here.
If Your Ex Has An Anxious Core Wound
21 days is going to be prescribed. Though I’ll go out on a limb and say that most likely your ex is not going to have an anxious core wound. In fact, your ex is most likely to have an avoidant core wound.
If Your Ex Has An Avoidant Core Wound
The vast majority of our client base has exes with avoidant core wounds,
For exes like this you want to do 45 days because really an avoidant isn’t going to “miss you” until they believe you are over them. A 45 day rule is actually perfect for this.
It’s enough time to where you are getting closer to that 66 day mark but not enough time to where you are passing it and out of their mind completely.
Now, where people always seem to mess up revolves around the fearful avoidant attachment style.
If Your Ex Has Fearful Avoidant Core Wounds
You actually want to do a 21 day rule.
Why?
Well, because of the pogosticking effect.
One moment an avoidant core wound will appear, the next an anxious one.
But here’s the dangerous thing about fearful avoidants. When their anxious side comes to the surface, if you don’t nurture it they can actually withdraw deeper into themselves and become even more avoidant.
Now, you usually want them to do this one time during no contact but anything greater than one tends to get a little risky.
Thus, 21 days seems to be the ideal time frame for fearful avoidant exes.
Once again, notice how none of the time frames come anywhere close to 120 days. That’s because four months of no contact is just far too long and quite frankly, unnecessary.
How Does My Ex Feel When I Ignore Him?
Mar 02, 2023
Today we’re going to talk about how your ex feels when you ignore them.
I’ve thought long and hard about how to approach this and I think I’ve found a really unique way of tackling this subject. You see, typically when you go online and search for answers to questions good ole Google loves to put all kinds of articles in front of you.
Many of these articles barely scratch the surface of what you need to know and for some reason they all seem to contain the same broken format.
Signs…
Tips…
You get the idea…
In reality this actually makes no sense. Someone who is literally searching for an answer to how an ex feels when they ignore you don’t need tips or signs. They need to understand an exes response to silence.
Luckily, we have so much experience seeing this because we recommend the no contact rule so frequently to our clients.
Honestly though, I think the correct way to diagnose responses is to look at how each attachment style handles being ignored and then from there we can infer their feelings.
So, here’s what I want to do.
Help You Diagnose Your Exes Attachment Style
Take A Look At How Avoidants Respond To Being Ignored
Take A Look At How Anxious Individuals Respond To Being Ignored
Take A Look At How Fearful Individuals Respond To Being Ignored
Take A Look At How Secure Individuals Respond To Being Ignored
Let’s begin!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Everyone always seems to have a fancy way of categorizing attachment styles.
Dismissive avoidant
Avoidant
Anxious…
Ambivalant
Fearful…
It can get really confusing really fast but I believe in simplifying things which is why I’ve always referred to attachments styles in four different ways.
The Secure Style
The Avoidant Style
The Anxious Style
The Fearful Style
But we are here because we need to figure out what attachment style your ex is. Luckily, there is a relatively straightforward way of doing that and it all revolves around core wounds.
Now, the goal always with attachment theory is to find yourself in the securely attached category.
Unfortunately, most of the individuals we work with have insecure attachments and it’s those insecure attachments that have the core wounds that when irritated will trigger the insecure behaviors.
So, let’s tackle figuring out if your ex has an insecure attachment first. Really what you are going to want to look at is if they experience the following core wounds.
Anxious Core Wound = A Deep Fear Of Abandonment
Avoidant Core Wound = A Deep Need For Independence
Fearful Core Wound = Bouncing From One Extreme To The Next
So, what does that look like in real life?
Well, someone with an anxious core wound, when they sense a breakup is oncoming will panic and try to fix the problem, to an almost annoying degree. They’ll constantly check in with you, ask how you are doing. Every little infraction that they deem spells trouble in paradise will cause them to overcrowd you.
Someone with an avoidant core wound is the exact opposite. If they feel they are being overcrowded or losing independence they’ll basically dip out and avoid. Sometimes you’ll even see big life commitments that cause them to feel like they’ll lose their independence will freak them out.
And then we have the fearful individuals. That’s where things get wild. They will literally go from one extreme to the next. One minute they are trying to “save your relationship” and the next they want nothing to do with you.
But you aren’t here for this. You are here to figure out how each of these individuals respond to being ignored.
A Look At How Avoidant Exes Respond To Being Ignored
All of 2021 and 2022 I spent researching avoidants.
Why?
Well, my team and I have found that avoidants tend to be the most common ex that we encounter.
By a pretty large margin.
Here’s what’s interesting about avoidants. Many of them will follow this path after a breakup,
The relationship death wheel of which there are eight stages.
I want someone to love me
I found someone yay
Hey, they aren’t perfect
I’m going to leave
I have left
I’m so happy I left
Yo… I’m getting kinda lonely
WHY IS THIS ALWAYS HAPPENING TO ME
But the thing that is of interest to us is actually stage #6.
This is called separation elation and I’ve talked about it a lot in articles.
After a relationship ends, people with an avoidant attachment style tend not to show much anxiety or distress, often feeling an initial sense of relief at the relinquishing of obligations and the sense that they are regaining their self-identity, and not tending to initially miss their partner – this is “separation elation” as the pressure to connect is gone.
So, how does the avoidant respond to being ignored.
They actually enjoy it!
At first.
But don’t worry, stage #7 is just around the corner.
A Look At How Anxious Exes Will Respond To Being Ignored
While avoidant exes are on one end of the spectrum, you know, avoiding you.
Anxious exes are on the complete other end.
It’s important to note that anxious exes are without a doubt the rarest type of ex we encounter on our work here at Ex Boyfriend Recovery.
So, what typically happens when you ignore an anxious ex?
Well, usually something like this,
For the record, this is taken directly from a client in our community.
Wild, right?
This is an anxious response to silence. They’ll do anything they possibly can to get you to respond.
It’s akin to a child throwing a tantrum. Except it usually plays out over texts, calls and unannounced show ups.
A Look At How Fearful Exes Respond To Being Ignored
Fearful avoidants are super interesting to me because they are so rare.
And their response to silence is unique.
Generally it’s been my experience that when you ignore a fearful avoidant they first go through separation elation but it’s an extremely shortened version. One that lasts, maybe a week before that anxious side starts kicking in.
But they usually don’t swing to the extreme as simple as a snap. Rather, they’ll do something passive aggressive over social media to get your attention.
Posting one of those, “I’m better that I’m single now” type posts,
They are doing this almost as a tester to see if you’ll break first. If you don’t, then you can expect them to escalate and start reaching out. Usually it’s not going to be as extreme as a full on anxious individual but there will be hints of it.
Here’s the important bit though.
If you don’t respond or at least nurture that anxious side they’ll retreat further inwards towards their avoidant side and take even longer before their anxious side gets triggered again.
This is why one of the big changes we’ve already made to our program is that we’ve started recommending shorter no contact periods for clients with fearful avoidant exes.
A Look At How Secure Exes Handle Being Ignored
What is the secure way to handle a breakup?
Well, I think it’s some variation of,
Allowing yourself to feel your feelings
Seeking support from trusted individuals
Distracting yourself
Healing
But there’s one thing that separates the secure ex from the insecure ex. They are confident that they will get over the breakup.
Usually secure people will respond to being ignored by trying to reach out a few times, taking the hint that you don’t want to talk and then backing off for a bit until you are ready to talk.
Of course, secure exes are actually even rarer than anxious exes in our program.
Want to know why?
Because often secure exes don’t feel the need to go online for help with their breakups. They trust themselves to do what needs to be done and that’s not a slight on anyone here.
It’s purely a numbers game.
The numbers tell us that the most likely pairing that we are going to see is anxious (client) and avoidant (ex.)
Secure exes in my business are a little like unicorns.
Today I’m going to talk about how to text an avoidant. This is a topic that I’m sad to say I have a lot of experience with.
I know this is redundant but we know that most of our clients veer towards more anxious behaviors,
While most of our clients exes veer more towards the avoidant side of the spectrum.
Now, when you are dealing with an avoidant it’s best to abide by some of the best texting practices (aka: the stuff we spent the last ten years figuring out.)
It all starts with our texting formula.
Ensure That You Follow The Texting Formula When Texting An Avoidant
Perhaps where Ex Boyfriend Recovery is different than most websites out there recommending you to text your ex is that we’ve come up with a formula.
Ah, but this formula isn’t for one simple text message construction. No, it’s for the whole darn conversation.
Hook + Payoff + High Point = Success
To borrow from the article I literally wrote a few days ago talking about this very thing,
Hook- Basically an open loop. Something so interesting that your ex can’t help but respond to it.
Payoff- An answer to the open loop/hook that leaves an ex feeling satisfied, wanting to help or wanting to engage with you more in some way.
High Point: When the conversation reaches its high point you need to end it.
Here’s a real life example of that in action.
The Blue Is The Hook: I could really use your advice on something…
The Green Is The Payoff: I’m taking a first year geography module next semester, what did you think about Globalization: Economy, Space and Power?
The Pink Is The High Point: (Do I really need to write all that?)
But following the texting formula isn’t the only “best practice” that we’d like you to adopt.
Get Good At Asking Open Ended Questions In “The Hook”
If you are going to ask your ex a question then it’s important for you to make it open ended if possible. If you don’t know what this means then refer to this article,
A general rule of thumb is that if you ask your ex a question that can be answered by going to Google and getting a quick answer then it’s not a good question.
Try harder.
Aim For That 50/50 Split
Whenever you are texting an ex one of the best indicators on if things are going well or not going well has to do with the split or ratio.
You are always looking for a 1 to 1 ratio.
Meaning for every one text that your ex sends you are sending one in return.
Refer to the graphic below for what is good and what is not good.
Word Count
The general rule of thumb is that you want to put on your editing cap when it comes to word count.
We abide by the quote,
There is brilliance in brevity
That means take out unnecessary words that don’t need to be there.
We want them to be texting longer text messages to you than you are to them. Beat them on the word count.
How To Handle Positive, Negative, Neutral, None
Positive Response From An Avoidant = Next Conversation Can Happen In A Day
Neutral Response From An Avoidant = Next Conversation Can Happen In 3-5 Days
Negative Response From An Avoidant = Next Conversation Can Happen In 14 Days (You need to go back into a mini NC)
No Response From An Avoidant = Next Conversation Attempt Can Happen In 21 Days
If You Get 3 No Responses From An Avoidant = Next Conversation Attempt Can Happen After 30-45 Days, You probably aren’t doing enough to make your ex think you’ve moved on.
But to quote the great Pirates of the Caribbean,
We are dealing with avoidants and that means you are going to be dealing with some tricky customers in the texting phase with them.
Texting Habits Exhibited By Avoidants
Even for the most ardent “guideline” follower, when it comes to avoidants, you are going to get tripped up because inevitably avoidants have some really annoying habits, that if you handle the wrong way can mess up your progress entirely.
So, what are these annoying habits?
Well, there are four of them.
The Mini Ghost Period
The Taper
The Last Minute Cancellations
The Passive Texting
Let’s take a hard look at each of these so you understand what they are and then we’ll talk about solutions.
The Mini Ghost Period
I’m sure we’ve all been there. You are texting your avoidant. Everything seems to be going well. They like you, you like them and then BOOM.
They disappear.
There was no warning.
Your natural inclination is to try to fix things and so you do the one thing you aren’t supposed to do, you pull the avoidant towards you when you are supposed to push them away to give them space.
Generally you’ll find that these little mini ghost periods can last from anywhere between 2 to 3 days.
The burning question in everyone’s mind is why?
Why does the avoidant do this?
Well, it can happen for a lot of reasons but generally,
They’ll do this when they don’t know how to respond.
When they don’t find the conversation with you that interesting
When they’re trying to slow down how fast the relationship is moving
When they perceive the person as being too anxious.
Nex up we have…
They’ll Taper
Let’s say you have a date planned with the avoidant, it’s in a week.
A few days before the date the avoidant begins a type of taper.
If you aren’t familiar with the term it’s something that endurance athletes do before a big race. Essentially while training for a Marathon or Iron Man they’ll increase mileage every single week.
The one exception to that is the week before the race.
They start to taper.
To slow the mileage down in an attempt to rest their body.
Well, avoidants do the same thing before a big emotional event, whether that is a date, moving in together, talking on the phone, etc.
They’ll taper themselves from you.
They’ll grow distant.
One unfortunate thing that happens as a result of the taper is…
Last Minute Cancellations
I can’t tell you how often an avoidant will agree to plans and they are authentically excited about it, in the moment.
However, they sleep on it.
They second guess themselves.
They cancel.
Passive Texting
Earlier today I was doing a Livestream with our community and someone told an interesting story.
They were having a perfectly normal conversation with their ex and then in the middle of it their ex just started sending memes.
She’d respond to the meme of course with a laughing emoji and then ask another question, she’d get another meme.
Another question, another meme.
On and on it went.
This is a perfect example of passive texting and it’s a classic avoidant coping mechanism. Usually when the avoidant encounters a conversation where they don’t really know how to respond they’ll respond in a passive way and expect you to decipher the meaning.
In this case the meaning was hidden somewhere in the many different memes.
So, the burning question you are probably having at this point is how the hell do you handle these behaviors in the texting phase.
Well, the fix is comically simple.
When They Pull Back, You Pull Back
Simple, and yet executing it goes against almost every one of my clients programming.
You see, an anxious individual (who are the individuals I primarily work with) want to fix the problems as soon as possible. In fact, they are so obsessed with fixing it because it’s the only way they can feel better.
So, when an avoidant is communicating with you through action that they need space the anxious person does the exact opposite.
They try to fix.
When I told my wife I was writing this article and explaining the contents of it she made an interesting analogy.
It’s a lot like having a child who is extremely anxious about something continue to badger you for an hour straight. By the end you just want to pull your hair out.
It’s not that you don’t love them, you do.
It’s just that a little space would be nice.
Now imagine that kid is your partner and that partner didn’t give you that space.
They just were incessantly pestering you.
How would you feel?
That’s the avoidant for you and why it’s sooo important for you to exhibit emotional control and abide by the “when they pull back, you pull back” mentality.
Should I Contact My Ex Who Dumped Me?
Feb 06, 2023
Today we’re going to talk about if you should contact an ex who dumped you.
So, should you?
Once the prerequisites have been met then yes, it’s in your best interest to contact your ex. However, it must be done a certain way using the texting formula I’m going to outline in this article.
So, what are these prerequisites?
A full no contact must be completed
You must have gotten to a place emotionally where you don’t really care if you get them back or not
And then of course there’s the “how?” of the question.
How do you contact an ex and get a positive result?
Well, there’s a simple three step formula we’ve come up with but you’ll have to keep reading to figure out what that is.
.
For now, let’s talk about all the prep work that needs to occur before you reach out to an ex who dumped you.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
It’s been my experience that most people who’ve been dumped gloss over this section thinking it’s not important. After all, the texting formula is sexy and can yield those responses.
What’s not explicitly called out is the fact that the formula really only works if two things have happened.
You’ve gotten through a no contact period
You’ve gotten your mind right through that no contact period
To be honest, I’m tired of talking about the no contact rule and its benefits. You can see all of my thoughts on it here.
You can watch my thoughts on it here,
Basically the quick crash course lesson is that no matter how difficult it may be it’s really important to get through a complete 21-45 day period of no contact.
Refer to the massive no contact guide I linked to above to determine what the best time is for you.
Getting through a no contact period unscathed is going to be challenging in and of itself, but the more meaningful thing is your mindset after you come through the no contact rule.
What We’ve Learned From Success Stories
Ex Boyfriend Recovery has been operating since 2012. That’s almost 11 years in business. We’ve literally had tens of thousands of men and women come through our program.
Thousands of those have successfully gotten their exes back.
I’ve interviewed them multiple times,
Want to know the big thing I learned?
Most people who succeed are the people who at the end of their no contact rule got to this place emotionally where they weren’t sure they even wanted their ex back anymore.
Authentically they need to believe this though. It can’t be a faked thing.
Why does this work?
Well, the best answer I’ve ever been able to come up with is that it gives you a certain confidence when going into the texting phase.
Instead of worrying about if an ex is going to respond or if your text is good enough you’ll think,
If they respond, cool. If they don’t, cool.
Somehow that bleeds through in your reach outs.
But it probably has more of an impact on response time than anything. You don’t appear to be as valuable and thus your exes perception of you slowly begins to shift.
Of course, my team and I have the benefit of not really worrying too much about getting an ex to respond.
We’ve spent years testing and seeing what actually yields the best response. We’ve then created a formula for that.
Our Texting Formula
Now, here’s the cool part of this article. Not only am I going to show you what the formula is but I’m also going to show you real life examples of it in action.
So, what’s the formula?
Hook + Payoff + High Point = Success
Ok, this is going to require some explaining so lets break it down one by one.
The Hook
This is going to be your text starter and it’s entire job is to capture your exes interest, much in the same way that the first sentence of a book is supposed to capture the readers attention.
You can utilize a combination of,
Pattern Interrupts
Knowledge Based Issues
Damsel In Distress Topics
We’ve actually seen a lot of success with the damsel in distress type texts. We think this is because it makes the ex feel good to not only “help you” but also generally you are asking about a topic in which they have a lot of expertise in.
It’s also important to note that the hook isn’t meant to be more than a sentence at most. It’s entire job is to just hook your ex is.
To get them to respond.
Here’s a few real life examples from clients,
Soo… have you heard the news?
What news?
There’s an unanswered question that the ex just has to find out.
Here’s another example of a great hook,
Tom, I need your cooking advice.
This hook is more of an expertise/interest question. It sets the ex up so he gets to be the hero saving the damsel in distress.
One more,
You literally won’t believe what I just saw…
This one is a more direct open loop/curiosity text.
As you can see it went really well for our client but only because they knocked it out of the park on the payoff.
Payoff
Ok, so this is the hardest part to get right.
With your hook you are introducing an unanswered question. I showed you three examples from above.
Soo… have you heard the news? (Unanswered question: What’s the news?)
Tom… I need your cooking advice? (What specifically do you need my advice with?)
You literally won’t believe what I just saw (What did you see?)
Once you have your ex hooked in and get the quick response you face a greater challenge. You need to create a payoff that makes your ex either,
Satisfied
Want to help
Engage with you
There are many clever ways in which you can do this.
One of our communities favorite ways is to respond with an open ended question. Basically respond with something where your ex can’t respond with a simple yes or no.
Here are a few examples of that done really well,
I’m taking a first year geography module next semester, what did you think about Globalization: Economy, Space and Power?
Notice how this is a really specific interest based open ended question. It’s not something I’m particularly interested in but this ex is.
Also, notice how the ex couldn’t respond to the question with a simple yes or no answer.
It forces them to dig in.
This is a good payoff.
The donut example from above is another really great example of a payoff.
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words,
This payoff works because it is interest based and shocking.
Someone created a D’oh!Nuts shop… From the Simpsons,
It’s a good payoff.
And then of course comes the most challenging part of our formula.
The High Point
Now, I’ve stated this multiple times throughout the history of this website.
End conversations at the high point.
Don’t overstay your welcome.
But when you are in the texting phase it can be difficult to figure out when this is for a lot of different reasons.
For one, if you are texting your ex right out of no contact the conversation shouldn’t really last very long. In fact, if this is your first contact after no contact then you are supposed to dip out of the conversation after you get the payoff as evidenced here,
You see how they said,
“Ohhh… that sounds interesting! Just dashing into town now but thanks so much for that.”
They got their payoff and now its time to end the conversation.
On the other hand, if you’ve been slowly building rapport over weeks with an ex conversations are going to stretch out.
You need to do your absolute best to identify the high point of the texting conversation and end it in a similar manner shown above.
My general rule of thumb for high point identification is that if you don’t want the conversation to end then you’ve probably reached the high point and should end the conversation.
Why this is so important is it taps into the Zeigarnik effect,
A concept that posits that people remember interrupted or incomplete tasks better than completed ones.
By consistently ending the conversations at the high point you make it more likely that your ex will want to reach out to you going forward.
Today I’m going to show you why I believe that cutting a man off is one of the very best ways to get him to miss you.
Since I started Ex Boyfriend Recovery in 2012 I’ve witnessed thousands of women utilize many variations of no contact on men and studied how they react.
The natural assumption most people have is that by utilizing no contact, or cutting a guy off, will instantly make them miss you.
However, I’ve found that getting them to a place where they miss you is not always a straight line. In fact, there will be a lot of emotional value changes along the way.
Here’s how guys typically feel when you cut them off,
Initial shock
Pain (Genuinely hurt)
Anger
Vengeance
Depression
Regret
Acceptance
Let’s take some time and dig in to each of these.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
You’ve decided to stop talking to him. You’ve temporarily removed him from your life. I promise you it’s going to come as a shock, especially if you were on previously good terms.
And if you really think about this stage it has a lot in common with the five stages of grief,
denial
anger
bargaining
depression
acceptance
Your guy will go into denial.
They won’t believe that you’d be willing to take such a drastic measure.
Out of all the stages we are going to talk about today this one is by far the quickest because it quickly paves the way for our next stage, pain.
Stage Two: Pain
When the realization hits that you’ve cut them off.
That you aren’t going to be talking to them for the foreseeable future it’s going to hurt.
They are going to feel as if all the time they invested with you was for nothing. They’ll convince themselves that you don’t care about them (when that probably isn’t true.)
It’s going to feel to them like a full on rejection.
And it’s interesting, this pain stage is probably the second shortest one in terms of how long it’ll last.
Stage Three: Anger
It’s human nature to feel angry after you feel wronged.
I mean, one look at our facebook group and you’ll see some interesting examples of this stage,
Anger is an interesting phenomenon.
As you can probably tell from the title of this website we got our start specializing in breakups and one of the things we noticed was the fascinating role anger plays in the breakup.
Even if an ex is the one clearly at fault, they find it easier to blame you.
It’s a way of internally soothing themselves.
By blaming you.
By making you out to be the bad guy they distance themselves from taking any blame themselves.
Across six experiments involving 1,500 participants, researchers found a clear and consistent preference for immediate revenge.
Let’s look at that screenshot I took of our group above.
Our clients ex, unprovoked sent them a message calling them a monster.
Why?
Revenge.
It’s a way to make our client hurt as much as they are hurting.
Is it childish?
Yep.
Does it happen often?
Yep.
Stage Five: Depression
Want to know the funny thing about vengeance?
It’s a short term boost that maybe makes someone whose being cut off feel better in the moment.
But long term…
Well, the benefits don’t last.
Instead, the realization that you may be gone forever begins to creep in.
But it’s interesting. Look at the journey it took to get to this moment.
I think that’s the single biggest misunderstanding that people have about cutting men off. They think the results will be instantaneous, they aren’t.
It’s a primal journey filled with emotional change.
And just because a guy starts to feel sad in this stage doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to miss you.
Our avoidant relationship death wheel taught us that,
They need to sit in the depression stage for a bit before they begin to regret.
Stage Six: Regret
One of the very best videos that I ever filmed was about making avoidants miss you,
At the time when I filmed it I was a novice on Avoidants.
I understood the basics of attachment theory but didn’t really understand the nuances behind each individual insecure attachment.
Over the years I had taken a few quizzes and found out that I was a dismissive avoidant.
I also found out that most of my clients believed their former partners were avoidant as well,
Here’s the crazy thing about avoidants. They don’t tend to regret until they feel like there is no chance that a reconnection could ever happen.
Only then do they give themselves permission to feel nostalgia and miss their previous partners.
Seems like a backwards way to operate but if you understand the nuances of their attachment style it actually makes perfect sense.
You see, the avoidant attachment style operates from a core wound of independence. This means that when anyone or anything threatens their independence their attachment gets triggered and they are likely to flee.
They like to do things on their own terms.
So, commitment has to be their idea.
Same goes with re-commitment.
By cutting them off, while they can still go through all the stages before this one, they aren’t’ going to allow themselves to feel regret until they feel like you have moved on from them.
They fall in love with phantom exes far too often.
In fact, they prefer it.
Ironically, when you believe your partner is smack dab in the middle of this stage is usually the best time to stop cutting them off and start reaching out to them.
Otherwise you run the risk of encountering stage seven.
Stage Seven: Acceptance
You ever wonder why I’m so adamant about not falling in complete love with the no contact rule?
It’s because giving your ex partner too much time away from you can absolutely cause them to simply get over the breakup.
It’s one of the reasons why I don’t believe in 90 day no contact rules.
In fact, I think the longest you should ever be in no contact for is 45 days.
The reasoning revolves around something I call the habit rule.
According to experts, it takes an average of 66 days to form a new habit.
By that logic it could theoretically take a guy 66 days to get over you.
So, if that’s not the outcome that you want, why would you ignore them and literally give them the opportunity to move on?
Contrary to what is being peddled out there online, there is a time limit on attraction and relationships.
One of my favorite movies ever is Cast Away,
The end of that movie is not only powerful but it’s a haunting look at the concept I’m trying to talk about here.
People don’t wait around forever.
Tom Hanks is literally cast away on an island. He loses his freedom, his sanity and the love of his life.
So, when he is miraculously rescued and comes back to the real world, did the love of his life wait around for him?
No.
She had moved on, gotten married, had kids.
It’s rare to find someone that’s willing to wait around forever. Eventually we accept what was lost and move on. So, my argument to all of my clients is don’t wait too long before you try to reach out.
Doing that can lead to disastrous results. Instead, reach out during the regret phase. Doing so will usually be the phase where your ex is actually missing you.
The Theory Behind Walking Away Making A Guy Miss You
So, let’s address the elephant in the room first.
Does walking away from a guy actually make him miss you?
The truth is that no one can guarantee you anything. However, generally speaking walking away, be it a form of no contact, or a form of finally standing up for yourself usually creates a situation conducive to having them miss you. Of course, this wholly relies on your past partner having enjoyable memories with you.
Think of it like this.
We don’t miss the people who made our lives miserable. Rather, we miss the people who we feel regret with.
But more on that in a minute.
For now you’re probably interested in the nuts and bolts of how this works psychologically.
Well, in the past I’ve written a lot about silence and its impact on making exes miss you. Even filmed a few videos on it,
In a perfect world here’s how its supposed to work.
Our own internal research shows two things.
Our average client tend to have anxious attachment styles,
And our average clients exes tend to have avoidant personalities,
These two are like oil and water. Generally, when there is friction in the relationship an anxious individual is going to react in a way that tries to “fix things.” You see, they operate from a place where their worst nightmare is to be abandoned. This contradicts with the avoidants core attachment modus operandi, independence.
So, you have one party pushing to fix things and the other party running away from that to get alone time.
After being in a relationship for a period of time the avoidant person almost comes to expect this is of the anxious person.
Using silence, walking away is a new look that the avoidant hasn’t really experienced from you before. You are essentially giving your partner the space they desire and doing so, research tells us, can actually be the thing that makes them miss you.
A few years ago I recorded this video,
And in it I cite this research,
Avoidants are free to long for an ex once that person is unavailable out of the relationship, and typically out of contact so they are untouched by actual engagement and their deactivation systems aren’t triggered, revealing their long-suppressed attachment and switching their operating attachment wound from the fear of engulfment to fear of abandonment. (source)
Essentially, give an avoidant enough space and they begin to have what I’ve coined as nostalgic reverie.
And this ties directly into the peak end rule.
How The Peak End Rule Ties Into This
If you aren’t familiar with what the peak end rule is then I suggest you watch this,
Basically the concept argues the following,
The peak–end rule is a psychological heuristic in which people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience. (Direct Quote From Wikipedia)
You can see why this concept interests me particularly.
Generally speaking when you are looking at the demise of a relationship it’s going to look something like this,
There’s going to be the beginning which is marked in a honeymoon period. (A slow incline of a rise)
There’s going to be the middle (the actual peak of a relationship)
The end (which is generally marked as the low point)
Usually when you are considering walking away you are going to be at the endpoint of the relationship.
This means that things aren’t particularly warm and fuzzy. Rather, they are cold and harsh.
Here’s the thing though, your partner is only thinking about how they are feeling at that end point and so one of the arguments to make for walking away is that it will give your ex (or guy, or whatever) time to re-remember the peak moments.
This plays into that nostalgic reverie concept I mentioned above.
Walk away, give your partner time to remember the high points.
Of course, this is completely contingent on one thing, that you actually had enjoyable peak moments.
What Everyone Seems To Be Afraid To Tell You
Figuring out what I was going to say for this discussion was actually pretty difficult. I spent 30 minutes spinning my wheels trying to find an interesting angle of attack. My process for writing article is actually deceptively simple. I’ll choose my topic and almost immediately know what I’m going to say. However, every once in a while I’ll get stuck and only have a handful of ideas.
Usually if I’m in that predicament I’ll go to me peers to see what they are saying.
For this particular article that’s what I did and I found something interesting but it wasn’t anything they specifically said, rather, it had more to do with what they weren’t saying.
Walking away from a guy only works if they had an enjoyable time with you.
My peers want to make it seem like walking away works in every situation, it doesn’t. To say that it does is simply false.
Let’s use the peak-end rule to illustrate the point I’m trying to make.
Generally when I talk about the peak end rule I use a graphic that assumes the peak moments are positive.
But what if all the peak moments were negative?
Remember, “peak moments” don’t always have to be positive. In some cases they can be negative.
So, you walk away and expect your ex to remember the good times but all they do is remember the bad times.
What then?
Well, generally in these cases my advice would be to work on moving on. No relationship that has toxic moments as the “peak moments” is worth getting back.
I’d like to turn my attention now to what most people do wrong when it comes to “walking away.”
Why Walking Away Isn’t Really Walking Away
As you can imagine, with this being a breakup website a lot of the discussion had on it revolve around the no contact rule.
One of the “walking away” methods.
What’s funny about it though is there’s a common misunderstanding.
People think that walking away really means walking away.
They think all they need to capture their exes attention again is to simply use a no contact rule and sit on their hands waiting for him (or her) to come back begging.
Except we know from research that usually doesn’t happen,
The truth is that what you do with that time away from your ex is more important than actually ignoring your ex, than walking away.
This comment on a recent video of mine really nailed it,
No contact works when you’re actually getting thing’s done. Going to the gym , taking care of your skin, getting that glow. When you achieve new things and get a side hustle that’s better than your 9-5 and you’re actually leveling up, financially and dressing well, then you Ex sees that, they’ll go crazy
They are right.
Silence…
Walking away…
No Contact…
Yes, they rely on your ex having good memories from their time together with you but they also rely on something else, opportunity cost.
If they had stayed together with you then their life would be better than it is right now.
Usually that requires you to actually do things, or accomplish things that they admire.
Most people don’t.
They go through a breakup, get depressed or sad and allow that to be their reality.
But a few, a small few, look at the breakup as an opportunity.
They go out and accomplish new things, things that captures their exes attention.
So, if you really think about it “Walking away from a guy to make him miss you” needs two things to really work.
They need positive memories together with you
They also need to see how good you are doing with out them to create regret
Obtain these two things and you’ll be in good shape.
Can Breaking Up Strengthen A Relationship?
Jan 13, 2023
Yesterday I did a Facebook Live in my private group and someone asked an interesting question.
Is it possible that a breakup can actually strengthen a relationship?
Here’s the truth,
Yes, a breakup can actually be a good thing but only if the people involved in it take the time to address the issues that caused the breakup in the first place.
With this particular discussion I’d like to go from the top to the bottom.
Starting with showing you why most couples that get back together fail to stay together
Ending with situations where couples who get back together actually stay together.
What separates the two?
Well, that’s what we are here to find out.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
What Usually Happens When A Couple Breaks Up And Gets Back Together
Here at Ex Boyfriend Recovery we’ve been blessed with our fair share of success stories. One of the things I’ve been very vocal with is the fact that only about half of the people I interview who got their exes back actually stayed with that ex. It’s a lot like the divorce statistic.
You know, I’m sure you’ve heard someone at one time or another spout off the fact that half of all marriages end in divorce.
Well, the same actually applies to getting back together with exes.
But why?
Well, I think the easy answer is that one or both parties make the same mistakes they did in the first go around.
But one of the trends I’ve noticed that almost no one talks about is that sometimes your ex has a misunderstanding of what love is.
I’ve been very repetitive about pointing out my “relationship death wheel.”
The idea is to show you the lifecycle of a relationship from an avoidant perspective.
I highlight avoidant exes because most of the people I have surveyed believe that their ex is avoidant.
And one trend I’ve noticed is that avoidants have a misunderstanding of love.
Look at the death wheel graphic above.
There are eight main stages to it.
The dumper wants someone to love them
They find you and believe their troubles are over
They notice some worrying things
This causes them to think of leaving
They actually leave
They are happy they left
They start to feel lonely
They wonder why this always happens to them
But really the part that interests us for this discussion is stages one and two.
Your ex yearns for someone to love them and then they find you and think their troubles are over.
This is also known in layman’s terms as “the honeymoon period.”
And without realizing it the avoidant is setting themselves up for failure. They start to expect that how they feel in the honeymoon period is how they’re supposed to feel in every relationship.
This is what “being in love” feels like.
But that’s the thing about the honeymoon period. It doesn’t last forever. Inevitably how they feel is going to level out. Now, where most people recognize that, the avoidant doesn’t. They convince themselves that they are falling out of love with you.
So, they break up with you.
And they go hunting for that next “honeymoon hit.”
And on and on they go.
I won’t say it’s the most common outcome but I’ve seen it enough to know that it exists.
So, the question now becomes how do you stop the vicious cycle?
How do you make this breakup a strength?
Beating The Odds And Strengthening Your Relationship
I was curious to see what some of my peers (other websites) were saying about this.
As you’d expect, you get the typical answers.
It gives you time to get back in touch with the real “you.”
You can fix mistakes you made
Take it as an opportunity to grow
Imagine the relationship you want
I won’t call these shallow answers but what I think they lack is substance and that’s the problem with today’s age of online advice. When I first started Ex Boyfriend Recovery way back in 2012 I used to write these epically long articles of 5,000 to 10,000 words.
I went deep. Really got to the substance of the point.
And yes, I believe the website was better off for it. However, maybe starting in 2016 there was a shift online. Google started to give preference to shorter, more to the point articles. I mean, it’s even gotten to the point that you don’t even need to click on a website anymore to answer your question.
Seriously, I just typed in, “can breaking up strengthen your relationship” in my phone and this is what I got,
But something as complicated as this can’t be answered in a snippet.
You have to go deeper to find the substance of what actually works.
And that substance is going to be found in the concept of secure attachment gravity.
Secure Attachment Gravity Is How You Strengthen Your Relationship
I’ve definitely talked about this in previous articles before so I apologize if you are already familiar with what I’m about to say. However, if you are new to this website then you are in for a treat.
First, a few statistics.
Our average client considers themselves to be on the anxious spectrum,
While our average clients ex tends to veer more towards the avoidant spectrum side of things,
So, generally the average pairing that we are dealing with is,
Avoidant (ex) + Anxious (client)
If you aren’t familiar with how these attachment styles typically operate then allow me to briefly summarize.
There are really only two types of attachment styles,
Secure Ones
Insecure Ones
The end goal for everyone from an attachment perspective is to obtain a secure attachment style.
Of course, most of the people that we help on a day to day basis have one of three insecure attachment styles,
Avoidant Attachment Style = Someone who values independence
Anxious Attachment Style = Someone who is terrified of being abandoned
Fearful Attachment Style = Someone who has both anxious and avoidant core wounds
Now, perhaps the biggest advantage of immersing yourself into attachment theory is the simple fact that your attachment style is fluid. This means that it can change based on circumstances or company.
Literally every person you interact with can have an impact on your attachment style or you on theirs.
For example, let’s say that you start off with a completely secure attachment but you are best friends with an anxious attachment. Simply by being in their orbit that anxious attachment can start to rub off on you and your securely attached personality can begin to become infected with anxious tendencies.
Ah, but the opposite is also true.
Your anxious best friend, being around someone who has a secure attachment can learn what secure behavior looks like and their attachment style can be changed.
What this means is that every relationship in your life is an interesting chemistry experiment.
This is especially true in romantic relationships.
But doesn’t it take two to tango?
Doesn’t your ex also have to put forth an effort to become more secure.
Technically yes but it goes back to that old adage of only focusing on what you can control which in most of my clients’ cases means they need to work on turning their anxious tendencies into more secure ones.
And this is that substance I was talking about at the beginning of this section.
If you want to have a stronger relationship the next time around then you need to push all your chips in on the secure attachment gravity factor.
What Is Secure Attachment Gravity?
It’s my fancy way of saying that as long as you work in the time away on achieving a more secure mindset then you give yourself the best chance of having that rub off on your ex when you get back together.
But how does one become more secure?
That’s the challenge isn’t it?
It’s definitely not an overnight process but I think it starts with taking a look at who you have surrounded yourself with.
Remember, our attachment styles are shaped and formed by others. So, if we have that friend whose always anxious or always avoidant and doesn’t seem to add too much to your life then it may be time to consider cutting ties.
That’s one part of it. Taking stock of your circle.
The other part of it is where I personally disagree with a lot of the psychologists and therapists out there.
In fact, I once had a therapist tell me in passing,
The way you have it conceptualized (attachment styles) is inaccurate. Attachment styles are formed in relationships, maintained in relationships and reformed in relationships.
I disagree. I think we have more control over our attachment styles than we think and it all starts with our behavior.
Anxious individuals tend to engage in anxious behaviors.
Obsessing about exes
Calling them
Spying on their social media accounts
Picking apart every interaction they are having on said social media account
The point is that these behaviors indulge the anxious core wound.
Think of how a secure person will act after a breakup.
They grieve, sure
But they don’t linger
They have enough internal confidence that things will work out for them
They start focusing their time on endeavors that actually make them happy
So, in my mind the best thing you can do for yourself is to start working on rewiring your priorities after the breakup.
If you take one thing from this article it should be this, you need to live for more than just your ex.
That’s the thing that people who get their exes back never seem to do. They revolve their entire lives around getting this person back and forget that the very thing that’ll strengthen their relationship with that person is if that person feels like they are dating an actual person, not a fan.
The research done in pursuit of answering that one question (how to make an avoidant miss you) turned out to be pretty revolutionary for the way we advise our clients to handle their exes. In fact, I grew so inspired by it that I filmed an entire video on the topic,
Now, you may be sitting there (or standing) reading this article and ultimately rolling your eyes with the thought that your ex is in no way an avoidant.
And you may be right.
However, according to internal polls of our clients most believe their exes to be avoidant and it isn’t particularly close,
Avoidants are interesting because what you expect to typically work on them doesn’t typically work.
Anyways, back to my video above.
When researching the topic on how to make an avoidant miss you I actually stumbled across the concept of nostalgic reverie. Something that avoidants often fall victim to.
The way it works is simple,
Avoidants are free to long for an ex once that person is unavailable out of the relationship, and typically out of contact so they are untouched by actual engagement and their deactivation systems aren’t triggered, revealing their long-suppressed attachment and switching their operating attachment wound from the fear of engulfment to fear of abandonment. (source)
So, given enough time, space and signals that you are moving on an avoidant will suddenly feel safe enough to begin missing you.
One potential explanation for what could be happening with your guy still being in contact with you even after HE broke up with you is that enough time has gone by to where this nostalgic reverie is getting triggered.
Of course, this is only one potential explanation.
No one initiates a breakup with the thought of it being a bad idea. Inherently it’s always looked at as though the grass will be greener on the other side.
And for some people it is.
But for others, it’s not.
And the tricky part about all this is that the jury is kind of out on a conclusion for a while.
Imagine for a moment that we could do a rudimentary calculation that measured your satisfaction in your relationship with your ex.
Let’s say that One = Unhappy
&
Let’s say that Ten = Extremely happy
That number of satisfaction is actually going to change over time a lot.
At the beginning it’s probably going to be a perfect ten but as the relationship wears on it will become less and less potent. Maybe towards the end your ex is feeling somewhere around a six which causes them to sit back and think,
Hmm… I wonder if I can do better.
And que the breakup.
That’s usually where most relationship pundits stop though when explaining the grass is greener syndrome. However, there’s actually more to it.
The satisfaction, or rather, the memory of how satisfied your ex was with you can change over time.
You see, there’s also another comparison going on and that comparison is how satisfied you are in your current relationship as opposed to how satisfied you are in your previous relationship.
Let’s say your ex leaves you to be with someone else. Throughout that relationship they are having with someone else they are constantly comparing how they feel with the new person to how they felt with you but these numbers are fluid. Maybe at first they feel like they are on top of the world.
They are in the middle of a honeymoon period.
But over time that satisfaction drops with their current person.
And a funny thing happens to their memory of their satisfaction with you.
The peak end rule goes into effect.
The Peak End Rule: Basically human beings rely on two distinct points to remember experiences. The peaks and the ends.
Your ex starts remembering their time with you more fondly while simultaneously thinking of their time with the new person more negatively. This triggers that grass is greener syndrome and can leave a bitter taste in their mouth. It might also account for why they stay in touch with you even while they are with someone else.
Thing #3: Ensure You Are An Option Lined Up For Later
I think this one is closely related to the grass is greener syndrome which is why I placed it right next to it in the order of my explanation.
So, with GIGS (grass is greener syndrome) your ex thinks they can do better than you so they break up with you to go find that magical unicorn (that definitely doesn’t exist because you are super duper awesome.) Anyways, some men you’ll find like to have a contingency plan in the off chance that they don’t find that other person.
They want to “keep their options open with you.”
And they know exactly what to do to keep you on the hook.
They’ll give you false hope in the form of future pacing.
Common examples include,
Breaking up with you but claiming you’ll get back together soon
Flirting with you
Being extremely hot and cold
It’s all something that they are doing to make sure you are their fallback option.
Thing #4: He’s Grown Jealous Of You From Afar
One of the things that I really harp on with my personal coaching clients is the importance of making sure your social media game is on point.
Doing so at times requires you to dip your hands “a little” in the jealousy jar.
And boy…. my clients really rule when it comes to this.
One look around our private facebook group would show you a whole album of pictures dedicated to successful jealousy pictures that you can use in the post breakup period.
(They are all done tastefully, don’t worry. We subscribe to the less is more theory.)
The one thing that men, as a whole, hate after a breakup is an ex who actually looks like they are doing better than them. Social media is the key to propagating that narrative. So, if you’ve been particularly killing it on your social media after the breakup then it is entirely plausible that your ex has grown jealous of you and that naturally manifests a situation where an ex will want to get back in touch.
Thing #5: He May Genuinely Want To Reconcile
This is still a real possibility.
Sometimes there are no shadow motives happening behind the scenes. Sometimes it’s as simple as an ex wanting you back.
Of course, I think the key lies in understanding how authentic your ex is being.
And really there is only one authenticity check that matters.
Do their words line up with their actions?
If you have an ex who tells you that they’d love to “hang out” or “see you again,” do they actually do that?
Do they actually take steps to secure a meetup or date of that nature?
If they don’t then that probably means that they weren’t authentic.
The cool thing is you can apply the words vs actions idea to anything in life.
To quote Batman,
It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.
What He’s Thinking During Every Day Of No Contact
Jan 04, 2023
Today I’d like to go through exactly what an ex boyfriend is thinking during every single day of a no contact rule.
A few stipulations though,
I want to use the most common version of no contact, the 30 day rule, as a guinea pig.
After spending the better part of a day outlining I think the best way to tackle this complex problem is by looking at it in phases.
Specifically these six phases,
Days 1-5 (Separation Elation Phase)
Days 6- 10 (The Wonder/Annoyance Phase)
Days 11-15 (The Anger Phase)
Days 16 – 20 (The Dyadic Phase)
Days 21 – 25 (The Realization Phase)
Days 25 – 30 (The Acceptance Phase)
You’ll notice if you are an avid reader of this site that this article bears a striking resemblance to this one. I’m writing this article in a way so that the two can be used simultaneously to compliment one another.
Though this particular article is far more interested in the actual thoughts an ex will have when the no contact rule is being done on them.
Enough chit chat, let’s begin!
Days 1 – 5 (Separation Elation Phase)
The biggest misconception that people have about the no contact rule is that by enacting it an ex will suddenly grow anxious and blow up their phone trying to reconcile.
And sure, I’ve seen it happen before. I mean, come on, we’ve all seen it before. Stuff like this goes around in our Facebook group all day,
But our research has shown that this is actually the exception to the rule. In fact, most exes don’t even contact you at all during a no contact and that’s ok.
Instead, what’s most likely to happen is what I’ve coined the “separation elation” phase.
This is taken directly from attachment style research. Well, specifically attachment style research for avoidants.
Pulling a quote from my favorite avoidant resource, Free To Attach,
After a relationship ends, people with an avoidant attachment style tend not to show much anxiety or distress, often feeling an initial sense of relief at the relinquishing of obligations and the sense that they are regaining their self-identity, and not tending to initially miss their partner – this is “separation elation” as the pressure to connect is gone.
So, in the early stages of no contact, specifically in the first five days what you’ll probably see isn’t an ex who is deeply saddened but rather an ex who is overjoyed at their newfound freedom.
Common Behaviors To Expect In Days 1 – 5
Snarky social media posts bragging about how great they are doing
Jealousy ploys
Hearing through mutual friends that they seem to be happy
Days 6- 10 (The Wonder/Annoyance Phase)
The next five days is where the magic of the no contact rule can begin to take effect.
So, the first five days your ex is partying.
They’re having fun.
Talking nonstop about how great the breakup has been for them.
This is where that changes, right?
Well, no, not exactly.
A complete 180 like that takes a lot longer to occur but this second phase is really where two things are going to happen.
The first thing is they are going to start to wonder why you haven’t reached out to them
The second thing is that they are going to grow annoyed at the fact that they may have had you pegged incorrectly.
The wonder thing is pretty easy to digest.
One minute you are clearly trying to reconcile and the next you fall off the face of the earth. It’s natural to wonder why your ex had a sudden change of heart.
And that’s what gets the wheels turning.
It’s that inception idea.
Your absence, your seemingly being ok with that absence plants an idea in their head.
Why?
Why is she suddenly ok with us being apart.
It causes him to rethink his assumptions about you.
And this annoys him. He may have had you pegged wrong. At the heart of every breakup is the childish notion of their being a winner and a loser.
Any guy who goes through separation elation is going to feel like a winner, right?
Well, your silence brings that into question.
And it’s annoying.
Especially when something that you wholeheartedly believed turns out not to be so true.
Common Behaviors To Expect In Days 6 – 10
A slow down on their bragging about their life
Snarky comments about you to mutual friends
Days 11-15 (The Anger Phase)
Recently, my wife and I have been watching Master Chef.
(Words I never thought in a million years I’d mutter.)
Yep, I got sucked into a darn cooking show,
Anyways, one of the things they have these competitors doing is dividing them up into teams to see how they can work in a group.
Inevitably, in a fast paced competition tempers are going to flare.
And there’s always that one guy (or gal) who messes something up, grows angry and finds it easier to start blaming other people instead of taking ownership for the mistakes they may have been responsible for.
That’s what I’ve noticed about anger during the no contact rule. In fact, Coach Anna and I had a really great discussion about this a few years ago on the podcast.
The argument we made was thus,
One of the best ways to distract ourselves from feeling pain is by growing angry at someone else.
Think about it from a guys perspective.
It’s been over a week since no contact has been enacted.
You’ve been on a separation elation high
You’ve realized that maybe you didn’t have your ex pegged the way you thought you did
It’s causing you to grow a bit angry.
So, whose to blame for this rollercoaster of circumstance?
Your ex seems like a perfectly good candidate.
Common Behaviors To Expect In Days 11 – 15
Angry text messages
Angry notes left on cars
Bad mouthing you to mutual friends
Days 16 – 20 (The Dyadic Phase)
Ah, but alas, you can’t blame your ex forever.
This is where the Dyadic phase comes into play.
In the past I’ve defined the Dyadic phase as,
The situation where one or both partners try to fix the relationship. However, there is a hyper focus on them fixing symptoms and not actual problems.
But how are you supposed to view this if you just had an ex say all kinds of mean things about you?
Does the dyadic phase simply mean that they are going to try to “fix” the relationship?
No, instead, its best to think of it in terms of the drunk texting phenomenon.
Not to say that you’ve ever drunk texted anyone but let’s play devils advocate and assume you have.
Usually after the texting is over and you wake up with a massive hangover and survey the wreckage you’ve created while inebriated.
You are overcome with a wave of guilt and perhaps even a bit of shame. Next, it’s time to do the apology tour.
Well, your during this phase of the no contact rule your ex might experience something similar.
Regret for the mean things they texted you.
Shame for how they’ve acted.
This can cause them to be apologetic even. We’ve seen the common “takeback” texts after the “angry texts.”
It usually looks something like this,
This is the dyadic phase at work.
They aren’t trying to fix the relationship. Rather, they’re trying to make themselves feel better because in their own head they aren’t the bad guy. Sometimes for an ex this is all they have to hold on to and if that perception becomes flawed their entire world can come crashing down.
Common Behaviors To Expect In Days 16 – 20
Apologizing for angry texts in the previous phase
Acting like the angry texts never happened and trying to start a conversation
Days 21 – 25 (The Realization Phase)
It’s almost been a month and you’ve been completely radio silent.
They might have started stalking your social media profiles to see what you are up to. They see you posting so they know you aren’t kidnapped. Nope, just ignoring them. This is the phase where I think they start to realize that you never talking to them again might actually occur.
And I’m not really sure they’re ok with that.
This is often the phase where we see exes try one last desperate plea to get you to respond.
Which means you’re going to get this kind of behavior,
Common Behaviors To Expect In Days 21 – 25
Another angry text
Lying to get you to respond
Showing up at your work
Showing up at your house
Days 25 – 30 (The Acceptance Phase)
This phase is simple.
They start to accept life without you.
Don’t panic though, this phase is the crux of my argument for why I believe you should be reaching out after no contact.
Think of the roller coaster your ex has been on throughout this no contact period up to this point.
They start off happy +
Then they started to get irked at the fact that you were ignoring them –
They got angry at you –
That anger might have made them feel better for a moment +
The feel bad about some of the things they may have said to you –
They make themselves feel better by apologizing or trying to put a band aid over the problem +
They realize they may never hear from you again –
That’s literally four emotional value changes.
They are up one moment.
Down the next.
And here’s the beauty of the way I teach the no contact rule.
YOU will be reaching out after it but only after they’ve gone through this journey.
Right when they’ve started to accept their new reality you give them one last value change.
You reach out to them.
Start a conversation.
Turn their negative into a positive.
Now, it’s not always as cut and dry of a scenario as I’ve outlined. However, I believe the theory is sound.
Of course, it’s undone if you break no contact prematurely (assuming you aren’t doing a limited version of it.)
It screws with the value changes.
So, I guess my ultimate argument is this.
Allow your ex to go through a journey during the no contact. Trust that the mere act of your silence will be enough to not only reorient your world but reorient theirs so that by the time the two of you get back in touch he’s a lot more willing to take you seriously.
If He Blocks You, He Loves You? Here’s The Truth
Jan 04, 2023
There seems to be a dangerous misconception making the rounds on the internet lately. It’s this idea that an ex (or a guy) who blocks you, actually loves you.
As if they’re just playing some weird reverse psychology trick on you. Well, today I’d actually like to peel back the layers on this onion and take an in-depth look at what’s really going on with a guy when he blocks you.
So, I’d like to divide this article up into three distinct parts
Answering The Question On If A Man Blocking You Actually Means He Loves You
The Important Role Avoidant Behavior Plays Into Blocking
Why The Mere Act Of Obsessing About This Is Setting You Back
Let’s just dive right in.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
My team and I have been studying breakups for close to ten years. So, it’s pretty safe to say that we’ve seen a lot of situations.
Obviously the art of the “block” is one of the most feared outcomes for our clients. So, where exactly did this phenomenon of thinking a guy who blocks you actually meaning he loves you come from.
Well, here’s the trajectory I’ve seen with my clients.
Your ex blocks you
Psychological reactance takes hold of you causing you to grow a bit desperate
You hyper focus on the “good moments” of the relationship
Specifically where he tells you he loves you
You do some research and see that all the experts suggest that the opposite of love isn’t anger, it’s indifference
And it’s that last statement where things get interesting because technically an ex blocking you is them taking an action that enables them to be indifferent towards you going forward.
But no one really views blocking as an indifferent action anymore. It’s viewed as an angry one.
And that leads us to the carrot,
The one that says that an ex angrily blocking you actually means they love you.
I don’t necessarily agree with that statement. I think it’s a stretch based on a flawed premise.
The reason most people “block” is due to an avoidant trigger they may have not because they love you.
The Important Role Avoidant Behavior Plays Into Blocking
Last year I wrote and filmed a lot on the topic of avoidants,
In fact, I personally believe that the first thing everyone who is new to my program or new to my website should be doing is going through a crash course on avoidant behavior.
Why?
Well, maybe the fact that most of our clients say their exes are avoidant is a big reason.
So, here’s what we know about avoidants.
Each avoidant has the same core wound. A deep fear of losing their independence.
And each avoidant experiences some variation of the following circular pattern if you will,
The avoidant wants someone to love them
They find you and believe their troubles are over
They notice some worrying things
This causes them to think of leaving
They actually leave
They are happy they left
They start to feel lonely
They wonder why this always happens to them
So, if you look closely at the graphic above you’ll notice that things start to turn on the avoidant right around stage seven.
The moment they start to grow a little lonely.
And we see this play out all the time in actual situations where our own clients have been blocked by an avoidant. One of the things you’ll constantly hear me say is that the best way to get unblocked is to simply do nothing.
Just live your life.
Let the avoidant go through the death wheel above.
Eventually stage seven will hit and they’ll unblock you. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, check out this poll I conducted last year,
Close to 70% of participants admitted that their exes unblocked them.
And this is where that assumption of them still being in love with you comes into play but I wouldn’t call it love. Not yet, at least.
More than anything this just solidifies that an avoidant is a slave to their avoidant programming.
But you aren’t fully interested in that, are you?
No, what you really want is the secret sauce on how to get a long term commitment. How to get a guy to fall in love and propose.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot and honestly I think it all boils down to one thing.
Most Of The Women I’ve Coached Obsess About The Wrong Things
Now, this isn’t an indictment of women in general. In fact, I think most women in the dating world actually have the right way of looking at things.
However, most of the women that frequent this website, by their own admission, have anxious attachment tendencies,
One of the classifying markers of someone with this type of attachment style is the following core wound,
Core Wound: Terrified of being abandoned.
And as you might have guessed having an ex block you is something that directly triggers that core wound for an anxious attachment style.
This leads most of my clients down what I consider to be a dangerous path. One fraught with,
Desperation
Begging
Obsession
We’ve all seen the meme online of the ex girlfriend who went crazy after a breakup blowing her exes phone up. More than likely this “crazy” person isn’t really crazy. Their anxious attachment got triggered and they’re reacting the only way they know how.
They want to fix things.
And they want to turn over every stone to do it.
But I’m getting a bit off topic. I’d actually like to turn my attention to a statement I made above.
I argue that the best way to get “unblocked” by an ex is to do nothing at all. Simply wait and trust that the avoidant attachment death wheel will do its work for you.
I then went on to show you internal research that basically backed my point up. However, I was being a bit heavy handed.
I was leaving out half the equation.
When someone enters my orbit and is serious about ex recovery the one thing I am very adamant about doing is ensuring that they reorient their world.
One analogy that I’ve used often is the solar system analogy. A huge pitfall that I’ve noticed women fall into when they’ve been blocked is their entire world revolves around the person that blocked them.
Much like the planets orbiting around a sun.
Your entire life revolves around your ex.
Or more to the point,
I know my ex loves me so how can I get my ex to unblock me?
But I’ve already established that I don’t think your ex loves you if he blocks you. Besides, in most cases what can cause an ex to block you is if they see that your solar system revolves around them.
Perhaps its flattering at first but over time you sort of lose respect for that person. It’s the classic case of a man getting everything he wished for in a woman and then taking it for granted.
It also has a bit to do with that pedestal effect concept I’ve talked about in videos before,
We always want to be dating someone above our weight class. Someone that we hold on a pedestal. Though situations like that tend to be incredibly rare so most of us are just happy to be dating someone “equal” to us.
What we don’t want is someone that we think we are better than.
They lose value in that circumstance.
What men really want is a woman who they admire.
A woman with her own solar system.
But how do you get your own solar system.
Well, I think it starts in the most unlikely of places.
It starts with your ability to live for more than your ex.
It starts with you becoming someone to be admired.
And this is where I think I lose most people because they think I’m saying that they’re not good enough the way they are currently.
That’s simply not true.
Being someone admired simply means you accomplish your trinity goals.
My concept of the holy trinity has gone viral because its a concept that really works.
Essentially you divide your life into three distinct parts,
Health
Wealth
Relationships
Now, originally in 2013 when I thought up the concept I made it all about balancing the three areas. I talk about their interconnectedness and how when one goes up the others can go up or how when one goes down the other can go down.
And that’s all still true.
But I’m not sure that’s helpful for most of the people reading this.
There’s a more important step that I don’t often talk about.
Setting a global goal for each area of the trinity.
So, I’ll use myself as an example. My global goals for the trinity are,
Health: Compete In An Iron Man World Championship Event
Wealth: Have A Net Worth Of 100 Million
Relationship: Be Married Until The Day I Die
So, really, the trinity is about dreams. It’s about setting specific goals to help you achieve your dreams in every important area of your life.
And honestly a global trinity goal needs to sound ridiculous otherwise it isn’t going to be good enough. It literally needs to be the type of goal that others scoff at because they don’t think they can achieve it.
THIS is what you should be obsessing about after a breakup. Not an ex. Not what he’s up to. Not if he loves you even though he blocked you.
Doing the trinity work is what creates the spark for him to fall back in love with you.
Your challenge is you just have to be willing to put in the time to start climbing toward your global trinity goals.
Types Of Breakups That Get Back Together
Nov 23, 2022
What if I were to tell you that there are six types of breakups that are likely to get back together?
Would you be interested in what they were?
Well, today that’s what we’re going to be talking about. Below I have listed the six types of breakups that in my opinion are the easiest to see success in.
On Again/Off Again Breakups
You Break Up With Them
Being Left While You Are Pregnant
The Grass Is Greener Breakup
The Evolutionary Breakup
The Zeigarnik Breakup
For those of you who are avid readers of my website this article is going to be similar to my “types of breakups ranked by recovery time” discussion with a few major shifts. So, buckle up and pay attention because as always, there’s a lot to talk about here.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Perhaps the most common “type” of breakup that I see getting back together is one in which the couple is caught in the on again/off again cycle.
For reference, I’d like to point you to my relationship death wheel graphic,
Or more specifically how people get caught up in the eight stages of it.
Your ex starts off wanting someone to love them
They find you and think their troubles are over
They notice some worrying things
They start thinking of leaving
They actually leave the relationship
They feel happy they left
They start to feel kind of lonely
They feel bad for themselves and wonder why this always happens to them
And that’s just one revolution of the wheel.
Think of it like this.
Each revolution around this wheel is another on again/off again phase.
You see, the challenge with breakups like this isn’t so much IF you can get an ex back. It’s more about IF you can stop the “off again” phase from occurring.
Let’s move on to our next type of breakup.
Type #2: You Break Up With Them
I’d love to be able to sit up here in my high tower and say that it doesn’t matter who broke up with who on the outset of a breakup.
And for the most part this is true.
The most part…
Which means there is some truth to the statement.
If you were the one that ended the relationship with your ex then you will find it a tad bit easier to get them back.
Perhaps no one personifies this better than Jessy. One of the very first success story interviews I did.
You can see this because if you go back to the article I wrote about time frames then you’d see that her situations was ranked as the quickest success only taking her a total of one month before she reconnected with her (now husband.)
Why?
Well, there’s obviously more to it than the fact that she was the one to break up with him. However, I do think that was a big part of the speed was due to the fact that she was the one who rejected him.
And as much as I hate to bring this up, that age old adage,
Men want what they can’t have.
Well, it sort of holds true.
Type #3: Being Left While You Are Pregnant
While Jessy above may have been my first success story interview she wasn’t my first actual success story. In fact, my first actual success story was a woman named Ashley and it occurred before this website was even in existence. You see, Ashley sat next to me in a college class and we struck up a friendship, nothing romantic, she already had a boyfriend.
And when I say she had a boyfriend I mean she LOVED this guy.
So much in fact that when he got a job three hours away she dropped college, followed him and moved in together with him.
I don’t hear from her for months until one day out of the blue I get a call from her.
Her boyfriend had broken up with her.
That sucks…
The next day she calls me again, “she’s pregnant.”
She begs me to help her win him back and thus, Ex Boyfriend Recovery was born.
It took her seven months before she got him back and taught me a valuable lesson. There’s a certain allure that men have to pregnant women. Sure, they panic and run away at first but that’s their baby and most do come back at some point.
Take Rachel,
Another one of our clients who got pregnant with her exes baby.
I have two kids so I can speak to this. It’s pretty scary to find out your significant other is pregnant with your child AND I’M MARRIED.
Your whole life is about to change and some men (cowards) run away from that responsibility. They fall victim to the fear of the moment but after time settles things, you’ll find that most men want to come back. The problem is, by the time that happens most women are soured from the whole experience.
That’s exactly what happened with Rachel.
Type #4: The Grass Is Greener Breakup
For this one I’d like to refer again to my relationship death wheel graphic.
Remember, this is breaking down the experience of a relationship from a dumpers perspective and every single time it ends up in the same exact place,
With an ex feeling sorry for themselves and thinking,
Why can’t I ever find the right person?
Now, this leads all exes to a crossroads.
They either try again with you
They either try again with someone else
But what happens if your ex always planned to try again with someone else? What happens if they got the hots for this person while they were with you?
And the entire time during this phase,
Where they are thinking of leaving you all they are thinking about is being with this other person.
This is what I would call a grass is greener situation.
They literally think the grass is greener on the other side.
But it’s important to remember that all rebound relationships start off that way. It’s also important to remember that they are still caught in their own death wheel.
Right at stages one and two,
“I want someone to love me.”
“I found someone my troubles are over.”
But what happens when they hit stage three,
They start noticing some worrying things about their new partner. They start comparing that new partner to you and all of a sudden YOU look like the more attractive candidate.
That’s why this type of breakup has made the list.
Type #5: The Evolutionary Breakup
This one is more internal than any of the other ones.
With the on again/off again you have a situational type breakup
With the you broke up with them, you once again have a situation type of breakup
You are pregnant, situational
Grass is greener, maybe circumstantial?
Whatever, all I’m trying to say is that this type of breakup is different than the others.
I’ve been doing this since 2012 (so ten years) and in that time I have had tens of thousands of people purchase my programs or buy a coaching session. I have had thousands of people find success with their exes.
With all that data.
With all that time.
I can confidently say that the most important factor for “winning an ex back” is your ability to outgrow your ex during a breakup.
Your ability to evolve.
To get to a place where you kind of don’t want them back anymore.
People who had that subtle mindset shift tend to do great.
People who don’t have the mindset shift… well, they tend not to.
Type #6: The Ziegarnik Breakup
One of the strategies that I’m famous for propagating is something called the zeigarnik effect which stages,
People remember interrupted or incomplete tasks better than completed ones.
Often you’ll hear me use this in conjunction with how I believe my clients should be ending conversations with their exes.
End a conversation at its high point and your ex is more likely to start the next conversation because it’ll feel like there’s unfinished business.
Well, what if I were to tell you that there’s actually an entire segment of breakups that end this way.
I’ll use the lowest hanging example I can think of.
You and your ex date for eight months and it’s glorious.
No major fights.
The connection is off the charts.
The two of you just seem to be in lock step with one another.
And then your exes boss transfers him out of state. Your ex, not believing in long distance relationships decides that the two of you should break up. There’s nothing wrong with your relationship, circumstances simply forced his hand. There’s unfinished business the two of you have.
One can apply the ziegarnik effect to the whole of your relationship.
Situations like these I have found to be some of the best situations for success because while the zeigarnik effect is meant to be applied to small scale things like conversations or dates, it can also have applications to large scale things like entire relationships.
If you and your ex have unfinished business then that bodes well for your success.
How To Be Mentally Strong After A Breakup
Nov 21, 2022
Today I’d like to talk about how to be mentally strong after a breakup.
Arguably one of the most important things you are going to hear me talk about on this website. Perhaps the greatest irony of this all is that no one really wants to spend time thinking about it. Instead, what garners the most attention, the most clicks on YouTube are the shallow ideas revolving around getting quick ultimately meaningless results.
Here are the three core methods for how you actually stay mentally strong in the post breakup period,
Adopting An I Choose Philosophy
Lose The Guy To Get The Guy
Learning To Fail Forwards
Again, a lot to talk about here.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
When it comes to all aspects of life I have noticed that people tend to be more reactive than active. This in and of itself may not initially seem like that big of a deal but it can soon snowball into a situation where it is. Most people are reactive to the world.
Things happen to them and they react.
Yet, it’s this very same person that “reacts” that often feels like they have no control.
Take your love life as an example. You’re here, reading this article, because of a reactive philosophy most likely.
Though you probably don’t think of it that way. You fell for a guy, imagined that “he was the one” or at least harbored those hopes but he rejected you and you immediately react to this in the hopes to solve your problem.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy you’re here but until you understand that giving other people the ability to choose what you do and when you do it is a core root of your problem you probably can’t be helped. When you care what a man thinks you give them the power to control how you feel.
When you care what your parents think you give them the ability to control how you feel.
And yes, the same goes for friends.
So, here’s how we’re going to fix this.
From now on YOU choose who you date. Not a man. Not a parent. Not society. Not even me. YOU choose.
Of course, you can nod your head in agreement to this concept but I’ve been doing this long enough to know that somewhere along the way something will happen and you’ll let other people choose your life for you. When this happens people often complain of circumstance.
“This breakup happened because he said he doesn’t love me anymore.”
“He said we can’t be together because the timing isn’t right.”
Some women will blame themselves.
“I’ll never succeed because I’m not worthy of love.”
“Why does this always happen to me?”
“Why don’t men love me? Why can’t I ever find the one?”
Notice a common theme?
Each one of these pretend scenarios revolve around you letting other people dictate how you feel.
In essence, you are letting other people choose the circumstances of your life for you. Now, most people may think that this “ownership” involves listening to what past lovers or friends criticized you over.
From now on YOU choose.
Lose The Guy To Get The Guy
Most people swear by playing hard to get.
Creating a fear of loss so great that the guy you want will suddenly pay attention to you and take action towards making you his forever. Fear of loss can work. I’ve seen it happen more times than I can count but there’s another element at play there that I think matters more.
Intent.
I think we can both agree that there is a difference between someone who is playing hard to get with a reverse psychology intent versus someone who isn’t trying to play hard to get they’ve simply become so enthralled with other aspects of their life that it looks like they’re playing hard to get.
This is the hidden key that I feel so many people miss out on.
Intent matters.
One person hasn’t acknowledged failure. Instead, they’ve let that failure define them by trying to make a man fall for them. The other person gets to this place emotionally where they don’t care if the guy falls for them. If he does great. If he doesn’t great.
There’s a bit of a stoic philosophy in that.
The stoic acknowledges that certain things are out of their control. You can’t control the weather. You can’t control society. You can’t control other people. All you can control is you and so that becomes their focus in life.
They put an intense focus on the factors of their life that they can control and refuse to be impacted by things that they cannot control. In other words, they are willing to lose the guy and by default get the guy because something is different about her. So, let’s do something that I know you absolutely don’t want to do.
Let’s talk about failure. At their core, people buy my programs or take coaching sessions with my coaches because they are interested in making an uninterested man interested in them. (That’s a hell of a tongue twister, isn’t it?) Most people don’t want to acknowledge failure. They don’t want to consider the fact that the guy they so desperately want won’t want them back in return.
And yet it could happen.
What makes someone ungettable to me isn’t the fact that they get all the guys. It’s the fact that they face this reality and are unfazed by it. And I mean they are truly unfazed by it to the point that it doesn’t even become a blip on a radar.
They are willing to lose the guy, truly.
The irony is that the result is often the opposite. Men seem fascinated by this. They’ve never encountered a woman who reacted this way in a relationship.
And perhaps the best tool with which I can give you going forward is how you view failure.
Learning To Fail Forwards
Now, when I take a look around, oftentimes nowadays, I see everyone out there pedaling magic bullet solutions. And this is especially true when it comes to learning to create desire within men.
Oftentimes many of my clients will fall for these magic bullet solutions because they want convenience. They want an easy way to get their desired result. They want to say this certain phrase or do this certain thing and automatically have this immediate result within the man that they want to fall in love with them.
The reality is it doesn’t really work that way.
And this is kind of the hidden point that I’ve been sort of getting at as we’ve been going through this discussion.
So, What Actually Works?
Well, it’s all the stuff that you’re doing when no one’s looking.
It’s working on your trinity, working on your magnum opus, having the right mentality, embracing that ungettable mindset.
Those are the things that create the foundation that make everything work.
And the funny thing that no one really tells you is the fact that if you try to do those magic bullet solutions, you say this really sexy phrase or do this really sexy thing, usually, those aren’t effective until you do all of the stuff that you don’t want to do.
And here we come to what I like to think of as the crossroads, which is failure and how you deal with it.
How To Deal With Failure
Look, the difference between someone who’s ungettable and someone who’s not ungettable is their perception of failure. This took me a long time in my own life to learn, and it’s going to take you a long time to learn. I’m not expecting you to go through this discussion and immediately have it click for you.
It just doesn’t work that way.
So what do I mean by perception of failure?
Well, everyone likes to think of themselves as above average. We don’t really like to think of ourselves as middling or below average.
Some of us maybe have that perception of ourselves after we’ve been beaten down by failure.
We try something. It doesn’t work out the way we’re expecting.
We try to attract this person.
It doesn’t work out the way we’re expecting and we get caught in this self-fulfilling prophecy where you’re sitting there and saying,
“I suck.”
“This isn’t working for me.”
“I’m not sure if I’m going to be worthy of a man’s love,” or whatever thing you get caught up in.
It all starts from failure.
You try something and you fail.
The one thing that struck me as what made people successful in that and what made people unsuccessful in the post breakup period was their ability to respond towards failure.
They did not let it break them.
In fact, instead of looking at it like this horrible misfortune of events, instead, they looked at it like an opportunity to learn and improve, almost a fun problem to have.
I realize it’s really easy for me to sit up here in my high castle and be looking down and saying, “Do this. It’s easy.” It’s not. The problem is usually when you experience failure, the harder you want it, the worse the failure feels. And it’s really hard in those emotional moments to take control of your emotions and look at the failure as a fun problem.
It’s not.
You feel like you’re going to be alone forever. You feel like you’re going to be unworthy. You feel like, why is this always happening to me? Your mind takes control and you let fear dictate your life. You let that failure overcome you.
Failure Is More Common Than Success
The truth is though that failure, it’s a lot more common than success. I think a really great example is any kind of sport.
We often watch professionals play basketball, tennis, football, baseball, and we see these people who seem like super men or super women going and achieving their goals. They are incredibly athletic. Oftentimes you’ll hear announcers talk about how athletic this person is. The truth is that person has failed way more times than they have succeeded. It is because of their failure that they have become athletic. It is because of their failure that they have become strong. It’s because of their failure that they’ve gained experience.
Failure is more common than success.
Poverty is more common than wealth.
Disappointment is more common than ecstasy. So the question isn’t whether or not you’re going to fail. You will. I am telling you right here, when you first try to cope with the breakup, you’re going to fail.
Do not let that disappoint you to the point where you sit there and say, “This doesn’t work.”
What really annoys me is sometimes in support, we’ll get emails from people who buy one of my programs and they sit there and they literally say it didn’t work. They say that because they tried something and it failed and they inevitably find it easier to blame something else like this program as the reason it failed as opposed to their own inability to deal with their failure.
Instead, Learn To Fail Forwards
Every time you fail, do not let it break you. Instead, let it teach you a lesson. You have two options when you fail. You can either fail forwards or you can fail backwards. 99% of people fail backwards. Why? It’s easier than taking ownership.
Sometimes failure isn’t your fault.
Sometimes there’s no ownership to be had.
Sometimes it’s just a simple understanding that you need to have that no matter what you would’ve done, you would’ve failed. But those are usually rare cases. Usually, there’s some ownership. There’s something that you did or something that someone else did that caused the failure and how you respond to that failure will dictate your success as a human being in life.
What I do, my entire career is based around content, building content, sharing ideas. It’s funny because sometimes I’ll get down on myself and I don’t want to make this about me, but I think this is a good analogy and I only have me to draw from.
Sometimes I’ll get down on myself and think to myself, “You know what I’m doing is not special. Anyone could do this. Anyone could sit up there and record a video like this, or write a product, or write hundreds of articles. I don’t deserve the success I have.” And then I remember that most people do try to do what I do.
They want an easier path in life, but they fail and they give up and they let that failure define them and then it becomes their narrative. Oh, that wouldn’t have worked because he’s got all these advantages. Or, “Oh, it didn’t work for me because of this or this and this,” instead of just taking ownership and saying, “You know what? I failed, but I’m going to get up. I’m going to keep trying. I’m going to keep going.”
They let it break them and move on to the next thing.
That’s the difference between failing forwards and failing backwards. And how does this relate to desire within men? It is almost like this weird universal law that the more you want someone to fall in love with you, the less likely they are to do so.
Usually when you experience this law, it’s heartbreaking to you and it’s really easy you to let this failure dictate your moves going forward.
Instead of looking at it like that, look at it like this: Your failure has taught you a valuable lesson behind what worked and what didn’t work. It allows you to take a step back to look at your situation and say, “Going forward,
I’m going to do this instead,” or, “Going forward, I’m going to that instead.” And by taking that ownership, which is really hard to do, it’s really hard to sit there and take blame when you feel like things are out of your control, or you feel like this wasn’t your fault.
But if you can take that ownership and be kind to yourself when you do so, you’ll notice that you tend to have more success after the failures.
Failure is the foundation to your success. This is the secret that no one wants you to know and it’s the most cliched
So here’s my ask for you. Whenever you encounter failure from this point forward, I don’t want it to define you.
Instead, I want it to make you.
Remember, failure is more common than success, but failure will be the reason for your success. If you can learn to fail forwards, there are going to be points in this process where you are going to be so desperately in love with your ex or so desperately want this man to fall for you again.
And my point is if it doesn’t happen and you will absolutely encounter failure, do not let it break you. Instead, take it and learn from it and try to do something different.
Over 90% of the individuals who visit this website have been broken up with by their exes and yet, the irony is that they are often on the receiving end of an exes hostility. Today, I’d like to talk about why that is and really dive into what’s behind an exes anger.
In this In-Depth guide you’re going to learn,
Why hostility can make your ex feel better about breaking up with you
The impact guilt has on all of this
A new wave of tantrum hostility
How to handle an exes hostility
Enough talk, let’s get down to business.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Why Hostility Can Make An Ex Feel Better About Breaking Up With You
About a year ago, Head Coach Anna and I did an hour long interview for my YouTube channel and Podcast where we talked about how to handle an ex being angry at you.
Out of the many interviews the two of us have done this is the one that always stuck with me the longest. It’s not that she taught me something I didn’t already know it’s the way she framed it. Specifically her thoughts on anger.
She argues that,
In the context of a dumper, anger is almost a positive. It has positive characteristics, as weird as that sounds. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean that when someone says, “You’re stupid,” they’re actually implying that “They’re Smart.” You’re selfish, means I’m generous. You’re behaving like a child means I’m behaving like an adult. This is why people get angry very easily and they stay angry because it feels good and it’s personally validating.
This offers one potential explanation for why exes seem to be so angry even though they really have no right to be angry.
It makes them feel good in a time where they’re supposed to feel bad.
But it also has an interesting relationship with guilt and ownership.
The Impact Of Guilt And Ownership
Again, most of the people who visit this website are the dumpees and not the dumpers but it’s always those situations where the dumper is more angry at the dumpee (not involving cheating) that stick out to me as odd.
It’s the dumpee who has every right to scream and shout and feel upset.
And maybe they do.
But when the dumper is hostile and angry and playing the blame game it feels icky.
And if you get into the psychology of it, it becomes even more complicated.
This is my relationship death wheel.
I talk about it a lot but for those of you who are new to the website and confused I’ll give you a quick crash course.
The Relationship Death Wheel: A graphic I put together that shows you the most common lifecycle of a relationship from a dumpers perspective in eight distinct stages.
Your ex starts off wanting someone to love them
They find you and think their troubles are over
They notice some worrying things
They start thinking of leaving
They actually leave the relationship
They feel happy they left
They start to feel kind of lonely
They feel bad for themselves and wonder why this always happens to them
And then the cycle repeats.
What’s interesting though is those last two stages but really the last one,
This is when guilt is likely to creep in.
This is when they are likely to feel regret for the way they treated you and it’s in this stage that your ex is often faced with a choice.
Do they take ownership of the way they treated you during a breakup
Do they deflect and play the blame game
And if you go off of what Coach Anna said with anger having an almost positive impact you can see why it’s a lot easier to paint YOU as the bad guy.
But that’s not the only form of hostility I’ve encountered in my decade of research on breakups.
There’s also my favorite hostility.
The Tantrum Hostility
I have a seven year old and recently we have found an opportunity to bond by teaming up by playing tennis on the Nintendo Switch Sports game,
She’s gotten pretty good at it too. In fact, it’s grown to the point where she begs me to play other people online. So, after thinking about it I decided to let her try.
What could go wrong?
Well, for the first time I got to watch her throw a video game tantrum. You know, the kind where losing causes you to yell and get very upset but that’s not the craziest part. No, the craziest part was the thought that I had.
This is just like the stories I hear in the group of exes freaking out after learning they’re being ignored via the no contact rule.
The irony here is that it should be the other way around.
I shouldn’t be comparing adult tantrums to a child one but alas, here we are.
On Ex Boyfriend Recovery we are big believers in a concept called the no contact rule but not for the reason you expect. You see, most people expect the no contact rule to be this strategy designed to make your ex miss you. Ignore them for a month and BOOM they’ll reach out.
Our version is a bit different,
The no contact rule refers to a period of time where you cut off all conceivable communication with an ex after a breakup. The intent of this tactic should NOT be used to make your ex miss you but instead should be used to rebuild your own life so that you outgrow your ex. By doing this, the no contact rule can have the added benefit of making an ex miss you
The important part is that you are using that time away from your ex to outgrow them so that when you do get back in contact with them you’ve knocked them from any pedestal that you may have held them on.
But for some exes it doesn’t matter. They like to control things and when you try to get some of your control back they’ll throw a tantrum.
In fact, in that interview I did with coach Anna she tells a story of what this looks like,
I mean in the Facebook group even I think two days ago, we had someone post from their ex that the ex was angry at the person didn’t respond. It was something about the gym. It didn’t require breaking a no contact at all. I mean the person can go to the gym whether or not the ex is there, okay, so that doesn’t matter, but they got really angry. Like, you don’t even have the decency to say yes or no? I was totally right to break up with you, you’re an immature, selfish child, or something to that effect, or really stupid.
But that question still remains, how are you supposed to handle this type of hostility?
How To Handle Your Exes Hostility
Have you ever seen the dog whisperer?
I mean, I hate to compare your ex to a dog BUT the principles for handling hostility with exes is pretty much the same way as handling hostility for a dog.
So, Cesar Milan teaches us the following.
When a dog is overly nervous, excited or angry you are not supposed to nurture that state. Doing so can lead to you getting bitten. Instead, you are supposed to exert a calm-assertive energy.
Well, what does that mean?
Calm-assertive means you are compassionate to what the other person is feeling but you are always in control. You aren’t afraid to set boundaries.
Think back to the last time an ex snapped at you or said something rude.
What did you do?
My guess is you probably did two things.
Their aggression frightened you and you ran away from the problem.
Their aggression angered you so you fought fire with fire and were aggressive right back.
Now, let’s use the analogy of a dog in the process of growling at you and see what kind of results those two strategies get you.
You have a little teacup poodle sitting in your lap. You pet him and he growls but instead of creating a boundary and showing him that this behavior is unacceptable you become frightened which only emboldens the little guy to growl even more.
Let’s say that you have the same teacup poodle in your lap. He growls and this causes you to get angry, he feeds off that energy and his growling evolves into snarling and then eventually biting.
Clearly those approaches don’t work.
The first one you weren’t calm or assertive.
The second one you weren’t calm and were too assertive.
Instead, someone like Cesar Milan would remove the dog from his lap, claim the couch and wouldn’t let the dog back up until it surrendered to a calm state itself.
So, how do we relay this to humans.
Let’s use the tantrum hostility as an example.
You are past your no contact rule and your ex throws a tantrum at how rude it was that you didn’t respond to them exactly when they wanted you to.
How do you handle this situation?
Well, we want to stay calm.
We also want to acknowledge that the other persons feelings are hurt.
But it’s important to stay assertive and create boundaries.
So, saying something like this would tick all the boxes,
I understand how you feel but I won’t allow you to speak to me that way.
Today we’re going to tackle the breakup relief phenomenon by figuring out exactly how long you can realistically expect it to last.
In my opinion, the breakup relief stage can last anywhere from 1 to 2 months from the onset of a breakup with it taking roughly 5 months before individuals actually feel they’ve healed from the breakup.
In order for you to fully understand how I came up with these calculations we must first dive into a few core concepts.
The relationship death wheel
The dumpers relief stage
The success story timeline
Figuring out how long the relief stage can last for a dumper is a lot like trying to solve a math problem. One, whose variables are constantly changing.
The best anyone can realistically do is come up with a template that works in “most” situations but not all situations and that’s what I intend to do.
First things first though, let’s introduce you to the variables.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
This is probably the one graphic this year that I’ve become famous for.
I call it the relationship death wheel,
The idea is that we are showing the entire lifecycle of a relationship from a dumpers perspective starting with what it was like for them to start a relationship with you all the way through a breakup and then a potential reconciliation.
Let’s get the basics out of the way first.
There are eight stages comprised within the wheel.
I want someone to love me
I found someone my troubles are over
I’m noticing some worrying things…
I’m thinking of leaving
I’ve decided to leave the relationship
I’m so happy that I left
I’m starting to feel kind of lonely
Why can’t I ever find the right person
Now, the specific stage that this article is going to be focusing on is stage number six.
I’m so happy I left
This is typically where dumpers relief comes into play. However, understanding how long it will last for depends on you having a basic understanding of the way the entire wheel works.
You’ll notice by looking at the graphic above that I’ve divided these eight stages in half into two categories.
The relationship category
The breakup category
This is important because most people only look at the breakup category and make calculations based on that but we must understand how the whole wheel works if we are to give an honest accounting.
Creating The Death Wheel Timeline
Everything I’m about to write here was actually taken from one of my videos,
Basically, I spent a day trying to figure out how long each of the stages take on average within the wheel. Figuring this out caused me to combine some of the stages.
So, here’s how it broke down.
I want someone to love me + I found someone my troubles are over = The Honeymoon Stage
I’m noticing some worrying things… = The Anxious Trigger Stage
I’m thinking of leaving = The Avoidant Trigger Stage
I’ve decided to leave the relationship +I’m so happy that I left = The Separation Elation Stage
I’m starting to feel kind of lonely + why can’t I ever find the right person? = The Depression/Nostalgia Stage
Again, we’re really interested in the separation elation stage but we need to understand how it fits into its surroundings first.
So, let’s talk through how long each of these stages will typically last.
I’ll do this by color coding the wheel.
The honeymoon stage (light green)
The anxious trigger stage (dark green)
The avoidant trigger stage (vomit green)
The separation elation stage (yellow)
The depression/nostalgia stage (orange)
The Honeymoon Period (Lasting Roughly 6 Months)
The honeymoon period stage is exactly what it sounds like it would be.
It’s that moment of time at the beginning of a relationship that you don’t see the other persons flaws at all. Everything is great. It’s all sunshine’s and rainbows.
The reason I think it lasts an average of six months is that a few months ago I put a question to my private facebook support group.
By far the most common answer was twelve months and the research I found seemed to indicate that usually the honeymoon period lasts about half the time of a non spousal relationship.
So, six months was the answer.
The Anxious Trigger Stage (Lasting Roughly A Month)
In order to understand how this works we must first understand the most common pairing.
This year my team and I have grown quite fond of attachment styles.
So much so in fact that we’ve learned our average client has an anxious attachment style,
And our average clients ex has an avoidant attachment,
This means that our average pairing is going to be,
Anxious (client) + Avoidant (ex)
This pairing isn’t ideal since it’s a lot like mixing oil and water. At first neither couple will notice anything wrong with the other. They are riding high on the honeymoon period.
However, eventually something will happen. Usually that something is their partners anxious behavior starts seeping through and it makes them take notice.
Eventually triggering the next stage.
The Avoidant Trigger Stage (Lasting Roughly 2 Months)
This is the stage where the avoidants actual avoidant side starts to get triggered.
You may notice your ex is previously distant in this stage.
You’ll ask them,
“What’s wrong?”
Only to have them respond,
“Nothing.”
But deep down you know something is wrong. Behind the scenes though your ex is planning their escape.
The Separation Elation Stage (Lasting Anywhere Between 1 – 2 Months)
This stage encompasses the actual breakup/escape as well as the dumpers relief.
In attachment theory more specifically this is called separation elation.
In fact, one of my favorite attachment style websites, Free To Attach, defines it as,
After a relationship ends, people with an avoidant attachment style tend not to show much anxiety or distress, often feeling an initial sense of relief at the relinquishing of obligations and the sense that they are regaining their self-identity, and not tending to initially miss their partner – this is “separation elation” as the pressure to connect is gone.
Dumpers relief!
And the crazy part is that most exes believe this relief feeling will last forever. It emboldens their stance that they made the right decision but the elated feeling is fleeting.
It doesn’t last forever.
And as high as they feel now about the breakup they’re about to feel low in a moment for the next stage is…
The Depression/Nostalgia Stage (Lasting 2+ Months)
One of the oddest things that I took to heart over the past two years is this idea of avoidant nostalgia.
People with this attachment style literally prefer phantom exes because there’s no threat of a reconciliation. I’ve actually talked about this concept in-depth in this video,
Basically,
Without the danger of reciprocity (so particularly after an ex has moved on), liberation from the fear of engulfment finally gives free reign to an avoidant’s latent romanticism. An ex being truly unavailable may even produce a perverse enjoyment – they are at liberty to fully miss and think wistfully of them while it also confirms their self-belief people won’t stick around them (sometimes in relationships they may imagine their partner with another to trigger this)
This is why so often we are seeing exes who don’t really miss past partners until that person has moved on. That’s when they allow themselves to feel nostalgia.
Conclusion
As you can see, the separation elation stage is very dependent on the stages that come before it an after it.
To recap,
The honeymoon stage (6 months)
The anxious trigger stage (1 month)
The avoidant trigger stage (2 months)
The separation elation stage (1-2 months)
The depression/nostalgia stage (2+ months)
Breakup relief may seem like it will last forever for a dumper but I assure you it will subside. So, try not to panic if you are dealing with a dumper that seems over the moon about the breakup.
I think it goes without saying that every time I write one of these articles I start by doing research.
Oddly, one of the things that is most surprising is that often the best ideas and research in the breakup isn’t found on Psychology Today or in reputable studies. It’s actually found on forums.
More and more I find myself pouring through Reddit and Quora trying to see what the experiences of real people are and I hit the goldmine with this comment,
This individual argues that one of the most common reasons that exes will block is because they’re so hurt after the breakup that they want to try to forget about you and move on. I’d actually like to add one addition to this hypothesis and I think it has to do with the advent of social media.
Imagine going through a breakup and having to see your ex every day on your social media account.
They look happy and you hate that.
Or
Maybe they don’t look happy and you hate that too.
Just seeing them pop up on your Instagram or Facebook feed infuriates you because it brings you back to your relationships. Irritates and aggravates.
It’s easier for you personally to block them so you aren’t re-living that trauma repeatedly.
And I’m not so sure that it’s the fact that they want to forget you. I think they just want to forget you right now until they feel better about themselves. More confident with themselves that the mere mention of you doesn’t break them.
Core Reason #2: The Reactionary Attempt
Remember that comment I said was a gold mine.
Well, there’s more to it,
Another potential reason that your ex could be blocking you is out of some misguided reactionary attempt and if you don’t believe this is a thing just take a look at how many people comes into utilizing a no contact rule the improper way.
Without a doubt, the no contact rule is the most popular post breakup strategy employed in the world.
However, most individuals who use it are using it improperly.
Instead of making the no contact rule about outgrowing an ex, they make it about tricking an ex.
The thinking is simple, by utilizing the no contact rule and its ties into reactance,
Psychological Reactance: We as human beings have certain behavioral freedoms. When one of those freedoms is threatened or taken away we react in strong ways to reacquire the lost freedoms
You can make your ex more likely to miss you. You can illicit a reaction from them.
In other words, its the passive aggressive approach.
So, if there are millions of people willing to use the no contact rule to illicit a reaction what makes you think there aren’t millions of exes who aren’t going to use blocking you as a way to illicit a reaction?
Core Reason #3: The Power Move
Yep, there’s more to that comment,
The power move…
A way to show that your ex has won the breakup. I don’t know what it is but lately I’ve been talking a lot about this concept of winning the breakup.
It’s a potent thing and a lot of it has its roots set firmly in “payback.”
Which seems like an odd statement to make especially if you are dealing with an ex who broke up with you. Why would they need to get revenge on you? Why would they need to win the breakup?
I blame the victim mentality.
Even exes who break up with you cast themselves as victims.
For all of us, we are the center of the world.
We’re not really but to us we are. So, when we date someone and share the spotlight with them and it doesn’t work out, our entire world is rocked.
Who else is there to blame other than the person who caused the pain?
The best way many people can think to deal with this is to resort to childish tendencies like blocking someone as “payback.”
I think there’s also something to be said about people thinking of this as a power move. Generally the person whose mind goes there doesn’t feel like they have a lot of power in the world and so they exert what little they do have over another as a way to boost their self esteem.
Something they can hang their hat on and point at saying, “See, I did that. I blocked her/him.”
Which leads us to the next reason.
Core Reason #4: The Societal Expectation
This is my own addition and I definitely know this exists because of the way people look at me when I tell them I founded this website.
Ex Boyfriend Recovery has two sides to it,
Recovery in getting over a breakup
Recovery in getting back with an ex
Most people when I tell them this respond with,
Why would you ever want to get back with an ex?
They sneer when they say it too.
And this hints at an underlying societal expectation placed on individuals who go through breakups. Society doesn’t take to people who want to get exes back, they shun them.
It’s not “the proper thing” to do.
In fact, most people think that once you are done in a relationship then you should be done with talking.
They deal in absolutes.
You talk to your partner
You don’t talk to your ex
And so there’s a pressure that exists in the post breakup period where your ex knows that blocking you is in accordance with what society expects. It’s always there tempting them in the back of their mind.
But there’s one important question I haven’t really tackled throughout this entire article thus far.
If you end up getting blocked by your ex how often is that sentence a permanent one?
How Often Do You Stay Permanently Blocked?
I must admit that I thought I had personally researched this before.
I’ve talked a lot about it.
Even made some bold statements.
Statements like,
Most exes who block you will eventually unblock you.
But when I went to go find the data, alas, there was none because I hadn’t procured it.
Yikes!
So, I do what I always do in situations like this. I went to our private Facebook support group (you can get access to it through our program) and ran a poll.
I asked the individuals there,
For those of you who have been in a situation where your ex blocked you; Did they at one point unblock you?
There were four answers.
Yes, the unblocked me (68%)
I’m still blocked to this day (15%)
They unblocked me, then blocked me, then unblocked me (15%)
They unblocked me, then half blocked me again (2%)
So, at a glance it appears that close to 70% of exes will eventually unblock you.
However, if you look a bit closer at the data the number is actually higher.
Only 15% of individuals said that their exes still had them blocked.
But another 17% basically admitted that their exes did the pogo sticking effect.
Pogo Sticking Effect: Where your ex blocks you but then gets curious as to what you are up to and then unblocks you to check, only to block you again and they keep doing this.
So, the real number of exes who will unblock you at some point is actually 85%.
A whopping 85% of exes who block you will unblock you again at some point.
So, my statements about most exes unblocking you if you simply wait and do nothing holds true.
In truth though, the number was far higher than I was expecting.
Why Do Guys Act Like They Don’t Care After A Breakup
Nov 08, 2022
Yesterday I was scrolling through our Private Facebook Support Group and stumbled across this comment,
Specifically this line in the comment stuck out to me,
He says he doesn’t care, but does he?
It’s one of the most common questions I get asked on a daily basis and today I’m going to show you the three core mechanisms that make men act like they don’t care after a breakup,
The Separation Elation Explanation
The Revenge Plot (Intentionally trying to hurt your feelings)
The Winning The Breakup Mentality
There’s a lot to cover here so let’s buckle up.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Most of our clients have an anxious attachment style while most of our clients exes have avoidant attachment styles.
Here’s the proof if you don’t believe me,
Ex = Avoidant
Client = Anxious
Now, where this becomes relevant with our discussion revolves around the idea of an avoidant attachment style.
I am the type of person that loves simplifying things and one of our very own coaches, Dr. Tyler Ramsey taught me this,
He said that when you are dealing with something as complex as attachment styles your best bet is to divide them up into “core wounds.”
Core Wound = The one thing that triggers that attachment style
So, when know from the polls conducted above that most of our clients have an anxious attachment style and most of those individuals exes have an avoidant attachment style.
From a core wound perspective that’s going to look something like this,
Anxious Core Wound = Abandonment
Avoidant Core Wound= Longing For Independence
So, a lot of times when an ex boyfriend is acting like he doesn’t care it might not be that he didn’t value your time together. Instead, you may be reacting to the fact that he’s simply happy to get his independence back.
One possible explanation for this is a concept called Separation Elation which I talk about in-depth in this article.
After a relationship ends, people with an avoidant attachment style tend not to show much anxiety or distress, often feeling an initial sense of relief at the relinquishing of obligations and the sense that they are regaining their self-identity, and not tending to initially miss their partner – this is “separation elation” as the pressure to connect is gone.
And as you can see, I’ve even created an entire section in my avoidant death wheel explaining this concept,
Here’s my point.
One of the reasons that you may think your ex doesn’t really care is because they are living off the “high” of a separation elation period.
Add in the simple fact that you may be exhibiting anxious tendencies yourself and you have a cocktail for disaster.
As they pull away, you try to fix.
You blame yourself.
Which in turn makes you appear more desperate and further pushes the ex away. It becomes its own unhealthy self fulfilling cycle of which you can’t escape.
And it’s not that your ex doesn’t care about you. Take a longer look at that death wheel graphic above.
Eventually that separation elation that you may be reacting to kind of wears off and the loneliness and regret kicks in. I’m not saying that every single ex boyfriend is going to go through these exact steps. In fact, sometimes you’ll get an ex that is authentic about not caring about you.
Some exes are just jerks.
However, as a general rule the wheel holds true.
The Revenge Plot
One of the stories I’ve told ad nauseum has to do with the idea of revenge in our private facebook support group (which you gain access to with our program.)
One of our clients was in the midst of her no contact rule when her ex texted her a picture.
Not out of the ordinary perhaps. We have exes texting pictures to our clients all the time. What was out of the ordinary was what was featured in the picture.
Or perhaps a better way of putting it is WHO was featured in the picture.
This ex had texted a picture to our client in bed, naked, with another woman.
It was done out of spite. Out of hate. The whole, eye for an eye mentality.
What warranted such hate?
Nothing.
Our client hadn’t cheated.
She hadn’t even broken up with him.
The only thing I could hang my cap on was the simple fact that we advised our client to engage in a no contact rule and ignore him. That was enough for him to grow angry and find a way to hurt her.
And that is really what the revenge plot is all about. It’s an insatiable need to make the other person hurt for any hurt caused by the breakup.
In my opinion, there are two extremes to the revenge plot.
The story I just told above is one end of the extreme. The loud end. Then of course theirs the quiet end. Complete silence.
Loud- In your face, obvious revenge attempts, intentionally trying to hurt your feelings
Quiet- Using passive aggressiveness. Intentionally trying to hurt you by ignoring your existence
Now, I’m sure there will be people reading this and thinking,
“Wait, isn’t the quiet revenge simply what we are doing with the no contact rule?”
Not really, because with the no contact rule the intention to reconnect is always there. After the period is complete you are meant to reach out to your ex and begin the rekindling process.
The quiet end is more passive aggressive.
Doing their own no contact and sending specific messages via social media about how little you really meant to them. It’s an attempt to hurt you but not to your face.
And perhaps the most interesting thing about the revenge plot is that it has its roots firmly placed in a philosophy.
Winning The Breakup Mentality
For those of you who don’t think this concept exists I’d like to show you something,
This is a movie from back in 2006 called “The Break Up.” Pretty much the entire premise of the movie revolves around “winning the breakup.”
If you can prove to your ex significant other that you are doing better after the decoupling period then you are the winner.
There’s just one catch.
You have to actually do better and perhaps the greatest irony of the whole mentality is that someone who truly wins the breakup doesn’t really even think about their ex anymore.
They have too many great things in their life to be caught up in past loves.
It’s that whole frank sinatra quote personified,
The best revenge in life is massive success.
THAT’S how you “win” a breakup.
You don’t rub it in your exes face.
You don’t feel the need to prove that you are doing better.
You don’t want revenge.
You simply have enough confidence with yourself that you know you’ll be ok. You find something else to pour your energy into that makes you the envy of not just your ex but other potential suitors.
But that’s not how most people try to win the breakup. Nope, most people try to take the loud route.
Announcing how great they are on social media with posts like this,
Here’s my general rule of thumb,
The louder your ex barks about the breakup the more they were impacted by it.
Remember, the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.
Final point here, when I first started dating my wife I could never understand why she had picture of her previous exes up on her social media.
It really bothered me and perhaps that’s because I do what I do all day which is read about breakups and I know what happens between individuals who used to be together.
It caused some serious fights between us.
It really wasn’t until she made a point that I realized what someone who has moved on completely looks like.
She said she hadn’t removed the pictures because there were enough that it would take a few hours and to her it wasn’t worth doing it. She didn’t really care about them at all.
All that mattered to her was looking forward.
That’s what someone who doesn’t’ care looks like.
They are indifferent to their past.
Still though, me being me, I removed the pictures for her .
Forget The Breakup Spellcasters, Here’s What Actually Works
Oct 25, 2022
Ever since I started Ex Boyfriend Recovery back in 2012 I’ve been having a war with the scum of the earth (not really.)
Every single day I open up my website and navigate to the comments section I’m greeted with a whole host of comments like this,
Basically it’s a spam advertisement to contact a special Nigerian/Indian spellcaster or a special “psychic” doctor.
Apparently if you contact them they will “assist you” in the most confusing of situations, like a breakup.
Oh, and the only way to contact them is through WhatsApp.
These spellcasters or psychic doctors have even started invading my YouTube channel. In fact, since I posted my latest video to my channel yesterday half of the legitimate comments that people have been invaded by spellcasters,
It’s annoying and the worst part is that I’ve literally blocked all comments that mention Whatsapp or doctors or have any phone numbers in it but YouTube doesn’t give me the ability to do that within replies and so what we get often in our videos is just hundreds of spammy spellcaster responses that I have to manually go in and delete.
So today, I’d like to talk about two things.
How the spellcaster scam actually works
Vs.
What actually works when it comes to breakups
Let’s begin!
Spellcasters And Psychics Are A Scam
I’ve always been familiar of the spellcaster scam. To the best of my knowledge here’s how it works,
Someone claiming to be a spellcaster uses a software or a bot to shotgun a sales pitch all over the web.
It’s a lot like a spiders web in that way…
They are hoping to capture an extremely desperate person who will do anything to get their ex back.
Once you are caught in their web they will keep escalating.
They’ll cast a spell, give some bogus idea of a timeframe of when it’s supposed to work
When it inevitably doesn’t work they ask for more money for another spell because the first wasn’t strong enough
Oh, or sometimes they’ll claim you have dark energy and they need to cast another spell to fix it
And around and around it goes
That’s the first type of scam. Probably the most common one I see. Notice how none of the “spell” involves bettering yourself. Instead, it involves making you feel bad about your “energy” and paying more money to fix it.
But of course, there’s a second scam. One that for some reason people seem to give a pass for.
The psychic scam.
It’s an interesting thought to explore why. I think it’s because general consensus is that psychics aren’t real, they’re just “a bit of fun” but trust me when I say that I’ve seen psychics escalate things in scary ways. I’ve even seen them infiltrate places for sales.
Case in point,
A few years ago when I first started the private facebook group a weird thing started happening.
One person in the group mentioned that they went to a psychic for fun. I’m all for freedom of speech so even though I think psychics are completely bogus I let it slide. Sometimes a psychic for fun can be just that, fun. Not something to be taken seriously. Fast forward a few weeks and someone from the group privately messages me that the original person who posted about the psychic actually works for the psychic and is strong arming people in the group to sign up for her.
Claiming that the results are guaranteed.
That’s where I draw the line.
I’ve long been on record that anyone who says the words guaranteed is full of it. Especially when it comes to exes. With breakups nothing is guaranteed.
But that’s not even why I dislike the scams.
Breakup Spell/Psychic Scams Take Away Your Self Reliance
I believe in the law of effort.
You get out what you put in.
You want to run longer, starting putting in the work.
You want to pass a test in school, start studying.
You want success at work, work harder.
The law of effort has never failed me or anyone who has put in the time. I think the problem with our society is that now more than ever we’ve been blessed with the quickest results in history.
If we are lost on the road we can pull out our smartphones, plot a location and instantly get the pathway home.
If we don’t know what a word means we can type it into google and get an instant definition
This kind of instant feedback conditions us to expect that this is the way it’s supposed to be with every facet of life.
But there are some things that you can’t shortcut.
Health
Wealth
Relationships
They all require some level of discipline. You have to do the work and it all starts with your self reliance. Your ability to hold yourself accountable. Your ability to trust yourself.
Falling for a spellcaster scam is all about taking away that reliance. They want you to pay them money because they want you to think you aren’t capable of succeeding on your own.
And the one thing I’ve learned is that if you want to succeed after a breakup you need to rely on yourself.
What Actually Works After A Breakup?
I may sound like a broken record here but I personally believe the most important thing you can do after a breakup is to outgrow your ex.
That applies if you want to get them back or if you want to get over them.
The first step is always the same.
Have enough confidence within yourself that you will be ok without them.
Most of the people I coach on a daily basis are so desperate to get their exes back that they can’t make it through a simple period of no contact.
My team and I believe this is because the most common client we personally deal with have an anxious preoccupied mindset,
This means they are more prone to desperate behaviors because for them their greatest fear is the fear of being abandoned and it just came true.
But desperate behaviors doesn’t work to get most exes back.
In fact, it’s the anxious behaviors that let people fall for the scams I mentioned above.
Here’s the truth, what you need isn’t to reach out to a spellcaster.
It’s to reach out to mentors
To professionals
It’s to work on discipline
Have a strong sense of confidence and self reliance
It’s to get to a place where you don’t care if you get your ex back anymore.
One of the reasons I am adamant about posting my success stories online for everyone to watch is to show you what actually works for real people.
The trend that always develops among them is the same.
They’ll say some variation of,
“It really wasn’t until I decided I didn’t want my ex back anymore that they actually came back.”
In other words, they outgrew their ex.
Obviously it’s a lot more complicated than that but I honestly think that half of the battle with most people is the simple fact that they aren’t willing to take that step because for most people “outgrowing” means giving up but it doesn’t have to mean that.
In my view, someone who has outgrown an ex has knocked them off the pedestal and now views their ex as an equal.
Or better yet, doesn’t even really view their ex as anything but a happy memory.
That doesn’t mean you have to give up.
It simply means you are willing to lose them and it makes all the difference in the world.
Why Ditching Your Ex Is So Attractive
Oct 03, 2022
Today I’d like to talk about why I believe ditching your ex after a breakup makes you more attractive to them and can eventually lead to them asking for you back.
It seems to be common knowledge that a certain phenomenon seems to exist when it comes to “ditching exes.”
And perhaps it is this comment from quora that best sums it up,
Well, it’s that “bolded part” of the comment that interests us.
“I cannot explain it. It’s like some mysterious energy that when you genuinely pull out, the other person comes back into your life.”
Now, I’m not a big believer in “mysterious energies” but I can’t tell you how many comments and experiences I have that prove this.
Like this comment,
And this one,
And this one,
I’ve written in the past that this phenomenon occurs when you seem to genuinely ditch your ex for good and the great irony with it is that often times when you get to a point where you are “over” an ex you don’t want them back anymore. This ultimately leads to the narrative of exes coming back at the wrong time, when you don’t want them.
So today, I’d actually like to peel back the layers even more and look at the reasons for why this phenomenon exists.
In my opinion it boils down to a combination of four things,
Time
Difficult With Alternatives
Your World No Longer Revolves Around Them
Jealousy
Let’s get to work.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Avoidants are free to long for an ex once that person is unavailable out of the relationship, and typically out of contact so they are untouched by actual engagement and their deactivation systems aren’t triggered.
So, once enough time goes by an avoidant literally begins to tap into nostalgia.
But I actually think there’s something deeper at play here. It’s often not as simple as,
Go through a breakup
Wait
Then your ex has nostalgia
I think the reason we are seeing “time” work so well is that it gives the ex enough time to reflect and think back to how good they had it with you.
That’s what the nostalgia is doing and ironically this leads us pretty seamlessly to our next discussion point.
Thing #2: Difficulty Finding An Alternative To Match Up
I’m pretty big on looking at commitment when it comes to reverse engineering the breakup process.
Generally human beings have six main criteria when it comes to making commitment decisions,
Satisfaction
Alternatives
Investment
Scarcity
Urgency
Fear of Loss
But I’d really like to highlight alternatives as a commitment point today.
Alternatives basically argues that we are always looking for the best alternative out there. Can someone better meet my needs than my current partner?
If you really think about it almost all breakups happen because one person thinks they can do better or that they deserve better.
It’s the old grass is greener syndrome.
If I leave the person I’m with then the grass is surely greener on the other side and almost always, at first it is.
Remember, with every new relationship there’s a honeymoon period where things seem overly great at first but eventually that honeymoon period wears off and the real comparisons begin to set in.
In it I make an argument that we are always internally comparing our partners to our past partners whether we are conscious of it or not. This “scale” changes based on our relationship journey. At the beginning we are bound to always choose our current partner over a past partner because everything with that new person is, well, new. However, over time that “rating” may change and that rating is particularly relevant to what we’re talking about here.
This might partially explain why exes are coming back later and later in the game. This is because enough time has to go by to where they can make a true comparison with you.
Of course, one other thing tends to occur.
Thing #3: Your World No Longer Revolves Around Them
Lately I’ve been talking a lot about my concept of the pedestal effect,
Essentially I argue that the smartest thing you can do after a breakup is to knock your ex down off the pedestal. Too often I see men and women holding their exes up like they were the great lost loves of their lives. This naturally causes them to place their exes up on a pedestal and exes are smart enough to realize this.
And you know the only place you can look when you are at the top of the mountain?
Down.
So, exes who know you are in love with them, more than they are in love with you begin to lose respect for you but not only that, you lose value to them as well.
This is why I’m always going on and on about the importance of finding something you care about more than your ex in the post breakup period. It helps you knock them down off the pedestal and move past them.
I don’t think I’ve ever told this story before but here goes.
One of my early breakups when I was in college was with this girl who held me on a pedestal. While to so people having a person hold them on a pedestal sounds amazing, it didn’t so much for me at the time. After thinking back and reflecting I think it had to do with the fact that someone putting me above them on the pedestal made me feel like I was better than them.
As a result, I felt like I could do better than them.
Now, when you break up with someone like this a natural assumption gets formed. So, I break up with this girl and my assumption is,
She’s going to obsess about me, act really anxious, try to win me back, etc.
Only she didn’t.
In fact, she was so adamant about moving on after the breakup that I began to reconsider everything I had ever thought about her before.
Did she not love me as much as she claimed?
Did I mean so little to her?
What is going on?
Ultimately the thing I learned from the experience was that when someone begins to move on from you after a breakup you actually gain more respect for them and it kind of turns your world upside down because you start thinking that your time together wasn’t as valued by them as you thought.
Of course, one other thing starts happening.
Thing #4: Jealousy That You Are Doing Well Without Them
Now we get into the win/lose the breakup territory.
No one wants to lose the breakup.
It seems like a petty thing to talk about but it’s true. Now, if we operate under the assumption that your ex believes they are “above you” on the pedestal then they naturally will believe that they are going to win the breakup.
They’re expecting you to,
Beg
Cry
Flail
Blow up their phone
Show up unannounced
Leave sappy breakup posts on social media
Basically they think you are going to act super desperate after a breakup.
But what if you didn’t?
What if instead of all that you simply ditched them.
Not to say that you don’t still care about them, it’s very hard to turn off your feelings completely.
However, instead of begging for them back you simply ignored them.
Instead of blowing up their social media accounts you did fun things and posted them on your social media.
What if instead of having the worst time of your life after a breakup, you had the best time of your life?
That’s prone to make your ex jealous. Make them feel like I felt in that story I told above about. All of a sudden it becomes less about how great their breakup decision was and more about why you are doing so great without them.
Did you even care about them?
Conclusion
So, ditching your ex after a breakup will make you more attractive to them because of four interchangeable reasons,
Time
Difficult With Alternatives
Your World No Longer Revolves Around Them
Jealousy
It’s always amusing to me that people argue with this too. I mean, it’s been proven time and time again that moving on from an ex after a breakup makes you more attractive to them but here’s the rub, it can’t be faked. I think one of the mistakes I made in my early days of Ex Boyfriend Recovery was talking about “moving on without moving on” from a “fake it, till you make it” approach.
What Love Feels Like For The Avoidant Attachment Style
Sep 26, 2022
Today I’d like to have an in-depth discussion on avoidants specifically as it relates to them falling in love and what that looks/feels like.
Now, most of the time when one of my peers covers this topic they focus on the major signs avoidants love you and what that looks like. In fact, I think I’ve even written an article covering that as well but when you talk about what love feels like from an avoidant perspective the discussion becomes really complicated.
Take for example this little nugget of knowledge.
An avoidant will typically have two big waves of “love” that they’ll feel for someone. We can divide these waves up into two phases,
Love at the beginning of a relationship
Love after a relationship
And that’s exactly how we’re going to divide this article up.
Let’s begin.
Wave #1: Love At The Beginning Of A Relationship
In researching this article I do what I always do, I peruse the forums and often I’ll find myself having two reactions.
Oh, this is a good point, I’ll have to dig in and mention this in my discussion
*eye roll* This person has no idea what they are talking about
For some odd reason I had a lot of eye roll moments in researching this but that’s because a lot of people have a basic misunderstanding of how avoidants operate. For example, the narrative often goes like this:
Steer clear of avoidants
Pursue those who demonstrate they love you
Avoidants rarely change
This is the problem with how most people view avoidants. They think they are incapable of love but that’s simply not true. In fact, one of the worst raps that avoidants get is that most people think they are incapable of love but the truth is that many avoidants want love very badly.
They’ve just never been shown how to “love” in a healthy way before.
And that really transitions perfectly to my next point.
One of the biggest misunderstandings that avoidants have about love is they are convinced it occurs during the honeymoon period.
In other words, they grow addicted to the feeling of the honeymoon period and when it ends they convince themselves that they’ve fallen out of love.
And though I’ve not been able to find exact reputable research to back up what I’m about to say, I do have a theory for why they do this.
The First Time Is The Best Time Theory
Life is set up in a way so that the first time we experience something it usually hits the hardest both positively or negatively. The example I always use is pointing to your favorite movie and asking you what it felt like the first time you saw it. What about the fifth time?
It can still be amazing but since you know everything that’s going to happen it loses a lot of its emotional punch.
This is a rule of life.
The first time will always hit the hardest.
Everyone who has lived long enough inherently understands this, avoidants included. So, this can partially explain why avoidants are drawn to the honeymoon period. They know it’s arguably the best they’ll feel in the entire relationship BUT I’m insinuating something far more devious.
If an avoidant subconsciously knows that a honeymoon period is going to end that actually plays right into their hands.
Remember, avoidants are always caught in this paradox of wanting someone to love them but never wanting to let anyone close enough for that to happen.
So, it’s entirely plausible that an avoidant can use the honeymoon period as an internal clock for the end of a relationship. Kind of like a doomsday clock. Once the honeymoon period ends, they know the relationship should too. I’m not saying that all avoidants operate in this way.
One look at my avoidant death wheel shows that some avoidants stay in relationships far longer than a honeymoon period exists,
But I would by lying if I didn’t mention that I have noticed avoidant exes in our program that do this.
They essentially use the honeymoon period as a crutch.
Hell, I’ve even been guilty of this.
By the way, if you didn’t know, I’m classified as a dismissive avoidant,
My first breakup scarred me so mentally that I was single for five years. That was a very conscious choice because I didn’t want to grow close to anyone but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t play the field in those five years. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t go on dates.
In fact, one of my favorite things to do was to go on dates, exist in the light of the honeymoon period and then cut the other person off after I felt the honeymoon period was ending for my own protection. I’m hardly the first person to do this.
So, that’s the first wave of love an avoidant will feel.
And for the most part that’s where most of my peers stop but I’ve actually found that there’s a second wave of love avoidants will feel.
I wish I could claim credit for thinking this up but the truth is that this first came onto my radar when I was pouring through avoidant attachment website, Free To Attach,
An avoidant person often has a story of a perfect ex in a relationship that wasn’t fully realised, the ‘one that got away’ to whom no one else can measure up. In reality the idealised relationship was often lacklustre or insecure and unlikely to be highly functional
So, just like an avoidant confuses love with the honeymoon period during a relationship with you they will also confuse love with the phantom ex syndrome and create a kind of “the one that got away” loop that they want themselves to be stuck in.
It’s all a protection mechanism to prevent themselves from getting hurt but it really helps you understand why so many avoidant exes are resistant to overtures. Remember, this is all happening in their head and they like to keep it that way. There’s nothing an avoidant feels more comfortable with than the daydream effect.
They’d rather have a pretend fantasy relationship with you in their head than in reality.
This explains why when it comes to allowing romantic connections to unfold in the post breakup period you have to do almost all of the work.
And this we actually have research to back up,
Last year I was shocked when I surveyed our private facebook group about the no contact rule and learned that over 60% of exes don’t reach out to you during no contact. When you consider that the vast majority of exes we deal with are avoidant,
It begins to make more sense.
A relationship that only exists in their head is more preferable to one that exists in reality.
It also explains why, if you want a reconciliation to occur with this type of ex, you will be the one that has to do most of the work. At best, they’ll give you a “look” but not many people know how to decipher a look.
And the phantom ex syndrome has short term prospects and long term prospects.
Phantom Ex Short Term Vs. Long Term
This is the final thing I’d like to leave you with today.
The phantom ex syndrome is one that revolves around “the one that got away.”
But they can have more than one, “one that got away”
Complicated, right?
But think of it like this.
Imagine that you are dating an avoidant and all throughout that relationship they were comparing you to another one of their exes. For them, this ex was “the one that got away.” A fantasy relationship that they most likely misremembered or inflated the importance of.
You can never measure up to this person because in reality they don’t exist. It’s as if they took the best qualities of this phantom ex and forgot about their worst qualities.
This is the long term “one that got away.”
Additionally though, after an avoidant breaks up with you they start to give you the same treatment. You become the short term “one that got away.”
Yes, an avoidant can have two phantom exes.
A short term prospect (a recent relationship)
A long term prospect (a relationship from long ago)
The aim is almost always the same.
They intend to create a scenario to hold off commitment because commitment threatens independence.
In the end this much is true, love is a complicated affair for an avoidant.
Behavior Your Ex Can’t Seem To Resist
Sep 23, 2022
Today I’d like to talk about the one behavior that your ex can’t seem to resist.
Achieve this one behavior and you’ll dramatically raise the chances of them reaching out and showing interest.
(I can’t guarantee they’ll come back. No one can but I can guarantee if you do this they’ll show interest.)
So, what is this special behavior?
Well, let me prime this discussion a bit.
As you know, starting in 2020 I really started leaning heavily on success story interviews. Specifically I became interested in what was actually working for real life people. What was it that they were doing that caused them to be irresistible to their exes?
If you’ve read any of my earlier articles or watched any of my older videos you’d know that the conclusion I came to is that they were able to achieve this mentality where they didn’t care if they got them back or not. In other words, they were able to outgrow their exes.
So, that’s the key, right?
Outgrow your ex and you’ll be golden.
Well…
What if I were to tell you there’s more to it. That we should actually dig deeper.
That’s what I’m going to be focusing on today.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
You always hear me talk about the importance of outgrowing an ex but what does that actually mean?
Does that mean you are letting them go?
Not necessarily.
Does that mean you are forgetting about them?
Definitely not.
So, what’s this magical thing to outgrowing an ex. Well, I think it revolves around your focus. For the first time in arguably a long time you aren’t completely focused on them. You begin to focus on yourself. Cliche, I know but hear me out.
One of the things I noticed from the success stories is that they seemed to be incredible at using focus that they used to have reserved for an ex for themselves and with that focus they were able to achieve incredible things. That’s the hidden layer of this entire puzzle that no one seems to talk about.
It’s not just about outgrowing an ex that makes them fawn over you.
It’s about what you do with that time when you are outgrowing them.
All of the time, energy and emotions invested into them have now been freed up to invest into yourself and with that level of focus, you should be capable of doing something that they themselves aren’t capable of.
THIS is the behavior that I’ve yet to see exes resist.
When they see how brightly you are shining without them they become drawn to you the same way the planets revolve around the sun.
But first a story.
You Doing/Accomplishing Something They Aren’t Capable Of
I’m going to start this discussion with a real life scenario that happened in my life with two of my exes.
One ex, who did absolutely nothing noteworthy with her time apart from me
Another who did
And how I reacted to these two women tells you everything you need to know about how important your time is after a breakup.
So, let’s start with ex number one.
Ex number one
My first real relationship
It lasted for about 9 months
I broke up with her
I was definitely not perfect, allowing my jealousy to take precedence
We fought every day
Not a great relationship
We actually didn’t talk after the breakup for about a month. The only time we did talk was after a hurricane hit our hometown. She reached out to see if I was ok. In the months that followed this interaction I didn’t really regret my decision to break up with her. She seemed to simply move on with her life (which is fine) and I moved on with mine.
I followed her on Facebook but after a while I got so sick of seeing updates that I decided to block her just so I could move past the relationship.
That’s ex number one. Typical breakup, right?
Well, let’s take a look at ex number two.
Ex number two
College relationship
Lasted for about a month
Again, I broke up with her
My reasoning was that I thought I could do better than her
Not much fighting
She was nice in the breakup
Ex number two here is a far more interesting breakup case. All throughout our relationship she had a dream of making the college volleyball team. She wasn’t particularly tall but she was quick. Unfortunately, after walking on to our local community college she failed the tryout and was sent home.
Then I break up with her…
I know…
Pretty bad of me but I promise it had no correlation to the volleyball thing. I simply felt that my connection with her wasn’t as strong as it could be with someone else.
Anyways, fast-forward about a year and I run into her walking to a different class. We are cordial but I am stunned at how different she looked. It was like she was an entirely different person. Twice as fit, twice as confident, surrounded by other women, volleyball women.
And they were looking up to her. Almost like she was leading the pack.
I go home and look her up on Facebook only to find out that she’s made the volleyball team and has been named one of its captains. I’m stunned and reach out to her. For the first time since knowing her I feel intimidated. Like I’m actually nervous if she’ll respond.
She didn’t.
BUT the lesson is there plain as day.
You have one ex who sort of just stayed the course of how things were. Didn’t do anything particularly noteworthy with her life and then you have the other ex who did.
And for me that’s the biggest key with breakups.
If you want to be irresistible to an ex accomplish a goal that they themselves are incapable of accomplishing.
Not only will you garner attention from others but from them as well.
Do you think I can make a volleyball team?
Hell no.
I don’t even know how to keep a ball going back and forth across a net.
But no one talks about this.
And that’s why I’m going to pick a bit on the breakup community here.
The Breakup Community Has Us Focusing On The Wrong Things
The breakup community is kind of dumb in my opinion and I’m not giving myself a pass because I’ve certainly been guilty of promoting the superficial things.
Too often I’ll go to YouTube and see titles like,
Get your ex back in 30 days.
or
Here’s what’s guaranteed to work on an ex.
or
The no contact rule is guaranteed to make an ex miss you.
It’s frustrating because it gives people unrealistic expectations. Even if they don’t watch the video the fact that there’s even a video out there making the claim is enough to make someone believe it’s possible and I absolutely despise it. The only thing that has ever worked for me or my clients is self improvement.
That’s the most important thing you should be doing after a breakup.
You want to know what exes find irresistible.
You accomplishing a feat greater than they thought possible.
That’s what gets attention.
And it becomes a healing mechanism as well. In the pursuit of accomplishing this great feat your life gets put in perspective. The breakup gets put in perspective. You knock your ex down off the pedestal you have them placed on.
But how does one choose a worthwhile feat?
Choosing A Worthwhile Feat To Accomplish
Well, that’s where your magnum opus comes into play.
But in terms of our program it’s the one thing that intersects the holy trinity.
Health
Wealth
Relationships
What one thing can you do that will positively benefit the three areas of the trinity?
That will make you healthier in body or mind?
That will earn you money?
That will forge new relationships?
Oh, and one other thing.
It’s not easy to accomplish.
Something that could take at least a year to bear fruit but can be transformative in the pursuit?
Engaging in that type of behavior is ultimately what makes exes want to come back. It’s what draws other to you.
All of the other stuff.
Texting correctly.
Social media etiquette.
It pails in comparison to the pursuit of your magnum opus.
And the craziest part is that no one is talking about this because it’s not popular, it’s not sexy but for me there’s nothing better than accomplishing feats that others cannot. There’s nothing that makes me feel more alive in the pursuit. It’s how I know I didn’t waste my time on this earth.
Generally speaking there are a few type of clients that come to us.
We have the new clients who’ve never been introduced to our program before.
We have the people who have been introduced to our program
Each of these types of clients has a unique relationship with the no contact rule.
So, for the people who are familiar with our way of doing things, they have no problem implementing a No Contact Rule.
That’s not the case for people who are maybe new to our program and don’t really see the No Contact Rule as anything other than a way to manipulate your ex.
Yet, every single success story that we have, has used some version of the No Contact Rule, or at least attempted to use some version of the No Contact Rule.
So the first major mistake I see people making is not even doing a No Contact Rule. Usually, they have a lot of different reasons for why they’re not willing to do a No Contact Rule.
But usually, they all revolve around some version of worry worried of my ex, forgetting about me, or I’m worried of how this will make my ex angry.
But I think the No Contact Rule in and of itself gets a bad rap because a lot of the breakup industry only pedals the it will make your ex miss you aspect. And I actually don’t think that’s what makes the ex miss you.
So I think it’s kind of like a correlation, not causation type scenario that we had playing out with regards to a no contact rule.
So obviously, people who implement a No Contact Rule, they are under the belief that by ignoring their ex for a certain period of time, their ex is going to miss them.
But what I’ve actually found through interviewing hundreds of success stories is the exact opposite is true.
The No Contact Rule in and of itself, just ignoring your ex doesn’t really help make your ex miss you. It’s actually what you’re doing with that time away from your ex that can help make them miss you.
So for our clients that are able to kind of outgrow their ex during that no contact period, I find that they are way more likely to get a positive response when they do eventually get back into contact with their ex. So for me not implementing the No Contact Rule isn’t necessarily the biggest mistake.
It’s not implementing the No Contact Rule the correct way. So yes, mistake number one, don’t. Not doing a No Contact Rule essentially, is the mistake.
Mistake #2: Moving On Too Soon
Okay, so mistake number two would be moving on too soon.
So what we discussed was that after a breakup, there are those few people who can’t cope with being alone, they don’t want to be in their own company.
So when their ex doesn’t want them back, they’ll immediately go out and find somebody else to be in a relationship with. While it’s technically a rebound, it’s also them not dealing with the way they feel they’re not processing the breakup their emotions, they don’t even start to consider what went wrong in a relationship.
Why did that breakup happen?
And what do what work do they need to do on themselves.
So even though in the program, obviously, we do suggest that you date, it’s just don’t immediately get into another relationship, you’re just filling a void that your ex has made by putting someone else in there and you’re just going to repeat history, and you gotta keep making the same mistakes, repeated relationship breakdown, and probably never actually process any emotions, just ignore them and dismiss them as much as you possibly can.
And then, when you want your ex back, you’ve not done any self work. So you’re not really going to get the actual goal which is getting over a breakup.
Get back into a healthy relationship, you just end up in the same cycle.
Mistake #3: Snooping
Okay, so mistake number three is actually snooping on social media.
This may not initially seem like a mistake, but I think it is.
So Shaunna and I, before we started recording, we were talking about another mistake on our list. And it actually kind of connects with this one.
And that is the fact that a lot of times you need to look at breakups as sort of a drug addiction.
So when a when a drug addict is going through a withdrawal period, they’re looking for a fix.
And so anytime that you’re engaging in any kind of obsession about an x, it kind of just makes the problem worse, you cannot stop focusing on your ex. So Facebook stalking, looking on their Instagram looking Snapchat, I guess tick tock, although I don’t I haven’t heard too much about tick tock in the Facebook group.
The point is, if you are not a very disciplined person, and you feel like snooping, on your ex is going to make you want to reach out to them after their breakup.
I don’t think it’s worth your effort to do so I think one of the biggest mistakes we see as people who really want to try to move past a breakup, but they’re unable to because they keep engaging in this addiction.
They keep feeding it they keep, Oh, I wonder what he or she is up to, oh, no, they’re doing this without me. And then they get upset and it becomes this emotional thing.
And it just kind of does not help you move past the breakup. So I think for me if you’re an incredibly undisciplined person, and no, you just won’t be able to help yourself, it might be a good idea to unfollow your ex on social media. And some way not necessarily block them, not necessarily unfriend them.
But to try to maybe just like, like, make your password to your social media accounts, super complicated. And then lock it away somewhere and logout so you don’t know how to get in it.
Just so that you can take a break and kind of regain composure before you can kind of talk to them again. So anyways, that’s mistake number three snooping.
Mistake #4: Trying To Get Closure
So, mistake number four, we’ve got trying to get that closure conversation with your ex.
So there’s this idea that you need to have that conversation where you talk about the relationship and where things went wrong, and how you could have been better apologizing.
But during this conversation with your ex too soon, it’s just an excuse to see them your mindsets more about how can I get him to see me if he can see me and I can tell him I’m sorry.
And I know where I went wrong, that you’ll eventually get to the point where you’re going to start wanting to talk about getting back together. And eventually your ex is going to say no, again, because it’s probably straight after the breakup.
And you’re going to restart the process of feeling heartbroken all over again.
And you’ve not achieved what you want it you haven’t got closure, new upset, because your ex still doesn’t want to get back together with you, which is what’s leading to the other point that we’re going to talk about later, which is the begging stage.
Mistake #5: Breaking No Contact
So yeah, mistake number five, which is breaking the No Contact Rule prematurely.
This may not seem like a big deal, because essentially, the rule with the No Contact Rule, assuming you have just like a general situation where you’re doing like a 30 day or 45 day, no contact rule and your ex.
What happens is, if you meet, we’re kind of expecting you to break it because most people, I think most people do break it. I think I did some research on that.
But I can’t remember off the top my head but Well, I’m just going to operate under the assumption that you’re going to break it well. Generally speaking, when you break it, you just have to start over from the very beginning.
But the one thing that never gets talked about by many of our peers in the breakup industry is the fact that the No Contact Rule isn’t like this thing that you can continue to leave go back to and it be the same level of effectiveness. So each time that you’re breaking the No Contact Rule.
Let’s say you say hey, I want to do a 30 day no contact rule but you get through a week of it and you contact your ex and you have to start over from the beginning. That’s second time that you have to start over, it’s going to lose a little bit of effectiveness. And each subsequent time this happens, it loses more and more effectiveness.
The analogy I often like to use is, it’s kind of like watching a really great movie in the movie theater for the first time, you’re feeling the emotions of that story, to the maximum effect.
But if it’s a good movie, you want to go watch it again. So you maybe pay for another ticket, you’ll watch it again. But it’s not as it’s still potent, but it’s not as potent as it was the very first time and each time you’re trying it over and over again, it’s losing a little bit of a of its potency.
So breaking the No Contact Rule one time, we’re kind of expecting to happen that’s sort of built into the system, but breaking it five times, breaking it six times, it’s not going to be as effective anymore, and you’re just harming yourself, assuming you either want to get over your ex, but you’re really harming yourself if you want to get your ex back. So that’s Mistake number five.
Mistake #6: Gnatting And Begging
So Mistake number six is the gnatting and begging of your ex. So the gnatting is where you would send lots of text messages, emails, phone calls, any form of communication, you can to your ex, to the point where you are driving him crazy.
You pleading you’re begging, you want your ex to take you back so badly, you’re offering the planets, if you could, it doesn’t work, and it’s not going to get the results you want.
If anything, it just sets you back in the process. And it also kind of makes you lose yourself respect in a way. Because you are literally begging a person to to be with you.
And that’s just, it’s not worth it. And the more that your time that you spend going to nothing and begging is more likely your ex is just gonna block you everywhere. So you can’t contact him anyway.
Or her obviously.
And then when you spend that time, you could have been doing the no contract that Chris just mentioned, you can be working on yourself, rather than showing your ex that you’ve not worked on yourself, you’ve not changed, you’re not respecting their decision to not want to speak to you right now.
I think that damages your chances more than most of the other things to be honest, because there’s just no self control there at all.
Yeah, to actually add on to this, I would say from an attachment style perspective. A lot of times what we see happen is avoidant ex anxious you.
So that’s like the most common relationship pairing.
And so what ends up happening when you’re begging your ex one of the reasons and avoid it will break up with someone who has an anxious attachment style is their anxious attachment style starts to kind of grate on their nerves.
But all your end up doing when you’re nagging or begging and nagging for those of you who are uninitiated is going nuts at texting. So it’s just basically like you’re begging by going crazy for texting like a gnat.
But what ends up happening is by begging, that’s a very anxious behavior. And so you’re actually triggering, if you have an avoidant X, you’re triggering that avoidant side to get them to leave you even more.
So there’s no advantage to you to do it at all. That’s my that’s you can take the next one.
Mistake #7: Bragging About How Good You Are Doing
So obviously, we say use social media. So how great you’re doing. And to show that you’re moving on. However, there are the few that go over the top, those who are given the impression that they were so great without their ex, they’re basically rubbing it in their face.
Now, even though you think that looks like you’re doing amazing, you get all the likes and comments, and all these people are saying how great you’re doing.
That’s like a small fix. But that wears off so quickly. Because you’re not actually dealing with how you truly feel, as well as the fact that you’re doing something else.
So just get more of that like attention. It’s going to look desperate to your ex.
And it’s also going to be a little bit of attention seeking as well. And they’re probably thinking like, why are you doing all this out of character to the point of extremes, and also the fact that you’re wanting attention of almost strangers.
Obviously social, social media has got people that you actually know in real life, but also the people that you just sort of know that acquaintances and their opinion doesn’t really matter.
But it’s a way to deal with the fact that you’re feeling a bit rubbish.
And this the likes on Oh, you look amazing.
Oh, that’s so cool. It makes you feel better short term. But again, it does doesn’t look good from your ex’s point of view.
Mistake #8: Not Being Able To Let Go Of The Breakup
Yeah, I actually think that leads pretty seamlessly into the eighth mistake, which to me is the most important mistake of all, and that’s not being able to let go of the breakup.
So think of it like this. 2022 has been sort of the year that I personally have done a ton of research on Attachment styles, with specific sort of study on the avoidant attachment style.
The reason for that is I did a poll in 2021 where I asked our clients Like, hey, what attachment style do you think your ex is, and over 62 I think percent of them said that they believe their exes are avoidant, or it could have even been as high as 70. I can’t I don’t have it in front of me.
But I just know, it was enough to make me feel like, Oh, this is significant, I need to really understand everything I can about avoidance.
Well, one of the interesting sort of quirks of avoidance is that they actually don’t allow themselves the opportunity to miss you until they feel like you have moved on from them. And this actually tracks was what we found when I interviewed success stories.
So another thing starting in 2020, that I did is I started actually having Shana. She would go through the Facebook group and line up interviews where we can basically sit down with people and ask them a bunch of questions for an hour to figure out like, Hey, what did you do that worked versus what do you that didn’t work?
And the one interesting thing that I wasn’t expecting out of the study is like I, you know, I was expecting like, oh, every success story did some form of no contact, every success story was this type of situation. But what I wasn’t expecting is the common thread that kind of bound them all wasn’t the No Contact Rule so much. I mean, yeah, it was present.
But not all of them, completed a full No Contact Rule, not all of them did the same type of no contact, you know, some of them did a limited no contact.
But the thing that bound them all was each one had projected and gotten to the place where they had given up. So they were like, You know what I’m done with this, I don’t want my ex anymore.
And boom, that’s when they would come back. And you can actually just go to our Facebook group and look at how often this phenomenon occurs.
And I think this really has to do with the avoidant attachment style and the fact that when the avoidant feels like you’re getting to this place where you moved on from them, all of a sudden, they kind of are allowing themselves to feel the nostalgia that’s necessary that needs to happen for them to want to come back.
And the cool part about this is this is exactly what no one else’s advice out there advising you to do. And yet it’s the very thing that works the best.
So for me not being able to let go of the breakup, but more I think kind of the the core belief there is not being not being able to move on from it.
If you’re still hung up on it, you know, you’ll notice that that’s kind of a common thread with some of the mistakes we’re talking about.
It’s really not being able to handle the breakup, not being able to move on from it not being able to grow from it, all of it combines to create this projection.
And it’s not something you can fake. It’s something that you authentically need to feel.
And that’s what is the biggest difference maker for me. So not being able to let go of the breakup is the eighth and final mistake we see our clients making.
You Have A Better Chance Of This Occurring If Your Ex Is An Avoidant
Initially this may seem like an odd take. Anyone who knows even a little bit about attachment styles can surely argue that avoidants tend to value their own independence over everything else.
However, our internal research has consistently shown that most of our clients end up dating people who are avoidant.
To the tune of 70% actually. This means that most of the research I’ve done over the past decade has been on understanding how avoidants operate.
Avoidants are free to long for an ex once that person is unavailable out of the relationship, and typically out of contact so they are untouched by actual engagement and their deactivation systems aren’t triggered, revealing their long-suppressed attachment and switching their operating attachment wound from the fear of engulfment to fear of abandonment.
So, three things need to happen in order for an avoidant to even consider “going out” with you again.
You need to have done something to indicate you have moved on
They need to have moved on (we will dig into this later I promise)
Enough time needs to have gone by that the sting of the breakup isn’t affecting them as much anymore
Here’s the thing about avoidants. Their M.O. is all about independence so it shouldn’t come as a shock that they begin having nostalgia based feelings when they also have their independence back.
But there seems to be a flaw in that thinking, right?
How can they feel independent if they are with someone else?
Great question. I think the best way to look at avoidants in relationships is that they are addicted to honeymoon periods.
The Rebound Relationship Honeymoon Period Addiction
This is what the typical relationship life cycle looks like for an avoidant,
I’ve been through this so many times on dozens of articles so I don’t really feel like repeating it but to be really quick about it here are the eight stages that avoidants go through from the beginning to the end of a relationship,
The avoidant wants someone to love them
They enter into a relationship with you
They notice some worrying things in the relationship
They think of leaving you
They actually leave you
They are happy they left you
They begin to feel kind of lonely
They wonder why they can’t ever find anyone
The stage that’s of interest to us is this one,
The depression part where they wonder why they can’t find anyone for them. That’s the most important thing to conceptualize because it really explains WHY avoidants actually can go on the rebound.
And really if you look at the whole death wheel above one thing becomes very clear. Avoidants live for the honeymoon period.
It’s soon enough into the lifecycle of a relationship that not a huge commitment is needed and obviously you are feeling great.
Yet the moment a relationship gets more serious. The moment independence becomes threatened they begin to work their way out of the relationship.
So, really the way I’ve always viewed avoidants is that they are constantly chasing the “high” of a honeymoon period and this is a really great distraction tool so they don’t have to deal with the complicated emotions that surface on the onset of a breakup.
That brings us very nicely back to that light green section on the upper left-hand quadrant of the death wheel.
An avoidant will do everything to stave off this stage. Once it begins to set in they will find ways to distract themselves (usually with other people) which really explains why they are going from relationship to relationship chasing the distraction of the high.
You Probably Need To Be Painted As A Phantom Ex
So, let’s play devils advocate here.
Your ex is on the rebound with someone else but you have a strong belief that your relationship was more impactful.
You were with your ex longer
You were more serious than they were
If that’s the case then you might be a good candidate for being painted as a phantom ex.
I define the phantom ex as,
A past partner that you can’t seem to stop thinking about. Instead, you hyper focus on them and romanticize your time together. Even when that time together wasn’t all that great.
From an avoidant perspective this is like hitting the jackpot. Remember, an avoidant is constantly living this balancing act where they want love but they refuse to let anyone close enough to them to receive that love.
Often their solution to fixing this paradox is to find a phantom ex.
A partner that they can fawn over from afar without the threat of losing their independence.
But there’s something really interesting about this phenomenon. Inevitably it fails, especially when they are on the rebound.
So, here’s what usually happens.
Your ex moves on to someone new to chase a new honeymoon period
They do this so they don’t have to deal with the grief of their breakup with you
In order to ensure they don’t feel threatened by their rebound they paint you as a phantom ex
This keeps them far enough away both from their current relationship and their old one
But the longer they keep this scenario the more the new person they are with gets annoyed or triggered
Comparing the ideal version of you (the phantom version) to the actual rebound is no contest
They start preferring this ideal version of you and ultimately break up with their new partner
Nostalgia has begun to kick in and sometimes they want to revisit that with you
This is often how most of our success stories have occurred where another person was involved but there is another big piece of the puzzle I’m leaving out.
How The Being There Method Fits Into This All
The being there method is essentially the spearpoint that helps you attract an ex back who has gone on the rebound.
Here’s how it works,
Basically the theory behind is revolves around attachment styles.
There are four major attachment styles,
Secure
Anxious
Avoidant
Fearful
All of the attachment styles have an interesting relationship with the secure attachment style in the fact that it’s an attachment game changer.
Throughout our lives based on our experiences our attachment styles can change.
Take an insecure attachment style like an avoidant and partner that person with a secure attachment style and an interesting phenomenon can occur.
The avoidant attachment style can actually begin to change and become more secure themselves. Of course, the opposite can also happen,
The secure attachment style can get worn down by the avoidants insecurities and become more insecure themselves so what really unfolds with every relationship is an attachment battle,
Pretty wild, right?
So, all the being there method really is, is you becoming more secure and staying in contact with your ex. That’s it. You aren’t trying to win them back. You aren’t trying to break them and their new partner up. You are just going to be there.
You are going to let your secure attachment do the work for you.
And what happens is usually twofold.
Your presence triggers the rebounds insecurities which in turn causes your avoidant ex to be triggered
Your constant presence causes your ex to subconsciously paint you in the phantom ex role
Now, in the spirit of honesty I will say that the being there method can be a bit morally grey. Some people will not feel comfortable using it.
But the core principles remain sound.
Work on making your attachment style more secure and you will reap the benefits not only with your ex but in other areas of your life.
The Facts The Breakup Industry Sweeps Under The Rug About Rebounds
Generally speaking when you are looking at a situation where your ex quickly jumps into another relationship after their breakup with you, you are looking at a rebound relationship.
Of course, when you are looking at rebounds there are certain held beliefs that people have about them.
That they are all destined to fail
That they are an unhealthy way of handling a breakup
But what if I were to tell you that most of what you believe about rebounds might be wrong. In fact, many of the stereotypes you have about them are simply false when looking at the data.
Take the “unhealthy” aspect.
So, most people believe that rebounds don’t give you time to process your emotions and properly grieve. I suppose the expectation is that you are supposed to go through the five stages of grief after a breakup before moving on to someone else.
But what usually happens is that right around when we get to this stage or this stage,
Anger
Depression
You’ll notice your ex go on the rebound. They’ll push their pain away but instead of processing it. They’ll use another person to distract themselves from it.
That’s the stereotype. That’s the argument for why people say that rebounds are “bad.”
That’s the whole argument of the breakup industry.
But they’re wrong.
In fact, according to an article written by Psychology Today in 2014,
New research shows rebound relationships are surprisingly healthy.
Recent evidence suggests, in fact, that people who dive into rebound relationships get over their ex-partner more quickly and feel more confident in their date-ability (Brumbaugh & Fraley, 2014).
It was actually me stumbling across this research that convinced me that our concept of the being there method was the correct way to go in a post breakup period assuming you want to get your ex back if they are in a new relationship.
But we are kind of dancing around the big elephant in the room.
We still haven’t explained WHY exes move on so quickly. To be honest with you I struggled with this question for years before finding an answer that I felt made a lot of sense.
The Connection Between Avoidants And The Speed Of The Rebounds
Often when writing about avoidants you’ll see me cite the following poll,
Essentially it proves that most of our clients believe that their exes tend to have avoidant attachment styles. It’s the whole reason I’ve essentially dedicated all of 2022 to studying avoidant exes.
And you want to know what I’m learning?
That you can learn a lot about why exes act the way they act by simply understanding their psychology. Them jumping into another relationship is no different.
Take the avoidant death cycle as a perfect example.
This is essentially a graphic I put together to help explain the life cycle of a relationship for an avoidant. There are eight core parts to it.
I’ve talked about them extensively in many of our most recent articles in our blog.
The eight stages are;
The avoidant wants someone to love them
They enter into a relationship with you
They notice some worrying things in the relationship
They think of leaving you
They actually leave you
They are happy they left you
They begin to feel kind of lonely
They wonder why they can’t ever find anyone
I’ve always thought of the cycle as a wheel with each revolution claiming another relationship in its path. Now, for our purposes the important part of the graphic is actually this part here,
This essentially highlights that post breakup period and how an avoidant handles it. According to Free To Attach avoidants will often go through a “separation elation” period,
After a relationship ends, people with an avoidant attachment style tend not to show much anxiety or distress, often feeling an initial sense of relief at the relinquishing of obligations and the sense that they are regaining their self-identity, and not tending to initially miss their partner – this is “separation elation” as the pressure to connect is gone.
Which interestingly is followed pretty closely by a period of repression,
Experts in repressing emotions, they do not feel much initially, typically appear to recover quickly after relationships and can move on fast, more comfortable seeking a new pursuit situation. They envisage that a new person could be the solution to their woes.
So, this seems to line up pretty well with the rebound stereotype I just took aim at earlier. So, am I wrong or is there something I’m missing?
Well, what’s interesting is that while it is true that avoidants use rebounds to repress their emotions this is a coping mechanism that’s been present since childhood.
They don’t know any other way of “dealing with it.”
As such they jump from relationship to relationship and heal from breakups that way and it’s actually effective for them. In fact, one of the things we are finding is that the more “experience” your ex has of handling breakups in this way the more effective it is for them to “move on.”
But I’m getting off topic.
How Avoidants Truly View Jumping From Relationship To Relationship
Generally speaking new relationships are romanticized by avoidants. Remember, a contradiction lies at the heart of every avoidant,
A need to be love but a protective mechanism that prevents them from letting anyone get close enough to give them that love.
Naturally they prefer relationships where there are “no strings attached.”
Or no large threat to their independence.
Rebounds fit this criteria because ultimately in their head they have no intention of “falling for the other person.” Rather, it’s more about falling for the chase.
Romanticizing that honeymoon period.
But this is all happening subconsciously. Without their knowledge.
They start out every new relationship optimistic that things are going to work out. Remember the start of the death cycle?
“I just want someone to love me.”
This is ultimately what everyone thinks before entering into a relationship. Avoidants are no different at the beginning.
They fall for the honeymoon period. Things are looking great until the newness wears off and their avoidant tendencies begin to come to the forefront.
It always revolves around a threat to their independence.
Once that honeymoon period is over, once that rebound makes an attempt to draw them closer they begin to self sabotage the relationship. They want their independence back.
Jumping From Honeymoon To Honeymoon
I suppose the big thing I’d like you to take from this article is that avoidants don’t really view rebounds as viable on purpose.
Remember, their whole M.O. is that they want to keep their independence by any means necessary. So, the reason they jump so quickly from one relationship to the next is they are sucking up the honeymoon period out of each.
It’s a little like drinking a milkshake.
They get into a relationship with you, drink the honeymoon milkshake, but the second the shake goes dry is when their avoidant tendencies cause them to want to move on to someone else.
We Broke Up But Still Act Like A Couple
Jul 20, 2022
Today we’re going to talk about what it means when you’ve gone through a breakup with your ex but you are still acting like a couple.
And I’ve brought my new partner in crime, Shaunna Nicol, who just happens to be the newest addition to our coaching team to help me out with this article.
Really the two of us are going to take two tracks to help with understanding this complicated situation.
We are going to define what this looks like
We are going to talk about what it means when you are broken up but still act like a couple
Let’s begin.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Generally speaking when you are looking at a situation where you are still acting like a couple after a breakup we’ve found the following behaviors to be the most consistent among our clients,
Texting, calling, seeing regularly
Becoming intimate
Going on vacation/holiday
Going on dates together
I’d like to clarify a bit on two points in the list above.
Becoming intimate
Vacationing together
Most people naturally assume I’m talking about sleeping together with an ex when I mention intimacy but that’s not necessarily the case. This can be something as rudimentary as holding hands or even kissing.
The point is you are crossing over a line that friends should not cross and in my mind any physical touch that can escalate to sexual behavior can be viewed as over that line.
But let’s assume that you are still sleeping with your ex. Where this becomes more complicated is figuring out what their true intentions are. After all, we’ve definitely seen some exes be total jerks and just get back in touch or “play nice” so they can sleep with you.
As a general rule when we see people in a Friends with Benefits situation they’ll sleep with their ex, and then disappear.
Technically that’s an entirely different situation and not one we are talking about in relation to “being a couple.” After all, most relationships even if they aren’t in the best of shape don’t have one part ghosting you after a one night stand.
The next thing I’d like to clarify is actually an idea put forth by Coach Shaunna,
My example is if you share children, and you’re deciding to go away together with the children, that’s like mixed signals, it’s you spending time together as a family, even though you’re not a couple anymore. So it’s like, you don’t really know where you stand with the other half, but you’re still having that family time that family bond is still there.
One of the things that I think gets lost in translation is the idea of other people connecting you together. So, when you’re going on a vacation or a holiday, and you share kids together, it’s giving a lot of mixed signals to all involved and in a weird way, makes everyone’s life more difficult.
But the question that is haunting most of you is “Why?”
Why would an ex act like everything is fine around you and all the kids but refuse to commit?
What does it all mean?
Well, let’s talk a bit about that.
What Does It All Mean?
I think there are three main things you can point to when trying to explain this breakup behavior.
Classic avoidant where they are avoiding a commitment but still getting the benefits of a relationship
Fear of moving on (too scared to let you go), keeping you on the hook
Used to spending time together, habitual routines are embedded in their lives (NC analogy)
Let’s start first with avoidant behaviors
Understanding Classic Avoidant Tendencies
A few days ago I was working on an article about avoidants and if they feel guilt that I actually think is really relevant to this discussion.
One of the things that I found fascinating when I was researching this subject is how an avoidant will often hold on to guilt as an excuse to avoid a commitment.
And what I think usually happens when you go through a breakup with someone but they’re still acting like a couple, is that they are falling victim to very classic avoidant behavior where they avoid a commitment, but they’re still getting the benefits of a relationship.
So the avoidant, you need to understand, they have this contradictory nature, which is, on the one hand, they want love. And on the other hand, they don’t want to let anyone close enough to give them that love. And so they’re constantly at odds with themselves.
Ultimately what we’re seeing with this behavior is an extension of that contradiction.
So you get into a relationship with them, they break up with you but they still want to act like a couple, because they still want that the benefits that you get from being in a couple, but they don’t like the commitment.
And so they’re kind of keeping you in an arm’s length by still having their cake and eating it too.
Your Ex Is Too Scared To Fully Let You Go
The next explanation is something directly from Shaunna so I’ll just quote her directly,
So what I was saying was the fear of like letting that person go, you don’t want to be with them. But you also don’t want them to move on. You want them like on the hook so that you can come back to them if you don’t find somebody better. So spending that time with him, making sure that they’re still there hoping that you’re going to change your mind, you’re gonna come back to them.
What I find really interesting about this is that when you pair it with the avoidant concept it almost seemingly contradicts itself.
But what’s important to remember is that there’s two types of avoidants there’s the dismissive avoidant, which usually is all in on avoidant behaviors, and then there’s the fearful avoidant.
Dismissive
Fearful
So I would argue that most of the people that are broken up with you, but still act like a couple are more likely to be fearful avoidants and not dismissive avoidants. So like Shauna says they’re afraid of letting you move on. They don’t want to let you go. So the keeping you on the hook, that’s really their anxious side coming out and taking control.
But there’s a strange subtext to all of this. An underlying jealousy aspect here. Like they know, they’re not going to do well with jealousy. If they let you go, and you’re with someone else they know they aren’t going to be able to handle that. They don’t want to see you happy with anyone else except them, but at the same time they don’t want to get into a full blown relationship with you.
And that’s really their anxious side coming out again with the jealousy but they then they get ruled by their avoidant side.
So they’re constantly at odds with one another.
And this, this is often really classic with why the mixed signals are happening because people, when they get into relationships with fearful avoidants are often left really confused.
Because on one hand, their ex is giving them very like, Hey, we’re still together type signals.
And then on the other hand, they’re like, No, we’re not together. And the mixed signals confuse people. And that’s really common for a fearful avoidant individual.
The Habitual Routine
When you’ve been together for a while you fall into this routine and this habit of spending time with that person, talking to that person.
And we see it with most of the clients that come to the program, they, they are so obsessed with reaching out to their ex, they need to speak to their ex, they’re just thinking about what they’re doing, why, what who they spending time with.
And that’s why we enforce the No Contact Rule telling them that they need to spend that time not focusing on their ex, whereas those that fall into the habits can’t seem to just pull themselves away.
Sign #1: Pay Attention To The Way Your Ex Speaks To You
As stated above, Coach Shaunna and I teamed up for this article and one of her contributions was pulling from her own personal experience in paying attention to the way your ex speaks to you after the breakup.
Using her exact words,
So I was thinking, the way your ex speaks to you can be indicative of a lot of things. Most people think it’s a bad thing if an ex is really angry with you but we’ve actually found that, that particular behavior usually shows that he still cares. On the other side of the coin, if he’s really nice to you and doing all these little sweet things it’s sort of like there’s a little remnant left over from the relationship that he can’t contain.
Shaunna continues,
I myself am an EBR success story, and pulling from my experience during the post breakup period. Well, my now husband and I, we obviously have pet names for each other and sometimes he’d accidentally call me by the pet name while we were broken up.
Essentially Shaunna’s argument is to pay attention to the way your ex is speaking to you when you’re communicating in the post breakup period. If they’re falling back into old habits, like names, certain turns of phrases, I guess, even like inside jokes would be included here.
One final thing I’d like to include here. If you ex is growing angry with you it doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. In fact, in most cases it’s the opposite.
Believe it or not, we’d actually much rather see that as a sign that an ex is still attached to you because usually the signs that an ex is kind of moving on from you are when they’re indifferent, or they are using their own indefinite version of no contact on you. Which I think is a really, really important distinction to make because the opposite of love isn’t hate its indifference.
But why don’t we move on to the next sign.
Sign #2: Looking At How Much Time They Are Investing Into You
If your ex is in a situation where they’re taking a lot of time and spending time with you then obviously there’s still something that they’re interested in.
In fact, in a weird way, paying attention to how long they’re spending in conversations with you is a good thing. I know this is kind of a loose connection a little bit but one of the things I’ve noticed is that exes who are really investing a lot of time energy into you, they tend to text you with longer sort of word counts and text messages.
So I actually think paying attention to stuff that most people would gloss over like,
Word count
Text ratio
The times they are texting you
How long the conversation goes for
All of that stuff is a good way of determining if your ex is still attached
In fact, Shaunna and I were actually doing a joint coaching call last week with someone and one of the suggestions we had was revolving around the importance of tracking text messages and things like that. So you can actually pay attention to this kind of stuff.
Let’s move on!
Sign #3: Your Ex Finds Excuses To Reach Out To You
This sign revolves around your ex making up ridiculous and sometimes funny excuses to reach out to you.
Again, this is one of Shaunna’s contributions so I’ll let her exact words guide us here,
So obviously, we encourage our clients to reach out during the texting phase but if your ex is reaching out to you on their own accord for seemingly minimal things then it’s time to pay attention to their behaviors. Pulling from a personal experience, when I was apart from my ex, obviously, the conversations that we’d be having were such that I’d almost question why my ex was even asking me about those things was. So it was things like, Oh, do you know what day one of our children had an appointment? And I was like, you already know, it’s that day. And then the next question was just so, trivial attempts to get a conversation going.
Shaunna’s answer her kind of triggered me because looking back at some of my breakups I’ve literally been in similar shoes where you run out of things to talk about. But you want to keep someone talking. So you’re just grasping for straws. And so you’re just throwing anything out there.
So, the big takeaway here is that if you notice your ex asking you;
Questions that they already know the answers to
Prolonging a conversation
Usually those are good signs.
Sign #4: Your Ex Having One Of Their Friends Spy On You
Sign number four revolves around your ex having one of their friends spy on you.
So, one of the things that we’ve been seeing a lot lately is the people undervaluing sort of the concept of sphere of influence,
The sphere of influence for an ex, or even for you are sort of these people that you surround yourself with, who influence your life in a positive way, they impact your life in a positive way.
these are friends
close family members
lovers
romantic partners
whatever
But these are the people that you’re surrounding yourself with that kind of shape the way you view the world and what’s interesting is that sometimes when you get into relationships with, you know, like an ex or something your sphere of influence and their sphere of influence almost kind of overlap a little bit.
And so there’s like this interesting overlap where maybe you have some mutual friends, but if, let’s say you do have a mutual friend with your ex, but that mutual friend goes back a little bit further with your ex.
One of the interesting things we’ve been noticing is that your ex will almost use that mutual friend as a way to spy on you, especially if you’re doing the No Contact Rule.
Or I guess in a weird way, sometimes some of our clients will block their ex is from seeing them on Facebook or what have you.
But that doesn’t mean that their exes aren’t interested in what you’re doing.
So, if you’re finding that all of a sudden this mutual friend that you were kind of cordial with but didn’t really talk to a lot with is talking to you and trying to ask you questions that are not part of the norm then they’re most likely being sent by their ex to pay attention to what you’re doing, and reporting that back to their ex.
I’ve actually experienced this firsthand with one of my very first breakups ever. All of a sudden, this girl’s best friend wanted to talk to me. And I think I was dumb enough to actually have like a three hour conversation with her I just poured it all out and of course, the girl went right back to my ex girlfriend and told her everything that I had said.
So yeah, basically, having one of one of your exes, friends or mutual friends spying on you is indicative of the fact that they’re still attached to you.
Let’s move on.
Sign #5: Your Ex Begins To Employ Jealousy
This one is super straightforward.
If your ex is trying to make you jealous then they are still very attached to you.
In fact, Shaunna herself has a specific example of this playing out for one of our clients.
Once again quoting her,
Yeah, we had one person post about how their ex worked with them, and they’d met someone else through work. And he made changes to spend time with this new person spending lunch with them. And obviously, the person in the group was really upset. Like he didn’t do these things for me. But we were like, yeah, they’re just trying to get a reaction. They want you to act.
Personally I think that there’s that aspect of jealousy go a layer deeper. Generally speaking, the rule of thumb when it comes to jealousy is again that age old phrase opposite of love isn’t hate, its indifference.
There’s almost like a certain revenge aspect to jealousy I’ve found. Usually an ex who tries to make you jealous, is trying to get back at you at some way.
They’re trying to kind of, for lack of a better word, sort of stick it to you like “win” the breakup in some way. They come away with the attitude of, “I’m going to show you how much better I’m doing without you.”
But in the end, it’s kind of a hollow pursuit. Most of the time it doesn’t seem help and so this is the difficult part I’ve noticed with ywith jealousy. The initially do it as some are sort of like a vengeance tactic to kind of quote unquote, win the breakup, but it is hollow I think in the fact that it’s usually only after the fact after the dust is settled that they realize how how immature it is and how ridiculous it is.
I’ve seen some really ridiculous really upsetting jealousy things like we once had someone in the Facebook group have their ex literally post a picture of him in bed with another woman to try to make the person jealous, which is just really wrong on so many levels.
But in a weird way.
It makes me also question the sanity of the girl that was willing to pose in bed with this guy because no I don’t think I don’t think any woman wants to be like a second wheel so it’s almost like are you still so hung up on your ex that you’re willing to do this so that’s why we say that your ex is usually still attached to you if you’re if they’re still hung up enough to want to get sort of this revenge through through jealousy but I’m just going on and on let’s move on to sign number six
Sign #6: Your Ex Drops Everything To Help You Solve A Problem
Once again, this was Shaunna’s contribution.
So, I’ll just quote her here,
So I was saying that if you needed help with something, advice or health care related and your ex drops everything to help you when they don’t need to it’s usually a good sign. Usually if they’re not interested they’d be like, nope, sorry, I’m busy. Whereas I found that with my situation, if I needed help, he’d be like, “Yeah, no problem on my way.” That’s been my experience.
Believe it or not but I think my wife, when she was really, really involved in the group, she sort of came up with this text message that was sort of coined the damsel in distress text message, which is to kind of like manufacture this purposeful situation where you’re almost testing to see if your ex is willing to jump through these hoops for you.
We’ve had some like, actually a godly amount of success with this type of a text message.
And I think what Shaunna is talking about here kind of harkens back to that concept of, you know, you’ve got this problem, and your ex really wants to help you solve it, they’re willing to jump through these hoops.
Does The Silent Treatment Work On An Ex?
Jul 05, 2022
Today I’m going to answer if the silent treatment actually works on an ex.
In my humble opinion, the silent treatment can be effective on an ex if you want to get them back and if you want to get over them. However, in both cases it requires you to have great emotional control and the ability to take your ex down off the pedestal you probably placed them on.
I’d like to have an open and honest discussion about how many of my peers warp the silent treatment (in the form of the no contact rule) for their own gain and completely miss the point. So today, here’s some of the things I’m going to dig in on,
The Silent Treatment Breakup Vs. Relationships
What Our Internal Research Has Shown About The Effectiveness Of The Silent Treatment
Finding A Worthwhile Purpose Outside Of Your Ex During The Silent Treatment
Let’s begin!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
The Silent Treatment Breakup Vs. Relationships (An Honest Discussion)
I think there’s a common misunderstanding that most people have when they hear about the silent treatment.
They believe it’s a perfect strategy to use to gain their partners attention but what’s often missed is this,
The silent treatment should only be used for a small period of time after a breakup and not during a relationship
I know this seems like a simple concept but you’d be surprised at how many of our clients miss this completely and almost fall in love with constantly using a no contact rule in their relationships to punish their partner.
So, here’s my declaration. Everything I’m about to say and break down about the silent treatment should really only be used on an ex who has broken up with you.
Got it?
Good!
Of course, most of the people who are probably reading this article have been broken up with from an ex and are often left reeling. Often, they’ve surfed online and learned a bit of the lingo revolving around the no contact rule and how it’s sold as the foundational strategy upon which your ex will want you back.
If you haven’t then allow me to quickly educate you. Most of my peers define the no contact rule as,
A period of time where you ignore your ex (no matter what) in an attempt to make your ex miss you.
And yes, technically that can happen. However, when studying real people going through real breakups the results of what actually works might surprise you.
The Internal Research On The Effectiveness Of The Silent Treatment
I think the first question we need to answer revolving around this isn’t so much dissecting the effectiveness of the silent treatment. We will do that for sure in a moment. I actually think we need to create parameters for what an effective silent treatment looks like?
Usually it’s revolving around reactions.
So, you use this period of no contact on your ex and they react in some way that indicates they miss you.
Some of the best examples include,
Literally telling you they miss you
Texting or calling you excessively
Showing up to your house unannounced
Asking for you back
Well, I hate to burst your bubble but more often than not the silent treatment isn’t going to yield these results. And that’s really my problem with the breakup industry. Many of my peers (and I suppose even there was a time I was guilty of this) but many of my peers they’ll frame the silent treatment or the no contact rule as a guaranteed way of getting these results.
What does the actual research say?
In 2020 I decided to poll our private facebook support group full of people utilizing the no contact rule (a form of the silent treatment) and literally ask them how often their exes reached out to them during it,
62% of individuals who responded to that poll said that their exes did not reach out to them at all during the no contact rule.
What does this tell us?
Put simply, the silent treatment doesn’t work the way you think it does to make an ex miss you.
Why?
Well, we think it has something to do with attachment styles. Specifically the avoidant attachment style which many of our clients exes tend to veer towards,
One of the interesting thing about avoidant individuals is that after a breakup they aren’t likely to reach out to you. In fact, they are more dedicated to reclaiming their independence or distracting themselves from the pain but eventually the toll will come.
In this video,
I make the argument that,
Avoidants are free to long for an ex once that person is unavailable out of the relationship, and typically out of contact so they are untouched by actual engagement and their deactivation systems aren’t triggered, revealing their long-suppressed attachment and switching their operating attachment wound from the fear of engulfment to fear of abandonment.
So, only when they feel safe, aka;
You’ve moved on to someone else
They’ve moved on to someone else
A lot of time has gone by
Will the avoidant ex will give themselves permission to daydream about your time together. This is why we are flushed with so many stories of exes coming back into the picture months to years after the initial breakup.
So, this seems to indicate that even though an ex isn’t likely to reach out to you during a no contact rule the silent treatment might be essential for helping them to eventually reach out. So, it’s still an important part of the process.
Yet my team and I have learned something else interesting about the silent treatment and that leads to perhaps the biggest point of a silent treatment on an ex.
Find A Worthwhile Purpose You Care About More Than Your Ex During Your Silent Treatment
In 2020 we started really studying our success stories to figure out what separated people who succeeded in the art of getting an ex back versus the people who didn’t succeed.
Our big takeaway from this practice was that what separated successful individuals was that they embraced one simple philosophy.
They found some purpose that they cared about more than their ex before they started talking to their ex again.
As weird as this sounds half of the battle when it comes to ex recovery revolves around life coaching. About finding that magnum opus type purpose. I was just on a coaching call the other day and you’d be surprised at how difficult finding a purpose outside of an ex is for some people.
Here’s my point.
What you do during a no contact rule is even more important than if it’s working.
Don’t be fooled or seduced by the crazy stories you hear online of these men or women who implement a no contact rule and their ex comes running back. You can’t take a chance that you are the exception to the rule. A much better use of your time is to use it productively in pursuit of a goal that means just as much to you as your ex.
For some that’s creating a business
For others that’s painting a piece of art
Maybe it’s writing a book
Recording music
Being a better father
A better mother
Devote yourself to that purpose. Become a master and your ex will take notice. They’ll realize they’re missing out but that’s not the point. The point is you are realigning your priorities so that your world doesn’t revolve around your ex but rather this greater purpose.
You know you’ve found a worthwhile purpose when it’s all you can think about. Time and energy once spent on obsessing about an ex is now spent obsessing about achieving this goal outside of your ex.
Only then should you make a decision on if you want your ex back or not because it really puts your whole situation in perspective.
So, for me a silent treatment isn’t about manipulating an ex. It’s about taking back control of your life. Of course, it’s up to you to do that.
This Is Why Your Ex Is Flaunting His New Relationship On Social Media
Jun 21, 2022
Today we’re going to talk about why your ex is flaunting their new relationship all over social media. Unfortunately, this is something that we see a lot of in our private Facebook support group.
I’m of the opinion that there are four core reasons for why an ex would “flaunt” a relationship on social media.
Flaunting = Attention
The Vengeance Mentality
The Avoidant Relationship Death Wheel
The Jealousy/No Contact Factor
We’re going to spend some time today going through each of these core reasons so you have a greater understanding.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
We start first with a philosophical question about intent.
What separates an ex flaunting a relationship on social media versus them simply making their relationship official?
Well, let’s take some real life situations and show you an example of flaunting.
Flaunting:
Posting couple photos that are nearly identical to all of the ones you had together
Providing updates about taking the new person to a place you always wanted to go to
Updates EVERY. SINGLE. DAY
As a general rule every photo, post, video or quote is specifically targeting you
Not Flaunting:
Posting tasteful couple photos together
Clicking the “in a relationship” tag in Facebook
Updates every week/month
As a general rule every photo, post, video or quote is more about the other person or life in general and in no way connects to you
It’s been my experience that folks who flaunt tend to be all about garnering your attention in some way. I mean, think about the mere act of flaunting.
To flaunt a relationship, especially on social media, implies that you are seeking attention.
From other people
From your ex
From your new partner
It’s a sign of insecurity and a sense of unhappiness. Typically happy people don’t need to tell everyone how happy they are, they just are.
But what could your ex want attention for?
I think the motives of flaunting are a lot more sinister than most people would have you believe and that leads us nicely to core reason number two.
Core Reason #2: The Vengeance Mentality
Put yourself in the shoes of someone wanting to “flaunt” a relationship in your face. There’s a certain admission there.
They want to “show you how good they have it.”
They want to “win the breakup.”
And how do you win the breakup?
Well, by finding someone better than your ex, right?
It harkens back to a much more primal need that exists in the human heart, a need for vengeance.
To do unto others the wrongs that have been done unto you and the great irony here is that most of the clients we work with have been broken up with, they are the victims, yet their exes claim that they themselves are the victims.
Which is selfish but very on brand for someone who has to use anger to craft this false reality.
Each of us is the hero of our own story but relationships often force us to be our true selves and sometimes we don’t like having the mirror shown in our face.
Here’s my point.
Many times an ex will feel that they have been wronged by you.
You have made them hurt.
So, they’ll flaunt a new relationship in your face to get back at you. To make you feel the hurt they are feeling.
Which is very on brand for avoidants.
Core Reason #3: The Avoidant Relationship Death Wheel
The vast majority of the exes we’ve studied have avoidant tendencies,
The avoidant aspect is an important piece of information to have because almost all avoidants fall victim to the same cycle, this one,
Now, before I go into why this is relevant to “flaunting” relationships I would like to read you a quote from one of my favorite websites regarding avoidant attachment styles,
Once a breakup is enacted, the avoidant person must justify it to themselves and others. Central to the dismissive subconscious worldview is to expect partners to be too demanding and troublesome, so they will look out for anything that can justify this, regardless of how accurate it really is.
That’s important because of this tiny part of the wheel right here,
Usually what happens is that they use those “worrying things” as an excuse for why the person they are dating is not “the one.”
Of course, if you look at their past relationship history that’s what you tend to find with all of their relationships. There’s always an excuse for what was wrong with the person.
It’s a perfect deactivating strategy to ensure that they don’t ever have to get close to anyone.
After all, an avoidants idea of a perfect relationship is one that they can fawn over from afar without actually risking being hurt.
Where it’s relevant to our purposes is that they often use the “worrying things” to break up with you and then move on to the next person who they then put through the wheel.
But it’s easy to get caught up in its own hype.
Look at the second part of the wheel. That’s the sunshine and roses portion. One where they get caught up in the honeymoon period of the new relationship. The part where they might actually believe that this new person is better than you because at first they are.
Don’t you see how easy it is to rub that feeling into your face?
Yet it’s a fleeting thing.
With enough time the honeymoon period of this rebound wears off, they find some worrying things and on and on it goes.
I’d actually say paying attention to how quickly your ex starts flaunting the new relationship in your face is an important consideration to make.
Of course, there’s one other core variation my team and I have noticed over the years with flaunting.
Core Reason #4: Jealous/No Contact
The no contact rule has been widely talked about throughout the history of this website.
For reference, our official definition is as follows,
The no contact rule refers to a period of time where you cut off all conceivable communication with an ex after a breakup. The intent of this tactic should NOT be used to make your ex miss you but instead should be used to rebuild your own life so that you outgrow your ex. By doing this, the no contact rule can have the added benefit of making an ex miss you
No matter how you slice it you will be using a no contact rule to take a break from your ex from anywhere between 21-45 days.
However, success isn’t always linear and exes aren’t always quiet. Sure, the majority of exes actually don’t reach out to you during no contact.
But the ones that do…
Oh boy, do they reach out to you and when they encounter a wall of silence in return this just feeds into that theory of reactance.
In case you aren’t familiar, the no contact rule revolves around a psychological theory called reactance,
Reactance is an unpleasant motivational arousal that emerges when people experience a threat to or loss of their free behaviors. It serves as a motivator to restore one’s freedom.
So, here’s my hypothesis.
Sometimes in an effort to get your attention (factor #1) and as a way to get revenge (factor #2) they’ll flaunt a new relationship as a way to get you to break no contact.
Their weapon of choice, jealousy.
So, I guess you could say that factor #4 here is a combination of all the factors that came before it.
One constant remains though.
Flaunting = A Need For Attention
Your ex wants your attention and they’ll do anything to get it. Even flaunting a rebound in front of your face.
Does Disappearing On Your Ex Really Work?
Jun 13, 2022
Today we’re going to talk about if “disappearing” on your ex is a viable strategy to re-attract them. In other words, does it work?
I’m of the opinion that while each breakup is unique with its own set of circumstances, in general, disappearing on your ex for a certain amount of time can be effective if you do the right things during it.
What are those right things? We’ll that’s what we are going to talk about today as well as the following things,
The No Contact Rule
Reactance And Avoidant Nostalgia
Understanding The Habit Rule
Learning From Our Success Stories
That’s a lot to cover so let’s begin.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
A lot of times when the experts out there are talking about “disappearing” on an ex they’re really referring to the no contact rule.
As you can see from the google trends chart below,
Interest in the concept has been steadily increasing as the years go by. So, what exactly is the no contact rule?
Well, our official definition is as follows,
The no contact rule refers to a period of time where you cut off all conceivable communication with an ex after a breakup. The intent of this tactic should NOT be used to make your ex miss you but instead should be used to rebuild your own life so that you outgrow your ex. By doing this, the no contact rule can have the added benefit of making an ex miss you.
The thing about the no contact rule is it truly varies based on who you talk to and the advice they give. The elements remain largely the same though,
You ignore your ex
For a certain period of time
With the hope that they’ll miss you
It’s that last part that usually serves as the primary motivation for completing a no contact rule but I’m always puzzled by the fact that most people don’t really do the work to understand WHY the no contact works.
If they did so they’d literally have a better understanding on why disappearing on your ex suddenly works.
There’s actually two core engines powering the no contact rule.
Reactance And Nostalgia The Two Engines That Make No Contact Work
Let’s turn to Wikipedia to help us with our understanding of reactance.
Reactance is an unpleasant motivational reaction to offers, persons, rules, or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms. Reactance occurs when a person feels that someone or something is taking away their choices or limiting the range of alternatives.
So, by implementing a no contact rule you take away the option an ex has of talking to you which inherently makes them more likely to react in a way to try to get that option back.
This is often the first engine that folks point to when they argue the no contact rules effectiveness but personally, I’ve found it to be overrated.
In fact, a recent study of my clients found that on average most exes won’t even reach out to you during no contact.
62% of people if we’re splitting hairs.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that reactance isn’t a big deal, it is and it certainly plays an important role for the effectiveness of disappearing but I’ve actually found the second engine to be a lot more helpful.
I’ve been doing a lot of research on avoidants this year. So much so, in fact that I’ve written 12 articles about them and I’ve referred to them in dozens of other articles.
I was inspired to do so after I learned that the vast majority of our clients exes have avoidant tendencies,
So, what does that mean?
Well, someone with an avoidant personality has one consistent theme throughout their life. They are fiercely protective of their independence so any slight perceived as threatening that independence causes them to run away.
Yet they live a great paradox.
They want love but they won’t let anyone close enough to provide that love.
Which leaves them in a really difficult position.
In researching them I actually stumbled across this gem of a website, Free To Attach, which taught me,
Avoidants are free to long for an ex once that person is unavailable out of the relationship, and typically out of contact so they are untouched by actual engagement and their deactivation systems aren’t triggered, revealing their long-suppressed attachment and switching their operating attachment wound from the fear of engulfment to fear of abandonment.
I cover this idea a lot more “in-depth” in the following video,
But my argument is a simple one.
By implementing a no contact rule you actually put forth signals that you have moved on which actually signals to the avoidant that they can actually begin feeling nostalgia towards you.
That’s the funny thing about avoidant individuals they literally won’t give themselves permission to miss you until they feel safe doing so which only happens if they feel like you aren’t a threat to their independence.
The no contact rule solves that nicely.
Yet there’s a delicate line you have to walk because too much space also allows them time to move on so that brings us to the next big thing we need to answer.
How much “disappearing” is too much disappearing?
Learning The Habit Rule
The no contact rule isn’t supposed to be permanent if you want to get your ex back or recover the relationship. It is supposed to be permanent if you want to get over them.
I’m just going to write to those individuals who are trying to get their exes back since those are the individuals who most likely will be searching for this resource.
Generally speaking the no contact rule has a lot of different “end points.”
Some experts swear by the 30 day rule
Some the 60 day rule
Some the 90 day rule
What is the right time frame?
Well, before I tell you that first a little psychology. Have you ever stopped and asked yourself how long it takes to either make or break a habit?
The real range of answers varied widely. Anywhere from 18 days to 254 days.
But let’s just use 66 days as our average baseline.
Theoretically if your ex wanted to purge themselves of all thoughts of you. If they wanted to get out of the habit of hurting over you. If they wanted to completely get over you it could take them 66 days.
Side Note: It’s been my experience that exes rarely can get out of the habit of the love withdrawal that quickly so don’t freak out if that seems quick. It’s usually not. Remember, I’m just using the 66 day time frame as an example.
So, assuming you are trying to get them back why would you help them along?
Yes, giving them space at first is a very good idea. It allows that avoidant nostalgia to kick in but don’t be fooled into thinking some avoidant nostalgia is enough to win an ex back, it’s not.
Eventually that nostalgia will fade and your ex will be on to greener pastures.
This is why we offer three official time frames for the no contact rule,
The 21 day rule
The 30 day rule
The 45 day rule
Lately we’ve seen the most success with our 45 day rule but I want you to take note that none of these time frames go above the 66 day habit rule.
This is by design.
There is one more small order of business we need to discuss though.
What We Learned From Our Success Stories About Disappearing
If you haven’t visited our success story page I urge you to do so. We have a ton of great interviews and even a cool video,
Thus far I have veered this article to talk about why disappearing from an ex works.
We’ve talked about how it plays into avoidant nostalgia and how you have to walk this tightrope between disappearing too much and too little.
But there’s one final element that our success stories taught me.
If you notice the timestamps on when I interviewed a lot of these success stories on our success story page you’d notice that a lot of them started being interviewed in 2020.
Really that’s when I started studying what set these individuals apart from the non successful ones.
We learned a lot. It’s actually what made me take a deeper look at attachment styles. But ultimately the big takeaway I learned from them had more to do with time management.
Specifically what they were doing with their time during the no contact rule. I noticed that the most successful individuals literally used that time away from their ex to find a greater purpose in their life.
They essentially found emotional leverage.
As you can imagine our average client wants their ex back. They’ll literally upend their entire lives to make this happen which I suppose in a way is a bit admirable that they care so much about this other person.
But it doesn’t play well with the avoidant phenomenon. They often can’t help themselves when they inevitably get back in touch with their ex.
They act anxious and desperate.
What made the successful individuals so successful was their ex was no longer their first priority. They went into meeting their ex again with a quiet confidence that even if a worst case scenario unfolded they’d be fine.
They have this other goal to accomplish.
And that’s what sets them apart. Find something you care about more than your ex before you talk to them and your ex won’t have an emotional sway over you anymore.
Today we’re going to talk about what you should say to your ex before you implement a no contact rule. Well, technically we’re going to talk about if you should say anything or not before you start no contact.
In my opinion, the no contact rule is more effective if you do it without any kind of warning.
And in this guide I’m going to show you why by talking about the following things,
Why I Believe The No Contact Rule Is Stronger Without Any Type Of Warning
Breaking Down The Psychological Components Of No Contact
How Avoidant Exes Play Into This
How You Can Actually Talk To Your Ex Indirectly Through No Contact
Let’s begin!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
I Believe The No Contact Rule Is Stronger Without Any Type Of Warning
I’m going to be operating under the assumption that you are utilizing the no contact rule as a means to win your ex back.
After all, if you are using the no contact rule to get over your ex my recommendation would be to simply do it indefinitely.
Meaning you are leaving your ex forever and won’t be talking to them again. So, assuming you are trying to get your ex back let’s just cut right to the chase.
I believe the no contact rule is stronger without any type of warning before you begin ignoring.
For reference, the differences between the two are easy to understand.
The No Contact Rule: You completely ignoring your ex from anywhere between 21-45 days. Again, you are supposed to use this time to outgrow your ex but unfortunately that always seems to get lost in the shuffle.
The Limited No Contact Rule: You doing the best to ignore your ex for 21-45 days in a situation where it’s technically impossible to completely ignore them. You share kids together. You work together. You live together. You get the idea
Now, I bring up the limited no contact rule because I want to have an honest discussion on why it’s not as effective as the traditional no contact rule.
You’ll find that only a handful of our success stories actually used the limited no contact rule. It’s not that you can’t successfully win your ex back with it but it can lose its effectiveness if you are constantly having to talk to your ex during it.
It’s the same reason this chart exists,
Now, I say all of this because warning your ex that you are going to be ignoring them lets them know there is an end in sight when you don’t really want them to know that there is an end in sight.
Is it the mature thing to do? Absolutely.
Is it the most effective thing to do? Absolutely not.
And I think this is because of the main psychological component that makes the no contact rule so effective.
Breaking Down The Psychological Components Of What Make No Contact So Effective
The no contact rule revolves around a concept called “reactance.”
Reactance is an unpleasant motivational reaction to offers, persons, rules, or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms. Reactance occurs when a person feels that someone or something is taking away their choices or limiting the range of alternatives.
The very reason the no contact rule is effective is that it limits your exes freedom to talk to you.
Now, I suppose an argument can be made that if you warn your ex that you are going to do this beforehand it can improve the effectiveness but I haven’t found that to be the case.
Usually when you warn an ex they know what to expect and they actually are given a light at the end of the tunnel.
Saying,
“You know, I’m going to take 30 days for myself. See you then.”
It doesn’t really work the way you think it does.
Being a dismissive avoidant myself I would read that as,
Cool, I’ll see you in 30 days.
In an odd way you give an ex exactly what they want. A break from the breakup.
It’s way more effective to do it without warning. Without the knowledge that there is an end in sight. That’s what elicits those famous reactions you see everyone talking about with no contact.
Now, I mentioned I’m a dismissive avoidant. Believe it or not that factors into this greatly.
How Avoidant Attachment Style Factors In
Ok, this is super relevant for a lot of reasons. Firstly, because most of the clients we help have avoidant exes,
We have a lot of experience studying what an actual no contact will do to an avoidant. It’s actually not as basic as you would think but more on that in a second.
The other thing I’d like to point out is that a lot of times your ex won’t be reaching out to you during this period of no contact,
This is precisely because most exes that come through our program are avoidant. So, in a way they want the space no contact can give them.
Weird, right?
Well, it actually revolves around a concept called avoidant nostalgia that I talk about in depth in this video,
To quote from the video,
Avoidants are free to long for an ex once that person is unavailable out of the relationship, and typically out of contact so they are untouched by actual engagement and their deactivation systems aren’t triggered, revealing their long-suppressed attachment and switching their operating attachment wound from the fear of engulfment to fear of abandonment.
So, the key factor to take from this is that it’s only when the threat of a reconciliation has been removed that the avoidant will have this nostalgia and longing for an ex can occur.
By warning an ex that the no contact will not be permanent it can actually make things worse as they know that on date “X” you’ll be reaching out again and they’ll have to have their guard up.
Besides, it’s not like you won’t be communicating with them during a no contact rule. You will, it’ll just be indirectly which is far more effective we’ve found.
How You Can Actually Talk To Your Ex Indirectly Through No Contact
Yesterday I wrote an article about if it’s healthy to keep in touch with an ex.
My argument is that it’s only healthy to get back in touch with an ex if you have gotten to a place emotionally where you have outgrown them.
That’s the big “A Ha” moment we’ve had in our coaching practice. Really what you are doing with your time during the no contact rule is super important. Every fiber of your being should be committed to outgrowing your ex and sharing that journey on social media.
Why?
Well, statistics have consistently shown that over 80% of exes will facebook stalk. It’s natural to want to see what your ex is up to after a breakup.
We all harbor in our hearts a hope that the person is devastated and broken without us.
This hope is doubled when you consider the fact that you are using a no contact rule on your ex so there has been no direct communication for weeks.
The only window into your life your ex should have should be from afar, indirectly.
And the only thing your ex should be seeing you is you making meaningful progress without them. Which harkens back to what we know about avoidants.
Remember, they only feel “safe” missing you when they feel like you’ve moved on from them. If all they are seeing from afar is you outgrowing them they may give themselves permission to start missing you sooner.
All in all, this is all a fancy way of saying that I don’t think it’s a good idea to warn your ex that you are going to go into a no contact rule.
You can undo progress before it even happens.
I’m going to leave you with one final piece of advice that editors will often give to their writers.
Don’t tell me the story, show it to me.
When in doubt show your ex that you are in a no contact, don’t tell them.
Is It Healthy To Keep In Touch With An Ex?
Jun 08, 2022
Today we’re going to talk about if it’s healthy to keep in touch with an ex.
In my opinion, staying in touch with your ex without the right type of mindset only serves to feed the addictive nature of the breakup. Therefore, it’s only healthy to get back in touch with an ex if you have gotten to a place emotionally where you have outgrown them.
Now, there’s a lot to cover here around the psychology of what occurs when you stay in touch with an ex after a breakup. Here’s a list of a few of the things we’re going to be talking about,
Staying In Touch With Them Should Depend On Your Situational Factors And Goals
Learning How Often Exes Stay In Touch With One Another
What Usually Happens When They Stay In Touch
Viewing Your Breakup As An Addiction
The Importance Of The “Outgrowth Mindset”
Let’s begin!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Staying In Touch With Them Should Depend On Your Situational Factors And Goals
Let’s answer the ultimate question first before we start picking apart the psychology.
Should you stay in touch with your ex after your breakup?
In my opinion, it really depends on two things.
Your Overall Goals
Your Situational Factors
Now, what do I mean when I talk about these two things?
Your Overall Goal
Here I’m simply referring to if you want to try to get your ex back or not.
Generally speaking everyone who comes to this website is at a crossroad,
They are figuring out if they want to try to get their ex back
They are also figuring out if they want to get over their ex
Generally speaking if you want to get your ex back that only really can happen if you get back in touch with them again after the breakup.
However, we’ve actually seen better results for individuals who want to get over their ex by simply entering into a period of indefinite no contact.
Of course, there are some situations where you will be forced to interact with your ex after a breakup no matter what.
Your Situational Factors
These are essentially factors that cause you to interact with your ex no matter what you do.
You share a child with an ex
You share a house with your ex
You work together with them
In these types of situations you are going to be forced to interact with them. Of course, how you interact with them is an important thing to consider. My recommendation would be to read this article if you want a full breakdown.
For now let’s move on.
What Are Statistics Saying On How Often Exes Stay In Touch With One Another?
What has always aggravated me about the scientific community was how little research is made publicly available around breakups.
In fact, I’ve never once been able to find a reputable study (save my own internal ones) about the average chances someone has of getting their ex back.
Interestingly though, a recent study was released detailing how often exes stay in touch with one another after a breakup.
Lindsay Rodriguez studied 260 undergraduate students who had moved on from their breakup with someone else. She was interested in finding out how many of them kept in touch with a previous ex. Turns out 40% of individuals did keep in touch with their exes.
Of course, the study, like all breakup studies, was a bit flawed for our purposes here.
It’s only taking a look at individuals who had current partners. I’m willing to bet that if you focused on everyone during the post breakup period the real number would be a lot higher.
So, what should we take from this?
Well, it’s really normal for exes to keep in touch with one another but that doesn’t really answer our question on if it’s healthy for the individual.
I think probably looking at what happens after most exes stay in touch with each other is a good thing to consider.
What Usually Happens To Ex Couples That Stay In Touch?
Once again, I’d like to pull from that Lindsay Rodriguez study because it actually backs up what we’ve been seeing in the field ourselves.
Most people didn’t communicate with their ex too often, but a small subgroup—13 percent—had contact with exes several times a week.
So, this tells us that most likely when you stay in touch with an ex the communication will fizzle out.
Well, either that or you’ll end up in a massive argument.
This actually tracks with what we know about avoidant individuals. If you look at my handy dandy avoidant death wheel you’ll notice that right in this area after a breakup,
They start to feel nostalgia toward you and are a lot more likely to give in to it but that doesn’t mean it’s long lasting. Often, unless you have the right mindset, getting back in touch with you retriggers their trauma and causes them to run again.
Avoidants are fun, aren’t they?
It’s Best To View Your Breakup As An Addiction
In 2010 the Journal of Neurophysiology, decided to study the brains of 15 recently dumped individuals. What they found was fascinating,
Essentially the parts of the brain that “lit up” during heartbreak were the exact same parts of the brain that lit up when a drug addict was going through a withdrawal period.
Specifically the Nucleus Accumbens,
But what does that mean for our discussion in this article?
Well, it’s actually best to view your breakup with your ex as an addiction. Often if you don’t have self control and you go back into a discussion with them it’s akin to feeding that addiction.
And really that’s the moral of the story.
If you want me to level with you on what I think sets our coaching practice apart from all the others out there it’s probably our ability to get people into the right frame of mind before they even think about reaching out to their exes.
Adopting An “Outgrowth” Mindset
While 2020 was one of the worst years on record due to the coronavirus it was personally the year that Ex Boyfriend Recovery underwent a pretty major philosophical shift.
Specifically as it relates to our approach on dealing with exes. It all stemmed from a series of studies I did where I interviewed our success stories.
I was trying to determine what made our successes so successful and I stumbled across a handful of trends.
Almost every success story utilized a period of no contact
Each one cited this phenomenon where they had gotten to a point where they didn’t want their exes back anymore
It was that second point that stuck out to me.
For years I had been hearing about this phenomenon where our clients would try everything to get their exes back, inevitably fail, give up and then that’s when their ex came a knocking.
So, ever since learning this we’ve updated all of our official definitions to include “the outgrowth mindset.” In fact, we even redid the way we approached a no contact rule.
If you look at our official definition,
The no contact rule refers to a period of time where you cut off all conceivable communication with an ex after a breakup. The intent of this tactic should NOT be used to make your ex miss you but instead should be used to rebuild your own life so that you outgrow your ex. By doing this, the no contact rule can have the added benefit of making an ex miss you
The outgrowth mindset is found there. Here’s my point. If you do want to get back in touch with an ex then do not do so until you have gotten to a place emotionally where you have outgrown them.
Now, what does that mean?
It means you are willing to move on from them
It means you have found something that you care about more than them (not someone)
It means you are ok if you don’t get them back
I bring up the no contact rule because really the thing people fail with isn’t breaking it (they do that obviously). No, most of the time they don’t do any shadow work to get to that place emotionally where they are ok letting their ex go.
And there’s a psychological reason that this “outgrow your ex” mindset works.
Remember above I talked about the avoidant death wheel.
Well, if you dig into what makes an avoidant tick there’s a concept I’m always going on about called the nostalgia factor,
The way it works is simple.
Only once an ex has moved on from them or there is no perceived threat of “getting back together” will the avoidant give themselves permission to miss their exes and they’ll go through this period of nostalgia.
And what does an “outgrowth” mindset do?
Simple, it puts forth the attitude that you don’t want your ex back anymore which makes them more likely to respond favorably to you once you reach out to them.
How To Cope With A Breakup You Didn’t Want
Jun 06, 2022
Today we’re going to talk about the five core strategies you can use to cope with a breakup that you didn’t want.
In this in depth guide you’re going to learn,
Always Start With A No Contact
The Holy Trinity Global Vs. Local Goals
Finding A Magnum Opus Goal
Crafting Your Own Sphere Of Influence
You Are Responsible For Your Happiness, Not Your Ex
So, if you’re ready to go all in on learning the very best way to cope with a breakup you didn’t want then look no further because you are in the right place.
Let’s begin!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Strategy #1: Everything Starts With A No Contact Rule
If you aren’t familiar with the no contact rule then you have probably been living under a rock. I mean, even George Lucas has heard of it,
To quote Mr. Lucas,
And it really does come down to a simple rule of life. And the rule is, when you break up with somebody the first rule is no phone calls. The second one is you don’t go over to their house to see what they’re doing. The third one is you don’t go over to their coffee shop to check up on them. You just say nope, gone.
See, I told you the creator of Star Wars knew what a no contact rule is. Of course, our version of no contact is slightly different.
Here’s our definition,
The no contact rule refers to a period of time where you cut off all conceivable communication with an ex after a breakup. The intent of this tactic should NOT be used to make your ex miss you but instead should be used to rebuild your own life so that you outgrow your ex. By doing this, the no contact rule can have the added benefit of making an ex miss you
The keyword there being “outgrowing your ex.”
One of the biggest “A Ha” moments that my team and I have had in the last few years came when we were studying our success stories. If you aren’t familiar, from time to time we will interview someone who went through our program and successfully were able to recover their relationship with their ex.
We became obsessed with trying to understand what set the successful people apart from the unsuccessful ones. Turns out, it has more to do with their world view than anything else.
The people who did well with their exes got to this place emotionally where they literally didn’t want their ex back anymore. They had outgrown them.
That’s not to say that they wouldn’t take them back if the opportunity arose. Many of them clearly did. However, I think the key distinction is that these individuals knew they would be ok. They knew that life would go on. This too shall pass so to speak.
So, really that’s what we are all about here at Ex Boyfriend Recovery is helping you achieve this mentality and it really does start during no contact.
By limiting your contact with your ex in that post breakup period you keep the main thing the main thing. It allows you to focus on “the holy trinity.”
Strategy #2: The Holy Trinity Global And Local Goals
You are familiar with my holy trinity concept, right?
Basically you can divide your life up into three distinct categories in which everything can fall into.
Health
Wealth
Relationships
Use this graphic to help you understand the wide ranging implications of what is included,
But that’s actually not what I want to talk about today. What I’d like to talk about is a failing that most of our clients have when they come through our program.
Namely, they don’t set any global or local goals.
So, what are global or local goals?
Global Goals: Large goals that will take years to achieve
Local Goals: Are the smaller steps that help you achieve your global goal
For each aspect of the holy trinity you must first set a very large global goal. I’ve briefly touched on this concept in the past and used myself as a Guinea pig to illustrate the global goals.
Health: Complete An Iron Man Race
Wealth: Find A Way To Make 100 Million Dollars
Relationships: Be Present For My Family
Generally speaking it’s not a good global goal unless it seems sort of impossible to achieve and here’s perhaps the most difficult thing for people to wrap their heads around.
Once you achieve your global goal (if you do get lucky enough) you immediately set another global goal even higher than before.
So, circling back around to the whole reason this article is being written. Too often I’ll work with individuals only to find out that they haven’t really considered any of this for their lives.
Or they’ll literally talk themselves out of it claiming, “I could never achieve that.” They defeat themselves before they even try.
Let’s talk a bit now about setting your magnum opus goal.
Strategy #3: Finding A Worthy Magnum Opus Goal
The magnum opus goal is sort of different than your holy trinity goal.
Most of the time it can fit within one of the three categories. So, essentially by achieving your magnum opus goal you can fulfill all characteristics of the trinity.
My check for the magnum opus is often by asking myself one simple question.
If I were to do this for the rest of my life would I be happy?
If the answer is yes then that means you found a worthy magnum opus pursuit.
If the answer is no then you need to keep looking.
Once again, I’ll be happy to use myself as a guinea pig.
I’ve talked about this in the past before, I’m writing a fantasy novel and this may be a weird statement since I’ve never technically verbalized it but I guess I’m trying to create the next game of thrones.
Or at least something that is as revered as it was during its time.
I’m not arrogant enough to think that I’ll succeed. That’s not the point. The truth is that I’d be happy if the novel series is universally liked but never makes it onto the screen.
For me it’s more the process of creating that brings me joy and fulfillment.
But let’s have some fun with this and assume that the idea takes off and becomes something.
Technically speaking all three areas of the holy trinity will intersect and be fulfilled.
Health: I just said I’m happies creating
Wealth: Might be able to make a full time living from it
Relationships: I’d get to meet all kinds of amazing creatives (I already have actually)
It’s a worthy magnum opus pursuit.
Here’s the final thing I’ll say about it before I move on.
The magnum opus is more about lifelong dreams than anything. It’s ok to set out on a quest on some unobtainable goal. That’s the point and it’s a healthy thing to do because what it’s doing is it’s forcing you to ask a question you probably haven’t asked yourself in a long time.
What is it that you want out of your life?
Strategy #4: Creating Your Own Sphere Of Influence
Lately I’ve been taking a bit of flack for my comments on sphere of influence.
Sphere Of Influence: The people you surround yourself whose opinions you truly care about
The controversial part is me quoting this line from billions,
“I don’t hold on to a loser. The moment it doesn’t feel right I let it go and get away from it.”
The argument I’m trying to make is that who you surround yourself with after a breakup matters greatly to how you respond to that breakup.
We’ve seen this simply by paying attention to how people transform within our private facebook support group. Yet my argument comes under scrutiny with how I recommend to people on how to handle those individuals in your sphere of influence who aren’t adding much to your life.
We’ve all been there. We’ve all had that one friend who takes more than gives.
Who makes everything about them.
Who isn’t there when you need them most.
My question is a simple one, why should you still be friends with them if they add no value to your life? You are clearly adding value to their life.
Here’s the point I’m trying to make.
Start taking a good long look at your own sphere of influence. Create your own super team of individuals to surround yourself with.
And yes, this includes taking a look at your ex.
Sometimes during the mental calculus you’ll learn that your ex isn’t worth including anymore.
Strategy #5: You Are Responsible For Your Own Happiness, Not Your Ex
I’ve always found it odd how individuals expect relationships to make them happy. As if finding the perfect relationship will somehow resolve their depression.
It’s a trap that leads you down a very dangerous path because it creates within you an unrealistic expectation that your partner is the solution to all of your problems.
I mentioned this in my article a few days ago, but recently I was watching a movie called Before Midnight,
And a line was delivered for me that was profound,
ANNA: My grandmother’s mother wrote to our whole family a twenty-six page letter from her deathbed. And she spent three pages on the costumes she did for a play and only one paragraph on her husband.
JESSE: Was she an actress too?
ANNA: No, she was a… (in French) How do you say, seamstress?
CELINE (in English) A seamstress. Seamstress.
ANNA Seamstress…and she had all these wonderful friends. About my great grandfather she mentioned three events: He went to the war, we moved because of his job, and he died. Her big advice was not to be too consumed with romantic love. Friendships and work, she said, brought her the most happiness.
For me this is an important lesson to teach individuals after a breakup who aren’t acting or thinking rationally. The more you become convinced that your ex is responsible for your own happiness the more you are going to be disappointed.
The truth is everything starts here, (points to head) and then once you take care of that things will start happening here, (points to heart).
How Do You Deal With An Ex Moving On So Fast?
Jun 05, 2022
Today we’re going to talk about how to deal with an ex that has moved on from you quickly.
There’s a lot to cover here, many of it philosophical by nature but I promise by the end of this article you’ll have a clear idea of what you should do to deal with the devastation of having an ex seemingly replace you with someone else.
Here’s what I plan on talking about,
The relationship death wheel
Why you need to stop getting satisfaction from feeling wronged
The thing everyone misses about a no contact rule
You are responsible for your own happiness, not your ex
Your life becomes worthwhile when you have worthwhile goals
Let’s begin!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
I wanted to start first in familiar territory with my fearful avoidant relationship death wheel because I feel it adequately explains the cycle that many exes are caught in.
Take a look at this graphic,
This is my death wheel and it usually explains how most relationships go for our clients exes seeing as how many of them are avoidant,
Ultimately the argument I’m going to make is that for many exes quickly moving on enters into rebound territory BUT the actual ex won’t feel that way.
They’re often caught up in the depression of this phase,
And the reason I call this a relationship death wheel is that it’s seemingly inescapable as long as they remain “avoidant.”
They will crush relationships with the new person.
With you…
With anyone who threatens their independence unless something changes and ironically one of the best ways to “stand out” or “win their affections back” is by leaving them alone.
Letting the wheel spin them around until they start to reminisce about you again. It happens more often than you think. In fact, I made a whole video about it here,
So, really the most important part of “getting an ex back” is what you are doing when you are away from them.
Stop Getting Satisfaction From Feeling Wronged
Many people seem to almost love the fact that they have been done a great injustice. Their ex has broken up with them and replaced them as if they were nothing.
This creates a thought pattern where they feel morally superior over those that have wronged them. They paint themselves as great victims of injustice.
I’m not saying this is you necessarily but I am saying I have noticed this as a pattern many of our clients fall into.
I think it was Maxwell Maltz who said,
Resentment is a cure that is worse than the disease
In the end resentment will act as a poison to your soul. Ultimately, making your happiness impossible. Instead of thinking about how you can use this breakup as a transformative experience you instead pour all of your energy into feeding that resentment.
Instead of accomplishing something profound and meaningful you facebook stalk your ex. You pick apart their new person.
“She/He is an exact carbon copy of me…”
“Does that mean they still love me if they are dating a puppet me?”
This emotional habit, of feeling sorry for yourself. Of obsessing over your ex will become the very prison you lock yourself in.
So, what is one to do instead?
You Are Responsible For Your Own Happiness, Not Your Ex
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot.
I live in America, for those of you who are reading from overseas and in America we like to propagate this idea that,
“All men are created equal.”
The founding fathers of America came up with that.
Yet, many of them are hypocrites.
Most of them were slave owners
Women not given the right to vote
And the statement itself is fundamentally untrue. Not all men are created equal. A fact often reminded to us by Tyrion Lannister of Game of Thrones,
All men are not created equal. Here is what I do believe though.
Once again, pulling from Maxwell Maltz,
It is fact that by the very act of birth one person is unjustly set out to begin a hard life in a ghetto filled with street crime, while another born a cross town hospital at the same time, that same moment will begin life in a safe suburb. In a sense there is no justice but we may manufacture just results for ourselves.
Stop looking to your ex and their dating life for your own happiness. I think that’s the great trap I’ve seen countless people fall into.
They fall victim to the great lie of, “If I can only get my ex back then everything will be right.”
Their entire happiness revolves around the affections of someone else and this will ultimately leave them disappointed because in the end true happiness is only found by having a meaningful purpose in life.
Your Life Will Become Worthwhile When You Have Worthwhile Goals Outside Of Your Ex
This may be before many of your times but do you remember the show Jersey Shore,
The premise was pretty simple. A bunch of early twenty somethings go out and party every single night. The guys pick up chicks and try to sleep with them. The girls try to find “the one.”
For some reason this show was a hit and I’ll admit I even watched it but I was always left with this feeling that everyone who got caught up in that party lifestyle was incredibly unhappy.
Going to clubs every night knocking themselves out night after night trying to convince themselves that this was true happiness.
But the end was always the same for every person on that show. In their search for enjoyment all they found was an empty shell.
Sure, one can argue that they had successes but these were fake by nature and often led to many of the shows “contestants?” “Participants?”
Whatever, it often led them to be penalized by an empty joy. A great lie that they had to convince themselves was the feeling of “happiness.”
The truth was that none of these contestants had any worthwhile goals and so they were caught in their own prisons chasing after their own tails trying to find happiness.
And I think the thing I’m learning as I get older is that too much pressure is put on relationships to ensure the other persons happiness.
Just last night I was watching a movie called Before Midnight,
And I thought one of the most powerful moments was this story told by a woman about her grandmother. She said that her grandmother on her deathbed wrote this 26 page letter detailing her life and lessons learned.
Only two paragraphs were dedicated to her husband of sixty years.
Now, you can take this one of two ways.
You can look at how unhappy she probably was in her marriage
Or
You can look at how her big lesson in life is that your partner is an important part of it sure but you need to live for more than just someone else.
Constantly setting new goals that give you meaning. This is how you find happiness in life. This is how you become more attractive to others.
How you become more attractive to yourself.
If life is nothing more than a treadmill. We work eight hours a day so we can pay for a house where we can sleep another eight hours so we can get up to work another eight hours.
Why bother with it?
Why get excited?
Why try?
Goals my friends. If you find something that excites you. That you want to accomplish. That gets you excited to get out of bed in the morning.
It all suddenly becomes worth it.
Get off the treadmill.
Stop going around in circles obsessing about your ex and what they are doing. Who they are dating.
Today we’re going to be talking about what can trigger a fearful avoidant to become either more anxious or avoidant. If you aren’t familiar,
A person who has a fearful avoidant attachment style is someone who contains both core wounds of an anxious and avoidant attachment style. So, a fearful avoidant has a deep seated fear of being abandoned but also can have moments where they fear they’ll lose their independence in relationships.
Now, after studying individuals with this attachment style we’ve actually been able to come up with a list of five things that will trigger them.
A Breakup Can Trigger Their Anxious Side
Being Taken Advantage Of In A Relationship
Any Type Of Major Step Forward In A Relationship Can Trigger Their Avoidant Side
Your Insecure Attachment Can Trigger Them
Any Type Of Passive Aggressiveness From Their Partner
Let’s take a moment and talk about what each one of these things are in depth.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Trigger #1: Going Through A Breakup Initiated By You
Fearful avoidants are always the most difficult to diagnose and comprehend because really it’s like dealing with two opposing attachment styles in one.
In fact, one of our coaches, Tyler Ramsey, talks about this in an interview we did a few months ago,
Essentially the argument is that instead of having one “core wound” that explains their triggers a fearful avoidant will have two.
The anxious one: a fear of being abandoned
The avoidant one: a fear of losing independence
This makes them incredibly hard to diagnose because just when you think you are dealing with an avoidant something sets them off and triggers their anxious side and makes you rethink everything you think you know about them.
Since we have predominately studied breakups in the ten years we’ve been operating we can confidently say that this is often a trigger for them. However, usually this only occurs if you were the one to break up with them as it triggers their anxious side.
So, if you aren’t familiar this is my relationship life cycle wheel of death graphic,
Well specifically this is looking at how an avoidant handles themselves in relationships and then ultimately the post breakup period.
What’s interesting though is that it’s always assuming that the avoidant breaks up with you. The wheel would look a little different if you broke up with them.
Think of it like this.
As the wheel turns around as it stands,
It’s always them looking for an excuse to leave. However, what can happen is that sometimes a fearful avoidants main attachment style is the avoidant aspect and that avoidant aspect can actually prove to be too much for you which in turn causes you to want to leave the relationship.
So you do…
This is something they weren’t expecting and it triggers their anxious core wound. You’ve just abandoned them.
A fascinating paradox isn’t it?
Throughout the relationship it seemed that they were constantly holding you at an arms length. Finding every reason not to commit fully. To hold on to their independence. However, when that behavior proves to be too much for you to handle and you inevitably leave that triggers them and they start acting incredibly anxious.
Which usually is when this occurs,
Basically on again/off again relationship.
Let’s move on to the next trigger.
Trigger #2: Being Taken Advantage Of In A Relationship
So, the thing to understand about fearful avoidants is that they are often stuck in this self destructive pattern where they are constantly taking advantage of themselves or putting themselves down.
Constantly telling themselves that they aren’t good enough
That they are unworthy of your love
Punishing themselves for doing something wrong
So, when they date someone that essentially holds a mirror up to that behavior by literally telling them,
They aren’t being good enough for you
They are unworthy of your love
Punishing them for doing something wrong
It can become excruciating and overload their system. What’s complicated about this is I’ve found that often it’s the anxious individuals who are saying this to the avoidant individuals.
So, often the anxious person gets triggered by the lack of effort from the avoidant and then literally tries to do anything to light a fire under them to show more commitment based behavior but instead all they end up doing is triggering the fearful avoidant even more.
Trigger #3: Any Type Of Major Step Forward In A Relationship Can Trigger Their Avoidant Side
I’ve been on record many times talking about the fact that our specialty is in studying exes who are avoidant. That’s our jam. That doesn’t mean we don’t know about anxious or fearful avoidant individuals.
It’s just we really know our stuff about what triggers avoidants.
After all, the majority of our clients are claiming that their exes are avoidant,
When studying what triggered avoidants we tended to notice that any type of major step forward in relationship can cause them to flee or withdraw.
What constitutes a major step forward in a relationship.
Well, here are real life situations that we have seen trigger an avoidant side,
Becoming official in a relationship
Talking about moving in together
Talking about marriage
Going ring shopping
Actually moving in together
Getting engaged
Getting married
Having a child together
Buying a house together
Notice how each one of these “events” can irritate the major core wound of an avoidant. Each is a perceived threat on their independence.
Trigger #4: Your Own Insecure Attachment Can Trigger Them
This is where the psychology becomes really interesting.
A fearful avoidant will typically have a dominant attachment style and a secondary one BUT depending on your attachment style their dominant or secondary styles can switch.
Here’s a quick reference,
Anxious (You) triggers Avoidant (Them)
Avoidant (You) triggers Anxious (Them)
So, let’s once again pull up my wheel of death graphic when it comes to breakups,
This graphic is making a simple assumption.
It’s making the assumption that you are anxious and your ex is avoidant. Notice how in phase three, where your ex starts to notice some worrying things it’s immediately followed with a phase where they think about leaving.
Well, the leap I’m trying to get you to make is that those “worrying things” are actually an avoidant picking up on your anxious behaviors which in turn causes their avoidant side to trigger.
But this wheel can work the opposite way as well.
Those “worrying things” could be you being avoidant which can cause them to pull harder to ensure the relationship works.
Just know that your attachment style has a huge impact on what side of a fearful avoidant gets triggered.
Trigger #5: Any Type Of Passive Aggressiveness From Their Partner
With trigger number two we talked about how fearful avoidants are in this constant war with themselves and that if you essentially “help” them be at war with themselves it can be a huge trigger for them.
Well, the only thing that may actually be worse than “helping them” in their self deprecating war is by being passive aggressive.
Why?
I think it’s because people that communicate that way are incongruous with their words and actions. They say (or don’t say) one thing and then do another which confuses the fearful avoidant and eventually they learn to cope by creating their own narrative about what you are thinking.
Anyone who has dealt with a fearful avoidant knows this is definitely on brand for them. They’ll literally create a worst case scenario delusion in their head about your intentions or thoughts because they have no clue what to think.
And it’s often difficult for you because when their anxious side causes them to blow up at you and they repeat this incorrect assumption out loud you can’t convince them that their thoughts are false.
They start to believe their own lie which in turn triggers them again and they end up in this loop of their own making that they can’t escape.
All from you simply being passive aggressive which I might add is a very avoidant symptom. So, in a way trigger #5 is like an extension of trigger #4 except worse because the fearful avoidant is literally using your inability to communicate effectively as a means to put themselves down and propagate a false reality.
How Long Does It Usually Take For An Ex To Miss You?
Jun 02, 2022
Today we’re going to talk about exactly how long it usually takes for an ex to miss you after a breakup.
In fact, based on our research you can expect the average ex to begin missing you anywhere between 2.5 to 5.2 months after a breakup assuming you put forth signals that you are “moving on from them.”
We’re going show you how we came to this conclusion by drawing on our knowledge on,
Attachment Styles
Real Life Success Stories
Client Interviews
The idea is to use all this knowledge to come up with a specific time frame based on research and psychology that is realistic.
Too often I see people claiming to expect an ex to miss you in something like 30 days when the reality is that this isn’t what we’ve seen in the field at all.
I’d like to put an end to all the speculation and come up with something today based on research.
First things first, when it comes to an ex missing you what kind of behaviors are we looking at?
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
So, when we talk about an ex missing you what kind of behaviors are we really looking at? Well, this isn’t rocket science so here’s what I think counts as an ex missing you,
An ex admitting they miss you
Asking you out on a date
Bringing up positive emotional memories from your past
Their response time to your texts is quick
The conversations you have are much longer than normal
They talk about “dreaming about you.”
They start texting you during odd times (usually when they are alone.)
Social media stalking
But here’s the thing with exes missing you. At first, it probably will feel like the behaviors listed above will never happen. After all, usually after a breakup most exes do everything they can to avoid you.
The Wheel Of Death
In fact, I’d encourage you to look at the emotional experience of the typical “ex” that we study by paying attention to the wheel of relationship death,
They start out wanting someone to love them
Then they find you, and at first, things are great
But something about your behavior sets them off (we will talk about what that is in a minute)
They use that as an excuse to think about leaving you
Then they actually decide to leave the relationship
Then of course they party and are happy they left the relationship
But there is a loneliness in the silence and they start to grow depressed
They ultimately sit and wonder why this always happens to them. Why can’t I ever find the one?
Which in turn leads them to start the cycle over and over again. They are trapped in a prison of their own making and the crazy part is most of the time they aren’t even aware of it.
Now, I’m going to use this cycle a lot throughout this article to explain when you can expect your ex to miss you and I’m going to back it up with real research.
So, let’s start with a personal favorite topic of mine.
The Avoidant Attachment Nostalgia Factor
Recently, I’ve poured most of my research time into better understanding avoidant attachments but without going too far into the weeds everything I’m going to talk about in this section of the article can be found by watching this video,
Specifically the part about the “nostalgia factor.”
But first things first, most of the exes we’ve studied tend to be avoidant,
This means that they are fiercely protective of their independence. In fact, I think an argument can be made that when it comes to relationships they are usually happy until the person they are with threatens that independence.
For those counting, that would be this part of the wheel of death,
At the first sign of trouble they actually use it to self sabotage the relationship. In fact, according to free to attach,
At this point, although avoidants ultimately want connection and a secure long-term attachment like the rest of us, they will start to avoid it, self-sabotage and push away for protection. Having learnt not to expect to be reliably happy around caregivers – that love comes with a degree of neglect – they are always expecting something to go wrong, and their subconscious mind moves to recreate this output.
At the heart of every avoidant lies an interesting paradox.
They want love more than anything else but they won’t let anyone close enough to give them that love.
But something fascinating happens right around here on the wheel of death after they ultimately break up with their partner,
A type of nostalgia kicks in. It’s at this point that we have found exes are most likely to fall victim to missing you.
From a psychological perspective what’s going on?
Well, a lot of things.
There is obviously the self loathing aspect kicking in. The feeling sorry for oneself here,
But it all culminates in this nostalgia phenomenon where they can finally feel “safe” missing you. Once again pulling from Free To Attach,
Without the danger of reciprocity (so particularly after an ex has moved on), liberation from the fear of engulfment finally gives free reign to an avoidant’s latent romanticism. An ex being truly unavailable may even produce a perverse enjoyment – they are at liberty to fully miss and think wistfully of them while it also confirms their self-belief people won’t stick around them (sometimes in relationships they may imagine their partner with another to trigger this)
This is often why it can seem like it takes FOREVER for an avoidant ex to miss you and brings me nicely to the next bit of research I’d like to pull up for you.
Learning From Our Success Stories
One of the pages that often gets overlooked on our website is our success story page,
I’m proud of it because I feel like Ex Boyfriend Recovery is one of the only outfits that actually interviews our clients in depth on how they succeeded in making an ex come back.
But what’s particularly relevant about that page is we’ve combined all of our information into bite sized snippets so you can see what real success looks like and how long it typically takes,
The thing that probably jumps out to you immediately on that page is the success time frame.
On average it takes our clients about 5.2 months to see success in getting their ex back after they begin working with us.
The key part to remember there is “after they start working with us.”
So, all of those “get your ex back programs” that claim they can get your ex back in 30 days… Well, let’s just put it this way. Based on everything we’ve actually experienced they are complete bullsh*t.
And the science backs us up on that.
An avoidant, the average attachment style of our clients ex, isn’t going to even entertain the idea of missing you until they feel like you’ve completely moved on from them. Only then will they feel safe enough to miss you.
And you know what it takes for them to “feel safe?”
Time!
Of course, if you want to get really technical here exes probably do begin missing you a tad earlier than 5.2 months. In fact, many times we first notice the signs of them missing you during the texting phase of the value ladder,
So, usually right around 2.5 months is when the first signs of an ex missing you start to fall through but it’s a delicate tightrope you are forced to walk.
Any type of overly anxious behavior can actually trigger an avoidant again and then it’s as if the clock starts all over.
So yes, you need to have emotional control before you even entertain the idea of texting an ex. In fact, this is why we make it a point to focus our no contact periods around “outgrowing” an ex.
We know that if you can authentically get to a place emotionally where you are ok not getting an ex back then you are actually more likely to make them miss you.
Why?
Well again, it harkens back to that nostalgia factor. It puts forth signals to the avoidant that you have “moved on” and it’s at that point the nostalgia kicks in and they can begin missing you.
One final point, this outgrowth mindset. It’s not something you can fake either. You actually have to make an effort to outgrow your ex.
Today we’re going to talk about why dumpers act so cold after a breakup. Specifically, I’d like to focus on why they demonize you and make you out to be the bad guy when they themselves were the one to break up with you.
In all, I think the best place to start is by looking at the following topics,
Having a discussion on what constitutes “cold behaviors”
How avoidant attachment style tends to factor into this
Why any anxious behavior from you can set them off even more
Taking a good look at anger as it relates to their own self validation
Let’s begin!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
So, before we start psychoanalyzing dumper behaviors I think a good place to start would be defining what we’re really talking about when we talk about “cold” behavior.
I’ve been on the record many times saying that close to 90% of our clients are the dumpees in relationships.
I feel very confident that we’ve seen enough “cold” behaviors from them to warrant a discussion.
So, for reference any time I’m talking about a dumpers cold behavior after a breakup I’m usually talking about the following things,
Them suddenly ghosting you
Them giving you mixed signals (in a negative way.)
Them getting angry with you
For many of our clients it’s a difficult puzzle to solve. For us, we’ve seen it so much and have studied the “why” so much that it’s actually comically simple for why they are being cold.
Let’s start first with attachment styles.
How The Avoidant Attachment Style Factors Into This
Alright so the first two things on our “cold behavior” list were what?
Them ghosting you
Them giving you mixed signals
Turns out both of those types of behaviors can be explained with the avoidant attachment style. Now, I get a lot of criticism on YouTube specifically for only putting my focus on avoidant attachment individuals but can you blame me?
Most of our clients say their exes have this attachment style,
So, what is the avoidant attachment style?
Well, officially the definition from Web MD reads as follows,
Avoidant attachment is an attachment style a child develops when their parent or main caretaker doesn’t show care or responsiveness past providing essentials like food and shelter. The child disregards their own struggles and needs in order to maintain peace and keep their caregiver close by
But that’s the thing. Technically this definition looks at what caused the avoidant attachment style. It doesn’t really cover the symptoms of it when it comes to relationships.
Luckily, I can do that for you.
Avoidant Attachments In Relationships: Value their own independence so much that any time anyone comes and threatens that independence they lash out by either arguing with them or more commonly, leaving the relationship
Starting to sound familiar?
Now, where this factors in for us actually revolves around the anxious and avoidant relationship trap.
The Anxious And Avoidant Relationship Trap
Above I established that most of the clients exes that we’ve studied have avoidant attachment styles.
On the other hand, most of our clients have anxious attachment styles,
So, this is relevant because often what can “create” cold behavior from an ex is being triggered by an anxious person. The avoidant core wound revolves around independence. The anxious persons core wound revolves around being left alone.
So, when the avoidant pushes away because they want their independence back the anxious person gets triggered because they feel like the avoidant person is going to leave them forever.
The result is this vicious cycle.
The anxious person gets close
The avoidant person gets triggered and runs away
The anxious person starts a fight
The avoidant avoids the solution
There’s a short term reconciliation
The cycle starts again
Now, what’s interesting about this is it kind of explains both the avoidant being cold and ghosting (the running away phase) and the mixed signal phase (the short term reconciliation.)
Of course, making matters a tad more complicated this can occur on a macro level or even a micro level.
Macro Level (It’s the story of the entire relationship)
Micro Level (It’s the story of a singular fight and how it gets resolved within a relationship)
It’s best to view these interactions as similar to a russian fibonacci doll,
It’s symptomatic of a greater problem in the fact that both attachment styles are insecure and really what both of them need to do is start surrounding themselves with more secure ones so they can learn how to become more secure themselves.
Of course, one thing that we haven’t really explained yet is how the anger component of “cold behavior” comes into play.
Anger = A Way To Validate Themselves
A few years ago Coach Anna and I did a video for the YouTube channel and she brought up a really interesting point revolving around anger and how it can almost have “positive characteristics.”
Sounds weird, right?
Well, to quote her exactly,
When I say that anger has positive characteristics, I mean that when someone says, “You’re stupid,” they’re actually implying I’m smart. You’re selfish, you’re selfish means I’m generous. You’re behaving like a child means I’m behaving like an adult. This is why people get angry very easily and they stay angry because it feels good and it’s personally validating.
I think this is especially interesting to study after a breakup because we know that no matter your exes attachment style it’s going to have a profound negative impact.
So, demonizing you.
Making YOU the bad guy is better than making themselves the bad guy. To quote Anna again,
Anger often protects the angry person because if the person’s angry, they’re protecting themselves from feeling sadness or shame. So anger is a defense mechanism.
So, here’s my argument. When you are looking at why the dumper is acting cold towards you one possible explanation is that it might be a defense mechanism to stave off feeling sadness or shame.
Remember, human beings are very pain averse and that’s doubly true for emotional pain. So, rather than look back at the failed relationship they would rather paint you as the cause of its demise even if it’s not true.
Every day in our private Facebook group we get questions revolving around an exes anger like this one (that we admittedly got quite a few years ago),
“I can’t stop thinking about my ex today for some reason. It’s been over 4 months and he hasn’t apologized or made any initiative. The texts I did send him were initially positive/neutral but since the conversation only focused on apartment stuff he remained angry and said he wanted to be left alone at the beginning of June. He has acted like he hates me but I’ve done nothing to deserve any of this. I was a great girlfriend that simply missed her family.”
So, here we have the classic cold behavior signs.
He’s ignored her (ghosting)
He’s been somewhat positive in a few texts (mixed signals)
He’s acted like he hates her (angry)
Now, I’m particularly familiar with this persons situation because they ended up becoming a moderator of our private support group.
After hearing the clients perspective on the breakup. She did absolutely nothing wrong and yet she was painted as the “bad guy” by her ex boyfriend.
Why?
Well, most likely because it’s a whole lot easier for the guy to deflect blame onto her so he doesn’t have to take responsibility.
Here’s the point I’m trying to arrive at.
Most anger you see dumpers exhibit immediately post breakup is a defense mechanism. Add in the fact that we teach our clients to let the breakup “make them” as opposed to “break them.” There’s a nuanced layer where the dumper actually grows more angry because the dumpee isn’t reacting the way they should.
The prevailing belief most dumpers have is that because they dumped you they should be placed on this pedastal and worshipped as the one the got away.
When that narrative doesn’t come true they often freak out and get even angrier and who better to blame than you, the source of their pain.
What Do You Do With Your Life After A Breakup?
May 26, 2022
Today we’re going to talk about what you should be doing with your life after a breakup. Now, seeing as how my team and I have probably seen more breakups than anyone out there we have a very good grasp of what works and doesn’t work in the post breakup time period.
In all, we’ve come up with a pretty strict regiment that we want all of our clients to follow in the post breakup time period.
Perhaps the coolest part about this regiment is that it can work in both “recovery” methods. It can work if you want to “reattract” your ex and it can work if you want to get over your ex.
Here’s the secret sauce,
Learn About The Holy Trinity
Set Your Maximum Health Based Goal
Set Your Maximum Wealth Based Goal
Set Your Maximum Relationship Based Goal
Now, initially these may seem like simple concepts but I’m going to actually encourage you to pay attention because I’m going to providing subtle twists about how they work that I’ve never really discussed before.
Let’s begin!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
The holy trinity concept is probably THE MOST IMPORTANT strategy that I teach on this entire website. You see, after a breakup you are often left reeling.
Add in the fact that the average person coming to this website is usually an anxious attachment style,
This means they are quite prone to the following behaviors,
Begging for an ex back
Seeking re-assurance in relationships
Showing up to their exes house/work unannounced
Basically any type of extremely desperate behavior
The problem is that after a breakup the last place your energy should be going is into your ex, rather, it should be invested into yourself.
Like the great Warren Buffet says,
“The best investment you can make, is an investment in yourself… the more you learn, the more you’ll earn.”
Wise words from the oracle of Omaha.
Here’s the slight problem though. Most people don’t really know how to invest in themselves. It’s actually for that very reason that I championed the idea of “the holy trinity.”
If you aren’t familiar, the holy trinity refers to the three most important areas of your life.
Health
Wealth
Relationships
There’s this constant balancing act between these three categories that goes on. However, as a whole what we have noticed is that the more you invest in yourself the more attractive you become to your ex (and other people outside of your ex.)
Additionally, the less you actually want your ex.
So, it’s a win/win no matter how you look at it.
Of course, 90% of the people that I teach the holy trinity don’t do it the correct way.
Setting Your Maximum Health Based Goal
Lately I’ve been really big on “goal setting.” Especially when it comes to something like the holy trinity. Too often I see clients get enamored with the concept of “balancing their life” and they daydream how great it would be but because they didn’t write anything down.
Because they didn’t set any goal. Well, nothing really gets accomplished. And those that do set goals often don’t set the right type of goals.
Yes, you want something achievable but when I talk about setting up a foundational goal within health, wealth or relationships, I’m actually encouraging you to dream.
Think about a goal that you know is possible to achieve but may take your entire life to do it.
THAT’S THE KIND OF GOAL I WANT.
So, what I’d like to do is use myself as a guinea pig here and show you some of the holy trinity goals I’ve set for my life.
We will start with health first.
Health is defined as the following,
Workouts
Eating Healthy
Sleeping More
Finding a Stress Outlet
Feeling Attractive
Looking Attractive
Hydrating Properly
Hygiene
Emotional Health
Ideally your “global goal” for health should be something that can accomplish all of those things. Now, it doesn’t have to technically but it should be one specific thing that theoretically can.
For me, it’s completing an Iron Man. If you aren’t familiar with what that is,
Basically it’s a triathlon that makes you,
Swim 2.4 miles
Bike 112 miles
Run 26.2 miles
Back to back to back. Essentially by training for an ironman you complete all of your health based goals.
Notice how the ironman race isn’t easy to accomplish either. It’s not like I can roll out of bed one day and suddenly be in shape to run an ironman.
No, it’s something that will take years of training to accomplish. Especially when you add in the fact that I blew out my knee training for it but we aren’t about negativity here.
Nope, we care about positivity.
Setting Your Maximum Wealth Based Goal
Wealth is defined as,
Money
Social status
Possessions
Property
Job
Degree
Personally I’ve only ever viewed wealth as “financial freedom.” Generally life does become easier if you are able to create wealth for yourself.
I’ve noticed that more arguments occur in marriages over money than anything else and that’s because of the symbiotic nature of the holy trinity.
Whether you acknowledge it or not the major categories of the holy trinity affect one another in profound ways. Let’s look at our marriage example.
If you were financially free then no argument over money ensues. Which in turn makes the relationship aspect of the trinity stronger.
So, what’s my global goal when it comes to wealth.
By the end of my life I want to have made enough money not only for me to live without a threat of not being able to pay bills but my children too.
By 90 years old I want to find a way to make 100 million dollars.
Here’s how I plan on accomplishing it.
I obviously run a business here at Ex Boyfriend Recovery but this obviously won’t generate 100 million dollars. Not even close. But whatever cash it does throw off, I’m going to take 80% of it and invest in index funds like the S&p 500 or even the total stock market which usually throws off annual returns of 10%.
Well, over the course of 50 years it might be possible.
Just one fly in the ointment. I need to find a way to save 1 million dollars and invest it. I’m still a ways away from that.
Sure, I have Ex Boyfriend Recovery but that alone isn’t going to do it so I’ve been trying to slowly transition into a fantasy novelist. Which seems like an odd choice but if I can find a way to get it to produce a consistent income in tandem with Ex Boyfriend Recovery then maybe the one million dollar save mark is possible.
And with the power of compounding over 50 years that one million dollar investment suddenly becomes,
Not bad, right.
At least, that’s the plan. It’s a lifelong goal but it’s my wealth goal. What can I say, I shoot for the stars.
Let’s move on.
Setting Your Maximum Relationships Goal
This is perhaps the most difficult one for me to set a maximum goal on. Relationships are defined as,
Friends
Family
Lovers
Colleagues
Teachers
Pets
One of the things I’m really well known for is my sphere of influence concept.
The argument is that often times the people whose opinions really matter to you are those closest to you. They are your sphere of influence.
For me, I suppose my global “relationships goal” is to cultivate a sphere of influence that enriches my life to the maximum.
I’m looking to surround myself with five human beings whose guidance and friendship allow me to grow as a human being.
I can confidently say I have five spots filled out.
My wife (who is my life partner)
My kids (who have taught me patience)
My father (who has served as the best teacher I’ve ever had)
My brother (who is loyal to a fault)
My artist friend Simon (who is an amazing collaborator and loyal friend)
Most people look at the relationships aspect and only think of romance but it’s much deeper than that. I prefer to look at it as a whole.
And here’s the thing.
I’m intense about who I let into the circle.
Very much like this scene from Billions,
“I don’t hold on to a loser. The moment it doesn’t feel right I let it go and get away from it.”
The moment someone gives me reason to doubt their ability to enrich my life I have no problem dropping them. When it comes to your life you have the right to be selfish and you have the right to cut people out if they are going to weigh you down.
And yes, that goes for your ex as well.
If at the end of this exercise you find that they aren’t enriching your life in some way. Cut them out. Be done with it. And find someone better.
How To Know If Your Ex Is Breadcrumbing You
May 11, 2022
Today we’re going to talk about how to know if your ex is breadcrumbing you but looking specifically at real life tactics exes have used to breadcrumb.
First things first though,
What is breadcrumbing?
Breadcrumbing often occurs when an ex does just enough to make you think they are interested in “re-pursuing” a relationship with you. To keep you on the hook, so to speak. However, usually that ex hasn’t made a decision whether they want to pursue you romantically just yet. They are keeping their options open.
It’s never fun to be on the receiving end of behavior like this but in this article I’m going to show you some of the most common signs that breadcrumbing exes engage in and after that, I’m going to peel back the layers psychologically to help you understand why exes breadcrumb.
Let’s begin!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
The Most Common Breadcrumbing Signs We See In Real Life
I wanted this to be the most comprehensive guide on breakup breadcrumbing in the world and I thought in order to do that it would be good to actually ask real people going through breakups what kind of breadcrumbing behaviors their exes were actually exhibiting.
They Set A Date To See You And Then Stand You Up Last Minute
Repeating Your Wants Directly To You But Never Following Through On It
A Lot Of Talking To You While They Have Another Person They Are Dating
They Engage In Pogo-Sticking Behavior
As always, I’ll provide proof of my findings and a little bit of commentary. Let’s begin!
Sign #1: Asking For A Favor Or Doing You A Favor
This one is probably the only add to this list that sort of shocked me but in hindsight it makes complete sense. It’s just often overlooked.
So, I got addition from this comment,
“Asking me if I had some clothes for a funeral (of course I did) and then proceeded to talk about his family drama the entire conversation, said he procrastinated, don’t worry about the clothes he’ll buy some.”
So, what we have here is an ex who is going through some stuff emotionally and usually the person who he would vent to is no longer in the picture so he makes up an excuse to talk to her so he can vent.
The excuse was the favor of borrowing clothes.
Yet our member doesn’t probably take it that way. Because of the emotional nature of the conversation it’s probably taken as if he’s opening back up to her in the same way that he would as if he was in a relationship with her.
Let’s move on to our next sign.
Sign #2: They Set A Date To See You And Then Stand You Up Last Minute
I blurred out the rest of the comment for the commentors privacy since personal information was shared that I was certain they wouldn’t want out there for the public but it doesn’t really revolve around the point I’m trying to make here.
This sign might be the most common example of a breadcrumbing I saw amongst comments.
Essentially an ex acts like they really want to see you in person and then at the last moment they never follow through with those plans.
Since I myself am classified as a dismissive avoidant I want to admit that this as my “go to” tactic.
I can’t tell you how many dates I literally stood up this way simply because I was afraid of losing my independence. I’d make plans and then about a day or two before the plans would be due to happen I’d suddenly cancel.
It all stemmed from my insecurities though and had nothing to do with the women I was dating. It’s important to remember that.
I think when we look at the breakup avenue this loss of independence an ex potentially feels is heightened because they’ve already felt a loss of independence at one point when they dated you.
It causes them to re-live the trauma even if you weren’t the one to trigger their offer of meeting up.
Sign #3: Repeating Your Wants Directly To You But Never Following Through On It
My favorite comment out of them all was this one,
“He knew the right words that always got me. Marriage, love, commitment. He’d drop them and knew I’d come back to him. Ugh.”
This one stuck out to me because it’s essential an ex using tactical empathy for their own evil purposes.
If you aren’t familiar with tactical empathy it’s essentially where you repeat a persons worldview back to them. Their hopes, dreams and desires. As long as you show you are empathetic towards those things and literally repeat it back to them then that person is a lot more likely to be pliable to your own wants.
When I get into the psychology section of this article I’m going to talk about puppet relationships and I feel like that’s what is happening here.
The avoidant ex breadcrumbs because they want that “love adrenaline spike” from you and they know exactly what buttons to push to get it.
Sign #4: A Lot Of Talking To You While They Have Another Person They Are Dating
This one wasn’t so much of a specific sign as opposed to just an observation from one of the commentors. But they kind of have a point,
For reference BTM is equivalent to the being there method which is a strategy we teach to people who have exes that have moved on to someone else.
What’s interesting from the data I got on the post is that there were a lot of mentions of “the other person.” Meaning a lot of the breadcrumbing is occurring while the ex is with someone new.
Remember, these are real life people giving these stories up and I’d say a good five or six comments out of the 20 I looked through mentioned “the other woman.”
This kind of behavior sort of tracks with what we know about the avoidant attachment style. Specifically, the phantom ex syndrome which I’ve talked a lot about in the past.
Sign #5: They Engage In Pogo-sticking Behavior
This is my own late addition because I know it does happen even though no one immediately said they were experiencing it on the post.
When I usually refer to pogo sticking behavior I’m usually referring it in reference to an ex blocking you and then unblocking you on social media.
Which I supposed could be argued as a type of breadcrumbing sign.
Nevertheless, what I’m looking for here is a lot of hot and cold behaviors. Your ex has an emotional conversation with you one day and the next they aren’t anywhere to be found.
They pogo stick around the spectrum with regards to hot and cold.
This is a type of uncertainty that is consistent with breadcrumbing.
Why Exes Breadcrumb?
Perhaps the best place to start when psychoanalyzing exes like this is with attachment theory. Really, 2022 has been the year of avoidants.
Not only have I written an insane amount of articles on them but I’ve filmed dozens of videos on them like this,
The reason I’m hyper focusing on avoidants is that I think understanding the nuances of their specific attachment style can teach us about breadcrumb because you’ll find it’s very on brand for the avoidant.
First things first though, did you know that most of the people reading this website will have an avoidant ex?
Avoidant attachment is an attachment style a child develops when their parent or main caretaker doesn’t show care or responsiveness past providing essentials like food and shelter. The child disregards their own struggles and needs in order to maintain peace and keep their caregiver close by. They still struggle and feel anxiety or sadness, but do so alone, and deny the importance of those feelings.
This attachment style often stays with a person through adulthood, potentially impacting their romantic relationships, friendships, and other connections.
Specifically when it comes to breakups though some interesting things happen to the avoidant attachment style. Today I’d like to talk about two of those things because it really helps explain breadcrumbing behavior.
The Core Wound Of Independence
The Nostalgia Weakness
Let’s dive into those for a moment.
The Core Wound Of Independence
I can’t really claim credit for this concept as one of the Ex Recovery coaches first brought it to my attention in this interview,
It’s believed that every core insecure attachment style has a core wound. A singular fact that can explain away most of their insecure behaviors.
For example,
Anxious attachment- The fear of being alone
Avoidant attachment- The fear of losing independence
Fearful attachment- Both core wounds are present
We are of course interested in the avoidant core wound of losing independence. So, here’s an interesting thing. The avoidant values independence at such a high level that they literally prefer puppet relationships.
Puppet Relationships = Ones where they can keep control and have you on their strings much like a puppeteer.
Here’s an example of how this works. An avoidant like the initial feeling of being in a relationship but not the strings attached to a commitment. So, what they often will do is set up this scenario where they “semi commit” but never actually follow through with it.
Starting to sound familiar?
Well, it gets even better. They even know what to say and what to do to keep the puppet relationship going so you don’t leave.
Their end goal is always the same, keep a relationship flowing for as long as possible without actually having to commit. One of their tactics for achieving this effect is breadcrumbing.
Of course, there’s another interesting thing we learned about avoidants.
They Almost Always Fall Victim To The Nostalgia Weakness
To me, this is perhaps the most interesting thing about the avoidant attachment style. You see, whenever I think of an avoidant I don’t really think of them as nostalgia based creatures.
Rather, I think of the as cold and calculating.
They get what they want, the affection of another, and then after their “cup is filled,” so to speak, they leave.
Technically speaking the avoidant is very much like that but there’s a little bit more nuance going on than you would expect.
One nuance is a fascinating finding we located within their psychology relating to nostalgia.
I talk about it a lot in this video,
So, here it goes,
If you give an avoidant enough time they are bound to fall victim to this period of nostalgia. Of course, this only happens if they’ve been left alone for long enough, a mistake our clients often make.
Since most of our clients tend to veer more towards the anxious side,
And their core wound is essentially a fear of abandonment we find that a lot of our clients aren’t leaving their exes alone long enough to for their exes to feel the period of nostalgia.
Now, the reason I’m making a big deal about this is because I think a lot of breadcrumbing occurs because an ex falls victim to a period of nostalgia and then is authentic with their intentions at first.
So, all of sudden the ex goes from cold to hot and you start thinking, “Wow, they are really interested in me. This is amazing.”
But it’s a flash in the pan. Lightning in a bottle. Eventually that core wound causes an avoidant to freak out. “Reliving the past” even momentarily, is enough to engage their core wound again and they disappear.
That’s what I think happens a lot of time with breadcrumbing. That’s why I think studying the avoidant nature is essential to understand how to handle them.
Why Would An Ex Reach Out And Then Disappear?
May 09, 2022
Today I’m going to look at one of the most common situations that our clients find themselves. Figuring out exactly why an ex would reach out to you and then suddenly disappear.
Unfortunately this type of mixed signal happens quite often and most of my clients are left wondering how the heck to make sense of it.
Ultimately, I’m going to argue that the primary reason that a lot of exes reach out to you and then disappear is a function of them falling victim to the nostalgia principle that avoidants often fall victim to.
Have no idea what that is?
Well, allow me to explain.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
For the past few months I’ve talked nonstop about avoidants and how they react post breakup. No, it’s never a one size fits all situation but I’ll tell you what.
A lot of what we know about avoidants can explain a lot of post breakup behavior.
So, let’s start at the beginning. Most of our clients exes are avoidant,
Well according to this article I wrote up earlier in the year,
The Avoidant Attachment Style: They are a person that does not like a lot of emotional intimacy or vulnerability within a relationship. They typically revert a conversation back to someone else to talk about themselves to avoid the spotlight. Often that’s how you’ll figure out if they’re avoidant or not. Ultimately they are afraid of having a deeper emotional connection and it all can stem from their experience in childhood. They’ve learned that any time they are vulnerable, it can be used against them and therefore they don’t rely on other people.
Essentially in a relationship any time someone gets close or threatens their idea of independence they run.
Of course, to make matters more interesting most of our clients tend to be more anxious by nature,
So, the most common pairing we see amongst our clients and their exes is this,
Anxious (our client) + Avoidant (clients ex)
The School of Life, a worthy YouTube subscribe did an excellent video detailing some of the issues with this pairing,
Tragically, this avoidant party triggers every insecurity known to their anxious lover. Under pressure to be warmer and more connected, the avoidant partner instinctively withdraws and feels overwhelmed and hounded. They go cold – and disconnect from the situation only further ramping up the partner’s anxiety.
What I’ve noticed is that often the anxious and avoidant pairing gets caught up in this cycle.
And by looking at this specific cycle we can actually gain insight into what is going on when your ex reaches out to you and then suddenly disappears.
The eight stages of the cycle are as follows,
The avoidant wants someone to love them
They find someone (the anxious person) and believe their troubles are over
The anxious person triggers their avoidant side and they start worrying about it
The avoidant person starts thinking of leaving
The avoidant person actually leaves
Infused with independence the avoidant feels a sense of euphoria
But it’s lonely being alone
The avoidant starts to feel bad for themselves and wonders why they can’t ever find the right person
And around and around they go.
Now, it’s that return of the cycle that interests us. Specifically this part right here,
Them feeling lonely, depressed and sad leads them to start looking again and triggers the nostalgia principle.
The Nostalgia Principle
So, there’s really two things that happen upon the turn of the wheel above.
They re-live the cycle out with a new partner
They attempt to re-live the cycle out with you
We’re interested in that second outcome.
In this video,
I essentially argue that,
Avoidants are free to long for an ex once that person is unavailable out of the relationship, and typically out of contact so they are untouched by actual engagement and their deactivation systems aren’t triggered, revealing their long-suppressed attachment and switching their operating attachment wound from the fear of engulfment to fear of abandonment.
This is particularly helpful to us for a number of reasons. Firstly, it describes that often an avoidant won’t begin to miss you until a lot of time has gone by. Secondly, it shows that they still have quite a bit of fear operating behind the scenes.
Essentially it’s the perfect cocktail of chemistry to illicit the, reach out and disappear behavior we are focused on here.
So, my argument is a simple one.
The reason that your ex is reaching out to you and suddenly disappearing is because they are falling victim to this nostalgia principle where they momentarily want to re-live the best moments of the relationship. After they reach out though they start to second guess themselves. They fear a loss of independence again and bail which creates a complicated mixed signal for you to sort through.
This is doubly true if you actually respond to them. You see, avoidants love nothing more than the concept of a phantom ex.
The Importance Of The Phantom Ex
The phantom ex is a concept well known but we’re going to add an interesting twist to it.
First things first, what is it?
The Phantom Ex: In your exes mind they have a story of the one that got away. That one ex that if they could just get back all would be right in the world but it’s designed to be that way. An eternal beacon of light that the avoidant can never reach designed to keep all other romantic attachments away.
According to Free To Attach, one of my favorite avoidant resources,
The phantom ex operates because there is/was distance, not because the relationship was successful. But a fixation with a past partner affects budding new relationships, blocking them from getting close to someone else.
Why this is important is because avoidants don’t really want any romantic connections that threaten their independence so what better than setting up a situation where it’s impossible for someone to get close.
We’ve noticed a lot of exes like to paint YOU as a phantom ex and in their mind they build up the positive moments of the relationship a la the peak end rule,
If you don’t know what that is I highly recommend you watch this,
Essentially it’s an argument that human beings suck at remembering entire experiences so instead they compartmentalize them into two distinct points,
The peak
The end
Essentially what we think is that your ex is reaching out because they fall victim to having nostalgia based on the peak moments of your time together.
Of course, the moment you respond they get pulled into the end moments of the relationship and I don’t know about you but not many ends to relationships are pleasant are they?
But this brings up an interesting question.
Is there ever a time when an ex reaching out to you can be authentic?
The Meaning Formula
I’m going to teach you a universal formula for measuring attraction so get your pencils out,
Undivided Attention = Interest
Let’s first apply this to your life before we start applying it to your ex. Think of the last time you gave someone your undivided attention.
For me, it was a book editor that I hired. One of my dreams has always been to create a story that people are obsessed with. Starting in 2020 I began that process and started hiring a team of individuals to create an experience like no other.
Among those individuals was a book editor, a darn good one too.
Anyways, every Tuesday we meet and discuss the craft of writing and how I can improve. He has my undivided attention because I’m extremely interested in what he has to say.
Now, there is obviously no romantic connection there but that’s not what I’m trying to dive into yet. What I’m simply saying to you that if you give someone your undivided attention it’s a good indicator that you are interested in what they have to say.
The same principle applies to your ex except here’s the fascinating thing. The more undivided attention they give you the more likely they are to have their avoidant side triggered.
Frustrating, right?
So, Why Do Exes Reach Out And Then Suddenly Disappear?
Well, most of our research has been revolving around avoidants so the first thing I’d look at is whether or not your ex is an avoidant.
If they are then it’s highly likely that the following cycle occurs,
A good amount of time has gone by post breakup.
The avoidant ex falls victim to the nostalgia principle
They start daydreaming about your peak moments together
They paint you as the phantom ex, the one that got away
This causes them to reach out to you
But reaching out to you has removed your phantom ex status and they start to fear that they’ll lose whatever distance they had to protect them
Worse, is the more undivided attention they give you and more interest they feel the more they feel that their independence will be threatened
And so they bail and disappear in an attempt to regain their long sought after independence
It’s not a perfect one size fits all explanation for every single situation but it is something we’ve definitely seen in our coaching practice.
Above we already established our sort of rule of thumb.
Ignore Your Ex = Start The Process Of Getting Them Back
Block Your Ex = Start The Process Of Getting Over Them
Realistically, not many people who come to our website have that goal fully figured out. They are stuck on a pendulum constantly swinging back and forth between wanting their ex back one day and then not wanting them.
So, my goal here is to help you make this decision easier and I’d first start by looking at few statistics
What Do The Statistics Say About Ignoring/Blocking An Ex
Now, I’ve written about the merits of ignoring and blocking an ex quite a lot but what do the statistics actually say.
Well, that’s the thing. There are no legitimate sources of research out there that have done a deep dive into ignoring or blocking an ex.
So, the internal research from our private facebook support group is the best we could do for you.
Let’s first start by talking about ignoring an ex.
Stats On Ignoring An Ex
When I talk about ignoring an ex I’m really talking about implementing a no contact rule. A self imposed period of time where you are ignoring your ex purely as an opportunity for self growth on your part.
Of course, the no contact rule isn’t meant to be permanent (unless of course we talk about “the block” version but we aren’t doing that here.)
Generally there are three time frames that we’ve historically recommended when it comes to no contact.
A 21 day rule
A 30 day rule
A 45 day rule
The goal with no contact is to get to this place emotionally where you’ve outgrown your ex before you actually begin to establish contact again.
So, the intent to actually start a conversation is always there and that’s what separates “ignoring an ex” from “blocking an ex.”
But what do the statistics say.
Well, we’ve been blessed with some amazing success stories over the years.
If you look at the successes that I’ve interviewed one common theme you’ll find throughout all of them is that the no contact rule is present.
In fact, in a recent study we conducted in 2021 we found that over 90% of our success stories mentioned the no contact rule in their approach to getting their ex back.
This lends further credence to the,
“Ignoring = Get Your Ex Back Approach”
We’ve even gone as far as looking at why ignoring an ex seems to be so effective.
We believe it’s because the average client is trying to get back an ex that leans more towards avoidant.
The Ignoring Avoidant Statistics
Let’s use hard data here.
In 2020 I conducted a poll in our private facebook group asking our participants what attachment style they believed their ex was.
More than 400 participants took part.
70% believed their ex was an avoidant.
So, with this knowledge we can safely assume that a lot of times a no contact rule is being used on an avoidant which if you know anything about avoidants you would know is exactly what they want.
In fact, in this video,
I make a strong case that the only way an avoidant will miss you is if they feel comfortable missing you and that usually doesn’t happen until they feel like you’ve moved on.
What does the no contact rule do?
Basically puts forth the fact that you are moving on.
Of course, we still have one fly in the ointment.
Ignoring An Ex Takes Discipline
In the past I have made some statements based on research I conducted in 2013. Now, I don’t know about you but that’s a long time ago and interestingly, the dating dynamics have seemed to have changed.
So, what was the statement I made?
Close to 80% of people who try the no contact rule will break it at least one time.
That’s been my rallying cry for years to explain to people that the no contact rule is difficult. Well, what if I were to tell you the stats have changed?
In preparation for this article I ran a poll where I asked,
For those of you who have attempted a no contact rule. How many of you made it through without breaking it at least once?
Here were the results.
63% of participants admitted they had not broken the no contact rule
37% of participants admitted they had broken the no contact rule
So, why the sudden change in statistics? To me, it just means my team and I are doing a better job of educating individuals who attempt the no contact rule the pitfalls of breaking it.
Each time you have to start it over after failing it loses a bit of effectiveness.
Now lets switch gears and talk about blocking an ex.
What The Statistics Say About Blocking An Ex
Blocking an ex is actually my preferred method for getting over an ex.
It may sound harsh but I personally believe that the more you can limit the temptation of talking to an ex the easier it will be to focus your energies within and heal.
Too often have I seen clients try to remain friends with an ex they want to get over only to be caught back up in the on again/off again cycle.
So, blocking an ex should only be used if you want to get over the breakup.
There are a few stipulations I’d like to talk about here though. If you presently find yourself in a situation where you can’t block your ex full out then you are going to have to make a few alterations.
What would a situation like that look like?
You share children with your ex
You work with your ex
Basically any type of situation where it’s absolutely essential that you stay in contact
In those cases I’d recommend a soft block instead of a hard block.
Soft Block: Your ex is blocked almost everywhere but still has a few avenues of communication
Hard Block: Your ex is blocked everywhere imaginable
Now, most of the time when I’m dealing with clients who are on the opposite end of the situation. They are the ones being blocked by their exes and we’ve learned some interesting things about that.
So, most of our clients who find themselves caught up in a situation like this immediately panic because they want to find a way to get unblocked.
And the best advice we can give based on empirical data is to literally do nothing.
Don’t react.
Just wait it out.
70% of the time if you do nothing your ex will unblock you on their own accord.
So, what does that tell us for the discussion we are having in this article?
Simply that the odds of you keeping your ex blocked are pretty low. The single hardest thing you are going to be dealing with is temptation.
What is my ex doing without me?
Are they with someone else?
Is that new person better than me?
Are they as broken up about the breakup as I am?
These kind of thoughts often lead to a type of pogo sticking effect to occur.
What’s that?
Pogo Sticking: Where you block your ex, then unblock them to see what they are up to only to block them again. And on and on we go.
This is why I’m such a huge proponent of using blocking only if you want to get over your ex. It’s simply a strict way of limiting your distractions.
Take the no contact rule as an example. Theoretically the only difference between a no contact and a block is that with a no contact rule the temptations and distractions are always available to tempt you.
You can see when your ex reaches out to you.
You can see what they are doing on social media.
With a block that goes away. There are no distractions. No facebook stalking or instagram hounding (just made that up.) You get the picture though.
In the end the battle that really matters really happens up here (points to head.)
If you can’t obtain emotional control then everything is all for naught.
Do Emotionally Unavailable Dumpers Come Back?
Apr 16, 2022
Today I’m going to take on one of the most common question dumpees ask about dumpers; Will they come back if they are emotionally unavailable?
Now, just so we’re operating under the same framework I’m going to define a dumper who is emotionally unavailable as someone who,
Is not comfortable sharing feelings or emotions with others. Often they can be even tone deaf to showing any kind of sympathy too.
So, does this type of person ever come back after a breakup?
As you can imagine the answer is a little nuanced but in all I’m going to argue that there’s a point where they have an extreme bout of nostalgia and consider the possibility.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll act on those feelings.
Like I said, it’s complicated.
Luckily for you though, I’m here to hopefully provide some clarity.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
I don’t know if it’s just me but I’ve always struggled with diagnosing emotionally unavailable people.
I first started Ex Boyfriend Recovery in 2012 and an argument can certainly be made that I was exposed to more emotionally unavailable behavior in the past ten years than I knew what to do with but I still struggled with explaining the root behaviors of why they are emotionally unavailable.
At least, that was until I came up with he following equation.
It may not be fool proof. I’m sure a licensed therapist can find flaws with it. However, in my experience generally that singular equation can help with understanding why an emotionally unavailable person is… well, emotionally unavailable.
Let’s do a quick crash course on what an avoidant is if you don’t already know,
According to Free To Attach, my favorite attachment based website and avoidant attachment is,
Someone with a tendency to emotionally distance themselves from their partner. Their caregivers consistently failed to meet certain needs (such as emotional support), so they learnt to suppress those needs and emotions and to self-soothe, meaning that even though they have a natural human craving for connection, at heart they feel safest alone.
There’s a lot to unpack there so lets dive a bit deeper.
Understanding The Root Cause Of An Emotionally Unavailable Dumpers Avoidant Persona
Following the definition above an avoidant is often an avoidant due to their primary caregivers not meeting certain needs.
This teaches them from an early age to self soothe and thus creates a kind of lone wolf complex.
My colleague, Dr. Tyler Ramsey, often will talk about finding an emotionally unavailable dumpers core wound.
According to him, an avoidant has a core wound based around fear. Essentially they fear anyone who threatens their independence which as you can imagine relationships certainly do.
It’s stubbornness on a pretty deep level that is hard to overcome. In fact, I’m reminded of Platos Allegory of The Cave in relation to their behavior.
Essentially it goes like this.
Imagine you were imprisoned in a cave with other prisoners from an early age. All you see around you is darkness and flickers of shadow due fire in the distance.
This is your entire life. Your entire existence. It’s all you’ve ever known.
Almost no one ever escapes the cave until one day you do. Suddenly you are exposed to the wonders of the outside world and you go through a personal Renaissance learning everything you possibly can.
One day you decide to travel back to the cave and tell the other prisoners there of the wonders of the outside world but you are met with skepticism.
“No, life is not all about this cave. There is a sun, sky, beauty to be found.”
But they aren’t buying it. In fact, they view you with such skepticism that they try to kill you.
Here’s the point. Often with an avoidant trying to convince them that they should be with you after they’ve dumped you is akin to you going back into that cave and convincing the prisoners.
The emotionally unavailable dumper has most likely been avoidant their entire lives. It’s their way of coping. Their only way of knowing how to exist.
You coming and trying to convince them that there’s another way. That you can have a relationship that is healthy, open and secure is met with skepticism.
That’s an assault on their independence and without their independence they’ll be laid bare and that kind of vulnerability is often too difficult for them to bear.
But that doesn’t mean they don’t consider getting back with you. We’ve noticed an interesting thing.
The Nostalgia Factor
I know I sound like a broken record because I talk about this all the time. In fact, I’ve filmed entire videos on it,
But there will come a time after an emotionally unavailable person has discarded you that they begin to fantasize about you again.
I think one of the reasons I’m so big about hammering this point home is that it really took me personally a long time to figure this out.
Years.
And I feel a little annoyed at how simplistic it seems to people. Often, when I explain this concept to them they’ll roll their eyes and go, “Of course.” Like it was the easiest thing in the world for me to learn.
It’s wasn’t.
I can’t tell you how many thousands of situations I had to study to learn it.
I can’t tell you how many hundreds of clients I had to personally coach and then wait months for their results to prove my hypothesis.
So, here is what we learned.
When an emotionally unavailable person feels like they have their independence again they finally allow themselves to feel nostalgia for that past relationship.
This is making a few assumptions though. If you were too aggressive in your pursuit of fixing the relationship they can sometimes skip over the nostalgia stage and simply just move on.
Additionally, just because they are having nostalgia about you doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll act on their feelings.
You see, emotionally unavailable people often fall victim to the phantom ex syndrome.
An avoidant person often has a story of a perfect ex in a relationship that wasn’t fully realised, the ‘one that got away’ to whom no one else can measure up. The phantom ex operates because there is/was distance, not because the relationship was successful. But a fixation with a past partner affects budding new relationships, blocking them from getting close to someone else. Just the knowledge that this person is out there is enough to make any new partner seem insignificant by comparison, a subconscious distancing strategy.
Look at how on brand that is for them. By concocting this idealized partner.
This “one that got away” it’s essentially a perfect excuse to keep all relationship at an arms length. No one will be able to measure up to this perfect person.
Thus, they hold on and protect their independence. So, weirdly fawning over failed relationships is part of their process.
That nostalgia will happen if you give them space because it’s literally their way to protect themselves.
But Do They Ever Come Back On Their Own Accord?
If you’ve been with Ex Boyfriend Recovery from the beginning then perhaps one of the things you may have noticed is that I encourage men and women to be a lot more active than most of my peers.
While they preach, “let the man come to you.”
I preach, “Give them some space and then be active.”
In truth it’s because I’ve always felt that playing hard to get alone isn’t an effective strategy all the time.
Only when I started learning about attachment styles did I really see this kick into overdrive.
According to a poll in our private facebook support group, most of our clients are dealing with dumpers who are avoidant and emotionally unavailable.
And everything I’ve researched and experienced says that if you just leave an avoidant alone they won’t usually take any meaningful action to “win you back” until WAYY down the road and usually I’m talking about years later.
In fact, we see this happening as early as the no contact rule. Contrary to popular belief most exes will not contact you during the no contact rule,
Why? Because they are avoidant.
Usually our clients have to be active if they want a reconciliation to occur and the key factor that everyone misses in the industry is that timing matters a ton with emotionally unavailable exes.
If you are “being active” in a space where an ex hasn’t hit that nostalgia phase you’ll be looked at as an annoyance.
So, half the battle is about timing your reach outs and value ladder work when an ex is in nostalgia mode but not being overbearing about it.
And the sad fact is that half of the time if you do get these emotionally unavailable exes back the relationships fail half of the time again.
So, I’d greatly encourage you to think carefully before embarking on this adventure. It’s not that it can’t be done. My team and I feel we’ve mastered the art of reconciliation.
It’s more about asking if the dumper is worth the effort.
Stages A Fearful Avoidant Goes Through After A Breakup
Apr 11, 2022
Today we’re going to be talking about the major stages that a fearful avoidant will go through during a breakup.
And here to help us is one of the best fearful avoidant experts in the world, Dr. Tyler Ramsey, to help dissect the stages.
According to Dr. Ramsey there are five key stages that a fearful avoidant will go through and oddly they are very similar to the dismissive avoidant stages we talked about in a previous article.
The five stages are,
Avoiding All Things About The Other Person
Feelings Beginning To Surface
The Pendulum Swing
The Attempt To Move On
Nostalgia Loop
First things first though, before we jump into talking about the stages of a fearful avoidant it’s probably a good idea to explain the difference between a dismissive avoidant and a fearful avoidant.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
What Is The Difference Between A Dismissive Avoidant And A Fearful Avoidant
In order to properly explain this concept we first need to really understand two opposing insecure attachment styles.
Anxious attachments: which are classified by individuals who like a lot of attention, affection, and crave constant reassurance in relationships
Avoidant attachments: which are classified by a persons need for independence. Generally when an avoidant feels that their independence is being threatened they will end a relationship.
You probably already know this as its been talked about on this website ad nauseam.
However, we haven’t talked a lot about the difference between dismissive and fearful avoidants.
A great cheat sheet you can use if you are confused is to simply think of the classifications this way,
Dismissive Avoidants: Comprised almost entirely of avoidant qualities.
Fearful Avoidants: Comprised of both anxious and avoidant qualities.
According To Dr Ramsey,
Really you have this unique dynamic with a fearful avoidant that has both qualities from within in so they have that anxious side to them, that’s basically craving a relationship. But also at the same time, they’re afraid to lose themselves in a relationship, their independence, their vulnerability, relying on someone. So you see them battle back and forth between the two. And that’s why they’re actually labeled fearful, because they desire a relationship but they’re afraid of it.
Stage One: Avoiding All Things About The Other Person
So, by his own admission Dr. Ramsey modeled the stages that a fearful avoidant is going to go through during a breakup after this video and article,
However, while they may sound similar there are subtle tweaks and differences that make all the difference in the world.
Almost all avoidants, no matter fearful or dismissive are going to have this first stage of avoiding all things about the other person but interestingly, a fearful avoidant, even though they have anxious qualities, they actually shut down and they deactivate more so than a dismissive avoidant.
Which you wouldn’t really expect.
It’s very interesting that they do these things, and it’s usually for a couple of weeks where they are just full blown, really trying to suppress those thoughts down.
Often you’ll see a lot of a fearful avoidants exhibit bad behaviors that may have been present in previous years.
Some of the most common coping mechanisms we’ve seen them engage in is,
Drinking a lot of alcohol
Going on a lot of dates with a lot of different people
Going as far as sleeping with some of those dates
I guess the more interesting question to ask at this point is why? What’s the psychology behind why they are engaging in these seemingly self destructive behaviors.
Dr Ramsey offers his take,
I think it’s because they have a lot of inconsistency within their past life. Usually what happens is a previous caregiver, was so inconsistent during their upbringing it impacts them on a profound level.
Stage Two: The Feelings For You Begin To Surface
Eventually that suppression can’t last forever and some of those suppressed feelings can begin to bubble to the surface.
Most of the time, they really tried to convince themselves that they have no feelings for you.
For them, this was a relationship that should have ended and usually it’s from an emotionally based decision.
They’re very emotionally based decision makers, where if something ignites, it ignites right there, then they’re like, Absolutely not, I have to get away.
But they recover quicker, too, because they have that pendulum like anxious and avoidant cycle where as soon as you give them their space, and you let them sit on it for a little while, they come out of it, they sober up in there, they start thinking more logically instead of emotionally.
Usually it’s because they’ve removed themselves from that scary environment.
As a result, that’s why you might see them start to have their feelings bubble to the surface.
But this is assuming you are giving that fearful avoidant ex some space.
What Happens If You Don’t Give A Fearful Avoidant Space?
Stage two is all about feelings being bubbled to the surface if you give them space but what happens if you don’t give them space?
Are they just kind of stuck perpetually in that first stage?
I put this question to Dr. Ramsey. Here was his answer,
Yeah, they stay in that first stage. It’s almost similar to the dismissive avoidant, you just reignite their avoidance all over again and they just push you away further. When an anxious person does go and try to contact a fearful avoidant over and over and over you do push them away further and they feel more firm in their decision, because you’re recreating that emotional kind of situation all over again.
Stage Three: The Pendulum Swing
Yeah, so the third stage is really where things start to change a little bit more from the dismissive avoidant stages because you actually kind of see their anxious side getting triggered a lot.
It’s best to look at their behaviors similar to that of a pendulum.
Swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other.
Most like to think there’s an even split of how a fearful avoidant is half anxious or half avoidant but that’s actually not correct.
Rather a more accurate split is, 60/40 or 70/30.
And so depending upon if they’re more anxious or avoidant, they’re gonna sober up and they’re going to potentially try and reconcile with the relationship.
But when that happens, they have this ability to re suppress like a dismissive avoidant as well.
So, in the interview with Dr. Ramsey he gave some insight into the complicated nature of fearful avoidant thoughts,
And what makes this trigger is their anxiousness getting to them too much, or what’s actually going on in their life. Currently, they’re feeling alone, they’re feeling like they can’t get anyone else, then they’re more likely to reconcile because they’re more anxious. And you’ll see sometimes and it’s probably like a 50/50 shot, a fearful avoidant will actually reach out to you. During that time, it’s not always the case. But the reason why they may not reach out is because they are afraid of being rejected all over again, or feeling that pain all over again, that they tried to avoid previous. So that’s why it’s a 50/50 shot if they’ll reach out. And it doesn’t mean that they don’t want to reconcile, if they don’t reach out, it just means they’re too scared to put their, you know, vulnerability on the line.
Ultimately this is the stage where you see a lot of mixed signals and for many who date these individuals it can feel like they’re almost dating Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Stage Four: They Attempt To Move On
Either the Re suppression or the rejection will win out eventually and they will try and begin to move on.
But it’s interesting to note that this stage can potentially never occur if you push them too far with anxious behavior. This is all assuming you are giving that fearful avoidant space.
If that’s the case, then usually they themselves are tired of being bitten by that anxious part within them.
Honestly, in a lot of ways, fearful avoidants are very complex people.
They’re not this just cookie cutter kind of person.
Really, I think if you are very anxious towards them they are still very empathetic people, so they feel bad for hurting you.
They’ll feel bad for making you feel that anxiousness. And so they don’t typically hit that point of no return until after you triggered them a few times.
Often you’ll have to continuously do it over and over and over and over to where what happens is it becomes too much of a burden on them.
They feel so bad, because they have such a core wound of feeling like they’re not good enough.
And that’s actually what an anxious person is reconfirming to them that they’re never good enough.
Because they’re reaching out saying they didn’t do these things for them.
Or why how could you treat me like this?
So they eventually just push you away completely forever, because you’re too dangerous to them and you’re too emotionally volatile.
It can make them feel so bad about themselves that they can’t handle it anymore.
And so it’s an interesting concept because anxious people don’t always think that way but they are honestly reconfirming to a fearful avoidant, their deep core wound over and over.
Stage Five: Nostalgia Loop
Stage five is all about the fearful avoidant getting hit with these waves of nostalgia about your relationship.
When eventually the FA (fearful avoidant) becomes more stabilized when they feel ok and a lot of time has passed they can actually sometimes enter this phantom ex stage.
They’ll start thinking,
“Man I missed this about my ex.” “I remember how good it felt during that one time.” etc.
And so they get caught up in the cyclic nostalgia loop but that nostalgia loop isn’t always enough to make them want to come back.
Remember, they almost like having the phantom ex ideal in their head.
In fact, according to Dr. Ramsey,
One of the hard truths is that a lot of times a fearful avoidant will attempt to cope with rebound after rebound after rebound. They’re very subject to rebounds because they have that anxious side of them. They can fall victim to that honeymoon phase. They’ll just go from one to the 111th person to the next but after a while they get tired of it. They re-reflect back on themselves and go, “gosh, maybe I had it good for with that one person from way long ago, maybe I’m never gonna find someone, maybe, you know, I’m gonna spend my life alone forever.” Why can’t I stay in a relationship for so long?
It’s usually at that point that they go back and they revisit that one.
And so you’ll see that happen a lot. In fact, most of the time typically has to pass before they do something like that.
The Rebound Comparison Game
Another interesting thing we’ve found about rebounds is that they play this strange comparison game.
Since often they’re rebounding what they’ll do is constantly compare every person to the key core characteristics they prefer in a partner.
They have this warped sense of reality where they think relationships should be perfect with no hardship, no emotional vulnerability.
And if it does have that, then it’s not the right person.
And they blame it on that and they break up. And so because they have all of these people that they have crossed compared on this person offered this and this one did this, and this person that I’m looking for should have all of these things, and I shouldn’t have to work hard at all.
According to Dr. Ramsey,
I think the biggest difference between a dismissive and a fearful is the fact that one has a high self esteem and one doesn’t. It’s the fearful avoidant that has the low self esteem.
Ultimately you’ll see that type of behavior play out consistently throughout their relationships.
He essentially argued that as long as the dumper isn’t overcome with their anxious side that if they give a fearful avoidant enough space that they will likely be hit with these bouts of nostalgia.
If you aren’t familiar with the concept of avoidant nostalgia I highly recommend you read this article and watch this video,
In a nutshell the video argues that all avoidants are overcome with nostalgia when they feel like their ex partner has moved on from them.
Only then do they feel safe enough to “miss them.”
Of course, what if the dumpee never gives the dumper that kind of space?
What if the dumpee is caught up trying to “fix” the relationship to the point that they become overbearing for the dumper?
In that case then the dumper will be brought back to the trauma of the breakup and ultimately want to avoid you.
So, weirdly YOU can be responsible for your ex not missing you after a breakup if you can’t obtain emotional control.
Crazy, right?
But there’s one other bit of complication that I feel is important to bring to the forefront and that’s looking at gender differences in how breakups are handled.
Understand The Different Ways That Men And Women Handle Breakups
I only bring this up because over 90% of our clients are female and for many of them there’s a disconnect for them when it comes to understanding what is going on in their ex boyfriends mind.
Now, you may be a male reading this and that’s fine. Still, I’d encourage you to listen intently because it’ll help inform you on the major misconception most people have about breakups.
Ok, so our head coach, Anna Gonowon, wrote this really amazing post on our facebook group essentially analyzing how men and women handled breakups.
The general stereotypes are what you would expect.
Women “are all broken up about it.”
Men seem to be ok.
BUT what does the research say?
Well, weirdly they kind of back this up. According to Coach Anna,
Men feel bummed, though, and they express it too. In that same study men reported more feelings of anger and they tend to engage in more self destructive behaviors than women. Women in comparison, frequently feel more depressed and participate in more social, affiliative behaviors than men. Women’s behaviors could be argued to be more constructive strategies as a result of their tendency to preserve the relationship whereas men choose destructive strategies for maintaining their own self esteem.
But here’s the thing. There’s more to it than meets the eye. Once again, quoting Anna,
So maybe the real story should go something like this:
Boy and girl meet.
Boy tells girl he loves her.
There is no one else but her.
But then, at some point, boy says, “It’s not you, it’s me. Let’s be friends.”
The boy changes his Facebook status to “single” and fills his Instagram feed with photos of himself partying with never-before-seen women.
The girl, meanwhile, falls apart and tells her friends how unfair it is that he’s already over the relationship, while she’s busy analyzing every minuscule thing that she might have done wrong, for months, maybe even years.
But the boy falls apart, too—he just doesn’t show or tell anyone. It sucks for both boy and girl, just in different ways.
And it probably sucks even more for him, but he’ll never tell you, because he’s not allowed to.
So, what does any of this have to do with a dumper missing you?
Well, assuming your dumper is a male it’s entirely possible that there’s an internal battle going on that you aren’t even aware of because they’ve become so adept at covering it up.
You read their silence as if they aren’t broken up about the breakup at all when the inferno inside them is consuming them.
And I think it’s all rooted in attachment styles.
Understanding The Avoidant Self Fulfilling Cycle
I know I say this in pretty much every article I write now-a-days but that’s only because it’s so relevant to most of our clients.
Statistically most of our clients are going through breakups with exes that are avoidants.
What does this mean?
Well, I’ll just refer you to the definition from my favorite attachment website in the world, Free To Attach,
People with avoidant attachment have the tendency to emotionally distance themselves from their partner.
Generally speaking they emotionally distance themselves from their partners when they feel as if they’re losing their independence.
And that harkens back to something our very own Dr. Ramsey calls the core wound.
According to him every attachment style has a core wound. Those with an avoidant style usually have a core wound that revolves around a loss of independence.
They’re afraid to commit because they feel like they’ll lose their independence in a relationship.
We can spend all day talking about trigger points and things of that nature but I’d like to cut directly to the heart of the matter.
What does the avoidant attachment style have to do with missing a dumpee?
Well, believe it or not but understanding the stages an avoidant will go through throughout a relationship cycle can help you understand around when they’ll miss you.
And for that we need to once again turn to a personal concept I came up I like to call the avoidant self fulfilling cycle.
Going In Depth On The Avoidant Self Fulfilling Cycle
Take a look at this graphic.
This is what I like to the avoidant self fulfilling cycle and before you ask me questions about if it applies to “all avoidants” I’m going to say that it doesn’t.
Nothing “cookie cutter” can ever encompass everything perfectly but as a general rule I have seen this play out time and time again across avoidant attachment styles as a whole.
Yes, that means if your ex is a fearful avoidant or dismissive avoidant they can go through these stages.
Because ultimately the crux of the concept of the avoidant self fulfilling cycle is that the avoidant is caught in this cycle going from relationship to relationship.
More on that in a moment.
For now let me just familiarize you with the basic stages of which there are eight.
They start out wanting someone to love them
They date you and things are great at first
Eventually your need for open communication and intimacy triggers their avoidant side
They begin to consider leaving the relationship
They actually leave the relationship
They are ecstatic that they left the relationship
They begin to feel lonely and need to find a distraction for the loss
They enter victim mentality and wonder why this is always happening to them
Now, what I find fascinating about the cycle is that it’s powered based on an aspect of nostalgia and desire if you really think about it.
You have the avoidant starting in a place of desperation. They’ll often think,
“Why can’t I find the right person for me?”
“Why can’t I feel the same way I did with that one person I was with”
And they’re constantly searching for a way to recreate that feeling.
In an odd way they have a lot in common with drug addicts looking for their next fix.
But they naturally self sabotage when they get into a relationship after they’ve gotten their fix and perhaps the most strange part of the phenomenon is they aren’t aware they are doing this to themselves.
And so often with Avoidants you’ll find they have quite a history of past partners.
Jumping from one relationship to the next. Yearning for an impossible partner.
So, it seems pretty gloomy, right?
Well, not really when it comes to pinpointing when the dumper will start missing the dumpee. The truth is that usually around stage seven of the self fulfilling process is when they are most likely to experience feelings of nostalgia.
The disconnect for many of our clients occurs because when they come to us their exes are sitting promptly in the middle of stage six.
It seems like the dumper is over the moon about dumping you and so my job (as well as the coaches of this program) is to educate you on what the post breakup period really looks like.
And part of that is managing expectations when it comes to time frames.
Creating A Realistic Time Frame Of When You Can Expect The Dumper To Miss You
I think I was doing a Facebook Live in our private facebook group with Coach Anna a long time ago and we started bantering back and forth about attachment styles when she said something that stuck with me to this day.
Your perception of time during the no contact rule can change based on your attachment style.
And while we aren’t really talking about the no contact rule in this article I feel like there’s enough of connection to bring it up.
Lately if you’ve watched any of my more recent YouTube videos I’ve been talking about this concept of time dilation based on attachment styles.
I use the 30 day no contact rule to really put it in perspective for a lot of people.
Anxious Individuals: 30 Days Feels Like 60 Days (or something to that effect)
Avoidant Individuals: 30 Days Feels Like 15 Days
Secure Individuals: 30 Days Feels Like 30 Days
Now, I bring this up for a few reasons. Firstly, that vast majority of our clients are the dumpees.
Second, most of our clients exes, who are the dumpers, tend to be avoidant.
Thus, it’s important to understand that on average it’s going to take longer than you probably think before the dumper is hit with that nostalgia that can make them miss you.
But what’s a realistic time frame.
A Realistic Timeframe Based On What We’ve Seen In Our Coaching Practice
It goes without saying that really we’re focusing on this area of the cycle,
So, in 2021 I posted a study I did on how long it took our average client to get an ex back (since that’s what they hired us for.)
I took 9 random success stories and simply looked at how long it took them to get back into a relationship with their ex.
Here they were,
Jessy (2 Months)
Kelly (3 months)
Mary (2 months)
Sarah Michelle (3 months)
Sarah Michelle Again (2 Months)
Sophia (5 months)
Jean (5 months)
Aaron (2 months)
Kris ( 7 months)
That averages together at 3.4 months.
Oh, and I believe that’s when they started working with us. So, if they were trying to get their ex back for ten months before they came into our orbit I didn’t count that in the data.
So, I think this creates a great baseline for when you can expect an ex to “miss you.”
Of course, the question gets kind of tricky because many avoidant exes above probably began missing the dumpee before they actually admitted it out loud.
But something tells me you are far more interested in a verbal acknowledgement of “missing.”
If that’s the case I think using our baseline gives you a great indicator on when you can expect a dumper to start missing you.
However, there is one factor that can ruin your chances. As stated above, if you don’t leave that avoidant ex alone they might never enter the nostalgia phase.
It’s so hard for many of our anxious clients to do this because naturally they want to fix their relationship as soon as possible.
But this is one scenario where patience really is a virtue.
Today we’re going to be talking about exactly how to know if your ex is confused.
And I brought in our very own Dr. Tyler Ramsey to help us with this.
According to him, the very best way to determine if your ex is confused is to take a long look at the actions versus words approach.
In other words,
Always pay attention to what your ex is doing as far as their actions are concerned because you’ll learn a lot about a person based on how they act as opposed to what they say.
Of course there’s layers to this and so the rest of this article is going to be dedicated to answering one singular question. How do you interpreted your exes mixed signals towards you? Are they confused?
Well, let’s find out.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
For the average person what does mixed signals post breakup look like?
According to Dr. Ramsey,
Generally what you’re going to see is hot and cold patterns where one day your ex is texting you very frequently and then the next they’re falling off the map.
But what’s really going on here?
Well, I think to answer that we need to take a hard look at the many different types of “mixed signals” that exes will exhibit when they are confused.
Confused Mixed Signal #1: I Want To Sleep With You But Won’t Commit
Unfortunately, this is a really common mixed signal we see throughout our coaching practice.
So, how does this work?
Essentially your ex is willing to sleep with you but they’re not willing to commit to you. Which is just kind of showing that they still want that connection with you but they’re not sure if they want to fully commit because that takes on an additional amount of vulnerability and accountability which adds pressure on them
Personally what I’ve always found interesting about the Friends with Benefits type situation is the inherent contradiction of of it, you know, you have this relationship with someone and then that person breaks up with you.
That’s them saying,
I’m not interested in you at all. But the Friends with Benefits aspect kind of indicates they are interested.
If you follow my actions vs words credo above then technically speaking it would seem as if your ex is unbelievably interested in you, right?
They still want to sleep with you at all so that has to count for something, right?
Psychologically What’s Going On Here?
Again, I’m going to turn to our very own Dr. Ramsey to answer this one.
Yeah, I think I think a lot of it is the fact that in this situation they are dealing with feelings, and they’re not sure exactly what to do with those feelings. My assessment would be that it’s a little bit too painful for them to cut you completely out of their life. Additionally, they’re probably not sure if they’re ready to take on a full commitment again so a lot of the times you see friends with benefits in a more avoidant person, just because the additional vulnerability that you need in order to make your time together into a full relationship is hard.
Ultimately what the good doctor is saying is that they still want to hold on to a small piece of your time together without fully committing.
In fact, Dr. Ramsey and I did an interview a few weeks ago where we talked about this idea of an addiction and how sometimes when you go through a breakup you get addicted to looking at peoples social media behaviors and he brought up this really interesting scientific fact about the nucleus accumbens which is a specific part of the brain.
In fact, even Coach Anna talked about this concept in her latest article.
According to her,
Physically, there are three areas of the brain involved in heartbreak, and those areas are:
Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA), which makes dopamine, the neurochemical that acts on the reward/pleasure parts of the brain
Nucleus Accumbens (nAcc), which is the reward pathway
Ventral Palladium (VP), which is associated with feelings of attachment to a partner that builds over time
But what’s super interesting about the Nucleus Accumbens is the fact that when it isn’t being used it can literally shrink.
Picking back up on another quote from Dr. Ramsey,
What I tell people often is that the brain is like a need heating machine. It will get its needs met regardless and that addiction part of it is actually something that contributes to it, and when it doesn’t, then it will go find it. A lot of the times, that’s a really quick fix. And so that’s why you typically see people entering into this friends with benefits situation. That’s why I tell a lot of my clients that if you’re in this situation you really have to set boundaries within it, because your ex is almost always going to keep you in this limbo, because it is a quick fix. And if you’re if you’re essentially agreeing to it, then you’re essentially saying you’re okay with being treated in the friendzone
Let’s talk about the next confusion sign.
Confused Mixed Signal #2: Future Pacing
So, what is future pacing?
Again, and I know this seems like a common theme but that’s because both Dr. Ramsey and I partnered on this article I’m going to turn the floor over to him.
Future pacing occurs when your ex makes comments about the future but never actually acts on those comments.
Some of the most common examples are them saying,
Oh, when we move in together Oh, when we buy this house together Oh, when we go to this place together
Ultimately future pacing is a good indication that your ex is confused.
One of the interesting things I’ve noticed from when I first started studying attachment styles is that a phoneme on I’ve noticed in studies is that avoidants often fall victim to these small bouts of nostalgia.
And this is often why exes can reach out to you from out of nowhere.
Maybe this is kind of like falling victim to that on a smaller level with future pacing.
Confused Mixed Signal #3: They Say They Are Happy Without You (But They Act Depressed On Social Media)
So, what does this actually look like?
Well, often it’s those things they say during the actual breakup that stick with you the longest.
“I’m better without you.”
“I never loved you anyways.”
“You meant nothing to me.”
Painful, right?
But the odd part is that on social media a different narrative is occurring.
Sure, they might feel like they’re happy without you but then they get depressed on social media posting all those sappy things that you see on their story on how they’re not doing well.
Or they need someone in their life to fill a void, those kinds of things.
Here’s an excerpt taken directly from an interview with Dr. Ramsey that I think sums this up perfectly,
And I think a lot of people are very aware when those things do occur. And so that’s, that’s a really good indication of showing actions and words, because they’re telling you one thing and doing another, and a lot of people will tell you, and I think that goes across all attachment styles is that, you know, I’m fine. I’m fine, I’m fine. And then I’m not really, because admitting some kind of weakness, or they’re trying to convince themselves that they are, but they’re not.
I mean, how often have we been in relationships with a partner and there’s this inherent sense that something is off you can tell it in your gut.
Ultimately this sign is kind of like the extreme version of that idea. And the fact that these people are they’re putting on the front and the opposite way. They’re saying, like, Hey, I’m fine. Without you. I don’t need you. But that’s not the case, you know, the actions are taking, you’re indicating they’re kind of depressed after a breakup.
Which leads us to our next sign.
Confused Mixed Signal #4: You’re More Than A Friend… But I’m Not Ready For A Relationship
I know I’ve used this reference before but I’m going to do it again because I think it’s perfect for explaining this mixed signal.
There’s this whole How I Met Your Mother skit on that idea of keeping someone you like on a hook.
The classic, “I’m not ready for a relationship… Right now…”
Insinuating that there;’s still a chance.
Of course, there’s tons of variations of this. Another classic is, “Maybe in the future?”
Ultimately my take on it is maybe a little unique because personally I feel like if I’m putting myself in this position and I’ll preface this by saying that I have definitely been on both the receiving end and the giving end of this excuse.
I feel like every time I’ve ever said that it was more to spare the other person’s feelings which I realize is a backwards thought because all it does is give them false hope when there’s no potential hope.
But the common theme that seems to be developing is that really what we’re trying to get you to see is the words aren’t as important as actions actions.
Jordan Peterson gives this really great lecture on something Carl Jung said,
If you can’t figure out what someone is doing or why, look at the outcome and infer the motivation.
Of course, this is just a really fancy way of saying that actions matter more than words when trying to understand the psychology of a human.
Today we’re going to take a hard look at dumpers and answer if you can expect them to stalk you on social media.
And I brought on our very own Dr. Tyler Ramsey to help. (Yep, just a few days ago Dr. Tyler literally became certified.)
Ultimately, we are of the belief that in most cases dumpers do “stalk” their exes on social media. In fact, there are multiple ways in which they do that.
And that’s what this article is really going to be about.
We’re going to dive into the science of why we believe most dumpers will social media stalk you
We’re going to take a hard look at the ways in which they do that
We’re going to talk about the pogo sticking effect in depth
And really look at if it’s healthy for you to even be spending time worrying about what the dumper is doing post breakup.
Let’s get started.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
This entire article is comprised of the notes from an interview I did with Dr. Ramsey, one of our ex recovery coaches.
(You can see that podcast episode above by simply clicking the play button. Additionally, it’s why Dr. Ramsey gets credit for writing this article .)
In the interview he provided some incredible insights that I’m going to get to in a moment.
But usually my “go to” research that I point people towards when they ask me if I think their ex is stalking them is this article from the huffington post,
While it’s a bit dated (the study was done in 2012) I have found it to be incredibly relevant today. Essentially it argues that close to 90% of exes will “facebook creep” you after a breakup.
So, statistically speaking there is a high likelihood your ex is going to be stalking you on social media.
Additionally Dr. Tyler brought up some really fascinating studies on why exes can get caught up in this addictive behavior after a breakup.
The Nucleus Accumbins And Its Importance To Addictive Stalking On Social Media
This concept taken from Dr. Ramsey so I claim no credit for it.
There’s this really small place in your brain called the nucleus accumbins. It’s best to think of it as the dopamine receptor that creates this feeling of euphoria.
Essentially any time you think, “Oh wow, this is great. This feels amazing.”
That’s the nucleus accumbins firing. So, during the honeymoon period with your ex that sucker is firing on all cylinders.
Suddenly a breakup occurs and it turns off. When that happens the nucleus accumbins can literally shrink due to the sense of loss.
So, engaging in behaviors such as “facebook stalking” or “instagram story spying” is essentially a dumpers way of trying to re-engage that nucleus accumbins or at least falling victim to it.
All of this is to say that scientifically and statistically the odds are definitely in your favor that a dumper is going to be “stalking you” on social media.
What Are The Dumpers Preferred Methods Of Stalking On Social Media?
That’s a really great question.
Generally the behavior falls into three distinct categories.
We’ve seen them use friends
We’ve seen them create fake accounts
We’ve seen them do it in silence (and heard about it upon recovery.)
Honestly nothing too revolutionary. Where things get tricky is how our clients often react to the stalking.
Many of our clients need affirmation to determine if dumpers are stalking them.
They need to see their ex watching their instagram story. They need to see their ex unblocking them.
The truth is many times you aren’t able to tell if they are stalking you because they tend to be secretive about it.
And so that’s where an addiction of our clients own making can begin but more on that in a second.
I’d actually like to talk about some controversial.
What Are Our Thoughts On A Dumper Stalking Their Ex If They’ve Blocked Our Clients?
So, this is where things get really complicated. Most people generally assume that an ex who has blocked them doesn’t want anything to do with them.
However, that’s generally not what we’ve found across the board. In fact, Dr. Ramsey really hammers home this point that when he coaches clients his top client fear is,
“Are they done with me?”
Well, the way to look at blocking specifically is that it’s an emotional reaction.
We know that the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.
A dumper who was truly over you wouldn’t block you. I mean, they definitely could but they wouldn’t engage in something I lovingly refer to “the pogo sticking effect.”
What Is The Pogo Sticking Effect?
Ok, let’s pretend that I’ve blocked you on Facebook. I want nothing to do with you. You can rot in h*ll for all I care.
(I’m playing the role of an ex boyfriend who is really rude. I need to get in character . )
A few days go by and naturally I get curious as to what you are up to so I quickly unblock you to check out your profile. Once I am satisfied I go back to blocking you.
I do this four or five more times over the coming weeks.
This is the pogo sticking effect. Essentially it’s where an ex blocks you and then unblocks you. Back and forth. Time and time again.
And I think it’s really important for us to take a look at some of the top reasons for why people block after a breakup.
Sometimes they want to send a statement: “I’m going to hurt you because you hurt me”
Sometimes it’s too painful to watch you from afar
Sometimes it’s an effort to kick the addiction of spying on you too much.
Your Reaction To The Breakup Creates An Interesting Control Vortex
One of the most interesting things that Dr. Ramsey brought up in his interview was the following excerpt,
“Sometimes if you act like the breakup wasn’t a big deal and you basically accept the breakup they (the dumper) starts to feel like they are losing a bit of that control and it can almost make them question their decision to break up with you. “
This can actually play in to that pogo sticking affect as well and the stalking concept in general.
But this leads me to the final point I’d like to make about dumpers and stalking.
Is It Healthy To Even Care about A Dumper Stalking You?
I don’t think so.
When you “stalk” or “Facebook creep” it can become habitual and it no longer becomes about feeding into your anxiety. It’s often because of a habit.
Think of it like this.
Let’s say that every morning at eight you get up and drink your cup of coffee. While you are doing that you go into social media mode and the first profile you look at is your exes.
At first it’s purely led by your anxiety post breakup but as time continues to march on it becomes less about that and ingrained as a habit.
You get up, you drink your cup of coffee every day at eight in the morning. You check on your exes profile. That’s just the way it’s going to be.
Obviously we don’t want our clients overly focused on their exes post breakup. We want them focused on themselves and improving their lives.
It’s cliche I know but sometimes cliche works.
So, the question now becomes how do you break the habit?
How To Break The Unhealthy Habit Of You Social Media Stalking Your Ex?
Most people tend to recognize that they are doing this and they want to break the unhealthy habit but most people fail.
Why?
Well, they treat it kind of like a New Years resolution. I mean, we’ve all been there. We set a goal. We go from 0-100 to achieve that goal and ultimately we lose focus and fail that goal.
Dr. Ramsey makes the case to not go 0 to 100. Instead, do it in increments. If you are looking at your exes profile ten times a day back it down to nine the next day and so on and so forth.
Break the habit in a small way. Try not to do it all at once and you’ll find your life is a bit easier.
Today we’re going to talk about the best way to tell a guy that you like him without getting rejected.
The trap most women fall into when they want to tell a guy they like him is they play too hard to get.
Here’s how it typically goes,
So, there is a decision to be made:
Do something about it (Play hard to get)
Don’t do something about it (Take action)
Let’s look at those individuals who don’t take action.
This Is What Happens If You Don’t Take Action
If you don’t take action on telling a guy you like him expect the following things to happen,
You’ll keep your feelings to yourself and pine away forever in secret. Similar to how Snape pined away in secret forever for Lily Potter.
Move on. This is straightforward. You say nothing, and, even if your family and friends know, you make them promise to never say anything about your former love. You ultimately find someone that you can love or communicate your love to, and you build a life partnership with that person.
Now, I don’t know about you but something tells me these scenarios don’t seem very attractive for you.
Which leaves you with one option.
This Is What Can Happen If You Take Action
In a dream world, you could approach your crush, declare your love for them, and receive an honest appraisal of their feelings in return.
But, unfortunately, things are never that simple in real life. So, what does this leave you with? Simply put you can do something about it.
You can take actions on your own, enlist the help of others, or do both. Communicating that you do like someone can be done in one of three ways:
Direct: is that you communicate your attraction directly to your crush
Indirect: is that you incorporate others and/or signaling into communicating attraction to your crush.
Combination: Mixing the best of both words from direct and indirect.
But before we really dive in on these three essential tenets we need to talk about timing.
The Importance Of Timing When It Comes To Sharing Your Feelings With A Guy
Regardless of what action you decide to take, you have to make decisions regarding timing.
Timing plays a significant role in communicating whether you like someone.
What we see often in popular culture, especially in the United States, Canada, and parts of Western Europe and Russia, is the idea of just telling someone immediately or fairly immediately and directly that you like them. Even when preparing for this discussion, I immediately thought,
“Duh, just tell the person you like him, her, or them. What do you mean how?”
Then, I realized that I have never told someone that I liked him shortly after I realized that I was attracted to them.
So, that straightforward answer isn’t the answer that works in real life.
That’s where timing comes in: it’s better to lay a foundation for attraction first.
Whether you communicate attraction directly, ask your friends to smooth the path or get involved somehow, or do both, you should put some time into laying the groundwork.
How much time passes between you realizing that you like someone and, ultimately, making the person aware that you like him, her, or them?
Do you just go for it?
Do you enlist help from others?
Do you enlist help from others and also do something yourself?
What’s the timing of all the actions that you want to take?
The Correct Direct Approach To Telling A Guy You Like Him
Research at different business schools say that a person is more likely to say yes to something if you have experiences in which they first say yes, feel understood, and feel excited and interesting.
Technically this is an extension of the Benjamin Franklin Effect.
Benjamin Franklin Effect: Contrary to popular belief doing a favor for someone makes you more like to do another favor for you as opposed to the other way around.
Depending on how your crush interacts with you, you can determine whether your crush reciprocates your feelings.
How To Know If Your Crush Reciprocates Your Feelings
1. Maintaining eye contact.
According to a study by Harvard psychologist Zick Rubin, couples who are really in love look at each other while they were talking 75 percent of the time, so try to resist the urge to nervously look away.
It’s a good sign if: your crush looks at you while talking and has open body language when you speak.
It’s not a good sign if: your crush does not look at you while you are talking, does not say much, and has closed body language.
2. Be interested in who they are as a person and listen to everything they say.
It’s a good sign if: your crush shows similar interest in you and what you have to say.
It’s not a good sign if: your crush does not seem interested in what you have to say or does not show excitement in your interests.
According to studies by the University of Nevada and the University of Washington, being a good listener is a huge part of having someone fall in love with you. People love it when other people take an interest in them and don’t immediately change the conversation so they can talk about themselves right away. Ask follow-up questions and respond warmly to what the other person is saying.
3. Notice what hobbies and interests they have.
Science tells us that people tend to fall in love with those who are very similar to themselves.
Studies have linked similar backgrounds and similar levels of physical attractiveness to the process of falling in love. It’s a terrible idea to try to change yourself in order to have more in common with or please somebody else.
However, if your crush has a hobby that you have had an interest in, it’s time to drive into that hobby, too.
For example, if you share a class or lab with them, look over at what they’re doing and say, “Hmmm, that looks pretty good.” This (then point) looks especially interesting. “What’s that about?”
4. Make them feel appreciated and special.
48 percent of couples have said they don’t feel appreciated by their partner, so if you can make your crush feel like you appreciate everything they do and everything they are, they’re more likely to fall for you.
Building off of our class or lab example above, you could then say, “Hey, look at what I’m doing here. What do you think of it?” Then listen to what they have to say and respond with, “That’s insightful. I hadn’t thought of that, so thank you for pointing that out.”
5. Flirt The Correct Way
It’s a good sign if: your crush flirts in return.
It’s not a good sign if: your crush remains silent and does not flirt at all or rarely flirts.
• Smile a lot. Body language studies say that smiling makes you look more attractive, more engaging, and it makes you look like a winner, all of which increase how hot and confident you look to someone who you’re hoping will become your person.
• Touch them more often. If your crush is male, touching your crush often increases a sense of comfort and intimacy with them. So little arm touches when your crush is around are actually working in your favor in a big way. Now, if your crush identifies as female, you have to avoid non-consensual touching.
6. Embrace what the other person is most passionate about.
When someone talks about something they’re really passionate about, they’re often sharing a part of themselves that’s vulnerable, so if you can appreciate that thing they love, they’re likely to be crazy about you in return.
Again building off the class/lab example above, let’s say that you overhear your crush mention to friends that he or she loves movies and movie marathons. Then, you notice that your crush is wearing a movie t-shirt. You could then say, “That’s my favorite movie! What do you like about it?” At the end of class, you could say, “I gotta get home, but I’m looking forward to seeing if your next movie t-shirt is of my second favorite movie.”
7. Bond over an adrenaline rush
There’s a connection between adrenaline rushes and sexual attraction. Test subjects were put in a scary situation (a shaky bridge), and then had to rate their feelings toward other participants. Compared to the control group who were on a safe, non-rickety bridge, the people who thought their lives were in danger were much more attracted to their fellow test subject. Roller-coaster date might be a perfect (and much safer) choice.
8. Play hard to get and utilize the Zeignarik Effect
It’s a good sign if: your crush tries to finish the conversation the same day or the next day.
It’s not a good sign if: your crush does not follow-up or remember the topic of discussion.
According to the “scarcity principle” invented by psychologist and author Robert Cialdini, objects that are rare, unique, or limited in time will make people desire them more. In one study of college students, four women were shown pictures of men they were told either liked them “a lot,” “an average amount,” or who “were uncertain of their feelings,” and then we’re asked to rate how attractive they found each photo. If you guessed that they found the “uncertain of their feelings” guys the most attractive, you’d be correct.
The Indirect Way Of Telling A Guy You Like Him
Much of this is straight out of an MBA program and any reading that any lawyer, sales, marketing, communications, or organizational executive would do.
People who are good at influencing others find ways to gather people together and get them to buy into a common goal (e.g., celebrate a birthday), initiative (e.g., watch all Marvel movies in chronological order), or solve some problem (e.g., we haven’t gathered in one place since the pandemic began).
They also find natural ways to be front and center from time to time; hence, perhaps you’re organizing parties or get togethers.
Become friends with your crush’s Sphere of Influence
Maintain good relationships with people within Sphere of Influence by checking in, showing you genuinely care about each person
In a 70/30 fashion (you are listening 70% of the time, talking 30% of the time) Listen to Sphere of Influence and ask questions that are simply about the Sphere of Influence
When you speak, address what the Sphere of Influence said and weave into the conversation your qualities and interests that you share with your crush
Become actively involved in group activities of Sphere of Influence
Work your social media
Make it clear that you’re single and looking to date a person who has certain characteristics – be sure to list the outstanding positive characteristics of your crush When you’re evaluating Sphere of Influence, ask yourself some questions:
How much outside support (ie, Sphere of Influence) do I need?
Who are the people, what are the organizations, and what are the interests that matter most to my crush?
Why do I need this person’s support or persons’ support? Why are these organizations important to my crush? What are my crush’s top interests?
What are the similarities between me and my crush?
What does my crush appear to find most attractive in terms of interests, activities, and values?
No matter what happens, how am I making sure that I continue to feel good and strong about myself?
And Finally The Combination Approach
You will have your highest chances of your crush reciprocating your feelings if you have a good handle on Sphere of Influence and are effectively interacting with your crush directly.
But what would this actually look like?
In an interview I did with Chris he tells the story of how he tried to tell a crush that he liked her.
He created a study group for the sole purpose of flirting with this girl inviting other people along to make her feel more comfortable. This would be classified as an indirect method.
Of course, during the study group he tried some very light flirting with her. This would be our direct method.
Think of the combination factor as combining the best aspects of both direct and indirect approaches.
Understanding How Exes Will React To Accidentally Seeing You In Public
Regardless of how you broke up, who broke up with whom, why you broke up, and what’s happened post-breakup, seeing an ex accidentally in public is going to be AT LEAST somewhat awkward for both of you.
No matter how calmly or “fine” your ex may appear, all exes will feel at least a short, sudden rush (interpreted as shock or surprise), followed immediately by uncertainty, and then an outward/visible attempt to appear at ease.
What is unlikely to happen is your ex running to you with arms wide open, asking how you are, telling you how much they missed you, and asking for you back.
What actually happens in the interaction is completely up to you, and, to make the most of that interaction, you should be prepared.
I’ve put together a list of rules, based on gender, on how you should be approaching things.
How Women Should React To Accidentally Seeing Their Ex In Person
Describe to yourself a woman – fictional or real life – that you believe is strong, confident, carries herself well, and radiates both power and attractiveness.
This woman has true “main character” energy or vibes.
Now, imagine this woman went through a breakup that is similar to yours in terms of who broke up with whom, general reasons for the breakup, the presence/absence of fighting, and what, if anything, that happened post-breakup.
Suddenly, this woman sees her/their ex while out in public.
What would that character do?
What do you think this woman’s ex would think on seeing HER accidentally?
What would be going through her/their ex’s mind? Another way to think about it is…what do you value most about yourself?
Is it your friendliness, your humor, your happiness, your intelligence, your loyalty?
Whatever you value the most, fully step into those values for those moments when you interact with your ex.
Although most cultures raise men to initiate interactions, in the situation of an accidental run-in in public, women should be prepared to initiate and to chat with an ex at least a few minutes.
For LGBTQ couples, women should expect to first catch the eye of the ex, wave in a friendly and gentle way, and make your way to your ex at a normal pace and assuming the ex is a few feet away.
Do not try to impress or show off to your ex, and do not ask your ex about anything that could make your ex feel bad or references the past.
Also, if you are still angry or sad, focus on being pleasant in that moment with your ex and exit as quickly and gracefully as you can – getting on the phone with your closest friend, your therapist, your coach, your family member as soon as possible to rehash.
Do not ask if your ex misses you, thinks about the past, or regrets anything — UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO HEAR AND ADDRESS THE WORST.
Moments such as those are the absolute worst timing to have such conversations; there’s time later to have them and in a way that stacks the probability of a favorable outcome.
Compliment your ex or, in the very least, note that you appreciate the chat but you have to go.
How Men Should React To Accidentally Seeing Their Ex In Person
In many cultures around the world, men bear the burden of initiating or being on the offensive in social interactions.
So, if you see your ex accidentally, you should be prepared to smile, wave gently and in a friendly way, and, if you are within a few feet of each other or less, walk up to your ex at a normal pace.
Do not run away.
Do not turn away from your ex and walk quickly in the opposite direction.
Remember, no matter how your ex may appear, internally your ex is also on his/her/their own rollercoaster of emotions:
Surprise
curiosity
uncertainty
trying to appear calm.
If you approach the situation with a positive frame of mind, understand generally how you’re doing to behave, and plan to exit after a short while, you are going to be fine.
Similar to women, men should have a general gameplan in their minds regarding what to do and what to say if they see their exes in public.
Like women, men should assume that there will be some awkwardness, surprise/shock, and an attempt to appear “okay”.
Think back to what you value in yourself as a person – not your physical characteristics, your job/school, your friends, family or network – as that is most likely what your ex valued in you during your relationship.
For example, you may be a smart, funny, down-to-earth person who listens well and asks good questions.
Whatever you value most in yourself as a person, lead with those characteristics in mind.
Do not try to impress or show off to your ex, and do not ask your ex about anything that could make your ex feel bad or references the past.
Do not ask if your ex misses you, misses experiences with you, or any similar emotional conversation – UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO HEAR AND ADDRESS THE WORST.
Moments such as those are the absolute worst timing to have such conversations; there’s time later to have them and in a way that stacks the probability of a favorable outcome. Compliment your ex or, in the very least, note that you appreciate the chat but you have to go.
A Quick Recap Of The Basic Principles Of Accidentally Running Into Your Ex Regardless Of Gender
Approach your ex with open body language
Say hello
A hug isn’t necessary at this moment.
A friendly wave, a friendly demeanor, and a smile will suffice.
State that you didn’t expect to see your ex here. Ask what brings your ex to that location.
Ask one open-ended question about your ex or your ex’s top interests, family, friends, or work.
Answer any questions that the ex may have.
Then say that you’d like to talk longer, but you have to go as you have a few other places to go today.
Tell your ex that it was good to see him/her/them.
IF YOU FEEL THAT THE INTERACTION WASN’T TOO WEIRD, you can hug goodbye and say that you’ll text him/her/them later. In general, the Ungettable person wouldn’t run away, hide, or freak out (at least visibly).
The Ungettable person is still human, so he/she/they are most likely to save that behavior for when they’re alone or with their close friends doing a debrief. However, in the moment, the Ungettable person has already determined and planned how they would behave, generally what they’d say, and how they’d exit as gracefully as possible.
Specific Scenarios On Accidentally Running Into Your Ex And What To Do
In this section I’d like to talk through some specific scenarios we’ve seen in our coaching practice and how to handle them.
Your ex runs away from you
Your ex is angry or unkind to you
They get really sad or emotional
They are with a new romantic partner
Dealing with a situation you can’t avoid
Let’s begin!
Your ex runs away from you
Just know that your ex believes that you are the stronger person emotionally
Your ex also believes himself/herself/themselves to be incapable of interacting with you in an emotionally calm manner
Your ex is panicking or very anxious because they don’t know what to do
Your ex is withdrawing out of fear (not fear of you, fear of not knowing what to do and not wanting to make everything worse)
If your ex is angry or unkind
Stay calm
Simply state: I do not have conversations with people who speak to me like this
Turn around, walk away, and get away as quickly as possible from your ex
Do not engage
If your ex is sad or gets really emotional
Stay calm, use a slow-paced, low speaking tone
Suggest to your ex that both of you should go a quieter place, then explain that you should both sit down until the ex feels a little better
If the ex asks a lot of emotional questions (e.g., getting back together, missing you, what have you been doing or thinking, etc), say that now is not the time to have this discussion, because this discussion needs time, attention, and thought and you’re not prepared.
Explain that you care for your ex and value him/her/them, but that the past is in the past.
IF YOU WANT YOUR EX BACK, SAY: However, while the old relationship is over, that doesn’t mean that there can’t be something valuable between you moving forward
IF YOU DON’T WANT YOUR EX BACK, SAY: It’s better for the time being for both of you to focus on being your best individual selves now and in the future.
You’re working on yourself and trying to be your best self, and you want your ex to be doing the same
If your ex asks if you’re seeing someone, be truthful: We’re both single, and I’m still definitely healing. I’m open to talking to people, but there is absolutely nothing serious, exclusive, or committed in my life right now. • Then redirect conversation for your ex to tell you about work/school, family/friends, or top interests.
After the ex is calmer, state that he/she/they seem better, and that makes you happy.
Then stand up and say that you have to go because you still have other things to finish today.
State that it was good seeing him/her/them.
DO NOT SAY YOU’LL TEXT IF YOU DON’T WANT THEM BACK.
If you do want the person back, tell him/her/them that you’ll text in a couple of weeks and see how they are doing.
If your ex is with a new romantic partner
Do not run away.
If you’re within a few feet of your ex and the new person, walk up to the ex and introduce yourself (by name only) to the new person.
Smile, be friendly, and have open, confident body language.
Ask how your ex is doing and ask an open-ended question that demonstrates you know a lot about your ex – work, family, pets, etc.
Say that you’re only there for a few minutes to get something or check on something, but you had to come by and say hi.
Hug the ex and wave at the new person, say it was nice meeting the new person and seeing the ex
Walk off as if you own the world.
If the situation is one you can’t avoid, such as work, Church, a small party, etc
If you must attend this function, be prepared to have small talk with your ex
Only address your ex if you are within arm’s length of your ex at the function
Greet your ex in a friendly way
Ask a function-appropriate question or two
Make a friendly comment regarding the function
After 5 minutes or less, put your hand on your ex’s arm and say that it was good to see your ex
But you see (person) and need to chat with them for a bit
Compliment your ex as you leave and say that you’ll text them in a few weeks
Success Story: How One Woman Became The Ultimate Ungettable Girl After Her Breakup
Mar 03, 2022
Without a doubt my interview with Lee is among the best I’ve ever conducted and it seems many people on my YouTube channel agree,
So, why is her interview resonating with people so much?
Simply put, I think she adopted the mentality of the ungettable girl and STILL lives her life like it to this day. So much so that she got her ex back but decided he wasn’t good enough for her anymore. She’s unapologetic about that fact.
Often my clients will hear me talk about how they need to have confidence after a breakup.
THIS WOMAN EXUDES IT.
Make her your spirit animal.
How Lee Got Her Ex Back And Decided He Wasn’t Good Enough For Her
Chris Seiter 0:00 Hey, I’m ready. Alright, so today we’re talking to another one of our success stories. This is Lee, who is basically become the ultimate ungettable girl. She was telling me a little bit about her situation before we got started recording and the importance of specifically why you need to kind of get yourself out there date other men. And so not only did he not only get her ex back, but she chose to reject her ex after she was like, I’m not really sure he’s up to up to par anymore, and now she’s dating someone who is great. Is that, is that a fair thing to say?
Lee 0:36 Yes, he’s, he’s proving himself, um, we definitely I, I implemented a new rule where when I start dating someone, I’m going to give them a 90 day trial, like
Chris Seiter 0:49 so it’s like, it’s like a money back guarantee type situation.
Lee 0:54 You if you really want something to be real and authentic, do you have to work for it, and you don’t want something immediately you want to, you know, you want to work toward something, and you don’t want to have your whole entire being within a month or two months, because things come out of the closet. Like, you know what I mean? Like, so you have to be careful. And as you get older, like, you know, I’m in my 30s Like, I’m not gonna just bring some Joe to my mom and be like, hey, you know, like, I want it worth it. And I want it to be real, you know?
Chris Seiter 1:22 Well, no, I think yeah, I think I think you bring up a really interesting point here. And we’ll get into the breakup stuff. Don’t worry, anyone listening. But I think this is an interesting point. One thing I’ve noticed there’s like these certain tipping points that set set men off specifically, like you mentioned, like, things come out of the closet as an example, Well, son, sometimes the more serious you get, that’s when the more crazy stuff that comes out of the closet, like you’re feel a little bit more comfortable to let that seven. So I think that I think the 90 day trial is is a pretty smart approach.
Lee 1:54 All important, and they respect you so much more. Like that’s the one thing I’ll say. And it’s it’s it works. It really works. It does in my mind.
Chris Seiter 2:06 I mean, you’re living it essentially. So before before we get to the to the happy roses at the end of the rainbow. Let’s go to the dark ring clouds for analogy there. But yeah, take us back to the beginning of like, when things went wrong, what the relationship was like with your ex.
Lee 2:23 So me and my ex like had the relationship everybody was like jealous of we both were like everyone called us Barbie and Ken We never fought like, you know, I got along so well with my his parents and vice versa. And it was interesting. It was like back back in the end of the spring. And we were actually about to go to a wedding the next weekend. We had started moving my stuff into his house like literally because that he was supposed to meet my nephew for the first time. And it was my first time meeting him as well. Because with COVID and everything they were living in Nashville. So it was like a couple double Whammies we were going up to see his his family that said like the following weekend, everything and like we were so excited. We had a great weekend. And literally it was like a Sunday morning. We were about to leave for the beach. Like I’m not kidding. We were about to like all our stuff was packed, our backpacks were on everything. And he’s like, we need to talk. And I was like, like, it’s really nice out, should we go outside bars? Like, do we do this at the beach? He’s like, No, we need to talk. And like, I sat down and I immediately knew like, I never like, I didn’t think it was coming. But once you see that look on the face, you’re like, I’m about to have a rug taken out from under my feet, you know? And I was I immediately said it to him. I was like, are we breaking up? And he’s like, I just he couldn’t even finish the sentence. He couldn’t complete a sentence. He couldn’t give me a rational reason. It was literally the conversation was maybe 20 words on his side. And he’s like, I’m gonna leave but you can pack your stuff. Like literally, that was the only thing that came out of his mouth. So I literally was like, You’re not leaving, like you’re gonna watch me do this. And then I quickly ran upstairs called one of my guy friends and he’s like, You don’t owe him anything. Take what you need and leave. Okay, and so legitimately, you know, I hear the door close. He leaves. I’m there with our dog. And I’m like bomb taking the dog. And it was literally a 20 minute like, everything flipped. And I took when I needed and I just left and I remember I went home. I called my sister and she was like really serious like, were they the baby and her were like three days from coming out. She’s like what, like we have a wedding to go to his name was on the invitation and everything And I was like, I don’t know. So I literally remember, I picked up a girlfriend. And we literally went out to brunch. Like, we went out to brunch, she posted a picture of me on social media out to brunch, like, literally to the point where keep in mind when my ex was breaking up with me, I just kept nodding. And I was like, okay, whatever you say, I’m not gonna fight for this. I’m not gonna have to prove myself if you don’t think I’m the person for you. That’s it. Okay. Like, okay, that’s it. And so then after that, I literally just remember sleeping for like, 24 hours straight. And then I woke up in the morning, and it was like a nightmare. Like it. It’s so weird when someone just pulls themselves from your life and you don’t see your phone ringing when usually, you have your patterns, your routines, and I just was like, numb. And I knew because I’ve been watching you for years, like just to keep my mouth shut. Because acting on impulse. From the minute you break up with somebody is going to shape your entire outcome, and I can’t really, huh,
Chris Seiter 5:59 so So have you already been kind of familiar with with no contact and stuff like that before this relationship?
Lee 6:07 Every time? I had good time. Okay, forehand.
Chris Seiter 6:12 Like you were already kind of part of the program by for this guy.
Lee 6:20 But I had been watching your YouTube videos for years, like okay, yeah.
Chris Seiter 6:25 So it was the long it was the long game to get you into a customer. Essentially, it’s against
Lee 6:31 Yeah. Well, the guy wasn’t worth it in my mind to like, and this one I was like, I’m just like, gotcha. And so literally, I, you know, kept my mouth shut. And I was like, my stuff’s still there. I know, I need it, but I’m not going to contact him yet. So I think like 48 hours had gone by, and I’m driving home from work, and an email pops up at like, 930 at night. And basically, it’s from him. He couldn’t even call to pick up the phone. It was like he was a coward who I was like, wow. And it’s basically the same thing that I see on all of the reasons why men break up with women. It’s like, oh, I can’t give you what you give me. You’re so great. You’re a great person, bla bla, bla, bla bla, what I’ve learned is those are empty excuses to get out. So they don’t feel bad about themselves. Like that’s the one thing you have to remember, if you look for a pattern or a trend or Google, like he said, this, does that mean we’re gonna get back together? Oh, it’s men, when they’re breaking up with you, I’ve learned will say anything to get out of a situation, whether it’s positive or negative, they want you out. Like they have their mind up. You know, luckily, my axe was a little bit more sensitive and didn’t go that route. So then I looked at the email, and I literally forwarded it to my twin and I just laughed. I was like, What a coward. He doesn’t deserve a response. So then the next day, I’m like, Alright, I got to start getting some of my stuff back. So instead of responding to the email, I picked up the phone, and I said, You know what, I need to get my stuff. And he’s like, what? You said you you saw the email though, right? And I’m like, Yeah, I was like, but I need to get my stuff like that doesn’t warrant a response for me. Like nothing that you said, is salvaging us, I need to move forward, I’m coming to get my stuff. Well, you’re
Chris Seiter 8:18 playing this breakup really good. Like you’re really doing a solid job here. Because it’s like a value proposition. If you think about it, like the way you’re handling it. Screams value, like, Yeah, this is what a valuable woman would do. She’s like, Alright, fine, whatever, I can find, I can replace you not the other way
Lee 8:37 around. And it’s, and that we, as women have to remember, we need to bet on, like, if we’re getting dumped anybody that’s getting dumped, you have to bet on yourself. Like you have to bet on yourself, that when you are walking out the door, or they’re pushing you out the door, that you are the best they’re ever going to have you. And that and you know,
Chris Seiter 8:55 people don’t think that because their insecurities are so great, and they’re so anxious, it just sort of that’s what comes out.
Lee 9:04 It I get it. But if you take it from that approach, like I bet on myself, that I’m so good of a person no one else is there’s no other man in the world, that they’re going to feel a void. It’s going to come and whether it’s 30 days, 90 days a year, there’s going to be that point where they sit there and like Damn. You know, like, he never did this or this
Chris Seiter 9:27 is the exact attitude this year anyone listening, this is the attitude you need to want to be successful.
Lee 9:34 Wow. She sat with my mom on Sundays and knitted and she hates knitting. Those are the things that are going to like make you a better person. And I knew our relationship was such quality. It wasn’t toxic. We weren’t fighting. Like those situations. You shouldn’t get back with your ex if you’re fighting every other day. You know, there’s cheat, like come on. But this was actually something where I was like, Alright, I’m a little iffy. I’m really going to do this right and I was like, I bet on my myself, and everyone’s like, you’re really not going to talk to him like, No 30 days. So that’s when I bought the program. I was at the wedding and I was having
Chris Seiter 10:08 Okay, tire took a year to break it down. Yeah, finally, gotcha.
Lee 10:13 I driving up to the wedding. And I’m like, feeling anxious because I know his name is gonna be on everything. And I’m like, I’m downloading the program, I’m buying it. And I remember as I’m getting ready for the wedding, as I’m driving around, like, I had my air pods and and I’m just listening to chapter after chapter. And I’m like, Alright, this is empowerment. Like, this is empowerment, this is what I’m going to do. And so I went to the wedding, and I had a blast, I had a blast. I was meeting, you know, a single woman at a wedding is a diamond in the rough. Like, we have to remember that. So I up. And keep in mind that entire time it had been like a week since we broke off. I went radio silent on social media, like he had to, I made it to a point where he had to check an obituary to see if I was alive. My friends were not allowed to post me. I didn’t add anybody on it. There was no bread crumbing like I was out. And so of course, I go to the wedding. Have a great time. I look great. And what do you think I do? The day after it was, it was on a Saturday. So Sunday night, I was like, I’m gonna post this photo, and it’s this beautiful photo, I’m in the field. I’m laughing, I’m smiling. And I waited till seven o’clock at night, because I knew that’s when everyone’s home from the weekend checking things. And I hit hit post. And literally, like, the photo, like for my friends, like broke the internet. Everybody’s like cheering me on, everyone’s like, yeah, like, That’s it, go, boom. And then I went silent again, I went silent. And that’s when he started breaking. Because, you know, my friends and I would be out. They’d post something. And then they check their stories. And he’s immediately checking, like to see, like, if I’m living or breathing, and then I just, you know, kept with the program. But then the biggest thing was, I didn’t look back, I looked forward. And then what I did was, you know, I had goals with this man, I had a timeline with this man. And the first thing I did was reset my goals for myself, right, and I
Unknown Speaker 12:22 carry some of those goals.
Lee 12:25 So like, oh, sorry, alarms going off. And so
Chris Seiter 12:30 far, it’s tough for interview, we started a little bit early.
Lee 12:35 So some of the goals were like simple, like, you know, get a place of your own, I was going to be living with him. I wasn’t in an apartment I was happy with at the time. So I was at his place a majority of the time. So it was finding a quality home that I was proud of, you know what I mean? That was something out of, and then it was reassessing my career, I was really unhappy with my work schedule. And I was like, let me let me get it a little bit higher. Like, let me you know, let me take myself to the next level, let me challenge myself. And then it was like, I want to make X amount every single month, how am I going to do that? So you know, then it was like, be a better daughter, be a better friend reconnect apologize to your friends that you kind of put on the side when you’re making your relationship a priority. And those are the things I really invested in. And then I reassess my friends circle that I did have, and may do friends, you know. So I really tried to do a full transition. Because for me, I knew that was that was the only progressive way to make a change in my life to potentially never get this person back. If we stay stagnant. Who we are, and we don’t evolve, and we don’t see ourselves reaching new goals and new heights in our life. There’s no intrinsic motivation. So like, what I will say is challenge yourself, to make yourself uncomfortable and actually follow through with the program and do things like that Trinity. Actually do the Trinity for yourself, right? Don’t fit for that. Don’t do it for their friends to see. Do it for you. Because the outcome was like my outcome is now I have a better home, I make more money. I have an incredible job. And that’s all for me. Like that’s exactly.
Chris Seiter 14:22 So what’s interesting about the goal setting this is this is the question I want to ask you I’ve been thinking a lot about this from from like local goals to global goals. So if like you think of a local goal, that’s kind of like short term so like you mentioned the apartment. That’s a great example of a local goal because that’s something that you can theoretically find within the span of three to five months. But then there’s like bigger global goals and the global goals are kind of like getting married having kids things like that. Did you only just set like local goals or did you also set yourself global goals that would take years to get to
Lee 14:54 you know, I I’m like here I am like being a ball and being like I’m strong. I had this person Then like did it it it up, but I was still hurting a lot. And the wrongs I hear on the radio and stuff like that. So I did local goals, because realistically, teams were like shattered. Like, you know, I was like I’m getting married next year, we said we’re gonna kids in two years, how can I make a new local goal, like a global goal when that is more heartbreak? Don’t want to trigger yourself? You know? Yeah,
Chris Seiter 15:23 no, I think I think that’s, I think there’s something to that too, because like, I think sometimes people when they set those global big goals, like getting married, buying house together, kids, things like that, you can serve as a productive North Star, but when you’re going through a breakup, that North Star can be so bright, it kind of just ruins you, you know,
Lee 15:44 don’t don’t, don’t do it to
Chris Seiter 15:47 local goals only.
Lee 15:51 Like you just have went through a huge transition in your life, like, be kind to yourself and be realistic of what you can achieve. Because realistically, some days, I didn’t want to get out of bed. So it’s like, you know, keeping it simple in the beginning, and then seeing that movement is really how you make it work. Like it really is how you make it work. And you know, when you have a entirely new life, basically, because that’s what I did, you know, I lost my person that I was living with, that I loved that I saw a future with, I had to reset, I had to hit reset. And I think that’s something we all aren’t prepared to do. But that’s what we have to do. You know what I mean, we can’t attach ourselves to the past if we want to move forward.
Chris Seiter 16:33 So it seems like things are going pretty well. You’re like posting all this stuff on social media, you’re kind of capturing this attention, you’re still kind of radio silent. It seems like you’re kind of almost like coming out of water, like a submarine every once in a while to post something. And then you go back down and underwater. When does things really began to snowball for you with regards to the ex like actively chasing, begging for you back things that nature. So
Lee 16:59 it wasn’t like a wasn’t like he was blowing up my phone. He’s he sent a lot of testers and it was actually interesting how it got back together. So keep in mind, we ended things at the end of May. And then I think mid July, he reached out and was like, Hey, I hope you had a good Fourth of July. It was like July 21.
Chris Seiter 17:20 So based on weeks after July 4, he reaches out, which is a really odd text message to send, like way after the fact.
Lee 17:30 Yep. And I was sitting at the pool with my friend at my brand new apartment. And you know what I did, posted a picture of myself at the pool and just went out with my friends at night and didn’t even respond. And then I responded. The next is that window of time, it literally I think was day 45. So I had gone past those 30 days. And I was like I don’t I don’t think I’m in that mindset yet. I still knew I missed him. But I still knew I needed to move forward. So I was like, You know what, I’ll wait till the next day. And I was like, yeah, things are going well. And he literally goes to me, he goes, Yeah, like what’s going on in your life I’ve been following or social media, but it’s kind of hard to read what’s going on. And I was like, Docker, like, you know, cuz it’s like, I’m posting little things like new apartment. I’m out with friends, he has no idea who they are now
Chris Seiter 18:19 just is a subtext here that he’s worried you’re dating someone else at all?
Lee 18:25 Probably. And he just saw me like, I evolved. I have so many of his friends following me. And like, I’m a very prideful person. So it’s like, you know what I’m gonna prove to them like I am. I’m not, I’m something of worth. And I’m going to take this break with dignity. You know, that’s the biggest thing you have to remember is that, like, at the end of the day, you want to go out with dignity, you want people to respect you like, the biggest thing is, is that it’s actually interesting. I’m still very close with some of my exes, friends, and I don’t think any of them would have been close with me if I didn’t take a mature approach to the breakup. Okay, you know, so quickly, you know, he was like, it’s hard to see what’s going on with your life. And I’m like, things are going really great. Like, sorry, you got a run going to the pool. And then he reached again, because I still had some of his stuff. And so we agreed, you know, we had gone back and forth. We talked on the phone a little bit. And then you know, we have the meetup. And he I call him the day of the meetup. And I’m like, hey, you know, I know you’re busy. But are we good for later? And he’s like, uh, yeah, we can get a drink. And I’m, I’m going to drive 45 minutes, we’re getting more than a drink. Like, this isn’t an in and out, you know, this is like, we’re gonna at least have some respect for one another. We’ve been together for a year, we could sit a table, at least you know, for an hour, exchanged stuff and walk away. Now what I mean, not bring up the relationship and just be cordial. It’s like, uh, yeah. And I was like, You know what? I was like, You’re clearly not prepared for that. I didn’t entertain the conversation really, I knew what was happening. And I was like, You know what, clearly you’re not ready for this. I’m sorry, I thought otherwise, took his stuff that I had still and just shipped it. shipped it to I just okay, I shipped it. And I went radio silent again, 30 days, and then I start getting the bread crumbing facts again. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Like, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, You know what? There’s, there’s no question. There’s no, there’s no course of action that he’s, he’s putting in these texts. I’m gonna keep moving forward. You know, and then I started dating. And, you know, he obviously caught wind of that. And I dated once again, for myself. It wasn’t to make him jealous. I met someone that I thought was pretty cool. And I started dating them. And, you know, eventually he he called me he, my ex called me he reached out. He was like, I really want to see you, I really want to talk to you. Um, I did some coaching sessions with Anna and I was like, You know what? You should you should meet up with him. Okay, so then, you know, we meet up waterworks, no other woman has ever treated me the way that you do. And I want another chance did it at a
Chris Seiter 21:13 pretty typical, pretty typical.
Lee 21:16 Yeah. Funny.
Chris Seiter 21:18 So sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. But I wanted to interject here. I think the really funny part about this is, I feel like the, the way you handled the breakup was so on point that really played into that result. Like, I don’t think you get that result if you are acting not. If you’re acting like the typical anxious person after a breakup, you’re begging for them back, you’re crying, you’re being too overtly jealous. I think the way you handled it really created this value gap between you and other women, potentially that he could have other alternatives for him. And I think that’s the key component on why you got the result you did.
Lee 22:04 I followed exactly what you said to like, I remember there was one thing it was like, change up your look a little bit like, go that extra mile and I did that I was doing those things. I was trying new things. I was surfing again. I was I used to sing. I was singing again. And he’s like, looking at all this. And he’s like, holy shit. Yeah, like I missed out on all of this, that I could have been a part. Yeah. And, and so it cost thing. Yep. And so finally, you know, we start dating again. And it was okay. It wasn’t anything astronomical. It was, you know, it was there were those great feelings. But at the same time, every morning, I would, you know, when we got back together and things started working again, every morning, there’s still that fear that they’re gonna check it out again, you know, like, as much as I was doing everything, right, like, you know, I still had that fear. Um, but you know, do you ever
Chris Seiter 22:58 talk to him about that at all? And he gave you the whole publish feels like, you don’t need to worry about this. I’m in it right here to try to. But did he actually do any actions? Like to backup anything? He said?
Lee 23:15 Oh, yeah, like, so it was interesting, because he was the one that told me what his weaknesses were and how he could have been a better man and the relationship. So it was like communication. So he really started communicating quality time. And those were things we already were doing. But he took it to that next level. And it was interesting, because we always were at his place, we were going to move into his place, he started coming to mine. And I had some like, very hard time. Like, you know, my mom got really sick. And I will say this, he was my backbone through that. So he really was proving himself. But at the end of the day, when you, you know, I had three months to grow. And I’m looking at, you know, what he’s doing when I’m not with him, like, he’s kind of a child still, you know, and he’s like, five, I was like, do I really want this life anymore? Like, is this really it for me? Like, is he gonna be just doing those same things? And is that really where I want to take my life? And then I started realizing that I was having that bad gut feeling that he told me about four months prior, and I needed to go with my gut and realize that he wasn’t it.
Chris Seiter 24:25 Yeah, I think what’s what’s interesting, at least, the way I I’ve always looked at it is I feel like when women put themselves in a position where men have to prove themselves to them, they’re always like, they’re always in a, I don’t know, inherently better position. And what’s interesting about this is you had grown to such a level where you wanted to I think it’s kind of like a snowball type thing. You wanted to keep the growth going. Do you feel like he hindered it at all? Like just being with him kind of like set you back from like, reaching your maximum potential?
Lee 24:58 I would have stayed in the same Like complacent things I was, you know, I would have stayed in the same job, I wouldn’t have challenged myself, it was all simple. Like, you know, I was very, I was a top performer in a company, I won, like, most valuable employee, one year out of 2000 employees. And it was like, alright, well, you’re really good, like, wow, those are really commendable things, but we’re gonna get married, we’re gonna have kids, and then you’re gonna stay home with the baby for two years and take care of it and not work.
Chris Seiter 25:27 And so that was that was your life trajectory that
Lee 25:31 was gonna be that was gonna be it. And you know, who knows, maybe that’s what I wanted. But that was what he wanted. And I was like, Okay, well, I really want to be with him. So I’m going to do whatever he says, I really get married, you know?
Chris Seiter 25:43 Yeah, I mean, that doesn’t seem like the great foundation for a marriage, that’s going to last a long time, especially if there’s that level of resentment. And then when you get kids involved, that adds an extra layer of complexity cuz you you love your kids more than anything. So it just kind of muddies the waters and you can end up feeling trapped. Not to say that yeah, being a mom or all those stuff is like a fulfilling thing. But there’s always that resentment potentially bubbling under the surface. And did you feel like that was kind of where that feeling came from?
Lee 26:12 Women have maternal clocks, like, we have to remember that and we grow up with a group of female friends, and they all start getting married. And you don’t want to be the last one. I didn’t want to be the last just like a picture type thing. Yeah, it’s my MO peer pressure. And that’s exactly what I was doing. So anything he was saying was enough. I age bracket to get married, get engaged. So this was it. You know, this, this, this was it. This was complete, in my mind. But realistically, I wasn’t listening to myself, You know what I mean, my life. I hadn’t accomplished the things that I wanted to accomplish that I knew I was capable of. Yeah,
Chris Seiter 26:51 I mean, that’s not to say you don’t want to get married. You don’t want to have kids. You just feel like you don’t want to be tied down to only having that as your potential future. If I’m getting that right.
Lee 27:03 And tied down with the wrong person.
Chris Seiter 27:06 Yeah, that too. So you, you eventually, you eventually get to this, this dual middle way a little bit. Yeah. JACKIE. Alright, I’ll talk to you just close the door. First time that is interview,
Lee 27:34 hot, and I was like, Oh my God, that’s my like, that’s my I have not
Chris Seiter 27:38 shaved and days. I’m looking awful. You know, so I will take the compliment and be thankful for that. So obviously, you you meet someone new, how does that come about?
Lee 27:52 Um, so one day, I remember like, the day we broke up, and I was like, you know, this doesn’t feel right. And I sent him a message. And I’m like, I want to talk to you on the phone. And he was like, I’m having a bad day. And I’m like, Well, wait, why are you having a bad day? He’s like, work is just really hard today. And that was it. I was like, you get paid? Well, you have a good job, like, and you’re complaining, like when people are starving, dying, my mom was dealing with cancer. So it was like, tell me what a real problem is, sweetheart. So that was my that was it. I was done. I was like, Listen, you have no sense of reality. And that’s not the man that I want to have kids with. Have a future with like he truly showed his weakness second time around. And I think a lot of it had to do with how strong I was this time around. You know what I mean? And so, you know, we ended it. And I think like, it was actually interesting. I like, I started, like, you know, just hanging out with my friends a lot. And I was going to a concert. And it was like a month after we ended things and my ex knew I was at the concert. And I’m literally sitting at the concert and I see my axe like five feet away.
Chris Seiter 29:11 So after I’ve broken things off,
Lee 29:14 it was a month later, and it was in I told him I was going to the concert. He helped me pick the tickets, like where I was sitting. So
Chris Seiter 29:23 basically, he knew to be there. He basically bought tickets to be there near you to try to win you back again.
Lee 29:29 It was an Eric Church concert. Do you know how back to those are? Like it’s not like a little rinky dink like he went to like Madison Square Garden. Yeah. So I just like I love I was like whatever. So then I, you know, started dating again. I had friends setting me up, I went on dating apps and I wasn’t like Alright, pick the first available bachelor out there. I started talking to like seven at once. Like, I
Chris Seiter 30:00 don’t know, I think there’s something great about that. It’s like a numbers game, you’re trying to find the right one.
Lee 30:06 We have to remember as women, like, I have guy friends. I know when they’re single. They’re not just talking to one girl. Like, I hate to say it. That’s true. And we have absolutely true. My Psyche was like, You know what, I’m going to give the same amount of respect and effort that Amanda when I’m dating now, so I started dating multiple, it wasn’t even like I was sleeping around or anything. They was like, on Monday, I was going out to dinner with x. And then on Friday, I was going out to dinner, why? And they were all different. And they were all bringing different things to the table. And I had a blast. I did it for like a solid two months. And I won’t lie. Every single one of those men respected me. They chased me, because they knew I had options. I was assertive, and I had my shit together. You know, keep in mind, it wasn’t like, Hey, why haven’t? Why haven’t I heard from him? It was more like, why haven’t I heard from her? Like, you know what I mean? Like, we just had a great date. Why isn’t she like blowing up my phone? Because it was like, You know what, I’m not gonna give 110% yet. And so I kept dating, kept dating. And then I, you know, I met a unicorn. And he and I, you know, just mash. And it was easy from, from, you know, day one. And it was funny, because he kept trying to meet up with me, but I had other dates. And he was like, come on, come on, come on. And I’m like, Oh, I can’t tonight, like, this is going to be our first date night. And then I remember like, before, are the night before our first date. He is like, I’m going to call you and like, I don’t even know you like he’s like, I’m gonna call you. So I was like, Alright, if you could keep me on the phone for more than 10 minutes, I’ll stay on the phone and talk to you. We were on the phone for like four hours. And then the next morning, we won’t you
Chris Seiter 31:50 love it. When you get those connections, you just you just mesh so well. Yeah, only handful of times I’ve ever experienced that. Because usually it’s kind of not working. You know, you’re talking to
Lee 32:01 an absolute stranger. And he was, you know, he was my type. He was kind, you know, and I was like, wow, like, this could be it. Like, you know, you get that gut feeling the same gut feeling I had to end it with my axe, I was getting a gut feeling that I was actually potentially with the right person for once. We have the same common interest, we had the same mindset. We spoke to our pasts and our accountability and the things that we wanted for our futures and match. And it was interesting, because our first date was supposed to be on a Saturday. And he’s like, Alright, I have football practice, but I’m gonna, you know, I’m coming over, and I’m gonna take you out at nine o’clock at night, the day before, because I really want to see you I’m like, no, no, no. And he was like, Nope, I’m coming. We ended up going out that night. And we like, we just clicked it. It all made sense. It was it was easy,
Chris Seiter 32:51 seamless, there was no like, trying to fit a square peg into a round hole type situation. It’s worked. Maybe that was not the right analogy to use. But
Lee 33:01 what like thing is, is that I the biggest thing for me though, was I still like, even though he was this amazing person. I was like, Hold on, let me backtrack, because I just went through some serious trauma with this breakup. Am I gonna rush things just this happened again, my gonna, you know, push these other guys away? And I was like, Absolutely not. And then I implemented the 90 day trial. Okay, and here we are.
Chris Seiter 33:28 We’re still on a 90 day trial currently, right?
Lee 33:32 Really, we’re almost at the end, but almost there, you know, what he was like, We got to be exclusive. So like, around like day 60 We did that. But like, you know, it was my my one of my friends give me the suggestion. He’s like, put them on a 90 day trial because things come out of the closet, and you still want to have options. And it worked. It really
Chris Seiter 33:54 the guy you’re currently dating is aware of the 90 day trial.
Lee 34:00 There are no secrets. And he knows that.
Chris Seiter 34:02 It is the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard. Because any No. Now, here’s potentially a philosophical question between you and I hear you are implementing this 90 day trial on this guy. But you’ve told him about it. So wouldn’t theoretically he be on his best behavior during the 90 days and then all the crazy crap comes out. Do you worry ever about that?
Lee 34:27 No, because you know, I like I mean, we like it’s so funny because he says this to me all the time. He’s like, you’re crazy matches my crazy like, and that’s the biggest thing. Also, like after going through the program and learning things like you can never hold yourself back from being yourself in a relationship. And you need to vocal beginning your morals and your values. And you need to slowly introduce them to your past and any skeletons you have. But like you just have to authentically be yourself if you want a genuine relationship. And I think that’s something that I didn’t do in my I passed with my axe I you know, it was very, like, I was more composed. But this time I was like, you know, I’m just bat out of hell, I’m gonna have some fun, like, you know, and if it sticks, it sticks, but I’m not going to be someone that I’m not in a year or in two years, I’m going to evolve as a person, but he’s never gonna say like, Hey, this, this wasn’t the person I signed
Chris Seiter 35:19 up for. Well, I think what’s also interesting about that approach is it’s so much easier to live life, just being truthful and honest, not playing the games. In a weird way. 90 day trial is kind of a game. It’s sort of a playing heart type thing. But you’re being honest about it. And weirdly enough, when you find that right person or that right connection, I feel like it is just inherently easier. It’s
Lee 35:44 it’s interesting, because when I told him I was doing this, it’s like, alright, just send me send me the I want to hear it when it’s done. He’s like, I’m really proud of you. Like and cool, you know? Yeah, he’s like, that’s awesome. You know, and he’s not like, oh, like, you know, you you did an extra recovery program. And like, now you’re gonna do that. Thank you. Like, like, cool. He’s like, let me know how, let me know how it goes, you know, like, and that’s that. It’s,
Chris Seiter 36:09 it’s always interesting. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Lee 36:12 Zack knows that I’m doing this because obviously, it was like, out of respect,
Chris Seiter 36:15 I just want you’ve just told everyone, so this is gonna be our most watched episode ever. Right here.
Lee 36:19 I EB and you know, to his mom, like, I didn’t know you broke up with her through like, before all that stuff. But you know, you have to, like, the biggest thing I’ve learned is like, you have to find who you are as a person with this program. And that’s the success. That’s how you have your success. And, you know, I realized that I had to be comfortable with myself before I love somebody else again. And those are all things that the program taught me. I think, a lot of the times when women are doing the program the whole time, they’re like, Alright, I’m supposed to evolve. But my action is in the back of my mind at all times, I’m checking social media, I’m doing this I’m posting a photo,
Chris Seiter 36:59 they’re evolving for the wrong reasons, they’re evolving for they’re not evolving for themselves. And that’s the distinction that is so important to make. And I have such trouble getting people to, to accept
Lee 37:12 if you fake it, so for example, okay, like, you’re gonna pick up this, this beautiful hobby, and you’re gonna do it, and you’re gonna get really good at it. But then when you get back with your ex, you let it go, they’re gonna be like, Wait, I thought you were into, you’re just
Chris Seiter 37:27 doing that to like, attract me back. Essentially.
Lee 37:31 Men are not dumb. So like, you know, that’s the biggest thing like you have to have like, and I think a lot of the times in the pattern when I like read the Facebook’s and stuff like, we like a lot of the women really to shape their lives around these men, and I was one of them. And I’m like, that’s no way to live. Because at the end of the day, the questions Oh, is this? Am I? Are they good enough? For me? It’s not Am I good enough for them? You know what I mean? And that has to remember when you know, picking our significant others, we’re not questioning our worth, it’s questioning if they’re worthy enough to be in our lives to be around our families, our children, you know, our animals even like you, you have to remember your worth and your value. Because you there’s only one of you in the world. And you might not be the prettiest you might in your eyes or vice versa. But like you are special. And that’s how you have to tackle this.
Chris Seiter 38:26 Yeah, everyone has some unique aspect of themselves that they can offer, and almost have an unfair advantage. And I think the inherent problem with most people in the Facebook group is they don’t recognize that because they’re so codependent on that relationship. By nature. Most people on the on the Facebook group are anxious attachment styles and anxious attachment styles naturally just are shaping their entire lives around this relationship. And while they’re great problem solvers, and that’s one of the aspects of that, because I feel like anxious attachment styles, like they’re good problem solvers. And that’s one of the positive aspects about it. But we always focus on the negative aspects. So I’ve been trying to get people to Yeah, problem solving aspect in a positive way. So use kind of the advantage, find the disadvantage and turn it into advantage essentially, is what I’m saying. No, but you’re right. Yeah.
Lee 39:25 I think what you’re trying to say is like, Stop putting the blame on yourself. Like you read the stories in there. Like, I was clingy. I was this. It’s my fault. I’m the reason why he left it a done. No, that’s not the reason. Like it’s, it takes two people. And like, if you go like that, you can’t be a doormat.
Chris Seiter 39:48 No, you’re right. And I think also like, a lot of it is due to their attracting. So what’s interesting about your story, and what I think maybe you’re not speaking enough to is the fact that you Your new person seems to be more in line with what you want. In the future, you’re doing the 90 day trial essentially to prove that. But what’s interesting is, when you look at your past relationship with your ex, potentially what happened is that guy had some avoidant tendencies. And what happens in a lot of times in the Facebook group is they’re in similar situations where they’re anxious, they entirely revolve their life around wrapping it up into this relationship, the the avoidant person falls away, because they’re just kind of like, you know, I can’t take all the pressure from that person. And then they naturally think in their heads, oh, it’s my fault. But to your point, no, it’s to people, you may have played some role in some of the anxious tendencies or some of the crazy things you did during the relationship, but also the fact that the guy wasn’t willing to sit down with you and communicate with you and make you feel kind of like you belonged in the relationship. They got to take ownership of that. And you said, like, a lot of times, when men break up with you, they’re giving you the it’s not you, it’s me excuse, but they’re just trying to appear altruistic, when they’re not really altruistic at all. And that’s kind of the point we’re trying to make.
Lee 41:13 Yeah, and it’s interesting, because, in the past, you know, in my past relationships, it was always like, Oh, my boyfriend, my boyfriend, my boyfriend, and now it’s like, now that I’m in this new relationship, yes, he is my boyfriend. Like, even though it’s a 90 day trial, it’s still like, yes, that is my significant other. Like, I don’t associate myself with him like that it like, you know, it’s like, yes, he complements my life. But I don’t need to keep affirming verbally, that, Oh, yeah, me and him did this on this day. Like, I know, he’s my person. I know, it works. And that’s all I need to prove to myself, like, at the end of the day, I don’t need to be like, Oh, this is my boyfriend. It’s like, you know, it. People, people will know, like, we’re a strong couple. And I’m confident with him. Like, I know, it’s almost like, he provides a shield like around me, and I feel warm, you know, knowing he’s in my life. But it’s like, at the same time, he’s not what I sent her my life round.
Chris Seiter 42:11 Yeah, I think there’s, there’s something because really what happens, you know, totally makes sense, what really what I think you’re speaking to here is how you derive meaning in your life. And I think a lot of the mistake people make is they derive their entire meaning and life around this relationship. And what you’re saying is essentially, that’s a complimentary aspect of how I derive meaning. But all these other things over here also create the meaning in my life. This is what gives me fulfillment. The relationship is just like one pillar of that. It’s a great pillar, arguably the strongest one, but it’s not the only pillar.
Lee 42:49 Yeah. And like, if it crumbles, it’s not gonna ever define me again. And that’s what this program taught me to do. And I think that’s what people really need to remember. Like, it’s not the end of the world, like you, the world is still spinning. It’s just how you choose to like, get up and move, like, the world is still moving you sitting at home, feeling sorry for yourself isn’t gonna get you anywhere, even if you want your ex back. But it’s if you start moving forward authentically, you’re going to get what you want, eventually, whether it’s your ex, whether it’s you know, someone else, whether it’s anything, it’s like, you got to do it. And you and I will say like, with the program, you actually have to do it for yourself. If you are like only doing this for it, you’re not going to get them back the right way.
Chris Seiter 43:37 Yeah, and I think you hit on something really profound again, which is, I think a lot of people misunderstand when they say I want my ex back. But that’s not really what they want. Really, what they want is a loving relationship that, you know, potentially lifelong, but that gives them joy. That’s what you want. If I were to offer you, your ex back, but the ex is in this really poor relationship with you, there’s fighting all the time, versus someone else who can provide warmth, you mentioned, like, you know, he makes you feel warm, and all that stuff. Versus that that’s really what you want you you want that kind of security, you don’t want to get in a relationship with an ex who’s gonna not be right for you. And I think that’s the distinction because if you started thinking about like, oh, I need to get my ex back. I need to get my ex back. You’re doing things to get your ex back. You need to do things to make yourself into someone that can attract or magnetize those other types of people to you. Whether that’s your ex or not, and I think that’s what you’re hitting on.
Lee 44:40 Mm hmm. Because when you go through a breakup you like that’s the lowest Do you feel like anybody can you can walk into her room and everyone’s like, wow, she’s most beautiful, but you don’t feel that way anymore. And like, the biggest thing is, is that the program, if you do it right helps you get your confidence back up, and helps you realize like you challenging us for the skill sets and Trinity and stuff like that. It really like if you take a step back and look at all that you accomplish. It’s like, wow, like, I’m really powerful. And I can do all this during this like terrible time in my life like I can do. Yeah, yeah.
Chris Seiter 45:16 Getting back at your situation. Do you feel like what do you feel like was the most important thing that got you to this to this result? Like going back? What would you say if you had to pick one thing that was the most important thing?
Lee 45:32 When my ex broke up with me, I said, Okay. I was like, whatever you feel at the
Chris Seiter 45:42 time, you just left it at that you didn’t get into any breakup talk or some sort of like any closure, you’re just like, okay, got your stuff left,
Lee 45:51 you’re done. I’m not gonna bag you’re done with me. I’m not gonna beg to be in your life.
Chris Seiter 45:57 But how did you get that residence? How did you get that confidence to be able to say that?
Lee 46:06 How did I do it? So um, I remember back in the day, like, I remember one time, me and my ex broke up. And I like, threw myself on the ground. And I was like, sobbing. And my it happened. Other happened to be there. Because we were moving my knee out of past boyfriends like, you know, we were living together and we had broken up, and we called my parents to get my stuff out to help. And I was like, laying on the floor, sobbing and my mom just looks at me, she’s like, you’re a woman, have some respect for yourself. And I was,
Chris Seiter 46:41 so you need you need to have a mom like your mom, I said,
Lee 46:46 really unpacking it and watching the videos and stuff. And it’s like, okay, I don’t think a lot of the time. Like, when I talk to some of the girls in the group and stuff and like my battle, buddy, she’ll be like, Oh, my God, I accidentally sent him like five texts last night, like, I had been drinking a little. And I was just like, really nostalgic. And I kept asking him why, like, we can’t be together faster, and they’re in like a good place. They’re talking to them again. But then they get a little too pushy. And we’ve all been there when someone’s pursuing us. And they’re really annoying and Natty. And we’re just like, No. So I don’t think a lot of the time the people in the group remember it on the other side? And how annoying it is and how unattractive it is. And it’s like, you’re not gonna get anywhere. But you might get smarter if you actually just accept it and be like, you know, you’re right. This isn’t working. You’re you’re you’re not working for me either. Okay.
Chris Seiter 47:38 Yeah, I think also, there’s kind of like a little underlying vengeance motivation there. It’s kind of like, oh, oh, you you think you can do better than me, I’m going to show you. But you
Lee 47:47 know, that’s the case. Because if you truly love somebody, you know what you knew, you know, what you bring to the table. It’s just whether or not they want it. And if they don’t, it’s their loss. Like, that’s what you have to realize, like, loving someone is one of the best feelings in the world. And if that person chooses to reject that love, that you work so hard to build that you were vulnerable about, like, you know, you put yourself in a position where you truly like, if you really truly love somebody, and they don’t want it like that’s on you. That’s not like that’s on you. Not on me. Yeah, I’m sorry.
Chris Seiter 48:25 Well, I mean, you also have to have the confidence in yourself to be able to get to that place emotionally. And it seems like sometimes you don’t, you have to go through kind of the road of trials, so to speak, to get there. Like you mentioned, the situation where you threw yourself on the ground crying to try to get the you know, like, that’s, that’s a trial, but you learn from it. And that’s the cat.
Lee 48:47 And like, I would say this to anybody, like when you’re doing the the program or like even when you decide to start dating again, and you should be dating while you’re you’re in the program, because realistically, there’s no promise that you’re going to get your ex back and you should see what else is out there. Because there there are amazing people out there that might work better for you like minded, you know, but the biggest thing is, is that like you you you need to remember like you kind of put yourself out there and you got to at least take a little bit of a risk. Like you’ve got it because it will only bite you in the face at the end of the day. Like it’s just the biggest thing isn’t it’s not like fake it till you make it but you have to like I would look myself in the mirror every morning and be like You are beautiful. You’re smart. And it’s not on you. This is not on you anymore. And like you need to move forward because what are you going to get just sitting there crying?
Chris Seiter 49:46 Yeah, I think that’s the power of self belief in a nutshell right there. You just built into going back to what you said earlier. You’re just betting on yourself. You’re just saying like I’ll put push all the chips in I know. I’m going to come up the other and be fine with this. And that is the key component that so many people miss because they they’re not they don’t have that level of self confidence.
Lee 50:10 Yeah, yeah. And I really like the way you do the program, it’s not manipulative, but it’s, it really does work. If you follow it like it, the success rate should be 100 if you just actually listen to what
Chris Seiter 50:23 it’s not, unfortunately, in fact, I’m actually surprised it’s as high as it is, um, you know, Anna Anna has like a really high success rate with her coaching clients. But like, across the board, we’re finding 70% are doing pretty well. But I’m actually surprised it’s that high because of what you see in the Facebook group and the amount of pain people are going through there. And the amount of codependency they have in the relationship or the x. It’s just, I’m surprised. I’ll just put it that way. I
Lee 50:53 was talking to an one time because I did two sessions with her. And I was telling her about my axe, and I’ll never forget, she said this one thing, and it still sticks in my mind to this day. She goes, Okay, so you told me all this stuff. And he told me the things that he did, because you know, you unpack your relationship with her and like, kind of like, how they’re acting even when you are speaking to them again. She’s like, Do you think he’s good enough for you? And I was like,
Chris Seiter 51:20 I No one’s ever asked me that before.
Lee 51:24 You think he is worthy of you? She’s like, cuz I’m talking to you. And you seem amazing. But like, Do you think he’s actually worth it? And I literally sat there and I was like, you, you are a godsend, like, you know what, you’re right. Like, you’re, you’re totally right. You know, like, she’s like, you want to get them back? And I’m back. And she’s like, Do you really think he’s worth it? I mean, when someone breaks up with you like that’s, that’s a lot, there are a lot and like, I one thing I will say like instead of impulsively saying you want to get them back, like take some time and write a pros and cons list out and really unpack your relationship and why it went to that direction. Because when you see it in front of you, you’re like a, like, you know what I mean? Yeah,
Chris Seiter 52:06 we have a tendency to not remember, we only kind of remember those two distinct points, you know, the really important exciting moments. And then we remember a lot of the end when it went wrong, but we don’t remember all the other stuff in between. And when you kind of add it all up, it’s, it’s a little horrifying. To see it all there.
Lee 52:25 Yeah. And that’s why like, when you and I were talking about it, like, just take your time, and like really get to know yourself again, because like this program, once again, like in reintroduce you, you know, you to yourself into such a beautiful, independent version of you. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I remember being like, you know, the financial part of the Trinity, like, I got my, like, I, this is the most I’ve ever made in my life. And I don’t think I would have thought about it that way, if you didn’t highlight that, like, you know what I mean? Like, that’s really important.
Chris Seiter 52:58 I think I think it all kind of bleeds in. Like the Trinity specifically, like every aspect kind of has this really interesting overlap with all the other aspects. But the financial part of things it just makes, it makes life easier and makes you feel like you should not put you should not gain value for monetary value. You should not be like, Oh, I make this more important. But there’s a little bit of that, honestly, if you’re it feels like wow, wow, look how much I can make if I really set my mind. You know, it kind of gives you that confidence, which in turn, plays into relationships because you feel like well, you know what, I don’t need a man or I don’t need this or I don’t need this person. I don’t need a pendant on on a house for them.
Lee 53:43 The level of security when you actually put yourself first is like it’s astounding, like, and it’s just amazing, because when I like when I started dating after the program, ever, like, out of all the guys, I was dating, every single one thing that every single man would say about me was was like, I can never, I never know what you’re thinking. And you’re by far the hardest woman to read. And I give so much and that’s what I think made a lot of the guys like stick around and like want to see where it was going. Because like, you know, in the program, it teaches you to like like really be that. Don’t put your don’t put everything on the table immediately. Like, don’t tell them like oh my god, you’re amazing after one day, or like text them good morning immediately. Like, let them know that you’re fully vested. Like you have to remember that like, once again, they’re just as lucky to have you. So like, it’s just so funny because sometimes, like my boyfriend even will say he’s like, I still don’t know what you’re thinking half the time and I’m like, eventually you will. But you’re gonna have to work for that. Like, you know, and I mean, no, I
Chris Seiter 54:48 think I think what men really like is they like to see hidden layers and hidden depths to women. So if they what happens a lot of times to your point is when we come to the table, they’re like, here’s everything. Here’s everything. And it’s interesting It can be interesting at first, especially if there’s like a lot of, but once you kind of know everything, it’s kind of like, That’s it, there’s like an inherent like that that’s kind of disappointing and they lose interest. But if you do it your way, which is like
Lee 55:15 there’s, like, your videos are so good and I like just listened to it, like you literally say, like men are predators. So regardless of how long you’re in a relationship, like you always have to make further like, the you’re giving them a little bit of a challenge. And it’s like, I remember one time, the texting bubbles, like the you’re in the blue, like, you don’t want to be in the blue, like, like it needs to be. I carry those things, even though I know this person’s like fully invested in me. And they’ve said, like, I want to spend my life with people.
Chris Seiter 55:45 Last, I knew that with everyone I talked to except maybe my wife, but we hardly ever text anymore. Because we live together. I see her every day. But every other person and you know, family excluded, but every other person like even business wise, I’m always paying attention to that ratio, like making sure it’s one to one. You never want to seem overeager, especially when you’re negotiating things.
Lee 56:09 No, no. And like, just like, like, I remember, like, you know, like you explaining, like the texting and like you shouldn’t be texting them all day, like, like, you need to be going off and doing your things. Because then there’s nothing to talk about, like, you know, like, you have to actually be doing your own thing and being invested in your life instead of waiting for that next text. Because the minute like you let go, and just like you go off and like do your own thing. Like, it’s amazing. Like, that’s when the text comes like that’s when like, you know people, bro, like, you know what I mean?
Chris Seiter 56:41 Yeah, design designer exists totally space, it’s only when you give that person space that they actually miss you. And that’s the hard thing for a lot of people.
Lee 56:52 But like, and once again, the Trinity is what helps you develop that confidence to give space. Because like, once again, the goal is for you to be comfortable alone, like, I can go and sit at my house all weekend, without a significant other without my phone without someone reaching out to me, I’ll feel whole at the end of the day, because I know who I am as a person.
Chris Seiter 57:14 Now many people, you know, know, especially nowadays,
Lee 57:19 and like find beauty in the silence and find beauty and like just like being like with yourself. It’s so nice, because like you we all forget this. Like, once we’re in a relationship, it’s you know, you’re you’re going with somebody else, you’re going on vacations with them again, you’re doing things all the time, holidays, you know. So it’s like, embrace the time that you actually can be alone, because that’s really when like, you really can do that self assessment and that like alright, am I actually, am I actually? Is this still me? And that’s the biggest thing that I also ask myself all the time. Like, if I’m at any point in this relationship, not being myself, then it’s not working.
Chris Seiter 57:59 I mean, you can’t argue with the results. Seems like the results have been really great for you across the board. Not only did you get your ex back, but you basically found someone still on the 90 day trial, but almost there seems seems like a really great fit seems like it’s going really well seems like it’s kind of easy. You’re Are you? So last question during this. So it’s not related to breakups. It’s actually more the 90 day trial idea because I think this is genius. So are you are you allowing yourself to be fully vulnerable with them? Like, are you opening up about like things that you’ve never told anyone before with him? Or she you are, you’re allowing yourself to do that during the 90 day trial, you’re not holding yourself back for?
Lee 58:41 Like, you can’t not be yourself like, you know what I mean? And it’s amazing, because in relationships, there were so many times where I held myself back from being like, Oh, I don’t want to tell them about this. Or this. Yes, yeah. And I was like, You know what, full speed ahead. Like, just be yourself. And like, if it’s not gonna work, I would rather know now than later.
Chris Seiter 59:02 Yeah, that’s kind of the approach I I think is the best approach. But people are so often worried about what other people think that they prevent themselves from being vulnerable, especially if you have black sheep in the closet, and you’re like, I don’t know how they’re going to take this. Sometimes it’s always better just to say like, Hey, this is it. This is it. If you don’t like it, whatever, that’s fine. Oh,
Lee 59:23 interesting. Because I told it, you know, I, I used to be like, kind of a little bit of like, a challenge. And I, you know, used to like, I used to be like kind of a little bit of a badass, I made a lot of mistakes in the past. And I would always be like, try and hide it. And then I was like, You know what? This person’s gonna know about it. Eventually. I just got it. I gotta, you know, this is it.
Chris Seiter 59:48 And that has worked out. Great. I just wanted to say thank you for coming on. This is one of my favorite interviews ever. I’m in trying to push this out soon. Yeah, it was amazing. I feel like There’s one quote weirdly enough that sticks with me is you need to find the beauty in silence. I think there’s something to that mindset there that that I want to I want to explore especially like when I’m, I’m going to refer to this interview and articles when I’m writing articles because like you have the essence of really, ug, my ungettable. That’s what we’re looking for.
Lee 1:00:24 Like, watching your videos for you
Chris Seiter 1:00:27 did it? I didn’t do anything.
Lee 1:00:29 I’m not kidding. Like, it’s so funny because like, if you look at my subscriptions, like you’re the top like, there’s no other dating video that’s
Chris Seiter 1:00:36 shocking to me that you do that because I like looking at subscriptions. I’m like, why would anyone ever want to subscribe to my to my channel, but I love hearing it.
Lee 1:00:45 Yeah. And you know, there’s still times in my relationship where I’ll reference your videos.
Chris Seiter 1:00:49 That’s great. I need to do more like relationship based videos, and try to branch out to that into that space. But again, Lee, this was an amazing interview. Thank you so much for coming on sharing your story. inspiring women. I don’t know what Sam I’m speechless. Yeah. Thanks.
Lee 1:01:10 Hey. Yeah, hopefully it works out for them. I hope so. Me too.
Success Story: She Got Her Ex Husband AND Her Ex Boyfriend Back
Feb 23, 2022
Today we’re going to be talking to CJ, who is one of the success stories from our program. She has one of the more interesting stories because not only did she get her ex boyfriend back but her ex husband came back as well.
So, if you are interested in learning about,
How to get an ex husband back/ex boyfriend back
How her ex husband used ex recovery program tactics on her (and how they still worked)
Why it’s important to allow someone to miss you instead of trying to make them miss you
Then you definitely came to the right place.
Let’s get started.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Chris Seiter 0:00 Awesome. All right. Today we’re going to be talking to CJ, who has quite an interesting story. She’s one of the more recent success stories that we’ve had in the Facebook group. And we’re just going to be sitting here and asking her questions about how she was successful in sort of reuniting with her ex. But first things first, how are you doing CJ?
CJ 0:21 I’m doing good. How are you doing?
Chris Seiter 0:24 You know what I’m not doing so great. To be honest with you, I just found out I’m going to need a major knee reconstruction surgery the other the other day, so that kind of put a damper on my happiness a little bit. So while you’re running? Yeah, so I basically ran 10 miles a day on a broken kneecap, which, apparently is not a good idea. So yeah, so um, besides that, we’re talking about you not so much me. So why don’t you take me back to kind of like the beginning here and sort of clue us in on your situation.
CJ 0:58 Um, I do have a unique situation. So I actually joined ERP to get a person back that day, and I was very much in love with. But in the process of that, I decided I didn’t want him back. And another very unlikely ex did come back to me it was someone actually, I dumped but and I didn’t want him but he actually used ERP style tactics on me to get me back, which is hilarious, because I know he didn’t have he didn’t do ERP. But yeah, it’s kind of he was very, I never wanted him back. So it’s actually funny. That that’s how it worked out. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 1:43 So you know, what’s really interesting about what you just said, I’ve noticed from just interviewing lots of people, the one of the more interesting things that happens when you try to like, like this, the old adage, when you’re trying to get this one ex back, it’s the other ex that you didn’t want to come back that actually comes back, I find that happens a lot. But in your case, it seems like it happened. And now you’re happy with that person?
CJ 2:09 Yeah, the relationships actually a lot better than it was before. I mean, he did a lot of things to change and make himself better. And I also grew with myself, I made myself better. And I think that’s why our relationship is a billion times better than it was before. It’s not even the same relationship. It’s like, we’re not even the same people. Which is great. So
Chris Seiter 2:35 yeah, I mean, obviously, you want to improve when you sort of get back together, so that relationship can survive. But let’s go back. So you’re so you are trying to get this ex back. And obviously, you did something, you put something out into the universe that somehow attracted this other egg. So why don’t we like talk about that stuff?
CJ 2:55 Yeah, I’m so in the process of, you know, trying to get this other guy back. And ironically, he actually has been messaging me like crazy now, like this other ex, you know, it’s like, you know, he’s like, I want you back or, like, the time has passed, dude, I’m sorry. Um, but I just started working on me. I started just realizing that I had a very anxious attachment style. And I was very worried about my, I think I had a big ego issue. I didn’t like to be dumped. I didn’t like someone leaving me. And so I just started working on that, and learning how to call my emotions. I read a lot of books, listen to a lot of podcasts. And then I kind of just kind of practice that and learn how to let go of things. Like I would just like internalize and think, Okay, why do I feel this way? Why is this emotion happening? And I think that helped me kind of build up who I was, and make myself feel better about the situations and I use this a lot in the group, I say, you know, flip the script. So if I, like, for instance, you know, I was always worried when this ex was with, you know, the girls like, oh, this other girl is better than me. But then I was like, no, no, I’m gonna flip the script now. And I, a girl in the group actually use this mic. Example. And it really made me feel good, but was like, No, that girl’s just a bandaid. I’m way better than her. He’s just using this other girl to make himself feel better because he misses me so much. And so, you know, it was like kind of a nice way to make myself feel better, but it might be true. I don’t know could be true.
Chris Seiter 4:39 I think it might have been true especially if both exes have kind of come back. What’s interesting is you mentioned you had kind of like this anxious attachment style. And what I what I’ve been really looking at lately is sort of the coupling of the anxious person and the avoidant person. Do you feel like what’s I mean, we’re kind of have a well have information here. So you have this X that you’re trying to get back. And then you have the x that you actually got back and it’s like snowballed. So now that you got the x that you quote, unquote, didn’t want back, the x that you did want back has come back. So ironically, it’s only when you got the x that you didn’t want back and you’re like, Okay, I want this person now. And I don’t want that x, that x actually came back. Well, it’s like, it’s, you know, it’s all crazy. But I’m interested, would you would you say you classify their attachment styles as more avoidant? When paired with your anxious attachment style?
CJ 5:34 The one I was trying to get back most definitely wasn’t avoided. Okay. I mean, a lot of things he would say were very. Now when I look at it, I mean, before I was taking it personally, like, oh, it’s against me, hates me. But then now I go back, and I look at some of those text messages and go, Oh, he’s doing that to push me away, because he’s avoided. He’s feeling insecure in himself. And this is his way of dealing with it. The person with now I, I think he was has always been pretty secure. So maybe, I don’t know. I mean, like, when we before we used to fight, he would need to, like have space and be gone for like a week or two. And, you know, and I would freak out and watch chase him, but he always like came back to me. So I feel like he maybe had some avoidant tendencies, but not major ones where he could handle my anxious attachment where the other one couldn’t. Does that mean? Yeah,
Chris Seiter 6:31 no, no, it totally makes sense. And I think it’s best to look at the attachment cells. There’s almost like percentages, because I think it’s really like you like you can easily make a blanket statement of this person’s fully an anxious person, or this person’s fully an avoidant person or fearful, avoidant, or dismissive or whatever. But I actually think we all have kind of different percentages in which we sort of lean and veer towards so even like a secure person can have moments where they’re anxious or avoidant, but they’re mostly secure, potentially what you had, there’s maybe a secure person that had a little bit of avoidant tendencies and attachment styles are kind of fluid, they can change based on who we’re with and the types of situations that we’re in. But what’s fascinating to me, is usually when I see anxious people partnering up with avoidant people, the anxious people, they’re just like, really great problem solvers. So anytime the avoidant person does something they perceive as a slight, they feel like they have to fix it. Do you feel like that was that’s pretty spot on with how you would handle like, let’s let’s just focus on the initial breakup with the ex that you wanted back initially. Do you feel like that was kind of how you were handling situations and when you’re anxious? style? Oh,
CJ 7:43 absolutely. I mean, if he pulled back I start texting like crazy and find gifts. And I mean, I gift horrible, the horrible letter that
Chris Seiter 7:53 was the most amount of money that you spent on a gift.
CJ 7:57 Oh my god, I’m $100
Chris Seiter 8:02 not bad. I had. I had a client once who was so desperate to get her ex back because she bought him like $1,000 guitar. Like he was like a musician and everything. And I was just like, oh, like, she was like in severe debt, too. So problem solvers, I guess is my is my point.
CJ 8:20 Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Chris Seiter 8:22 You felt like that, that pretty much sums you up in? Oh, yeah. What would you notice what happened when you would try to like successfully solve the problems because you can sense them kind of like, deteriorating, kind of like leaving? What what would happen in a relationship?
CJ 8:38 make it worse, he’d run away, he shut down even more. And I always took it as I’m losing control. He’s, he hates me. I mean, like, that’s the thing. I just needed to let go of that thought that taking it personally. And, but yet, he would just back away and he’d be like, and me trying to think that it’s me, it’s my problem and sort of just realizing he needed space, but eventually escalate to the point where he was like, I’m just gonna block you. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. You know, it was like, terrible. And I, yeah, I like I said, I had to really learn from that. But I’m glad I joined the program, because it really helps me with that.
Chris Seiter 9:18 So at the time, before you joined the program, before you kind of came into our orbit, did you know at all about like any of the attachment style type stuff? No. So that didn’t have been a harrowing experience learning that, like when you when you first found out about it, did you like immediately classify yourself as an anxious person? Or did you go more towards like thinking you were secure?
CJ 9:39 Um, oh, I I hit the anxious right away. I mean, I noticed all the things I’m like, Oh my gosh, yeah, that’s me. That’s totally had to laugh at myself a little bit. I’m like, Oh, my God. I need to fix myself a little bit. So um, yeah, but I mean, it’s funny because all of my long relationships I’ve been the dumper. And so I mean, I’ve been the person, the person I got back. I mean, we were together for 14 years, and I dumped him. So I don’t, somewhere along the line, something happened where I was like, I became anxious. And it was probably because I developed a little bit of a low self esteem. Well, on Well,
Chris Seiter 10:21 I think it really goes back to that concept that we’re all kind of fluid in our in our attachment style. So you mentioned you’re together with this person for 14 years, maybe at the beginning of that you were more secure. But as time went on, and as those insecurities kind of developed, you develop those anxious attachments, and then you kind of bring that into your next relationship and especially if your next relationships with an avoidant. And you don’t really know how to handle the avoidant, it just becomes worse because they, you know, once those anxious tendencies bubbled to the surface, they kind of fall away and then you’re chasing more, they fall away even more, and it just becomes this snowball effect in a bad way. But I’m what I’m interested about more than anything is you seem to be in a very good headspace right now. So like, what were the specific steps you took after this initial breakup with this guy that you felt were important to getting you to more secure mindset?
CJ 11:20 Why listen to a lot of podcasts, obviously, in trying to figure out how to do less self love, and just kind of hearing my insecurities. I think one of the most beneficial things I heard in a podcast once was that, you know, letting something let be, don’t be afraid to let someone go, because letting them go, isn’t going to prevent them from coming back to you. And I think that was the big thing I was like so attached to like, hang on to them that I was afraid that if I just let go of it, that they would never come back to me. And then I just continued to hurt and was like trying to control that situation. But once I was able to just let it go and just trust that you know, whatever is going to be will be I felt better. I healed myself. I was able to go out and enjoy life. I jumped off an airplane even I just started like chasing my bucket list. I started just doing everything
Chris Seiter 12:19 for me. So if you want to know what makes me anxious jumping out of an airplane makes me anxious.
CJ 12:25 You know what’s funny is I’m terrified of heights, definitely afraid of heights
Chris Seiter 12:28 and I the bull by the horns.
CJ 12:32 I flipped it on a Sunday night. And they said well, I have I have availability, like first thing. The next morning. I’m like, let’s just do it. Let’s rip the band aid. I’m going to do it. I jumped out of an airplane. I filmed it. It was It was terrifying and awesome. So I’m glad you know.
Chris Seiter 12:51 Yeah, I mean, that’s, you’re better than me. We’ll put it that way. I don’t I don’t think I’d be caught dead near. I mean, I’m not like deathly afraid of heights. But there’s something about just like that life or death thing of just like a parachute is basically all that’s keeping you alive. freaks me out. So yeah, kudos to you.
CJ 13:11 I think I think what got me to jump out of it was the airplane like, Look just raggedy and I’m like, I don’t think it’s gonna be safe to land in the airplane. So I think I’m safer to jump
Chris Seiter 13:21 to essentially you lied to yourself to jump out of the air. Okay, I love it.
CJ 13:27 Yeah. So
Chris Seiter 13:29 you you kind of are practicing the self love Did you? Did you like just implement a no contact rule right away? And then during that no contact rule you’re doing that? Or did you kind of go to the beat of your own drum with approaching the breakup?
CJ 13:43 So well, I like didn’t know I didn’t join this program until I don’t know four or five months after the breakup. Okay, so I was definitely not doing the No Contact. Once I did the no contact on him. He definitely reacted to it. He two weeks later sent me this like long like note about you know, Don’t think I don’t ever think about you you know like that I’m not telling you this to make you make you second guess anything. I want you to find the love that’s right for you. Blah, blah blah. Of course I didn’t have enough emotional control. At that point. I responded like an idiot. But um, but it definitely, if no contact really is the way to go. I really think that people need to, when they’re in no contact, if if they could learn from my mistakes is they have to like work on themselves. Like just let the exco lead. Let except the breakup, let it happen for those 3045 days work on yourself and then think about the text. You know, I just I wish I would have had that mindset back then. But it’s so hard to have that mindset when you’re Losing Someone You really like?
Chris Seiter 15:02 Well, I think you really hit the nail on the head because that’s the consistency I see every time I interview people, which is like, it’s really what you’re doing with that time during no contact before you message them. And a month, like just opening up my challenge is trying to get people because, um, you mentioned before we started recording that you listened to our podcasts. And so you listen to podcasts with success stories, you probably listen to some of the other podcasts where, you know, it’s just me talking about stuff. And you’ll, you’ll see me talk about this concept, yet. It’s easy to like, logically understand, but how do I, what can I do to get people to actually put it into practice? Because you basically admitted, that was you, you kind of understood it, but you couldn’t put it into practice. So like, what was it that caused you to click and start practicing sort of this idea?
CJ 15:55 Um, so you and Tyler did a it was like, probably one of your very first podcast is, so it was like a long one, too. It’s like, it’s about the attachment styles. It was like, somewhere in the middle of it. You guys talked about letting go. And how it’s so weird that a second you like, just give up and like go, that’s when the ex comes back.
Chris Seiter 16:16 I only wrote about an article on that. Like, why is the when you stop caring, they start caring?
CJ 16:21 Yes. And I don’t know. And then you start, you always bring up like the magnum opus. And I was just like, You know what, I just need to focus on what makes me happy. And I just need to let go. Cuz you know what, letting go obviously, is the answer. If you look in the group, I mean, just about everybody’s like, I quit liking them, or I moved on, and now they’re messaging me. I mean, that’s what happened to me. So it’s like, okay, obviously, letting go is the right thing to do. And I don’t really know how to help people understand other than, you know, if you, you have to let go of that timeline, because if you are so anxious about getting them back, like right now, you’re not going to get them back. But if you realize times on your side, and okay, who cares? If you don’t, you’re not able to talk about 30 days or 45 days or a couple of months. If that means that you’re going to get them back. So what’s two months versus getting them back versus not getting them back ever? And that’s kind of how I looked at it was like, Okay, if I keep bugging him, I’m never gonna get him back. So I might as well just make myself happy.
Chris Seiter 17:27 Yeah, I mean, the way I was treated? No, yeah, I mean, that that’s pretty much it. Like, I really liked that you brought up the magnum opus thing, because sometimes I feel like I’ll talk about that, and it just goes over people’s heads. But the way I try to look at it is it’s really about like, reprioritizing your life so that your ex is no longer number one, they’re number two, you know, yeah, take them off the pedestal, put them put them, it doesn’t mean you you have to like kick them down to the bottom to like the streets or whatever, the sewers or something. But if you put them off the pedestal and, and also try to find something, I think that authentically makes you happy that you can spend your time on. I feel like that goes a long way and can simultaneously create that like, wow, I don’t need them effect. Because I feel like with anxious people, they really put a lot of their identity into the relationships. And that can be a difficult thing to try to teach someone to not do that. Because they have years and years and years of behaviors that ingrained these patterns.
CJ 18:34 I heard something the other day because I still listen to podcasts like every day but and I really liked it. It was talking about allowing someone to miss you versus trying to make them miss you. Or allowing them is like you are genuinely happy and trying to make someone miss you is manipulative. And they can sense that manipulation. And it’s also coming from a place of insecurity. So I kind of liked that. And I’m kind of implementing that with myself. Like, I’m allowing someone to miss me. Because I’m still the catch. I’m still a good person. I’m still worthy, and no one’s gonna forget me. I mean, you meet me, I hear people. I mean, you bring up in a lot of your podcasts about you talk about your past breakups. I mean, you’ve never forgotten your exes. I’ve never forgotten people I’ve dumped from years ago. So it’s like, I think that was a fear to of mine that I was afraid of being forgotten about. But I’ve never forget that. Like, that’s just human nature. You’re gonna remember that person forever.
Chris Seiter 19:35 Yeah, I think I think like it depends on the individual. I think in most cases you do, but like sometimes you’ll get people in the group and they’ve only they’ve never met their ex and they’re like online dating. I feel like in those cases maybe like if you’re listening to this that case your maybe your ex might sort of just not have you on the pedestal or thoughts but I think You’re hitting it on the head really with, with the allowing your ex to miss you or just allowing someone to miss you because I guess that paradigm shift where you’re, it’s, it’s really about just sort of like space like desires created within the space that you give that person. And sometimes what you’re doing with that space is sort of the self love stuff we’re talking about. And that gives you this confidence, which in turn, when you talk to them, again, just sort of bleeds through. It’s not something I think you can fake. And I think you’ve seen that a little bit with your situation. But obviously, you have very unique situation and the fact that it was the other ex that came back. So how did that like, develop?
CJ 20:41 So see. I was really heartbroken over this breakup with this guy. And, like, it really bugged me. And then it’s he just kind of did with the group calls to be being their method. I mean, he was just essentially tried to be my friend. He didn’t try to swoop in and be like, hey, you know, I’ll be your date or something. You know, it wasn’t anything like that. He was like, really, he was really coy about it. He didn’t really well, he was just kind of like, you know, when we’d go to like, we always we have kids together. So when we have soccer games, he was just like, Oh, hey, you know, I got a coffee. I know you like coffee. Here you go, blah, blah, you know, How’s it go? And just like, just try to, like, just see how it’s doing be my pal. And then eventually he started being like, you know, you have anything going on this night. Let’s go, you know, let’s just go out for pizza or something was like, never like, but he just kind of was there. And he started like, opening himself up for me to just have a conversation with him. And he was given me it was kind of funny, because he was given me a minute man’s perspective of why this other guy was like being me. It made me become closer to him. And then he started showing he started speaking my love language. Like and before. I mean, what was your love language? Um, words of affirmation. Spending time together?
Chris Seiter 22:12 Seems to be ever females love language. Why can’t you girls just like physical touch? Like the guy is like that,
CJ 22:19 too. But he couldn’t show me that to me, right. But yeah, I am very much. I mean, like, that’s kind of what made me really like, the person who I was trying to get back was like, He’s big into cuddling. And I’m like, very much a physical touch person. And so the person I’m with now, he wasn’t like that before. Like, he was very, I’m not he’s very, his is very much doing things like that’s his love language, like, acts of service. And that’s
Chris Seiter 22:54 quality time can kind of come into that a little bit, too. Yeah.
CJ 22:59 So um, when he started speaking, my love language, I was like, oh, wait a minute, he’s changed. So then it just kind of made me really like, notice some more, I’m like, maybe this could work. So
Chris Seiter 23:15 Well, I think also, there’s an underrated element here and that you’re sharing kits. And there is kind of this, this thing that you have that will just always I think attached you, no matter what you do for the rest of your lives. And I feel like that does kind of help. So it gives him a little bit of an advantage. You mentioned the soccer game. So it’s kind of like these instant, like mini dates that you can kind of see each other on. But as as he’s kind of inviting you out on real kind of very small dates. did was he like opening up in a new way to you was he like, like, kind of baring his soul? Or because you said you had been together for 14 years. So it feels like it’s hard to find something new. But did you feel like you found any new layers to it? I did.
CJ 24:01 Yeah. In fact, there was one point that he actually, it really made me think about it. And so I actually got a little scared when I realized he was trying to chase me because I’m like, Whoa, I like left this guy and people are gonna be like, upset if I go back to, you know, like, kind of like I had like OSHA pressure. Yeah, yeah. But there was one point he sent me this text message and he is that he’s like, not an emotional person. He never used to be he is now. But he was just he never shared like how he felt about me, I always like was under the assumption he just like, was with me to be with me. But he sent me this text message about our very first date, like ever, like, years ago when we first met and he was just kind of like, you know, our very first date like I just the way you like, got through to me, he’s like, I couldn’t believe like that. You know, you’re just so funny, you know, going and your smile was so cute and this and that. He was like, I couldn’t believe that you did all these. He’s like, essentially baring his soul in this text message. He’s like, I just want you to know, you really are a special person. And, you know, he followed up later with like, you know, that guy was dum, dum video. And I’m just like, oh, what’s going on? And then so it’s like, it made me think about it. Um, but yeah, I mean, he just kind of became a closer friend to me than before. And I think that’s what really made me kind of really give it a second shot, if that makes sense. Yes.
Chris Seiter 25:32 So you basically gave it a second shot. And then when you give it a second shot, the actual guy that you wanted, starts texting you and everything, but he’s lost his chance.
CJ 25:44 Lost his chance. Yeah, I mean, he, I’ve had to finally block him from my phone. Because he was messaging me irony.
Chris Seiter 25:51 He blocks you to begin with that unblocks you and now you’ve blocked him, because it’s getting to be too much.
CJ 25:58 It really is. It has been too much. So I mean, cuz he had messaged to be less than a month ago. Now. He’s the one I wanted back. He’s like, I just need closure. Like he wanted closure from dumping me. And he’s like, so I was like, okay, whatever we can meet for coffee. And like, he’s just like going on and on and telling me all these things, you know that? You know, why the break up? And it was just interesting. And even like, when we tried to, like when we left, he’s like, Well, I really hope that you find the real love you want. I’m like, I have it. And he was just like, oh, and then a couple of weeks later, it was like, message after message after message. I was like, Okay, I can’t do this anymore. I have to block you.
Chris Seiter 26:40 I think I think what’s really interesting about that is it really kind of shows how important it is for I think women after after breakups actually go on dates with other people, because it kind of creates this value proposition where and I’ve noticed this with avoidance, they have like this inflated sense of ego where they think the their x is like, going to sit in an eating ice cream of tub, tub of ice cream every single day and gain 50 pounds and be crying their eyes out every night. But when they can actually see that’s not the case, and that that person’s moving on. That’s when that nostalgia kicks in. And they start to go into action. And they start to feel like oh my gosh, I’ve lost them. And then it’s almost like that’s what triggers their grieving process, which is this really weird phenomenon. But I think a lot of women are scared to date after the breakup, because they don’t want to lead a guy on they’re just not physically ready. But it seems like you had this really interesting unfolding of that, where it kind of you, your your ex that you’re with now kind of came under the radar a little bit and he wasn’t very threatening and just kind of like slowly began opening up to you.
CJ 27:51 Mm hmm. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And actually, the, the one I want it back, originally, like he was like really miffed that I started dating somebody else. Like he was super miffed. He’s like, What do you mean, you dated? Someone sounds like you date someone else. He’s like, Well, they were just hookups and I’m like, so. Like,
Chris Seiter 28:10 I don’t see how that makes it. Like, that almost makes it worse. Like, you’re admitting that you just like, had, you know, did it with a bunch of people. And it meant nothing to you. It’s like that, if I was going to break up, that’s the last thing I would want to hear to make me want to come back. It’s like, okay, so you treat relationships that that way. You’re not going to be like serious about it. So yeah, but Yeah, funny, double standard, isn’t it?
CJ 28:36 It really is. It is funny. And, you know, he did admit that he watched my Instagram stories and my, you know, page all the time, and he noticed that I was always out doing something. He’s like, you’re just very active. He’s like, I couldn’t believe you’re just like, go because I went on trips, and I was doing things that I was posting about it. So yeah, skydiving, climbing mountains, skiing, all that fun stuff. But yeah, I mean, he just, he noticed that he even mentioned, he’s like, I just noticed that he’s like, he actually admitted that he was he had blocked me and he unblocked me and he blocked me. And I’m just like, okay, it’ll be why it just, it’s like, why I’m blocking me and he blocked me. Were you afraid? I was gonna message you. I like, so.
Chris Seiter 29:23 I mean, yeah. It might just be his way of trying to keep control of the situation. And did he like give you any insight into why he did that behavior? The excuse?
CJ 29:39 He said that, you know, my, I was very anxious because he even met, he’s like, you’re very ancient. You were very anxious, and it gave me anxiety. And he’s like, you know, and I was, you know, I definitely chased him a lot. I mean, at first it was because I didn’t want to lose him. And he’s like, you know, that behavior just really affected. made me afraid. He’s like, there’s so many times I missed you so much. And I really wanted to message you, but I didn’t want you to start chasing me again. So it’s like, Okay. Well, I
Chris Seiter 30:13 think that, but I think that goes to the preconceived notion of you’re anxious, and you’re going to react a certain way. And that freaks me out. But you kind of got the last laugh at the end. So I did. That’s pretty good. Do you feel like looking back on your situation? Do you feel like that was like the key to like your success, which is just like, weirdly, we’re like, just letting go.
CJ 30:37 Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Letting Go. I’m just kind of letting it be. really kicking him off the pedestal. Someone else had posts like what another like? podcast, I heard someone kind of said, you know, if you have someone on a pedestal, above you, they have no choice but to look down on you. So you have to be Yeah, so you, you have to like kick them off and be the star of your own show. So I’m like, okay, yeah, I have to be the one who’s making myself happy. And I can’t allow or be looking for someone else to make myself happy. Because that’s, I’m never going to get it. And I think that’s why, because I worked me, that’s why my relationship now with my person is so much better was because I was always looking for him to make me happy. I wasn’t creating my own happiness. Yeah. And so I was super insecure about it. And I was like, Oh, if he’s not telling me, I’m beautiful. If he’s not telling me, he loves me, he must not love me. My days ruined my day shot. And now I mean, if he doesn’t say it, which is very rare, he’d even say it, but I’m just kind of like, I’m going to go on with my business, you know, and usually, he chases me down. It’s very, it’s very interesting. So it’s a flip of dynamic for sure.
Chris Seiter 31:54 Yeah, it seems it seems like you have that really rare situation where this breakup happens. It’s really awful. But you turn it into a positive thing, which is kind of what I try to preach to everyone, but it gets through to so like, people just don’t put it into practice. So that’s why I love when, when people like yourself come on the interview, because they can actually see what it is like when you make this change. And it’s not an easy change. Are there ever days where you’re just kind of like you get out of the bed? And you’re just thinking like, in the old ways where you’re like you mentioned, like, if he doesn’t tell me, he loves me, or if he doesn’t tell me that I’m beautiful. It bothers bothers you, how do you get past that?
CJ 32:36 I talked myself out of it. I’ve learned that my thoughts create my emotions. So if I analyze my thoughts, if I’m like, Oh, I feel like crap. Why do I feel like crap? What are my emotions? What am I telling myself? And I kind of like internalize it and think about it and become aware of why I’m feeling that way. And I usually tell myself something like, you know, well, I flip the script, I’d like Well, I’m obviously beautiful. He’s just having a bad day, or, obviously, he’s going to come back when he’s not so busy. Everybody has a bad time. It’s not me, it’s him. Sometimes I just give him space, sometimes I want space. So it’s a good thing. You know, I’ll go out for a run and everything’s better later on. I definitely do have moments where I find myself going back to that anxious like tendencies. But I know to catch it. I think it’s, that’s the thing is you have to catch it.
Chris Seiter 33:41 Yeah, well, I think also, what you’re really speaking to here is this concept of figuring out how to master your mind, because your mind runs wild. And while while I would recommend everyone to read the book, and watch his podcasts and everything, I would say there’s some pretty foul language. But there’s a guy named David Goggins who is like this, like Navy SEAL guy, and he talks a lot about this concept of mastering your mind. And like, he does it in a physical space where, like, you mentioned going into runs, like when you go on a run, and you’re going, like, let’s say you hit mile three or mile four, your mind starts to start saying things like, I’m tired, I want to quit, I want to stop. And it’s like, what do you do when you face that? And how do you master that? And I feel like that’s a very stoic mindset, like the stoics. They always had the philosophy of like, I’m only going to focus on the things I can control because anything outside of myself, I have no control over. I don’t like I have no control over. It’s not worth worrying about. And I feel like everyone can use a little bit of that after a breakup because your mind is running wild. You know, the anxious tendencies are kind of coming up. And it seems to me like you’ve done a really amazing job at Figuring out strategies on how to handle when those negative thoughts come up, or those anxious thoughts come up and try to flip the paradigm on it.
CJ 35:09 Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, I just, if I’m thinking something negative, I told myself, Okay, what’s the opposite of that? And I’m going to choose because really, everything is about choice, right? So I think Tony Robbins talks about that a lot, everything’s a choice, you can either choose to think about it negatively, or you can choose to think about it positively. And your reality is how you choose to believe it. That’s where you can have 100 people in a room, and they all had completely different experiences, because of their choices of how they viewed it. So I can choose to view it in a positive.
Chris Seiter 35:42 Yeah, I mean, you’re really right, everything revolves around choice. I mean, that’s sort of what what creates this cause and effect conundrum we, we often figure out, you know, something happens, and then you choose to act a certain way. And then the result occurs. And that just is like, the string of moments in our life going on and on until, until we die, really. And so the choices we make we have control over sort of how we’re looking at things. And if you’re choosing to look at things in a negative way. I think that’s something everyone can work on, including myself. I don’t I don’t think it’s like an ever it’s a process that ever stops at
CJ 36:20 all. Oh, yeah, you have to continuously work on that. I think it’s because we’re just so used to looking at things in a negative way, I think some of us, you know, we’re just used to the world’s ending. And instead of looking at the world’s positive,
Chris Seiter 36:34 well, I mean, most of our clients are going through breakups as well. So a huge negative thing just happened to them. And it’s hard not to let that creep into all the other areas of your life and all the other thoughts that you’re having. And it takes a really special individual to be able to counteract that in the moment, like this eternal positivity. But my wife and I were watching survivor, the which is a really weird, really weird comparison to bring up. But there was this contestant on survivor that just had like, the most positive, like, all these horrible things were happening to her she was like, like getting voted out and all this stuff, but she had like the most positive outlook on life. And you could just tell that the people that she surrounds herself with it, sometimes you can actually affect other people in this really positive way. So I think there is also something to be said about the people you’re surrounding yourself with also helping you did you feel like you had a little bit of a good support system?
CJ 37:32 Um, actually, no, I created my own support system.
Chris Seiter 37:36 My YOU ARE YOU WERE YOU close yourself. And, you know,
CJ 37:43 I made well, I mean, I kept myself really busy. I like, I threw myself into my magnum opus, which was helping other people. I, I teach fitness at a gym, and I was like, You know what, I’m just gonna throw myself in here, and help these people, like, achieve their goals, because it’s gonna make me feel good. And so that’s what I really focused on. And I think that that really, it helping them became my therapy and helping
Chris Seiter 38:09 me. Yeah, well, I love so I’m so glad you bring up the magnum opus, finally, someone gets it. I’ve been trying to get that for like, a year straight and no one brings it up. And I’m just always,
CJ 38:24 you keep bringing it up. So obviously, it’s important.
Chris Seiter 38:28 But people don’t see it. I don’t get it. But yeah, I just wanted to take a moment and say, Really, thank you for coming on this because I feel like this is one of the most positive improvement stories I’ve ever heard. And what’s really cool about your story to me is that you kind of got both guys back. Yeah. You got to choose your pick of the litter. Essentially, you chose the guy that’s best for you.
CJ 38:53 Yes, exactly. Exactly. And thank you for your program. It really i If I could tell anybody. I mean, I tell everybody you know, if you’re going through a breakup and this you got to listen to this guy says you got to follow the you do the Trinity and work on you. That’s, that’s really the core of your program. I liked it is it’s working on you.
Chris Seiter 39:12 Yeah, I think I think the way I try to always look at is trying to focus on the things that you have control over and maximizing those areas of your life and you just find it kind of gives you wings. I don’t know that read gives you when I I can’t think of a great analogy. There we go. That’s the slogan.
CJ 39:32 Yes. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. I really hope this is helpful for other people too.
Success Story: Why Outgrowing Your Ex May Be The Key To Getting Them Back
Jan 18, 2022
Today we’re going to look at the benefits of outgrowing your ex. I had the pleasure of interviewing Brandon who is not only going to give us some insight into the male mind during a breakup but he’s going to share his amazing story on how he was able to recover from his breakup.
So, if you’ve ever wondered,
The types of thoughts that men have as they go through a breakup
Why outgrowing your ex is essential
How you can handle a breakup with dignity
This is definitely the success story for you.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Chris Seiter 0:02 All right, today, we have a kind of a special treat, you know, most of the time on the podcast or on the YouTube videos, we’re talking to women success stories. But today, we’ve got a male success story. And it’s unique in all kinds of ways. So I’d like to introduce you to Brandon. And we’re just going to kind of organically talk and go through a situation. So how are you doing, Brandon?
Brandon 0:24 I’m doing just fine. Just making it through.
Chris Seiter 0:27 Alright, well, Brandon, just now is recovering from COVID is Vax. But still, despite that, he got COVID. And he’s starting to just now feel better. So we’re, we’re, I feel lucky that you’re good enough to actually come on here and do this.
Brandon 0:45 Yeah, it’s okay. It’s not too bad. It’s my pleasure.
Chris Seiter 0:49 All right. So why don’t you take us back to the beginning of like, how this relationship with your ex formed the break up, and then we’ll kind of keep going through there.
Brandon 0:57 Yeah, so um, so a little bit about me. Um, so I swim in college. I live in Georgia, but I go to school in Alabama. So it’s kind of far away from home, but not really. And when I first got to college, I had a girlfriend actually. But it was long distance. And I just told the girls like, look, I care about you. But this isn’t going to work. We’re both not in places in our life, where we can make this happen. And so it just happened to be that my ex was there. And so um, we kind of hit it off, like from the start. And like, we it was just, it is basically kind of how like, the story is always goes like, you know, the gun fired. And it was just off to the races. And, you know, we were on the same swim team, we did everything together, like we were in, even in the same clubs somehow, like, she was basically like carbon copy of me in a way, except, like a little different, like I was maybe going to school for business marketing, and she was doing business accounting. And that was pretty much the main difference. But I mean, really, were really started to change was, as we both got older, I started wanting to do things a little bit more independently, you know, away from the team and kind of grow up a little bit more. And she wanted to get closer to the team. And that’s where some of the strife really started. And then I had my own personal issues with the team and everything like that. So ended up just causing like a really weird situation. And that’s where we, that’s how we got to where we are now.
Chris Seiter 2:22 So how long total from when you met her to when you break up? Did you actually date like how many timeline was days? Years? Once?
Brandon 2:32 A week before two year anniversary? Okay, that’s pretty pretty long time. And
Chris Seiter 2:42 like, how serious was this rule? Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt.
Brandon 2:45 You’re fine. You’re fine. You’re good. You’re good. Like, seriously, that was pretty serious.
Chris Seiter 2:49 So you were like, like, potentially, like marriage down the road? Things like that.
Brandon 2:54 Oh, dude, I It’s funny. You say that all summer I had actually, I saw a coach on a swim team. I actually got a second job to pay for a ring and had actually planned on buying a ring this semester, this upcoming semester, had told my whole family like grandparents, parents, sister, like I was like, guys, like she’s the one like she’s literally like, amazing. Like, I love her so much. And, you know, um, we ran into this issue where she wanted to go to law school. And I told her, I was like, Look, I will follow you when we first met. I told her like, I’ll follow you to law school, you know, because she was like, I’m gonna go to the big SEC school. And I cool I can do that. It’s plenty of business opportunity. And then, over the summer, she goes, I want to go to Stetson University in Clearwater, Florida. And I was like, I mean, it’s got a great law program, but the business program is like, not good for an MBA. And that’s when she told me she was like, well, if we’re gonna do some long distance, I don’t want you to pop the question until after that. And that was Red flag number one. And, I mean, it was it was pretty serious. Like, we were talking like marriage, like when we were gonna, like, you know, propose, like, you know, that kind of stuff, talking about post college, like, where we wanted to go together. I mean, her family would, or at least at least, her mom would always be like, your family to us. Like, she texts me all the time and be like, thank you so much. Like, you’re so great to our daughter and stuff like that. But yeah, no, it’s pretty, pretty serious. Pretty pretty up there.
Chris Seiter 4:24 So this is a very serious relationship. You didn’t buy the ring yet? I’m hoping. No, no, thank the Lord. But you were thinking about it. And so eventually, you kind of allude to some problems on the swim team or some friction there and yeah, and like, what exactly causes this breakup? Is it just like a confluence of factors or is this like one clear thing?
Brandon 4:51 It was, it was everything to be honest. I mean, like, you know, without without like, getting to nitty gritty in it, but like the whole attachments styles and everything like, avoid. Definitely a lot of avoidant behaviors we’re in, we’re in all of it like, and I saw that for some reason it was in all of our relationship, but because of my past relationships, I was actually somehow able to be like, Hey, here’s what we can do. And it just worked. It just worked for two years. I don’t know how, but um, no, it was just, it was a lot of things. Um, I kind of butted heads with a lot of people on the team. I used to be like, like, our freshman year, we were the inaugural team, I was very, like, prominent, like, I did a lot of like, Captain like things at first. And then I didn’t get voted in to be a captain or sophomore year. And that kind of hit me really hard. Because, you know, growing up, I’ve always been, you know, that guy, like, I’ve always been, like, I’m not the, I’m not the fastest, I’m not the best. But, you know, I’m, I’m gonna be a leader. And so that hit me hard. And then the team kind of just took a turn culture wise that I wasn’t, I didn’t like and so I butted heads a lot with people. And then also, during all of that, I hit like a huge injury like, like, like, spree over two years, like that I cannot explain. I wasn’t really in the water. And then people kind of like, spun that and got very judgmental about it. And we’re just saying that I didn’t want to be here, they were making up stuff about me. And it’s just kind of created a very toxic environment for me. And, you know, where it really put a wedge between us with the team was, there’d be days she’d go to practice, and I wasn’t there because I’m sick, I’m injured, I can’t be there. And I was told not to be there. i My coaches and my trainers, and people were like, where’s Brandon? Like, where’s he at? Like, why is he not here? What’s wrong with him? And all the time, and all the time? And then, you know, people also being like, Oh, I saw you in Brandon walking the other day out of like, this building, and stuff like that. Just, I think the way and then I put it was just people that needed to grow up a little bit more. I guess. Like, it’s really? Uh,
Chris Seiter 7:00 yeah, I mean, to me, it seems a little bit of like peer pressure. Yeah, coming at it from from her ankle. So like, you know, you got the swim teams kind of like, why are you still dating that guy? He’s like a trader? And maybe that just begins to weigh on her potentially? Who knows? A bunch of immature babies, for sure. But yeah, eventually this breakup does happen. So we do know, you know, kind of the whispering in the ear seem to kind of get through a little bit.
Brandon 7:33 Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, when the breakup happened, you know, it, it didn’t hit me by surprise. And I could feel to pull back and I hated it. Because, you know, I wish I could, I wanted to do so much to help not get those pull backs. And, you know, at first I was like, Okay, I’ll just mirror it, you know, because that’s what I’ve always done is if they pull back, just give them their space, wait till they come back. Because that’s just that that’s just what a healthy relationship does. And so I would do that. But then, you know, every time I messed up, it was almost as if it was like, tenfold and, like, something just triggered on her, or like in her and, you know, it just got to a point where the day of the breakup, we’d had a fight, because I had asked, I’d accidentally because my job cuz I’m an RA. They’d planned something over our anniversary. And our, like, our anniversary night. And I felt so bad. But the only catch was, is that because we’re so busy with swimming, is that we had planned to do something that weekend anyways, and so I just told her, like, Hey, can we just move it to this weekend, like, I’m gonna be really busy that night, I was like, but we can still hang out. I just have to get this, this project done right after practice. And she did not like that at all. And she was saying stuff like versus the anniversary than it’s other things. And, you know, after after practice, we made up and she was like, you know, I love you so much. And then two hours later, she hits me with like, Brandon, I just think your pride and your ego and your anger. It’s just too much for me. And she was like, I just don’t know if you’re the one for me anymore. And I was like, oh, like I literally and all to it. Like the Wind, like the wind, the breath out of my lungs were just gone. And so I told her, I was like, Well, what do you want to do? I’m like, what can what can we do for you? Is there anything I can do for you? Because, you know, I don’t want you to feel like this. And, you know, it was kind of at first it was mutual, because I thought I told her like, let’s just take a break. I was like, I’ve been feeling burnt out too because like the stuff I was telling you like the avoidant behaviors just feeling like it was like, I had to be perfect all the time. And no, no, she was like, No, we just need a break up the next day, like the next day she comes in. She’s like, we just need to break up. This is it. I was like, oh, okay, that’s cool.
Chris Seiter 10:00 You know what, what’s interesting about it is it seems to me she was like looking for maybe months, any excuse to like leave, flee any authentic excuse to leave and kind of like, the good guy. And like, the anniversary thing might have just been like, Oh, this is the perfect excuse. And then, you know, I feel like potentially what was also going on is, when you offer the break in initially, she’s kind of like, Alright, we’ll see. And then the next day kind of goes by and she’s like, No, I think ultimately, it was always a no, she just didn’t want to be like that girl. That was Yeah. You know, like, gonna be like, no, like, No, I don’t ever want to date you again. She wanted to kind of she didn’t want to hurt you. Which I think, I think in a weird way ends up hurting you more, because it kind of like prolongs the breakup a little bit. But obviously, it sucks to get broken up with and probably you also have this feeling of like, Oh, she just chose to swim team over me because of all the friction and
Brandon 11:02 yeah, yeah.
Chris Seiter 11:04 So Alright, so now we’re gonna get to the fun stuff here. What? What did you do any kind of the typical crazy behaviors after the break up? Or were you pretty well behaved?
Brandon 11:16 Look, I, I would say the craziest thing I did. And I did two things that I really think are crazy. Besides like, maybe talking to the team about it being like, hey, like, she mad at me like what’s going on? Like, because it hit me by surprise. Because two days before that she was telling our team like some of our teammates in a room. She’s like, Brandon, I’ve been together for two years. And our coach talks about swimmers dating is such a bad thing. We’ve only had one issue ever. And it was a pattern too, because the year before that, literally almost to the day, we had had a similar issue where she like almost broke up with me.
Chris Seiter 11:53 Like around the anniversary.
Brandon 11:56 It wasn’t about the anniversary, but it was like, two days before our anniversary the year before.
Chris Seiter 12:01 I feel like that’s a tipping point for her for whatever reason, like and you kind of see this was avoided some time. Like there’s always like these weird tipping points in relationship moments where they’re just want to pull back. And it was just too much for
Brandon 12:15 Yeah, well, I mean, I was her first and like, you know, I hate having like, like, like putting it onto that. But I was her first real boyfriend of any type. And her parents are separated too. So I was just like, okay, um, but no. So I didn’t really do much of like the begging or pleading, I think what I did do was I think I texted her like, the next night at, like, 1130 at night and I said, Hey, so are we like, dun dun. And, and she goes, Yeah, that’s what I told you, isn’t it? And I was like, okay, just making sure because our pictures are still up on Instagram. Like, you didn’t take down our one year anniversary posts from last year. And she goes, Why just don’t want to be petty like that. Um, but like, it just it didn’t make any sense to me. I was like, Okay, I was like, but yet you just told me this morning that like, and then, you know, I went back and read it later, I was like, Okay, well, she was really hurting. And I was being selfish. And I thought about myself. And typically, that’s how like it happens in breakups is when we’re upset, we only think about ourselves. But then like, the next week, I, you know, I got I got lit with some friends that night, or like that, that weekend. And I like ran into her and she like, yelled at me and was like, laying into me. And all this other stuff. Because I used to hate drinking used to hate it. And then through the relationship and through just growing up, I learned to enjoy it. And not not just like enjoy it, but like, learn my boundaries. Because I have a very like traumatic past with it. My mom, like, went through a program or whatever. Um, so just just, it’s just, it’s run in my family, like, not even her like just passed. And so, um, you know, just trauma with that. And so basically like, I was just like, Why are you yelling at me? And the next day, she, she blocked me on everything, everything like and she found out I had like love like it. Oh full like hard luck, like and in and well she found out that I had gone at Tinder to based off of some guys recommendations. They’re like, just just start swiping. And I was like, okay, like, why not?
Chris Seiter 14:25 What irony there is, wouldn’t she need to be on Tinder also to find that out?
Brandon 14:31 Well, she found out through her friends. Her friends told her I was like, Yeah, I mean it, but she took it the wrong way. She was like, You’re just there to hook up with girls. If you just want to like get your body count up. That’s the way to do it. And in my head, I’m just like, I just want to feel better.
Chris Seiter 14:47 Like you just like looking for a distraction to dull the pain. I think he’s like an accurate way of putting it which is like a completely normal grieving process. And it’s funny, like I often talk about like It’s time dilation with regards to attachment styles. So like, typically, you don’t really strike me as much of an anxious person. But typically most of the clients are anxious. But, you know, like, there’s that trajectory of like how you grieve after a breakup, you know, you have initially the denial and the anger, the depression, I feel like you are kind of in that depression state, you know, like, you’re looking for ways to dull the pain. Well, what’s funny is with avoidance, they take a lot longer to go through those five stages. And so where she at, she’s at the beginning, she’s at the anger stage. So setting setting her off.
Brandon 15:34 Yeah. And like, that’s so so that’s, that’s actually how I found the program was because she that was on a Sunday. Like, she blocked me on everything. And then she intercepts me on the way to my like room and apologizes to me. And it was like, normal, and that but she, but she doesn’t block anything but my number. That’s it. And so, I was like, okay, I can I can work with that. That’s cool. Um, because I’m, I’m on good terms with my exes. So, whatever. But then, like, the hot and cold was really weird. Like that afternoon, I saw her and she goes, Hey, how’s your day? What the hell? Are you talking to me? Like, he just broke up with me? What are you doing? And blocked, like on Snapchat, Instagram, like, the full shebang and Facebook? I’m wrong. 20 I don’t know. I started using Facebook as VRP. Like,
Chris Seiter 16:29 because when I was 20, Facebook was the tops, you know, Instagram or Snapchat. There was literally MySpace and Facebook. That was it. And MySpace does not exist. I think it’s like for bands now. Right? So it was Facebook. And in my mind, it’s still like the biggest thing but every time I talk to someone in your generation, it’s always like Instagram or Snapchat. I’m just like, I really need to like figure out how to how to like reshift my mind on the social media stuff. But yeah, that’s that’s
Brandon 17:00 Look, look man. The new things tick tock yet I get on there, man. I know tick tock. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no, that’s, that’s, that’s the new big one that’s probably going to be big for Eska. It’s like the neck spine. But whatever. Um, the breakup? Um, yeah, no, in the hot and cold was unbelievable. Like, I mean, I was doing everything I knew, I knew how to do like, you know, I was improving myself, I started going to therapy. And so, like, it was like, as soon as she broke up with me, I was like, Oh, I’m not, I’m not about to go through this. I was like, I need to fix whatever I’ve got going on. Because if there’s anything wrong with me, I like I want to fixed. And so I, it took me about a month of solid just like working on it. And during that whole time, like, there’d be days, like we had classes together. She went from sitting next to me, it’s like sitting next to our teammate and another row. And then I was like, okay, that’s, that’s cool. Um, but then, um, she do that, but she’d see me and I actually got a concussion that week after the breakup. And she goes, how’d you get a concussion and, like, made fun of me, like, in like, a kind of flirty way. And I was just like, bro, what the heck, like, the, I just, I didn’t like it. Because the whole hot and cold. I was like, Look, I still care about you a lot. And you don’t know how to react with this. And I don’t really know how to react with this either. So I’m going to figure out a way to either a get you back, or to get to a point where I don’t care if I get you back. And I know that with time I could get there. But I think that if I just do the time method, it was gonna take a lot longer. So I was like, I need any people. So that’s where I found ERP. And I mean, ended up being a great support system. You know, the whole battle buddy thing, like that’s what really got me. Like, I I know you say this all the time in your podcast and everything, but like, people just getting the program for the Facebook group. Yeah, I was one of those. Yeah, that was me. I mean, it was great. Like, that’s
Chris Seiter 19:05 what it is, man. You know? Yeah.
Brandon 19:07 I mean, and like, you know, I, I went out I went full force. I was like, I’m going to get better. And so I took all the money that I was going to pay for the ring. And I said, this is my breakup money. How are you going to
Chris Seiter 19:19 get it? So all $47 that you had saved up for this ring? You put into the program?
Brandon 19:26 Hello? Oh, yeah. 47 plus some? Yeah, right.
You did? Sorry. Yeah, no, no,
you’re fine. No, and like you know, even before I found you guys I coached with like someone else and Anna and I joke about this all the time. He told me you got this bro. He’s like, I think I think it’d be fun.
Chris Seiter 19:45 I know exactly what you’re talking about too. Well, I won’t say because we’re on YouTube here but yeah, player. i Yeah, believe it or not, that person is not the first coach to say those exact words to to another client.
Brandon 19:59 Yeah, and like I told Anna on our personal it’s like, when he said that I literally just went, Yeah, I know. I know I got this, like, I’m gonna be fine. I just want to know what to do because like, I’m in uncharted territory, you know, like, you don’t send a ship out to sea with no. Like no radar. Come on man.
Chris Seiter 20:19 Yeah, exactly.
I mean, so. Alright, you go just break up. You found the program. Yeah. I’m actually kind of interested. Like, I want to pause to talk about the battle buddy thing too. They partner you up with a female or another male.
Brandon 20:33 I got a female and she’s actually I feel like
Chris Seiter 20:38 yeah, I feel like it’s helpful things you’ll get it, you’ll get the female perspective on on things and also she’ll, she’s older so she’ll be able to kind of like, I don’t wanna say grant some wisdom, but maybe she’s a little bit more patient. Did you did you find that?
Brandon 20:53 Well that and also um, she’s a fearful avoidant. Okay, so that was like, super helpful. So I like I lucked out like it was the lottery. Um, and she told me she was like, Yeah, I think your ex is probably a fearful avoidant, but also both of us were sitting there were like, we’re not psychologist. So like, we don’t like we’re not gonna diagnose her. But we’ll just pretend as if she were. But no, I mean, yeah, it was, it was the best like I got paired with female older like, fearful avoidant, and the crazy thing is, is like, our situations just kind of worked out to where like, both of us had advice for the other person. Like she’s got long distance, and that’s all I had done before this, like I dated a girl that went to New Zealand for six months. So like,
Chris Seiter 21:40 just crazy. That girl. That’s for distance. 00 time, okay, so that’s why that relationship failed,
Brandon 21:49 bro. Well, no, she lived here. And then she was like, Hey, I’m going to New Zealand for six months. I was like, okay, cool bricks up with me on Thanksgiving over text. I was like, Oh, Lord. But, um, anyways, so yeah, no, the battle, but the program was amazing. And like, I still talk to her to this day. And when I told her I was like, yeah, like, I think I’m just gonna move on without moving on. She’s like, do I need a new battle, buddy? No, cuz I was like, I’m still here for you. It’s like we’ve been talking for like three months. I’m not just gonna leave you like that. Come on. So
Chris Seiter 22:17 yeah. Well, what’s interesting about Brandon’s situation is he’s actually at that point. And I talk a lot about this on the podcast about like, getting people to the point where they’re kind of out. they’ve outgrown the breakup, or they’re, I don’t want to say they don’t necessarily want their exes back. But they’re kind of like, okay, I don’t care if I get my ex back. Brandon is at that exact point right now. And that’s what’s kind of fascinating, because I think the entire goal for everyone is to get them to this emotional state that you’re having right now. So what did you do to get to this state?
Brandon 22:53 I mean, as cheesy as it sounds, self work, like, what like, if it wasn’t for me, just taking every opportunity I could to just do something for me. Like, I, I basically, I realized that we had the same friend groups, and I wasn’t going to get better around them. Like, I would always be told, Oh, well, there’s plenty of fish in the sea. And that’s not what I wanted to hear. So I, I made new friends. I basically just started, you know, investing in myself a lot. I got like a life coach. It just happened to be one of my teachers. I was teaching him how to do some lessons. And now we’re like, great friends and everything. And, you know, we we shoot each other texts all the time talking about how Georgia beat Michigan and stuff like that. So I’m a huge UGA fan. national champs, um,
Chris Seiter 23:45 just a quick plug in there. In the dating podcast, just quick plug there.
Brandon 23:51 Um, yeah, so um, no, I just I, I know, it sounds so cheesy. But all the work that you put into yourself. As much as I know, the program, like we always preach like, oh, the program is for you. It’s not for your ex like, No, that is like, if you go in with that mindset, like, you will win no matter what. And, you know, I tell this to my battle buddy all the time. Because, you know, we all struggle with it. Like, there are days where I’m sitting there, I’m like, why are you saying this? Like, you should know, you should know by now. Like, what to do, but then I’ll have days like that. I’m like, Okay, this is this is why it’s helpful. But, um, no, I mean, I think like, I picked up guitar and stuff like that, again, like, I would do music. Um, but I didn’t just make myself busy. I think like, I realized that I needed a support system the most. And, you know, doing life alone, especially after being in a long term relationship like that, as serious as it was. It was lacking a little bit and so I just built it up as best as I could. Yeah, I
Chris Seiter 24:54 mean, I that’s kind of like the the cliche answer that everyone I feel like in their heart kind of knows, but they’re they, they think there’s like some other big trick to it. One of the things I’ve been talking a lot about is trying to find a purpose that you kind of care a little bit more about than your X. Did you find? Did you find that helpful at all? Did you? Did you kind of approach it with that type of mindset? Or was it more of just initially starting out thinking like, I’m gonna do all these things will kind of dull the pain a little bit, and then you find yourself enjoying those things?
Brandon 25:27 And no, it’s definitely the second one. Like, at first, I was just like, I was heartbroken, literally, um, you know, I can eat, do stuff like that. And I think quickly, I realized that, if I didn’t snap myself out of it, I was never going to snap out of it. Um, and so I’m a junior in college. And so I was like, Okay, I’ve got, I’ve got a year and a half, I’ve got a year and a half until a master’s program. What do I need to do to get there? And so I basically just went crazy in terms of I was scheduling meetings with teachers, I was, you know, doing the extra like going the extra mile in terms of building relationships with people. And I’m like, not just that, but trying to figure out like my career path, because, you know, I want to go into like, sports marketing of some type. And so where are the opportunities? And so I remember I would meet with a teacher, we would get my resume together. And we’d be like, Okay, well, what internship opportunities can I look at for this upcoming summer, and like, this is back in October. And internships only been open until like, August, or not, not August, like January. And so I just, I went headfirst into, you know, just just that, and not even just that, but like, whenever I had coaching with Anna, like, her homework was crazy, like so much information. And I remember she gave me books because she told me she was like, yeah, like she she told me her, like, basically her her pedigree or whatever, of like schooling. And then she gave me a bunch of books to read. So like, reading a couple of those like, I mean, I’m starting never split the difference now. by Chris Voss. That one’s pretty good. There’s, it’s the yellow one. I think it’s the power of influence, I think. Yeah, that’s the one I’m reading. And then there was another one. Oh, I mean, calling the emotional storm, but that one’s just a pug. Like, I just listened to it. Whenever I I
Chris Seiter 27:24 feel I guess you got like an audible just to kind of like, listen,
Brandon 27:27 yeah, when I drive on three hour, three hour trip.
Chris Seiter 27:29 Yeah, dude, I’m with you there.
I’m all over that. Yeah, my favorite of those is usually never split the difference, but only because it really teaches you the tools on how to get through to someone who does not want to hear what you want to hear. But yeah, I mean, you had, you’ve had a really interesting, unique approach to this. And I’m kind of curious, while you’re doing all this self work, did you see any kind of difference from your ex at all? Was she a little bit kind of like a moth to flame drawn to it? Or is it has it been the opposite?
Brandon 28:07 When I was a no contact, um, basically, I, I, I basically told myself, I was like, I am not gonna read into my ex, because I will overanalyze it, and I’m just not going to look into it. And so I just ignored her. Like, I mean, not in my not a bad way. She said something to me, I’d say, hey, you know, stuff like that, you know, cuz I’m seeing her in class. Like, I literally swim two lanes away from her every day. This is like six days a week, so I can’t just ignore. Um, but no, I definitely noticed as soon as I got out of limited out of my no contact. Um, it was her birthday. I was like, Hey, happy birthday. Um, you know, really hope you have a good time. And so she was like, thank you so much. And then oh, my second reach out. I was like, Hey, did you see the new Spider Man trailer? And no, she did not like that at all. And she was like, she literally, I think she was like, Dude, are you serious? It was negative response. And I was like, wow, let’s talk. We’re
Chris Seiter 29:04 talking about movies, apparently. Gotcha.
Brandon 29:06 Yeah. Yeah. Even though she’s like, she’s a huge Marvel fan loves going to the movies. Like they, my team goes and watches them, like, on all the premieres. And so I was like, okay, that’s weird. But then her sister texts me on Thanksgiving, and says Happy Thanksgiving, but at 9am 9pm at night. Wonder why. And then we get back. And basically, my ex pretends like I’m not really there, but she’s like, laughing at my jokes kind of warming up. And I think like, the next week, she like comes up and just starts talking to me about one of the tests that we had. And I was like, Why, like, this is so weird. And like, we’re laughing together, having a good time. And then, you know, I, I would design garlic effect. I basically, like took the high point and I said, okay, cool, walked away. Like, and we’re in the middle of our cafeteria, and so I’m out through that I think we had a swim meet. And I said, Hey, congrats on this race. And she goes, thanks and walks away. So I was like, bro, what the heck? Like, this is so weird. And then I get a text. Like, I know, I’m like, I’m giving you all the examples, but hope this helped, right? Like, yeah. No. And then like, not even a couple days later, I get a text and like, I’m sick with the flu. And she goes, Hey, can you bring my HDMI cable to practice today? I had forgotten, like, it was from like, like, it had been three and a half months. And I was just like, Sure. And when I brought it, I was like, like, she almost looked hesitant to come approach me about it. And so I just said, Hey, I got your HDMI cable, you go. And she was like, Oh, thanks. And I was like, Yeah, you know, I was just thinking about keeping it forever, you know? And just like, joked around, she goes, I mean, now they’re, like, 20 bucks, and it kind of set in like a mean ish way. And I just said, Oh, okay, I was wondering why you texted me about it. And then just just left it at that. But it just, it was like, so hot and cold and like, I won’t want my mom text her. And she’s like, super like, like positive to my mom, which don’t, don’t recommend that for anyone else. Like, don’t don’t look, they’re gonna try to reach out. I’m just saying like, I didn’t know about it. I didn’t know, stuff happens. But I was I was way out of no contact. Like I was basically building like rapport in a way my nn eyes like program like through coaching coaching is great as well. Like just putting that out there if you think that if you can afford it, I’d say do it. Because whether or not you get them back or not, it is a step by step way to get better. And so Anna just told me she’s like, it’s just gonna take time you’re building rapport, it’s just time so much with
Chris Seiter 31:47 like a potential fearful avoidant, it’s like the, the period of time when you’re getting responses, just you’re not you’re not experiencing anything that hundreds of other people who’ve come through the program have experience with fearful avoidance with that hot and cold behavior. Yeah, I’m wondering, how has it turned it? Or is it just been pretty consistent this way the entire time?
Brandon 32:10 Um, so let’s see, the last reach out I had was actually Christmas. Um, so I just text her a simple like, Hey, Merry Christmas. Because we also do a lot of stuff together in our club. I’m the president, and she’s our national rep. And so like we taught, we have to talk anyways. And she just liked the message. Okay, like didn’t even didn’t even say Merry Christmas back, I think. Okay, cool. Thanks. And so I kind of just took the time. I this is this is what I told Anna was that I kind of grew a lot of resentment towards her during that process of up and down kind of in her just being like, really weird. And so I was growing a lot of like hatred in a way like not hatred, but just anger. And I didn’t like it, because that’s not who I am. And so I kind of took, you know, that time away from her, like, physically, and I said, I’m not going to worry about her, not going to talk to her. And so after the Merry Christmas thing, a couple days later, I said, you know, I’m just gonna delete her contact, I can get it back. I was like, I know people with her number. But right now, I don’t need that. And I didn’t. And so I deleted it. And get back to school get COVID and haven’t talked. I’m just haven’t talked to her since. I mean, then again, I also haven’t been there to talk to her. I just don’t I don’t want to just text her outright. Because she might. She might be weird about especially since I can just walk up talk to her practice. Yeah, but uh, that’s the one different thing about my situation is like, the texting portion is Yeah, yeah.
Chris Seiter 33:47 Yeah, I mean, I think like the the, like, the asset or the problem, however you look at is the fact that you can see her theoretically every day in person. So like, specifically, it’s hard to create some space between the two of you like ideally, the No Contact Rule is supposed to do that. But you really weren’t able to do a No Contact Rule, you kind of do a limited no contact rule. So that idea of space existing and desire existing in space rather, isn’t really there for you. So like, it’s hard for her to desire you when she can see you like a constant reminder. But you got the right attitude. And I think that’s the key that I want to harp on here. Which is like, it’s really challenging for a lot of people to get to this point emotionally where they’re just like, You know what, I’m not really like, I’ll be okay. I’ll be okay. If I don’t get them back. How long did it take you to from start to finish to like, get to that point?
Brandon 34:43 Yeah. Well, when that when the breakup first happened, of course, like that’s when that’s when I start but, and I’d be lying if I said I’m still like, I like I’m 100% like, Okay, now like I am, like I would say like nine times out of 10 I’m going to be okay, but at Every now and then you get that little bit of grief. Yeah. And one thing that I learned from like emotional, like calming the emotional storm is feel it. Like it’s okay. Like, just feel it. Because if you try to suppress it, you’ll end up in the same situation with like a blow up. And so, you know, there’s some days where I just get really upset, and I’m like, What the heck, like, You’re stupid. Like, and, you know, like, and I’ll be like, I don’t understand why you did that. But I’d say it definitely took like, a solid, two, three months of just working on myself, figuring out what I wanted. Because, you know, one thing about a breakup is you need to figure out, Is this what you really wanted. And so I remember I would post something in the group and someone was like, Well, you’ve known or your whole college experience. Now you don’t. So you get to choose whether or not you want to continue with her. And so I mean, that that helped. But I think another big one, too, is that I, this is something really, I think would help other people is that it’s, if you’re doing the right work, other people notice, like other people notice. And that’s one thing I’ve no like, I’ve definitely seen is, you know, whether it’s other girls, I’ve started talking to sense or my friends, like, they’ll say, Wait, so you did this, this and this. And you’re like, like, you’re acting like this right now. Why did she, huh? Yeah. And so, you know, if you do the right work, if you focus on yourself, you can’t go wrong, and other people notice. And, I mean, I, I really do believe that whether or not you get your ex back, if you work on yourself, you’re gonna get someone way better, they’re gonna treat you way better either way. Like, because I mean, you are ungettable. You know, that’s what you got to live life. Like, like the book says, you know, you know,
Chris Seiter 36:52 it’s really insightful. What you just said is, I’ve been going through a lot of our previous success stories, and really looking at them trying to find the weird commonalities that I potentially missed the first time. The first pattern I always noticed is people with sort of the mentality that you’re talking about, which is kind of like, I’m pretty much okay, nine times out of 10, I may maybe have that one day where I’m just sort of, you know, not feeling yet. Usually, they tend that like that, that mindsets consistent throughout. But what’s really interesting is, I’ve also noticed this fear of loss component where they’ve started dating someone new, and all of a sudden their ex pays attention. So what you just said about, like, when you’re doing the work and other people notice, like, if other girls are giving you attention, that actually helps your cause? Because not only could you potentially find someone better than your ex, but also it allows your ex to weirdly enough feel more at ease, which is I’m not sure something that you potentially thought about, but no, I’ve noticed, like, Have you have you gone on dates with other people at all? Yeah, yeah. Have you? Gone? Have you liked You’re not dating anyone, though? You’re still kind of single at this point.
Brandon 38:00 Yeah, I mean, I’m talking to like, like a girl or two, not nothing like crazy serious. But I mean, like, I think there was a there was one, like, not too long ago, she had been and like a four year relationship was even engaged. And she was telling me all the like, all this stuff. And I his funny, she goes, Yeah, we broke up. Because if he he had some issues, and she just didn’t couldn’t deal with it. And he got a girlfriend two weeks later, and I wanted to be like, That’s a repo, don’t worry about it. But I was like, I’m not gonna scare with ERP stuff. Oh, and I would have
Chris Seiter 38:35 been like, attachment style. Right? Yeah. Touch is very avoidant. Yeah. Like, he actually just doesn’t feel okay with himself. Okay. Um, he’s using
the girl as a prison for his pain.
Brandon 38:49 Oh, my goodness, um, but no, like, and I started talking to her, and when we hit it off immediately. And so she, I asked her, I was like, so, um, you know, tell me a little bit about yourself. And she’s like, 23 kind of job and everything. And she was like, How old are you? I was like, Oh, I turned 21 in like, a month or two. And she was like, what age gap? Come on. At my age, man. I don’t know it, but but she told me she’s like, you know, I never would date a guy younger than me. But she’s like, you’re changing my mind. I was like, okay, cool. And like, she’s not the first one to say that. And so like, you know, it’s not just me, though. It’s like, it’s working on myself and all that other stuff. Like, when I’ve gone out on dates, I mean, they’ve walked away and they’ve been like, wow, this is amazing. But I’ve had to be like, I’m not ready. Like, I’m sorry. Like, I like you’re a great person, but I can’t give you 100% yet, and I’m sorry. And I think that’s been the hard part for me. It’s like I want to be able to give that to someone. But I can’t because you know, get
Chris Seiter 39:56 really Yeah, morally I think like your conscience. Perfect. You from from getting into a relationship with someone when you’re no when you know, like you can’t fully commit when you’re still kind of grown up a little bit. I think that’s probably a mature way of going about it. But my question for you now is has your ex found out that you’ve gone on these dates?
Brandon 40:22 Maybe? You don’t know. I don’t know. But I do know that guys on the team know that I’ve gone out on dates, like, I do know that. There was, there was one, there’s one point because we’re all on the same team, like we’re at a party and me and a girl were talking like the whole time. And then like, we had been sitting together at the caf and talking a bunch like, that whole month or whatever. So she sees me, she sees me as other girls. And so I just, I wonder, but I think for, I think another thing too. And this this goes, this is for people that directs if they don’t really have as much experience, let them find out, like, let let like, that’s the hard part is you have to let them find out what they missed. And sometimes that means they have to get hurt. And it doesn’t matter how much you love them. Like, you know, it’s gonna suck, especially if they come back. And you know, they’ve got baggage now. But you know, if you love this person, you mean cliche as it is you got to let them go. Like, let them figure out what they missed out on. And that’s that’s been what I’ve kept me going a little bit is like, I’m gonna be okay the way But will she? And so I can keep moving on. And she may come back, she may not. But, you know, once she realizes what she had, like, maybe maybe she’ll have second thoughts. Well, who knows?
Chris Seiter 41:39 Alright, so final question here. What would you consider to be the most important aspect for as cliche as it sounds your recovery after this breakup? Oh, like if you had to pick one, this is the chain part. It just one thing. One thing Oh,
Brandon 42:05 I, you know, it has to be working on yourself. But like, there’s, there’s nothing else like.
Chris Seiter 42:11 So I guess that’s like more of a time management thing. It’s like what you’re doing on time, as opposed to focusing on your ex, you’re focusing on yourself, which is, you know, the cliche thing to say, but
Brandon 42:22 yeah, works. Yeah. Yeah. And like, you know, and you’re never you’re never the first one to be doing what you’re doing right now. Like, I guarantee, you know, every person that will ever hear this will probably be like, You guys are either going asleep right now, or you’re listening to this while you’re walking around? Because that’s what I used to do. Like, I mean, I wouldn’t, I would go on walks, and I would listen to, you know, ERP stuff all the time. Like, I even got to the point where I used up all the all the the girlfriend recovery, and I listened to the the boyfriend recovery.
Chris Seiter 42:56 Yeah, it was like, rubbish. I
was like, EBR Yeah, yeah,
Brandon 42:59 I was, like, it’s the same principle, just learn how to use it a little bit differently. And so like, you know, it’s okay, like, that first month, it’s, it sucks, it sucks a lot. And you’re gonna hurt and you’re probably not gonna want to go to bed. You know, without hearing something without listening, like that anxiety is off the roof. Or, like, OT, like, out of this world. Especially if you’re like an anxious, preoccupied, like, you know, my heart goes out for you. Because, you know, you are probably going crazy right now. And so, it’s okay, it gets better. Just relax. I know, we don’t like to hear that. But just take a deep breath, relax and move on. Like, like in terms of like, just take it day by day, because no days guaranteed, but the moment that you’re in is so you know, try to live in the present. You know, like, that’s, that’s my advice is just live in the present. Because, you know, you’re gonna want to listen to the video. And I know you’re going to hear a video that says, you know, like, like time management and only give your ex an hour of your day. But in the end, like, just slowly, slowly, you will get better and like, slowly take away that time. You know, some days, you might have to give them four minutes, listen, like four hours with the podcast help you get through some days, you may only need an hour, but eventually, you’re not gonna need any. And when that day comes, that’s when you know, you’ll be ready. Because you can confidently walk on and say, I’m okay. And that’s what that’s where I’ve gotten is like, maybe every now and then the nine, like the one out of 10 I need a video. But outside of that, I’m just like, Okay, I’ll be fine. So that was my advice.
Chris Seiter 44:38 I think that’s I don’t know what else to say, man.
That’s that’s pretty much it. Yeah,
I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks for coming on and sharing your story.
Brandon 44:49 No problem, man. And I appreciate everything you guys have done. It’s it’s been life changing.
Before we really dive into what a fearful avoidant is we need to first give you a primer on the three “insecure attachment styles,”
The anxious attachment style
The avoidant attachment style
The fearful avoidant attachment style
Let’s start first with the traditional anxious person.
Anxious Attachment Style: This person typically requires a lot of attention and affection. They really like to feel close to their partners, it’s not uncommon for them to want to spend every single day with them. The core wound of them is that they have a fear of abandonment and being alone and so that’s what usually triggers their anxious behaviors in relationships.
Next we have the avoidant attachment style.
The Avoidant Attachment Style: They are a person that does not like a lot of emotional intimacy or vulnerability within a relationship. They typically revert a conversation back to someone else to talk about themselves to avoid the spotlight. Often that’s how you’ll figure out if they’re avoidant or not. Ultimately they are afraid of having a deeper emotional connection and it all can stem from their experience in childhood. They’ve learned that any time they are vulnerable, it can be used against them and therefore they don’t rely on other people.
Finally we have the fearful-avoidant attachment style.
The Fearful-Avoidant Attachment Style: It’s always best to think of a fearful avoidant as having a combination of both anxious and avoidant attachment behaviors. What’s really interesting about them is that a lot of time their partner (the person they are with) will dictate what attachment style is more likely to come out.
Let’s talk a little bit about that last part because I don’t see many of my peers peeling back the layers on this.
Generally you’ll start to see avoiding behaviors crop up.
The opposite is true if you exhibit avoidant behaviors in the relationship. In that case your fearful avoidant partner will start to exhibit anxious behaviors. In some of my latest articles and videos I talk about this paradox that lies at the heart of the fearful avoidant.
They desperately want a relationship but they are often too afraid to let someone close enough to give them they love they crave.
Many people who enter into relationships with them find themselves extremely confused because the fearful avoidant likes to get close to people very quickly. However, you’ll see that after a month or two goes by there’s this subtle pull back and they begin to freeze when commitment starts to exist.
So, what’s going on here?
Ultimately it’s that avoidant quality of losing their independency within a relationship, even though they have an anxious quality that drives them to have emotional connection.
The paradox is a doozy.
If You Want To Understand Why A Fearful Avoidant Pulls Away Look At Their Core Wounds
Above I briefly mentioned the concept of core wounds.
If you want to understand why each of the insecure attachment styles is acting the way they are acting understanding their core wounds is essential. Let’s start with the two basic ones and we’ll go from there.
The Anxious Core Wound: I’m afraid of being abandoned and being alone
The Avoidant Core Wound: I’m losing my independence and myself to this relationship
So, the reason for all anxious behaviors from an anxious attachment style can be traced back to the root of this core wound of “I don’t want to be alone.” We see this a lot with our breakup clients.
Most of our clients tend to lean anxious while most of their exes tend to lean avoidant,
This means that every single time they do some crazy behaviors like,
Begging for an ex back
Leaving 100 voicemails
Showing up at their doorstep unannounced
The reason for that is that ultimate fear of abandonment. Not to say that being anxious is “bad.” On the contrary, Coach Tyler often will point out that anxiously attached people are some of the best problem solvers.
Of course, exactly like an anxious persons behavior can be traced back to their core wound so too can an avoidant person.
The avoidant is terrified of losing their independence and as a result they push people away in relationships when that person gets too close.
So, I hope you’re seeing the pattern here.
Every single action an anxious or avoidant will take is usually rooted in their core wounds. There is one odd exception though and that is fearful avoidants. This entire article is structured around the idea of helping you understand why a fearful avoidant pulls away.
Do you see now where the paradox comes into play with these types of individuals?
They contain BOTH the core wounds of the anxious and the avoidant.
So, how do you make sense of why they are doing what they are doing? Weirdly it’s best to look at your own behavior in the relationship with them.
If you were being particularly anxious then their avoidant side gets triggered.
If you were being particularly avoidant than their anxious side gets triggered.
So, to answer the question that this entire article is dedicated to. Usually if a fearful avoidant is pulling away from you it’s because you are triggering their avoidant core wound of, “I don’t want to lose my independence and I feel like I may be losing myself in this relationship.”
What Are You Supposed To Do When They Pull Away?
Without a doubt this is the number one question we get asked on our coaching sessions.
And here’s the truth,
There’s really not a whole lot you can do to fix the situation.
The “dating advice” industry has you incorrectly primed to look for a magic bullet. This one thing you can say or “text” to turn things around but according to our research the smartest thing to do is that when a fearful avoidants “avoiding” side gets triggered is to give them their space.
Here’s a few reasons why.
A lot of the times when an “FA” has someone that comes in and tries to do a lot of things for them, they don’t feel deserving of it, because of the core wound that they have inside of them already.
So they like to help others, but they don’t like other people to help them. And that’s where the disconnect sometimes goes, where it’s better to leave them in their own space to work through whatever stress that they’ve gotten inside their head, because they make very emotionally based decisions.
They don’t make always the most logical ones. Then later, they figure out, oh, they were just overwhelmed.
And now they’re okay.
So a lot of the times you’ll see them recover within the next three to five days so leaving them alone is really a great way to deal with the situation.
Of course, it’s always easier said than done especially when many of our clients have anxious attachment styles. Remember above when I mentioned that the anxious attachment style is arguably the greatest “problem solver?” Well, I’ve noticed they tend to have an extremely difficult time with letting a fearful avoidant have space.
It literally goes against everything they’ve been programmed to do since childhood.
After all, they need to “fix this.”
If you think this is going to be you then here’s my best recommendation, find a problem or purpose you can solve outside of your partner and focus on that for a while. Lately I’ve been really in to helping my clients find their “magnum opus.”
Basically that thing that you want to be remembered for the rest of your life and by focusing on that, on something outside of your relationship and problem solving it, it might be enough to help you begin to exhibit more securely attached behaviors.
Which is what everything you do should be about.
We’ve actually had some success with this reframing of priorities.
Often in my success story interviews with clients you’ll hear them talk about the basic concept,
“When they pull back, you pull back.”
Essentially a much cooler way of saying, “I need to give my partner space.” What they don’t usually disclose during those interviews is what they are doing with that space they are giving their ex.
Psst… here’s the secret;
They are focusing on problem solving something that they feel gives their life meaning.
I suggest that’s the place you start if you find yourself in a similar situation.
Success Story: He Left Her When She Was Pregnant (Now She’s Married To The Man Of Her Dreams)
Dec 27, 2021
This is a doozy of a success story that I have for you today. I had the honor of interviewing Rachel who not only got her ex back but ended up getting married to the man of her dreams in the process.
So, if you’ve ever dealt with a breakup that had any of the following elements,
An ex who is a fearful avoidant
An ex who left you when you were pregnant
An ex who moved on to someone new only to come back
Then this is definitely the success story you should watch/listen to.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
How Rachel Got Her Ex Back, Denied Him, And Then Married The Man Of Her Dreams
Chris Seiter 0:00 All right, today we’re gonna be talking to a really interesting success story. Her name is Rachel. She’s a member of the ERP Facebook group. And she’s got quite the tale to tell. How are you doing, Rachel?
Rachel 0:12 I am doing good. How are you?
Chris Seiter 0:15 Hanging in there? So let’s go back to the beginning and relive some of this depressing stuff. Oh, joy.
Rachel 0:22 Oh, yes. Okay.
Chris Seiter 0:23 Right. So yeah, take us to the beginning and talk us through sort of your unique situation because it has a really cool ending.
Rachel 0:33 Alright, so do you mean the beginning of the breakups the beginning beginning of the relationship?
Chris Seiter 0:39 Yeah, let’s go to the breakup. Just just let’s get to the goods. Let’s let’s get right down to it.
Rachel 0:48 Um, so the beginning. So he is an ex fiance of mine. And so I have to tell a little bit of the pre breakup story. Okay.
Chris Seiter 0:59 Yeah, let’s just give us like a quick crash course primer into into him.
Rachel 1:03 Yeah. Okay. So basically him and I met fell in love super fast. And basically, we got pregnant the first time plan to get married and we let that pregnancy happen. Okay, so we were all in he was super excited, unfortunately, had a miscarriage. He was devastated. I of course, was devastated. So that’s a really hard thing for relationship. And then he ended up calling off the wedding. So um,
Chris Seiter 1:34 so did he do this? He did this after the miscarriage.
Rachel 1:37 He called off the wedding after the miscarriage. Yes. It’s like just
Chris Seiter 1:41 rubbing salt into the wound, you know? Yeah.
Rachel 1:44 Yeah. Um, you know, looking back, that was several years ago. Now, looking back. We don’t know why we made the choices we do sometimes. Like, if I could talk to myself, I’d be like, Why are you giving this guy the time of day, but sometimes you don’t want your reality to be your reality. Right? So we’ll do anything to not have that be your reality. And so that wasn’t the end of the story for us. And that was also not what brought me to your program. Um, we basically stayed quote unquote, together but not together since now commitment was even scarier. And then towards the end of that year I we had been long distance to so I always told them I would never do more than a year long distance. And I don’t like cold weather. So I moved wanted to move to warmer place regardless, so I knew knowing not,
Chris Seiter 2:37 yeah, other songs.
Rachel 2:41 Even now, I’m like, Oh, this 50 degree winters too cold.
Chris Seiter 2:45 Yeah, exactly. You got to like go to Hawaii or something to get to get rid of those winters. Exactly, exactly.
Rachel 2:53 Just gonna keep going further. So so basically moved down here, um, knowing it wasn’t like a surefire shot with the sky. But I also knew that I wanted to know, for better or for worse, to use that term, right? If this was not going to work, I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t that I was gonna let it go. And if it was gonna work, I wanted to give it that shot. So that was the other part of my decision to move. It wasn’t like, let’s move together. I moved to the same area, and we did get back together. And eventually I was like, why are we not engaged again and again, still before I found your fee, and then eventually I was like, Don’t come back unless you have a ring I’m done for a variety of reasons.
Chris Seiter 3:36 The ultimatum you know.
Rachel 3:40 And that was for again, a variety reasons why and take up too much time on the backstory.
Chris Seiter 3:46 I gotta say, I’m with you so far here, you know, yeah, you moved. It’s like you should do something.
Rachel 3:53 Yeah, we weren’t even living together. But so yeah, so basically, a he was not a fan no man is a fan of an ultimatum Right? Any woman that’s considering it highly recommend you do not do it? Even if it’s for the moment not thought out? Like my case. Don’t say it if you’re angry. You can’t say it. You nodding your head over there. Nodding
Chris Seiter 4:18 just like yeah. Music to my ears.
Rachel 4:24 So that was just before the holidays. And you know, typically, you know, I’ve had a bunch of axes in the past almost every single one I’ve gotten back. Um, I am. Yeah, I like organically been the No Contact Rule person because I was just like, No, this guy doesn’t want me well then. Screw him. Like, I’m gonna make him see what it’s like not have your own.
Chris Seiter 4:48 Beautiful, love it.
Rachel 4:51 Yeah, and also I don’t want to reach out and then be rejected. So it’s ungettable but it’s also fear based. Okay,
Chris Seiter 4:57 so don’t talk about that part.
Rachel 5:01 Okay, so um, so basically go through the holidays, which typically, if exes are looking for an excuse to reach out, that’s a big one where it’s like, oh, Merry Christmas, like, how have you been, you know, nothing silence and then mid January, I hear from Him and He wants to meet up. And we have like a three hour long conversation and all of a sudden, like, he can’t picture his life without me and we can elope because one of our arguments was I didn’t want a big fancy wedding, I want it to elope and we can go to the courthouse the next day and yada yada and all this stuff. And all right. And that same night despite precautions our daughters can see. Okay, yeah. Here’s a really, okay, we’re not done yet. It gets better. So we’re could supposedly back together, right? And then he hasn’t talked to me for three or four days. Of course, I find out two weeks later, I’m pregnant. And when I did talk to him, he was like, he was like, Well, I don’t think we should jump back into things. And I was like,
Chris Seiter 6:05 What are you talking about? Docked me up, dude.
Rachel 6:09 Well, he doesn’t know that yet. Because we found that about a week later. But don’t tell me you want to get married and all this stuff and then disappear off into the great wide world somewhere.
Chris Seiter 6:19 I’m mad for you. Um,
Rachel 6:24 so okay, we’re still probably around 11 months away from the ERP breakup, right? So basically, I get pregnant. It’s a bumpy, bumpy pregnancy. He doesn’t. Here’s one thing he doesn’t believe the baby is his because we were broken up for that time, right in between when he came back.
Chris Seiter 6:40 Did he make you take a test or something?
Rachel 6:43 Oh, wait until they tell you. Yes, yes, you did after she was born.
Chris Seiter 6:49 So cringy, you know,
Rachel 6:51 there was no possible way that this was anybody else’s baby. Like I literally said to him, I was like, if it’s not your baby, then Jesus says, Come again. And you need to like
Chris Seiter 7:01 through the Virgin Mary.
Rachel 7:05 So um, anyways, so yeah, we broke up like once or twice during the pregnancy, like, obviously, pregnancy hormones. I can’t go out with him and have drinks anymore. I can’t do a lot of the fun things because pregnant women can’t do a lot of stuff if they want to take care of their child. So there was all types of reasons that we weren’t getting along wonderfully. He also was not very supportive of the pregnancy. He traveled a lot for work at that point. And then so she comes along, and we’re getting to the breakup. But to answer your question, she comes along, and two months after she’s born, so we were not officially living together, but somewhat living together after she was born. One day, he basically says, I don’t think this is going that well. I don’t think we should live together, you need to move out. So me and our two month old baby. Um, I’m on maternity leave from work. And I’m like, Well, I’m not staying 1000 miles away from my family when the father of my child slash ex fiance tells me he doesn’t think we can live together but we can still hang out, which was his word. So you don’t know. It doesn’t really see. So I’m going to go back to my home state for the holidays. Which he was an angry about. And, but then again, I never wanted. I don’t think any woman is like, I really hope when I grew up, I am a single mom.
Chris Seiter 8:27 Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Rachel 8:30 And so it was at that point that I started looking for. How to get things back together. In your pro cam, that’s not the first time in my life. I’ve been like, Googling how to do whatever, like do I text him first? All that stuff. Right, right. But it was the first time that I came across your program. And what I really liked about it was it applied different theories. It had elements of programs I had looked at and been in before, but it also had some stuff I hadn’t done before. So that’s about the time that I found you guys and jumped in and then I also did coaching with Anna to
Chris Seiter 9:16 definitely helps. And is great, isn’t she? He
Rachel 9:21 is wonderful. They like in our first call, like she’s hearing the story and of course it’s different when at that point I think
Chris Seiter 9:29 probably like she’s probably like gathering the war. You know, like the war party behind her to go like raid this guy’s house or something for how he treated you.
Rachel 9:38 She literally like she was very reserved, but she said to me, are you sure you want this guy back? Like obviously trying not to be like, What the heck are you doing? But she’s probably laughing if and when she listens to this and hears that but um yeah, he supported what I wanted, and gave me the game plan. In, which wasn’t very different than the game plan in your book, it was basically the same except additional coaching on how to do
Chris Seiter 10:08 books like recommended reading. She usually sends those those really long homework things out with those books.
Rachel 10:15 Yeah, I was a bad student.
Chris Seiter 10:17 Oh, shame on you, Rachel.
Rachel 10:20 No, I know I was a bad student. But I mean, being a single mom working full time, like there’s not a lot of time to read books.
Chris Seiter 10:28 Yeah, so you got the two month old three month old screaming every day. You’re running on three, four hours of sleep every night? Yeah, I get it.
Rachel 10:36 Yeah. Yeah. So I like I was listening to the podcast version and to reading. I keep rereading, and then I had battle buddies with your group, and stuff like that. So yeah, so ultimately, what happened is, I followed the program. Of course, they didn’t do it perfectly. I think it’s really hard to do that it did lose EC or emotional control a time or three and have to restart. Um, but he came back about 15 months later after the breakup.
Chris Seiter 11:10 I know, I’m old is your daughter at this point?
Rachel 11:14 Um, she would have been? No, she was 15 months old. So it must have been 17 months after the breakup. Okay. So I’m thinking Wait, it was February. Yeah. So she must have been 1414 folder. So
Chris Seiter 11:31 you had moved back to your home state? Correct. At that point.
Rachel 11:35 I did not move back. I only went back there for maternity leave. Okay, I
Chris Seiter 11:39 ended up so it kind of came back to where he was.
Rachel 11:43 Yeah, because one cost of living was better. I have to give her myself,
Chris Seiter 11:50 too. You want to play together?
Rachel 11:54 On my family together? But even if it didn’t, she need I don’t want to be I didn’t want to be that stereotypical baby mama that everyone hates who like who she was? Let me see my child, you know, like? So? Yeah, for a variety reasons. I did move back here. And how often
Chris Seiter 12:11 How often would you like you mentioned throughout this process, you would lose emotional control? Would that happen when you would like have to, he would like come around to see her.
Rachel 12:24 So when I first was back here, it was very confusing. Because he started he was super nice to me, he would be like, Let’s do family dinners on Sundays. And like all this stuff that literally felt like a family
Chris Seiter 12:38 show. avoidant to me.
Rachel 12:42 Yeah, that’s what the coach said to, um, and so, you know, and hold back as much as I could. And then I’d be like, Well, what’s going on? Why can’t we like, try this? Why can’t we be a family? So probably my mistake there was just not holding back enough to make to force it out of him. Yeah. But there’d be you know, so that was the loss of emotional control. I think there was one night that he had her that I allowed myself too much wine and decided nothing else was working. So I was gonna call him and tell him how I felt, which is obviously exactly what you don’t want to do.
Chris Seiter 13:23 That doesn’t really work. Yeah.
Rachel 13:28 So yeah, so basically, you know, eventually I got to the point, I couldn’t do it. 100%. organically, I’ll be very clear about that. I couldn’t pretend like I didn’t care, especially like, the family aspect to seeing him weekly or more, because we share a very young child. I did not know what was actually going on in the background at that time, which is there was another woman in the picture, surprise, surprise, which he very carefully hid for me in every sense of the word. And
Chris Seiter 13:59 do you know how far back that went?
Rachel 14:02 So
Chris Seiter 14:04 God is we’re opening up these horrible, it’s like, I’m ripping open scabs here. Something I mean, but I feel like it’s important to touch on because I create some insight into the breakup.
Rachel 14:16 He, so they had actually met in college. And
Chris Seiter 14:22 what’s his ex?
Rachel 14:24 No, no, I didn’t date in college.
Chris Seiter 14:27 All right. They got away.
Rachel 14:30 Potentially. Yeah. And so she, she was actually married. So he at one point, him and I were talking about relocating together and she was married and lived in that same state. And while I was pregnant, one day, we’re out and his Snapchat kept blowing up and I was like, Who’s her name? I’m gonna leave it out. Right? Right, right. It’s like, oh, that’s my friend from college. She’s married. She lives in the same state. We’re talking about moving to and I was like, Oh, that’s so great. Like, you know, we’ll have friends when we go out there. Turns out, you’re, you’re so
Chris Seiter 15:02 kind See, see, my wife would not be that way. She’d be like, Why are you talking to someone who’s married? And you’re moving to the same state? So it’s not like it’s such a kind hearted person, Rachel is all I’m saying, you know, this glass half full? Yeah, I look at it, I look at it like it is. In this case, it was a disadvantage, but in most cases, it’s an advantage.
Rachel 15:31 So I did ask him that question. And he was like, Well, you know, obviously, things haven’t been perfect. But that’s during this pregnancy. And I was kind of asking her because she’s married, like, is it supposed to be this difficult and getting her insight on that? And I was like, well, has she ever been pregnant? He said, No. And then I was like, well, then how would she know? And he was like, I don’t know. And I was like, Okay, well, you should be talking to me about this, not her. Because I didn’t want to open a whole can of worms. But to me, that’s emotional cheating. And it leads to the destruction of relationships, um,
Chris Seiter 16:00 is, it’s like a gateway drug. That’s what it’s like.
Rachel 16:04 Yeah. And so they were at least talking when I was pregnant at some point, but she must have been, he must have told a half truth and that she was actually getting separated. Because that was when I was about six months pregnant. And when probably two months come to find out much later, which we’ll get to that when we get the success part. And then what I found out really happened. So probably about two months after him, and I split up, they were suddenly dating.
Chris Seiter 16:33 He’s got a child, oh, my God.
Rachel 16:37 And I’m like, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m gonna so he,
Chris Seiter 16:39 he basically broke up a marriage is what you’re saying.
Rachel 16:43 So either he broke up a marriage, or she’s a homemaker, and he broke my marriage. So they just give them
Chris Seiter 16:49 both some credit for that, that, you know, I think there’s enough blame to go around for both of them.
Rachel 16:55 Yeah, so, you know, that’s why I was a little nervous on this interview. So it’s like, there’s some feelings that might come out?
Chris Seiter 17:03 Yeah, well, you know, you know, we’ll just stay away from that then.
Rachel 17:09 So, um, but I did not know about that for the entire thing. Until, so what happened is, I were saying, I lost emotional control a few times. And then I basically got to the point where I was like, this is not working, I have to completely let this go. Like not even counting down days of no contact, I was not the type of person who wanted to start those text conversations to get them engaged. I tried it here and there. And if he would always react positively, but I knew that he would like, that wouldn’t have been a new thing for us, like we get along. I was like, that’s not gonna make a difference. Like we can be best buddies on text, and it’s not gonna make a difference, you know, at least not in my situation. So I was like, I have to completely let this go. I have to really, really like not because you told me to, not because ERP tells me to, but I really, really focus on myself and like, full force, throw myself into doing all the things that ERP says, like, find new, like COVID related activities that I’m going to make my hobby, and like, do something that builds up my confidence. Now,
Chris Seiter 18:20 how long did it take you to get to that? That place?
Rachel 18:25 I think I probably got to day what? I forgot what the prescribed days is for that.
Chris Seiter 18:34 Sure. So what I’m asking is, like, when the breakup happened, and when you started trying to like, get get him back? How long did it take you before you had that mindset shift to where you’re religious? Like, you know what, I think I’m going to let him go.
Rachel 18:49 Um, it probably was early that summer, so I would say it was four or five months.
Chris Seiter 18:58 So it took a little while of you try really hard to get him back and then just getting frustrated. I mean, like, Okay, I’m gonna start focusing on myself. And I’m guessing that’s when the real results started happening.
Rachel 19:09 Yeah, so it wasn’t, it was that quick. So what I did is I, I like threw myself into like, home improvement projects, like started playing with power tools, like, like badass like, I have,
Chris Seiter 19:24 like building like, a baby’s room or something. Right? Like that.
Rachel 19:29 Like architectural stuff in my house. Yeah. Like I was like, that’s big. Chip and Joanna Jane.
Chris Seiter 19:35 Oh, yeah. You know, a fixer upper. Yeah, yeah.
Rachel 19:39 So I did that. Um, I started my own business in addition to working full time because I’m crazy, apparently, you know, um, but yeah, basically, I was like fully focusing on myself and getting back to myself and I as much as it like, was puke worthy to myself. I did go back online dating, email. That’s not what I want. it in my heart, but I was like,
Chris Seiter 20:03 it’s yeah, how often I hear that and how often that ends up being like that secret weapon for some reason. It’s just uncanny. Like, I did a successful interview yesterday with a woman. And she just, like half the time was talking about how exactly like you, she was like, I don’t want to go online dating, but I did it. And then it just like created this like momentum with all these men that started liking her posts and everything. So I’m actually really curious to see how this plays out. Sorry.
Rachel 20:34 No, that’s fine. So I was like, very. So as a single mom with no family in the area, it’s not one of the challenges for me dating was that one, my daughter is so young and so cute. And I don’t want to pay a sitter to go spend time with some random dude who might not be around. Right. So I was very, very, like, life situation. ungettable because anyone who wanted to spend time with me, I was very strict with the time that I give them. So basically, the guy that I first went out with is actually my now husband, just so you know.
Chris Seiter 21:10 So the all my daddy thing kind of worked out for you that
Rachel 21:13 Yeah. Cuz I wasn’t like the first guy that you go out with. It’s not the guy. Right? This is, you know, I thought he was except
Chris Seiter 21:21 in your case. Except. So, um, you probably really, he probably was like really wanting to work to see you. You know, like, it adds this really interesting element with the with the child. And it’s kind of like you well, you can’t just like leave her to go on a date. Right? So and what does he have to do?
Rachel 21:43 And her dad would cancel times that he was supposed to have with her. So we’d have a date set up. And I’d be like, sorry, her dad canceled. I can’t go. And he even asked me after we got married. How many times do I actually know?
Chris Seiter 21:56 Yeah, the guys just be in it. You know what? Yeah.
Rachel 22:00 And so I’d see him maybe like twice a month and we ended up him and I end up dating for about six months. In the meantime, of course, like, I’m still talking to my battle buddies, who one of which I still talk to weekly. And she did get back with her. She has a son who’s the same age as my age is my daughter she did did get back. So she’s like a current success story too. And they’re living. Yeah, that’s it. Okay, she want to just
Chris Seiter 22:24 making sure I did hear things in the background there. Yeah, he was
Rachel 22:29 trying to come over to the window, and I pushed her away and she got mad. So, um, but, so I still talk to her weekly. So definitely love battle buddy as part of this. And, um, so where were we in the story? Okay,
Chris Seiter 22:44 basically, yeah, go ahead.
Rachel 22:46 I had started casually, super casually dating this guy. And I was very strict with him. I made it very clear, I was honest. I was like, Look, I’m not like, emotionally ready for anything. So this is going to be extremely slow, if it’s going to be anything and if you’re not okay with that, that’s fine. Like, I just I didn’t care, you know. Um, and he rolled with it like, and until for about six months. And in the meantime, I’m still like, trying to entice my ERP ex, right. And I guess the energy shift that we’re kind of talking around, it happens when you open up your energy to other men, um, did attracting back because basically what happened slowly over time is my daughter’s father started suddenly bringing over dinners for us because he knew that I didn’t have time to cook much. And that became more and more frequent. And then it became do want to come over for dinner. And then it became eventually him opening up and then we got back together. So I did get my my ERP ex back.
Chris Seiter 23:57 Okay, no, she’s gonna drop here again. So let’s get to it.
Rachel 24:02 So, um, at first, it was like, absolutely fabulous. honeymoon period. Yep. Yeah, yeah. And so this is where I think there has to feel it doesn’t have to feel good to like, get your family back. You
Chris Seiter 24:15 know? Yeah. Yeah. But there’s, there’s there’s still secret. There’s still a sword of Damocles hanging over the head here. So,
Rachel 24:23 yeah, there was a lot. I think. There was a lot of come to Jesus conversations that basically he had to have with me, and part of me thinks looking back now, did he come back because he carried so much guilt, that he was trying to allay that guilt from himself and he didn’t actually want to get back together. Because what happened over the next like, six, eight weeks, however long it was, we were back together. As he started, tell me about this other woman about the fact that she relocated here about the fact that she was living with him which he never wanted to do. Give me so that like was a gut punch about the fact that she lived with him when our daughter was staying over there, like so all of these things were back together, I have what I’ve worked so hard for, right. And I was sitting in the moment and thank God for all the emotional control training that I had through ERP, right? I became like a superstar that so like, I was all like, I’m all like gung ho emotional control is the key to success in relationships, if you are emotional, female. Um, but I had the decision every time he was telling me that’s like, I don’t like hearing this. This sucks. I want to vomit. But it’s in the past. And I have what I want now. Do I let it go to potentially give my daughter and myself the type of life that I was fighting for for so long? And at the time? My answer was, yes, I’m letting all this go. And I think, you know, this could probably be a debate psychologically, that he was not expecting me to forgive everything. Right?
Chris Seiter 26:00 Yeah. I wouldn’t. So
Rachel 26:03 yeah, and so I think part of him was like, she’s gonna find this out. She’s not gonna want to be with me. So maybe he was never all in? I don’t know.
Chris Seiter 26:10 Oh, so you’re thinking like he had the conversation because he knew, which would be that’s kind of a common fearful avoidance tactic of like being half in half out. So you’re thinking like, he might have potentially had this conversation with you with these come to Jesus moments, so that you would break up with him.
Rachel 26:29 Either that, or he knew that if we were going to go forward that he had to be truthful, but he didn’t really believe that it would go forward. So
Chris Seiter 26:38 it’s a bit of both human beings. Did you know?
Rachel 26:41 Well, and it gets worse to if you if you can, oh, I can
Chris Seiter 26:45 unfortunately, but it’s just it makes me feel so bad for you. But I’m, you have the good ending. So that’s sort of the wind tunnel. So this is
Rachel 26:55 going to be literally the wild card of this entire conversation. Are you ready for
Chris Seiter 27:00 it? Okay, let me let me let me get ready. Okay, I’m ready. Yeah. Like,
Rachel 27:03 like, sit back. Okay. All right. So this is gonna be the pincher the entire conversation. So basically, everything I went through, obviously, I was not the no sex before marriage type. Even though I do identify as Christian, like, I had a daughter out of one. Um, and I had always approached my adult life that way, cuz, you know, like most women, I’m a fan of sex, too. But everything that happened with my daughter’s father, and I like it hurt me so much emotionally, and also just my dreams for my life way before him, that I was like, it’s not worth it. Like, as much as I love that one. There’s some fantastic toys out there that do way better. To like, if I’m going to give that part of myself, someone, I need to know that they’re going to stick around and I don’t want to be attached to someone, especially now that I have a daughter that isn’t gonna stick around. Like they need to be like ride or die if they’re gonna get that part of me, right. So I basically had decided that for myself, and this was after her father and I broke up. So I did with him, because obviously, we already had a daughter, but with all of the other men that I had gone on dates with as the result of the online dating, like that was never a part of the equation. Okay, um, so, but the part where it gets worse. So first of all, keep that in mind. Okay, the part where it gets worse is, so when him and I were intimate again, I had not been intimate with anyone since before she was born. So at that point, that’s like a year and a half or however long that’s a really long time. And nobody else besides him. And I find out because we hadn’t like committed to each other that time. But oh, I
Chris Seiter 28:54 think I know where this going. Yeah,
Rachel 28:57 other women had never been a thing. I find out that the very next night, he was when the homewrecker
Chris Seiter 29:06 so you, you’ve technically been together, right? You’d like when you when you become intimate here, you’re technically back together, right?
Rachel 29:14 Well, we didn’t verbalize that. So it was like so
Chris Seiter 29:17 for you. It was just like this assumed thing where you’re a little afraid to to, to, like know that with him.
Rachel 29:25 Not even because I even we talked about it. And I was like, This doesn’t have to be a big deal. Like I said that I was like it doesn’t because we both didn’t want to rush back into it. We didn’t want it to fizzle out, like be fastened and fizzle out. And I was like, Well, honestly, I was like, I really want to do this because I did that a while. I know. It’s like, it doesn’t have to mean that we’re back together this second. But prior to us having a child together. We were together for several years other women had never been a thing. To my knowledge, I guess at this point. Maybe they had who knows But so I didn’t have that fear with him or that concern. So there was no way in my mind, I thought when I said that, well, he’s gonna go sleep with another woman the very next day, but he did. He got really drunk and it didn’t mean anything, quote, unquote.
Chris Seiter 30:14 Okay. It did it. Did he literally tell this to you?
Rachel 30:19 He did. He did. He told me
Chris Seiter 30:22 how long after that event with the other woman. Did he tell you?
Rachel 30:27 So this is before this is right. But that’s actually what got us back together. Because I said to him, I was like, Look, that was a very big deal for me to sleep with. You haven’t been with anybody else. I was like, and to know that it’s so casual to you, regardless if you’re blackout drunk or not. You know, I was like, I don’t know how I’m going to trust you. Like the fact that I was nowhere in your mind when this happened. And he was like, well, in my mind, you know, we weren’t committed to
Chris Seiter 30:56 each other. Yeah, I get it. Yeah.
Rachel 31:00 So he offered commitment at that point. And that’s when we got back together.
Chris Seiter 31:06 So you get back together eventually, things don’t go well. So
Rachel 31:18 no, boy okay. That’s true story. Right.
Chris Seiter 31:21 It’s it’s almost like self sabotaging. If like I’m just looking at it from afar here. It’s almost like self sabotaging a purpose. Like, your comment before about like, you know, him telling you and being quote unquote, honest here is also a little bit of like, self sabotage. So maybe some part of him didn’t want to be it, like died down.
Rachel 31:45 i Yeah. I mean, yeah. Okay. So that’s why one of the things were looking back, I decided maybe it was all driven by guilt and wanting to lay his own guilt. Right. for that.
Chris Seiter 31:59 I don’t think fully, I think like just looking at, I think it’s like a combination of both. I think guilt definitely plays in like, it’s like, he’s the bad guy. There’s just no way you can slice it away, like you, you leave a woman, right, as she’s pregnant. She’s a single mom, you are shacked up with this other you know, it’s like, there’s just, however you slice it, it’s not good. So how do you? Like I don’t really know. I mean, I’m sure I’m sure. In his mind, there’s a way that he tries to make himself the hero. But it does seem like self sabotage. Like he’s doing this. Like you mentioned, like, well, I didn’t even enter your mind. It did. I think. I think there’s a clear indication he’s trying to self sabotage. Yeah.
Rachel 32:49 And I called him out on that during the break up that happened. Um, so Okay, so that happened, we got together and then he’s like one of those all in full steam ahead people and this has actually written about in my post where he has plans and a timeline for when we’re getting married for when he’s moving into my place. We’re going to buy a house together and sell his house and he has a whole timeline, like the months of the year that we’re doing this. And to the point that he’s like, sending me houses on like Zillow and Redfin, we’re actually touring houses together. Okay,
Chris Seiter 33:25 it’s scary doing that. I’ve done that. Scary. And I’m not like a super avoidant person, but it’s scary. That’s like, wow.
Rachel 33:34 Yeah. And, you know, I did get the advice from some people like he’s running shoe faster, this you need to pump the brakes. Now, I would try. Like, can’t we just have fun and be like, well, what’s the problem? You don’t want to do this? And I was like, No, I do. So I couldn’t really, really pump the brakes no matter what. And so, we ended up planning a little it was my birthday, we planned a little family vacation, which we had never done before. And I thought we had a good time. Apparently he did not. But my mom also came his family flew in. So it ended up being like a huge family vacation. Um, and then two weeks after that, I got the second COVID shot was really sick one day, didn’t talk to him for most of the day, because I was just laying in bed like dead to the world. And he called me up and was like, We need to talk real talk. It seems like you’re not happy. Like, what did I’m
Chris Seiter 34:35 checking at this point? You know?
Rachel 34:38 I was so confused. I was like, how do we go from like shopping for
Chris Seiter 34:43 as you’re sick with the COVID thing? Yeah.
Rachel 34:47 So and after that, it was like we quote unquote, talked through whatever he the issue was twice. And it was very weird. The things that were talked about. He was like, Well, I feel like It’s a lot of work when we’re together now. And I’m kind of like, well, I didn’t say this, but in my head, I’m like, Well, no shit like, Yeah, you can’t go out every night and play pool like we have a year old your daughter like
Chris Seiter 35:15 it’s the Peter Pan syndrome that Jordan Peterson often talks about how some men just resist growing up. And,
Rachel 35:24 and I think that’s exactly what happened. He did the cliche thing of finding someone younger, who’s still in that party stage who fit his lifestyle better. There’s a clear that’s like, If a man gets a woman pregnant, and she doesn’t match his lifestyle any longer, he will find someone who does.
Chris Seiter 35:39 Well, the irony is people with people like that end up dying with regrets because eventually, you know, the body’s gonna wither. All that’s all that’s left is your mind. And he’s not doing anything to cultivate his mind.
Rachel 35:57 Hmm, that was one thing, even when we were dating before ERP therapy came up at one point. And Anna, that was actually a big thing in her plan. She was like, part of the plan was to get him into co parenting therapy, not couples therapy, co parenting, and he was immediately like, I don’t think you want to co parent therapy. He’s like, I think you want therapy for other reasons with me. So that was a hard No, but also he doesn’t think anything’s wrong with him. He’s like, he said to me, he’s like, I will go to therapy in order to support you going to therapy. But, you know, so I don’t like to throw around the term narcissist. I think it’s overused, but I really do think he might be one.
Chris Seiter 36:42 I don’t, I don’t know. I’m, I’m no licensed therapist, but it does seem to me he’s got some serious avoidant tendencies. And it does seem he really, like kind of doesn’t want to take responsibility. And I can get that, you know, it’s, it’s really hard, especially when you’re feeling really tied down. Like, it’s super common for avoidant men to jump all in, and then jump all out. And that’s kind of what you you’re experiencing. So let’s continue. This is like one of the most, it’s like, we’re going down this crazy windy road in
Rachel 37:25 that I should like, saw this story to lifetime. It’s pretty good.
Chris Seiter 37:29 It’s pretty good. You got me on the edge of my seat.
Rachel 37:33 Um, so yeah, so he like basically same thing as so I didn’t tell you this part earlier. So when I had gone back to my home state right after my daughter was born, our daughter, I should say. I basically like I said, instinctively was a no contact person. So I was doing that. And just like every other time, they crawl out of the woodwork and he wanted to talk and work things out. And at that point, he had been like, I just want more good days and badmouth you, you know, maybe we can do a weekend away together as a couple. Like, he’s a very sweet talker. He’s very charming when he wants to be successful at work, like you know that, that that phenotype. So when I got back to the state that we live in, in my mind, we were going to pick up that conversation. But the weird part was, that was no longer an option. And I had no clue why. And he would not tell me, he’s like, I just it was too much for me. We’re just done. It’s not such an open door anymore. I was like, literally talked about work. Yeah, well, you know, find out password year plus later, it was so good. So so
Chris Seiter 38:50 but Rachel got so mad about that. She threw her phone down, guys. Yeah, yeah.
Rachel 38:57 So the similar The reason I brought that up, the similarity was, like, looks like it’s going one way and sudden complete drop, no explanation, that makes sense to me. Right? Same thing happened with the break up after I got him back because of the ERP approach. And I will say, I think this is really important for people that are trying to do the program. He actually said, when we got back together, I was like, you know, I said to him, why now and he was like, well, he’s like, I’ve noticed a lot of differences in you over the last few months, you know, I was in this relationship that I wasn’t happy with. And a lot of the things that I was concerned about with you don’t seem to be there anymore. And the big thing was because I had relocated, like, I didn’t have my own social network here. I didn’t. I was really dependent on him for interest and stuff like that and friends at some point. And so the ERP like throw myself into my own interests, really is basically He was like, wow, like she’s doing all these things. She isn’t a magnet like she’s, you know, this whole thing. And I was I was always successful with work like, I’m kick ass. And actually, I’m Anna said, because I’m in marketing. And she was like, you know, the marketing and sales clients I have are usually the most successful ones because they understand strategy and go to market and it’s true. Yeah, well, yeah. So basically, all of the things that ERP said, what happened as a result of really reining in and then focusing on yourself, which I hate that phrase, I really do. Because everyone’s cliche like, yeah, yeah, but focus your show, it’s, I would get so mad, it’d be like, people be like, well just focus on yourself. And I was like, I don’t have the effing choice, but to focus on myself, thanks for pointing that out.
Chris Seiter 40:53 It’s all right. It’s all right.
Rachel 40:55 So, um, so yeah, but so I think that’s important to say, um, as far as like, what he said about why he didn’t come back. And I think in my case, even though we didn’t end up together, the ERP program did a few things. For me one, it really did help me get back to a fuller version of myself, because for me post breakup, like I keep going with life, I might like melt into a puddle for a weekend and binge watch NetFlix. But then I’m like, that’s enough, like I got shit to do. That doesn’t mean there’s no emotional pain, but then really pushing into the new interests and really being that independent person, again, where you’re not like checking in as a couple. It really built me up back into that full person again, and taught me I think, to be more discerning it also like building that confidence up also makes you less dependent on someone else approving of you. So it’s being reminded of your own value, but you really have to believe that for yourself. And one of the things that was really interesting roundup learning kind of tangentially is you can have a really high self concept in your work life, and maybe your friend life, things like that his young life. But what the relationship with my ERP ex did is it gave me a really low self concept when it came to relationships like romantic ones. So basically building up that self esteem and self concept with, I can do this, even if it’s not a relationship thing. The belief that you can do things is incredibly important and bleeds into all areas of your life. So I really think that even though I was an ERP to get my ex back, which obviously I did, the ERP approach made me that ungettable person. That is what was it?
Chris Seiter 42:52 Yeah, but let’s just we’re talking about your husband. Now. Yeah, it made European you’re giving me complete credit for winning your husband, which I
Rachel 43:03 actually think, yeah, I mean, it’s the combination of everything right, but like, he even now says, he was so impressed by everything I was doing. He asked himself, he knew initially, he was actually intimidated by me. And I was kind of like, what did she keep?
Chris Seiter 43:20 That’s what you want. You want men to be intimidated by
Rachel 43:23 you? Well, and this is a guy who has never had trouble with women. Right? And so I he says to me, and he’s in sales, right? So it becomes part of your job to figure people out. He’s like, like, he was like, and part of it because I was so held back emotionally and like, had all these boundaries up and was like ungettable, basically. Right. And so he had to pursue in pursuing pursue, and I’m fairly sure actually, I know there was other women around and I just didn’t care because that’s not where my heart was. Right. And I also wasn’t sleeping with him. So it didn’t matter to me. Um, so six months and he wanted more like wanted Oh
Chris Seiter 44:08 may have lost her for a little bit. Of course,
Rachel 44:15 I’m at the person and they stood up and greeting each other. I turn around in there he is with his girlfriend at the time. Okay. But he said to me, he said it on her wedding day that that was the moment he knew that I was waiting for him. And he was like, What am I doing? Like I need to be with her and not the person that I’m with. So basically, he broke up with his girlfriend and started pursuing me again. And three months later, we were married
Chris Seiter 44:44 I don’t know if that’s on a happy ending. I don’t know what it is. You become like so intimidating to all other other men and women that he’s just like, I have to get that one. That’s that’s the goal. Yeah, I mean, She posted Rachel post, like a picture of the her ring and everything on the Facebook group. And it was talking a little bit about how, even though she did get her ex back like she’s, she’s talking about here, a year, ERP kind of like, laid the foundation for giving her that mindset for getting a husband. And no, ironically, you have that optimistic dream that you wanted. You didn’t
Rachel 45:27 really have anything that I ever wanted. Like, he gives me way more than my ERP ex would have. He’s generous. He’s kind hearted. He values me, probably because I learned to value myself like I miss man, like nothing’s perfect, right. But this man,
Chris Seiter 45:47 if you were perfect for you.
Rachel 45:49 Yeah, exactly. It’s like I He spoils me. You saw that in the ring? Good. Yeah, it’s I, I just can’t. Not that I can’t believe it. But the way that this story has unfolded, and, quote, unquote, the happy ending, like, and this is why I wrote in that post, like, Absolutely, if you’re in this program, on your core level, you have to believe that you can have and are deserving of the relationship that you want. And don’t settle for less. And that’s cliche, too, to say, Don’t settle. And I know that we get attached to our exes, because we’ve invested so much. Now you
Chris Seiter 46:36 had a really good reason to get attached, though. I mean, there’s a natural, like, you shared a child with him. And there’s a natural, I think, feeling that you want your family whole you don’t want quote unquote, like a broken family. But
Rachel 46:53 my daughter at Christmas, you kidding me? That sucks? Like, come on. Yeah, have your kid to 2pm on Christmas Day, because that’s the exchange time. Like, that’s my reality now.
Chris Seiter 47:01 But sometimes that’s what’s best for you and the situation as a whole. You know, and I think I think that’s sort of maybe as initially took took a little while for your you to wrap your head around. But you seem to be doing great now. But your iPhone Promax and your awesome husband, and let’s go on.
Rachel 47:25 Yeah, we’re building a house together, like it’s good.
Chris Seiter 47:28 Okay, so just throw that in there.
Rachel 47:31 Yeah, we’re going to Jamaica on Monday for honeymoon, I’m just gonna keep adding. But one thing that I really do want to say, and this was a driving factor with me, and then we do have to jump because I’m late for work call. But I’m in is one thing that I really realized. And that really did change my approach to in addition to everything else was, if you are in a situation where you do share a child with someone, as you were just talking about, it’s very strong and like a factor to want to be back with someone, I want you to really, really think about the relationship that you would then be demonstrating for your child if you had it back. Because what we see as young children as quote, unquote, what love is becomes what we try to emulate when we get older attachment
Chris Seiter 48:14 theory. That’s attachment theory, right? Yeah, sure.
Rachel 48:19 Yeah, yeah. 100%. And like, I know that my version of quote unquote, loves a little or a lot broken. I came from a broken family. I didn’t see warmth and love and how people should be treated and kind of stumbled my way through, right. But for my daughter, it was so much easier for me to want better for her for her to see through the relationship her mom has, how a man should treat a woman you know, and what she should look for. Because if she saw the relationship I had with her father, it I wasn’t good. Yeah, I want so much better for her. So that’s something I think a lot of us don’t think of when we have a child you just want your family to get back together. But think about what you want for your child. Yeah, I
Chris Seiter 49:01 love that. I think I think most people don’t think that we are self interested by nature as human beings but what I have found is usually when you have a child you learn become a little bit more selfless as a person and start to consider these things and sometimes the only way you can have that is through experience and I mean you made you it wasn’t easy for you to come to that conclusion. But again, I don’t want to keep you late for your work call so if you got a bounce I get it. We got more than enough here for most people. She’s a busy woman, people
Rachel 49:37 do his homework and I’m sorry but obviously yeah,
Chris Seiter 49:40 I’ll talk to you about that later. Give you a school thanks for coming on. Seriously, this is amazing.
Rachel 49:49 Yeah, no I hope I hope my story like helped someone and I I can say like through the story I was absolutely crushed like obviously I’m at a happy ending now so not, but I was crushed, like crying my eyes out, leaning on my battle buddies so heavily. Like, everything was so difficult. It really was like you could not pay me to do the last two years over again. You really couldn’t there’d be no price you could put on it. Um, so even though I’m happy now when I got to my quote unquote happy ending, like, don’t let that overshadow how difficult it actually was because it was very, very hard. So people out there who are struggling, I get it. I’ve been there as far as the group itself. It can be good in some ways, because you’re seeing people in earlier stages and later, later stages. I will say at some point, I think it’s good to detach from it because you don’t want to fill your daily feed with all these like, sad stories. Yeah. But I don’t actively pay attention to it right now.
Chris Seiter 50:53 Yep. So thank you for coming on. I really appreciate that.
Rachel 50:58 Yeah, no problem. It’s good talking to big
Success Story: Dating Other Men Made Her Ex Come Back
Dec 20, 2021
Today we’re going to be talking to one of our success stories, Jamie Cantrell. She has an incredibly interesting story because she created all this momentum that led to her ex trying to get back with her.
She did this of course by dating other men and reclaiming her ungettable status.
Let’s listen and learn how she did it.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Chris Seiter 0:03 All right, today we’re gonna be talking to another success story. This one has quite the saga. I was like, really? So this is Jamie Cantrell, everyone. She’s got a really interesting story. I was reading through a lot of your posts on our Facebook group. And it seems like you you were broken up from for from your ex for quite a long time before you got him back.
Chris Seiter 0:28 been almost a year basically. Yeah. So why don’t you take us back to the beginning? Like, I know, it’s probably hard to kind of go back to revisit a breakup. But can you can you kind of maybe explain what the breakup, like? What happened to make that occur?
Jamie Cantrell 0:47 Sure, sure. So, we had been together for almost four years. And of course, we’re older in our 50s. And he seemed to be a very kind of a dismissive avoidance. So I learned a lot of those terms through your program, I was first introduced to that. And he kind of started pulling some things that I felt were very inappropriate with a co worker, and I just wasn’t okay with it. And so, you know, I called him out on it. He just dismissed it kind of did a lot of gaslighting. So I said, Hey, I need a break for a couple of weeks to think about this and process it. After those two weeks, I contacted him and said, Hey, here’s what I want for my life. You know, we’ve been together for years, is this relationship progressing? Is it going anywhere? Because if it is, let’s work on this? If not, hey, let me know now. And I’ll move on. And so I always considered myself as you would call a very ungettable girl. And so I kind of laid that ultimatum, if you will, out there. And he kind of said, yeah, no, I don’t, I don’t see us going anywhere, I don’t want to ever get married, and you need to go find somebody else. And we’re just too much alike. And we’re not enough alike. And he just kind of talked in circles and absolutely caught me off guard, I was not prepared for that. So I did the breaking up. But then I was the one that came back and said, Hey, I really want this to work. We have so much invested and he acted like he didn’t want it to work. So I did a little bit of the crazy stuff like you talked about that I’m not very proud of a woman that knows better. I did a little bit of the calling and the texting. And and, and finally I just said, Okay, I stumbled upon your program, actually, it’s what happened after I blocked him and then unblocked him, you know, because we do those crazy things when we’re hurt. And I and I stumbled upon your program, and I just delved into it just 100% did a 30 day no contact, then we kind of I reached out, and then he would go three weeks and not reach out. And then we’d reach out again. So we just kind of back and forth reached out a little bit to each other over the next several months. And he still was just stubborn and did not want to really let me you know, compromise with me or give me any hope that there was a progression to this relationship. And, you know, I probably in your words from your program, I probably pushed the envelope a little bit. But at my age, and after four years, if we’re not going somewhere, let me know. So I can move on. You know, I’m I finally I think through your program. Remember that ungettable girl that I’ve always been and I kind of lost her there for just a little bit. And I think that’s what’s great about your program is even very high quality, high value women can lose ourselves in a relationship when especially powerful women because we like to be in control. And when we feel like we’re out of control, that kind of throws us a little bit. So I got that girl back. And I just implemented everything in your program. And I’ve got some really great stories of how that worked. So well. And then yeah, about Thanksgiving just a couple of weeks ago, he messaged and said, I love you, I want you back I’m reconsidering marriage. I’ll marry you. And, you know, but by that point, Chris, honestly grown and changed so much. That really wasn’t what I wanted anymore. And that was something that I learned in your programs that I didn’t think would happen to me. So success story, not a success story. Depends on how you view it. I view it as a huge success.
Chris Seiter 4:37 Oh, yeah, it’s a huge success for sure. Yeah. I mean, so what’s interesting to me, just like listening to the, to the broad macro strokes of everything is you mentioned like originally the, the precipice of the original breakup was you wanting a deeper commitment, like a marriage type situation, and he seemed to resist that. Had he been married before and had like a poor experience. Was that his resist? Yes, yes. Um, no, I don’t know if this is like overstepping anything. But how long had it been since? Because I’m assuming, you know, they divorced and what have you how long it how, how long had it been since he had been removed from that?
Jamie Cantrell 5:19 Oh, gosh. 20 years? Yeah. So long enough to get over that break.
Chris Seiter 5:25 I see. So it’s almost like a wound, you know, like, it’s just like, he carries the the bad memories of that relationship with him. But what’s fascinating is you had him do a complete heel turn, where by the end he wants it’s, I mean, it’s the ultimate irony. By the end he he’s asking you to basically marry him. And you’re just like, yeah, no, no, which is kind of what our program is trying to, to get people to believe. But for me, the most important thing is how, how did you get to that mentality?
Jamie Cantrell 5:59 Okay, um, so, oh, gosh, so many things. I just read, read, read your program, I listened to every YouTube video before school after school on the way to work on the way home, oh, my god. on my lunch break, I just, I poured into your programs so much. Because like I said, I’ve always I think inside of every woman, and man, there’s a high quality woman or a high quality man in there. They just don’t always show up as that person on that in that particular season. And so my focus was I really wanted to get me back. And I remember you saying, the only way they come back, is if when you truly move on and you can’t fake moving on. You truly.
Chris Seiter 6:44 It’s like listening to a carbon copy version of I can’t tell you how often I’ve been up there in that YouTube room, saying that exact thing and thinking I wonder if people are actually listening to this? And finally someone has Yes,
Jamie Cantrell 6:58 yes. So that really clicked with me that
Chris Seiter 7:06 I could start here, you know, No, you’re good. It’s it is what it is.
Jamie Cantrell 7:11 But my set my phone is kind of being weird right here. So yeah, I mean, I can’t
Chris Seiter 7:16 see you. But I can hear you and hearing us more important than seeing you right now.
Jamie Cantrell 7:23 I’m gonna see if I can, I can find you back here again. I don’t know what happened. Somebody called me and my phone is just,
Chris Seiter 7:30 oh, that’s all good. You’re just the popular you’re not gettable girl. You know, you got lots of attention.
Jamie Cantrell 7:36 Yes. Okay. So there you are. So anyway, what happened is, I knew that I had to 100% Move on. I had to get over him somehow. And in the back of my mind, I was thinking this is a way to get him back. But then I knew I couldn’t have that in the back of my mind,
Chris Seiter 7:56 or Yeah, it’s a paradox.
Jamie Cantrell 7:58 Yep. Yeah. So that was that was tough. You know, of course, learning all about the ungettable girl. And I just really dove into that I actually started telling other women about it. And I teach high school girls, so I would talk to them about things that I learned from your, your podcast, you said, Hey, I joined. That’s really great. Let me share with you some relationship stuff, and then helped me because now I was teaching them but I was also teaching myself again. I’m the one this should be
Chris Seiter 8:28 right. They should. They should be teaching my book in call in high school. Right? They should.
Jamie Cantrell 8:33 Yeah, I do I teach it. Oh, um, the one thing that worked for me, and a lot of people may criticize this because I know I put on a Facebook post. And you know, some people said, I don’t think that’s, that’s right, what you’re doing. But I dated, I jumped right back into the dating scene immediately, for a couple of reasons. Number one, I thought I have 53 time to waste. And I am a goal oriented person. And if I want a loving, committed relationship, I’m going to go after it. But I’m very, very picky. So it has to be the right guy. So I knew I was gonna have a long search. The other thing was, I did not want to really jump back into dating I would cry on the way to a date I quicker on the way home for this from the date. I you know, my heart was just still broken, but I didn’t like a job I forced myself to go out and meet people. And what I found was it did several things. Number one, it allowed me to practice being ungettable to practice being flirty yet confident to to practice getting back to that place that I knew I should be. The second thing it did was I met some really great guys and at first I thought I’m never going to fall in love again like he’s it he’s he’s my life. And it took a lot of dates, but about the 10th. One, I met a guy that I’m like, Hey, I think I kind of like him. And so that helps a lot. Let me move on. So I started realizing, even if it doesn’t work out with this guy, I found him. I can find more. Yeah, so the thing that worked the best and and this is where it may be a little controversial, but I think you should put it in your program because it works brilliantly. All of the guys that I met online, wanted my phone number. And I told them that I didn’t feel comfortable giving my number out just yet. But I would love to be on Facebook or Instagram friends with him and we could stalk each other a little bit. They were all for that. And that worked perfectly, because then I would getting catfished
Chris Seiter 10:45 looks like quite literally ungettable.
Jamie Cantrell 10:48 Yes. And what happened was, they all started liking all my Facebook posts, and all my Facebook posts and Instagram posts are public. So I knew my ex would be watching. And it you talk about the law of scarcity worked brilliantly. So now I’ve got 3040 high quality men because I didn’t give my I didn’t entertainment that I didn’t feel work work high quality. They were liking all my posts, they were saying comments like you’re absolutely gorgeous. You’re so beautiful. I love your style. And it’s these men from all over, but many of them were somewhat close within it within 100 mile radius. So my ex is seeing all this. Now I didn’t know he was seeing it. I had no clue he was even watching. But later I found out that he most certainly was. And the guys that I was talking to on these sites and being friends with on Facebook, now they see all these other guys liking my stuff, so they think I’m ungettable so now scarcity just kind of compounded. And yeah, guys I didn’t even know before it came out of the woodwork. Other exes came back from years ago. It was It was the craziest thing because I really worked my Facebook and Instagram like you talked about I went skydiving, I went,
Chris Seiter 12:11 I can’t believe you went crazy. I would never do. I know I say like do these crazy things. But I’m the classic case of like, Yeah, I do skydiving, but I would, I would never do skydiving.
Jamie Cantrell 12:25 I forced myself to just do all these really crazy cool things that I never thought I could do. And I posted about all of it on social media. I did shout out to clothing stores as me wearing a new dress. And so it didn’t it didn’t look like you did post a really
Chris Seiter 12:43 interesting. Oh, you will you did post it like the picture that caught me. Most was you posted this picture, like when you were talking about your success story. And it’s a view like in front of this red Mustang? Or is it a Mustang or just really, really nice red card? I was just like, wow, that’s a pretty that’s a pretty awesome post.
Jamie Cantrell 13:05 Yeah, and that was it. That was another guy that I met. Just online, just actually on Facebook, he just saw the cool things that I was and I was I would just like other guys things on Facebook, I just put myself out there I put myself open to dating, even though I wasn’t ready. I think if you wait until you’re ready with anything with you know, doing your business, if you waited until you had all your ducks in a row, you probably would never have done it because know this, things aren’t always going to be prime time to do something. So I just jumped into dating. And I wasn’t ready. And but I just said okay, I’m gonna practice being ungettable in this moment and with this guy and just see where things go. And that is what helped me to really move on.
Chris Seiter 13:55 Yeah, well, you know, what’s also interesting, but what you said you said, like what might be controversial that I was going on these dating websites, I’ve actually found. I’ve learned a lot this past year just by interviewing success stories. Like to me, I’m very interested in what actually works. You know, I’ve done all the research on the psychology. So I could sit here and like say like we can talk about attachment styles, we can actually talk about how rebound relationships, scientists or psychologists actually think rebound relationships is one of the best ways to quote unquote, get over an ex which is kind of what you experienced a little bit but what I found is a consistent pattern among people who are getting their exes back as they do go on other dates when they’re not ready. So I think there is something to that. But it seems to me like you men
Jamie Cantrell 14:41 are very I think men are competitive creatures. And they they can’t stand it when they think you’re seeing somebody else. But if they think you’re seeing a better man, a higher quality man, a man with a Ferrari you and they really it really drives them crazy. And so that’s what worked really well for me. And I would encourage it because you not only increase that law of scarcity, you get to practice being a high quality woman, but you get to meet some really fascinating people. And some of them were now great friends. Some of them were going through a really hard breakup. And they said, and we both kind of said, Hey, I’m not ready to jump into anything serious just yet. I’m going through this breakup. And they would say, Hey, me, too. So I became battle buddies. With a guy that I was talking to on a dating and best friend.
Chris Seiter 15:42 What’s great, yeah, sometimes you force those connections through hardship. Yeah. You just seem like really, really get the mentality, like you put a lot of work into getting to that place emotionally, where you just were willing to be like, okay, whatever. If I don’t get him back, I don’t get them back. Do you think just forcing yourself to go on dates? When you didn’t? Like you mentioned, you’re crying in the car, which, which is, which is horrible. You’re crying going back from the day, which again, is horrible. Do you think, like, I guess at what point did that kind of stop and it became more about the empowerment side of things, as opposed to like, you’re just hung up on your ex?
Jamie Cantrell 16:24 Oh, gosh, I’m a quick bounce back or girl so quickly. However, I would say let’s see, we broke up right around Valentine’s Day, February. So March, April, May, June, I would say it was about four or five months. That I actually said, Okay, I’m doing this for me. And, and the the thing about going on dating sites, and forcing myself to do things I wasn’t ready for and go workout I worked out like crazy hit the gym, every day, and really working on myself was I had to say, I might love him. But I love me more. And I will do whatever it takes to show self love to myself. And if that means putting myself out there and letting myself be vulnerable for another man to love me, then that’s what I’m going to do, I will guard my heart in the process. But I firmly believe I’m a Christian. So that offends anybody. I apologize. But I firmly believe that God has an amazing, awesome, wonderful future and plan for all of us. And I knew my guy was out there. And I just said, Okay, I’m gonna go find him. And you know, I told my ex and I told other guys since then, hey, I want a man that’s going to show up with intentional, purposeful behavior in my life. And if that’s you, great, I would love to move forward with you. But if it’s not, that’s okay. It’s okay to and maybe you’re not my guy, maybe there’s a better guy out there for me. And maybe there’s a better girl out there for you. That’s the look. And see what that says right there works like, he might not believe how well it works. All of a sudden men are oh so much more interested when they’ve been ghosting you or orbiting you all of a sudden, they’re so much more interested now.
Chris Seiter 18:18 Yeah, I was actually just about to say why I think they’re more interested in us because they, you almost like position yourself as someone who who has confidence and who has self value. Whereas I think a lot of women, at least when they come into our orbit orbit, they don’t really have confidence. And they don’t have self value, because they become completely codependent on the relationship. So half of the battle we struggle with is trying to teach them healthy habits like this is how secure attachments are supposed to be. This is like what it’s supposed to look like. And what’s really interesting to me is before like, like towards the beginning of this interview, you mentioned that you always kind of had considered yourself as like an ungettable girl. And then you get into this relationship and you feel like you kind of lost a little bit of that. And then you know, the breakup happens and you still don’t think you’re there, that’s actually consistent with what we’re seeing across the chain with attachment styles and how someone who has a completely secure attachment style can get into a relationship with an avoidant and all of a sudden become extremely anxious. So like it’s important. I think that the big issue and I’m really eager to get your thoughts on this, but I think the big issue that most people have, is they have this misconception that the work stops once you get the guy, you know, right. And they get a little bit maybe complacent and all of a sudden they start getting into their anxious behaviors. Do you feel like that’s sort of what happened to you a little bit in your breakup?
Jamie Cantrell 19:51 Absolutely, absolutely. I have been through way worse heartaches than this one. And always bounce back. So after salutely You know, you get if you’re in a relationship with somebody that’s an avoidant, or toxic or narcissist or whatever, they do kind of wear you down little by little, and you don’t really recognizing that it’s happening and you don’t realize that you’re losing yourself. And then you you get fearful and you get anxious. And especially for alpha females like me, I want to control everything. And so, yeah, that I think you’re absolutely right. I think depending on what relationship you’re in, it can trigger some anxious behavior. And the key is to stop and say, Okay, this anxious behavior is not healthy. And that’s what your program did. It allowed me to see my behavior from a, from an outside perspective and say, Oh, my gosh, I am acting that way. And I need to stop. So in all the dating relationships in the last 10 months, I got to practice being more securely attached, I got to practice saying, hey, he hasn’t texted me for five hours. That’s okay. He’s probably busy. No big deal. Sometimes I do that too. And I didn’t let it trigger me. And so the more I practice that secure attachment style, the more great high quality men were just beating down my door, because you come at it from a standpoint of I may want you, but I certainly don’t need you. And I wanted to treat you well. But I also want to be treated well, also. And so. Yeah, absolutely. That that we’ve got to get ourselves back to that secure attachment place that you’re talking about.
Chris Seiter 21:38 Yeah, well, also, it seems to me, like you’re really, really good. With regards to getting to those. Like, I feel like maybe you have experienced bad breakups and have come through the other end and felt like, I’m okay. And you can maybe draw from that. Whereas you’re a little bit older than their average customer, right? Or average customers, like, kind of, you know, like in their mid 20s or so. And a lot of them have maybe only like, this is the first big breakup to where they don’t really have a little bit of experience to draw from. Whereas I feel like one of your advantages is that you knew deep down that even though it hurt, it was going to be okay. What do you think I could say to someone who’s struggling in a breakup to get them to connect in and sort of buy in, because I do find I have a lot of trouble getting people to buy in, when they’re in these in the depths of pain, you know, so what do you think would work?
Jamie Cantrell 22:39 Oh, you know, I think a lot of it is just time and and that’s really hard to tell somebody when they’re hurting. But yes, I have been through. Like, we talked earlier, I’ve written a book of all of my breakups and hardships that I’ve had. And I feel like I’ve let I’ve lived three to four lifetimes, I’ve really, really horrific experiences. And so I knew that this breakup was not going to break me, it hurts. I was sad. But I knew I loved myself enough that I would get over it and people that haven’t been there. You know, I think it just, it just takes time to get them through that. But to tell somebody, Hey, this too shall pass. It’s going to take some time, but you’re going to be okay. It’s hard for them to wrap their mind around that. So the best thing you can do is tell them that, but then also give them strategies like you do. And again, one of the biggest strategies is move on date other people, I don’t care if you’re ready now. Now I know a lot of people will say that’s horrible, horrible advice. But coming from a woman who has been in that place, many times I’ll tell you what, it feels really good to have a high quality man or any man for that matter to say, You’re beautiful, you’re smart, you’re sexy, you’re amazing. Your ex was an idiot, even if you don’t like that guy. Yeah, we all need validation when we’re in that place of insecurity. And when we feel like we’re not loved and we’re not worthy. We all want that. And so in a way, you know, somebody had mentioned on your Facebook to one of my posts, they said it seems like maybe you’re just using these guys to get validated. Yeah, maybe I I’m not even gonna, gonna try to deny that I was putting myself out there and it was not intentionally to feel validated. But that was a byproduct that happened. I put myself out there because I knew I needed to move on. And the only way for me to move on was to show myself this guy is not on a pedestal. There are other guys that hold a much higher place than him. And I need to go prove to myself there are other high quality men out there. And this guy that I think I love so much is not my whole world. So that was my purpose in the process. They did make me feel absolutely amazing. And so I think, I think that’s a hard sell, to be able to tell people, hey, just jump back in the saddle again, jump into the ring of fire. I think that’s a hard sell, because you still have to guard your heart in that process. But I think it’s practicing being the ungettable girl in that dating scene. You don’t want to not date for a year or two years, I think. I think you’ll it makes it even harder, because then you’re so scared to jump back in.
Chris Seiter 25:48 Yep. Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s really, I think, really, the heart of the thing you’re talking about here is momentum. But like both positive negatively, like, let’s say you have someone who is too afraid to jump back in, and they go years without dating, well, then they have all sorts of negative momentum. And then they have this wall built up. And they don’t let anyone in. Whereas you took the opposite approach, which is okay, I’m going to practice on other men. And ironically, that’s what created the momentum that potentially may have. I mean, it just kind of feeds off itself, right? You know, you have this guy liking your posts, this guy liking your posts, and then usually have your ex seeing this, and they have this guy seeing all this and, you know, it just kind of feeds off of itself. And it it creates opportunity. And I think that’s something that a lot of people when they go through breakups don’t really feel like they have because their whole world is wrapped around this one guy. And the the weird part about this is, you technically got your ex back. But you right, and you actually, I think transcended just that, because you had a position where you could choose whether you wanted to take them back or what you like, wanted to move on to all of these other opportunities, right? I think right? That’s, to me, that’s the ultimate power of your approach. I could see why it is a hard sell from for someone. But if you want my opinion, just from everything I’ve seen over the past decade of just talking to people and asking them what’s really working. The one consistent trend we have seen is getting to this place where you’ve let go, and also dating other people. It seems that is like the most consistent thing you can do to have success long term. And I think you hit me, you’ve been probably the most vocal person I’ve talked to successfully was about going out dating other people. But I can I can see why when you had so much success. Because it’s it’s not just that you got your ex back and you look at all these men just foaming at the mouth on social media. You know, that’s kind of a nice,
Jamie Cantrell 28:02 it’s actually been very, very fun. And and those guys will say, they’ll make comments like, wow, I don’t know that I can compete with all of these other guys, you have a string of guys that are hitting you up on social media. Are you talking to any of them? How can I compete with that? Or, you know, and you can just smile and say, hey, you know, maybe the best man wins. But effort? Well, it’s, yeah, I think I think that women need to learn that. You know, we have one life to live and you want the best people in your corner and the best mate in your life. And we need to not put these men that are pulling the shenanigans if somebody doesn’t want me, or if they’re on the fence about me, for after four years. I certainly don’t want to try to convince them that I should be in their life. Why would I want that Guy? Guy that instead of being on the fence about me, would jump fences for me. And that’s the guy I want. And so I just kind of set it up almost really like a an interview, I made a spreadsheet and every guy had an asset and a liability column and they didn’t check off enough assets. were gone. That’s
Chris Seiter 29:19 tough. That is tough. So this so now I’m definitely going to jump into that. So asset and liability caught and what were some examples of some of the assets and some of the liabilities some of these men would have without naming too many names and we don’t want we don’t want okay, too many men upset but
Jamie Cantrell 29:38 no, no and assets and liabilities are going to be different for different people. But for mine we have to have the same political standpoint. We have to be a Christian and the same denomination or similar denomination to what i What’s his core values.
Chris Seiter 29:53 Those are like non negotiables for you like they have to be me it would be a nightmare to be in a relationship with someone who’s a Democrat and someone who’s a Republican, I’m imagining that create a lot of friction. The same thing goes with religion, I would assume it, you know, if you if you’re, you know, you get the Christian in the in the Muslim together I’m, that’s, that’s not going to be too much of a of an issue I might pay to watch that movie, but I would not pay to exist in that relationship.
Jamie Cantrell 30:24 Right. And you know always before if when I was in a relationship it was Oh, I like him, he likes me we have this chemistry, let’s let’s get a relationship. But after this breakup, I realized, okay, chemistry is not enough. Short term connection is not enough, I need this long term connection. So I am not going to go for any guy that doesn’t make these core assets, I need it. I’m a hard worker, I go out and I hustle, and they had to hustle as hard as me, or harder than me. Financial stability was a big one for me. And these are going to be different for every person. I didn’t want somebody with young children, I didn’t want to raise anybody else’s kids. I’ve been there done that. So they’re all going to all those assets are going to look a little different liabilities. If they started orbiting or ghosting, maybe we were talking and maybe we went out on a few dates. And you know, there was really connection and there was chemistry, but then they kind of started getting a little you know, just orbiting or ghosting, I had no problems at this point, just shooting them a text and saying, hey, I can tell you’re pulling away a little bit, you’re being a little bit just it, no worries, maybe we should just date other people. I want somebody that’s going to show up with purpose in my life. And if that’s you great, feel free to clarify. But if it’s not best of luck to you, and I’ll tell you why they got a little offended. Pretty right off the bat. And they always come back. They always come back around and say, you know, especially if you just have the attitude, I really have the attitude of okay, he’s not my guy. Move on. Number two, number 12. Whatever. Yeah.
Chris Seiter 32:07 Well, I think I think that’s a great attitude to have. Because the big issue most people think is this x is the only person I can be with. And your your approach is kind of like, no, there’s these 15 other guys here, each with their own assets and liabilities. I can just find more. I’ll just keep finding more. I think what the beauty of it really is. Think about maybe in your younger days, when dating websites didn’t exist, it was impossible to do something like that. Because it’s really hard to find that, especially if you’re like in a small town or something right? You everyone knows everyone, you’re kind of stuck. But nowadays, it’s not so hard to be able to have that mentality and find the right match.
Jamie Cantrell 32:51 And I think sometimes we get stuck on thinking, well, this is my soulmate, but think about it. I tell my high school students how rare is it that your soulmate lives within a 50 mile radius or goes to your same school? That’s so odd. Why can’t your soulmate be an app?
Chris Seiter 33:06 Remember high school I remember my first girlfriend thinking I was gonna marry her had it all planned out. And then you know, it’s it’s unrealistic, but that’s experience talking and sometimes you have to experience the experience to actually have the experience you know?
Jamie Cantrell 33:27 Yeah, I think I tell a story of the shipwrecked sailor I think shipwrecked sailors have a lot of wisdom to share you know, you have a diety shipwrecked. And he’s been there for years and a beautiful yacht comes pulling up to the island and he runs out and says, Don’t come near here. There’s big boulders underneath the water, they’re gonna rip your boat apart, go around to the other side and, and pull in over there. And the captain yells at him and says, Why would I listen to you? You’ve been shipwrecked.
Chris Seiter 33:52 It’s like the sirens from the Odyssey.
Jamie Cantrell 33:56 Sometimes shipwrecked, people have a lot of wisdom to share. You know, we can say hey, here’s the pitfalls you don’t want to fall into. So I’ve been around enough and been through again, like I said, they can read my book and all the relationship issues, I’ve had to be able to say, hey, you will get over this and new day. And there will be a new face that will brighten your life. But you need to open yourself up to that you cannot be so closed off to a relationship with somebody else. And this man or this woman, whoever it was, it broke your heart. They need to come off of that pedestal. They do not need to take up any more space in your head. They don’t pay my thought was I do real estate. I thought he’s not paying rent to get to live in my head.
Chris Seiter 34:45 Yeah, that’s a great analogy
Jamie Cantrell 34:47 about it. Yeah, I went about it with everything that I had to get him out of my head and if that meant replacing him with a bunch of other guys until I found my guy then that’s what I did. But he did not have the right to live there and occupy that space when he wasn’t treating me. Well.
Chris Seiter 35:09 I love it. Now, you had mentioned that you’ve written a few books, why don’t you tell us about some of those books?
Jamie Cantrell 35:17 Okay, the first one is called victory ladder, how to move your mountain to face face book on how to have faith, extreme kind of faith. So that’s another thing that helped me to I just really believe that, you know, the glasses, always. It’s not just half full, it’s full, I suggested extreme optimist. So my second book, though, probably more applicable, is called stolen halos. And it’s for women who have been hurt, especially in a relationship. So I have been through physical abuse. My ex has been cheated on me with multiple, multiple multiple women. Lots of really, really horrific situations that that I won’t go into people can read the book, but it’s called stolen halos. And so it’s how to, for women to get their Halo back, to be able to get back to that place that that beautiful woman that God created them to be to be fragile and vulnerable and feminine and soft, yet be bold and courageous, and fierce and confident at the same time. And my third book, which is in process is called power play. And I teach leadership on the college level. So that’s for women that want to have a little bit more power, a little bit more influence in fields that are predominantly dominated by men.
Chris Seiter 36:37 Yeah, so weirdly enough, I really love that name stolen halos. It’s such a cool take on it. Just just because there’s like, you know, it’s kind of like you have this pure Halo, you know, like, and then you get into the relationship and the men just screw the halo up. And so it’s kind of like, I love that. Thank you for coming on. And so like, it was mind blowing how confident and awesome you were, and I’m so happy that you actually listened to the advice. I can’t tell you how many people don’t listen to it.
Jamie Cantrell 37:13 Now I would my big thing is anybody that is listening, get Chris’s program, buy it, it’s worth every dime. I did a coaching session with Anna so worth it so 100% worth it. It just confirms really what I already needed to know. But for women that don’t have this confidence level that I have, you’ve got to get the program you’ve just got to work the program but again, you got to listen, when Chris says you have to move on you have to work on yourself, love yourself be ungettable and truly move on. That’s when they come back and then you have the option you whether you want to take him back or whether you don’t you hold hold all the power at that point.
Chris Seiter 0:02 Got it. Alright, so today we’re going to be talking to another one of our success stories. Her name is Jane. And she has some of the most valuable information that you can have. She has talked to her ex boyfriend, who she is now currently with, and asked him exactly what he was thinking during the process of when she was going through our program. But I’d like to just say, I really appreciate you doing this, Jane, because your information is going to help people going through breakups.
Jane 0:31 Thank you, Chris, I appreciate the opportunity to be on here. I think it’s crazy. Cuz when I first found your program a year ago, I originally came for a different ex that I had been a very long term, almost seven year relationship with. And to kind of see where I am. Exactly, you’re later. I just can’t even it’s kind of mind blowing to be on this. It’s kind of it’s very, it’s very, it’s very cool.
Chris Seiter 0:56 Yeah, you mentioned that when we started talking, you’re just like, I can’t believe I am where I am. And the irony of the situation is literally looks like you came into our orbit around December of 2020. And is now December of 2021. And look at the year of growth you’ve had, which is which you deserve to be commended for because I can’t say how often most people will come to the program, and they won’t really see much growth at all, because they don’t put in the time and effort. But I looked through a lot of your posts in the Facebook group, you were really trying hard. You were showing updates. You were really active. So to me, it tells me you were taking it seriously. And you saw some great results for it.
Jane 1:34 Yes, I 1,000% agree with you. i It was so my original relationship I was in it was almost a seven year relationship. And we had a businesses together you know, we share a child together. And so I didn’t realize that over that period of time, I had become so codependent and kind of lost who I was my identity in that relationship. And so when that relationship ended, it literally felt like the end of the world for me. And I had a very hard time coping, I had a very hard time processing, I remember that was the first time therapy became an actual real thing. And not just a word, you know, and friends of family members were starting to talk about, you know, you need to really, really just get help. This is not healthy. It’s not okay. And in that like emotional like that heightened emotional, like kind of madness, I was like googling everything found your program was like, okay, I can do this, because I didn’t want to lose my life. I thought my life was ending. But it’s so interesting, because like you said a year later, I honestly feel like my life is just beginning in such a whole new bright way. And the program helped me achieve exactly what they came to do. It just it wasn’t what the original person I intend it for. Ultimately, I got back myself, which is what I’m really proud of. And it helped me attract a partner and get, you know, be with a partner that basically, I’m very happy with now and just very happy about what our future looks like together.
Chris Seiter 3:00 Yeah, perspective is amazing. You know, once you get that perspective, looking back, you’re like, Well, what’s interesting about your situation is you you came for the original x and you got with someone else, but in the process of getting with someone else going through the breakup with that person getting that person back. It seems to me like the original acts you came for also started trying to rekindle things as well.
Jane 3:25 Yes. And it was it’s crazy, because there was we we so we had been kind of separated all 2020 kind of something I
Chris Seiter 3:34 was sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. You had been together with this person for seven years, which is a long time you’re sharing a child together? Was there any kind of on again, off again, component? So that was the first breakup ever? And I’m assuming he initiated it? No, I
Jane 3:50 did. I do initiate it, and March of 2020. But I don’t think either of us took it seriously. Like neither of us did. Because we
Chris Seiter 4:00 was also okay. So I want to talk about the original of the the new sort of situation. But this is fascinating. Okay, so you broke up with him? Yeah. I don’t want to hear all this. Yeah, let’s go for it. Let’s just dive into it.
Jane 4:18 So I sold me my original ex were together for almost seven years, like I said, very codependent for both of our perspectives, because we didn’t have traditional jobs. We had a business we share. And we traveled a lot for work, things like that.
Chris Seiter 4:31 Was there any talk of marriage was that just kind of at a standstill,
Jane 4:35 there was talk of marriage and I’m glad you brought that up because I see so many posts in the group about different situations and scenarios and I’ll be transparent and say that, you know, my my first my first ERP, that’s what we call them, right? ERPs my first ERP was 10 years older than I was and have been married previously. And
Chris Seiter 4:56 did I have other children with other women as well? So that’s true. What bonded you together for so long? Um,
Jane 5:03 yes, correct. So, um, he was 10 years older than me, he is nine years older than me, married twice before. So when we met, you know, I was, you know, it was just kind of like, a relationship. And obviously, we had a daughter and things like that. But um, when we were together, you know, we, you know, we’re, our personalities, our visions for what to do in life, we started a business together. So we became very codependent. And over that seven year period, we couldn’t balance out the difference between like our business selves and our personal selves. And a lot of the issues we both carried as individuals, insecurities, frustrations, ego issues, a lot of that bled into each other’s lives. And we just didn’t know how to be like the couple anymore. All we knew was how to be business partners. And it was really hard for us. And so we got to a breaking point, because we had been increasingly fighting from like, year three or seven, right? We have been increasingly fighting and very, very, very unhealthy dynamics. And it got to the point where, you know, I was just really tired, I was really frustrated, I was just so upset. And we, I just I initiated a breakup in March of 2020. And it was right before the pandemic, like I want to say, right before, I mean, three weeks before, okay, and it was a situation where, you know, because our business wasn’t doing so well, I had to go back to work. So I ended up taking a job. And my job took me five hours from my, my, my previous partner, my daughter. And so that was really interesting, because we basically spent the whole year apart, but did because, you know, the pandemic, forced to shut down on everything. So even though we were on paper, like not together, nothing about our lives change. We talked every day, we saw each other every weekend, we still were cohabitating we were still you know, sharing finances still running the business there. It was,
Chris Seiter 6:57 it was her. Alright, so you’re mentioning nothing changes. But is that in all respects? Like, are you still being intimate with each other? At this point?
Jane 7:06 No, because by this point in our relationship, we had been fighting so much we weren’t intimate
Chris Seiter 7:10 anymore. Okay. So that that have been like going on for a very long time. Got it. Okay, was it so I did read a little bit about your original situation. And you mentioned there was another woman that came into the picture. Oh, God
Jane 7:25 develop? Oh, probably about November.
Chris Seiter 7:29 Do you’re still fake broken up? Or like, Yeah, whatever it is. So
Jane 7:35 about November of that same year. It’s our, our daughter’s birthday month as well. You know, I could tell he was acting a little bit different and funny, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. And that’s actually when I was done with my job. So I was coming home now for good. Okay. And on a sprung it on me, when we went to go celebrate our daughter’s birthday,
Chris Seiter 7:56 great timing, just great timing.
Jane 8:01 Because I decided to take my daughter to go visit some family, like my, you know, mom’s sisters, things like that. And he kind of sprung it on me when he came to visit because he went on a business trip came back and visit us. And it was really hard. And you know, there was another person in the picture. And it was so hard because, you know, I didn’t realize she was in the picture, like I knew, but he didn’t admit that to somebody else. It was just Hey, shouldn’t do this. We’ve been broken up for months. And I was like, you can’t pick and choose when you want to be broken up. When we share everything still, we shared the money, we shared responsibilities, we shared the stress, you know, we were still calling and texting each other things like honey and Babe and nicknames. And there are one or two times that, you know, he tried being intimate that I was just like, No, I cannot, you know, do this, you know, from March to November. So when you know, it was like, Okay, no, we’re good. We’re done. And we’re like, Okay, now we have to act as if we’re really not gonna be together. You had asked to bring our child out for a Thanksgiving holiday or something to his hometown, which was, you know, halfway across the state, which I was like, Yeah, take her for a week, I need to just I need space. Right? It was during that time, I found out there was another person involved and he was bringing our child around that person.
Chris Seiter 9:18 That’s always a difficult thread.
Jane 9:21 You know, I went I drove halfway across the state in the middle of the night, picked up my child came back that started off this whole barrage of just very, very unhealthy yelling, screaming, kicking, fighting just between us just terrible. And you know, that’s it kind of cemented their relationship even more because I was acting like the crazy ex that was just go all this stuff already. You know? Like, yes, the stereotype that was me. So it was during that time and it was that right after Thanksgiving, about a week or so after all this stuff had happened. I found your program. And I was like, oh, it’s only like You know, 30 bucks, whatever. I’ve been in the sales and marketing world for years now. It’s like, okay, there’s something else coming after this, this funnel, right, but let me value for, like, let me just go ahead and get it. So I was like, you know, let me do it. And I was so intrigued by the booklet in the program and what really drew me in for that, like, initial whatever I paid was the Facebook group. And I was like, see, that’s interesting there other people, I can’t keep overwhelming my sisters, I can’t keep rolling my family, they’re already not supporting me as it is already not listening to me, I feel worse about my own self and situation apart from my previous partner, because of what everyone’s saying to me. I can’t do this, like, I need an outlet. So to me, that was like the biggest draw. And so, um, you know, I dove into the program, was really reading everything over and over and over again, was watching all the YouTube videos over and over and over again, was participating in the group. You know, posting how I felt being 100% transparent, right? Because I wanted to make sure that I got the best feedback about the best advice and just seeing what other people were going through made me feel so much better. Like, like, if I’m honest, it didn’t make me feel so much of a loser. Because I felt like I felt I felt like gosh, like, like, my life is ending. But when I saw what other people were going through other men, other women, things like that, it was like man, I could really live there’s conflict. There’s a community here like I can, I can, like feel supported,
Chris Seiter 11:24 because you can have a safe space because society has certain ways they treat people who are like plenty of breakups and stuff.
Jane 11:31 Yeah, and it gave it gave me a really safe place to really vent go to focus redirect, especially because you know, during the no contact or the limit, no contact with my first partner, I failed like twice in the first month and I had to start for a third time seriously, but there were so many dynamics in it that I’m not going to focus on today but just so many crazy things he was doing that just was like making it hard to not break it but I had to really say Listen, what do I want for myself I really have to take this program seriously regardless of I want him back or not. And even though I really miss my partner at that time missile life we had I knew we could keep moving forward with everything the way it was. And it didn’t help that the other woman in the situation was just being the other woman you know, she was contacting me she was very publicly doing a lot of things on social media. I had blocked her from the beginning before because for me I didn’t want to look at things I didn’t want to go on unhealthy spiral of Facebook stalking or Instagram stalking or whatever because people do that. And I said I don’t want to compare myself to her in that way and feel bad about myself so I blocked her from beginning but she would reach out to me through different phone numbers like texts call easy
Chris Seiter 12:43 for someone to get another phone number just to harass another person is a lot more about them than oh
Jane 12:52 that’s not even love the height of it like she would do a bunch of stuff and you know, my first ex was going through some health concerns because of the stress he was feeling going between the both of us and in my eyes I was like they’re going through this perfect life you know all this stuff this this this he’s she’s already met family like he’s replacing me like I felt like I was being replaced in every way I felt like he was trying to replace me as even my own daughter’s mother. I was not a good place. Yeah, but the saving grace was the program because of the things I learned and the advice I got from more experienced members who had gone through the therapy work had done a lot of the assessments I’ve done on the self reflection it helped me see the cracks in places where maybe he didn’t want me to see that show they really weren’t in a healthy relationship themselves. And so kind of fast forward from like you know, Christmas holiday to the springtime of a me about two months later january february don’t
Chris Seiter 13:46 you had done some coaching with Anna in between here.
Jane 13:50 I did coaching with Anna I did a session with her in December because that like I said I was so anxious I remember Anna specifically told me she said you know our first coaching session. Jane, you were very manic you were very manic to the point where it was like so anxious so manic like an age like it was very turning so definitely
Chris Seiter 14:13 have that anxious attachment style. Yeah sort of tendencies and would you say your first acts had maybe avoidant tendencies
Jane 14:22 by far he was more of a dismissive
Chris Seiter 14:24 it’s essentially it’s essentially that the traditional breakup you’re expecting you know you got the anxious in the avoidant they grade on each other’s nerves. There’s a breakup then they avoided moves on to someone else thinking like, oh, well, why, why can’t I find someone but that new person is just as anxious as you are. And you know, there we go.
Jane 14:42 Yeah. No, it’s the I was it’s a classic avoidant, anxious attachment. And what’s interesting I’ll note here is I was never an anxious attachment style in most of my relationships. I was basic.
Chris Seiter 14:53 Yeah, well, so what’s interesting, and I think the biggest misconception people have about attachment styles is that it can change just because yes, grow up with maybe a secure attachment. If you get into a relationship, especially I think in a relationship like yours where you’re sharing this child, and that becomes a huge part that bonds you and kind of invest your time, you can become anxious about that and your attachment style can come to shift and maybe that’s what happened to you.
Jane 15:21 I was so anxious because I like I said, I was so codependent at some point, I failed, being independent and keeping autonomy and became so codependent and losing like the identity of who I was, I became so anxious at the father of us not being together because I didn’t know who I was. And it forced me to really examine who Jane was without this person without this partner without this man. And you between December and February, after a coaching session with Anna and really diving the program. And being in the support group, I really had to really ask myself who I was outside of my partner, who was outside of this person who was outside the role of being a mom. And that’s what I was really trying to explore. And so that’s, it’s kind of interesting, because at this point, I’m in the program, I’m done with my LNC I, or about to be done, but I’m really not even trying to text with this person.
Chris Seiter 16:17 You know, just no getting the like, you’re supposed to do that, like at the beginning of the limited no contact, but you’re just now getting the actual point of no contact, which is like yeah, figure out who I am. Yeah.
Jane 16:30 You till the very end. And so I started going on dates again, I started really pouring more more time to things I want for me. And that’s when I started going on i i went on two dates, okay. I went on two dates. The first day, it was a terrible day. And the second day is when I met my current ERP. And it’s interesting because I think at that point, I was so frustrated because I was like, I don’t you know, I’m, I know, I’m young, right? I’m 30 but um, I was like, Listen, I’ve got a child. I’m business minded. I don’t have time to waste. I went there, all this emotional bullcrap. But this person, I’m
Chris Seiter 17:10 waiting for someone to actually step up and Tim, you know, I get Yeah,
Jane 17:15 I was like, I’m done. Like, if I’m gonna tell you what I want. Like, let’s just be transparent from beginning. And so that my second day ever went on. Not a second ever went on no third day, I apologize. Three dates, I went on three dates. During this process. My third ever went on was with my current ERP. And we just didn’t stop dating. I had never been on a second date with anyone else except him. And we just kept dating and kept go on dates and kept talking. And it’s so interesting because it was really by accident. I was not in a serious way trying to find a partner I was just trying to rebuild my confidence over feeling not love not feeling attractive. Not feeling wanted. Did
Chris Seiter 17:54 you? Did you tell him not at all? Or were you just kind of go, Okay,
Jane 17:58 I was playing it cool. I felt that way. Like I felt not desired. I felt not wanted, you know, I there were a whole lot of things that go into that. So I knew that going on dates to rebuild my confidence and to rebuild, not my sense of self esteem, but to essentially give me something to work with. As I was growing, it was super important. So on this third date with him, I have it on two dates of work, you know, to other people that just I was like, okay, waste of time. So I’m on the state with my current DRP. I sat there, and basically told them for an hour straight over dinner, who I was what I wanted, what I was looking for in a partner in the future has been what I was willing to do as a partner, it was just very direct. How did it work? So well, we in stop going on dates, okay, so he told me after the fact that I didn’t give him an edge and a room to talk. He told me after the fact he was like, you know, I was very intimidated. But you know, it’s to the point where I was like, well, she’s aggressive. Why? Let me go on a second date. Okay, so we kept on dates from there. And we started talking every day. And the more and more I talked to him, the more and more I started dating him. I was like, Well, wait a second. This is I only move too fast. But is this what a partner could be like? We have the same principles. We have the same values. We share a similar mindset to a lot of things. And I remember at this time dating him, I remember thinking to myself, I can’t remember a time with my previous ERP. I can’t remember the last time I felt we were on the same page.
Chris Seiter 19:33 Yeah, it’s a Tony perspective is an amazing thing, especially when you like, go into thinking like, Oh, this is the way it usually is. When I date people, then you get kind of a glimpse of the sunlight of what it can be like when you actually start dating someone new. And you’re like, wow, we don’t have to fight constantly. We don’t have to bicker over this stuff. It can we can be mature about this. Oh,
Jane 19:55 it was just a breath of fresh air and we just it was nice. Because I, I was nervous a little bit because I was like, you know, with someone new that you’re dating, you’re not sure. But at the same time, I never felt so comfortable. It just I felt comfortable. I felt like I didn’t have to impress him. I didn’t feel like I’m old. Like, if anything, I just kept thinking man, like he’s going to run at some point. But it wasn’t a way that I was like, because I’m not enough
Chris Seiter 20:28 to me too good to be true syndromes. Yeah. Yeah. something does happen negatively here in a minute.
Jane 20:36 It does, cuz I was being a huge, you know, while I’m going through this self growth, self draining process, I was kind of being a dummy, right? Because I was like, Man, I got to a point where it’s like, well, do I move forward completely? Or do I kind of hang on a little bit, and I kind of stayed too long in that space. Okay. And that was
Chris Seiter 20:54 decisiveness really just destroyed your sort of vibe with him? Like, yes. Like, was there ever an official talk? Like, Hey, we are officially dating, I am your boyfriend, you are my girlfriend type thing.
Jane 21:07 Yes, there was there was but it happened about a month after we started going on dates casually and talking every day and really getting to know one another. But as I’m dating someone new and really embarked on this journey with him, my first ERP is ramping up is just crazy. Reach out crazy. Like all this drama, it was drama, there was so much drama happening was the other woman at this point, a woman and, um, they’re just drama happened between them, she starts emailing me, like a couple of times, I’m sure you saw it in the group, right? Just the email she sent me were super nasty. You know, she was like, you’ll never lose enough weight to get him back. I’ll have to take care of you know, him and your daughter, because you can’t take care of yourself.
Chris Seiter 21:53 That just to me, is someone who’s incredibly insecure with their own ship to feel the need to do that. You know, it was
Jane 22:01 terrible, just terrible. Like Elna true alpha in
Chris Seiter 22:04 the world is not going to give a rat’s. You know, what about anyone else? They’re so confident with themselves. So the fact that she’s just doing that she’s projecting her own fears onto you and making sure that
Jane 22:16 she would do it after her fights with him. Like, they would fight you learn.
Chris Seiter 22:21 You learn that now? Yeah, I learned
Jane 22:22 that now. After the fact I learned it. And I would always tell them, hey, listen, Naomi, tell her don’t reach out to me. We don’t have a relationship like her. And I don’t have any kind of relationship, my business with you for this reason only. There’s no reason for us to be talking. Like that’s it. Like I have a story. And so they had a lot of drama, he had a lot of pressure for anyone who’s an OWI situation, especially if they have a if they have a child together with their ex things like that. My ex a lot of pressure behind he felt like, like X number one, he felt like he was living two lives. He was like, how do you why satisfying keep new person happy. But how do you why?
Chris Seiter 22:58 Still, you know, the mother of my child, right? Yeah, I get it.
Jane 23:02 And she she would tell him, you know, I feel like you have two girlfriends. I feel like you’re you’re keeping dual wives, she would tell him back back and tell me. And what’s interesting.
Chris Seiter 23:11 She’s in? Did he? Did he ever introduce her to your child? Yes. What’d she mean to your child?
Jane 23:19 No, she wasn’t. But she would say that, but they would do things. They would do things in front of my child that didn’t make me comfortable with it. Like when they were fighting, they would fight in front of my child. And it would be in very unhealthy ways. I can’t disclose right now publicly, but it’d be in very unhealthy ways. So we’re
Chris Seiter 23:35 sure your child who’s around the same age as my daughter is a sponge and will repeat until you everything,
Jane 23:43 everything. And so um, my ex would come tell me you know, X number one, for those of you still listening, I don’t want to be confused. But for X, number one, he’d come and tell me every time they’d fight, he’d picked fights with me, he would ask me for advice on things to do with, you know, the new woman and things like that and place. He’s all over the place. And I had at that point, basically abandoned wanting through the texting program with him and wanting to get back with him. Because number one, it was too much drama for me. I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. I was realizing that I deserve better. And I had on you know, the other hand, a partner that was just this incredible, just wonderful man, just, we had the same principles. We have the same values, we had the same vision for our kind of future that we were looking for in a family and in a life and, you know, I was like, I don’t want to risk that future. For me, like for a past that, you know, there are moments I remember fondly, but there’s also so much tension, so much drama, there’s drama now. I was like, I just I can’t risk that. And so I may have rushed my relationship with my current boyfriend now. A lot. And it was because I was wanting to feel secure. I was wanting to feel loved. I was wanting to just be overall the drama.
Chris Seiter 24:57 And it wasn’t I wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting you to be the opposite of like, still be a little confused about wanting the original ex back and bringing that in. But you’re saying it’s the exact opposite it was the fact that that that scar tissue from that first relationship made you so freaked out that you felt like I need to lock this down with the new guy. Us. In essence, you move too fast.
Jane 25:20 Way too fast, way too fast. And you give me like an
Chris Seiter 25:23 actual example of how you move too fast. That kind of freaked him out a little bit.
Jane 25:26 So my current boyfriend is a my current boyfriend is a isn’t what we call a fearful avoidant, that doesn’t happen in style. This is learning after the fact. Yeah. This fall for him, you know, when we were talking? There were moments he would Daydream with me and we would be talking about like a lie future kids things like that, which I now know, okay, that as an FA, they fast eyes a lot, you know, I’m back and then you know, cuz I get excited. But then they pull back very quickly, because they don’t know. Well, when my extra bro conversate or my current boyfriend, like current boyfriend? Yeah. friend would bring up those conversations. I always get excited and like buy into it as well. And we would talk and get excited. And this and
Chris Seiter 26:13 so you’re along for the ride. You’re just like, you don’t come off. You think it’s like a verbal commitment? Almost. And he comes back?
Jane 26:23 Yes. Because, you know, we’re talking about kids names, and I’m not initiating these conversations. He is, you know, we talked about, he would tell me lots of sweet things, you know, like, you know, I can’t believe like, you’re perfectly made for me. Like, I didn’t think I could ever meet someone like you. He would. He sent me pictures of engagement rings once saying, hey, what style would you like, eventually? It’s very nice all the time. And I didn’t think he was being in genuine. Just because of our background. You know,
Chris Seiter 26:53 I still don’t think he was being genuine. But like, sometimes you put it out there in this happy nostalgic reverie moment. And then you’re kind of freaked out by it. Because it’s like, yes. Like marriage is a lifelong commitment. That’s a tricky thing for a lot of people.
Jane 27:09 Well, we were just we start spending a lot of time together because we’re you know, me my Chrome boy for a long distance. We’ve been long distance from beginning. And it’s been a challenge. But you know, I wasn’t used to not because again, I was in a seven year plus relationship. I was used to seeing my partner every day, I was used to doing a business with my partner every day. I wasn’t used to being in a several plus our longest relationship, especially one where we weren’t doing the same job or business, especially when other other dynamics because my current boyfriend has a child outside of my daughter, right? So it was I must agree
Chris Seiter 27:42 mirror. He’s like the dark twin of something how crazy.
Jane 27:46 He really is. Because, you know, when we started dating, I found out that his previous relationship was also seven plus years, was also with the way is it? He has a boy, I swear
Chris Seiter 27:57 to God, it’s like the craziest mirror. Wow.
Jane 28:02 His previous partner was also older than him. Okay, so it’s very live on doors,
Chris Seiter 28:08 if the stars having a lion it so it’s like, you can’t write it any more perfect than that. Okay.
Jane 28:14 He grew up within 20 minutes of each other and not knowing it. Yeah, we met in a town that neither of us are from but had a lot of business dealings in. Me, I found out that my mom’s best friend when I was growing up was, you know, friends with a relative of his because she worked at his school. Like there was just a lot of things that were like this
Chris Seiter 28:37 guy for you. Yeah, but of course, we’re going to go through a breakup here. So let’s get to there’s two big points that we need to cover here still number 1x Number one trust to come back at some point right? And number number two is x number two is about to go through a breakup with you. So what’s the timeline of events here?
Jane 29:01 So we so I met you know my current boyfriend in January and we became like official like April. Okay,
Chris Seiter 29:14 April 2021. Yeah. of April we can officially three month courting period almost then the official thing you had you had your talk where you’re like, I want that this this this this? Yeah, yeah, that didn’t freak him out. So he kept he kept going. And all right, things are happy.
Jane 29:33 Moving, they’re happy. So during that period from January to April, because my first X was causing so much drama, the O W was causing drama, they were both doing crazy things are both reaching out. And then I also got to the point where you know, my first ex was you know, saying I’m gonna I want to reach out to your current boyfriend and you know, I want to talk to him sabotage
Chris Seiter 29:51 it or something. So you’re worried like he could say that, like I’m cheating on him or something like that.
Jane 29:57 He was I just didn’t want him being a cuz I knew my first year he was a very aggressive man, I didn’t want him just starting crazy drama and Bs for no reason. And we really scaring my current boyfriend. And it got to the point where I was just constantly telling my friend boyfriend stressed, venting what was going on this and this and this and all sort of stuff. And my current boyfriend. He’s a very mature person. He really is. And he’s very level headed. You know, he’s former military. So he likes to assess situations, he’s very patient.
Chris Seiter 30:28 So I’m not really sure your first acts of being aggressive with someone who’s like a Navy SEAL military type person is the smartest move, you know,
Jane 30:39 not and I didn’t want him to really push that envelope with my current boyfriend because my current boyfriend well, he is patient. He also has like a no bullshit tolerance, sorry, my language, but it’s all good. Like, we’re not gonna deal with this. And he told me they’re gone. I’m not dealing with trauma. So I knew that. So I was just like, Oh, I got stressed, anxious. So all the hard work I was putting in was now starting to unravel. And I felt it unraveling because it was like, now I was in the hot seat and crash, we’re going between two different things.
Chris Seiter 31:04 It is difficult in your scenario to because you shared daughter with this, this first tech so it’s not like, like with with most people, I would just say we’ll just cut them out like they’re done. You’re done with that face? You can’t really do that here. You know, so you’re constantly. There’s a thread in there.
Jane 31:20 Yes. So it was it was very, I have a very interesting ERP story. It’s very
Chris Seiter 31:26 good. So far. It’s fascinating. When people
Jane 31:29 ask for advice online about different things, oh W or long distance or this, I’m like, No, I’ve touched all of that. Yeah, good. They’re
Chris Seiter 31:35 in there.
Jane 31:37 Um, but like I was saying, it costs a lot of tension between us. I was constantly in my current boyfriend for drama. I was constantly I’m just doing little things that were immature. I have been doing a lot of growth and work, I was proud of myself. But there was still immature, insecure behaviors I was doing out of fear out of jealousy that, you know, my current boyfriend didn’t appreciate. And he shouldn’t have like, honestly, he really shouldn’t have. So I had split. So my ex, my first sex, it got to the point where my first ex was coming into town a lot because we live in different cities. So he’s coming back to the town where me and my daughter were living. And he just wasn’t making sense. There were a lot of excuses for why he was in town. And so there was one week where I had made arrangements to go see my boyfriend, my boyfriend, I went to his town to go spend a weekend with him at his house, things like that. And my first ex, I can’t remember was, but he caught a lot of drama for me. I can’t remember now, but he has a lot of drama for me that month. And my ex Mike my Chromebook was not happy. He was like, you know, this is just, you promised me that’s not going to continue like I can’t. I’m not okay with this. And he had been giving me warning statements not in like an overly, hey, I really understand this is serious. And it’s a deal breaker for me kind of way. But just comments I wasn’t taking seriously, because I kept thinking I can manage it all. I can fix it all. That’s where my mindset was.
Chris Seiter 33:08 Did you include your current boyfriend in any of Did you like, explain to him exactly why you were acting this way? Or were you just sort of shut up about that?
Jane 33:19 I will shut up about it. Because I didn’t know how to like, talk to him. But when I was going through, I didn’t know how to because he was also like, he was single for nearly three years before we met. So there was a part of me that was like, I don’t want him to think I’m not ready for this. Because what if he’s not like, what if he doesn’t where, you know, my my mindset was scarcity. I’m going to such a good man who I believe life partner. What the hell do I do? Yeah. So um, that month, my my previous ex was causing a lot of drama. I can’t remember what but he was doing things that my Chromebook wasn’t happy with. And so I we had arranged for me to spend time with him, I go down to my boyfriend’s house, you know, out of town, I drive to go see him. We spend a wonderful weekend together. You know, we’re driving through my neighborhood driving through his neighborhood, you know, sharing memories talking. And you know, really just really starting to get into, you know, we’re a couple phase. And at this point we were having such a lovely weekend. I could tell my current boyfriend was like, stressed about something but saying anything about it. And so I was like, Oh, no. And I had that sinking feeling in my stomach. And I went home, you know, things were fine. And I think my previous ex came into town again to do something and he took my, like, my vehicle to do something. And for my Chrome boyfriend. I was like the breaking straw. Yeah, it was it was for him, but he didn’t say anything he had with was sitting on it. So a couple of weeks back into town. We were talking and I don’t know what happened. I think he was not being engaged on the phone with me. And I said you know, honey, is everything okay? You know you’re not you’re quiet. And I could hear what he he said, he pulled over, he was driving, he pulled over and said, well, we might as well have this conversation. And that’s when I was like, Oh, no. And so I was being dumb. And I opened up the door to this part of the conversation and I said, Are you breaking up with me? Or do this that thought,
Chris Seiter 35:18 well, that’s a projection. That’s your biggest fear. You’re just putting it out there.
Jane 35:22 So he was like, I think I am. And so we have like a two hour meltdown on the phone wasn’t a meltdown, I say meltdown, like Oh, shading bargaining, okay. I did not I handle this very differently from the first x very differently, I was calm it was
Chris Seiter 35:39 next you are the one who broke up with with him. This is the this the opposite side of the scenario. And to me, it seems like a little bit of a, like upset worry, anger, maybe even a little bit of jealousy that you’re so close to this, this ex, which to your point, or to the point I made earlier, it’s your child. So it’s not as easy to just cut this person out. And that’s just probably just like, he can, maybe he can send some things off with you with the way you’re acting. So it just kind of culminates, you know,
Jane 36:10 in retrospect, that we’ve had conversations after the fact. So obviously, we’re together today is a
Chris Seiter 36:16 happy ending here, or the happy ending.
Jane 36:19 But he told me, he said, You know, I cannot be with someone who’s not 100% in? Because if she’s not, if you’re not 100%, in how can I be 100%? And that’s not fair to either of us.
Chris Seiter 36:29 Also, you had that big talk where you were just like, Yeah, this, this, this, this, and maybe your actions are backing that up, and he’s maybe going back to that,
Jane 36:38 correct. And, you know, he was because when we broke up, he told me, you know, I go by behavior, and not by just words, I’m very, I have to see things and, you know, what I’m seeing I don’t like there are things I don’t agree with, like fundamentally anymore, that I cannot give you 100% Because it’s no longer healthy. And for me, I didn’t understand that at the time. And then he came up with new, he said a lot of things, you know, he was like, you know, I don’t know, if I would wanna introduce you to my mom and my son, you know, I don’t know if I can be the same person for you and for your daughter that I am for, you know, my son, you know, I don’t know where I am career wise. You know, I don’t even know if I want more kids in the future. So all this stuff that was just kind of throwing me off because I was like, you know, not even a couple days before, things seemed super happy. So I was very thrown off. But it’s because I wasn’t seeing everything that was like the all the little cracks and started to kind of build up because I was choosing to only see a lot of happy things. So we broke up, I immediately I didn’t want to no contact right away. I was like, you know, maybe this is not a final decision. So over the next couple of days, you know, I didn’t reach out to him, he reached out to me. But when it was clicked, we were broken up, I would immediately went to no contact. And he reached out to me, probably like maybe four or five times during the first first two weeks that week before I went to no contact and that first full week of no contact. And I wasn’t responding because I was in no contact. And he called me one night like 11pm late at night didn’t answer a couple days later, he texts me I have a great day financer a couple days after that, he deleted me off of social media, like took me off the book took me off Instagram,
Chris Seiter 38:16 typical anger response, you know, she’s not responding me, I’m gonna show her Delete.
Jane 38:22 I was so heartbroken. I was so just, oh my gosh, like, I cannot believe this. And so I was like, grieving a second time. And I was like, What the hell is really wrong with you, Jane? Like, come on?
Chris Seiter 38:35 Like, oh, man, it’s the men. So
Jane 38:39 I really took this no context seriously, even more seriously, because I was like, You know what, this is?
Chris Seiter 38:45 actually real. No contact this time. Yeah. Sort of limited. No context is a little bit flawed in the fact different words. Yeah, yeah. You know,
Jane 38:52 I feel no contact. I had a really new growth. I went through and reread and started reading actually reading the books that Anna had prescribed to me from months before that I should have started reading for months before
Chris Seiter 39:03 because it would have saved me a lot of emotional storm probably was there.
Jane 39:07 It was for me attached was a big one wired for love was a big. I’ve never split the difference was a big one. So it was like the best. Listen, I was like, you know, I really want to take this seriously and master this crap. Because, you know, I don’t know if we’re getting back together. I don’t know what I’m doing in the future. I don’t want to do this crap. Again. I just I’m tired of
Chris Seiter 39:25 this. And so at some point, the first ex does he has he tried to come back yet or is that still to come?
Jane 39:33 So I started dating my now boyfriend in April. We broke up a few weeks later. Official.
Chris Seiter 39:40 Three weeks later volatile issues at the first boyfriend coming in and sort of stagnating or polluting the relationship?
Jane 39:49 Yeah, it’s exactly what happened. And then you know, when we broke up, obviously my first ex found out about it. And my first was
Chris Seiter 39:57 there to be the crying shoulder to right he’s probably telling To be the hero,
Jane 40:01 he was and he broke up with his girlfriend. Same time. They’re about the same time because she found out that he had cheated on her. With whom? Other women, my first ex was sleeping around. He was, you know, doing?
Chris Seiter 40:18 Had he been doing that in your relationship now? Oh, can you say that definitively though? Yes. Okay. So he must have been really unhappy with this other woman.
Jane 40:30 Happy, very unhappy, and they broke up, because they use cheat on her. And so then it was a weird time where he was trying to reconnect with me he start having conversations, like, what if we get back together? And I was like, Dude, I’m just in the space where I need me. I need time to heal. She’s still in your life, because you basically replaced me in our business with her. And now you work with her every day. So it’s messy in all kinds of areas.
Chris Seiter 40:57 Still the case right now?
Jane 40:58 It is that is so let me continue
Chris Seiter 41:02 to go one heck of a story. Jane.
Jane 41:05 We should go back and re record and break this up into two stories.
Chris Seiter 41:08 No, no, no, no, this is all good. This is all good. So
Jane 41:11 I’m, I’m really going through my no contact. You know, my first ex was trying to rekindle with me I’m like, Nope, no, thank you don’t talk to me, like I’m straight. Him and his girlfriend breakup because he’s cheating on her and all that crap is happening. I find out so much about that time period between me and my first ex, when we were broken up and the situation about his perspective, because when we were talking a little bit more, I knew I didn’t want to be with him. But after they broke up, then he started getting a lot of things. Okay. So just for anyone listening, if you have an opening your story, and you see weird social media behavior and a bunch of other stuff happening, it’s all real. It really is. And the best advice I’ve ever gotten the group was pretending Oh, W or other man doesn’t exist. And so I did. But that made her so mad. And so she would go into his account, Facebook stalk me, she would delete me off his social media several times a day blocked me several times a day. Then when he would read follow me and add me it’s because he was upset that she was doing all of that. Hello, hello. Hello.
Chris Seiter 42:12 I’m still here. No, I can still hear you. It says I can still hear you. Oh. Well, we’re having a little bit of technical difficulties with Jane, but we will come back here.
Jane 42:32 Hello. I can’t hear you. I’m sorry.
Chris Seiter 42:37 I don’t know what happened there. That was so weird. I was here. I was talking. I was like, what happened? I was like, just going on this rant about like, oh, man,
I’m sorry that you went through that with the other woman? Just like typical super insecure behavior. And then we just sort of cut off but we’re still recording luckily. So let’s just keep the train going.
Jane 42:58 Yeah, is this sound okay, for me? Sounds perfect. Yeah. So I think for
Chris Seiter 43:03 anyone listening, just consider this like the intermission between the song
Jane 43:08 we have to have one. So like I was saying, um, I found so much about my first exes perspective and things he was feeling going through things in that situation. But you know, again, I did not want him. I truly felt like, you know, I need to be on my own, find out more about me really, really understand and fix my issues. So at this point, I’m like, okay, there is something wrong with me. Nonsense. I’m not like a good partner. But there were insecurities. There were unhealthy things I was holding on to that was reflecting on my relationships, obviously, at this point. So I was like, let me attract, like an attack that stuff first. So I did and I really started doing that. And I went on dates again. Just to just, like, have something to do to again start rebuilding confidence. Right? And, you know, I went on, I went on like 12 dates over like a nine day period.
Chris Seiter 44:06 It was a multiple day to day.
Jane 44:09 i Yes. And I never went on the second date again. It was all one time.
Chris Seiter 44:14 Okay, just like but I was for you. Yeah,
Jane 44:17 I was just like, you know, do I even know how to date do I know how to go out there and or am I just fixating on
Chris Seiter 44:23 guys? I just feel for the guy on the date. They think they have a chance. There’s just no chance in the world.
Jane 44:30 It’s just like, Man, I can’t Yeah, it was I remember I went on one date with one guy and he was like, man, you’re perfect. And I was like, nope, bye. Like I literally just said I can’t do that. I said I’m not perfect. And I said that disturbs me you think that and I cut the day off short. I think it was very Yeah.
Chris Seiter 44:48 Okay. That’s pretty ug move right there.
Jane 44:53 I was trying to be ug so I said during this no contact time with my with my current boyfriend. I truly drive to New Delhi. into the self work, more therapy. I did a coaching. I said, you know, I’ll do a coaching session with Anna maybe towards a no contact. Why? Because I don’t need a drink no contact or you know what I know the game at this point like, you know, let me grow, give him his space, right? Don’t say, you know, don’t Facebook stalk on social media stock like really just be cool. So I was anxious though, because that was the root of my issue. I’m an anxious attachment. I was very anxious and you know, I was like, you know, what if he doesn’t want to reconcile what if I really blew my chances? You know, we were only together for like four months really only official for a few weeks really? Like, shoot? What if you really, you know, have to accept the fact that you lost a really good one Jane like, well, what then? So after my no contact was ended, I did 30 days, I met with Anna. And you know, we talked about it explained my dynamics and what happened and sure you knew what happened to my first relationship I came to the program for so she understood where my current boyfriend was coming from. And she’s like, Listen, if you’ve addressed all those concerns that he had, really on, it’s on him at this point, she’s gonna do the self work, and address his insecurities and understand why he felt the need to not communicate or what he made him feel uncomfortable. Now this points down on you. And so you want to reach out, reach out and then go from there. So I did beautiful texting phase, it was almost textbook.
Chris Seiter 46:23 All the texts, they were really Yes. I report back and forth.
Jane 46:28 Well, because we always have a dynamic like and that was when we start texting. I remember when I sent my first text out thinking oh, God, what happens isn’t, you know, reply, because I never went through texting phase of the first one. Like, what if like, this is new to me, this part was new to
Chris Seiter 46:40 me. Oh, this is fun. Yeah. Okay. So
Jane 46:44 it was very new to me. So I remember being very nervous. And I put my phone down. I didn’t want to look at it. Right. And I saw my messages. And he tripled texted me for my first message, and even threw in do you need to call me or do you want to text about it? Because I was asking for advice on something. And so I asked him a question, you know, put my phone down. When did things they texted back right away and said, Wow, after a whole month of not talking? That’s the first thing you say and ask me for not even a how are you? Like he was petty? He was real felt
Chris Seiter 47:17 real. So contact that does that be
Jane 47:20 so salty, but he sent me like a three page essay on what I needed to know. And then you know, good luck, right? He said, Good. He said, Good luck Junebug. Okay. And that was the name a nickname for me. He is my nickname, but he gave me so at that point. I was like, okay, even though you’re kind of petty and salty right now. You’re using a very intimate nickname. That’s good. So that made me feel more relieved. So the next six weeks of texting were hard because I was basically reintroducing myself into his life. He was being reintroduced to mine. And it was so familiar yet not. It was like, I know you I have intimacy with you, but we don’t. And so it was it was like this little dance. And it was it was hard. It was hard being patient cuz I’m an impatient person. It was hard because I was anxious. But I was like, No, I can really pull myself away from here. And I’ll admit, still, I’ll still admit this point, I had not completely done a lot of the work I still needed so much more time to really become so much more secure. Because I was still very, very anxious. And so after texting phase, you know, we kind of we met up, we had a date that he asked me out on and we we called up and he the entire time I felt nervous. I felt very flirty, like I couldn’t stop smiling. I was looking away I was being very coy. You know, I was like cool. And you know, he held my hand everywhere. Like he made excuses attach the small of my back he made the excuse, you know, they kind of walk with me ARM and ARM places. You know, he pulled my glasses off my face, you know where it was clean my glasses for me. You know, kind of like this great. Yeah, like, you know, just this thing’s you know, long hugs. Just I could tell. Okay, there’s still something here. But I’m not sure because it’s not the same and that’s what I feel like I was looking for. I was looking for something to tell me Okay, things are okay between us like this is going in a good direction. Because it’s, you know, we’re intimate again, but it wasn’t the case. Like I had remembered like we’re broken up. And so we went on 111 date, you know, I’m still kind of texting. We go on a second date shortly after that. And that was fine. The second date was more obvious. You know, we were eating together we were sitting next to each other now catching up. You know, we have this thing between us. I know my friends. You know, my friends are like, like they roll their eyes at us. But we when we eat together we
Chris Seiter 49:56 Yes. So say that last quarter. again.
Jane 50:00 So we’re saying the same booths are sitting next to each other now because I can date for six crosslinker on the first date, but my, my friends would make fun of us from when we first dated, because we’re the type of people we’re, we’re we’re a couple where we’ll give each other advice of each other, too. I know, I roll
Chris Seiter 50:18 my eyes, just like in the COVID era, you’re willing to do. Okay. All right, you know, that was a so no, no, it’s I mean, it’s kind of cute. But at the same time, you know, it’s sort of I get it, I get both perspectives. Yes, I get both perspectives. So for our purposes, this is a very good sign.
Jane 50:37 Correct. So on the second day, it was a very good sign because we were willingly like sharing bytes of goodwill, never doing that. Catching up, like a little bit of future talking a little bit of flirting. And then after that, I had to go out of town because I had, you know, a sick family member. So we start talking about money. Last
Chris Seiter 50:55 question here. Yeah, this is the second day you’ve been on Correct. Credit. Yes. Was there any attempt to kiss? No, no, neither day. So just sort of like you’re still trying to feel that out a little bit. Yes.
Jane 51:08 Okay. Yes, but the increase in small physical touches, and yeah,
Chris Seiter 51:12 yeah, he’s working up his confidence. He doesn’t want to overstep, I think,
Jane 51:17 yes. And then, um, you know, after like, literally the same day after that date, I had to go out of town, because I have a sick family members. So we started talking every day now. We had close the gap. Now, it’s, we’re talking every day, you know, mind you before our first before our first date, we had worked up, you know, to a phone call. You know, we went in a couple of dates, we worked up, you know, do face times, we and when we were FaceTiming, he was obviously flirting. So after the first after the dates, he was obviously 40 Now on FaceTime, and being like sexual and things like that, but it was like, it wasn’t unwelcome. But it was also like very blatant to the point where it was like, You were never like this. And when we first dated, what’s up?
Chris Seiter 51:59 Okay. That’s an interesting twist. So,
Jane 52:03 no, it was, yeah, like, it got to the point where it was like, we went for it sexually. But it was like not it was not gross. It was not indecent. But it also wasn’t like, normal between us. It was just odd.
Chris Seiter 52:20 So this is like a new element that’s getting added to the dynamic. That was not there the first time. But I would say you didn’t date very long for the first time.
Jane 52:30 Yeah. So it? I guess that’s maybe what came into play? I don’t know. So
Chris Seiter 52:37 was it a welcome when it was happening the second time for you to
Jane 52:42 welcome. It wasn’t unwelcome. It just threw me off. It blew me off because that wasn’t his character. He’s a very he’s, it’s not his character, I would say. I think I get it. Yeah. I felt like I knew his character to at this point, even though we hadn’t talked for 30 days. But that was just like, This is not you like what are you? Why are you doing this? I couldn’t figure it out. What’s going on? So I had to go to town for a sick family member. We started talking every day, we’re FaceTiming. We’re calling. But now the energy level at this point, change, something shifted. And I could feel he was kind of withdrawing and pulling away. So although we kept a routine of talking every day, FaceTiming everyday calling every day we started getting to the point where it was the good mornings everyday like he would text me good morning, every night day. Good night, every night. Yeah, so we’re slowly working our way towards Okay, we’re gonna start dating again. Really, really well. It’s going really well. But emotionally, he pulls back. Okay. He pulls back.
Chris Seiter 53:39 So, generally speaking in situations like this, we tell our clients, when they pull back, you pull back a little bit. Did you follow that advice?
Jane 53:47 I didn’t because he was because even though he was emotionally pulled back, he was still texting every day.
Chris Seiter 53:52 I get that. So I was hired on hold for you. So
Jane 53:56 we, you know, we just kept that routine. And then when he did start doing small pullbacks, I started, you know, respecting it, then he’d come back after two or three days, we’d be fine.
Chris Seiter 54:05 And then you didn’t do it that you? Little bit.
Jane 54:09 So around this time, we had a conversation where I was like, Hey, listen. I like where we are. He’s like, Yeah, like where we are, you know? And he made a comment. So so it’s around this time that he he said, you know, we might we’ll have this conversation. So he says, I’d again, like okay, what conversations
Chris Seiter 54:29 did you pull over on the road again? I saw this conversation. He was crazy.
Jane 54:37 And he was like, you know, I like where we are. And I like what we’re rebuilding a friendship, which was the foundation of how we first met. You know, I think that obviously, you know, we would have had beautiful children. We would have had a great relationship. Like you said start saying things like that and I was like, okay, cool. Yeah, I like where we are too. There’s no rush. There’s no let’s just you know, That’s kind of where he left it. So he’s still pulling back emotionally, but we’re still texting every day. We’re still calling every day we’re still FaceTiming every day, essentially becoming best friends. And this is the part where you’re gonna want to know this part now because it this is this. You want to know. So, um, you know, this is we go through no cons. So we break up. We my No Contact is all of me. Right? All of May, June, we start texting. You know, mid July is when we start doing work. We’ve worked up to phone calls and FaceTime and having a first
Chris Seiter 55:36 long texting phase to get to that point. Yeah. very methodical, though.
Jane 55:41 Yes. And then I’m also because we’re a long distance, it was like, I couldn’t be helped. Like, there was just
Chris Seiter 55:48 Yeah, I guess. Yeah. This communicate.
Jane 55:51 You know, by this point, you know, we have that initial conversation. Hey, we like where we are. Right? I thought was so interesting that he was like, Yeah, we would have beautiful, we would have had beautiful children, you know,
Chris Seiter 56:01 you tense type thing like we would have.
Jane 56:06 So we just left it alone. And this happens, like, you know, August, and we’re becoming best friends at this point. You know, we’re establishing a best friend type, you know, um, August, September. We are still talking text every day, but he’s pulling back more frequently now. And it’s becoming more strange. And I feel it. And you know, this when he starts doing three, three days of disappearing four days of timber, yes. Okay. Then October rolls around, and he does a huge pullback. He So October rolls around in October at this point, I’m getting impatient. And I’m just
Chris Seiter 56:43 like, a long time to wait around for like a commitment. You know.
Jane 56:47 So in October, you know, kids were doing everything a couple would kind of do. But we’re stopping short of being a couple and saying recovery.
Chris Seiter 56:56 So intimately Have you become intimate at this point?
Jane 56:59 Um, no. Because Because so so texting was all of you know, June into July 1 dates, you know, calls he facetimes was in mid July, into August and August, September, we’re becoming really best friends. So around September, he starts pulling back emotionally even more, and he comes up with a naughty jar.
Chris Seiter 57:21 Okay. Okay, so but, like, kissed know, how often are you seeing each other in person though?
Jane 57:29 We only had to date in
Chris Seiter 57:32 much time to build. And I’m wondering if that played a role. That’s why I keep asking.
Jane 57:37 I’ll, I’ll tell you what you said. Cuz I asked him. So I’ll tell you. So September, September, we’re becoming best friends. You know, but of course, October rolls around. And at this point, it’s like, come on. We are talking every day. We’re we’re calling every day. We are being intimate in a an emotional way.
Chris Seiter 57:56 Yeah. Which is, which can be just as big for a lot of,
Jane 58:00 we’re now we’re now in this phase where we’re no longer just friends. You cannot say we’re just friends. You can’t say that. Yeah. So I have a conversation with him. And I just tell them straight up. And we I forgot we were doing that conversation. I watched his favorite movie because his favorite movies notebook. And yes, it is favorite movie is the notebook? It is. Okay, Chris, I know I was it’s a very interesting story we have here. So there was no book, I finally watch it. Because in all my 30 years, I’ve never seen it. Right. I was never part of the craze or watched it. And so we talked about it like a couple days later. Because, um, you know, we still shared the HBO Max accounts. So he saw that I watched it
Chris Seiter 58:45 to max. Oh, yeah.
Jane 58:47 So we, uh, we had a conversation about it. And I just told him straight up. I was like, you know, I just, I missed you. And I hadn’t told him this the entire time. At this point. Now, I said, I miss you. The first time I’ve ever like shared feelings. Yes. And I and he said, Oh, I missed you, too. I said, Okay. So we’re talking, talking, talking, and I say, You know what? I just I’m gonna tell you, he was like, Oh, you’re gonna make it weird, aren’t you? Please don’t make it weird. I go too late. I’m gonna make it weird. And I said, you know, I love you. And I miss you. And you know, I don’t expect anything. And you know, we’re not rushing things, but I want you to know that if I’m very quiet, there the phone? Yes. Very good. Bye. And he was just like, just quiet. And so I was like, No, you’re just like, you’re just waiting. Waiting. So I said, I was trying to ask clarifying questions. I was like, Hey, how are you feeling? You know, um, do you need a little bit of space? Do you want a little more permanent space? Either one is fine. With me either one is fine. I’m asking you a little bit of space a couple days or a lot of space. And either one is fine. Like what? So this point I can tell he’s just shut down. Like I don’t know what to do as the avoidant. So I told him, I said, Hey, listen, I said, you know, have a great day, you know, do what you’re doing. I’ll leave you know, I’ll let you go. I’ll text you later to make sure we’re both Okay, let’s check in. But we’re good. Like, let’s just move forward. So later on I text him like normal as promised, He responded. It was kind of he was kind of in but kind of like okay think you’re so weird. And it was this weird thing where, you know, we talked again every couple of days and he did a you know, he did a really large pullback. He had like a like a four day pullback, five day pullback, and he had never done this at this point. So he comes back, we pretend like everything’s normal. Don’t talk about where he went or why we didn’t talk. And then you know, we’re just talking, catching up, and I’m still frustrated. I’m still annoyed. So we have another conversation and that and I forgot what prompted this conversation. But I was like, listen, oh, he talked about his feelings. He opened up for the first time and start talking to his feelings. And he said, you know, the way I feel about emotions, our emotions are like little secret shirts, like the ones you find in a deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, dark ocean, you know, the ones that aren’t like pretty in the light, but they do perfectly fine way deep down in the ocean. I said, Yeah, like Finding Nemo. He goes, Yeah, those. He was like, those are my emotions. You know, if they come out, I don’t really want to look at them. But they’re, you know, they’re down there weighed you down there. They’re fine where they are. Okay. He’s He’s basically explaining being a fearful avoidant. And so I could recognize that. And so I kind of, because he opened the door to it, but I just started talking to him, and somehow comes up about a feelings for each other. And I said, you can’t tell me that. You know, I’m just a friend. And he was like, but you are. So you can’t tell me that. He goes, Well, I care about you. I said, I know you do. We care about one another. But feelings will either grow or they’ll die. And he said, We’ll do your feelings for your siblings ever die. And I said, Please, you’re not telling me right now that you love me like a sibling. He was like, Well, I love you like family. And because you’re like my best friend, and that’s friends or family. So they’re. And I said, Yes. But you and I both agreed that we wanted a best friend and a partner. So am I that best friend that’s in a partnership? Or are you just trying to tell me I’m just a friend. And he was like, you know, you’re different. I said how? So? He goes, Why keep things separate? For a reason? I you know, ex lovers or ex lovers, ex boyfriends, or ex girlfriends. Friends are just friends. They across the boundaries. So who am I? And you couldn’t tell me he literally was like, Well, I don’t know. You’re an exception. And I was trying to tell him, I said, No, you do know. You just can’t you don’t want to say it. So it was very funny. And he just couldn’t tell me and then he was like, you know, I think you’re amazing. I can’t talk to anybody else. Can we talk to you? Nobody else gets it. Do do I want to you know, do I love talking to you? Yeah. Do I want to talk to you every day? No, I’m okay. Do I miss you? Yeah. Do I you know, Philly, the, you know, tell you I miss you all the time. Yeah. And I was just like, Okay, that’s cool. But you’re still not answering like the issue at hand through political response. Yeah. So we just let it go. We just let it go. You know, we talk every here and there over a few weeks period, like every couple days or so. And then he hasn’t really been pulled back. He disappears on me for 10 days. Time, dance a long time. It’s almost a week, 10 days. And I’m just like, at this point. Now I’m posting in the group because I hadn’t posted the group in a bit because, you know, we we’re slowly working our way towards things. And I post the group and I’m like, Guys, what is this? Like? WTF?
Chris Seiter 1:03:43 It’s pretty common, fearful avoidant behavior, especially after kind of a deep conversation. And conversation.
Jane 1:03:51 Yeah. But I had never seen that kind of behavior from him or
Chris Seiter 1:03:55 that. It’s harder than no contact. It was
Jane 1:03:59 just, it was hard. And forgive me, I my, my charge is going to die. So I’m charging. I’m plugging in. Hopefully, the sound is okay. But, you know, I just did not know to do. I didn’t know what to say. Can you still hear me? Okay? I can’t Yeah. Okay. So I just, I just didn’t know what the heck, what the heck, I just didn’t know what the heck, I’m posting in the group. And there was another success story in the group. And that posted and I was like, you know, let me go back and read through her stuff. I remember reading through but let me read through it again. And so I did I think around this time, her podcast came out because she had to do hers is
Chris Seiter 1:04:39 was it the forget her name? It was a fearful avoidant one. Right where she’s talking
Jane 1:04:45 about Terry. Yes, yeah. Yep.
Chris Seiter 1:04:49 Then I get to interview but like he pulled over and then broke up with her on the side of the road, which actually is very similar to kind of what you’re but she was actually in the car and the that really awkward ride home. Yeah.
Jane 1:05:06 So during this 10 Day pullback, fortuitously, you released her interview, and so I’m going back through her post and then reading your interview with her and I’m like,
Chris Seiter 1:05:17 Huh? We battle buddies with her. Cuz I feel like she was talking, she was talking about one of her friends in the group. That was like really close to getting your ex back. But pull back. I’m wondering if it was you, like off air when we
Jane 1:05:30 It wasn’t me. It was really connecting with her until after you posted the end. Okay, got it. It was. So it was someone else. But I just thought was so crazy that you had posted your interview with her during this big pullback I had never experienced. So it made me go back to her posts in the group. And I was seeing a lot of commonalities now. And I was like, seriously, like, oh, Army really? Yes. So the compartmentalization was there. Yeah. So. So
Chris Seiter 1:06:02 thing is very Yes. And like the statement of like, I keep X’s X’s and things like that. Yeah.
Jane 1:06:09 He told me all the statements in the beginning, you know, I never take X’s back, you know, things like that.
Chris Seiter 1:06:14 Oh, that’s, you know, so yeah.
Jane 1:06:17 So we. So it’s a big pullback. It’s like 10 days, I’m getting anxious again. And I’m like, you know, I can’t keep doing this. And so I booked an appointment with Anna. And I’m like, listen, let’s just talk this out. We talked it out. And she brought up some very good points that I Did Not See From His perspective. And so I said, let me go back to what I know. Let me reread wired for love. Let me reread attach, let me go back. Because you know what, I’m getting impatient. Again, I’m doing this thing where I’m focusing on me, again, I’m focusing on how I feel I’m focusing on like being impatient for me, but I’m not really seeing what he might be feeling or what might be causing him to kind of pull back from his perspective, or you don’t have to agree or understand. But I need to recognize that how he’s feeling is valid. And there’s a reason for why he’s feeling the way he does. And at this point, I’m like, okay, he’s gonna come back. He did, he came back after 10 days. And we’re just talking, you know, whatever, every couple days, and I’m really pulled back, I’m really mirroring him in a true sense now that he had. And I remember really thinking about it. And I was like, do I just get to the point now where I move on, if he doesn’t come back? Yeah. And something was telling me we were going to be together. But I was like, you know, I’ve done this before. Maybe it’s my insecurities talking like, I need to be really prepared if we don’t. And so I really started letting go. I really started thinking, you know, honestly, I did, like I was, I just need to be prepared for not being with this person that I do love, they do think is a great fit for me. But at this point, if he can address some of these FA tendencies, like I had to ask myself, Do I really want to be in a relationship with someone that does pullbacks like this, then pretend like everything’s okay? And not the dress, the reason why we didn’t talk for three days, or 10 days or the cases. And for Tilak, everything is normal. And I didn’t want that. And I was like, you know, I don’t think I’m going to be okay with that. Like, I can’t thrive in a relationship like that. If I’m doing the self growth for me to be healthy for that partner, I need the partner to do the same thing for me. So I
Chris Seiter 1:08:31 am assuming you started to see results after this point.
Jane 1:08:35 So I’m letting go. We’re talking sparsely like not like before, not like how we were connecting over the summer, you know, just whatever. And we’re talking like, every couple days, just he calls me one day. And he’s like, Hey, what are you doing? And I’m like, I’m at the office, like, what’s up? He’s like, what your plan today? And I was like, okay, like, I’m this, you know, what’s up? I might be stranded. Oh, are you in town? He was like, Yeah, you know, my truck broke down. Now, mind you. Okay. That’s a lot. He asked. He asked me the same week to meet him for lunch. So I was expecting him to to meet him earlier in the week for us to get a lunch date. And then he kept rescheduling. And I was fine with it. I was like, no big deal. Whatever. Like at this point, I’m trying to let go. It’s fine. So then the day he’s coming through town, he wasn’t supposed to have time to meet because he had to go back home to go do something. So he’s driving through my town. His truck breaks down.
Chris Seiter 1:09:43 Oh, so it really did. I thought it just made it really?
Jane 1:09:46 No, it really broke down. It really truly broke down. And it was so interesting because we were supposed to have lunch on Tuesday, but he postponed it to Thursday. Then he said you know um, you know I can’t you know we’ll have to wait till next week. You So Thursday rolls around, and it really breaks down. Okay, so Well, you know, he’s like, Hey, do you mind giving me a ride to a, you know, bus date, you know, whatever. And I’m like, I’ll just come get you. It’s fine. This day, Chris, I don’t even know how to explain this. I never curl my hair. I never like, like, do anything to look bossed up. But this day, in particular, for whatever reason, I just woke up and was feeling myself, curled my hair for the first time in over a year. Got myself like, put together with a new makeup look, I hadn’t tried before, like, looks really good. And then didn’t, you know, did a couple of really good things at the office. So I got the phone call. I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me.
Chris Seiter 1:10:45 Though the store still line some days, you know, it just happened to one
Jane 1:10:50 in a line. And I looked really good. I looked really good. So I go pick him up. Right? And he’s like, Hey, thank you so much. You don’t have to do this. You know, it looks like it’s gonna be ready for a week, I started to get back to my hometown a couple hours away. I’m like, okay, while we were up something to eat. I’m kind of hungry, yummy lunch date. Anyway, let’s, let’s get something to eat. And we’ll figure it out. And so we grab lunch, I’ve got to pick up my daughter at this point. Because, you know, it was just a very random day. She also hadn’t seen him in months. She was so excited to see him. He was excited to see her. You know, we all have lunch together. And that’s when he starts talking weird. I’m sorry. There’s a really long interview. But it’s
Chris Seiter 1:11:28 no, no, it’s fascinating. It’s really good.
Jane 1:11:30 So we’re at lunch, he still is not saying anything. So by the way, I pick him up right from his from the dealership where the truck got towed to. And he gets in the car. Or we we get out, we give you a very long hug. And he can’t stop smiling. And he’s like, You look really good. So we get in the car, I’m driving, and he grabs my right hand. Because it was sitting on the on this, the stick shift. And he grabs my hand. And I’m thinking, you know, like for a split second. I’m like, What are you doing? And he’s looking at my nails. Like, he’s just like looking at my nails. And I’m like, I was like, you’re about to hold my hand. He played it off. He was like, No, your nails, your nails look really good. Like, they look good. I just want to see them. Like when we go pick up my daughter, we go have lunch, you know, she wants to sit next to him, which is fine, because they there was not long before. And he’s just saying little things that are now making me think what’s about to happen. So he was joking with her. And he was like, you know, mommy might get jealous, you know, all this stuff like, hey, we’ll do this, we’ll do that. And you only get your basket. But like all these things, and I’m like a lot. Like Where’s this coming from? So at lunch we’re talking about we’re going to do his truck’s not gonna be ready. So he lives three hours away. So we talked about it. We didn’t couldn’t find a bus ticket. The flights were super expensive. I was like, hey, you know what, I could just drive you down there no big deal. I’ll come back. So he’s like, really, you shouldn’t have to do that all the stuff, you know, we’re fine. Um, He’s increasing his physical touch. We’re still feeding each other, you know, at lunch, giving her the bites of food. Future talking a little bit about things we want to do like little plants. And then when we’re walking out of the restaurant, he comes up behind me and he sneaks his arm around the back of my waist. like kind of like kind of, you know, just trying to
Chris Seiter 1:13:24 Yeah, kind of Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So high school. You know, you’re just like, oh, wow, I got a girl next to me.
Jane 1:13:32 Very much. So very much so and then we’re outside with, with with my daughter, and we’re each holding her hand. We’re having a good time. You know, we drop her off at home. I get changed. We had on our road trip. And we’re just having a great time. At this point. I’m not nervous. I’m just like, you know, just enjoy each other’s company. My best friend is here. Essentially, we’re joking around all the stuff. You know, we go to a bikinis, you know, buches is I do so yeah. But yeah. It’s great. Right? bikinis? Yeah. So we stopped there. And you know, when you go to buches, you have to stop for a little bit to shop around.
Chris Seiter 1:14:08 Yeah, usually when I was going to buches it’s always to get something so I don’t fall asleep on the drive back home, you know, Gatorade or something like that.
Jane 1:14:19 So we’re shopping around we’re having a good time. You know, all this stuff. He’s pointing out little home decor stuff. Like there’s no tension there’s no awkwardness, there’s no weirdness, it feels like like at the height of our relationship at this point. And we’re talking about home decor home stuff, you know, what do you think about this? So what do you think about this in the house? We like he asked me questions like that and I’m like, okay, okay, let me just play along a little bit of everything like so he’s insisting on beating me giving me snacks, whatever, and we’re checking out and the guy asked, you know, How was everything and he’s like, Oh, he he made a weird. He made a weird dad joke. He was like, Oh, haha, everything was great. You know, except this one back here turned out You know, empty my wallet. Haha, like, you know one of those okay? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I was just like okay finger so weird. So we’re, we were driving to where we’re supposed to go and I have to reach in the back of a car to grab something from the back seat so I’m buckle my mic cuz he’s driving my car, because you know, I’m not gonna drive like you’re gonna drive us right? So I go to the backseat, I reached back to get something that that I need or he needed. And when I do that he kind of flops my blood a little bit. And I’m just like, this is a very so I’m like, Okay, you cannot tell me.
Chris Seiter 1:15:35 We’re just friends just read,
Jane 1:15:37 just read. Like we’re let’s have this conversation. So we make it all the way to his house we pulling like around 11pm. And, you know, we talked in the car that I was going to stay the night and honestly the next day at like 6am or something no big deal. I hadn’t arrangements for my daughter, it was fine. So I asked him I said, Hey, do you can I sleep in? So and so’s room? His son’s room because his son wasn’t home that weekend. So I was like, Can I sleep in his room? More The couch is ready in the living room. So I can sit in the living room? And he was like, oh, no, I thought we were sleeping the same bed. And I was like, literally with the same baggy. Same bed. And he was like, No. So why would you think that? He was like, Oh, if you want to sleep in the same bed, it’s fine. I’ll sleep. I’ll sleep. I’ll sleep in his room. You can sleep in my room. I was like, Okay, fine. We get to the house. It’s late, we want to go to bed. He gives me a change of clothes. He’s like, Hey, be comfortable, whatever. So you know, whenever I go climbing to bed, you know, he comes into and I’m just like, Fine, like, let’s just go to bed like I just want I’m tired. I need to leave early. So he takes a shower. He comes into bed. And he’s like, you know, Hey, would you mind if I held you? And I was like, I just rolled my eyes at him. And I was like, okay, yeah, fine. You know, he’s watching TV while he’s falling asleep. I’m already half asleep at this point. And he starts kissing my forehead. And so I open my eyes and I say, What are you doing? And what was that for? He was like nothing. He goes, just thank you. And throughout the car drive, he had been saying things like, Thank you. You’re amazing. You’re doing this, like I really appreciate you. So he was repeating some of that language. I was like, Great, I’m falling asleep. I really am falling asleep. So then he said, Hey, I said what? And he’s like, open your eyes, open my eyes. He kissed me. And so we start kissing. And I stopped him. And I literally stopped him and said, as much as I’m enjoying this. I don’t want there to be any gray areas between us. I want to be on the same page. And I want to be clear, because I care too much about me. And you got to do I get a credit. I didn’t come up with that she she posted on somebody else’s post months.
Chris Seiter 1:17:48 Yeah, it was a good move. Yeah, trust me. So yeah, I’ve seen the other end of the situation where that doesn’t happen. And one thing leads to another and then you’re not in a relationship. You were literally friends with benefits.
Jane 1:18:01 Yes, that’s what I did not want. And he looked at me. And he said, um, he said, we’re on the same page. So that’s kissing me again. So I stopped again.
Chris Seiter 1:18:14 Yeah. And I said, Fine. What you mean? But I said no.
Jane 1:18:17 I said, I need you to hear me. I do not want to be friends with benefits. And he looked at me and said, We’re not friends with benefits and he starts kissing me again.
Chris Seiter 1:18:27 You have it’s like, it’s like that rare situation where you can get him to agree to anything. You know, you stop. I
Jane 1:18:41 did you know, I stopped. I’m telling you. That’s
Chris Seiter 1:18:44 what you got to do. And my wife does that to me all the time. That’s what I’m most pliable. You know what? I’m not my brain so to speak.
Jane 1:18:51 Yeah, I stopped him. I said, No. Let me be clear. I am not going to be friends with benefits with you. If we’re going to do this, we’re on the same page. Right? I don’t need a title be together. But we’re taking it like I need to know that we’re together or at least committed because you know, I’m not going to do this with just anyone and I know you don’t either. He said we’re on the same page. We’re not friends of benefits. I said that’s all I want to know. So that we have an intimate night. That’s great. You know, just gloss over that. Yeah, it was great. Yeah. Dreadful. Yeah. No, really. That’s literally what happened the next morning, you know, we’re in the beginning, I left. But at that point, it was like, No, we’re together. Like that was the understanding. And so over the next couple days, I didn’t really say anything yet anybody because I was like, I really want to make sure for sure. I didn’t make the biggest. No, we we are together. We’re it’s completely different dynamic. I mean, when I say the height of our relationship, it’s the height of our relationship. He’s calling me honey again. You know, we’re future talking. It’s the same but also different in such a good way, where I don’t feel there’s any pull backs or hesitation or emotional withdrawal or, or anything. And it took a couple of days to really get into the full 100% of it after that night. But we, we walked we basically walked into and it was like, it’s like we’ve never been apart. And so we saw each other again, a couple days later for the night again. And we were just catching up talking. And, you know, I asked him some questions. I was like, you know, we need to be clear about this now. Because we, you know, we had an intimate out again, and I remember we were just kind of be like, we were together laying in bed together. And I was just talking to him. And I was like, hey, you know, I really need to know. You know, you and I told him I said, You made moving on looks so easy. You know, you I had no clue where this came from, you know, I’m no indication I said, I kind of want to know, you know, did you ever think we were going to get back together? I just point asked him. And he looked at me and he was like, you know, who said I moved on? He goes for me, it’s only ever been you. And I was like, What? Are you serious? Pretty good. He was like it for me. It’s only ever been you. He goes just because it looked like I was moving on doesn’t mean I did. And just because, you know, we weren’t friends on social media doesn’t mean that, that, you know, I wasn’t constantly tempted to find out or know what you were doing. He goes, it drove me crazy. But he goes, I’m a principled person, I didn’t want to do that to myself and start looking you up and you know, stalking you. He goes, I made a choice. And I had to live by it. And that was a consequence of the choice I made. So now he’s coming into key was basically following the decision to break up with me. Because if he went back on it, what would that say about him? Yeah, pride, cried. And he said that he goes, You and I both have cried. And he said, You know, I’ve missed you. Of course, I’ve always loved you. Of course, I It’s only ever been you for me. And he said, You know, I did think we would get back together, I had a feeling that we’d find our way back to one another. You know, but I think we needed this break. And this time for things to really, like settle between us unit time for a year the situation to kind of like calm down, I needed time to really think really think about what I wanted. And we need we needed this, this this kind of this break. And it just happened naturally. I didn’t think it was gonna happen like this. I didn’t like you know, I just, you know, me, I take my time with things like it just it just happened. And that’s where we are Jane. And so we talked more, and he was like, you know, even though I deleted you off on social media, it’s because I didn’t it was painful to watch you go on with life when I was also hurt. And so for me, it was like, wow, we were both hurt in different ways. But just because we can see, it didn’t mean that we weren’t hurting. We both were. And he was like, you know, I he goes at your picture. So to say my phone. Obviously we talk all the time. He was like that wasn’t gonna change. You know, we just we need more time. And so I started asking more specific questions. And I you’re gonna think this is funny. I told him I said, so he addressed again, this is maybe the fourth time he had brought up the fact that when we talk for a month, the first thing I did was ask him a question and not Hey, how are you? He’s still six months later upset about it.
He rings up all the time. And I was like, Hey, you have to understand, I wasn’t sure how you would react. You know, you hadn’t reached out to me anymore? Because of course I didn’t. You didn’t answer me for a whole week? Like, why would I reach out to you after that you needed space? Like I didn’t know how you’re gonna feel if I reached out to you. But besides the point you’ve made decision to reach out to me the least you could have done was asked how I was it’s like you didn’t care how I was feeling. You’re just like, you know, give me the advice or whatever. He’s curious. He’s still he still brings it up.
Chris Seiter 1:24:02 My take on it is we look at the results. Does
Jane 1:24:07 it work? And so we are we are so I asked him you’ll think was very interesting. Because we had talked about 10 day stretch. And he brought it up. He brought up that big 10 Day pullback he brought up
Chris Seiter 1:24:20 after you had like the the I Love You sort of Yeah. Yeah. And also the anxious like, I feel like something that was like a moment where you’re anxious tendencies sort of just bubbled to the surface, and you kind of wait with like, I miss you. I love you. And then he kind of disappears for 10 days, he appears.
Jane 1:24:38 So he brought it up. He brought up and he was kind of like being petty with me because he’s kind of like that. He’s a little salty sometimes. I forgot what I said. He goes, Oh, he goes well, you didn’t text her call me for like 10 days. So he was paying attention to how many days to just Yeah, yeah. So I was like, What do you mean? I said you were overworked. That was one of the time you finally called me. Honey, you literally were working 24 hour shifts. So you were busy. I was giving you space like you were tired. He was like you so called called or texted. I was so soft.
Chris Seiter 1:25:13 He’s playing a game.
Jane 1:25:15 I said, first of all, I said, Well, hold on, honey, let me be clear with you on this. I said, So you want me to call you or text you to know that I’m there. But you also don’t want to feel the obligation to reply, if you don’t have the energy to reply, like you want me to engage and reach out to you. And you will engage or reach out when you want to, but won’t if you don’t have enough energy, but still know that we are okay. He’s like, Yeah, it’s perfect. You understand?
Chris Seiter 1:25:44 That’s pretty funny. It reminds me of stuff I used to do when I was like really insecure about, like how someone felt about me. And I would be like accompanying a test and see like, if they reach out to me, that really means they care. But the fact that you did it probably puts them off. So
Jane 1:26:00 he I called him out on it. Because I was like, that’s an FAA tendency. You want to know I’m here for you. And then I’m we’re good. But the same time, you don’t want to feel the obligation to respond. If you don’t want to, you want to feel like you want to talk to me, but you only feel obligated to talk to me, you just want reciprocation. That’s it. He told, he told me he was like, hey, if I send this to say at once, I don’t feel the need to say it again. If I tell you, I love you, I say it once I’m feeling sad again. And I’m just like, okay, like, whatever. Yeah, whatever he’s on, I’m like, listen, that’s some of your past traumas. We’re all good. Like, you know, I know, it’s how you grew up, it’s fine, we’re good. We’re on same page, he, he really is a wonderful man, he really is. But um, you know, I just called him out on it. And the thing that stood out the most after we got back together, was, you know, his feelings for me didn’t change. But he was going through his own journey. He wanted me to reach out to him because he didn’t want to look dumb or stupid reaching out to me, and also didn’t know how I was gonna react. He was gonna call it didn’t know how to get back together without rushing it. Because what we did the first time, he also didn’t know if the main issue why we broke up, had been resolved at this point. And that was a big issue for him. And then he really had to go through his own journey where he had to understand his principles and values for what he was willing to do and be okay with in a relationship and how he did grow. So that was pretty much when we talked about we got back together, like the summary of everything. And then even more so like, the more we talk about it, and the more we open up and the thing about things that we talked about now. He’s a completely different person. Now he’s 100% in like, this is it we’re in? Like, we’re good to go.
Chris Seiter 1:27:44 Got it. So I should expect the ring on your finger in the next year, right?
Jane 1:27:48 Yes. Yes.
Chris Seiter 1:27:50 So you’ve talked about that? We talked about it? Yes. That’s a good sign. Come back. We’ll do another interview your engagement.
Jane 1:28:01 Yeah, I’m excited. No, we’re in a very good space, I’m actually going to see him he called me randomly. I just saw him like, two days ago, and he called me randomly last night was like, Hey, I’m gonna come in town this weekend. Let’s go do this, this, this and this. I’m like, Okay, perfect. Ladies, just be secure be in the previous relationship. It felt like I was kind of dragging him along. In this relationship. I’m just sitting still. And he comes in just like, he comes to me now.
Chris Seiter 1:28:30 That’s a good dynamic. To me. I think we’ll end here in a minute. But to me, I think what I hear your situation, I think the undervalued aspect of it is sort of an internal battle. And he’s happened with himself. You said something to me, that was that was really interesting, which was he kind of like to keep things separate, you know, like an x always needs to be an x. So having that internal battle of what he wants, versus like, what he thinks he needs is sort of like he wants you. But that is also an admission that he can’t keep things compartmentalized, and I think maybe he’s the type of person that like, once things aren’t compartmentalized anymore. Don’t all like his whole life will maybe go out of whack. And it’s not that case at all. I think that’s an avoidant type coping mechanism.
Jane 1:29:18 No, you’re 100% Correct. And it’s interesting and I’ll say this, my second coaching session with Anna, where I really was like, be okay, if you don’t get back together, like you really need to be okay with this. We talked about and I told Dan, I just can’t figure this out. So we really talked and delved into a little bit more, and she 100% called it out. By the way, small plug. If you haven’t done coaching, whoever is listening to this right now, please sign up for coaching with with Chris, or Anna or Tyler or any of our other amazing coaches because they will literally put a perspective on it outside of your own. You need to be forced to see, right you have to get out of your own way sometimes to get the help you really need. And
Chris Seiter 1:29:57 that fact is Most people don’t want to look at your unique individual, I think because you were willing, you wanted to do work. Yeah, I think most people kind of go into coaching expecting us to do work for them. And it’s as simple as showing you like, this is what you need to do. And if you don’t do it, you’re not going to get a great result. I mean, it’s like a cause Oh, yeah, relationship, you are unique in the fact that you wanted to do the work. And that is a huge plus.
Jane 1:30:30 Yes, thank you. I, I feel like when I was doing coaching for this relationship, me doing the work made the difference. I feel like in the first relationship, they came to ERP for I was expecting things to magically just happen and wait for it to happen. But this one, I was like, No, I gotta work for this for me first. So Anna had called it out completely. In our second coaching session, she said, Listen, you have to understand for someone as principled as he is with his character, if he goes back, on breaking up with you and all this near together again, then that means that the promise he made to himself is no longer good. And if if he’s someone who’s very principled than someone who your word is your bond, then who is he to himself? Yeah. And she was like, I think he’s really having an internal battle on knowing that he wants you but also want to you means he’s wrong, like he has to accept the human mistake.
Chris Seiter 1:31:23 Yeah. And it’s kind of like a fundamental belief, because if you like, look at it that way, he has his fundamental belief that this is who he is. And if if he has to kind of go back on that belief, he has to almost like, in to to hit using his own words, he likes to keep those sea urchin emotions way down there. And if he has that fundamental change, he has those surface, those come to the surface, and he has to deal with that he doesn’t want to. I don’t blame him. It’s hard to deal with those raw emotions. But you win. So it is all good.
Jane 1:31:56 Yeah. So we’re, we’re together again, and I just, I’m sorry, oh, we took him a lot of time. But I feel like it was important to know some of that beginning. One of
Chris Seiter 1:32:05 the best interviews because, you know, before he served, Korea was like, alright, should we talk about the first breakup, but I feel like they are kind of united in a way, because they really like the issues of the first relationship lead into the breakup of the second relationship. And yes, you didn’t do anything wrong. I think that’s important, though. Like, it was the other woman and the situation and how volatile that first relationship was, that’s for lead the state of mind you were in caused friction and yet second relationship. It’s not your fault. But going back, when you look at it with perspective, do you feel like you could have done something better? Like to tie the break? Yes. Like, what do you think you could have done?
Jane 1:32:51 Honestly, I could have honored the boundaries. I knew I needed to set but I didn’t want to,
Chris Seiter 1:32:58 what do you like? Can you give me like an example of a real life application?
Jane 1:33:02 So for example, a lot of the reason why we’re so much drama, bleeding into my relationship with my current boyfriend in the beginning from the previous relationship is because I allowed it to happen.
Chris Seiter 1:33:13 So meaning car, sharing the car, like
Jane 1:33:15 the car, right? Yeah, sharing the car, things like when the other one would email me. Like, I allowed that door to be open for two. And I don’t want to call them bad people, because I don’t believe people are bad. But for those two people in my current life that are not healthy for me in my life, I allowed them to be presidents it presences in my life when I didn’t need them to be meaning like, Why did I feel the need, if I was so excited about this new relationship a new was a good thing for me why I have the door open still to this one. It shouldn’t have been that way. It should have been very, if it’s going to be transactional for things for our daughter, keep it transactional, but then we shouldn’t be talking. We shouldn’t be sharing things we shouldn’t be like, let that be it.
Chris Seiter 1:33:59 And I can see where it puts your current boyfriend in a very difficult position because it’s always sticky with how you’re going to handle it when there’s children involved. And like you have to interact in those transactional situations with your ex. And it’s like your current boyfriend. It’s bugging him. And he’s telling you it’s bugging him. But he also doesn’t want to be that guy that that says like, you have to make this more transactional. You can’t be more personal with this. You can’t let that because it makes him seem insecure. He doesn’t want to seem that way. And then yeah, it just it just continues to fester.
Jane 1:34:36 So for me it was I will truly say I need to set proper boundaries. I need to keep them in force. Like honestly, Elon sees the best thing for me and that person the situation. But I The second thing, mostly was I really need to spend more time on me. So I really need to spend more time on who Jane is. Spend more time on you know, what does James Want to do not? If I do this will so and so look at it this way, if I do this, how will so and so react? And I think the earlier if I had just done this sooner, and really just started being like, let me let go of this expectation I have, right? And I’ve come to adopt this mindset, I’ve come to adopt the mindset that I’m happy if things happen, but I don’t regret if they don’t. And I’m really choosing to live by that. And so Anna had posted in the group a couple days ago, and she was like, What are two things I’ve helped you be more secure ug during this process this year, and I was like, well, the two things for me is, you know, number one, whenever I feel my mind, going in an anxious way that’s going to produce negative feelings about my situation, I literally will say out loud repetitively I choose happiness for me today. And I move on. And I will keep saying it until I forced myself to stop feeling like my emotions are bubbling out of control. So I can recenter myself. And the second thing is anytime I felt overly anxious about my own situation, I spent time pouring into other people. So I would call an ERP friend and say, Hey, how’s life going? Let me tell me more about what’s going on, let me pour into you or I talked to a business associate, or I would, you know, go into the group and try and give advice or you know, kind of emotionally poor in a positive way to somebody else, because maybe I was feeling low about myself, because I needed to recognize that I was creating negative emotions for no reason.
Chris Seiter 1:36:27 Yeah, it’s also kind of a way of manufacturing some positive momentum by helping someone else having to be grateful for that you can kind of get a win on the board, and it’s kind of easy thing to do is you’re just helping others. And then you can kind of build up, you know, sort of, like, hit that positive emotion or momentum back into your own life. I had actually never looked at it that way. I’m definitely gonna start telling people to do that. Plus, people get their minds off their own situations.
Jane 1:36:57 It did so because then I started realizing my situation wasn’t so bad. And I started calming down about things happening between me my current boyfriend, because I was like, Oh, this person’s going through this and reporting to you. Let me you know, make you feel, you know, safe and comforted and hurt. And then in a way, it made me feel hurt. Because I it’s like, I don’t want to explain it but it’s like, I truly feel sometimes my own anxiousness or my own kind of negative emotions that start to spiral out. They’re not real in a sense of there’s no reason for them to be exasperated. There’s no reason for them to be like, to the max effect, but it’s like some mind. Yeah, if I don’t handle it, handle it from a logical perspective, like I’m going to let it go that way. And so by me taking the time to pour into other people regardless who was ERP or the people in my life it put things in perspective again for me that hey, things are okay. So all the time I tell people, Hey, listen, I choose happiness for me today. And all the time. Like in my head, I keep saying things like, you know, I’m happy if it happens, I don’t regret it if it doesn’t, and I’m truly truly like believing it.
Chris Seiter 1:38:05 This is one of my favorite interviews ever. As you can tell from the time I just I just wanted to keep going because it was a great story. No, you’re good. You’re good.
Jane 1:38:16 Thank you for having me. I appreciate this is very it was a very interesting story to tell. It was great.
Success Story: How To Get Your Ex Back When You Do Everything Wrong
Oct 25, 2021
Today we’re looking at how to get an ex back when you’ve done everything wrong. I thought the best way to tackle this subject was to actually feature one of our newest success stories from the ex recovery program, Sophie.
She ended up getting her ex back and has progressed to the point that they are even planning on moving in together. What makes her situation fascinating is that she ended up doing a lot of things “technically wrong” but managed to overcome those things and successfully get him back which is a rarity in todays day and age.
Things like,
Breaking no contact
Manufacturing meet ups
Arguing on the phone
You get the idea
But despite these missteps she ended up winning him back.
How?
Well, watch and find out.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
How She Got Her Ex Back After Making Cardinal Mistakes
Chris Seiter: All right. Today we are going to be talking to one of our success stories. Her name is Sophie. And she has a really interesting situation that she’s going to take us through. And I say that knowing nothing about her situation, of course. Yeah, I was telling her before we started recording that usually an hour before we start recording, I familiarize myself with the success story, but I had an appointment before this and I didn’t so much do that. So I am going to be just like a listener here. And you are going to take us through your situation. But how are you doing, Sophie?
Sophie: I’m good. My ex and I are officially back together now as of probably a month ago, I think. And actually, we are currently making plans to get an apartment together, so that’s the whirlwind of my life at the moment.
Chris Seiter: That’s big. Okay. All right.
Sophie: Yeah, I would say that it was almost too successful in some ways.
Chris Seiter: That’s a good problem to have, though.
Sophie: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So why don’t you take us back to the dark ages when the breakup actually occurred.
Sophie: Oh, the before times. Yes.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Is that a South Park reference?
Sophie: A little maybe.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: So this was our second breakup if you want to count official breakups.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Well, let’s go back to the first one. That’s interesting to me.
Sophie: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Let’s go back to the really before times.
Sophie: The really before times. So we started dating in January 2020. I had just gotten out of a long term relationship, myself. And I don’t know, that had been two years and I was pretty confident that I wanted to move on. So we started dating about three months, and we started running into some issues. So I think the issues I identified initially were we had some religious differences and just some other, we weren’t on the same page about a bunch of things. He is an avoidant attachment style.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: I think dismissive avoidant. I know he goes to therapy now, so he’s talked about it a little bit. And then I lean more towards the anxious [crosstalk 00:02:19].
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you are just like the prototypical couple here.
Sophie: Pretty much. It’s definitely explosive chemistry at the beginning, but as soon as things start getting into the-
Chris Seiter: Hard, basically.
Sophie: Hitting on some of your core stuff, we hit the rocks as expected, I guess. So we did end up breaking up in May 2020.
Chris Seiter: So COVID is happening here.
Sophie: Yes, COVID is happening.
Chris Seiter: Did that have any impact on the situation at all?
Sophie: I think it did. He’s very extroverted. I’m not. I think we spent a lot of time just together not doing anything separately. And we were getting a little bit sick of the routine as well. So things didn’t seem to be going the way that we had hoped they would go when we first started dating. You get this great vision of the future where you’re going to hang out with your significant other and all your friends. And COVID really did complicate that, I think, because there just wasn’t anything that we could do about it. And both of our mental health took a little bit of a dive as well.
Sophie: So we broke up. And I, of course, like every other poor girl out there, start Googling. I’m like, “What am I going to do about this? I have to get him back somehow.”
Chris Seiter: Got to fix.
Sophie: And I found a program, I don’t remember what it was called, to be honest with you.
Chris Seiter: Shame on you. This is the… No, I’m just kidding.
Sophie: It was not your program. But I started getting advice over email like, “You should send a closure letter and you should do all these things.” And I was like-
Chris Seiter: Okay. That seems like a great idea.
Sophie: I didn’t like the format of the advice I was getting. I liked some of the introspective stuff where I was writing about the process and the breakup. But other than the journaling, I felt like I was getting advice that wasn’t hitting the mark for me. So I found your website shortly after that, so it was maybe a week after, two weeks after. I bought the program, and I embarked on my first journey with ERP. So that actually ended up working, because we actually had agreed to a no contact period. There was 21 days, and he kept breaking it, because he just kept wanting to talk to me. We didn’t part on bad terms.
Chris Seiter: What about you? Did you stick to it?
Sophie: I did eventually complete a successful no contact. The group was really good with making sure that we kept it business only, because I did work with him at the time. So we kept it to work projects only. And he was very curious as to what I was doing at that time, so following all of my social media still, everything was pretty good. And we actually got back together hastefully, and some of the advice that you gave me, actually, after I talked to you once, was make sure that you don’t fall back into the same patterns. And I think I was just so happy.
Chris Seiter: Did I do that on a Facebook live?
Sophie: No, I don’t think. Well, maybe it was. I think it was a Facebook live at one point, but you basically said, “Don’t rush it. Just be steady with the progress that you’ve made.” All together, it took us a month or a month and a half to get back together, so it was basically like just after no contact. He was like, “Can I call you?” And we thought we’d try again. I’d count that as my practice run with therapy. I had no idea how much more difficult and much more painful trying a second time would be.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: So this was where it gets interesting. So we got back together. Things were okay, but we were still running into fundamental, in my mind now that I look at it, I think they were related to attachment style. They were related to communication style issues that some of the overlying stuff, like personal differences or opinions were hiding the deeper problems in a sense. So even when we worked on that and we settled our religious differences, we settled a whole bunch of other differences, we thought things were going to be different, but they weren’t, because ultimately, our underlying disagreements, the reasons we were disagreeing and how we were disagreeing were the actual problem in my mind.
Chris Seiter: Can give us an actual example of what that looks like? Not a super serious one, but maybe a surface level one so people can understand what you mean when you’re talking about the underlying disagreements here?
Sophie: Sure. So I think for him, personal freedom is a big thing. He doesn’t want to have to think the same way as me. He does not want to have to do things-
Chris Seiter: So he likes being independent.
Sophie: Very independent.
Chris Seiter: Very avoidant.
Sophie: He’s one of the most independent people I have ever met in my life.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: He has a very sweet side to him where if he chooses to be engaged and be involved in something, he’s definitely there 100%. But he has to be able to make those decision emotionally for himself and not feel like he’s being pressured.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: So it just, for me, I was pressuring him about some of our differences, and then when I talked about it in therapy, I was like, “Okay, this isn’t a big deal for me.” But there were still things that I kept pushing about. And it-
Chris Seiter: What were some examples of those things?
Sophie: So he actually was friends with his ex girlfriend before me still.
Chris Seiter: Okay. That would bug me. I get it.
Sophie: It bothered me. It did.
Chris Seiter: It’s like the Beaner Method inverted.
Sophie: And I saw right through it, too. I was like, “I don’t think that she’s here for wholly reasonable reasons.” And when we had broken up, he had gone to her for some comfort. And I guess they had made out or whatever. And he told me about it.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So there’s some physical connection there as well, unfortunately, after the breakup.
Sophie: Yeah. And that was hard for me, because they only dated for two months, maybe. But all of his relationships have been two, three months. He has not been able to sustain a long term relationship at any point before me. So when we broke up, the fact that he was talking to his ex again was, to me, a big deal. I was like, “That doesn’t [crosstalk 00:09:04].”
Chris Seiter: I knew it. I knew it.
Sophie: So we moved on, disagreeing on that still. And we kept seeing some of… He has a really, in my opinion, not a great friend group. And she’s well ingrained in that, so we saw her a lot. And it kept getting under my skin. And then there was some other things with some other girls where he had been friend with some girls that he’d been seeing before. And I don’t think there was ever anything there, but I think that true to a lot of avoidance, he likes to reminisce, he likes to hold on to things, likes to hold on to old relationships, likes to hold on to old keepsakes from relationships, too, which was weird to me, because I was like, “No, I think I should be the only important person in your life.” And it all exploded eventually. And what I didn’t realize was at the time, I had actually told him at one point before we broke up, this was maybe a month or two before we broke up, “I want you to stop talking to your ex girlfriend.” That’s it.
Chris Seiter: So gave him the ultimatum, essentially, do this or else.
Sophie: I did. Yep. And I said, “You need to unfollow her.”
Chris Seiter: Did you clarify what else would happen if he didn’t do it?
Sophie: Well, I did threaten a little bit. I was like, “You know what? You need to unfollow her on social media since she seems to interact with you a lot on there. I’m not comfortable with this relationship as it stands, and I’ll take my things and go if we don’t sort this out.
Chris Seiter: Okay. True ultimatum then.
Sophie: It really was.
Chris Seiter: I can’t tell you how often I’ll interview people, and hear this thing, and they’ll say, “Yeah, I gave him an ultimatum.” And I’ll be like, “Okay. Well, how?” And they say, “Well, you do this,” but they don’t really clarify what else will happen if they don’t follow it, but you did.
Sophie: I did. I was really, at that point, quite ready to just… Because she had been tagging him in things and other things, and every time I would ask him, he was like, “Oh, I don’t know what you’re talking about. She’s just interacting with me. And we don’t talk about things or anything.” And I was like, “Okay, I don’t believe you.” Eventually, it came to a head. He unfollowed her on social media after I asked him three separate times. And that was that. We broke up in April 2021, and this was after several mock breakups almost, where we were really getting to the end of our rope with what we could handle. He felt like I was pushing him for a further commitment, and I was, because the more insecure I got, the more I felt like I needed to push things like moving in together, and fidelity, and all these other things as I saw them.
Sophie: I think I did make a big deal about things that weren’t necessarily a big deal. But I was definitely putting a lot of pressure on him there.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So let up the street. You go through the breakup initially in 2020, all during COVID. And then he moves on to this other girl that is his ex. And this period of time between when that happens and what we’re talking about here in 2021, are you just talking at this point or had you gotten back together again? I’m just trying to clarify the timeline.
Sophie: Like right now?
Chris Seiter: No. Okay, so you mentioned in 2020, you started the relationship.
Sophie: Yep.
Chris Seiter: And then you ended the relationship a few months after this all happens, and the issues in that were that he was constantly tagging his ex, right?
Sophie: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: And there’s some issues with disagreements and things like that. Timeline wise, how long were you broken up before you tried to do anything? Are you still talking about the actual relationship and the problems with it? I’m just trying to clarify the timeline.
Sophie: Yeah. So we got back together in July, I think, of 2020. So it was like May to July.
Chris Seiter: May to July. You got back together very quickly.
Sophie: We did.
Chris Seiter: And then went through another very abrupt breakup.
Sophie: Yes. And I expected it, but we lasted another eight months or so, just in this year [crosstalk 00:13:46].
Chris Seiter: So there’s been two breakups that have happened here. The first one happened in 2020.
Sophie: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Who initiated that? Was that you?
Sophie: He broke up with me.
Chris Seiter: Okay. And the second one-
Sophie: Basically, saying, “Oh, I feel like I can’t love you the way that you need to be loved. And we’ve got some differences,” and he saw it as a bit of a merciful thing.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: And same with this time around, he broke up with me and gave me some of the similar reasons, although perhaps a little bit more angry.
Chris Seiter: But this time, was it… So all right. So the two breakups, this period in between the two breakups, that’s when he had the make out session with the ex girlfriend, correct?
Sophie: Yes.
Chris Seiter: What happens after the second breakup? Does he go running back to her again?
Sophie: So, I actually noticed he followed her on Instagram the day after we broke up. He deleted all our pictures, and then he re-followed her on Instagram. And I was so mad, like pissed at him.
Chris Seiter: Was that a revenge thing, do you think like, “I’m going to show her?”
Sophie: No, because they had been talking this whole time, apparently, and I didn’t know that. He had told me they weren’t talking. So him following her back on Instagram was just like I can officially now [crosstalk 00:15:08].
Chris Seiter: [crosstalk 00:15:09]. Right.
Sophie: So I didn’t know if there was anything there or not. But nevertheless, he really just doesn’t like to have anyone tell him what to do. So I think for him, he was like, “I’m just going to follow her back on Instagram.” So actually did the same thing.
Chris Seiter: You followed her on Instagram?
Sophie: I did.
Chris Seiter: That’s interesting.
Sophie: I like drama a little bit. So I knew based on how he had described all of his previous breakups, so he described his breakup with her very negatively. He said he basically snapped at her for demanding too much of his time and demanding too much emotional investment. And he broke up with her over the phone and blocked her everywhere, and then basically told all of his mutual friends that she was crazy.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: So I probably should have taken that as a bit of a red flag, myself, but I did this time around. I was like, “This is probably what’s going to happen to me.” So I thought to myself, “Okay, I need to talk to Anna,” so I did start coaching with Anna a little bit.
Chris Seiter: Beautiful. Okay.
Sophie: But I made the decision sort of defensively to try an ingratiate myself to the sphere of influence a little bit, including some people that I had been not on great terms with before.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, you mentioned at the time, the friend circle were not people that you were fond of, correct?
Sophie: No, I didn’t like them. I made it clear I didn’t like them for him. Again, he values his relationships. So he wasn’t happy with that. So I did start trying to repair a couple of my relationships there. He was very confused, actually, and pretty upset, because he felt like it didn’t give him a place to vent about me or the breakup after it happened. So I got-
Chris Seiter: He’s got a new girlfriend for that, right? [crosstalk 00:17:21].
Sophie: Well yeah, right, so I don’t think they were ever actually officially back together, but they certainly seemed to be entertaining that as an option. So I reached out to her. I basically said, “Look, I apologize for how I treated you during our relationship. It’d be nice to get coffee sometime.” And I did eventually get coffee with her during the period that we were broken up. And she basically said, “Yes, he has been pursing a relationship with me before you guys broke up, actually, like pursuing a friendship aggressively.” And she didn’t know that I wasn’t cool with it, apparently.
Chris Seiter: I don’t know if I believe that.
Sophie: Well yeah, I don’t know if I believe that either, but she was like, “Well, I figured you must’ve been, because he was interacting with me, but I never bothered to check with you.” And I was like, “Okay.” So I think I did everything wrong, though. I had confrontation with the other woman. I had drama with the friend group.
Chris Seiter: It’s interesting. So we’re seeing the anxious behaviors take root here.
Sophie: Yeah. Yeah. I went full panic, because I didn’t know what to do. And he was pretty upset with me for that. I thought it was genius. I was like, “I’ll stay in his life by being invited to everything by his friends.” And he was so pissed about that. He was like, “I need time.” So he reached out to me about a month after the breakup. So I visited his roommate, and she and I were friends before we were even dating. But I visited his roommate. We went to a park nearby the house that he lived at, and I got some very angry text messages in probably late May, early June. And the breakup was April 26. So a little bit of time had elapsed. I was in no contact the whole time. I basically went into no contact right after the breakup, because I [crosstalk 00:19:35].
Chris Seiter: Okay. How long were you shooting for, like 30 days, 45 days?
Sophie: No, 45, given that it was our second breakup, and also it just ended very badly.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: It was to me, I felt like the breakup on April 26, 2021 was out of the blue. I knew we had issues. We had committed to working on them. And he had started a lot more optimistically. He had started looking at apartments for us to move into. He had started really trying harder with the relationship, but at the same time, saying, “Here are my boundaries, and if you cross them, I will break up with you.” So I felt like there was a lot of mixed messages going on. And then one weekend, we spend weekends together, I was over, and he was acting really weird. And he kept being really combative with our friends and everything I suggested, he didn’t want to do. And I just had this feeling that he was going to break up with me. So he started the conversation on April 26 in the evening, basically saying to me, “I think I’m having some doubts and I may just need to work through them.” And less than an hour later, we were basically screaming at each other. And he’s like, “I’m done. I’m not getting back together with you ever again. This isn’t what I want for my life. I’m glad that you’re reinforcing my decision to dump you right now.”
Sophie: It was very hurtful.
Chris Seiter: It did not end well.
Sophie: It didn’t. And I left at 3:00, 3:30 in the morning, just crying and everyone knew about it. And it was just a big mess.
Chris Seiter: So you go right into no contact.
Sophie: Yes. [crosstalk 00:21:37].
Chris Seiter: 45 days. And you’re basically poaching his sphere of influence at this point during the 45 days?
Sophie: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: So that, I feel like would be something that I would’ve changed, maybe not doing that. well because I thought-
Chris Seiter: Then again, maybe it worked, but let’s see how it plays out.
Sophie: Right. I thought that it was going to be better than it went. And so initially, a week after the breakup, I felt like I needed to vent, so I vented to some ex friends of his that were… I know, bad idea, right. Terrible decision.
Chris Seiter: You can’t see me, but I’m shaking my head really.
Sophie: So I did. I vented to some ex friends of his, and I thought the information wouldn’t go anywhere. It did, ultimately.
Chris Seiter: That is very naïve of you, Sophie.
Sophie: It was. It was.
Chris Seiter: Don’t you know people love to gossip more than anything else?
Sophie: Yep. So they are still not friends, but they had some mutual friends, and they spread the information to the mutual friends, who then spread the information to [crosstalk 00:22:52].
Chris Seiter: And it’s like a game of telephone. You ever play that game of telephone? By the time the message gets to the end of the line, it’s different. So I’m imagining something like that happening.
Sophie: And that’s exactly what happened, because a lot of the details that got back to him were not even at all accurate to what happened.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, people like to put their own spin on things. And they clearly did that.
Sophie: Pretty much. So the first reach out I got from him was a little bit before my no contact was supposed to end. And it was after I saw him roommate staying out. And he basically texted me immediately after I left the house. Apparently, according to his roommate, he was ready to come out on to the front lawn and confront me, and basically say, “You need to give me space, because you haven’t given me space.” So to him, even though I was giving him space, I wasn’t to talking to him, me interacting with his sphere of influence was a big no no for him, because he still didn’t feel like he had emotional space to process the breakup.
Chris Seiter: Very possessive over them.
Sophie: Yep. So I ignored those text messages per the advice of the mods. I did not engage, because he basically said to me, “Hey, we need to talk.” And I ignored it. And then about 40 minutes later, he was like, “If you don’t have time today, that’s fine, but we do need to have discussion.” And I ignored that one. And then he finally sent me a text late in the evening saying, “All right. I thought we could’ve handled this differently. But you’ve made your choice.” And then he blocked me everywhere. So I was blocked on Facebook, Instagram, [crosstalk 00:24:41], SnapChat.
Chris Seiter: What about phones?
Sophie: So I don’t know if I was ever blocked over text, because I didn’t answer those messages, but I was blocked on WhatsApp, I was blocked on whatever.
Chris Seiter: It’s a pretty safe bet you were probably blocked at one point on the phone.
Sophie: I think I was blocked everywhere to be honest. He was really mad. He was done.
Chris Seiter: See, I’m sitting here super excited, because it’s very rare that we actually get to talk to someone who was blocked, and got out of it, and got back with their ex, like to this extent.
Sophie: Yes.
Chris Seiter: So I just perked up here.
Sophie: Yeah, I was fully blocked on everything, and I’m trying to remember. So I completed my no contact. And then Anna basically said, “It ends before your birthday, but maybe you could give it a little bit of time after your birthday.” He did not reach out for my birthday. But I kept [crosstalk 00:25:35], I think.
Chris Seiter: Well, you’re blocked. You’re blocked.
Sophie: Well, exactly. Right, I’m blocked everywhere. So I actually ran into him in person by accident, and it wasn’t truly an accident.
Chris Seiter: No, when you say by accident, is there a part that manufactured it? Let’s be honest here.
Sophie: I felt like it was by accident.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so it’s manufactured by Sophie here. How did you manufacture this? There’s no shame in it. Flirting is playing games, that’s how it works.
Sophie: So his best friend, Josh, that’s a pseudonym, and his girlfriend-
Chris Seiter: So Josh and the girlfriend.
Sophie: Yeah. They invited me over for my birthday because I’m friends with them, and I had been seeing them after the breakup. Mostly, his girlfriend, Angela, is my friend. And she was very insistent that they would continue seeing me after we broke up. She was like, “We don’t play sides. Whatever.”
Chris Seiter: What a rock star.
Sophie: So she was like, “I would love it if you’d come over for your birthday. I know you don’t have anywhere else to go,” because my friend group and his friend group were one and the same, unfortunately. I did not maintain an independent friend group. And after the breakup, that occurred to me. I was like, “Crap. I don’t have any friends.” So don’t do that. Don’t get lost in a relationship where you don’t have any friends, because that was mistake number one for me.
Sophie: But I went over for my birthday, and I had cake and whatever, and I took some photos.
Chris Seiter: So it was your birthday. You get invited over by Angela, who’s a rock star.
Sophie: Yep.
Chris Seiter: And it just so happens your ex is there?
Sophie: So no, he wasn’t there. But he lives two streets over or whatever on the other side, there’s a bridge that separates two little communities.
Chris Seiter: It’s like Romeo and Juliette here.
Sophie: And he lived five minutes away.
Chris Seiter: You’re the girl across the bridge.
Sophie: So I go over there and I have a great time. And I’m leaving somewhat late. I was like, “Okay. There’s no way I’m going to see him. It’s 11:30 PM. That would be weird.” But people had known I was going over there for my birthday, so I think maybe there was some element of he probably heard about that. So I get into my car and I see his car driving past. And I was like, “Oh, my goodness. That’s definitely him.”
Chris Seiter: You get that boom, boom, boom. It’s sounds like boom boom, boom boom, boom boom.
Sophie: It was embarrassing for me.
Chris Seiter: No, let’s do it. Let’s hear it.
Sophie: I wanted to see if it was him or not.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: So what I did was I get into my car, spin around, and I start ripping through the area to catch up to him, essentially.
Chris Seiter: Oh, so you’re driving and you pass him like two ships in the night, and then you say, “Oh, that ship looks cool,” and then you turn around and drive after him. Okay.
Sophie: That was exactly what happened. So he ended up behind me at the light.
Chris Seiter: Whoa. Whoa. So you were going fast.
Sophie: I was.
Chris Seiter: So you passed him.
Sophie: I did.
Chris Seiter: And then you lane change in front of him.
Sophie: Yep.
Chris Seiter: Okay. I see where you see the embarrassing part on that now.
Sophie: The worst part about it was it wasn’t even that, it was the fact that my windows were open and I was playing my music.
Chris Seiter: No shame.
Sophie: My windows were open, but I had a [crosstalk 00:29:20].
Chris Seiter: What music did you have playing? Metallica or something as you’re going through this or Ozzy Ozbourne?
Sophie: It probably rap music, whatever.
Chris Seiter: Rap, okay. Got some Eminem playing.
Sophie: I was [crosstalk 00:29:35].
Chris Seiter: Lose Yourself.
Sophie: No. I wanted to give off the impression that I was nonchalant about the whole thing, which in retrospect, was crazy and not nonchalant.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So nonchalant is like you don’t turn. Maybe you turn around and just stay in line there.
Sophie: And find a different way to go home. Yeah, exactly. So I guess he was headed back to his place across the bridge. I don’t really know why he was in that neighborhood in the first place. And it seemed really weird like a coincidence that we even ran into each other, but I technically had to go the same way as him, so I maybe just sped up a bit to get there. But at one point, he’s trying to get away from me in his car. I am trying to see if it’s him. And in the chaos, my birthday balloon that had a little tiny anchor on it flew out the window and smacked his windshield. So it has happy birthday written across it on my birthday.
Chris Seiter: Oh, my God.
Sophie: Whacks his windshield. So he basically speeds up, gets around, and then drives off to his road. So I know it was him. And I go home from there. So I think, “Okay, I’m going to hear from him.” But I don’t. So basically, I drive home and I wait a couple of days to post the pictures to Instagram, because I thought, “I’m fully blocked everywhere. It’s not like it makes a difference. He’s definitely not checking or anything like that.” And I posted the photos to Instagram, tagged my friend, not his. But obviously, it was his house. And at one point, I had this habit, which again, I don’t recommend, of checking to see if I was unblocked, so I would check every couple of days just to see if I was going to be unblocked or if I was.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: And I kept posting to Instagram like I was unblocked, even though I wasn’t. So that advice was really good, just keep posting per normal, because you don’t know what they see or don’t see. And at one point, I actually caught him unblocking me and then I was blocked five minutes later. So I was like [crosstalk 00:32:02].
Chris Seiter: And reblocking you. So he’s doing the drive by where he unblocks you, “Oh, okay,” and then block again.
Sophie: Checks and then blocks again. And then I was convinced there was no way he was going to look at any of my social media, because after everything that he’s mad at me for, after all of my weird crazy behavior, there’s no way he’s checking on what I’m doing. But apparently, that was the case. So he sees the photos posted a couple days after my birthday, and he reaches out again. And he’s like, “I don’t think you understood me last time, you really need to stop seeing my friends.”
Chris Seiter: How does he reach out to you? Is this through texts?
Sophie: It was over text. Yeah, he texted me. And he basically said, “I would like to meet in person to discuss this.” And I was like, “No, I’m not doing that.”
Chris Seiter: So you’re out of no contact at this point?
Sophie: My first one, yes. And then I’m trying to remember, I think I broke no contact, maybe, or I didn’t start texting phase, I just-
Chris Seiter: It’s super common.
Sophie: Yeah. I think I broke no contact, maybe. It was like a 45 day one, and then I was supposed to extend it based on the angry text messages that I got. So I broke the extended past 45 days or whatever. And I got into it over text with him about our mutual friends. And we started arguing, and he basically was like, “I shouldn’t be having these conversations with my dear friends over an ex of a year and a half.” And he was just really mad.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: And I finally said, “Okay, I’ll give you a phone call. I’ll explain.” So again, not what I was supposed to do, but I called him. And I talked to him.
Chris Seiter: You’re going up that value ladder in a very strange way, but there is some-
Sophie: So I called him, and I explained my point of view. I basically said, “Look, these are my friends, too, and I don’t think that you should have a monopoly on them.” And I-
Chris Seiter: It’s like parents arguing over kids or something.
Sophie: That’s what it felt like. It was very immature. So I essentially, then, I basically explained myself. I felt like I did really well on the phone call. And I debriefed it with Anna later. The gist of it was he kept reiterating his points, but then he kept throwing little things in there like, “Oh, if we were to get back together,” or “I just needed time,” or “I need some space,” and things like that. And I just kept ignoring all of it. I stuck to my talking points. I was like, “If this is about our mutual friends, here’s my boundaries, here’s what I think, here’s what I’m going to keep doing.” And then he basically said, “Okay, well I’m going to talk to my friends and we’ll see.”
Sophie: So we ended the phone call, and then probably about a week later, I get a text message from him saying, “I talked to so and so friend, and I apologize. I don’t think I was treating you fairly.” And we left it there. So I decided to do on the recommendation of everyone else, a second 45 day no contact. I think what had happened was I finished my no contact. I’m trying to remember. The details are fuzzy, because I did so many of them. After my first no contact, I think I did reach out with my scripted text, “Can I grab your expertise on something?” And that was when he first blew up, because I didn’t acknowledge the texts while in no contact. But he was angry about it and he was still angry at that point.
Chris Seiter: Got it. Okay.
Sophie: I then was like, “Okay, I got to restart.” So then that’s when I restarted. But so I don’t hear from him for a while, and I found it strange that he had kept the same vacation days that we were supposed to go to, we were going to Provence over for a vacation together. I had taken time off work. He had, in this process, quit at the company that we were at, but he still decided to go on the trip that we were supposed to go on during the same days in July. So I’m doing my no contact, I’m doing my thing. And a couple week into July, he starts liking all of my social media posts. So after he apologized to me, he unblocked me.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: So I was unblocked probably from late June to early July, I think. And he had blocked me again after we talked before he apologized, because he didn’t want to see all my stuff on my sisters page. He’s still friends with her on Facebook, which I find kind of weird. But I was blocked probably three times fully.
Chris Seiter: Okay. It’s consistent at least.
Sophie: So he was constantly back and forth about the blocking me and unblocking. So he had unblocked me, and I just decided to leave things as it was for a while. And I decided to distance myself from all of our mutual friends. And I was like, “Okay, I’m just going to take some actual time to do a proper no contact.” So he starts liking my posts on Instagram, and he doesn’t follow my account. So every time I would post-
Chris Seiter: He actually has to look it up.
Sophie: Every time I would post, it would be like within 24 hours, he would go and like the post. And I was like, “That’s such a weird way of signaling you want to interact with me.”
Chris Seiter: The safe way. It’s safe.
Sophie: Yeah, it was very low investment.
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Sophie: And so at that point, I was asking myself, “Well, do I break no contact and talk to him?” And everyone in the group was like, “No, you don’t do that.” This is a very low investment move, even though it’s consistent, it’s low investment.
Chris Seiter: Right.
Sophie: So I decided not to break anything. And he reached out to me over text, actually, about a blog post that I’d written. And apparently, he went through the trouble of actually reading the whole thing. It was 20 minutes long on my private blog or whatever, and he found it through my Instagram somehow. And he reached out, being like, “Oh, that’s a great blog post.” And so I was like, “Oh, thanks.” And then left it at that. But he was actually starting to signal interest in me again a little bit as time went on. And I decided that I was, again, in a weird, crazy move, going to go on vacation to the same place as he was going, on the same dates. So I didn’t think we would necessarily run into each other. [crosstalk 00:39:17], yeah.
Chris Seiter: So you had the time off work scheduled, but as he’s going also, you decided to go also.
Sophie: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So once again, you were manufacturing another run in. Okay.
Sophie: A little bit, yeah. So I was trying to do that again. And he, I guess, got wind of the fact that I was going, and started texting me a little bit about him being there. And he started with small talk and whatever like, “Oh, what a beautiful location. Do you have any recommendations for places I should go while I’m here since you’ve been here before?” And I was like, “Is this reverse ERP?” But as soon as I tried to get any deeper, he was like, “We’re not there. I’m sorry. I’m not a confidant for you at this point.”
Sophie: And I took that very hard. I was like, “Oh no. He doesn’t like me. He’s just toying with my feelings or whatever.” And so then he found out about the mutual friend problem, and that caused another problem where he was mad about that. And I can’t remember whether I was blocked again, but there was a series of angry phone calls.
Chris Seiter: I call this a saga. This is really a long process here.
Sophie: It was. It was super long. And I think it would’ve been so much shorter had I simply kept to myself during no contact, during my first no contact. I think if I had given him space and time to miss me, we might be in a different place.
Chris Seiter: So a lot of times when I interview people, they talk a lot about their time during no contact. Usually they’re talking about the trinity basics, health, wealth, relationships. Did you do any of that type of work at all or did you struggle with doing that because you were just really anxious about him?
Sophie: No, I actually really committed to the external appearance of doing all of that.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: So I started going to the gym again, and I posted on social media on a regular schedule. And I was always going out with people, having a great time. Even when I was blocked, I was doing all of that. And I think that’s initially what made him curious. I talk to him now, and he was like, “You seemed to be doing really well. You were doing all these things without me. And it got me thinking.” So I did work the trinity. I did get myself into a better position, but I think I didn’t [inaudible 00:42:09] some of the-
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I think just for me critiquing, I think probably the focus wasn’t so much on that when you have turning around of the car and constantly poking the bear with the mutual friends, things like that takes away from that and puts his focus on those things, but it makes him angry instead of the nostalgic feelings that you want. But clearly, something still worked by doing that.
Sophie: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So what’s your take on that?
Sophie: So I think where things reached a bit of a turning point was when we were having these conversations where I basically said, “I talked to so and so mutual friends. I talked to your ex girlfriend.” And the reason for the outburst was she texted him saying, “I heard everything she had to say and I don’t want to engage with you anymore.”
Chris Seiter: So basically, the girls get together and they share notes, and it’s like, “Holy crap, look this guy’s been taking us for a ride.”
Sophie: Yep.
Chris Seiter: This, of course, makes the ex girlfriend here be like, “I’m done with you,” which of course, makes him angry. And then he, of course, needs to blame someone for the anger, and you seem like the easiest target.
Sophie: And I was. Yep. And basically [crosstalk 00:43:27].
Chris Seiter: Yet you technically did nothing wrong.
Sophie: I technically didn’t. I still think I wouldn’t have stirred up so much drama until after talking to him about it, until after applying some of the better concepts that I learned. I definitely wouldn’t have done it again. But I technically didn’t do anything wrong, either.
Chris Seiter: I think this goes to show, you can make mistakes throughout the process and still see results. But it prolonged those results.
Sophie: Yes. And that’s what I would tell anyone. If you’re going through this process. Sure, you might think it’s a good idea at the time, but I promise you, it’s not. It’s not a good idea, whatever you’re thinking of. Don’t do it.
Chris Seiter: Well, you had some extreme examples, like the best one so far is the balloon, the balloon hitting his car. As if you’re trying to be stealthy, boom, the balloon is-
Sophie: Happy birthday. It’s her birthday.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, right.
Sophie: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: But eventually, there’s a turning point that happens. So you mentioned the turning point is when you start talking to him about some of the stuff with the mutual friends.
Sophie: Yep. And we started hashing it out. And I basically, at this point, had decided that I wasn’t sure that I wanted him back. With everything that had happened, with the fact that he wanted to blame me for a lot of things that I didn’t feel I should take the blame for, I decided that I was not going to be apologetic, I was not going to be sappy about anything.
Chris Seiter: Love to hear that. Finally, you got your power.
Sophie: I did. And that’s when things started changing. Because I think he realized, “Oh, she might want nothing to do with me.” So at one point, we had a phone call where he was like, “Okay, this is going to be the last phone call, and then I need time and space away from you. And you’ve wrecked everything,” whatever. And I was like, “Okay, fine. We’ll have one last phone call. Let’s do it. Let’s have this phone call. So he called me, and I basically said, “You lied to me. You’ve not been a very good friend. Here’s the reason I said all these things. I had every right to be angry.” And I said, “I feel like I cut my losses in a sense.”
Sophie: And he was very quiet. And I basically thought I was being dramatic. I was in a bar. I was drinking when I was calling him.
Chris Seiter: Got some liquid courage.
Sophie: Really, yeah. I thought I was being dramatic. And I was like, “Look, you know what? At the end of the day, I’m sitting in a bar, 750, 800 km away from you. I don’t know what that is in American, but-”
Chris Seiter: It’s a good amount. 500, 600 miles.
Sophie: A while. And I was like, “And I still know more about you and I’m still connected to you than any of these people that you’re worried about. So that’s that for me. And you can think it over and whatever.” So I basically said, “Have a good night. And I hung up.” And we didn’t really hash everything out at that point. I left it alone for a while. Eventually, we had a point where we decided to have a text message conversation about everything that had happened. We figured out where some of the misinformation came from. And he, at this point, actually wrote me a very long apology email. So if you thought this couldn’t get more dramatic, it absolutely can.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Sophie: So this was in August, I think, late July, early August.
Chris Seiter: We’re almost to October here.
Sophie: August, yeah I know. August. And he, after hearing everything I had to say, and afterwards, he was like, “Why did you do that? That was a closure conversation. That wasn’t the best think you could’ve done.” But I decided to do it anyway. So after our closure conversation about friends, he sent me this really long email. And basically said, “I’m really sorry for how I treated you during our relationship. I think that you deserve better. I don’t think that I will change my mind. I still don’t want to get back together with you, because I feel like too much has happened and there’s just a lot that I need to process and work through.”
Sophie: And so I think I had been coaching at this point for long enough that I realized that’s not necessarily true. He’s just an avoidant, and he’s been overwhelmed. So I said, “Okay. I appreciate your email. Thank you for sharing how you feel. We’ll go our separate ways.” And we did. And I cried a lot about it, because I was like, “What if he never loves me again? What if he’s serious?”
Chris Seiter: Fear takes over.
Sophie: He wrote me an email. He wrote me a whole email.
Chris Seiter: Do you keep going back to the email and reading this one part?
Sophie: Read the email again, read this one part where he said he didn’t want to get back together like 500 times. And Anna was like, “You know what? Just give him time. Just give him time.” So I did. I gave him some time. And then right on schedule, about two weeks later, he starts liking my Instagram posts again. And then-
Chris Seiter: Super consistent. He’s super consistent.
Sophie: Pretty much from there, he was really consistent about it. And he then messages me at 3:00 in the morning about a story I had posted. And this was a subtle jealousy post, because I had had a male friend over for dinner, and I cooked dinner for the two of us, and I had his hand in the background.
Chris Seiter: Got to love those posts. They work so well.
Sophie: That is definitely one of the things that pushed him to message me, because he had made up his mind. He was like, “We’re not getting back together.” But then I immediately jumped right back into my trinity stuff and going out on dates, and going out with people, and inevitably, that curiosity just crept up again, and he was like, “Oh, I see you still love pasta as much as you did.”
Chris Seiter: Okay. It’s like that subtle way of being like, “I saw the post.”
Sophie: [crosstalk 00:50:06] some reminiscing. We’re hitting a little bit of that I remember. And those were things I was looking for in some of his little reach outs that weren’t necessarily super high investment. But basically, Anna said, “Yes, you’re still in no contact, but if he responds in a positive way, that is something that you want to encourage, so don’t just leave it. Make a little bit of small talk. Make your exit. And just finish your no contact that way if he engages.” And I was convinced he wasn’t going to, but he did. So then he started engaging me a little bit. I would do my little, “Oh, got to go,” and duck out of conversations.
Chris Seiter: All right, so Zeigarnik effect happening there.
Sophie: Yeah. So I feel like a lot of the principals were good. I just definitely extended it far past.
Chris Seiter: The execution was not the best, maybe.
Sophie: The execution was very bad, but I think what I would say my takeaway from this was is that even with all of the mistakes that I made and even with the amount of time, he told me that as an avoidant, because he’s had a little bit of time to reflect on this now, he’s like, “You know what? Actually, I don’t feel like I was even ready to move on during that two, three months that things were really tense.” I guess it was more than three months. And he’s like, “It didn’t even cross my mind moving on at that point.” He’s like, “I was definitely busy. I was engaging myself with other stuff, but in a feelings sense, I hadn’t even processed it.” So for me, I processed it all in two weeks, but for him, he didn’t even start to process or even start to reminisce at all.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. It’s funny how that works, because you mentioned that you have some anxiety traits from an anxious attachment. Well, what’s interesting is after a breakup, the anxious person begins to process immediately, but the avoidant person does not process at all until time goes by. So what you have is this weird dichotomy where the anxious person has already processed things, and they’re able to get over it a little bit quicker, as odd as that sounds. There’s a hyper obsession right after. But by the time they get over it, that’s when the avoidant person begins to start processing, and that’s where this weird disconnect happens. So I’m wondering if that’s what happened here.
Sophie: That’s exactly what happened. I was like, “I’m done.” I told Anna, I was like, “I’m done with him. That’s it. I’m not chasing this man anymore. I’m done trying. This program is really hard, and I don’t think it’s for me, so I’m just going to move on.”
Chris Seiter: It is hard. Yeah.
Sophie: And it is. But I think it was when I started to move on, that he was like, “Oh, wait, wait, wait.”
Chris Seiter: Yeah, “Wait, wait, don’t go. Don’t go.”
Sophie: So I basically just took it slow. I then started with normal texting phase, pretty much. Built rapport. Used tied theory. I was still single. We were still taking it really slow. And then how we ended up getting back together, actually was I noticed that he started coming to me with emotional things and I could tell that I was the first person that he would reach out to when something good happened and when something bad happened. And so I made note of that in my mind where I was like, “Okay. We’re at a point where we’re still friends, and he appears to be looking for girlfriend benefits that he does not get to have at this time.”
Chris Seiter: He doesn’t have that yet.
Sophie: He doesn’t have that privilege, right.
Chris Seiter: You got to put a ring on it for that kind of stuff.
Sophie: I’m not talking about it today until you marry me.
Chris Seiter: We’ll talk about that after we stop recording.
Sophie: So anyways, we had some phone calls. We went from texting to calling. And then we had started dropping a little bit, “Oh, we should maybe go out.”
Chris Seiter: See each other.
Sophie: Yeah, see each other or like, “Oh, so and so has a thing going on in a few weeks or a month from now, there’s another car show or whatever, some mutual interests.” So during one of our phone calls, he definitely got into his feelings about some things, and it wasn’t specific to me, it was just too much for me to handle. So I said, “I need a day to think about it,” and I stopped talking to him for a couple of days. And then I said, “Okay, I’d like to call you.” So I called him, and I said, “I don’t want to be friends with you.” And he got super mad. He was like, “Well, then why did you bother sticking around in my life and why did you talk to all my friends? And what was the point of all of this then?” And I was like, “No, you moron. I don’t want to be friends with you.”
Chris Seiter: I want to be more than friends.
Sophie: Yeah, and I was like, “I still have some feelings for you. I still like you.” And he went all quiet and he was like, “Oh.” And he was like, “I did not want to allow myself to hope. So even where you thought you were dropping really obvious hints during texting phase, even though you thought you were dropping really obvious hints during calling,” he’s like, “I did not want to allow myself to hope and I was hoping that time would work it out in my favor.” He’s like, “I was hoping that maybe we could meet up and then if things went well, maybe I could ask you for coffee or something.” So I guess what I took as disinterest was actually just him not wanting to push the limit a little bit or move things too fast. And he still expressed that to me. He was like, “Look, I don’t want to rush anything. I feel like I need to process still.”
Sophie: But he said, “Let me take you for coffee.” So we went for coffee, and that was really great. And then we just started hanging out again. And then he met my dog and he asked me to be his girlfriend again in late September, I guess, maybe mid-September.
Chris Seiter: All right. So we’re caught up a month after now.
Sophie: Yeah. Just about a month ago.
Chris Seiter: And you mentioned you’re looking at apartments?
Sophie: We are. Yeah. He’s come to me with all this. Basically, he said, “The reason I re-engaged with you was you seemed different. When I would engage you on things, you responded differently. You were more light hearted about things. And you didn’t take everything so seriously or so crazy.” And he was like, “I kept wanting to talk to you because you kept making jokes, and small talk, and things that I was really comfortable with. So he said he was really, really curious about that. And I guess the point is, the emotional stuff is supposed to come later, and especially for him, it was important that it did. He did not want to end up in the same mess that we were in before. So since then, we’ve been working through. And we’ve had a couple of fights. But we’ve handled them very differently, where I’ve been like, “Okay, you know what? I think we need a minute. We’ll come back to this in a few hours or tomorrow or whatever, and if you can’t see me,” I’m like, “You know what, no problem. You can’t see me today. Go see your friends. Go do whatever.”
Sophie: And that’s something that he was like, “Oh, yeah. This is something I still want in my life.” Because I guess everyone looks for what’s in it for them, and in that sense, he realized he would have a greater sense of freedom to make decisions without fearing the anxious consequences, essentially. So he’s like, “I think we should move in together. I think we should do all these things that we were planning to be doing.” And that’s come over the last week or so. He was still inching things like, “Oh, I know we’re moving to the same place. Our leases are up around the same time. I’ve got a male friend that I could move in with, or we could look at somewhere.”
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Let’s look around a little bit.
Sophie: Yeah. So I was like, “Oh, you want to move in with me?” And I could’ve been like, “Yes, let’s move in. Let’s do all these things.” But I was like, “I’ll think about it. I’ll entertain it. And if we find somewhere, then maybe we could think about it.”
Chris Seiter: But deep down inside you’re like, “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.”
Sophie: I know. Right. And I’ve learned I just have to hold my horses. If I get too excited and I get too pushy, that’s where-
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I think a good rule for you going forward is the if they pull back, you pull back ideal. Because that’s something that they feel like you’re giving them space. So like you mentioned, if he wants to go out with friends, you’re not as taking offense to why aren’t you hanging out with me instead of them. But allowing them to do that, when they pull back, you pull back a little bit. That you’ll find, especially with avoidant personalities, that works really, really well. And you figured that out.
Sophie: It works like magic, I think. If I really want results, I’m going to just-
Chris Seiter: And the beauty is if he watches this interview, it will still be effective. I promise you, it will still be effective.
Sophie: Oh, yeah.
Chris Seiter: Like, “Dude, I’m telling you, this is what she’s doing. And I’m telling you, it’s going to work on you. There’s nothing you can do.”
Sophie: Yeah, and that’s basically it. When I told him about coaching with Anna and everything else, he’s like, “Man, I could be mad that I was a little bit hoodwinked.” But he’s like, “But it’s still meeting all of my needs, so I don’t feel like that is something that I’m going to worry about.”
Chris Seiter: That’s good.
Sophie: He’s like, “I still feel like we have the relationship that we want to have and I feel comfortable finally to approach you with things instead of feeling like you’re always nagging me, or pressing me for information, or telling me to share, or open up my feelings and things like that.”
Chris Seiter: So looking back, what do you think was the most important key component to your success?
Sophie: Definitely could’ve had more emotional control, but I think emotional control in the end was something that salvaged some of those situations.
Chris Seiter: For you especially. Okay.
Sophie: But I also think what was key to success? I think working that trinity, doing all that stuff, even when you think they’re not looking, I was hard blocked, and he definitely was checking on me. So he was seeing all the stuff-
Chris Seiter: I tell people that, but they never believe it.
Sophie: No, and I didn’t believe it. I was like, “There’s no way.” Everyone else I can believe that was hard blocked, everyone else, I’ll believe that their ex is checking their page, not mine. No, he was. And I busted him one time for it. And he subsequently admitted to me, “Yes, I was stalking your Instagram then when I had blocked you, because I was mad at you, but I wanted to know what you were doing and if you were doing things that were going to make me more mad.” So I think in a certain way, it was like we had not caught up in the process to the grieving part. He was like, “I was mad and I just wanted to see if you were doing anything that was going to make me more mad.”
Chris Seiter: It’s interesting. It’s almost like he was going through the five stages of grief, but stuck in that anger stage because of all the things that you were doing.
Sophie: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: He wants to move on to the next stage, but you keep pulling him back to that anger stage.
Sophie: And that was my bad in some ways. I think I did definitely poke the bear in some ways.
Chris Seiter: That’s interesting. I got to think about that. Because there’s always something you can learn from people when they do things “not the correct way.” Because you did get a positive result in the end. So it’s interesting.
Sophie: I think it was ultimately, it wasn’t about what I was doing so much as how I was doing it, and I think the program has definitely, from the first time that I used it to now, it’s definitely shifted a lot more towards you have to have that attitude change. You have to have that intangible. And in some ways, you really have to decide at a certain point, “I’m moving on.” Because it wasn’t until I had that emotional shift to like, “I don’t know if I want him back. I don’t even know if he fits my current goals, and my coaching goals, and my therapy goals, and my life goals,” where that was I felt the switch. It’s not just something you can manufacture with exactly the right wording always. But I felt like the way things were structured, the way that Kirstie does her texting guide, for example. It’s all very… It’s meant to give you that confidence of emotional control and doing things the right way.
Chris Seiter: Well, that’s beautiful. There’s not a better testimonial than that. I try to tell people, “The key to no contact is to outgrow your ex. That’s the mentality that you need to have.” But people don’t get it.
Sophie: It is. Yeah. I really think that that’s-
Chris Seiter: So, Sophie, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate this. This is a really intriguing story. I love all the twists and turns. I love you’re full blocked, and then you get unblocked. And then you break up again, and then there’s the ex girlfriend, and then you talk and share. I love it all.
Sophie: Yeah. It was a really wild ride, but I think in hindsight, a lot of the things that he’s shared on his own and a lot of the things that we’ve talked about now being back together are all things I learned during ERP. [crosstalk 01:04:41].
Chris Seiter: We will gladly take credit for that. Thank you.
Sophie: Definitely he was like, “I needed that space. I don’t think people understand how much space of what is actually needed and how much time they actually need.” People get afraid like, “45 days, what if he forgets about me?” He’s like, “I wasn’t even close to forgetting about you at 45 days.”
Chris Seiter: I know.
Sophie: So I think even in telling him about the program, he’s like, “It actually helps me feel like there was some people advocating for me, too, where it wasn’t just that you were trying to get me back, but also it was there are people that were actively supporting you into better habits and into a person that’s ready now for the relationship that we have.”
Chris Seiter: The funny part is almost no one has good relationship habits. Almost no one gives people space, because they want to fix things right away. But thank you. This was amazing. I really appreciate you coming on.
Sophie: Absolutely, Chris. I’m super happy to be a success story, and I really think that going forward, I will continue to apply a lot of the principles, a lot of things that I learned. And I recommend this program to everyone that I meet. I’m like, “Oh, you’ve been through a breakup? I have something for you.”
Chris Seiter: Thank you.
Sophie: Because I know my instincts would never have gotten me to this place. I can be fully honest in saying I would’ve continued to make all the worst mistakes and I don’t think that I would be in a healthier and happier relationship now for it. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: All right. Today, we have another really interesting success story. We have Heather here who … Her and I were going back and forth on how to define her success story. Ultimately, settled on this really interesting medium between if you have a military breakup that occurs where your boyfriend or girlfriend is going overseas, and they breakup with you right before, or if they’re going to study abroad, and they breakup with you right before.
Chris Seiter: There’s any forced departure. This is the success story to listen to. I’d love to introduce you to Heather, who is going to take us through her entire situation. How are you doing, Heather?
Heather: I’m doing great. Nice to be here.
Chris Seiter: All right. Let’s go hop at the time machine, start back from the beginning. How does this breakup occur? What goes on here?
Heather: Yeah. Breakup happened almost two years ago. It was back in March 2020, which is a very familiar date for a lot of people.
Chris Seiter: It’s uncanny how many breakups came into our phase around March of 2020.
Heather: In March 2020. This happened before, before the big event, before COVID. My boyfriend was getting set up to deploy overseas. I will admit that things had become a little bit strained before not in an argumentative way, or anything like that. But definitely, I started to have insecurities in the relationship, and I think I was projecting that a little bit. But it was still a very good relationship. He was very loving and clearly still in love with me.
Heather: I had gone down to his place, his parents’ place. He invited me down to his parents’ place that weekend. Then on the way home, I got back home and that’s when he let me know that he just didn’t see it working. This was after being together for two years. I was completely floored. He was also leaving for overseas in less than a week. It’s a week before his deployment. While it had been not as good as relationship had been before, it was still a very big 360. I was really, really surprised.
Chris Seiter: You basically … This is happening in the car right coming back from the visiting the parents?
Heather: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: It’s like there’s no way to escape to? He’s got you. Who’s driving the car?
Heather: Me.
Chris Seiter: I mean, there’s a time when you breakup with someone, maybe not when they’re driving a car, though.
Heather: I think that’s when he got the courage, I think, because it was a long drive. I think he got the courage to do it. I clearly had been on his mind. That’s might be why there have been a bit of distance that I’ve been sensing.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Yeah.
Heather: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: You notice … You visit his parents. You’re both there to visit the parents. Do you notice anything during that trip that makes you feel something’s off?
Heather: I noticed that before. But actually during the trip, he was more touchy feely than he had been in a long time, wanting to hold me a lot. But I now know that that was probably him last chance to hold her kind of thing.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. That’s really interesting how that work. What was his reasoning, this breakup talk happens while you’re driving a car, which is dangerous? If you cry, you’re not paying attention to the road. There’s all sorts of things that can go wrong. But what does he say?
Heather: I did cry, by the way. I pulled over. I pulled over.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Thank goodness.
Heather: He just had that classic thing that he just didn’t see this being a forever thing at this point anymore. He just didn’t see a future. He didn’t know how there could be a future. He hadn’t for a little bit. No matter what I said … Obviously, it was an emotional state. But I was very devastated. But that was his reasoning. But neither of us could really talk about it anymore at that point, because I was crying. That’s what we talked about more the next day, is when the big conversation happened.
Chris Seiter: What was the living situation? Did you guys live together …
Heather: No.
Chris Seiter: … at that point? You live separately. You just went on this trip together to his parents’ house. On the way back from the trip, he breaks the news. This is a weird question to ask, but I’m just naturally curious. I’ve never heard of a breakup happen this way. You’re in the car. Does he do it like 25% into the drive home, or does he do it like right as you …
Heather: Nearly at it.
Chris Seiter: Okay. There’s not that awkwardness like, “We still have two hours to go together.” Okay. His reasoning basically is like, “I don’t see this being a forever thing,” which almost implies to me that he feels pressure for a next step.
Heather: Yes.
Chris Seiter: I don’t know. You mentioned in your Facebook post when you post the success story a few months ago that you were not the one to pressure him. It was actually maybe the other outside extra forces that were …
Heather: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Do you feel like that had a huge impact on his decision?
Heather: I would say so. Definitely his parents were really, really keen on me.
Chris Seiter: What those grandbabies?
Heather: It came up a lot.
Chris Seiter: I know. I’ve been in that situation, too.
Heather: But I mean, definitely, he knew that that’s what I wanted. I never pressured him. But he knew that … We talked about it. That’s the thing he’d brought up in the past when we live together, when we have kids, this is what our kids names will be. This is all competition we’d have had. But I definitely never pressured it. I didn’t pressure him to move in. He actually did talk about that the next day was that we were moving towards that direction.
Heather: I personally think he got a little bit scared like, “Let’s put the brakes on.”
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Heather: But yeah. I didn’t necessarily pressure him. I never gave an ultimatum. I was very happy in the situation we were at. But he definitely was feeling the pressure from his family. He did mention that.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. I mean, the only really experience I’ve ever had to draw on is when I was going to move in with my wife before we were married. I was started looking at apartments, because to me, it’s this nice thing to say and fantasize about, but until you’re actually there and experiencing it, you’re like, “Oh, this is a real thing. This is going to happen.” It freaks you out a little bit. I’m wondering if maybe that occurred.
Chris Seiter: But, obviously, there’s more to the story because you have this X factor of him leaving on this departure to go overseas. How did that factor in?
Heather: What I knew at the time or what I know?
Chris Seiter: Let’s go with hindsight. Now, what you know now?
Heather: Yeah. Honestly, I think he thought he was going to be very sad missing me. He didn’t deal with emotions that very well. I think, judging on some conversations we’ve had even coming up to that point that it was easier and less painful for him to do a breakup than to spend six months missing me.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. It’s fascinating how many people have that black and white mentality, which is the mature things to do. It’s like, “Okay. I’ve got her back home and it’ll suck, but she’ll be there.” Instead you’re saying he’s basically like “No, it’s easier for me to just breakup with her and not have to think about it anymore.”
Heather: Yeah. Also, I mean, there was again still that distance that had happened. He had been for it away for several months. The more he pulled away, the more insecure I became, and the more subservient I became, which I think just fed into a little vicious cycle.
Chris Seiter: Now, you mentioned that you became insecure and subservient. What are some examples of how that manifested in the relationship?
Heather: Oh, everything. I would be like, “Oh, what do you want to do this weekend, or where do you want to eat?” It was never me giving suggestions.
Chris Seiter: Got it.
Heather: I was trying so hard to please him at that point, which was never a relationship before. But I was trying so hard to make his experience with me be positive. It was always trying to please him.
Chris Seiter: It’s funny how that fear that you have losing him manifests itself in odd way it causes you to lose him. Okay. Let’s get to the actual stuff that you did that worked here. He goes overseas. You’re broken up. You’ve obviously been through all of the emotions, the grief and everything like that. What is your first step?
Heather: Actually, can I fast track back for a second?
Chris Seiter: Yes. Track that. Yes.
Heather: The day after the breakup, we did talk as well. This time I spent the whole night saying, “No. I’m going to put a emotions aside and be super logical about this.” I actually had a very logical talk with him said, “What would you like a break, or would you like to see other people, or let’s talk about this rash? You think we maybe take a break while you deploy, when you come back, let’s reconsider.”
Heather: The more I gave suggestions, the more he dug in. I did do the logical emotional list thing. Strangely enough he got emotional during that. But I did try to be logical. It didn’t work.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Well, so that’s interesting. Because when you approach … What woman … No. Seriously, what woman offers up like, “What would you like to date other people after that?” I mean that would throw me for a loop and it’s like, “No.” But if you really think about it, you want to get mad about it, that’s what the true secure woman would do. She would have enough confidence to be like, “Yeah. Find that other woman. She’s not going to compare to me.”
Heather: Well, yeah. That’s what I was thinking. I was like, “Go out there. See what you think you’re missing, then when you come back.”
Chris Seiter: Well, okay. Now that you had the logical conversation, it didn’t work. He dug in.
Heather: Dug in hard.
Chris Seiter: Then he leaves.
Heather: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: What happens next?
Heather: I was devastated for a good week. Good week after that. I told very few people that this has happened. Then a week later is when COVID hit hard. Not only was I not telling people, but then suddenly we were going to work. I wasn’t allowed to see my friends. For a long time, nobody knew that this breakup happened. They just assumed he’s deployed and at I’m at home, because that I was actually home …
Chris Seiter: They’re sense you’re sad, you’re sad because he’s deployed?
Heather: Yeah. Well, they couldn’t sense I was sad because I wasn’t. I had excuse not to go anywhere. I had an excuse not to see anybody.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Heather: I was at home with COVID. But at the same time, I didn’t have anyone to talk to. That’s when I started to be a little bit more proactive, because then I’m stuck at home. All I can think about this, I have no escape. Instead of being sad, I said, “What can I do about this?” That’s when I started doing the online search about, “All right, is there any kind of breakup program?” That’s how I learned about No Contact. I did admit in the Facebook group. It wasn’t yours. It was not the first program I found.
Chris Seiter: Shame on you.
Heather: But I learned about No Contact. I started doing 21 days was this program. It was always 21 days. It’s all you do. I started doing the 21-day no contact, but I was very scared because he was deployed and I’ve been with him when he’s been deployed before. Military men really tend to compartmentalize. When they’re there, they’re there, when they’re home, they’re home. I wasn’t quite sure how much effect No Contact was going to have on someone over there. I do think it didn’t have much effect at the time.
Chris Seiter: No. That’s fine …
Heather: I really do believe.
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Heather: I know that what happened when he came back. I assumed the 21 days no contact. Then during that time, I wasn’t quite getting the support I wanted from other coaches. It would have been too expensive to have a coach on call every day.
Chris Seiter: Shame on you for telling to those other coaches.
Heather: I know. That’s when I found your … I can’t remember. I think it’s your website I found.
Chris Seiter: Probably.
Heather: Yeah. It was the Facebook group. Instantly appealed to me, because I thought, “Oh, this is great. There’s these moderators there, they’ll be able to answer my silly questions, and there’s other people going through the same situation as me.” Again, I hadn’t pulled anyone. I was almost like … Actually, I noticed. I was scared if I told people it would be real. It was just, “If I’m going to do this, I’m going to get him back. I don’t want people to know, because I need to do this.”
Heather: The Facebook group gave me a place to talk to people about it and about the issues I was having and also have a moderator there who could answer my silly questions. Then I would get a coach for the big faces and that’s my plan of action. That gave me …
Chris Seiter: Then you coached with Anna, obviously.
Heather: I did, yeah.
Chris Seiter: Anna said, “What?” to you, specifically about fearful avoidance.
Heather: I talked about everything that had happened. She, I think, I hadn’t even done introducing the situation. She’s a fearful avoidant which she has personal experience with. She warned me right off the bat that of all the kinds I could get, this guy is going to take.” Yeah. She said minimum a year to [crosstalk 00:13:40].
Chris Seiter: I’m telling you, it’s hard to hear. Anyone who’s listening to this that thinks they have a fearful avoidant, there will be a part of you that says, “That can’t be right.” Heather, it’s right. It takes longer.
Heather: That’s right.
Chris Seiter: It takes longer. Well, I think in your case is going to take a little bit extra longer, too, because you have the military aspect of him being overseas. You can’t really do too much.
Heather: Yeah. But even so, even counting out six months out of there, it’s a basically …
Chris Seiter: It takes a while. If you think about, I mean, the average success story is going to happen between three and seven months. Fearful avoidance take longer naturally. I mean, but that’s what normal situations. Arguably, the hardest situations that you could have, but I think it’s a testament to how smart and amazing you are that it worked out really well. Let’s figure out. What did you do that was smart and amazing? Obviously, something went right.
Heather: Well, okay. Well, I took Anna’s advice to begin with. I did …
Chris Seiter: First steps, you took people as she bought coaching … No. I’m just kidding.
Heather: I did. It is true though. It gave me a plan of action, which is for me I needed a plan. I had a general plan. But I needed specific. I knew the No Contact was coming up. I was freaking out, to be honest. It’s funny, so many people have issues with No Contact. In the Facebook group is the hardest thing. I did not find that the thing. That was my regrouping time. The hardest thing for me was when the texting phase started.
Heather: It terrified me before and I was right to be terrified for me. With Anna, she gave me really like, “All right. This is what you’re going to do. But because he was a fearful avoidant, it wasn’t quite the regular texting program. It had to be a bit longer. If there was no response or anything like that, I had to give it more time than a regular person would.
Chris Seiter: When they pull back, you pull back? Yep.
Heather: Yeah. That was hard. It was really hard. But I did it. He’s very polite [inaudible 00:15:39] super polite, super quick. I never once got a no response. But he never engaged. He never furthered the conversation. It was always very different. It was dragging stuff out. Even on his favorite things, I could not get him engaged while he was deployed. I’m going to caveat that while he was deployed.
Chris Seiter: Well, I think that really hearkens back to that compartmentalization that you were mentioning. How long is he deployed? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you didn’t see any serious success until after he got back from deployment?
Heather: 100%. Yeah. It was completely neutral, low positive, consistently the exact same thing for the time he’s deployed. Didn’t matter if I gave him two weeks, one week, whatever, it was the same until he came home. That’s when things started to change.
Chris Seiter: I’m actually going to ask you a series of questions here that maybe seem they’re off topic. But I think they’re super relevant to anyone who’s in this situation. How did you cope with that? Because he’s going to be … How long was he deployed, for like six months you said?
Heather: Six months. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: All right. He’s deployed for six months. Nothing major happens in those six months. It feels you’re a little bit a hamster on a wheel just doing the same thing over and getting the same results. How do you cope with that, emotionally, internally to get through that period of time?
Heather: It was tough for me, especially because I’m seeing on the board people having success after three months, four months, from a few weeks, and I was, “What am I doing wrong that they’re doing right? Maybe he really doesn’t want to come back.” But at the same time, I also knew about military guys being very compartmentalized when they’re deployed. I had a little bit of faith. Let’s just see what happens when he gets back. That’s what I kept telling myself. We’ll just wait. We’ll see.
Chris Seiter: Okay. That served as your North Star to like, “Okay. I’ll make my ultimate decision on whether I need to just find someone new or continue doing this once he gets back and we’ll see then?”
Heather: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: He gets back.
Heather: He gets back and initially it is the same where he’s … I knew he was back. Actually, that hurt a lot when I knew he was back.
Chris Seiter: Oh, he didn’t say anything?
Heather: He didn’t say anything. He didn’t come to see me. In my mind, you put these little things, “Oh, he’s going to change his mind. I’ll come running back.” He didn’t. He didn’t say anything. It hurts. That hurt more. What I’m saying it hurt just as much as the breakup had. I would still do a little reach outs. I get that same polite response, but nothing major. Then what changed was I got a message from his best friend, who knew I was going to be in a nearby city and said, “Oh, hey, let’s go hang out for the day. We’re going to have this fun thing.”
Heather: I’m like, “Okay.” I mean, we’ve been friends before. But we weren’t super close. But I was thinking, “Oh, this is a way to get to his inner circle. I’m going to do it.”
Chris Seiter: Sphere mental. I got it.
Heather: It’s fearful. I got it. Also get some insider information of what’s going on. But what ended up happening was at the end of the day, his best friend admitted to me that the real reason he asked me to meet up was that my ex had been very sad since he’d come back, not while he was away, but since he’d come back. He was worried about him. He was wondering if I would consider taking him back. Which was funny because I was who got broken up with, but it turned out everyone thought that I broken up with him.
Chris Seiter: He really compartmentalized to the point where it’s almost like his friends didn’t even realize they knew the breakup went down, but they didn’t realize the exact circumstances around that.
Heather: The good news of this, it gave me some renewed help. The bad news of it is that it lets me forget that he’s a fearful avoidant, so I did want to rush ahead a bit, which I can kind of warn about later, doesn’t work. But yeah. Concocted this plan that we’re going to go camping and I would arrange it and then I put out the filler and invite him and see if he wants to come. He immediately responded, “Absolutely. Sounds great. Let’s go do this.”
Heather: It was the most response I’ve gotten from him since he’d left. Again, in my mind, I’m thinking, “This is great. I know he misses me. I know he’s sad. He’s going to want me as soon as he see you.” This didn’t happen, by the way. But the camping trip did happen. He was so communicative. The few weeks leading up to the camping trip, it felt amazing. But then when we got there, we were on pleasant terms. It was great, but there was … We didn’t get back …
Chris Seiter: His friend make a move? Your friend a make move?
Heather: Yeah. Exactly.
Chris Seiter: You’re in the stalemate? No one knows what to do?
Heather: Yeah. But I also now …
Chris Seiter: Does it anything interesting happened at all during the camping trip, or was it literally you’re afraid to do something, he’s afraid to do something, you just live in that place?
Heather: I don’t know. I don’t think he would have been in the right space yet to make a move, because I don’t think he knew what he wanted at that point. But I was definitely afraid to make a move. I think I went a little bit meek again. I don’t think it held me back. But it definitely … Because the longer the weekend went, the more surprising was that it wasn’t progressing. Then it was over.
Chris Seiter: [crosstalk 00:21:21] get frustrating on level two, because you know, he likes you. His friend basically told you as much. But you’re not getting that immediate reaction from him.
Heather: Yeah. To be fair to myself, though, is it that he misses me, or is he just misses having someone and he was done with me. I didn’t know. He start to have this self doubt again. But it didn’t change as much as I thought it would. But what did happen, the benefit of this trip was that it opened up the communication floodgates. Now, I could text him and actually get communications. This is when I started to do the real texting phase, so to speak, the way that it’s meant to be done and doing the push and pull, and I was able to do it properly this time.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Heather: That was the camping trip allowed me to do that. I want to point out to everyone listening. It was not a solo camping trip. It was with a group.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Heather: There’s a bit of safety net there.
Chris Seiter: Okay. You mentioned you do kind of get back into the texting phase here. You start seeing some positive feedback from that. How quickly do things progress at this point?
Heather: Not quickly. I would say we went the push-pull thing and there was few times where I had to go like two weeks … I had to do a few many No Contacts and few more coaching sessions with Anna. Then the next big breakthrough was Thanksgiving.
Chris Seiter: 2020?
Heather: [crosstalk 00:22:46] year. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: 2020, almost, yeah.
Heather: Yeah. Thanksgiving 2020. I couldn’t go home because of COVID. He couldn’t go home because of COVID. It was a just crazy idea. I was like, “No, I’m going to invite him over and we’ll see what happens.” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Great.” He came down for the weekend for Thanksgiving. I ordered. I didn’t make it. I’m not going to lie. I ordered a Thanksgiving meal.
Chris Seiter: Those were the best.
Heather: We had it. Nothing happened.
Chris Seiter: But did you say you made it to him?
Heather: No. No. He know [crosstalk 00:23:22]
Chris Seiter: That’s unfortunate. He’d be like, yeah [crosstalk 00:23:23].
Heather: But it was fun.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Nothing happens?
Heather: Nothing. No. I mean, it was fun. It was enjoyable. We hung out. We watched TV. We ate. It was really, really nice. We sat on the couch by my side.
Chris Seiter: But no holding hands?
Heather: No.
Chris Seiter: No kissing? Nothing like that?
Heather: No. No. But there wasn’t …
Chris Seiter: It’s like teenagers.
Heather: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: No one knows how to make that first move.
Heather: But there wasn’t tension this time. It wasn’t like, “What’s going on, Heath?” We just enjoyed each other’s company?
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Heather: But I thought this is great. He’s remembering how great we are together. Yes. He did. But it didn’t have me not knowing how these things work. Didn’t realize that this would cause the opposite reaction. When he went home I didn’t hear from him for two weeks.
Chris Seiter: Okay. He got really scared, because getting real at that point, you’re physically there, well, maybe nothing romantic technically happened, sometimes emotional intimacy is just as powerful as physical intimacy. I’m assuming emotional … You’re opening up and he’s opening up and becoming vulnerable that can be scary for a fearful avoidant.
Heather: It is. But I will say, once he did reach back to me, he admitted that. He goes, “Sorry, I haven’t been communicating, it’s just that I really enjoyed spending the weekend with you.” I went home and I just was sad that it didn’t continue. That was his first emotional slip up.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Heather: Slip up. I game. He slipped up. He slipped up. Yes. But we’re still were together and then we went back still that texting push and pull. It’s a long process with these guys.
Chris Seiter: Texting phase here is lasting a lot longer than the average success story. But fearful avoidance are different than regular avoidance.
Heather: Yeah. Then a similar situation happened at Christmas. Except this time I went back to his …
Chris Seiter: Holidays.
Heather: Oh, actually this one’s even better. He invited me, again, to his parents’ house for Christmas.
Chris Seiter: It’s literally go back to the scene of the crime.
Heather: I know. But again, we didn’t get back together. It was …
Chris Seiter: But is anything progressing, physically at this point, kissing, hand holding, anything like that or he’s still a little too afraid to do things like that?
Heather: During Christmas, yes. But it was why we’re at his parents’ during Christmas is we were playing make belief that we were boyfriend, girlfriend again. But we both knew it wasn’t real, if that makes sense.
Chris Seiter: It does, actually, because do you think that … Okay. This is a weird question to ask. But I do think with this guy, it’s definitely worth asking. Do you think that pressure, to me, he seems he really cares about what his parents think. That seems to be a huge thing. Do you think the pressure of having to see them and bring you there add to that dynamic at all, the fakeness dynamic, you’re together, but not really together?
Heather: It’s very possible. I guess the way I refer to it at the time as to why it didn’t freak me out was it was just try before you buy.
Chris Seiter: That’s a great …
Heather: That’s how this feel.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Heather: But I think he just need to see how it felt for him to be [inaudible 00:26:45] because he’s clearly scared to go back into this phase. I think he needed to know is this like … Because he’s a type of person, fearful avoidant, that when they jump in, they’re all in. I think that that’s why it took him so long. But I want to be clear, we did not get back together Christmas.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Holiday was not what pushed him over the edge.
Heather: No.
Chris Seiter: But you became … You kissed, or you do make some progress in that realm but you’re not together yet?
Heather: Yeah. Physical got crossed. That was the first time that it happened. But it didn’t mean we were back together when we got home.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Heather: He did the same thing. He did a Thanksgiving where he pulled back again.
Chris Seiter: Two weeks.
Heather: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Two weeks. Well, at least he’s predictable at this point.
Heather: Yes.
Chris Seiter: You know exactly what’s going on.
Heather: Yes. But at this time it was quite devastating. I had another one-on-one with Anna. During Christmas break, I think it was. She was like, “This is it. Success story. This is great.” Then it didn’t happen and he pulled back really, really hard to the point where … My birthday was a few weeks later and I got …
Chris Seiter: Okay. Maybe that crossing that physical barrier, I think maybe the first time he pulled back you have that emotional barrier that’s crossed. He pulls back and freaks him out. But above the emotional barrier to him maybe is the physical barrier and that begins to get crossed and he really maybe pulls back. He’s like, “I got to think about this.” Do you think that’s what happened?
Heather: Yeah. I think so. But I will say so, when I talked to Anna at this point, by this point by the way had been on … Almost a year.
Chris Seiter: Almost a year. Yeah.
Heather: Anna sat me down and she said, “Because I was so sure that what you had back in December was it.”
Chris Seiter: She told me.
Heather: Yeah. She’s like I don’t …
Chris Seiter: I don’t know if I told you that. She said, “I got one, fearful avoidant success story. It’s happening.” Then I didn’t hear anything from her.
Heather: No. I had another coaching session with her after I think three weeks I panicked, I had another session with her. She said, “I’ve got to be honest. You have to accept this might not happen,” which was so hard for me to hear after all this time. She just said, “You tried your best but you can continue.” She says, “There’s a possibility. But you have to be realistic that this might not happen at this point, because you’ve tried everything.”
Chris Seiter: You don’t want to waste your time on a situation, too, that can become untenable no matter what you do.
Heather: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Obviously, was that how it worked out?
Heather: No. Two, she doesn’t say it wasn’t going to work out, but she was being really realistic at this point.
Chris Seiter: She’s trying to protect you so that you don’t go all in on someone that’s going to break your heart. That’s not what we want. We want that transformation where you’re like, “You know what? I can find someone just as good.”
Heather: Yeah. I told her this time I said, “It’s COVID right now.” I had started dating again. I did declare. I did the whole Trinity thing, work, I renovated my house, I got promoted. I know I did all this stuff. I was dating. But at the same time, it was still COVID. It wasn’t I was really meet a lot of new people. I thought, “You know what? I’ve got nothing going on for the next few months until this COVID thing starts down, because it was a second wave happening.”
Heather: I’ll give him to the end of this. We’ll see how it progresses. But I’m not done yet. I still think there’s hope. But we’ll see. She gave me a new plan. Again, back to that whole texting, push-pull. I went back to that phase so many times. But we’re back to that again. It was like that. Quite a while.
Chris Seiter: You’re in the testing phase constantly. Were there any progressions up that value ladder up to phone calls? I mean, you had gone to in-person. I mean, I don’t know if I classify the meeting the parents as a romantic type of a date. But was there any sprinkling in of talking, or is he’s just strictly text message?
Heather: Strictly text message, but that’s because that’s cheap it. He did call me on my birthday.
Chris Seiter: Interesting.
Heather: That was, which he doesn’t … He’s not phone call person. That was interesting. But we were talking more. Now, it wasn’t that awkward. I could text him and it wouldn’t be weird and I could message. But it wasn’t that same when we were dating, talk about everything daily, kind of thing. I still had to respect the mirroring and the rules of the text messages.
Chris Seiter: Yes. Sometimes even … Because if you really think about it, you go back to the beginning of your relationship, everything’s so new, you can talk everything, you’re learning. Sometimes that can shoot you in the foot, because then you run out of things to talk about, and things to keep interesting, especially when you’re going through a breakup like this. They feel they already know everything about you.
Heather: Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t talk about this before. But when I did try to speed up the text messaging, because I am only human, I did try to make that happen a few times. It backfired. That’s when I would get him getting less close enough. He’d close up or not respond as much. That was when I would try to speed up the process and get too personal or try to hit him up every day. It never worked.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Heather: It always backfired.
Chris Seiter: Something’s got to give here. You’ve been through … You said your birthday is a little after Christmas. You’ve been through the Christmas thing. He pulls back, and then the birthday thing happens. What happens, something’s got to turn it?
Heather: He got deployed again.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Heather: I don’t I mentioned that before.
Chris Seiter: Another six months.
Heather: I didn’t mention that in the Facebook group. But he got the deployed again, is what happened. Just a mini one, just a mini one. But he got deployed again.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Heather: We were having … But this time we were talking. Well, I was doing the text messaging thing. But this time I was communicating with him, as opposed to the no contact last time. Honestly, I just think at this point with the text messaging me … Just the text messaging, and respecting those boundaries and doing the mirroring, it gave him the time. He knew the process, what he wanted to do, and the proof that I wasn’t pressuring him.
Heather: I think that’s what I needed to be doing the whole time, which is the whole point of the program. At no point was I pressuring him, but I was showing them how good it could be. But at the same time, I want to let you figure this out. I truly believe that’s what, finally, got into his head. I missed this. She’s not pressuring me. It’s right there. Then when we will get away again, he really missed it. It was while he was away, that’s when he just said it one day, in a message.
Heather: He’s like, “Yeah. When we get back together … It’s one week, when we when I get back home, we’re going to do this and this and we’re going to go do this and vacation.”
Chris Seiter: Future phase. All right. Okay.
Heather: Future phase. It literally it was a day, he just started using future terms, and he never went back.
Chris Seiter: Because sometimes people make a huge deal about the talk, did that ever happen for him? Was he a little too afraid to take that step? It just almost naturally unfold, is the point we’re just back together?
Heather: It naturally. I let it. I purposely didn’t have the talk. Because from everything I’ve seen with him …
Chris Seiter: I think you figured correctly that would push him. There’s that emotional thing. Then there’s the physical thing, that is up there, putting a commitment on it. You’ve been together for a while now, because you posted that success story in June, I think.
Heather: Yeah. It’s actually Anna gave me inspiration not to confront him. She never told me not to. But she told me her story and how she had just after … She just naturally migrated back together. Then after so many months, she was like, “Oh, here’s my boyfriend” and he didn’t correct her. Basically that’s what happened with us. I did it specifically because I remembered her story, and it worked.
Chris Seiter: That’s actually what happened with my wife. I’ve got a very similar story, which is we were out at some bar that had a band playing. It was during a July 4th. She was wearing an outfit that had the American flag on it. They called her up because they wanted her to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I don’t know. It’s this dumb bar thing. But the guy asked my permission, first.
Chris Seiter: He said, “Hey.” We were just dating at the time. “Is it okay if I asked for your girlfriend to come up on stage?” I go, “Sure.” That’s how it went. Sometimes letting it unfold naturally is beautiful, if you get cool stories like that.
Heather: Well, at this point, I knew him well enough. It did take this process for me to learn.
Chris Seiter: It did. Yeah.
Heather: It truly. I didn’t know before that I couldn’t push this. He had to make that decision, and he did. Again, once he was in, he was all in. That was good. But definitely, I don’t think that conversation would have worked well for him.
Chris Seiter: For you, I think the key really was understanding that fearful attachment. But most importantly, when they pull back, you need to kind of pull back. To me, that requires an immense amount of discipline. What would you say to someone who … Because to me, there’s also a huge difference between understanding and doing. A lot of people understand. A lot of people don’t do. How did you reconcile the two?
Heather: Well, I did have my moments of doubt. I’m not going to say that I didn’t. But I would say for the most part, I had to console myself saying, “I really truly think this can work out. I have to stick with this.” I remember thinking several times, I think it told us to Anna, “Is that I can go through a year.” I told this the very, “I can go through a year if I know it’s going to work out. What I don’t want to do is go through a year to find out it’s not going to work out.”
Heather: Because I had this belief that I truly think it could work out, I kept at it. It looks it wasn’t till that December conversation I had with her … We’re both of us. It wasn’t just her. I thought, “Oh, my God. This might not work.” It’s funny because that was the last big hurdle before he said, he’s like, “Yeah. We’re back together.” But he really had to pull back hard to make that final decision.
Chris Seiter: I’d say in Anna’s defense, she’s used to getting results a lot quicker. Your guy was a tough one. Usually, it’s the emotional thing. They’re more than okay with the physical barrier getting breached. But I guess for him, he was really uptight about that. Which is a beautiful thing, because it really goes to show how much he does care about relationships, especially if he’s all in. How have things been since you’ve been back together?
Heather: It’s been amazing. Yeah. He’s over all the time. Actually, I didn’t mention this. But I have a dog. Actually, that was one of the first things … I mentioned this in the story. That’s the first way I knew that he was missing me for how I started … Actually, it’s one of the ways that I kept my hope alive, was he would say, “I missed the dog, and give him a cuddle for me. I miss him. I can’t wait to see him again.” I didn’t realize.
Chris Seiter: That’s a clever inception way of putting it in there. Like, “I miss you.”
Heather: Exactly. I realized that even when he said it the first time, I was like, “No you don’t. You miss me.” I realized that. That when he would say I missed the dog, that’s what would give me hope that, no, it’s actually me he misses. But anyways, we are back together. He still jokes about that with the dog. When he goes away now, he’ll be like, “Oh, yeah. I really missed the dog. You’re fine. But I missed the dog.” I think he knows that he was doing that now.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Well, maybe this is an aspect that you didn’t think about. But maybe that was his subtle hint.
Heather: Maybe.
Chris Seiter: I get the sense that he’s a little too afraid to make the first move. The only reason I say that is because men who aren’t afraid to make the first move are usually the ones that breach that ask question like, “Hey, are we going to be boyfriend or girlfriend again?” But he just let it unfold naturally. You’re smart to let it unfold naturally, because now look at you. You’re just this ultimate, awesome situation.
Chris Seiter: But I’m just wondering if maybe a lot of this is because of a lack of communication on his part on what he needs. Because I think fearful avoidance are really afraid to tell you what they really need.
Heather: Yeah. I would agree with that. Again, me not being fearful one, I didn’t understand that. I 100% believe I needed this process to understand him better. I really do understand him better than I did before. Even now, there’s a few times where he’s pulled a little bit. Sorry.
Chris Seiter: No. I’m sorry to interrupt you. I was just going to say that’s huge. Because if you really think about it, instead of thinking this girl is like crowding my space, he’s going to think this girl knows exactly when I need space. That shift gives you advantage over every other woman he could possibly meet. Don’t tell him I said that.
Heather: But he knows exactly and that’s what I’m saying. Even though we’re back together and I’m not doing a texting favors for him, there’s a few times where he was really stressed and I could sense it, because now I recognize it. I just gave him the space. Then after a day or two weeks ago, blah, blah, blah, back to normal. I now know he needs that. He needs sometimes just to be in himself and not have me nagging him. What’s the term you use?
Chris Seiter: Net.
Heather: Net.
Chris Seiter: But I would say … To me, I don’t look at it you nagging him or nabbing him. I mean maybe that’s how he looks at it. But I look at you like you want to fix the problem, because that will make him feel better. Is that the intent behind why you would push too much in the past?
Heather: Well, because I want to help if he says, “Yes. I feel what can I do to help? This will help. This is not helping?”
Chris Seiter: I can be the hero here.
Heather: Exactly.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Well, that’s beautiful. I’m blown away. A lot of insights that I learned personally from this, probably the number one thing is the compartmentalization aspect of the military thing. I’d actually never heard that before. It makes so much sense now that I think about it where they get deployed, they compartmentalize. The No Contact rule may not be as effective. I mean there’s not really much you can do.
Chris Seiter: But I think what you probably did for yourself during the No Contact rule was an essential part of the process, even just understanding how attachment styles work and diagnosing him is like he sounds like a fearful avoidant, here’s how you handle that when he gets back. But also the texting phase and how that … If you got a fearful avoidant it’s going to take some time.
Heather: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: What would you say looking back was the most important thing for you?
Heather: That I get from himself personally or to get back with him like that?
Chris Seiter: Let’s go both.
Heather: Okay. For me, personally, I think … I actually mentioned this before. I didn’t mention it during the podcast. But I needed to get that confidence back and that bring back that dynamic of where I wasn’t being meek and trying to make him happy and scared he’s going to leave, but actually be a partner where we have that banter.
Chris Seiter: That’s equal.
Heather: If he … Yeah. Exactly, very equal. I truly needed that back in the relationship for it to work. He knew that. Now that that’s back, we’re both so comfortable. I needed to get my confidence back up so we could have that feeling of equality back in relationship, which he wants, too. He didn’t like it when I was meek. This was really good. I can’t tell you how much I needed that.
Heather: Then I think the most important thing for the relationship was what we just discussed was me learning that he does need to process things a little bit differently than I do, and that’s fine, as long as I can recognize it. I’m more than willing to give him that time.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. I think that both of those things are so essential, I think especially because we didn’t really touch on it too much in the podcast. But basically what she was talking about is how she found herself in the relationship the first time almost afraid she was going to lose him to the point where she starts trying to please him, and everything becomes about him. She loses herself a little bit, and then go through the breakup. You realize like, “Oh, my God. I was doing that” Now, you don’t do that anymore.
Heather: No. No. Yeah. I feel happier, too.
Chris Seiter: Heather, I’m really … This is a great episode. Thank you so much for coming on. I just am super grateful that you took the time out of your day to do this.
Heather: Yeah. No problem. I’m so excited that I got to the point where I can do a podcast and talk about this. We’re both very happy now. I do owe it to the program. Not just saying that to, “Oh, all you should buy his program.”
Chris Seiter: There you go.
Heather: It definitely, without question, I would not have gotten him back had I not gone through that, for sure.
Chris Seiter: Well, thank you. You can just continue the call. We should also praise Coach Anna, because I think Coach Anna helped a ton.
Heather: Yeah. She was amazing. Amazing. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: There you go. Buy the program, get Coach Anna. You should be good.
But one thing that we really haven’t hyper-focused on that we’re going to do today is what kind of impact that completing a no contact rule actually has on your overall chances of success.
We’re going to do our best to come to a definitive answer, but, as I think you’re going to learn, there’s no such thing as a definitive answer when it comes to breakups.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
So, I thought probably the smartest thing to do first is to define what we consider to be a successful no contact rule.
So, we’ve all heard about the no contact rule, this magical period of time where you purposely ignore your ex, usually, no matter what the circumstances are, for anywhere between 21 to 45 days, and hopefully at some point, they’ll miss you.
Now, the no contact rule in and of itself is actually a lot more complicated than this average, generic definition would have you believe.
For example, we’ve learned that, really, what you do with your time during the no contact rule is one of the biggest indicators on if you’re going to have a successful reach-out or meet-up with your ex after a breakup.
To give you an example, imagine there’s two people, Person A and Person B. Person A does a no contact rule with the pure intent of trying to make their ex miss them. Person B does the no contact rule, not necessarily to get over the breakup, but at some point throughout the no contact rule, they decide, “I’m going to focus more of my time on me instead of on my ex.”
Now, when you compare the two experiences of Person A and Person B, Person B ends up having a lot more depth when they actually do get back in touch with their ex. Why?
Well, I think it ultimately has to do with the rate of change.
While Person A and Person B are both doing essentially the same things, Person A is still obsessing about their ex and oftentimes has anxious tendencies that still have a tendency, pun intended, to come out when they actually do get back in touch with their ex, whereas person B may start out with anxious tendencies, but through this time away, through the internal growth that occurs because they’re actively trying to improve their own lives during the no contact rule, they shed some of those anxious tendencies and then get back in touch with their ex, and their ex looks at them like they’re this whole new person.
What Are The Overall Chances Of Success With An Ex?
Now, the other element that we have to consider when we’re looking at the overall chances of getting an ex back after a no contact rule is what our research has found to be the average chance of success of getting an ex back without our help.
So, a few years ago, I did this study where I was trying to find real-life data on what the average chance of someone who wants to get their ex back actually has when they’re just sort of going through a breakup.
What’s interesting is there’s not a lot of research that has been done on how often couples reunite after a breakup, and the research that is done is either not done by a reputable source or is so specific to conditions that you always have to take it with a grain of salt, essentially.
For example, some of those conditions would be something like, you know, we’re only looking at people in college, we’re not looking at the holistic experience of individuals across all age ranges. Things like that, you need to keep an eye out for.
But nevertheless, I ended up finding some reputable resources that had done research on how often people would reunite after getting an ex back.
And it turns out that, on average, there’s a 48.25% chance that you can get your ex back without our help, roughly 50/50, which doesn’t really tell you much more than you probably already know.
Now, it’s important to keep in mind that this chance of success here actually happened where the no contact rule really wasn’t implemented, and if it was implemented, it was implemented just based on what that particular individual felt was right for their situation.
So, oftentimes, no contact in these types of circumstances is indefinite, meaning they have no intent of ever talking or trying to get their exes back, which I realize is not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it helps us for answering the overall question that you’re here to learn about, which is, “What are the chances of getting my ex back if I use a no contact rule?”
One other factor that I think is important to keep in mind is we’ve had a lot of success or have been blessed with a lot of success stories, people who have gotten their exes back throughout their time on Ex Boyfriend Recovery and our brother site Ex Girlfriend Recovery.
But what’s interesting is we need to take a look at how we define success, because I want to be transparent with you. So, for me, success can mean usually one of two things. Number one is the most obvious one. You know, you want to get your ex back, you implement some strategies and tactics, and ultimately get them back.
Doing Thing A leads to Thing B, very obvious.
I think also success can be considered if you come into this process wanting your ex back more than anything, and then exit this process choosing not to get them back, but also having them, or them exhibiting signs that they are interested in you, but you haven’t decided you don’t want them back anymore, essentially. I’d consider this to be a success as well.
Let’s Actually Define Success After The No Contact Rule
So, when you look at that, how you define success, or rather, how we define success, I did this interview with our head coach, master coach, Anna, who’s our head coach here at Ex Boyfriend Recovery, and we were just talking, and she mentioned that she’s had a success rate of her clients of over 70%. And I asked her specifically, “Well, how are you defining success?”
And she basically gave the same parameters that I gave: either you get your ex back, or things are going really well with your ex but you decide you don’t want them back anymore. So, those parameters had to be in place.
What’s interesting is, before my wife ended up moving on and doing something different, she was actually a coach here at Ex Boyfriend Recovery as well, in… I believe in the years 2018, or, I think 2017 or 2018, I can’t remember exactly, because years just kind of blend together, she ended up taking on 10 high-value clients. I mean, these were clients that worked with her day and night, every single day.
And her success rate was a seven out of 10. Seven of them got their exes back; three of them did not. One of them technically… One of the three technically did get the ex back; the ex literally looked at her and said, “Do you ever think about getting back together?” And she didn’t know what to do, so she texted my wife. So, there’s a little bit of an issue from there, so it could’ve been actually higher, but…
I think what’s interesting is when you take the basic strategy, the basic overall baseline, our chances of getting your ex back without any kind of help from us or any other coaching practice that helps you through this difficult time, helps you through this grieving process, you’re looking at roughly a 48.25% baseline chance. There’s a 48% chance that your ex will come back to you.
We cannot guarantee that. I’ve been on record saying multiple times that even if I sit here and say you have a 99% chance of getting your ex back, there’s still a 1% chance that you won’t get your ex back.
There’s no guarantees in this.
But what this tells us is a 48.25% chance is kind of the baseline. Yet our clients… We are obviously very, very big people, we think very highly of the no contact rule, if you will. Our clients are having over 70% success rates, and they are using the no contact rule.
So, if you’re looking for any kind of way of gauging what the no contact rule can sort of add to your overall baseline percentage of chances, I think roughly it’s going to add 21.75% improvement on your chances of success.
And look, this is not necessarily talking about the generalized no contact.
I realize this is very, very difficult to kind of get to the bottom of what’s working and what’s not, like I said. The way we define the no contact rule is it’s supposed to be this period of time where you work on outgrowing your ex.
This is the single… In fact, this is the single most important factor that we’re finding helps you get your ex back. It’s the ability to get to this place emotionally where you’ve outgrown them, where you are willing to let them go forever and be okay with your life.
How many of you listening to this or reading this right now are at that place?
Chances are, probably not a lot of you. So, if you’re not doing a no contact rule with that in mind, you can kind of kiss these improvements goodbye. But the impact, the overall impact that a no contact rule has on your chances is just impressive. To me, it still baffles my mind when someone wouldn’t even want to try it out.
I guess I… Playing devil’s advocate, the reason most people don’t want to try the no contact rule out, usually they fall into two camps. Number one is it seems like kind of a mean thing to do to an ex, someone who you care about so deeply.
And number two is you think that it is a type of a strategy meant to manipulate your ex. And we’re trying to reframe the way you’re looking at the no contact rule.
This is not a strategy that’s about your ex. This is a strategy about you. This is a strategy where you will work to heal after the breakup. This is the important part that we’re trying to get across.
So, the first thing we would say about, like, look, the first big improvement that the no contact rule will have on your chances is it’s really going to help the internal work that you’re going to be doing. It gives you time to create some steady habits, to create an efficiency of habit stacking that allows you to have more depth.
We have no control over the length of our life, but we have control over the depth of our life. And I’m a big believer in becoming someone so impressive that your ex just is naturally drawn to you, and you don’t really do that by obsessing about them and trying to play games during the no contact rule on making them miss you. It’s not about that. We need to sort of put that off. So, I think that’s the first big thing that can really improve the impact that the no contact rule will have on your overall chances of success.
For me, the second big thing is actually by looking at the data. We’ve had a lot of success stories, thousands that have come through our program, and I’m not kidding you, literally thousands.
Our Way Of No Contact Is Different Than You Expect
I’ve been lucky enough to interview, I think I’ve got like 50 or 60 hours’ worth of interviews on YouTube just for free, where I sit down with success stories and interview them for anywhere between 35 minutes to an hour, talking to them, trying to pick them apart and understand what they’re doing that’s working.
And what’s interesting is that in 90% of those very same success stories, they used a no contact rule. So, the no contact rule’s clearly a huge factor for those who are successful at getting their exes back.
We also think that it’s a huge reason for why our program is so successful. What I think sets our program apart is that we initially started as one of the traditional, like, “Hey, look, we will teach you how to get your ex back,” but over time, we learned what actually work isn’t necessarily the tactics to make you more desirable to your ex. What matters more is that you make yourself more desirable to yourself, and by default, your ex finds that more desirable.
And I know that’s, like, incredibly cliché, and I think that’s why a lot of people, when they hear something like that, they kind of scoff and roll their eyes and say, “Well, that’s cliché, I’ve heard that a million times.”
But what I’m proud of is the way in which we empower men and women to actually make a difference, and the no contact rule is sort of the vehicle in which we give them the… Think of it like this. It’s the first big domino that falls.
Once we can get them to do the no contact rule and get them to adopt the no contact rule from an outgrowth mindset, we find they just end up improving week after week after week, becoming more empowered, becoming more confident to the point where, at the end, our end goal for everyone that comes through our website, program, everything is at the end of a no contact rule, we want to see such a change internally within you that you don’t even really want to get your ex back anymore, because that’s how we know, look, now you have all the leverage.
You talk to them, you don’t care if they respond, you’re not going to be looking at your phone every five minutes. You’ve kind of grown past them. You kind of have to ask yourself, “Are they willing to meet me at my new level?”
I also think that you need to understand that the no contact rule is a tool and not the entire strategy for getting an ex back. Look, the no contact rule will absolutely make anger dissipate, and will absolutely make people nostalgic, but that’s pretty much all it does from a stand from a “this will make my ex miss me” standpoint.
If you’re looking at the no contact rule, just purely what it’s going to do to your ex, it’s going to do two things.
It will make them calm down after the breakup, and it will help make them more nostalgic; our research on avoidance has suggested that. But we add this extra element of, like, “Okay, while that’s going on, let’s also do this work here. Let’s move on.”
This is not a popular thing to say, because I think most people come into this…
Most people come into this because they think their ex is the man of their dreams. And what we’re trying to make you realize at the end of it is, he may very well be, but also, so is this guy, so is this guy, so is this guy, and you have your pick of the litter.
No Contact Is The First Step… Not The Entire Strategy
So, the first thing I would say is you really need to understand that the no contact rule is just the first step to this overall strategy. It’s not the entire strategy. I think that’s a huge mistake people make. Right? There’s a synergy between all of the three core components that make up our program. So, if you were kind of to divide the three components of our program up, you would have three specific categories. You would have the no contact rule, you’d have the concept of the value ladder, and then the concept of the value chain. So, the no contact rule is all about internal work, the value ladder is all about external work, and the value chain kind of combines that value ladder and no contact work together.
All right, so the way I try to explain it to people who get confused, because sometimes I don’t do the best of explaining it, is simple. The no contact rule, this period of time where you’re ignoring your ex, is all about you fixing you. Not saying that there’s anything wrong, but there’s improvements that we can make. Everyone has improvements.
The value ladder is all about helping you understand the mediums in which you’re going to be communicating with your ex, and how you need to communicate with your ex. So, for example, after a no contact rule, what do you do? How do you get your ex back? Well, the first thing you’re typically going to want to do is build value through text messaging. Once enough value is built through there, you’re going to move up to phone calls, or sometimes video chat or Skype, or what have you. Once you build enough value there, while still using text message, you add on meetups. Meetups are kind of not romantic dates, they can be [inaudible 00:16:41] kind of hangouts, but they’re not romantic yet. So, while you’re doing texting and video chat, phone call, things like that, you’re also doing meetups.
Once you do a couple of meetups, that’s when you try to go for the romantic date. And usually, if you’ve gotten to that romantic date and you’ve sort of climbed your way to the top of the ladder, that’s usually enough for most women to have a man come and basically say, “I want you back.” But in cases where they don’t say that, there’s strategies that we teach that can help you do that as well.
But then, you kind of have this understanding of like, “Okay, I do the no contact rule, then I do the texting phase, then I do the phone call phase, then I do the meetup phase, then I do the romantic date phase. What the heck do I say? How do I build value?” Well, that’s where the value chain comes into play, by looking at the types of conversations you’re going to be having. Right?
So, generally speaking, I think there’s four or five main types of conversations that you’re going to want to have based on where you are at in the value ladder. So, the first types of conversation is small talk, basically. It’s the type of conversation that you can have pretty much with anyone, you know, like, “Hey, how’s the weather? What’s up?” That’s small talk. Next, you have telling stories, right? So, telling stories, you usually only tell stories to people who are acquaintances. They’re not necessarily strangers; they could be sort of work friends, they can be your closest friends, so there’s a wide variety. Next, you have sharing opinions. Sharing opinions is usually only reserved for close friends, family members, people you’re dating.
Then you have sort of the virgin ground. Virgin ground is where you start diving into topics that you’re maybe a little afraid to talk about. Usually, it’s not about your past relationship with your ex. This is usually sort of new ground where you’re kind of opening up and showing your ex the depth you have, and hopefully, in turn, your ex is sharing depth they have. And what you’re looking for is them to literally say, “Wow, I’ve never told anyone that before.” You’ve hit virgin ground. And then the final one is where you share feelings. You usually only share sort of romantic feelings with people you’re romantic with. So, there’s even kind of like a value ladder stair-step aspect to the types of conversations you’re having, and you sprinkle these all throughout the value ladder.
Now, how to do that is another article, another podcast episode, another entire YouTube video in and of itself. But that gives you kind of the idea that the no contact rule in and of itself will help improve your chances, but it’s not going to be the entire strategy. And the more you realize that, the more power the no contact rule can have, because you know, “Okay, this is just building the foundation for everything that’s to come.”
Today, we’re going to talk about how to tell if he’s not over his ex.
Now what’s really interesting about this topic is that on our website, Ex Boyfriend Recovery, we mostly deal with people coming at it from the other side of the equation.
Meaning they’ve been broken up with by an ex, they’re trying to get that ex back or trying to move on from an ex.
But I thought an interesting way to thread the needle is by looking at it from the perspective of someone who’s actually dating a boyfriend and has suspicions that this boyfriend is still into their ex.
So this is kind of this interesting way of threading the needle between both encampments, whether you’re currently in a relationship with someone and you have a suspicion that they may still be harboring feelings for their ex.
Or you’re coming at it from the perspective of you have been broken up with by your ex-boyfriend, he’s moved on to someone new, and you’re trying to figure out if he’s still into you.
Let’s get started.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
So today we’re going to talk about the eight definitive signs that he’s not over his ex and these definitive signs are not just taken out of a hat.
I’m famous for trying to use real life research to back up every assertion that I make. Now, luckily on Ex Boyfriend Recovery, we’ve had a wealth of success stories from people who have gotten their exes back.
And what’s interesting is we learn a lot by talking to the individuals who got their exes back and asking those individuals, if they actually asked their ex what their perspective was during the breakup.
So specifically I want to hyper sort of look at our success stories in which another woman was involved, because I think that will help us understand how to tell if he’s not over his ex, when he’s dating someone currently.
And we found eight definitive sort of signs that you need to keep an eye out for and some of these signs, if you’re not new to this website, and you’ve read a lot of our articles will not be anything new to you.
Here are the eight definitive signs that he’s not over his ex.
Time Investment From A Texting Perspective
Time Investment From An In Person Perspective
They Come To Her Rescue Every Chance They Get
The Avoidant Side Gets Triggered When You Bring Her Up
They Fixate On How Their Past Relationship Went Wrong
They Grow Jealous When Their Ex Dates Someone New
You Catch Them Using Pet Names With Their Ex
They Become Overly Protective Of Their Phone
Sign #1: Time Investment From A Texting Perspective
Sign number one, time investment from a texting perspective.
All right, so what’s kind of interesting about this is we know based on a lot of different scientific research out there, there’s this concept called the interdependence theory, which posits that human beings commit to one another based on a cost and benefit scenario.
So in essence, human beings are always trying to find the best deal for themselves from a relationship perspective. And usually they use three types of criteria to determine whether or not they’re going to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs.
And those three bits of criteria are how satisfied they tend to be in the current relationship that they’re in. If they feel they’re not very satisfied, what typically happens next is they start thinking that there’s a better alternative out there for them.
They think I can do better than the person I’m with.
And then of course, they look at investment from a monetary perspective, but more important, from an emotional and time perspective.
Now what’s really interesting is they’ve done a lot of research on these different facets, these different tenants.
So we have,
Satisfaction
Alternatives
Investment
And what’s interesting is they definitely seem to find correlations between investment and everything else.
And what I mean by that is let’s imagine you take a pretend scenario here.
Let’s say that you’ve been married together with someone for 25 years, and you’re incredibly unhappy with the relationship, you feel unsatisfied.
And every day you wake up thinking to yourself, I can do better than this.
I need to find someone better than this. I need to leave this person. And what’s interesting is that person in this pretend scenario never leaves that person. Why? Well, it’s really from a investment standpoint.
They have found that even if you are unsatisfied in a relationship, and even if you feel like you can do better than the person that you’re with, you tend to not to change your situation if you have invested a lot into it.
So what we’re looking for here is a time investment from a texting perspective. So if you were one of those people who is very comfortable, very secure with yourself, and you’re okay with your current boyfriend texting his ex, and you start to notice that that boyfriend is spending more time texting his ex than he does texting and spending time with you, this is a sign that he is feeling more feelings towards her.
It’s not a good sign.
It’s a sign that he’s not over his ex essentially.
Sign #2: Investment From An In Person Perspective
Now staying on the same investment standpoint this leads us to actually sign number two, which is time investment from an in-person perspective.
So texting is pretty much the thing that all couples do nowadays.
Usually we’re finding that across all age brackets, texting is probably the easiest way of communication, but it’s not the most meaningful way of communicating.
If you notice that your ex or your current boyfriend is spending a lot of time with his ex, what that typically means is he is investing a lot of meaningful time with this person. And it is not a good sign. Generally speaking, people who are happy in their relationships do not spend time with their exes if they can help it.
And what I mean by that is there are always, those constraints revolved around sharing kids, or if the person works for you or works with them, or what have you, circumstantial things like that don’t really count.
We’re talking about him spending time with his ex when he doesn’t have to, and an in-person perspective.
So the one sort of tricky thing here is it’s really easy in sign number one to say like, okay, if he’s spending more time texting his ex than he does texting you, not a good sign. It means he’s still not over his ex.
With sign number two, what we’re looking for here isn’t necessarily the guy’s spending more time with his ex in person, but rather we’re looking for, if he’s spending as much time with this person as he is with you, he still has feelings for that person.
Sign #3: They Come To Her Rescue Every Chance They Get
Let’s move on to sign number three.
They come to her rescue every chance they get. Now, what’s interesting about this one is it really backs up what we’re finding with regards to the damsel in distress text message.
So if you’re not familiar, Ex Boyfriend Recovery was originally conceived as a strategy website for helping people who are trying to get their exes back, actually accomplish that goal.
Over time, as it has evolved more into a self-help development type of a strategy, which if done correctly can help you achieve that goal.
But more than anything, it’s helping you gear your time towards repairing yourself after a relationship, kind of picking yourself up off the ground. But what is kind of cool about all of our experience in helping individuals get back with exes, we’ve kind of learned tricks of the trade.
We’re kind of learning what works when exes are kind of engaged. And what we found works better than anything seems to be these damsel in distress type text messages.
So a prime example of this is we had a client once in our coaching practice who wanted to find a way to get her ex to see her in person. So it turns out that her air conditioning was broken in her apartment and she didn’t know how to fix it.
And she didn’t have the money to hire an air conditioning repair guy. And it just turns out her ex was really handy around the house with things like that.
So she sent him a text, “Hey, could I get your help on something?” And he dropped everything and came running.
If you’re noticing that your boyfriend keeps running to repair things for his ex, it is a good sign that he harbors some feelings for her. Otherwise he would just sort of say, “We’re not dating anymore. I don’t care about that. Figure it out yourself. I moved on to someone new.”
That’s what you want to see happen. What typically does happen in situations where your boyfriend has feelings for his ex is he will literally drop everything at the drop of a hat and go fix whatever she needs fixed.
Sign #4: The Avoidant Side Of Him Gets Triggered
Let’s move on to sign number four.
All right, so sign number four is the avoidance side of him gets triggered when you bring her up. You are not dumb. I realize that’s a very simple statement to make. You already know that.
And what I mean by that is when you are in a situation or scenario where you are worried if your current boyfriend has feelings for his ex, you are most likely going to bring this up to him, not in necessarily the most calm manner or in the ideal manner, but you will bring it up to him.
What you’re looking for here is to draw on your past experience and look and see how he reacts. What you don’t want to see is his avoidance side getting triggered. What you do want to see is him not see me bothered by it.
Him just simply explaining that it’s not true and I’ll explain why.
What you don’t want to see is the avoidance side getting triggered.
So what do I mean by that?
Well, we really talk about attachment styles a lot on this website.
So attachment styles, basically there’s four core main attachment styles:
secure attachment
anxious attachment
avoidant attachment
fearful attachment
Avoidant attachment style is what we’re looking at here.
We’re finding most ex-boyfriends that we deal with on our website tend to have avoidant attachment styles. That means they really value their independence. So when they feel like they become threatened or their independence becomes threatened, they tend to push people away out of their lives.
Well, in this odd way, you bringing up the boyfriend triggers or can trigger this side because it feels like an assault on his independence. And this is kind of a weird sort of thing. So what you don’t want to see happen is him to withdraw and almost disappear.
This would indicate he’s still harboring feelings for his ex, because what we notice happens with avoidant people is they tend to only allow themselves to feel nostalgia for past relationships when they are sure that they can never get that past relationship back.
So this happens one of two ways.
The first way is the way we recommend to people, which is try to project that you’re moving on after your breakup, even if you don’t feel like it because this will help that nostalgia come out.
The second is if that avoidant begins to date with someone new, AKA you, and they can think back positively on their past relationship. So this is what we’re looking for. We’re looking to see if his avoidance side gets triggered. So what are some avoidant things to do?
Well, I gave you the most common one, which is they simply shut up and sort of very slowly disappear. You’re looking for any type of withdrawal aspect coming from them. This is not a good sign.
Sign #5: Fixating On How Their Past Relationship Went Wrong
Let’s move on to sign number five.
Sign number five is they fixate on how their past relationship went wrong.
Okay, story time.
When I was 19 years old, maybe 20, I had gone through my first breakup and I’ll never forget this.
I was really upset about how the breakup ended, because I felt like I could have done better in the relationship.
I felt like I was given an unfair scenario. I felt like her friends ganged up on me. I felt a lot of stuff. What’s kind of interesting about this is I was not over the breakup clearly. So after about like eight weeks or so, I meet this girl, really lovely girl, nothing but great things to say about her.
I consider her to be prettier than my ex. She was basically more intellectual than my ex.
She was, in my eyes, better in every single way. There was a attraction, there was a mutual attraction there but I was still not over my ex.
And so what ended up happening is as we began dating and going on dates, I just could not help myself and fixate on how my past relationship went wrong. And I almost did these comparisons between her and my ex in front of her.
That was an immature 19, 20 year old kid. I can’t remember. It’s been so long ago now.
But I was this immature kid that literally did these comparisons in front of her. And nothing screams you are still into your ex more than if you spend more time talking about your ex than you do about any other aspect of the relationship.
So if your current boyfriend is fixating on how their past relationship went wrong, what either they could have done better. But most of the time there’s going to be a lot of blame.
They’re going to blame their ex.
Their ex was this, their ex was that, their ex was this.
And they just fixate on that and they can’t let it go. It’s a good sign that they have some type of feelings and they’re not over their ex completely.
Sign #6: They Grow Jealous When Their Ex Dates Someone New
Let’s move on to sign number six. Sign number six is they grow jealous when their ex dates someone new.
This is probably the most obvious sign that there is. There’s a clear cause and effect happening here. Your boyfriend notices that his ex-girlfriend begins dating someone new and they immediately say that they’re not jealous, but they exhibit all the jealous type of behaviors.
They try to rub the fact that they’re dating someone new, AKA you, into their ex’s face.
They specifically pick arguments with their ex and just seem upset for no reason whatsoever. And usually what happens is you don’t find this out in such a simple manner.
What usually happens is the effect comes first before you can find the cause. So if all of a sudden your current boyfriend is doing out of character things like, hey, take this picture with me here.
Hey, take this picture with me here. And then after some research on your part, you find out, oh, the ex of my boyfriend is now dating someone new. This is not a good sign that he’s completely over his ex.
Remember the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.
What you’re looking for here weirdly enough is you want your current boyfriend to be indifferent about whatever his ex is up to.
Sign #7: You Catch Them Using Pet Names With Their Ex
Let’s move on to sign number seven. You catch them using pet names with their ex.
This always bugged me. And I think it still does to this day. I have not been in a situation where I’ve had to worry about that, thank goodness.
But let’s say you start dating someone new.
And there’s always this weird question in your mind on how much you can trust this new person, because you’re opening yourself up to them.
You don’t want them to hurt you. And then we kind of come up with the pet name scenario, which is babe, or honey, or hon or whatever the pet names we use are in our relationships.
And this thought enters your mind, which is, do they only do this with people that they’re intimate with or close with, like romantic with?
Or do they do this with everyone?
I was taking a trip down to my parents, I drove kind of like a cross country trip down to my parents and I got to Alabama. So I live in Florida. My parents live in Texas so I had to drive all the way from Florida to Texas. And we go through Alabama. Go through Alabama, and the people there are just like very Southern, very sweet, but they always call you hun. And this almost becomes like this cultural thing in Alabama.
So I would stop. I think I stopped at like a Chick-fil-A and this woman kept calling me hun. And I started thinking about this concept of pet names. It almost like devalues the pet name.
So you need to kind of account for pet names. And if it’s normal for your current boyfriend to use it with everyone.
And for some people, this may not seem like a big deal. For other people this is the biggest deal in the world. I think though, what we’re looking for here is the intent of the pet names.
So if your ex or if your current boyfriend is calling their ex by pet names and you know, or you catch them doing this, and you know that they only do this with people who were their romantic with, that’s a bad sign.
Like a really bad sign.
Sign #8: They Become Overly Protective Of Their Phone
Let’s move on to our final sign, sign number eight, they become overly protective of their phone.
Now I’m not suggesting you pick up your boyfriend’s phone, look through it, nothing like that. In fact, that’s wrong.
You should not do that. But what you’re really looking for here is if, when you and your boyfriend are in the same room and they immediately like … They’re on their phone, they immediately kind of put their phone down or try to hide it from you. It’s not a good sign. And I think this is kind of like the gut check type thing.
Everyone knows when they’re doing something wrong. And probably the litmus test for figuring this out is, are you willing to … I mean, let’s just use you as an example, and let’s not just throw your boyfriend under the bus.
If you’re doing something that you think is wrong, you will feel the need to hide it from people.
Usually you hide it from people because you want to protect their feelings because you’re afraid of them. Maybe it’s even an ego thing. You want to protect their feelings, but you’re also at the same time afraid of how it will look on you. What you’re looking for here is this type of thing.
If you can notice the subtle shift in energy when you’re around your boyfriend and you notice that they’re becoming overly protective of their phone, usually it means … I mean, we all have things that we don’t want our significant others to find out about us.
But usually in cases like this, when you already suspect that he’s not over his ex, it doesn’t take a hard cause and effect line to figure out what’s going on here.
So pay attention to how protective your boyfriend becomes of their phone.
My Relationship Ended Badly; Can I Sill Get Him Back?
Sep 28, 2021
Today, we’re going to be talking about what to do if your relationship ended badly, if you should still be trying to repair that relationship, get that ex back or simply trying to move on.
Well the truth is, yes, you can get them back, but only if you’re willing to lose them forever.
Now, this is an inherent paradox. Yes, you can get them back, but you have to be willing to lose them first.
Well, what I’d like to do is actually talk about this concept, and it’s relatively new concept that we’ve been exploring in our coaching practice and seeing really incredible success stories with.
So first, let’s talk about getting ex’s back, specifically taking stock on if the relationship that ended badly is even worth exploring or repairing.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Take Stock On If The Relationship Is Even Worth Getting Back
So I think it goes without saying that you should not be trying to get an ex back in some circumstances, and this is maybe the hardest thing for people to hear, because there’s sort of an abuse cycle that can tend to happen when there’s emotional abuse or physical abuse involved.
So oftentimes we’ll see situations where someone is being physically abused or emotionally abused, and they don’t want to get their ex in trouble so they keep quiet about it.
These are circumstances in which we absolutely do not believe in trying to repair relationships.
So this is kind of like looks through the big red flags that we see among relationships that are non-negotiable no’s for us.
So if you experience any of these big issues, you should not be trying to repair this relationship. You should be trying to repair your heartbreak and move on completely from this person.
So what are some of these gigantic red flags?
Well, I think there’s nine that I talk about on the red flag article, but I’m going to just talk about four of them.
These are the four most common ones that we see, and these are four in which we absolutely equivocally agree you should not be trying to get your ex back.
Do Not Get Your Ex Back If There Is Emotional Or Physical Abuse Involved
The first one, or the first two really are kind of intertwined, and that’s emotional abuse and physical abuse. If you’ve experienced any kind of physical abuse, you should absolutely run the other way.
You should not be trying to win this ex back. And I say that, because when we’re dealing with situations where your relationship ended badly, there’s usually a reason for why it ended badly.
Either you are being abused or you’re fighting all the time, and that’s where kind of the next abuse can kind of come into play, and that’s emotional abuse.
So what we tend to find happen is there is a progression towards physical abuse. It starts first with emotional abuse.
And emotional abuse can be anything like gas lighting to putting you down. We’re going to talk a little bit about controlling types of behavior, but we’ve noticed that this can kind of get looped into the emotional abuse cycle. And what tends to happen is as the person becomes more emotionally abusive, physical abusive type stuff can plague the relationship.
If you’re in a situation like this, you need to get help. You need to run away. You need to end the relationship with this person forever. And I realize we are a website that helps people repair relationships. And you know it’s pretty bad when I’m sitting here saying, if you are in a situation where you’re emotionally abused or even physically abused, you need to get away from this person.
This is a relationship that ended badly. Sure, you should not be trying to get this person back.
Do Not Get Your Ex Back If They Were Overly Possessive
The next type of person you should not be trying to explore get back is the overly possessive individual.
This is very common behavior, I think in younger couples, but we even see it with older couples.
I think it’s mostly going to be based on attachment styles. Usually avoidant people don’t exhibit so much possessive behavior.
Usually it’s kind of the anxious avoidant, if that makes any sense. So maybe the fearful avoidant approach. What does a possessive behavior look like?
Well, it’s pretty standard. It’s usually where they’re trying to control you in all sorts of ways.
My wife tells the story about one of her first boyfriends ever, who was so possessive that she would go to the restroom and he would be standing outside the restroom knocking on it saying, “what are you doing in there?” And this kind of controlling, possessive behavior, clearly this guy was worried that she was texting someone else.
And I think the thing you need to understand about possessive behavior is it doesn’t easily go away.
Usually almost in all cases, any type of possessive behavior is based on anxious issues going on inside the individual. So if you take the example of my wife, where she’s in the bathroom, her ex-boyfriend comes over and knocks on the door and is asking what she’s doing, the reason he’s doing that is because he’s afraid that she’s cheating on him.
And she gave him no indication that she was interested in anyone else, but he is so afraid of getting hurt that he responds to that by doing everything he can to control and possess her. And that’s usually not a good sign. This is the kind of sign that kind of creates toxic relationships. Don’t try to get this person back.
Do Not Get Your Ex Back If There Is Addiction Involved
And then the final, big thing that we want to say you should take stock on and if this relationship is even worth saving is addiction, while it is socially acceptable to be there for someone who has an addiction.
What’s interesting is I don’t think someone with an addiction, I think a lot of the clients that I’ve experienced at least, and this is purely my speculation based on my experience coaching individuals for the past 10 years, in my experience, someone who comes to us wanting repair a relationship that ended badly and addiction was present in there within their exes, they kind of have this mentality that they can be the ones to fix them.
And the truth is that they can’t. And that might be a hard thing and not a socially acceptable thing to say.
But I think it’s kind of, the best way I can maybe describe this is someone with an addiction has to want to repair themselves. They are aware of the problem. Oftentimes they’re using the problem to mask how they’re really feeling about different situations in life.
And I think, I’m really big into triathlons right now.
And one of the top triathletes in the world’s this guy named Lionel Sanders.
He’s got a really interesting story, but he was someone who was addicted to … He started off just smoking marijuana and then eventually graduated up to taking harder drugs, like cocaine. And he literally, he went to college on a track scholarship, on a cross country scholarship so he’s a really good runner.
And he just let it go because he got so addicted to all these substances. And it got to the point where he was so addicted to so many hard things that he started hallucinating. He got a job. So he didn’t have to go outside of his house, so he got a job writing articles for some website or something.
He didn’t want to go outside the house. He was hallucinating.
He got to the point where he became suicidal. And what’s interesting about this is he was aware of the problems that was going on, and it wasn’t until he made a conscious decision himself to fix himself that strides were actually made. What worked for him, and I’m not saying this is going to work for everyone with an addiction, but what worked for him was taking this negative addiction and pouring it into something, pouring that energy into a positive addiction. So he became obsessed with finishing an Ironman triathlon and ended up sort of saving his life. And he’s very open about his struggles with substance abuse. And he took ownership of it and take stock of it.
And my point is, the thing I learned from him is someone with a serious addiction doesn’t really want to get rid of the addiction until they’re ready to, and nothing anyone says will change their mind.
So if you are in a situation where you’ve taken stock on a relationship and you’ve noticed that there’s any kind of emotional abuse, physical abuse, your ex is overly possessive or there’s addiction aspects, these are situations in which you should not be trying to win your ex back.
You should be pouring all of your focus and efforts into moving on. But what about situations where those aren’t present?
That’s where things get kind of interesting. So we know that this relationship ended badly.
What Does A Relationship Ending Badly Usually Look Like?
Now, what does a relationship ending badly actually look like?
Well, usually there’s a lot of arguments at the end. I think most of the time when I think of relationships ended badly, I think back to my first relationship ever when I was in high school, an 18 year old kid, all the way up to 19, because I think that relationship at lasted maybe 12 months or something.
You’re immature, she’s immature.
You’re both making mistakes in the relationship. You’re not talking about what’s really bothering you. You let it boil up inside and then you just kind of argue. So it seems like every single week you’re together, you’re arguing about something. Eventually you just start arguing about stuff that you don’t even realize why you’re arguing.
You’re just arguing to argue.
These are relationships that end badly.
And I think when you’re dealing with this relationship, and the question ultimately here is can you still get him back if this relationship ended badly? And my answer at the beginning of this was yes, but you need to be willing to lose him forever.
So I’m about to kind of let you in on the secret that most of my peers aren’t willing to tell you, but I’m going to tell you for free.
Learning To Fail Forwards
So we often talk about these periods of no contact.
The period of no contact, this period of time where you ignore your ex with the intent of making them miss you and kind of going through this internal growth. Well, what’s interesting is I think a lot of people get the wrong idea with regards to no contact.
And what we’ve learned over the past few years after studying a lot of different success stories really is that the no contact rule isn’t the important part.
Yes, it gives you the opportunity to help make an ex miss you. But what’s more important is what you do with your time during no contact.
And what we’ve noticed consistently is there are very clear indicators that someone who is successful at preparing a relationship that ended badly does during no contact. And this is kind of the secret potion, if you will. If you’re ever looking for a magic bullet, and this is by no means a magic bullet, this is the closest thing I can get you to it.
So I think the first thing I noticed when I talk to people that went through no contact successfully and ended up getting their exes back is they looked at failure differently.
They failed forwards.
And what I mean by that is, throughout life you’re going to be approached with failure or you’re going to experience failure. And how you react to that failure is going to tell you everything about the type of human being that you are. Most people when confronted with failure run the other way.
They won’t take chances. Think about it like this, if I were to sit here and ask you to date someone new right here, right now, you probably wouldn’t do it.
Number one, you would say you’re not in the right head space. But inherently there’s a contradiction inside with that. You’re lying to yourself. You are in the right head space to begin dating someone new.
And before you argue with me, here’s my point. I think if you go on a date with someone new, what you are afraid of is failure. Not with the new person, but failure with the previous relationship. It’s an acknowledgement of the failure that that relationship failed. It’s an acknowledgement that you are maybe by ceremony trying to move on.
It’s a worry that you’re going to fail to get your ex back.
You’re going to send off the wrong signals and you’re afraid of failing. That’s the truth. So there’s two ways that you can fail. You can either fail forwards or you can fail backwards. So what’s the difference between the two? Well, someone who fails backwards is someone who lets failure define them. So I think we can look at a breakup as failure. It is failure. Someone who lets that failure, lets that breakup define them, and impact them and impact every decision they make is ultimately not go going to do well.
But someone who is going to seek out more failures and learn from those failures, that person’s going to do well. So yeah, I think there is a certain amount of taking stock on what you could have done better in the relationship, what your ex could have done better in the relationship.
If the relationship is even worth saving is really important to figure out. That’s called failing forwards. That’s learning from the failure. But I think also the inherent issue that most people have is they’re afraid to seek failure out. They’re afraid to put themselves in opportunities where they can fail, because the feeling of failure is so strong within them they don’t want to ever feel it again. And maybe there’s an aspect of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in there.
So one of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, when you look at it, one of the interesting aspects is at the bottom of the pyramid, things like your basic needs, like food.
A lot of people are afraid to go after that promotion at work because they’re afraid of offending someone and losing their job, or they’re afraid of doing something. And that’s a direct hit on their ability to feed themselves or shelter themselves and things like that. And so they become defined by this fear of failure.
And my point is, during the no contact rule, if you’re going to do this seriously, you need to reframe the way your mind looks at failure.
You need to look at it in this way, that it’s an opportunity for you to learn. People don’t like failures. I know it’s kind of hard to hear this, but people don’t like failures. Our society is built to reward winners. And yet, what’s interesting about the winners is, I’ve noticed the true winners in life are the people who have failed so many times and learned from those failures so many times that they begin to succeed.
Sports is a great way of showing this analogy.
I used to play tennis pretty competitively.
And what was interesting is when I first started to learn to play tennis, I was awful. When I first played my first match, I was physically in great shape, and I played this really fat looking guy and he wiped the floor with me. Why? I was just starting and I hadn’t failed enough. Now I could’ve let that failure define me, but I kept practicing, and practicing and practicing, and pretty soon I became really good. But you only become really good by failing, and then learning, and then failing, and then learning, and then failing and then learning. And I think a lot of times people get self-conscious about the failure and they don’t learn from it. So this is the first thing I want you to do during no contact. You need to learn from your failures and you need to seek it out.
Embrace The Holy Trinity
The second big thing I would say to do during the no contact rule if you want to get your ex back is to really embrace this idea of the Holy Trinity.
Now, we’ve been talking about the Holy Trinity a lot throughout the history of this website. Health, wealth, relationships. But I’m going to add an addendum to it. I no longer think life can be divided up into three simple categories.
I think there’s actually four categories if we’re being realistic about it. There’s health, which is anything that impacts your health physically or mentally. So this could be things like working out, or seeking out a therapist to talk to, or seeking out one of our coaches to talk to. These are things that impact your health positively. Then there’s of course wealth. This is probably the most obvious and straightforward one. This is anything that gets you money. Anything that helps your wealth as a whole. This can be investment opportunities. This can be quitting a job and starting a new one. This can be starting a new business. This can be anything in those realms.
And if you’re really young, let’s say you’re still early in college and you don’t really have much of a job, you can still work on this. There’s different things that you can do. And then of course there’s relationships. But the addendum here, or not the full addendum, but an addendum is with regards to the Holy Trinity, the relationships aspect, it’s outside of your ex. Too often we get clients who are so razor focused on the breakup they neglect all the relationships outside of that breakup. So this is friends. This is family. This is other romantic partners. Remember when I said people are afraid to go date new people because they’re afraid of failing, not with the new person, but failing with their ex. Well, this is kind of an opportunity to focus on those things.
And this is how you rebuild your life after a breakup. But the issue I had with the Holy Trinity, or the realization I had maybe last year or a couple years ago, was truly if you just live your life in a way … So I always try to practice what I preach. So I’m always, every single day try to function my time to where I’m doing something health wise, wealth wise, relationship wise, always seeking that ever elusive balance. And yet what I found to be fascinating was seeking that balance to not give my life meaning. Sure, I can easily argue that talking to you and helping people through their breakups and relationships should give me meaning, but it didn’t. Sometimes stuff like this feels like work to me because I have to do a lot of it every single day and put out fires every single day, and it kind of takes the fun out of it for me.
And it wasn’t until I found sort of the fourth pillar of the Holy Trinity that I began to realize this is fun again. And that’s sort of the Magnum Opus pillar. This is the pursuit of your life that you feel gives your life meaning. This could be anything. But the important part is that it gives your life a meaning. This is kind of the legacy component. So for me, it’s writing stories. I’ve always been incredibly passionate about that. For my wife, I think it would be creating something that helps parents with children. That’s something she’s incredibly passionate about. This could be anything. The important part is that you’re super passionate about, you can work on it. It’s almost like when you’re working on wealth based stuff, it’s the thing that you’re thinking about while you’re like, I just want to get this done so that I can work on that. And what we find is when I tell people to do this, all sorts of really interesting things come up with their Magnum Opus concept.
And really the Magnum Opus concepts is kind of the thing that you want to be remembered for when you’re gone, the statement you want to make on life. And it could be anything. It’s personal to you. And if your relationship ended badly, what you’re going to find happen is if you fail forwards, if you work on this Holy Trinity, health, wealth, relationships, Magnum Opus, a subtle shift is going to take in how you view, not only the past relationship with your ex, but how you view yourself. You create confidence for yourself. Other people start to notice that confidence and it creates momentum. The momentum eventually gets back to your ex. Your ex eventually wants to figure out what you’re up to. So this is kind of the first foundational of work that you do before you do any, any reach outs, or text messages, or sort of strategies or tactics.
A lot of people think if they say the right thing or do the right thing, that’s the key. Well, no, it’s kind of a combination of everything. Success is not linear. It’s a lot of ups and downs. It’s a lot of squiggles and circles. And it’s messy. It’s kind of like doing everything at once. The stoic philosophy, I think this is the old Roman Marcus Aurelius kind of was a famous stoic, and there’s something about it that I really like, and that’s the ability to focus on only what you can control. So the stoic man or female is only concerned with things that he has control over. He’s only concerned with, or she, she’s only concerned with reaching her maximum potential in all areas of life. And it’s kind of that statement where you have to check yourself, when you say, am I doing everything I possibly can in this area? And if you’re not saying yes, the stoic, that’s the thing that bothers them.
They’re not bothered by losing a job. They’re not bothered by losing a relationship. They’re not bothered, I don’t know, by something else that happens that they have no control over. They can’t control other people. They can’t control the weather. They can’t control society. What they can control is their soul. They can’t control their actions. And they are hyper, hyper obsessed with controlling their actions and maximizing their potential to help humanity. This is the kind of philosophy that you need to have when you go through a breakup, especially if the breakup ended badly, because the key thing that you need to hear, but no one ever wants to hear is the true secret to succeeding after all of this heartbreak is by focusing on yourself-
How Do I Break Down My Ex Boyfriend’s Emotional Wall?
Sep 19, 2021
Today, we’re going to talk about how to break down your ex-boyfriend’s emotional wall.
More specifically, we’re going to actually talk about what an emotional wall looks like when your ex is putting it up.
We’re going to talk a little bit about why they put up an emotional wall and what type of attachment style people who have these emotional walls typically are.
And finally, most importantly, we will talk about how to break down the emotional wall that your ex is putting up after a breakup.
All right.
So let’s just jump right into this.
What does an ex putting up an emotional wall typically look like?
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Breaking Down What An Ex Putting Up An Emotional Wall Actually Looks Like
Now there’s a lot of different symptoms of the emotional wall, but most of the time, the symptoms are going to have four things in common.
The first thing is you will be with your ex-boyfriend after the breakup, or maybe during the breakup, or maybe even a little bit before the breakup, but you’ll have this feeling and you don’t really know how to describe it.
Maybe you’re picking up their body language being different.
Maybe you’re picking up the responses not being as quick.
Maybe you’re picking up that your ex-boyfriend or your boyfriend is not as interested. You just get the sense that they’re becoming distant.
So if you noticed they’re distant a lot, this is maybe one of the first dominoes falling with regards to putting up that emotional wall.
The next thing you’re probably going to notice a lot is a lot of hot and cold behavior.
So this is kind of a weird one, but sometimes, especially after a breakup, what ends up happening is your ex will flirt with you and you will be, after the flirting, you’ll go to bed at night thinking, “Wow, I’m making a lot of progress.”
Then you wake up the next day and you won’t hear from them and you’ll think, “Okay, well maybe they needed some space.” Then another day goes by and you don’t hear from them again. Now you’re starting to become a little bit worried.
Well, what typically is happening here is the ex has put up the emotional wall.
Why?
Well, typically speaking, when you’re really hot, they’re allowing themselves to be vulnerable. So when things are going well, they’re flirting with you, it seems like they’re kind of into you, they’re allowing themselves to be vulnerable, but when they become vulnerable, they get scared because they have past experience where you’ve maybe hurt them, or they are hurt by the breakup that they put this emotional wall up.
And then the emotional wall comes down and they get hot again, or they’re on the on again phase and the emotional wall comes down, they get afraid, the emotional wall goes up, rinse and repeat.
This is the hot and cold.
Now what’s interesting is a lot of times when you’re noticing that they’re hot and cold, or you’re noticing that they’re becoming distant in conversations with you, you’ll say, “Hey, are you okay?”
And they’ll simply reply, “I’m fine.”
They’ll become extra defensive when you call them out a little bit. These are the typical signs that someone has their emotional wall up.
There’s a lot going on internally when you notice an ex-boyfriend has their emotional wall up, but what’s important or what can maybe shed some light onto what’s going on internally is actually by understanding why they’re putting that emotional wall up.
Now, there are really two big reasons for why people or why exes will put up emotional walls.
Number one is it keeps people out, and number two is it protects them from being hurt.
Now we’re talking about ex-boyfriends in this case, so most of the time when you’re encountering an ex-boyfriend who has an emotional wall up, it’s because they’re protecting themselves from being hurt by you.
You are the source of their pain.
When they think about you, and we see this a lot, even in social media, when they look at your social media posts, you’re posting something on Instagram, you’re posting something on Facebook, it hurts to look at that stuff because it reminds them of the good times that they had, and it reminds them of the pain and the emotional turmoil that they’re feeling currently.
So by putting up the emotional wall and keeping you at an arm’s length of distance, it protects them from being hurt, especially if you’re getting back in touch with them.
The other thing, or the other factor that I think is often lost on a lot of my clients is past experiences can sometimes inform their reality.
Let’s say that … and you’re going to find that this actually really, really plays into this a lot when we start talking about the attachment style tendencies and the self-fulfilling cycle tendencies.
But oftentimes, if you have dated an ex-boyfriend who has a lot of bad experiences with breakups, they will naturally assume that this breakup is going to be the same and they will naturally have their protective walls up. So those are basically the reasons.
So they want to keep people out and they want to protect themselves from being hurt, so it’s all about self-preservation. They look at you as the source of their pain. They won’t always look at you that way, but when you begin to get close to them, when they become vulnerable with you, they will look at themselves and protect themselves and put up that emotional barrier.
Why Looking At Attachment Styles Is A Good Idea To Understand Your Exes Emotional Wall
Now, where this gets really interesting is when we look at the attachment style of people who have emotional walls up.
Now we know from research that most of our clients have anxious attachment styles, so as you can imagine, most of the people that are coming to our website or watching our YouTube content or listening to our podcasts want their exes back, or they’re going through a breakup and have at least considered the idea of getting an ex back.
These are people who have anxious tendencies, because people who have secure tendencies tend not to think about getting their back.
They’re like, “Okay, cool. I will move on with my life. I’m too cool for school. I’m cooler than you.” That’s the way they have this internal swagger, this internal confidence.
Anxious people are the exact opposite.
They look at this relationship as if it’s the entirety of their world.
They don’t have a world outside of this relationship, and so they do everything they can to fix their world or fix the relationship.
This includes very anxious behaviors, like constantly blowing up an ex’s phone, nagging, which is going on to texting, showing up at their ex’s doorstep, sending their ex gifts, all sorts of the desperate behaviors are very anxious type of tendencies. But what’s interesting is when we actually do look at the research, most of the time our anxious clients have avoidant boyfriends.
Now, avoidants are kind of an interesting thing, because we’ve done most of our research when it comes to attachment styles on mostly anxious people and avoidant people, because those are the two most foremost types of attachment styles that we see at our coaching practice.
So what’s interesting about avoidant tendency people is, it really fits with the emotional wall.
A lot of the reasons or a lot of the times that an avoidant will push someone away, is if they feel themselves becoming too vulnerable, they really value their independence to a level that if they feel that their independence is becoming threatened, they feel like they need to do what they can to preserve that independence.
And sometimes when we become vulnerable and we become emotionally intimate with someone, we can honestly feel the pressure of expectation, specifically expectations of marriage, because some people look at marriage as this constraint on their lives.
And I know this is kind of a weird way of talking about it, but it does need to be talked about.
Someone with an avoidant tendency does not look at marriage the same way as someone with a secure tendency, because someone with an avoidant tendency tends to see the cons of the marriage.
Well, if I am with this person, that means I have to move in with them, I have to live with them, that means I’m not going to have my own free time anymore, all of my time is going to be stretched out into this relationship. And this just becomes too much for them, and they actually have these really interesting anxiety ridden fears that are not true.
So the idea of just maybe getting married or the idea of being with someone where things began to get serious threatens the idea of marriage, they start to freak out and think all of these things that aren’t true or haven’t happened.
And what’s interesting about it is this is why they push you away, because they want to preserve themselves, they want to protect themselves, they want to keep you away so that their independence is preserved.
And what is cool about this is the avoidant person has the self-fulfilling cycle that they go through.
So a lot of times the biggest misconceptions that people have about people with avoidant tendencies is that they don’t want relationships.
That’s actually not true.
People with avoidant tendencies or people with an avoidant attachment style want a relationship, a loving, intimate relationship, arguably more than anyone else. They want the relationship so badly that they’re willing to get into a relationship with people, but they enter into this self-fulfilling cycle and they’re not even aware of it.
So they start out the cycle wanting a relationship super badly, so they find someone that they can have a relationship with, you. And they start thinking, “Wow, this is cool. I have this relationship, I feel really great,” this is the honeymoon period in action.
But what’s interesting is avoidant people tend to be drawn towards anxious people and anxious people tend to be drawn to avoidant people. That law of playing hard to get for the anxious attachment style. But when they’re with someone who has an anxious attachment style, the avoidant begins to realize, wait, this person is starting to ask for too much too soon.
Something as similar as even asking for a picture together can freak an avoidant person out, because the cause and effect or the causality of the situation makes them believe that you’re going to eventually ask for more.
So they start percolating this idea, this anxiety ridden fear pivots in their mind, and they first get the idea that they want to leave the relationship, but they’re too scared to do anything about it because they do care about your feelings, they’re not a monster.
And as they become more distant, as they begin to put those emotional walls up, someone with an anxious style tends to be really good at bomb sniffing, dogging this concept out. They notice their current boyfriend or girlfriend is becoming distant.
They’re hot and cold.
They’re becoming super defensive.
And this, in turn, just ends up freaking the avoidant out more, because as the anxious person feels like the avoidant is about to leave the relationship, they start pushing harder to fix things. This freaks the avoidant out because they feel more responsibility and end up finally leaving.
And then of course, they start thinking, “Well, why is this always happening to me?” And they kind of get down on themselves and ultimately leading to the beginning of the cycle, which is, I really want a relationship so badly. And they just rinse and repeat that concept.
So this leads us to our million dollar question.
How do you break down the emotional wall of someone who goes through this cycle?
How To Break Down Your Exes Emotional Wall
Well, there’s a lot of things you can do. I think the first thing really revolves around understanding the anxious and avoidant mentalities.
If you understand that you have anxious tendencies, you can work on those tendencies so that you are not appearing as anxious, and if you understand that your ex has avoidant tendencies, you can make sure behaviors are present that will not trigger avoidant tendencies, or you’ll figure out the language to speak to the avoidant person.
So just understanding the concept of anxious and avoidant mentalities will help you in your road.
Now I’m going to go out on a limb here and say most of the people reading this and are serious of getting their exes back, have anxious tendencies, they have anxious attachment styles. And that is the first place that you need to start when you’re looking at how to break down someone’s emotional wall. You start with it. This is kind of a weird thing, but you’re going to start with your time. So we notice that someone with an anxious attachment style tends to dedicate most of their time towards that romantic relationship.
So if you imagine, and this was an analogy given to me by a really, really smart woman named Antia Boyd, who I’ve done multiple interviews with, and I’ve done multiple webinars with and seminars with.
And her jam is attachment styles, and using attachment styles to help understand romantic relationships.
And she gave this analogy once, and I thought it was maybe the most brilliant thing I ever heard. Imagine that your time is like a cake and an anxious person, 70% of the cake is dedicated to their romantic relationship, whereas 30% of the cake is dedicated to all of the other areas of their life.
The smartest thing that you can do, if you find yourself any situation where you realize or recognize, hey, I have anxious tendencies and 70% of my time is spent worrying or trying to win back my ex-boyfriend, you need to shift that. Instead, you need to shift that to maybe 30%. So it needs to be the exact opposite of the ratio that you’re at now.
Most of your time literally needs to be spent on health, wealth, Magnum Opus ideals and relationships outside of your ex.
So 70% of your time needs to be focused on those four distinct categories.
So again, I’ll repeat health, wealth, relationships, and Magnum Opus, but the relationships aspect is only relationships outside of your ex. So, friends, family, even other romantic relationships with different partners. 70% of your time needs to be focused on those things, and then 30% of the time needs to be focused on your actual ex and the process of winning them back. Now, why? Why is this a good idea?
Well, because it signals to your ex, to your ex who has the emotional wall up, that you are no longer as obsessed about them as they would have you believe.
The other concept that I want you to understand is when you do get back in touch with an avoidant ex who has an emotional wall up, this is the principle you need to live your life by. When they pull back, you pull back.
Why?
Well, because it shows a maturity on your part, and it shows that you are different because in the past, when your ex has pulled back, what have you done? You have chased and tried to fix. That has not worked.
The often quoted Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Well, if you have chased your ex over and over again, and they’ve just avoided you more, put more of an emotional wall up, well, that approach isn’t going to work anymore.
What we’ve noticed is when you’re dealing with someone who has anxious tendencies, and you’re dealing with someone who has avoidant tendencies, when the avoidant pulls back, the anxious person should also pull back and give that avoidant person space, give them time to work through and realize, eh, I’m being ridiculous, and then they’ll come back. This is what secure attachment styles do. And the beauty of this is this all integrates with that cake analogy. So often times, you’ll have no problem pulling back in your romantic relationship a little bit if your ex pulls back, because you have all these other things on the cake that you can spend your time doing.
The final thing I want to talk about that you can do to break down your ex’s emotional wall is actually using the fear of loss. Now, I was actually trying to research for this specific topic. How do you break down an exes emotional wall? And one of the best places I always start is actually with real people, because I find sometimes if you go to Google and you type in, “Hey, how do you break down someone’s emotional wall?” And you try to find psychological research, it’s kind of bland, and it also doesn’t answer the exact question that you’re asking about.
So what I did is I went to our private Facebook support group. There’s over 6,300 people in there, currently, all of them going through breakups, some of them trying to get over their ex, some of them trying to get their exes back. And what’s interesting is literally today, there was a comment from someone who made a post in the Facebook group talking about the dumper’s experience. And it was fascinating to me because this girl ended up dumping her ex and putting up an emotional wall, it was just becoming too much for her. And so she broke up with her ex while he was on vacation. And what’s really interesting about the whole thing is that he came back from vacation and tried to win her back and tried to talk through things. And she almost gave in and said, “Yeah, I made a mistake.”
And what’s interesting is she went on and said that basically, the reason she did not admit that she made a mistake or took him back or anything was because she was having this huge internal turmoil. So one part of her just wanted to hug and kiss, forget any of it ever happened, let the nightmare end right there. But on the other hand, she was extremely scared and she was extremely emotional, and she was really frightened of things going bad a few more months down the road and she wanted to protect herself. So the prototypical, the emotional wall is up, she needs to protect herself. But it really wasn’t until she found out that he had someone new two months down the road, that her mindset shifted a little bit.
Now this is interesting, because I’m going to use her exact words here to describe what she felt when she saw the fear of loss at play.
“Well, it wasn’t until I found out he had someone new two months down the road. That day I received the news, I kept feeling something weird running down my spine. I tried to shake it off, but it kept piling. I only understood what that feeling was that night, when I finally got engulfed by it. It was the sense of loss. I only felt this sense of loss when I realized he was gone. So it’s true. We really need to evoke the sense or fear of loss in our ERP exes. If not, they wouldn’t budge. I’m not saying we got to find a rebound for that to happen, but we need to definitely evoke that fear in some ways.”
So as odd as it sounds, I think the best approach isn’t to go in the rebound, but I think it is to put forth signals that you are moving on. And this actually meets up with the literature and the psychological research, because what we know about people who have avoidant tendencies is that they don’t begin to miss you until they feel like you have moved on. And this is the case here with this woman. She didn’t feel like she lost her ex or missed her ex, until he had completely moved on to someone new.
And I think this is a lesson that we can all take, because you notice if you want to break down the ex’s emotional wall, a lot of the things that I’m instructing you to do, understanding the anxious versus avoidant mentality, make sure you have your time management skills so that the cake is not taken up directly by the romantic relationship, making sure that when they pull back, you pull back, making sure that you are instituting a fear of loss, however you’re doing that, are all things that indicate you are okay with moving on. And this is the key to breaking down an ex-boyfriend’s emotional wall.
Today, we’re going to talk about what it means when an ex-boyfriend wants to hang out with you.
So ultimately, we’re going to be defining what that situation looks like and it’s not necessarily the most common situation that we encounter within our coaching practice, but we do see it from time to time.
So we will be defining what it means.
Next, we’ll be looking at really what cost cause them to want to hang out with you.
Why would they ask you out after a breakup?
And we’re also going to be talking about if hanging out with them is a good idea or not.
Should you do it?
And if you do decide to do it, how should you be acting when you hang out with them?
So without further ado, let’s just jump right into it. All right.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
What Does It Mean If Your Ex Wants To Hang Out With You
So what does this actually look like?
What does it mean if your ex wants to hang out with you?
Now, the truth is that it’s really not a one size fits all kind of an answer.
There are any number of interpretations for what it means when they want to hang out with you, what the intent is behind the ask.
They could want you back.
They could just be trying to be nice to you.
They could be trying to set up a friends with benefits type situation.
Now, the real challenge isn’t necessarily understanding why they’re doing it or understanding what it means, rather, it’s understanding which interpretation is real.
Now, I spent some time actually game planning what I was going to say when I came to this section of this information.
And ultimately, I think I came up with a pretty cool approach to potentially helping you understand which interpretation is real.
So I’ve given forth three main interpretations for what it means when an ex wants to hang out with you.
They could want you back. They could be just trying to be nice, or they could be trying to set up a friends with benefits type situation.
Now, what’s interesting is when you look at each of these three encounters, or situations, or interpretations, each one has almost different symptoms.
So while in many cases you’re going to find the common theme throughout, you just kind of have to wait and see what their actions sort of tell you. There are some telltale signs that this person’s leaning more towards this way, or this person’s leaning more towards that way.
So what I’d like to do is go through each of these three interpretations and tell you what some of those telltale signs are.
Interpretation #1: They Could Want You Back
So let’s go first with the, what it will look like if they want you back.
So your ex basically broke up with you.
Most of the people here have been through the receiving end of a breakup.
Maybe you go through a no contact rule. You stumble across some of our pieces of content.
You like what you hear, you start implementing it. And then when you do get back in touch with them, they want to hang out with you. So what would it look like if they wanted to hang out with you because they wanted you back?
Well, the first thing you should really pay attention to is if they bring up the past a lot.
We’re noticing that most of our clients have anxious attachment styles.
Now, we’re not saying this as like, “You need to be diagnosed with an anxious attachment style disorder.” It’s not like that. They just have anxious tendencies after the breakup, because for them, their entire world revolves around this breakup.
Now, a lot of our work is sort of shifting their focus from focusing less about making their entire world about the breakup and more about like, “Hey, look at all these other interesting things that you can do.”
But we also know from dealing with these anxious attachment styles, individuals that their exes tend to be avoidant attachment styles. And what’s interesting about avoidant attachment styles is they really live for reminiscing.
They really live for nostalgia. Oftentimes, we’re finding that most of your exes will not begin to actually miss you until they feel safe missing you.
And the only way they feel safe missing you is if they feel like you’ve moved on from them or that you don’t want them back anymore.
Then they give themselves permission to miss you. So what ends up happening is they get this bout of nostalgia and they want to try things again. So what they’ll do is they’ll bring up the past a lot.
“Hey, do you remember that really interesting time we had on the beach?” or, “Hey, do you remember when we went on that spur of the moment vacation?”
Usually what you’re going to be looking for if they’re bringing up the past a lot is going to be romantic situations in the past. Now I’m not talking about intimate situations.
I’m not talking about when you got hot and heavy type situation. I’m talking about really meaningful emotional situations.
Like the first time he or she told you that they love you, or the first time that you maybe opened up to them in a way that really was meaningful for them.
So they’ll bring up the past a lot and specifically those type of situations in the past.
They may also apologize for their part in the breakup.
They may take some ownership of, “I was a real jerk to you.” What you’ll also notice is they’ll say, “I love you a lot,” or, “I miss you.”
This is a little bit rarer because most of the time they won’t say I love you until they’re back together with you, but they will say, “I miss you.” And they’ll hint at these kinds of things before the meetup.
This is an important and often underlooked at fact.
Most of the time people are focusing on what happens during the meetup.
Well, if they want you back, these types of things will creep in before the meetup actually occurs. So that’s the first interpretation on what to look for if they potentially want you back.
Interpretation #2: They’re Just Trying To Be Nice To You
The second interpretation is if they’re just trying to be nice to you. So the whole concept of them trying to be nice to you really revolves around the concept of staying friendly after a breakup.
So what happens with these types of people is they’re friend zoning you.
But what’s interesting about the friend zone that I don’t think often gets talked about a lot is the concept that your ex, if they friend zones, you is still getting something out of it, and that’s the emotional aspect of a friendship with you.
So what you’re looking for here, if they’re just trying to be nice is before the meetup, they’re opening up to you an extreme way emotionally, but they don’t become romantic with you.
So you’ll get the sense that they’re just essentially using you for emotional support. And what ends up happening and we’re going to talk a little bit about this when we talk about what causes them to want to hang out with you is the grass is greener syndrome might play a role here.
So maybe at some point in their relationship with you, they feel unsatisfied and break up with you because they think they can find someone better.
And what ends up happening is sometimes when they don’t find that someone better, or maybe they do find someone better, that someone better does not meet their emotional needs like you met their emotional needs. So what they’re looking to do is try to set up a situation where they can get their physical needs met elsewhere, but their emotional needs met from you.
So that’s the second big interpretation and things to look out for.
Interpretation #3: Friends With Benefits
The third one is a friends with benefits type situation where they’re not necessarily coming into it with the intent of playing you, but they are coming into it with the intent of becoming intimate with you. So oftentimes, before you guys meet up together, they’ll bring up times that you were actually together in the past a lot.
So they’ll flirt with you, but it will become very sexual very fast and it will make maybe even you a little bit uncomfortable and start questioning, “Should friends be talking this way to each other?”
That’s a good sign that this is mostly what they’re going to be after. We’ve seen this happen a lot before the actual meetup.
And then of course, when you get to the actual meetup, they will actually engage in aggressive type of flirting. I don’t know how to say this without being blunt, but they will try to make a move. Oftentimes, what’s interesting is and this is mostly women listening to this podcast, but a big aspect of the dating area for men specifically is the pickup artist niche.
And it’s always interesting because I never try to excuse any concept that I think can help my clients. So what was interesting is a few years ago, I took a look at like, “Okay, well, what are these pickup artists recommending and can we use any of the things on a reverse area towards the men that my clients are trying to get back?” And what’s interesting is this idea of kino flirting came up.
So kino flirting is like where your progressive really ratcheting up the intensity of physical touch on a date. So like, if you imagine on a date you start with the slightest physical touch, a hug, and then maybe you slowly touch their hand in a gesture when you’re telling a story.
Then maybe you’re starting holding hands and it just continues to progress from there.
What you’re actually looking for if your ex is trying to create a friends with benefits situation is this subconscious kino flirting.
So subconsciously what will happen is on the date they will begin touching you in these ways. It will start out light, but then the intensity will become more and more intense as the date goes on. And then eventually they will ultimately try to make their move.
Now, I don’t think I need to say this, but I’m going to say it just to cover my bases. We do not believe in sleeping with exes before you actually get a commitment. We find that if you do end up with a friends with benefits situation, it’s actually among one of the most difficult situations to get out of. All right. So let’s switch gears here and talk a little bit about what causes them to want to hang out with you.
What Causes An Ex To Want To Hang Out With You
And I kind of already gave the answer away a little bit earlier when explaining the interpretations, but we’re finding that a huge reason or a huge motivation for why your ex-boyfriend will want to hang out with you after the breakup is the grass is greener effect.
I think you can make one big blanket statement about all breakups in that, usually they occur because one or both parties thinks that they can find someone else to better meet their needs. This is the very definition of the grass is greener effect.
So they sit there and think, “Well, I can find a better alternative to you. I can find someone that meets my needs better than you, and I’m going to prove it.” And this is also a little bit of where that winning the breakup concept comes into play as well.
A lot of times people with a grass is greener syndrome want the grass is greener to be on the other side so badly because it means that they were right, that their decision does not have to be lived with regret.
Of course, what ends up happening is usually it’s a 50-50 proposition.
Sometimes the grass isn’t greener on the other side.
And when they realize the grass isn’t greener, they have to walk this really tight, tight rope where they are not admitting that they were wrong for breaking up with you, but also knowing deep down that they regret their decision.
So you have this paradox that exists where on the one hand, they want to keep their pride.
They want to make sure that they, they did not make a mistake. But on the other hand, they’re having extreme regret because they’re realizing how much they miss you. So oftentimes, what ends up happening is there’s the slow progression towards them asking you out.
And we think this is one of the big causes that makes them want to hang out with you. And I do think you can sort of loop in the interpretations that we talked about as well. If they want you back, this is certainly the case.
If they’re just trying to be nice, there’s even a grass is greener effect there because they’re looking for emotional needs to get met. If they want friends with benefits, again, you have a grass is greener effect because they’re really looking for the physical needs to get met.
So they’re regretting their decision to leave you.
Is Hanging Out With Your Ex A Good Idea?
Now, let’s get to the rub. Is hanging out with them a good idea?
This one’s a hard one to answer, because really it depends where you are in the process.
So one of the things that I talk a lot about on the podcast, the articles, the YouTube channel, even the program is the concept of the value ladder.
So the value ladder, if you don’t know what it is, the best analogy I can give you is imagine that you have a ladder up against a house. In order to climb the ladder, you have to take each step one by one.
You start out with something very, very light. Well, let’s back up. You start out first with the no contact rule.
And then after that, you start off with something very, very light where you’re just text messaging them back and forth and building a connection through text messaging.
Then after that connection has been built through text messaging, you advance up and start calling on the phone or mixing in phone calls or FaceTime or Zooms with them to try to ratchet up the tension.
I think also sending them videos can be included here or sending them voice notes can be included here. Once enough attraction had been built up, then you meet up with them. But you don’t meet up with them in a romantic way.
You meet up with them in a light, a non-romantic/little romantic way and then after enough of those meetups have happened, then you go on your first true romantic date.
And if you’re able to go through that progression 9 times out of 10, if you’re a female, your ex will ask for you back. Though, we do have sort of a protocol for what to do if you are in a situation where you’re ex is too cowardly to ask for you back.
Now, this is where it gets difficult, because what essentially is happening with this topic where your ex boyfriend wants to hang out with you is they are skipping to the top of the value ladder. So here’s my approach.
My approach is this is truly a gut decision, but I think in my opinion, you should not hang out with them during a no contact rule, unless they specifically state they want you back. That’s the one caveat.
Other than that, a no contact rule has to be finished and completed in order for you to consider hanging out with them. But ideally in a perfect world, what we want is to build up some anticipation for that meet up.
So they want to hang out with you.
And the best way to do that is, let’s assume you’re in a situation where you finish a no contact rule, you get back in touch with them, and then your ex immediately wants to hang out with you.
Do you say yes or no? Well, you kind of do the middle of the road approach, which where you say yes, but then you reschedule. What I mean by that is you say yes, but reschedule to a later date immediately say, “I would love to, I’m busy on this day. Does this day work for you instead?”
The reason for that is it gives you some time to look… It does two things really. The first thing is it really tests to see how much your ex-boyfriend really wants to hang out with you.
The second thing is it gives you more time to continue building a connection so that you can kind of come into this with some type of momentum. What happens if you don’t do that though?
Well, we have seen it work out. I’m not going to sit here and lie to you. In some cases, we’ve had people completely disregard the advice that I just gave. Merely hanging out with their ex, their ex immediately asked for them back.
But, in over 70% of the cases, it doesn’t work out. Why?
It doesn’t work out because ultimately your ex-boyfriend is looking for some time type of need to get met. Either usually they want an emotional need met or a physical need met. Once those needs are met, once you hang out with them, the chase is over. They’ve gotten what they’ve looked at and they’re thinking to themselves, “I didn’t really want her back anyways.”
Yet, the approach is different if you make them work for it a little bit. And I’m not saying like physically, I’m saying, make them work just for your time. All of a sudden they value you more. So that is the thinking behind why you should sort of say yes, but schedule.
How You Should Act If You Decide To Hang Out With Them
Okay. So how should you act if you decide to hang out with them? This is a really good question.
And to be honest with you, if it’s your first meetup, I think you should only come into this with a few tenet rules that you’re abiding by. If you come into this with the script of exactly what you’re going to say, it usually ends up being super awkward and not so efficient.
Instead, come into this with only a few guidelines.
The guidelines are, you’re not going to really bring up the past relationship. If they bring up the past relationship, don’t pretend and it didn’t exist. Acknowledge it, and then change the subject and say, “Yeah, I’d really like to talk about where we are right now.” Or, “I’d really like to talk about something else interesting.” I don’t know, think of something. The second big rule that you want to do is you should always look great.
Show them what they’re missing out on. And really the third big rule is if you’re going to compare with something, it needs to be something important that you do during the no contact rule. So we’ve been talking a lot about the no contact rule and the concept of the Holy Trinity.
And really the Holy Trinity is a fancy way of saying someone who has anxious attachment tendencies will… If you can imagine their time is like a cake. Someone who has anxious attachment style tendencies, 70% of that cake is dedicated to their ex, 30% is dedicated to all the other aspects of their life. What we’re really trying to get you to do during the no contact rule is to make your ex only 30% of the cake and the rest of your life 70% of the cake. That’s what we’re trying to get you to do. And then what you’re doing with your time should be noteworthy enough to mention.
Here’s an example using a health-based type thing. So I recently have gotten into cycling. I’ve sustained an injury in my foot. I was training for a marathon. So I sustained an injury in my foot and I needed something low impact to do. So I got into cycling and started really getting into it and trying to understand like, “Okay, what are the best bicycles? What’s the best cadence? And what’s the best way to train?”
So I bought a bike and realized there’s this really cool program online called Zwift, which allows you to basically set a real bike up in your house and ride in a digital world with other people. And it’s really cool. I just literally was doing it before I started talking about this topic. And it’s really cool because you could see other people’s paces.
So you get to kind of race them a little bit, but also you get to see all sorts of cool things. The scenery alone just helps you not focus on how much pain it is to continue pedaling. And it’s really cool. If you get a smart trainer, it simulates what it’s like to actually go up a hill.
There’s really cool maps on there. There’s like a map where you can ride through a volcano. There’s a map where there’s dinosaurs around and you’re just riding. There’s pre-programmed workouts. It’s just this really cool thing.
Now, if you tell that type of a thing to your ex, it’s going to do a couple of things. Number one, is it going to say, “Wow, she’s been working out.” Number two is, “Wow, that’s really cool. Zwift, I’m going to have to check that out.” And it’s even better if you have some sort of physical… like the Zwift has this app that you can use on your phone, where you can show people your workouts and make friends. It’s like a bicycle support group type thing.
But it’s like a cool story to sort of share. You just need to come into the date, or the hangout, or the meetup with that type of a mentality.
Just talk about what you’ve been doing without your ex and don’t rub it in, just make it really interesting.
Talk about one aspect and usually that’s enough. So that’s going to do it.
Well, this is not necessarily a hugely complicated scenario and it’s one that we’ve seen quite a lot throughout the history of the ex-boyfriend recovery.
So essentially what occurs is this. You and your ex are dating. You have a relationship. It seems to be going well. And then all of a sudden they get back in touch with their ex. Now, you’ve always had this sneaking suspicion that their ex was essentially the one that got away.
There was unfinished business there.
They didn’t have proper closure, but you don’t want to seem like you’re super insecure about the fact that your ex is talking to their ex so you kind of leave it be a little bit, or maybe you don’t, maybe you freak out.
Whatever the case is, your ex begins entering into a conversation with their ex and then ultimately breaks up with you to go back to their ex. Now you would assume that would be the end of things, right?
They figured out what they wanted, what they wanted was their ex.
But the reality is once they get with that new person, after some time goes by, you’ve noticed ever so subtly the amount of conversations they begin having with you over text message increases.
And then not only in the frequency of the text messages increase, but the intensity of the text messages increase.
Why Is Your Ex Texting You When They Are With Someone New?
Well, these are all questions that we’re going to be looking at today. So now that we have sort of a definition of what the situation looks like, let’s talk about the reason that your ex is calling and texting you after going back to their ex.
All right. So one of the first concepts that I think you really need to grasp, if you find yourself in this situation, is the honeymoon period comparison.
Diving Into The Honeymoon Period Comparison
So what is the honeymoon period comparison?
Well, we’re all familiar with the concept of the honeymoon period.
Usually this is occurring when you enter into a relationship with someone for the first time.
It feels incredible.
It feels like they can do no wrong, right? And usually the honeymoon period can last anywhere from a couple of months to half a year. And in some rare cases, it can last for years.
And usually the honeymoon period is kind of like when all of the chemicals that get released by your brain are regulated from your brain are going at their most extreme.
So oftentimes when we’re talking about looking at the science of love, really it helps you to understand love as nothing more than a set of chemicals that your brain regulates, right?
So when we have these emotional responses to when we’re talking with our ex’s, or when we’re in a relationship with our partners, our brain is regulating these really strong chemicals within our body that create the feeling of love.
Well, ultimately what happens is when we’re in that honeymoon period, our brain is regulating these chemicals on steroids, right? So they’re getting really excited, our brains like saying, we love this person.
This person can do no wrong, but what goes up must also come down. It is not healthy for the brain to regulate these chemicals at an insane rate all the time. So eventually it slows down.
We often talk about this from a complacency standpoint. So oftentimes when we come complacent in the relationships, we’re becoming complacent because we’re no longer feeling that love anymore that we were in the honeymoon period.
It’s love on a different level, if that makes any sense.
And interestingly enough, without kind of deviating too far off the path here, some people were noticing break up with their ex because they no longer love their ex. And what really we think they’re saying is that, yes, maybe they lost feelings, but what they’re maybe really misunderstanding is that the honeymoon period just wore off.
And as the honeymoon period kind of wore off, we start thinking that we are entitled to feel the crazy amounts of oxytocin and all sorts of crazy chemicals your brain is releasing within your body to create the feeling of love all the time.
But when it kind of dies down and you become a little bit more calm, we take that or some men take that as I’m no longer in love.
This is a misunderstanding we’re finding happens quite a bit. And it’s kind of important to bring this up here, because what ends up occurring is your ex will not be thinking clearly when they get back into a relationship with their ex, because they are looking at it from a honeymoon period perspective.
But ultimately when things began to die down, when they start to come off the high of the honeymoon period, they really begin to compare what it’s like with you versus what it’s like with their ex.
The 500 Days Of Summer Impact
One of my favorite movies ever from a romantic comedy perspective is that movie 500 Days of Summer.
Now I’ve told this story on the podcast before, I’ve told the story on my YouTube channel before, I’ve told this story on the articles on our website before. And I’m going to tell it again here.
So my favorite part of that movie is the reality versus expectations part of the movie.
Now, if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s a perfect scenario for what’s kind of going on here with this article.
It’s about this guy who literally is going through a breakup, and we’re kind of revisiting his relationship from all different points of the relationship, from what it was like at the beginning, during the honeymoon period, from what it was like at the end, when the breakup occurred, to what it was like after the breakup occurred and how he’s sort of like depressed and how he wants to get his ex back.
So he ends up running into his ex and his ex who’s named Summer, 500 Days of Summer, is he’s obsessed with her, right? And she invites him to a party at her house. And as he’s walking through the party the camera kind of cuts into two, it sort of divides the story into two points, reality versus expectations. So the expectation is he’s going to go there. He’s going to go to the birthday party.
He’s going to reconnect with Summer. They’re going to fall back in love. They’re going to get back together. The expectation.
That’s what it is. The reality is, he goes there. She’s nice to him, but she doesn’t talk to him much. And he’s not really getting along with anyone at the party because he’s there for her, but he’s too afraid to broach things with her. And then he realizes that she’s actually moved on to someone new and is now engaged to that new person. Reality versus expectations.
So what ends up happening a lot of times with these honeymoon period comparisons is when you’re dealing with an ex, who’s still texting you, the reason they’re still texting you after they’ve gone back to their ex is the honeymoon period has worn off.
They built up the expectations as this really grand thing, but the reality didn’t quite meet up to that expectation. And the honeymoon period has worn off. And they’re starting to have nostalgic feelings about their relationship with you.
Now, this also opens up an interesting can of worms because the nostalgic feeling often is what led to the breakup with you ultimately for them going back to their ex. So this is where it kind of gets really messy and hard to understand.
What we look at situationally in scenarios like this is what is it going on within your ex’s brain to make them want to break up with you and move on to their ex, and then what is going on in your ex’s brain to make them want to talk to you while they’re still with their ex.
The Reality Didn’t Quite Live Up To The Expectations
And ultimately we think the answer lies in sort of that honeymoon period, coming off. They’re beginning to realize their expectations and reality were not met.
And they may be began to regret their decision a little bit and start having a conversation with you.
Now, the opposite can also be true. Maybe they are happy in their relationship, but there’s an element of their relationship that is not quite giving them what they need.
Usually this is some emotional support type of component. Maybe their ex was the one that got away.
So they went back to their ex. They’re in this relationship with their ex, right? And it seems to be going really well. But the one little thing that their ex isn’t really good at giving them is emotional support and they need emotional support, but they don’t want to act kind of cowardly and ask for emotional support.
So they come to you and you give them their emotional support. So they get some of their emotional support needs and most of their physical needs met by their ex, but the big emotional support needs that they need to get met are met by you. And they kind of operate under this sort of pretense going forward.
And you in the end kind of get hurt by it because you feel like they’re being hot and cold. You look at them texting you as them wanting you back.
Well, that can be the case, but it also can not be the case. This is where it gets kind of difficult. And this is where it’s also really important to understand the understanding or rather the way avoidant people operate.
Understanding How Avoidant Behaviors Play Into The Equation
Now, I say avoidant people because we’ve actually surveyed our audience multiple times and found out that most of our audience has anxious attachment styles, where most of our audiences ex’s have avoidant attachment styles.
Now, when you really try to understand how avoidant exes operate, it’s important to understand that they are in love with what if scenarios, they are in love with admiring people from afar.
I’ve made it clear multiple times that people with avoidant tendencies really do not begin to miss others or begin to regret their decisions until they feel safe to do so.
And they only feel safe to do so if a couple of criteria are met.
Either you’ve moved on to someone else or it’s been enough time to where they’re thinking, okay, they don’t want me back. Or your ex has moved on to someone else.
Only when they’ve moved on and think that there’s no chance you could ever want them back do they feel safe enough to have these nostalgic feelings.
Now, this can also explain what happens with the reason for why your ex went back to their ex because they’re with you and they’re having those nostalgic what if scenarios.
Well, what if I got back with my ex or their admiring from afar, they get enthralled with the reality versus expectations type thing.
The expectation is, well, it didn’t work out with my ex, but what if it did?
And then they reach out to them just trying to be nice. And then it feels great. And then they begin to pursue that relationship. And the same thing is happening here. So essentially your ex is mirroring their behavior. What they did to you was what they are doing to their ex.
So it’s really important to understand that admiring from afar and the what if scenario within avoidant tendency people. People with avoidant tendencies really like to feel nostalgia, but they don’t feel nostalgia until they literally feel safe to have that nostalgia. And that is why we think your ex, even though they’ve moved on to their ex is still texting you.
Now, the final thing I’d like to talk about is whether or not you should be trying to get someone like this back.
Should You Be Trying To Get Someone Like This Back?
And for that, it’s a little bit tricky to answer.
One part of me wants to say, no, leave them.
They’re treating you poorly.
The other part of me is saying, well, if you want your ex back, you can also approach, give it your best shot, essentially.
Here’s where I’m at on it. If you’re in this scenario, should you try to get your ex back? I only think you should be trying to get your ex back if you think they are capable of breaking this behavior.
The fact that your ex went back to their ex while they were with you, or immediately after they broke up with you, they went back to their ex, is sort of indicative of the behavior they’re exhibiting now, where they went back to their ex and the relationship with their ex, but they’re still texting you.
It’s the same type of behavior. So that same self-fulfilling cycle of breakup, have nostalgic feelings for ex, get back with ex, breakup, have nostalgic feelings for other ex.
Get back with that other ex then have nostalgic feelings for the ex’s ex. You know, it just continues to go around and around and around. If they are caught in that type of a self-fulfilling prophecy, don’t get this person back. Usually they are capable of change, but not on the timeframe that you want them to be.
You also have to consider the fact of, if you can forgive them.
Believe me, I’ve been doing this long enough. Even though it is simple for me to sit here and say, well, look, we should just start over a new. Click the reset button. It’s like a video game. Start over from the beginning. Everything’s new again.
You don’t have any kind of baggage coming in with a new video game. You just get another run to try to finish the Sonic the Hedgehog level. That doesn’t happen with relationships. You can get back with your ex, but if you’re still hung up on the fact that they would leave you for their ex, when you, maybe you had mentioned to them that you were insecure about that. If you’re not able to get past that, then the relationship won’t survive.
So you need to be completely brutally honest with yourself before you consider getting back with an ex like this.
Chris Seiter: All right, today, we’re going to be talking to Amy, who’s one of our more recent success stories in the Facebook group. And she’s got a really interesting one, because she’s not only gotten her ex back, but she’s got engaged to her ex. And man, you’ve got a lot here.
Aimee: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Rich is a fearful-avoidant. He’s a doctor. He got really stressed based on COVID, and he even knows that you used this program to get them back, which is a huge… It’s pretty rare for a lot of people that I talked to you in they’re success stories. They’re embarrassed about it, but you seem like you’ve been completely honest and open with him about it, which is great, I think.
Aimee: Yeah, I was. And he was actually proud of me for taking the initiative to get him back. He thought that was amazing.
Chris Seiter: I think it’s cool that he looks at it that way, because there’s really two ways to look at it, which is, “You used the program to get me back. Oh, that’s so cool that you cared enough to use something like that to get me back.” And then there’s the like, “You’re weak for using a program.” And usually, I think most women and men who get their exes back are just scared to tell their exes that they had to get help. But anyways, let’s go back in time.
Aimee: I was scared.
Chris Seiter: Oh you were?
Aimee: I was scared in the beginning, I was. But then he just made me feel comfortable. So I blurted it out after a glass of wine, unfortunately. But he was so receptive and wanted to know more about it, actually.
Chris Seiter: Oh, that’s great. That’s great.
Aimee: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So you probably let him into the Facebook group and he could see how everything’s on-
Aimee: I did not.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Aimee: No, no, no, no.
Chris Seiter: That’s too much for him.
Aimee: It’s too much.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So why don’t we go back in time, and why don’t you just introduce us to how this breakup came about and your journey. And then we’ll ask questions to figure out what you did right.
Aimee: Okay. So he and I were just at a year, and we were making plans to move in together, and COVID happened. And actually, COVID happened about three months after we started dating. So it was really difficult dating. All of our dates were at parks, picnics, that kind of thing. But a lot of one on one time.
Chris Seiter: Couldn’t go out to eat, couldn’t see a movie, do things like that.
Aimee: Correct. We couldn’t. Right. But I think that it actually brought us closer quicker because of all the talking. But anyway, we were just at a year. We were planning on moving in together. And the week before we were moving in, he canceled that out of the blue. And then about two weeks after that, he broke up with me out of the blue. There was no indication to me that there was a problem. I was just dumped. And I’m not-
Chris Seiter: Did he do it… I don’t mean to interrupt. Did he do it over text or did he do this in person?
Aimee: Oh my God, yes. He tried, but I’m not okay with that. He tried to do it over text ,and I texted him back that that was not acceptable. So he called me and we talked about it. And actually, the first time he dumped me, we got back together for two weeks, and then he did it again. So it was twice. And then the second time-
Chris Seiter: So how did you get him back? Before we get into the permanent one where you got engaged, how quickly did you get him back that first time before the second breakup occurred?
Aimee: It was weird, because once I got him on the phone and we talked things through, it was immediate. We were back together. It’s almost as if-
Chris Seiter: Okay. So it was just a conversation.
Aimee: Correct. It was just a conversation. I never begged, I never natted, none of that. But then he did it again via text. And that, that was enough for me. And I texted him back that I agreed with him. I needed the space, the time, too. And that was the end. I never texted him again.
Chris Seiter: Now, when you say you agree with him, did you just say it like that? Like, “I agree with you?”
Aimee: I did. I did.
Chris Seiter: Wow.
Aimee: I said, “I agree with you. I need this, too.” And that was the end. He actually texted me after that, but I didn’t respond.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So how did he exactly initiate this breakup the second time?
Speaker 3: He said, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you. But I love you.” He kept repeating himself, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you, but I love you.”
Chris Seiter: It’s such a paradox.
Aimee: And right now… It was. It was Crazy. “And right now, I can’t be with you. Right now.” It was just like that. It was like, I love you, but I’m not in love with you. I love you. I can’t be with you right now.” And I was done.
Chris Seiter: What was your first reaction upon saying like, “Okay, I agree with you?” what did you do after that?
Aimee: I was angry because he did it by text again. So I have too much pride, I guess, to be okay with that. And so that was just… Yeah, I was done and I just agreed with him. And that was it.
Chris Seiter: So do you think you saying, “I agree with you,” came from a more of a prideful stance or an anger stance, like, “Okay. I agree with you. We’re done?”
Aimee: Yes.
Chris Seiter: So, okay. I like it actually.
Aimee: Yes, definitely. I was not going to be treated that way, and I felt I had more value than that. And I had tried to let him understand that the first time he broke up through text, but it didn’t seem to catch on, but the fearful avoidant part of him, I know that’s why he texted. Now, I know this. He was too afraid to do it over the phone. He was too afraid to do it in person. So, but at the time, I didn’t know that.
Chris Seiter: The complications are scary for someone who has-
Aimee: Oh yeah. He’s not good with that.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So immediately after this breakup, you’re angry, hurt. At what point does that… So just to clarify, when you say, “I agree with you,” are you at any point thinking I need to immediately get this person back or is it like screw them, I don’t care about them?
Aimee: I think when I texted him that, it was screw you, I don’t care. Yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so how long did it take for the for the dial to shift more, to like, okay I [crosstalk 00:06:44].
Aimee: The next day.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So it was a quick-
Aimee: It was.
Chris Seiter: The anger of the five stages of grief was very quick for you.
Aimee: Yes. And you know why, though, because we had such a perfect relationship. We had never argued. We still haven’t. No arguments, no disagreements, and just a beautiful relationship. So yeah, I wanted it back. And he’s the first guy I’ve been with since my husband passed. And so I think that bond with him, I just-
Chris Seiter: You had a strong connection.
Aimee: We really did have a strong connection, yeah.
Chris Seiter: You felt there was something special to this.
Aimee: Sure.
Chris Seiter: It seems like the only points of contention you guys ever had was related to this all of a sudden he comes out and says, “We can’t move in together,” and then breaks up with you quickly afterwards. And as we’re probably going to find out, probably that step of moving in together maybe freaked him out, do you think?
Aimee: I think it did. I think it was the tip of the iceberg, honestly. It was just what put him over.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Aimee: He couldn’t handle the relationship. He couldn’t handle the financials, the COVID, everything that was happening, his kids, everything that was happening at that time, the holidays, everything.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Well, we were talking before we started recording about some of the factors that caused the breakup, and there’s a lot there. You had mentioned that you’re a widow and he’s a widow. And then his kids did not want to meet you, so that weighs on him. Then there’s the COVID aspect of happening right when you start dating. So, it’s this weird situation for him, especially at work, because people don’t want to show up to work or show up because they’re afraid. And that created some financial stresses within him as well as work stresses within him. So maybe to compartmentalize, he’s like, “I need to put this relationship over here and just focus on these aspects.” Of course, it usually blows up in people’s faces who do that because, you can’t just pretend something doesn’t exist.
Aimee: Right. I think that’s what he did though. He tried doing that.
Chris Seiter: It’s almost like a coping mechanism. And I think it’s really relatable. I’m sure there’s areas in all of our lives that we’ve done the compartmentalization aspect without really thinking about it. We just do it as a way to cope.
Aimee: Probably, I agree. Yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Aimee: Yeah. It was a lot. And I think it just was the tip of the iceberg for him, the moving in, and he couldn’t handle it all. And I was the disposable thing, if you will.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. I think you were probably the easiest thing to like, okay-
Aimee: He thought.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, he thought.
Aimee: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: It turns out you’ll out last COVID, you’ll outlast the stress, you’ll outlast all of the financial constraints.
Aimee: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So eventually you get to this point where you’re like, “Okay, I need to think about trying to repair this.” At what point do you come across our program, or our website, or our YouTube channel? What point of the stage does that occur?
Aimee: I actually found it the night of the breakup, and so I guess the next day. It was that quick.
Chris Seiter: So do you remember exactly if you were doing a Google search or you did a YouTube search?
Aimee: It was a Google search that led me to the YouTube videos and I started on the videos. Yes, immediately. It just seemed like such a solid program. Of course, I was reading the reviews. And I’m a researcher, so I did a lot of research. And out of several, I picked this one. And actually the reason being, yeah, the reason being was to… Yes, I wanted him back, but I also wanted to find out why was it so easy for him to do what he did and via text, and I wanted to improve myself. I didn’t want it to happen ever again, whether I got him back or not.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So our program definitely fits that mold. You eventually signed up for the program. I’m assuming you start reading about the no contact rule. You get started on that. And you mentioned-
Aimee: That was immediate. Immediate, the no contact.
Chris Seiter: So you did that inherently without really maybe even learning about it until afterwards.
Aimee: Correct. Right.
Chris Seiter: You mentioned, though, that you never broke the no contact, not one time.
Aimee: I did not.
Chris Seiter: What is your secret? How can people get this magical power?
Aimee: I don’t think it’s a magical power. It’s really a will. It’s what do you want to accomplish? And it’s a goal. And if you want to accomplish a goal, you’ve got to do the steps to get to that goal. And I actually made a paper of 45 hearts on it, and I put it on the fridge, and every morning I colored in a heart, and it kept me… I could see the end. I could see, every day it was a colored in a heart. And I was reading through everything. I purchased the bundles. I did everything. But yeah, I think it was just that when you get a goal… The problem I see a lot in the program by reading through other people’s things, is that the focus is more on getting him back. And that should really just be an outcome. The focus I thought was on me and on improving myself so I wasn’t in this situation again. And if I got him back, that’s great. If I didn’t, you know what? There’s someone else out there.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. It’s music to my ears. Every single day, my YouTube studio makeshift, we have a room in our house that’s just for YouTube, I go up there and I always feel like I’m repeating the same stuff every single day, just in different ways. And it’s always what you just said, which is like, and I think that’s such a really great way of putting it, the outcome of improving yourself and focusing on you, outgrowing your ex, should be that they want to come back.
Aimee: Yes. Oh yes.
Chris Seiter: Instead of focusing on it like, “Well, if I do this, they’ll come back.”
Aimee: Right.
Chris Seiter: And it almost never works out that way. And it’s usually the people I’m noticing when I interview people, the people who have that, who realize that, that concept of like, “Hey, this is the outcome of all this work,” that end up doing really, really well. They don’t always get their exes back, but a lot of them end up do.
Aimee: Right. But it should be okay if they don’t, right?
Chris Seiter: They don’t care if they get their exes back, it’s kind of like-
Aimee: Right. Well I cared, but-
Chris Seiter: I think you can care, but also accept if they don’t come-
Aimee: I was okay.
Chris Seiter: Right. You know it’s not going to be like this devastating thing that’s going to ruin your life forever.
Aimee: Right. And I won’t tell you that I was even keeled emotionally the whole time, because I grew a lot emotionally through the program, a lot. Yes, I had plenty of days where I was crying and wanted to reach out. But my willpower was stronger than that, and because I wanted to achieve something. And I knew that if I did that, well, number one, why did I buy the program? And number two, I wasn’t going to achieve what I wanted to achieve, which was growing and changing and never ever again being any man’s doormat ever, ever, ever.
Chris Seiter: Well, I also, I’m kind of curious, you mentioned you classify your ex as a fearful avoidant. Did you know about attachment styles at all before you came into the program?
Aimee: I did not. One of the recommended books by Tyler was Attached, which I did read, and I did the test that’s in there for both me and my fiance. And he was textbook fearful avoidant. It was easy to see. But it changed everything in my perspective on how I approached him. It still does. It still does.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. It’s really mind blowing, isn’t it?
Aimee: It is. It’s awesome.
Chris Seiter: When you actually just to kind of understand this is how they’re interpreting relationships and how it’s maybe different. I’m curious, how did you score on the test?
Aimee: I am anxious.
Chris Seiter: Okay. It’s pretty common.
Aimee: Yeah, I’m anxious. But I will tell you that I’ve been working on changing that attachment style, and I’ve made leaps and bounds in doing that. I have really done well with handling my emotions, calming the Emotional Storm is a great book, handling my emotions and learning how to identify triggers, that kind of thing. So I’ve come a long way.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. So 45 days no contact is not a short amount of time. Here’s my question for you. I know it was not all roses and candy every single day and perfect. I know there were days where it was really hard, and you’re probably going to the Facebook group and you’re saying like, “I want to break no contact so bad.” But after all the work was done, when you got out of no contact, did you feel like you had more confidence? Did you feel a little bit better about things?
Aimee: 100%, 100%. I was very confident. I’m not going to tell you I wasn’t nervous about the first reach out and would he respond or not? Because I had no idea, but I was equipped and ready for it if he didn’t, I knew what to do. I knew how to handle it, thanks to the program. Everything’s written out. If you really do the program, everything’s right there for you. So I knew how to handle it. I was equipped. And thankfully, I didn’t have to deal with any of that. But if I had to, I probably would not have stuck around very long trying to, maybe two reach outs with no response. And that’s just me. I’m done, next. I’m going to move on.
Chris Seiter: Well fortunately, that didn’t happen.
Aimee: I’m glad it didn’t happen. I’m very glad it didn’t, because actually, the relationship is better now than it was the first time.
Chris Seiter: That’s so great to hear.
Aimee: It is. And I will tell you that it’s the change in me. I have no doubt that a lot of it is the change in me and how he’s responding to me that has made a difference.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Like I told you before we started recording, I had gone through some of your Facebook posts, and it was really interesting. There was a Facebook post in there that you were mentioning, this is before you were engaged, I think you were really close to getting him back, but not quite there yet. And you had mentioned something had happened where you could tell he pulled away, which is really classic fearful avoidant mentality. When things are getting close, they pull away because their independence is kind of like, “Eh.” And you had mentioned that before, you would have just kept pursuing and trying to fix the thing, right? But you decided just to give him his space, and he comes back the very next morning with like, “I love you.”
Aimee: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So it seems like just even being aware of how to handle someone who has avoidant tendencies and having the discipline not to give into your anxious tendencies, that’s huge.
Aimee: It made a huge difference. That was the texting phase. And he was so responsive during the texting phase. The first couple were actually neutral. One conversation, he even-
Chris Seiter: I saw your reach out, by the way. It was like you asked for his opinion on something. And he was really clever in his response back to you.
Aimee: Yeah. And then he just disappeared. And I was like, okay. So, but I mirrored him. I’m not going to, if that response warranted no response from me when he bowed out. So I didn’t. And yes, he did pull back. It was obvious he had pulled back, and he came back and I followed this program. I mirrored him. I have a spreadsheet where I kept the times where I was time and a halfing.
Chris Seiter: Oh, you did.
Aimee: I was doing it all, but it worked. So what can I say? If you want me to go ahead, I can go ahead a little bit. The texting phase, about five and a half weeks, I believe. The first-
Chris Seiter: It lasted for five and a half weeks, the texting phase.
Aimee: It did. Mm-hmm (affirmative). It did. And that’s when I went with Anna about going and trying to move into the phone call phase, because I totally didn’t really know how to do that. And she guided me in that, and it was just a success. He-
Chris Seiter: So, how did you accomplish that?
Aimee: Actually, we’re both in the medical field, so I was actually getting ready to be promoted. And I had a question about my promotion. He had been with me on that journey since day one, so I brought it back and was like, “I need help on my resume on this thing that I had to do for this promotion.” And I was like, “I want to email this to you. And then I’d like to go over it on the phone because-”
Chris Seiter: Oh, it’s brilliant.
Aimee: Yeah, and it worked.
Chris Seiter: Oh, it’s so brilliant.
Aimee: We scheduled a time. It’s good.
Chris Seiter: It’s brilliant, because it really taps into that holy Trinity concept, the wealth aspect of it, but also it’s such a brilliant way to get… She actually recommended that to one of my other success story interviews. It was someone who lived in Japan and it was a work thing that she needed help on. And she actually got a meetup that way. She was like, “Come meet up with me.” I think it was pre COVID. So it was back when you didn’t have to worry about going out.
Aimee: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Oh man.
Aimee: It was great. It just worked like a charm.
Chris Seiter: What a cool way of showing off, too, like, “Yeah, I got this promotion, but I need your help.” It just-
Aimee: Yeah, and we scheduled a phone call and he actually backed out of the first time it was scheduled. He was tired and didn’t want to.
Chris Seiter: He’s scared.
Aimee: I was like, “No problem. Is there another time you could do it?” And he’s like, “Well, why don’t we do it…” It was the next day, I think, actually, or two days. And he was there, we did the phone call, we went over it, and everything was great. And that opened the door for the phone calls, because then we started talking on the phone a little more. I took it slow.
Chris Seiter: So the very first interaction you have, which is business-based interaction, did it eventually evolve on that very first phone call to more personal topics?
Aimee: It did. You’re going to love this. You’re going to love this.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Yeah.
Aimee: So he really loves clothes like I do, okay.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Aimee: And I’m just a big Calvin Klein fan. And so I had, after the phone call about the resume and stuff, I’m like, “Well, the interview is coming up,” or whatever. And I’m like, “I’m going to Macy’s, I need a new suit. And I want to know your opinion on the three that I pick.” And so I sent him the three pictures, and that was it. He was commenting and he’s like, “You’re so beautiful.” And anyway, it really opened the flirting, and it changed the dynamics of our communication.
Chris Seiter: Oh, that’s so clever.
Aimee: It was. I did that myself.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Oh man, it’s just so good.
Aimee: It was good.
Chris Seiter: It’s a great way of using phone calls to enhance text messaging, too, if you think about it. Because that was all happening through text, right?
Aimee: That was all text.
Chris Seiter: The pictures?
Aimee: Yes. Yes. But then we started talking a little more on the phone, and it was only once a week or something, and they weren’t long. We’ve never had long phone calls. We still don’t. We talk in person. But he had brought up, through text he had brought up a movie he wanted to see. Gosh, what was it? I don’t even remember now, but-
Chris Seiter: Quiet Place Two or something like that.
Aimee: Yeah. I think it was his. I think it was.
Chris Seiter: Sweet.
Aimee: Yes.
Chris Seiter: That’s the only date movie that’s come out.
Aimee: I love that movie.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, it’s scary.
Aimee: Oh, they’re great. They’re both great. But I had texted or he had texted that to me, and I was like, “Yeah, I want to see that, too.” And I’m like, “Well, how about we just see it together then?” So I threw that out there.
Chris Seiter: You just keep stumbling into perfection here. It’s great. Did that not work out so well, though?
Aimee: It did. We met, we went to the movie, and then he said, “Well, why don’t we go grab a bite to eat afterwards?” And the golden rule, it was that right there at the dinner, “I want you back.” It was that quick, so I didn’t have to go through any more meetups. So, but it was great and it’s been great ever since.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So I want to back up.
Aimee: Okay.
Chris Seiter: There’s a few things that… We went hyper-speed. You mentioned after the first phone call, you were in that phone call phase for a little bit, and you would talk maybe like once a week, how would you end up getting into those phone calls, the second phone call or the third phone call?
Aimee: What was the second one? I had a COVID question, which I really didn’t because I’m in healthcare, too. But I had a COVID question and it was right when all the medications for it were coming out, and I can’t remember even the names of them, but I told him I wanted to talk to him about COVID. That was the second phone call. Wow. It’s hard to even remember, to be honest. It was all me though, it was never him. He didn’t initiate.
Chris Seiter: So it just happened naturally?
Aimee: He wasn’t even initiating texts.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So now that you got them back, you had told me something interesting before we started recording. Did you ever ask him explicitly why he never initiated?
Aimee: I did. I did.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Aimee: And he told me that because I had texted him that I wanted that, too, that I wanted the break up, too, and I agreed with him, he didn’t think I wanted him to reach out to me. And so he, being a fearful avoidant, isn’t going to risk that. And he wanted to. He told me he regretted the breakup within a week after doing it, but he didn’t reach out to me because he didn’t think I wanted him to. So that was interesting.
Chris Seiter: That is interesting, because I’m just curious if you had not reacted the way you initially reacted to the breakup, which was out of anger, and you’re definitely in the right for that. I wonder if it would be different, because I’ve actually seen situations where you get back together too quickly. And it just ends up in that off again on again cycle. And I’m wondering, did he make any mention about like, “Wow, you’re different” or, “You seem different,” at all?
Aimee: He did. He did. He told me that he thought that I was a lot more confident and that that was attractive to him.
Chris Seiter: Okay. What about specifically your handling of his fearful avoidant, sort of like, “I need to go away for a little bit?”
Aimee: Well, I haven’t told him that he’s… I haven’t told him that he is.
Chris Seiter: I’m just saying, did you notice him say anything about the space you’re giving him?
Aimee: Not specifically about the space, but you know what he did say to me? “You understand me. You get me.”
Chris Seiter: Okay. That’s exactly what you want to hear.
Aimee: Yes. And that was so neat to hear, so neat to hear.
Chris Seiter: Did at any point, did you ever read the book Never Split the Difference?
Aimee: I did. It’s actually sitting right in front of me right now. I did.
Chris Seiter: Oh, beautiful.
Aimee: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, that’s exactly what you want to hear. Like with Tactical Empathy, people want to be understood.
Aimee: It was a helpful book.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Okay.
Aimee: A little slow, but helpful.
Chris Seiter: A little slow. But yeah.
Aimee: It was hard to read that one. Yeah. But it was good.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So we’re missing a big part of the story here. How do you get engaged to this guy?
Aimee: It was so funny, because as a fearful avoidant, he’s so afraid of confrontation, and I’m not just saying bad confrontation, any, even good stuff, right? So he had this big doctor’s dinner coming up, and you had to be a fiance or a wife to go to it with him. And he asked me to go to the dinner with him, and I’m like, “Okay, well, how’s that going to work?” I’m thinking this in my head. And then it was a couple of days, he hadn’t given me an answer. So I texted him and I’m like, “Hey hun, am I going to this dinner or not?” And he forwards me a text response that he had gotten from the place he works for. And it said, “Yes, you can bring your fiance.” And I was like, “Okay. So the text is calling me his fiance, but he never said that to me.”
Aimee: So when I met him that night at his house to go to the dinner, I said, “So what about that text, honey?” And he’s like, “Yeah, I have a ring.” This is exactly how he did this. “I have a ring.” And I’m like, “Okay.” So he went and got the ring and he brings it up to me. And he’s like, “Here, you can wear this.” And I’m like, “Okay, is it mine?” And he’s like, “Yeah, it’s yours.” He was so awkward, so awkward. But it was-
Chris Seiter: It’s really nerve wracking to propose to someone. I’ve luckily only had to do it once, but it was the most nerve wracking experience ever. I knew I was going to get a yes, but it’s still just nerve wracking because it’s the ultimate act of vulnerability. You’re asking someone that you want to dedicate your entire life to them essentially.
Aimee: Yeah, it was cute.
Chris Seiter: So it is own brand for a fearful avoidant to have someone else do it for them and-
Aimee: Yeah, that was funny.
Chris Seiter: And you’ve only been engaged for nine days now. This is still fresh.
Aimee: Yes. Very new. And he actually, since that night, said he wanted to do a more formal proposal. So he’s planning a vacation. He won’t tell me where, but he doesn’t think he’s telling me where, but he said Asheville. Oh, come on. We both love to kayak. We love to hike. And we love the wineries. What does that say? The Biltmore Estate.
Chris Seiter: Oh, okay.
Aimee: So he’s planning a vacation for us in October.
Chris Seiter: It’s the engagement vacation, which is awesome.
Aimee: Yeah. So he’s going to do more formal proposal then, but yeah, that’s good.
Chris Seiter: What a story.
Aimee: It is, isn’t it?
Chris Seiter: Yeah. It made my life easier, because usually I’ll get on these success stories and I’ll notice like, “Okay, this person deviated from the program here, but they still saw success.” And usually afterwards I’m sitting there and trying to understand like, well, why did that work? Well for you, you just followed the directions and got the result, which is awesome.
Aimee: I did. And I would recommend everyone. And anyone that I talked to on the group, I tell them, I try to encourage them to follow, because that’s what works. There’s a reason for the way things are set up.
Chris Seiter: Right. We did not come up with it on our own.
Aimee: Right.
Chris Seiter: Believe me, if you saw the very first version of the program, it has changed dramatically from what it used to be, because we’re learning more about what works. And what is working is what is out there now.
Aimee: Yeah. And it definitely does. And I did everything down to the spreadsheets and read the things I was supposed to read, and mirroring, everything.
Chris Seiter: I love the heart no contact thing. I’m training for a marathon right now, and I have my own version of that, where I check off like, “Okay, I got my run in today.”
Aimee: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: And the no contact rule is if you can maybe visualize like, “Hey, there is an end to this thing,” it makes it easier to survive.
Aimee: It actually was. Something so simple as that, it really helped.
Chris Seiter: I know.
Aimee: I looked forward to coloring that heart in every morning. And you don’t know the outcome, but as you progress through those hearts, you can see that change in yourself and in myself. And that encouraged me to move forward. And yeah, I had it easier than a lot of people do, probably, but I think the outcome would have been very different had I natted, had I begged. I don’t see him having come back at all had I done any of that?
Chris Seiter: Well, it’s interesting because a lot of time, your statement, you think you had it easier than most people. And I would say, no, you didn’t, you were extremely disciplined and you didn’t make any of the fatal mistakes, because a lot of the people that have it hard are making these fatal mistakes in the relationship immediately after the relationship.
Aimee: Yeah, you’re right actually.
Chris Seiter: And so sometimes I think that the harsh truth that people don’t want to accept is that there are things you can do that dramatically make your chances just plummet, and you didn’t seem to make any huge mistakes at all.
Aimee: There was only one mistake I made, and that was on my second reach out. I had gotten mod approval on a text from Kirstie, and I altered it my own. And you know what? That’s the conversation he backed out of.
Chris Seiter: That woman knows how to text.
Aimee: That was the one. But that was the one he backed out of.
Chris Seiter: That woman knows how to text.
Aimee: So what does that say? I never did it again. But I did make that one mistake, but yes, I was very disciplined. But you know what? If you love yourself and you realize that you deserve better than what’s happening to you, you should be able to stick to this really. It wasn’t that hard for me to.
Chris Seiter: Looking back at the whole experience, what do you think made the single biggest difference for you?
Aimee: Improving myself.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Aimee: Getting ahold of my emotions, getting control of my emotions, my battle buddy. Oh my God. My battle buddy. Phenomenal, phenomenal concept, you guys. Actually, she’s my best friend now. We walk together, we do everything together.
Chris Seiter: I cannot take credit for that at all.
Aimee: Somebody can. That was great.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Well, okay, so basically the self-improvement, having the battle buddy helped a ton as well, probably just to vent and also hear, and maybe was there an element to the battle buddy aspect of like, “Hey, I’m not in this alone because someone else is struggling with the emotions just as much as I am?”
Aimee: Oh, definitely. Definitely. And someone who understands exactly what you’re going through and exactly where you’re at. It was wonderful. And she didn’t actually get her ex back. She walked away from it. So it was a very different dynamic with her, but we just had each other’s backs. We were able to vent to each other at any time. So using your battle buddy, I can’t recommend that enough, because if you have a desire to break no contact, or you’re feeling low about yourself, or whatever, that’s who you go to. And it just was great. It was great.
Chris Seiter: Well, hey, I wanted to say, Amy, thank you so much for doing this.
Aimee: Absolutely. I want to help these other people out there, too.
Chris Seiter: This was a great success story. It really was.
Today, we’re going to talk about what to do if you run into an ex who dumped you.
This is always a difficult situation to be in, because most of the time it happens when you’re not expecting it. There are some cases where we find some of our clients will manufacture run-ins with their exes, but those clients tend to be prepared and also breaking the rules.
So what we’d like to do is actually talk to you specifically about a situation where you run into your ex and you have no idea what to do.
I put together a list of nine of the top tips that you should keep in mind when you encounter this situation. And the tips are as follows.
Adopt the outgrowth mindset.
Don’t hide, instead, be preemptive.
Keep the interaction friendly and short.
Act interested in what they’re saying.
Do not initiate any physical contact.
Ensure you always look your best.
Do not spill your emotions.
Be prepared for a worst case scenario.
No contact is going to determine if you reach out afterwards.
So, that’s a lot. I think probably the best thing to do is to take this list of tips and go through each one, step by step, or tip by tip and give you specific advice on what we mean by them.
Let’s get started.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
So an interesting thing happened in early 2020. For the first time ever, we’ve been at this since 2012, my team and I decided to take a look, a very hard long look, at our success stories.
Now we’ve been blessed here on Ex-Boyfriend Recovery, with thousands of different success stories, meaning people who’ve come through our program, and successfully used it to win their exes back.
Ultimately, what we were trying to understand are the patterns. We want to see if there’s something that separates people who are successful in getting exes back versus people who are unsuccessful in getting an ex back.
Now, what’s interesting is, over the course of the last two years, we’ve been interviewing success stories, talking to them, trying to understand what makes their situation unique. And what we learned is there’s no two success stories that are ever the same.
Yet, there is one small subtle link between each and every one.
Now I would be lying if I told you that every single success story that we’ve ever interviewed says that they have this idea of present.
But ultimately, what we learned is the people who seem to be very successful at getting their exes back got to a place emotionally where they no longer cared about getting their exes back. In other words, they outgrew their ex.
And I think this is an essential thing to keep in mind when you run into your ex.
Most of the time, you’re running into your ex and you’re not expecting to see them. So you’re shell shocked, and oftentimes, you make it this bigger thing in your head than it actually is. It’s just some random happenstance or situation that you find yourself in.
And you’re thinking, oh my goodness, what are they thinking?
I hope I’m doing everything correctly. And you just double think yourself. Now, compare that scenario to someone who has gone through the process of outgrowing their ex. Now, when I say outgrowing their ex, a lot of times people think I’m saying you need to forget your ex.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. What I’m saying is you need to move past your ex, except the reality that you may not get them back, but not care if you don’t get them back. It gives you this external and internal confidence all at once. And it gives you this devil may care attitude, where you just walk through life just feeling like you own it. And this is a good thing to project out there when you do see your ex.
So ultimately, I talk about outgrowing your ex.
When I say that, I’m talking about a situation where you have gotten so strong mentally that you’re okay and you don’t really make it a big deal if you do see your ex in person.
So on the one hand, you have a person who is over obsessing about what their ex is thinking about this meetup or this accidental run in.
And then on the other hand, you have someone who kind of is like, “Oh cool. My ex is here. Whatever.”
There’s a huge difference. We notice that people who have that attitude tend to be significantly better in interactions because they don’t feel like there’s anything to lose. They’ve already gone through the grieving process, because they’ve already lost their ex, and they’re kind of like, “Cool, if I get them back, cool. If I get them back, all right, I don’t care.” That’s the mentality that we want you to have.
So the first tip always should be to outgrow your ex. And usually, you’re going to do this during a period of no contact. This is oftentimes what we’ve updated our definition of the no contact rule. It used to be just this rule that we’d use to ignore your ex, to make them miss you.
It’s now evolved into this rule that can still do all that, but it’s more about the internal confidence of outgrowing your ex, getting to this place emotionally by the end of no contact where you’re just kind of like, “Yeah, I want them back, but I’ll be okay if I don’t get them back.” That’s what you need to have.
So ideally, if you’re putting in that work to “outgrow your ex” you’re in a good shape already.
Tip #2: Don’t Hide, Instead Be Preemptive
So let’s take a fake scenario here.
Let’s say that you and your ex accidentally run into each other, and you are so fraught with emotions that you avoid the situation and you don’t do anything. Your ex feels exactly the same way. So guess what?
They don’t do anything as well. And it just creates this awkward situation where you’re not sure what to do. Your ex is expecting you to reach out to them first, you’re expecting your ex to reach out to them first.
Here’s my advice to you, do not hide.
This is the worst thing you could do. Even if you’re in a no contact rule and you’re “breaking” no contact, I don’t consider this technically breaking no contact, because it should be an accidental run-in. But even if you are in the middle of no contact, if your ex is there, don’t be a jerk, acknowledge them.
Be preemptive.
So don’t hide in the corner. Don’t get scared of your ex. Walk up to them and say like, “Hi.” That’s it. You don’t need to offer a hand.
You don’t need to hug them. You don’t need to do anything other than to not pretend they don’t exist. Go up to them. Be super nice. Say, “Hi,” and allow a conversation to unfold from there.
Now this leads us seamlessly into our next tip.
Tip #3: Keep The Interaction Friendly And Short
The biggest mistake I’m noticing people have when they run into an ex is that they’re not keeping their conversations either friendly or they’re not keeping their conversations short.
Now let’s talk about those things. Keeping an interaction friendly can be difficult if you have a lot of emotions involved.
So the idea here is we’re using the outgrowth mindset that we talked about in tip one to build as our foundation.
This allows us to be friendly and move past whatever emotions were there in the past.
Usually, though, if you’re in a conversation with your ex, you’ve decided you’re not going to hide.
You’re going to be preemptive.
If you see them, you’re going to wave at them, and you’re going to walk up to them, and talk to them.
Your ex will say that one thing that gets under your nerves, and it turns a conversation from friendly and pleasant into not so friendly and not so pleasant. Remember, always keep the conversation friendly.
Now we’re going to talk about a situation a little bit later about what to do if the conversation and you were trying to keep it friendly, but no matter what you’re doing, your ex just decides to be a jerk.
We’re going to talk about how to handle that, but for now, just understand you need to keep it friendly.
You also need to keep it short. Now, what is short? Well, I guess it’s all relative, but I would say your conversation should last no longer than seven to eight minutes.
This is the idea of what you’re trying to get across.
You accidentally run into your ex. You have gotten to this place emotionally where you have outgrown them.
You’ve gotten to this place where you’re very confident with yourself. So instead of hiding in the corner when you see them, you decide to walk up to them and say, “Hi,” and start a conversation with you.
You are super friendly to them.
They ask you what you’re up to. You tell them, you ask them what they’re up to. They tell you. Of course, you’re doing way cooler things than they are. And the idea here is that after seven or eight of entering into a very pleasant satisfying conversation, you have to go.
This does a couple of things.
It triggers something called the Zeigarnik Effect, which is a psychological principle that basically states that human beings remember interactions that are interrupted or incomplete better than completed ones.
A great example I always like to use is when I first met my wife, we would be in the middle of a hour and a half long conversation, literally right in the middle of it, the conversation was so satisfying, so pleasant, and then all of a sudden her phone would die. And all I could think is I want to get her back on the phone as soon as possible.
But it would take 15, 20 minutes for her phone to charge up. And in some cases, it would be so late, she would just go to bed rather than waiting for her phone to charge up.
All this did was drive me nuts, because all I could think about was this conversation and her.
The idea is if you’re keeping a conversation friendly and short when you run into your ex, that short part will make them think about you more after the conversation, because that’s really what matters.
What matters is you’re having this really pleasant, really satisfying conversation that almost ends abruptly, and they want more. And the fact that they want more will lead them to chase you a little bit. And that’s what you want.
Tip #4: Act Interested In What They Are Saying
Tip number four, act interested in what they are saying.
Now, one of the ideas of keeping a conversation friendly and satisfying is you need to come in with this prepared set of topics, but we can never be prepared for when we run into our ex, so it almost defeats the purpose.
Ultimately, though, every single time that I’ve ever encountered a situation where I had “a plan” when it comes to human interaction, it’s always gotten thrown out the window, because you can not account, or your brain can not account for all of the things that could potentially go wrong.
So usually what happens is when I tell people these tips, they’ll say, But Chris, how do I keep them interested?”
Well, all you ultimately have to do is act very interested and empathize with your ex. You need to understand what they’re talking about, and usually just build off of what they say. So act interested in what they’re saying.
They’ll notice you’re acting interested in what they’re saying.
They’ll add more to the conversation, because they like being the center of your world for just one little tiny moment. And then you can take what they say and build off of it.
Another really interesting way of keeping a conversation satisfying is, this is sort of a ninja tip, but it really helps to know what your ex ultimately is passionate about and interested in, and then asking them questions about that thing, because they always like to talk about themselves and then their interests.
So if you keep the focus and spotlight on them, they’re talking because, let’s be honest, all men have egos.
And they are more than happy and feel like this is an incredibly satisfying conversation, because they’re talking about the one thing they love more than anything, themselves.
Tip #5: Don’t Initiate Any Physical Contact
So you’ve decided you’re not going to hide.
You’re going to be preemptive.
You’re going to walk up to your ex, and you’re going to wave at them and say, “Hi”. You don’t even need to wave at them in some cases. But how do you handle physical contact? Well, my go-to in situations where you run into an ex is for you not to initiate any physical contact.
That means when you decide not to hide, but instead be preemptive, don’t go to your ex and outstretch your hand and shake their hand, just wave, smile, be super, super awesome and bubbly, and then allow them to initiate any kind of physical contact.
You’ll know, they’ll be the ones to hug you.
They’ll be the ones to touch your shoulder.
Let them be the ones to initiate that kind of stuff. All right. You don’t need to act not very confident with yourself. That’s not what I’m saying. And if you are a physical touch type person, this is going to be a little bit of a harder tip for you too encounter. But more than anything, you need to ensure that you do not initiate any physical contact.
Why? Well, the simple reason for why is you do not want to give your ex any ideas that you’re more into them than you actually are.
Let’s be honest, we’re all into our exes if you’re in a situation where you’re trying to win an ex back, right? But the key to winning an ex back is almost to convince them that you don’t want them back. It’s this interesting reverse psychology that we’ve noticed occurs.
The important part here is to not initiate any physical contact to give them any false sense of security. They need to recognize you’re you’re doing awesome without them. You’re super friendly. You’re super bubbly. You’re really interested in what they’re saying. You have really interesting things to talk about themselves, but there’s still something not quite right.
She used to hug me all the time. She used to be the one to hold my hand or touch my shoulder. That’s all gone. And if they initiate physical contact with you, then it’s an initiation that they’re missing that. I guess an admission is a better way of saying that.
Tip #6: Ensure You Look Your Best
This is going to be a tough one for everyone to accomplish.
Because like I said, oftentimes when you’re running into your ex, you’re not prepared for the run in. It’s an accidental thing.
So one of the ways that you can get around this is to always look your best anytime you step foot outside of your apartment, your house, wherever you live.
This is maybe not doable for all specific situations.
For example, what happens if you are dressed to go to work, and then on your way home from work, you run into your ex and you’re in your work clothes, and you’ve been in these work clothes for eight hours and you’re exhausted.
And you don’t feel that you look your best.
It’s not going to be a perfect thing.
This is maybe one of the most flawed tips on this list, because it’s impossible look your best all the time.
But ensure you do your best to look your best when you step foot outside of your house in case something like this happens. But more than anything, what you want to do is you’ll notice something interesting happens if you do look your best. Not just your ex, but other people will find you attractive. And this will, in turn, grow your confidence.
This is what we want to have happen. It’s a lot of work, but if you want to cover your bases with the accidental run-in, that’s a good idea.
Tip #7: Do Not Spill Your Emotions
So remember when I said we need to be friendly? Well, One of the best ways of not being friendly is for you to spill your emotions about how sad you’ve been, or how depressed you’ve been, or how angry you are at your ex. So what really tip number seven is all about is obtaining emotional control.
If you have trouble in a conversation with your ex where you’re having trouble not spilling your emotions, what it tells me is that you have not taken tip number one very seriously. Someone who has outgrown their ex has gotten to a place emotionally where they just don’t dwell on the past too much anymore.
They’ve grown past it. I guess the good analogy I could think of is think back if… Now, some of the listeners or some of the readers here may be in situations where they are with their first loves, but let’s assume that all of us are 40 years old and we’ve been through multiple relationships.
Maybe some of us are married. And we think back fondly to the very first person that we were with, the very first person we ever had a relationship with.
We broke up with that person or they broke up with us for whatever reason.
But when you look back, you don’t really think too much about that anymore. You’ve outgrown it. You’ve learned so much more. You’re not upset about some of the stuff they did anymore.
Even if they did cheat on you, I found sometimes you’re just kind of like, “Oh, well we were kids,” and you can move past it.
This is what you should always be striving to do. You’re trying to put this mentality on speed dial. I don’t know.
I’m trying to find a really good analogy, and I can’t think of one off the top of my head, but you get what I’m saying here.
We’re trying to accomplish the outgrowth mindset so that you do not spill your emotions and seem like a blubbering anxious mess in front of your ex.
Tip #8: Be Prepared For A Worst Case Scenario
Tip number eight, be prepared for a worst case scenario.
All right, let’s imagine a situation where you and your ex run into each other accidentally. You do everything right. You’ve outgrown them. You’ve been preemptive. You’ve kept interactions friendly and… I’m not sure, we’ll get to that in a minute.
You’re interested in what they’re saying. You don’t initiate any physical contact. You feel like you look your best. You’re not spilling any emotions, but your ex is being consistently a jerk. They’re consistently bringing up the relationship.
They’re consistently bringing up everything you did wrong, when in reality, they’re the ones who broke up with you because of things that they did wrong. Worst case scenarios are when things go wrong in every possible way you can imagine.
You need to be prepared for what’s going to happen or how to handle that situation if it does happen. So how do you handle it? Well, ultimately, I would approach it like this. If it was me, I would do everything I just said, all the tips. I would outgrow my ex. I would be preemptive. I’d be friendly. I would act interested in what they’re saying.
But what they’re saying is rude, I would allow them and not respond to it one time. I would allow them to get it out and not respond to it one time. But if they continue to dwell on it, and the conversation becomes polluted with it, I would just simply smile and say, “Well, it looks like you need some more time to process, so I’ll give that time to you. I really apologize for how you’re feeling,” and then simply exit the conversation.
I don’t believe in apologies when it comes to things that you didn’t do wrong. So ultimately, notice how I phrased that “apology.” It’s a tricky phrase. You’re apologizing for how they’re feeling. I’m sorry you’re not over this yet is essentially what you’re saying. And then exiting the conversation.
When someone is this angry at you, when someone has erupted, and you have found yourself in the middle of a worst case scenario, nothing you say or do in this moment is going to change their mind. Really ultimately, anger is nothing more than your ex wanting to blame someone else for their problems, because it hurts to look inwards.
It hurts to feel that way. So it’s easier for us to project that hurt onto other people and blame them, especially when it comes to breakups. So don’t give them the satisfaction of being their punching bag. Don’t be rude. Say, “I’m sorry you’re feeling this way,” and exit the conversation.
So I guess in that case, you want to keep the conversation as short as humanly possible.
Tip #9: No Contact Will Determine If You Reach Out Afterwards
So here’s the wrap.
Really how you act when you run into your ex is super dependent on where you are in the no contact rule.
If you’re not familiar with the no contact rules, without a doubt, the most popular and important strategy that creates the foundation of everything that you do, whether you want to get over your ex or get your ex back. And where you are in the middle of no contact or out of no contact dictates what you’re going to be doing going forward.
So for example, if you’re in the middle of no contact and you run into your ex accidentally, and things seemed to go well, can you break no contact early?
No, you still continue on with your no contact. You’re not going to try to reach out afterwards to say, “Hey, that was a really great interaction that we had,” or, “It was really nice seeing you today.” You’re not doing that. You’re going to finish your no contact out and just be thankful that you had this opportunity to stick in your ex’s mind.
The situation is a little bit different if you’re out of no contact.
Now we teach a specific strategy out of no contact where we try to stair-step using what we call the value ladder.
And the value ladder is this concept where we believe in doing a no contact rule first, and then engaging interaction or rebuilding attraction through text messages, then through phone calls, then meet ups, and then romantic dates.
It’s just upping the ante with every new conversation medium. Well, generally speaking, if you’re already out of no contact, maybe you’ve reached out to your ex a few times, and then you accidentally run into them, it is a good idea to use this meetup, maybe later that night, after eight hours have gone by, to reach out to your ex and say, “Hey, it was really nice seeing you today.” That’s all you got to say.
And that can get a conversation started, and you can go from there.
I Broke Up With My Boyfriend And He Went Back To His Ex
Aug 11, 2021
Today, we’re going to talk about, what to do when you go through a breakup with your boyfriend and they go back to their ex.
This is always a difficult situation because, without a doubt, the number one fear most people have when they go through a breakup is, what if they find someone better than me. And this fear is made doubly worse by the fact that your ex went back to someone that maybe you had an issue with, their ex.
Someone that they have a romantic history with.
And it can feel sometimes like they found someone better in their ex. And it makes you feel less confident in yourself.
So, today we’re going to talk about why they do this, but also how to handle a situation where your ex does move on to someone new, and that someone new being their ex.
Now, I’ve been doing this a long time. Pretty much for the past decade I have dedicated all of my time, effort and energy, in to understanding breakups. What works with them, what works to get over an ex, what works to get back with an ex, we sort of cast a wide net.
And what’s interesting is when you have an audience they ask you lots of different questions.
And specifically when it comes to a scenario like this, we get a lot of different questions.
For example,
“My ex went back to his ex. Will it last?”
“He went back to his ex but he still wants to be friends. Should I be friends with them?”
“My ex has this new girlfriend, but does he miss me?”
“Well, he went back to his ex but he still calls me, what should I do?”
“Well, he said he loved me so much but he still went back to his ex.”
“Why does my ex keep contacting me when he has a girlfriend? Isn’t that a bad sign?”
So, we’re going to talk about every single one of those questions.
So let’s just start from the top.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
So the interesting thing about scenarios like this is actually determining whether you are the rebound relationship or your ex’s ex is the rebound relationship.
This is a unique scenario in the fact that usually most of the clients that we’re dealing with who have ex’s who move on to someone else definitely fall into that rebound category.
Where their ex moves onto someone else trying to distract themselves from the pain of the breakup. And it’s pretty obvious that it’s a rebound.
Usually with women specifically, you’ll see them hyper analyze the new girl’s photos and say, “She looks just like me.”
Now, how many of us have done this?
This is a scenario where this might not be the case.
It’s actually a little up in the air whether or not you were the rebound or your ex’s ex is the rebound.
So, before I talk about rebound relationships and how long you can expect them to last, let’s actually determine whether or not you were the rebound or your ex’s ex is the rebound.
So I think the number one way that we can help determine something like this, is actually first by understanding the length of time your ex’s ex was with him and you were with him.
So the way I’m thinking is if you want like a simple approach, Occams Razor, “The simplest explanation often is the right one,” the best probably way to approach this is by saying,
“Look, if I was with my ex for three years, and my ex’s ex was with him for one year, it’s more likely that my ex’s ex is the rebound.”
Then we also have to consider the fact, well, how quickly did my ex move on from his ex to me? Or did he move on from me to the ex? I know this is kind of like word jumbling, but basically those are the two factors that you are going to want to sit back and think about when you’re determining whether or not you are the rebound or not.
So, most likely in this scenario where you were with your ex longer, you most likely are not going to be the rebound. The only scenario where that maybe is not the case is how quickly he moves on to his ex.
So what you mean by that is, if you’re with your ex for three years, and your ex’s new girlfriend was with him for three years or two years, excuse me, before he moved back onto her, the big determinator on understanding whether or not your ex is actually in a rebound with this new girl is, of course, I mean, you were the tiebreaker, you were with him longer. But the issue I see is, if it has been like a year since your breakup, all of a sudden, this is a different question.
So the length of time on how long it takes him to move on to this new person matters as well. And then once you understand that, you can understand how long the rebound will last.
So if you believe that you were not the rebound, but your ex’s new girlfriend is the rebound, the typical rebound relationship is going to last anywhere between 5.2 months. And sometimes in certain cases a little bit longer.
So buckle up because a lot of people think like rebounds are like a one week type thing. They’re usually not. Usually in my experience, people or exes who have rebounds will love the joys of the honeymoon phase or the honeymoon period. Where the dopamine levels are just like off the charts. They’re really enjoying their time with this new person.
They see this new person with rosy colored glasses. Everything seems to be going well. And this is actually hard for a lot of our clients to hear. Because 5.2 months is half a year, basically. But this is how long we’ve determined that the average rebound relationship last. You can also consider if your ex is with this new person, one other factor that you need to think about is, how long this new relationship with this new person’s lasting. If it lasts longer than 5.2 months, all of a sudden it’s charting away from rebound territory, if you get my meaning. So those are three factors you really want to look at. How quickly they move on to this new person. How long you were with him versus he being with the new girl in the past. And if they’ve been with this new person for longer than 5.2 months, it’s not necessarily a rebound relationship anymore.
So, hopefully that answers your question on how long this rebound relationship with your ex will last.
Let’s tackle the next big question.
If Your Ex Went Back To His Ex But Still Wants To Be Friends
“Well, he went back to his ex, but he still wants to be friends. Should I do it?”
Yes. You should.
The story I’m going to tell you right now is actually the introduction to the being there method. So, if you’re not familiar with the being there method, it’s without a doubt one of the most important strategies that you need to wrap your head around if you have an ex who has moved on to someone new.
No matter what circumstance you were in, the being there method is going to be the most important strategy for you to conceptualize and implement.
And if you want to learn more about the being there method, I’ve written an entire article, basically detailing what you should be doing if you are in a situation where your ex moves on to someone new. Whether that’s with his ex or with someone completely new, doesn’t really matter.
But the being there method is an important part of the strategy.
Why? All right. So when I first started taking on coaching clients, my wife actually helped me. And we first started looking for coaching clients in our private Facebook support group. You hear me talk about it all the time.
Currently there’s over 6,100 members in it.
It’s a great community. And back then, though, it was a little bit different, because it was actually a small community. We had just started it up. There was only a couple hundred people in it. So we knew almost every single person situation really, really well.
And so, when I actually implemented coaching for the first time, we started mining first or giving first-mover status to people in the Facebook group. And an interesting thing happened, my wife was helping me, so I would take clients and my wife would take clients.
And I noticed one of her clients was in a really difficult situation. One of her clients actually was in a situation where her ex broke up with her and literally moved in with this new person. So, literally, it was like all set up during the breakup.
So, as you can imagine, it was just like one thing after another. And it was just devastating for this girl. And we recommended a longer period of no contact for her, thinking maybe that if we were able to do a longer period of no contact, it would help her emotionally.
But something interesting occurred.
We noticed that after the long period of no contact, the more she stayed in touch with her ex, the better things seemed to go.
So we actually just followed that curiosity thread and introduced her to what soon became the being there method. “Hey, why don’t you just be friends with them and constantly be a secure presence in their life?
You don’t necessarily have to become physical with them or give them emotional support, but you’re just there, and see what that does to the relationship with the new girl and him.” And it worked brilliantly.
The new girl imploded. And really, we were trying to understand like, why? Well, obviously there’s kind of a gray hat approach here. This is not necessarily morally perfect. If you get what I mean.
We don’t recommend people cheat or anything like that. We were just very curious to see how this would approach. And ultimately, when we learned more about attachment styles, we learned this is maybe why the being there method works.
Okay. So, what we know about attachment styles, is there’s basically four core attachments.
Secure attachment, which is like the secure person, like the holy grail. This is always what you want to aspire to be.
The anxious attachment style, which is people who are extremely anxious in relationships. Their whole identity is made up of the actual relationship and they’re the ones who are most likely to get blocked after a breakup, because they’re the ones that blow up their ex’s phone or beg for their ex’s back and things like that.
Avoidant attachments, which is basically people who value their independence so highly that anytime they get into a relationship and begin to grow more emotionally intimate, they get scared because they feel like they’re not going to have their freedom anymore, so they bail.
And then you have fearful attachment, which takes the worst categories from both anxious and avoidance and combines them together.
Now, we usually don’t talk a ton about fearful attachment styles because only 7% of the entire human population has exhibited them.
So it’s extremely rare. It can have, and we have seen a few over the course of the years. But one factor remains true no matter what. And this is something that we’ve been calling the secure attachment gravity.
If you’re able to shift your anxious attachment style, your avoidant attachment style, or your fearful attachment style towards more of a secure attachment style, something interesting happens. Your partner begins to mimic those secure factors.
Also, in the being there methods case, if you are able to become more secure with yourself and then communicate with your ex, the fact that you are so secure, not only draws your ex to you, but it intimidates the new person.
Because generally speaking, the new person is not going to have a secure attachment style.
They’re not going to be cool with an ex talking to their ex. They will become incredibly threatened, give their ex an ultimatum. This will cause fights and friction. And ultimately your ex is thinking, “What am I doing with this person?” And they start to compare you to the new person and you compare very favorably. And that’s exactly what happened in our client’s case.
And the being there method has been without a doubt, one of the most successful strategies that we’ve come up with when it comes to literally having an ex who moves on to someone else. So, if your ex wants to be friends with you, it is a perfect segue into the being there method.
Can Your Ex Miss You When They Are With Someone New?
So, let’s move on to the next question. “My ex has a new girlfriend. Does he miss me?” I think in cases like this, where your ex is moving on to his ex, the truth is they’re going on the rebound to try to forget you.
And that’s maybe a hurtful thing to hear, but bear it out.
They aren’t going to miss you at first.
This is an important thing to consider, because I think there’s this misconception people have when their ex moves on to this new person, the new person doesn’t measure up to the expectations that your ex maybe had. And they begin to miss you.
That seems to be what happens, but it happens on a much longer scale than you can possibly imagine. So, if your ex does have this new girlfriend, and this new girlfriend is their ex, it is possible that he will miss you but it will not happen right away.
In fact, the chances are actually higher due to normal circumstances or due to the abnormal circumstances you find yourself in because your ex is going back to a known commodity.
What I mean by that is, the honeymoon period or the honeymoon phase that they’re likely to experience is going to be a little bit shorter because they’ve already experienced a honeymoon phase with this person. And after that honeymoon phase is over, it’s usually when they began to miss you or begin to harp on the alternatives factor.
What do we mean by that?
Well, there’s this concept called the interdependence theory, which basically helps us understand why human beings make commitment decisions. Basically it says, human beings make commitment decisions based on costs and benefits scenarios.
So they’re always trying to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs. And the way they grade this in their heads subconsciously, is through three external factors. How satisfied they are in the relationship with the person that they’re with.
How much they’ve invested into the relationship with the person that they’re with, money or emotions. And then, of course, alternatives. Is there someone out there better?
Well, at some point your ex thought there is a better alternative to you in another relationship. This is why he went into a relationship with this new person. But the same can also be said when he moves on to the new person.
Eventually they don’t start seeking out other alternatives or having the idea of other alternatives until satisfaction comes down. And satisfaction usually comes down when the honeymoon phase is over. And this is an important thing to understand, because satisfaction itself won’t cause an ex to want to break up with their new person and come back to you.
What ends up doing that, is when they began to realize they’re investing more time into you via the being there method than with the new person.
Then all of a sudden you look like the best alternative. So that’s when you can expect an ex to begin to miss you.
Ah, but what if they go back to their ex and still call you, what should you do? This is, again, a variation of the being there method. After our no contact rule, of course, you want to gain a monopoly on your ex’s time.
All right.
So this goes back into that interdependence concept of satisfaction, alternatives, investment.
You want your ex to invest as much time into you as possible.
So if they’re calling you and talking to you, it’s always a very good sign. But why is investment so important? Well, they’ve done studies and realized, people will stay in unhappy marriages where they definitely believe that there’s a better alternative out there for them if they feel like they’ve invested so much into the relationship.
Why?
Because they don’t want it to be for nothing.
So, if you’re to grade these three factors of the interdependence theory and try to understand which one matters more, it would definitely be investment.
Because even if satisfaction is low, alternatives are high, they will still stay in an unhappy relationship because they don’t want their time to be wasted.
This is important to understand, because if you’re able to take the monopoly on your ex’s time, all of a sudden you remove that off the table, and they really start to make decisions based on how unsatisfied they are with this new person and how you’re the better alternative out there.
Why Did My Ex Say He Loved Me But Still Went Back To His Ex?
So, let’s go with the big million dollar question of, “Why is it that my ex said that he loved me but he still went back to his ex?
There’s a lot of different reasons, but I think ultimately understanding attachment styles is the number one thing that you can do to help navigate the understanding of men and break up. So, one of the cool things about having an audience is, we have a lot of data to sort through.
We have a lot of experience to sort through. We noticed earlier last year when we started really diving into attachment styles, that most of our clients have anxious attachment styles, and most of their exes have avoidant attachment styles. Now, why is this important?
Well, people with anxious attachment styles value relationships pretty much more than anything else in their life, almost to an unhealthy level. They become almost very possessive of the person that they’re with. This often leads them to extreme bouts of jealousy, extreme bouts of possessiveness, controlling, things like this.
In their minds, they believe that they’re doing it to create a meaningful connection with the person. And that the connection is this mass thing that is amazing. This is the exact opposite of what an avoidant ex wants, or an avoidant person wants. An avoidant person wants space every once in a while, because they feel they value their independence more than anything else.
So the irony is, avoidance and anxious people are drawn to one another, but they’re doomed from the outset because their natural attachment styles just grate on each other’s nerves. So, why is it that your ex says that they love you but they go through this breakup with you and then go back to their ex?
Well, I think it’s an understanding an avoidance need of valuing their independence. Sometimes when things get so emotionally intimate between two people, an avoidant will literally start to think, “Oh my gosh, I’m getting too close.” Or, “Oh my gosh, what happens if I lose my independence? What happens if I’m no longer able to do this or no longer able to do that.”
They want an intimate relationship more than anything else, but they are stuck in the self-fulfilling cycle.
Where they start out wanting an intimate relationship because they’re tired of being alone, but they do value being alone at the same time. So they enter into a relationship with someone who gives them all of the intimacy that they are seeking.
Someone who is an anxious attachment style. But when the anxious attachment style person’s tendencies begin to grate on their nerves, they start to realize what a mistake it was to get into a relationship and they bow out of the relationship.
Of course, then they start to feel bad about themselves and feel sorry for themselves and create this self-fulfilling narrative in their head of, why is this always happening to me?
And then they start to look for someone else. But what about the known commodity where they begin to realize, “Hey, remember my old ex, maybe I’ll try things up with them?”
And this actually completely is understandable if you understand how avoidance tend to miss people. So, avoidance are famous for literally loving these, what if scenarios.
They love to admire from afar, to have nostalgic reverie from afar, when there’s no chance they could ever get back together with you is oftentimes when they begin to miss you because it’s safe to miss you.
So, then when they get out of this relationship with you and they begin to think back on their whole relationship status, it makes complete sense that they would want to go back to an ex because they begin to have nostalgia about maybe the good times with this one ex.
Of course, interestingly enough, if they get into this relationship with this one ex, and if that ex, this new person that they’re with, has anxious attachment styles it’ll eventually grate on their nerves and they will be stuck in the same process again. And ultimately, maybe want to come back to you.
So ideally, every thing that we’re talking about today can be used on a wide variety of different social media platforms from Instagram to Facebook, to TikTok, Snapchat, you name it.
We’re trying to be all inclusive, but at the same time, we’re also trying to take from him real life experiences that our clients are actually experiencing. So every single status that we’re going to be listing here today has not just been pulled randomly from a hat.
We’ve actually surveyed our audience and tried to figure out exactly what sort of posts that they use ended up eliciting jealousy. So if you aren’t familiar, one of the reasons that we feel our program is one of the best in the world is because we give you access to a special private Facebook support group.
And the Facebook support group as of today has over 6,100 members in it.
So what I usually do sometimes when I want real life data from real life people going through breakups and what’s working to get their exes back is I’ll survey the Facebook group.
I’ll simply ask them a question and that’s exactly what I did here.
I went to the Facebook group with over 6,100 different men and women, and asked them the simple question of, what were some of the best statuses that you posted that eventually made your ex jealous on social media?
And we got over 22 answers as of right now and it’s still growing.
But I went ahead and found there are certain patterns that are beginning to emerge, specifically nine patterns that we noticed emerge. So what I’d like to do is take a real live status update or picture, or post via social media that our clients have used and elicited jealousy.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
So like I said, nine different statuses or posts that can make your ex jealous.
So let’s briefly cover what those are.
The Sports Montage Post
The Holy Trinity Ungettable Post
The Food Jealousy Post
The Drink Jealousy Post
The Mirror Selfie In A Bar Post
The Going Out On Their Birthday Post
The Having Fun With Someone Else Post
The Killing It At Work Post
The Look Where I Am Post.
So what I’m going to do is briefly talk about what each one of these looks like and means.
So let’s start from the top and talk about the sports montage post.
The Sports Montage Post
The sports montage post was posted in our Facebook support group by a woman named Amy who basically said roughly two and a half weeks into her no contact, she posted like one of those montage on Instagram that kind of allows you to post multiple pictures at once with her football girls.
Now she is in the UK and football is commonly referred to in America as soccer.
So basically she posted football/soccer posts of her since she’s on a soccer team.
And this definitely elicited a reaction from her ex. And she says that it wasn’t even to get him to feel that I was finally comfortable. I think by natural progress, it happened and showed through and it got a lot of attention including his.
So what do we learn from Amy here?
Well, we learned that being active is important.
So especially if you’re not a very confident person or you’re trying to rebuild your confidence sometimes entering into a sports league and posting photos of yourself in that sports league can be a really, really good idea.
Also, it has the added benefit and probably my best recommendation is Amy already was part of a soccer league. But what sometimes is interesting is there’s these leagues in America and I’m not really sure how the UK works exactly. But when I was in college, we had something called coed softball.
So basically it was like softball, sort of like baseball, except the underhand softball thing, where you were allowed to have teams made up of both males and females. So one of the smartest things you can do is posting sort of team pictures, or you sort of doing awesome things on the field, like these montage things, but also with members of the opposite sex to elicit some of that jealousy within your ex. And as you can see, it can be an incredibly effective approach.
The Holy Trinity Ungettable Post
Next, we have the Holy Trinity ungettable posts and this one comes to us directly from a woman named Amanda who says, “I can’t do the jealousy posts as it will 100% backfire being used on my ex. I know him, but simply me being UG,” which is sort of an acronym for ungettable. “And sharing great pics on social media helped my case a lot. And he wants me back.”
So this is kind of interesting because really what she’s talking about with the ungettable posts, I think has more to do with sort of the Holy Trinity concept.
Now, the Holy Trinity, if you’re not familiar, is this concept that I came up with in 2013 or 2014 within the infancy of ex-boyfriend recovery, where I basically was trying to explain to people how they should be using or structuring their time during a no contact rule.
And I said, really, what you’re going to want to do is divide your life up into three distinct aspects:
Health
Wealth
Relationships
Now in a perfect world, we would be able to balance our time in each of these areas and live a very balanced sort of transcended lifestyle. But what tends to happen during breakups is we put so much focus on the relationships portion of our Holy Trinity concept or categories that we kind of neglect the others.
And this kind of bleeds through to the others as well.
So imagine you go through a breakup, you’re very depressed about the breakup, very upset about the breakup.
And as a result you decide, I don’t really want to go for a run today, or I’m not really feeling like eating healthy today. I just want to eat something that can help distract myself from thinking about the breakup. Well, all of a sudden the breakup has negatively impacted your health and that kind of forces you to snowball.
And you sort of at work decide, I don’t really want to work really hard today, or I don’t really care about going into work. I’m going to stop going to work. And let’s say your boss calls and you get reprimanded and all of a sudden this negative relationship aspects can negatively impact your wealth as well.
So what’s interesting though, is the opposite is also true.
You can actually improve all the areas of your Holy Trinity by focus on the corresponding different or parallel area to the Holy Trinity. So let’s say for example, you’re really depressed, and you’ve sort of hit rock bottom. Instead of feeling like, oh my goodness, I’ve hit rock bottom.
Your attitude should be, oh yes, I’ve hit rock bottom. There’s only one way to go: up. And so you get to work, but you don’t get to work by focusing on obsessing about your ex. You get to work by focusing on obsessing about areas that you have full control over. Health, wealth, things like that.
And so what happens is you use the momentum you build from focusing on health and focusing on doing a good job at creating wealth, that it sort of bleeds over into relationships and relationships in and of itself doesn’t have to just be about your ex. It can be about your relationship with your family, your relationship with friends, relationship with support groups.
There’s a lot of different ways that we can kind of look at relationships. But the idea is by focusing on all the areas of the Holy Trinity that you have really positive control over, you can actually positively impact your relationship with your ex. And one of the cool ways that you can do this is through social media status updates that can ultimately make your ex jealous.
Because what you’re going to find out is a common theme here is your ex has a certain narrative that they’ve built in whenever you go through a breakup. So the narrative usually goes something like this.
They want me back, they’re going to get so depressed without me. So if you actually do the opposite of that and show them you’re doing the opposite of that by posting on social media, by posting really cool health updates, really cool wealth updates, really cool relationship updates with family and friends.
All of a sudden this narrative is sort of proven wrong, and this interests your ex again, and also makes them a little jealous because they in turn are still very hurt by the breakup.
The Food Jealousy Post
All right, so next we have the food jealousy post. And this comes to us from a woman named Velis who basically said, “I posted a jealousy picture of a Caesar salad made by me. Two plates. I was with a friend of mine, two glasses of white wine on my balcony. I posted it as a story on Instagram on day 21 of no contact. And he replied to it. After we started meeting again, he told me that this made him jealous.”
So this is actually a variation of something that I talk actually a ton about on some of the jealousy posts that I’ve written for ex-boyfriend recovery.
And this is sort of the subtle jealousy dig. So the story behind this one is basically one of my very first coaching clients when I was talking to them, she told me the story. And the story was that she posted a picture on Facebook. I think it was where she was on a date, but it wasn’t with a romantic partner.
It was just basically kind of like a meetup. So she posts a picture of her food and the meetup she has with this friend, the friend’s arm happens to be in the picture. And she was literally just trying to … She’s like one of those food blogger type people. So she was really just trying to focus on the food, but because the guy’s arm was in the picture, her ex literally went ballistic on her.
And I actually said, hey, do you mind if I tell that story to the Facebook group? And when I told people in the Facebook group, they loved it and started implementing it on their exes. And as you can see from Vellus here, it still is very effective. So what she basically did was she made a Caesar salad.
She doesn’t say or clarify if … She mentions that she was with a friend, but she doesn’t mention if the friend was pictured in it. So you can even go more subtle with this where you just, there’s two Caesar salads, and you’re just posting the picture of the Caesar salads, but you don’t actually need to see the other person at all.
And that can be incredibly effective at making an ex jealous because ultimately they’ll start to wonder, are they on a date with someone else who is this other food for, she can’t possibly be eating two Caesar salads herself.
So that’s how that works.
The Drink Jealousy Post
And the next type of jealousy post is actually called the drink jealousy post. And this is actually basically an identical version of what Vellus basically said, except we’re going to feature sort of a success story here named Susan.
Now, Susan basically says, “I’m not sure if you’re looking for pics, but this got my ERP guy back together, asking if I was on a hot date on my social media picture thread.” And she was actually kind enough to include a picture, which is basically just two drinks.
And you can actually see it appears like they’re at a bar somewhere. You can sort of see the bar set up behind the drinks, but there’s no guy pictured at all.
So it’s implied that she’s on a date with someone else, but it’s not so in your face. So as you can see, that sort of subtle jealousy idea through food or even drinks can be an incredibly effective motivator in making an ex jealous.
And the clear indication here is that I’m a big fan of subtle jealousy because I think ultimately people would use jealousy on them if they are prone to jealousy.
They are more tormented by the narrative that they create in their heads than by actually seeing something in the flesh, so to speak. So if you usually post a picture of you and another guy, and we’re actually going to feature that in a little bit here, you’ll find it’s sometimes not as effective as being more subtle.
And the reasoning behind that is because with some subtlety where it’s implied you’re on a date, but not explicitly stated you’re on a date, they allow their minds to run wild and ultimately become more and more jealous and really think about you more. And that’s ultimately what you want to have happen.
The Mirror Selfie In A Bar Post
All right, the next social media status update or post that we’re going to feature here is called the mirror selfie in a bar post. And this is actually going to come to us from a woman named Emily, who basically said, “I posted a mirror selfie of me dressed up in a bar. He messaged me two minutes after he saw it asking if I was on a date and said, I looked good.”
So this is even a further variation of sort of the food jealousy posts, the drink jealousy posts. And I want you to notice really the pattern that’s exhibiting here is subtlety seems to be the key. But also when you’re taking the mirror selfie in a bar post, the important thing here is the location.
We always have a certain stereotypical idea of what locations entail. I think nothing sort of illustrates this better than a show like The Bachelor. The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, they take the contestants on these incredible dates and some of the most incredible romantic locations.
And while I wouldn’t say a bar is an incredibly romantic location, what it does have a stereotype for is, hey, this is typically where men and women first meet when they’re beginning to learn about each other.
This is where men and women go out with friends to pick up people and sometimes even have one night stands and that can actually play into the jealousy factor. So if he sees you looking really good in a mirror selfie, posting a selfie in a mirror, but it’s also clearly shown in the background that you’re kind of at a bar, yeah, that can be an incredibly effective way of becoming jealous. And I would say this is like a really forceful, subtle jealousy.
And you’ll notice even Emily said, he messaged her two minutes after he saw it, asking if she was on a date and that she looked good.
So as you can see, it’s incredibly effective if you pull this off right.
So I think it goes without saying, you want to look your best in the mirror selfie, you want to make sure it’s explicitly shown that you’re at a bar without being so obvious about the bar. So really the key to subtlety is it’s never in your face. So the key here is really, she’s not taking a picture of herself and she is, but she’s not.
She’s taking a picture of herself and the fact that she’s at a bar, but the irony here is the mirror shows that she’s at the bar. The mirror is what sort of shows the location that you want your ex to see and be driven wild from.
The Going Out On Their Birthday Post
All right, the next one is called the going out on their birthday post. And this comes to us from a woman named Paula, who basically says, “I was going out for drinks with some friends on his birthday. Unintentional jealousy post as I thought I was still blocked at the time. Wink.”
Okay. So there’s actually two layers going on here.
Most of the time, when we get questions about exes and birthdays, it happens during the no contact rule. So if you aren’t familiar with the no contact rule, it’s a period of time where you’re ignoring your ex and you’re supposed to be using that time to outgrow your ex.
But oftentimes women and men get so hung up on the fact that they’re going to hurt their ex’s feelings if they don’t wish their ex a happy birthday, if their ex’s birthday falls in the midst of that no contact rule.
And oftentimes it’s because wishing your ex a happy birthday does not advance you at all. All it does is show that you’re thinking a lot about them. Instead, I actually think a smart approach would be doing what Paula does. Imagine this. Imagine you are so busy, you forget it’s your ex’s birthday. You’re busy living your life and having fun.
So you actually go out with friends, not necessarily to a bar, but it could just be at a restaurant. You’re going out, meeting up with friends at this restaurant, or even a bar for drinks. And you’re posting pictures on your ex’s birthday. Now this can be taken two different ways from an ex.
The first way is the most common way, which will be your ex is so wrapped up into what you’re doing, they kind of forget the fact that maybe you’re doing it to get their attention. So that’s the first way.
The second way is they just literally think you’re doing it to get their attention. So you need to really have a good handle on the type of person your ex is and how they’ll react to jealousy if you use it.
Now, the idea here is by going out, having fun with friends, you’re kind of hitting the relationships aspect of the Holy Trinity. But at the same time, what you’re also doing is showing your ex that you’re having a good time on their birthday.
And it’s also kind of showing your ex, hey, this is what you’re missing out on. We could have had a good time on your birthday. Instead, I’m replacing you with my friends. This is a less subtle form of jealousy. But again, it was incredibly effective for Paula who said her ex got jealous and she thought she was blocked at the time.
The Having Fun With Someone Else Post
All right, next, we have the having fun with someone else post.
And this one is coming to us from a woman named Katie, which basically says, “I posted a picture of me laughing with a male friend.” All right.
So here we have our form of direct jealousy via social media. The way this works is pretty simple. You with a platonic male friend, have someone take a picture of the two of you sharing a laugh. That’s it. But this is a direct form of jealousy. My advice always would be if you want to make your ex jealous, and this is your primary directive on what you’re doing.
First approach it through indirect means, through subtle means.
So try to make your ex jealous through some of those Holy Trinity posts, through the food jealousy, drink jealousy, mirror and the selfie post, even the going out on the birthday post is pretty subtle.
But the second you actually include a member of the opposite sex that your ex or someone that your ex could potentially become jealous of in the picture, even if you’re not “making out” with them and doing ridiculous things romantically with them, this is still a form of direct jealousy because it looks like you are trying to make them jealous.
But you can not deny the effectiveness. So it really depends on the type of person your ex is.
And also it depends on the type of person you are.
And I say that because if you have a history of posting pictures with other guys having fun, purely platonic, there’s nothing wrong with that.
In fact, this type of a post fits right in tandem with your previous history of posts. So it kind of just looks like you’ve picked right back up where you left off before you started dating your ex.
The Killing It At Work Post
And the next one we have is called the killing it at work post.
Now this one’s kind of a fun one because it directly hits on the wealth aspect of the Holy Trinity. And it comes to us from a woman named Carmen who basically said, “I posted a pic of my first week back in the office that got a ton of attention. He was calling me within hours of me posting.”
And she doesn’t actually specify what it was that she posted. But I’m just going to go out on a limb here and say her posting a picture at work.
I think reading between the lines here, her ex must’ve been jealous of some of the males she worked with at her specific job. And for those women who are listening here, who think, well, my ex isn’t like that, think again. Because like I’ve already stated with subtle jealousy, oftentimes it’s what you can’t see that makes you more jealous than what you can see.
Yes, what you can see can make you incredibly jealous, it can make you feel like the person’s being unfair to you, flirting with this person in front of you.
But it’s oftentimes when you’re left alone with your own mind that you have to go to war with it and your mind knows exactly what to say or what to think to attack you in the weak areas.
So if your ex has a history of becoming jealous with the fact that, hey, you work with other guys, you’re an attractive woman, other guys hit on you, including men at work. All of a sudden it’s a different sort of feel to posting a picture of going back to work.
So if you think your ex has a history of doing this, where they’ll just be driven nuts by the fact that other men find you attractive, especially at work, posting a picture at work, even if it’s just you sitting there around other guys at your desk can be an incredibly effective motivator with regards to jealousy.
The Look Where I Am Post
And the final jealousy status post/update that can make an ex jealous is called the look where I am post.
And this is actually one of my favorites. It comes to us from Amanda, who basically says her “Posting pictures of her traveling and checking out places that he always told me we would go together made him jealous.”
All right. So here’s kind of an interesting, funny thing that happens in relationships. Oftentimes men and women have a tendency to future pace relationships. So when we’re in the midst of a honeymoon period, when we’re feeling really good about ourselves, what we do is we will start projecting of what things will be like in the future. And usually we do this through locations. Oh yeah.
We’re going to take a trip there one day. Oh yeah. We’re going to go there one day.
So if your ex is saying, you’re going to do all these things together and you’re going to go all these places together, but never comes close to doing it, one of the really cool ways of making them jealous and also making them a bit regretful is having that experience without them. Sometimes you can do this alone.
Usually it’s best to go with a friend, but I think a primary easy example is actually not with regards to going places that they tell that they would like to go with you. It’s with regards to doing things that they told you that they were going to do together with you.
So this can be usually … So usually I’ve noticed a lot of exes will say like, hey, we should do a romantic, like private hot air balloon ride together.
Well you don’t have to necessarily do a private hot air balloon ride, but maybe what you can do is look up where hot air balloons take off somewhere nearby and sign up and go on one. I’ve actually been on a hot air balloon ride, and it was one of the most incredible experiences I think I’ve ever experienced.
In fact, I got some really cool stories out of it because I went with my wife when we were engaged and I had actually already proposed to her before I went on the hot air balloon ride. It was actually like included in the engagement proposal. So when we went on the hot air balloon ride, we were actually already engaged.
But what’s interesting is I didn’t know this about hot air balloons, but when hot air balloons land, they sometimes don’t know where they’re going to land. And so they have a car that’s almost like, kind of like chasing the hot air balloon ride, so that it knows like, hey, there’s a communication between the two. Our hot air balloon pilot basically set up like, hey, we’re going to be landing here.
And so when we landed, we actually landed in this really, really open neighborhood. There was like no fences or anything, but there was like this gigantic kid’s birthday party going on. And so as we’re getting closer and closer to landing, you could see people coming out of their houses and pointing out our hot air balloon.
So it’s this really cool experience. And we landed literally in the backyard of this like eight year old birthday party. So this eight year old’s having a birthday party, and we were the ones who like landed. I’m pretty sure he thought like his parents, like, oh yeah, mom and dad, thank you so much. It’s the best birthday ever. A hot air balloon ride in the backyard.
The truth is though that it was like completely by chance, but it was really cool because when we got out, everyone assumes that I had popped the question on the hot air balloon ride, but I had already done it way before then.
And we were just so tired of people literally asking us this question that eventually we just sort of like, went with it and were like, yeah, that’s what happened.
So we have like a bunch of pictures of us landing in this hot air balloon, this backyard with a hot air balloon. All these kids are coming out and trying to roll the hot air balloon up. We’ve got pictures. People like posing with us and stuff like that, showing off the engagement ring and everything like that.
And while that’s an incredible story, imagine the story you can have, if you were to do one of these experiences that your ex always “said that they wanted to do with you, but never got around to doing it.”
Not only can that make them jealous of the fact that you’re doing it without them, but it also can make them regret the fact that they’re not having this experience with you.
Today, we’re going to talk about how to stay in no contact.
And this is actually going to be one of the most difficult things that you’re going to experience when you actually attempt a no contact rule.
In fact, we estimate that roughly 80% of people who try a no contact rule for the first time will fail it their first time.
Why?
Well, that’s what we’re going to discover today.
We’re going to look at why people fail no contact, but most importantly, we’re going to hear from real people who succeeded in getting through no contact without breaking it and understand some of the strategies that they employed.
All right, let’s get after it.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Well, without a doubt, the no contact rule has become one of the most popular strategies out there that breakup experts will recommend to you.
So, generally speaking, the no contact rule is this period of time where you are cutting off all conceivable communication with your ex for a limited period of time. Usually this period of time is 21 to 45 days.
And there’s many different reasons for why we have those constraints.
But ultimately, if you do this successfully, it usually accomplishes a few things.
It gives you time to reset so that you have outgrown your ex by the next time that you actually try to attempt to contact them.
But also it triggers the reactants, the psychological reactant component within your ex that actually makes them want to hear from you more.
So there’s kind of a double whammy that gets involved with the no contact rule.
But without a doubt, it is the most difficult implementation that you’re going to experience of a strategy because we find it has the highest fail rate among our clients.
Now, what do I mean by that?
Failing The No Contact Rule
What is failing the no contact rule?
Well, simply put, when you fail the no contact rule, it means you’ve committed to doing a 30 day no contact rule. You decided you’re not going to respond to your ex if they reach out to you, you’re not going to reach out to your ex in a moment of weakness, and after 30 days, you can begin to rebuild rapport with them.
But let’s say, after day seven you find the no contact rule is just becoming too difficult and you break it.
You decide to reach out to your ex to see how they’re doing.
We’re finding that close to 80% of people who actually attempt a no contact rule for the first time will fail it the first time.
So why is it so difficult to actually stay the course in no contact?
Why The No Contact Rule Is So Difficult To Complete
Well, there’s a lot of different psychological reasons.
And then there’s the obvious reason.
So, let’s tackle the psychological reasons first.
A recent study looking at people going through breakups has likened the idea of the breakup period, the period where you go through a breakup and you’re missing your ex, they have found that it is akin to trying to kick an addiction that a cocaine addict would have. So when they looked at the brain of someone who’s going through a breakup, they find that the same part of the brain that actually lights up is the same part of the brain that lights up within a cocaine addict who’s going through withdrawal.
So as you can imagine, when you’re going through some sort of alcohol addiction or drug addiction withdrawal period, it is extremely difficult to kick those habits. Well, the same thing is being applied to here. And yet what we’re asking you to do is almost an impossible task.
We’re asking you to quit your ex cold turkey.
That is incredibly difficult.
And then there’s the obvious reasons for why the no contact rule has been proven to be so difficult for a lot of our clients. And that’s because, when you really think about it, the no contact rule, cutting your ex off cold Turkey, there’s a lot of different fears that the mind will place on you when you try the no contact.
So, for example, let’s say you try no contact rule on your ex, and day one goes by, and day two you start to get worried because, number one, you’re worried about maybe hurting their feelings by them worrying about what’s happening to you.
You’re also worried that they’re going to find someone new. And so all of these fears begin to morph and evolve and you become your own worst enemy. And ultimately you have to break the no contact rule to see how your ex is doing.
And this is actually become even worse with the advent of social media.
So, for example, oftentimes during the no contact rule, what you’re going to experience is this incessant, insatiable hunger to spy on your ex. And oftentimes when you can’t talk to your ex, your way of getting your fix is by going to Facebook or Instagram and seeing what your ex is up to.
And if they post a picture, especially if they post a picture out with friends or out with another girl, you start to freak out because guess what?
This person has maybe potentially replaced me.
And it makes you feel like, well, I need to go in and defend my territory so you end up breaking the no contact rule and end up hurting yourself ultimately. So, what is the best way to stay in no contact?
And what I mean by that is, what’s the best way to not break a no contact rule? Well, generally speaking, when I’m thinking of big guides like this that I want to talk about, I think of unique ways to tackle the question, so to speak.
Asking Real People How They Made It Through No Contact
I’ve talked a lot about the no contact rule on my websites, and on my podcast, and on my YouTube channel, it’s almost always better for you to hear from real people who have gone through a no contact rule, have been in the trenches exactly where you are and see what’s working for them.
And that’s what I’ve done.
If you’re not familiar with the setup we have with our program, basically everything we have revolves around this program that we put together called the Ex Boyfriend Recovery program for females and the Ex Girlfriend Recovery program for males. And basically anyone who gets into those programs gets access or has the opportunity to join our private Facebook support group.
To date over 6,000 people are in the group, 6,100 last I checked, right?
So what’s cool is sometimes when I want actual real life people to give me feedback on the strategies and the experience of what it’s like in the trenches when you’re using those strategies, I’ll go to the Facebook group and I will literally ask them a question.
Well, that’s what I did today in preparation for this particular article, podcast episode, you name it. I basically asked them, word for word, the following question.
For those of you who got through no contact, what was the most important factor for not breaking it? What helped you the most?
What I did is I waited about a couple of hours and got over 100 answers.
Now what’s interesting about this, is each of these answers was unique, but there were some definite patterns that emerged.
So I’ve done all of the research for you and figured out what the six most important strategies or tactics or mindset shifts that you need to implement in order to give yourself the best chance of surviving your no contact period.
Find A New Purpose Outside Of Your Ex
Understand That Every Time You Have To Restart No Contact Loses Effectiveness
Stay So Busy That You Don’t Have Time To Check Your Phone Or Social Media
Train Your Mind Not To Quit
Having A Support Group
Understanding How Avoidants Feel During No Contact
Let’s talk about each of these strategies for a moment.
Strategy #1: Find A New Purpose Outside Of Your Ex
Like I said, trying to quit your ex cold turkey is very difficult and is the similar kind of environment or experience that a drug addict will be going through when they go through withdrawal. It’s just not so easy. So one of the smartest things that you can do is try to find a way to put the focus away from your ex. What maybe you don’t know about our history with the no contact rule is, I started my business in 2012. So it’s been about 10 years now that I’ve been at this, which is kind of wild. But what’s interesting is initially our understanding of the no contact rule has evolved throughout those 10 years. We’ve actually went through three big definition changes, if you will.
So, the first definition of the no contact rule was basically, it’s this period of time you ignore your ex to make them miss you. But after four or five years went by we found out, ah, that’s not exactly what the no contact rule is based on real people’s experience. We updated it to say, “Okay, well, it’s this period of time, usually between 21 to 45 days, where you’re ignoring your ex and you have the opportunity to grow from the experience but you’re also still trying to make your ex miss you. So, we harped a little bit more on the personal growth aspect of no contact.
So after about 6, 7, 8 years goes by, we start to get better at reaching out to our customers who are successful at getting their ex’s back. If you don’t believe me, you can actually just go to our website and look at our success stories tab to see some of the actual hour-long interviews I’ve done with people who’ve gone through our program, successfully gotten the ex’s back. But after interviewing a lot of these people, I start to notice a really interesting pattern, and our latest iteration of the no contact rule varies the most when it comes to our competitors.
So, ultimately our view of the no contact rule now is, it’s this period of time where you’re ignoring your ex, but the intent is not meant to make your ex miss you, it’s to get to this place emotionally where you outgrow your ex. So you’re ignoring your ex, let’s say, for 30 days, but during those 30 days, you need to do everything you possibly can to get over them, get to this place emotionally where you accept, “Hey, I might not get this person back.” Or, “Hey, I’ve outgrown my ex.” And what we found is people who do that, when they actually began to enter into the conversational aspects of trying to get their ex’s back, they have exponentially better success rates.
So, how do you outgrow your ex? Well, ultimately I think the best way to do that is to find a new purpose outside of your ex. We know from basically researching that most of our clients have anxious attachment styles. This means, they’re more prone to be the ones to blow their ex’s phone up. They’re more prone to be the ones to freak out when things don’t go their way. They will be the ones to buy their ex a gift, show up at their ex’s house unannounced, text way too much, not really know when to stop texting. They are the really anxious type of behaviors. People who have anxious tendencies find it incredibly difficult to find a purpose outside of their ex because their ex is their purpose.
So we need to help you shift your mindset during no contact so that you find this Magnum Opus idea. I’ve been talking a lot about Magnum Opus ideas lately. Basically, it’s your life’s work. What do you want to be remembered for? And I can guarantee you, you do not want to be remembered for this breakup, how you acted after the breakup, or even this relationship with your ex. You’re a lot more than just a relationship aspect. So you need to find something that you care just as much about as your ex and start to focus on that. That is the first strategy that you can implement during no contact to lessen the burden.
Strategy #2: Understand That Every Time You Have To Restart No Contact Loses Effectiveness
The second strategy is to understand that every single time you have to restart a no contact, it will lose a little bit of effectiveness. So this is not necessarily anything revolutionary. I’ve talked a lot about this in the past, but here it is again. Basically we find that it is okay if you mess up no contact once, it’s even okay if you mess up twice, but if you mess up like seven, eight, nine times in a row, and if you don’t know the way no contact works is, if you mess it up you have to start over from the beginning, which is kind of a harsh thing but there’s a method to the madness, it’s teaching you discipline so that you understand like, hey, I can’t mess this up.
But what’s interesting is there’s also kind of a time element involved because if you mess it up a bunch of times, you’re not given like 10th, 11th or 12th chances. You’re given a second chance, oftentimes you’re given a third chance, but once you start messing it up more than five times, you’re in trouble. And I always try to explain it to people like this. The best analogy I’ve ever found to explain this concept is, imagine you go to a movie and you see this really amazing movie for the very first time. And it’s all you can think about. In fact, you think about it so much, you decide you’re going to go watch it again. So you watch the same movie again the very next day. It’s still really good, but now that you know everything that’s going to happen those emotional moments don’t touch you as much, but you still are obsessed with it.
So you go and see it again. So you see it this third time, and it’s no longer as good as you remembered. In fact, it’s almost like disappointing because you’ve seen it so many times, you know everything that’s going to happen. You’re still obsessed with it, but it loses its effectiveness. This is the same way no contact works. If you break it the first time, it’s okay. You can still do it again the second time. Same with a third time. But the more you have to do no contact, the more you fail no contact, guess what’s going to happen? It’s going to lose effectiveness on your ex. No longer will you ignoring your ex seem like it’s this big deal. It’s like, “Oh, okay. She’s going on another bout of ignoring me. Cool.” So, understand that every time you have to restart no contact, it kind of puts a check mark against you and the ledger.
Strategy #3: Stay So Busy That You Don’t Have Time To Check Your Phone Or Social Media
Strategy number three. Stay so busy that you don’t have time to check your phone or social media. As you can imagine, temptation is really high during no contact because we allow our minds to take control and rule us through fear. Oh my goodness, is he moving on to someone new? Oh my goodness, what if they forget about me? The issue is this is made worse when you’re constantly checking your phone seeing if they’re going to reach out to you, or you’re constantly going on social media to see if they have a new update or seeing if they respond to any of your updates. I think social media is an incredible tool. In fact, as I’m speaking here, I’m writing a really gigantic article on it, but it’s also our worst enemy.
And the fact is, we waste a lot of time on social media that we could actually be doing something more productive with our time. We could actually be spending that time towards our new purpose outside of our ex’s to outgrowing our ex, to encountering the holy trinity and trying to get the health, wealth and relationships balanced in our lives. Yet, if you’re checking your phone constantly, or you’re checking social media constantly, it robs you of that time.
One of the very first coaching clients I ever had, I think it was actually the very first coaching client that I ever took on with someone who is obsessed about her ex so much so that she became incredibly anxious. And we had the first coaching session. It went really, really well and I gave her this homework. And all of the homework, it was pretty obvious. I wanted her to focus on the holy trinity, which is her health, wealth and relationships, and relationships outside of her ex. And I wanted her to spend more time on outgrowing her ex. Right? So I gave her the correct type of advice and said like, “Hey, if you want to do a follow-up session with me, here’s the link. But I don’t think you’re going to need one for maybe a month or something.”
Well, maybe after a week and a half, she actually signed up for a followup session, which I was extremely grateful for. I was like, “Oh cool. I got my first follow-up.” And then I got on the follow-up call. And I said, okay, “Well, here’s the homework I gave you last time, where are you at? What have you done? And she had not done anything. And I literally asked her and I said like, “Why didn’t you do anything that we talked about?” And she said, “Well, I just don’t have time.” And I said, “Okay. Well, let’s talk about that.” What are you doing with your time? She said, “Well, I work eight hours a day. And then I get home and I watch Netflix. And then I get home and I spend two hours on the night looking at social media posts and looking at Pinterest.”
And so, I was basically saying like, “Okay, so basically you work eight hours a day, which is really strong workday. And then you have like five hours of free time that you just dedicate to Netflix and social media and Pinterest?” And I was asking her this in a question format so she can realize, you’re just being lazy. Which is a hard thing to do. And she basically acknowledged like, yeah, I should try harder. But here’s the thing. No contact is extremely hard if you are not finding a way to stay busy and be productive with your time. And the cool thing about the holy trinity, is if you’re able to successfully interact with the holy trinity, they build off each other and force you to be productive.
So, I’ve actually noticed this. I’m actually in the process right now of training for a marathon, right? I’ve got the whole training schedule down and I want to do really good on this marathon. I’ve never run a marathon before I want to do really good. I used to run cross country and track in high school. I’m in the process of trying to lose weight so that I can have an easier time on the marathon. And I’ve noticed it’s been about two weeks since I started the training program. I’ve run every single day. I’m supposed to run about three miles a day. But I’ve noticed my productivity and all the other areas of my life has improved. And that’s because I’m training my mind to basically work and stay busy when I don’t want to work and stay busy. And this is actually the perfect segue into our next strategy.
Strategy #4: Train Your Mind Not To Quit
Your mind is going to rule you through fear. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, when you go through a breakup, you have lots of different thoughts. Predominantly, my ex is going to replace me with someone new. When you’re in no contact, these thoughts multiply. Not only are you afraid that your ex is going to find someone new, but you’re afraid that you won’t be able to do anything about it if your ex find someone new. You’re also afraid that your ex will forget you. He won’t.
You’re afraid of hurting your ex’s feelings. And this is maybe even triggered more by the fact if, sometimes your ex can have a knee-jerk reaction to no contact. So you are in the middle of no contact, your ex reaches out to you, really angry about the fact that you’re ignoring them and your mind just goes crazy. And sometimes your mind gets the better of you and forces you to break no contact to respond. But your mind is a liar.
See, one thing that people don’t really realize about this, is oftentimes we’ll talk about calming the emotional storm. There’s a huge emotional storm within you after a breakup, and the best way to overcome the breakup and stay in no contact without breaking it, is to find a way to tame the storm and maintain emotional control. But the way to maintain emotional control is to overcome your mind. And you have to go to war with your mind. You have to have an answer for every single thing that your mind will say to you to try to get you to break no contact. And this is challenging because no one knows you better than your mind. It knows your weaknesses and it knows exactly what to say to bring you to your knees. And it takes an incredibly disciplined individual to overcome that kind of stress.
And since we’re talking about running, like I said, training for a marathon right now. What’s interesting about training for a marathon is I started up. And the first thing they wanted me to do is a three mile run. I had not run in a couple of years, so I try running. I make it maybe a mile before I have to walk. The funny thing is I used to think people who walked when they ran were cowards. I no longer think that. What’s interesting though is, the more I stuck to the training program, the more that mile became easier. And then I started getting difficulty at two miles and then I made it past two miles and that two miles became easier. And then I had difficulty at three miles, I made it pass three miles and I’m up about 3.75 miles where I started to hit the wall, so to speak.
But in this marathon training program, what’s interesting about it is, there’s always what they have termed a long run day. And the long run days are when you basically… Like I’m on week two right now. So it wants me to run three miles on Monday, three miles on Tuesday, three miles on Wednesday, three miles on Thursday, it wants me to rest on Friday, but I’m an insane person so I’m just going to run three miles again. And then on Saturday I have my long run. That’s seven miles. Today, I literally just got back from my run before I began recording this. And I was thinking on my run, I don’t know how I’m going to make it seven miles. I really don’t.
It is going to be incredibly hard because what ends up happening at a certain point on the run, you start to max out your endurance. And that’s when your mind asks you the really difficult questions, why am I doing this? This is so dumb. This hurts so bad. It’s not going to be such a big deal if you walk. I mean, we’ve already been three miles. What’s the big deal if we don’t go 3.2 miles or 3.7 miles? Your mind knows exactly what to say to get you to stop. The challenge on surviving the long runs, and I’ve only done one long run so far, I went six miles and then six miles was miserable. And the challenge is to try to either ignore what your mind is trying to get you to do or go to war with it.
Recognize you’re just trying to manipulate me and prevent me from achieving my goals. And this requires incredible self-discipline. And this is something that unfortunately, you’re going to experience not in a physical way, but you’re going to experience the hardship on a mental and emotional level during no contact. Your mind will tell you things that aren’t true. My ex will find someone better than me. That’s a lie. There’s no one better than you for your ex. We know that. And if you don’t believe that, then you have a confidence issue. Your mind is also going to say, well, what if they get upset at me? Who cares? You shouldn’t care if your ex gets upset with you.
Remember, the point of no contact is to outgrow your ex so that you don’t care what they think anymore. Well, what if I ruin my chances? What if they get so upset at me that they never want to talk to me again? I’ve been doing this for 10 years. It’s very rare for that to happen. You need to have an answer for each one of these things your mind does. I would almost treat it like a game. Every time your mind finds a new way to manipulate you during no contact, write it down and find a realistic answer to answer it. And recognize like, this is just my mind trying to play tricks on me again. So that’s strategy number four.
Strategy #5: Have A Support System
Strategy number five is a little bit more obvious, and this is having a support group. One of the smartest things that you can do for yourself when you’re going through the no contact rule is not to do it alone. It is a lonely experience doing no contact. But if you’re able to surround yourself with like-minded individuals who are also going through no contact, you’ll find that you can actually talk to this person about the hardship and it becomes easier. It’s almost like a therapy in a way. This is actually how we came up with our concept called the battle buddy program within our private Facebook support group. The very one that I use to get these strategies. So the way that battle buddy program works is, we try to partner you up with someone who is like you or in a situation similar to you, so that you’re right around the same period. And you can relate to each other and help each other through the process.
Now, in some cases it’s blown up in our faces. Sometimes the battle buddy program we don’t like doing because people don’t like their battle buddies and all of our moderators, our volunteers, and they’re just like, “Well, I don’t want to do this anymore because people are just getting angry because I’m not partnering them up with the right person. But here’s the thing. You don’t necessarily need a battle buddy to survive no contact. What you do need is a support group. You don’t even need to go, and I’m not by any means insinuating you should buy our program and get access to our support group, though that would be really helpful. Sometimes it’s just having your own personal support group of supportive people. This is the challenge.
Not everyone wants to help you get your ex back. In fact, I’ve experienced this in my life. Sometimes when I tell people what I do, they’ll look at me and they’ll say, “Well, why would anyone ever want to get back with an ex? And the irony is, I find a lot of times people when they say have never been in a situation where they’ve ever wanted an ex back. So, they can’t really ever relate to the person. So they project their experiences of a breakup onto other people’s experiences on a breakup. They come up with these preconceived notions. You do not want to surround yourself with a support group of friends or family that have these preconceived notions.
Instead, going back to strategy, number four, they will give your mind more ammunition to use against you. They’ll bring up points of like, “Well, it’s just stupid to get your ex back. Why would you want someone back who treated you this way?” Maybe your ex treated you really, really well, but they don’t see that because they love you and they’re supportive of you. They’ll say things that gives your mind ammunition against you. So what you’re going to want to do, is find, not necessarily yes, man. You want to find people who support you, but won’t also be beholden to trying to please you at every single turn if that makes any sense. That’s the right way to form a support group.
Strategy #6: Understand How The Avoidant Feels During No Contact
And finally, strategy number six, which is understanding how avoidance feel during no contact. So, I’ve already stated that we found that most of our clients tend to be anxious during the no contact rule. Why? Because they have what’s called the anxious attachment style. What’s also interesting is we find that most of the anxious attachment style people that we have in our program tend to attract avoidant attachment style exes. Now, an avoidant attachment style is basically an ex who wants emotional intimacy, but also is scared of emotional intimacy because they think it’s going to take over their independence. A good example of this, is I was talking to someone who’s an expert on the subject called Antia Boyd. She’s an expert. She’s got her own YouTube channel. Check her out.
Antia Boyd was telling me the story of one of her clients who was dating this guy. And the guy was going to go on a trip long distance to some other state halfway across the United States. And all this girl wanted was, “Hey, just let me know when you get there. I want to know that you’re safe. And the guy was like, “Okay, sure, sure, sure.” Gets on the plane, goes to wherever he was going. And her client’s just waiting around to get a response from him. Did he make it yet? Did he make it yet? Did he make it yet? And eventually she’s anxious. So, she decides to text him, “Hey, how did you make it? Did you make it there okay?
And then he blew up on her. “Why should I have to tell you if I made it there okay. You just need to let me be me.” This is a prime example of someone who’s an avoidant. What’s interesting is you need to understand how avoidance feel during no contact. The big misconception a lot of people have is that avoidance want to avoid because they don’t want a relationship. And that’s not true. What they like, is they like relationships from afar. They like to romanticize relationships. They like to feel nostalgia with regards to relationships. In fact, when it becomes too suffocated in the relationship this is what often causes them to run away.
But here’s the important point that is often missed. Most of the time, the no contact rule serves a really important purpose. And that is giving your avoidant ex time to begin to miss you. That sounds super obvious, but it makes a little bit more sense when we understand that oftentimes avoidance will not give themselves permission to miss you until they literally feel like you’ve moved on from them and there’s no chance that you will ever take them back. Then they feel safe beginning to miss you, beginning to have nostalgic reverie, beginning to remember those really great times you had together. And when they’re in that state of mind is when you want to reach out to them. That’s when they’re most likely to be responsive. And we have tried to structure our no contact rules in this way so that you’re reaching out when they’re having these extreme bouts of nostalgic reverie.
Today we’re going to be talking about why your ex is trying to hurt you. And we’re going to be using a real life scenario. Someone from our private Facebook support group was kind enough to allow me to use their situation to basically talk about why exes are mean, why they say disrespectful things, why they do things to specifically to try to hurt your feelings.
And what we’re going to do is not only are we going to understand why, but we’re actually going to also talk about how you should approach, how you should react to someone who’s being incredibly hurtful, saying incredibly disrespectful things, doing hurtful things, going on dates with other people, shoving it in your face, things like that.
How do you handle that?
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Learning Exactly Why Your Ex Is Doing Hurtful Things
So let’s just jump right into it. I basically went to my private Facebook support group and told them that today I was going to be recording a podcast episode and I really didn’t have a good topic to cover.
And I asked people to ask me their most burning questions, the questions they want answered more than anything. And we got multiple different responses, so many in fact that I’m going to have to go back and actually add more or record more podcasts.
But I chose someone’s situation that I was briefly familiar with. And to protect her identity I am not going to be saying her name or talking about super big specifics, but I do need to give you a low down so that you can understand the situation.
So the person I am talking about here actually went through a breakup.
Her ex broke up with her, but the irony is that he blames her for letting him walk away.
After this breakup her ex went into this self-destructing spiral where he began drinking, smoking constantly, posting and sharing all sorts of hurtful things on social media.
And ultimately when she came to our program and used the no contact rule he had a birthday.
And the no contact rule basically says you cannot break it for the birthday. And she did not wish him a happy birthday on his birthday and this caused him to blow up.
So he sends her this really incredibly disrespectful text about how rude she is for not wishing him a happy birthday, how much better off he is without her, and how basically he’s going to disrespect her.
And since then he’s been going on dates and rubbing it in her face.
And then you can actually go back and see some of the posts if you’re in the private Facebook group that he’s been posting on social media, like social media updates about how he spent so many years with this person and how he fell in love with her and now the true colors are shown, things like that.
Basically she’s incredibly hurt and reeling and trying to understand this anger is coming from because the paradox here is that he was the one to break up with her.
So why is it that he is so angry at her?
Why is he trying to hurt her?
Understanding The Truth Of Anger
Well, in order to understand that we need to understand the truth of anger. Now, there’s a lot of different types of anger throughout the human experience.
You have anger when you are completely justified and there’s a 100% reason that you’re angry. And then you have anger like this, the paradoxical angers, and trying to understand, reconcile that, is difficult.
So what’s the difference between the two types of angers, the justified angers and the paradox type angers?
Well, justified anger is for example, let’s say you’re in a situation where someone robs you and takes your purse or money from you and they’re a thief and they run away. You’re angry at that person who did those things to you and you’re justified because ultimately that person’s not cool for doing that. And then you have the paradoxical anger and that’s the kind of anger that her ex is exhibiting here. And that’s the sort of anger where you’re angry at someone that you broke up with because they didn’t fight for you.
They let you walk way.
What’s going on here?
Well, Coach Anna and I couple of months ago did this really amazing podcast and I think it might be my favorite podcast that we’ve ever done. We’ve done some really great ones, but it was basically a podcast where we talked specifically about anger and why exes get mad and what to do if you think your ex is mad and even what to do if you’re worried that they’re mad. And what was interesting about that podcast is Coach Anna said something that I thought was really insightful.
And that’s the fact that situations where someone else is wrong or situations like this where there’s this paradox involved, where you have no right to be angry at this person that really didn’t do anything wrong… Well, it’s a weird coping mechanism.
So if we look at situations where someone else is wrong… So imagine you’re this person.
You are the one exhibiting this paradoxical anger, this anger where you broke up with the person, but you’re angry because they let you walk away. Well, if you look at a situation like that, in order to fall asleep at night, becoming the hero of your own story so to speak, it makes a lot more sense if you look at the situation as they’re wrong.
And we feel correct and we’re distracting ourselves from feeling the true pain, pain of regret and guilt and looking back over situations where you are feeling guilty and you don’t want face the harsh light of day.
And that’s why so many exes feel angry and judgmental. It’s essentially this defense mechanism that they put up and it’s more about them than you.
But what’s interesting is they’re not even consciously aware that this is what they’re doing most of the time. I think they’re consciously aware that it’s ridiculous for them to be angry at you when they’re the ones who ended the relationship. But they’re not consciously thinking, “Well, I’m the one who broke up with her so I’m the bad guy.” It’s important to remember that everyone is always the hero of their own story.
Oftentimes this is why we love antagonists in literature.
I mean, if you really think about it, a great antagonist in literature is actually not going to be the mustache twirling villain you would expect. It’s always someone with a legitimate reason for being angry.
I think this is actually why the Marvel movies are so beloved.
You have Thanos, right?
This really guy who basically wants to wipe out half of all population, but the reasons for why he wants to wipe it out are kind of noble in this weird way. He’s the hero of his own story. He is worried that overpopulation is going to cause people to suffer. And so it’s easier to wipe half of all people out… But let’s not forget the fact that with those infinity stones he could have just made double the resources so no one would have had to die, but that’s besides the point.
The point I’m trying to make here is your ex is going to be the hero of his own story. And that’s an important thing to understand when you’re looking at why they’re angry, because they will specifically craft situations in their head where they’ll make it to where you’re at fault for things you’re not really at fault for, because this is their coping mechanism.
This is what makes them feel like they don’t have to feel guilty.
A Personal Story To Illustrate This Point
I’m trying to think of a personal story to maybe illustrate this point and the only thing I can really think of is very first relationship I ever had, which was fraught with toxicity and fights, immaturity on my part, immaturity on her part.
And I was the one who initiated the breakup, but I was the one who was angry at her because in my mind she was the one that made me do it.
She put me in this position where our love was supposed to last. And that’s not what happened at all.
And I was angry about that fact, but the fact is when I look back on it with clearer eyes, there was a lot that I was at fault for. I was extremely immature. I was extremely insecure. And this is something that after the emotions died down I looked at it and said, “I need to improve so this doesn’t happen again on my next relationship.””
But not all people look at relationships that way.
How Do You Handle An Ex Who Hurt You?
So how do you handle someone like this? Someone who is trying to hurt you and it’s almost like their coping mechanism. It’s something that they are telling themselves and a belief. Well, I think the embedded question in this is looking at what they want more than anything. And this is kind of the tricky thing.
So the client that I’m talking about here, she is trying to learn how to handle this situation.
Her ex is saying hurtful things. Her ex is doing hurtful things. How does she handle that situation?
Well, I think the first way to handle that is by looking at what your ex wants more than anything. And her ex more than anything wants for her to beg for him back because he wants to win the breakup. Yet the irony is if she gives him what he wants, he will go, “Cool.” And then discard her like she’s nothing.
And the only reason I know this is because I’ve been doing this for a very long time and I’ve actually seen this play out time and time again. Oftentimes this is why super anxious behaviors like begging for your ex back doesn’t work. You give your ex that validation that they were seeking, like, “Yeah, I won. And now I’m bored.” It’s like a child getting a new toy.
You give this child this new toy and they play with it and they’re really excited. But then they look over and they see their brother and sister with an even newer toy and they discard it and want to go to that new toy.
So how do you handle someone like this?
How do you survive the onslaught of disrespect and hurtful types of behaviors? Well, I think understanding attachment styles can really help in this way. So I was trying to ask the person whose question I featured here and the question I’m answering here on this podcast what her ex’s attachment style was, what she thought it was. And I never received a response… At least at the time of this recording. And that’s okay because I’m going to make a few guesses based on the specific information available to me.
So the first thing I thought was maybe this ex is a fearful avoidant.
So one thing we know about avoidants is they value their independence more than anything else, but when you add that fearful aspect in there, they’ll disappear and then they’ll act really anxious and crazy and then they’ll disappear. And it’s this weird understanding of what is going on.
Yet the more I looked at the situation, the more I’m not quite sure that’s what this is, because they have a pretty storied history. I was looking through her specific questions in the Facebook group and it seems to me like they were on and off again for years. They were engaged at one point. They had been together for over seven or eight years. And my guess is it’s probably her ex that is the one that’s initiating a lot of these breakups and a lot of the on again, off again type behaviors.
So I want to say that her ex is exhibiting more anxious type of behaviors than fearful type of behaviors or avoidant type of behaviors. So I want to say her ex is acting in this anxious type of a way where he’s getting angered, but I’m not sure. That’s the challenge with working on not perfect information. And ultimately her ex is the only one that could truly tell us what their attachment style is.
But I want to say a lot of the blaming her for letting him walk away, a lot of the self-destructing spiral like drinking, smoking, posting and sharing hurtful things, is anxious behavior in this weird way that he’s trying to seek validation that she still loves him. That’s why I said what he wants more than anything is to win this breakup.
But how does she handle someone like this?
What Would A Secure Person Do?
Well, I think that the ultimate key to handling someone like this is to always ask yourself, “What would a secure person do?” So how do you first define what a secure attachment style is?
Well, I think ultimately someone with a secure attachment style is going to be able to regulate their emotions and feelings really well. They’re going to also have a really strong goal-oriented behavior when they’re on their own. They’ll be great at bonding and opening up and trusting others.
They’ll be great at knowing what they’re about in life and what purpose they ultimately want to fulfill, which is actually something I think a lot of people miss out on. They don’t really know what that is. Secure people can communicate their needs really effectively. They feel like they have an impact on the world around them.
They feel very fulfilled. They’re comfortable with closeness and mutual dependencies. They actively seek emotional support from their partner when things are tough.
So I think always the best way to handle people who are being hurtful towards you and disrespectful towards you, we can always go with the Frank Sinatra quote of best revenge in life is a massive success, but I think more than anything, I view… I grew up in Texas. So this is going to be a weird analogy, but in Texas… I grew up in Galveston County. And Galveston is… Their one claim to fame is that they got hit in like the 1900s by this massive category four, category five hurricane and it wrecked the town.
It was before they had any kind of weather instruments that could dictate, “Hey, there’s a hurricane coming. Flee.” So it just hit, devastated the town. And when they rebuilt the town, they built this ocean wall almost like the wall in Game of Thrones, but this is a wall to keep the storm surge back.
And I view this situation in that way. I view an ex trying to hurt you or doing disrespectful things as trying to get a rise out of you, trying to get you to break your wall, so to speak. So imagine the waves crashing here. Someone who’s really anxious, someone who’s really disrespectful, hurtful. They’re like a crazy storm. And the best way to handle them is by not giving them validation, not rewarding them for their crazy behavior. It’s by holding the wall. And you want to hold the wall by being secure. If your ex is acting like a crazy storm then you need to act like the exact opposite. You need to act like a stone, stalwart, really confident with yourself person.
And it’s going to be hard too, because generally speaking with exes like this, eventually they will feel nostalgia. Eventually they will feel guilt for all of the things they’re saying and all of the things they’re doing. And usually I think the biggest mistake a lot of people make is reaching out to their ex when they’re in still the stormy state. And I think the key is trying to time your reach out in a way that you’re not reaching out when they’re in the stormy state. You’re reaching out when they’re in this guilty state, where they’re thinking back on, “My gosh, I acted like a fool. How could I treat her that way? She’ll never want to talk to me again.” And then you reach out.
So the person who asked this question also asked other question. She was saying, “My ex is acting very hurtful and mean to me, what do I do?” Things like that. But she also basically asked a few other questions and that was she’s doing everything right. She’s being ungettable, keeping herself lowkey. Right now she’s doing things to make him wonder, being mysterious on her part. She just got accepted to grad school. Things are going really well, but she just wants to know, “Is he going to reach out again?” Since she ignored his message about the birthday when he blew up on her.
My answer is, “I don’t know, but probably yes.” I’m not a fool. I’m not going to guarantee anything, but my guess is he probably will reach out. But what you’re going to want to do is it doesn’t really matter when or even if he reaches out. What matters is you need to reach out at the right type of time. And so one of the quotes that I love best is, “Always find the advantage in the disadvantage.”
As weird as it sounds, when you’re at a disadvantage, everyone always obsesses about, “Wow, my situation sucks. I’m horrible. This is horrible.” What they fail to realize is there is always an advantage in the disadvantage. And the advantage I see here is your ex is so… I don’t want to say toxic, but chaotic, that when things are probably going well, you will see that probably reflected in their social media. When they’ve calmed down and they start feeling guilt, they’re going to stop the crazy posts and things like that.
So if you want my advice, it’s not to reach out until you feel your ex is in that feeling guilty stage.
What To Do When A Long Term Relationship Ends Abruptly
Jul 12, 2021
Today, we’re going to be talking about a little bit more of a general topic, and that’s what to do when a long-term relationship ends abruptly.
I guess the reason that I wanted to talk about this is because oftentimes there’s not a lot of people in the industry that do talk about this. So what I’ve done for you is I’ve put together a list of reasons for why exes end up ending long-term relationships.
We’re going to talk in depth about those reasons, but more importantly, I think there’s this need for closure or there’s a need for, what do I do next?
Oftentimes, the people coming to this website are caught in this crossroads where a part of them wants to just simply get over their ex, get over their breakup, and then the other half wants to win their exes back.
So what we’re going to do is help you understand what’s really going on in your ex’s head on why they ended a long-term relationship, rather abruptly. Then after we’re done doing that, we’re going to give you some advice. Rather, I’m going to give you some advice on how to go forward and making a decision that’s best for you.
Understanding Why Your Long Term Ex Broke Up With You
So ultimately, I’ve put together a list of 10 reasons for why an ex would abruptly end a long-term relationship. I think the keyword there is long-term.
We’re not talking about a relationship that just started three months ago. We’re talking most of the time long-term relationships that have lasted a year to years. Why would an ex all of a sudden come out of the blue and say, “I don’t want you anymore. I don’t want this relationship anymore.”
We’ve compiled a list of the top reasons for why this might occur.
They think they can do better than you
The stability vs. mystery scale
Things have grown kind of boring
The pressure of settling down
They’ve learned everything about you and there are no more layers to peel back
Their feelings aren’t the same as they once were
The relationship has grown so toxic
Reality vs. Expectations
Flirting or cheating
Anxious behaviors: Anxious attachments tend to get overly attached to their partners
Place extreme emphasis on romantic relationships
Have a harder time getting over a breakup
Common behaviors include being clingy, demanding, jealous, or easily upset by small issues.
Let’s begin!
Reason #1: They Think They Can Do Better Than You
So the first reason is I think the most obvious one, which is they think they can do better than you.
Now, this one is sort of the universal reason I like to teach my clients or talk to my clients about, because what is a breakup, if not an admission that someone thinks that they can do better than you?
The Interdependence Theory teaches us that human beings are very cost and benefit-oriented when it comes to our own personal love lives.
We’re always looking for someone that can bring the most benefit, but reduce the most costs. Usually, when you’re making a decision like that, you’re looking at three types of criteria, how satisfied you are in the relationship, are there better alternatives out there, and how much you’ve invested into the relationship.
What’s interesting about that is if you’ve invested a lot into the relationships, which a long-term relationship would seem to lend credence to that fact, usually that is the most important factor. You can be unsatisfied in the relationship. You can believe that there’s a better alternative out there, but if you have invested so much into the relationship, it always kind of causes you to stay longer.
What’s happening here is if your ex can think they can do better than you, usually we’re finding that they’re pretty checked out by the time that they are having these thoughts. Now, there’s always a wavelength difference.
You oftentimes don’t realize that this is going on and it kind of catches you off guard because you’re on a different wavelength than them. But usually, the signs to kind of check for here isn’t so much that they’re flirting with other people though, that can happen and we’re going to talk about that in a little bit. It’s more the fact that they’re checked out.
They’re not as interested in spending time with you anymore.
They’re not buying gifts that they may be did at the beginning of the relationship because that shows monetary investment. Those are the kinds of things that you want to keep an eye out for. Those are the kinds of things that oftentimes lead up to them, starting to think, “You know what? There is someone better out there for me. I can find someone that can meet my needs better.”
Ultimately, this is the ultimate version of the grass is greener syndrome, which we’ve talked a lot about.
But let’s move on to reason number two, which is the stability and mystery scale.
Reason #2: The Stability And Mystery Scale
So this is a concept that I came up with a couple of years ago that basically highlights something that we’ve seen across breakups when we’ve started studying breakups and that’s the fact that there’s this paradox that exists within each human being.
We each have a need for stability.
We want someone that you can kind of curl up on the couch with when it’s raining, sit in all day and just watch Netflix.
Sometimes there’s no greater beauty than having someone that you don’t want to go out with. Sometimes you just want to stay in. Now, if that sounds like a nightmare to you, don’t worry. I’ve got you covered because that’s where the adventure and the mystery comes into play.
So we have this need for stability, but we also have this need for spontaneity and adventure and excitement and adrenaline. Sometimes these needs are competing and I always try to tell my clients that each person has an individual percentage in which they kind of gravitate towards.
So sometimes people will be 60% stability, 40% mystery. That’s what they’re looking for in a partner. Sometimes people want to be 80% mystery, 20% stability. But what almost always happens is when your ex falls in love with you, they’re falling in love with potentially the thing that you aren’t.
So subconsciously, maybe you recognize that your ex loves to go out. They’re very extracurricular. They’re very extroverted if you will. So you play to that, but it’s not who you are internally. So as you enter this long-term relationship with your ex, they’re going to sit there and expect you to be spontaneous all the time but if that’s not who you are, and you kind of naturally gravitate back towards your stability side, which a lot of people think it’s boring, but I don’t think so.
I think it’s more just like I’m always going to be there for you. That can kind of turn an ex off because they’re going to sit there and think, “You’re not who you were at the beginning of the relationship,” and that can be a reason that sort of the cracks begin to form and they can end a long-term relationship abruptly.
Reason #3: Things Have Grown Boring
Reason number three is that things have grown kind of boring. This is actually specifically meant for long-term relationships because oftentimes in long-term relationships, you do get stuck into those routines and if you’re in a long-term relationship, especially if you’re living together with your ex or living together with your partner, sometimes things have a tendency to grow quite boring.
You want more of that mystery. You want more of that spontaneity and when it doesn’t come, that kind of creates this narrative within where you’re sitting there and thinking, “You know what? I’m not sure I want to do this anymore.”
I think one interesting thing that not a lot of people talk about is the fact that most of the time, when an ex breaks up with you, they’re not going to tell you the real reason for why they broke up with you. They fear that you won’t be able to handle the truth.
So they make up half-truths.
They tell you half of the puzzle, so to speak and you’re left trying to reach in the dark, trying to understand, “Well, why did they leave me?” Well, it could be that you’re just, the routine is boring to them.
They want a change.
Reason #4: The Pressure Of Settling Down
The fourth reason we’ve seen is the pressure of settling down.
This is more specific within men than women.
So what I mean by that is oftentimes women, since their time is just naturally more valuable, they’re pushing to settle down.
They’re wanting marriage, they’re wanting children. They’re wanting the whole nine yards and sometimes, especially when you have avoidant exes and to kind of pause here and look at avoidance in general, people who have avoidant attachment styles really value their independence more than anything else.
So anytime someone comes in and threatens that independence, they have a tendency to push their partner away. So if you’re noticing, you’re in this long-term relationship and for the first time ever, you pushed, “Hey, what are we, what are we moving towards? Are we going to get married? We don’t have to do it right now, but I just want sort of the assurance that in the future, that that could potentially happen.”
If all of a sudden, your ex breaks up with you, you pretty much have an avoidant ex because you’re threatening that independence and when their independence is threatened, like I said, they tend to push you away. Now, the best thing to do with avoidant people is simply just to give them time, let them deal with their own emotions.
They’re not going to have nostalgic reverie that you want them to have until they actually feel like you’ve moved on, which is this really warped way of thinking, but it helps you understand the way that they actually do think.
So that was the fourth reason.
Reason #5: You Have No More Layers
The fifth reason is they’ve learned everything about you, and there are no more layers to peel back.
This is actually something that I didn’t personally come up with. A good friend of mine came up with. So the situation goes like this. My friend, he was dating this girl and he told me that she might be the one.
Things were going extremely well.
The way he was talking about her, you could just tell he was madly in love. So this was during the pandemic. So we didn’t talk for a couple of months and then after a couple of months go by, we got on the phone again and we just started talking and it was great.
Then I just naturally asked, I said, “Hey, how’s things going with that girl?” He told me, he said, “It’s okay,” which didn’t seem like much at the time but when you actually heard the tone of voice that he used, and just sort of like how unexcited he was, my spider-sense started tingling and I started probing, just naturally, because it’s what I do.
He ultimately told me, “Yeah, you know, things just aren’t the same as they used to be,” and I got really curious because I wanted to help women specifically understand what a man goes through when they’re considering going through a breakup.
He was very much considering breaking up with the girl and so I asked him, I said, “Well, what’s going on?” He said that she’s kind of shallow and I said, “Okay, well, didn’t you know that to begin with?” He said, “Yeah, but the thing was at that point, I didn’t know everything I knew about her.
So it’s when I learned everything about her and I felt like I kind of bared into her soul and there were no more layers to peel back, things just kind of became boring.”
I think this is kind of an interesting insight because a lot of times people don’t look at it that way. They look at it like I want to show my ex everything about me. The truth is though there is an element of mystery kind of going back to that stability and mystery scale.
There’s always an element of interest when you realize there’s more layers to peel back and when you feel like you’ve gotten to the center of the person’s soul, it just becomes kind of boring.
So that might be a potential reason for why your long-term relationship has ended. So you’ve been in this long-term relationship, your ex thinks that they’ve been with you and they know everything about you that there is to know, and there’s no more layers to peel back. There’s nothing more to learn. Well, we actually have ways, going forward that you can sort of fix that, but let’s move on.
Reason #6: Their Feelings Aren’t The Same
The sixth reason for why an ex would abruptly end a relationship is their feelings aren’t the same as they once were.
Usually, this doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a very gradual thing and it does kind of, you’ll notice a lot of these reasons kind of synergize, they kind of build off one another. So kind of going forward with that peeling back the layers and there being nothing left, I think that’s sort of what happens.
Okay, so … channeling for my own personal experience, I’m trying not to use names here so that I don’t offend anyone. I was dating this girl in college and we weren’t specifically in a relationship, but we were in that talking phase and I knew for a fact that she wanted to be in a relationship and at first, there were feelings from my end and from her end. But after, I guess I peeled back all the layers, I just found that the feelings I had at the beginning weren’t the same as they once were.
If you’re going to ask me to be honest with you about why, I think it does directly correlate to peeling back the layers. Also, one of the other things that we’re going to talk about in a little bit is the reality versus the expectations sort of idea.
But ultimately, what happens here usually is if you’re in a long-term relationship, you feel like you’ve known or know everything you can know about the person, you’ll kind of have this epiphany one day and realize, your feelings aren’t the same as they were at the beginning.
This is kind of an irrational thought because the truth is no one’s feelings will ever be the same as they were at the beginning. Usually the best relationships are the ones that can overcome this and can find new ways of looking at a relationship.
But for the most part, a lot of times, especially in millennials, we’re finding that after enough time goes by, if your ex learns everything there is to know about you and feels like they’ve peeled back all the layers and realizes their feelings aren’t the same as they were at the beginning, that can be a trigger for why they abruptly end a relationship.
Reason #7: Relationship Has Grown Toxic
So what number are we on now? 3, 4, 5, 6, reason number seven, which is the relationship has grown so toxic. I’m actually seeing this more so with two types of couples. This is the ones that are very early in college and the ones that are just two anxious people being together, anxious and avoidance being together there. Here’s how this works.
Your relationship has grown so toxic. That means it’s plagued with fights. It seems like every day is another fight and sometimes it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where you are aware of the toxic aspect of it, but you’re not letting go of the relationship, you’re holding onto it, but you can’t help yourself, personally, so that you end up being the one to initiate a lot of the arguments and the fights. It almost becomes this weird dynamic and I think understanding how anger works is an important trigger for understanding why fights are happening so frequently.
So here’s what we know about anger.
Anger is almost like this addictive quality. It sounds weird, I know, but just bear with me here. It’s addictive because in a way it makes you feel good. So imagine a situation where you and I are dating. I say to you, “You’re dumb,” or, “Why are you so dumb?” Or, “Why are you acting that way?”
That statement in and of itself is implying that you’re dumb and I’m smart. “Why are you acting so childish? You’re a child and I’m an adult,” which is really, really weird. You get what I’m saying here. Oftentimes when an ex gets angry at you, it’s their weird coping mechanism to project the problems onto you instead of taking ownership of the problems that they themselves have caused. Now, not every situation is like this, but oftentimes when you get into this toxic relationship, it’s like this self-fulfilling prophecy where you yourself are feeding into it because in a way, getting into an argument with your ex feels good because you, number one, are standing up for yourself so to speak. And number two, you are in a way making yourself feel better about yourself.
It’s a weird coping mechanism and eventually, someone who is in a toxic relationship just can’t take it anymore and they break it off. So that’s oftentimes why that breakup occurs.
Sign #8: Reality Versus Expectations
Sign number eight or reason number eight, which is reality versus expectations.
One of my favorite movies, probably my favorite romantic comedy movie ever is the movie 500 Days of Summer and I love it because it’s so valuable for this concept which is we’re talking about breakups and oftentimes the entire movie is about a breakup, about this guy who’s basically reliving his experience of dating this girl. What’s interesting about that is there’s this scene in that movie called the reality versus expectations scene.
So here’s the setup. Basically the main character, the protagonist has gone through a breakup. It’s been a few months. He’s super depressed. Everyone around him is just annoyed by the fact that he’s so depressed about breaking up with this girl or the fact that this girl broke up with him. Then he runs into the girl and the girl, they have this really fun interaction and the girl invites him to go to this rooftop dinner party and all of a sudden, he’s not depressed anymore.
He’s really excited to go to this party and he kind of goes and finds the right jacket and everything. Then the scene begins, the reality versus expectations scene. So the expectation is that he’s going to go to this rooftop party. He’s going to basically rekindle things with his ex-girlfriend and then they’re going to live happily ever after.
But the reality is different. He goes there and finds out that she’s actually engaged to someone else and she’s just being this really nice person and trying to invite him to this experience and hopefully he can find someone new at this rooftop party outside of her.
So oftentimes in this reality versus expectation thing is the reason I bring this scene up is because I find it happens a lot specifically in breakups like this where an abrupt breakup occurs. The reason is because, oftentimes, the idea of dating you potentially is more enthralling than the reality of it. So we oftentimes, our minds are very amazing tools.
We oftentimes have the ability to daydream about what things will potentially be like but then when it actually occurs, we’re kind of like, “That’s it?” There’s almost this disappointment. So sometimes we get stuck into these relationships and sometimes long-term relationships where we keep waiting for our expectations to meet reality, but it never quite happens and that’s when the hard decision occurs. That’s why that abrupt breakup occurs.
Reason #9: Flirting Or Cheating
Let’s move on to reason number, what are we at, nine now? Which is flirting or cheating. This is one is probably the most obvious one of the bunch.
Usually, an ex will abruptly break up with you if flirting or cheating is involved. If they catch you explicitly flirting with other people or explicitly cheating with other people but this is also a double-edged sword. If they’re cheating or they’re flirting, there’s a certain amount of guilt that they carry around within themselves.
If you’ve ever experienced the amount of just that feeling of guilt that you’re carrying around, it can be all-encompassing. It can be an action driver. It can drive you to break up with this person. Rather than admit that you cheated on this person, it’s easier to break up with this person very abruptly.
There’s not too much more to dive into here. I mean, it is what it is.
Your ex is excessively flirting with other people and maybe finding that mystery or venture that they’re missing out on with you in this other person so they leave, or they’re simply cheating because of that. There’s a lot, we can get into the reasons for why people cheat later. I don’t think that’s super relevant right here, because usually, most of the people aren’t going to be experience abrupt breakups because their ex is cheating on them. Usually, the number one culprit is actually reason number 10, which is your anxious behaviors.
Reason #10: Your Anxious Behaviors
So in order to understand this, we need to understand a little bit about attachment styles and attachment theory.
So there’s four core attachment styles. You have secure attachment style, anxious, avoidant, and fearful. We’re not going to really talk so much about secure attachment styles because, really, that’s sort of the holy grail. That’s what everyone should be sort of trying to move towards.
But what we’re finding is most of our personal clients have extremely anxious behaviors. So what do extremely anxious behaviors look like? Well, simply put, anxious attachments tend to get overly attached to their partners. So they place an extreme emphasis on romantic relationships.
They have a harder time getting over a breakup. Their common behaviors are going to be like, they’re super clingy. They’re demanding. They’re very jealous or they’re easily upset by small issues. We’ve all experienced probably in our past someone who just can’t get over a breakup and they just constantly call like every single day, leaving a voicemail or blowing up your phone through texting. Sometimes they’re even as crazy as if you block them, they’ll get a whole new number and text you, which is just a bad look but those types of people have anxious behaviors.
So oftentimes, those anxious behaviors aren’t really occurring after a breakup.
They’re occurring during a relationship, but they’re not occurring from like you broke up with them and then they’re texting you. This is happening in the relationship so oftentimes, they’re getting extremely jealous anytime you’re talking to someone else of the opposite sex, they’re extremely demanding about your time. “Why weren’t you on time here? Why weren’t you on time there?” They’re the type of person that is going to literally stand outside of the bathroom door when you’re using the bathroom because they’re worried that you’re sitting there and texting someone else. They always let their mind go to the worst-case scenario. They’re very upset by small issues, but what’s interesting, there’s almost a paradox within attachment behaviors or anxious behaviors because they also care so deeply about the relationship that it kind of sucks you in and you really do believe that they love you and they do.
They value the relationship with you so much higher than maybe they should, even above themselves. So oftentimes, if you have or have exhibited these anxious behaviors, and we have found that over 80 to 90% of our clients have anxious attachment styles, this could be one of the triggers for why they broke up with you. But also it’s kind of a weird topic to broach. It’s super offensive to say someone, “You need to stop being so clingy or demanding or jealous. You have an anxious attachment style. It’s getting on my nerves,” when they know you’re just going to come back with, “Well, you should love me for the way I am,” but here’s the point. Understanding and identifying why your long-term relationship ended abruptly is only part of what you need to do because understanding isn’t the same thing as knowing what to do next.
What To Do If You Find Yourself Trying To Get Your Long Term Ex Back
So here’s oftentimes what I tell my clients they should be doing if they find themselves in a situation where they’re not really sure if they should be trying to get over their ex or trying to get their ex back. That’s always to implement a no contact rule immediately after the breakup.
Now I know that sounds super traditional and not very innovative, but I think where our innovation from Ex Boyfriend Recovery comes into play is the fact of we view the no contact rule very differently than most people. So most people view the no contact rule as this period of time where they’re ignoring their ex and as they’re ignoring their ex, they’ll make their ex miss them.
But when we actually talk to our success stories, people who have used the no contact rule, gone through our program, successfully won their exes back, or even simply just got over the breakup, they always said that the no contact rule for them was more about outgrowing their ex.
So the way we view the no contact rule is we view it as this period of time where you’re ignoring your ex, you cut off all conceivable communication after this breakup, but the intent should not be used to make them miss you.
Instead, it should be used to rebuild your own life so that you can outgrow your ex and by doing this, the no contact rule can have that added benefit of making an ex miss you, which is just gravy, right? So ultimately here’s what I suggest to you.
If you’re in a situation where you’re at this crossroads determining whether you should be trying to get over your ex or trying to get your ex back is always to do a no contact rule and actually use the no contact rule in a way so that you’re trying to outgrow your ex and then make that decision on which crossroads you should be going down when you’re at a place where you have outgrown your ex, you’re at a place where you have shifted your anxious attachment style to a more secure one, where you know, “Hey, I’ll be okay,” and at that point, you’ll be happy with whatever decision you decide to make.
Success Story: How To Get Your Avoidant Ex Back When You’re So Anxious
May 24, 2021
If you’ve ever wondered how you can get an avoidant ex back when you’re extremely anxious then you came to the right place. Last week I had the opportunity to interview Grace, one of our success stories of the program about how she successfully won her ex back.
What was interesting was how she mentioned the key to her success was getting a handle on her anxious behaviors.
This is something we’ve been studying a lot lately and we believe it may be the hidden key to your success. Especially if you identify your ex as being extremely avoidant.
But don’t take my word for it.
Take hers!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
How She Got Her Avoidant Ex Back When She Was So Anxious
Chris Seiter: Hey. Here we go. Today, we’re going to be talking to one of the success stories in our private Facebook support group, Grace. I must admit, usually I do a bunch of research to figure out people’s situations before I start talking to them. I know where I’m going to sort of ask, but with Grace, I ran out of time today. I’m going to be learning as you’re listening. How are you doing, Grace?
Grace: I am good. How are you doing today?
Chris Seiter: Busy, busy, but I just wanted to take a minute and thank you so much for coming on and doing this. Honestly, I like to tell this to people that I don’t really care if they followed the program to a T because really through doing these interviews, not only are we helping to inspire people who are in the same situation, but it’s also helping refine our process to actually understand what’s working in the field. I think that’s a really important thing. I’m going to ask you just questions to see where my curiosity goes, but don’t be afraid of telling me, “I tried this and it didn’t work.” I want to know that stuff.
Grace: Awesome.
Chris Seiter: Take us back in time to the dark days where the [inaudible 00:01:10] occurred.
Grace: My boyfriend and I had been seeing each other for around a year. Actually, we had just had our anniversary maybe a week before the breakup happened. We had battled several things. He was having some struggles personally. When he would have those slip ups that would affect me. That’s when those issues would flare up. We had a series of bad luck as well. We tried a couple’s counselor who ended up trying to separate us, and we were having to go through… It was not good. We’re having to go through the process of the LLR, and having to report some of the things that he did that was inappropriate. We had some bad luck as well, along the way. The breakup, it happened on May 2nd 2020.
Chris Seiter: Literally a year, a year ago.
Grace: It was right a year when I wrote the Facebook post that Anna actually tagged you in and got this ball rolling. I was just thinking back on it, because we just got back from Hawaii. I was like, you know what? Just pondering about this day and just thought that I would write a Facebook post about it because it was just interesting how much had happened in this past year. We had been struggling for that year. Things started out very fast and very, very good between us. We meshed very well, very quickly. I think that that contributed to when the hard times came. They were that much more difficult. Because we essentially didn’t see any flaws in each other immediately and we moved pretty quickly because of how well things went. When he started going through… I’m sorry.
Chris Seiter: I was going to say, when you say you move real quickly, are you talking in terms of how there’s always that honeymoon period where everything’s really great. Are you saying you literally move quickly to the point where you’re moving in together and things of that nature?
Grace: Yeah. That happened too. He works at the gym that I go to, and that’s how we met each other. He does management there and he stopped me one day. It was a very odd encounter that I hadn’t had. I’d always known someone before I started seeing them. He was actually just this like super tall, a former athlete, handsome guy that just randomly asked me for my phone number and I’m this person in law enforcement from a small town that doesn’t… I was like, what? It was almost like a fairy tale type of thing for me initially.
Chris Seiter: I take that.
Grace: As soon as he got my phone number and we started texting back and forth, he arranged a date for the following weekend. Then after that we started seeing each other, every chance that we got. We didn’t really take it slow, like, “Hey, let’s go on a date once or twice a week.” It was like, I want to see you every single day because it was almost like we just had this amazing attraction to each other where we just couldn’t not see each other when we had the opportunity. Then unfortunately with him, he had a roommate who ended up selling their house. The guy ended up selling their house very quickly, and he had to leave very quickly. Coincidentally, my roommate at the time, she was in military and she deployed. It just worked-
Chris Seiter: Just aligned. The thing is like, “Oh, why don’t we just move in together?” There you are.
Grace: I was like this is so much easier. It’ll help with bills and all of that stuff. We met in March of 2019. We started officially dating in April of 2019. Then we moved in together by late July 2019. It was very quick.
Chris Seiter: [inaudible 00:05:13] together. That is moving fast. The attraction is definitely there.
Grace: Definitely. I think at that point we hadn’t had the chance as well to see some of the day-to-day things. I don’t like the way this person brushes their teeth, or those types of examples of little nitpicky things.
Chris Seiter: That comes out when you move in together pretty quickly.
Grace: That came out at the same times as the things that he was struggling with came out personally. I didn’t know how to handle those things as well. Then when we would have these arguments about these things, or when we go through these struggles, I was finding myself, which I didn’t know at the time, but I learned through ERP, which was, I was going through an anxious attachment style when we would have these issues and that he would be avoidant. He would be wanting space, but I would be afraid that, “Oh, you’re going to go mess up again if you’re out of my sight.” It was very much not meshing well that how I was giving him that space.
Chris Seiter: What’s really fascinating about what you just said is we have found, if you’re going to type cast our clients with their exes, it’s almost always anxious client avoid an ex. It almost always it is that. There’s fireworks when they get together, but then it’s like, “When it breaks apart, it just breaks apart pretty bad.
Grace: That is exactly what happened.
Chris Seiter: Let’s fast forward and take us to that moment because obviously how were you living together before things start to get really… You keep alluding to this issue that he’s struggling with. I’m assuming you’re like the, well, let’s fix it. I want to fix it. Are you that type of a person?
Grace: Yes. It was an issue mainly that I didn’t know how to fix. I didn’t realize… I mentioned earlier, he was a former athlete. Well, he played football. When he played football in college, he got hurt really badly. He had several back surgeries. With that it was at a time that college sports were very much about their making money and their team and all of that.
Chris Seiter: I hate to break you. They’re still like that.
Grace: Still like that. He was getting fed pain medication, and they didn’t know that he had a bulging disrupted disc, whatever it’s called in his lower back.
Chris Seiter: The pain meds were just making it to where he didn’t feel it.
Grace: Well, the doctor on the team actually… Side note, he ended up getting fired because he didn’t realize what was going on. My boyfriend at the time wasn’t allowed to see another doctor than the team doctor. He had actually ended up in the ER. The doctor got fired, and it was a big old mess. In the meantime, they kept feeding him pain medication to get him through these games. They were like, “You’ve got to play. We need all of these ticket sales and all of that.” Due to that, he actually ended up getting so injured that it ended his career because he kept playing through that. Then the mixture of ending his career as well as getting back pain medication that was his pick me up. He actually ended up in an addiction because of that.
Chris Seiter: I’ve actually experienced this myself with… I think it was before we started recording. I mentioned I had four surgeries. My surgeries were not small surgery. They were major ones. I ended up having to go hunt down one of the best doctors in the entire country, one of the best surgeons to fix it. One thing that you get hooked on the pain meds, like the narcotic type stuff they give you because you’re in so much pain all the time. It’s really easy to get hooked onto it. I remember having trouble as well with that. I can definitely empathize.
Grace: It was something that was so unnatural or it was very a new, I guess, experience for me. I had never been in that type of situation. Like I’ve got to mention I was-
Chris Seiter: Because you’re in law enforcement, so how ironic is that?
Grace: I was in a very tough spot of, “Oh my gosh, I love this person. I want to help this person, but I don’t want to… We live together. Something can come to where I’m.” It was a very hard position for me to be in. On top of like you were saying with the pain aspect of it, he was going through the depression of losing his identity because he thought, “Oh my gosh, I’m going from division one college to being a quarterback in the NFL.” That’s what he thought. Then that all came crashing down. It was also making him feel better emotionally or psychologically.
Chris Seiter: There’s always a pick me up with those type of medicines. I think that’s honestly why most people get addicted to them because of… It’s almost like you get really, really… This is a weird turn to the breakup conversation. You almost get really like you’re in the best mood possible for four or five hours. Then it wears off. I was lucky in the fact that the meds they gave me would make me extremely nauseous after-
Grace: After taking them.
Chris Seiter: It just got to the point where I just couldn’t take it anymore. Though, the craving was always there. I definitely empathize with it. That’s incredibly difficult too when you add in the identity loss aspect. Then he’s there with you. You’re just like, how do you fix that?
Grace: It was very, like I said… Sorry, can you still see me?
Chris Seiter: No, no, you’re good.
Grace: It was very difficult because I wanted to help. In times like that, he was honest with me when we first started seeing each other. He told me that he had had this issue in the past, and he told me that he had gone to rehab and that it had been two and a half years. He was good and clean and all. It did turn out that there were weak moments. What he claims is that he cannot get anything past me being in law enforcement that I just always know when he’s guilty or I always know when-
Chris Seiter: You got the bomb sniffing dog in the house just to do the-
Grace: He was like, ‘You don’t understand. I never got anything past you.” I would always sense something. I could sense something was off with him. I could sense something didn’t add up like, “Oh, where did this money go?” There was always something that I could sense. That was really where those struggles came in really difficult. I didn’t honestly know how to handle that. I hadn’t been in that situation. I was in anxious attachment style. Then naturally the way that I am is I like to control things in life. I don’t mean a controlling crazy psycho person, but controlling it, I like to control what’s going on because I want things done my way because I think my way is the right way.
Chris Seiter: You want to be the master of your own fate.
Grace: That’s how I naturally am. The anxious part, that part, and then having natural suspicions being in law enforcement. It was just this huge, and I didn’t know how to handle those situations. It was this huge… I was this overwhelming just super cloud of anxiety over him. He just couldn’t handle that.
Chris Seiter: Was there ever a confrontation where you would just sort of boil over and be like you got to get help or something like that?
Grace: Yeah, there were several where that happened. Sorry, I’m going to grab my charger. There were several where I was saying, “You’ve got to get help. You’ve got to do this. You’ve got to do that.” At the same time I’m spouting all these things off, and I don’t really know what I’m talking about. It was hard because I wanted it done my way, and I didn’t really understand how to deal with someone in that type of crisis.
Chris Seiter: Also, it’s difficult because it’s true like a situation where the messenger gets shot, they almost have to learn it on their own. Forcing them to do something that they don’t want to do, it doesn’t always work out so great. I’m assuming this all boils up and eventually who breaks up with who?
Grace: He broke up with me. Like I said-
Chris Seiter: You’re just trying to help.
Grace: I know. I was like, how did this… Regardless, it was the middle of COVID so, of course, that was just wonderful. He had gone to work. The gym wasn’t open because of COVID. However, they still had employees going in and just doing some admin stuff because they were able to do that much here. He’s gone to work and come home. I’d seen a therapist for a while because I have anxiety really bad. I see somebody and I had talked to her that morning. When he got home, he normally talked to me about my session because I’m normally uplifted in a good mood and all of that. When that happened, when he got there, I was like, “Hey, I had my therapy session today and I just noticed something was off.” He didn’t ask me about my session. He wasn’t really interested in the session and-
Chris Seiter: Body language is disinterested.
Grace: Right. I kind questioned him about it. He was like, nothing, I’m just tired. He went to get in the shower. When he did that his phone went off, and I just out of just a reaction, I just looked over and the preview of it on the screen was an email and it had his name. It said, thank you for your interest in these apartment complexes.
Chris Seiter: What a way to find out. If there’s ever a way to truly find a way to center a breakup and an action, that would be it right there.
Grace: It was not fun.
Chris Seiter: That’s awful. Looking back, it’s a fun story to tell. Look over and see this apartment thing, but in the moment if that happened to me. I’d be having a panic attack right there.
Grace: Oh my heart sunk.
Chris Seiter: Did you confront him in the shower because that would’ve been the best?
Grace: No. I did later on in this story, but that was not very [inaudible 00:15:52] but we’ll get to that part. He got out of the shower and I said, “Hey, I just noticed this popped up in your phone.” He was immediately defensive. He was like, “Where are you looking at the phone?” I was like, “Oh, I wasn’t. It just popped up.”
Chris Seiter: The preview, it was just a preview.
Grace: I was like, “It was a preview. It didn’t even show the whole email.” He was like, “Well, no, it’s nothing. It’s for us for when we decide to move from this place or whatever.” I was just like, “Okay.” Then later on-
Chris Seiter: That’s a pretty good way to spin it. Now that I think about it.
Grace: It was. I just had that feeling. You know that gut feeling, and that’s what it-
Chris Seiter: It’s not a good sign.
Grace: It kept lingering. I was like-
Chris Seiter: If you really think about it, if you were truly like, “Oh, yeah, we’re going to upgrade to a new apartment.” You think you would be included in that conversation at some point.
Grace: Right. Exactly. I told him, we had talked about feelings and all of that. I was like, “Hey, I’ve got that feeling again. I’ve got a gut feeling. It’s just not good and it’s about this email. Was it really for that purpose?” That’s when he decided to sit down and let me know that he was looking at apartments to move because of us not being together anymore. He knew I had to go in to work night shift that night. It was a Friday night. As I mentioned to you previously, my department was involved with a television show. I was about to be on national television that night. It was so terrible. He was like-
Chris Seiter: International TV. How do you feel? I feel great.
Grace: He was like, “I wasn’t going to do it tonight because I know that you have this show.” He was like, “You brought it up.” I was like, “Oh God.” We had had some really emotionally draining talks going into this. The topic of breakup had come up. It hadn’t recently. This was a shock. I was just too emotionally drained to keep fighting at that point. Whereas before, I probably would have cried or begged or said, please I’ll do whatever. I just was like, “Are you sure that that’s what you want to do?” He was like, “Yes.” I was like, “Where are you going to stay?” He told me he was going to stay in a hotel. That he said that this is one of the most difficult things he had to do because he had never broken up with someone before, had to break up with someone before that he didn’t actually hate in that moment. It hadn’t gotten… He was like…
Chris Seiter: Before it was an easy decision for him, this was-
Grace: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: You’ve set the stage. You’re on the TV show feeling super sad about this breakup. Let’s [inaudible 00:18:36] a little bit. Somehow you come into our orbit. How did you come into… Was it just frantically searching Google, YouTube? What’s your story?
Grace: It would be Google. It was Google.
Chris Seiter: Google.
Grace: I was like, “I don’t know what to do, anything. I was just probably exhausted. All of my friends and family have all of their free time. God bless them for just dealing with me as much as they did.
Chris Seiter: They were pretty supportive.
Grace: They were. I had so many friends that would talk to me on the phone. They were probably falling asleep on the other end because I just was getting super anxious.
Chris Seiter: They’re good friends.
Grace: They were. I just needed more of a strategic approach I thought. When I started Googling it and then I found this program, and this is not to be insulting at all because I learned that-
Chris Seiter: It’s okay. I’ve heard every insult. Don’t worry. It’s like, who wants to get an ex back? Oh, this is dumb or this won’t work. I’ve heard it all.
Grace: Well, my first thought was there is no way in the world that I’m going to pay for some type of program like this. It’s probably a scam. These people are normal and they’re-
Chris Seiter: It used to be more expensive, believe it or not. It used to be like maybe 70 bucks to get into the program, but I lowered it to 47 to make it more affordable, but still people pitch about it.
Grace: That’s why I actually ended up doing it. I was like, “It’s only $47.” I was like, “You know what?” I kept seeing this thing about this Facebook group when I was looking through it and my mind kept coming back to it. Even though I kept saying no way, no way I’m going to pay some money. I read-
Chris Seiter: [inaudible 00:20:11] you’re the kind of customers I love to win over.
Grace: I’ve read probably every article that you ever wrote. I would-
Chris Seiter: 600, that’s a lot of posts. I’m going through and redoing some of them. I can’t even stand it. It’s so much work to go through and update them.
Grace: When I tell you I’d be like 03:00 o’clock in the morning in my patrol car, what article can I read?
Chris Seiter: That’s great. I love that.
Grace: I would do that and I’d watch the podcast or listen to whatever’s on YouTube or whatever I can find. I realized that it made me feel so much better to listen to that stuff or read this stuff. It just made me feel like everything that I had been feeling… Everything was based off of so much emotion. I felt helpless or hopeless with basing everything off of emotion. When I started reading everything and seeing these stories and all of that, I was like, this is a logical approach. It makes it look like strategy. It makes sense to me. That was something that I really struggled with is I couldn’t make things make sense to me. When I realized that that’s what… How this is making me feel, that’s when I was like, “It’s only $47.” If it doesn’t work, then it’s $47.
Chris Seiter: [inaudible 00:21:26].
Grace: I ended up paying for it. Then I realized the Facebook group was so much more helpful on top of everything because I started learning based off of certain… People’s individual experiences when they would post in there and either moderators.
Chris Seiter: Did you get loaded up with the battle buddy system?
Grace: I did. Yes. My battle buddy was great. I’ll make sure that she knows that I did this. I’ll be like, “You’re the best.” She helped me out so much. That was very helpful too, because we were in the same time zone, but she was able to be there for me and anytime-
Chris Seiter: She’s also going through a breakup too, right?
Grace: Right. She understood.
Chris Seiter: Exactly. A lot of times you talk to friends and family, they’re supportive. Sometimes they’re not supportive, but they don’t really get exactly what you’re going through until they’re experiencing it. Because a lot of times you go through a breakup and it’s like, “Oh, screw that guy. I’m going to get over them.” While if you’re trying to get that person back, it’s a little bit of a different experience.
Grace: I definitely went through that. I had a couple of friends that was like, “Hey, girl. He sounds like he sucks. He didn’t want to be with you. You can get anybody, blah, blah, blah.” I was like, “Well, this is not what I want.” My battle buddy was great. Then just learning off of each of the experiences when moderators would comment, and even when other members who were more seasoned and all would comment. I was just teaching myself so much. I would just go through… I’m going to make myself sound like a loser with no life, which I didn’t have one at the time. It’s not incorrect. Just like I would read all of the articles, I would start reading all of the Facebook posts. I would just learn so much. I would only be a couple of weeks in and I’d see a new post. I’m like, “Girl, you’re not supposed to do that. Don’t you break your no contact.”
Chris Seiter: I’ve been fighting that battle, Grace, for 10 years of the, don’t break the no contact early. Are you doing a no contact rule? I get it.
Grace: I went from that to, I ended up getting a coaching session with Anna as well, which was another thing that I said I wasn’t going to do. I was like, “I am not going to pay that money.”
Chris Seiter: It’s too expensive, too expensive. Then you get on with Anna, and you’re like, “Wow.”
Grace: She’s the best. She’s so amazing.
Chris Seiter: You know the funny thing about her? Grace is, we’ll do… Her and I do podcasts episodes every week. I’m sitting there. I literally think to myself, “I cannot believe how much I’m learning just listening to her.” Her perspective is so fresh. I learned things. I created the program.
Grace: I couldn’t have imagined more of a… Just the perfect balance of what I needed when I spoke with her because I needed all of my feelings validated, even though I was super anxious. I’ve had all this going on, and she validated all of those feelings. However, I needed someone to shake me into a logical mindset of how to do this. She did that perfectly. Like I said, she didn’t make me feel like any of my emotions were dumb, or I was acting crazy or anything like that. She also was like, “Let’s think about this in a logical way and what would be a more rational or reasonable way to go about this.” She was great. Don’t let her go.
Chris Seiter: I haven’t. I’m holding on to her like… Don’t leave. You get the coaching session with Anna. How long into the process are you at this point? Are you past your no contact period?
Grace: Between when I scheduled the appointment and when I had the appointment, I had just finished the no contact period. However, I did bring us to my first mistake. With the no contact period, he had reached out several times. He reached out to my partner. I have a male partner at work. He reached out to him.
Chris Seiter: What an interesting conversation in the squad car that must have been like, “Who’s [crosstalk 00:25:51]?”
Grace: We were actually sitting at lunch, and he showed me the text message. I was like, “Oh my God, what?” It was-
Chris Seiter: Did you go like, “You didn’t respond to him? Did you?” Did he ask your permission to respond, or?
Grace: I was like, “You didn’t say anything, did you?” He did respond, but he actually had a very good response. He was like, “Hey, man. I hope you’re doing okay.” He didn’t respond about anything about me personally.
Chris Seiter: That’s perfect.
Grace: He actually had a really good response. He was like, “I hope you’re doing okay man. If you need anything, you can give me a call.” He didn’t go into any details about me or anything that I was up to. That was really good. However, my no contact was right at the end. I had done so well, but-
Chris Seiter: It’s so good to listen to the mistakes.
Grace: I know. Something actually happened at work with one of the trainers from the gym that I came in contact when I was working in law enforcement. He ended up being in a crisis. He needed to go to the hospital, so on and so forth. He was like, “Hey, can you please go to work, at the gym, and let them know that I’m going to the hospital?” I was like, “Oh, I’m not good at-
Chris Seiter: Don’t you know ex-boyfriend recovery says not to do that?
Grace: I was sitting there thinking. I was like, “Oh.” I couldn’t really tell him, but I was like, “Oh, boundaries, but I wasn’t good at that.” I was like, “Okay.” I thought I was just going to sneak in, and I was just going to find my ex’s boss at the time. Of course, I go to the front desk and I was like, “Is so-and-so here, who would be the boss.” They were like, “No, but [inaudible 00:27:39] is here,” which was bad. I was like, “Of course, he is.” I walked around the corner to where his desk was, and his eyes looked like he saw a ghost. He was like… Because he had been reaching out to me and I never responded.
Chris Seiter: Well, the funny part-
Grace: I actually had one run-in. I had one random run-in. I forgot about that. I messed up that one too. I didn’t follow any of the advice because it was so… I was so shocked that I think he told me later on once we talked about it that I looked terrified. I didn’t play that one well. He was like, “You look terrified.”
Chris Seiter: We’ll just forget about that one and focus on this one.
Grace: Yes, we don’t have to. When I saw him, it just came out of my mouth. I was like, “This guy’s in the hospital. He just wanted me to let you all know, and I got to go.” He was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, wait, wait.” I was like I’m not good at saying no. I was like, “Okay.” He was like, “Do you hate me? Do you never want me to try to talk to you again and all that stuff?” I was trying to think of what all of… The Facebook posts said to do and what your article said to do with the program. I was like, “No.” It was so difficult in the moment. I was like, how do I say it like, no, I don’t hate you. I don’t want you to stop reaching out to me.
Chris Seiter: You should have just said that. Said, no, I just needed some space just for a moment.
Grace: I think that’s what I ended up saying. I was like-
Chris Seiter: That was pretty good.
Grace: I just needed some time. I just need some space. He was like-
Chris Seiter: You didn’t mess up the no contact rule. You had no control over that guy going to the hospital.
Grace: That’s true. Then afterwards, we ended up jumping the value chain.
Chris Seiter: Let’s get to that mistake.
Grace: We ended up talking there. Every time I went to try to leave, he would indicate something that he wanted to talk to me about when I was not talking to him for a month. He was making the little slide jokes about how you didn’t talk to me for month. Whatever. I was like, “Well, what were you trying to talk to me about?” He was like “I don’t want to talk to you about it at work.” He was playing this game as well where-
Chris Seiter: He was trying to get you on a date.
Grace: I was like, “Well… He did ask me to hang out with him that night, but I was good then. I was like, “I’ve got plans.” I did have plans. It was like, “I’ve got plans.” I went out. He was texting me the whole time. He called me. He was like, “Let me know when you’re on the way home. I want to make sure you’re okay.” I told him I was on the way home. He called me. He wanted to talk to me. He kept saying he wanted to see me. He actually made a really funny joke, because I think this happened on a Monday. He said, “When can I see you again?” I was like, “Oh, I work Wednesday and Thursday, so maybe Friday.” He said, “Oh, I forgot June has no Tuesdays.” I was like, “Okay, funny guy.” I don’t know if I… I can’t really remember if I actually saw him that Tuesday or I may have made them wait for the weekend.
Grace: Once I saw him again, it was all of those feelings from before just came and they would just pop in. It was just basically like we were way back together, again. It didn’t seem like it wasn’t working up towards it. You know what I mean?
Chris Seiter: It just came naturally.
Grace: I didn’t build the rapport. I knew at the time, I was like, I know I’m going too fast. I’m way jumping in this value chain that I read about and all this stuff. I was just going with what felt good to me. However, there was an incident, or I had… I can’t remember how I realized this, but I had just had this feeling that there was a woman that he worked with. I had this feeling that he stayed with her before he got into this apartment that he got into. The breakup happened on May 2nd, and he stayed in another place until June 1st is when he moved into his place. He had kept telling me that he was staying at… He was just like he rented a room that he found online or something like that. It was weird because I wasn’t allowed to know where it was.
Chris Seiter: You were the ultimate detective.
Grace: Exactly, so he wasn’t very smart in this. Some of these conversations actually happened before I found the program do no contact because we had conversations and all before I realized that. I kind of made it really-
Chris Seiter: That’s actually really good to know.
Grace: I made this realization before I went into no contact that I thought that he had stayed with this woman at work.
Chris Seiter: This girl.
Grace: She did not have a good reputation. Her husband was in military, but he was deployed and she was known for not respecting her marriage while her husband was gone.
Chris Seiter: Just say it. She’s known for cheating on her husband. That’s the truth.
Grace: I don’t think anybody physically saw her do anything, but everyone had their… They noticed her with different men just being too close. She had gone and made dinner at different guy’s houses. Just things like, why do you do that?
Chris Seiter: I feel just bad for the husband. Do you think he-
Grace: He’s out fighting for his country, but.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, he’s out fighting for his country and his wife is just two timing.
Grace: I had had this feeling. I can’t remember, some things are just feelings and then there was things that would back it up. She had acted weird on social media. I knew that he had seen her at the gym that day because when… They were the only ones that were allowed to work out there because of COVID, but there had to be at least two people for liability reasons. He and her happened to be the two people that were there together before this happened. There was just a lot of stuff. He was very weird when I would bring her up. I just had the feeling. You just know.
Chris Seiter: He stayed with this other girl.
Grace: That came out, yes. When I had talked to Anna during all of this, when I was struggling with this, because I was like, “Anna…” He was very touchy, feely. He was very excited to see me at first. He got very, very avoidant very quickly within a couple of days. I told Anna. I was like, “Anna, I think that this happened.” Oh, I missed the worst part, which is the whole shower thing that I was going to tell you about. I couldn’t-
Chris Seiter: I think I can read between the lines and figure out what happened there. I think most can.
Grace: Well, maybe. I was very, very anxious. He got in the shower and I went through his phone because I just could not-
Chris Seiter: Oh, I thought you were going to jump in the shower with him.
Grace: Nope. It wasn’t that great. I went through his phone because I was so, I needed to know.
Chris Seiter: Did he have a lock on his phone? My phone has the pass code.
Grace: Yeah. I was lucky enough, lucky or not lucky. I don’t know how you can say that.
Chris Seiter: He didn’t change the pass code or-
Grace: He never changed it. Yeah. I looked and I saw text messages with him and her, which would have indicated that he would have been staying with her at that time. He was in the shower. I had a little bit of an outburst while he was in the shower, and I went to leave. He like chased me out the door in a towel.
Chris Seiter: That’s great.
Grace: It was a good sight. After that I talked to Anna. He wanted to end things again with me then because he got very, very avoidant. He went back to those… Which understandably, and Anna was-
Chris Seiter: I see your point of view too. Sorry, continue.
Grace: I was on fire. Anna was like… Again, like I said, she was great. I talked to Anna about the situation because the girl actually reached out to me in the meantime. I was like, I’m so… Because this was happening when we were having a bunch of riots and my city that I work in had some riots and stuff like that and had to go and work that. She texted me and she was like, “I just want to let you know that you and all of your brothers and sisters in blue welcome. If you are ever afraid to go home or need somewhere to stay, I have an extra room. She’s texting me this knowing obviously that she allowed him to stay there.
Chris Seiter: It was a guilty conscious to me.
Grace: Yeah. I was telling Anna that and I told Anna what she texted me and all of this stuff. Anna was like, “Oh, no. She’s shiesty.” She validated me. Then at the same time, she was like, “Okay, he sounds like he’s avoidant.” She was like, “You have to make sure that for every… You can only have a negative interaction for every thought positive interactions that you have, because that’s how intently he takes these negative interactions.” It made sense because even when we were talking in the breakup, we could have had like two, three good weeks of just the imperfect. Then we got into an argument on the third week and that’s what he remembered. That’s what he didn’t… Anna was like, “This is what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to shoot for this.” Then she said, “We’ve got to shoot for getting him outside of his apartment.”
Grace: She was helping me along at that point. I did okay for a while, but I did end up bringing her up again to him later on, maybe a week later. He was like, “I can’t take this anymore.” He ended it again. I went back into another no contact. I went back to another no contact-
Chris Seiter: This is a real up and down story. This is a great story.
Grace: I don’t know how it got to where we are now. I’m just going to be grateful for it. I went to another no contact and then I had been posting, which I didn’t mention. The one thing that I did do consistently well was the social media. I only posted actual… The only social media he had was Instagram. I only posted an actual post on Instagram and if it was a very good post to post. Then I would post some stories at times that were good throughout the day, but not maybe just post like a full post material, permanent post material. I think I did do that very well. I know that I did that very well because he’s said since then that he actually blocked me a couple of times because he couldn’t take my posting. He couldn’t take seeing me and things that I posting and all, but he’s also admitted since then, which is why I need everyone in this program to listen to me. He actually said since then that he would unblock me and go look at my page and he would go-
Chris Seiter: [inaudible 00:38:39].
Grace: Yeah, and then blocked me again. He said that he did that-
Chris Seiter: I knew that because I’ve done that. It’s like the hit run approach. Oh, what’s she up to, nothing. I’m going back to the safe home base.
Grace: I’ve tried to tell people that and the Facebook and stuff. They’re like, “What do I do? How do I post, if I’m blocked?” I’m like, “Listen, just keep posting like he’s there, because he’s going to look.”
Chris Seiter: It’s hard to [inaudible 00:39:06] for a lot of people, I think.
Grace: Yeah. It’s what I did. I didn’t think the no contact was going to work for me. I was like, “Oh, he’s done.” It really did. Both of my no contexts were very effective. I thought going into the second no contact I was like, I just did this. It’s not going to work this time. It was very effective too. He began reaching out to me almost… It would normally take him about a week to try to reach out to me. Then he would give it a couple of days and try again. Then maybe around the third week, like you say, he would start getting really anxious and I’d get an influx. Please talk to me. I’m trying to call you. Come on. I’m not trying to mess with you. I just need to talk. Why are you doing this? Stuff like that. That was happening.
Grace: One thing that did happen, which was a social media thing that got us back again, I was probably… I don’t think I was quite three weeks into my second no contact. Like I said, I’m working in law enforcement, and I actually went on a call. I got into a fight and I got hit. I had a black eye.
Chris Seiter: Cool. Not cool, but did you post that on social media?
Grace: I did. I waited a little while. I was about to go out of town. I had a trip planned to the beach with a couple of friends. Right before I left, the black eye thing wasn’t even my big thing. I had a really, really good jealousy post that I was going to put. Anna loved it. I was like, “I can’t wait.” I posted the black eye first and it was still very much visible, but it was clearing up. I was like, “Oh, my black eye is almost gone or whatever.” I posted on my story. Not as post, but he ended up watching it after he had blocked me and unblocked me and then followed me again. He immediately started texting me. He was like, “Are you okay?” Then he was like, “Please, just let me know that you’re okay.” He was like, “I think about you every day. I worry about what’s going on.
Grace: I just need to know that you’re okay.” He’s like, “I see a picture of you with a black eye on Instagram and my heart sinks, or my stomach sinks or whatever.” At that point I didn’t know what to do because I was like, I don’t… Anna and I had spoken about how he didn’t… No contact was very effective, but when we talked about it, he was going forth. I do want to. You do let me know when you’re okay, because when you didn’t speak to me for a month, and there was riots and I knew that we got shot at. He was like, “I see this on the news and you won’t respond to me.” I did post it in the group before I did anything. I was like, “Anna help.” She said okay, you can respond to him. Let him know that you’re okay, but then add like five days or so onto your no contact. I said okay. I did that.
Grace: Then he starts responding and I’m not responding back. He was like, “Are you calm?” I didn’t respond back. Then he said something that indicated that he was at my apartment. I don’t know. I can’t remember what it was, but I think he said like, “Hurry up and get to your door because that needs to be in the refrigerator.” Or something like that. Like I said, I was on the way out of town to go to the beach. I was like, I got to respond because is he at my front door right now?
Chris Seiter: I saw a text.
Grace: I responded and he had brought me my favorite thing in the world is chocolate covered cherries. He had brought me chocolate covered cherries and some flowers and dropped them off at my door. Diet Dr. Pepper because I love Diet Dr. Pepper. He left me a six pack of Diet Dr. Pepper. At that point I had a friend pick them up and I told him that I wasn’t able to get to them. I was out of town, but a friend of mine that was a neighbor at the apartment complex picked him up. We started easing into texting. Like we talked about before, I was like, “Oh, I’m not supposed to be texting yet.” It just seemed like the right time to try to ease into it. Everybody finish your no contact.
Chris Seiter: Well, you had already finished one too. The optics are a little different when you have to redo it again.
Grace: Then I also too, didn’t want him to see what you’re talking about too. Him to see, “Oh, it’s been exactly a month again.” I didn’t want him to start putting those things together.
Chris Seiter: You want some variation, for sure.
Grace: I started texting him. Things were rocky. I was trying to reel in my anxiousness. He did talk to me and admit that he stayed with this other girl. He admitted that to me finally. He swore up in there on everything that nothing happened. He didn’t touch her. It wasn’t like that. It was literally just a place to say, a room to be in, to save money. Get his apartment, all that stuff. I still didn’t like it.
Chris Seiter: You don’t have to.
Grace: It was just a point where I had to tell myself for a while. I was like, “Okay, do you have… I felt disrespected. Could he do it? We were broken up, but I felt really disrespected. I had to tell myself too, or remind myself, you got to make the decision. You got to be with him or don’t be with them. You got to be able to get past it and be there or don’t be with them. This decision you’ve got to make. Which is something that when I had my second coaching call with Anna, she helped me realize too. She was like, “What would you tell a friend of yours in this situation?” I said that exact advice. She’s like, “Okay, if you’re mad about it, and you don’t want to be with them then don’t. If you’re going to, then you got to forgive them before.” I chose to do that, even though it was difficult. Things were rocky a little bit.
Grace: I was anxious, but I started learning. I started going through really the follow-up email that Anna sent me with the dealing with my anxious attachment styles and stuff like that. When he would get overwhelmed and say, “I don’t know if I need to do this.” I would start feeling like he was going to be avoidant and either cut or shut us down, or he was going to just back off. I would take the lead, and I would say, “You know what? You’re seeming like a little overwhelmed or really stressed out right now. Why don’t you take tonight do this or do whatever.”
Chris Seiter: [crosstalk 00:45:51].
Grace: Text me when you feel better. Then, another thing that Anna showed me was if the conversation, because sometimes he would steer the conversation. He’d start getting stressed out and he would just steer the conversation and say, “We’re not back together yet. I don’t want to lead you on.” He would start turning the conversation like he was going to end us. I would say, “You know what?” Anna would tell me to take over, take the wheel, I guess, from in the conversation. I would do that. I would basically do the same thing. I’d be like, “You know what? I want to take some space. Let’s take some space.” Finally, after I did that two or three times, he was like, “Oh my God, I just appreciate you so much because I feel like you’re really learning me.”
Chris Seiter: That’s fun.
Grace: I feel like you’re really learning me and you’re just… I see this change in you. You’ve just realized exactly when I need some time and you don’t have your grip on me whenever you feel like something’s not going right. That really helped a lot. It was a huge game changer. Then at that point we just started… We were just working into being together again. I did get anxious to myself, not to him a few times about the amount of it was taking for us to be official again. I just gave myself an internal deadline. I’d seen in the group, if you have a deadline, don’t give it to him. Don’t put that pressure on him, which I don’t think would have been good if I would have done that. I just gave myself an internal deadline, which was Halloween of 2020. He was cutting it close. He had about 10 days.
Chris Seiter: How did you swing it? How did the actual official title get re-bestowed?
Grace: It was weird. It happened without saying it at first. We went to a friend of mine’s birthday party, and he said something. I was like, “Well, you’re not my boyfriend.” I was like, “We can go together, but we’re just hanging out.”
Chris Seiter: We’re just like better than friends, a little bit.
Grace: He was like, “Oh my God. Come on. You know that we’re together.” I was like, “Oh, really? How would I know that? What do you mean I know that we’re together?”
Chris Seiter: Nice job, Grace. I love the attitude, the tone of that. That worked really well. What did he say then?
Grace: I was actually moving into a different place. I was really excited about it. It was much better than my last place, which was a nightmare. He knew all of the terrible experiences that I had in my last place. He was really excited for me to get out and just have a fresh start in this new place. When I moved in here, it was the end ish of October, beginning of November. I moved in here, but I didn’t have all my stuff in until maybe the little after November started. My birthday’s in November. My birthday is mid November. Maybe a week before my birthday, when I was fully in here, he brought me a bouquet of roses for my new place. He got me a Tiffany necklace for my birthday. That was the okay. We’re together. It was a big moment for him too, because he was like, “I’ve never bought a girl jewelry before. You don’t understand.”
Grace: He just in the month of October, I don’t know what it was. It happened. Like I said, it was just like a blessing that… It must’ve just been a mixture of everything building up, but he really committed. He changed like that avoidant… The avoidant is pretty much gone with him, or his behavior, the way whenever he was avoidant. I think it must have just been me giving him the space because-
Chris Seiter: You could have learned, you’re the avoidant whisper at that point. You’ve had a lot of practice going in.
Grace: The last thing that we went through right before we were official again was we had struggled when we were together before with him having me meet his family. He would always say, “Oh, let’s go do this and do this with my family,” which they live about two hours away. He would say, “Let’s go do this and do this with my family.” Every time the day would come up, he would have an excuse not to. He’d be like, “Well, I don’t have the time because of this. I don’t feel good,” or whatever would be. This happened maybe beginning of October, and I got upset. I said, “This always happens. You always say that you are going to do this, and this is a perfect opportunity because your sister who was out of state is here with your parents. You keep saying that you’re going to do this and then you don’t.” Then I took it to the group and Anna and Christie-
Chris Seiter: Christie.
Grace: Both responded. They were like, “Hey, you have to be patient.” They were like, “You got to let him do this on his time because-
Chris Seiter: Especially with avoidant.
Grace: They were like this is his family. This is his thing. You got to let him make this decision. You can’t put this pressure on him because as much as you may deserve this or whatever the case may be, it’s his family. He’s got to make that decision. Anna made me feel really better or a lot better too when she said, I don’t think that it has anything to do with you because she knew about his personal things when we talked and all. She was like, “I really don’t think it has anything to do with you. I think it has to do with his personal issues that he’s had going on.” That helped ease me a lot. I ended up talking to him and saying, “You know what? I’m really sorry. That’s your family. Whenever you want to take me or whenever you want to do that, that’s going to be up to you.” Then once I gave him that decision, he turned around. He went the next day. By the time he was there for two hours, he ended up calling me, begging me to come.
Chris Seiter: That’s beautiful. There’s a lot that goes… We’ve got about five minutes left, but I want to say one thing about the family meeting thing, at least my perspective on it, and then ask you one question.
Grace: Sure.
Chris Seiter: I’m sure you have better things to do than sit here for hours and-
Grace: I’m probably talking your head off.
Chris Seiter: No, you’re fine. That’s what the interview is. What’s really interesting to me about the family dynamic is a lot… I think it weirdly works in your favor extremely well by you getting upset and then sort of taking it to the group and then having the group basically say, “No, that’s his family.” Then you literally word for word, telling him. Maybe the narrative he’s thinking in his head, which is like, “Wait a minute. This is my family. This isn’t your family.” You even just putting him out there, he has this clarity of understanding like, “Oh, she gets me.” Then you find that opening up. You actually find that a lot in the book Never Split the Difference. I don’t know if you had a chance to read that, but.
Grace: I’ve been told to, but I need to.
Chris Seiter: I think it’d be right up your alley because it’s by a guy by the name of Chris Voss. He’s an FBI hostage negotiator. What’s interesting is the beginning of the book starts with him being interviewed at Harvard. He’s just blowing these Harvard professors minds. They’re like, “How is this working? This isn’t fitting in our psychology books.” He’s like, “Well, we’ve just been for the past 50 years, looking at what’s working for police in the field.” One of the things they learned is tactical empathy, which is labeling someone’s exact emotions to their faces. If you’re able to find out what his narrative is, and repeat it back to him, they open up to you. I think weirdly enough, it worked in your favor extremely well by you just be seeing like, “Oh, it’s your family, whenever you want to do that.” Then look immediately… It’s like, wow, she gets me. My question for you before we end is when you look back on everything that you did, what do you think was the most important factor for your success?
Grace: I think it was learning patience. I’m not a very patient person, so-
Chris Seiter: That’s a really good answer. I haven’t heard that one actually, which is ironic because almost everyone is impatient when they go to [inaudible 00:55:01].
Grace: That’s what I had to be reminded with the whole family thing is well Anna and Christie were both patients. That was Christie’s exact words, was patience grasshopper.
Chris Seiter: She’s Australian. She gets some of those-
Grace: Anna would tell me every time we spoke. She’d be like, “Be patient.” I learned that with both of the no contacts. Obviously I’m sure you hear it all the time. I was not a fan of doing a no contact. I was like, not talking to him for a month. Excuse me, he’s going to have three girlfriends, four babies by the time this is over with.
Chris Seiter: Four babies. You went there.
Grace: I was like, no way. Once I was patient, and I went through that and then patience with giving him the space. Like you said, just letting him know that I’m just sympathizing with his feelings or empathizing may be a better word.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, empathizing.
Grace: With his feelings and just letting him know that he could have those feelings and I’m not going to be just overbearing the time just. I think patience was the biggest thing.
Chris Seiter: Well, what’s interesting about the whole thing, and I promise I’ll leave here soon. A lot of times I think you hear from ex’s, you get back. Your ex literally says to you like, “Wow, you seem different.” The reality is though you’re just more aware of like, “Oh, I have these anxious tendencies. I need to not be so anxious. I need to let him be… Allow him to have his feelings with me without me trying to like, fix it.” Then that appears to them that you’re this whole different person when really you’re just a little bit more self-aware of these are my tendencies.
Grace: I did definitely recognize it.
Chris Seiter: Grace, I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming on and doing this. I really appreciate it.
Grace: Of course, thank you for having me. I love being able to help anyone that I can. I’m pretty excited.
Chris Seiter: You gave maybe the best interview ever for coaching period. I called Anna on this. I called Anna on this. Just thank you.
Success Story: She Got Him Back Without Completing No Contact
May 18, 2021
Today I talk to Jenny who got her ex back without fully completing a no contact rule. I found her situation completely fascinating because she’s a bit of a unicorn.
The no contact rule without a doubt is one of the premier strategies in the industry so when someone succeeds without out I’m always interested in their approach.
Technically Jenny did do a no contact rule but not the original timeframe she had set out to complete.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Chris Seiter: All right. Today we have brought on Jenny, one of our success stories from our private Facebook group. Before we started recording, I was telling her that she’s a bit of a unicorn because she didn’t follow the exact strategy with no contact, and she’s one of those rare people that got her ex back. We’re going to basically sit down with her for 35 to 45 minutes, and just interview her, and figure out what she did to successfully get her ex back. By her own admission, it seems like she still can’t believe she got him back, which is kind of awesome. How are you doing, Jenny?
Jenny: I’m doing great. I’m glad it’s Friday. The sun is shining today. Having a really good day.
Chris Seiter: We were talking a little bit. You said the weekend looks like it’s going to be a bit rainy in your side of the states. Hopefully, sometimes the weather might get it wrong.
Jenny: We need a little bit of rain for some flowers, so I’m okay with it.
Chris Seiter: That’s true. My grass is dying outside because of a lack of rain. I’m hoping it rains. Anyways, why don’t you take me back to the beginning? Give me a little bit of a briefing on your past relationship with your ex because you had mentioned before we started recording that it was a little bit rocky a couple of times before.
Jenny: Yes. It has not been a perfect relationship. We’ve been together almost three years now. Last summer, we actually made the decision for him to move in with me. During that time that he lived with me, that’s when the pandemic happened. Not only were we first living together for the first time, but then we were kind of forced to stay together for a long time. During that time, there was kids involved, his kids, my kids. We just got really rocky, really fast.
Jenny: He actually ended up moving out and getting his own place, but we ultimately decided to stay together still, which it was like taking a step backwards to take a step forward. Then I think it was about a month or so ago. We were just having a conversation. At one point, during the conversation, he was just like, “I can’t do this anymore.”
Jenny: I was completely blindsided. I didn’t understand. What do you mean you can’t do this anymore? We were just fine a couple days ago. In fact, we had gone to the park with our kids. When it comes to our kids, it’s a really serious, serious situation. I was kind of confused, and blindsided, and really hurt, and didn’t understand. Immediately, in that moment, I was doing the grasping for straws, just begging, “Don’t leave me. I can’t live without you. What are you doing? You’re my person.”
Jenny: Then after that, it was just silence. I didn’t hear from him at all, which is completely unlike us. We talk every day. Then the hurt just kept coming. I’m even more confused, and more hurt, and just didn’t understand. Now we don’t live together, so it’s not like I can just reach out to him. I had all those thoughts of, do I go to his house? Do I go to where he works? That whole stalker mentality starts sinking into your brain.
Jenny: I was like, “What am I going to do? This is my person. This is my future.” In the past, I was kind of that person, the chaser, going after them, and begging, and just doing that whole thing that we always do. I think it was day three. I found your program online. I immediately was like, well, I don’t know if I really want to go through with this. I don’t know if this is for me. I was reading some of the videos. I literally read every single article. I think there’s 600 or something like that.
Chris Seiter: 600 articles, yes.
Jenny: I read all of them.
Chris Seiter: I’m actually in the process of redoing some of them since they’re a little outdated. Before we actually started reviewing or interviewing, that’s literally what I was doing. Someone who reads 600 articles… I can barely read them myself, and I’m going through them. I tip my cap to you. That’s impressive.
Jenny: I was just in that desperation phase. What am I going to do? How do I do this? What is he thinking?
Chris Seiter: Did you bookmark the website or something?
Jenny: Yes.
Chris Seiter: That’s crazy.
Jenny: I have two tabs at work. I was working on one and then reading on another.
Chris Seiter: The ultimate multi-tasker.
Jenny: I had to do something with my time.
Chris Seiter: Well, I guess that’s kind of a productive outlet. You’re learning.
Jenny: Yes. I was desperate. I didn’t know.
Chris Seiter: Did you do the same thing with the videos?
Jenny: I actually didn’t watch them as I was reading just because I was at work, and I can’t do video and work at the same time.
Chris Seiter: Oh yes. That kind of gives away the whole secretive…
Jenny: Right.
Chris Seiter: You’re supposed to be working.
Jenny: Right. I actually didn’t start watching the videos until I got the program. I would read, and watch the video, and then read the PDF. That’s just kind of what I was doing with my time. I didn’t realize time was passing as I was reading. Then all of a sudden, it was a week later. Then I was in the Facebook group. People kept posting stuff. I was like, yes. I’m like, “Oh, I’m with that. I’m right there with you. I know exactly how you feel.”
Chris Seiter: Right.
Jenny: I really think that the Facebook group was something that really helped me, too, because seeing people go through the exact same thing I was going through, struggling with the exact same feelings I was struggling with, just kind of having that support system of, okay, I’m not crazy. Other people are doing this too.
Chris Seiter: This is normal.
Jenny: Yes, this is normal. Then just being able to also see what other people are saying or doing that is working or not working… I was like, okay, well, I’m not going to do that.
Chris Seiter: Yes. We get a lot of that. Right, right, right.
Jenny: That was really my goal. Then I got to the point of the ungettable girl topic. The way that I saw that was, no one would want to be with someone that’s begging, and sad, and crying. I need to make sure that I’m emitting this kind of secure relationship vibe out to the world. Whether he sees that or someone else sees that, I wanted that to be me. They say success is not linear, or grieving is not linear, or whatever is not linear. That’s exactly how it felt. Some days, I was bad-ass, and I could do this. It’d be fine. Then the next day, I was in my bed with the ice cream.
Chris Seiter: I think that’s so normal too.
Jenny: It is.
Chris Seiter: It’s so overlooked for a lot of people. Everyone always thinks it’s just, one day after the next, it’s going to be perfect. You’re going to be building up that ungettable mentality, but no. It’s like two days in a row and then one day, something happens. You’re just down in the dumps. Then you kind of have to get back up on the horse. It just kind of is this… I mean, yes.
Jenny: For me, it was little triggers. I would find something. I have this note that he wrote me on my desk that I look at all the time.
Chris Seiter: Oh no. Right. You look at it, right?
Jenny: I was like, right? I was like, why would he write this if he didn’t mean it?
Chris Seiter: I mean, what’s interesting about the whole thing from what I’m hearing about your situation so far was how out of the blue it seemed. I kind of imagine, from his perspective, it must have been percolating for a while. If I’m him, I think maybe he’s having trouble… He has the idea, almost like… I watched Inception the other day. It’s top of mind right now. The whole movie is about planting an idea in this guy’s head, and it kind of grows.
Jenny: Kind of grow it.
Chris Seiter: Consumes him, right. I’m thinking your ex, when that breakup happened, because it was so out of the blue, and it was just almost in the middle of a conversation, which is kind of wild, it must’ve been really percolating inside and growing until it finally bubbled up. He just couldn’t let it out anymore, or couldn’t contain it anymore, and had to let it out. I’m kind of curious. Once we get through your situation, if you actually asked him what his experience was with that because I think that could help a lot of people who are in a similar situation, whose exes just sort of cold-cocked them out of the blue.
Jenny: Out of nowhere, yes. We didn’t talk. I tried to do the social media rules where I was supposed to say things about myself. I bought myself tickets to this art show that I’d been wanting to go to for a long time.
Chris Seiter: Well, that’s pretty rad.
Jenny: I went with my friends, which I’m not a big go-to-a-club-or-a-bar kind of person, but I went out with my friends.
Chris Seiter: Right.
Jenny: Then I went to a outside concert with my parents. I was just in the sun. It was a blues show, and it was just so relaxing. In those moments, I was okay. I was fine. I was having a good time. I felt happy or in my zone. I looked that way from the outside.
Jenny: Later on, he did admit, “I was stalking you. I watched all your stuff.” During that time, I started posting… I’m a big TikTok user. I actually started doing a daily TikTok every day of something positive, a positive quote or a positive uplifting message. I actually started doing it for myself so that I could inspire myself or inspire others. When you do that, you can post it on all your social media.
Jenny: He was seeing those videos and was… Later on, he had mentioned, “I didn’t know if me leaving was a good thing for you because you just seem so happy.” I was like, “No. Sometimes but not all the time.” My idea was just, I need to be positive. I need to have this positive energy. That’s what I want back. That’s how I want that positive energy back.
Jenny: It was hard. It was definitely hard. What initially ended up happening was I was reading all this stuff on the Facebook group. Everyone’s like, no contact, no contact. He had sent me a message, “Hey.” Because right after the breakup, I was like, “Let’s talk. Let’s meet for some coffee or something.”
Chris Seiter: Right. He was not having it.
Jenny: He was like, “No, I don’t want to talk to you.”
Chris Seiter: How much time had passed before this all occurs?
Jenny: Probably a couple weeks, at least three weeks. I mean, I was getting there.
Chris Seiter: Three weeks. Oh, it’s 21 days. That’s almost kind of a smaller little no-contact.
Jenny: The short one.
Chris Seiter: Right.
Jenny: He sends me this text message. He’s like, “I want to meet up with you, or are you open to meet up?” At first, I wasn’t going to reply at all because you’re not supposed to reply at all, but I was just kind of like, “Well, I’m actually busy next week. I can’t really meet with you,” which to him… He immediately responded, “Oh, well, I just want you to know that I’m available whenever you need to meet or whenever is good for you.” He wanted me to know he was available.
Chris Seiter: You literally told him that you were busy, but you can meet him next week.
Jenny: Yes. I was like, “Maybe next week.”
Chris Seiter: That’s pretty clever tactic.
Jenny: I did not have plans.
Chris Seiter: Of course. Right. It’s all a game, but hey, he broke up with you.
Jenny: That’s right.
Chris Seiter: Hey, you can play a little games back.
Jenny: You can wait.
Chris Seiter: What happened?
Jenny: That was really, really hard because I did want to talk to him. I did want to see him. I did want to say all the things I’ve been wanting to say. It was really hard to kind of play that game. I’ve been journaling every day and writing all the things down that I want to say. Ultimately, in the end, I didn’t end up saying any of those things that I had written down.
Chris Seiter: It’s funny how that works, isn’t it?
Jenny: Yes.
Chris Seiter: You write it all down. You’re like, okay, this is the perfect thing to say, but when you’re in the moment, it’s kind of like, what was that again?
Jenny: Yes. It was very interesting. It was probably a couple days after. It was the weekend after he had sent that text saying he wanted to meet up. I was just sitting there in my bed journaling. I had this really, really strong feeling that I wanted to say something. You have those throughout the whole time. You want to text. You want to call. You want to see him or whatever. This time, it just felt really different. I didn’t really want him to say, I love you or let’s meet up. I just wanted to reach out somehow.
Jenny: I just sent a text. It was 9:00 at night. I said just in a text. I was just like, “I just want you to know I’m thinking about you.” That was it. No, let’s talk. No, let’s have a conversation. Just, I just want you to know you’re on my mind, kind of thing. I’m finishing journaling. I’m sitting there in my bed journaling, and my phone goes off, which I know he’s replied to me. I’m like, I’m not going to answer that right now. I’m just going to finish journaling. I’m doing everything, getting ready for bed.
Jenny: I finally look at my phone. He was asking me about my weekend, or how I was doing, and that I look so happy. I was just like, “Well, I’m just sitting here journaling. I’m not doing anything serious.” Then either he said or I said, “Do you want to text right now?” In my head, I’m thinking, “I kind of want to go to bed.” I was like, “Okay. I’ll text-
Chris Seiter: He was not your first priority.
Jenny: No.
Chris Seiter: Sleep was your first priority, which is kind of the beauty.
Jenny: Right. I was like, “Well, I’ll text for a little bit, but I’m going to be going to bed soon.” It was small talk, that little value chain of just small talk. “Oh, what’d you do this weekend?” that kind of thing. “Oh, I went to a show with my parents,” or whatever. Then out of the blue, he was like, “Can I tell you what I’m thinking right now?” I’m like, “Okay, sure.” He’s like, “I really just want to come over to your house and tell you what I need to tell you because there’s some things I want to say to you and then I can just leave.”
Jenny: I was like, it’s 10 o’clock at night. I don’t know if that’s really a good idea. I talked to my son. I was like, “Hey, he wants to come over. How do you feel about this?” Ultimately, I said, “Okay. Well, you can come over, but we’re going to stand outside on my front porch.”
Chris Seiter: Sit outside.
Jenny: You can’t come in. He did. He came over. It was 10:00 at night. He came over. It’s a 35-minute drive from his place. He stood outside. He said all the things. He said, “I want to be with you. I miss you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I told my kids that I want to move in with you at the end of my lease. I still want to marry you in two years,” all these things.
Jenny: Again, all the things that I’d written down just flew out of my brain. I’m like, “Oh, okay,” completely shocked that this is what he’s telling me because at the time, I’m expecting him to just say, “Look, this is my life. I don’t really think this is where it’s going or whatever.” I really stood my ground. I was like, “Well, that sounds good. I want that too. Let’s just kind of see where this goes.” Then he left. There was no him coming inside. There was no sleepover, none of that.
Chris Seiter: It ended abruptly, and then it began again extremely abruptly.
Jenny: Right.
Chris Seiter: Then he just left. It’s kind of like a drive-by proposal, and then he’s out of it.
Jenny: Right.
Chris Seiter: That’s hilarious.
Jenny: We just sat outside, and he told me all these things. I was like, “Well, I’ve been missing you too. I really want to be with you. I’ve been waiting for us to talk or whatever.” It’s kind of like, we not necessarily picked up where we left off, but even in a better spot now because we have all these plans that we’re doing. He’s been sending me houses that he’s wanting to possibly go look at this summer.
Chris Seiter: Well, that’s exciting.
Jenny: We had dinner.
Chris Seiter: Also, a little bit scary. Are you nervous about that?
Jenny: We had talked about it before the breakup. It wasn’t completely shocking, but it was kind of… He had gone from the iffy, “Well, maybe,” to, “Okay, let’s look at this house.”
Chris Seiter: Well, what’s interesting about the situation to me is mostly how it ended. Did you ever have an opportunity to sit down with your boyfriend and say, “What was going through your mind when you broke up with me?”
Jenny: I did. What he claimed was going through his mind is there was something that he had been kind of struggling on a personal level that he hadn’t… I guess he just was kind of scared to tell me. Instead of wanting to tell me, he just kind of was like, “Well, I’m just going to keep you from it. I’m just going to leave you.”
Chris Seiter: It’s classical avoidant approach to the-
Jenny: Oh my gosh, yes.
Chris Seiter: Is that in line with his personality? Is he kind of more of like an avoidant type tendencies?
Jenny: Yes, he is. When we would get in a fight, he was the one that needed space and didn’t want to talk. I’d have to sit around, and wait, and wait for him to get ready to talk. It is in line with his personality in that if he’s dealing with something, I’ll find out later on down the road. I’m not going to find out if he’s got-
Chris Seiter: He’s like, “I’m going to deal with it myself. I don’t need help from anyone.”
Jenny: Right.
Chris Seiter: Which is really classic avoidant attachment. They’re very independent, so they feel like they can deal with the problems themselves. They don’t want to include anyone else to help them. Of course, you seem like the kind that would love to help solve problems. In some ways, that’s an avoidant’s worst nightmare because they’re like, “No, I can do it myself.” They push you away.
Chris Seiter: I don’t think this is a case of, the grass is greener, where he thinks, “Oh, I could find someone better.” I think this is a case of, you’re getting a little too close. I’m getting scared, so I’m going to push you away. Then now that he’s away, he starts to have nostalgic reverie based on your past relationship. He’s like, “Oh crap. What have I done?” He regrets the decision. He comes back. Do you think that’s in line with what happened, or is there an element that I’m missing here?
Jenny: No. I mean, it sounds pretty right on. He was very like, “I want to deal with this myself.” Then after having some time away, he’s like, “I really need you. I really need you in my life.” Not to his own fault, but I’m the kind of person that I kind of have to put up a boundary. I’m not going to do this for you. You have to figure this out on your own because I want to help so hard. That’s something that I have to work on myself, is I want to help you, but I can’t do it for you.
Chris Seiter: I don’t know about you, but I was always taught, maybe from viewing my parents, that when couples are having struggles, you help each other, right? For me, when I would start dating and date someone who had avoidant tendencies, it was almost like help… I wanted to get in there and solve the problem. It took me a long time to realize, like what you said, you have to almost stop yourself and be like, no, they have to solve the problem.
Chris Seiter: A lot of times, I’d be dating someone. They’d be crying. I’d be like, “Why are you crying? I’ll fix it. What’s wrong?” It was really hard for me to sit back and be like, I need to let them feel what they’re feeling. Do you feel like there was any of that where you’re like me, where you’re just like, “No, I’m going to help solve the problem,” and then just sort of backing up and being, no, I’m going to let them feel what they’re feeling?
Jenny: I am that person. I’m the, please don’t cry. What can I do to help you?
Chris Seiter: Right.
Jenny: How do we use fix this? I’m that person. He’s kind of the opposite, in that, “Oh, you’re crying. Maybe I should just give you some space.”
Chris Seiter: My wife is the same way. I don’t really cry that much, but when something’s bothering me… A classic example is when someone gets sick or when my wife gets sick, if I try to help her, she’s like, “No, stop.” If I get sick, I’m like, “No. No, come help. Dote on me.”
Jenny: Do all the things.
Chris Seiter: Right, yes.
Jenny: That’s pretty much the same for us too. I think in the opposite way, he wants to do it himself. He’s fine by himself, doesn’t need help. Then ultimately, when you get there, you’re like, okay, maybe I do need your help. Maybe I do want you here. We got to the point where he admitted that he was struggling. I said, “Well, I can’t fix this for you, or I’m not going to fix this for you, but I’m still here. I’m still here for you. You don’t have to do this by yourself, even if it’s just me just sitting next to you so you’re not sitting by yourself.”
Jenny: Ultimately, I think that’s where we got to. It was, again, like you said, very unexpected in that it happened and very unexpected in the way that we got back together too. I had gotten to that point where I was like, is this ever going to happen? Is he ever going to reach out? I definitely had those moments where I didn’t know for sure what was going to happen.
Chris Seiter: Were you ever at a point emotionally, because I hear this a lot from success stories where they get to this point where they’re just… They’ve been through enough period of no contact without hearing from their ex. Things maybe are not going the way they were expecting. They’re sitting there and thinking to themselves, “You know what? I just don’t care about getting them back anymore.” They kind of confront that reality, and they’re okay with it. Was there ever a point that you got to where you felt that way?
Jenny: I would probably say no, just because in the back of my head, I still wanted that reach-out. I still wanted him to reach out and say something, even if it was a closure conversation. I think, eventually, I would have got there had we not got back together or he had not reached out to me. I think I was going on a path where I would have felt that eventually. I had a really good support system. My friends were always there for me. I would pick up the phone, and they would answer. I think had I gone maybe another three months or another six months, I feel like I would have got to that point.
Chris Seiter: I feel like that’s a really honest answer because the truth is, I think a lot of people, especially at the beginning, don’t get to that point emotionally, but it seems like you did a lot of behaviors that projected a more secure self than maybe he had viewed you as. Maybe he would view you as the person who was going to eat the tub of ice cream after the breakup versus instead, you’re going out, and doing a concert with your parents, and going out with friends, and posting these daily things on TikTok, or I guess across all social media platforms. You look happy.
Chris Seiter: That almost creates this narrative in his head that, wow, is she doing better without me? It kind of reframes the way he thinks about you. I think that had to have made a difference at kind of lighting the fire a little bit. I think it wasn’t so much that that got him to come back. I think just basically, the way your breakup occurred had more to do with that than anything. It certainly had to help that you weren’t constantly nagging about… Well, I don’t know. Did you nag at all about, why did you break up with me? Explain. Like that, or was it more of just the approach where you’re just waiting back and seeing?
Jenny: Well, I actually surprised myself because I am that person that’s naggy. In the past, I would blow up his phone. I would text him. I would call over, and over, and over. Like you mentioned, I think he might have expected that right away. I think he, as soon as the breakup happened… Or as soon as the breakup happened, I was that way. I was begging. “What are you doing? Why are we breaking up? What’s going on? Don’t leave me.”
Chris Seiter: That’s normal.
Jenny: Right. Then right after, I was like, “Can we talk? I want to talk. Tell me what’s going on.”
Chris Seiter: Again, very normal.
Jenny: Right. In that kind of short period right after, I was that. Then, I think I said the third day or something like that, I was just kind of looking, how do I get my ex back?
Chris Seiter: Right.
Jenny: Then I kind of started filling my time with, okay, well, what can I do different this time that, obviously, in the past, when I’m nagging, that doesn’t work, right? How am I going to do this different? How do I actually get him back? How do I actually do that?
Jenny: I surprised myself in that… Okay, I’m just going to be positive. I’m just going to do things for me. I’m going to keep working out. I’m going to go with my friends. I’m going to keep doing things that make me happy so that I don’t feel sad, so that I don’t feel hurt because I didn’t want to feel that. It was kind of more focused on what’s going to help me versus what’s going to help me get him back.
Jenny: Ultimately, he saw that. Ultimately, he saw, “Oh, well, Jenny’s not blowing up my phone. Why isn’t she blowing up my phone? She’s posting all these really positive things on Facebook. Why does she look so happy?” He did actually make that comment of, “Maybe me leaving made you better after.”
Chris Seiter: Right.
Jenny: I definitely think that that had a good impact on it. Like you said, I don’t think it had the reason why he came back, but it definitely had a different impact than what my previous personality would have done.
Chris Seiter: Well, I think it just is the contrast between two almost… I don’t want to say there’s two versions of you.
Jenny: Right.
Chris Seiter: In his mind, he’s thinking before the breakup versus after the breakup. One thing that I notice, especially with people who go through breakups, is they act exactly how you act, where they’re just trying to understand why the breakup’s occurring. The first few days, they’re blowing their ex’s phone up. Then really, I think the clock starts after they have those normal reactions because a lot of women and men act that way for weeks afterwards. Sometimes it can get really contentious. When you almost do this behavior, you create a certain standard. If you do something to contrast that standard, it really makes a gigantic difference.
Chris Seiter: I think you said something incredibly insightful, which is that stuff that you’re talking about, all the social media postings and kind of making yourself feel happy away from your ex wasn’t the thing that got him back fully. I think that’s so key because the more I’ve been doing this, the more I realize there’s not one thing that you do that gets to success. It’s usually just throwing the kitchen sink.
Jenny: Right.
Chris Seiter: We know it works, but it’s impossible to pinpoint all of these things. Plus, it seems to me it was more based on your ex’s or your boyfriend now’s personal situation, and him projecting that onto you, and protecting himself, more than anything, that really led to sort of the chess pieces being set where they were set at the beginning of this breakup.
Jenny: Right. I’m not a big numbers person, but he is. Sometimes I pay attention to statistics and stuff like that. I kept looking at the numbers that said, “If it’s this kind of breakup, then this is the chance, or if it’s this kind of break up, this is the chance.” I was like, “Well, I don’t have that. I don’t have that.”
Chris Seiter: You kind of have a general breakup to me, at least. I mean, there’s a little bit of… Just, if you want to get numbers-based, we notice that most of our clients tend to have exes that exhibit avoidant behaviors. Most of our clients tend to be the anxious type of behaviors because if you really think about it and distill it down, the people who are going to be going to Google and searching how to get your ex back are going to be people who are extremely anxious and value the relationship extremely highly.
Chris Seiter: While I think that is something to be commended, when it comes to getting this person back, you almost need to exhibit secure behaviors. I think secure behaviors is allowing yourself time to grieve and then being like, okay, I’ll be okay. A lot of those behaviors that you’re doing is sort of, I think, exhibiting that, I’m going to be okay. What we find is there’s almost a gravity between people who have secure behaviors. They almost draw other people towards them.
Chris Seiter: Let’s use your boyfriend as an example. If he has avoidant tendencies and you are more secure, he will subconsciously begin to gravitate more towards secure behaviors on his own. It kind of is a way of killing two birds with one stone. You can help yourself get them back but also help keep him once you get him back. That’s one of the really interesting things that we’ve noticed with attachment styles. We’ve been kind of on attachment styles kick lately. Sorry if I’m boring you with all the technical mumbo-jumbo.
Jenny: No, I’ve actually heard that before I even ran across your program. I had actually been looking at secure behaviors, and what that looks like, and the different stages of relationships, and how you get to that point eventually because when you’re new, it’s not something that comes natural. To your point, I was thinking during the breakup, “What can I do now that I can continue to do if we get back together?” I’m hitting the gym four or five days a week right now. Am I going to continue to do that if and when we get back together? I’m going out with my parents more. Am I going to continue to do that even after?
Jenny: I told myself, yes. I want to do these things. You don’t change your schedule to meet with them. If they ask you to meet and you have plans, you don’t change your schedule. I continue to do that. He’ll want to come over. Tonight would be a night that he would come over, but I’m going to my cousin’s birthday party dinner. Sorry, I can’t meet with you today. In the past, I probably would have changed my schedule. I probably would’ve said, “Oh, well, I’ll just go to the dinner late.” I’m not doing that anymore because I feel like I’ll see you next time.
Chris Seiter: Well, it takes a lot of confidence to do that.
Jenny: That’s been a change for me.
Chris Seiter: Well, yes, I think to your point, just using the example of the dinner tonight or whatever, in the past, you’re probably… The narrative anxious people have in their heads is, “If I don’t see him, I could lose him.”
Jenny: Right.
Chris Seiter: The narrative that secure people have is, “I will see him later, so it’s okay to push it off another day.” I think that shift for most people going through this program is an extremely difficult one to have because it requires a lot of self-confidence to be like, it’s going to be okay, because a lot of people don’t think that, especially if they’ve already been proven to be in a situation where they’ve been hurt through a breakup. They’re on red alert all the time.
Jenny: I definitely have that past history. I have had that where I’ve been in a relationship. I go chasing and get them back. Then they leave, and then I go chasing and get them back. Then it’s just-
Chris Seiter: A circle.
Jenny: This really bad cycle. I had made it in my mind. I was like, this is really what I want, that I’m going to do. I have to do it differently. I have to do something different because all of that stuff I’ve done in the past, that didn’t work.
Chris Seiter: Well, I actually really love this interview because we’re getting into the stuff that really matters. A lot of people talk about the no-contact rule, and the value chain of the value ladder, and concepts like that. The truth is it doesn’t matter if you don’t have the mentality that you have, which is, it’s going to be okay even if things don’t go my way. If you have that mentality, when you implement that stuff, I think it works really, really well.
Chris Seiter: I mean, technically, I guess you did the small talk value chain sort of thing, but it was so disjointed because of… He asked for you back without you really even having to do a ton of work. You did do work, whether you realize it or not. It just kind of shows you the value of show, don’t tell. I think some women in the Facebook group have a problem with telling their exes how great they’re doing without them. You showed your ex how great you’re doing without them. That’s always more effective in my opinion.
Jenny: I think, just, that space really gave me that time to do that. You said you have to get to a point where you’re okay. I did not feel okay. I was definitely not okay the whole time. There was moments. That’s something that I think would help people in the future, is you’re not going to feel this overwhelming, I’m going to be just fine, the whole time. It comes little tiny bits at a time.
Chris Seiter: Yes, especially when you draw attention to it. When you’re thinking about, oh, I need to be feeling better, it’s hard to feel better, when you’re just constantly obsessed about what he’s doing, if he’s dating someone, things like that. To your point, success is not linear.
Jenny: Right. I remember sitting there with my parents and I’m like, oh, this is so nice. He would really like this. Then I’m like, I really like this. Just those little moments where you want them to be there, but you’re okay that they’re not.
Chris Seiter: It’s kind of weird, too, if you think about it because it’s that whole… We’re taught in relationships. It needs to be about we instead of me, but after you go through a breakup, it kind of needs to shift from we to me.
Jenny: Right.
Chris Seiter: Looking back, Jenny, on your whole experience of going through the breakup, going through the program, what you feel worked, what you feel didn’t work, someone going through it at the beginning, what advice would you give to them?
Jenny: I would definitely say, don’t give up. I think that was really hard for me in the beginning, is to keep going. You have to kind of do a little bit at a time. For me, it was, in two hours, I’m going to text my best friend and just tell her that I feel sad if I’m feeling sad, or I’m going to text her… In two hours, I’m going to tell her however I’m feeling. Don’t give up, and then allow time. That one was really, really hard for me. Every day is a little bit more time and a little bit more time. That time really, really makes a difference.
Jenny: We talk about this no-contact rule. In the moment, I was like, there’s no way. I can’t do that. That’s way too hard. I think a lot of people have that feeling, big time. I see it all the time in the Facebook group. This is so hard. I just want to reach out. Really, every day that you give it time makes the success even better. It makes the chances of it even better. If I was talking to me a month ago, I would just say, don’t give up. Just give it time. Keep giving it time, for sure.
Chris Seiter: That’s great. I just want to say, thank you so much for coming on. This is a really great interview.
Success Story: She Got Her Ex Back Following This Exact Game Plan
May 13, 2021
Everyone is always looking for the secret to getting their exes back when they come to Ex Boyfriend Recovery. Well, our latest success story, Lauren, may have found it. In today’s interview I sit down with her and quiz her about everything she did to successfully get her ex back.
But what struck me wasn’t so much about what she did to get him back but rather how she looked at the entire process.
Chris Seiter: All right. So today we’re going to be talking to Lauren, who is one of our success stories that we had from our private Facebook group. And I can’t claim her success. She coached with coach Anna. So I think Anna kind of rightfully gets some credit, but Lauren’s the one who did most of the work. So basically were just going to be sitting down with her and talking to her about what she did that was successful in getting her ex back. How are you doing Lauren?
Lauren: I’m good.
Chris Seiter: Take me back to the beginning, back before the breakup or as the breakup’s happening. Let’s walk through your situation.
Lauren: Okay. So right before the breakup, he moved back from Nashville. He was doing an internship there, so we had a long distance relationship for about a year. He moved back to be with me and his family and right when that happened, his dad dropped the news on them like, Hey, I’m getting married, and I’m-
Chris Seiter: So his dad was…
Lauren: …going to be-
Chris Seiter: …was single at the time?
Lauren: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Lauren: Yeah. He said, “I’m getting married and I’m going to be moving out in October.” They lived together.
Chris Seiter: Your boyfriend is basically getting kicked out. Is that kind of the thing?
Lauren: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Lauren: Yeah. His dad gave him until May of this year to either buy the house or he would have to find an apartment.
Chris Seiter: How old is your boyfriend at this time?
Lauren: He is 25.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So at 25 being told that you have to buy a house or get your own apartment kind of…
Lauren: I know.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. That’s kind of a lot for a 25 year old kid.
Lauren: Yeah. That really stressed him out and he took a job that he didn’t really like, and it was burning him out. The news of his dad leaving and not liking his job, that stressed him out so much that he kind of fell into a depression. He kept telling me, “Oh, I’m so depressed. I don’t even know who I am anymore. I don’t know what to do.” Until one day it all came to a head and he came home from work and he felt like a different person.
Chris Seiter: When he would say these things to you, were you still long distance or was he close by?
Lauren: He was close by. He lived about 30 minutes away from me.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So when he would say these things to you, like “I’m depressed” or “I’m sad”, what was your typical response to that?
Lauren: I was really supportive and understanding. I was like, We can get through this together. I can help. I can help you either buy the house or we can move into an apartment together.
Chris Seiter: Nice.
Lauren: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So you were basically being the perfect girlfriend to him.
Lauren: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: I’m assuming that kind of made him push you away a little bit further?
Lauren: It seemed so. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So how does this breakup go down? You’ve set the stage of okay, he’s really sad and depressed because of his dad and all this pressure that he’s putting on himself, but also the dad’s putting on him. You’re being seemingly perfect, but it seems like he’s got some sort of an avoidant tendencies, so he’s kind of avoiding that. When does it come to a head?
Lauren: He came home from work one night and I was there and I had made him dinner.
Chris Seiter: Wow, you’re being awesome!
Lauren: Yeah!
Chris Seiter: And he broke up with you after you made him dinner?
Lauren: I know, yeah.
Chris Seiter: That’s cold!
Lauren: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Did he eat the dinner first before he broke up with you?
Lauren: Well, we ate dinner and he was being really distant.
Chris Seiter: Oh, so you’re like, Hey, what’s up? What’s wrong? You can tell something is up.
Lauren: Yeah, we actually went to bed and I woke up the next day and he had to go to work. So I went home and I just had this terrible feeling. So I asked him, “Hey, are we okay? I feel weird.”
Chris Seiter: Your intuition kicked in.
Lauren: Oh yeah. Big time.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you basically forced the issue to him. You say, are we okay? And I’m assuming you did not get a favorable answer?
Lauren: No, he wrote me a novel after that.
Chris Seiter: A text novel?
Lauren: Yes. He texted me. He broke up with me over text.
Chris Seiter: What did it say? Can you… You don’t have to go through the whole thing, but just give us the gist.
Lauren: So the gist was… He just reiterated everything. He’s like, I’m so stressed out. I’m so burnt out. I don’t know who I am anymore. I still love you, but it feels different. Just a really, really long way of saying it’s not, you it’s me.
Chris Seiter: To me, it sounds a lot like the avoidant tendencies. Typically, speaking with avoidance, anytime they feel like their independence is getting threatened, they tend to like blow things up or go away.
Lauren: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: And I’m wondering where you… I’m getting off topic here, so you’ll have to pop us back on. But I’m wondering at the time, right around this breakup, were you really pushing…. Because I think in your mind, you’re like, hey, let’s work together. We can fix this together. We’re a team. Let’s get our own apartment together. Were you kind of pushing that route a lot?
Lauren: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Lauren: I was communicating with them him like, Hey, I really want to… I know you want to buy the house, so let’s do that. I was wanting to redecorate and stuff.
Chris Seiter: You didn’t do anything wrong, I’m just trying to look at it from his perspective of why he all of a sudden… It kind of does seem a little out of the blue. I mean, not technically, but you seem you’re hitting all the right notes as a girlfriend, so what the heck is up?
Lauren: I know.
Chris Seiter: I think it’s because he started to feel like that independence is getting taken away from him.
Lauren: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Obviously you break up, right? There’s a break-up text that goes down. What’s your first reaction?
Lauren: My first reaction… I remembered the program, like as this was happening.
Chris Seiter: So you didn’t try to call and beg for him back or anything like that?
Lauren: No, I was really understanding.
Chris Seiter: That’s amazing.
Lauren: Yeah. I didn’t get mad anything, or beg.
Chris Seiter: That’s amazing. That’s really good. That’s a great starting point. So you remember the program. You said before we had started recording that you had used this program a couple of years ago for someone else. Like four years ago or something like that, and you kind of get back into it and you realize things have changed a little bit in how we operate since then.
Lauren: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Did you buy the program? Like the new version?
Lauren: Yeah. I bought the new version of it.
Chris Seiter: And then you get into the Facebook group and then eventually… Well, I don’t want to skip ahead because I know you got in with coach Anna, but you started a no contact rule… At least in your write-up in the Facebook group, your success story write-up, you said it was a 45 day, no contact rule. What was the thinking behind doing the 45 day rule?
Lauren: Well, I took the assessment and since there was kind of like a mental health issue there, I chose 45 days.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. So what’s interesting, just between you and me, Lauren, I’ve noticed a lot more people who have longer periods of no contact are ending up in these success stories. So I kind of think that’s an important thing, when you just start reiterating more. But most people don’t want to hear that because no contact is hard to get through. Did you fail no contact at all when you tried it?
Lauren: Yes. I failed it three days in.
Chris Seiter: Okay. That’s pretty common. That’s very common. What happened to make that occur?
Lauren: Well, I was pretty emotional, so I deleted all of our pictures on Instagram and then I noticed that he unfollowed me. So I was like, Oh no, what have I done? So I texted him. I was like, I’m so sorry for deleting all of our pictures.
Chris Seiter: That’s great.
Lauren: I don’t resent you or anything.
Chris Seiter: Did he respond to that? Or was it just kind of nothing?
Lauren: Yeah, he responded immediately and he was like, Oh yeah, don’t worry. I’m fine. Stuff like that.
Chris Seiter: So you’ve got a long trek ahead of you, 45 days. How did you spend that time?
Lauren: Well, I immediately went into therapy because-
Chris Seiter: Okay. That’s a great decision.
Lauren: …I didn’t want to deal with the breakup by myself, and I felt like I needed somebody to talk to, especially a professional. So yeah, therapy. I started working out and doing yoga.
Chris Seiter: So mostly you’re working kind of the therapy angle, you’re working the physical angle. What about… Because I’m kind of hinting at the Trinity concept.
Lauren: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: What about work-wise? Because if correct me if I’m wrong, this breakup occurred in December, 2020, right?
Lauren: Yes.
Chris Seiter: So this is going on during the height of the pandemic or… I mean, I guess we’re still in the height of the pandemic technically. How was your career type prospects at this time? Did you make any headway on that during the no-contact period?
Lauren: Well, right as the breakup happened, it was the off season.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Lauren: I work in a country club, so the golf season had just ended. So I wasn’t working.
Chris Seiter: So you get extra time to kind of sit and stew in your thoughts essentially.
Lauren: Yes.
Chris Seiter: But you seem to handle it really well. So the most pressing question I guess I would ask is you eventually… You said towards the end of no contact, you ended up booking a session with Anna and you started working on preparing exactly how you’re going to be talking to your ex.
Lauren: Yes.
Chris Seiter: What were some of the big insights you got from that session?
Lauren: Well, I really blamed myself for the breakup. I thought it was my fault, but, Anna really helped me… Like talked me through it and made me realize that it wasn’t my fault. One of the things that she told me was he didn’t have to break up with you. He broke up with you because he was sad. You did nothing wrong.
Chris Seiter: Well, I mean, basically when you were explaining it to me, it sounded like you were being a pretty good girlfriend. You were supportive, you were willing to forego your own happiness or comfortability to try to get into an… I don’t know what your financial situation is, but it seemed like you were willing to put your whole heart into the thing and he just kind of ran away. I mean, it’s funny. So by the end of no contact, had you gotten over that belief that the breakup was your fault?
Lauren: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. My therapist really helped with that too.
Chris Seiter: So you’re talking… And I think this is a really good indicator for people who are struggling. Sometimes it is good to talk to a professional, because there’s a lot of self-doubt and blame that goes on after a breakup, even when it’s not your fault. So let’s get to the fun stuff. How did you get him back after the no contact rule? What was your approach?
Lauren: Okay, so I ended the no contact and I sent my first texts out and it was about his interests. He likes video games and music and stuff like that. So the texting phase was basically about that and I got really positive results. He texted back immediately.
Chris Seiter: So you basically kept it based on his interests.
Lauren: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Which are video games.
Lauren: Video games, yeah.
Chris Seiter: Did you know anything about video games when you texted him then?
Lauren: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I did.
Chris Seiter: So did you like play video games with him?
Lauren: No. We never got around to that because we’re both very busy.
Chris Seiter: Can you give us an example of a video text that you used? I mean, it doesn’t have to be exactly but…
Lauren: Okay.
Chris Seiter: Just give people kind of a frame of reference.
Lauren: Yeah. So at the breakup, it was right before Christmas, so we exchanged Christmas gifts and he got me a video game controller.
Chris Seiter: Well, you can’t leave me hanging. For what system?
Lauren: PS4 but I hooked it up to my PC.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you played… You kind of found a way to hook it up to your computer.
Lauren: Yeah. So my text was… I said, “Guess what I just did.” and he was like, what did you do? So I sent him a picture-
Chris Seiter: Nice. That’s great.
Lauren: …of the controller and I was like, I just set up your Christmas present for me. And yeah, we just went from there.
Chris Seiter: So did a full blown conversation occur or was it just kind of like a quick back and forth, and then the conversation ended after you sent that text?
Lauren: Yeah, it was a quick back and forth. I asked him what video games should I play over Steam, and he gave me his Steam password.
Chris Seiter: So you get them for free.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah. So I had access to all the games that he was playing.
Chris Seiter: That’s a big deal that he gave you the Steam password though.
Lauren: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Because it kind of like connects him further in, but I noticed in your write-up you said you were texting him for like two and a half months building that value up. Can you take us a little bit through your experience or at least how you approached it for anyone… Because I think the texting in that building value phases is maybe harder than no contact in and of itself.
Lauren: Yeah, it was…
Chris Seiter: Yeah, yeah. So go ahead.
Lauren: It was really hard. It was really nerve-racking too. Looking back, I don’t know why it was so nerve-racking. I guess I didn’t feel worthy of getting him back for some reason, but you know, I was working on that with my therapist. So when it got too much for me, I would take like a mini no contact of like two weeks just to get emotional control again and like hop right back into it.
Chris Seiter: So for you, you think the key was getting that emotional control and having it throughout the entire… But as far as the actual conversations go, was it… Did you ever have any trouble getting into conversations with him? Was there ever a time where you would text and he wouldn’t respond or situations like that?
Lauren: No, he would always respond immediately. I would use hooks very early on, but then after my session with coach Anna, she said, “If you are 95% positive he’s going to respond, you don’t have to use a hook.” So I would just text him and be like, Hey, what’s up? How are you doing?
Chris Seiter: Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you actually had someone who was very engaged. The fact that they’re willing to just sort of like get into conversations. What were the types of conversations that you were having with him?
Lauren: I would always bring up a topic of interest first. He’s a musician, so he has a couple of music projects that he’s working on. So I would be like, Hey, how is the album coming? Or something like that.
Chris Seiter: And would he always be super engaged after-
Lauren: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Seiter: Okay. Was there ever a time that he took the initiative and asked you about something that he wasn’t interested in, but you were interested in?
Lauren: There was a few times that he actually reached out to me first. Like, for example, he told me like, Hey, here’s a place that you can get your COVID vaccine.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Right. So okay, that’s kind of important. I guess that’s technically not something that you’re like, gung-ho… Like if you’re like, a ballet person. But hey, it shows that he cares which in and of itself is probably the point. At what point do you start moving or building up enough… You’re feeling like you’ve got enough value built up with him that you advanced to kind of that meetup phase?
Lauren: Let’s see. Right at the end of the two and a half months of the texting phase, I was like, I don’t want to do this anymore.
Chris Seiter: Had he ever suggested a meetup before, or were you the one that had to suggest the meetup?
Lauren: I suggested a while back. I had actually got a puppy. I adopted a new puppy.
Chris Seiter: So that’s like an instant like, come see the puppy type thing.
Lauren: Yeah. I was like, look at my new puppy. You should come meet her sometime. And he was like, Okay, I’d love to do that, but it never-
Chris Seiter: Materialized.
Lauren: …went from there.
Chris Seiter: Right. Well, I guess you’re scared to push him on it and he’s kind of thinking like, Well, I’m uncertain about how I feel.
Lauren: Oh yeah. He was pretty uncertain too.
Chris Seiter: So tell me exactly when that uncertainty becomes certainty for him? Did you press the meetup with the puppy again? Was that like your big thing?
Lauren: No, I kind of reached a point where I was like, I’m okay if I don’t get him back. So I just kind of wanted to… I came to a fork in the road. I was like, I either want to move on or I want to ask him because during the breakup, one of the last things he told me was, maybe I just need some time.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So that’s kind of like… You’re constantly thinking about that statement playing in your head. I guess if you’re in this state where you’re like, I don’t really care if I get them back or not, but I want to try to see just so I don’t live with regrets. That’s kind of your mindset.
Lauren: Yeah. It was either move on or actually figure out if he actually meant that. So I made a bold move and I texted him, because I think I had built up enough rapport at that point. I texted him and I asked him, “Hey, did you really mean that? Did you really just need some time?” And he responded, and he was like, “Yeah, I really did mean that, and I think about you every day, I miss you.” That’s when he suggested like, “Hey, I still need to meet your new puppy. Why don’t we meet up and see how things feel?”
Chris Seiter: Well, it seems like such a mature sort of approach from a breakup perspective. Hardly ever do you see that. I guess the one thing that fascinates me the most about your situation is your perfectly in line with what I’ve seen a lot of the other success stories that I’ve interviewed mention, which is, I got to this place emotionally where I just was like, You know what? If I don’t get them back, I’m okay. Did you feel, looking back on your situation… And I know technically you guys are still… You’re like a couple of weeks… You just got back together a couple of weeks ago, but with whatever little perspective you have looking back on your entire experience, do you think getting to that place emotionally was the key for you?
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. I think that helped immensely.
Chris Seiter: Was there any other things that you look back on and say this… Can you point to just a few things other than that mentality that you felt like were so critical for you achieving this success?
Lauren: I think working on my trinity was really helpful. Right up there with being okay with not getting him back.
Chris Seiter: Right. Was there anything else? Because obviously that no contact rule was a bit extended, more than normal. Like usually the average one’s like 30 days, obviously you had a particular circumstance when you went through the assessment that called for a longer period of no contact. Do you feel like that helped a lot? Because I mean, technically that’s right in line with what he said, which is he needs more time. So that’s getting more time technically, right?
Lauren: Yeah, definitely.
Chris Seiter: We’re kind of skipping a little bit. Let’s go back because you guaranteed this date with this puppy and the date actually occurs. Did you have to go on multiple dates to get the commitment again? Or was it just like one thing and he was like, No, let’s get back together.
Lauren: So we did the first meetup and at the end of the first meetup, it went really well. We were talking, it wasn’t awkward. You know, it felt just like old times.
Chris Seiter: Did you make a post in the Facebook group after that saying, “I haven’t gotten him back yet, but I feel like I’m about to.”?
Lauren: He was kind of dancing around the subject, but yeah, I could definitely tell it was going to happen.
Chris Seiter: It was like a few weeks ago that you made this post, right?
Lauren: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Seiter: Okay. What’s funny is Anna and I were talking about you last week.
Lauren: Really?
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Yeah. This is awesome because I think both of us saw the post and we were both just like, we can’t count her as a success story yet. And actually Anna is just texting me. She canceled on me. How dare she?
Lauren: Oh, no.
Chris Seiter: No, no, no. That’s all right. That’s all right. I’ve interviewed… I could use a break today. So yeah, this is probably fun for you. So Lauren, I’m not even kidding you. I think it was either last week or the week prior, you leave that post and you’re just like, yeah… Unless I’m mistaking you with someone else, you’re kind of like, yeah, I’ve basically got him back, but there’s been no commitment talk. Right? And you always get the people chiming in on the Facebook group and everything, but Anna and I were talking about it before we recorded our podcast episode a couple of weeks ago, we were just like, yeah, she’s going to get him back.
Lauren: Yes!
Chris Seiter: It’s going to happen, and it did.
Lauren: That’s awesome.
Chris Seiter: So we do talk about our clients sometimes. Anyway, sorry to interrupt. Let’s get to the fun stuff.
Lauren: Right at the end of the meetup, he was talking about like, yeah, I don’t know what I’m going to tell my dad now. So I was like, Oh, so I was thinking like we’re going to-
Chris Seiter: Oh wow, it’s May now isn’t it? Isn’t that deadline happening?
Lauren: No, it actually got-
Chris Seiter: Pushed?
Lauren: …extended.
Chris Seiter: Oh, that helps.
Lauren: Yeah. That definitely helped. He was talking about like… Just dancing around it, but kind of insinuating, like, yeah, I want to get back together with you. After the meetup, he was texting me and he’s like, “I don’t know where to start again, but we’ll get back to where we were.” And he’s like, “I promise that we’ll get there” and saying all these nice things. We had a second meetup, he called it a date. So we went on a date.
Chris Seiter: Where’d you go on the date? Because to me, that’s what determines if it’s a date or not, the location.
Lauren: We actually made dinner at his house.
Chris Seiter: That’s pretty romantic. Plus you’re in his… You made dinner and I’m assuming that’s where he pops the question, weirdly enough. Like the girlfriend question.
Lauren: I had to ask him. I was like, “So, are we official?”
Chris Seiter: What are we? Yeah. That’s all good. That’s all good. My very first girlfriend ever had to do the same thing with me. It’s kind of general knowledge for women that all men are cowards when it comes to these kind of questions. So you got him to say basically like, yeah, we’re official.
Lauren: Yeah. Just the way he was talking, he was like, Oh, we’re going to do this, this and this. I want to do this, this and this. I want to go on this vacation. So I was like, Oh, okay. So we’re back together.
Chris Seiter: That’s the perfect time to ask him, too. That’s great. That’s great. So you get him back and how long ago was that exactly? Like a couple of weeks ago?
Lauren: I would say two weeks ago.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Two weeks ago. So how’s things been since then?
Lauren: Really good. Yeah. Yeah. We’ve been…
Chris Seiter: Do you guys have like a plan with regards to the housing situation?
Lauren: Not quite yet, but we are talking about getting an apartment together.
Chris Seiter: To me that sounds like a plan. At least a small one, you know? No pressure.
Lauren: Yep. Baby steps.
Chris Seiter: So looking back on everything, what would you say, if you could do it all over again, any like mistakes that you made, what would you say were your mistakes?
Lauren: I did have a problem with cyber-stalking.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you spent a little too much, like focusing on what he’s posting on his Instagram stories or Snapchat or Facebook or whatever.
Lauren: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: I don’t know if you guys are into TikTok, I’m still resistant towards the TikTok movement, but if it’s big enough, I’ll learn it. So basically, you had a really hard time not looking at what he’s doing.
Lauren: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: I’m kind of curious, when you got him back, did you kind of quiz him on what his experience was like during the breakup? Did he stalk you on social media? Was there anything interesting that you can tell anyone listening about like the man’s side of the breakup?
Lauren: Well, he told me about the breakup. He told me, “Yeah, I blew everything out of proportion when I broke up with you. I shouldn’t have broke up with you.” You know, stuff like that.
Chris Seiter: Well, I actually feel like you should be extremely proud of yourself because I think you handled the breakup really, really well. It could have went the exact opposite way because most women, I think when they get broken up with, and they don’t want the breakup, they tend to do those anxious type behaviors, you know? And it seems like, even though I think you had some, like the cyber-stalking and things like that, you sort of had enough emotional control to kind of play poker so that he’s not seeing the weak moments. It kind of makes him… Makes you a little bit more intriguing in his eyes. I think you should be incredibly proud of yourself. You’re as close to as textbook of a success story as I think I’ve ever interviewed. So you should give yourself a pat on the back. You did an amazing job, Lauren.
Lauren: Thank you.
Chris Seiter: Is there any sort of other insights that you can give anyone listening here who is going through a breakup and they’re in the middle of a no-contact rule or they’re struggling during the texting phase or any kind of piece of advice that you would give them?
Lauren: I would say, really focus on working on your trinity, because that’s really what my boyfriend said drew him back to me.
Chris Seiter: You heard it here. Holy Trinity. Focus on that trinity. You’re like the 50th person that has said that. And people don’t do it. I don’t get like… The proof is in the pudding, but anyways. I just wanted to say thank you for doing this. Thanks so much.
Success Story: How No Contact Can Win Your Ex Back
Apr 19, 2021
If you have ever wondered about the effectiveness of the no contact rule and its impact on your overall chances of success with your ex then you’ll definitely want to pay attention to this interview.
I had the pleasure of interviewing one of the latest success of our program, Harley, and was blown away with how well she did, especially during the no contact rule.
It’s better for you to watch so I’ll just cut right to the chase.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
How Harley Got Her Ex Back With The No Contact Rule
Chris Seiter: All right. Okay. Today I have the pleasure of introducing Harley, one of the success stories that got engaged to her ex in the private Facebook group. I was going through and looking through your posts and the very first post that showed up was the ring. And so I just think you have a really awesome success story that you could share with people. Organically, there’s a lot of questions I’d love to ask you, but first I’d just like to welcome you onto the interview thing.
Harley: Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, of course. Before we get to the fun part, why don’t we go to the depressing part? The breakup. Give us some background before we get started.
Harley: This wasn’t the first time that we’ve broken up. Like you said, I have an on again, off again relationship with him. Well, I did. And when he broke up with me this time, it just seemed a lot different. It seemed like… I’m sorry, my dog is just whining.
Chris Seiter: Don’t worry about it. We can barely hear it.
Harley: Okay, good. It’s because he’s like, “Oh, I wasn’t in love with you, but I love you.”
Chris Seiter: He literally says… Is it an, “I’m not in love with you anymore, but I still love you very much,” type of explanation?
Harley: Yeah, it was. He said that he had feelings for me. He loved me but he wasn’t in love with me, if that makes any sense. He had strong feelings for me, but didn’t want a relationship with me.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Did you ever talk to him after you got him back, like “What did you mean by that?”
Harley: For sure.
Chris Seiter: What did he mean when you asked him?
Harley: That his feelings were still strong, but not as strong as they were before. Definitely not as strong as… What happened was he left me for his baby mama because he has a kid with somebody else. And he was like, “My feelings just aren’t the same as they were with her.” Obviously they’re going to have a different connection together because they have a kid together.
Chris Seiter: They share that.
Harley: Yeah. And me and him don’t. And he also told me that he just wanted to be single and he wanted to experience that because he just turned 21. And at that time I wasn’t 21. So he was going to the bars all by himself, going out and experiencing that life with his friends. And I was already concerned about that, but I was supportive. I didn’t ever hold back. I told him, “Yeah, go out, have fun with your friends. Call me if you need a ride.”
Harley: And the night before he broke up with me I actually picked him up from the bar and stuff. And he was talking to me. He was like, “I’m so scared that you’re going to leave me.” Because I was talking to him about how I wanted him to be more loving towards me and do more cute things with me. And he just seemed like I was asking a lot of him. Because with his first relationship with his baby mama, he did a lot for her. And that made him more distant in our relationship. And I tried to tell him, “I’m not her, but I do expect you to do things to show me that you love me or to show me that you still care just to give me peace of mind and all that.” But I guess that was just a lot for him.
Harley: And that was pretty much the main thing. He was just stressed out and he was like, “I just want to be on my own,” but I know him way too well. I know you’re not going to be on your own. But it ended up he was on his own and I wasn’t on my own. So it was a complete opposite of what he wanted to happen to happen.
Chris Seiter: Well, it sounds to me like he’s going through… I don’t want to say midlife crisis, but he’s going through a crisis of his life where he’s trying to figure himself out. And he’s really not sure how to reconcile all of the changes that may be occurring. It’s really interesting hot and cold behavior where the day before he breaks up with you, he’s basically… I wouldn’t say begging, but very, very worried about you leaving him, which almost indicates to me the next day when he does break up with you, it might be a self-defense mechanism, an avoidant type thing to do where you’re just like, “Well, if I cut her out, she won’t have the opportunity to hurt me.” Did you ever get any vibes like that looking back on it?
Harley: Once I got my mind more focused… Because in the beginning of a breakup, at least with me I get crazy in my mind and I’m overly emotional-
Chris Seiter: You are not the only one.
Harley: And I was crying a bunch. Yeah, no. That was a big help with your group that made me realize that I’m not crazy. And this reaction is normal, especially with having a battle buddy. She talked to me a lot about that.
Chris Seiter: You get to actually experience someone else going through it as well, the same stuff.
Harley: Yeah. And it helped a lot with my mental health and stuff. But yeah, like I said, I was just really crazy and upset about the breakup.
Chris Seiter: So he breaks up with you. And you had mentioned before we started recording that this wasn’t the first time that he had broken up with you?
Harley: Yeah. That would be the second time that he’s broken up with me. The first time was for a good reason, because he was fresh out of a relationship with his baby mama. We were really young. I was just out of high school. We were only dating for three months and he wanted to work things out with his baby mama for the sake of trying to keep his family together… Which I get it now that I’m older. I get it. But at the time being as young as I was… Not really saying much because that was like three years ago, but I understand now.
Chris Seiter: Well, at the time that has to be very, very hurtful. But with perspective you think, “Okay, I get that.” But this breakup you said seemed different.
Harley: Yeah. It seemed more serious and more hurtful. I don’t know how it felt more hurtful because he was being a lot nicer about this breakup it seemed with… Communication-wise. But it just seemed a lot more hurtful because at that point we were essentially dating for three years or two and a half years. So there was a lot more emotion packed behind that and I get more emotionally invested than he does. I don’t know. That’s a girl thing though.
Chris Seiter: That’s not a girl thing. That’s a human being thing. There’s different attachment styles and different investments even for men. But so you go through the breakup, right? It’s awful. And eventually somehow you find Ex Boyfriend Recovery I’m guessing. How did that process go? How did you find us? Were you just frantically searching on Google?
Harley: Yeah. There was one night where I didn’t really want to be alone. So I stayed the night at my mom’s and I was just crying and I was Googling a bunch of stuff. I was wondering if the way I was acting was normal or if there was something I could do to get him back. Because your immediate reaction when you break up with somebody is, “I want to message them. I want to talk to them. I want to get to know why they broke up with me. Even though they told me why it doesn’t feel like that that is why.” You want to blame yourself for it.
Harley: And I know I personally was blaming myself for it. It made me feel like I wasn’t good enough or that I was doing something wrong… Which in the end I realized that maybe I was doing a few things wrong, but I wasn’t doing anything wrong that was huge majorly, like relationship ending wrong. And I came across one of your YouTube videos and I started watching that. And then it was like, “Oh, if you liked this video, I have a program.” And so I was like “Huh, that would actually be good.” Because I really liked that video. And I started your program and I listened to the audio books while I was at work. And I went from there.
Chris Seiter: That’s great. That’s pretty awesome.
Harley: Yeah. Like I said, it helped me a lot.
Chris Seiter: YouTube for the win.
Harley: Yeah. It helped me a lot to realize that I’m not crazy, my reaction was normal, and to get my thoughts straight on how I wanted to go about this, especially not messaging him. There was a couple of times that I did break that and message him for stupid reasons. But in the end it worked out.
Chris Seiter: Well. So what was interesting to me is before we actually started even setting up this interview, I think Shauna had connected us… Shauna is someone who is a moderator in the Facebook group. And she had said, “Hey, we’ve got a success story.” And then you and I started talking and you had said, “I hope it’s okay. But I actually technically never made it out of the no contact rule.” The no contact rule worked so well on him that you got almost immediate results, which is actually pretty rare. So for me, from my perspective looking at your situation, I think the no contact rule is the key. What did you do? So obviously you find about the no contact rule, but what did you do during it to yield these results? You mentioned you actually failed it a couple of times before you got your string of days where you’re ignoring him together, but take us through that process.
Harley: Yeah. So I think the one thing that enticed him the most was acting ungettable for sure, because me and him were friends on Facebook still. He didn’t block me or anything. And so I knew he was creeping on my social media because I know him too well. And so I just kept posting things and I started going to the gym and posted about that. And he started going to the gym a year before we broke up. So I knew he was really into the gym scene and he wanted me to care more about my health. So I took that into consideration and I started doing that to get him interested, to show him that I was caring about myself and trying harder to be better. And I think that that’s really what enticed him more.
Chris Seiter: So you’re posting photos and videos of yourself at the gym, just lifting weights or doing yoga or things like that?
Harley: Yeah. That or just selfies of my progress and me getting skinnier and all that or me going with my friends-
Chris Seiter: Sorry. I love the dog in the background with the [crosstalk 00:11:21].
Harley: She really wants to go outside.
Chris Seiter: Well, we can take the interview outside. I’ve never done that before, but if you want to take her outside and walk and talk, we can definitely do that.
Harley: I just need to put her in my room. She went outside before the interview, but I don’t know what her deal is. It’s nice out.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Dogs are dogs. They want what they want.
Harley: Yeah. Okay. That’s better. Sorry about that.
Chris Seiter: Oh, no worries. So we’re talking about no contact rule. We’re talking about you basically killing it at the gym posting those… I guess on Facebook was a big thing for you. Did you do it on Instagram or any other social media platforms?
Harley: He didn’t have Instagram. We were friends on Snapchat, but then he unfriended me like a week later. Because I kept posting things on my Snapchat story and I guess it made him upset or something so he unfriended me. I don’t know why he didn’t unfriend me on Facebook. Probably because he didn’t want to not have contact at all.
Chris Seiter: And he wanted to spy on you probably.
Harley: Yeah. No, he was always the first one looking at my Snap stories too for that first couple of weeks. And then he unfriended me and I was like, “Oh, I see how it is.”
Chris Seiter: Okay. But doing the gym stuff’s not all you probably did during no contact. Or was that pretty much your only focus?
Harley: No. I went outside more, hung out with my friends more. I just focused on myself, learned how to do things on my own. We have a lot of mutual friends so what I was doing was getting back to him.
Chris Seiter: So that sphere of influence aspect is just really helping.
Harley: Yeah, for sure. And I would talk to my friend who would then talk to him and was… Oh my gosh, what just happened? Oh, sorry. I got a call.
Chris Seiter: Oh, no worries. All right. So you talked to your friend, you talked to him. This is an exciting interview. You keep me on my toes.
Harley: I talked to my friend who then talked to him because I started getting more comfortable with myself and started trying to go on more dates. And so she was telling him that and he’s a very jealous person. I wouldn’t say jealous in an unhealthy way, but…
Chris Seiter: It works. It definitely works.
Harley: Yeah, it worked. So I was going on more dates, trying to get more comfortable with myself and figure out who I am by myself because I’ve been in a lot of long-term relationships. I’ve never tried to focus on myself. So this was the first time I focused on myself and realized who I was and my worth and all that. And she was just telling him that. And that really is what got to him. And there was one night where our mutual friends went out to drink and they were having a party and they were talking about me and she told him that I’d been going on dates.
Harley: And he just got really upset and started doing some soul searching and he was working on himself and that’s when he messaged me. And at first I wasn’t going to respond back, but I was with my friends and I started freaking out having just this absolute breakdown of a reaction because I was doing fine. I was having just such a great day and a great night. And then I just freaking broke down in front of my friends. And my cousin took my phone and messaged him and was like, “What do you want?” And I was like, “No, Sammy! You can’t do that!”
Chris Seiter: “You broke no contact! How dare you?”
Harley: Exactly. Yeah. So it wasn’t my thing for breaking no contact. It was her fault. But it worked out in the end so I can’t get too mad.
Chris Seiter: Obviously. Well, you had said to me you were at day 40, right? Does that sound about right?
Harley: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So that’s a pretty extensive period of not having communication, right?
Harley: Yeah. I broke no contact twice and it was like I went a week and then broke it. Then I went another week and broke it. And then I finally stuck to it because I was like, “This isn’t going to work if I don’t stick to it,” like you said in your book. And I stuck to it and I kept pushing back no contact because I did use the chart to figure out how long I was supposed to be in no contact.
Chris Seiter: What did it come up with? 45 days?
Harley: I think it was like 35 days. Yeah. And then when 35 days came up I didn’t know what to message him. And I don’t think I was ready. So I just kept putting it off because I didn’t want it to go bad. I was afraid of failure.
Chris Seiter: Apparently the message that unlocks everything for you is, “What do you want?” Which I find hilarious. That’s what you ended up messaging him. “What do you want?”
Harley: “What do you want?” Yeah. I was like, “I don’t want him to play mind games with me and I’m happy where I’m at and I don’t want to waste my time anymore.” Because I was so determined. Because that whole time by myself just helped me so much. Especially with this program, it helped me so much just realizing who I am, what I want, and my value of what I want in a relationship. And if he isn’t going to give it to me, then I don’t want him to talk to me anymore. I don’t want to waste my time with that.
Chris Seiter: That’s interesting you say that.
Harley: And that’s why I wanted him to tell me what he wanted.
Chris Seiter: Well, it’s interesting you say that. So you were at this point where you thought, “If he’s not willing to treat me with respect and be honest about what he wants, then he can go date someone else. I’m over it.” Were you at that place emotionally, truly?
Harley: Yeah. I was truly like that. And even it was a couple months ago with us being back together, we had just a small little fight about something… I can’t even remember. And I even told him, I was like, “If you are unhappy in our relationship, then things aren’t working out between us and we can go our separate ways. We’ll be much happier without each other. At least we gave it a shot.” You can’t force two people to be in a relationship. It’s just not going to happen. You’re not going to be happy. Neither one of you are going to be happy because one person might be happy and the other person might be unhappy, which just makes it completely negative. And I didn’t want any of that to happen. I just wanted to be happy at that point.
Chris Seiter: So obviously you have a different mindset by the time you do get in contact with him. Even if that getting back in contact with them part is done by your cousin, the results you got from saying, “What do you want?” Seemed to be pretty good, at least what you screenshotted it in the group. Do you want to talk people through how that initial conversation went?
Harley: Yeah. He basically just said, “Hey.” And I freaked out and my cousin took my phone and said, “What do you want?” And he thought I was mad. And he was like “Okay, then I’ll just go then.” I was like, “No, that was Sammy. What do you want?” And he told me, he’s like, “I just really miss you and I still love you. And I thought I was going to be good without you, but I’m not. And I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching and been trying to make myself better for you. And it just kills me that we’re apart.” And he’s like, “I need to see you. I just want us to talk this out and see where we’re both at. And I want to know the person that you are now,” because he was obviously creeping on my Facebook and saw that I was just a little bit different than what I was a few months ago before we broke up. And that was basically it. And we kept talking a little bit and then we eventually met up face-to-face. I know that’s breaking a rule.
Chris Seiter: That’s an interesting thing for me because like I told you before, I want you to be honest about your success. And even if that breaks the value ladder concept, I love it because it tells me something about what’s actually working in real life scenarios. But I remember from when I just looked at that picture of the text, it was a back-to-back-to-back thing where he was like, “I miss you,” and blah, blah, blah. It was a controversial response because your question was ultimately, “What do I do? Do I break no contact to see him?” And it was split in the comments. Some people were like, “Yeah, break it.” Some people were like, “No, stick to it. You’re jumping the value ladder.” You’re saying you basically jumped the value ladder. So it’s a calculated risk on your part. But what went into your decision to jump all the way from basically not texting to an in-person interaction?
Harley: I wanted to show him how different I was. And I didn’t want him to think that I was sitting there being upset about what happened. I wanted to show him that I am confident and that I’m not sitting here and crying about it anymore, even though I secretly was. But I’m also more of a face-to-face person. I don’t like text messaging. I just think it’s very slow and it would be easier to talk to him to his face. So I talked to him to his face. And I remember him talking to me a couple of weeks ago about how that conversation went. And he said it felt like that I was very emotionally distant, that I didn’t want to be with him anymore. And I wasn’t trying to come off like that, but I also didn’t want him to think that he could say anything and just sweep me right off my feet and I would be right there for him again and want to jump into our relationship again. And I think I really got that across to him.
Chris Seiter: So your almost prerequisite for jumping that far ahead in the program or process was, “I need to play hard to get. I need to basically show him I’m not going to jump through hoops for you. I’m here to show you who I am now, as opposed to who I was before.” And that came across from his perspective.
Harley: Yeah. It for sure did. And I think being ungettable really entices somebody. It catches their interest a lot.
Chris Seiter: So you see him in person and that first interaction that you have, he views you as emotionally distant. Did that change somewhere in that first interaction? Or did it take a few more interactions for him to… I mean, he eventually proposes. So connect us from point A to point B.
Harley: Okay. Yeah. So one big fight in our relationship was I wanted him to show me commitment and that was another reason that he broke up with me.
Chris Seiter: You won the fight, by the way.
Harley: Yeah. Yeah, I did.
Chris Seiter: Show us the ring. You got to show us the ring. There it is.
Harley: Oh, don’t mind my pudgy fingers, but I don’t know if you can see it.
Chris Seiter: It’s more the camera that blurring it. But hey, there’s the ring, people.
Harley: Yeah. But he was scared of commitment. And I told him, I was like, “That’s the only way I feel like that you could show me you love me,” because at that point we’re going on two and a half years. So I was like, “Where is this going if it’s not marriage? We don’t have to get married right now. I just want an engagement to show that it’s just you and me. And then we can go from there.” But then, like I was saying, I was very emotionally distant and it took a couple interactions. And then eventually I started slowly opening up, not completely. I was still keeping to myself because I was scared of getting hurt again. I was scared of getting too close and then losing it all and being even more of an emotional wreck than I already was.
Harley: But we did go over our feelings in the moment and why he said what he said. And he basically told me that it was just because he was stupid. And he was scared that I was going to leave him and he was trying to take control of the situation like you said. And he realized once he saw me living my own life, he’s like, “I can’t imagine my life without you. And I just want to be in your life. And it’s sad that you’re living your life without me and I didn’t know what to do being on my own.” So hearing that made me feel so much better. And then… I feel stupid by saying this out loud. A month after us getting back together we eventually moved in because he was living… Moved in together. Because he moved into my apartment. Because at first he was living with his parents.
Chris Seiter: I don’t think that’s stupid. I mean, you’re engaged. Right? So you almost play by different rules when you’re a fiancée as opposed to just boyfriend, girlfriend. So to me that makes a lot of sense.
Harley: Yeah. But he moved in with me and we started just spending more time together and he seemed like he changed a lot too in a good way. He’s more emotionally available to me. And he talks more and communicates more and seems to do more. He wants to make me happy. And I can definitely see that now in his actions instead of just his words. Because actions mean a lot to me rather than just saying, “Oh, I’m going to do something,” and then not following up on it.
Chris Seiter: Nobody actually does it.
Harley: Yeah. Now he actually does it. Especially on Valentine’s Day. He used to not get me anything for Valentine’s Day. This Valentine’s Day he got me flowers and chocolates and a stuffed animal. And I was like, “Yeah, he’s actually trying this time.” And then-
Chris Seiter: I like that. It’s interesting. Do you think… I’m sorry to interrupt. You go ahead.
Harley: No, it’s fine. What were you going to ask?
Chris Seiter: I was going to ask, some people view… I’ve noticed that some people, it takes a commitment for them to take it seriously, so a legal commitment. When you get engaged, there’s almost a legal aspect to it. You’re making a vow to each other that you’re going to be together for life. And some people need that to start to take it seriously. Do you think that’s why all of a sudden those actions and words began to line up? Because now that you’re engaged, he’s like, “Okay, this is serious. This needs to work.”
Harley: Yeah. I feel like it means a lot more because, like I said, I was more emotionally there than he was in the relationship. So now it feels like he has something to lose like I have something to lose, especially now that he realizes how much I mean to him because he spent that time apart from me. It made him realize that I mean more in his life than he originally thought.
Chris Seiter: Did he ever say anything about you dating other guys while you were apart?
Harley: Oh, yeah. That was a big thing. I wouldn’t recommend… I don’t know. Girls take things a lot different than guys do. To me it wasn’t a big deal. It was just me trying to find myself and figure out who I am, what I want, and experiencing more things. Because I haven’t been in a lot of relationships and being with other people helped me a lot in realizing that and what I wanted. And also I’m in my twenties. You got to experience more things. And he was a little-
Chris Seiter: He didn’t like that, I’m guessing.
Harley: No, no. He was a little upset with that. And I don’t know. He made it sound like… I don’t want to use a harsh word, but he made it sound like I was hoeing around, but that wasn’t what it was. So I don’t know.
Chris Seiter: I mean, you can just go on a date with someone. And I’m guessing there was no vibe between the two of you where it would… You’re still hung up on your ex a little bit. Would that be an accurate thing to say? You were going on the date, but it was like, “Well, I like this person, but I’m not in love with this person.”
Harley: Yeah. And I was also honest with the guys ahead of time too. I was like, “I don’t know what I’m looking for. I don’t know if I’m looking for a friendship or an actual relationship. Let’s just go on a date and see what happens.” And I told them that I-
Chris Seiter: Did they take that to mean, “Oh, she wants a boyfriend?” Because I know I’ve been in that exact scenario where a girl told me that. Before I met my wife 15 years ago I’d go on a date and the girl would say, “I don’t know what I’m looking for. I just got out of a relationship.” For me that was like, “Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Me. You’re looking for me.” And of course that wouldn’t ever work out for me.
Harley: Honestly, if one of those guys were interested in relationship, obviously I wouldn’t go straight into the relationship, but I probably would have tested the waters to see how I’d feel. But at that time I really liked being on my own and not having to worry about anybody else and checking in with anybody else.
Chris Seiter: So he did not like that. But I would argue that that was an essential part of the process for making him feel like, “Oh, I need to commit because she can go find someone else.”
Harley: Yes, for sure.
Chris Seiter: And did he try to go… Because you mentioned he’s got a child with another woman. Did he try to go back to her at all?
Harley: Yes, he did. Don’t get me started about that because that’s when I-
Chris Seiter: That’s an off topic. So it went both ways. He was angry that you went and dated other guys or went on dates with other guys and you were probably upset that he went back to the other woman.
Harley: Yeah. I was like, “You could have started new and gone a different way and you went the same direction that you were going two years ago.”
Chris Seiter: It’s familiar. It’s familiar for him. That’s not uncommon unfortunately. But you won in the end. So you got that commitment. Looking back on everything, what would you say was the most important factor to your success?
Harley: Staying ungettable and realizing your value and knowing your value. And being… Also journaling and emotionally aware of your feelings is a big part of it because you shouldn’t be pushing away your feeling. You should be, “Oh, why does this make me feel sad? Or why am I having such an absurd reaction to this?” And just trying to get a hold of it and knowing why you feel that way.
Chris Seiter: Okay. You’ve mentioned ungettable a lot, which I always like. But I always notice when I talked to people about the ungettable concept, they always have a different way of defining what it means to them. For you what did it mean?
Harley: That’s a hard question. Or a hard answer to give.
Chris Seiter: Right? Right? When I was having to write that book, I was like, “I don’t even know how to define this.” So I just asked a bunch of people and I was like, “There’s 50 different definitions for how people view it.” But I’m just curious to see what yours is.
Harley: I think I would define it as showing that nobody can hold you down, that you are your own person and you can do whatever you set your mind to, basically.
Chris Seiter: Fortitude would be the adjective you’d use. No matter what, if you get knocked down, you get back up. Lots of fortitude.
Harley: Yeah. For sure.
Chris Seiter: Well, you definitely have fortitude and it paid off for you. You got engaged. And how are things now?
Harley: Oh, they’re great now. Especially I feel more secure in our relationship. Because that’s all I wanted. I wanted him to show me commitment, that he loved me and only me, and wanted a future with me. That was a big thing, is seeing a future, because I have a hard time staying in the present. I look too far in the future, which I’m trying to get better at. But as of right now, it made me feel more secure in our relationship and knowing that I’m the only person he wants to be with, regardless of him and his baby mama and all that. Just being able to feel that way, especially right now.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Well, I would just want to say I really enjoyed your success story a lot. I learned some really interesting things about breaking the no contact rule and how you almost have to set that prerequisite of emotionally distance, like how you said you were emotionally distant and that’s the vibe he got. I think that was a huge, huge indicator of you getting him back because immediately it makes him have to work. Like, “I have to work to try to to win her back.” And that’s the leverage aspect that you’re missing when you initially go through a breakup. But I just wanted to thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and giving people hope. And you didn’t have an easy situation. So thank you so much, Harley.
Harley: Yeah. Thank you for letting me come on here and tell my story and thank you for your program, because that helped a lot. Especially you help a lot of people too.
Chris Seiter: Oh, thank you. Don’t don’t make my head any bigger than it is.
Success Story: Letting Her Ex Go Made Him Want To Come Back
Feb 20, 2021
Lately we’ve been talking a lot about this concept of letting an ex go to make them come back. I’ve been on record many times saying how I think this is a key component to the no contact rule and the success you can see afterwards and it looked like Jule, our latest success story, took my words to heart.
After having her ex break up with her and even avoid the breakup talk altogether she joined The Ex Boyfriend Recovery Program and ended up getting her ex back.
Watch or listen to find out exactly how.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
How Letting Go Of Her Ex Helped Make Him Come Back
Chris: All right. Today I have the honor interviewing one of our success stories named Julie. And I’m coming into this blind. I don’t know really anything about her situation, which is going to be a treat. So anyone listening to this, or watching this, is going to be learning as I’m learning. How are you doing, Julie?
Julie: I’m doing well. How are you, Chris?
Chris: Hanging in there. Hanging in there. So, where should we start? Let’s start in the practical place. How long were you and your ex together before you guys broke up? What did the breakup look like? Why don’t you start from the beginning.
Julie: So, we were together about a year and a month before the breakup.
Chris: Okay.
Julie: And that was interesting. We had met from Facebook Dating, which was the first time I ever used the app.
Chris: And did online dating? Have you ever tried-
Julie: Oh, I have.
Chris: The Tinder, or the Hinge, or anything like that?
Julie: I actually have, but it was never on a serious time. It was just like, “Okay, well…” Because I’ve been single for a couple of years now, since my last ex. But I was on the dating apps, but then one of my friends was like, “You should really try it out and everything. Facebook Dating is a little more serious…” From the quality of guys she was running into. So I was like, “Okay. Let me try it out.” And that’s how I ran into my ex.
Chris: All right. [crosstalk 00:01:28] So you ran into your ex, and dated him for a year and a half, right?
Julie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris: So we’ll skip all the fun part, and get to the bad part.
Julie: Okay.
Chris: How did the breakup go down exactly? What was the reasoning? What did he say? Who broke up with who? Why don’t you take us through that.
Julie: So, when I refer to the breakup, I refer to it… Well, now it’s a little funny to look back at it. But I always call it an emotional rollercoaster.
Chris: Okay. So you went-
Julie: So-
Chris: Up and down, and just sort of everywhere?
Julie: Yeah. So the breakup happened, literally, probably three days after seeing each other. We were hanging out and everything typical, and then all of a sudden I just realized he was just being more flakey about our plans. And he was using the excuse, “Oh, I have to work more, I have to work more.” And then I’m over here like, “Well, tell me what’s going on. You’re not communicating.”
Julie: And so the day that the breakup happened, we were supposed to hang out. Typical, it was a Saturday. And I was like, “Okay. Well, we have plans to hang out.” He’s like, “Okay. Yeah, I’ll let you know.” 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon comes and I’m like, “So… What’s up?” It’s like crickets. What’s going on? He literally just texted me like, “Oh, I’m on my way to go out East to finish this work job. I’m probably not going to hang out with you.” And completely blows me off.
Julie: And this is where I get so mad, and I’m like, “Are you kidding me? You had all these hours to tell me this. What the hell?” And then, I-
Chris: So-
Julie: I madded.
Chris: Okay. So basically what’s happening is, he almost seems to be avoiding a confrontation with you? Is that-
Julie: Yeah.
Chris: What’s going on? He gets-
Julie: Absolutely.
Chris: The sense, and doesn’t want to hang out with you. So, he’s going to avoid it, and then you’re just blowing up. Because naturally, you’re like, “What the heck? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Julie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris: Okay. So-
Julie: Definitely.
Chris: So first, that’s the first red flag that something’s amiss.
Julie: Yeah.
Chris: Okay.
Julie: Absolutely.
Chris: What’s the next red flag?
Julie: Next red flag was, as I’m madding him now sending multiple texts basically just blowing up. Like, “How can you do this? What the hell?” Like, “I’m a person. Why couldn’t you tell me this?” All this stuff, and he’s just like, “I can’t do this right now.” Blowing me off still. And he’s like, “I got to talk to you tomorrow.
Julie: And I’m like, “What?” Like, “This has to be fixed now.” And he’s like, “No. I got to talk to you tomorrow.” I’m like, “What the hell.” So the whole night, we’re not communicating. He’s not saying anything. He’s doing God knows what. The next day, with the official breakup, I call him. And he hasn’t bothered to text, call, nothing in the morning. Nothing at all.
Julie: So he finally calls me after one of my text messages, and he’s just like, “Hey… We’ll talk later.” And I’m just like, “No. I want to talk now.” And he’s still pushing it off. So finally, that night, I’m like, “What is going on?” And this is how crazy it got, where it’s just, I’m like, “Where are you?” I don’t even know where he is. He’s like, “I just woke up from a nap.” I’m like, “A nap?” Like, “I’m still here. What’s going on? You’re not talking to me, and this is a problem.” Like, “You’re blowing me off. What the hell?”
Julie: He finally snaps, and he’s like, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m done.” And I’m like, “What the hell do you mean you’re done?” Especially because of the fact that he’s breaking up with me on the phone now. And I’m like, “You don’t even have the common courtesy to tell me in person.”
Chris: It’s scary to tell them in person. I’m not going to lie. My first girlfriend ever, I think I broke up with her when I was 19, right? So we had dated for about a year. And I literally used, “I’m done.” But I did it through text message, and I literally meant the conversation. Like, “I’m done with this conversation.” But she took it to mean the relationship, and I was just like, “Oh, okay.”
Chris: So I guess I can kind of sympathize or empathize with your ex being scared of that conversation and saying I’m done. But were there any signs leading up to this that something is wrong? Was he a little bit more distant? Or was this just his normal way of handling any kind of conflict or confrontation?
Julie: And the story actually gets a little crazier, which I’ll explain. But throughout the-
Chris: Okay. We love crazy stories here.
Julie: Oh gosh. Throughout the relationship, he was very… I would say avoidant. I’m more of the I want to fix this now, so that way the whole day isn’t ruined.
Chris: So he’s like the avoidant attachment-style type, and you’re a little bit more leaning towards the anxious attachment-style type at this point?
Julie: Absolutely. Yeah. Because I was-
Chris: Okay. Well, that’s the most common situation we see.
Julie: Yeah. And he has no problem spending hours not answering, or even a day. I wouldn’t go past one 24 hrs. Because at that point, I was so anxious that I was madding a lot.
Chris: See, I’m like you. I don’t think I could do that either. I feel like I like the natural communication, the talking all the time. I don’t understand why some people need two to three days space of not talking. To me if you’re in a relationship, that seems just odd. But some people are just like that.
Julie: Yeah, which is crazy to me. Well, especially, if there’s a situation going on. Because I do believe in healthy spaces, especially with this program now. It’s like, “Okay, space is good.” But two, three days-
Chris: There’s such-
Julie: Is kind of like, “What?”
Chris: Right. That’s too much space.
Julie: Yeah.
Chris: Well, at that point it almost becomes disrespectful as well. Their purposely not talking to me in the relationship. Something’s really wrong. And you’re just trying to fix it, so I totally see where you’re coming from.
Julie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And so, here’s where our breakup got a little interesting. So after-
Chris: Okay, let’s get to the good-
Julie: Well, it’s actually not good.
Chris: Well, yeah. Yeah.
Julie: So-
Chris: But that’s what the goods are for ex-boyfriend recovery.
Julie: Yes. Yeah. So I didn’t take it very well that he’s trying to do this over the phone, so I was just like, “You know what? I deserve more respect in this. I’m showing up to your house.” So-
Chris: Oh, I knew you were going to say that. I knew it.
Julie: Yep.
Chris: I knew you were going to do the whole crazy ex-girlfriend type thing.
Julie: Yep. Yes.
Chris: Okay. This is fun. Let’s do it. So, how did that go?
Julie: Because before when we fought, I probably did that once. Where I showed up and then we talked it out and it seemed fine, for a month or so, and then we got rocky again for something completely stupid or random, miscommunication styles, all of that. And we went back to fighting.
Julie: So when it’s finally the breakup, because I was like, “Are you sure? Are you serious?” On the phone before showing up. And he’s like, “I don’t see a future with you. Yes, I’m sure. I cannot do this anymore.” But I said-
Chris: So it’s-
Julie: “You know what?”
Chris: So it’s in-person he’s doing this. He’s literally saying this to you, looking into your eyes.
Julie: No, over the phone still. And so I said-
Chris: Oh, so he’s over the phone still.
Julie: “You know what? I’m coming…” Yeah.
Chris: Okay.
Julie: So I’m coming… To his face.
Chris: So you call him first again before you came over? You didn’t just show up unannounced.
Julie: Yes.
Chris: Okay.
Julie: Yes.
Chris: See, that’s not as bad-
Julie: I basically-
Chris: As I thought, Julie.
Julie: Well, he didn’t think I was coming.
Chris: I thought you were going to just show up.
Julie: No, I did. He didn’t think I was really serious.
Chris: Okay.
Julie: He thought I was still in my house. And I’m literally, like, “I’m 10 minutes away from you house.”
Chris: Okay.
Julie: And he’s threatening to be like, “I’m not here. I’m going to walk away. You’re not going to find me.” I’m like, “Nope. I will sit outside and you are going to meet me outside.”
Chris: Oh, you are very determined to get your heart broken in person, I guess is the intriguing part about this. Okay.
Julie: Yes.
Chris: So, what happens?
Julie: Because a part of me thought it was going to be serious. I thought it was going to be one of these fights that we had where, okay, you see me… Okay, you’re going to backtrack or something. But no, he was still serious. I pulled up, he came into my car. And I asked him again, “Are you serious about breaking up?”
Julie: At this point he’s just looking forward. He’s not even looking at me. And he’s just like, “Yes. I can’t do this. Look at what you’re doing. You’re not respecting my space or my privacy.” And I’m like, “You just broke up with me, dude, over the phone. I think that went out the window.” That’s how my thinking was at the time.
Chris: Right. Well, that’s normal thoughts.
Julie: And he’s still reiterating the same thing. I don’t see a future in this. I can’t see a future with someone I fight with constantly.
Chris: Okay. So you got-
Julie: That’s when-
Chris: Your heart broken in person.
Julie: Yep.
Chris: Okay.
Julie: But he was still like, “Oh, text me when you get home. I want to make sure you’re okay.” And I’m just like, “Okay…” But then nothing the next day.
Chris: Right. Well, it’s this is what I’m supposed to say. This is probably going to make her feel good, like I still care a little bit, but I want my privacy.
Julie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris: Okay. So now the strong upward march of getting them back, or determining whether you want them back, begins. So most of the people that find Ex-Boyfriend Recovery, or The Ex-Recovery Program, or the Facebook group, end up coming to us after a frantic Google search. They’re Google searching everything related to getting exes back, or, “Hey, what does it mean when he says this?” And then end up finding the website and getting entrenched in the zillions of articles there.
Chris: Some people do it through YouTube. They’re just doing the same thing. What was your journey into learning about our method?
Julie: So, after two weeks of madding him, after the breakup still. Yeah, because I still was like, “Let me give him a day or two.” Then, still see what’s going on, and I even apologized for things. I was like, “I’m sorry,” and all that, but still blowing up his phone. So finally a day came where he just didn’t even really text me at all. It was just a generic cold-less text, and I was like, “I can’t do this.” So, I Googled something along the lines of boyfriend says he doesn’t love me. Or something about the future… Doesn’t see a future with me.
Chris: Right. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Julie: And that’s how Ex-Recovery popped up, with one article I believe you had touched base about that.
Chris: Yep.
Julie: And that’s when I started reading it. Yeah.
Chris: All right. So you read it eventually. You decided to take the plunge and get into the Facebook group and start the process and the program that we try to teach. And I say try because not everyone listens to what we try to teach. How was that journey? Learning about the no contact rule and everything that needs to get done during the no contact rule?
Julie: So, what’s interesting about it is that I’ve heard of the no contact rule before, years ago. Just that basis. And so I was aware of it. Never really fully practiced it because years ago when I decided, okay, no contact with someone it just turned into indefinite no contact, which I didn’t think was a thing.
Julie: So, I never did it to get an ex back. So when I was going through your articles, I’m seeing more and more articles, especially the no contact, and then that’s when I saw the program. Where it’s just, let me take a leap of faith. Because it had so much things that you offered. Not only the program, E-book, but then coaching was also a part of it if I wanted-
Chris: Right. You get that-
Julie: And then the Facebook group.
Chris: Right. You’ll get that discount on coaching if you want to do the coaching. You’ll get the Facebook group. There’s the audio aspect. There’s the PDF… There’s a bunch of stuff in there. But obviously, you get in there and it’s probably information overload. There’s too much stuff I’m imagining.
Julie: It is.
Chris: Yeah.
Julie: It was very intimidating in a sense. Like, “Oh gosh. What is it?”
Chris: Right. Right.
Julie: But in the first week of trying to get into this, I’m not going to lie, it was so hard. Actually, three weeks. I’m not going to lie. But, yeah.
Chris: So when you say get into it, are you referring to just simply getting through a no contact rule without breaking it? Or even just reading some of the content in the program, and being like, “This is too much.”
Julie: Well, I think it’s more so the no contact rule. Reading the program materials helped ease my anxiety a little bit. But it’s just the no contact alone, starting it. Because before that period of time, I was talking to my ex every day.
Chris: All right. So that was the pattern-
Julie: Unless-
Chris: Of the relationship. You’re talking every single day.
Julie: Yeah.
Chris: Now, you did the no contact rule. How long did you determine to do? What time frame? Were you a pretty standard 30-day rule?
Julie: I was 45 days from the assessment. Yeah.
Chris: All right, right. So 45 days. You got a long time before you’re going to talk to your ex again. Did you have any hiccups along the way? Where you broke at day 15 or something like that.
Julie: So when I started it, I broke it day… I want to say seven.
Chris: Okay. You made it one week.
Julie: Day seven.
Chris: Congratulations. So you had to start over again.
Julie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris: Hopefully you started over again. And what-
Julie: No, I did. I did. Yeah.
Chris: Okay. So I’m also trying to fish for an answer… But I don’t want to influence your answer. Because this is something-
Julie: No, I get it.
Chris: That I think is really important. At any point during the no contact rule, did you focus more on yourself or your ex? Throughout the no contact rule, was it always focusing on your ex? Or was there ever a transitionary period where you started like, “You know what? I’m going to focus on me,” for a little bit.
Julie: So the initial start of no contact was definitely focused on my ex. It definitely was. But then probably two and a half weeks in, that’s when I started shifting the focus on myself.
Chris: And then when you say shifting the focus-
Julie: So, getting out more.
Chris: All right. So, getting out more… What were some of the other things you did to “focus on yourself”?
Julie: I actually in terms of work, I started picking up a little more shifts then I normally would have. Just to help build up getting rid of some debts I had accrued from credit cards, or whatever the case may be. But start saving as well. So work was part of it. Friends, because through the relationship it was more so we were together constantly. And I hung out with my friends, but not as much as I should have. I basically neglected that part of myself in the relationship.
Julie: So I was going out with my friends more. Basically, seeing my family too. That was a thing as well. Hanging out with my cousins more, and getting in touch with them more. Seeing how everything’s been. Because it’s like I was emerged from a cage.
Chris: All right. So it’s a year and a month of being in this relationship almost consumed your entire life, you would say.
Julie: Yeah.
Chris: At least when it comes to the Holy Trinity idea that we talk about, that relationships portion, or that pillar is mostly your ex. The romantic side of things.
Julie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes.
Chris: So you’re just trying to broaden your horizons, so to speak.
Julie: Yes.
Chris: Okay. Did you do anything health-wise? So for me, working out and stuff is a great way to alleviate stress. And I imagine the no contact rule being an extremely stressful time in your life. Did you go on runs? Did you go on walks? Did you go hiking? Anything like that? Or was it pretty purely the wealth side of things with your work, and also just finding support through friends and family?
Julie: So I actually did start working out again. Because in the beginning when I met my ex I was working out, but I fell off a little bit.
Chris: Okay.
Julie: And so when the breakup happened, especially when I was like, “I need to focus more on me now,” and I had a goal for myself. I’ll lose 40 pounds by this date. Nothing crazy. I’m still in the process though. Losing the pounds.
Chris: Well, 40 pounds is a lot to lose in a quick span.
Julie: Absolutely. But I’m still working on it, so that’s a good thing.
Chris: Okay.
Julie: But I still had a goal to let me at least start back up again. So I started working out with one of my friends who’s a personal trainer, and that’s who I trained before. So he was like, “Let’s get back in to the gym.” And he also helped as well.
Chris: Great.
Julie: In terms of, we’re going to start kicking some butt.
Chris: Yeah, I love it. I love it. Okay. So another question I’m dying to ask you is… Because we haven’t really gotten to the good stuff yet. We haven’t gotten to the actual attempt of how you tried to get your ex back. We’re still in that no contact phase. But was there ever a period throughout no contact where you stop worrying so much about getting your ex back? And start instead accepting the fact that you may never get them back?
Julie: Yes, I did. Because I got to the point where, especially in mind, I kept thinking wow. Because throughout the no contact, you also have that little wish that they would contact you in real life, but you’re not talking to them. So I was like, “Well, if someone’s not doing that, then am I even worth their time to them?” Am I even worth something to them?
Julie: So after I saw I wasn’t really getting anything, I was just like, “Well, why am I going to stress myself out?” Especially because I never was like this with anybody. So why is he different? But that’s when I started seeing myself in terms of how I was looking, and I wasn’t really doing healthy things like eating properly. Because I didn’t really have an appetite when I was really hung up on him. And that’s when I finally was just like, “I can’t do this. I have to shift it back to myself.”
Julie: Because that’s not a healthy way. And I was so sick and tired of having anxiety too. And so when I started reading more and more of your articles, and of course Facebook Lives, that helped me a little bit better to say, “Okay, no. This is really about you.” And I also did a few posts of what I was feeling, and there were some members that were very encouraging. And were saying like, “No, you’re a catch. You’re good. Focus on you. Keep doing you. Stick to no contact.”
Chris: Okay. Right. So you have those moments where you have a crack. And you’re like, “Is this worth it? Is everything working out the way it should be working out?” You have those self doubts, and you come to the Facebook group and get almost some validation that, no, you’re on the right track. Keep going.
Julie: Yes.
Chris: Okay. You know what’s really interesting about your situation so far? Is I really think your ex at this point is an avoidant. So what’s interesting about avoidance is they typically will not “start missing you” until they feel that you’ve moved on. And the reason for that is because that’s when they feel safe to romanticize a relationship.
Chris: So by doing all the stuff, putting the focus on you, it might appear to your ex as if you’re moving on. And that’s maybe when they start to miss you. But I’m dying to find out basically what happens after the no contact rule. So why don’t we take it from there?
Julie: So what’s interesting enough is that I would say day 27 of my 45-day no contact, he actually reached out to me with a text. Really long text, which I also posted in the group because he almost got me to break it, but I was just like, “No, no, no.” I have to stick to this. But I wanted people’s opinions about it. Kind of apologizing for all the things that went wrong in the relationship, and other things as well. And I posted all this to the group, like, “What do you think? Is this worth it?”
Julie: And everybody was just like, “No. Don’t break it. It didn’t have the golden factor.”
Chris: It’s a trap.
Julie: [inaudible 00:24:00] It was a trap. It was basically he felt guilty for himself, so he was basically trying to out-guilt himself, but not really care about the relationship I guess.
Chris: Well, if you think about it, it’s his way of trying to make himself feel better about it. So, if you validate that with a response and say, “It’s okay, he gets what he’s looking for. And it’s okay, cool. Now, I’ll move on.”
Julie: Yeah. And I didn’t get that. I didn’t validate it. I stuck to no contact.
Chris: Good.
Julie: But I basically-
Chris: You’re so good, Julie.
Julie: Ignored that message. It’s not easy though.
Chris: No, I know.
Julie: It wasn’t easy, but I stuck to it because it was just okay… Well, I reached out to another member of the group. She was very great in my help. Because I know there’s battle buddies. She wasn’t my original battle buddy, but she’s very involved because she went through the process before with her situation. And she was willing to answer questions. So I messaged her, which she was so nice about it, and I told her, “Well, what does this mean?” And stuff. Like, “Should I just…”
Julie: And she was just like, “No. Don’t do it. No. It’s a trap. Don’t do it. Stick to your no contact. You got this.” But it also in a sense, might seem like it was working. So I was just like, “Okay, that’s a good sign.” But then after the days went on and I still didn’t get nothing after that text, it was just like, “Screw it.” I want to shift it back to myself again.
Julie: It’s hard to explain, but when you get to that point, it’s not a specific pinpoint area to where you’d say, “Oh, this is what’s going to happen.” It naturally happened. Time actually did help. In terms of saying, “Well, look at what I’m doing.” I noticed that my savings account was growing. I noticed that my weight was changing. My body appearance was changing, and I started posting more on social media.
Chris: Okay. So I think we call that momentum. You’ve really gotten momentum in all these other areas of your life outside of your romantic relationships. And obviously, that has an impact on your romantic relationships. So on day 27 of a 45-day no contact rule, he reaches out with the ultimate break this text. You don’t break it. You continue going. You gain that momentum. Does he reach out again before the 45 days are up? Or is it you who ends up-
Julie: Nope.
Chris: Having to reach out first after no contact is up?
Julie: I have to reach out first.
Chris: Beautiful. Beautiful. All right. So, how does that go?
Julie: So, at that point, I was still super nervous. Because my no contact ended I guess I want to say on Friday, and it was just recommended that I wait that Monday. Especially because my no contact ended around New Year’s Eve, something like that.
Chris: So you don’t want to make him think you’re only reaching out because of New Year’s, so you just wait until some distance has… So really your 45-day no contact was 48, 49 days.
Julie: Yeah. It was 49 days, which is tough. Because by this point, I’m already missing Thanksgiving. Miss Christmas. So now New Year’s, so it’s like, “Oh my God.” We spent three holidays, and the big ones, couple holidays, not even spending together.
Chris: So I feel like 2020 might be the throw out year, if there’s ever a throw out year for holidays-
Julie: That’s true.
Chris: And we had COVID. So that’s the way you should look at it. Not that you missed the couple holidays. You probably missed getting COVID or something. Look at it that way.
Julie: Funny enough, he ended up did catching COVID when we weren’t together.
Chris: Oh yeah. See? I am a mind reader, Julie.
Julie: You are. You are. But-
Chris: Okay, all right. So we’ll get to that… So hold on. Is that later when you start talking to him, and find out oh yeah, he had COVID?
Julie: Yeah.
Chris: Okay.
Julie: That was after my first text. Because my first text, I decided to send a hook text. Like, “Hey… I need your advice on something.”
Chris: Oh, like the damsel in distress type.
Julie: Yeah.
Chris: And it worked, right?
Julie: It worked. Well, at first, I didn’t get a message right away. So I kind of freaked out, like, “What? Okay… After all this time, whatever.”
Chris: That’s normal. That’s normal.
Julie: But he finally answered… Yeah. He finally answered the same day of course, probably two hours later. And said, “Oh, hey, sorry. I’m just getting over COVID.” And that’s how I learned. I was like, “What?”
Chris: Oh. So it was the first text.
Julie: Yeah.
Chris: The response to the first text.
Julie: Yeah.
Chris: Wow.
Julie: And so he led with that, and then he was like, “What’s up?” And I used something along of like, “Sneaker advice.” Because I knew he was a very big sneaker head. So I used one of those. And he actually gave me a very positive response. He sent me screenshots of sneakers that he thought would look good on me.
Chris: Oh, so he put some thought into it? He put-
Julie: He did.
Chris: Some thought into that response.
Julie: But what’s interesting enough is that before he did any of that, he basically said, “Oh, happy new year to you too.” Which I was just like, “Okay…”
Chris: Oh, when you didn’t-
Julie: I didn’t really respond that.
Chris: Oh, I see.
Julie: Yeah, I-
Chris: So he was upset that you didn’t say happy new year’s to him on new year’s.
Julie: Exactly, and then on top of that he was like, “Is it for you or for someone else?” But then backtracked and said, “Nevermind, I guess it doesn’t matter.”
Chris: Well, these are all great songs. It’s clearly signs that he’s number one, worried you’re going to move on. Number two, worried that you’re not talking to him. And number three, it’s a positive response. He put thought into it. So how did you respond to the is it for you or someone else?
Julie: I didn’t even address it. Because I also looked at it like, “Well, I don’t have to.” Because he backtracked and said, “Oh, I guess it doesn’t matter.” So I was just like-
Chris: He gave you a-
Julie: “I guess it doesn’t.” Yeah, he did. So I answered… He sent screenshots of sneakers, and even said, “Oh, maybe you should try these? Because your feet are flat.” And in my mind, I’m thinking, “You remember that?” But I kept emotional control because I didn’t want to go overboard with it. So I basically said, “Oh, thank you. I’ll check it out.” And then I also responded back in terms of I needed time for myself because I was also advised not to really, completely ignore the fact that he reached out through my no contact with that text.
Chris: Well, I think that’s a good ploy.
Julie: Yeah.
Chris: That’s something that I’ve found can be addressing that big elephant in the room when you get back into touch with them in a really clever way. Almost undercuts any type of animosity they’ll have towards you. How did you address it? Just basically saying I needed time for myself?
Julie: Yeah. Just that I needed time for myself, thank you. Got to go train now. And then just left it at that. And he was just like, “Okay, you’re welcome…” But I could tell he was kind of confused. It was like a dot-dot-dot… Because I normally never used to just end the conversation. It would just go on when we were together.
Chris: Beautiful. So all ready, he’s getting indications that you’re a little different than you were before.
Julie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris: All right. Cool. Let’s keep the train rolling. So what happens next?
Julie: So I was told not to text him the next day, which is okay. I was planning to do my second text in a few days, but he ended up texting me the next day. And so he was just like, “Hey, are you working?” And I’m just confused. Because I was just like, “Okay…” But then he just told me he was with COVID before. So I’m thinking it’s because he needs to come to my job because I work in the medical field.
Chris: Oh, so he’s thinking he needs to get checked out for COVID, and this is his slick way of seeing you?
Julie: Yeah. So I wanted to gauge as to why, but also still keep control in terms of well, I don’t want to seem eager either. So it was more so like, “Yes, I am. What’s up?” Very plain, like that. And he initiated to see me.
Chris: Okay. So he wants to see you right away?
Julie: He said, “I wanted to see if you were free.” Yeah.
Chris: All right.
Julie: And that caught me off-guard. I was like, “What?” Because he was just-
Chris: Yeah. That’s an interesting tactical decision on his part.
Julie: Yeah. So not only is he asking to see me, he also puts in that his best friend at the time was over his apartment and they were speaking about me. And I was like, “Oh…”
Chris: That’s weird.
Julie: It’s very weird. So I basically sent a screenshot of the conversation, of course, to the group. Because I was just like, “What do I do?”
Chris: I’m so glad we have this group.
Julie: Oh my God, yes. I’m so glad too. So they all were like, “Don’t skip the value chain. No. Do not meet him.”
Chris: Yeah, I wasn’t going to say anything. But I was like, “I hope she didn’t see him.”
Julie: No, I did not. I didn’t. So basically, I responded in a polite way because one of the moderators gave me a way to respond which was so great. She basically just said, “Oh, just say that you’re busy, but I’ll let you know.”
Chris: Oh, that’s beautiful.
Julie: Pretty much, like I’ll let you know.
Chris: That’s like the Chef Kids’ meme. It’s perfect.
Julie: Yes. Yes. And so, I left it at that. And he’s like, “Okay. Just let me know.” And then we end the conversation there. I don’t even follow it up for the rest of the day. So the next time I’m supposed to send my second reach-out text, I sent him a, “Hey, can I get a recommendation about Netflix shows? I want to get into something after I get off of work.”
Julie: And so I thought I was going to get something negative, because again, I didn’t answer him right away in terms of meeting up, but it was actually very positive. He was like, “Oh, you can check out one of these shows…”
Chris: I figured it would be positive. Because if you think about it, him initiating that meet up try, and you nicely turning him down has to be disappointing. So it’s almost like, “Wait, she doesn’t want to see me?” And it makes him bummed out. So when he does hear from you again, he’s like, “Oh, thank God. She’s still interested.” And so, yeah. So what Netflix show did he recommend?
Julie: I forgot the name exactly, but it was one of those gang mob situations in Britain.
Chris: Peaky Blinders?
Julie: Yes.
Chris: Yeah.
Julie: There you go.
Chris: I love that show.
Julie: Yes. So I was like-
Chris: Obviously, you did not love the show. You can’t remember it.
Julie: I didn’t even check it out.
Chris: Oh, okay.
Julie: I didn’t even check it out.
Chris: All right. It’s just-
Julie: Usually, I’m a-
Chris: A means to an end for you.
Julie: Yeah, it was just like, “Oh, I just wanted to know…” Because at the same time before, I still didn’t have time to check it out regardless. Because I was still working on the health, well, and relationship parts of the trinity that you speak.
Chris: Right.
Julie: So I was busy still working, doing my own thing, all of that. So I still didn’t even get a chance to check it out. But I will, I promise.
Chris: That’s a broken promise right there, Julie. I’m pretty sure you’re never going to check it out.
Julie: No, I promise I will.
Chris: Don’t make promises you can’t keep. No, okay. All right. So did that turn into a little bit of a longer conversation? Was it a quick, rapid-fire type Netflix thing?
Julie: So it was just rapid-fire Netflix, but what was interesting was, I said, “Okay, I’ll check it out. Got to run.” Whatever. And then what’s it called… He left it at that. But then ended up showing up to my house days later.
Chris: Whoa. That’s a-
Julie: Yeah, I know.
Chris: So he shows up to your house a couple days later? So he skipped the value chain for you essentially.
Julie: Absolutely.
Chris: All right. So what happens? This is getting juicy.
Julie: Absolutely. Oh, okay. I’ll let you know. Just give me one moment.
Chris: All right.
Julie: Yeah, so I’m on my way out. I’m basically dressed and everything. And so I’m getting ready to do my own thing with my friends and everything like that. Sorry… Give me one moment.
Chris: No worries. Sounds like you’re walking around in your apartment or something.
Julie: I’ll explain why. Because-
Chris: Uh oh.
Julie: You have to know the situation. But basically, I showed up at my door. And this is him, just saying, “Hey.” And I’m like, “Hey. What are you doing here?” And I’m like, “I can’t talk. I’m on my way out the door.” Because I have plans.
Chris: You’re going somewhere. Yeah.
Julie: I am. I’m going somewhere. So he basically takes a second and says, “Listen, I need a moment… [inaudible 00:38:06]” Okay. I don’t really think I have that, but he’s pleading at this point.
Chris: Okay.
Julie: And so, I was just like, “All right, fine.” So he comes inside. Obviously still trying to play it cool, he’s like, “Well, how are you?” And I’m just like, “This is what you wanted to talk to me about?” So basically, I’m like, “I’m doing fine. I’m on my way out with so and so… Everything, okay?” And he’s just like, “No. Everything’s not okay.”
Chris: Oh.
Julie: So I’m like, “Okay.”
Chris: Okay.
Julie: Yeah. So shows up, and basically tells me he’s been missing me. And basically [inaudible 00:38:51] up, at this point.
Chris: Wait, so say that again? You kind of broke up.
Julie: Oh, he basically showed up and told me that he regrets the breakup.
Chris: Did he ever say specifically I want to get back together? Or was it just I really regret my decision to breakup with you?
Julie: Well, he was saying more so he regrets it. [inaudible 00:39:21] while he’s telling me this. And even says, “I want you back.”
Chris: Wow. So, he went with the nuclear option. And you were like that’s everything you’ve ever wanted to hear. So it’s just sort of-
Julie: Absolutely. He’s not even the type. So I was just-
Chris: Wow.
Julie: Confused at this point. Like, “What the hell?”
Chris: Yeah, that is a bold move. I have tried that move before and it blows up in my face every single time. But I guess he picked the right person to do it with. So I’m assuming you accepted, right?
Julie: So not right away. Because at that point, I was okay-
Chris: Look at you.
Julie: With not getting him back. Yeah, I was okay with not getting him back. And at the same time too, I didn’t want to go back to the same [inaudible 00:40:14], and I was already doing my own thing, and just very comfortable with myself. So it was just more so I actually introduced the idea of let’s date. Just a fresh start. Let’s date instead, and see how this goes.
Chris: Wow. Wow, Julie. So I love what you said about you’re okay with the fact that you didn’t have to get him back. That tells me that a lot of the anxious tendencies that you had before aren’t as present anymore. I’m sure they creep into other aspects. It’s just human nature to feel anxious when they don’t respond right away and things like that. But this almost seems to good to be true. It’s so amazing. What a success story.
Julie: It was just crazy because he really wasn’t the type to ever do this, at all. But now, and we’re still together now, he actually showed up at my apartment just now. That’s why I had to step out.
Chris: Oh, I see.
Julie: Basically, yeah. But it’s been going very well.
Chris: So I figured it was something… All right. So we’ll keep it quick so you can go see your boyfriend again here.
Julie: Yeah.
Chris: But yeah, so wow. So he showed up right as we were talking. That’s the first time that’s ever happened on a success story interview.
Julie: I know. It’s so funny.
Chris: All right. So when you look back… And let’s just do this for five more minutes. All right? And then I’ll let you go.
Julie: No, yeah. Of course.
Chris: When you look back at the whole situation, what do you think was the most crucial aspect to your success? To having him just show up and blatantly ask for you back?
Julie: I would say shifting the focus from him to myself was very crucial.
Chris: Yeah. That is the one pattern that we recognize is consistent among almost all success stories. I think there was a handful over the course of the years that they were kind of flukes. They didn’t really get their exes back by doing much. But yeah, you personified everything that you should have done. You did it so well. So you should feel extremely proud of yourself.
Chris: And obviously, you’re still together. He’s showing up trying to interrupt our conversation now.
Julie: I know.
Chris: He’ll probably be like, “Who are you talking to?” And you’ll say, “Oh, it’s work.”
Julie: Yeah. Because he was trying to push before, which again, since being together… I used to be the one to plan and say okay, can we meet up this time? Or whatever. It’s completely shifted. So I already warned him-
Chris: Wow.
Julie: “Hey, I’m going to be a on a conference call.”
Chris: Oh, beautiful. Beautiful. Would you say things are better now than they were in the past?
Chris: How long have you two been back together? Couple months?
Julie: About a month now.
Chris: Okay, about a month.
Julie: About a month. So it’s still fresh, but I’ve noticed differences since the first go-around.
Chris: That’s great.
Julie: Because communication is better.
Chris: That’s amazing.
Julie: To the point where I don’t feel like I’m just a nuisance anymore, like I used to. Because again he would avoid a lot. But now when something happens, he’ll address it. And he’ll say-
Chris: Wow.
Julie: “Are we okay?”
Chris: Wow. You basically tamed him, which is amazing.
Julie: Yeah. With your help.
Chris: Oh, no. You did it all. I just sort of wrote all the articles and stuff that probably inspired you. But you’re the one that did the hard work.
Julie: Well, that helped, as well as the YouTube videos too. Because literally, we’ve actually talked about the breakup before and what his mind was at during that time. And he’s actually checked off a lot of your videos like Dumpers Remorse and everything. And I’m just like, “This is so funny.”
Chris: Yeah. Well, I’m not making it up.
Julie: How things just come together.
Chris: People think I just pull it out of a hat. So your situation is really cool because you’re someone who did everything the right way and got the exact result they wanted. Which just makes me very, very happy for you. And I’m sure it makes you happy too.
Julie: Yes, it really does.
Chris: So is there any final thoughts you have to anyone listening going through a breakup that is maybe losing a little bit of hope? Because I think a lot of people are in that state of mind, where they’re like, “Is this worth it? Is this going to work?” What would you say to someone like that?
Julie: Well, I would say it’s worth it regardless of if you get your ex or not. Because at the same time you’re discovering yourself, and I think that’s the main component of this process as well. Not just the ex back. Of course, it’s great to get him back, but to just focus on yourself and getting your well-being straight, I feel like is the crucial thing.
Julie: Because if you’re so hung up and just doing this process to get them back it’s kind of missing the Trinity aspect. And you’re not really completing the full program. So when-
Chris: I couldn’t say it better myself.
Julie: Yeah. Literally, when it does happen, where it shifts from them to you, it helps a lot. Even in the process if you decide to get them back. It really does shift to them like, “Oh, well, maybe I didn’t know her as much as I did.” And you become a new person for the greater good of course.
How Criticism Is Destructive To Any Relationship
Feb 17, 2021
Today we’re going to be talking about how criticism is destructive to any relationship and I brought on my friend Dr. Jessica Higgins from the Empowered Relationship Podcast to help us discuss exactly how criticism can ruin your relationship.
I felt this was an extremely relevant topic since we’ve found that roughly half of our success stories end up breaking up again and it’s mostly due to what Dr. Higgins and I discussed on this episode of The Ex Boyfriend Recovery Podcast.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Discussing How Criticism Is Destructive To Any Relationship
Important Note:In the interview with Jessica she made mention to a special resource to help you shift your communication style so you aren’t so critical. You can find that below:
Chris Seiter: All right, today we’re going to be talking to Dr. Jessica Higgins, who was kind enough to have me on her podcast a few months ago. And she’s also the founder of a podcast called the Empowered Relationship Podcast. How are you doing today Jessica?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I’m doing great. It’s an honor to be with you.
Chris Seiter: Oh well, thank you. So we’re going to be talking about criticism, and we were talking a little bit about kind of some of the stuff that you have, like free guides and things regarding criticisms, but I already have a few questions for you regarding criticism. So when you are working with clients who you’re noticing are having issues with criticism, is it more of an issue where they don’t recognize that their behavior or the language they’re using is critical of the other person, and there’s kind of like this disconnect on wavelengths?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: It’s a great question. Most of the time that people are reaching out, they’ve gotten feedback from their significant other or perhaps somewhere else in their life, perhaps in their friends group, or their family, or even in the workforce that they tend to have this critical tendency. And so it runs into having issues or problems in their relationship, and they’re like, this is becoming problematic. So that’s when they get curious about what is it that I’m doing, because oftentimes most of the time we’re steeped in our habits and our tendencies, and sometimes we don’t see it. So it’s usually when people get enough feedback that they start getting interested in what’s going on here and what can I do differently?
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Well, as you can imagine, this is a perfect topic for many of the people listening here who are all going through breakups and determining whether they should try to get over their ex, or get their ex back, or just even trying to understand a breakup in general. And the criticism point comes up quite a bit. The significant other, their breakup, the ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend will come and say, like, I didn’t like how you said this thing to me, or this thing to me. So what are some of the things that are markers that maybe you’re setting people off to making them feel a little critical?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. Well, I just want to say that it’s super easy, especially I think in our modern day of society to fall into the critical tendency, and usually what that looks like is leading with the you statement, or something outside of you. So whether or not it’s, I mean, it’s a very common human impulse to feel pain, or to feel some issue and to look for what’s the cause, or what’s the source of that problem. And we look outside of ourselves. You left the shoes in the doorway and I tripped, right? I don’t like that.
Chris Seiter: I don’t like that either. I wouldn’t like that either. So it’d be critical there. You got me on one. Okay.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, and when we’re in relationship, we’re two different individuals that have different perspectives. We’re going to have conflict and we have different desires and needs at different times. So negotiating that ,it’s often that we’re going to address it in the other person. If you would do X, Y, and Z, I would feel better, or we would be better. So that’s usually one of the clear markers, but we’re not always conscious of that.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So I’ve been on both the receiving end of the criticism, and I’ve also been the criticizer. So I know both pretty well. And usually one of the things that we’re going to get most alert to this is problematic is when we’re going in a loop. A cycle that never seems to end. It’s a trying to address, so the person that’s being a little more and being more critical in this situation is trying to address an issue, and your partner’s not responding. It’s just a simple thing. Why don’t they just say, “Oh my bad, I’m sorry.” Or, “I didn’t know that. Now I know I’ll do better. I want to help.” Right. It feels so simple, but yet our partner’s getting defensive, and they’re saying, “No, but this, no.” And they’re rebuttaling. And then it’s like, you’re often running and it starts to escalate, or it goes nowhere though. That’s usually the point in which people are most aware that this isn’t working, and we don’t always know why, but it’s that constant cyclical loop that is problematic, creates disconnect, nobody feels great afterwards, and can lead to breakup and worse, because it whittles away at the bond over time. And people’s sense of like, you’ve got my back and you’re with me, which relates to the attachment.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Well, so when you were talking about people not really realizing that they’re doing it, my wife pointed out to me that oftentimes my daughter, who’s five years old will get frustrated, and that’s only because that every adult in her life is always ordering her around or telling her what to do, right? So is there ever a circumstance when you’re in, and I’ve witnessed personally this kind of thing happen in relationships where one party thinks that they can solve the other party’s problems all the time. And the other party kind of doesn’t want them to, but they don’t really communicate at all about that. So is there also a circumstance where there can be criticism without any kind of communication between the two parties? It’s just a lack of communication that creates the criticism.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Absolutely. I mean, let me just back up one step further. Evaluation, assessment, critical tendencies, we all need, right? It’s something that actually people in industries, high-level CEOs, attorneys, scientists, MDs, like a lot of people need to have their critical hat on in their industry, and it serves them well, and we get a lot of reinforcement. It’s a really valuable skill. When it comes to relationship, unsolicited feedback always feels like criticism, and it’s never usually welcomed, or even is felt in a positive way. So unsolicited feedback. That’s when we ask for it, we’re not looking for it, and we’re getting commentary and feedback about how well we’re doing or the evaluation of it.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So to your point, yeah, I was on a podcast actually a couple of weeks ago, and this woman was like, “I’ve got an example. It’s a small example, but help me through this.” And she was like, with her husband, she’s like, “He doesn’t do a great job eating lunch during the day, and it’s a gift of love to…” You too, you too.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, yeah. My wife is always on me about that. “You need to eat more,” and I’m just like, “I got work to do. Like, I don’t have time to eat.” So yeah. I’m there.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Laser focused.
Chris Seiter: Right.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I got it. So she essentially was like, “I shop, I meal plan. I make these nutritious, really healthy meals. It’s all packaged. It’s in the frigerator. It’s like right there for him, and he won’t eat it.” Right? And she’s like, “It drives me nuts.” She was like, “It’s a small thing.” Then as we got to talking about it more, I was like, “Well, help me. How did this get started? Was he saying, I need help? Or were you thinking this is something that he would enjoy? Does he complain about not eating?” And it turns out, I don’t think he had any issue with not eating. It was just something she thought he would love. Like, it was something she projected onto him. Like this is [inaudible 00:07:16], she was saying, I’m putting so much energy and love and nurturing into this when he doesn’t receive it. It’s like, it feels like it’s being-
Chris Seiter: Like a snub.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, it’s being-
Chris Seiter: Right.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Denying, dismissing. And I’m like, yeah, if your love is getting mold in the frigerator, that’s not a good symbolism, right? I don’t think so anyway.
Chris Seiter: No. It might be the perfect symbolism for the situation though, you know? That’s how she feels.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Exactly. So, I was encouraging her, to your point, to revisit, like how did we get to this? Was there an explicit agreement? Is this really hitting a mark for you? Or maybe it’s not, maybe there’s other ways that I can show you love and that it really does hit the mark. And then for her, right, instead of just getting mad at him, right? Is understanding the backdrop of that agreement, but also most of the time a criticism there’s pain or something underlying it. There’s a need, and we protest. Like, I don’t like this, this doesn’t work, but we do it through criticism and in its attempt to resolve or reach the other person. And unfortunately they don’t know that, because you’re talking about them, and then they’re on their heels thinking like, I didn’t do anything wrong. And then they’re more focused on defending their character, defending their behavior.
Chris Seiter: Right.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: When really you’re just saying, “Ouch, I’m hurt. Can you help me?” And they don’t know that because they’re trying to defend against the criticism.
Chris Seiter: Well, it’s all of the underlying things, especially in that circumstance where she’s feeling like, “Well, why won’t he eat this? I’m doing all this work.” And he’s maybe just thinking like, “Well, why should I have to eat it? I’m set in my ways.” When ultimately it’s the underlying thing, which is I want you to acknowledge how much work I put into loving you and doing these things.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Exactly.
Chris Seiter: Do you think that really revolves around, like in that specific circumstance, and I’m sorry to kind of pick on the podcast interview that you did, but in that specific circumstance, do you think that kind of has some roots in the five languages of love? How like some people like receiving gifts.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, absolutely.
Chris Seiter: Or acts of service. Do you think that maybe there was a disconnect there? And I realized not all communication needs to be verbal, right? It can sometimes be nonverbal or even, I guess, in a weird way, giving a gift to someone or doing an act for someone there’s like something attached to that. You know what I’m saying?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Absolutely. And I do think that when we experience the opposite of our love language… So I have a couple, a married couple, they have like three kids, super successful, like great couple. And she’s had an injury in the last year and then also lost her mother. So she’s gone through a really difficult time. [crosstalk 00:10:15].
Chris Seiter: Lots of emotional turmoil.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. And so part of the way that she’s managed that is she’s wanted to kind of go to their room and just kind of unplug for a little while and-
Chris Seiter: Be alone.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Be alone, and also not burden her family. Like not being like a negative source.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So she doesn’t want to be… Okay. Sorry, sorry. This is fascinating stuff.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So her need to kind of take care of herself and also worried about bringing the family kind of energy down. And then for him, his love language being quality time, it hurts more where he says she sequesters herself, and it’s painful for him when she pulls away. So it typically, like one of my top love languages is words of affirmation. So if my husband is a little grumpy and has a little bit of a gruff tone, it hurts probably more for me than it would for someone who their love language is acts of service or something.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Well now I know exactly how to get on your good side. Just compliment you.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So with regards to the criticism, though, in that specific circumstance, it seems to me like the person, the act of service is their way of kind of communicating. And the criticism can be like the snub of not even acknowledging it. So criticism can be, I guess that’s a perfect example of where you have one party that’s essentially not saying anything and they’re kind of being a little bit of avoidant towards the circumstance, the other person’s real kind of anxious. Like you need to respond to that. So sometimes criticism can happen where there’s no language at all. No communication whatsoever.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah. I’ll give you an example, this came out of my group yesterday and the member was talking about, I often will pick up my phone as a way to kind of manage some of the anxiety I sometimes feel. Just in a lull of a moment and her partner’s like on her case about her being on her phone and-
Chris Seiter: Oh she’s not actually like looking or researching the latest political news. She’s just sort of picking it up because it feels safe?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: No, no, no. She’s definitely on apps. She’s deleted some of the social media, but she’s looking at news, but she’s saying, “If I’m being really honest, I’m picking up my phone in a space where there’s a lull.” Or there’s a little bit of some downtime where her significant other is like, “Hey! Like, hi!” Like wanting some attention.
Chris Seiter: Right.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Okay, one of the things is it’s difficult to do, but encouraging him to say whether or not it’s making a joke of like technoference, or phubbing, or whatever the term is, and making a joke of it or being really revealing and say, “I’d love some quality time with you,” or, “I would love to go for a walk. Do you want to go for a walk?” Like actually ask, right? So that’s one of the key distinguishers around switching criticism. It takes some mindfulness and some awareness, but slowing down to tune in around what is it that I’m wanting? Right?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I can criticize my partners looking at their phone. I feel ignored. I don’t know what they’re looking at. I don’t know where they are, and I feel either insulted, or hurt, or whatever. Like again, human impulse would be, that’s a problem, I want to address that problem, and we can resolve that problem. Will you please put down your phone? Or I don’t like it when you’re on your phone, or why are you on your phone so much, or who you talking to? Right? None of those are like crazy over criticism, but it’s still in the ballpark of you. Something going on with you, rather than saying, “I miss you. I haven’t seen you all day, can we sit down and chat?” Or, “I would love some conversation or quality time.” So turning the criticism into a request and it’s a much more difficult thing to do then just saying it.
Chris Seiter: Well, so what’s interesting is when you original, so I think I had asked you where you had said like, “Hey, I think maybe this topic would be good for your audience.” I was thinking at it from a perspective of, okay, these people are going through a breakup. Well, maybe they would want to understand why they went through a breakup, but one thing I neglected to tell you, and I actually think this is a better fit for people, is we have found, for the people who go through our program and determine like, yeah, we want to try to get our exes back. We’re not really into getting over the ex, even though the two are kind of interconnected interestingly enough, but don’t tell them that.
Chris Seiter: Maybe 60 or 70% of the people who get back together, break up again. And I’m imagining a lot of it is due to things that they aren’t perceiving are problems like this. Like, it may seem like a small slight to be on your phone too much, or the moldy refrigerator food, but that stuff can add up. Especially if the behavior doesn’t change. So your suggestion of maybe improving that, is turning criticism into kind of a request, which I always kind of look at, just dumb it down a little bit, because I need everything dumbed down for me. You just need to be like super blunt with what you’re wanting or asking for, but I imagine people are afraid of being blunt, because they’re afraid of maybe how they’re going to be perceived as needy. Do you experience any kind of worries and fears like that? Because I imagine what is the number one thing that prevents people from just telling the other person what they want? I’m just kind of curious to get your take on it.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes! Well, there’s a few things at play here and this does relate to some of our early upbringing and experiences. But before I go there, I would add in addition to being super forthright, right? There is something around people saying, “I’m just being authentic. I’m super pissed at you.” Or, you know what I mean? Like they’re feeling their emotion and they’re just like, I’m going to tell you authentically.
Chris Seiter: Maybe that’s too much.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, it’s not so much that, but what I guess I would encourage, and why it’s difficult is the underbelly. Is the deeper layer that is not visible on first blank, it’s almost beneath the field of awareness or consciousness, because we often suppress our vulnerability, our fear, our sense of inadequacy, or fear of abandonment, fear of not being good enough. All of these like deep, deep feelings, and so in these small interactions, right? You didn’t take out the trash when you said you were going to take out the trash, right? Or you didn’t do acts when you said you were going to. And there can be so much emotion, and it’s like, okay, it’s the trash. But often if I look a little deeper, Oh, I’m afraid you don’t care about me when you don’t say you are going to do what you’re going to do, or you don’t do what you said you were going to do. So I would add to a little bit being more forthright or blunt, the excavating to unpack, to get to the deeper core, and then what’s so, so tricky is the vulnerability, right? We think I-
Chris Seiter: Being about to communicate that.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes.
Chris Seiter: So let’s use that example.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes.
Chris Seiter: You have someone who is really acting the way they’re acting because they’re afraid that the other person doesn’t care about them. Now imagine the wall that would prevent them from just simply telling like I’m worried, or being honest about like, because you don’t do X I’m worried, and I know it’s an irrational worry that you don’t care about me. They would probably be thinking what would prevent them from saying that maybe is the fact that I don’t want this other person to think I’m that desperate, or I’m that-
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Fragile, needy. Yeah, for sure.
Chris Seiter: Or even like, maybe they’re going to think like, Oh, well maybe by saying this to them, that will make it happen. You know? So it’s kind of an irrational fear, but in some cases they believe it’s rational potentially.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Sure.
Chris Seiter: So I don’t know. Those are just my thoughts on it, but I’m kind of curious, you think excavating, going that deep, and being that fragile is really what you need to do.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, not necessarily fragile, right? Like I’m not at all recommending we go out into the street, metaphorically naked and like exposing-
Chris Seiter: Are you sure? I mean, that seems like… That seems like the coronavirus would be the perfect time to do that. No, I’m just kidding. Do not do that people listening. Please don’t do that.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: That was a joke.
Chris Seiter: That was a joke.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well research shows when we are in those secondary emotions, frustration, annoyance, criticism, anger, that pushes people away. But when we access the primary emotion, it draws people close. So I will say from my own experience, when I have accessed the underbelly of whatever it is that I’m feeling that feels super raw and like the very thing I don’t want to say to my husband-
Chris Seiter: Maybe that’s a good test. Like the one thing that you don’t want to say is what… Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Exactly, which feels like the most unlovable, shameful, unattractive, unlovable, all of that. That that’s often the thing that is vulnerable, that when they hear that our humanity. We’re wired up to respond to each other, right? The facial expressions, the tone of voice, and when we access that reveal, and again, building trust, like in the early stages of relationship, I’m not recommending we expose and bare our whole everything, but incrementally, we can take those risks of exposing, and being vulnerable with emotional balance. And when, usually, when somebody feels that they come close. It draws them closer.
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So I have an example just-
Chris Seiter: I would love that.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes!
Chris Seiter: I love that.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: We have feel it.
Chris Seiter: I have, right. Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Go ahead. Go ahead.
Chris Seiter: All right. So I got two examples. The first one is actually not a perfect example, but I think a really great way of illustrating this concept. Have you ever seen that movie 500 Days of Summer? It’s got like Joseph Gordon Levitt in it.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I don’t remember [inaudible 00:21:06].
Chris Seiter: It’s an old movie, but there’s this moment in the movie that, I don’t know why it always stuck with me, but I think it’s because of his accessing that really raw feeling. But it’s about this guy, he’s kind of like reliving his breakup. He’s trying to win his girlfriend back. And it’s not told linearly, it’s told like out of order. So you kind of get into the background of what the relationship was like at the beginning versus at the end. But there’s this moment in the middle where, she’s always kind of keeping him at a distance, but he doesn’t feel that close to her until she starts telling him things that she’s never told anyone before. And that kind of is that bonding experience.
Chris Seiter: And the other personal example happened a few days ago. My wife, a couple of months ago got a puppy for my daughter’s birthday, which is great. I was resistant to it, because I was like, she’s only five. I don’t know how that’s going to work out, but it turned out to be great. He’s like this little toy poodle thing, which I’ve never had a toy poodle before, but he’s got a lot of problems. So we got him from a breeder and everything, but he’s got a lot of problems. We’ve taken him to the vet maybe 15 times. Right.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wow.
Chris Seiter: So he keeps throwing up, then the other day I came downstairs to get a water and he had blood in his poop. Right. And so my I go upstairs and my wife fell asleep putting my daughter to bed. So I just text her and kind of explained the situation to her. And so then I go to bed and she ends up waking up in the middle of the night to use the restroom. And she’s like, Oh, I fell asleep here. So she comes to bed. And the second she sees that text message she’s awake. She can not fall asleep anymore. And I’m like kind of in and out. And she kind of wakes me up and starts to ask me about it, and one of the comments she said threw me off so much. I was like, why would you ever think that? But talking to you, it made me realize, Oh, she’s just entering into that vulnerable worry that she has.
Chris Seiter: So she was literally worried that I was going to try to send the dog back to the breeder for all the problems. And I was like, what are you talking about? This is our dog. I would never do that. But she’s accessing that vulnerable, which I guess is kind of a powerful thing because she feels comfortable enough to do that with me. But just talking to you, just kind of made the light bulb go off. So yeah, it does bring people closer together.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. And this is super tricky when we’re in relationship when there’s been conflict, or nobody’s really going to the vulnerable place. And therefore it’s, we want this love, and we want to feel close, and we’re kind of reaching, but we’re also having like one hand protecting ourselves and kind of holding our clock cards a little closer. It’s like, who’s going to go first and really reveal. And so it’s hard to both protect and create intimacy. They’re different mechanisms. One is to kind of conceal and protect, and the other is to really open, and reveal. So it is difficult to straddle and that’s why safety is really important, and building trust, and incrementally testing. Not so much testing, but practicing so that you get more comfort, and skill, and reciprocity that your partner’s able to respond to you. Right? And then once you build on that, then you have a more solid, secure relationship where you can kind of in these, in the moment, be able to say, I saw your text, I was worried you want to give the dog back? You know what I mean? And you’re like what?
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s kind of interesting a lot of people when I got married to my wife, they were like, “Do you feel any different?” Because a lot of people say like, Oh, it doesn’t feel any different. But for me it did. Only because I felt like, I don’t know, it bonded us closer together. It was like, Oh, we’re real. We’re legal. You know?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Verified.
Chris Seiter: So I actually noticed. Right. Verified. I noticed it was a lot easier for me to open up and for her to open up about some of those insecurities that you’re playing close to the heart, you know? And in the end, it’s just, it’s a great decision if you have someone to trust that you can do that with, because it does bond you closer together, but we’re dealing with people who do not have those types of relationships.
Chris Seiter: So a lot of times, and in the circumstance I’m bringing up here, it’s like, okay, they went through a breakup, then they got back together. And we’re finding a lot of difficulty in keeping that relationship going. A lot of times it’d be kind of an on again, off again situation. Or the things that caused the breakup in the first place haven’t been corrected or addressed. And then the ex or the person who took the ex back is like, “Oh yeah, I didn’t like this. I forgot about that with time.” And I imagine a lot of the solution is kind of going to that raw place and building up kind of a foundation of trust that you can actually have those type of conversations.
Chris Seiter: So the one thing I would say is, I really like what you say about there’s this sort of… You’re playing chicken, who’s going to open up first.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: That’s the best way I can sort of… Do you have maybe some strategies for people on how… Because my theory would always be, I think you need to kind of lead by example. I think you need to go there first. And then that shows the other person that wow, they opened up to me, and then they’ll kind of sometimes reciprocate in turn, but I’m curious if you have any tricks up your sleeve to get people sort of communicate on that level.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I do. There’s a few things I want to say first, but in addition, well, let me just acknowledge that I do agree with you at the end of the day, because we really only can stay in our lane, and we can only be really responsible for us. And so if we’re trying to control our partner, or we’re reacting to something they did, and we’re trying to get them to see the error of their ways in various forms. Typically that’s not going to go well, right? Hearkening back to people don’t respond well to unsolicited feedback.
Chris Seiter: To criticism. Right.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: To criticism period. So, we can kind of go around the block with that a few times and recognize, okay, that doesn’t work. So I do like practicing and walking the walk, because then you are, your conscious is clean, right? Like a lot of people who do go through a breakup, they’re like, what if? And had I done this? Or what could have been different? And I do believe when one person shifts, it shifts the dynamic. You can no longer do the old dynamic. Right?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So similarly to the chicken, we can also escalate by the very opposite, right? Reacting and hoping. It’s just really interesting thing we do as humans. It’s almost like we react and we’re like, I’m showing you that I’m hurt. Or I’m showing you that I am upset. Right? Respond to me with softness or get that I’m hurting, but they’re not saying, “Ouch, I’m hurt.”
Chris Seiter: Right. No, they don’t.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: They’re saying, “You’re such a jerk.”
Chris Seiter: They’re basically saying you should know me well enough to understand how to handle me, but the problem is they don’t. Especially if you don’t tell them.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. And so to further complicate this, which is really kind of more psychological, but we all have an early imprint in understanding how relationships work. So everybody from their early upbringing and childhood get imprinted on a model of how relationship works. What we can expect, how people are going to respond to us, and how we feel in our body and emotionally. All of this, it’s all happening. Even without our effort. And so a lot of the times I find, Chris, that when people criticize, they grew up in families where emotions were seen as weak, or that you’re to not show that, right? Go to your room with that. Or highly intellectual, or they’d been criticized, or it’s a lot of evaluation, right? Like there’s just so many things that they’re being compared by, and that’s where success and accolades and validation and a sense of self-worth come from either performance, or having it all dialed in, or being able to compose yourself and suck it up. All of these things.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So they haven’t known the safety of that emotional attunement of like, Oh, you’re hurting. And then that responsiveness of like, you’re hurting and I’m here for you. I’m going to offer comfort and I’m going to here to help. They haven’t known that. So if you have however many, let’s say 18 years of that type of dynamic, where you’re to kind of be with yourself, with your emotions or suppress them or stuff them, they have no value. They’re going to make you weak, and all of these things. You get into relationship, and it pulls at your heart, and it’s emotional. We want to feel that bondedness, and we want to feel that closeness. We don’t perhaps have the approach or the language to respond in this reciprocal safe way. Right. We just almost, it’s like, we go to the head, that’s the safe place, and then we speak from the intellect and the intellect is going to critique, measure, evaluate, assess. And so it’s hard for your partner to decode that.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Yeah. So, Jessica.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes.
Chris Seiter: I don’t want to take up much of your time here.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Because I want to keep going, but you told me you have like, what was it? Like a one o’clock or two o’clock? So you told me, before we started, that you have like a special guide for people on criticism, like a special resource that they can use. Do you want to tell people listening about that?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, sure. I mean, this does kind of answer your question around what are some tips that can help people as they’re contemplating, is there an approach that’s more effective in turning to my partner when I have an issue with something, instead of calling it out? I have like 10 million examples I could share with you.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: But if you’re asking me about the guide, the guide is a side-by-side comparison, it’s a chart. There’s an intro and questions to prompt and work with, but essentially it’s giving some real concrete examples, language of what a common tendency to maybe call it out, and be a little more critical is like. And I think we can all recognize, sure I do that or have done that.
Chris Seiter: Right.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And then a real constructive, what would be turning that criticism or that call-out into a request? And more accessing the vulnerability and what the need is. So these are examples, and I think there’s like, I mean, there’s like 22 or something. So it really helps people kind of get a real sense of a lot of examples of what this looks like in practice.
Chris Seiter: So basically she’s going to give the link to me, because I am going to devour it and use it. But also if you’re watching this on YouTube, all you’ll have to do is just look in the description below, and I’ll put a link there to it. And if you’re listening to this on a podcast, driving home from work or something, just come to our website and in the show notes of this episode, I’ll link to it as well. So you’ll have kind of double, double whammy way to get it.
Chris Seiter: Also, Jessica has a website which you can find at drjessicahiggins.com, where you can sign up to work with her, to listen to her podcast, you can purchase one of her courses. I see courses here, though we didn’t talk much about those. Do you want to talk about some of the courses?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I have a shifting criticism course. Yes, which is like packed with real like techniques, research, experiences to help people understand. Many of the questions are like, why do I criticize? Why is it so hard to stop? What can I do? And how do I do this differently? And really giving people the scaffolding for how to really get the iteration to shift some of those habits, because we get a little bit of a like relief when we’re feeling that pain and then we criticize, it almost is like a little bit of letting out steam, but it’s the short game. Right? We let out steam, but then our partner’s not responding to us, so we don’t really feel heard. It doesn’t really resolve the issue, and our partners on their heels and perhaps distancing from us or getting defensive. So all of those things in the long term are problematic.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So in the long game, it’s really helping people feel better equipped around kind of switching some of these tendencies. And it’s not to throw out that critical thinking skill entirely. It’s just to add another skill to compliment. So in relationship, you can feel that your partner will respond to you because ultimately, we want to feel seen and heard. If someone’s upset, they want to say, “Ouch, this hurt,” or, “This is what was hard for me.” And have your partner say, “Oh my goodness, I hear you. That makes perfect sense. I care. I hurt that you hurt, and I want to help.” Right?
Chris Seiter: Right. So if you want the course, or you want to listen to her podcast or anything, her website is drjessicahiggins.com. Look at me, I’m pimping out your website.
Chris Seiter: You also briefly talked to me about these groups that you were running. And you said you were having some success with that. Do you want to tell people listening maybe how they can get access to this group to work with you?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah. So on the work with me page, I have different things. Like I have a strategy session, and then I have group coaching, and right now I’m in the middle of an eight week session. And I haven’t posted, I don’t know if my next group is going to be for couples or for individuals, but the current group is helping individuals that notice some insecure tendencies, or reactivity. Have a difficult time communicating really from this emotionally balanced place, where their partner will respond to them. So it’s really helping an individual negotiate some of this intensity around the emotions, and how to really engage in patterns that are effective essentially.
Chris Seiter: Right. Well, so anyone listening, I actually think that would be a good course. So I don’t know, have you heard of the no contact rule?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: You mentioned that. I like that, yeah.
Chris Seiter: We’re kind of big on this concept of the no contact rule after a breakup, and there’s different of what you should do in different timeframes based on things that we’ve studied, but one of the things that I’m making kind of a shift too, because I noticed after I interviewed a lot of our success stories to figure out like, hey, what are they doing that’s working? A lot of them got to this point where they just like plain outgrew their ex. They were just like, I don’t know if I want them back anymore, which is the key of what they should be doing during no contact. But a lot of it, when you look at a psychologic, trying to understand it through psychology, we learn that most of those people are anxious attachment styles, and they’re making the shift or evolving that attachment style to be a little bit more secure. So I actually think some of the scaffolding that she’s talking about is perfect for those of you who are going through our course, for example, and going through a no contact rule, and just like trying to figure out how do I act more secure? How do I get rid of some of these anxious tendencies? I think Jessica’s course is perfect. Or the coaching thing though, it seems to be a pretty elite group. So it’s not like it’s… It’s not like you can…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: It’s on a timeframe basically.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, yeah.
Chris Seiter: So if you’re listening to this two years from now, check it out. So you can get in on it.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you, I appreciate that. I mean, it is very much referencing a lot of the emotionally focused therapeutic techniques, which is really addressing the attachment tendencies that might be a little bit more insecure, and so really helping people. And then also referencing some of John Gottman’s research around the soft startup, and all of that too.
Chris Seiter: He’s the best. Yeah. We reference some of his stuff as well.
Chris Seiter: Thanks for coming on Jessica. Seriously. It was a pleasure to have you.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Thank you for having me. I know, I know. I think last time when we spoke, it was like, you get two curious people together, and it’s like, there’s never a good stop .
Chris Seiter: I keep looking at the time being like, did you have to schedule something after it? Because I could have kept going, but again, thanks for coming on.
Emotionally Unavailable Men Vs. Narcissistic Men
Jan 07, 2021
A few days ago I had the opportunity of interviewing Antia Boyd who studied psychology from U.C. Berkley. One of the big things that I’ve noticed a lot of in my coaching sessions is a failure to properly understand the difference between an ex who is emotionally unavailable versus one who is just straight up narcissistic through their attachment style.
Luckily, Antia was kind enough to come on to the podcast and answer this exact question for me.
She was even kind enough to give my audience (you guys) a free gift in the form of a quiz.
How To Tell The Difference Between An Emotionally Unavailable Man And A Narcissistic One
Chris Seiter: Okay. So today, we have Antia Boyd coming back to be interviewed who I think maybe one of my favorite interviews I’ve ever done. You could always just tell organically when you’re clicking with someone and their message, and that was something I definitely felt with you. And if you don’t know, Antia and her husband, I should say, Brody, are basically the masterminds behind Magnetize Your Man. And if you can’t see, if you’re watching this on YouTube, she’s literally got this Magnetize Your Man book that I was given a hard time about before we started recording. But how are you doing, Antia?
Antia Boyd: I’m so good. How’s it going over there, Chris?
Chris Seiter: I’m hanging in there. You know how it is. So Antia, she’s actually the one who suggested what we talk about because I’m always kind of unprepared and being like, “Oh, what should we talk about?” So she actually had a really great suggestion, which is talking about narcissism versus unavailability. And she had something really interesting to say because we were talking last week. I’m just sort of shooting stuff back and forth. And you had something that kind of struck me as really interesting because you said a lot of times, women who you coach will come in thinking that they have a narcissist guy that they’re in love with, but that’s not true. They’re just unavailable. So I’m kind of curious, how do you make that determination?”
Antia Boyd: Yeah. So let’s actually backtrack because-
Chris Seiter: Okay, backtrack. Backtrack.
Antia Boyd: … the reason I got into narcissism is because I grew up in a household of a narcissistic mother. So right away, I experienced the emotional availability, but also the distortion that comes with the narcissism, right? And the reason why I’m so passionate about talking about this is because it leaves women with so much self-doubt and with so much questioning themselves, with decreasing internal as well as external confidence because narcissists are really breaking down your sense of self and your self-worth systematically. But I also studied attachment style theory at UC Berkeley because I was struggling my whole life as you can imagine.
Antia Boyd: So then after a while, I realized when I started coaching, and of course, I met my men and all that in the process, but when I started coaching, there was always some such quick labeling, right? It would always be like, “God, he’s such a narcissist.” And I’m like, “Well, let’s look at that.” So women are so quick, right? And you say so fed up. They were like texting him and he’s not responding or he ghosted her. And then we go just to the most extreme internal representation that we could possibly find, right? But you’re not necessarily being served with that because for one, now you’re actually projecting onto someone much stronger distortions than they actually have. Right? So you can’t really see the truth. And now, you’re also reacting from a much more reactive, explosive place almost that responds to narcissism because your mom was a narcissist, or your dad was a narcissist, right? Or your ex-husband was a narcissist. So that’s usually what happens.
Antia Boyd: And I think this is a huge distinction here because… And we would go into all of that, how that all comes together. But here’s the thing. For example, I have a fearful avoidant attachment style or anxious-avoidant or whatever you want to call it, which means I have an anxious part inside of me and also have an avoidant part inside of me. Now, it doesn’t necessarily make me a narcissist. No. Can it be correlation? Yes. Right? But what it actually means is from that point on, you can move someone to secure attachment, right? So in other words, that sense of well-being inside of yourself, that sense that you can rely, that relationships and connections are safe, that intimacy is safe, right? Because that’s actually one of the markers of a secure attachment style, right?
Antia Boyd: They actually say like, “Oh, I can rely on relationships.” Right? “I can rest in relationships.” They’re secure. Versus the avoidant or the anxious. They’re always looking at, “It’s not secure. It’s not a foundation.” I still need to kind of look out for myself in case it doesn’t work out, right? So there’s always a level of aggravation and anxiety.
Chris Seiter: So you said a lot of really interesting things, but there’s two things that really first come to mind. The first one is really this concept of you say you’ll be on the phone with your clients and there’s this immediately labeling of a narcissist like, “Oh, he’s not texting me. He’s a narcissist. I can’t believe it.” Do you feel like that sort of immediate labeling is a reflection of how our society is now with regards to… I’ve just noticed with my clients, there’s always this need for instant results. And when they don’t get those instant results, they almost panic or start labeling or start just saying untrue things. Have you noticed any kind of unrealistic expectations with regards to some of the people that you’re coaching and that being one of the reasons that they’re labeling a narcissist or an unavailable person a narcissist?
Antia Boyd: Yeah, absolutely. So one reason is because they resist their own inner narcissist inside of themselves. I actually wrote a blog about it and I got so-
Chris Seiter: Oh, that’s interesting. That’s kind of a yang-yin philosophy type or psychology. So you’re saying you wrote that blog post. You got a lot of backlash for it.
Antia Boyd: Oh, yeah. People are like, “You don’t even know what a narcissist is. You didn’t grow up in a toxic…” I’m like, “Actually, I did.”
Chris Seiter: Yang would just say like, “Oh, that’s integrating the shadow.”
Antia Boyd: Yes, that’s right. That’s right.
Chris Seiter: You just need to accept that you do have a narcissistic aspect to your… You’re capable of it.
Antia Boyd: Yeah, exactly.
Chris Seiter: So you’re saying you got a whole bunch of backlash after this article?
Antia Boyd: Yeah. Because, of course, the women who liked to kind of collapse more into the victim mentality, right? They were abused. This is what is narcissistic abuse. Right? And then they’re like, “Now you’re telling me I’m a narcissist.” That’s too much, right? Because they lived into the identity of this abuse. And then they went to the recovery group. And so there is sort of this way of relating to themselves, right? And out of the sun, they’re saying, “Well, wait a minute, I am in control. I’m actually empowered. I actually have that part inside of myself that could inflict manipulation that’s based on my own agenda on to the other person? No, no. I can’t. No. That’s not. That’s unthinkable, right?”
Antia Boyd: It brings up so much shame and so much embarrassment that it causes an immediate shame shield. So at the end of the day, all the backlash I got was all the shame shield. It was just collective shame shields, most of the attack, and I loved it. I love when people unsubscribe or when they’re not my friend anymore because I know I hit a nerve. And what you do over here is none of my business. You know what I mean?
Chris Seiter: What’s really interesting about that concept of hitting the nerve and you kind of loving it, it’s almost like you’ve rewired the way you look at that. I was watching this video which was unrelated to psychology, it was more business related for business. And it was this guy who was talking about the differences between your rabid fans versus your haters, right? And usually, you can’t say anything worth saying unless you offend someone. So a lot of times, I think people come into any avenue of life so worried about offending other people. And there’s different levels to it, but the fact that you’re secure enough, you’re a really big preacher of the secure attachment style. That’s really the key to a lot of what you’re teaching. You’re just sort of preaching or you’re practicing what you’re preaching, especially when they get the backlash. But you also think that one of the reasons that you’re getting that backlash from saying like, “Hey, you do also have this narcissistic side,” or “You’re at least capable of having a narcissistic side,” do you think one of the reasons is because people are afraid to take ownership of that?
Antia Boyd: I very much think so. I mean, when my mom was… So narcissists, that’s how you know, they gaslight, right? Of course. So my mom projected onto me who she is. So she would say, “You are so selfish.” And so, of course, that was my biggest trigger. Right? So then, of course, if I would have read a blog that like, “No, you are actually selfish and you are actually narcissist,” I’m like, “No, that’s my biggest trigger. That’s how I’m being manipulated. That’s how I’m being constrained. Right? That’s how I lose my sovereignty.”
Antia Boyd: So then, of course, you go into reaction. But I will tell you, Chris, that actually, what set me free and how I was able to actually break free from my mom sort of owning me just for that word being selfish was actually owning it and actually saying, “Yeah, I can be narcissistic, or I can be selfish, or I have narcissistic distortions inside of myself,” which by the way, you do if you have narcissistic parents, you will have necessity distortions because of the mirror neurons. There’s just no way around it. Right? And it’s really empowering, though, with that awareness to actually say, “Yes, I have that inside of myself.” Right? Because from that moment on, my mom didn’t have that hold, that grip on me anymore. And I was free. I was finally actually being able to be all of who I am. I don’t have to hide myself anymore or be quiet when I actually want to see something because I’m afraid to come off as selfish or as arrogant. That’s another good word, right?
Antia Boyd: Yeah, it’s really powerful. I always tell my women, the only way through healing, it is really the way through it. Right? You can’t heal it sort of from the outside or if you go around it or over it. You know what I mean? I was like, “No, you can’t go through it.” Right? And you really got to own what you judged your parents the most for or your ex-husband because I know you have a lot of people who want their ex back, right?
Chris Seiter: Yeah. So for us, it’s like two camps. You have the people who want desperately to get their ex back and people who want desperately just to move on. But both are dealing with breakups. And I think also, when you look at the people who are listening to my podcast or watching the YouTube videos on my channel, a lot of them are going through breakups. And sometimes, I think there’s like how we’re talking about taking ownership. I think sometimes, the women that I talk to take too much ownership. They don’t allow themselves to realize, “My ex should take ownership of what they did.” So for you, where do you feel like that line is between being realistic and not realistic about that?
Antia Boyd: Yeah. I can actually relate to that because I was the kind of child that would stand in the middle of the living room and my parents would just yell at me. And I would just be like, “Yes, it’s all my fault, all my fault, all my fault,” right? So these are the people who would just take on all the responsibility. They’re overly responsible. I also call them the compensated murderers. Right? Or on the other side, are the ones that are blaming. Those are usually the ones that respond with shame shield off attack. Right? Like, “It’s all your fault.” So yeah. So we kind of want to see… What I was telling my women is so when they come in, I can already tell if they’re more blaming or if they’re more taking, or self-blaming, right? So if they’re more self-blaming, will always move towards the balance.
Antia Boyd: So for the women who would be already like to take the responsibility, I would actually say, “Hey, it takes two to tango. You know what I mean? Yes, you make certain interpretations and you have belief systems and things like that. But you also have to say that he has accountability, right?” So those women don’t hold other people accountable because they’re so afraid of the repercussions of it. Or maybe they were also trained that other people are being put on a pedestal and they are not. Right? So that would be an example of a narcissist child, right? A child from a narcissist. You could either be the black sheep as a child of the narcissist or you could be the golden child, right? That basically is the extension of the parent, right? Like, “Oh, my daughter, she won the competition because she’s my daughter.” Right? But either way-
Chris Seiter: That sounds a lot like Donald Trump, doesn’t it? He always holds his daughter, Ivanka, up as the golden child but let’s not get political here.
Antia Boyd: Right, right. But the point is like… So it’s like this golden child or you have the black sheet, right? So you basically didn’t pay attention to me and so you’re being [crosstalk 00:13:23].
Chris Seiter: So you’re talking about it from the parental perspective right now?
Antia Boyd: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Does that also kind of evolve into maybe a relationship? How does that come into the relationship aspect? Because I feel like the golden child versus the black sheep, I feel like you need two children to have that. Or can it be in one distinct personality? Like one moment, this one person can do nothing wrong. And the next moment, they’re doing everything wrong. And they just flip flop between those two… Can that also happen with one singular personality?
Antia Boyd: I mean, I’ve seen that, right? So when we actually look at the studies, they actually do distinguish that there’s two different kinds of people because think about it. One is the golden child. So she is getting invested in and she gets all the attention. But she doesn’t have the independence. So she doesn’t have the choice. It’s just because she’s being chosen. Those are the homecoming queens and the child actresses and all of that. Right? Moms are living vicariously through them. But when you’re a black sheep, you’re really being ostracized. It’s like all your fault, right? Whatever goes wrong… It’s basically saying all the shadows are being projected onto you. For the golden child, it’s the opposite. It’s all delight, or whatever the mom had for herself is being projected onto you. Right? Can you experience both? Yes, I guess you could in bipolar situations and borderline personality situations for sure. I mean, that would extend way… Go beyond the scope of this and everything. Right?
Chris Seiter: Right, right.
Antia Boyd: Yeah. But in general, so my experience has been that you’re either in one of the two camps. So you’re either being praised or it’s like always your fault, you’re always doing something wrong. The parent always has to get the attention, right? So if the parent doesn’t get the attention, they will take many punitive measurements to get the attention. To move the attention away from you, which is basically… And this is how it reflects in a relationship systematically breaking down the self-worth, right? Making those stabby little comments, right? Like, “Oh, you sure you look good in this dress?” Or, “Oh, you could…” It’s sort of like a compliment, but it’s kind of backhanded. That’s usually how it starts. And I see that so often with my women when they sent me screenshots and I’m like, “Oh, look at that. He’s already starting to test you.”
Chris Seiter: So what’s interesting about the screen… So you’re saying like some of the coaching people that sign up for coaching with you, they’ll send you screenshots of a backhanded compliment that this guy is using.
Antia Boyd: Yeah, exactly.
Chris Seiter: What’s interesting is years ago, I read this book, it’s called The Game, I think, by Neil Strauss. And it’s all about this guy who cannot get a girl. It’s a true story. He’s a writer for Rolling Stone. It’s all about this guy who cannot get a girlfriend. I mean, he’s the most pathetic guy you can imagine. And he does this expose on underground pickup artists, these guys who just go from club to club picking up girl to girl who have systematically designed a way to get a girlfriend that night and sleep with the girl that night, which is a very unhealthy behavior. I’m not condoning it.
Chris Seiter: What’s interesting is in there, the “pickup artists” talk about using backhanded compliments and somehow at working to attract. Do you feel like the reason that that concept maybe works is because the women they’re using it on have narcissistic parents who have projected that sort of thing onto them? And so that’s almost what works on them. I’m just kind of curious to get your take on that because the backhanded compliments, sometimes is what… You’re on YouTube with me, right? You’ll see these pickup artists like YouTube videos come in and they’re always recommending the backhanded compliments and things like that. What’s going on there?
Antia Boyd: It’s interesting because I used to watch… I mean, my husband actually started with pickup too [inaudible 00:17:33].
Chris Seiter: Right, right. I’m not going to lie. When I was early 20s, I was like, “What are they recommending? How can I do it?”
Antia Boyd: How do you do that? And I love-
Chris Seiter: Nothing I tried worked, of course. It was just me being me that worked, but yeah.
Antia Boyd: Exactly, exactly. Right? But I watched this show, it was called the pickup artist and I was sort of the same… It’s the same idea. Maybe it’s the show version of The Game, right? It sounds like it.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. It’s got that guy, wears the peacock hat or whatever.
Antia Boyd: Yeah. What’s his name? Like Marshmallows and I don’t know. That’s a DJ.
Chris Seiter: Mystery, I think, is-
Antia Boyd: Mystery.
Chris Seiter: They all have their little code names as they go… It’s actually amusing to see how it works.
Antia Boyd: Yeah. It’s interesting. It’s almost like being an actor sort off but you [crosstalk 00:18:22]. But what I found who they were seeking out when I was looking at which women, that profile, they had more of an insecure disposition. So they could have had an anxious attachment style, which is approval seeking. So they would seek definitely women who were more at their focus. Now, it doesn’t necessarily have to come from narcissistic parents, not necessarily, because like we said before, if you listen to my other interview that I did with Chris, that when you have an anxious attachment style, that comes from inconsistent response off the primary caregiver. So all that was needed was your mom not responding all the time. So maybe she was busy. Maybe she was working full-time. Or maybe she wasn’t emotionally… She was kind of in and out. Right? But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a narcissist and that’s why I’m so excited to talk about this is because also understanding where the unavailable-
Chris Seiter: Unavailable. Right, right.
Antia Boyd: … is coming from. That’s actually coming from no response, right? As a matter of fact, when we watch the Strange situation study by Mary Ainsworth and you can actually all… You can Google all of that. It’s all on YouTube. Right? But when we watch that and we saw toddlers between 12 to 24 months or 18 to 24 months, how they were responding with-
Chris Seiter: Is that the study where they have the mom with kids, they’ll go in and they won’t say anything to see if the baby cries?
Antia Boyd: Yeah. So the mom leaves. And then they also study the response of the infant at the mom’s return.
Chris Seiter: And that tells you what kind of attachment style they have.
Antia Boyd: That’s right. That’s right.
Chris Seiter: I think it was the fearful attachment was the weirdest one where the child had no response at all when they left.
Antia Boyd: The avoidant one, yeah. The avoidant one would be like so mom would return and this child demeanor stayed unchanged. Right?
Chris Seiter: Right. That’s it. Yeah.
Antia Boyd: Versus the secure would easily be soothed, right? So they may cry for a second, and then they easily sooth moms back, right? And the anxious is doing something very interesting where they cry and they kind of hold the mom, but they also push away. So it’s kind of love me, stay away. And that’s kind of an inconsistency. Right? You give me the response-
Chris Seiter: It’s just amazing. You can tell that early. I wonder if they’ve gotten it down to a science to figure out exactly how early these attachments form.
Antia Boyd: Yeah. Now we’re saying minus six months. So after the first trimester, parents, you know what I mean? If you’re watching this, I don’t know. I know you want to get your ex back, but maybe you’re pregnant at the same time [inaudible 00:21:06].
Chris Seiter: Oh, we have had those situations, by the way, where they’re pregnant and their ex breaks up with them.
Antia Boyd: Second trimester is literally like, yeah, think about what music you play around them. How’s your own nervous system doing with the baby as they’re screaming outside of the womb? So all of that, right? So the baby decides in the women it isn’t safe to even exist in the world, right? So that’s minus six months. And then we’re usually saying between 18 and 24 months, we’re sealed, we’re done. So it’s irreparable in that sense. Now, you can only help the child to sort of cope with it, heal through it at some point, but it’s not just how you’re so malleable in the first 24 months, right? You’re so vulnerable. We’re just picking everything up from mirror neurons, right? So basically, our parents’ nervous system. Our nervous systems are our parents nervous system.
Antia Boyd: And so all of that happens. So that’s why we see so much. And I can usually tell when you see the mom, so I’m actually like, “Oh, I can tell. She is showing up this way.” And some moms, they’re also a little bit like, “Why? Why are you doing this?” Right? So when my mom told me, when she left me alone, when I was under a year… I was about a year older because my brother was just born. And she was like, “I’ve come back and he would just smile.” And I’m like, “Mom, that’s not a good thing. I should be crying,” right? She’s like, “I left and you were smiling and you were not crying.” I’m like, “Mom, that’s not a good thing.” I wasn’t emotionally connected anymore. I was already checked out. Right? So that’s unavailable. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re a narcissist. No, you’re not.
Chris Seiter: Absolutely. Think about it from your mom’s perspective. So you say your mom has narcissistic traits, right? She’s a narcissist.
Antia Boyd: Oh, yeah. She is definitely a narcissist. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: She views that experience not as like, “Oh, this is bad.” She views it as, “Oh, look how happy she is to see me.” That’s what she thinks it’s like, “Oh, it’s so cute, she sees me,” but that’s actually not a good thing according to psychology.
Antia Boyd: Right, right. So I’ll give an example that’s an avoidant… A parent [inaudible 00:23:12] versus a narcissistic and then you can see how this also plays out in dating, right? So for example, so an avoidant parent would simply be just emotionally not available. They would be just kind of dismissive, right? But a narcissistic one, they have an extra twist on it. So when I was in sixth grade and I was in this one play, and I was the mom of the daughter and whatever in that play. And I was like, “Hey, this is my first play. It was so exciting.” Right? And I’m playing kind of my mom, which is kind of ironic, right? I was literally playing my mom, so it’s this woman who was like-
Chris Seiter: You got to have conflict in a play.
Antia Boyd: But it was funny because my mom watched it. And in that play, I was a mom who had migraine and was always in a bad mood and so very similar to my real mom, right? But guess what? My mom was like, “Well, that must have been an easy role for you to play because this is who you are.” So she basically told me this is who I am, right? It was so easy for me to play the bitch because this is who I am anyways. Unavailable wouldn’t say something like that. So said something stabby to it. When you play with an avid narcissist, it’s like some gas-lighting aspect to it. And then also, a narcissist will literally tell, “You can prove me black on white that you’re right and you will still not be right.”
Antia Boyd: So they literally create their own reality that’s an inflated self-esteem. With the unavailable, there’s actually not an inflated self-esteem. They’re actually afraid of rejection. They just checked out, right? But it doesn’t mean they have a huge self-esteem. Actually not at all, the unavailable. But the narcissist, they have an inflated one. So they actually know they’re wrong. Their belief systems are wrong. Their social norms are wrong, and they are still wanting approval even though they’re wrong. So do you see how that’s completely… It’s completely distorted. It makes no sense. They already know that they’re wrong, but they won’t be wrong because in their reality, they’re not wrong. I can already feel that some women are feeling already triggered. That reminds them of something.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, as you’re talking, I was thinking there’s one very specific person in my life who I’m like, “This is them to a T,” specifically with the reality breaking things where you can literally… So maybe the best example of the narcissistic aspect, that sort of creating your own reality that I’ve personally experienced is when you know clearly that what the person is saying is incorrect. And I had the misfortune once of being like really fed up with it by the… Normally, I’m like, “Okay, I get that this person is narcissistic. This person does not like to be proven wrong.” It ends up becoming an argument where you’re just like, “No, you’re wrong and this is why you’re wrong.”
Chris Seiter: So I got the idea once. I was like, “Oh, this will shut them up.” I’ll know exactly what to do. So the person made a statement that I knew was blatantly untrue. I literally went to Google. I found the answer. I held up my phone in front of them and it still didn’t work. That’s wrong. That Wikipedia article’s wrong. It’s like you can’t win. That’s an example of a narcissist.
Antia Boyd: Okay. Awesome. Yeah, totally, totally. You can’t win, right? And it was so interesting. You feel like you’re in a twilight zone. So literally, your realities break, right? You really start to be like, “Wait.” So that’s when you know when you’re with a narcissist. So when you really start to be like, “Oh, wait. What?” All that an unavailable really does, an avoidant attachment style, when we’re talking avoidant-dismissive, right? So fearful avoidant would be like what I was, that’s more the anxious. Mix in there too, that dismissive avoidant, what they’re really saying is everybody is responsible for themselves. So doesn’t necessarily have something to do with narcissism, right? So they also say, “You’re responsible for yourself.” So they don’t want to be accountable to anyone. And they also want you to hold them accountable either, right? So they kind of get this whole…
Chris Seiter: Can you give me an example of how that plays out specifically in relationships? Just give a concrete example.
Antia Boyd: Perfect. Well, a really great example that I heard was a woman was asking a guy, he was going on a business trip. And he’s like, “Hey, can you do me a favor? When you’re there, just send me quick testament and say, hey, I landed, all good.” And he agreed to it. And he ended up not doing it. Right? And what he ended up saying is like, “We’re on our own. I mean, I don’t owe you anything.”
Chris Seiter: Were they dating when he made this statement?
Antia Boyd: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they were dating. Yeah. So that’s pretty typical for an avoidant because they’re like, “I’m on my own. I’m doing my own thing. I don’t owe anybody anything.” So it’s this whole owing somebody something, being accountable to something, being committed to something.
Chris Seiter: So how do you get past that specific type of a mentality? This person who’s dating with you who you feel like it’s not like they owe you anything. It’s more like it’s just common courtesy. Like, “I just want to make sure you’re safe.” How do you get through that person to that specific of an unavailable person?
Antia Boyd: Well, I think the biggest thing is actually that the unavailable has to want it himself. So my husband, he used to work with men and all of that. And he said it was even hard when the unavailable came to him. And the reason why they were coming, they’re like, “Look, I’m in my 40s.” You know what I mean? And I’m just like, “I want a wife. And I know I don’t have one because I was unavailable the whole time. You know what I mean?” And then they have to really face their fear of intimacy because what happens with the avoidant is they’re afraid of intimacy. Intimacy to them means death.
Antia Boyd: So before they cut off all access to humanity basically or their heart, right? They are actually going through a tremendous amount of despair. Right? We’re talking existential anguish. And so that’s so much anxiety for the baby to handle that the baby literally feels like it’s going to die. It literally fries the whole nervous system, right? So that’s why eventually it shuts off to protect itself and to actually stay alive, right? So what it does is every time when it gets closer, it gets closer to that existential anguish and that despair because it has to go through that to get back to that connection, to get back to that trust, because he cut it all off. So compare it this way. So imagine your piece of metal, and you have to be able to go into the oven, and you have to be willing to melt and to lose-
Chris Seiter: It’s not going to be a fun process.
Antia Boyd: What did you say?
Chris Seiter: It’s not going to be a fun process.
Antia Boyd: No, it’s scary as heck. Right?
Chris Seiter: Right.
Antia Boyd: So the minute the unavailable feels like, men or women, feels like they’re getting too hot, starting to lose form, they’re pulling out. It’s nothing personal. It’s a nervous system, right? It has a certain temperature set. And just for attachment work, them really wanting it, can this actually be healed? It’s going to take a lot, especially when a woman is anxious. I mean, if she’s secure, that’s definitely much more of a potential there that she could just be with that and is like, “Hey, he’s doing his avoidant dance again, whatever.” Right? And she’s very secure, and he learns to be secure. But if a woman is more the anxious side, they really become each other’s worst nightmares on earth because he wants space because he feels like he’s losing his everything, his identity, his form, everything, right? And her worst nightmare is distance. And she wants connection, right? So they become each other’s worst nightmare.
Chris Seiter: Right, right. I mean, unfortunately, we see a whole bunch of that with ex-boyfriend recovery where we have a lot of anxious women going after really unavailable type of guys who… I think the oven analogy really is a good analogy because it’s almost like, “You’re going to have to melt, but it’s getting hot. I’m just going to pull out.” And from talking with Antia, I almost already know the answer. A lot of people are going to be sitting there and thinking, “Okay, okay, I get it, I get it. How do I deal with that?” Well, the answer is actually a little bit more simple but complicated at the same time. You need to really invest into becoming secure because usually, those secure attachments kind of pull things towards them. They’re almost like magnets. They’ll get their piece of iron and magnetize it. But that’s hard to do if you’re an anxious attachment style. You know?
Antia Boyd: And that’s why I always say for one, yes, working with what’s secure, and by the way, you don’t have to be finished because by no means was I all finished when I met my husband. As a matter of fact, we were talking about a story yesterday where I had emotional breakdown within a few weeks of dating him and showed him a very vulnerable side of me. And then he was like, “Is this happening all the time? Or is this just happening…?” You know what I mean? Is that the worst, right? So men will measure you and see like, “Is that her worst or is that her every day?” Right? So it’s like very-
Chris Seiter: Yeah. We don’t want it to be your every day.
Antia Boyd: He’s like, “Do you break down every day?” I’m like, “Okay, Houston, we have a problem,” right. And then this other thing is also naturally being more drawn to somewhat of a more secure attachment style, right? Because my honest belief is if more women would be naturally more drawn to healthy secure attachment styles, the avoidant attachment styles, or the avoidant women would have to step it up. They would have to heal. They would have to evolve because they would simply not have a partner that wants to link up with them. And we do want to have partnership. We do.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. We all do.
Antia Boyd: You would literally say, “Oh, you’re unavailable. Okay, I’m going to go.” That would get support right? So there’s a stigma on it versus actually being like, “I think women are really attracted to the unavailable because there’s so much up and down,” as we talked about. Right? It’s such a roller coaster, which sort of is that fake imitation of passion. So they think now, “This is passion. This is life force flowing through me. I feel activated. My heart is beating, right?” Versus if you look at the narcissist, so if you were to come to me like, “I’m dating and unavailable man,” I’d say, “Well, good luck. We can work on yourself and see what happens.” If you were telling me you’re dating a narcissist, I would say, “Get out.” There’s just a zero tolerance. Narcissists are for the most part not going to change because they want to be right even though they don’t… They’re right. So what are the chances that they want to seek out help?
Chris Seiter: No, not really high because they don’t think they have a problem.
Antia Boyd: “It’s you. It’s you. You’re wrong.” You know what I mean?
Chris Seiter: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Antia Boyd: They will never. Remember, they have this grandiose self-esteem.
Chris Seiter: So you’re hitting on something really profound here and also very scary for a lot of people because a lot of times, especially with breakups, what I’ve noticed is no matter what I can tell someone, especially if I’m like, “This person sounds narcissistic. You probably shouldn’t be dating them or you shouldn’t be trying to get this person back,” they don’t care because in their minds, they’re so dead set on getting that one specific person back. But that’s also some of their anxious aspects coming into play. They’re so drawn to that one person they feel like that is their identity.
Chris Seiter: But I have seen firsthand people in their 60s who’ve gone through divorce with a narcissist, and each one of them is miserable, and regrets the experience. So even if you are able to make it work, it’s usually not worth it. In the end, you end up being a lot more unhappy as opposed to what Antia is talking about here, which is kind of brilliant and profound, which is if you’re secure and you’re drawn to another secure individual, then not only you’re going to get what you want, but you’re going to force all the other anxious, unavailable, not the narcissistic guys, but to step up their game. And I think that’s just profound but people don’t look at it that way, unfortunately.
Antia Boyd: Yeah. And one thing I want to say for the women who are like, “I really want this particular guy back, and it’s like nobody else on the planet I will ever meet who I will love like that,” really seem like, “What is it about this guy? What is this guy giving you?” Because what you really want is how he makes you feel, right? In other words, the treasures that he brings out inside of you. So then one question that comes up is like, “Okay, so how can you access that inside of yourself?” Those treasures that he activates. Right? We’re proving to herself around her with friends, how can I have other people around me help me to activate that to actually really see, “Oh, it’s really like I feel like a princess when I’m around him.” Or, “I feel like I have this incredible sense of value when I’m around him.”
Antia Boyd: Okay. All that shows is you have that access inside of yourself. He’s in your presence in this presence that just comes out. Right? It’s like you can’t squeeze the lemon and apple juice comes out. Right? So it’s already in there. So what can you create around you that makes you feel valued or like a princess or the passion or whatever it is, right?
Chris Seiter: So weirdly enough, what you’re talking about here is a perfect application to one of our core strategies that we teach people after breakups, which is the no contact rule. Go through a breakup, go into no contact, work on getting that secure attachment. But also, a lot of times, we’re finding people fail the no contact 80% of the time their first try, meaning they’ll break it after a week because her ex texted her and like, “Oh, yeah, hey, why haven’t you talked to me yet?” Or they’re worried, “Oh, they’ll forget about me,” which has never ever happened in the history since I’ve done this.
Chris Seiter: But what’s interesting is what you’re really talking about here is having maybe kind of this out of body experience where you realized, “Wait, what I’m really attracted to is that feeling that he gave me,” but you need to reframe it to where, “Wait, he didn’t give it to me. Just his presence allowed it to come out. It was already in there.” So by surrounding yourself with other things or other people that can make you feel something on that level, it will also kind of take them off the pedestal. You’ll start to look at it in a different way.
Antia Boyd: Absolutely. I have this example from 10 years ago where this guy was inviting me on a sailboat and whatever and all the women wanted to come.
Chris Seiter: Oh, that’s nice. Yeah, sailboat’s pretty cool. That’s a nice move.
Antia Boyd: Sunday afternoon, right? But what I actually understood was like, “Wait a minute, if I do that, then I become codependent.” Because I’m really saying like, “Only he can give me this experience.” And so I ended up actually saying, “No,” and saying, “I need to create this exact same experience by myself.” So then that way, I can choose. Do you know that most women don’t choose? They just literally live by default because they need something.
Chris Seiter: What do you mean by that? So what specifically are you kind of referring to there?
Antia Boyd: So when I need attention, well, I need this guy to bring out the sense of whatever freedom or whatever you have on the sailboat, significance. You know what I mean? Whatever, he chose me. Then I can choose him. Right? You can choose somebody when you need them. Does that make sense?
Chris Seiter: Yeah. I mean, it kind of does. I’m trying to think of the other antithesis of that. You’re saying most women live by default. They don’t ever choose. To me, it seems like it’s a question of being active versus reactive. When you’re suggesting women should be a little bit more active in what they choose instead of being reactive, meaning things are just happening to them, well, I guess it’s more-
Antia Boyd: So if I need to have attention from someone, then I can choose them because for me, it’s like so when I say I choose somebody, that’s coming from a sense of un-attachment. I’m not attached to anything. I just choose this experience from freedom, from security, from a sense of well-being. But if I need something, then I come from a place of scarcity. I come from a place of limitation. I come from a place of co-dependence. But I can’t exist without the other person. So there’s actually a lack of freedom. There’s actually a limitation there.
Antia Boyd: And I think most women that are struggling in dating or they’re struggling to get their ex back and whatever, they come from this place of limitation and this lack of resourcefulness. And so therefore, they don’t choose, and guess what? Men can tell. Men can tell if a woman has the resourcefulness inside of herself and she chooses him, meaning he’s almost the price. Or no, then she’s the prize because he’s like, “Oh, I’m chosen by this woman. She doesn’t need anyone. But she chose me.” Right? But if he’s like, “She always needs something. She’s always feeling she’s not worthy.” And then they feel like, “Oh, I’m just like them to fill in the gap because she doesn’t feel worthy. So she just needs a boyfriend.”
Chris Seiter: So what you’ve essentially done, I don’t know if you realize this, but I was telling you that when I was making fun of your book back there, and it’s on the pedestal, “You should go buy Magnetize Your Man,” I said, “I also have a book,” but I wish I had put it. It’s called Ungettable. Really talks a lot about this concept called the ungettable girl and something that I’ve noticed, which is women who seem to be ungettable to men, men are just naturally drawn to them. What you’ve just described is psychologically, I think, what happens with those ungettable girls. The ability to choose. And I think some of that… Do you think some of that revolves around the fact that most women don’t feel very independent? They don’t have the ability or options to choose? They’re kind of a victim of their circumstances? How would you go about-?
Antia Boyd: So one of my experience is that so the women that come to me are financially very well, independent and resourced. But the problem is they were so focused on that that their emotional independence actually suffered because they use the financial independence to cope with that co-dependence, that emotional co-dependence, that they had since they were a child because they didn’t get the approval from the parent. They didn’t get the consistent attention that they should have gotten or they didn’t get the right to speak their truth and to separate themselves as an individual and have sovereignty. Right? So it’s two answers. Financially, yes, independent, but emotionally, not at all.
Chris Seiter: Okay. There’s sort of two aspects to it.
Antia Boyd: Right. Emotionally, actually very codependent.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. It seems to me like a lot of it really has to do with how you value yourself. And I guess the point you’re making is a lot of women who “don’t choose” don’t have a really high value on themselves or don’t place a high value. They put more of a high value on men and it needs to be the other way around, which sounds like the most cliché advice ever, but it’s also what works.
Antia Boyd: Yeah. You know what’s sad about that is actually that they don’t have less resources inside of themselves. The women who are anxious, they just project the resources they have inside of themselves onto another person. So they just celebrate you on the pedestal, Chris, right? They’re just like, “Chris, he’s this great person, and he has all those great qualities and all good traits.” You know what I mean?
Chris Seiter: Why did you stop? Why did you stop?
Antia Boyd: Keep going. But he’s so humble and so great. But I’m like, “Right, you know you spot it, you got it. Right? So whatever you actually celebrate in another person, and this is why you want to be with that person-”
Chris Seiter: Then it kind of comes to actually that yang-yin. Yeah, right, right. It’s the projection idea. You have that inside of you. A lot of times, we focus on the bad things. That’s why you had such an outrage over that article you wrote, which is like, “Yeah, you also have that narcissistic aspect inside of you or you’re at least capable of it.” But people forget that you’re also capable of all these good things.
Antia Boyd: That’s the thing. That’s what I always tell my women. I said, “If you project, you got to project both ways.” You can’t just like say, “You just own the bad things. Then you also got to own all the good things.” So if you want to play that game, you got to do it in both directions, not just one.
Chris Seiter: So before we end, there’s kind of one thing I wanted to get your thoughts on because what you said kind of made me start thinking of analogies to try to explain it to my audience, which is sort of these limiting beliefs that people have or tell themselves. So the point that I’m kind of ultimately taking from this, which is a lot of women don’t choose because they don’t think that they are capable of choosing. So it’s like almost this limiting belief that they tell themselves. And as odd as it sounds, you see a lot of the same things with sort of the elephant mentality. So you know how elephants are these gigantic creatures, right? And because they’re every single day chained to this little stake in the ground, they can easily escape from the stake, but they don’t realize that they’re able to do that. It’s kind of a matrix type thing. People don’t wake up. Your point is like, “Wake up, you can choose. Realize you have more value than you… Realize you can project all those really good things onto those people. You’re those things too.
Antia Boyd: Right, right. And it’s really about asking a different question, right? Because women would… So the next logical question that I could see a woman ask is like, “Well, Antia, you have a good thing and you’re married. And so how do you even start with that? How do you even know that I have this resource inside of myself?” That’s a great question. How can you access the resources? So now you no longer doubt that you have resources. Now, it’s much more a question of the access to it, right? How do I get a VIP access to my resources? That’s a very different question than, how do I get to die? Does that make sense?
Chris Seiter: Right, right. Well, it’s a reframing of it. Instead of focusing on them, you’re putting a little bit more focus on you and kind of building it from inwards to outwards as opposed from outwards to inwards, which I think is maybe the issue a lot of women have, which is they’re looking and they think the men will solve their problems inwards. But usually, it works the opposite way. Wow. Every time we talk, I’m just like, “Oh, I’m going to use that. I’m going to use that. I’m going to use that. I’m going to use that.”
Chris Seiter: I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for coming on. But before we end, I want to just say that Antia has maybe some of the best stuff of… Any time I’ve interviewed someone, she has some of the best stuff to share. Right? And so I really want to share with my audience the fact that she has coaching available. So why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about your coaching so that they can basically partner up and become your client?
Antia Boyd: Yeah. So the women that come to me are really mostly fearful-avoidant. So if you find yourself in the camp, I’m kind of both, but still also successful. But I struggle with trust issues, attracting emotionally unavailable men, come also from narcissistic backgrounds. So that can be an overlap like I said before. But are really, really ready to step up and own their power, right? Trusting their own power in their relationships, attracting the right men to them, valuing themselves. So that’s kind of like what we’re working on here. And if you want to learn more, I invite you to actually go to magnetizeyourman.com, fill out a quiz. And at the end, there will be some resources and potentially also an invitation to have a call with me so we can actually see what it is particularly for you, right? Because we have to see where you’re disassociating where you’re associating. That’s literally the game, right? And that’s what men pick up on. That’s how they decide if they trust you. That’s how they decide if they want to ask you on another day. And that’s also how they decide if they’re going to take you back because if you’re still associated, un-associated, disassociated, and you haven’t changed, he’s not going to come back to you. But oftentimes, some women don’t want the guy back anymore after they work with me-
Chris Seiter: That’s very true.
Antia Boyd: … because they realize, “Wait a minute. This was toxic.” And they get to go on, right?
Chris Seiter: Right. Well, the end goal is always to make sure that you’re in a better place than you were when you started. And so Antia has this quiz on her website. And if you’re watching this on YouTube, just simply look in the description link below this YouTube video. Click on the link you see there, I’m going to put a link to it. If you’re listening to this on your run or walk or doing the dishes or whatever, all you’ll have to do is come by our website, find the Antia interview. Just click on the podcast or something. We’ll have a link in there as well. So Antia, this quiz, so what will the quiz measure for them so they know why they should take it?
Antia Boyd: That’s many different levels. I mean, it’s really actually looking at their own emotional availability and really also seeing like, “Yeah, I mean, where’s the commitment or where’s there no commitment?” So it’s like a lot of different areas, what areas they need to focus on, what archetype they need to focus on. So there’s different energies inside of ourselves. And so some archetypes are really strong inside of us and some are not so strong at all, need to be really… They’re kind of almost in our blind spot. They’re starved. And that’s why they’re attracting distorted men and basically men that are conflicted inside of themselves into their life.
Chris Seiter: So again, if you want to take the assessment/quiz, schedule a call with Antia, look in the description link in YouTube, click on it. Or if you’re listening on the podcast, make sure you check out this interview on our website. There’ll be a link there and I’m even going to put an email out to kind of let people be aware of this because this is mind-blowing stuff. Thank you so much for coming on, Antia.
Antia Boyd: Thank you so much. You’re like the best host, Chris.
Chris Seiter: Oh, thank you. Thank you.
Antia Boyd: You [inaudible 00:50:49] me. You know what I mean? I’m like, “Wow, that was good.”
Chris Seiter: Oh, good. I’m glad I’m asking the right questions.
Chris Seiter: Recording now. Okay. So today, Anna and I are taking on the big fish, the white whale, which is basically… I’ve been reading too many… For some reason I’ve been reading Moby Dick lately. So anyways, take of that what you may. Today, we’re going to be talking about what to expect in 2021, because we all know 2020… So I get the sense, and I don’t know what your sense is but 2020 everyone’s always looking forward to 2021 as like, Oh my God, things are going to be so much better in 2021.
Chris Seiter: But I get the sense it’s not going to be as great as you think. I think you’re still going to be facing a lot of the same challenges and that’s what Anna and I want to talk about today, which is, what challenges are you going to be facing regarding your breakup and relationship in 2021, with regards to things like the no contact rule or building rapport. What does the global pandemic do to that? So…
Anna: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I don’t even know what to say here. So maybe let’s just start like… This is the angle I think we should take, which is, 2020, what have you noticed that’s different in 2020 from 2019 before the pandemic? Just with regrads to…
Anna: With regards to… One, there are more breakups than ever.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, you know it’s funny, I didn’t know how to feel about it because it was like when the pandemic happened, I remember you and I were talking and-
Anna: I told you there would be more.
Chris Seiter: You and I were talking and I was like, “Anna, I’m worried, there’s a recession going on, our business… We might be in trouble.” And business was actually better than ever [00:01:42]. I don’t know what to make of it, it’s super cool from a business perspective but super crappy from a relationship perspective.
Anna: It’s been a sad year for anyone in a relationship. And what I have found is, unless relationship is incredibly strong, both of you are very mature, both of you are very self-aware, your relationship has likely suffered.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. You know-
Anna: Both are very healthy, like physically. I mean, because you’ve gone through some stuff-
Chris Seiter: That’s what I was going to say. So 2020 a lot of people… So 2020 has affected me in a different way and the fact that I had… So I was on my third and fourth surgery, I think by that time, and that takes a toll when your health is… And I can’t imagine someone who tested positive for COVID going into the hospital and what that does. And then of course we have breakups and what that does, so it’s been a messy year.
Anna: It’s been a messy year.
Chris Seiter: So, what have you been noticing, obviously more breakups than ever.
Anna: Mm-hmm(affirmative).
Chris Seiter: But from the people breaking up, from a perspective like how are they going to get their exes back? Have you noticed anything different and especially… Because you are the one going through most of the big coaching calls, so you have the data.
Anna: Yeah. I mean, people are experiencing a lot of difficulty particularly when it comes to building rapport and moving along the value chain. So they’re finding they are spending a lot more time in texting, right? In the texting phase and having to get really creative with when they finally get to the meeting phase with online dates and online activities. So there’s been an increase in gaming, virtual escape rooms, virtual trivia nights. I’ve had some clients literally, I don’t know how they did this because we… I mean, it was so intriguing to me, but we didn’t have time to go into it. They built a puzzle together, but they were long distance. So I don’t know how that happens virtually.
Chris Seiter: Maybe there’s like an app.
Anna: Maybe.
Chris Seiter: I don’t know.
Anna: I don’t know. But people have gotten really creative on spending time together in order to build rapport or get that, even if they don’t have the face-to-face time because quarantine, they’re finding ways to connect emotionally. And social media has become even more important than before but with the pandemic, there’s less opportunity to have these great backdrops, right? Of the outside or going on trips. So again, trying to be creative and also be [inaudible 00:04:28] at the same time while staying at home.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. It’s a paradox in that way, because a lot of times the natural thinking of someone who’s [inaudible 00:04:38], someone who’s out there. They’re doing things, but were prevented from doing stuff like that.
Anna: Right.
Chris Seiter: But I’m actually curious. You’re mentioning a lot of people having trouble building rapport. So what method… So building rapport through texting, building rapport through just virtual, talking on the phone, FaceTime, things like that, where are they struggling the most?
Anna: Well, it’s getting past texting and figuring out where to go from there because we have the normal progression of texting and then phone calls-
Chris Seiter: Right.
Anna: And meeting in person [crosstalk 00:05:19].
Chris Seiter: Okay. So this is ultimately… You’re noticing a lot of issues there that’s the funnel point where a lot of people are missing. Is there any generalization in how you can look at your clients and sit there and say, “Okay, most of them are doing this. Most of them are doing this wrong.” In your opinion, what are they doing wrong?
Anna: Well, they’re allowing themselves to get stuck on, the only way I can interact with my ex is if I do it in person, or the only way I can demonstrate change is if I’m able to go outside, or travel or be around people. And so you have to get past that part. You can always demonstrate [inaudible 00:06:01] you are by taking on a new hobby. You can still exercise at home, you can still interact with people, you can interact with your ex in as much as it not as great to not do it in person, you can still do it virtually. Right?
Chris Seiter: Okay. So what’s interesting is, to me it seems like it’s a mindset. They have this mental block like, okay, well, that’s not how it’s going to work. So is it one of those self defeated attitudes that they come in all ready or they enter into the texting phase all ready with this mindset of, no, this absolutely has to happen in person. There’s no way this digital thing can work.
Anna: Well, it’s new. So a lot of people tend to be skeptical at the beginning. So you just have to… I mean, you shouldn’t break the law, right?
Chris Seiter: Uh-huh(affirmative).
Anna: If your city or state or province or country has you in quarantine, you should not be doing things that breaks the law, right? Or different mandates. So you have to just accept it and try to be creative. Right? Or for example, join a Facebook group, right? And ask for suggestions and there’s tons of suggestions all the time on how to get around things.
Chris Seiter: It’s actually really interesting because a lot of the best suggestions I find, a lot of people, especially when I’ll write an article or do a YouTube video and they’ll say, “Oh my God, that’s such a good idea.” It’s not my idea. It’s from the creative people that I’ve stolen from the Facebook group, they’re just like, Hey, we’re doing this and I’m like, Oh my God, that’s working.
Anna: Right. I mean, when you have thousands of people active-
Chris Seiter: We just had 5,000, I don’t know.
Anna: [inaudible 00:07:44] say 5,000?
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Anna: Amazing.
Chris Seiter: I think [inaudible 00:07:46] 5,000. That’s actually pretty good now.
Anna: I really think that if all the success stories stayed, our group would be seven or 8,000.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Well, that’s the other interesting thing, there’s a little bit of a turnover. There’s a [inaudible 00:07:59] to it. But we’re getting off topic here, I suppose. Okay. So, you have to be willing to accept the more the digital methods. I read something really interesting yesterday, actually. I was trying to figure out… Whenever I tried to write an article or film a YouTube video, I’m always like, okay, what’s a new way I can put this. I was watching a video from Chris Voss, never split the difference guy. And he made a really interesting point about the tone. So it’s almost like… Especially when it comes to texting, a lot of times people don’t realize in regards in this thing, he was talking about emails. I was thinking, well, emails is a form of texting if you’re able to finagle in your head.
Anna: It’s old school texting.
Chris Seiter: It’s the old school texting, which is… It is what it is but he said something really interesting, which was a lot of people don’t think that there’s a tone to an email, but that’s wrong. There is a tone. And he was making the point that a lot of times when you write a text message, I’m just using my own analogy here. But when you’re writing a text message, you’re writing it with a certain tone. There’s almost a guarantee that the person you’re sending the text message to is not going to read it in that same tone. So one of suggestions he made was basically reading the text or reading the email in his case out loud, in the most harsh tone as possible. And if it can’t survive the harsh tone, you need to reword the text. Have you ever noticed issues like that with texting?
Anna: Yes. And that is actually a classic public relations technique that I tell a lot of my coaching clients.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. So if you don’t know Anna, literally run one of the biggest public relations businesses in the world, so one of the coolest aspects of having Anna, she’s like your own personal PR.
Anna: Yeah. Well, I mean, getting an expert literally is [crosstalk 00:10:00]. Is like a rebranding campaign. [inaudible 00:00:10:01].
Chris Seiter: That’s just such a creative way of looking at it, but okay so like classic PR technique.
Anna: Technique which is… We all have this capability on our phones, right? Record it. Record yourself saying in the harshest tone possible, listen to yourself and ask, Hey, how does this sound? How’s this coming across? And I probably need to change my words.
Chris Seiter: So he said… Saying… What was it? There’s certain words you can say-
Anna: Why, like you don’t say why.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. But there’s, I forgot what he called them. He called them email qualifiers or it’s something that you can put in there that no matter how you say it, even if it’s a harsh way, it’s taken in a positive way. And it’s something it’s like, Oh, sorry and I’m aware.
Anna: Yeah. I’m aware is one of them.
Chris Seiter: I don’t think saying, “I’m sorry,” works in this context, but just to give you an idea, there are some finagling you can do with certain words to…
Anna: I want to say, I think I understand is one of them or even something along those lines. If you have a subscription to masterclass.com, for example-
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Anna: You can… Or just read his book which is really great.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I went through his book in a whole weekend. For me, it was really mind blowing and how many applications there are to this process.
Anna: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Because a lot of times it is a negotiation… You’re talking about it, it’s like a PR thing, which is also true [crosstalk 00:11:44]. So it’s this interesting mix between the two.
Anna: Mm-hmm(affirmative).
Chris Seiter: You’re saying you’re seeing some issues with regards to how text messages are worded or is it more of a tactical errors by people when it comes to their texting?
Anna: Well, I think it’s tactical. Well, it’s both strategic and tactical errors, right? So when you communicate with any ex, you want it to sound, one as natural as possible between the two of you but you want it to be the smarter, more directed version of that, essentially. So that’s why you should record yourself, reading out loud in this harsh tone your texts, right? You should also not make the rookie mistake, for example, of texting too much or apologizing when you don’t have to. These are just a couple of instances. All right. Or after you send your text out, not taking it personally, if the person… If your ex reads your text, but you see that person online.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. That’s a really big one too, because you see that a lot. Because a lot of the times our clients, they’re super obsessive about checking to see if he or she’s online and it sets him off when they’ve read it, but they haven’t responded, but they’re doing something else?
Anna: Yeah. Like how dare this person actually have a life outside of texting me.
Chris Seiter: But I mean, if we’re all being honest, we’ve all been there. I’ve done it.
Anna: [inaudible 00:13:17].
Chris Seiter: I think it’s a normal, natural thing, but it’s also… It’s a little… It doesn’t make you look very good.
Anna: Yeah. It doesn’t. I mean that anxious state of mind will drive you to distraction. I mean, that’s why every time when I was going through my process, I threw my phone behind the couch.
Chris Seiter: I was thinking of this the other day, actually. I was putting together a shoe holder for Jen and I was working with a designer on something and he hadn’t gotten back to me and he was really annoying me. And I was checking constantly, why hasn’t he gotten back? To the point where I was like, Oh, I’m getting frustrated. So I put on some music and just started working. And it took me two hours to put the stupid shoe thing together [inaudible 00:14:03] you know? And then when I had realized, Oh my God, two hours have gone by, I can’t believe it. And of course there was like five texts from him there. And then it’s interesting the other day too, I was thinking about that thing. And it fits into this concept of a flow state.
Chris Seiter: I don’t know if you’ve ever researched anything about flow states, but actually I think there is something to really hitting the flow state or trying to achieve this flow state while you’re distracting yourself because time can move faster, even though it’s not really moving faster, but for you, it can move faster and it can distract you while you’re not focusing on your… That’s just… I guess it would be my suggestion, but…
Anna: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: I don’t know how we got over here. We’re supposed to be talking about what to expect in 2020, when we’re talking about carpentry and…
Anna: Right. But it’s a nice sidebar. When you’re building rapport, I think especially in a pandemic, right, in 2020, and I think we’re going to be seeing this also in 2021, when your movements are restricted and when your social interactions are severely restricted, all right? We’re going to see increased rates or continued higher rates of anxiety and depression, which is going to have a direct impact on your ability to build rapport and to maintain emotional control, when you try to build rapport or connect with your ex, right? Because what we’re experiencing now, it’s not as if when January 1st, 2021 happens, the world will be a much better place, we’ll be able to go outside and do all these things. I think that we should expect in anyone who’s building rapport or in the middle of a breakup, right. In 2021, we should expect more of 2020 just as we’re experiencing it now until about at least April or May.
Chris Seiter: I would actually… I hate to break it to everyone. My opinion is that 2021 is going to be pretty shot too. I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but like everywhere, you’re not allowed to go in without the mask.
Anna: I live in Georgia so…
Chris Seiter: It’s a little… I live in Florida, so it’s pretty much the same thing, but at least in my town where I live, the mask and I actually can’t imagine the mask mandate going away for a long time.
Anna: [inaudible 00:16:31].
Chris Seiter: So I think it’s a little naive to sit there and think that the movement restrictions are just going to be all of a sudden lifted in 2021.
Anna: Right.
Chris Seiter: So it’s almost best to get with the new way of doing things. What we’re noticing is working, which is a little bit of a higher premium on some of the digital stuff and social media, and really putting, putting the effort into understanding this is the best way I should be texting. Now let’s talk about texting a little bit because that’s where essentially the funnel is right here, where we’re having trouble. This is where a lot of people are getting lost, that transition phase between text messages to really talking on the phone. Have you found any interesting ways of bridging the gap there for some of your clients?
Anna: I mean, I don’t think transitioning from texting to video calls, for example, like Face Time or Skype videos or even Zoom calls. Right? Has changed much. Right. What has really changed… I mean, to get from what from texting to video calls, right. It’s pretty simple, right? You just say, “Hey, I came across this thing or I have something funny to tell you, it’s too much text [crosstalk 00:17:58] call you.” There you go. Right. It’s easier to do that. Right. Or it’s, “Oh my gosh, I had this funny thing to show you, my cat is doing this crazy thing and I got a FaceTime you now.” There you go. All right, that’s easy to do. The part that’s difficult that I get a lot is, and how do I transition from texting or phone calls to in-person, right, when there’s a pandemic. And the answer is virtual, right. You have to do virtual dates. All right. As much as you can. So this is where if you are 35 or below, you should be. If your ex is into gaming, for example, you need to start looking into that as well.
Chris Seiter: So basically what Anna’s telling you is buy a PlayStation five.
Anna: Yes. [crosstalk 00:18:56] PC, right. That’s because… I mean, I game on a PC, so… But I have a PS5.
Chris Seiter: Really?
Anna: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: I said to my wife. I said, ” Hey, I wouldn’t mind one of those PS5s.” And she doesn’t seem pleased about it because she doesn’t want to lose me to the video games. Sometimes I have a tendency to zone in. I can hit a flow state with video games.
Anna: I mean, it’s really fun. I mean, think about it for your daughter. I mean, she might like, for example, doing things like Minecraft or the Sims.
Chris Seiter: We tried Minecraft. Minecraft is a little hard because then I am a lot more interested in it than she is.
Anna: Oh, no.
Chris Seiter: Yeah but those are separate problems. So the transitionary phase… Because this is just what I’ve noticed, I think that it’s almost like there’s this barrier between each of the phases. Like once you get comfortable in texting, usually texting go pretty seamlessly, but there’s always a transitionary barrier to breaking through text into the phone calls.
Anna: Yes.
Chris Seiter: The barrier gets even more difficult to peers. Yeah. As you get into the video chat to in person type thing, especially when you have the added pandemic type of rules. Now, I’m curious what you think about this. Let’s say both of you decide, Hey, we both want to go on a date, like an in-person date. We want to see each other in person, we’d like to quarantine for… I don’t know, a week or something like that, is that a potential option that you can see people take?
Anna: I actually, I’ve had a couple of clients do that. And as they’ve gotten closer and closer to being back together, and I say that makes sense, just make sure that you have a number of virtual dates and a couple of really long phone calls. Obviously the flirting and all that other stuff that you do, but you need to have the ability to have really great, serious conversations about expectations and what you’re doing, this’ll be fun, it’ll be amazing. You have to feel comfortable and you have to also expect your ex to feel comfortable enough to say this is what I’m concerned about. Right. I have no problem with it. I think it’s okay but just don’t go into that thinking all right, immediately after this week is over, we’re going to be so back together.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. There was… I can’t remember her name. She was one of the success stories who ended up doing coaching with you. She was a teacher in Japan, I want to say. She taught English for Japanese students, but she [crosstalk 00:21:40].
Anna: Was [inaudible 00:21:40] that her?
Chris Seiter: I don’t remember.
Anna: [inaudible 00:00:21:48].
Chris Seiter: But she had a really interesting approach, which was very similar to what you were saying. She had a lot of these longer conversations over the phone and stuff and this build up into finally seeing each other in person. So what Anna is saying here can work. It’s just different than what we normally preach because we’re in abnormal circumstances, with a global pandemic it’s not as simple as just saying like, Hey… Especially if you live in LA, a lot of times right now, but LA is actually taking it very seriously. Right? So a lot of the restaurants are closed down, so it’s not possible to just say, “Hey, let’s go grab a bite to eat.” So I think it’s very geo specific also. And unfortunately it seems like it’s going to get worse now that the winter is here and it’s already getting worse. So this …looks like Anna, she’s already got the virus over. I’m just kidding.
Anna: Oh my gosh. I hope not. Although, I was in a town recently in Western Georgia where very few people wore masks. And so I was very nervous and kept steering my husband away from everyone. I said, what is going on? But then I thought, Oh, it’s Western Georgia.
Chris Seiter: Well, you know what’s interesting is I had to drive up from Florida to Wisconsin and you can see state by state. So you get up to Georgia and usually we stopped right around Northern Georgia, they weren’t wearing masks. And then we get to Tennessee.
Anna: No mask.
Chris Seiter: No masks. Then we get to Illinois, a little bit of masks. Then we get to Wisconsin, a little bit more masks and then eventually when we’re like… Where I was going was really near the border between Wisconsin and Minnesota and almost everyone wore masks.
Anna: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So it was really interesting to see the progression as you go up through the country. So, I understand when you see someone not wearing a mask and you’re like, Oh my God, I got to stay away from that person. Especially in these really dingy gas stations that you have to use the restroom. And so it’s…
Anna: It’s like you hold your breath the whole time.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. But it won’t help you know. If it gets in your eye or something.
Anna: Oh my gosh.
Chris Seiter: So we’re talking about… This turned into a COVID…
Anna: A COVID discussion. But I mean, going back, I think that people should expect obviously, reduced or restricted social contact or contact with people, which is going to turn into mental health concerns and obviously physical health concerns. So in trying to build… Excuse me. In trying to build rapport, I mean, part of building rapport, in my opinion also includes making sure that you have sufficient emotional control. Right? So in addition to talking to your ex regularly, you need to make sure you’ve got your own trinity in line, right? Join online support groups, like a Facebook group, right? Or set up regular conversations or interactions with your friends and family and coworkers. All right. I read an article recently in the Wall Street Journal where they were talking about Zoom fatigue. And so simply interacting by voice is still helpful. But in general, you want to try to include as much variety as possible and virtual activities with your ex as you build rapport, that’s essentially what that is. Right?
Chris Seiter: So I think you make some really great points. The first point I’d like to just say like, this is exactly what I’m trying to preach, but you say it so much better than I intend to do on videos, which is the emotional control thing. I think the number one mistake, at least I tend to notice people, especially in the Facebook group, when I’ll do a Facebook live, you’ll see a lot of the same type of comments. And I think it’s a lot of times because people engage in conversations, texting even when they don’t have emotional control.
Anna: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So there are a lot more likely to freak out at every little thing that doesn’t go their way. And the second thing that’s interesting is adding variety, which there’s a lot of variety that Anna’s talked about. So she’s talked about gaming, which is a really interesting variety because I grew up when world of Warcraft was a huge thing.
Chris Seiter: So you could chat like that. And I’m not really so into the Fortnite gaming or anything like that. So I’m not right up to date with that. Other than just the one video game I’ll play every once in a while, I usually like single-player type stuff, but those are things that you can do. But I think… Well, it’s interesting the Wall Street Journal thing, talk about Zoom fatigue, which is talking to someone like Anna and I are talking right now. But one thing that I actually have been adopting lately is…. There’s this app on my iPhone called voice memos, it allows you to create these real quick voice notes that you can send to people. So just adding all variety to not just get fatigued in one area. I think it’s just such an essential part, especially in 2021 as you… Because I don’t think these restrictions are going to get lifted for a while.
Anna: No, we’re looking at… I mean, at least in the United States, right? I mean, they’re rolling out vaccines in the UK right now, but in the United States, we’re still waiting on FDA approval. And right now we only have… The United States only has access to about a hundred million doses. So the current vaccine is two doses, which means only 50 million people will get them. I read some statistic where they’re about… I know of course you would expect healthcare workers to get that first and there are about 16 million healthcare workers in the United States. So those 50 million…
Chris Seiter: It’s really more like-
Anna: This is going to go really fast. So I mean, then we add on probably firefighters, policemen, and then I would assume people who would run public transportation or transportation of any kind, someone who’s like a frontline worker or essential worker, [inaudible 00:00:28:06].
Chris Seiter: I think an underrated thing is I really feel for the grocery store workers.
Anna: Yeah, I think they [crosstalk 00:28:18].
Chris Seiter: Grocery store and I’m like, Oh my God, these people are here and fight. They’re seeing the most amount of people that are just..
Anna: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: But I heard also the vaccines are going to take a little while to [inaudible 00:28:25] out all of the kinks so that they’re super effective. You know, Jen was telling me in one article, she read that, Oh, the vaccine, I think you have to take in two doses or something, the first dose. And they’re a little bit worried right now about… Because you’ll get a fever with this vaccine or something, so you’re going to get sick and they’re worried that people will feel so bad they’re not going to want to come back for the second dose because it’s like, I’m not going to want to do that again.
Chris Seiter: So you have to consider how many people are going to do that. So it adds this further complication and 2021 is going to be pretty rough too for a lot of people. And I think the one big elephant in the room that we really haven’t addressed yet and we’re running out of time which is, even though the stock market is not showing it, we’re still in the midst of a recession.
Anna: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: A lot of people have been losing their jobs consistently.
Anna: Yes. Right.
Chris Seiter: And that adds an extra layer of, I think, depression for exes, especially.
Anna: 100%. And we should continue to expect far reaching employment and business impacts in a negative sense. Right. And that in my experience is probably the number one or the number one driver or like the engine for a lot of breakups.
Chris Seiter: I would say unequivocally, it’s the number.
Anna: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: I know it stresses me out and I can’t imagine someone else who has less than me. They’re probably very stressed out, who’s lost their job.
Anna: Right.
Chris Seiter: And I think we also see that a lot of times you’re in recessions, domestic violence goes up.
Anna: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Depression goes up, suicides go up. All of those things happen and it’s as a result of money. I mean, that’s just the hard truth of it.
Anna: So if people are trying to get back exes who have gone through… Who’ve been laid off, fired or lost their… Or they have reduced work hours and then wonder, well, why is my ex not responding to me? You have to be mindful and you have to give that person more compassion because they’re likely to be turning inward and away from social contact, right. With you, especially.
Chris Seiter: So I personally had no experience with depression until my injury, where I was on bed rest and I had to get four surgeries. And I literally felt like every single day, I’m just thinking, why am I waking up? I’m like… I’m not going to get better. What’s the point of this. I can definitely speak for someone who has maybe lost their job and you’re trying to get them back. And they’re like, Anna says, looking inward, sometimes nothing you can say will coax them out of it.
Anna: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: The best thing you can do is just try to understand their worldview from their perspective. That was like the only thing that worked on me, I feel like just having a really understanding wife who was like, I get what you’re going through. I see what you’re going through. It’s okay.
Anna: Mm-hmm(affirmative). Yeah. I mean, you’re very lucky. You’re right. But I think anyone who’s listening to this should keep in mind that in a breakup, if your ex is going through a depression, your role is not to act as a partner. You are supposed to be supportive just as you would with any good friend. All right. But in the wake of a breakup, that persons does not, it should not have the privilege of leaning or being independent.
Chris Seiter: Relying on you.
Anna: Relying on you in the same way. Right? So you have to protect yourself. I also have gone through a severe depression that lasted a few years. It was situational and I was highly functioning, but I withdrew completely from the world or from social contact for a long period of time. And so I would say what got through to me is people continually reaching out to me and just saying, “If you want to talk about it, I’m here.” Right? And understanding that my depression was not… They should not take it personally. All right. That’s something that I have to fix my myself.
Chris Seiter: I think this is an excellent point that you bring up too, because a lot of times I think our clients think it’s because of them. And usually it’s not.
Anna: It’s never because of you. Right? A person’s depression is not because of other people, it’s external events. If it’s situational, it’s external events that are maybe somewhat related to you, perhaps there were arguments. Right? But there are other things that are influencing that. And if the depression is medical or chemical requiring medication, that definitely is not your fault. Right?
Chris Seiter: Yeah. That’s… I don’t know if you can say it any better than that. But yeah. I mean, overall, Anna is just basically trying to say, the rules are from your perspective, if you’re trying to get someone who’s depressed back. It’s not like you’re going to become their caretaker.
Anna: Yeah. And you should not be.
Chris Seiter: Right. All we’re trying to do is just point out to you these are some of the challenges that can be present still in 2021, especially with the global pandemic going on and what we’re seeing, specifically, Anna seeing on her coaching calls, a lot of issues, building rapport, breaching that barrier of the in-person type thing.
Anna: Right.
Chris Seiter: Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like to me, it’s a lot more of an emphasis on digital dates before you build it off goodwill before you have that actual in-person date, because you also have to quarantine, you got to make sure that both of you guys are safe and also it will be a little… Like, I think everyone’s also thinking that the vaccine’s going to be the cure. Everyone’s going to go back to normal, but it’s still going to take some time, right?
Anna: Yeah. Right. Anyone with a science background will tell you, you want to not be the first, in the first group of people who gets the-
Chris Seiter: I don’t. My parents are very pro-vaccine. Right? They don’t even want to get the vaccine first.
Anna: Yeah. I don’t want to get the vaccine first either. I just want to see what happens with the other people.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah.
Anna: [inaudible 00:35:24]. People, I mean… In general, because we expect the state of things that exists right now in 2020 to keep going into 2021, at least through mid year. At least. All right. That means the impact on building rapport or getting an ex back means that most likely your to get a person back is extended.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. This is kind of the other elephant in the room that we haven’t addressed, which is a lot of people come to us and they think, I think they’re sold lies by other coaches like, Hey, you can get your ex back at 30 days. No.
Anna: Any, recovery program who tells you that it’s like his lying.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. It is what it is. We have our no contact rule is 30 days. Right? So, if you want a 30 day success, we’re not for you, we’re actually for actual success.
Anna: Right.
Chris Seiter: And the pandemic has just stretched that timeline even further. I feel like the average success story for us used to be three months. I feel like it’s now five or six months.
Anna: It’s probably closer to six. I think.
Chris Seiter: So there you go.
Anna: And so you’ve got to have a lot of patients, make sure that you shore up your own emotional resources. Right. And be really easy on yourself and kind to yourself in this process and try not to take it personally, if your ex doesn’t respond in as you hoped.
Chris Seiter: Yep. So I guess, that’s it. We probably should… We probably-
Success Story: Exactly How She Got Her Long Distance Army Ex Back
Nov 24, 2020
I’m SUPER excited to introduce you guys to Karina one of our Ex Recovery Program members who got her ex back. I had the pleasure of sitting down with her last week for about an hour and got to ask her all kinds of different questions about how she succeeded in getting her ex back.
So, if you’ve ever wondered;
What a long distance success story looks like
How it’s possible to get an army ex back
About real tips that actually worked for someone
Then you’re going to love this success story interview.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Chris Seiter: I am recording. All right, so today, we’re going to be talking to Karina, who is a member of our private Facebook support group. She’s boughten some of our programs, and she has gotten her ex back, but she hasn’t seen him yet. And what’s interesting is I don’t know her situation like the back of my hand, but I’m assuming there’s some sort of long-distance situation going on there and next Friday, she’s going to be seeing him for the first time since getting him back. And she’s going to tell us the entire story of how they broke up and how they got back together, but first off, I just want to say welcome to the podcast, Karina.
Karina: Hi.
Chris Seiter: All right. So, man, there’s a lot to cover here. You have yourself a real interesting situation. So, why don’t we just start from the beginning. What caused this breakup?
Karina: Well, that time, he broke up with me in September when he just got back from deployment.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, he’s an Army guy?
Karina: He’s in the Army, yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Karina: Well, we’d been almost together for seven years and-
Chris Seiter: Wow, seven years together?
Karina: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, he broke up with you in September of this year. Well, it didn’t take you long to get him back at all. I’m sure it was miserable, though.
Karina: Yes, because it was out of the blue. I was not expecting that.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, he gets back from deployment and he out of the blue breaks up with you. How does he break up with you?
Karina: Well, he came back in August and he had to go back to Oklahoma because that was his last duty station since he came back three years ago from Korea. I live in Texas, he lives in Oklahoma, and it’s four or four and a half hours away from us. I saw him for two weeks and he came to Texas because he had his stuff here and his car and he needed it. We had this house here together.
Chris Seiter: So, you owned a house together.
Karina: I own a house, but-
Chris Seiter: You own a house, but he was living with you.
Karina: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, you were living together. You’re together for seven years. When he came to visit you in Texas, had he already broken up with you?
Karina: No, but something was odd.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, your spider sense is tingling. You’re like, “Okay, something’s up.”
Karina: Yeah, I had this gut feeling. I mean, we didn’t see each other for a year. Of course, he was deployed and the greeting was kind of messed up.
Chris Seiter: Define messed up. He just does some sort of awkward hug, like Voldemort did in Harry Potter?
Karina: Yeah, it was awkward. It was just awkward because I was expecting him late in the afternoon, and then I was outside and all of a sudden I come in and I had this friend in my house that I didn’t know of and I was kind of…caught me by surprise.
Chris Seiter: Hold on. So, I guess he had keys to go home. He comes home. And then you are getting off work. You come home and you’re just, all of a sudden there’s this random person in your house?
Karina: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Is the random person a girl or a guy?
Karina: No, it is a guy.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Well, at least it’s a guy. Okay, so…
Karina: It was awkward because I didn’t know him. I could not put face and face together. I never met him.
Chris Seiter: So, maybe he was bringing a friend for support because he knew he was gonna break up with you. And he was like, “I know if someone’s there. She won’t freak out.”
Karina: No, no, not like that. He picked him up from Oklahoma because his car was here the whole time.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Karina: And he had no right and…
Chris Seiter: So, this random guy is just sitting in your kitchen. And just you’re like, “What the heck is this?”
Karina: Yeah. So, it was kind of awkward. And I did not know that. Well, I kind of knew that his friend’s bringing him in here. And is doing him a favor because he had to come to the town anyway, his friend. So, he gave him a ride here. So, but he was just standing here in a living room and I’m like, “Okay, hold on. Who are you?” And then he came around a corner. I guess he was looking for me in the house. And yeah, he gave me a hug, he kissed me and it was kind of awkward because we didn’t see each other for a year and his friend was here that I don’t know off.
Chris Seiter: Oh, I get it. So you’re like expecting this really romantic.
Karina: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: But like, “Oh my god, you’re back.” And instead you get this awkward hug and kiss and some third parties sitting there and watching it all.
Karina: Yeah, that was very awkward.
Chris Seiter: That’s pretty weird. Yeah. So, does he cut ties with you immediately? Or does he…?
Karina: No. He was here for two weeks before he had to go back. He told me he wanted to do this school and army that’s really hard. And people don’t pass it. But he wants that, to do that school for his career.
Chris Seiter: Is it a sniper type school or Navy SEAL?
Karina: No, no. He is air defense. It was something for that to get promoted faster, and be in a better position to get better jobs when you get out of the army.
Chris Seiter: Got it.
Karina: So, it was very important for him. I knew about this. And he told me it was start. I think it was the beginning of…no, the 13th of September. So, he was here for two weeks. It was kind of awkward. He was always distant. He was always on his phone, distant, he didn’t want to do anything. And I took off for a week because I wanted to do something with him and my two kids. My previous kids from two previous marriages.
Chris Seiter: Okay, I see. So, you have two kids and he’s kind of you’ve been with this guy for seven years. And you just wanted sort of the family to be back together?
Karina: Yes. And it was kind of he was not there. So I knew, “Oh, my God, something is wrong.”
Chris Seiter: So, he was physically present, but not emotionally present. Is that an accurate way of looking at it?
Karina: Yes. I mean, he’s general unemotional but this time, it was…
Chris Seiter: Stone Cold.
Karina: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, I’m assuming when you kind of sense, “Hey, he’s much more withdrawn the normal,” you confront him about it?
Karina: I tried, but I couldn’t because I was in my own mental health stage.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, I mean the dam is going to break here. So, how does this breakup occur? Who initiates it?
Karina: After the two weeks, it seemed to be normal again. We talk on the phone a lot or texting a lot during the day. It was a normal thing for us. He was not only my lover, and my partner, he was my best friend too. I tell him everything. And I was at work and five days before he had to go to school that I got a long text message at work.
Chris Seiter: All right. So, it was just a text breakup?
Karina: Yes.
Chris Seiter: What does this long text message basically say? Just give us the gist.
Karina: That he was thinking about it, about the future and that he has to think about himself and he cannot go on with this. And he has to think about his career and but he still wants to support me and wants to be friends with me, and that he still loves me and my kids but he cannot go on like this. So, there was no indication what exactly was wrong.
Chris Seiter: He just said, “Hey, I can do this anymore.” And then just…
Karina: Yes, basically, but I couldn’t read the whole text because it was long and then I was at work. He knew I was at work. I mean, since years and years, five years, I’m working in the same place. He knows when I got off and when I have to work. So, it caught me by surprise. And I called him at work. And he was saying me basically the same things. Sorry.
Chris Seiter: It’s okay.
Karina: I love you, but I’m not in love with you.
Chris Seiter: Okay, the whole…
Karina: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: That whole spiel. So…
Karina: Yes.
Chris Seiter: All right. So, what is your first reaction to this? Do you immediately go into panic mode and try to fix things? Do you immediately kind of say, “Well, screw you. I’m going to do my own thing.” Do you go to the internet and start searching for ex boyfriend recovery? What’s your first approach to this?
Karina: Well, I hang up on him while he was talking.
Chris Seiter: So, anger, anger?
Karina: Anger. Not only anger, I was shocked. I was in a state of shock. So, I hang up on him because I couldn’t hear his voice. I didn’t want to hear his voice and all this. How can you say that bs? Because it didn’t make any sense to me.
Chris Seiter: It seems like there’s some aspect of the equation that he’s not telling you.
Karina: Yes. So, I even asked him on a phone. “Do you have found somebody else, did you met somebody else?” And he was saying no. And when he told me, okay, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.” That was for me the point okay, I hang up on you and I crashed at work. I had to go home, I was crying, I was on the floor. I did not want that he hears that over the phone that I was crying because I’m the kind of person that end showing weakness. And then, basically, I went home. I didn’t know what to do. I called my mom in Germany because…so, oops.
Chris Seiter: Looks like your mom’s calling you.
Karina: No. Sorry. And then I called my mom and she was like, “Yeah, there’s nothing you can do leave him alone.” Basically
Chris Seiter: All right. So, the age old advice of just like, “Well, we’re just gonna leave him alone at this point.”
Karina: Yeah, let him think about it. Leave him alone.
Chris Seiter: And it’s never that easy. Is it? You still…
Karina: No, it’s not. It took me four days.
Chris Seiter: Okay, four days before what happens?
Karina: That I sent him begging text.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, what does the begging text say? Like, “Just please, rethink.”
Karina: Yeah, I love him, he’s my best friend. How can I fix this?
Chris Seiter: Right, Okay.
Karina: He was cold. He was very cold. He was like, “Yeah, you have to respect my decision. And I already told you, and it’s over.” And I keep asking and asking, and like, “Why is it over?” And because I wanted to know what happened here. Because it was out of the blue. It did not make any sense to me. And then he texted more things like, “I told you so many times what the problem was, and you keep ignoring it.”
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, he’s saying he’s told you what the problem is. What does he mean by that?
Karina: It basically to start it when he got deployed the first time to Korea. And I started getting depressions.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So he’s worried, he feels like your mental health is attached to his being away from you. And he feels almost like guilt from that, or what is his thinking behind that?
Karina: Basically, I was not communicating that time for three years. And try to hide it and just started complaining about my job, my life, my kids, everything. I was negative.
Chris Seiter: Well, that doesn’t seem an abnormal thing. Unless it is maybe just overly negative. Is that how he perceives it? You’re just too negative? Is that what…
Karina: [inaudible 00:13:47] not me. He knew.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, maybe it’s more of like, “Well, you’re not the person I thought I was dating.”
Karina: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, that’s how he frames it. And I’m sure you don’t take this information too kindly. Do you?
Karina: No because at this point, I mean, we were almost seven years together and how could he do something like that?
Chris Seiter: That’s a long time.
Karina: But for him was all the time…even though he said on the phone, the last phone call we had and he said, “You never communicate.” And that was another one of those problems. That I’m eating everything inside and then out of the blue, I’m going to explode. And he tried to give me advice for everything the last three years and try to help me and I was just basically sitting there and say, “I know, I know. I know.” And he couldn’t take it anymore. Because I developed anxiety, a panic attack, I couldn’t drive anymore, and I wasn’t with the speed razor. And he felt like he was failing, and he couldn’t help me anymore. He didn’t know what to do anymore. He had no choice to break up.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, that seems like he’s communicating that pretty well. But obviously, you still want him back. So eventually at some point, you probably go to YouTube or you could probably come to Google or something you find some of the stuff I’m writing about, I was talking about and you buy into the program. What was your experience like from that point?
Karina: Well, after that bagging text and it didn’t work out so well.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, those usually don’t work to well.
Karina: Yeah, it didn’t work. I was trying, I was like, “Okay,”
Chris Seiter: Everyone does it. So don’t…
Karina: Yeah, I’m like, “Okay you cannot [inaudible 00:15:52]can be that seven years. And you tell me you love me and I try to understand that phrase, what Americans say, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.” It’s not something like that European people use
Chris Seiter: Yeah, yeah. That’s an interesting thing, isn’t it?
Karina: Yeah, I kind of understand that. And then I came, start googling right away after that text message didn’t went well, because he just blew me off. He was just like, “I need to go I have to work, I have to study for my school.” And one of the final sentence was like, “Work on yourself or work on myself.” So, I knew what the problem was at this point. And I was like, “How can I fix this? And how can I get him back?” And yeah, and I found you. Bought your program and start reading.
Chris Seiter: You start reading, you start watching the videos, listening to audio. I saw I noticed you weren’t active participant in the Facebook group. Because before our interview, I was going back and looking at some of the things that you were posting and responding to people. But what I always find is interesting when people buy into the program, not everyone has the same path within the program. Some people use parts of it. Some people don’t use it at all. Some people use it to a tee. What was your experience with regards to that? Did you try to follow it as closely as possible? Did you have any hiccups? Did you make any mistakes?
Karina: No, that day it was September 10. That was the day when I went to no contact.
Chris Seiter: Okay, September 10. You learned about the No Contact Rule. You’re like, “Okay, I’m going to try this.”
Karina: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: How hard was that?
Karina: Very, very hard. Very hard.
Chris Seiter: It’s like going through another breakup. Did you fail?
Karina: No.
Chris Seiter: Wow. Okay, so you’re one of two out of 10 people don’t fail on the first try. So, what do you do during no contact?
Karina: To be honest, I went crazy.
Chris Seiter: Okay, well, at least you’re honest.
Karina: I went nuts. Because you have you went through all those emotions okay. Especially with me when you with somebody so long and out of the blue, being ice cold, and they’re like, “Ha, why doesn’t he love me anymore? And I’m useless. I’m not worth that.” But then, like I said, I started reading your program, I started watching videos, not only yours from other people about relationships, men, how men think and during no contact. I wanted to know everything. That was basically what helped me.
Chris Seiter: So, you said you start watching videos. Were they just general videos on how men think in relationships, or is it specifically about how men think during no contact?
Karina: Everything, both.
Chris Seiter: Okay, all right.
Karina: Because it was always interesting for me. And that’s psychological thinking for humans. So, that was holding me back not to break contact. Because I knew you have to do the opposite.
Chris Seiter: And you’re…sorry, go ahead.
Karina: You have to do the opposite and not what your emotions tells you to do because it will mess it up. That was the hot thing. Even if you think “Oh, he’s just going to forget me and I need to text him and everything. I was like cutting my fingers off not to do this. I went to the gym. He’s a gym freak. I used to go to the gym. I was always fit and I was doing sports since I was a kid. And I was like, “I want my body back.”
Chris Seiter: So you’re just like, “Okay, I’m gonna go work out.”
Karina: Work out. It helped humongous was the anxiety and panic attacks that I’ve fought. Then I had a coaching session was Anna.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you got Anna to help you?
Karina: Yeah. Because there are times that I was like, “I don’t know what to do.” And I…
Chris Seiter: What was some of her advice on the coaching session?
Karina: Well, she asked me how it was before when we met and that was something I had to think about it, yeah, she’s right. Because that that was before than the Karina from three years with depression, anxiety and panic attack. And she didn’t know what to do and that he had no choice. I wasn’t a sinking ship.
Chris Seiter: So she’s just trying to get you back in touch with sort of Yeah, with the energy and the essence of what of the person you were when you first met him?
Karina: Yes. And work on myself and fixing the problem, not only to get him back, but for myself.
Chris Seiter: What were some of the things that you did to do that? So, you mentioned that you had this depression, you mentioned that, and breakups don’t help depression, obviously, I just want you to know that. But you also have these panic attacks, which I’ve actually had a friend. I remember in college, she had a panic attack. We were out for an extra credit assignment at some museum, a bunch of us, she just had a panic attack in the middle of museum and no one knew what to do. It was kind of a frightening thing. So ,what did you do to…I’m not going to say overcame some of the stuff fully, but what did you do to kind of make inroads on it?
Karina: The gym.
Chris Seiter: The gym. So actually, for you is more of a physical exertion type aspect that helped you deal with it.
Karina: Yeah. I mean, Anna taught me to go to the counselling and everything. I did it but I don’t know if it’s a here kind of thing that China does crappy pills and everything. I don’t want that because that did that before I met him years ago.
Chris Seiter: So for you, it’s more of just like, “I want to do something. I want to take some type of action,” and going to the gym, physically exerting yourself, going for a run or something like that is what helps you the most, getting in motion.
Karina: Yeah. And then it’s distracting you too. I’m guilty. I was stalking.
Chris Seiter: Okay, well, though, everyone is guilty of that too. Everyone doesn’t want to admit to it. And I’m just sort of like, “Just be honest. You know, it’s okay.” So, you did the Facebook stalking thing. Were you still friends on Facebook?
Karina: No, it was literally right after he texted me the breakup text. He deleted himself from Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
Chris Seiter: So, he just deleted his profile?
Karina: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Wow. That’s an interesting approach. Okay, so he deletes his profiles. But how did you Facebook stalk up if he deleted his profiles?
Karina: I was hoping it pops up one day or something.
Chris Seiter: Oh, I see. Okay.
Karina: On Instagram he deleted me from…he still had his Instagram. But he never posted anything, even if…before that he posted randomly things and all that. So, he basically was like he was never there.
Chris Seiter: Wow, he just erased himself from reality.
Karina: Yeah. So, I was thinking about it. Maybe because he has to focus on a school. He doesn’t want to see anything about me. And he unfriended me on Instagram. But Facebook was completely he erased themselves.
Chris Seiter: Wow, that’s a big move.
Karina: Yes, right after that text and when I called him that was, It was shocking for me.
Chris Seiter: Well, I think it does go to show that the breakup did hurt him as well. And we’re going to find that out. Obviously, when you do get back in touch with him. But your no contact rule, how long did it last?
Karina: 39 days.
Chris Seiter: 39 days. So, you went more of the longer period of no contact. And then after no contact is up, how did you feel? Did you feel like you were in a better place emotionally or were you still have work to do?
Karina: Well, when I talk to Anna and me and Anna decided to do…what is it called? Inter-division, that word. Doing a no contact of than a usual 30 or 45 days. Because I told her about the school and it was from the 13th of September to before Thanksgiving. So, we decided to do that just to leave him alone. Don’t bother him and anything like that. So, in the whole time, I was counting days, of course. I mean, you do that. But I was keep going and going. I had to go to work. Even people saw that I work. I was not feeling well. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I did exercise beyond no return.
Chris Seiter: You went all in on the exercise?
Karina: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay. It seemed work for you.
Karina: Yeah, it worked for me. And then I ordered your book Ungettable.
Chris Seiter: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So you got Ungettable. You’re reading Ungettable.
Karina: Yeah, I was reading that.
Chris Seiter: Did it actually come? There’s been some ever since COVID happened. There’s been some delays on…
Karina: Yeah, it came took from Amazon. I think it was three, four days later that I got it.
Chris Seiter: Okay, perfect.
Karina: And, yeah, everything I could find on the internet due to your page. I was reading it, even at work.
Chris Seiter: You just immersed yourself into it.
Karina: Yeah. Interesting.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Did you end up listening to this podcast that you’re on right now?
Karina: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Well, that’s could be a treat for you. But you were thinking like, I hope one day to be on that podcast.
Karina: Yeah, kind of. But like I said, I went to the stages emotionally. Yes, I want to text him. And I was like, I always, even at work. When I had to go to the bathroom. I look myself in a mirror was like, “No, you got to make it, you’re not begging and you’re not breaking contact.” If you want him back, you have to fix yourself. And Don’t break no contact. Go ahead, keep going.
Chris Seiter: All right, so you kind of took the Extreme Ownership Approach, which is, “No matter what, I am going to do everything I possibly can what’s in my power to make this work?”
Karina: Yes.
Chris Seiter: But there’s an extra element to it. And that’s where you have to get back into talking to them. Right? So, your no contact is 39 days. Does he reach out at all to you during those 39 days?
Karina: No.
Chris Seiter: Not at all. So, that has to be in the back of your mind, a worry.
Karina: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Who reaches out to who first eventually? Because the no contact is over? Usually we tell our clients to reach out first. What was your experience with that?
Karina: I did not know really what I was expecting or what I should have. What should I do? Because normally it is supposed to be before Thanksgiving, my first text. And of course you’re hoping he’s reaching out but depends on what he’s writing or what he’s texting you. We go from there. Even if it’s a stupid thing like, “Yeah, I miss you,” or something. I would not answer that. Yes, it makes you happy. But it makes you only happy for 10 minutes maybe and then you fall back in the same misery that you were before. And I did not want that. I had to acknowledge this old relationship with him is over. It’s got to be a new beginning.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, you reach out first, I’m guessing.
Karina: No.
Chris Seiter: No? Wow, Okay. So, he reaches out first.
Karina: Yeah, I’m the kind of person that have too much pride. And I was like, “I want this so bad. I cannot fail.” I’m that kind of person Even if I’m suffering crying, I was crying a lot. I was crying. Two days before he reached out. I was crying. I’m like, “I’m worthless.” And I’m always this pep talk to myself. “No, you’re not. You got to make it if you want to back up.
Chris Seiter: Oh, I like that. I like that a lot. Okay, so you’ve just basically reprogrammed your brain to anytime you had maybe a catalyst for depression you would just sort of grab it and say, “No, that’s wrong. I’m better.” And then he reaches out. So what does he reach out with?
Karina: The whole 39 days. I was working on myself trying to make myself better and I didn’t post anything for four weeks.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Is that abnormal for you?
Karina: No, not necessarily. I mean, I post randomly things on Instagram not much on Facebook at all and because I was still looking if he is on Facebook again and he was…the week before he reached out. I was at work and I was randomly looking. And then all of a sudden his Facebook profile popped up. And I was still friends with him. And he didn’t post anything, either. So, it was kind of like, “Okay, what is he doing? And should I post something? Or maybe I want him to feel and think the same way? What I was thinking, “Okay, where is she?” I was thinking and in my no contact race, “What is he doing?” We all do that. And I was mirroring him. So, he started all of a sudden posting things on Instagram. And I had a friend she was looking at it because I’m not looking at. I want to know, but I’m not looking at it.Even if you want to, I’m not going to do that.
Chris Seiter: You got a girlfriend who’s going to do it for you sort of the go between?
Karina: Yes, and it’s wrong because it…I start crying again. I was emotional. But then 10 minutes later, “you got to keep going. Okay, you want to win. You’ve got to keep going.” And then I started posting gym pictures, the ug pictures, [inaudible 00:31:32] pictures.
Chris Seiter: Yep. I hear that work.
Karina: He didn’t like it, like my picture, but he was seeing it. Then I posted the day before he reached out. So day 38 that I’m doing school. I’m trying to find another job. Because that is the main thing that destroyed our relationship too because I was…
Chris Seiter: it was [inaudible 00:32:01]your job a lot.
Karina: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Karina: He liked that picture.
Chris Seiter: Okay. And then he reaches out.
Karina: And he texted me. Was exactly that sentence. Why do I have to leave you? What is it exactly? Something like, “Why do I have to leave you? So you live again, to live again?”
Chris Seiter: Oh, so it’s almost like he noticed the changes?
Karina: Yes.
Chris Seiter: And he was like, “This is the person that I fell in love with.”
Karina: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Interesting. That is an interesting first reach out text, by the way, that’s very direct. How do you respond to that?
Karina: Oh, I respond. In emotional control. Yeah, something like, “I did a lot of thinking and I had to change, too. Because I did not want to be in that stage anymore in its present stage and live in it.” That was my answer, short and…
Chris Seiter: To the point.
Karina: To the point. And then he started texting me again like, “I’m proud of you.”
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, you guys sort of start this very easy communication on day. 39.
Karina: But I made him…my texts shorts.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so he was a little bit more invested in those text messages than you.
Karina: Yeah, because I didn’t want to give so much out for myself in the beginning and then push them away again, or scare him away.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Karina: I want him to leave them thinking and wanting more.
Chris Seiter: How did it work out for you?
Karina: He called me because I…
Chris Seiter: He called you that day?
Karina: He called me that day, he basically said, sorry for that word, I’m fucking with his brain.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So he’s obviously getting very direct here. So, how does a phone call…is this like when he asked for you back right away?
Karina: No.
Chris Seiter: No. okay. So, let’s skip ahead to that. So the phone call I’m assuming kind of goes…how long does it take before he kind of asks for you back?
Karina: Not really asking me back.
Chris Seiter: So, it’s more of an organic type assumption.
Karina: Yeah, yes. He’s not…how can I say that? He’s kind of, he’s a logical thinker. From the beginning why we last so long, it was he always was attracted to my thinking, and my brain. Because I’m different. And I accept him for who he is and who he is. Because this the same way people think he’s rude, he is aloof and I’m the only person who understands him. And he wrote me before he called before he called me he was like, “I can perfectly live by myself. But since I know there’s somebody out in this world who understands me and takes me who I am, I cannot be by myself.” So, he meant me by that.
Chris Seiter: He calls you and…
Karina: Two hours, he asked me what I did and what happened to me. And how did I change back to the Karina that I was before and we talked, nothing happened. And then it was surprisingly, because normally he is always sleeping at nine o’clock because he has to go get out at four o’clock for formation. It’s military.
Chris Seiter: So, he’s up early.
Karina: Yeah. And I was surprised we were on the phone for two hours. I was cool. I kept my cool. The whole time. I wasn’t even surprised that he called me. And then his last sentence was like, “Do you think I will not text you or call you tomorrow?” I was like, “I don’t know.” Other people would probably say yes, I want you to text me or call me. I kept my cool and I was like, “That’s up to you.” And two days later, we texted a text the next morning and basically, he was like, “We’re back together.”
Chris Seiter: Wow. Okay, so it just became this organic.
Karina: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: He was really drawn to the energy that you had before.
Karina: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So, we’re coming up on like almost an hour here. But basically, the last few questions I had for you were with regards to when you look back at your entire experience, and I want you to just pinpoint what you feel worked. In your opinion, when you look back at your entire experience, this turnaround that he had, what do you feel worked for you?
Karina: You got to stay in no contact, you got to work on yourself.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So it’s the standard advice that I keep hearing from all these success stories, which is…
Karina: Yeah, that is a standard advice. Even if he later he told me he had a rebound. He tried to replace me for a couple of weeks.
Chris Seiter: Really? Okay. So, that’s an interesting turn. What did he have to say about that?
Karina: He was honest, he could have been lying. He asked me if I had somebody else. And I was like, “No, I was working on myself and healing myself and be the Karina who I was before.” And his answer was “Touche” But he had a rebound. Well, he didn’t call her a rebound. Basically, he’s trying to tell me, he tried to replace me, she was kind of like me in my worst stages the last three years and he couldn’t forget me.
Karina: And he was still loving with me. So, he ended it. But I did not know because I thought he was not the type of guy that he would do that. But he was like, “I just did not want to think about that seven years down the drain. And I tried to move on. And I’m thinking about us, not about me, even if you still love me,” and he couldn’t shake it off and he broke up with her. He was honest.
Chris Seiter: So, he was honest about how he went on this rebound and how he almost started comparing the rebound to you and she just didn’t really compared to the history.
Karina: That’s not me.
Chris Seiter: Got it. And you really feel like the key to your success was not just doing No Contact Rule. But what you did with that time, during the No Contact Rule. A lot of how you were integrating some of the darker aspects that you’ve you’ve had trouble with before with the depression and the panic attacks and how you just sort of attacked it these exercises and these workouts and I actually find it particularly interesting how you would look at yourself in the mirror and say, “No, I could do this. I’m stronger than this.” You feel like that was sort of the essential key to getting back to the Karina that you were before things kind of took a downward momentum turn.
Karina: Yeah. So, never ever give up on yourself. And never ever break no contact because it’s a time for you, even if it’s the worst thing ever. You got to work on yourself, watch videos, read books. Everything you can find of, work on yourself go to the gym. Yes, you have ups and downs but you have to keep going through those. If you really want somebody back, the main thing is don’t break the No Contact Rule because it’s for you and for the other person and heal.
Chris Seiter: Heal.
Karina: Heal
Chris Seiter: Heal. So healing how…when you say healing, what do you feel like was the best way that you did that?
Karina: Basically was my situation with anxiety and everything and depression and panic attack that was the gym. It was fighting my demons and that was for me for next week I have to drive four and a half hour that is the first time I’m driving again that long and that far after three years. So, I’m very excited if I can make it, I hope I make it.
Chris Seiter: You’re going to make, you’re going to make it. You’re totally going to make it.
Karina: Yeah. And just whatever the personal issue was and if you know the reason for the breakup, I will work on it. And always remember the old relationship is gone. You got to focus on the new thing.
Chris Seiter: So, the key for you, just so I’m having this right was sort of don’t break no contact, make sure you use that time during no contact to face your demons, slay your demons, and also have a distinct understanding that your old relationship isn’t ever going to come back. Instead, it’s time to create something new and better.
Karina: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Beautiful, beautiful. So, no, this is kind of interesting question that I’ve been taken to asking, and this will be the final question, because I know I’ve taken up so much of your time already. But one thing, one pattern I’ve noticed among my success stories is that there’s this interesting tendency where at one point, they almost kind of stopped caring about getting their ex back then was kind of fall in love with the process of self reliance. Did you ever experienced that? Because to me, I feel like you might be an outlier. Because when I hear your story, a lot of it seems like you were dead set on always trying to get him back. Was there ever a point where you’re just like, “You know what, if I don’t get him back, that’s okay.”
Karina: Oh, I had those pawns, too. Of course, yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, you did sort of get down to that mindset, eventually, where you’re like, “You know what, I’m going do everything possible if I can get back, but if it doesn’t work out, I’ll still be okay.” I feel happy where I’m at.
Karina: I had no choice. That’s why I was always telling myself don’t break no contact, no matter what the outcome is, yes it was in the beginning and almost till the end till he reached out there were days “Yeah, I’m doing this for him. Because I want to back. You’re not a failure.” But it was also for me like, “No, I have too much pride. And no matter what the outcome is, if it comes back or not, you will be fine. Yeah, it’s got to be hard and you’re gonna heal from it, but you have to keep on living.” That was for me the thing yeah, it was like, “I don’t care if it comes back or not.”
Chris Seiter: Okay. Beautiful. Yeah, you so you’re like the 11th person in a row who’s gotten their ex back who has told me those exact words. [inaudible 00:52:09], that I really believe that’s a key. But the thing I’m noticing and this is the one last thing I’d like your take on is a lot of people who say that they experience this point of no return where they’re literally get to this point where they’re like, “If I don’t get him back. I’ll keep living, I’ll be okay.” It’s not something that they can pretend, they almost have to honestly feel it. Do you agree with that statement?
Karina: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, it’s not something that you fake…So, it’s almost like you’re almost for anyone listening to this and hopefully you’ve listened to her entire story because it’s an interesting one. But for anyone listening to this who’s going through a breakup and is wondering what the secret key or the secret sauces to getting an ex back I think this is it. It’s getting to this point where you feel like you have the fortitude to move on no matter what. And Karina is just the latest example of someone who did that. Awesome. She did such an excellent job of doing that. I would argue Karina that you had a really much more difficult situation because you had some of the more internal battles with your depression and your panic attacks. And even despite that, you overcame it.
Karina: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So, you should feel extremely proud of yourself.
Karina: I am. Thank you.
Chris Seiter: Thank you for coming on to the podcast. Sharing your story.
Her On Again/Off Again Ex Said He Wasn’t Coming Back… Then He Did
Chris Seiter: All right. Today, we’re going to be talking to a success story who came through our program, who was in our private Facebook support group, named Zoe. I am going to admit, I don’t really know much about her situation, so I’m going to be learning along with the rest of you as I just basically probe her for questions and ask to see what she did that worked versus what maybe didn’t work. First off, I just wanted to thank you so much for doing this, Zoe. You have no idea how much it probably helps people that are going through breakups. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast.
Zoe: You’re welcome.
Chris Seiter: Why don’t you take me to the beginning? Why did you and your ex break up?
Zoe: I don’t actually know. He was at my house. We planned to go out the next day. We just had… It was a stupid argument. I don’t even know what it was over. He just said, “I’m going home,” packed up his stuff and went.
Chris Seiter: Was he living with you at the time?
Zoe: No. I live with my family, and he lives with his. He was just like staying over for the night.
Chris Seiter: You guys just have this argument, and he just sort of leaves, no explanation.
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: I mean, was it a break up when he left? Did he actually say, “Hey, we’re breaking up,” or was it just like, “I need to get out of here,” and just leaves?
Zoe: It was just, “I’m going home.” That was it.
Chris Seiter: There’s literally no hint at all that he’s just broken up with you.
Zoe: Nope. No, nothing.
Chris Seiter: The next day, do you try to get back in touch with him and say, “Hey. I’m sorry about the fight or whatever?”
Zoe: I waited three days. Whenever we broke up, he changed his WhatsApp picture back to a picture of him and his friends. He did that, and I knew something was wrong. I sent him a long message, basically telling him that I couldn’t fight for somebody who wasn’t willing to fight for me because this wasn’t the first breakup.
Chris Seiter: This was sort of an on-again, off-again type. Let me ask you a question. How many times had you broken up previously in the past?
Zoe: About four times.
Chris Seiter: Four times. We’ve gone four revolutions of the wheel at this point. This is nothing new to you. It’s just sort of the latest time that you guys had broken up.
Zoe: Whenever we broke up, I was always the one who kind of begged for him back. I was always the one chasing him. He never chased me. When I didn’t hear from him for three days, I thought, “I can’t. I kind of can’t do this anymore.”
Chris Seiter: You’re fed up with the chasing. You’re just kind of like, “That’s it. I’m not fighting for you anymore.”
Zoe: Yes. I thought he may reply, saying, “No. I love you,” but no. I got a, “I’m not interested. I don’t like you,” response.
Chris Seiter: That really sucks. Also, it’s untrue because now you have him back. There’s a lot to unpack here. Do you mind if I probe into why you broke up the four previous times? Was it always around the same reason? Was it some sort of jealousy on his part or on your part, or is it different reasons every single time?
Zoe: The first one… We hadn’t even been together that long. We were in a shop. I basically shouted his name, and he didn’t like that. He felt like I was embarrassing him.
Chris Seiter: For shouting his name?
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Were you shouting it in a rude way or a playful way?
Zoe: A playful way. I thought playful. We hadn’t been together that long, so we didn’t really kind of know each other that well. I shouted his name, and he told me that I was embarrassing him. We went back to his house. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. He was working night shifts that time. He left a lot earlier than he usually would. He said, “I’m going to work,” which was my cue to leave. He left. I left. He texts me. I can’t remember what he said. It was something along the lines of, “Being stubborn won’t work with me,” something like that. I replied basically saying, “We’ll talk about this tomorrow when we see each other.” It just spiraled into a breakup.
Chris Seiter: That’s breakup number one. What about breakups two and three?
Zoe: Breakup number two was around drugs. Not me, him.
Chris Seiter: You were just like, “I’m not having any of that.”
Zoe: I said to him that if he did it again, that would be kind of me and him over. He went and did it again. We broke up there.
Chris Seiter: Was breakup number three sort of a similar circumstance?
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Breakup number four, the fight you had… Was it about that?
Zoe: No, no. This was breakup number four. I always say that maybe the other breakups were just breaks.
Chris Seiter: Just sort of-
Zoe: This is a breakup.
Chris Seiter: This was a strong one.
Zoe: This was six months, yes.
Chris Seiter: The drug problem… Has that been solved, or is that still an ongoing issue?
Zoe: I’d like to say it’s been solved. I’d say it’s his friends who he hangs around with. With COVID going on, can’t see your friends.
Chris Seiter: It sounds that worked in your favor.
Zoe: Yes, big-time.
Chris Seiter: Breakup number four happens. The drug problem… It’s sort of him just surrounding himself with the wrong types of people. Is he struggling with that still? Is that still, right now, an ongoing issue with him?
Zoe: I wouldn’t say he’s got addiction or anything. I think it’s just when he’s had a drink, and he’s with his friends, and he just doesn’t want to say no.
Chris Seiter: You guys break up for the fourth time. What is your mindset, game plan, approach at that point?
Zoe: After he said he didn’t like me, I went on to say the typical things, “You’ve never liked me. You’ve never loved me,” just the usual kind of guilt-tripping stuff.
Chris Seiter: Right.
Zoe: I think after we’d settled the things he said to me, I just thought, “Right. Everything I’ve got of yours… ” Because he did leave some stuff behind accidentally, I thought, “Right. I’m just going to get it gone. Don’t want it in my house.”
Chris Seiter: All right. You’re getting rid of his stuff.
Zoe: It’s gone. I went and dropped off… I think I just left it by the side of his car, came home, and text him again just to basically say… It was something like, “You think my family liked you. My family never liked you.”
Chris Seiter: Oh okay. You’re getting hurtful now.
Zoe: Yes, yes. I thought, “I’m not letting you get away with this.” I said a lot of hurtful things. I think I ended it with, “You’re dead to me.”
Chris Seiter: It’s almost like giving him a piece of your mind, essentially. At that point, had you found your peace? Had you gotten the bug where you’re like, “Oh man. I made a mistake. I might want him back”?
Zoe: I didn’t find peace until six weeks after the breakup.
Chris Seiter: It had been awhile. Had you guys been in contact pretty consistently since then, or was it radio silence?
Zoe: I gnatted big-time.
Chris Seiter: I mean, think of it from his perspective too. It’s almost like you tell him all these mean things, and then your actions are just bugging him.
Zoe: Completely different.
Chris Seiter: How did he react to the gnatting? Was it positive, or was it just, ew, get away from me?
Zoe: After I told him he was dead to me… It was a week before his birthday. I basically had text him just to say… It was like my closure. His response was, “Why are you texting a dead man?”
Chris Seiter: That’s pretty witty, you have to admit.
Zoe: I think I responded with something like, “Oh, you’ve been waiting to use that line for a long time.” We got into another argument.
Chris Seiter: Oh okay. It didn’t even take long for the argument to develop.
Zoe: No, no.
Chris Seiter: This is funny.
Zoe: We argued. After the breakup, I got diagnosed with anxiety and depression. It was nothing to do with the breakup. It’s something that I’ve kind of been dealing with for a long time.
Chris Seiter: The breakup is just sort of not helping that though, I imagine.
Zoe: No, not at all. I got diagnosed. Then I couldn’t sleep. I just decided to text him again. He was being really nice to me, opened up to me, which is something that he had never kind of done in the past.
Chris Seiter: Had you told him of your anxiety and depression thing?
Zoe: Not at this point, no. Then I did. I think I had asked him to come and meet me.
Chris Seiter: Did he believe you? Because sometimes, men who are going through breakups think sometimes, women are just making things up for sympathy. Did he believe you?
Zoe: I’d say yes and no. Potentially no, because of, maybe, yes, the way I was kind of reacting to everything. That’s when he kind of opened up and was like, “We all feel this way sometimes. You’ve got to see the positive in every negative.” Then I said to him, “Did you mean all of those things you said?” He said, “Yes, you’re not for me.”
Chris Seiter: It’s just hurtful. That definitely won’t help anxiety or depression at all, hearing that.
Zoe: No.
Chris Seiter: Did that spark another fight between the two of you?
Zoe: No, no. I left it.
Chris Seiter: You were just really bothered and hurt by it.
Zoe: Yes. Then I text him again. I was in his town for a work-
Chris Seiter: How many weeks is this after the breakup? Is this week four or five?
Zoe: I’d say this is going on week five.
Chris Seiter: There’s been a lot of contact between the two of you. You text him again.
Zoe: Asked him to come and meet me.
Chris Seiter: You tried everything.
Zoe: Oh yes, because I knew if he’d come and see me, he’d want to get back with me.
Chris Seiter: It didn’t work the first few times though.
Zoe: Oh God, no. God, no. I asked him to come and meet me. He responded saying it wasn’t a good idea. I said, “Fair enough. That’s your decision, but I’ll still be there.” I waited until… Bang on, I think it was half six. He didn’t come. I thought, “Oh, I’m seeing red again.” I text him another long paragraph message. Because I’d asked him to block my number, so I couldn’t text him because if I delete… I know his number off by heart. I delete the number. It’s pointless.
Chris Seiter: You just know it, right?
Zoe: Yes. I asked him to block it, and he told me to just delete his number.
Chris Seiter: You’re kind of like, “Well, I can’t. I know your number.”
Zoe: Exactly. I end up telling him I was going to block him, and I did block him. I blocked him right up until my no-contact ended.
Chris Seiter: You’re skipping a few important elements there. Week five seems to be when you try all this stuff out. Then you’re just sort of like, “This isn’t working.” Eventually, you probably go online, YouTube or something, and you come across the program, or articles, or whatever, however you came into our field of view. You get the program and learn about the no-contact rule and everything like that. What is your approach? because sometimes, people have a lot of false starts with the no-contact rule. Are you one of those people that would get the program and just be like, “I’m going to follow it to a T?” Are you one of those people that says, “This part sounds good. This part sounds good. This part sounds good. I think I’ll do those parts and forget the other parts.”
Zoe: I’d like to say that I do follow it to a T. I didn’t want to steer off because clearly, you follow it, and it works.
Chris Seiter: Is there a lot of doubt when you start, like this can’t possibly work?
Zoe: I think everyone’s got that doubt. I’ve gone on Google, and I typed in everything. What does this mean? What does this mean?
Chris Seiter: You’re just furily researching. You’re probably coming across some other people and their takes on things that maybe contradict what some of the stuff we say is. You’re just trying-
Zoe: I actually followed you and somebody else. Her position was, you do 60 days, no contact. You don’t reach out. If they don’t reach out in 60 days, move on.
Chris Seiter: That’s a way to do it. That’s a way to do it. That’s not my position though.
Zoe: Then I came across yours. I would go on your website three, four times a day.
Chris Seiter: Good, good. I’m glad this website got-
Zoe: Sat in work, going through it. Need to save this. When I get home, I can read this. I can read this. Then I kind of just bit the bullet and bought the program.
Chris Seiter: You bit the bullet, bought the program. You do get into the Facebook group. How was your experience there? because every time I talk to people, they seem to think that the Facebook group, just being around that community, seems to be that most helpful thing. Not everyone, but most people seem to be… It’s almost like once you see how other people are having struggles too, you kind of realize, “Oh, I’m not alone.” Was it a similar vibe for you?
Zoe: It was really helpful. You see it. It’s just post after post after post. I just thought, “The only way people are ever going to comment on my stuff is if I comment on theirs.”
Chris Seiter: That’s correct.
Zoe: Get involved because you kind of build… It’s like a group of friends who kind of have your back kind of throughout it all.
Chris Seiter: Yes. Well, it’s interesting you say that because my theory has always been, the more you help people in the group, people will remember you and help you in return. Most people… When they come in there, they just want help. They don’t ever want to give anything in return. It kind of goes both ways, I think. You’re one of the people that went in there, were like, “I’ll help a few other people, and then I’ll ask my questions to them,” or you probably networked. Did you do the battle-buddy system at all?
Zoe: Yes. I did that. My battle buddy actually lived in America, so I did get paired with someone from the-
Chris Seiter: Timing.
Zoe: Yes, I got paired with somebody in the U.K. She just kind of just left the group.
Chris Seiter: That’s fine.
Zoe: I just came across-
Chris Seiter: Sometimes you get that. Right.
Zoe: I came across my battle buddy kind of… It was by accident. She asked for my advice on something on a message, and then it just went from there.
Chris Seiter: Perfect. Are you guys still friends now?
Zoe: Because she got her ex back as well.
Chris Seiter: Good.
Zoe: Since that’s kind of happened, and with kind of COVID, and everything, contact’s kind of dropped a level. I know that if I had a problem, I can go straight to her, and it’s vice versa.
Chris Seiter: It’s interesting you say that. Your battle buddy that got her ex back… Did she make a oh-I-got-my-ex-back post, or did she kind of keep it quiet?
Zoe: I think she kept it quiet.
Chris Seiter: It’s interesting you say that because all I know are the people who get their exes back that make a post about it, or talk about it in a comment, or something. I don’t know the people who keep it quiet. Now I kind of get a growing suspicion there’s a lot more than I even realize. The problem is I really wish everyone would just say it so that I could tally it up to see, hey, this is actually what the success rate is. It’s hard to get an accurate assessment because of that reason. Anyways, we’re getting a little off topic here. You learn about the no-contact rule. You’re like, “I’m going to try this on my ex.” You try it on your ex. What do you do during no contact? Do you fail it a bunch of times?
Zoe: No.
Chris Seiter: Are you really focusing on yourself, and energies, and things like that?
Zoe: I had to do 45 days. I did 45 days, no problem.
Chris Seiter: I think that was a smart decision for you.
Zoe: Well, I did the breakup assessment. It said it, and I thought, “Right. Well, I’ve got to do it.” I’d already started my no contact, so I was 20 days in by the time I joined the-
Chris Seiter: You’re halfway there.
Zoe: Yes. I had to read the program. I printed it out in work. Printed it out in work, came home, got my highlighter out.
Chris Seiter: You actually printed this? It’s 700 pages, Zoe.
Zoe: Oh yes.
Chris Seiter: Oh my God.
Zoe: Chapter by chapter, printed it, and I just brought it all home. I just got highlighter out and just worked my way through.
Chris Seiter: Wow. You work your way through it. Are you actually doing something else other than going through the program? because it’s almost like, to me, reading the program just cultivates your mind. Are you doing anything, like working out at all, or trying to meet new people, or just make new friends, or anything like that? which I imagine is hard with the COVID thing.
Zoe: I got into walking.
Chris Seiter: Walking.
Zoe: Me and one of my work colleagues… We’d go climb mountains at weekends.
Chris Seiter: That’s awesome. All right. That’s not walking. That’s hiking.
Zoe: We actually still do that now.
Chris Seiter: Awesome. Great way to relieve stress as well, which I imagine helps with the anxiety.
Zoe: It just clears your mind.
Chris Seiter: Eventually, you get through no contact. You say you don’t break it at all. Does he reach out at all during no contact for you?
Zoe: No. That’s it.
Chris Seiter: When he doesn’t reach out, do you have any of these moments where you kind of step back and you’re like, “What am I doing? This isn’t going to work.”
Zoe: No.
Chris Seiter: You’re real confident in this.
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Why? Where does that confidence come from? The fact that you’d gotten him back before?
Zoe: Yes. He always said to me, “I don’t take an ex-girlfriend back.”
Chris Seiter: And he did three times.
Zoe: Yes, yes. I wasn’t kind of worried. I think what worried me the most, which I think worries everyone, is, has he moved on?
Chris Seiter: When you worried about that, how vivid are the… Because in my experience, sometimes if you let people kind of imagine their ex moving on, they kind of always imagine the worst-case scenarios. Did you ever have nightmares about things like that happening?
Zoe: Yes, twice.
Chris Seiter: You did, twice. Oh man.
Zoe: I went and met up with him. He had a new girlfriend. He said, “My family really like her. My friends really like her.”
Chris Seiter: This isn’t real. This is a dream.
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: You said it so real. I was like, “Wait, what?”
Zoe: No, no, it was a dream. Then my second dream after that… It was multiple women.
Chris Seiter: He’s a ultimate player or something like that.
Zoe: Yes, it was horrible.
Chris Seiter: How do you cope with those nightmares?
Zoe: I have a diary. I just scribble in that.
Chris Seiter: You’re still getting through no contact. You’re doing the hiking. What about internal mindset shifts? Is the way you look at the situation after you come out of no contact different than the way you looked at it at the beginning of no contact? Do you feel a lot more confident afterwards?
Zoe: I think it’s quite nerve-racking coming out of no contact because you don’t know how they’re going to react.
Chris Seiter: Right.
Zoe: I think because I had him blocked for pretty much the majority of no contact, kind of coming out of it was-
Chris Seiter: When you say, “Blocked,” you only mean blocked in phone. What about social media outlets?
Zoe: He doesn’t have any social media.
Chris Seiter: Oh, that makes a lot of our social media stuff kind of not matter. In that sense-
Zoe: It didn’t stop me. I carried on posting.
Chris Seiter: Very good. I’m actually kind of curious. Even though he doesn’t have social media, did he hear about some of the things you were posting on social media from a… No. He’s just not even part of the digital world at all.
Zoe: Nope.
Chris Seiter: Very contrarian. Did you get attention from other guys or something like that?
Zoe: I was actually speaking to somebody else whilst in no contact and whilst… I was actually in a texting phase with him.
Chris Seiter: You were the one that were talking to multiple guys then?
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Interesting. You come out of no contact. 45 days, you’re complete. He hasn’t reached out once or made an attempt to reach out once because you have him blocked, but he also doesn’t have social media, so obviously not. What is your game plan? Do you text him right away? You seemed to have met someone else where you’re just sort of talking to this other person as well.
Zoe: I reached out on day 47, which was a Sunday. The other person who I was speaking to was more of a distraction. It was never going to be anything else, kind of over the-
Chris Seiter: Did that person believe it was going to be more?
Zoe: No.
Chris Seiter: No.
Zoe: No.
Chris Seiter: Was that person also coming off a breakup as well?
Zoe: No.
Chris Seiter: No. He was just being a nice friend?
Zoe: Yes, I’d say so. I mean, we don’t speak now. There’s no reason for us to speak.
Chris Seiter: Day 47 happens. You’re still talking to this other guy, but you decide you’re going to reach out to your ex here. What do you say? Does it work? Tell me about the experience.
Zoe: My first text was positive. I sent him… It was a, I need some advice.
Chris Seiter: Damsel-in-distress type.
Zoe: He responded, I’d say, within 15 minutes. I sent the text, put my phone down, and went out in my car. Just left my phone.
Chris Seiter: You’re just like, “I’m not going to… ” It’s interesting. I was texting someone a couple of days ago. My wife had me… She wanted me to put together a shoe rack for her, but it was not the kind of shoe rack that’s really simple. It was the kind of where you’re… I have to screw things in. It took an hour. I was texting someone, and I was really eager to hear back from them. It was some designer that I was working with for work. I texted them. I kept looking at my phone. I was thinking, “God damn. Why won’t this person respond?” Because I was doing this woodworking thing, the time flew so fast that next thing I knew, it was 10 minutes, and they had texted back. Sometimes distracting yourself like that, like going out to your car, focusing on something else, is one of the best things you can do.
Zoe: Yes, it really works.
Chris Seiter: I think yours is more nerve-racking based.
Zoe: Anxiety, yes. Big-time.
Chris Seiter: You’re in your car. Eventually, you go out and get your phone though.
Zoe: Yes, I came back in. I had a text message. Supposed to respond-
Chris Seiter: How long were you out in your car?
Zoe: I went to go fill my car up with petro, so I was only out about 20 minutes.
Chris Seiter: You just went to go fill up your car up with gas. He had responded.
Zoe: I came back. I waited an hour from his response time to when I text back. I think I asked two questions, and then I exited. He responded back saying… I think it was something like, “Enjoy.” That was it. Done.
Chris Seiter: The bridge has been created. Texting phase begins. How does that go? because sometimes, the texting phase doesn’t always go as smoothly as people hope.
Zoe: I’d say most of my texts were positive, really chatty to each other. It was just natural. There was no kind of… Right. This is what I need to ask. I’m going to ask that, and that’s it. It was the way we used to text.
Chris Seiter: Let me ask you. You mentioned it was real natural. At some point, did you even care about how you started the conversations? Were you really clever about the conversation starters, or was it just so natural that it was almost like you could just text, “Hey,” and they would respond?
Zoe: No. Majority of texts that I used, I’d have them approved first by a mod. Then I’d always start with a hock, always. It was never, hi, none of that. It was always a hock.
Chris Seiter: Were you the one that would start the conversations every single time?
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Did that bother you?
Zoe: No, because it’s not about who starts the conversation.
Chris Seiter: Very good. I feel like I taught you well or something.
Zoe: I think he reached out twice. That was it.
Chris Seiter: Were you the one ending the conversations?
Zoe: I’d say 9 times out of 10.
Chris Seiter: That’s good enough.
Zoe: Towards the end, he beat me to it.
Chris Seiter: He started getting like, “I’m going to beat her before she beats me.”
Zoe: I think it’s because the texts were getting longer and longer. They’d go longer throughout the day.
Chris Seiter: Was it an all-day thing?
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: How long did it take to get to that level?
Zoe: I’d say maybe text seven, maybe.
Chris Seiter: The seventh, sort of, conversation you had, it was all day long. I’m sure there’s lulls throughout the day where you’re just maybe an hour or two, no one responds because of work and things like that.
Zoe: Yes, when people are at work, it’d go quiet.
Chris Seiter: What kind of things would you talk about? because talking all day can be sometimes challenging because you run out of material to talk about. What would you talk about?
Zoe: It would be-
Chris Seiter: Was there any kind of flirtatious aspects to it at all, or was it just sort of more interest-based?
Zoe: More interest-based until we kind of got closer to phone calls in the end. That’s when it would kind of get more flirty.
Chris Seiter: How long were you in texting phase before the flirty messages occur? Who initiates some of the flirty messages? Is it you, or is it him?
Zoe: I’d say it’s a mixture. It’d start with humor. Then it would just turn into a little bit flirty and cheeky, I’d say.
Chris Seiter: Eventually, the phone call phase begins. How long into the texting phase did that take for you?
Zoe: I’d say I had a spreadsheet where I was kind of logging everything. I only got up to text 16.
Chris Seiter: 16.
Zoe: I actually met up with him before I did the phone call.
Chris Seiter: Wow. That’s fine. This is interesting. Who initiates the meetup?
Zoe: Him.
Chris Seiter: Him. What does he say? You’re on your 16th text message conversation. You’re texting back and forth throughout the entire day at this point. Is he just like, “Hey, let’s meet up?” Is it something like that?
Zoe: He sent me a picture of a burger.
Chris Seiter: Oh okay. He’s like, “Want one of these with me or something?”
Zoe: It was something like… He sent me a picture of the burger and said, “Would you like to try this?” I just said, “Yes,” not thinking anything of it. Then he said something like, “Oh, I’m off on Wednesday if you want to meet up and go for lunch.”
Chris Seiter: You can’t say no to that.
Zoe: Then-
Chris Seiter: That’s pretty good.
Zoe: I was on a week’s holiday, so it was perfect timing. We met up.
Chris Seiter: You met up?
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: How did that go?
Zoe: Fine.
Chris Seiter: Are you real nervous when you go?
Zoe: I was fine until I saw his car outside. Then, kind of, the nerves hit me. I got into his car, smiled, and it was like old times.
Chris Seiter: Just fell back into the normal roles that you’re used to.
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: How long does this meet up last?
Zoe: Longer than it should have.
Chris Seiter: Longer than it should have. Okay.
Zoe: It was, I’d say, about six hours.
Chris Seiter: It’s really hard to end those early though, isn’t it? because you’re having such a good time. Do you have that moment where you’re like, “I just don’t want this to end. This is great.”
Zoe: I know he felt the same because he kept saying, “Oh, do you want to go here? Oh, do you want to go here?” I know what he’s like. When he started doing that, I thought, “Right. I’m on.”
Chris Seiter: You’re in.
Zoe: Yes, yes, yes.
Chris Seiter: You eventually do end it though after six hours.
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: What happens after that? because sometimes, this is the tipping point, I like to call, because sometimes, men just fall right off and then sometimes, you’re way… They’re really into talking to you. Is it pretty much like you get back, and he’s just immediately texting you again? It’s just sort of like you hit another level?
Zoe: I can’t remember. He wouldn’t text me when I got home. No, he did. He texted me when I got home. He said… It was something like, “How did you find today seeing me?” I answered. I was like, “Oh, it was old times. How was it for you?” He said, “I thought it would be really uncomfortable, but it wasn’t.” Then the next day is when he rung me. That was kind of the calling phase for us.
Chris Seiter: What I find really interesting is the text message that he used, “How did you find seeing me?” because if you really think about it, it’s extremely self-interested, which is my entire theory when it comes to breakups. Everyone always makes decisions based on self-interest. He’s making it almost like, “What did you think about me?” That’s the first thing. He’s worried about what you think about him. It’s almost implying that your opinion matters a lot more than you realize. Then he’s initiating these phone calls.
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Do you hit hyper speed at some point? because I feel like you’re getting close to him asking for you back. Or, sometimes men get kind of cowardly about even asking for you back. They’re just sort of like, “Oh, yes. We’re dating.” It’s almost like it magically happened overnight or something. What was it like for you?
Zoe: That’s kind of actually what happened, literally what you said. We started kind of the phone calls. We were never great on the phone together, never. It was uncomfortable.
Chris Seiter: Do you ever try FaceTime or video chat?
Zoe: We do now. Literally, five minutes before I came on to you, I was on FaceTime to him.
Chris Seiter: Well, see, it’s a lot better, isn’t it, when you can see a person?
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: There’s just something a little bit more powerful about being able to see the person, and see their gestures, and everything.
Zoe: We kind of started the phone calls. They were never long, five minutes. He’d call me every day after work on our way home. We’d have very short conversations.
Chris Seiter: You guys are mostly texters then. Texting, got it.
Zoe: Yes, yes. Then he asked if I wanted to go on a weekend away.
Chris Seiter: It’s a big step.
Zoe: Our biggest interest of conversation was bikes. When we had the first meetup, he showed me his new bike. I had a ride on it. Then-
Chris Seiter: Bikes… an actual bicycle or a motorcycle?
Zoe: Bicycle. No, bicycle.
Chris Seiter: Sorry.
Zoe: On that meetup, he bought his bike. I had a little ride on it. Then that evening, he was sending me bikes on eBay. You should-
Chris Seiter: He wanted you to buy a bike.
Zoe: Yes, yes. You should buy this. You should buy this. Look at this video. This could be yours, very much that. I ended up finding a bike. He’d agreed to come with me to come pick it up. It was a four-hour roundtrip. The day before, he texts me to say, “I can’t come tomorrow.”
Chris Seiter: What? Was he too scared?
Zoe: I didn’t play on it. I left it for a couple of hours and just said, “No worries. Really excited to pick up my bike.” I thought, “I’m not letting you know that I’m actually kind of upset”
Chris Seiter: You were really looking forward to the four-hour car trip or whatever with him.
Zoe: Yes. I kind of just left it at that. Then I didn’t reach out for awhile. He ended up reaching out to me with a memory.
Chris Seiter: When you say you didn’t reach out for a while, how long is awhile? Couple days? Couple hours?
Zoe: No, couple of days. It was about four days. I had-
Chris Seiter: You had picked up the bike by yourself.
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: That has to be scary though because it’s like, everything was going so well. Then it’s almost like you see your first… little hint of doubt there.
Zoe: He’s a mixture of fearful, avoidant, and dismissive.
Chris Seiter: He’s a mixture of everything.
Zoe: Yes. I knew, him pulling back, all I had to do was pull back as well.
Chris Seiter: It worked.
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: I think it’s just more about giving him space to kind of figure it out in his head. Eventually, you mentioned, he just sort of assumes the two of you are together again. How does that conversation go? Are you the one to push the issue? How does that go?
Zoe: I pushed it. We had one weekend away, and it was great. We came back, and he had said to me, “What’s going to happen with me and you now?” I got some advice. I responded. He said, “I agree with everything that you’ve said. Let’s just enjoy each other’s company, but I don’t something casual.” Then we had a four-day weekend away, which was coming up to where our year anniversary would have been. We finished work on a Friday. On our way, he referred to me as his girlfriend.
Chris Seiter: It just sort of naturally happened.
Zoe: I didn’t play on it. Didn’t pick up.
Chris Seiter: You didn’t. Great.
Zoe: Just ignored it, carried on as normal. Then the next day, called me his girlfriend. I didn’t say anything. Then the next day, I said to him, “What are we?” He said, “We’re dating, aren’t we? We’re official.” I was like, “Okay.” That was it.
Chris Seiter: That’s the best. That’s the best. You got him back. It’s funny how it just sort of naturally unfolds like that, isn’t it?
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: What do you feel like, when you look back at the whole situation, was most important for you?
Zoe: I think it’s understanding him. Before, if I hadn’t found the program, I would’ve… We wouldn’t be back together. It’s as simple as that. I would have ruined my chances.
Chris Seiter: You mentioned some of the attachment theory stuff. Do you feel like that was something that you didn’t know before?
Zoe: Yes. I had no idea about any style of attachment, none of them.
Chris Seiter: Well, it’s-
Zoe: Finding that out helped.
Chris Seiter: I mean, it’s amazing actually, how relevant that actually is. You feel just kind of having a framework to go forward on was important. It also seems to me like you’re actually more confident, I think, than you give yourself credit for because one of the reasons I was asking during no contact, if you had any doubts, was because I find that a lot of people have a ton of doubts. They let the doubt kind of control them. You don’t seem like that to me at all, or do I have you pegged wrong?
Zoe: I think during no contact, I was torn. Do I want him back? Do I not want him back?
Chris Seiter: You were just even at a point where, I’m not even sure if this is worth it for… What ultimately decided for you?
Zoe: When we started texting and how kind of naturally, it just flowed. I mean, after couple of no responses and some negative texts, that throws you back a little bit.
Chris Seiter: It does, yes. Because I’ve been noticing this trend among people who get their exes back, where they almost get to this point where they’re just unsure if they even want their ex back… They’re almost like, “I’ll be okay without them.” Do you feel like you achieved that mindset as well?
Zoe: Yes, definitely.
Chris Seiter: You were the 15th person in a row to mention this. This is why I think it’s almost cliché. It’s almost like you kind of got to get over your ex first before you can get them back. It’s cliché, but I’ve seen it happen in 15 people in a row.
Zoe: It’s so true.
Chris Seiter: Last few questions before I let you go… Let’s dive into that mindset. You’ve mentioned you did get to a point where you’re just even considering whether or not you should try to get him back. Is it the kind of thing that you can fake, or do you feel like you have to actually-
Zoe: No.
Chris Seiter: How did you get to that point where you achieved it?
Zoe: I think it was just realizing how happy I actually was on my own.
Chris Seiter: That’s a great way of looking at it.
Zoe: My attitude in work, the way I help myself kind of more… I was kind of seeing friends I hadn’t seen in a long time. I was becoming the old me.
Chris Seiter: The key for you was almost realizing how happy you were not stressing about this relationship.
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Almost realizing, this is how happy life can be without the worry or stress of this relationship.
Zoe: If it didn’t work out, there is someone out there for me.
Chris Seiter: Having that confidence of that really makes a difference. Now that you’ve gotten him back, do you feel like your relationship has been better?
Zoe: So much better. On that weekend where we became official, he opened up to me like he’s never opened up to me before.
Chris Seiter: Really?
Zoe: Telling me things like, “I took you for granted. I realize that now. I wanted to reach out to you, but I deleted your number. I know my priorities.” It was just kind of all the stuff you wanted to hear, and he told me all of that.
Chris Seiter: He said it. Has his actions backed it up since you’ve been back together?
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: That’s great.
Zoe: I mean, we don’t see each other as much as we used to. That’s work.
Chris Seiter: It’s hard now with the thing.
Zoe: This was his idea. We just opened up a joint account together for when we move out next year.
Chris Seiter: Oh, you’re going to move in together?
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Big step.
Zoe: Yes, all his idea.
Chris Seiter: I’m really glad you said that because it seems to me, the key for you is just having the confidence to give him space when he needs it. Remember how he did the bike thing, and he’s like, “I can’t come.” Did you ever ask him why he did that?
Zoe: It was to do with work. They had asked him to do a couple more hours. You can’t turn it down. He didn’t tell me until about four days later.
Chris Seiter: He’s worried about how you’ll react. That’s why he didn’t tell you, probably, right?
Zoe: Yes.
Chris Seiter: You reacted really well. This has been really eye-opening. I really loved the way you put it. It’s just being happy without them and realizing you can sort of live a happy life without this breakup. Is there any other thing that you’d like anyone listening here that you’d… Maybe one piece of advice you can give them if they’re struggling through a breakup and they’re trying to consider getting an ex back.
Zoe: Buy the program.
Chris Seiter: Oh okay. Great advice. We’ll end it there.
Zoe: It’s as simple as that. Buy it. Everything you need is on there. A group of people who you can call, friends who are going through exactly the same as you, because your friends and family… They don’t understand, Whereas you’ve got a group of people who do.
Chris Seiter: I’m just going to say this is called Buy the Program Successfully. Thanks so much for coming on.
How To Attract The Right Type Of Men (With Inna Mel)
Nov 19, 2020
We’ve come to learn that the secret to “attracting an ex back” and “getting over an ex” is to actually learn how to attract other men to you.
Wild, right?
Well, today you’re in luck because I had the opportunity to sit down for an hour and interview one of the top experts in the world at helping women attract the right type of guy Inna Mel,
In our interview we talk about a wide variety of topics from,
How COVID has impacted the dating scene
Making sure you have the right type of “energy”
What she’s seeing that successful women are doing
And much more
Advice On Attracting The Right Type Of Man
Chris Seiter: Okay. All right. Today we’re going to be talking to [Inamel 00:00:04], who is a really interesting individual who was telling me a little bit about what she does and how she helps single successful women try to attract the right type of guy. And I think that’s a perfect fit for all the women listening to this podcast or going through breakups who maybe want their ex back, but also just need to learn how to attract the right type of guy. So I wanted to have Ina on to talk a little bit about how she does what she does. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started?
Inna Mel: Oh, thank you. First of all, I just want to say thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I’m so, so excited. My journey started many, many years ago. I think that in a sense, I was meant to do this way before I actually knew I was meant to do this. My parents got divorced when I was eight years old and I was able to witness from a very, very young age what it was like to see a healthy relationship and also to see a toxic relationship. And so once I got older, unfortunately, as you know, if you don’t heal your childhood traumas, you carry them onto your adult relationships.
Inna Mel: And so, I was in multiple unhealthy relationships, and then I just realized that I need to really do the work and figure out, why am I attracting these deceptive people into my space? And so my journey started and I realized that I want to help single successful women finally attract the right men into their life. And I’m here today doing what I love to do.
Chris Seiter: So you’re working with single women basically trying to teach them, or show them rather, how to attract the right type of guy. It’s really funny, before we were doing this interview, I was up, I’ve have like a makeshift YouTube room that I’ve put together to do YouTube stuff. And I was doing a video on the nine red flags that you should not be trying to get this person back. And I’m curious, I’m assuming a lot of the women that you work with are attracting the types of men that they shouldn’t be attracting, and I’m curious to get your take on this, why do you think that is? Why are women who are attracting, like you said earlier when we were talking, one-night stands, just very toxic type of relationships. Why in your opinion, do you think that happens?
Inna Mel: I think there are multiple reasons. For the most part, I think that my clients or the women that I work with, they are very successful, so what they do is they apply the same method that they do in work, where they use a lot of their masculine energy, which is control, and so they try to bring that into-
Chris Seiter: They’re almost like the alpha at work? And so are you saying because of they’re alpha at work, they start being the alpha in the relationship with men and men are finding that a little bit off-putting?
Inna Mel: Yes. I would say that, instead of being more in their feminine energy where they’re receiving, where they are listening, they use their masculine energies and so they attract these emotionally unavailable men or even men that are maybe even using them. And another thing is, I think that they’re very giving. I would actually call a lot of these women very giving where they’re just taking the lead, taking control. For instance, they’ll be the ones who will plan the date, they’ll plan everything. And they don’t give these guys a chance to lead, a chance to feel like they are the alpha male, as you said. So I think that that is where they go wrong very early on in the dating scene.
Chris Seiter: Is there ever a case where the opposite is true, where they aren’t assertive enough and the man is the one that is just taking control over everything?
Inna Mel: Yes. But for the most part, the women that I come in contact with, that’s not the problem that they have, it’s the complete opposite. So my guess is, they just need to figure out how to balance their masculine and their feminine energy and bring in that partner. Another thing I would say is, a lot of these women, they’re go-getters, and so what they do is it’s almost like they’re seeking validation, not from within themselves, but from these men, telling these guys like, “I’m the CEO,” or, “I make this amount of money.” because ultimately, men don’t really care what you do for a living, they connect with you because the way you make them feel.
Inna Mel: And so I think that’s where they have that imbalance, if I’m making sense.
Chris Seiter: Do you think that hearkens back a little bit to, you mentioned the childhood trauma and how that integrated into your dating life, I think the entire theory of attachment styles really revolves around that. Do you have any insight into… I’m a big believer in patterns, one of the big assets that you have when you start talking or coaching a lot of people like you have is you can start to notice patterns. And I think you’ve already picked up on one, which is these women being a little too assertive almost. But I’m wondering, do you also notice a pattern in the types of attachment styles that the women have?
Chris Seiter: You mentioned they’re trying to seek out validation, do you think there’s some insecure aspect?
Inna Mel: Yeah. Absolutely. And I love that you mentioned attachment styles. I think that for the most part, they are more on the anxious side, they probably have more of an anxious attachment style instead of a very attachment style. So the patterns are all there.
Chris Seiter: So secure attachment style is like the holy grail that you’re looking for. This is actually something I found when I coach with people, and that’s, a lot of times if you’re trying to win an ex back, a lot of times, one of the best ways you can do that is you try to rewire their brain in a little way to try to mimic a secure attachment. Are you noticing a similar experience with your coaching clients?
Inna Mel: Yes. I definitely see that. However, I’m a big believer that your attachment style can change because for instance, I’ll use myself as an example. I used to have an anxious attachment style and now I can say that I have a secure attachment style. So it’s definitely not something that is set in stone, it can be changed once you put in the work and you do the work. But I definitely do see that, that they try to mimic that, but in reality, when I do the work with them and we go deeper, the anxious attachment style does appear. It does come up.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. It’s this very consistent theme you’re seeing amongst the women that you’re working with where they have these anxious attachment styles, and that does harken back to childhood. So I’m actually interested in, when you say you go deep with your coaching clients, do you go so deep to the point where you start asking them questions about their childhood? And if so, are you starting to notice patterns there about maybe a father leaving earlier or something along those lines?
Inna Mel: Yeah. The way that I work with them and the work that I put them through is I try to figure out what are their unconscious and conscious needs. I also try to figure out what are their desires, what are their non-negotiables? And then once we figure that out, we work through releasing specific patterns or false beliefs that they have about relationships in general or fears, or if they have any past wounds that may be blocking their path into finding a partner.
Inna Mel: So all those things we do talk about and we work through, and it really does help figure out, “Aha, there’s this pattern, you’re attracting a certain type of men into your space and it’s repetitive. And until you work through these blocks, you’re going to continue attracting the same type of partner just with a different face.”
Chris Seiter: I’m also interested when you talk about attracting the right type of man, is most of your work basically just focused on helping women do just that, the attracting part, or are you finding that the attracting parts, the easy part and the keeping them like the relationship surviving is the hard part? Because what I’ve found is, the more and more I’ve done this to learn exactly what works and what doesn’t work, the attracting part is the easy part, at least for my work, it’s actually keeping that relationship together, especially in breakups, because there’s usually problems that are present. So I’m just curious about your experience with that.
Inna Mel: Yeah. I agree with you. I think that the attracting part is the easy part, but some of these women are actually clueless, so I start depending on where they’re at. So the attracting part is definitely the easier part, but the keeping part is the hard part because as you know, especially when you first meet someone, you put on a different face, so you put on a different hat and then once you get to know them and you spend a lot of time with them, all these things come up and it’s like, “Wow, who is this person that I’ve been with?” And so the keeping part is definitely way, way harder than attracting.
Chris Seiter: And I suppose you can make it a little bit easier if you do attract the right type of guy, he’s a little bit more amenable to realizing you’re not a perfect human being, especially in today’s day and age where everything is on social media. It’s almost like we always put our best foot forward on social media and then when you meet the person in real life, you’re just like, “Well, this isn’t the person that was portrayed on social media.” So I’m curious, especially with COVID happening now, what has been your experience with how COVID has impacted just everything?
Inna Mel: Oh, wow. I think that in terms of relationships and dating, I think this is actually a very good time to get to know someone. Why do I say that? Because you can’t really meet them right away unless you both decide and you take all the precautionary measures. So what you have is you get to know them and you get to really figure out how is this person coping with what’s happening in the world. Where’s their head at? And I think online dating at this time is really, really great. I’m a big, big believer that this is the time to really get to know someone during COVID.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Online dating, I’ve heard really interesting stories about online dating with COVID. We’ve noticed a huge trend in breakups since COVID started, and as a result, a lot of our clients, and we have this Facebook group where we can just see everything, they’re all trying online dating, and they’re getting less than desired type of men, like on Tinder or something like that. Do you have any tips for someone who’s deciding like, “Hey, I think I’m ready to go out and try to date, but I’m going to try online dating?” What are some of your top tips for someone like that to attract the right type of guy?
Inna Mel: I think with online dating, it could be tricky, but it could work to your advantage. The way that I would go about doing so is, and I don’t know about Tinder, I’ve never been on Tinder, but there are plenty of other sites because like Coffee Meets Bagel, Bumble, JSwipe, it all depends on which one you… And I know people who have actually met their partners, they’ve gotten married off these sites. So there are good women and good men out there. I think to just get to the point, meaning if you are on these sites, you can exchange phone numbers.
Inna Mel: And then I would go straight into video chat, to be honest with you. I don’t even think I would text them so much as I would in the past. Right now, I think chatting online, seeing who you’re talking to, like how we are, and then you can plan these dates. You can have coffee dates, you can have dinner dates, you can cook together. And that way, you are really getting to know this person without physically meeting them.
Chris Seiter: What’s really interesting about what you just said is, I was introduced to a book called Never Split the Difference a couple of months ago, is basically by this FBI negotiator who was just spilling his secrets. And he talks in there about this the 7-38-55 rule and how we perceive communication, and how only really 7% of communication is through words, the rest is through tone of voice and body language. And so what’s interesting about the video chat thing, and I’m just wondering your take on this, but one thing that I’ve noticed is when I’ve told my clients about this, they actually go out and start trying to video chat more because you get more of the same, more of the full scope of it as opposed to just texting where you’re just going with words, so you’re only doing 7% of the 93% that’s left over.
Chris Seiter: So I’m wondering if video chat, just to let… Like you and I, right here, I can see you, I can see your body language, your tone of voice, I can do all of that. That’s just such an advantage as opposed to just texting, but it’s almost like a lost art now, everyone’s a little too afraid to video chat. So what do you say to someone who’s afraid to take that step?
Inna Mel: Well, the way I look at it is yes, you may be afraid because it’s different, but the times are different now. And the way I see it is, would you rather waste or spend a ton of time just texting away and not being sure who you’re really talking to and not seeing, like you said, the body language, the emotion, the head gestures, laughter? And so when you look at it that way, I think that the best way to do is just take the leap, what do you have to lose? If anything, if it’s not the right person for you, you’ll know way sooner than if you were texting them for a week or two or three.
Chris Seiter: Okay. You’re mostly working with single successful women that seems to be like your good catch phrase, which I really like by the way, but I’m actually curious, most of my audience, well, they’re single and most of them are pretty successful, but they’re mostly trying to navigate the treacherous waters of figuring out whether they want to move on from an ex or try to get the ex back. And I’m just curious, what’s your take on your personal thoughts on whether they should be trying to move on or try to get an ex back?
Inna Mel: Well, I think that it varies. It all depends on what was the reason for your breakup because for instance, if your break up was because of long distance, that’s very different as opposed to if your breakup was due to cheating. So it matters, how did the breakup happened and what was the cause of the breakup? For the most part, I am not a fan of getting back together with an ex, I think that there’s a reason why this relationship did not work out and I like to just move forward and leave the past behind you take the lesson and you move forward.
Inna Mel: However, as I said a couple of minutes ago, if it was due to a long distance, if that was the only reason you guys broke up or because you guys wanted different things, the timing was off, that’s one thing, but it all depends really on what the cause of the breakup was.
Chris Seiter: So it is more situational, is what you’re saying. What’s actually really interesting about what you said is we’re finding that really the biggest tool in your tool belt when it comes to breakups and trying to get an ex back is literally just getting over them and then they come back. Now, it’s a lot more nuanced than that obviously, but what would you say to someone who’s going through a breakup and wants to try to get over their ex and wants to try to find the right type of guy? What should be step number one for them, the first thing they should do other than coaching with you? What’s step number one?
Inna Mel: I think that they should take this time as an opportunity to get in touch with themselves, to really take the time to…. Well, traveling probably right now is not a good idea, but to really figure out, what are their interests? Who are they? Go back to them to themselves. That would probably be the number one step, I would say. And forget about the ex, really focus on yourself because the more work you do on yourself, the more attractive you become to everyone. And then not only will you attract the ex, but you will attract a lot of really, really great people into your space. So that’s the step I think you should take.
Inna Mel: Really figure out your desires, your non-negotiables, as I said earlier, your needs. Because a lot of times when we get into relationships, we kind of lose a little part of ourselves, so it’s a great time.
Chris Seiter: Right, right. That’s 100 % true, especially when it comes to breakup. Sometimes you put so much of yourself into this relationship and it doesn’t work out and you’re shattered and you’re no longer the protagonist of your own life, someone else is, and you’ve put that ex on the pedestal. I talk about these things all the time, and in what she’s talking about here is just the truth. You should figure out where you are philosophically, you should try to figure out what those non-negotiables are. But, one question I still have is, I know for a fact there can be people who are listening, they’re like 20 minutes into this interview, and they’re thinking like, “Oh, okay. That’s just like the cliché answer. Yeah, get back in touch with yourself.”
Chris Seiter: For someone like that, what is something actionable that they can do? Because I’ve just noticed, with people like that, they don’t quite understand how powerful it can be because they’re not willing to take action. So what is something they can do, very simple, just to get the momentum started?
Inna Mel: It’s a really good question. You actually got me thinking. I think that what they can do right now… I mean, I’ll just use myself as an example. How about that?
Chris Seiter: Perfect, perfect. Personal stories.
Inna Mel: Is always great. But again, the times are a bit different now with COVID, so I don’t know if they can do that, but when I got dumped-
Chris Seiter: Let’s pretend COVID doesn’t exist.
Inna Mel: Yeah, exactly.
Chris Seiter: COVID will be gone eventually and we can, you know. All right, tell away.
Inna Mel: Yeah. I got dumped and what I decided to do is I actually booked a trip to Bali, and I left. I went to Bali for a few weeks. It actually started as a yoga retreat and then it turned into just a trip with friends, which was absolutely amazing, and it really helped me. First of all, it took me out of that space, so I was in a completely different environment, which I think is really important. I was with different people. The ex wasn’t even a person that we discussed. So I think that’s really important. And it really helped me because when I got back to New York, it shifted my perspective, I wasn’t feeling so down anymore and I wasn’t obsessing on why this happened to me. I wasn’t the victim anymore because I cleared my head.
Inna Mel: So I think that is something that is very powerful if you’re able to do that. And I’m not saying, obviously, get on a plane now and go to Bali, but do something that maybe a little bit out of your comfort zone, I would even suggest. You can take acting.
Chris Seiter: That is obviously a very actionable thing that you did, you literally hopped on a plane and went to a different country.
Inna Mel: Literally, yeah.
Chris Seiter: Literally, yeah. Do you think that the power in that was more due to the fact that you’re just up and doing something actionable or you just changed the environment completely?
Inna Mel: I think it was a little bit of both, but the change of the environment really helped me because I wasn’t in my house. I wasn’t having these memories of things we used to do, I wasn’t obsessing over the past because I was I a completely different space. So I think that really helped me. And it was probably a little bit of both, but the environment I think was the key for me at least.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So it’s more of a combination, but with a little bit more of an emphasis on the environment change. So that is something actionable that if you’re listening that you can definitely do. And I’m curious finding the right type of guy. So you mentioned that you work with a lot of women and a pattern that you see has to do with these masculine and feminine energies. Now, how do you define that exactly? Give me an example of what a masculine energy looks like, other than just some super confident guy walking down the street. In my head, that’s what a masculine energy looks like, but that may be not what you’re referring to.
Inna Mel: I think that it has more to do, besides it being in an energy. So for instance, I think all humans, we all have both, we have feminine and masculine energies. It’s just some of us, we lean more towards one or towards the other. So for instance, to me I would say masculine energy is when you are assertive, when you’re able to take control, you take the lead. That’s what I consider masculine energy. Feminine is more like when you’re open to receiving, to receiving whatever that may be, listening, to being compassionate, that’s more of the feminine energy. So those are the two, the way I look at it.
Chris Seiter: The way you look at it has more to do with the qualities of the personality of the individual?
Inna Mel: Yes, correct. It’s not physically.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So this is just me following my own curiosity with regards to the energy thing, because I think it’s an interesting way of looking at the situation. You mentioned that both males and females have different… they can have both types of energies, right? So would I be right in assuming that, let’s take a male, for example, a male who only has a masculine energy is going to be a little bit too controlling, a little bit too domineering. So really you’re looking for a complement both of these types of qualities. Is there-
Inna Mel: Yes, because-
Chris Seiter: Sorry. Go, go, go.
Inna Mel: Sorry about that. Go ahead.
Chris Seiter: What I was going to say-
Inna Mel: I that a lot of-
Chris Seiter: Go ahead. Sorry, we keep getting our wires crossed. I’m being too much of the masculine energy, I’m sorry.
Inna Mel: I think that a lot of my clients, what they struggle with is they are not really drawn to the men who will have more of the feminine energies, they want a man who has more of the masculine energies, so it becomes this almost like a power struggle in a sense.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you mentioned that these women, that you are coaching, they tend to be very career oriented, very successful women who maybe have a little bit more of that masculine energy themselves. What I’ve noticed is that like tends to be attracted to like, so usually the age-old expression opposites attract in my experience has not been true. There’s always outliers to that. So would it be safe to say that because of their own masculine energy leanings, they are more attracted to that in the partner, but the partners that they’re attracted to, who have these gigantic masculine energies, they tend to be controlling domineering, too alpha almost, and that ends up being a turnoff?
Inna Mel: That’s correct. Yeah. You nailed it. That’s exactly what the… And I think that’s what they struggle with the most. And the goal is to get them more in their feminine. So you’re not taking away their masculine energy. You’re not taking that away from them, but you’re just trying to get them more into their feminine that way they are still able to attract the alpha male that they’re really attracted to without having to sacrifice.
Chris Seiter: I actually really like this example, because to me it would make sense that probably everyone has different preferences, like some women want more of a in touch with their feelings, caring type of a male, some women want a more dominant alpha type of a male who has a little bit of that, he’s not afraid to cry. I hate to do this to you, but there’s probably no such thing as like a one-size-fits-all preference, but have you noticed any patterns in the women that you’re of what type of men is pitch perfect for them energy wise?
Inna Mel: Well, I think that when I start working with them, what ends up happening is they have this ideal of what they’re looking for, but it doesn’t mean that is the right fit for them. That’s how I see it.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Okay. What is their typical ideal man? I’m literally curious about this.
Inna Mel: Well, it’s with what you said just a couple of minutes ago that you don’t believe opposites attract, and I actually don’t really know if I believe that. Although looking at my parents, they are complete and total opposites, so I can’t say for sure, but I would probably say that-
Chris Seiter: Well, I mean, they attracted, your parents attracted, but you told me that they split up eventually, so there’s something about that-
Inna Mel: Well, I’m sorry. I actually probably should have rephrased that. My parents, what I meant was my stepfather and my mom. They’re currently together.
Chris Seiter: Got it. Got it.
Inna Mel: They are polar opposites.
Chris Seiter: Well, they’re the exception to the rule.
Inna Mel: Yeah, there’s definitely the exception to the rule. However, I would say, their image of what an ideal partner looks like, it’s pretty much the way that they see themselves, career oriented, and then they have this checklist of what he should look like. And I always say, get rid of this checklist because he may have all those qualities, but let’s assume, I’ll just use this as an example, he has all the qualities, but he’s too short for them. And so, because he’s too short, they don’t want to even attempt to give this a try. And I think that’s absurd. Or his hair color.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So this is the whole list argument where they are too critical on their list. He checks off maybe 90% of the boxes, but those two boxes are just essential. And I guess what you’re doing with them is looking at their list and saying, “Which ones are non-negotiable for you?”
Inna Mel: Absolutely.
Chris Seiter: And then it whittles down there to be more accurate or more forgiving towards other men.
Inna Mel: Yeah. And I love that we’re having this conversation because I actually had a workshop yesterday, it was called Love Breakthrough, and what I was talking about is why they’re still single. And I think the reason why they’re still single is because of all these things that we just discussed and having the list, being too picky, and it just goes on and on. There’s so many things that could hold you back because ultimately, you are looking for someone that you can grow with, someone that you can create a life, a family was, if that’s what you were looking for. So I think that a lot of women, they’re focusing on the wrong things, meaning they’re putting way too much focus on the wrong things and not enough on the right things. What are these guys’ values? Do they even have values?
Inna Mel: And so I think it’s important to really take a look at that before looking at this list of, he’s too short, or his hair color doesn’t match with what I’m envisioning my future husband to be.
Chris Seiter: So would you say that their lists tend to be a little bit more superficial by nature, where they’re not necessarily looking at the qualities? And sometimes it’s hard to measure quality in one conversation when you go on a date one time, you have to allow that person to open up, but the superficial aspects of like hair color, eye color, height, weight, things like that. I just want to make sure that we’re understanding each other correctly. What you’re saying is they put too much of an emphasis on those things and not much of an emphasis on the things that really matter in the end?
Inna Mel: Yeah, absolutely. I would have to say that that is in fact true. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: To me it sounds like you’re dealing with very successful women, so women who don’t really have a hard time attracting guys, they have a hard time attracting the right type of guys. Do you ever work with clients who just have a hard time attracting men in general? And if that’s the case, what kind of advice do you give to that person?
Inna Mel: Yeah, I do. So for the most part, I work with successful women, but I also work with just regular women who just have a hard time attracting anyone, or just literally besides a one night stand, they have a hard time attracting a guy who’s actually looking for a long-term relationship. And for those women, what I try to figure out is, where are they stuck? What are they exactly? What are they struggling with? And then we work through that. And for a lot of times, it has to do with a lot of childhood stuff, they may have had abandonment issues, and so they are very closed off.
Inna Mel: So they are attracting certain guys into their space, but they’re not even giving them a chance, they’re not opening up. And so those are the problems that these young ladies have.
Chris Seiter: I’ve had clients where I’m working with them, and I wouldn’t say that they’re successful career-wise or anything like that, but they’re attracting one nightstands like consistently. And what’s interesting is, I come at it from the male perspective, and you come at it from the female perspective, so my interest to get your take on this. My initial assessment of why my client, for example, would continue to have these one nightstands was because she didn’t think she could do any better, and she didn’t really have enough internal confidence to believe that about herself.
Chris Seiter: And so I would try to like explain to her like, “Hey, this is what’s happening.” But I don’t really ever think I got through to her because she just kept engaging in the behavior. Look at that situation, what is your take on it? Am I off base there? Or what can I do better to get them to have that light bulb moment?
Inna Mel: Wow. I love that you said that because I say the same exact thing. The reason why she’s attracting this type of guy is because she doesn’t think she can do better. It’s also a self-esteem issue as well, and although on the surface, she may look confident, deep down, she does not feel that she’s worthy of someone who will be with her long term or someone who will get to know her. And so the only thing I could say is try to maybe go a little bit deeper up, ask about her experiences in the past, her childhood experiences, because you can really learn a lot about a person just by knowing how their childhood went. So that’s the first thing I like to talk about, is I’m just always curious.
Chris Seiter: Well, it’s really interesting you bring that up because this particular client that I’m talking about is someone that I coached years ago. They always stuck out in my mind because I always felt like I didn’t really get through to them. And you could always tell when they had that light bulb moment, but when I was coaching them, it was like when I first started coaching people so I was still new to understanding how to get through to people. And I really didn’t know much about attachment styles and how that plays into your relationships as an adult.
Chris Seiter: And I didn’t ask anything about her childhood, but I can almost guarantee you, there were probably some abandonment issues there. But I always viewed her situation, and it just the one that stuck out to me as this self-fulfilling prophecy where she would go into it believing she couldn’t do any better than this guy who was clearly taking advantage of her. She would continue to go back to this one particular guy, she would sleep with him, he wouldn’t call her, the booty call thing would happen where he’d get horny and wants sex, essentially.
Inna Mel: And it’s 2:00 A.M.
Chris Seiter: Exactly. And it always to me, look like a self-confidence issue where I was trying to get through to her, but I never could. When you go deep with people and ask them about the childhood, how do you do that without, I don’t really worry about offending people, but how do you get for them to have that light bulb moment when you dig deep and make them realize, “Hey, you’re acting this way because of this experience back then”?
Inna Mel: Sometimes actually they are aware of why they’re acting that way, but they’re not able to get past it. For instance, I’ll use an example, yesterday there was a girl in the workshop, the one that said, she openly said, “I have abandonment issues. My parents got divorced, my father was physically not present and my mom was emotionally unavailable. And so I attract toxic unavailable men into my life and I don’t know how to change that or how to stop that.” So it all depends, and again, it’s not like one solution fits all, there’s multiple errs, and so, what I told her and something that I’m going to be working with her through is, there’s different things she can do.
Inna Mel: Again, I’m not a therapist, but she can go to get like hypnosis. And what they do is they actually bring you back to a moment in your childhood and you can reprogram that moment where let’s say, your caregivers weren’t there for you. And it’s almost like you’re just reprogramming that vision, that image, and it’s just a lot of inner work and it’s painful, it’s really hard, but I feel like if I can only get them to a certain level, then I would recommend maybe they should seek therapy or go some someplace else. So I can’t always help them 100% or they can work some more painlessly with a therapist and with a coach.
Inna Mel: So it really varies from situation to situation, but for the most part, it’s really looking inward. And I would even say making a list of all the people that you’ve been with and all the pros and cons and seeing like you said, patterns. I also look at patterns because they are there. And once you figure out, it’s like, “Aha, I’m attracting these people and what’s causing that?” It’s almost like you can help yourself through limiting beliefs, through really reprogramming your subconscious mind, you can help yourself, but it takes a lot of work. And one thing that stuck out with me that she said was, she said, “Well, my therapist says, if I don’t change, I’ll be alone forever. And that this is a lifelong journey and I don’t have enough time.”
Inna Mel: So when she said, “I don’t have enough time,” that’s where a light bulb went off in my head, and it was like, “Well, who’s to say that you don’t have enough time? You’re a young lady in your early 30s.”. And I think that is another thing, women because of the fear of like, “Wow my biological clock is ticking.” Or, “All my friends married with kids and I’m not.” And I like to challenge them and ask them, are you attracting these men out of fear or because you’re open and you are ready to receive the love, because when you’re open, you attract different men into your life, but when you’re scared, you attract the whole different pool of men.
Inna Mel: You attract those unavailable men into your space because you’re so scared to be alone. I can’t even explain it. Am I making sense?
Chris Seiter: No. You were talking and I was just thinking so many good points you brought up, you brought up the reprogramming your brain, Carl Jung would call that integrating the shadow.
Inna Mel: Yeah. Exactly.
Chris Seiter: Then you brought up really the childhood abandonment issues, and I just was thinking, it’s amazing how people scoff at the idea of two parents going through divorce and that not having an impact on a child, because think of what that client of yours said. She said, “I have an abandonment issues, my father wasn’t there presently,” which almost sets up this self-fulfilling belief of men won’t be there presently, and her mom was emotionally unavailable. And it’s interesting too because the emotionally unavailable mom is probably emotionally unavailable because the father left and has such an impact on this woman who grew up to have trouble with men, and it’s hard to overcome that self-fulfilling prophecy.
Chris Seiter: So Jung would often call, integrating the shadow, which is all these negative beliefs you have about other people, you’re projecting thoughts that you also have about yourself onto them. And one of the hardest things to do, and you bring reference to it, which is integrating the shadow and realizing you’re not perfect and you think these exact things about yourself that you’re emotionally unavailable, that you’re not good enough for men, and owning it and just realizing that it’s there, will allow you to have a more fulfilling life and achieve that transcendence goal that everyone always seems to talk about.
Chris Seiter: But you were just talking about therapist who said that the woman had no time, and I think that’s complete BS personally.
Inna Mel: I do also. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: It’s interesting also, you brought up a really great point about the timing, because one thing that… I deal with mostly women because there’s just more women searching online, I think, for breakup stuff, but I’ve got plenty of men that I work with too, and it’s really interesting the big differences I see between the two is, men are very emotional in the moment about breakups. They were like, “Oh my God, this person broke up with me, now I realize she’s the love of my life.” Women on the other hand are a little bit differently because I think they are programmed differently by society.
Chris Seiter: So you have those societal factors of like, “Oh my God, my friends are getting married, I need to settle down.” Or, “Why I’m always tracking the wrong type of guys?” Or you add in the biological clock, which at 35, your egg quality drops and all of a sudden you need to have a child. That’s almost like your fear talking and that will prevent you, I think, from attracting the right type of person because you’re putting these restraints on yourself. It’s almost like trying to fit a round peg through a square hole. It’s not going to work if you put that much pressure on it. And then you add in this therapist who says, “You’re running out of time, you’ll be this way forever.”
Chris Seiter: It adds another element of tension. And usually, that’s not how it works. I’m a guy, so sports analogies work for me, but basketball player was talking about being in the zone. You’re not in the zone if you’re super tense. So I would imagine your clients are not in the zone because there’s all these factors going on that build up this persona that they falsely believe they have. Sorry, I ranted, that was really cool.
Inna Mel: I also feel almost like you’re screaming desperate, like you’re desperate. And so when you’re desperate, what are you going to attract? You’re not going to attract a guy-
Chris Seiter: Desperate people.
Inna Mel: Exactly.
Chris Seiter: This is just my personal belief. If a woman is, feel free to correct me, but let’s take your client who is taking the workshop with you because she feels she’s not attracting the right type of guys, she projecting this desperate energy. Well, that’s going to attract, think of it the law of the jungle, a desperate animal is going to attract a predator. That’s what you’re going to attract if you’re desperate, you’re going to attract someone who’s going to take advantage of you, not physically or emotionally, but they see like, “Oh, I can be the dominant person to this one.” And they like that. And maybe that’s what turns some of these women off.
Inna Mel: Yeah, I agree. And I think also for the most part, they start… Another thing that she mentioned which I thought was interesting is that, ” I give, I give, I give.” Very giving and giving prematurely. And that’s something that I always say is a no-go. I actually tell these women that they should date multiple men at the same time. That way, they do not spend all their energy obsessing prematurely and then being disappointed if it does not work out.
Chris Seiter: Well, what’s interesting about the giving thing, at least my take on it would be the Benjamin Franklin effect, which is, we’re hardwired to believe, hey, if we do a favor for someone, they’re going to do a favor back for us. That’s not how it works. If you do a favor for someone, you’re more likely to do another favor and another favor, so it’s almost like the giving part, she’s just giving. And of course, he’s going to just be like, “Sure, keep giving, I’m not going to say no to these favors.” And he’s just going to take advantage of it. That’s just the truth.
Chris Seiter: I could feel like I could talk to you for hours, this is the kind of stuff that I just love opening stuff up and trying to understand, but we’re running late on time here. So what I’d like to do is I want to promote you, let people know, how can they coach with you? What are the steps to get that going?
Inna Mel: Oh my God, that’s amazing. Thank you. The best way to get in touch with me, I would say is through Instagram, I’m very active on Instagram. So my Instagram handle is [iaminamel 00:45:19]. And I’m actually going to launch an eight-week coaching program in the beginning of January. I haven’t picked the exact dates, but I’m already enrolling. It’s going to be a very, very intimate group, and it’s called Conscious and Intuitive Dating. And it’s going to cover everything that we spoke about, but obviously, very, very depth and it’s going to be absolutely amazing. So enrollment period has started. I still have a few slots available.
Chris Seiter: How many slots have you got left? Hopefully my audience can fill that real quick.
Inna Mel: I have five slots left.
Chris Seiter: Five slots. So there is five left.
Inna Mel: It’s very intimate group and I just love intimate groups because I think it creates this sacred-
Chris Seiter: You help more people that way?
Inna Mel: Yeah, absolutely. And so that’s probably the best way to reach me. You can also go on my website, which is being rebranded as we speak, [Inamel.com 00:46:16]. But the best way would probably be through Instagram, IamInamel.
Chris Seiter: What I’m going to do is link that up in the show notes of this episode, and make sure you flood her inbox with so many requests that she doesn’t know what to do with them. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast.
Inna Mel: Thank you so much for having me. This was absolutely great.
Success Story: How She Secured A Date And Got Her Ex Back
Sep 30, 2020
Today I have a special treat for you. Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Sarah who is one of our success stories. Again, if you haven’t been paying attention I’ve been doing this series where I’ve been interviewing people who have come through our program and have gotten their exes back.
Probably the best part about this is that I’m checking my ego at the door and just looking at what works. This means I don’t even care if they used the strategies we teach in our program.
This is strictly about results.
Well, today’s interview is a gold mine.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Chris: Okay. Today, we’re going to be talking to Sarah, who is one of our lovely success stories who’s come through the program and happened to get her ex back. We’re just going to be asking her questions about what she did that worked. How are you doing, Sarah?
Sarah: Oh, I’m good. I’m good. How are you?
Chris: Hanging in there. Hanging in there. You got your ex back and one thing, I don’t know if you know, we’ve been doing this thing lately where we’re trying to record a success story a week where we’re posting it on our YouTube channel. We’re just trying to figure out what are people who are successful doing, versus the people who aren’t successful. Obviously, you and your ex-boyfriend had a breakup.
Sarah: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
Chris: Somehow, you came into our atmosphere and bought our program. I don’t know if you did any coaching with me, or rather with coach Anna. But, I just want to get your take on like, okay, you go through this breakup. What is your first response to this breakup? Do you go immediately to Google and… reading all the articles you can read on getting your ex back? What was that like for you?
Sarah: Yeah, that’s what I did, basically. But, I was so anxious at that time. I don’t know what to do. I cried like usual. I cried-
Chris: You went through the grieving process.
Sarah: Yeah. Right. Yeah, process.
Chris: How long did that last for you?
Sarah: Months.
Chris: Months? Okay. So, hold on. Give us the dates. When does this breakup kind of occur around?
Sarah: It occurred end of September last year.
Chris: Okay. How long does this grieving process last before you hit Ex Boyfriend Recovery?
Sarah: Actually, I discovered the program around the same time. Early October, like that.
Chris: Okay.
Sarah: But, the process of grieving still going on during that time.
Chris: I see.
Sarah: I was trying to figure out why did that happen. I blame myself for the breakup and whatnot. Yeah. And then I discovered your program and I said like, “Okay. Why not give it a try?” Because at that time, I still want to be with him.
Chris: You get in the program, obviously you get into the Facebook group and I noticed you interacting with other people in the Facebook group. Did you get partnered up with one of the Battle Buddies to help you through that grieving process?
Sarah: Yes. Yes, I did. They paired me up with someone who is near to my region. My Battle Buddy does really help. Then, I read through all of other stories in the Facebook group too. So, I found couple of people who are actually very positive, very following the program at that time, so I tried to add them and I tried to vent at them, I would say. Like vent. But they’re kind of like, “Oh, yeah. I understand how you’re feeling. But we can go through this together.” Things like that. Everything is just positive.
Chris: Okay. You get into the Facebook group, you start interacting with the people there. Did you do a traditional No Contact Rule at all?
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Do you remember how long your No Contact Rule was? Because it’s been a while since obviously you started that.
Sarah: I think I started right away in October. And then suddenly there’s a typhoon came [crosstalk 00:04:15]-
Chris: Okay, so like a hurricane, typhoon thing.
Sarah: Yeah. So like I-
Chris: So you like were worried about your ex in that.
Sarah: Yeah. Suddenly my ex contacted me and the he asked me, “How are you? I hope you’re okay. This is the center of… If anything happened, you can go here.”
Chris: Oh, wow.
Sarah: That kind of thing.
Chris: It took mother nature to get involved for him to reach out to you. You just need a hurricane, guys. Do you remember how long in No Contact that was? You were ignoring him and then this typhoon comes to head? Were you halfway through it? Were you almost done with it? Had you just started it?
Sarah: I think it was a few weeks after. I think around two or three weeks, if I’m not mistaken. No, it’s like two weeks I guess. Then I have a eager to actually reply back. I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t.
Chris: So you broke the rules and replied. So you replied back to him because basically he’s saying, “Hey, this is where you go with the typhoon stuff if you’re caught in the typhoon.” What did you say, do you remember?
Sarah: I just said, “Yeah. Thanks for your concern.” I said. I replied, “Thanks for your concern. I’m okay here. I’m okay alone.” I just said like that. Something like that. I can’t remember.
Chris: So you literally say, “Yeah, I’m okay alone, without you.”
Sarah: Yeah. Sort of, but not really. And then I went to the group and I told them the story. Then they said, “No. You have to restart over.” So, I have a [crosstalk 00:06:12]-
Chris: You restarted, yeah. And did you follow their advice?
Sarah: Yeah. I did. I went NC right away.
Chris: Okay. So you went to the No Contact Rule. You started over. Did you make it through fully the second go around?
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Okay. How long was that? Like 30 days, 21 days? 45 days?
Sarah: I was planning to do it like 30 days, but then I feel good about it. I focus on myself. I did a lot of reading. I went out with friends. It’s like I haven’t done it for a while, since the breakup. I dressed up. I posted pictures and then I did all the things that I like. But reading does help me a lot at that time.
Chris: What kind of things were you reading? Are you reading like self-help, like improve yourself type things? Or was it more of just fictional things to distract yourself from the breakup?
Sarah: Well, it’s more on the files that the Facebook group provided.
Chris: Okay. So it’s more of the self-help type things like, “Hey, this is what you should be doing with your time.”
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Did you feel like going through that period of No Contact, where you’re focusing on yourself, really made a difference?
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like, no, the breakup… I realized that the breakup was not my fault. And I realized that actually both of us can work on things out, if he gave more time to me to explain. Because the breakup happened just like ooh, hah, like that. Like suddenly-
Chris: It was out of the blue.
Sarah: Yeah. Out of the blue.
Chris: It was just shocking to you.
Sarah: Yeah. And he said that, “Okay, that’s it. We’re no longer boyfriend girlfriend. That’s it.”
Chris: Okay. Would it be fair to say that because you redid this No Contact after the typhoon thing, you started over again, you decide you’re going to do a 30 day No Contact, and you start focusing on you, you think that’s fair to say that gave you more of an outlook on like, “Hey, he needs to respect me more, if we’re going to get back together?”
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Okay.
Sarah: I needed him to hear my opinion too. Not just his opinion.
Chris: Do you feel like your relationship before the breakup was a lot like where you’re sort of letting him have his way?
Sarah: Yeah. I can say that.
Chris: Okay.
Sarah: Then, from 30, then I had a session with Anna.
Chris: Anna.
Sarah: And then from 30 days, I extended it to 40-
Chris: 45.
Sarah: 45.
Chris: 45 days.
Sarah: But it did not… Yeah, 45 days, around that. Then after that I started the first texting.
Chris: And how did that go when you… Did you reach out to him first? Let me ask you this question. When you do your 30 days, and you extend it to 45 days, did he reach out to you at all through text during that time?
Sarah: No.
Chris: No. So it was you having to finish your No Contact Rule, and reach out to him first. And how did that interaction go?
Sarah: Eventually, it was positive. He just answered my question.
Chris: Okay, so he just answered the question.
Sarah: Yeah. And then I tried to end it, the text messages, on high notes. I think the first one went between neutral and positive.
Chris: Okay. Neutral, okay, so not quite positive but a little better than neutral, okay. It’s in that in between.
Sarah: [crosstalk 00:10:29].
Chris: Okay.
Sarah: Yeah. [inaudible 00:10:33].
Chris: That was the first interaction you guys had. Obviously you guys are going to have a second conversation at some point over text. How quickly does that happen for you?
Sarah: Okay. To be honest, I thought No Contact was the hardest for me, like this process I thought. But then I came to-
Chris: The texting.
Sarah: … texting, that was the hardest for me.
Chris: I’m genuinely curious, why do you feel that way?
Sarah: Because you can’t simply text whatever you want. As you mentioned, you have to go around his interest. I sort of took me days to actually write a strategy. I would say, “Okay, list down his interest,” things like that. It kind of like-
Chris: Oh, it messed with you. Because you’re like, “Oh, I want to talk about things that I want to talk about, but I know I can’t. I have to talk about things he wants to talk about. And I don’t know the things he likes.”
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: It worked out, because obviously you did engage him on his interests. Or I’m assuming so, right?
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. It worked. It did work.
Chris: Okay. You did engage him on his interests. I’m curious, when you engaged him on his interests, did you feel like he was a lot more engaged in the conversations? Or was it just pretty much in that between neutral and positive approach?
Sarah: It depends on the topic, I would say.
Chris: Okay.
Sarah: Because the first few ones, the first one went okay because it relates to his interest. And then the second one I think it did not went well. He was ghosted on me.
Chris: Oh, so he didn’t even respond.
Sarah: Yeah. I mean, he responded.
Chris: Oh, he just didn’t engage then.
Sarah: Yeah. Like one or two words, like that. Like the beginning [crosstalk 00:13:00]-
Chris: Oh, I see.
Sarah: I wanted to end it. But he ended it first.
Chris: Okay. But he did respond, albeit it only like a few words, which isn’t perfect. When did things start to kick up momentum-wise?
Sarah: I can’t remember. I think like after the fifth or sixth text I think, because in between… Okay, with my ex at the time I realized that I read his pattern. I make sure like okay, when is the suitable time for him to actually reply me? Because eventually I realized that if I text him during the day, it took him more than three to four hours to reply, like that.
Chris: Wow. You noticed if you text him during the day, it’s taking him hours to reply. I’m assuming at night he responds a lot quicker.
Sarah: Yeah. That’s what I realized. That’s why.
Chris: Did you find out that it’s because he’s got work throughout the day?
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. He’s busy. I kind of understand, because he’s like, “If I work, I need to focus on my work. Don’t bother me,” kind of thing. And then I talked to my, one of the members in Facebook. Then I ask her like, “Okay. What do I need to do? When do you think I should text him? He always respond me about three to four hours. It means I have to mirror him in a way, right? If I wait that long, I already go to sleep. I usually wake up, needs to wake up early. I always leave the conversation hanging. And I don’t want that. I want to leave on a high note. I need to find a strategy.”
Sarah: That’s when I realized, when I talk about it to my Battle Buddy and she suggested that, “Okay, so why not do it during the night? Texting during the night after he finishes his work. You can just assume what time. And then that’s it. Leave him on high note. That’s all.”
Chris: It’s almost like you engage him in a conversation at night. And he feels like, “Oh wow, this is fun.” And then he’s thinking about it all day long, hoping that you’re going to text him throughout the day, only… Do I have this right, you’re only texting him at night at this point?
Sarah: Yeah. At that point.
Chris: And you’re saying, that’s what really made things go quicker and better.
Sarah: I would say, yeah. I would say, because there are also days that he’s not engaged at all. Like I say, it depending on the topic. If he really into the topic, he would reply me a lot. And then I always leave him, like after the text I always leave about five or four days, like that. And then as we get used to the texting pattern, I tried to close the gap.
Chris: Okay. Just so I have this right. You’re saying at first, when you first started texting him, you’d make there, there would be a long period of time before you would have another conversation. But the more you did this, the smaller the gap would become, to the point where you guys are texting every day at some point?
Sarah: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And then at that point, instead of me starting the [crosstalk 00:17:16]-
Chris: Ah, he was starting the conversations.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: Beautiful. That’s awesome. Do you feel like, how long… because I think this is a huge question that a lot of the people who listen to this podcast have. And that’s like, “I’m the one, like Chris, you’re telling me that I have to text my ex first. What does it take to make him text me first?”
Chris: And my theory has always been, well if you do what you did, if you do what Sarah does, where you are starting the conversation and then ending it first, eventually he’ll start to crave the conversation and reach out first. And you’re saying that’s exactly what happened to you.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Awesome. What did it take? How long were you guys texting back and forth before you guys eventually saw each other in person?
Sarah: It took a while.
Chris: It took a while.
Sarah: [crosstalk 00:18:07]. It took a while. Okay, let’s see. Roughly October, November. It started between middle of November, we started the texting phase.
Chris: Okay. The texting phase starts in the middle of November. That’s like two and a half months.
Sarah: And then I think it gets more interesting until January.
Chris: You guys were texting for three, three and a half months.
Sarah: I suppose so, yes.
Chris: And eventually you guys are… Who pushes for meeting up in person? Do you guys get on the phone next? Or do you go right to that in-person stage?
Sarah: Oops. Sorry. That was my alarm.
Chris: Is that your boyfriend right there calling?
Sarah: No. No, that’s my alarm.
Chris: He’s calling on air, guys.
Sarah: No. Wait.
Sarah: I was the one who tried to-
Chris: See him in person?
Sarah: No. Before that I had a video call.
Chris: Okay, so face-time, video chat, Skype, things of that nature?
Sarah: Yeah. Because in the conversation, I asked for his help with my tax return.
Chris: Oh, beautiful. Nothing makes someone pay more attention than the… The fact that he wanted to help you with the tax return is just, that’s a good sign, because no one wants to do tax returns.
Sarah: Yeah. No.
Chris: I think it’s a good sign obviously. That’s how you hooked him into doing the face-time thing.
Sarah: Yeah, because I said, “Oh, I need to do the video call, because I really need you-
Chris: Like you need to this
Sarah: … You need to see it.”
Chris: Oh, that’s so genius. That’s so smart, Sarah.
Sarah: But in between, during the conversation, because I posted a lot of things. He rarely on his social media, like Facebook or Instagram. So we use the LINE chat application a lot. I posted most of my pictures there instead of Facebook and Instagram. And he thought that I already have someone.
Chris: Oh, he thought you were dating already.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: He thought you’d moved on from him.
Sarah: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Before the video call, he kept asking me, “Are you with someone?”
Chris: Oh, he’s already worried that you’d moved on from him.
Sarah: I don’t know, maybe. But he didn’t show that he was-
Chris: He tried to play it off cool, then.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: He tried to ask it without coming out abruptly and just being really upfront about it. He was fishing around, I guess is a good way of putting it.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: That’s another interesting thing that you learned on the face-time chat. After you breach this face-time thing with the tax returns, does that become the new norm where you guys are talking on face-time all the time? Or is it, you go right back to texting?
Sarah: No, it’s like in between.
Chris: Okay, so you guys are just doing whatever feels relevant to the conversation.
Sarah: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris: Sometimes you text, sometimes you do the face-time thing. And eventually one of you guys is going to start pushing for an in-person meeting. Who did it? Was it you that pushed for it? Or was it him that pushed for it?
Sarah: It was me.
Chris: Oh, okay. No, that’s beautiful. How did you do it? How did you get him to agree?
Sarah: After the video call. I tried before the meetup, I already plan on, okay, I should do, when should the meetup be? I put timeline to it. I need to make sure that I have another phone call with him. From the video call about tax, I ended it. And then I tried to continue it again, because it took a lot of process to actually fill in the form. I ended it. I said, “Okay, let’s continue next time.” And then the second time, it was about the tax form a bit, but then I go with his, talking about his interest at that time. He was into anime.
Chris: You mixed business with pleasure, so to speak.
Sarah: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:23:20].
Chris: You weren’t able to finish the tax form the first time. You used that and say, “Hey, let’s do this again next week,” to get him on the phone again. But instead of doing the tax form the entire time, you also start to just have a normal organic conversation with him.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: And obviously that goes well?
Sarah: Yeah, eventually. And then I keep on doing like texting. And then I used, the reason for meetup is for him to help me out too, because I engage with him using what we have talk in the conversation. And then I use the same topic for meetup. For example-
Chris: I love. It’s so clever. It’s smart, because the tax forms, anyone who’s ever had to do tax forms alone, I’ve had to do it and I’ve had help, it takes a long time to get through those tax forms. You’re saying you still use the tax form to see him in person like, “Hey, could I just see you in person so you could help me with this?”
Chris: And plus, it’s like a damsel in distress type thing. He wants to help you. He wants to feel like the hero.
Sarah: Yeah. Eventually. Then I set up the meetup. I set up the meetup and then we met in a café. He say, “Oh, it’s been a while,” things like that. And then after that I realized, “Okay, I need help with something.” But then eventually, stupid I am, I did not, my laptop was running out of battery so we couldn’t do anything. I was like, “Oh, my God. I messed up,” like that. The first meetup.
Chris: No. Did it work out in your favor though? Because, it almost forced you to talk about just normal couple things.
Sarah: Yeah. And then I decided, okay it ended up this way. So I might just have a casual conversation with him, sort of. And then instead of him helping me out at that time, we just had to talk. Like what’s been going on in his life and yada, yada, yada. And I talk about what I’ve been doing yada, yada.
Sarah: And then it only last about one hour and a half, like that. So I said like, “Oh, I need to leave. I need to meet my friend after this,” I said. Then along the way he always, whenever when we were a couple, he always see me straight to the station. He eld never leave me alone.
Chris: Okay.
Sarah: That’s what he did.
Chris: He walked you to the train station.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: To protect you, so to speak.
Sarah: Yeah. Along the way, while we’re crossing the traffic light, he was trying to hug me in a way, like that. But I did not resist. He was trying to hold my shoulder. But I did not resist-
Chris: Oh, so he’s got like the arm around your shoulder. And you just let him do it.
Sarah: Yeah. But then I said, and then after he see me at the station, I just say, “Okay, that’s it. Okay we’ll talk again,” like that.
Chris: Just like that?
Sarah: Just like that. And then after that I posted everything on Facebook. And then I got a reaction from the mods and then other people too reacted to the situation and whatnot. And then they said like, “Oh, I think it went pretty okay.”
Chris: No, that went amazing. It’s really smart actually, because your tax form thing puts him in this hero complex position the entire way, through all the phone calls he has to help you with the taxes. Your laptop running out was a blessing in disguise, the battery. I actually think that’s kind of a brilliant thing, because you came in there, and it forces you to just have a normal conversation. And he starts to… Obviously you haven’t gotten him back just yet.
Sarah: No.
Chris: What does it take to push the ball over the goal line here? To where he’s asking you to be his girlfriend again?
Sarah: Okay. Then we went to a second meetup, which I think it was him who initiated.
Chris: That’s always a good sign. So, he initiates the second meetup.
Sarah: Yeah. And then I say like, “Oh, I need your help with something.” Again I use the… But this one is a different one, because I wanted to go somewhere which he can help me out with school-
Chris: School stuff.
Sarah: … school stuff, because I work in school as a teacher. And then at the same time, I want to go to a place where it’s a bit of romantic kind of place.
Chris: You wanted a little bit more of a private area where you guys can just connect.
Sarah: Yeah. Sorry, yeah.
Sarah: Then he picked the place. He said, okay because at that time it was cherry blossom.
Chris: Oh, very nice. That’s about as romantic as it gets, Sarah.
Sarah: Yeah. I said to him, “Oh yeah. Why not? Let’s meet up. You can help me out.”
Chris: Oh yeah, why not?
Sarah: Yeah, why not?
Chris: Let’s go to the blossom trees. Okay.
Sarah: And then I said, “Okay, you need to help me out with to find baseball stuff for the school,” because he’s into baseball.
Chris: Okay. That’s pretty good.
Sarah: Yeah. I said like, “I need help with the baseball team stuff.”
Chris: Okay. You work at the school. You’re picking his brain for baseball stuff. “Help me pick out baseball stuff.”
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Wow, you are so smart. I don’t think you… Before we started recording you were just playing it down. You’re like, “Oh I didn’t really do anything that special.” All this stuff is really smart. I just don’t think you’re even giving yourself enough credit.
Sarah: No. Thanks to my Battle Buddies anyway. We drafted a lot of text, we brainstormed a lot.
Chris: You had that support system of all the girls and everything like that.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: And so, the baseball stuff. He’s helping you pick up baseball stuff. And I’m assuming something romantic’s going to happen here.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Okay. Let’s get to the goods, Sarah. Let’s get to the goods.
Sarah: Then before we went to the baseball shop he said, “Okay, let’s go and watch the cherry blossom.” He knows that I’m into photography. I brought my camera-
Chris: Oh, okay. You brought the camera.
Sarah: Yeah, I brought my camera along. And then I took some of the pictures. And then I say, “Okay now pose for me.” And I took his pictures. We were walking like normal. And then suddenly he brought me this one place where he said, “Oh, this is my favorite place to view the cherry blossoms.” He said that to me. We were walking and I was struggling with my camera at that time. I was trying to put it back in the case, because I already finished with taking the pictures. Then, as we walk along, he grabbed my hand.
Chris: Ooh, grabbed the hand, okay. What happens next?
Sarah: It was just in the mood, where-
Chris: Okay, you’ve got the cherry blossoms, the wind’s swaying. He grabs your hand.
Sarah: And it was next to a lake, a small lake.
Chris: Oh, you’re just setting the scene even better now. Was there like a fence across the lake that you can walk up to the lake?
Sarah: Yeah. I mean, no. It’s just a walk around the lake.
Chris: Okay. It’s a sidewalk around the lake. And he grabs your hand. Does he try to kiss you?
Sarah: No.
Chris: No. That’s so anticlimactic. You built it up so well.
Sarah: No. Eventually we just hold hands until the end. Then he brought me to the baseball shop. While holding hands, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t say, “Let’s go back together,” or something. Nothing.
Chris: Nothing like that.
Sarah: Nothing.
Chris: It was just like he just grabbed your hand. He’s like, “You’re mine.”
Sarah: Yeah. So I just had to-
Chris: Did you guys at least have a conversation about how you’re going to get back together? Or was it just assumed from that point on?
Sarah: Nothing. Nothing.
Chris: Nothing. You guys have been back together without really having that conversation. You’re just boyfriend and girlfriend now.
Sarah: Yeah. Eventually.
Chris: Interesting.
Sarah: Yeah, but then we didn’t talk about it. Then after that, we went to the baseball shop. He helped me out with the baseball thing and whatnot. Then after that I ended the meetup.
Chris: Wow. And so was he chomping at the bit for another meetup?
Sarah: Yeah. But because of his work-
Chris: It took a little while before that happened?
Sarah: Yeah. Actually it took me about 10 months, like that, in the process, like-
Chris: Wow, you are one committed lady. Holy crap. 10 months.
Sarah: Wait. October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May, my birthday then. Yeah, around that. Like nine months.
Chris: So nine, ten months.
Sarah: Nine months, yeah.
Chris: Wow. So you got him back.
Sarah: Yeah. The third meetup was actually the one that I actually… Because he did not say anything-
Chris: He didn’t say anything. You’re acting like a boyfriend and girlfriend, but you don’t have the label yet.
Sarah: Yeah. No, like we’ve been contacting every day, we’ve been texting every day, we’ve been calling. And then, but still nothing from him. I just assumed that we are already a boyfriend and girlfriend, but I want the confirmation [crosstalk 00:35:22]-
Chris: Yes, you need the confirmation.
Sarah: Yeah. I don’t want to leave things hanging. Then the third meetup, that’s when I asked.
Chris: How did you ask him? Did you take him to a romantic environment in front of the cherry blossoms and bat your eyes and be like, “Hey, what are we?” Did you do that? Or was it just like a blunt like, “Hey, what is this?”
Sarah: Well I, sort of like it took advice from Anna, because I’m just afraid that I’m going to ruin it. Because I’m almost there.
Sarah: Yeah. I don’t want to ruin it, I set another, what do you call it, meeting with Anna.
Chris: You did coaching with coach Anna, who’s been advising you periodically throughout. And you’re just like, “Look Anna, what will help me get over the hump here? How can I get him to… ” What did you guys settle on?
Sarah: Yeah. Anna is very good in giving me strategies. But not just strategies, she also advised me on a lot of things in terms of psychology and things like that. Then she sort of draft the conversation, how it should ended up. But wait, let me… I kind of followed that.
Chris: You followed her advice on the real-life conversation you have with him.
Sarah: Yeah. Anna said if you want to, how do you say, have him engage in the conversation, I couldn’t, like I shouldn’t do it like one-on-one session, because he will feel that I’m interrogating him. Instead of that, I need to do something like while he’s doing something. Like for example, if he’s in the kitchen, so I should have the conversation there.
Sarah: Then okay, the third meetup was like, I want to celebrate his birthday, so I made a card. Then I gave him the card. Then we were walking in a park at the time. I give him my card. I said like-
Chris: You gave him the card, you’re walking in the park.
Sarah: Yeah. I said like, “Oh, happy birthday.” So then… Wait, wait, wait. Let me look for the conversation.
Chris: She’s looking through her notes with coach Anna right now.
Sarah: Ah, okay. Right. Before that, sorry before the meetup, something happened. He sort of left me hanging with my text. But from the… Before, I’m the type of anxious person, so I always [inaudible 00:39:34] like, “Where are you? Where [crosstalk 00:39:36]-
Chris: Okay. So yeah, [inaudible 00:39:38].
Sarah: Yeah. After I went to the program, I realized that it’s not something good to do.
Chris: No. It makes you appear a little bit more insecure than you really are. You cleaned that up so you’re not doing that anymore, right?
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: But it’s probably driving you insane inside. It’s like, “What’s going on?”
Sarah: Yeah. Exactly. Then I realized that, since I joined the program, I can control myself. I kind of control my emotion. I kind of like, “It’s okay. Give him space. He needs it.” I gave him a lot of space in between the text. When he did not reply me, I just go, “It’s okay. I’ll do my things. I don’t have to worry about him, whatever. He will text me if anything happen.” Things like that. So I don’t worry much like before.
Sarah: Then, something actually happened a few days before the meetup. He went to a bar with his client. And then one of his friends, boyfriend, hit him.
Chris: Punched him?
Sarah: Yeah. Punch him.
Chris: Punched him.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Okay. That is a twist in the story.
Sarah: So, then he told me. And then I got worried. So I gpt worried, but he left me hanging.
Chris: Hold on. Why did he get punched? Did you ask him like, “Why did you get punched? Why did someone hit you?”
Sarah: Yeah. This is where Anna actually helped me. Then during the meetup, I did… Before the meetup, I just text him like normal, “Okay, are we going to meet?” Like dah, dah, dah something like that. I did not actually talk about the incident.
Chris: Okay.
Sarah: I just said like, “Oh, I’m worried,” something like that, “But thank God you’re fine.” Like that. When the meetup, when I meet him, I hug him and then I said like, “I’m so happy that you’re okay. I was worried for you. And upset that someone hit you.” And then I listen to him. And then he said, “I’m not cheating on you,” or something, he said like that.
Sarah: It’s just sometimes things like that happen in a bar. And the couple, his friends, the girl and the boyfriend, join them. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, he just punched him. I think that maybe the conversation that they had [crosstalk 00:43:09]-
Chris: Something set him off. Your ex-boyfriend had said something that set him off to cause-
Sarah: Maybe. Maybe.
Chris: All right. You use this as your opportune moment to be the caring girlfriend. How do you get your conversation into asking, to get the labels?
Sarah: Okay. Then, this is where the part, after I listen to him, and then he said, “The thing is, the reason why I did not text you about it, because I don’t want to talk about it. I want to forget about what happened.” That’s what he said to me. And then I say, “Okay, I accept it.” And then I said, “I believe that you are not cheating on me, because I know that you are loyal.” I said, “But however, the surprise to me was that, that you said you’re not cheating.” So this is when I use it like, “Does that mean that we in a relationship and dating?”
Chris: Oh, clever. So, what did he say?
Sarah: So because I just said like, “Okay, I wanted to ask because I thought we were dating. But you have not said so. So I just wanted to make sure, that’s why I said-
Chris: Coach Anna basically plotted out like, “Hey, this is probably what he’s going to say.” And you just followed the script.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: What did he say?
Sarah: Okay, so-
Chris: Did he say like, “Oh, yeah we’re in a relationship.”
Sarah: Then we were holding hands at the time. And then he said to me, “I like you.” He said, like in Japanese culture we don’t really say, “I love you. I love you.”
Chris: Okay. Got you.
Sarah: It’s always like [inaudible 00:45:01] something like that. So he’s like, “Oh, I like you. But I’m not sure what we are,” he said. Like, “What do you mean that we’re dating?” And then I said that we are in a relationship. I said like I just want to confirm with him. “I just want to confirm that, because we never talk about it. We’ve been texting every day. We’ve been doing stuff like a couple,” I said. And then he said, “Yeah, we are dating.”
Chris: Okay. That’s it. You got the confirmation.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: It worked out. Him getting hit by some dude in a bar, helped you get him back. Who knew?
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Wow. When you look back at your 10 month, or nine month experience, what do you feel like helped you the most? If you just picked one thing, what do feel like made the biggest difference for you?”
Sarah: To build myself up, I would say this three things. Battle Buddies, a lot of reading, coaching with Anna.
Chris: Oh, okay. So we’ve got the three there. Battle Buddies, so the support system that that provides. The reading, which is like reading the program, reading any other thing to cultivate your mind. And then having someone be there with you to help coach you through the difficult moments. And you feel those three things made the biggest difference?
Sarah: Yeah. I would say, because in the beginning I couldn’t control my emotion. I couldn’t. I was like all-
Chris: How long did it take you to feel like you’ve got a handle on that?
Sarah: Being UG?
Chris: Yeah.
Sarah: After a couple of months. I think doing the NC… Okay, the reason why I want to extend my NC at that time, because I think I still need to control my emotion, not because of him, but because of me at that time.
Chris: Okay. I’m going to tell you something interesting I’ve noticed. When I do these interviews, the one consistency I see among almost every single one, the one pattern is, people who use their time during No Contact to focus on themselves. And sort of look at the areas they feel weak on. For you it’s emotional control.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: I’m so happy to hear that you said you extended your No Contact Rule, because that tells me you’re really putting a lot of value into that. And I can’t tell you how much that does help when you get back in touch with your ex, because I think so many people just try to rush through the No Contact Rule without doing that hard work. And it’s not easy.
Sarah: It’s not.
Chris: You also, just my initial thoughts on listening to your situation, I actually think it’s kind of brilliant to use the taxes as a way to get his help, and force a natural way of talking on the phone, and a natural way of meeting up. And I also thought it was a really lucky coincidence that your laptop ran out of battery. It almost forces you to have a natural conversation. And I feel like I’m going to start recommending people to have ideas like that to draw, like it’s a hook to get on the phone.
Sarah: [crosstalk 00:48:26].
Chris: You’re a trendsetter, Sarah.
Sarah: No, no. Well-
Chris: So-
Sarah: Yeah, sorry-
Chris: No, no. You go ahead.
Sarah: I think Anna did help me a lot in terms of that. Like [Kirsty 00:48:45] too, like in the group.
Chris: Yeah, Kirsty. Some of the mods helping you. You really relied a lot on that support group, that support system in the ERP Facebook group.
Sarah: Yeah. In the beginning, before, because I’m too afraid of what his response would be. At that time I’m still kind of anxious too, because I kept on looking at his social media.
Chris: Yeah.
Sarah: But, less anxious at the time. It’s just a, “Okay, whatever. Okay, you’ve been going here and there.” But that’s it. I don’t worry much. But to initiate the first text was nerve-racking for me, because I cannot imagine how would he respond to it. A lot of draft does really help. And I also make notes of every single thing that [crosstalk 00:49:46]-
Chris: Oh, so you charted everything, to see the patterns and things like that.
Sarah: Yeah. I also recorded his response, like in Excel, and all the things that Anna had given me. I kind of followed that. All of my planners are mostly full with the points from the program.
Chris: That’s beautiful. That’s awesome. Looking back do you feel like, it took a long time to get him back, do you feel like that was, do you feel happy with the outcome and everything, now that you have him back?
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: That’s great.
Sarah: Yeah, because I see the relationship in a different perspective now. I became less anxious. I gave him more space. And he appreciates that. It’s like I can read his pattern now. Every week, even though we’ve been texting every day, almost every day, but there are also days that he just needs to shut things.
Chris: Chill. Got it, yeah. He just needs those days to just take a breather, and then come back into it.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: And you’re just okay with giving him that space, because you feel so secure with yourself.
Sarah: Yeah. I can like, “Yeah, I’m okay. I have my things to do,” things like that. The program does help me like, “Okay, now I understand what do you need.” And he really appreciates that. I think before the program, I cannot see that. I don’t know what is your need? I think we had a problem in conversation, to have an open conversation like what we need, what I don’t want you to do, things like that.
Sarah: This program does really help me to actually get to know him better.
Chris: Well, thank you so much for doing the interview. I’m actually just blown away by some of the stuff that you did. I feel it was so clever. I’m totally going to talk about that in a blog post or something, about using his interest to hook him, or using a favor to hook him into a phone conversation, because it worked so well for you. It’s just really kind of clever. But thank you so much for coming on and doing this.
Attachment Theory And Exes With Antia Boyd
Sep 22, 2020
A few weeks ago I got a chance to interview the lovely Antia Boyd from Magnetize Your Man and I have to say I was blown away. Now, I know that’s something I’ve said before when I’ve introduced other experts to the community but this girl is on a whole different level.
Usually whenever I interview someone I learn something new but I don’t really put it into practice. There were multiple times throughout this interview with Antia where it felt like a lightbulb went off and I honestly had my mind blown.
So, without further ado I’d like to introduce you to Antia Boyd!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Chris: Okay, so today we’re going to be talking to Antia Boyd who, I had the pleasure of talking to about a week ago, we just sort of got to know each other. And it was really interesting, I really loved the way that you kind of structured our relationship. The way you sort of described it was, you’re often taking the clients that I’ll get before they go on the break up, and I kind of get them after. So, I would just love to pick your mind today specifically about some of the attachment styles, and really an interesting thing I’m noticing with my coaching clients. But, first off, how are you doing?
Antia Boyd: So good Chris, I’m so excited to be here, we’re just past Labor Day weekend so we’re all ready to rock and roll. You know get back at the thing, get your ex back, let’s go.
Chris: Yeah. So, why don’t you tell us first a little bit about the magnetize your man method. Because she’s, first off the coolest name ever right? Magnetize your man. And second off, what exactly do you help women do when they come into your orbit?
Antia Boyd: Yeah, totally, totally. Yeah. So I actually developed the magnetize your man method from my own pain. I was struggling myself, attracting a lot of emotionally unavailable men, which you ladies can relate to, because you probably have breakups because of that, right? And I developed a structure which is basically mapping, magnifying and manifesting. So, one thing that needs to happen, we don’t know what we don’t know, right? So you don’t know your blind spots, you don’t know I do lots of different readings and look at the human being at many different levels. I studied personality psychology at UC Berkeley, and really understanding what is our internal dialogue? How’s it translates into action or it doesn’t translate into action, right? And also, how are we distorting actually our reality all the time?
Antia Boyd: So that’s what the mapping stage really looks at. It also looks at what, are your unique gifts? Because we always believe, once we go through a breakup, we have nothing to fall back on, right? Like our manesty is the all be all end all-
Chris: Right, right.
Antia Boyd: … But it actually a teach in the mapping phase like, how many resources you have, particularly personally, so it’s personal to every single person, for yourself that you can totally rely on? Maybe you’re incredibly intuitive, or maybe you’re incredibly an incredible connector, whatever it is, but that’s what we uncover too. So you can build that intrinsic confidence, instead of just the extrinsic one, right? That of course, so many women have.
Chris: So I’m really fascinated not only by your work but, I’m fascinated to get your take on something that I, I don’t know scientifically how to describe this concept, but it’s something that I’ve noticed a huge pattern in. So here’s kind of the interesting thing I’ve been doing lately. So one of the really cool benefits of having a pretty good audience is, you’ll get the opportunity to talk to a lot of people who actually succeed in getting their exes back. Now, we can debate the merits on, if you should be getting an ex back later but, I’m kind of interested in dissecting specifically, what did they do versus the people who were not successful?
Chris: And one interesting pattern I’m noting is, a lot of what you’re talking about, which is like that internal value that they kind of get after the breakup but, there’s also this really interesting phenomenon occurring where, most of the time they’ll start out with the blinders on, where they want to get their exes back and then, slowly but surely as they go through my program, and they kind of focus a little bit more on other things, as opposed to their ex, they kind of get to this point where they’re just like, “I don’t want them back anymore.” And then the ex comes back. So I’m kind of curious to get your take on it. I’ve been asking everyone because it’s something, when I’m interviewing these success stories, it’s something I consistently see happen. They get to like this internal mindset shift where they’re just like, I don’t care about him anymore, and then he comes back. So do you have any maybe scientific explanation for that? I mean, it’s okay if you don’t, I’m just kind of curious to pick your mind.
Antia Boyd: Oh, yeah. I mean, we can really feel when somebody is attached to an outcome, so I studied attachment style theories under Mary Ainsworth, who was of course, under the [inaudible 00:04:28] of Mary Ainsworth, sorry, who of course was studying under john Bowlby. And so, um, whoops, by the way, you don’t know John Bowlby. And so, who was by the way you don’t know John Bowlby, he is the grandfather of the soul attachment style theory, that’s where everything started. And so, what oftentimes happens, men can feel when you’re attached, right? They can feel it because you’re coming from desperation, you’re coming from fear, and you’re coming also from a place of potentially resentment, but it’s a negative emotion. And it’s interesting but, men are actually much more intuitive than we give them credit for, and they can feel when you let go of that attachment.
Antia Boyd: And that attachment then actually means trust, connection, and you’re coming from a place of love. And who doesn’t want to go back … Like think about it this way Chris, would you rather go back to a place of, if you come back to me, you got a lot of love, or if you come back to me, you got a lot of fear and a lot of resentment and-
Chris: Right.
Antia Boyd: … A lot of like constriction, you know?
Chris: Yeah, that makes sense. So this is a fascinating topic because, anytime I bring up attachment theory, or attachment styles within our private Facebook group, or to my clients, they eat it up, they love this stuff. But, when you’re talking about like the cues that men can pick up on, how are those cues picked up on exactly? Are they just looking at specific types of communication like tone of voice and things of that nature, or is there more to it than that?
Antia Boyd: Yeah. I mean sometimes it’s actually over time people actually create a telepathic connection. Think about it this way, you think about a person and they call you. How do you explain that right?
Chris: Right, right.
Antia Boyd: But we do have like, and we see it all the time in releasing a person workshops, things like that where, the guy calls afterwards, they didn’t know that you were in a-
Chris: Right, right, there’s no way they knew it’s just … And then yeah, I mean, we see that all the time where it’s like you know, you’ve probably seen it in your life just like I’ve seen it, where you’re thinking, or you’re watching a video about something that you hadn’t seen in a long time, and then you go out walking and all of a sudden, that’s all you can see.
Antia Boyd: Right, right, the reticular activating system, right? Absolutely.
Chris: So I’m curious, so this is kind of more of a philosophical question at this point but let’s say you are going through life where, you’ve just watched this movie or something that you hadn’t seen in years, and then you’re going through life, and all of a sudden you just see all these things about this movie, that you hadn’t seen in years. Is it a function of, kind of that aspect being drawn to you, or you being a little bit more aware and being able to pick up those cues?
Antia Boyd: Yeah, that’s such a good question because a lot of women actually think, if the guy calls that means they’re meant to be, to be better, right?
Chris: Right.
Antia Boyd: And that’s not necessarily true. It could also be scientifically explained through what is it called? What I’m looking for? Metaphysical principles, right?
Chris: Okay, yeah.
Antia Boyd: And so how I see it so, I so relate to this because, I would break up with a guy sort of, I mean I was thinking my whole life, but I was always dating and you know-
Chris: You’re married now though to a great husband.
Antia Boyd: Yeah, husband is here, yeah.
Chris: This woman has the answers guys.
Antia Boyd: I have all the answers, [inaudible 00:07:33] me. And I went through a lot of pain, because I would literally drive down the street, and then I would see a street name with the name of that guy. Then I would be like, oh, Chris, it’s a sign.
Chris: It’s meant to be.
Antia Boyd: He’s my soulmate right? Or like, I don’t know.
Chris: You’re preaching to the choir with my audience, because I can’t tell you how often I see stuff like that where they’re just like, “But it’s a sign, we have to be together.” But you’re saying it’s not necessarily true.
Antia Boyd: No, it’s not true. So what I always would say is like just, you can write it down in your journal, just as a marker. There’s this really great book it’s called When God Winks on Love, and it talks about that. Like those winks that we get, but we don’t necessarily take action on them. It’s fun to look back and be like, oh, wow, all along I got sent those signs, but it doesn’t mean now get attached to something. So, I would see it as more oh, I’m on the right track, whether it’s this guy or he’s the bridge to the next guy, but how I would such a see it as more, I’m on the right track. Like I’m doing something right. Something is in the flow, I don’t know what that something is, because you don’t know if Joe is just a opener to, I don’t know, George, right?
Chris: Correct.
Antia Boyd: And [inaudible 00:08:46] see this guy again, or remind yourself of something, have some sort of resolution with him, and then meet the real guy that really-
Chris: So, no, no, no, I really love your explanation, and I think, I’ve done so many coaching sessions with people to know kind of their reaction when I try to explain the principle, the Joe versus the George, it’s sort of like, well, I think a lot of times they get so hung up on trying to get their ex back, that they don’t realize maybe that one person is not the best for them in the long term. So how do you get someone to maybe open up their blinders a little bit, to seeing the world from a 30,000 foot perspective, as opposed to just taking it like one little thing at a time?
Antia Boyd: Right, right. I love this so much. I call this the meter perspective, like, well you have the macro perspective versus the micro perspective, where you’re caught up in the weeds, right?
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Antia Boyd: And so part of it is actually like seeing, okay, well, let’s say you get Frank back, but you know, you’re going to go through this pattern all the time where he doesn’t call you every week or, you don’t know where he is on Saturday night. So imagine this would go on for 10 years, would you be okay with that? Because I think when we think we want to get back with our ex, we think, we just idealize the scenario, right? But we forget to actually acknowledge well, what were all the things that I didn’t like? What were all the things that caused so much anxiety, we’re talking about attachment styles today, right? That caused so much anxiety, mistrust, insecurity inside of yourself, that really, you want to live like that for the rest of your life?
Antia Boyd: So actually saying yes to it, not saying no, you can’t have it, or you shouldn’t have it but actually like, great, let’s say you’re going to get it. Let’s say Frank comes back. But Frank is not going to change. Frank is going to stay the same, he may change for two weeks or three weeks, and then [inaudible 00:10:37] go back into his patterns.
Chris: So that’s an interesting point you bring up. Because I’ve noticed that what usually happens in most … So, I’ve noticed about half of people who get back together will break up again within the first three months. And what I’ve noticed is, when you study the half of the people that kind of don’t stay together for a long term time, usually there is an immediate change at the beginning, but slowly but surely they kind of get back into their old habits that caused the relationship. But let’s say theoretically that you wanted to get Frank back, we’ll use Frank as our obligatory ex boyfriend, Frank. So, let’s say we want to get Frank back, and you succeed in getting Frank back, what would have to occur for Frank to change his ways to basically pull his weight in the relationship? Or is that even possible do you think?
Antia Boyd: Well, so it really depends on if he chose to come back with you or if you guilt tripped him into it, which I’m sure-
Chris: Okay, that’s a good thing.
Antia Boyd: … About it, right?
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Antia Boyd: It’s like making sure, particularly if he’s more the avoidance, so if you’re listening to this, you’re maybe more anxious side of things and just like, anticipating, checking your phone every two seconds, and Frank may be more like, I need space. I need my weekends, I need my buddies, I need my world, and so then what needs to happen for you is for one, you need to change the dynamic with you. Now how do you do that? Well for one, you have to really work on your own insecurity inside of yourself. And one thing that I talk about is, how to become secure in your insecurities. So not like fighting against it like, oh, I feel shame right now, oh my God I should like use one of those shame shields, attacking or pretending it didn’t happen.
Antia Boyd: Or, I feel, I don’t know, somebody just said I’m selfish, oh no, no, I’m a giver and I’m generous, and just constantly going against feeling insecure versus actually really leaning into that.
Chris: So, this is something that we actually talked about last week when we just were getting to know each other and it turned into like this three hour, hubbub back and forth where were just … It was a really great conversation, we probably should have filmed that one. But-
Antia Boyd: Totally should have.
Chris: … This was something that you taught me that I really hadn’t thought about before which is like, I think a lot of women and men for that matter, when they’re going through breakups, they feel a lot of guilt, shame, things like that, and they hyper focus on their insecurities or the things that they did wrong. And, I really loved your theory because I talk about a lot about this theory called the ungettable girl. So it’s like for women strive to be this ungettable girl to where you’re kind of like above men, you don’t put them on pedestals, they’re kind of equals. And, I think I just love that concept of like, kind of owning your insecurities. So, do you think you could talk a little bit more about someone who’s having a really hard time doing that?
Chris: Because I think someone listening to this are like, oh, yeah, that sounds super cool, but when it comes to owning something that you’ve been insecure about your entire life, it’s not like we’re going to snap our fingers and it’s just going to fix. So what kind of strategies can someone have or use to own their insecurities?
Antia Boyd: Totally. So I’ll give you an example. So I grew up in an emotionally absent household. So my mom was rather narcissistic and the core message was, don’t bother me. So the last thing that I want to be have all kinds of insecurities around like being too much, and I mean I used to, still as always like residuals. But there’s this like, don’t be too much, don’t ask for too much. And so 10 years ago, I was dating this guy and he said, “Well, you’re too affectionate. You kiss too much, you hug too much.” And so in that moment, I learned how to advocate for that. So not say, what would a normal woman do? Well a normal woman, the average woman would be like, “Oh, no, no, no. No, it’s fine, you know what I mean? I’ll give you space or you know.” Or she’ll be like? “Well, to much.”
Antia Boyd: So you either go into attack and be like, “Who do you think you are?” Or you would go into pretending it didn’t happen, right? That’s Bernie Brown talks about that, those are shame shields. And so, but I just said, well, this is who I am. He smiled and then he felt actually his shame, because most people when they say something, they just say it because you have a charge around it. They can feel unconsciously when you don’t feel secure with something, and they will speak to that, right? So now, I was secure in that moment, and I was, I would like to call advocate, for my insecurity so to say or for my needs, and so now he was faced with his own shame, so now he backtracked.
Antia Boyd: He actually ended up using a shame shield and said, “Oh, no, just kidding. No, it’s great, I love you, you’re awesome.” You know what I mean? And he ended up pursuing me, calling me, he was actually going on a trip and he called me every day, whatever state he was in, left me voicemails. And so, it really changed something but I always tell the women, it’s not about insecurities that you have, I don’t care if it’s an insecurity about being, wanting to be famous, or people are like, “Oh you just want to feel important. Who do you think you are?” Or if it’s around something like, being too much or, not being smart enough, or whatever it is. We all have all those different stories. But if a man sees that you just stand there and you’re, yeah that’s me, they don’t know what else that they’re going to say, right?
Antia Boyd: It’s like they’re telling me that I have blonde hair, what am I supposed to say to that? It’s true, I have blonde hair so now what?
Chris: It’s true, right. Well I mean, I think in this odd way, if you really think about it, we don’t look … So like we, obviously it’s hard to change external aspects like you used the blonde hair, you’re not going to change the blonde hair. But we almost look at personalities as the separate entity from ourselves, like they’re this this changeable thing and it’s not simple to change something like that. And I really love the concept because the way I look at it, the way I would frame it is like, by owning some of your insecurities you appear more confident to the other person. And sometimes supreme confidence in oneself can be blinding to the other person. So I think that’s almost like why they backtrack. They’ve never seen a human being do that before where they’re just like, yeah, yeah, I’m this way, that’s how I am.
Antia Boyd: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: Which I really love. Do you have any … So you work with a lot of women, obviously.
Antia Boyd: Right, I work with thousands of single successful women, all over the world.
Chris: Right.
Antia Boyd: All ages, all stages I always say.
Chris: So I’m curious, do you have any others? Because I feel like this concept may be one the most important for my audience to grasp, which is like just owning those insecurities. Do you have any other stories from women who have done this on dates that maybe can like, sometimes I think my audience needs to see lots of different success stories to kind of really hammer how important this point is.
Antia Boyd: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I have like one story of one client and she was told by this guy that she’s a bitch.
Chris: Okay.
Antia Boyd: And-
Chris: So it’s funny my wife when I met her, we were driving, I did not call her a bitch, I want to put that out. But I said something along the lines of like, oh, you’re kind of sassy and she’s like, “No, I’m just a sweet bitch.” So I think she did one of those things without me even recognizing it until six years later.
Antia Boyd: Well what impact did that have on you in that moment Chris? Like tell it.
Chris: I think I just laughed because I had never seen a girl call herself a bitch before. And she was like, “No, no, I’m not a bitch, I’m a sweet bitch.” And she just kind of owned it. It was like, I didn’t know how to react to it. I don’t think I backtracked on it, I think I just started laughing and it became like this weird inside joke, but I think it was her way of just owning maybe some of the edgier parts of her personality and it worked. But, so maybe wow, you used me as the example, how dare you?
Antia Boyd: Yeah, you actually-
Chris: So you’ve got this client, who’s being called a bitch or she calls-
Antia Boyd: Yeah and then she said, “Yes, I am.”
Chris: And so what does he say to that?
Antia Boyd: He was completely flabbergasted. He was like, he didn’t know what to say. He’s like, he was like speechless. He was like, “Are you serious?” So he was really like, you know what I mean? He did need to collect himself.
Chris: So what’s interesting is, I mean we’re dealing with, the audience we’re talking to here is dealing with like, they’ve literally gone through breakups. And so I feel like the pushback they would have to this concept is like, “Well, what if those qualities, those insecurities about myself as the reason that he broke up with me, should I still do this?”
Antia Boyd: I guarantee you nine out of 10 times that’s her own self perception, that’s not why. It’s because she judges herself and she actually activates that judgment then inside of himself. But if she actually were to hold her own in a relationship, men don’t leave. They don’t leave. If you hold your own in a relationship, you have your heart open, you’re the sweet bitch, I love that. I call it a queen it’s between a doormat and the bitch, right? I love the sweet bitch, that’s awesome.
Chris: Yeah.
Antia Boyd: You know, so you say I’m the [inaudible 00:19:56] of the bitch-
Chris: You can feel free to use that, but you have to give him-
Antia Boyd: I totally [crosstalk 00:20:03]
Chris: It’s-
Antia Boyd: Totally use that, totally. That’s so right. But like if you get to be the sweet bitch, and so you’re holding your own, but you’re still in your heart, that means it comes from a place of compassion versus resentment, men don’t leave. Why is that? Well, because it gives them access inside of their own heart. They have their own wounds from their childhood that they’re trying to protect, and you manage and navigate, and that’s what it ultimately broke out, because you hit a wall with them, you hit some sort of ceiling, some sort of threshold where are the resources? But if you’re saying, “Hey, I have the resources, I’m right here, I love all of me, how about we love all of you? How about not becoming defensive when you yell at me or be angry, but maybe we can see a world like where we can hold space for that for ourselves? How about we see that those are parts of us versus all of us and we become so over identified with it and take it so personally?”
Antia Boyd: So that’s what I would say to that. So I would bet with you, that that’s not the real reason, it’s more about how she relates to that than-
Chris: Yeah I mean, I totally 100% agree with you. And I think actually coming into a new relationship, or even an old relationship with this mentality, it’s kind of like, it changes the trajectory. Because, to your point it’s like, okay, when you were insecure, and you wouldn’t own those insecurities in the relationship, of course it’s going to create this sort of toxic environment where you lash out maybe. But by kind of owning it, it adds this new dynamic to where he’s forced to kind of like see, oh, wow, I didn’t know that was allowed. Because I don’t think people know it’s allowed to basically say, “Oh yeah, I’m a sweet pitcher. Or oh yeah, I’m this way or this way.”
Chris: It feels a little like breaking the rules. But I feel like sometimes that’s how you have to add a new dynamic to your relationship. But, so I’ve noticed also, and this is something I think is really relevant to my audience, you work with a lot of women who have dated narcissists.
Antia Boyd: Yes.
Chris: What kind of, just outlooks or kind of insights can you give my audience, who is deeply in love with someone who’s extremely narcissistic, and maybe shouldn’t be trying to get that extremely narcissistic person back?
Antia Boyd: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So look, you have to understand how are you a narcissist magnets, versus a narcissist repellent? which is what I, you know you put an insect repellent on right so you’re kind of a narcissist repellent.
Chris: Yeah, get away. Do we have a spray? Is there a spray we can buy?
Antia Boyd: We’ll have a cream you know what I mean?
Chris: Okay, a cream yeah sorry.
Antia Boyd: … Before you go on dates. But seriously so, narcissists go for empaths. So people are naturally more other focused, but narcissist as we know, are very self rotating, right? So they’re like parasites. So the more you focus on other people, meaning you make focusing on yourself wrong, but I just said before, if you’re like, “Well no, I’m not a bitch or no I’m not selfish,” great, great target for narcissists. Because they’re like, “Oh great. All I have to tell her, don’t be so selfish. I just have to gaslight her and then she’s just going to focus on me. You know what I mean? It’s all going to be about me. And not only that, but she has like her intrinsic self esteem is starting to break down because I make her question and doubt herself, because her self esteem comes from outside approval. So if I don’t approve of her, I can break her down, great. Now I can make a question herself, leave her family, leave her friends and just give me all her resources, all her love, all her money,” I mean I’ve heard it all.
Antia Boyd: Writing over loans and credits and co sign things, I mean it goes pretty far what narcissists are able to accomplish with a woman that’s so other focused.
Chris: So what would you say to a woman who has been broken up with by a narcissist and wants the narcissist back? Because I personally don’t think going back to a narcissist is probably the best thing for your sanity. What would you say to someone who would argue with my point which is like, hey, don’t do it. How would you get them to maybe redirect to a more healthy relationship?
Antia Boyd: Yeah so, one thing that she has to understand, yes there’s a part inside of her that wants to have this guy back, and I would not fight that. Because if you want to fight that, the more protection and the more management comes up, the more she actually hardens and she’s not receptive. But if you’re like, okay, great so let’s say you get him back, we put that one over here, so I’m not saying it’s not going to happen, but let’s take the other scenario too. Let’s look at that site too. And that’s actually you becoming your own narcissist. So what I would most likely do is, I would draw out everything she’s experienced in her life, every time when she’s given her power away. How this all started in her childhood. How she tried to turn herself into a pretzel, right?
Antia Boyd: Like how her dad was telling you, who do you think you are? So I would actually, like when we’re talking about before giving a bigger perspective, a macro perspective, that would be a good moment to do that because she’s so caught up, and a woman who wants to go back with a narcissist, which usually when my women come to me, there’s no way they want to get back with a narcissist. They want to get as far away as possible from that. But what they don’t understand is that they have to become a narcissist themselves.
Chris: Well, so I think that there’s the correlation there would probably be because, someone who is naturally drawn to someone who’s very narcissistic, wants to be very sympathetic to others, or empathetic to others, and they don’t really think … so what I’ve found in general in relationships is, a lot of times people when they make a relationship decision, they try to make it out of self interest, but there are exceptions and I feel like these would be the exceptions. People who are kind of selfless by nature. And, we all hear the like the woman who are drawn to fixer uppers. So these are the women who are highly like, they just need a problem to fix so that they can feel good because they’re doing good, you know?
Chris: And I think … So someone like that is basically what you’re saying is, they need to get to this point where they own that, and stop giving the narcissist power? How do they get over that mental block? I guess is my question.
Antia Boyd: It’s really about, any resistance that you have around being selfish. So Chris if I ask you, or the women who are watching, when you think of a narcissist, what kind of woman is narcissistic? She is like, she doesn’t care, and she’s just all about herself and whatever, they would just throw some adjectives and some attributes at me, right?
Chris: Right, right.
Antia Boyd: Well, great you get to embrace that now. Meanness, nastiness, oh a nasty woman is a narcissist. Great, now you get to embrace the nastiness. So now you’re not only get to be a sweet bitch, but you also got to be a nasty bitch. And I’m actually super, super serious because I’ve gone through this process myself, and I have lots of women that come from very, like, nice backgrounds where nobody is saying anything and everything is brushed under the carpet, and they learn to embrace that. And just really say, we’re doing self absorption exercise, absorbing yourself. Because people use self absorption as a word as an insult. If I say, Chris, you’re so self absorbed, you would never think, thank you for the compliment.
Chris: Yeah, right. But a narcissist would maybe.
Antia Boyd: Yeah, a narcissist, thank you so much. No, they would gaslight, no you’re the self absorbed one because they’re projected out, but it’s really, it’s actually the opposite. So everything that charges you up, that’s what you actually like working on. So we’re having a whole self absorption party, and it’s great, and actually break down with self absorption really means, because usually it’s the other way around, it’s actually absorbing other people, not ourselves, not enough of ourselves, and that is the balance between focusing on other people and focusing on ourselves, to really create a healthy interdependence. Because what the women, the woman that wants to go back to a narcissist is in a codependent pattern and I will break it all down to her, but I’ll have her answer the questions.
Antia Boyd: Because I’m not going to tell her anything, because she already decided she wants to go back. So what I would do is like, I would ask her questions and really, really think this through because remember, we delete, we distort and we generalize reality all day long, based on our unconscious expectations. So we got to break that down because otherwise we’re in our illusion of what that relationship is like.
Chris: So what seems fascinating to me is, I think for the first time ever, you’re saying, I mean, I’ve never heard this before, which is really interesting, which is like, look, if you’re drawn to narcissists and you’re just like this incredible empath, and you really don’t think about yourself a lot, you need to learn to become more narcissistic. But is there … So my understanding of it would be like, okay, you don’t need to embody and become a full narcissist but you need to take some of those selfish qualities and use them on yourself, so that you can achieve the balance between being selfish, and also being kind of empathetic so that you’re not losing maybe the empath part of yourself, but you’re also looking after yourself a little bit more than you would have before. Is that an accurate way of saying? Or are you are you saying just turn full heal and just go completely narcissistic yourself?
Antia Boyd: Yeah, go completely the other way because when somebody is so far on this side, so if I tell them to go all the way, then they maybe end up in the middle.
Chris: In the middle, okay.
Antia Boyd: They’re going to have so much self perceptive distortions inside of themselves, that by the time they’re like, [inaudible 00:30:03] tell me what did you do? Well, I just said something I was like, well that would be what any confident person would say, that’s not-
Chris: Got it. So essentially, it’s almost like they don’t have a good alignment metric within themselves. So they don’t … So it’s like, for someone who’s extremely selfless, and that’s the way I view people who are probably like more narcissistic focused, they don’t really know what it’s like to be selfish. so even if you tell them to be selfish, it’s impossible for them to go so far to the other end, because they just don’t know how to do it. And, I’m assuming you came up with that concept through a bit of trial and error with real clients after telling them like hey, just go and be a narcissist yourself, and you’re just hearing like their narcissist behavior is like, basic, confident behavior that’s not narcissistic at all.
Antia Boyd: Yeah well first of all, I have a narcissistic mom myself that means, I naturally will have a hyper masculine narcissistic distortion inside of myself. Because if we have like an extreme parent, we will have that as a distortion, but we will not know about it, because we’re hiding it from ourselves. But I was always manipulated by people, including my mom, and the minute somebody would say, “You’re so selfish.” I would like bend over backwards, guilt trip 101, and I was just sick and tired of it. It never worked for me. I was disrespected by men left and right. So I was like, I just have to … I literally came up for this myself because I said, well, I got to … When I learned about Shadow Work, I don’t know how much you’ve talked about Shadow Work with your clients-
Chris: No, I would so we’re going to go into that.
Antia Boyd: Yeah.
Chris: You have to tell us about it.
Antia Boyd: That’s actually where it all started right. So, right away, definitely give credit here, Debbie Ford, of course, she died a few years ago, but she wrote a really great book. It’s called The Dark Side of the Light Chasers and it talks about shadow work. And so shadow work essentially is looking at yourself, or looking outside of yourself actually, and see what are you judging in those other people? And so with my mom, I would always say, she’s such a narcissistic bitch. So then I was like, well, wait a minute, if I take this work on, the shadow work actually says, whatever you judge in someone else is what you have inside of yourself.
Chris: Okay.
Antia Boyd: Okay, take a deep breath right now ladies.
Chris: It’s almost kind of like Freud’s ID or the super ego, or something like that where they’re-
Antia Boyd: I think that Shadow Work actually comes from [inaudible 00:32:35] originally.
Chris: Okay.
Antia Boyd: Yeah, yeah exactly. And so basically then you get to say, well great, then where are my narcissist? So now I get to embrace my own inner narcissist and it’s great.
Chris: Okay. So basically you have it in you, you just don’t think you do?
Antia Boyd: That’s right. The reason why you’d know that is because, other people would maybe see my mom and they wouldn’t have a problem with anything. They wouldn’t be charged, they would just notice something and it’s just like you know, it’s like breathing. So they don’t have a charge in it so they don’t have that hidden inside of themselves. Maybe they’d already have it integrated or, they don’t really care about it, they are selfish in a healthy way, whatever the case may be. But when you’re charged up about something like, this cruel person, or this nasty person, this arrogant person is another one, then you get to embrace that inside of yourself.
Antia Boyd: And so that’s a really deep journey, and this is a journey of self honesty, it’s incredibly deep, and it’s not designed for everyone. I mean this is definitely not, it’s no joke to say, wait a minute, you’re saying I suffered my whole life from narcissistic abuse, and you’re telling me I have that inside of myself? Are you freaking out of your mind? So that was like my first reaction. But then I was like, over time, I was like, I was watching dynamics and I was looking at, oh wow, in this dynamic with a friend, I’m the one who talks more. Or I’m the one who sort of anchors more into her, or take the resources, or whatever. But again, it takes this willingness to be wrong. Because the body, the system, the unconscious always wants to be right.
Antia Boyd: So you have to be like, okay, maybe I’m doing this a little over here. Maybe I’m a little arrogant over here. Maybe I’m a little fake over here. And so essentially Chris, we have all parts inside of ourselves. But the question is, which of those parts have we hidden from ourselves, and then attract in response, in reflection in the other person? So essentially, they just remind us what we already have inside of ourselves. So essentially, it’s a really big gift, you know?
Chris: It’s such a fascinating and an odd way of looking at it, because I don’t think anyone looks at the situation that way at all.
Antia Boyd: Yeah.
Chris: Well, so you were talking and you have one of the most fascinating backgrounds, period. So, I hadn’t known that about your mom before this moment, but you basically lived your life in Germany and then you came over here to the US to study at Berkeley. And you get your degree at Berkeley, and you work with hundreds of people and all that. But what I’m really fascinated by, and this is something I see in my own coaching practice, but I’m kind of curious your personal experience with it which is, it’s not enough necessarily for me sometimes to tell people what they need to do or show them what they need to do, they need to experience it for themselves to have the effect. And so you talk about your mom being narcissistic, right?
Chris: And I’m curious, would you think she was narcissistic before you came to Berkeley and started studying? Did you have those thoughts? Or was it after you went to Berkeley kind of learned some of these concepts that it just clicked for you? Or did it take you learning the concepts but actually applying it in your own life to click for you?
Antia Boyd: I think the biggest thing for me was learning about attachment styles. I will never forget when I opened up my textbook in my developmental psych class, and I literally, I kid you not Chris, I read this page about the anxious attachment style, and I feel like they took my life and documented it and put it in the book.
Chris: Wow. So you’re just like seeing this and you’re immediately like, that’s me.
Antia Boyd: That’s me. I thought the whole time there’s something wrong with me, I don’t know I have a curse on me or, literally my mom would always say, “We have curses.” My mom had divorced when I was 10 years old, and my brother wasn’t having a long term relationship, and I was struggling and so we’re all like, it’s this family curse, right? There’s like, which there’s actually something to it, it’s called family entanglement, but it’s a whole different story.
Chris: So it’s not a curse-
Antia Boyd: [inaudible 00:36:48] I thought there was something wrong with me, you know what I mean? Something missing.
Chris: Okay. So you see the anxious attachment, you’re like, this is me, and then what happens after that?
Antia Boyd: Well, after that now I actually had a framework, so now I could actually create tools for myself. So for example now I knew, yes I see myself walking down the aisle with this guy, if you see all my journal entries, I meet a guy and I say he’s my soulmate. And then like three weeks later I meet another guy and he’s my soulmate. [inaudible 00:37:18].
Chris: How many soulmates did you meet?
Antia Boyd: I don’t even know. I don’t know, 30.
Chris: You found the real one though, as you can see in the picture back there, she’s married.
Antia Boyd: Yeah so, and here’s the thing too with that, is when you heal your attachment style, my husband didn’t feel like my soulmate. He told me that the first night we met, he told me I’m the girl of his story, but I didn’t feel this like, Oh my God, he’s my soulmate, because I finally had sort of healed that attachment to that outcome and the, I call it the future anticipation, right? And I’m like, [inaudible 00:37:53] Hawaii, I don’t know what’s happened so I just learned it 10 days ago, and let’s see what unfolds for me. So being more make the unknown your friend, was what I started to do because, I was always walking my friends down the aisle, I had my little support groups, because I knew a lot of stuff. And they’re always coming to me for advice, but it was never working for me so I just said, I’m just going to go to Hawaii and I’m just going to just focus on myself, and just totally let go, let go and let God so to say.
Antia Boyd: And 10 days later, I met my husband and it just felt natural, Chris. It just felt like breathing, I told him everything, he knew my attachment style within a few weeks. And he was accepting me, I had a breakdown, I think one month into us dating and I tried to push him away. And I could tell you stories.
Chris: So actually the pushing away thing is interesting because I’m curious like, what is the psychology in your experience of why you pushed him away? Because I’m dealing with a male client who has a female doing that to him right now. And for me it’s kind of easy to understand how men work for me because I’m a guy but, the female mind is a little bit you know, sometimes I’m like, I need a little help. So why were you pushing your husband away? I mean this is someone you ended up marrying. So what’s the rub?
Antia Boyd: So picture this, right, so here’s the anxious attachment style, she’s used to an avoidant attachment style, who calls her every other week? Or, is he still into me? There’s this constant questioning, there’s this constant up and down. There’s those promises, and then they’re not being capped. So there’s this hope, and then it’s a disappointment. So there’s just a lot of activation in the body. Then I meet a man who just does not that, it’s just natural, he just tells me I’m the one, he calls me, he’s not overbearing or anything, he does still do his thing. And so my system essentially was feeling like, this is a foreign body. I don’t know what this is. I can’t compare it to anything, I have no category for that. Because we were starting to be physically intimate relatively early on, and probably part of the reason why it’s because I’m like, I don’t know, it’s probably just a friend or something like that.
Antia Boyd: Because I’m like, but then we have this physical connection too, so it’s not just a friend. So yeah, my system … And then what does the system do when it feels in the unknown, it pushes away, right?
Chris: Right, it will try to purge it, just like get it away,
Antia Boyd: Let’s get it out of the system, right? Like, I don’t know what to do with this, this is unfamiliar, that means I also don’t know how to behave, that all my known structures and behavioral patterns. Remember Chris, I had all those rules, which I’m sure a lot of woman are watching, you have all these rules before I get intimate with somebody and how long we need to be exclusive, and all the stuff, you had to jump through all the hoops, and you equally just cut out of my life if you call me five minutes late. And so all of a sudden, I can’t apply any rules. So then I’m like, who am I? So eventually, I went through almost like an identity crisis, because I’m like, without my rules, without my behavioral patterns, because none of that I can apply, who am I? The system’s not going to go for that. It’s going to push it. It’s going to say I can’t do this. This is weird.
Chris: How do you overcome that in someone else? So let’s put ourselves in your husband’s shoes.
Antia Boyd: Oh, yeah, I can-
Chris: How did he overcome that? Because obviously you tried to purge the emotional way and like-
Antia Boyd: I did yeah, I did.
Chris: I don’t know what to do with this, this is like an unfamiliar street I’m on. How did he basically lure you back? Because I think that’s the quandary that many of the people here are having.
Antia Boyd: Literally through his confidence. So I would go to this party and I would drink two bottles of champagne, now I don’t drink at all right. So-
Chris: Me too, me too.
Antia Boyd: You know what I mean? But I drank two bottles of champagne-
Chris: Kind of cool the champagne. I mean like, usually people just drink beer, but no, no you went right to the champagne which is funny.
Antia Boyd: Yeah I went to the champagne and I ignored him the whole night. He’s like “Happy Friday.” Because he was at this party and I was like, why are you here? I didn’t invite you. I’m here with my friends, it’s Hawaii, go to other places. Go sailing, go snorkeling, there’s so much to do here. But he was not coming to me, he’s not trying to convince me or anything. He was just like-
Chris: So he’s physically around, but he’s not like … It’s like why are you here? And he’s like, oh I’m just here and he just ignores you.
Antia Boyd: Yeah, like so I … So basically he’s like, okay, she chooses to … I don’t know what’s going on with her, let her go through the motions. Because, again as a secure, he doesn’t have to like oh my God, what’s going on? We’re in the unknown, he’s good in the unknown, because he was loved in the unknown. He knows when something … In the unknown he has hope, he has connection, love, warmth, he learned all of that as a child, because it’s a secure attachment style. So then I had to be with myself. So you don’t want to push against it, you want to give the woman a space to be with it. So then, of course at the end of the night, what did I do Chris? I texted him and I said, You know, I think I ignored you the whole night.
Antia Boyd: I was like, I don’t even know what I’m doing. I didn’t even know where I am, I don’t know what’s happening. You know what I mean? I had a breakdown and then I broke up with him like a week later because I’m like, I don’t know, this all too much for me, my system can’t handle it. And back again, same thing.
Chris: And he’s like, cool. Like, okay.
Antia Boyd: Yeah he was like, went to his workshop but then I forgot my towel in his backpack and again, he’s giving me the towel back and then I just was drawn to him. Because he was not trying to convince me. I had my space to move through my emotions. And he actually said later on that he’s like, “Well, I was just like, just giving you space. I just knew you’re moving through your motions, I’m here, I know you’re the one so I know you’re going to get to it at some point.” And just this resting confidence, and there’s also this sort of like quiet unattachment right? He was just not attached and I could feel it. I could feel it. I could feel the space. And then basically my fear could, I needed space because remember, my mom’s a narcissist so I didn’t have any space at all for my own experience, right?
Antia Boyd: So this man gives me all the space so I can feel everything and move through everything and then guess what? If you don’t have anything that pushes against us, we come out the other side. Of course we do, we’re human beings, we’re dynamic human beings so we move through our emotional cycles, and at the end we’re like, okay, still here. You know what I mean? The guy is still there, you know what I mean? Yeah I just, and I just yeah.
Chris: So, that’s a really fascinating story because there’s a lot going on there. Were you aware of the attachment style theory when this was going on?
Antia Boyd: No, I mean I had studied at UC Berkeley, but actually in that moment I wasn’t. Because I was so caught up in everything that was happening, and mind you I was seeing other guys and I was distracting myself and I was like, this is this foreign body, I don’t know, you know what I mean? I was actually taking for granted in a way I’m like, yeah, he’s always going to be here so whatever.
Chris: Okay. But eventually just that quiet confidence of basically saying-
Antia Boyd: I wasn’t aware of that. No, I was too much caught up in just seeing it more like as a friend or something, something. I don’t know what I was thinking. But just this unlabeled experience, you know what I mean? That was easy and … But yeah, I had this whole experience of, it needs to be the fireworks, and there needs to be this, all of it together, and this high level of charge and that wasn’t there. So I was like, it’s something I want but where, we’re having fun and-
Chris: And I guess it kind of goes into what you’re saying about kind of people needing to be right. And the fact that your framework no longer applies to this one guy it’s like, it’s not right. It’s just like, okay, well, let me … I’ll do something else.
Antia Boyd: Yes, that’s right, that’s right.
Chris: So-
Antia Boyd: Anything, anything, right? Like in that moment I became also irrational. Because remember, if you don’t have anything to hold, now you’re just becoming irrational because you don’t even know anything anymore. So now you become unpredictable, you do weird things, you push them away. Break up with-
Chris: Right, right.
Antia Boyd: … And so on, yeah.
Chris: So one thing I would like to say about you is, not only do you have amazing YouTube channel, but you do have these really cool sounding coaching, mastermind groups that you were telling me about last time. So, first off, we’ll do the YouTube plug for you. So tell us where we can find you on YouTube since you have this awesome growing channel. So what do we type into YouTube to find you?
Antia Boyd: Yeah, Antia Boyd, A- N- T- I- A B- O- Y- D so don’t … Like and it’s-
Chris: Or we could do, if they type in magnetize your man.
Antia Boyd: Your man, yeah.
Chris: Okay. So there you go. But really what I would like to hear you tell more my audience about, are these really amazing mastermind … Because that’s how I viewed it. I don’t know if that’s how you kind of pitch it, but I viewed it like these mastermind groups, and they’re like high level mastermind groups with like 12 women, right? How many women per call?
Antia Boyd: Yeah, it’s between 12 and 20 women, somewhere around there.
Chris: So tell us how those work exactly. How long are the calls? Are they weekly? Are they monthly? Just give us the-
Antia Boyd: Right. Yeah, no I mean, it’s like the longer program, it’s a six month long program and it takes you through the three stages.? So it goes to the mapping stage, then it goes into the magnification stage, which is where all the fear is coming up like, I don’t want to be narcissist, I don’t want to be too big, too bright, too bold, any of that, so breaking through all the stories that you have. That’s where the Shadow Work comes in mostly, is the magnification stage. And then the manifestation stage, that’s actually we’re looking at how are you sabotaging relationships? Where can you literally not receive relationships because Chris you probably see that with your women they are also sabotage it too, where they’re like, “Oh, he didn’t give me this and I passive aggressively just hang up on him.”
Chris: My favorite sabotage story ever was, there was a girl who we were helping to try to get her ex back, and she was having really a lot of success. She had a lot going for her. And she had gotten the guy and he’s sitting next to her on the couch and he goes, “Do you ever think about getting back together?” And she didn’t know what to do? So she she starts texting us to like, “What do I say?” With him on the couch right there. We’re just like-
Antia Boyd: [inaudible 00:48:40], yeah.
Chris: So, yeah that’s probably the best sabotage story. And obviously they did not get back together. I think she got into an argument with him or something.
Antia Boyd: Because she texted you guys? She was like, okay.
Chris: No, I think we didn’t see the text message or the Facebook message, I can’t remember it was just a couple years ago, until hours after this had occurred. And so, because she didn’t know what to do, she just started panicking and I think just, like you said, purged that away. She didn’t know how to handle it. Because, I think that taught us that sometimes we can’t coddle people, I think we were coddling her too much. We were giving her too much like, do this, do this, do this, too many steps. And ultimately, she didn’t think for herself and so we’ve tried to pull back on doing that for people and, that’s worked for the most part. But yeah, that’s my favorite sabotage story.
Antia Boyd: You know what probably also happened with her is like, so usually when women don’t want to be too forthright, so he’s already like, “Hey, do you ever think of getting back together?” And she probably wants to say yes with all the fiber of her being but-
Chris: Right. Well so-
Antia Boyd: … She was afraid to be needy.
Chris: No, no, no you’re absolutely right. So what was really interesting about her is, she was one of the worst insecure attachments I had ever seen. I mean, it was like, I have never seen any person this insecure. So we were constantly explaining to her, and I didn’t know the best way to maybe tell someone that, but we were being very blunt with her and saying, look, this is the type of behavior that’s pushing him away. And so I think the fact that we made her aware of that, kind of messed with her a little bit where she had those thoughts you’re talking about. Where she’s like, well, I’m afraid to seem over eager. And so she just kind of just done doesn’t know what to do.
Antia Boyd: Yeah, so that’s like an anxious avoidant, right. So they actually have the anxiety underneath, and that’s what we’re dressing in that last stage, is actually what we always forgetting is when we sabotage, we’re going actually into avoidance, of course we do, that’s how you sabotage. You know what I mean? You’re like not communicating-
Chris: And so she got into an argument and obviously they kind of split up, and then of course she wants him back even more than-
Antia Boyd: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: So it’s kind of this interesting back and forth dynamic and yeah. But that’s by far my favorite sabotage story.
Antia Boyd: Yeah, that’s wow, I love that she really texted you and added to this instant WhatsApp access is all that right? But, sometimes you sleep or, you know what I mean? Something happens.
Chris: I can’t be around forever, my wife was helping her too, so she can’t be around forever. So it just is what it is sometimes. But I-
Antia Boyd: But [inaudible 00:51:22] it’s really about sharing right? Like this authenticity, I did this with my husband too. I was telling him, hey, part of me wanted too manipulate you, that was like six months of us dating, right? And he’s like, “Really? How did you want to do that?” And so in doubt I would always say, share to overcome that avoidance. And we talk about that in the sabotage stage, how to actually create more authenticity, and more transparency in that stage, because you’re not going to survive in any other way because otherwise-
Chris: So the these are all stages that you talk about, and essentially these huge mastermind calls between 12 and 21 women. So, how long … So the calls are weekly, correct? If I’m remembering correct. And how long is the average call?
Antia Boyd: Oh, I mean, the group calls, they’re like two hours because-
Chris: Two hours.
Antia Boyd: … You see me getting-
Chris: So also-
Antia Boyd: … You know.
Chris: Would you also say there’s a really cool benefit to the fact that there’s other women who also hear your situation, and are able to give advice as well on top of the advice you can give?
Antia Boyd: All the time. As a matter of fact, sometimes I come in and it’s like all the questions I answered, because they’re like, “Oh, so and so already answered this for me or, I totally relate to her. Yeah, a lot of women have breakthroughs because, think about it, when you hear somebody else’s story, your defense mechanisms are down because you’re, well it’s not about me. So you’re going to be even more listening even more carefully, right?
Chris: It seems like a fantastic way, and something I feel like I should start doing for my own audience. But it seems like a fantastic way because one thing I’ve noticed in our private Facebook group is that, a lot of that happens. And it’s cool because, you’re hyper picking these women who can get really close and kind of bond, and I’m sure you’ve had friendships happen over these-
Antia Boyd: Business partnerships. I mean, books written together, authored books together, I mean just incredible. And that’s why I said like, now we really call it like a sister of mine because it’s like, really I’m an incredible friendship lifelong business partnership, soul sister ship I will almost say.
Chris: So let’s say someone listening to this podcast episode, or watching this YouTube video is interested in signing up for one of these, where do they have to go to sign up?
Antia Boyd: Yeah. So you go to magnetizeyourman.com, and so take the quiz there so we kind of know where you’re at and what’s going on.
Chris: So if you don’t know where to go it’s magnetizeyourman.com, which again, I’m going to reiterate, one of the coolest names ever for a business. And like me, she has a free quiz. And so what is your free quiz do exactly?
Antia Boyd: Yeah. Well, it just really shows you what’s actually going on, where you’re stuck, what are your blind spots? Where are the distortions? So it tells me a lot, there’s a lot going on and I’m also … Yeah, there’s a lot of different levels that I look at.
Chris: Okay. So it’s basically giving you an assessment, I guess, is a good way of putting it of-
Antia Boyd: Yeah, yeah. It’s an assessment, really seeing where you not feel supported? Where you not feel cherished, where you’re distorted to what’s your hyper masculine versus your hyper feminine? And it’s like yeah. And then they also get free, personalized gifts with that as well in response to that.
Chris: Okay. So you’re getting all those goodies plus the assessment. And then from there does it lead you to kind of like say, hey, we think this is probably the best type of phone call mastermind, sisterhood, mind hive. You came up with a really cool name for it, I forgot, I’m blanking. What was it sister?
Antia Boyd: Sister mind, yeah.
Chris: Sister mind, got it. And so that’s basically-
Antia Boyd: [inaudible 00:54:55] bring in a little bit more femininity. You know women are so masculine and-
Chris: So, are men allowed in these calls?
Antia Boyd: No.
Chris: Okay so it’s an all girls thing, ladies. So you’re not going to see me in there but, what about someone who’s part of the LGBTQ community? Are they allowed in there?
Antia Boyd: Yeah, I mean, we have like one woman just joined, yeah. I mean, I just never had them come to me, but yeah, we definitely talk about it.
Chris: Okay. Okay so basically if you want to get access to this really, and like I said, I feel like it’s really helpful just to have these group of individuals who knows each other’s situations like the backside of their hand, and then every week, they’re just digging deep and trying to improve. And so if you want these calls, or if you want access to this resource, all you have to do is go to our website, magnetizeyourman.com, take the free quiz, and then you’ll be directed from there to whatever fits your situation. So, again, thank you so much for coming on, this was one of the most mind blowing episodes because I feel like I learned so much. Especially about the owning the insecurity thing, I’m going to totally tell some of my clients to do that and see what happens.
Antia Boyd: They’ll be like, what?
Chris: Yeah, right.
Antia Boyd: How do I do that? Yeah, totally, totally. But it really takes those unconventional methods to create unconventional results. I mean, you won’t have results, but you have a very high likelihood to get the guy back. Well, you got to do something unconventional, you got to [inaudible 00:56:32] for the chase, right?
Chris: Yep. So thank you so much for coming on.
Antia Boyd: Thank you so much for having me Chris.
Success Story: She Got Him Back And Then Decided He Wasn’t Good Enough For Her
Sep 17, 2020
Every week I try my best to interview a success story for my podcast. This week I had to opportunity to interview a wonderful young woman named Mary. As always, the purpose of these success story interviews isn’t to toot my own horn about how awesome I am but to actually see what I’m doing wrong.
I try to go into every interview with one directive.
I want to see what actually works to get an ex back.
Well, I walked away from this interview not necessarily learning something new but rather admiring Mary for her fortitude.
You see, she not only got her ex back in a really unique way but she actually broke up with him again after she learned he was falling back into the same old habits that cost them their relationship in the first place.
Here’s How Mary Got Her Ex Back
Chris Seiter: Okay, it’s recording. All right. Today, we’re going to be talking to Mary, who is a success story who was in our private Facebook support group. And we’re going to be talking to her to basically figure out what she did that worked. How are you doing Mary?
Mary: I’m good. How are you?
Chris Seiter: I’m doing pretty good. Okay. So I know really nothing about your situation. So why don’t we do this? Why don’t you tell me a little bit about how this breakup occurred? What caused it?
Mary: Okay, so leading up to the breakup, we got along really well. We meshed really well, but I think we were spending a lot of time together. We were constantly together and that led to lots of fights about stupid things. We never really had a giant fight until the very end, but just little things. Then we would not want to talk to each other for a little while, but be sitting next to each other sulking. So it was really just uncomfortable.
Chris Seiter: So how old was he and how old were you?
Mary: Okay, so this was a year ago. So I was 22.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Mary: Yeah I was 22 and he was 26.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So he’s the older one.
Mary: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: You’re basically saying, because you spent so much time together, you just kind of got on each other’s nerves, eventually?
Mary: [crosstalk 00:01:39] each other. Yeah. Because even I was thinking, “Why are we doing this? This isn’t working.”
Chris Seiter: So can you give me an example of what … You said you would fight over kind of petty things.
Mary: Just the movie we wanted to watch. We couldn’t agree. So we would just start arguing about, Oh, you can never pick anything, stupid things. I think it was about who was taking our dog to the groomer the next day. I don’t even know.
Chris Seiter: So it’s almost like you guys were just starting fights for the sake of starting fights.
Mary: Yeah. We were just frustrated with each other and I think it was definitely on both ends. Because we were both short with each other.
Chris Seiter: So were you guys living together?
Mary: No.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you weren’t living together-
Mary: I was just always over at his place because I lived at home.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you lived at home. He had his own place, but you have a dog together.
Mary: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: What an odd arrangement. It’s like sharing a kid.
Mary: It was his dog that we got together, but it was his dog and we took care of him together and yeah, I was just always at his place. So I basically lived there.
Chris Seiter: You were together for like a year you said?
Mary: Not even a year. I want to say got together in August and then we broke up at the end of July.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So that’s only a few months you guys were together. So in those few months, it’s like you guys were just spending so much time together eventually you kind of got on each other’s nerves. So how does this break up go down exactly? Who breaks up with who? Was it him to you or you to him?
Mary: See, he thought it was me to him at first and then I thought it was him to me because I remember it was that talking about the groomers and then I just left. I went home and then the next day he was at work, I came, took the dog to the groomers and then dropped him off and then left. Then we didn’t speak to each other for the weekend. Then finally I was texting him and he didn’t want to talk to me. He told me that he figured the relationship was done. He took me leaving as a breakup and he didn’t even want to try anymore.
Chris Seiter: That is a unique breakup because it’s a breakup without words, essentially. It’s almost like he just is like, “Ah, I don’t want to fight for this anymore,” and that’s the [crosstalk 00:04:15]-
Mary: There were words.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So there were words.
Mary: There were words after the fact because I didn’t accept that.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you were like, “No, hell no, we’re going to make this work.” He was like-
Mary: I was like, “That’s so stupid. It was a fight.” So you know how you had that nice list of things not to do?
Chris Seiter: Oh yes. Yes. I’m familiar with that. Yeah. So I’m assuming you checked off every one of those?
Mary: Every one.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Mary: Even the hoard letter. Oh, that was-
Chris Seiter: Oh the letter. So what was in the letter?
Mary: Oh gosh. I don’t even remember. I remember being very emotional when sending it, so I don’t even know, but basically about how I was sorry for trying to do … So he doesn’t want to talk to me and then I asked for a conversation, so he gives me the conversation and he nicely tells me he doesn’t want to be together. Then I asked for another conversation and then he’s not so nice and tells me he doesn’t want to be together.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Mary: Then I was [inaudible 00:05:20] and then I sent the letter pretty much apologizing for everything I did and that I was going to give him his space and I understood where he was coming from. Then that’s when I think after that was when I found your articles,
Chris Seiter: I had done all of the bad behaviors. So I’m assuming after you go through all these bad behaviors, you’re like, “Okay, well I probably should like go to Google or YouTube and try to figure out what people are recommending to do.”
Mary: Yeah. I think I looked up like how to get over a broken heart. It was very pathetic.
Chris Seiter: No, no, no. Okay. Then somehow you come into my orbit and-
Mary: Yeah. Then I found all of these articles and that was one of them. I was just like, “Oh no,” because I thought, oh, there is a chance we could get back together because I was reading some other ones first. I was like, “Okay, it’s not so bad.” Then I saw that one and I was like, “Okay, no chance. I just ruined everything.”
Chris Seiter: So you saw all the mistakes and you’re like, “What have I done?” So eventually you get into the private Facebook support group. So did you buy the program first?
Mary: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So you bought the program, you get into the private Facebook group and what happens then? Do you follow the rule? I don’t really care if you follow the rules, I’m just trying to figure out what you did that worked versus what people are doing that isn’t working. But what was your approach when you get the program?
Mary: Okay. So I got the program and I really tried hard to follow it because the first couple of weeks I remember it was really hard, but I kept a journal and I just wrote my feelings every day and how some days were better than the others. So I knew the down days I could get over, but it was really hard to be motivated to try and change myself because I never felt that way. I was in such a dark place.
Chris Seiter: It’s kind of depressing. Isn’t it? When you go through this loss because it’s like a grieving process if you really think about it and it can be depressing. Especially, you probably have those days where you just don’t want to get out of bed. We were talking before. I was like, “Yeah, for whatever reason today, I just didn’t want to get out of bed.” But I’m assuming with a breakup though, those emotions are heightened.
Mary: Yeah. It was horrible. I didn’t want to go to work. I was just about to start my semester. I would go-
Chris Seiter: You’re like, “I don’t want to go to school anymore.” Did you ever consider dropping out? Was it ever that bad? It was just more of just knowing you eventually will have to go, but you don’t really want to go.
Mary: Yeah. I was just like, “How am I supposed to do anything?” My family was thinking I was crazy because they felt so bad for me. But then I was reading how to get over it, how to make yourself stronger. So I really focused on those. I focused on the relationships of other people, especially I got a lot closer with my family, which was really nice and some friends. I had a lot of support from friends.
Chris Seiter: So that’s unique because most of the time when people hear about that holy trinity concept, health, wealth, relationships the last thing they focus on is the relationships. They always kind of hone in on you’ll see some women and men go like, “Well, I’m going to go get in the best shape of my life.” Then you’ll see some women and men are like, “Oh, I’m going to focus on my career.” Rarely do you see people who focus on the relationships aspect.
Mary: Well, the relationships helps me with that because my one friend was going to the gym all the time. So I went along with him and we worked out and I was getting in the better shape and I was feeling better about myself.
Chris Seiter: So you basically used friendships on the relationship spectrum to help with health, because he was like a workout person and you’re like, “Well, can I come?” It’s almost like the motivation of having a partner there throughout this really hard time.
Mary: Yeah. Because he knew what he was doing. I had no idea. So now even when I go alone, I have at least an idea of what to do and how to actually improve. Then I worked on once I started school, I just kind of focused myself into it and it worked out. I ended up getting the best grades out of my entire career.
Chris Seiter: Wow. So, you turn a really negative situation into a positive one and I’m assuming, so we didn’t really talk about this, but did you obviously you learned about no contact? How were you in that? How long was your no contact? Did you end up doing one? Did you fail it consistently? What was your experience with that?
Mary: So I want to say the first few weeks of us breaking up, I didn’t even know about the no contact, so I didn’t do it. Then my first attempt lasted a day.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So lasted a day. So how’d you break it? Was it like, “I just need to find out,” or-
Mary: It was that letter.
Chris Seiter: Oh the letter. Okay. So you’re just like, “I need the closure of the letter.” Okay.
Mary: No, it wasn’t the letter. I don’t remember what I did. I think I just sent out a text. I can’t remember at this point. I know I broke it. I just cant-
Chris Seiter: So I’m assuming you broke it multiple times then. You had a few false starts.
Mary: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Mary: Then once I got through the first week was when I got through it.
Chris Seiter: So how long of a period of no contact did you decide to do?
Mary: I did 30 days.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Mary: So then I started no contact, did all that. Then I tried to text him and my opening text, it was something about … I lied. I said I saw a dog that looked like his dog up [crosstalk 00:11:38] and I said, “I hope you guys are both doing well.” He said, “Yeah, we’re both doing really well. I hope you’re doing well too.” I didn’t say anything back after that. It was nice compared to the messages from before.
Chris Seiter: Okay so [crosstalk 00:11:54] a juxtaposition between what it was like before versus now. But I’m kind of curious. It seems like that 30 days of no contact that you did, do you feel like by the time you got out of it, you were in a much better place emotionally, like you had sort of more emotional control? Do you feel like that?
Mary: Completely. Completely. Because I was thinking about going longer and then I was deciding, because I was thinking okay, if it doesn’t turn out well, am I going to be okay? If I get a negative reaction or no response, am I going to be okay? I figured, “Yeah, I will be because I’m pretty happy with myself right now. I’m happy with the state I’m in. I know I don’t need somebody, so it’ll be okay.”
Chris Seiter: So would you say that this period of no contact where you’re thinking of extending it, was there ever a point where your mind shifted towards I need to get him back, I need to get him back to, I don’t care if I get him back?
Mary: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Mary: But it was like a bungee cord. There was one day where I would think like that and then the next day I would be like, “No, I think it could work out better. I know what the problem is now. I think it could be better.”
Chris Seiter: So obviously you will get him back, but what I’m noticing when I’m doing these interviews is this exact thing where people will kind of get to this emotional place where they’re like, “I’m not sure I want him back anymore,” and then of course they’ll have the bungee cord experience, which is a great analogy by the way. Would you say that mindset of getting to a place emotionally where you don’t care about getting them back helped before getting in touch with him?
Mary: Well, I kind of got to that point after I first got in contact with him because his messages … So the first few times I tried to text them, they were obviously short and he would always respond, but it didn’t seem like he was that into the conversation.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So it’s like he’s just responding to be nice. Not intrigued.
Mary: Yeah. So that’s when I was saying I didn’t want to do all the work. I didn’t want to put all the effort.
Chris Seiter: You wanted him to be half. You wanted you to be half. You wanted it to equal.
Mary: Exactly. So I thought, “Okay, if he’s not even going to try at all, I’m just going to be done.” So I deleted his number. I was like, “I’m going to be done.” I’m going to move on. That was my mindset. I’m over it. Move on time. Because I knew if I wasn’t trying to get back together with them, there was no point in talking to him, which ended up being a mistake.
Chris Seiter: Oh okay. So it was a mistake in what way?
Mary: Okay. So I stopped talking to him and he didn’t text me back. A week later I found out something that I had to tell him and it wasn’t something that I just wanted to tell him. It was something that I needed to tell him. I had no way of contacting him.
Chris Seiter: I don’t know his number. What’s his number? Okay. So did you have to go to a mutual friend and say like, “Hey, do you have so and so’s number?”
Mary: I didn’t even do that. I was just like, “You know what? I said I was just going to show up, tell him what I wanted to tell him.”
Chris Seiter: Oh, wow. This is good. Okay.
Mary: Then I was just going to leave. That was the plan. So I go to his house and his mom answers and she’s really excited to see me. Then his dog was really excited. I remember him walking out of the kitchen because I knew he had just gotten off work. I planned this very well. Came out of the kitchen and he saw me and he looked like he just saw a ghost. He was-
Chris Seiter: So he’s immediately it’s almost like he doesn’t panic. It’s like he shuts down. He doesn’t know what to do.
Mary: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Mary: Yeah. I was just like, “I’m so sorry. Do you mind if I talk to you outside real fast?” So I got him outside, told him exactly what I needed to tell him and then … Sorry.
Chris Seiter: No worries. We need the beeps every once in a while to keep the audience engaged.
Mary: So I told him what I needed to tell him.
Chris Seiter: Yep. See there’s the second one guys. Just making sure you’re listening. Okay. So you told them what you needed to tell them.
Mary: Yeah. It wasn’t good news either. I’ll just say-
Chris Seiter: Oh. Okay. So, it was bad news.
Mary: Yeah. So I was just like, “All right, well I got to go. Hope you’re doing all right.”
Chris Seiter: You basically say, “Hey, we haven’t seen each other in two months, but here’s this really crappy news. Bye.”
Mary: Yeah. I know when I get nervous, I smile a lot. So I’m telling them this bad news with this smile on my face.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you tell him the bad news, you smiles. What’s next?
Mary: Then I just left and he didn’t really say much and he let me leave. Well, wait, I did say sorry that I just stopped by, but I told him I got a new phone, so I didn’t have his number because I didn’t want to say that I erased it. He said, “Oh, well, do you want my number now?” I said, “No, that’s all right. If you want to talk to me, you can,” and I just left.
Chris Seiter: It’s almost like you did kind of a hot and cold thing without really … You just confused the heck out of him. So you show up unannounced, which is usually not what we tell people to do at all. So this is the way I would picture it. The immediate thinking he would have is like, “Oh, she’s here to try to win me back.” But instead of doing that, you drop this horrible news on him or bad news on him. So he’s like, “What the heck?”
Chris Seiter: Then to make it worse, you’re like, “Oh yeah, by the way, I got a new phone. So I don’t have your number.” He’s like, “Oh, do you want it?” You’re like, “No thanks.” Then you just leave.
Mary: Yeah. That’s exactly what happened.
Chris Seiter: Wow. Oh, that’s interesting though. It’s almost like … I’ve never seen that approach before and obviously it had some effect.
Mary: Yeah. Because I wasn’t even home yet and I started getting text messages from him.
Chris Seiter: Well, obviously he still has your number.
Mary: Yep and he just started saying how no, he’s not okay to answer my question of hope you’re doing all right. He just said that he was full of regrets and he hates his own stubbornness because he’s made this situation into what it is. I could tell it was about the relationship, but it was worded very generically. So I tried not to respond in a way where I took it in the relationship sense, I was just like, “Oh, I’m sure you’ll get, you’ll get through it. Whatever it is. It’s not too bad. It’ll be all right.”
Mary: Then he got into the specifics and then he didn’t talk to me again for a couple days. Then he asked me to have a talk with him. So I want to go over and we had a long talk. I kind of just let him talk. He was just telling me everything, I guess. What he was thinking when we broke up and what he was thinking during our time apart and what he thought when I just showed up.
Chris Seiter: So what did he say he was thinking during the breakup?
Mary: That it would just be easier to end it because we weren’t getting along.
Chris Seiter: So you’re fighting so much. Then what was he thinking after the breakup when this no contact rule was going on?
Mary: Well, he felt that relief, like being free.
Chris Seiter: It’s like, Oh, thank God. We don’t have to fight anymore.
Mary: But he told me he hated just hanging out with his friends because he would be wondering what I was doing and that there were times where he would go to text me and then just erase the message. He doesn’t have any social media at all. So it’s not like he was creeping on there or anything.
Chris Seiter: What did he think when you showed up?
Mary: I remember him telling me I looked really good.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So he’s just more thinking sexual thoughts then. So the bad news didn’t even phase him. He was just like, “Wow, look how good she looks.” Okay.
Mary: Just that he was happy to see me, but yeah, he wasn’t happy about the news, but that he was happy that the news caused me to come because he didn’t think he had it in him to try and talk to me without it, even though I had texted him.
Chris Seiter: Stubborn. Interesting. Okay.
Mary: Yeah and it’s interesting because it took me being there. Not even just like me reaching out to him because he was very unresponsive to those. I asked him about that and he said that was because he felt so bad about how he treated me and how he didn’t think he deserved to text me or something like that.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So it’s almost like guilt and just seeing you in person, just maybe enough to spur you on. There’s this concept called the 7 38 55 rule, which posits that human interaction, a lot of it is due to three concepts. Which is words, body language, and tone of voice. When you’re texting, you’re only engaging 7% of the possible meaning of messages. So tone of voice and body language are not included in text messages.
Chris Seiter: So sometimes words alone won’t reach someone. I’m wondering if seeing you in person it just spurs him to take action as opposed to the texting. But I’m curious because you still haven’t gotten him back yet. He’s just texting you now after you’ve shown up.
Mary: Yeah. So he asked me if I would be willing to try again.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So did he do that over the phone in person or-
Mary: During our talk. Our initial talk. I said the possibility wasn’t completely gone, but I wouldn’t want to just rush into it. Then he asked me if he could start texting me good morning again. Be he said he missed-
Chris Seiter: That’s kind of sweet.
Mary: Yeah. So then that started. The good morning text started. Then we talked on the phone a couple times when he was just driving home from work. Then he asked me to watch Harry Potter with him, which was interesting because I tried to get him to watch that for our entire relationship.
Chris Seiter: So, first off, this says a lot about which Harry Potter exactly?
Mary: All of them.
Chris Seiter: All of them? From start to finish?
Mary: Yeah. Yeah. That was our hangout thing.
Chris Seiter: A Harry Potter marathon.
Mary: Not all at once. He would ask me, “Oh, do you want to come watch the first one?”
Chris Seiter: Let’s watch The Chamber Of Secrets now. Oh, Prisoner of [inaudible 00:23:44]. Okay.
Mary: I think he was just trying to find a way to get me up there because I was trying to get them to watch it so often. He was not having it.
Chris Seiter: It just took a breakup, Mary. It just took a breakup.
Mary: Yeah. Then we were just hanging out more and then we never really said we were back together. We just kind of-
Chris Seiter: It just kind of happened. Just the interactions you were having in the Harry Potter marathons.
Mary: Exactly.
Chris Seiter: That’s what works. Harry Potter is going to have a strong place in your relationship from now on. Did you make it through all of them? That’s the number one question I’m wondering.
Mary: We watched all of them. Not all at once. Like I said, it was over a couple of weeks.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Okay. So there’s a lot interesting here because you followed half of it and then you just kind of audibled and did your own thing, which in this odd way worked, but I’m kind of curious when you look back on the experience of what worked to win him back, what do you feel was the most impactful for you personally?
Mary: Oh, I feel like I got more out of it from me than just the relationship. I really enjoyed the holy trinity. I still follow that. I thought that was great. Anytime I feel like I’m getting low on one, I’ll focus on another. So I’ve been able to keep myself pretty happy. Because me and him aren’t together now. We actually broke up again.
Chris Seiter: You broke up again?
Mary: We did.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So this is interesting too, because I’m finding that half of the people that get back together will break up again. So what caused the second breakup?
Mary: It was more mutual. Because I feel like-
Chris Seiter: It’s like you almost outgrew him or something.
Mary: Yeah. I really think that’s what happened.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you go through the program. You basically use part of it. I mean, you kind of use your own thing, so I’m not going to take total credit, but you use part of it, you get him back. But then truly, so what I’ve been finding is women who tend to let go, tend to get their exes back. I think literally you let him go. You’re just like, “I’m better than him,” maybe in this odd way.
Mary: We didn’t break up right away. We were together for a while and at first it seemed great. We had both gotten better and then I could see him going back into old patterns. Instead of trying to talk through things he would resort to arguing or if I would try and talk, he would just say like, “No, it’s going to be an argument. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Chris Seiter: So that’s a pretty common thing that I talk about a lot. Most of the time I talk about it on other interviews outside of the group. But what I tell people is what I see is there is an immediate change when you get back together. But eventually there’s a regression to the mean where it gets back to what caused the issues in the first place. You’re saying that’s kind of what happened to you with him. So you were just like, “You know what? I’m not going to do this.” So you break up with him.
Mary: I didn’t want to go back to that relationship.
Chris Seiter: So you’re just like, “I’m too cool for you now.”
Mary: I didn’t do it mean. I was trying to tell him-
Chris Seiter: You did it nicely.
Mary: Well, I told him that I explained why I didn’t want to be together and that if we could work on it, then we should try to make it work. So I kind of did my own thing for a while. Gave us space, like got my own apartment with a friend and was doing my own thing. I feel like that kind of made him resentful instead of-
Chris Seiter: So he’s resentful of your independence.
Mary: [crosstalk 00:27:42] yeah.
Chris Seiter: Maybe not resentful, but maybe intimidated in this odd way, because if you’re intimidated, you can kind of lash out by it. So do you feel that’s what happened?
Mary: Yeah, exactly. He was lashing out on me and then we just stopped talking completely. That’s been, I want to say two months now.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So this is kind of the interesting question. You went through the program, you got him back. Yay. Then you date for a little while, and then you kind of determine this isn’t making me happy and another breakup occurs. Are you at a point where you’re just like, I want to move on for someone else? Or do you still have lingering I want to try again?
Mary: No, neither. I didn’t want to find someone else. My thought was like, “All right, let’s get through school now.”
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you’re focusing more on the wealth sort of career type aspect, which is school for you.
Mary: Yeah I was just like [crosstalk 00:28:46].
Chris Seiter: Then of course the pandemic happens, which adds another layer to this all.
Mary: Yeah and I was surprised cause I kind of expected myself to go back to that dark place, but I feel like the system made me strong enough where even now I’m fine. I’m okay.
Chris Seiter: So you got that internal confidence knowing that you’re allowed to feel the pain, but you’ll be okay. That’s interesting. I mean, I think you’re the first success story I ever had that’s done that. That’s gone through it, gotten back and then basically said, “This isn’t making me happy. I think I deserve better,” and then kind of focus more on this is what I think is going to make me happy right now. You have an interesting perspective because you’re not on the high of the honeymoon period. So you can really look and say, “This is what I think worked and this is how I was feeling.”
Chris Seiter: So most of the people listening to this are trying to get their exes back or maybe they’re even trying to get over their exes. What we’re finding consistently is that the key to kind of getting your ex back is kind of moving on or letting go in this odd way. That bungee cord thing you were talking about.
Mary: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Do you feel like that was an important part of the process for you?
Mary: Getting over it?
Chris Seiter: Yeah getting over it.
Mary: Yeah. Yeah. Because once I got over it and started working on myself, I was happier with myself then even when we were together, before we were together, literally the happiest I had been with myself was during that time.
Chris Seiter: Obviously the results were pretty positive. He came back, but it seems like the interesting aspect is you almost outgrew that relationship with him because you got to that strong place.
Mary: Yeah. I think that he has his own insecurities and …
Chris Seiter: So when you say insecurities is a lot of jealousy, like he’d be worried about you hanging out with this guy or he’d be worried about you doing something like that or was it some other thing?
Mary: Sometimes. Not a lot, but sometimes that would happen and he would just always talk about how he expected me to hurt him because he had been hurt in the past. He was just waiting-
Chris Seiter: So he has the victim mentality because he’s the one that technically initiated the breakup or you have a kind of an odd breakup.
Mary: He fully initiated the last breakup. So yeah. I would bring that up. I was like, “That’s not fair for you to hold me against something I haven’t even done whenever you’ve done it to me and I’m trying not to hold that against you.”
Chris Seiter: So there’s 100% insecurity there with him, which is like, he’s afraid. Which it’s really fear based if you think about. He’s so afraid of getting hurt, he’s willing to push that away.
Mary: Yeah. I know he had been hurt in the past, pretty harshly so I could understand it and I was trying to work through it with him, but he didn’t want to work through it. So I mean, there’s only so much you can do at that point if they don’t want to try and get better.
Chris Seiter: So what would you say to someone who’s maybe going through a breakup right now and is looking for maybe just like one thing to do? What would you say the most important thing for you to do was?
Mary: Oh gosh. That’s hard. I mean, it depends on the person.
Chris Seiter: It does. So just for you personally, when you look back at your experience, if you had to choose one thing that you did, what would you feel was the most impactful?
Mary: Oh, getting closer to my family. Me and my sister are six years apart. So we weren’t very close growing up because she was so much younger than me, but after that breakup, she was there for me. We bonded and we are best friends now.
Chris Seiter: Oh that’s great. So it’s almost like you try to turn this really negative experience of a breakup into a positive in whatever way you can. By doing that, you reestablish this really strong relationship with your family, your sister, and now you feel like some good came out of it at the very least.
Mary: For sure.
Chris Seiter: Well, thank you so much for doing this. It was actually a really unique one because I don’t think we’ve ever had someone come on, say, “Yeah, I got my ex back, but I realized they weren’t kind of good enough for me.” Mic drop. Which is kind of cool
Mary: I probably should have warned you beforehand.
Chris Seiter: Oh no, no, no. That’s okay. Actually I kind of like it. It’s like the twist at the end of a movie or something. So what I really liked is the fact that you got them back then you were like kind of grown enough from the experience to realize this relationship isn’t making me happy. It’s it shouldn’t take this much work. I feel like I deserve better than this. sometimes I think it’s important to show people realistically, what will happen. Because what I’ve found is about half of the people who will get back together will break up again because of the exact thing you’re going through, which is like it’s kind of-
Mary: What do they call it? The pedestal effect.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s almost like I think that it’s more of the honeymoon phase aspect where you’re just living on the high of getting back together. But eventually those insecurities aren’t worked on on his side, they started dripping in and it seems … So before we go, I do have one question for you. So you mentioned you guys would fight a lot in the first relationship over like really trivial things. Was that an aspect of yourself that you worked on when you got back together? You were like, “I think I need to communicate better.”
Mary: Yeah. Yeah. I was trying really hard.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So he wasn’t willing to play essentially.
Mary: Sometimes he would. Sometimes we could have constructive conversations and I’m like, “All right. See, this is how we have to communicate. It’s a lot better,” and he would agree, but then next time and an argument would occur, we just couldn’t do it again. I don’t know what it was. We just couldn’t consistently have this conversation.
Chris Seiter: To me it seems like you guys would enjoy communicating in an effective way, but then when the emotions got high over something else, you would just kind of throw the rule book out. Would you say you pretty much stayed the same with trying to be calm and communicative or was it eventually he would just wear you down so much to the point where you’re just like, “Oh, I can’t take it,” and you’d lash out at him?
Mary: No. In the second relationship, which was very different from the first one, it was when he would drink was when the arguments would come out and they would-
Chris Seiter: Okay. So there’s some sort of alcohol aspect to it.
Mary: Yeah. That wasn’t the way it wasn’t the first relationship. That was just something that happened in the second one. I’m not really sure why. It wasn’t at the beginning either. It was more towards the end, but every time he would drink, he would want to argue with me and I would say, “Okay, you need to go to bed. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. I don’t want to have these arguments.” Then it would lead to him kicking me out of the house and stuff.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So it’s a really unhealthy second relationship it seems like.
Mary: Yeah and those were things that didn’t happen in the first one. I don’t know why that happened.
Chris Seiter: If I were to take a guess. I think there’s a lot of resentment about the fact that you guys had to break up in the first place. So he blames you. Also I’ve been reading, this is weird, but I’ve been reading a lot of [Niche 00:36:58] and it’s really interesting Niche, the philosopher did not believe in alcohol because he thought it’s a way of distracting yourself from the problems of real life. If you struggle through life, you’ll actually grow stronger.
Chris Seiter: So I think whatever struggles he had or whatever demons he had, he would sort of drown them with the alcohol to kind of maybe not think about them so much. You were just wound up in the cyclone. So it seems like to me a great decision to get out of that relationship. I think it’s a great cautionary tale for people who sometimes look at their exes with rosy colored glasses.
Chris Seiter: It’s not always easy if you get them back and sometimes that’s not the answer, but it seems like you were able to take that situation and know your worth and be like, “Look, I can’t do this anymore.” To me, I would have advised the same thing. It seems like a real unhealthy situation at that point of the second relationship, which you wouldn’t think, because you’d think he’d have a chance to work on his issues in the first one, but [crosstalk 00:38:04] worse.
Mary: Yeah. It wasn’t even at the beginning, I don’t know if something happened that maybe I didn’t know about or I don’t know.
Chris Seiter: I mean, the only thing I could maybe say is he feels a lot of resentment about the fact, he’s already played the victim mentality. So he feels a lot of resentment about the fact that there was a breakup that occurred the first time. He’s always got that sort of Damocles hanging over his head like, “Well, what if she hurts me again?” That creates this pressure and maybe he’s drinking, trying to forget about it or trying to numb whatever pain he’s feeling inside. It’s just not a healthy way to deal with the problem, number one. Number two is you shouldn’t be taking it out of the individual who loves you. That seems to be what was happening.
Mary: Yep.
Chris Seiter: So you’re just focused right now on school. You’re just focused on yourself.
Mary: Yeah. That’s my last semester. I want to get through it.
Chris Seiter: I’m telling you, this is, this is when you meet the guy of your dreams. Usually when you’re not looking is when you meet them.
Mary: All right. Well hopefully it’ll take some time.
Like I’ve been saying for the past few weeks. I’ve been conducting this massive site wide/product wide interview series where I’m sitting down with real life success stories and asking them exactly what they did to be successful in getting their exes back.
Thus far we’ve learned a lot of interesting things.
Every single one has used some form of no contact
Every one seems to stick to our plan for the most part but isn’t afraid to adapt when necessary
So far, every one mentioned that they got to a place emotionally where they didn’t want their exes back anymore
But Jo’s particular success story was fascinating for a number of reasons.
Firstly, her ex had blocked her so that’s always an immediate pay attention factor but what really impressed me was how she completely changed the paradigm so that when she got him back he was literally saying,
“Wow, you seem so different. You’ve completely changed”
So, without further ado I’d like to introduce you to Jo!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Chris: Okay, today we have a big treat. We’re going to be talking to Jo, who was one of our success stories in the private Facebook support group, and she bought our program. We’re going to be asking her lots of questions about what she did to successfully win her ex back. But let’s just introduce ourselves. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Jo.
Jo: Hey, Chris. Well, I’m from Sydney, Australia. And yeah, I’m 26. What about me did you want to know?
Chris: Oh, well, basically just tell me a little bit of the background with you and your ex. How did you guys-
Jo: Oh, okay.
Chris: What caused the breakup, and we could just go from there.
Jo: Okay, yeah. So with my ex, who’s now my boyfriend again, we’re actually family friends. I have known him since I was born pretty much. My dad and his dad were best friends when they were in high school back in the Philippines. We were together for a year and a half and we broke up because I was too toxic. I was insecure, I dwelled on the past a lot in our relationship and I guess he just got sick of it and he left. He was a nice guy, he took it all in. He didn’t really say much. I think when I … So the day before he broke up with me, he was at a party and then I got upset that he didn’t invite me and I went psycho. And then the-
Chris: So, hold on.
Jo: … next day he broke up with me.
Chris: Hold on. Okay. Okay. Define psycho? What kind of psycho behavior did you do in your eyes?
Jo: Well, I spoiled his night. Instead of letting him enjoy his night with his friends, he was arguing with me. I just got upset that he didn’t invite me with his … To go to the catch up he had with his friends. And then you’re like … And then I blew up the smallest issue to the biggest issue, then the next day he broke up with me. He was like, “I’m just sick of it.”
Chris: So basically, it’s like you just started a fight just to start a fight because you were really upset about-
Jo: Pretty much.
Chris: … he didn’t invite you to the party. How does he break up with you exactly? Does he do it in person? Does he text you? Does he do it over the phone?
Jo: Oh no. We did in person. He was like to me, “Hey, can you come?” The next day, he was like to me, “Can you come over before you go to work, please? Or after you finish work?” So I went before work and then he had a few of my belongings at his house like a few books, and some toiletries. He was like, “Oh, I’m done. Take this, I don’t want to see you again.” And I was [crosstalk 00:03:03].
Chris: Going into that meeting, did you have any idea what was about to happen? Did you think it was just a normal get together?
Jo: No, I actually thought we were going to talk about the night before. Because the night before when he was out hanging out with his friends, before we were on the phone and before he hung up he said to me, “Please, you remember that I love you and please trust me.” It ended fine.
Chris: Okay. So you patched the thing, the fight up, but he clearly still was very bothered by the behavior.
Jo: Yes. So I think when he got home that night, he was thinking a lot because I saw him online on Instagram pretty much after. It was like … I saw him on probably like 3:00 AM in the morning. So when I went there, he broke it off and it was embarrassing. I was begging, and his dad was at his house. And because like I told you, my dad and dad-
Chris: Family friends.
Jo: … are close and we’re family friends, he was telling my ex that for us to calm down and talk it out. But at the time-
Chris: What a fascinating dynamic that is, because I-
Jo: I know.
Chris: I think that actually helped you in getting him back because it’s like I always-
Jo: It did.
Chris: … talk about sphere of influence. It seems like that-
Jo: Yes. They [crosstalk 00:04:40].
Chris: The fact that you [crosstalk 00:04:40]. Right. So he breaks up with you, and do you just scour the internet looking for advice right away? Or do you make the classic blunders of continuing to beg for him back for a few days, and try to find out a way to make him come back to you?
Jo: That day he broke up with me, I begged for about half an hour at his house. And then his dad told me to calm down and give him space. So I gave it like three days. I think I found your program … Yes, that day as well. I saw videos on YouTube, but I didn’t buy your program until after three and a half weeks-
Chris: Okay, so you first found-
Jo: … of the breakup.
Chris: … me through YouTube. So you saw the YouTube videos that I put out and you were like, “Okay, I like the vibe.” But it took you getting into the hole a little bit deeper before you were like, “I need extra help. Someone needs to help me.” And that’s when you pull trigger, you buy the program. Do you get through the program? Or is it one of those situations where you get into the Facebook group and just wing it on your own?
Jo: Oh, no. No. I was trying to stick to the program to the T.
Chris: Okay. Obviously, you get him back. But what I’m interested in isn’t so much if you followed the program, I want to see whatever deviations you made from the program. So take me from start to finish. What did you do, in your mind, to help you get him back?
Jo: Okay. Because I knew the reason why he broke up with me, that I was toxic, and insecure, and yada yada. And I actually had … He could see that I had … I guess you could say that I have anger issues.
Chris: The interesting thing to me about it is I feel like I would be upset if I was in your position too. But I can also see why he’s upset at you being upset, maybe he just wanted to have a fun time with its friends. But I feel like maybe you getting angry is more like, “Okay, he’s in this environment. Maybe there’s other girls there that hit on him. I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want to get cheated on.” Was there any kind of insecurity like that lingering? Was that-
Jo: Oh no. No. No. It was just because us … So the people he hung out with, I’ve met all of them. They’re all his workmates. I think I just got upset because I’m so used to us … We’ve been together for a year and a half. We got very comfortable with each other, and we were seeing each other every day. I think just … And we were always together I guess. I think because he didn’t tell me that he was going to hang out with his friends, I saw it on his Instagram. Then I was like, “Okay, you didn’t invite me. What the hell?”
Chris: Okay. Okay. I get it. So it’s almost like a break from the norm. You’re like, “Why don’t you-
Jo: Yes, pretty much.
Chris: … You always invite me, why aren’t you inviting me now?” And you feel like maybe there’s something wrong, and it just blows up. So you’ve gotten in the program, what do you do next?
Jo: Okay, so I’ll tell you what I did just a little bit before I got into the program. I spoke to my auntie, we’re very close. I told her about my whole situation and everything, she advised me to get counseling just for my anger I guess. Because I’ve just got some … Because my parents divorced, so I think a bit of … I was affected a lot, but I didn’t realize it. And my dad’s got a template, so I … And I live with my dad, so I think it rubbed off on me and then it affects the other people in my life. So we broke up on the 1st of June, but I didn’t start the program until the 26th of June. Because between that time, I was texting my ex here and there about what put him off. So we were still friends on social media before I went into no contact. It was on the 25th of June, I drunk texted him. And then he thought I lost the plot, so he blocked me. He blocked me on Facebook Messenger, he unfollowed me on Instagram, unfriended me on Snapchat. But-
Chris: He blocked you full. So were you blocked on the phone?
Jo: No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t blocked on phone text, I wasn’t blocked on WhatsApp. I was blocked on Facebook, but he didn’t block me on Instagram and Snapchat. So I was just a bit like, “Okay, what’s the [inaudible 00:09:44]?” So that was the 25th of June. I started on no contact on the 26th of June, and then … Yeah.
Chris: How did your no contact period go? Did you make it through it pretty unscathed? Or was it a battle just to get through those ignoring days?
Jo: The first 20 days, well I struggled. I was crying every night. So I’ll also give you a little bit on my situation just financially because my ex, he’s got heaps of savings and we had goals of buying a house together and all that. And I have lots of debt. I had credit card debt like 6,000 Australian dollars, right?
Chris: Okay.
Jo: To him … Okay, this is what I didn’t like. To him it was … He found that a big issue but the thing is, I never asked him for help or anything to pay off my credit card. I think he just saw it as a hindrance to buying a house together. But the thing is we’re studied, so that’s not a goal until for like another four years. So during NC, I think I struggled the first 20 days because I didn’t do anything for myself really. It was just because I was focused on paying off my credit card, so I didn’t really do that much. It was weird because I cut out a lot of people. I think the only person I kept in contact with a lot was my best friend, and I was with my brother all the time. My parents, I got closer to my parents with my brother. Because him and his girlfriend, they broke up a week after me-
Chris: Wow.
Jo: … and my ex. And then I told my brother to join ERP. So my brother joined ERP and we pretty much went through it together.
Chris: Wow.
Jo: So he’s pretty much been my rock. And the funny story, they got back together like two weeks ago.
Chris: That’s pretty awesome.
Jo: It’s ERP. Yeah. But he didn’t really stick to it, I think he only did no contact for three weeks. Anyways, more about-
Chris: Oh, that’s okay. That’s okay.
Jo: Yeah. So with me, yes, I focus on my credit card. So I actually paid off my credit card that had $6,000, I paid that off six weeks after the breakup.
Chris: Okay. It seems to me the no contact rule … You’ll often hear me talk about the holy trinity health, wealth relationships.
Jo: Yes.
Chris: It seems to me like the big thing-
Jo: Yeah, I’ve heard the program.
Chris: … that you focus on was the wealth aspect, which is like, “I need to get out of this credit card debt.” So you just paid the whole thing off throughout the entire period of no contact.
Jo: Not sure. I actually had … I started with $12,000 [crosstalk 00:12:56] at the start of the year, and then got to half. Then-
Chris: Okay. That’s pretty good though.
Jo: Australia … Yeah. And in Australia, tax return time is July so that pretty much helped me pay it off. Then after I paid off my credit card, I was so much better. I signed up for pole dancing, I signed up for aerial yoga, and I went to the gym more. And I spent more time with my brother, every weekend we would play table tennis in the park or something. So after that, I started to become okay. I was crying less, I kept myself busy.
Chris: So would you say that at any point during your period of no contact, you get to this point emotionally where you were like, “I don’t know if I want him back anymore.” Or was that not even in the cards? You were pretty much like, “No, I want to get him back.”
Jo: No. There were quite a few times where I don’t want him back. It’s just because I thought that if … I thought because people … So you, ERP, and everyone else kept reminding me that I should know my value. And I did and I just kept thinking to myself those times that I didn’t want him back, I was just like, “We were supposed to be together through thick and thin and he let me down.”
Chris: So that to you is like, “Okay, he’s not in this as much as I was in it.” And you emotionally through this period of no contact are thinking at some point like, “I don’t know if I want him back anymore.”
Jo: Yeah. I was also very clingy, so I think that [inaudible 00:14:58].
Chris: Okay. So how long of a period of no contact did you plan on doing?
Jo: I was planning … Before the assessment, I thought I was only going to do 30 days. But then when I did the assessment, I had to do 45 days. Yeah, the plan was to stick through the whole 45 days. [crosstalk 00:15:20].
Chris: Okay. So what happens? I already know a little bit, spoiler alert, because she had this huge write up in the Facebook group. So how long did you make it through no contact?
Jo: 41 days.
Chris: Okay, that’s still pretty a lot. So what is it that caused you to break no contact early?
Jo: It was because you know how I told you that I started … Did I tell you I started seeing a counselor?
Chris: Yeah. You said you went to the counselor.
Jo: Yes, I’m still going. I still go every three weeks. So I was just telling my counselor about like … I was telling her how I was emotionally, I was getting better. But it was because my ex contacted me on day 30 and on day 32.
Chris: Okay, so that’s an interesting-
Jo: Yes.
Chris: It’s an interesting piece of information. So what does he say when he contacted you on those days?
Jo: It’s funny because his very first contact was a phone call, not a text. And I was-
Chris: Okay. So jumped [crosstalk 00:16:24]. He went right up to the phone call.
Jo: He did.
Chris: Did he leave a voicemail?
Jo: No. So he called me, it was 10:00 PM on a Saturday. And I was like, “What the hell?” I was watching Netflix with my mom and my brother, and I had my phone and I was like, “Mom, he’s calling me.” And she was like, “Don’t answer.” So I didn’t answer.
Chris: Okay. [crosstalk 00:16:48] 32. You said day 32 he-
Jo: He texted me.
Chris: So what does he text you?
Jo: He was like, “Hey, how are you?” And I’m just like-
Chris: So, the bare minimum.
Jo: “I need more than that.” Yeah, I was like, “I need more than that.” Oh, I also didn’t tell you but during … Since the breakup, I got off all social media. The only social media I got on-
Chris: Interesting.
Jo: … was Facebook for ERP, that’s it.
Chris: Okay. But you weren’t posting-
Jo: That’s it.
Chris: … anything on social media, you just went-
Jo: No.
Chris: … silent. Interesting.
Jo: I actually deleted all the apps. I deleted Instagram, Snapchat, everything. I just deleted the apps.
Chris: Just not to tempt yourself. Was that an executive decision on your part to stop you from obsessing about what he was posting?
Jo: Yeah, I guess so. Because I was in … It was weird because every time I would open those apps during the breakup, my heart would be palpitating.
Chris: Really?
Jo: I think because I was so worried about what I was seeing. No, and also I think because the first week of the breakup, I was checking his Instagram. He was posting a lot. He posts on his stories. He would post a lot, he was posting like 10 stories a day. And before, he hardly posted.
Chris: Excessive. That is so excessive.
Jo: I know. And then I watched one of your videos, the one that says why do they post so much? And it was about I think filling the void and I could see it. And I think he wanted to show me that he was doing okay. But then yeah, I got off. I was just like, “This hurts too much.” So I got off. Even being on Facebook made me nervous. I wouldn’t scroll through my newsfeed, I would just type in the search bar “ERP” and then just look at new posts-
Chris: Go to the group. Okay.
Jo: … or whatever. Yeah, that’s it.
Chris: Stay in the safe space of the group.
Jo: Yes.
Chris: Got it.
Jo: Yes, that’s it.
Chris: That’s pretty funny. Okay he contacts you with the obligatory, “Hey, how are you?” And you eventually do you respond to him 10 days later.
Jo: Yes.
Chris: How do you respond? And what is behind the decision to break no contact? Granted, it’s 41 days, so you almost made it to the end. But what’s behind the decision to break it? And what do you respond with?
Jo: Okay. It was just because it was him contacting me was driving me crazy. And I was thinking, and also my brother and my battle buddy like, “Why? I wonder why he’s contacting me?” So day 41 I had a counseling session, so then I was telling my counselor about ERP and the whole no contact rule thing. And she agreed with the whole … With the reasons for it, that to let emotion settle from both parties and to heal pretty much and find yourself again. But then when I told her about my ex contacting me, she … Because I told her, “Oh, it’s driving me crazy. I don’t know what to do. Why is he contacting me? He blocked me on pretty much everywhere except phone and text.” I actually thought he blocked me on the phone, but then him calling me and texting me confirmed that. Anyway, so my counselor said to me, “People don’t reach out for no reason, especially men.” And then that’s what made me break my contact.
Chris: Okay, so the counselor basically says, “No, you should …” So what do you use? Or what do you say to him? Did you call him? Or do you send a text message to him? Or what’s your plan?
Jo: I sent a text message, but it was that like a usual ERP one. I already had one plan, the hook-
Chris: The curiosity thing.
Jo: … question.
Chris: Hook thing.
Jo: Yeah. I didn’t do that.
Chris: Okay. No. No. No. That’s good. That’s good. So what was it that … Because to me, it seems like the hook thing, you don’t really need because he initiated the contact already. So what was it that you said back? Did you just respond to his initial question 10 days later? Or did just start a new thread or a new conversation?
Jo: Well, he just said, “Hey, how are you?” So I was pretty much … I just said, “Hey, sorry for not replying to you. I just needed a bit more time to heal, and I’m ready to talk now if you’re ready to talk. Would you like to catch up?”
Chris: Wow. Okay.
Jo: Yeah. Pretty much.
Chris: You went right to it. That’s interesting. Okay. So you basically … You did something interesting, which is you labeled this awkward silence. Because he sends the text message on day 32, and then you respond to him on day 41. So that means almost … a little over a week has gone by and obviously the number one question he’s going to have if you respond to that text message is like, “Well, where the hell were you?” But you seem to cut that off immediately by basically just saying like, “Hey, I’m sorry, it took so long to respond. Let’s catch up.” Now, usually we don’t advise to go right for the kill like that. Usually you try to-
Jo: Yeah, I know.
Chris: …. build a bit of rapport. But it sees to have worked out for you. So does that scare him off a little bit? Or does he wrap around that opportunity to see you in person?
Jo: Well, after that … Okay, so I’ll just give you my thoughts on why I sent that, it’s just because I felt like my counselor was like to me, “Oh, you should be genuine if you really want to repair the relationship with him.” So that’s what I did. And funny thing, he responded in 10 minutes and he was so positive. He was like, “Yeah-
Chris: So the no contact really had an effect on him.
Jo: It did. It did. I can tell you what … I guess we were going to what happens when we meet up. He pretty much said, “Oh, hey, that’s okay.” I’m trying to think of because I can’t scroll up to the message, but he pretty much said, “Oh hey, that’s okay. I’m just busy with school at the moment and it’s assessment time, can we catch up in three weeks?” I was like-
Chris: Wow.
Jo: “Yes.” And then he was like, “How’s work and everything?” And then I responded. I said to him, “Yeah, that’s fine. I know you’re busy with school. Whenever you’re free from assessments is fine.” And then when he asked me, “How’s work and everything?” I went straight in because I know my credit card bothered him. I was like to him, “Oh yeah, I’m good. Work’s good. I paid off my credit card three weeks ago.” And then he didn’t reply until three days after because he had assessments. But yeah, I was worried when he didn’t respond. I thought it got him thinking because I guess I proved him wrong. He thought I was going to be telling there forever. Then he replied to me to that text message three days later, it was a Sunday and I was so excited. Because his text message was … His first text message that day was very long. He was talking about … He was saying, “Oh, hey sorry for the late reply. I had a hectic week.” And it was funny because he’s studying of film and television.
Jo: So he was telling me about his assessment, and he was giving me the thesis statement and everything, and I’m just like … I showed my brother, I was like, “That is a lot of effort. And that is [crosstalk 00:25:02].” it was … Yes. It was so wordy, I was like, “Wow, he actually lost me.” And then I got excited and I tried not to show that I was excited, so I replied two hours later.
Chris: Okay, so you have some-
Jo: And then … Yeah.
Chris: … some control. Wow.
Jo: Yeah. So I responded two hours later, and then he tried to reciprocate me. He responded … So we were pretty much texting that whole day. He was responding to me. He responded to me after that an hour. So then the next five texts, there was an hour gap from each of us. And then I think when it hit like 6:00 PM, six o’clock in the evening, he was taking like 10 minutes to apply.
Chris: Okay, so it was just like-
Jo: And I would take half an hour.
Chris: It’s kind of like-
Jo: It was a good day.
Chris: It was kind of like back to normal. You slowly come back-
Jo: Kind of, yeah.
Chris: … to that texting routine. so I’m curious. So he says, “I can’t see you for three weeks.” Did you guys end up meeting up earlier than [crosstalk 00:26:02]?
Jo: We met up … So when he said three weeks, we ended up meeting five days later.
Chris: Okay, so it was basically BS by him. He’s trying to play cool, essentially is what that was.
Jo: Yeah. So because I started to feel okay now, I started posting again on my socials. And then you know how I took up pole dancing, I posted like a short video and he saw that.
Chris: Okay, that way so he wants to take you out. That’s funny.
Jo: I think it was the credit card that really shocked him.
Chris: I think it was not just a credit card, I think it was and all of the above, this con-
Jo: Everything.
Chris: All these things that just match up and just create the perfect cocktail. So essentially, you just talked to him for five days and he’s like, “Hey.” So who negotiates? Is it him saying “Hey, I need to see you.”?
Jo: He was like to me … Oh, I’ll tell you, I forgot to tell you. I just felt like when we were in our old relationship, I had no hobbies. I had no hobbies whatsoever, because we were together all the time. And it was pretty much he was my whole world. But then I ended up taking up three hobbies when we broke up. And I’m still doing it now, which is good.
Chris: Yeah, that’s good.
Jo: So I’m sticking to being UG.
Chris: Okay. It’s good.
Jo: So after he saw my pole dancing video, he messaged me. He was like, “Oh, hey, are you free? I don’t have work today. I just finished school.” And then I was like, “Wow, okay.”
Chris: Wow. So he sees the pole dancing video and it’s like an immediate response.
Jo: Yes.
Chris: Okay. Wow.
Jo: But actually, then … So he said that. He was like, “Hey, are you free? I don’t have work today. I just finished school.” He said to me he wanted to show me his projects for his assessments because he’s doing film and television like I said.
Chris: Yeah. I mean, you got to make it sound-
Jo: I don’t know [crosstalk 00:28:04].
Chris: Yeah, it seems to me it’s like he gets all hot and bothered by the pole dancing video and he’s like, “Oh, I got to see her now, but I need to make it sound like it’s not going to be about that.” So he’s like, “Well, come look at my assessment.” So you obviously go, right?
Jo: Yeah.
Chris: You go and see him and how does that interaction work?
Jo: Oh, okay. Well, actually because I’m very … I would like to call myself a bookworm just before I get into that with the meeting up again. So when he asked me if I could see him because he needed help as well, he just wanted some advice because he’s not really strong with essays. So I said to him, “I can give you pointers if you want.” And he was like, “Oh, that’s what I always admired about you. You’re so good academically.” blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so the meetup I was hella nervous. Because I live with my dad, I told my dad that I’m going to hang out with my brother because I didn’t want him to know. I didn’t want anyone else to know. Anyway, so I got there. I tried to look my best, but it was just at his house, so it was just not to overly dressed.
Jo: But what really shocked me was that I surprised myself because I was expecting to want him back so much, and I expected my feelings to be so strong for him. But when I saw him, it didn’t feel as strong as I expected it to be. So I think-
Chris: Oh, that’s awesome. It’s really interesting you say that. No. No. What’s really interesting about that is ever since I’m doing these interviews, the people who’ve gotten their exes back feel the same exact way. And I think it’s about how they use their time during no contact.
Jo: Yeah, it was. I think-
Chris: And I feel like-
Jo: Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. No. No. No. Okay, so I’ll just say this. I think it was the company I missed. I think you also said this in one of your books, because I think I’ve bought everything from you. It was the company I missed, not him. So I saw that when I saw him.
Chris: [crosstalk 00:30:27] you got so used to that routine. And then just [crosstalk 00:30:31] away one day.
Jo: Yeah. And then I got used to being by myself, and then I’m seeing him again.
Chris: So you saw him again, though, obviously. And you get there and you’re just like, “Wow. I still love this person, but I expected to get weak in the knees and faint or something like that. But that didn’t happen and at all.”
Jo: Yeah. You’re right, it didn’t happen.
Chris: So you almost surprise yourself. Now, you get there-
Jo: Yeah, I was really shocked, and then something else that he said … Then he said something else that put me off. I was like for a minute, I didn’t want him back. But anyway, so I’ll tell you what happened.
Chris: Yeah, for a minute.
Jo: Yes. Okay. When I got there, his mom cried when she saw me. She was like, “I missed you so much.” I was like, “Holy shit.” She cried, I was like, “Wow.”
Chris: So it does help to have that sphere of influence on you sometimes.
Jo: Yes, it does. And then I think his dad was having a nap, but his parents were home at the time. This was like three o’clock in the afternoon. His dad was having a nap. And then I was just in my ex’s room. He actually showed me his assessment, he showed me two videos. So he showed me that. And then his dad woke up just as we were going to go for a walk, and his dad hugged me as well and was like to me, “I missed you so much.” I was like, “Wow.” I was like, “Oh my god, they’re really in my circle of influence.” Anyway, in your videos and in the ERP program, you talk about not talking about the break up when you first meet, right?
Chris: Right.
Jo: So I had that in mind, but my ex went off. He talked about the breakup so much, I was like, “Oh my god. What the hell?” Because I said, I was like to myself, “I thought he wanted to talk about his assessment. Why is he talking about the breakup so much?”
Chris: Well, it’s because the assessments weren’t the real reason he wanted to see you obviously. That was just an excuse.
Jo: Yeah, I guess. Well, I didn’t think that. In my mind, I was just like, “Okay, be UG. Don’t talk about the breakup at all.” And then so we went to the park nearby his house and we talked for like an hour. It was pretty long. So we had the talk, he talked about the breakup so much. A few things that put me off so much. The first thing, he talked about how he felt like he was the victim in our old relationship.
Chris: I’ve taught … See, I say that all the time in the videos though, don’t I? I said like, “Even though they’re the ones who broke up with you, they will victim mentality [crosstalk 00:33:29].”
Jo: Yes. Yeah. So I remembered that. I didn’t react.
Chris: [crosstalk 00:33:33] almost. So you didn’t like that, so that put you off. What else put you off?
Jo: Then he said … Because he asked me, he was like to me, “Oh, you know what?” I think the reason why I was obsessed with wanting him back so much is because I didn’t even go on one date during no contact.
Chris: Okay. So I kind of get [crosstalk 00:33:53] this is going.
Jo: I was scared and I felt like I wasn’t ready.
Chris: Okay. So I’m guessing he went on a few dates with some few girls?
Jo: Yeah. So he asked me. He was like to me-
Chris: Have you [crosstalk 00:34:08].
Jo: “Are you seeing anyone?”
Chris: Right.
Jo: Yeah, he was like, “Are you seeing anyone?” I was like, “No, I haven’t been on one day.” I felt like I should [inaudible 00:34:15].
Chris: You probably just really should have went on a date, even if [crosstalk 00:34:20].
Jo: Yeah, I know.
Chris: Okay. Then-
Jo: And then-
Chris: … did he say he had been on a few dates?
Jo: I didn’t want to ask him because I didn’t want to know because I [crosstalk 00:34:34].
Chris: You didn’t want to be that girl too.
Jo: Yes. Because he knew me as a psycho. The smallest things, I would blow up. Anyway. So then I asked him, “Are you seeing someone?” Then he was like, “Yeah.” And I was like, “Shit.”
Chris: Oh, does that mean [crosstalk 00:34:52] relationship with someone?
Jo: No. No, just seeing.
Chris: Okay, so he just went on a few dates.
Jo: Pretty [crosstalk 00:35:00]. Yeah, he went on a few days with this girl. Anyway, so that put me off. I was like, “I don’t want him back anymore. I don’t [inaudible 00:35:06].”
Chris: That works to your favor though, having that mentality, I think. Because it knocks him off the pedestal, you know?
Jo: Yeah. But because he knew me as I reacted to everything. I kept my cool like, I just stood there. I was like, “Oh, okay.” And he was really shocked. He was really shocked. So he said that to me, and then I asked him, “How long have you been seeing this girl?” He was like, “Two months.” And I was like, “We’ve only been broken up for two and a half months, that was really quick.” Yeah, it was really quick. And I’m just like, “What the hell?” In my head, I was going crazy. I was like, “How the hell did you move on so quickly?” But my outside, I was just quiet and he looked at me like … He was like, “Oh.” I could see he was confused that I wasn’t reacting because usually I would. But then I remembered be UG, keep your cool.
Chris: Yeah. You did good. You did good.
Jo: That’s what I did. That’s what I did.
Chris: So what happens next?
Jo: So then, we were talking, we started walking around the blocks. So then he was like to me, “Oh, you’ve really shocked me.” I was like, “Why?” Then he was like, “You seem like a completely different person.” I was like, “Oh, thank you.” And then I smiled. And then you know what, Chris? I let him do all the talking pretty much the whole day, I didn’t-
Chris: That’s what you’re supposed to do. Yeah.
Jo: I remember towards the end of the ERP, let him lead. So that’s what I did, I let him lead. I listened a lot and he talked so much. So we were all walking around the block. And then he was like to me, “Oh, I still love you.” I was like, “Oh, do you?” And then he was like, “Yeah.”
Chris: So he’s seeing someone loosely at this point?
Jo: Yes.
Chris: Well, I guess that are kind of dating but not really. They’re in that gray territory.
Jo: Yeah. They’re not in a relationship. They weren’t in a relationship, no one knew of her he told me.
Chris: Okay. So it was just some girl he was taking on dates, but-
Jo: Oh, his parents knew her. But, that’s it. Just his parents.
Chris: So at this time, he’s still seeing this girl technically then?
Jo: Yeah, but he told me the last time he saw her was like three weeks. So it was three weeks prior.
Chris: Okay. So it had been a while.
Jo: [crosstalk 00:37:48] while. It seems like he just got bored with it. It was like the typical rebound.
Chris: No, he got busy with school. That’s [inaudible 00:37:52]. He got busy with school.
Jo: Oh. That’s interesting too, because he was busy with school and he started reaching out to you, and he-
Chris: Yeah, because he said-
Jo: He saw you five days later, even though he was still busy with school. Yeah, so I’ll tell you this. The day he broke up with me was the day before his first day of school. He said to me the day … The day he broke up with me he said to me, “I’m going to be studying, I don’t want any distractions.”
Chris: Okay, so that’s a [crosstalk 00:38:26] factor. But I feel like that’s not the real reason he broke up with you, I feel like it’s the excuse like, “Oh, maybe will hold her over.” Okay, so he says, “I still love you.” The very first time you meet up, you’re walking. And he went about it in a very clumsy way. So he basically says, “I’m the victim. Oh yeah, I’ve been dating this chick but I still love you.” So it’s almost like-
Jo: Yes. [inaudible 00:38:51]. I was like, “Is this guy playing games with me?” That’s why I felt like I didn’t want him back anymore because I felt like I deserved better, because I know my worth.
Chris: Okay. Okay. So what do you do when he says that he loves you? How do you react to that?
Jo: I was just like, “Oh, okay.” And then he said, “Oh, my parents loving you is a bonus.” And … What else did he say? Because he talked about that and his parents. And then he said this, like, “I thought I could get through school alone, but I realized I couldn’t.” But then I felt like that put me off a bit as well because I felt like maybe he only wanted to get back with me just for school [crosstalk 00:39:37].
Jo: Yeah, that’s what I thought. That’s what I thought.
Chris: So how do you physically-
Jo: And then-
Chris: … or verbally respond to him saying, “I love you.” That quick?
Jo: And then-
Chris: What do you what do you say to that? Do you say anything to it? Do you just ignore it like it didn’t happen?
Jo: Okay, so he also said, “I want to make this work.” So then I was like, “Yeah, I want to make this work too.”
Chris: So he just asked for you back right there.
Jo: Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much.
Chris: But he did in the most clumsy, strange way possible. So he-
Jo: We were walking on the street.
Chris: So he says, “I’m really upset because you hurt me a lot, I’m the victim.
Jo: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris: Oh yeah, by the way, I’ve been dating this girl for three months after we broke up. Oh yeah, by the way, I love you. Oh yeah, by the way, I thought I could get through school alone without you, but I can’t.” Which gives you all these conflicting emotions because you’re like, number one, “You are not the victim.” Number two is like, “How dare you start dating this guy or this girl.” Well, I hope it’s not a guy. And number three is like, “Well, are you just asking for me back because you want my help to get through school?” But it seems like despite all that, you were just were like, “Okay, I’ll take it.”
Jo: Yeah, but then we both agreed to take it slow. So then I was like, “Okay, we’ll take it so so.” That was good. And then I said to him-
Chris: Did you ever ask him a little bit about his mentality while you were doing the no contact rule?
Jo: Oh, yes. Oh my god. Yes, I did. I did. I was like to him, “Hey, so …” Okay. I asked him. I said to him, “Why did you call me?” Because remember that was his first [crosstalk 00:41:22], his reach out. And then he was like to me, “I actually was stuck on an assignment and I needed your help.” So this is what contributed to me thinking-
Chris: Do you think that’s truthful though? Do you think it was he’s just too prideful to admit like, “I just wanted to talk to you.” So he comes up with [crosstalk 00:41:42] excuse?
Jo: No, I think he was I’m pretty genuine because when we got back together, I helped him with one of his assignments. I could see him struggling. So I think that was a genuine.
Chris: Okay. Sounds like-
Jo: Then I asked him-
Chris: … you should me a filmmaker.
Jo: Right. It’s just the theory that he struggled in. But anyway. Then I said I asked him about the text. I said, “Why did you text me, ‘Hey, how are you?'” And then … Okay, so I didn’t tell you this. Four days after the breakup, I left this grand sorry gesture on his doorstep.
Chris: Okay, so you did the classic like, “I’m going to buy his love back with a huge gift.
Jo: Yeah, pretty much.
Chris: That’s going to [crosstalk 00:42:26].”
Jo: This was four days after the breakup. So I left a note. I talked so much, I’ll tell you what I dropped off actually. So I dropped off a PlayStation game, but-
Chris: What … Hold on. You’re not getting that easy. What PlayStation game exactly?
Jo: Oh, GTA 5.
Chris: Oh, that’s a good one. I bought that game a few years ago after I hadn’t played that, and I was just glued to the TV playing that game for [inaudible 00:42:54] straight. Like, “This is so cool.” But of course, you do the most devious things on that game. So anyways, [crosstalk 00:43:02] you buy him a PlayStation game, what else?
Jo: Pizza, donuts, a rose, a box of lollies, and a letter. So there was six things.
Chris: Holy … Oh my god. That’s a lot of stuff.
Jo: Yes, but then I was just like, that was going to be the last thing from me. I didn’t return any of his things, that was the last thing from me. That was the last thing from me.
Chris: Okay. It has to hurt that you sent all that stuff and he didn’t say anything about it until 30 days later.
Jo: Yeah. No, because I also had a letter and I wrote a lot on there. So I’ll tell you that I think the one thing that … So you know how he texts. So in the letter I said to him, “Oh, I should pay off my credit card by August.” And then I asked him … Then when we met up I asked him, “What was your intention behind that?” He was like … Because he messaged me end of July. And then he was like to me, “Oh yeah, I just remembered what you wrote in your letter about your credit card about you paying it off by August. I just wanted to see if-
Chris: Oh, that’s interesting.
Jo: … you were able to achieve that.” So that tells me he read the letter because I actually expected him to not read it, but he read it. And because I didn’t … Like when he texted me that, I consulted the ERP group and then they were telling me no. So it was so hard to resist, but I didn’t respond. So when I told him about the credit card, he told me that I proved him wrong. So also … Sorry. When we met up again after telling me all that about he still loved me, he was seeing another girl, and blah, blah, blah. He said to me, “Oh, you proved me wrong, you’ve changed so much. You’ve paid off your credit card, and now you do pole dancing, and aerial yoga, and all these things. It’s like you’re a completely different person.” Oh, and also because you know how I told you that I got off social media. I got off social media completely, I read about 10 books during no contact. And he was proud for me. He actually said to me, “I’m really happy and proud of you for what you’ve achieved.”
Jo: Anyways. With the, “Hey, how are you?” Text, he said to me, “When you didn’t respond, I thought you had found someone else and moved on.” That’s what he said to me. [crosstalk 00:45:39].
Chris: So when you did respond, that’s why he responded so quickly. He’s like, “Oh-
Jo: Yes, I think so.
Chris: Okay, that’s interesting. When you look back at your experience on how it all works to get him back and everything like that, what do you feel like was the most important piece of advice that you received that was the most helpful?
Jo: Being UG, and stay in no contact, they were.
Chris: Okay. So the no contact bit, you mentioned that you really didn’t do too much for the first 25, 30 days other than just focusing on getting the credit card debt paid off.
Jo: Yeah. And then after that, I was okay.
Chris: After that, you got into more of the hobby type thing where you mentioned the yoga, pole dancing classes, things like that. Was there anything else that you did during no contact that you’re not maybe mentioning that you felt was really important to getting through it?
Jo: Reading books. I read a lot of books, I read 10 books.
Chris: Sounds like you’re cultivating your mind too. [crosstalk 00:46:44].
Jo: Yeah. And getting off social media was … Having that social detox was really good as well. I felt like when I got back on social media, I was like, “This feels really weird. I don’t want to be back online.” Because I felt like I got strong on my own, I didn’t need-
Chris: You don’t want it to weaken you out.
Jo: … the internet. Yeah.
Chris: Yeah. There’s an interesting relationship we have in social media if you think about it, it’s almost addicting. We go on there to look at other people’s lives and see what’s going on, but that prevents us from living our own lives if you think about it. So by cutting all that out, you were able to focus completely on yourself, maybe finding some passions that you didn’t have before. Because it seems like a big problem of your relationship is you were too wrapped up into him and you didn’t have any kind of independence by yourself.
Jo: Yes. Yes. I lost myself in the relationship. I did.
Chris: And how are things going now? How long have you been back together? It looks like you got back together on August 9th, so you guys-
Jo: No, we got … So almost a month now we are really good. We are really good. Do you want to know what happened with the other girl? The one that he was-
Chris: I would love to know what happened with the other girl. So did she go crazy trying to win him back?
Jo: Oh, no. Actually, I was expecting that. I thought she was going to fight for him back.
Chris: Right. You thought you get in a fistfight with her in the street or something.
Jo: That’s what I thought. So I said to him the day we met up, I said, “What are you going to do with the girl you’re seeing?” And he was like, “Oh, it’s really slow and it’s still early days. I’m going to end it with her.” And then I said to him, “When are you going to end up with her?” He was like, “Tonight.” So then I saw him the next … Yeah. So then I saw him the next day, and then I said, “Oh …” He was like to me, “Did you tell your dad?” I was like, “No. Did you end it with the girl?” Because I said to him, “I will tell my parents when you’ve ended it with the girl.” And then he showed me the text message. So actually, the day we met up, the girl texted him, she said, “Hey, I know we’re both busy, but you haven’t replied to me and it’s been more than 24 hours already.”
Jo: So then from that text, I could see that him trying to reach out to me, maybe it’s deviated him from seeing her a bit. And then what really … I was really touched by the text message he sent her. He said to her-
Chris: That’s interesting [crosstalk 00:49:19] hear that from the-
Jo: I know.
Chris: … from the other woman being involved. So what did he say?
Jo: He was like, “Hey, sorry for the late reply, but I caught up with my ex today and I am so shocked at how much she’s changed in the last two and a half months. I am so happy and proud for what she’s achieved, and I want to make it work with her. I think we’re in it for the long haul.” That’s what he said to her. And then she said to him … I was expecting her to fight, but then she took a like a woman. She was like, “Oh okay.” She said, “Oh okay. Well, I’m just letting you know if it doesn’t work out with her, you can’t come back to me.” That’s what she said.
Chris: [crosstalk 00:50:05].
Jo: So I was like, “Shit, she’s she’s UG herself.” And then my ex was like to her, “Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Wish you all the best.” And then that was it from them. And then-
Chris: Wow. I love the fact that he even showed you the text message to show-
Jo: Yeah. It was really long, I was really touched. And then he said to me after he said that … Because we were in this situation before like a year and a half ago where he had to pick between me and this other girl. And then when he said to me, “Oh, I picked you again, you better be worth it.” As a joke, but we know it’s half meant.
Chris: [inaudible 00:50:43]. So things are going really well it seems like right now for you guys.
Jo: We are really good. So at the start, we were saying we’ll take it slow, see each other two to three times a week. But just like last week, we pretty much saw each other every day. And I was like to him, “What happened to seeing each other two to three times a week?” And then he was just like, “Oh, no I just miss you a lot.”
Chris: Aww, so cute.
Jo: Because I was I didn’t tell him about ERP. But one of your bundles, Chris, like the relationship fitness activity, I read that. So we’ve been bonding a lot. We would go by the water or the beach, and we would listen to a playlist and not talk to each other. We’d also read books together. And it’s funny, because what is working for us now is we’re trying each other’s hobbies. So he’s been coming with me to aerial yoga and Pilates for the last two weeks. And it’s funny because he’s the only guy there but he loves it.
Chris: That’s great.
Jo: But yeah, we are really good.
Chris: No, I hadn’t heard that strategy before of trying each other’s activities, because usually, one party’s-
Jo: It’s about-
Chris: … just not interested at all.
Jo: Yeah, it was like just giving each other space, but it’s actually pretty good. I actually tried playing COD the other day. Do you play COD, Chris?
Chris: No. So in America, we don’t really have COD. I don’t even know how it’s played. Maybe it’s just a different.
Jo: Oh, Call of Duty.
Chris: Oh, Call of Duty, so COD.
Jo: Sorry. Sorry. Call of Duty.
Chris: I thought it was Australian [crosstalk 00:52:40].
Jo: Oh no. No. No. It’s Call of Duty.
Chris: No. No.
Jo: Do you play Call of Duty?
Chris: When I was a high schooler, I used to play. But [crosstalk 00:52:45] 15 different versions of it now. But I remember when they had Call of Duty Modern Warfare, I had the very first original one I used to play that. I used to play Halo, but I grew up and had a family so the video game time is not really there anymore.
Jo: Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: So you did Call of Duty with him?
Jo: On no. He wanted me to try this gun the other day, so I played for 10 minutes. I was like, “Nah, I can’t do this.” [crosstalk 00:53:15].
Chris: So the best part of playing that game is going online and just trash talking people over the internet.
Jo: Well, my mic was off. [inaudible 00:53:25]. But so we’re really good now. We actually had our first argument on Sunday because in Australia, it was Father’s Day, Sunday. So I went out with his family. And he’s very … With his mouth, he’s got no filter so he just says things and he said something that upset me in front of his parents and then … It’s funny because that was like our first argument, but I was trying [inaudible 00:54:01]. I remembered reading ERP like, “You have to maintain being UG.” So old me-
Chris: I-
Jo: Yeah. Old me would have went ballistic, and I would have fought with him for like three days about that issue. But you know what I did? I said to him, “Look, I want to sort this out calmly and immediately, and I don’t want it to be like before.” And because we fixed it up straight away and I wasn’t angry or screaming at him or anything, I was strict. And then I just said my point, and then I said, “Let’s move on.” He said to me … When he said this, I just kept remembering how far I’ve come. He said to me, “You’ve really changed. The old you would have went psycho on me, I’m so proud of you.” He said that to me on Sunday.
Chris: That’s really great.
Jo: And I’m just in my head. “Yep. It’s about being UG.” So it’s good. It’s going really good.
Chris: Well, I’m super happy for you. You set a lot of really interesting things that I hadn’t thought of before. Because it seems to me like one of the underlying factors that helped you succeed was, oddly enough, this crazy gift you sent him. It’s almost like … Now, I still think it’s a dumb idea to send a gift period. But the fact that you had sent that letter gave him … It lingered, and it did make him want to reach out during no contact. So as weird as it sounds, the clingy kind of obsessive crazy behavior worked in your favor a little bit, I think. Which is a cool thing if you really think about it. I hadn’t seen much of that. But is there anything else that you wanted to say to anyone listening here who’s really struggling, that maybe would inspire them to keep going or something?
Jo: Oh, okay. Yeah, definitely. So guys, if you’re listening to this and going through NC and struggling, stay strong. I know it’s hard but it’s temporary, it will pass. Stay in no contact, find hobbies, or do journaling. I forgot to mention that I journaled every day and I’m still journaling now, journaling helps so much. Yeah. Spend time with your friends and your family. Find yourself, you come out so much stronger and I’m glad I did as well.
Success Story: How To Get Back An Ex In A Long Distance Relationship
Aug 27, 2020
When you’ve been in this business as long as I have you encounter a lot of different situations. One of the most beautiful things about this baptism by fire is you start to notice certain trends. For instance, each and every situation is unique and while I’ve tried to create a framework that unites everything under one set of rules humans are too complicated to allow that.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of interview Rachel, she’s one of our success stories and she had what you might think is one of the most difficult situations to navigate, long distance.
So after an hour of interviewing her I learned some really interesting things she did and I’m hopeful that if you’re in a long distance relationship you can get a lot from this.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Chris Seiter: Okay, today we’re going to be talking to Rachael who I have the pleasure of talking to. She’s one of our success stories, and we were talking a little bit before we started recording a bit about how she did things differently and she admitted she broke the no contact rule multiple times, so we’re eager to hear about that. But mostly what we’d like to do is get to the bottom of what Rachael did that’s different from everyone else who isn’t succeeding in winning their exes back. So, first off, how are you doing, Rachael?
Rachael: I’m good, you know? This is a last minute thing and we just popped in here.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, it was very organic how it worked out. So, I’m pretty sure that you showed up to a few of the Facebook lives, am I remembering that right?
Rachael: Yes.
Chris Seiter: So, there’s so many people that show up it’s hard for me to… I just have the little thumbnail you know they have on Facebook?
Rachael: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Seiter: And if they change the thumbnail I’m confused again, so I’m pretty sure I remember your thumbnail so I think I remember a bit of your situation. You did not have a really easy break up, did you?
Rachael: I’ve been in about three serious relationships and was actually probably the worst break up I’ve ever had.
Chris Seiter: So, what-
Rachael: I was in a new low.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so why don’t you tell us a little bit about how the break up occurred first off before we kind of get into what you did?
Rachael: Okay. So, me and my now boyfriend because we got back together, but he was in the military and he just got out this summer so we’ve been long distance for a year and a half.
Chris Seiter: So, he got back from being deployed, is that what you’re saying?
Rachael: He ended his contract with the military so he’s officially out.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so he quit. He quit the military?
Rachael: He’s now back being a college student. Yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so he’s back to the daily grind of being the college kid?
Rachael: Yes. Sort of, because with COVID.
Chris Seiter: Oh, yeah. Yeah, the COVID thing kind of… So, it’s more like a digital college from what-
Rachael: Like what we’re doing basically. He’s-
Chris Seiter: Yeah, basically what we’re-
Rachael: … actually here this morning doing classes on his laptop, so.
Chris Seiter: Oh. Okay. So, he’s in the military, he quits the military, and I’m assuming this spawns a break up of some sort?
Rachael: Oh, actually, no. He was still in the military when we had all this process.
Chris Seiter: Got it. Okay.
Rachael: Yes, and he came back to where I’m at in the beginning of July. The break up actually was in February. So, I was getting at, so he was in a desert somewhere and his grandmother had passed. And it was basically his second mother, he lived with her for a few years, and she had passed unexpectedly when he was out in the desert so they actually had to emergency… Red Cross had to get involved and bring him back for the funeral. And I at the time was going through a really stressful time at work. I was working 60 hour weeks and I kind of just… Yeah, it was not fun. This was pre-COVID-
Chris Seiter: 60 hours weeks?
Rachael: Yeah, it was pre-COVID so it was, you know, I’m in the hospitality industry so it was popping at the time and now it’s dead.
Chris Seiter: Well, that took a change.
Rachael: Now, it’s dead. So, I basically had a mental breakdown at the worst time possible. It was-
Chris Seiter: So, define mental breakdown, when you say mental breakdown what are some of the symptoms that you exhibit?
Rachael: So, he was back with his family and I have a dog and I was going to come up and stay with his family for a couple days while they were doing the funeral and I was going to bring my dog… I was asking if I could bring my animal with me and he was like, “Sure, let me just ask my family,” and for some reason that… I have a interesting relationship with his mother, she’s not my biggest fan, so when he was like, “I’m going to ask her,” I was like, “No, I don’t want her to dislike me even more. I’m putting a burden on their family with a dog.” So, somehow me being a very hormonal woman, that just set me off and we just got in this huge fight and I started dumping all of this stress on him.
Chris Seiter: So, the dog is essentially the catalyst-
Rachael: Yes.
Chris Seiter: … and them I’m assuming when you get into this it’s just like you’re throwing things out of left field that have nothing to do with the dog.
Rachael: And he’s just like, “What the heck is going on?” I hadn’t seen him in two months because he was serving-
Chris Seiter: Oh, so there’s a lot of anxiety and maybe [crosstalk 00:04:04].
Rachael: Yeah, because I had moved to a new state, I didn’t have anybody out here, so that’s the mental breakdown. I moved to a new state, my family’s states away. I was living by myself, he was gone, and working 60 hour weeks it just… atomic bomb all at once.
Chris Seiter: Finally, it was like the volcano building up, you know?
Rachael: Yes.
Chris Seiter: It just, it took a dog to set it off.
Rachael: Yeah, my precious dog just… Yes, so I blame her sometimes, not really.
Chris Seiter: Okay. All right. So, this is when the breakup occurs, I’m assuming? Like the breakup’s about to occur here?
Rachael: Yes, this is the day of the break up. Yeah, this is-
Chris Seiter: So, this is the catalyst for the breakup, this gigantic fight. Now, are you fighting like in person?
Rachael: This is through text which is the stupidest thing ever because he was on-
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I’ve had fights like that before.
Rachael: He was literally in the airport about to fly home when this was happening.
Chris Seiter: Oh, God. You get on the plane, so you lose connection, you can’t text anyone. It’s just simmering. So, you get off the plane and you’re just fuming.
Rachael: And then it starts again.
Chris Seiter: Right, yeah.
Rachael: It was just a lot at once, and now we look back at it and I’m like, “I was an idiot,” so it was…
Chris Seiter: So-
Rachael: And I really just should’ve called him and had communicated properly about it, but you know at the time it was-
Chris Seiter: Do you feel this fight… Was there a reason that you didn’t try to escalate it over to the phone or talk in person? Did it just feel safer?
Rachael: It was really late at night, it was like 1:00 AM, 2:00 AM because I had just gotten off work and he was in the airport in the middle of a desert about to fly home.
Chris Seiter: All right. So, who breaks up with who here?
Rachael: So, that was that night he was flying back into where we’re at, and so he finally shows up and I’m like calling him several times, texting him, blowing up his phone, and he’s just trying to be there for his family for this funeral and I’m just… I was being very selfish at the time. I was like, “I need help, me, me, me,” when he’s… and he’s the eldest of three boys so he was trying to be there for his mother. He couldn’t be at two places at once because I live an hour away from where his parents are.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so he’s-
Rachael: And he couldn’t be at two places, so I’m like, “I need your help,” and he’s like, “Well, my family needs me.” So, it was basically like an ultimatum and he picked the family and he was just like, “Look, I’m done. I don’t want to talk to you.”
Chris Seiter: Okay, so-
Rachael: And so my crazy butt decided to drive up there.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you drove up there-
Rachael: Literally when I say my story is similar in a lot of ways to other women, I did the whole being crazy, texting non-stop, calling non-stop. I showed up unexpectedly.
Chris Seiter: You were the classic Nat then, you went nuts and texted literally.
Rachael: When I watch your videos with Natting I’m like, “Yeah, that was me.”
Chris Seiter: Well, that’s okay.
Rachael: So, I go up there and I’m not banging on his door, we go to a park that’s outside of his neighborhood and he reluctantly meets me and I thought we… and I communicated then like, “Look, I’m stressed, all this,” and we started communicating properly face to face. Because we’ve been in a long distance relationship for so long the phone was kind of like our only means of communication.
Chris Seiter: Safe haven. You’re used to the phone.
Rachael: Yeah, so that’s kind of why I didn’t switch over to a phone call because I can’t call him because he’s out of signal somewhere. So, we started talking face to face and I thought we were fine but as I’m driving home he calls me and he’s like, “No, I can’t do this. I’ve been thinking about it, I think we need to go our separate ways and you need to find someone there that can take care of you.”
Chris Seiter: Okay, so-
Rachael: I was like, “But you’re getting out of the military in like six months,” and then-
Chris Seiter: So, to me it just seems like an absolute matter of timing, like you-
Rachael: Oh, yeah, if this had happened at any other time it would’ve been fine.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, you were stressed from 60 hour work weeks, everything was just kind of happening at once, and then he’s stressed because of this passing he had and having to be there for the family he feels like you’re putting him in the middle a little bit and he just sort of, you know, fight or flight. He’s like I’m just-
Rachael: And it was wedged into such a small time because he could only be home for like four days and then he had to go back because-
Chris Seiter: Still in the military, right?
Rachael: Yeah. And he was a non-commissioned officer so he’s in charge of 40 guys when he gets back. He has to make sure they’re-
Chris Seiter: Okay, so he’s got a lot on his mind?
Rachael: Yeah, and I just put a hot spoke right in it.
Chris Seiter: Right, you’re like, “Deal with this.” Okay, so all right.
Rachael: So, neither one of us after the breakup were in a good spot. He just happened to have distractions because of being in the, you know, he got to be a man, and dirt, and guns, and all that kind of stuff so he put his anger out through his guys.
Chris Seiter: Shot a few targets, you know?
Rachael: That was the end of February and then two weeks later I get furloughed because of COVID, so it’s like I got hit with a double whammy of losing my boyfriend who I hoped to marry one day and then I lost my dream job, because I just had graduated college and this was my first big girl job. And then, so-
Chris Seiter: So, it was sort of like your career essentially?
Rachael: Yes.
Chris Seiter: You get furloughed so that is another negative hit on just things going, and you’ll be surprised at how often your story is resinating with so many people because it’s really hit or miss too I’m talking to with the COVID furlough thing. I mean, like half the people I talk to are furloughed from work, half the people aren’t and work picks up for them. It’s just like this really weird thing. I’ve seen lots of breakups because of COVID though.
Rachael: And I joined ERP literally the day I got furloughed because I was like, “I’m SOL, what’s left?”
Chris Seiter: Okay, so-
Rachael: Because I kept Natting him, I kept texting him and, you know, he’s in the desert.
Chris Seiter: So, you’re trying everything to get his attention.
Rachael: I’m grasping at straws.
Chris Seiter: At what point do you take to… because I’m assuming you probably go to Google and you start typing in how do I get my ex back? Or I’m doing this wrong or I’m doing this wrong.
Rachael: Yes, literally you… yeah. And I came across your quiz.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you took the quiz and then the quiz is probably promoting the program itself.
Rachael: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Seiter: And then you get the program and you get into the Facebook group?
Rachael: Yes.
Chris Seiter: What happens then? Because usually I notice it’s like a 50/50 split between people who… Some people never just read the program they just use the Facebook group which I think is a mistake. I think people should always get through the program, but even when people read the program they still don’t kind of stick to some of the stuff. What was your experience with that?
Rachael: Well, I’m a book worm so I read it and then I actually had purchased your Ungettable Girl workbook because at that time I was-
Chris Seiter: Oh, yeah. I’ve got it back there somewhere.
Rachael: Yeah, I saw it, it was one of your Facebook lives and I was like, “Huh, I’ll do that.” Because I’m a very organized person. I like writing things down if it’s a step by step thing. I honestly felt like I was trying to get rid of a drug addiction because it was such a loss.
Chris Seiter: Well, that’s what it feels like. So, one thing maybe you don’t know if when you go through your breakup the same part of your brain that lights up is the same part of the brain that lights up when a cocaine addict is going through withdrawal. It is literally like getting rid of a drug addiction.
Rachael: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I had coaching with Anna and she said that same thing too.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. So, you did the whole nine yards?
Rachael: I did the whole nine yards and I honestly feel like a much better person, because when I had purchased it and read it and I was doing the step by step thing I was like, “I don’t know who I am anymore,” because I was so… I technically moved here for a job, but it just so happened to be the same state he was going to move back to when he got out of the military so my dad says I moved out here for a boy, I did not. It was a job, it just happened to be in the same state.
Chris Seiter: It just happened to work out that way. Okay.
Rachael: I had just moved out here basically for him and I was like, “So, what do I do now?” I don’t have a job anymore, I lost him, so I-
Chris Seiter: You got lots of time on your hands, I guess.
Rachael: Yeah, I tucked my tail between my legs and moved back with my mom for… I was only furloughed for eight weeks.
Chris Seiter: Okay, that’s not too bad.
Rachael: So, I got my job back about May, so about Memorial Day actually, so.
Chris Seiter: So, you get all the program and everything and did you stop texting him?
Rachael: The day I bought the program, which I really didn’t feel like it was a purchase anyways because I need… it was just like, what else? What’s next? So, I texted him, which sometimes you’re like… in some of your videos, you’re like, “Just stop talking to him.” But I did the… I read on another page, it was like, “If you’ve been Natting,” which they used a different term, “send this text, apologize, and then be done with it.”
Chris Seiter: Oh, yeah, so it’s sort of like a primer text before you get into a not contact type of-
Rachael: Which I didn’t tell him, “I’m going on a no contact.” It was just like, “I’m sorry for the breakup and how I responded to it. I just wish you the best.”
Chris Seiter: What was your take on that strategy? Do you feel like that had any impact on the overall success that you ended up having? Or do you feel like it was just kind of eh?
Rachael: It was kind of eh, I felt like the no contact was the big thing because our phone’s been our lifeline for having a long distance relationship. Sorry, my dog is getting all up in my business. When I stopped talking to him, he was still in the desert at the time and I feel like he’s probably thinking, “When is she going to stop?” Because it was about two or three weeks where I was being a Nat and I slowly just stopped because my mom, my friends, are like, “You need to stop. He’s telling you to give him space and time to think and you’re not.” And I actually went to see a therapist as well and she did this thing where she stood up out of her chair and got up all in my face and I was like this, and she’s like, “You know, that reaction’s basically what you’re doing to your boyfriend right now because you’re-”
Chris Seiter: Oh, the physical-
Rachael: Oh, there she is.
Chris Seiter: Oh, it’s a beautiful dog.
Rachael: Thank you, she’s very annoying right now. You want to go home. But she was like getting all up in my face and she’s like, “That’s what you’re doing. You’re literally pinning him in a corner right now.” And my guy, he’s not the best with emotions. He’s a marine so he’s not a very-
Chris Seiter: So, communication isn’t the best for him?
Rachael: I wouldn’t say he’s an avoidant because he’s really good at communicating when he has time to think about it, and I wasn’t giving him that time to think about it. So, when my therapist got up all in my face and I’m very claustrophobic, that’s kind of when it clicked. I was like, “I need to stop.”
Chris Seiter: So-
Rachael: And that was the same day I got into the Facebook group, so I was just like, “Good bye.”
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you said basically-
Rachael: Not really goodbye, just like, “Have a nice life,” kind of.
Chris Seiter: Right, right. You said kind of the re-breakup type text type thing to I guess kind of pre-warn him because you feel like it’s the right thing to do and you do get into a no contact rule, but before we even started recording you said you broke it a bunch of times.
Rachael: Yes, because-
Chris Seiter: Tell me about that.
Rachael: Because he’s basically on the back of a Humvee in front of a 50 caliber gun and I’m calling him, and he’s like, “Just stop trying to get us back together,” and that’s kind of also the trigger where I was like, “Okay, he’s serious,” because-
Chris Seiter: How many false starts did you have at no contact I guess is the question I’m getting at?
Rachael: So, when I started I was like, “I need to follow this program wholeheartedly,” it was only twice but there was two to three weeks… She’s just insane right now. It was two to three weeks of that Natting, and I would say probably twice in there too. So, I basically broke no contact like four times.
Chris Seiter: Four times, okay so when it finally-
Rachael: So, my spaces are just [inaudible 00:14:57].
Chris Seiter: Yeah, right. So, when it finally took for good how long of a period of no contact did you actually make?
Rachael: I was like, “I need to do the 45,” since it was such a bad breakup and I was Natting. So, I decided to do a 45 and I got to about the 18 day mark, that’s the first time I broke it because I had posted in a Facebook live, like, we had PlayStations that were linked together.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Rachael: And-
Chris Seiter: I kind of feel like… Was this during my Facebook live?
Rachael: Yeah, it was during your Facebook live and I said, “Personal belonging issues,” or something is what I said.
Chris Seiter: I’m pretty sure I remember something like that. Yeah, okay, so it turned out to be two PlayStations that are linked so you can see each other’s updates, is that kind of-
Rachael: We were linked because we could game share because I was cheap and didn’t want to buy games that he had on his console.
Chris Seiter: Oh, I didn’t even know you could do that.
Rachael: Yes, if you log into another account. And somehow it got messed up so I had essentially had locked us both out of our PlayStations and-
Chris Seiter: Uh-Oh, so you communicate essentially to fix that issue?
Rachael: Yes, because he had to get on his and log off and stuff, and that’s the first time I broke it. And then I tried calling, well, I did call him and he picked up. Because this is when he got out of the desert is when I waited, and it turned into… I should’ve just left it at there, even Anna was like, “You just need to ask that, fix it, and then be done.” But me being me, I’m like, “So…” kind of like-
Chris Seiter: Oh, God, you tried to extend it more?
Rachael: Yes, and-
Chris Seiter: So, she was just like, “If you’re going to break it just stick to the business at hand,” but you kind of spring boarded it into more.
Rachael: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So, we talked for like an hour and then we hung up and I was like, “Dang it.” So, then I restarted it and, yeah, I got to… it was like day 40, 41 where I was going with a friend to… because she had just graduated and she was moving back so I was helping her move from our university back to her state and she has a lake house so we started hanging out, and I guess he saw on my social media that I was hanging out with guys from her hometown. I think that’s what triggered him, because he even said, “You should find someone there.” I had no intent to date any of those guys.
Chris Seiter: But you just put yourself in the situation where there’d be other men around, and he reached out I’m assuming?
Rachael: Yes. And so, during that second no contact is when I had the Ungettable Girl workbook and I did use social media to my advantage. I posted pictures, which was hard with COVID right now.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, it’s really hard.
Rachael: I saw a lot of girls posting about that, it’s like, how do I do this because we’re not allowed to go anywhere? And I’ll admit, there was like six weeks in there where I just did not leave my room. Like my mom brought me food, I just was huddled. I did eat… yeah, it was bad. So, I got that-
Chris Seiter: It took you awhile to kind of get out of the depressive state that the breakup put you in?
Rachael: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Seiter: Six weeks where your mom is essentially nursing you back to health.
Rachael: Yeah. At one point, she came in and she’s like, “Are you just ever going to get out of bed?” I was like, “No. No, I’m not.”
Chris Seiter: So, was it simply just time that kind of triggers you out of that state?
Rachael: Well, me and my mom went to… We have property down on the Gulf Coast, so she took me and that’s kind of where I was like, hey, I could use this to social media advantage and make it seem like I’m going out, which I literally took a picture of the beach and then walked back inside and went on the bed.
Chris Seiter: Well, that’s what you got to do sometimes, the baby steps, you know?
Rachael: So, I started doing that and I had been posting pictures throughout and I think that was like, you know, it’s me in a bathing suit. So, he started liking that picture and I’m like, “Oh, well, you like that but not the other couple I posted?”
Chris Seiter: So, did it kind of spring board from there after you got that one like [crosstalk 00:18:57]?
Rachael: One like? I was like, “Oh, I got his attention again,” because I would see that he would like all… I never blocked him or anything, and I would see he would like all of my friend’s stuff but never would like any of my stuff. And I’m just like, “Okay, cool. You only know these people because of me,” and…
Chris Seiter: Right, it’s almost like a passive aggressive way of saying, “I’m paying attention, but not to you.”
Rachael: Yes.
Chris Seiter: But I’m really paying attention to you.
Rachael: Yes. I was grasping at straws looking into all the minor details. So, fast forward, that was how I started was social media then that’s when he reached out is when he saw me hanging out with other guys. That was about end of April, beginning of May, so that was about day, 40, 41, and he… we just started talking. There was no-
Chris Seiter: So, he reaches out and then it just kind of goes from there?
Rachael: It was through Snapchat and then it was just like small texting. I don’t think I followed the program with the texting phase because about day 40, 41, when I was going helping my friend move we… how would I put it? I was just like, “Hey, I’m going back to the state we’re from,” and I was like, “Do you need anything from your mom or anything?” And that’s kind of how it rolled into then he notices me hanging out with guys that weekend and I guess that’s what set him off. So, I didn’t really have a… I followed the texting bible a little bit after that FaceTime call, I kind of was doing the push and pull method because a couple months ago I was blowing up his phone nonstop. I didn’t do the wait seven to 10 days, I never did that. We just kind of continued conversation.
Chris Seiter: I’m noticing that trend where it’s just like once you get the conversation going you just want to keep it organic as possible and just sort of feel it out a little bit. Is that the approach you kind of took?
Rachael: Yeah, because… and I felt bad because I would see girls posting and saying, “Is this right? Is this right?” They had their whole conversations planned and I’m like, “I don’t want to do-”
Chris Seiter: So, you didn’t really do that? Okay.
Rachael: Personally, I felt that part of the program… it does work for some people, I know, but I was like that’s kind of bogus. I feel like it’s staged a little bit.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, you felt you didn’t want any inauthenticity to come through in your interactions with him. You wanted everything to seem authentic because it was authentic.
Rachael: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Seiter: Now what-
Rachael: And the one thing I did keep to heart though is leaving conversation, because I would always hear you talk about this.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, that’s a big thing we [crosstalk 00:21:34]-
Rachael: About who does it, start it, ends it, and that’s the big thing I was trying to…
Chris Seiter: Yes, yes. And do you feel that that was accurate advice, based on your experience?
Rachael: Yes, because I’ve always been his person, he would always complain about his job and stuff and I’d always be the person that would just stay up late to hear about him and then he would fall asleep on me. So, when I’d be like, “I got to go,” I think that’s kind of, he, you know, who is this person now? She never has time for me anymore. And I’m-
Chris Seiter: Do you feel doing that, did you notice him actually start reaching out to you more after you did that?
Rachael: Yes. Because I will say I initiated several times, and then when he started picking up that I was leaving conversation that’s when he was like, oh, let me go after her a little bit. And then when he saw me with… because I never went on dates with anybody in the no contact period because of COVID and I personally just didn’t want to because that’s the person I… like, I wanted him. But I would be talking to other guys and, you know, nice attention. I never got a dating app or anything, it’s just people I knew. It was a confidence booster, and then I started working out, eating right, because I, you know, first six weeks was basically lethargic as my mom says it. And I think just all that once when he started re-talking to me, you know, he… and he does admit he saw me in a different light.
Chris Seiter: Okay, different-
Rachael: He’s like, “This is the girl that I’ve, you know, when I first saw you I fell in love with.” Because he was noticing I was slowly cracking since Christmas because of work and stress and moving and all that kind of stuff, and he’s like, “This is the girl that I remember.” He’s like, “You’re basically glowing. You’re beautiful as,” something that he quoted and I like screen shotted that text because I was like, “Aw.”
Chris Seiter: So, from what I gather, you are texting back and forth or did you move on to talking on the phone-
Rachael: Yes, because-
Chris Seiter: … or was that even an option?
Rachael: Yes, because he was back in his barracks at his base and we were texting and SnapChatting, and I would be leaving conversations. So, the hardest part about the breakup was because that was my best friend too, like we would FaceTime every single day and it was just like cutting a drug cold turkey. So, we moved to phone calls and FaceTimes pretty quick just because that’s what we used to do. And I know you talked about breaking habits is 66 days, it hadn’t been 66 days fully through all this breaking up, no contact, so it kind of just came back easily, FaceTiming all the time.
Chris Seiter: So, did you notice-
Rachael: And I would leave the FaceTimes quickly too, like, not quickly-
Chris Seiter: Did you notice the conversations improving when you change mediums like that from just texting each other to seeing each other through face to face, like we are here?
Rachael: Yeah. The conversations would get deeper, and again, that was one reason the breakup occurred was because it was over text and tone, emotions doesn’t come through text. And so, when we got to FaceTimes we would get… I feel like our communication’s actually better than ever now because of no contact and not being able to talk because we had so much to talk about for not talking for a month and a half. And so, it got more deeper conversations and at one point it got so deeper he’s like, “I’ve never stopped love you through this period. I just didn’t know what to say.”
Chris Seiter: So, that’s almost like you got him back at that point, essentially.
Rachael: I kind of knew at that point like I could do this, and then because of COVID his based was locked down. So, it opened up around Memorial Day, I had planned going up there and that was like, you know, you talk about planning a big meet up because we are long distance-
Chris Seiter: Yeah, long distance.
Rachael: We were long distance at the time, and so I went up there and hung out for a weekend and then actually while I was up there is when I got the call back like, “Hey, we need you back at work in like three days.” So, then I have to fly back home and turn around and drive 14 hours and be at work.
Chris Seiter: That’s a little way to drive.
Rachael: It was funny, I lost him and my job at the same time and then I kind of got him and my job back at the same time.
Chris Seiter: At the same time. They’re connected.
Rachael: I don’t know how. But he hadn’t asked me to be his girlfriend yet. He felt like he wanted to get back, like, once he ended his contract with the military he wanted to get back and we date a little bit because we’ve always with the long distance relationship, you know, I’d come up for a weekend or a week and we always were vacationing kind of together. So, we never felt like we really dated, so he came back home about six weeks after that meet up and we started going on dates actually. And his mother was especially not my biggest fan after the breakup because she thought I directly was insulting her because I was doing it with her mother’s passing. So, she was very hesitant to us talking again, and I actually went up to his family’s house for his birthday and it was awkward, I will admit. He wanted me to apologize to her, and me being stubborn I’m like, “Why?” Because I apologized to her back, you know, around the breakup.
Chris Seiter: Well, I think he’s just trying to play peace keeper, especially if he ends up marrying you. He’s like, “I don’t want these two women like cats and dogs.”
Rachael: Yeah, because his father’s family never accepted her and I feel like she’s kind of doing it to me, even before the breakup.
Chris Seiter: It’s really common, my best friend growing up, his mom was a lot like that to the girlfriend’s he would bring home, [crosstalk 00:27:04].
Rachael: Yeah, and that’s her baby boy, that’s her first born son so that’s her baby. My mom, I have a brother and it was… my mom says when your boy dates a girl you either have to accept her or you’re going to just fight her the whole time, and she ended up accepting my sister-in-law, and-
Chris Seiter: So, how did you approach… So, did you kind of apologize to her?
Rachael: That’s the thing, I haven’t really said, “I’m sorry yet.” This is the battle I’m fighting right now is her getting to like me.
Chris Seiter: If you want advice, I have a way that you can sort of clear the air but you have to kind of check your ego at the door. So, the best thing to do in situations like that is to actually come up and lay… the first thing you should do is just lay it all out on the table. So, like, hey, I know you feel this, and I know you feel this, and I know you feel this, and then she’ll kind of be a little bit more willing to listen to what you have to say after you kind of hit her with everything she’s thinking inside. But some people just aren’t willing to do that because we’re stubborn by nature, and it seems like you kind of feel-
Rachael: I am stubborn, but the hardest thing is is she’s got three boys and a husband and the family’s always over. So, I’m always going to a house that has 37 people in it so I don’t want to do it in front of everyone, and every time we’re-
Chris Seiter: Well, you can take her in another room or something and say, “Hey, could I talk to you,” or something like that.
Rachael: And during his birthday I tried doing that but everyone keeps busting in and I’m like… so. Next time I go up there is when I’m going to do it because I said it in Anna’s Facebook live this weekend about it and she gave me some pretty good advice. But so-
Chris Seiter: I’d take her out for like… well, I guess you can’t do that now, can you? Damn COVID.
Rachael: You can in Texas, but that’s, you know.
Chris Seiter: Oh yeah, that’s true. No, I do have some questions getting off the mom topic, we could probably chat about that.
Rachael: That’s my current situation, but after we dated for a little bit and his birthday and I met his family again, I think that’s when he was like, “Okay, I’m ready,” and two or three days later he asked me to be his girlfriend again.
Chris Seiter: So, when you look back at the whole situation, what do you feel like was the most important thing to your success, just your opinion on it?
Rachael: Focusing on myself and re-finding myself because even though I love my job and I got a dealt a horrible hand of cards, it really change… I had to grow up really fast. I always feel like I’m pretty adult-ish, but moving on my own, and this is when I officially had been financially cut off from my family. My dad was like, “Oh, you graduated, done. I don’t pay for anything else.” He’s like, “I paid for-”
Chris Seiter: Graduated from college or high school?
Rachael: College.
Chris Seiter: Okay, college. He at least gave you those four years to get the college degree, okay.
Rachael: Yeah, he was like, “I paid for you for 23 years, so I’m done.”
Chris Seiter: Okay, that’s what we call a baptism by fire, just putting them out there in the world.
Rachael: And so, I would say re-finding myself because I really didn’t recognize myself, and even my friend said that. The girl who actually set me and my guy up, she was like, “I don’t recognize you any more,” because I’d be calling her all the time like, “What do you think I should do?” Because they’re friends and she was like, “You just need to relax.”
Chris Seiter: So, what did you do to re-find yourself? What were some of the things that you-
Rachael: Kind of like you say with the trilogy, I was focusing on my health because I actually had lost 15 pounds because the breakup because I just stopped eating for like-
Chris Seiter: Really?
Rachael: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So, I see it’s like either hit or miss. Some people eat everything in sight, and that would be like me, and then some people just stop.
Rachael: Which is funny because I am an emotional eater, I usually eat when I’m sad, but this… I wouldn’t even call it, just because I have struggled with depression and anxiety in the past, I don’t even know what this was. I just shut off completely.
Chris Seiter: Well, I guess they do say sometimes one of the side effects you lose your appetite when you go through highly emotional breakups, so it’s probably a bit of that. But I’ve also seen it swing the other way, so.
Rachael: Yeah, because I didn’t eat for several days, I was crying myself to sleep for probably a total of two weeks. It was bad.
Chris Seiter: So, the breakup hit hard for you?
Rachael: Yeah. It was the first one where, and hopefully the last one, where I felt my heart get ripped out of my chest.
Chris Seiter: So, you’ve had breakups before but this one just stung?
Rachael: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Seiter: Do you feel it stung so much because you felt like this was your person, like you were supposed to marry him and now you lost it?
Rachael: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So, that’s why it hurt so bad?
Rachael: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I understand he was going through the same kind of grief because he had just lost basically his second mother and then me too, so he got hit with a double whammy but he had distractions. So, I kind of had to find… I stayed in bed for several weeks and then when it started-
Chris Seiter: Yeah, but you’re furloughed so you have that on top of everything so it seems very stressful.
Rachael: And so, I started eating better and I’ve always been athletic but because of college and work I’ve slowly let myself go over the past couple years. So, I was like, “I need to get back into shape,” so I started going to the… this was before gyms were shut down so I started working out from home and at gyms, and actually my good friend we were like FaceTiming yoga together.
Chris Seiter: Okay, that’s pretty cool.
Rachael: And I would post that on social media for kind of making myself look better. I would post the screen shots on Instagram, and so that was that. And then trying to get myself financially better because obviously COVID slashed through my financial on that, and then what’s the other one in the trilogy? Health, wealth, and-
Chris Seiter: Health, wealth, and relationships. So, did you make new friends or something?
Rachael: I made new friends technically. It was through gaming.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you played games and everything.
Rachael: So, online friends a little bit.
Chris Seiter: I mean, technically that counts, and sometimes all you really need to do is focus on two because the two will kind of bring up, and it did… It seems like to you so much of your relationships have matched up with him and that just took a hit. So, it’s almost like it’s kind of hard to explore other things in that realm because it feels-
Rachael: Yeah, it was just a bad… 2020 has just not been a good year whatsoever.
Chris Seiter: I think it’s been better than you think. You went through some ups and downs, but maybe in the end it made you realize how important this guy is and maybe the same with him to you.
Rachael: Yeah. So, I focused on just on making my… because I let myself go for those first couple weeks, so just getting back and then trying to pick up my sad little bank account and then make friends, mostly online. I talked to some girls through the Facebook group too, with my battle buddy and some of the other girls, because I’d post things and they were like, “Oh, our situations sound similar,” and we’d talk. Because I was just looking for anything because every day… I’m a talker. When I have a problem, I talk it out right then and there. Him, he’s like my mother, he needs a couple days, time, to process it and then talk it. And that was one of the reasons I Natted because I wanted to fix it right then and there and he’s like…
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Rachael: Stop.
Chris Seiter: Well, his communication style is different than yours, and sometimes that can be hard for someone like you to grasp because you’re like, “Let’s just fix it.”
Rachael: Yeah, I’m problem solver, and our communication has gotten better now now that we’re seeing each other more because he’s officially with me, not living with me, but back in the state that we’re in. And so, our communication has really gotten better versus just having to talk on the phone all the time because we’re states away.
Chris Seiter: So, tactic wise, so you talked about the self improvement thing, and I’m happy to hear you say that because that’s the number one trend I see people cite. But tactic wise, like when it came to… So, you mentioned ending conversations first, you mentioned actually transitioning from texting to FaceTime, but what do you feel what really worked for you tactic wise?
Rachael: I think the biggest thing, he said it, is just seeing my confidence come out more, because I had been working on myself and he just like I reminded him-
Chris Seiter: So, like the social media posts that you were posting?
Rachael: Social media posts, and then when we got to FaceTiming and I would end conversations, I was busy, even though I really wasn’t. I’d make my… because I’m not paying attention to him as much because I always had been his person to go to. And my mom was always saying that… My poor mom was my therapist during this whole thing, and-
Chris Seiter: Oh, but she loves you so much to be able to do that, right?
Rachael: Yeah, and so God bless her.
Chris Seiter: You got such a good mom, seriously.
Rachael: If I can be half the mom she could be then I would be set for life. She was like, “You were his person too,” because every day I’d be like, “I just want to talk to him,” and she’s like, “I know, but it’ll…” Because when I told her I got into this program… because she’s old school, like really old school.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I get it. I get it.
Rachael: Because when you talk about don’t talk to many people, because I was getting so many opinions because me being me and being a problem solver I was talking to a lot of people like, “What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?” And some people were like, “Just leave him. If he wants to leave you, then that.” And so, when we got back to talking I think just showing him that I’m the girl that he remembers from our first date, I think that was the biggest thing and then ending conversations so I looked busy.
Chris Seiter: So, you did look busy, right. So, one thing that I’ve been also trying to advise people on recently, and I’d love to get your take on this, is trying to find something that you feel is more important than him. Do you ever feel like you got to a point where you found something like that?
Rachael: I think the job I started treating more important than him.
Rachael: Yes, because I’d just lost my job and my boyfriend, and so I technically had gotten my job back before he asked me to be his girlfriend again. So, when I got that I was focusing on work and making myself better at work and I think that showed him that my attention can go elsewhere, not just all on you.
Chris Seiter: So, because to me it seems like the big problem that you had was your focus was so much on fixing things after this big blow up that you had and he maybe thinks, “Wow, she doesn’t have anything else other than just this.” That maybe just drew him back a little bit.
Rachael: Oh, yeah.
Chris Seiter: So, do you think him seeing these other-
Rachael: I was not very attractive looking at the end of the breakup. I was very-
Chris Seiter: I don’t-
Rachael: I was very desperate looking.
Chris Seiter: I think more than anything it has to do with your focus, like it seems like you’re obsessive about this breakup and then maybe putting your focus on other things is intriguing to him because he thought he had your pegged a certain way and then he realizes he doesn’t. Maybe that’s what your mom was trying to say, like she’s like, “Hey, you’re focusing…” or your therapist, you know, she was like in your face. That’s kind of… So, it’s kind of good that you got lots of different perspectives on the problem.
Rachael: I think I got a little too many perspectives because I would talk to a lot of people about it.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, that’s a true… there is such a thing as too many chefs in the kitchen, so to speak.
Rachael: Oh, and I work in a kitchen, so yeah, I understand that.
Chris Seiter: So, what do you feel going forward is your next steps with him? So, are you guys long distance any more?
Rachael: So, he doesn’t live with me, he lives with his parents right now because didn’t want to live in a dorm when he back to school because he did two years in the military and now he’s doing his last two years. So, he’s living with his parents right now and he’ll stay a couple nights here when my days off for work. And so, our thing right now is kind of just dating honestly because we were long distance from the start. And now it’s-
Chris Seiter: Wow. Well, that says a lot about you though because it takes a lot to get into a long distance relationship off the bat, I mean, you really have to like that person.
Rachael: A lot of my relationships have been long distance and my mom at some point’s like, “Do you purposely get in relationships with people you don’t have to deal with?” And I’m like, “No, it just happens that way that I date someone and then they have to move somewhere.” And so, now we’re just focusing on dating because during our reconciliation time my mom’s like, “You need to be careful just jumping feet first back in with him because what if he moves back and y’all end up hating each other after a couple months? You realize y’all were only good long distance?”
Chris Seiter: That’s good advice too because it seems like sometimes when you’re long distance you get used to the routines of long distance, but then when you’re together there’s the aspect of having to see what the person’s like all the time. You see kind of the hidden depths to them that you don’t-
Rachael: Like never putting the toilet seat down.
Chris Seiter: There you go, stuff like that. I mean, that’s like petty stuff but there’s other stuff that can run deep that you just feel you’re not matched. Does you feel like you guys have had enough time to sort of feel each other out that way?
Rachael: It’s getting better day by day. I think our biggest thing is I’m an over thinker and he has resting bitch face really bad. And he… I’ll always be like, “Are you mad at me? Did I do something?” And he’s like, “No, I’m just…” He’s not a big talker, unlike me.
Chris Seiter: This is me, I just look mad all the time.
Rachael: He’s like, “I’m just sitting here. I can enjoy your time in peace with you just sitting here and me sitting here and us watching videos.” That’s our biggest thing is just… because I’m a very… I’m type A, he’s type B. I’m very open… extrovert, introvert. He’s there, like when he first met my family, my family’s like, “He’s very quiet,” and I’m like, “He’s really not. He just doesn’t know you.” He’s kind of that person at a party that’ll sit in the corner until… And he’s even said it himself with me, he’s like, “I would’ve never gone up to you at a bar. Like, if I saw you at a bar I would’ve never gone up to.”
Chris Seiter: So, he’s not going to be the person who opens up until he really knows you and trusts you. But you get him talking all the time, I’m assuming?
Rachael: Yes, it’s my job. I deal with people, I’m in the people industry so that’s my thing. Because he’s always impressed with… he’ll even say it, like, “You can just walk into a room and make friends with five people right off the bat,” because I’ll just, you know?
Chris Seiter: You’re very very personable, you’re very good at talking. It is an art and he’s maybe lacking in that way, but maybe that’s what draws him to you.
Rachael: Yeah, we’re very opposites in that way, and figuring out our communication right now also is the biggest thing because I’ll say what I think, it’s got me in very problematic situations in the past, but I’ll say what’s on my mind right there and then without thinking and he needs time to process it. And so, our communication is getting better and I think that’s our biggest step is just feeling each other out, how we are together, and being able to talk. Because communication is key but also comprehension is key, because you can talk left and right but if they’re not understanding it or willing to work with it… because everybody’s like, “Communication is key in a relationship,” and I’m like, “No, comprehension is.”
Chris Seiter: That’s true. I think also people have different ways of communicating and that’s not always easy to pick up on. Some people who aren’t very verbal will communicate very well non-verbally, you just have to learn to pick up their cues.
Rachael: Yeah, with the love languages his is very much quality and acts of service.
Chris Seiter: Really? Interesting, I would’ve expected touch for him.
Rachael: So, guys are… No, he hates PDA. I’ll try to hold his hand in public and he’s, like, “No.”
Chris Seiter: Seriously? Oh, man. Okay.
Rachael: I know, we’ll be out on dates and I’ll be like, “Can I have a kiss?” He’s like, “This is your one kiss.” I’m like, “Wow, that’s just mean.”
Chris Seiter: He’s not like that at home I’m hoping, right?
Rachael: No, he’s just… And he’s a person that’s like, “PDA is not supposed to be public, it’s supposed to be private,” so.
Chris Seiter: Oh, okay. All right.
Rachael: Yeah, and so his acts of service, quality time, because he’ll stay over and wake up really early just to take my dog out or do my dishes for me because I’m working a lot right now because of COVID, so he’ll do that. That’s the biggest problem, because mine, I like words of affirmation. I-
Chris Seiter: Okay, I would’ve expected that from you, words of affirmation. I guess words of affirmation and quality time would be my two if I were to guess you.
Rachael: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And then I show mine by gift giving. I’m a very big gift giver.
Chris Seiter: Oh, okay. So, yours is active… Is that one of the other…
Rachael: It’s gift giving, acts of service, quality time, physical touch, and words.
Chris Seiter: Words of affirmation. I guess.
Rachael: There’s five, that’s all I know.
Chris Seiter: [crosstalk 00:43:36]. Five love languages.
Rachael: So, yeah, I give mine by presents and then I like receiving words. He likes quality time, but he does acts of service.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Now, what I’m also curious about is after you got him back, did you ask him about his perspective on the breakup at all? Did you get kind of his side of things?
Rachael: Oh, we talked about it. I even told him I was in this program. He thought it was funny. He was like, “Were you that desperate?” I was like, “Yes, I was.” We talked about it and it was a long… that was like our really big deep conversation of what did he do while I over here and sobbing in misery, what did he do?
Chris Seiter: So, what was his experience of the breakup?
Rachael: So, he put himself to his work when he returned back to the desert with his guys.
Chris Seiter: Distraction essentially.
Rachael: Yeah, he distracted with that because he’s like, “I need to make sure they’re fed. We’re in 110 degree weather. I had to make sure they were going to be alive because they’re 18 year olds not knowing what the heck they’re doing.” And when I kept Natting him he was like, “At one point we were working on a truck or something and I threw an ax and it almost hit someone.” He just delved into work and then he said that-
Chris Seiter: Rachael, you’re danger. You’re [inaudible 00:44:54] is super dangerous. You got to stop it.
Rachael: I know, it almost killed somebody. Someone almost got an ax through the torso. But he said, “When you stopped talking to me…” because he would part on base because they couldn’t go out either because they were shut down, he would just drink with his guy friends. He’s like, “I really miss her,” like surely but surely he’d be like-
Chris Seiter: It took time for him to come to that realization is what you’re saying.
Rachael: He’s like, “I really do miss her,” and he struggled with do I let her meet someone there, even though I’m going to be back in a couple months? Do I let her meet someone there, or-
Chris Seiter: So, seeing you go to this party where there’s other guys who could potentially hit on you is the ultimate inciting incident that causes him to reach out and start making realize I shouldn’t let her go?
Rachael: No, and he’s a pretty smart, I mean, some of the male breed are stupid, but he really like-
Chris Seiter: I can say that is true. I can undeniably say that’s true.
Rachael: He even said, he’s like, “Did you post that one picture where you showed your butt just to spite me?” And I was like, “Yeah.” This was after we back together, he knew what I was doing. He knew I was posting things-
Chris Seiter: Sometimes though I experience they can know what you’re doing but it’s still just as effective. That’s the beauty of it. It worked on him, I’m sure.
Rachael: Yeah, it did work on him and he just slowly but surely realized he misses me, he misses talking to me, and when he saw me with other males that’s when his alpha male kind of kicked in and was like, “Nevermind, that’s mine.”
Chris Seiter: He’s like, “Give that to me.” Oh, that’s great.
Rachael: And when we started hanging out he saw that I was talking to… Hello.
Chris Seiter: The other man in your life right there?
Rachael: Yeah, well she’s a female.
Chris Seiter: Oh, it’s a she? Well, you know?
Rachael: Yes, she is a she.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Rachael: Okay, she’ll just be… She’ll just be in here for right now. Can you please get down? Where was I going at? Once he saw-
Chris Seiter: When he saw you I guess texting other dudes?
Rachael: Yeah, he saw me texting other dudes and that’s when he was like, “Why are you doing that?” And I’m like, “Well, I’m not your girlfriend. I can talk to other people,” and then he’s like, “I’m working on it.” And so, his mind he officially wanted to ask me to be his girlfriend when I re-met his family again and kind of cleared the-
Chris Seiter: So, that’s big for him to re-introduce you to the family?
Rachael: Yes, because that was his biggest… because his mother did not… like, blocked me on everything, did not want us to be talking to… Yeah, she’s a very…
Chris Seiter: Stern, I would say.
Rachael: Yes, very stern woman. But yeah, that was the snapping point is when he saw I was… that’s when it clicked was when he saw, hey, she could be taken by other people. I was like, “You told me to do it, so I went and started talking to people and then you’re mad that I did it.”
Chris Seiter: Yeah, that’s true.
Rachael: But I wasn’t serious about it because he was my person, so.
Chris Seiter: Right, right. So, is there any other thing that you learned from the experience that you feel anyone listening could take?
Rachael: Even when you’re in your very low point and you feel like it’s not going to work out at all, it could end up working. Because I’d read so much into what you were saying about breaking no contact lessens your chances, obviously it didn’t lessen mine to the point it made it worked, essentially.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, it worked out okay for you.
Rachael: And I think preaching to the choir, it’s like you got to focus on yourself because if you don’t love yourself how could someone else love you? That’s the thing. And so, when I started focusing on myself and finding myself again, that’s what drew him back in. So, the biggest thing I would-
Chris Seiter: [crosstalk 00:48:37] so fascinating because it’s a long distance relationship on top of it. So, I mean, we are also no talking enough about this big meet up that you had. I always say you need to build towards this one big meet up, and it seems like that meet up went really well for you even though you had to drive 14 hours the other way.
Rachael: Yes. I did 12 hours that way and 14 hours that way. Yeah, I feel like you got to trust in the process, I guess, which I’m not a very trusting person so I was like, “This is not working. Why did I do this?” And I kind of went off the track a little bit with not texting like you say. Sometimes you got to… It’s a guideline, it’s not a step by step. It’s a guideline. [crosstalk 00:49:22]
Chris Seiter: Yeah, like The Pirates of the Caribbean, they’re not rules, they’re guidelines.
Rachael: It’s more like guidelines. Yeah, I feel like that program… for some people in their situations, because I know you’ve seen thousands of relationships.
Chris Seiter: Hundreds or thousands by this point, I think.
Rachael: We’ve only been together a year and a half at the point of the breakup, and I was his first… I’m the first girl he’s ever taken home, the first girl he’s ever said he loved. I’m literally his [crosstalk 00:49:49]-
Chris Seiter: So, you’re a big person for him.
Rachael: Yeah, and I think when… and when we were discussing what did he go threw, he’s never had to [inaudible 00:49:59] serious breakup like this because I’m the first, so he didn’t really know how to handle it so it was new for him. So, and also going back to the guideline thing, I kind of went off the track a little bit and it seemed to work, so.
Chris Seiter: It did, yeah. So, that’s the other thing I’m noticing is people calling audibles mid play and it still works out for them. It seems to me like you need to trust your gut because you know your guy better than anyone else. All right, I don’t think you breaking the no contact rule like 10 times worked so well, but you eventually got it.
Rachael: Mine was like three or four.
Chris Seiter: Three times, but you still-
Rachael: Three or four or in there somewhere.
Chris Seiter: You still did, like you said you did a 40 day no contact at one point, right?
Rachael: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Like, I think it was the second time I broke it is because I had accidentally had screen shotted something of his Snapchat and it sent a notification to him and I was like, “Crap,” now I got to re-start it. But yeah, my situation I feel like is different and typical because I’ve seen on some of the pages these people have been in 10 year relationships and they just suddenly can walk away, so-
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I think the problems those people face are different than the problems you’re facing. You’re more of a news type relationship, they’re more of the we’ve been together so long it’s getting stale type problem. That wasn’t so much a problem in your situation because [crosstalk 00:51:27].
Rachael: And in my mindset at the time I was like, “How can these people, they’ve been together 10 years, share kids, how could they just walk away?” And I’m like, “I’m hopeless because I’ve only been together a little over a year.”
Chris Seiter: Yeah, that’s the wrong attitude. I mean, it’s like comparing apples to oranges because it’s two completely different situations.
Rachael: Ann actually said that in our coaching and it helped a lot. She’s like, “Every relationship’s unique.”
Chris Seiter: How old are you, by the way, and how old is he?
Rachael: I turn 24 actually next week and he’s 24.
Chris Seiter: 24?
Rachael: So, we’re only like six week apart, so yeah.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I’m thinking back when I was 24 I felt a lot like you, so I felt like I kind of had a lot of it figured out but with time and age and experience you kind of realize it’s not the same. It’s a little apples to oranges, so a lot of those thoughts you had about, well, how can these people get their ex back after being 10 years and they have kids together? It’s a lot different situation now that I have kids and I’m married, I can kind of understand some of why they walk away sometimes. You have to work to keep that relationship going, and your problem is a lot different because I’ve also been in a long distance relationship. I married my wife and we were in a long distance relationship for maybe a year I want to say, and to me the key with the long distance relationship is always having a plan to close the distance, and luckily you’ve already done that so that hard part’s over.
Rachael: Yeah, I did it like half way through the relationship, I was like, “I’m moving to where he’s going to back to eventually.”
Chris Seiter: Yeah, but you said you didn’t do it for him, you said you did it for the job.
Rachael: I got with the company and they’re like, “Hey,” I was like, “Do you have properties there?” And they’re like, “Yeah.” I was like, “Okay, going there.” There was something I was going to say, keep talking. It’ll come back to me.
Chris Seiter: No, well I think your situation’s real fascinating because we don’t really have a lot of people that have come on that I’ve been able to interview for the podcast or the YouTube channel like this who are in long distance relationships. So, the one last thing I’d like to get your thoughts on are what was your key… Did you think there was a huge difference between an average breakup and a long distance breakup? What was your experiences with that?
Rachael: With a breakup in person, you can’t behind your phone if you’re standing there in front of each other. And that’s like the biggest thing I kind of got PO’ed about was I’m like, “He can just shut me off because he just doesn’t have to respond to his phone.” And I think the key was when we were starting to talk again making it flow smoothly so he doesn’t just block my number and leave. Because this little device right here, so much of our relationship was through this. I kind of had to-
Chris Seiter: Those devices are almost everything to us now if you think about it. I mean, most of our-
Rachael: Oh yeah, this is my life.
Chris Seiter: Most of our online searching habits are here instead of a computer now, which didn’t always used to be the way when I was growing up. It was always the computer that you would get online. But I just want to take a minute and thank you so much for coming on, seriously.
Rachael: Well, I mean, I just want to help people because my situation I hope speaks volumes to people that I can work, because I was absolutely hopeless. I was willing to start talking to other people and see where it led.
Chris Seiter: Well, thank you so much for coming on.
Rachael: Yeah, because if he can just walk away like that, why can’t I?
Success Story: How To Get Back An Ex Who Ghosts You
Aug 19, 2020
As many of you know, I’ve been on this success story kick lately. Basically every week I’m trying to drip feed hour long success story interviews to my YouTube channel so I can get to the bottom of what’s actually working for my clients.
Not only has this practice been incredibly informative but I’ve even learned some new things.
Anyways, today I have the pleasure of introducing you to Samantha, a woman whose ex literally ghosted her while she was waiting for him to pick her up at the airport.
Buckle up, because this one is a long one.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Chris Seiter: Okay, today we’re going to be talking to Samantha, who is a success story that we found in our Facebook group. We’re going to have just a real organic conversation with her to get to the bottom of what she did that actually worked. What I tend to like to do, Samantha, in these circumstances … I just like to give the floor over to you to explain how the breakup went down and just basically tell us your story.
Samantha: Okay. Breakup was September last year, so almost a year ago.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, a couple months short of a year.
Samantha: Yeah, a couple months short of a year. I think the breakup was really, really terrible. Really, really bad.
Chris Seiter: Define what makes it really, really bad.
Samantha: Yeah. I was traveling abroad for work for a few months, and then when I came back to the States, my boyfriend just didn’t pick up the phone, so I had to figure out a ride from the airport to get home. Then I didn’t have my keys because-
Chris Seiter: How long were you gone?
Samantha: I was gone for two months.
Chris Seiter: And so you come back to the United States and you don’t even have a ride from the airport? He just ghosted you at the airport?
Samantha: Yeah. Well, we were messaging and texting each other up until then, and then … I guess he came to the airport an hour before my flight or something, and then when I actually got off the plane, he was not there and he just told me, “You need to figure out how to get back on your own.” I was like, “What? Okay.”
Chris Seiter: So already, there’s kind of a bit of a red flag. Did you have any sense that … Was there friction between you guys before this moment?
Samantha: Yeah, there was.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so it was maybe … Were you fighting before to make him do this?
Samantha: We weren’t really fighting, but I think I was having a hard time abroad, and then also, he was having a hard time being alone, I guess. His job was really stressful as well. So maybe it’s [crosstalk 00:02:40]
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you get to the airport and you need a ride, so I’m assuming you find a ride or you call an Uber or something.
Samantha: Yeah, I called a Uber to get back to my apartment and everything. Then I get back to my apartment. I don’t have my keys because I’m not going to carry my keys abroad in case I lose them. But what ended up happening was that he’s not even back in the apartment, and so I’m stuck outside of the apartment for like an hour or two until he comes back.
Chris Seiter: So he’s got your keys?
Samantha: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Why didn’t he just … Okay, we’ll get to that in a minute. Does the talk come or something? Does he say, “We’re going to break up,” right there and then, or does it linger for a little while?
Samantha: No, no. Basically, when he came back with the keys to let me in the apartment, he was like, “I want you to move out.”
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you’re sharing an apartment with him.
Samantha: Yeah, yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So he basically just says, “Here, get your stuff, get out.”
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Well, that’s pretty bad. That’s pretty bad.
Samantha: That’s pretty bad. And I was like-
Chris Seiter: Did you ask why?
Samantha: Yeah. I was like, “Wait, what? What’s happening?” Sorry, that was my dog barking just now.
Chris Seiter: That’s all right. It’s all right.
Samantha: Then I was like, “Wait, what’s happening? You didn’t tell me anything. What’s going on?” And yeah, it was just like … After he was talking or was like, “I want you to move out,” he was trying to say, “I wasn’t happy, I haven’t been happy, I still care about you, so you can stay here for a while until you find a new place, but I want you to move out.”
Chris Seiter: Was it a two-bedroom apartment or a one-bedroom apartment?
Samantha: It was a one-bedroom apartment and we were together-
Chris Seiter: So you’d have to share a bed with him.
Samantha: Yeah, yeah.
Chris Seiter: Wow.
Samantha: We were together for like six years.
Chris Seiter: Wow, okay. So he wants a change, essentially, because … Did he give any more insight into other than, “I lost feelings for you,” type thing?
Samantha: No. Not really.
Chris Seiter: So for you, it was just out of left field.
Samantha: Yeah. It was completely out of the blue.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so what happens next?
Samantha: So-
Chris Seiter: Also, awkward sleeping arrangements, by the way.
Samantha: Yeah, super awkward. So then I just end up just being on the bed or on the couch. But for the next week or so, he wasn’t in the apartments for a few days-
Chris Seiter: He didn’t sleep there? He just stayed with his parents?
Samantha: He wasn’t sleeping there. No. Our families are out of state, and so-
Chris Seiter: Okay, so where is he going?
Samantha: Exactly. I wasn’t sure. So then I was like, “What’s going on?” At this point, I also want to say he didn’t say that he wanted to break up with me. He never said-
Chris Seiter: So at this point, you’re holding onto that little thread of hope of, “Well, we’re still together. He just needs his space. He just needs his space.”
Samantha: Yeah. “He just wants me to move out. Okay.”
Chris Seiter: All right. You can see the logical progression, where it’s going to go now. So obviously, red flag, he’s not coming home for a week. Did he come to the apartment at all?
Samantha: Yeah, to take out his dog and somewhat like that. But he would always go back when I wasn’t there or something like that.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So did you confront him at any point, like, “Where the heck are you going?”
Samantha: Yeah. I didn’t confront him. But what ended up happening was I saw him one day and I noticed a hickey on his neck. I was like, “What the-”
Chris Seiter: So he’s definitely got some other girl.
Samantha: Yeah, exactly. And so then after I saw that, I confronted him and he was like, “Yeah. I’ve been staying over this other girl’s house.”
Chris Seiter: Do you think that was going on while you were abroad?
Samantha: I think so. I asked him about it after or whatever. I came back in September and he said he met her 4th of July and-
Chris Seiter: Okay, I think that’s probably accurate.
Samantha: Yeah, they met 4th of July and he said that they didn’t really actually hang out or do anything until a week before I came back.
Chris Seiter: That’s probably true. I think that’s true.
Samantha: I think that’s true.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I mean, that even can explain he’s like, “You need to move out.” Okay, so at this point, you have to be reeling. I mean, anyone in their right mind would be reeling.
Samantha: Yeah, exactly. I was so upset and actually pissed off and devastated. It was really, really terrible. And so I remember the date, actually, when I figured out all of this stuff. It was September 13th.
Chris Seiter: So it’s seared in your memory. You know.
Samantha: Yeah, it’s seared there. Then after we had this conversation, he was just angry with me and just left the apartment, probably just to go see the girl.
Chris Seiter: The ironic part is he’s angry at you when he’s done all this stuff. But that’s a consistent behavior I’ve noticed in breakups, especially when there’s the victim mentality. But at a certain point, you’re going to … At what point do you start … Because I’m assuming you found me or the program through YouTube or through Google. At some point, you’re going to search for advice. When does that start happening? Does that start happening after you move out of the apartment, or how does that come about?
Samantha: Oh. I remember September 13th was when all of this had happened and he left, so I was alone for two days by myself.
Chris Seiter: Right. So September 13th to September 15th.
Samantha: Yeah. But actually, I found your program … When he left, I was just obsessively thinking, “Oh no. This is not happening right now.” And so I went through Google and found your website, Ex Boyfriend Recovery, literally two, three hours after he left.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Were you consistently coming back and reading articles?
Samantha: Yeah. I spent probably the entire first day reading through all the articles and I was like, “Dude, this all makes complete sense. I know this is all going to work.” And so I just went out and bought it right away.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you got the program. At the point you buy the program, has he already moved out or have you already moved out?
Samantha: No.
Chris Seiter: Or is that still happening in the September 13th to 15th timeframe we’re talking about?
Samantha: Yeah, that’s still happening. Or I’m still there because-
Chris Seiter: So obviously a big part of the program is the no contact rule. How do you manage that?
Samantha: Well, he didn’t come back September 13th to 15th, but then for him, he ended up needing to go abroad to go to a friend’s wedding, and so I ended up having a week to myself in the apartment alone. So it was kind of convenient that way, so I just did no contact from that.
Chris Seiter: So you started the week in the apartment alone, you just started the no contact rule.
Samantha: Right away.
Chris Seiter: Are you at this point looking for other apartments to go live in?
Samantha: Yep.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you had to have found one, I’m assuming.
Samantha: Yeah, I did.
Chris Seiter: All right, so how fast did it take you to find the apartment and were you still in no contact when you found it? Did you just move out and when he comes back, the place is empty?
Samantha: I didn’t, actually. I found an apartment and then what ended up happening was things fell through and I had to find another one. So by the time I actually moved, it was maybe 16 days after, so maybe beginning of October by then.
Chris Seiter: So it started out as a pure no contact, and then when he comes back, was it like a limited no contact type situation you found yourself in?
Samantha: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: And then when you do move out, do you go right back into regular no contact?
Samantha: No.
Chris Seiter: What is your no contact strategy, I guess is the point I’m trying to get at?
Samantha: Oh, yeah. So when he was abroad and I was looking for apartments, I did absolutely no contact. No messaging, no limited no contact. I didn’t talk to him at all.
Chris Seiter: Right, right. Got it.
Samantha: But when he came back and my apartment things couldn’t come through, or whatever, I had to talk to him again really briefly. People would say that’s limited contact, but I just saw that as, like, “Oh, I had to break no contact because-”
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you just broke it, even though it’s technically limited no contact. And then do you just start over when you move out from the beginning?
Samantha: Yes. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay. That’s interesting.
Samantha: I just started all over.
Chris Seiter: Started all over from the get go.
Samantha: Yep.
Chris Seiter: And the no contact period, what was the time frame you had decided on?
Samantha: I did 45 days because it was …
Chris Seiter: 45 days, because the other one-
Samantha: … super dramatic and I was like, “This is terrible.”
Chris Seiter: Okay, so 45 days. That’s the longest period of no contact that we tend to recommend. What events occurred during that time from his side? Because most of the time, from what I’m understanding, it’s not so much what he does, but it’s more about what you do during no contact. But most of the people who are interested in no contact want to do it because they think it’ll make their ex miss them. So did he contact you at all during any of those 45 days, or was he pretty silent himself?
Samantha: The first time I did it, so-
Chris Seiter: So the week of no breaking it.
Samantha: Yeah, the week of not breaking it, he did message me a lot, and then he wrote a little letter also saying, “I still love you. I still care about you.” And then he said, “Maybe when I get back from the wedding or traveling, we can try and work things out.”
Chris Seiter: Even though you caught him with a hickey from some other girl.
Samantha: Yeah. Oh my God. That’s another thing. I found out about this when I was in my 45-day no contact, was that he brought the other girl to …
Chris Seiter: To the wedding.
Samantha: … his friend’s wedding and she wore my dress.
Chris Seiter: What?
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay, all right, that’s pretty big. So he is literally writing you this letter while he goes abroad, saying he still loves you, and yet he brought some other girl to the wedding and she’s wearing your dress.
Samantha: Yeah. I was livid. I was like, “What are you doing? That is-”
Chris Seiter: You have every right to be. Okay, so 45 days. Does he contact you at all during that timeframe?
Samantha: The second part, no. Not-
Chris Seiter: So radio silent, essentially.
Samantha: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Completely silent. All right, so what do you do during that time? Because a lot of the success stories that I’m interviewing, I’m noticing that they use that time super wisely. Do you feel like you did that as well, or do you feel like when you came out of the 45 days, you were sort of changed in a way? Or what was your experience, is I guess what I’m getting at?
Samantha: Oh, because your book says to make a trinity calendar and all this stuff, and I basically had … I had the audiobook of your book also, and so whenever I was doing work or anything like that, I would just listen to all of the no contact things so I’m just absorbing it. Then I also, literally every day, I had a trinity calendar that would hit my wealth, my relationships, and-
Chris Seiter: Health.
Samantha: Health, yeah. I would go to the gym, listen to your podcast. It was just really therapeutic for me to be-
Chris Seiter: So you used the program during the no contact rule to kind of prepare, I guess, and you really stuck to that holy trinity ideal.
Samantha: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay. By doing those things, do you feel more confident after the 45 days is over, or … I guess I’m just trying to get you to elaborate a little bit on your internal mindset as you do these things. Do you think they made a difference for you, or was it something else that made a difference?
Samantha: Oh, I definitely think it made a difference. I guess the other thing that I added to the trinity calendar was social media also.
Chris Seiter: Okay, social media. So what kind of things are you posting on social media?
Samantha: Yeah, exactly. I think for me, I was extremely scientific about it. I would basically log everything that I did. So I would post at this time, I posted this thing, did he watch it? No, okay, then I’ll post another thing. And then he watched that. So for me, the biggest thing was with Instagram where you can have Stories and your posts, so you can see who-
Chris Seiter: So you can see who watches.
Samantha: Yeah, who watches it. And what I ended up finding out … It was like if I just posted a Story, he wouldn’t really watch it right away. But if I made a post, like an actual post that’s on the page and then made a Story, he would watch it.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you only can find that out since you charted.
Samantha: Yeah, I charted it.
Chris Seiter: So in your opinion, you felt like charting was one of the best things that you ended up doing.
Samantha: Yeah. I think so.
Chris Seiter: Do you mind if I ask a question about that?
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Because a lot of people don’t look at it that way, and I’m constantly telling people in the Facebook group to chart their progress and everything like that. You start to notice this pattern eventually, right? Like, “Okay, I’m posting these posts and he seems to watch that or read that.” When you notice the pattern and you keep doing that type of technique, did he ever once fall off of that pattern? Or was it consistently every time you would do this one thing, he would watch?
Samantha: It was pretty consistent. If he didn’t do it, it was really rare. But even if he didn’t watch it, I was not really fazed about it because I was really focused on making myself feel better with the trinity, too.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Did you become part of … Obviously, I know you’re in the Facebook group, but what I don’t know is did you get assigned to the Battle Buddy program, or did you-
Samantha: Yeah, I did.
Chris Seiter: So did you utilize any of the resources that we have from the community?
Samantha: Yes. I ended up having … I think my original Battle Buddy decided that she didn’t want her ex back, and then … I think I had a total of maybe seven Battle Buddies.
Chris Seiter: All right, so you basically just got as many people’s opinions as possible to help you throughout your scenario.
Samantha: Yeah. I thought that was really useful. And everyone in the group that I talked to was really, really nice. I think when I was going through no contact and I was freaking out with my ex being with this other girl, they were able to really just calm me down and share their experiences, too.
Chris Seiter: I’m curious. You mention the other woman being involved in your situation. At any point as you’re going through no contact do you start to have second thoughts about trying to get him back? Do you let the anger take over and you’re just kind of like, “I don’t care about him anymore”? Does that ever happen? Or do you remain pretty stalwart about wanting to get him back the consistent way through?
Samantha: There are definitely a few moments where I think, like, “Oh, is this even worth it?” or anything. But then I would just journal all of this out in my thoughts and write out what I would think and all the anger that I was having. Then I realized, “But there’s so many good things about our relationship. Yeah, maybe he’s wronged me a lot, like a ton,” but I still kind of believed that it would be better if we were together.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so that was kind of your North Star consistently. One thing that I’d like to ask you about before we move on specifically about the approach and what happens after your no contact period is I’ve notice that as I’ve been interviewing more and more of these success stories, all of them talk about this concept of … I’m kind of likening it to a devil-may-care attitude where they get to this point where they just feel so confident, they understand, “Okay, if I don’t have my ex anymore, I don’t care.” Did you ever get to a point like that, or were you pretty consistent, like, “I really want him back,” the entire time?
Samantha: Oh, no. I definitely thought I didn’t care as much.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So what did it take for you to get that? Because at first, when you’re searching Google to get to the website, you’re obsessively about trying to get him back or trying to solve a problem or head off a problem before a breakup actually occurs. So at what point do you start to have that kind of internal confidence in yourself?
Samantha: I think definitely talking to the Battle Buddies helped a lot. I also think that because I was doing so many different things for trinity, I realized that before in the relationship, I was just holding myself back from being my true self or something. I-
Chris Seiter: It was like you’re not meeting your maximum potential. You’re complacent, maybe.
Samantha: Yeah. Yeah. And I realized that … Well, for me, my wealth was getting really good at that time.
Chris Seiter: So that helps. That helps, for sure.
Samantha: Yeah, that helped a lot. Then I was really happy with all of my friends that I was making and the coworkers I was getting friends with, I guess. And so I realized that, “Wow, a lot of people actually like me and it’s okay. I could totally keep doing this forever.”
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you were at a point where you were just like, “If I get him back, I get him back. If I don’t, I don’t.”
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so that’s been a-
Samantha: But I still-
Chris Seiter: Sorry, go ahead.
Samantha: I still also thought it would be really great if I got him back, but-
Chris Seiter: Yeah. So, I mean, you’re leaning still towards getting him back, but you have that swagger enough to know, like, “If I don’t get him back, it’ll be all right. It’ll hurt a little bit, but I’ll be okay.”
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so that’s a consistent theme I’ve found among every single success story. Every single one. Which is important for anyone listening. But we haven’t really gotten to the tactical stuff because he’s still got the other woman, you’re still on the 45-day no contact. So how do you handle that delicate situation, especially this other woman who wore your dress?
Samantha: Oh, God. I’m still angry about it, but …
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Sorry, I don’t mean to rip open an old scab.
Samantha: No, no, no. It’s okay. I think at this point, I’m angry but I also can joke about it.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so what do you do? Seriously, because this is a tough situation you’re in. There’s another woman involved. How do you handle that?
Samantha: Yeah. I knew there was another woman, but when we went to … Are we going into texting phase now? Is that [crosstalk 00:24:52]
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I mean, that’s the natural next progression. So no contact’s over, you go into texting phase, you know there’s another woman still. What happens?
Samantha: Yeah. Actually, the thing is, he never confirmed if they were dating or not, like officially dating.
Chris Seiter: So for you, it just seems like they’re a fling.
Samantha: Yeah. To me, it seems like a fling and I never addressed it in texting phase. I just went through his interests and I had an entire chart, all of my texting, too.
Chris Seiter: So you really charted it. Like better than no contact, you charted the texting as well. Did you notice any kind of interesting trends about what was working in texts?
Samantha: Yeah. My first text was about computers. He’s really into computers and things like that, so my first text was, “Hey, I need your advice.” Anything with gadgets. I figured out that any time I texted about gadgets or things like that, he would text really quickly.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So the, “I need your advice,” type thing, do you liken that to a damsel in distress type thing?
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So he really responded well to the damsel in distress when you put his interests in it.
Samantha: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Seiter: Okay. Was that a consistent thing no matter what, even to this day that would still hold true?
Samantha: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So it never ended.
Samantha: Yeah, it didn’t end.
Chris Seiter: How many times did you use that?
Samantha: Oh, not that often, actually. I only used it maybe twice in texting.
Chris Seiter: Okay, twice. So what were some of the … So you’re using other things as well. What else do you notice is working?
Samantha: Let me actually just pull up my texting calendar.
Chris Seiter: There we go, a texting calendar.
Samantha: Well, yeah. It’s kind of a calendar because I logged the dates and how many days in between I paused, too, type thing.
Chris Seiter: That’s beautiful to know for everyone listening who’s struggling with how to space out their texts. Samantha’s about to give us the goods.
Samantha: Yeah. I mean, also, I think what helped me a lot was the Facebook group kept talking about Tide Theory. When I was first getting into texting, I was really confused on, okay, is it the number of texts? Because in the book, it says number of texts. And then in the Facebook group, they talk about length of time periods in between. And so I think asking the group all these questions really helped me a lot, too.
Chris Seiter: Okay, and obviously sometimes when you ask the group, you get differing answers. I’ve found that always just choosing what feels right to you tends to be the better approach. What was your conclusion when you would ask the group and they’d give you these differing answers?
Samantha: I think what I ended up doing was focusing more on the days in between my texts.
Chris Seiter: So they days you wouldn’t be texting, when you would pull back.
Samantha: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Seiter: And he was pretty responsive, I’m assuming, in the text messages?
Samantha: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Do you have any tips for someone who’s going through the program but is having a hard time getting their ex to respond?
Samantha: Oh. I think what helped me was that I wrote all of his top interests, like what topics I could talk about, and then if he’s taking too long, then I would try and change the subject. I guess for me, I’m a pretty slow texter, also.
Chris Seiter: So you’re patient by nature.
Samantha: Yeah, I’m patient by nature.
Chris Seiter: So give me an example of what that patient looks like for you.
Samantha: So-
Chris Seiter: Give me a mock text scenario.
Samantha: Yeah. I guess if I am texting someone or if I text my ex or something and it’s a question … But for me, if it’s a super urgent question for my friends, I would just call. But for my ex, it’s not a huge emergency ever when I’m doing texting phase, and so I would send the message and then I would immediately have an activity that I had to do where I wouldn’t be looking at my phone. So sometimes I would go out shopping or something like that, or I’ll go to the gym or something. And so then I wouldn’t look at my phone for the next four hours or something.
Chris Seiter: Oh, that’s great advice. Seriously. So you would pre-plan an activity before you would send a text?
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Did your text messages always seem pretty flowy in the fact that there would be a lot of back and forth, or was there a lot of space in between when he would send a text and you would send a text back? How did that work out?
Samantha: I guess it was never super flowy in my opinion. I would send a text and then if he responded immediately, I would still wait maybe 30 minutes, but that’s just me being sure.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so what were the contents of his text messages like? Because when you first start, it can be a little hard to get that momentum rolling. But once momentum starts rolling, what kind of topics were you talking about? Did he ever bring up the breakup, and how did you handle that scenario?
Samantha: Oh, he never brought up the breakup.
Chris Seiter: So it was just sort of like the Mexican standoff type thing where whoever fires first, that’s when we’ll talk about it.
Samantha: Yeah. I was also super cautious about any topics that could bring that up, because I didn’t want to mess up texting and have a text war or anything like that.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. So what kind of topics would you guys get into?
Samantha: I think what we talked about was gadgets, like computers, and then also his favorite show is Mad Men, and so I would talk about Mad Men. He’s also into skateboarding, and so there was … This ended up being really cool. I found a house on one of my random jogs or bike riding things. I saw a house with a skate park driveway.
Chris Seiter: Oh, did you take a picture of it?
Samantha: Yeah, I took a picture and I sent it-
Chris Seiter: And you sent that to him.
Samantha: I sent it. I was like, “What do you think about this?” He was like, “Whoa, that’s awesome. Where is this?” I found out later that that was during the time where he was also looking for houses.
Chris Seiter: Oh, wow. So a happy coincidence there. Did he end up buying that house?
Samantha: No. I think someone was living in it.
Chris Seiter: Oh, that’s a shame. The conversations you would have, would they be kind of in that realm when you’re building rapport and it’s a fun, lighthearted conversation? Or at any point, do you get into a little heavier topics? Not necessarily emotional, “I love you,” type topics, but little heavier type things when both of you are opening up emotionally? Or does that happen later?
Samantha: Oh, that happens much later. I think-
Chris Seiter: Okay, so what has to occur to get that kind of conversation to open up for you? Was it just a medium change of going from texting to a phone call or FaceTime or something like that?
Samantha: Yeah. I was probably in texting phase for like a month and he-
Chris Seiter: Do you know if he’s still with the other woman?
Samantha: I don’t, actually. I-
Chris Seiter: So essentially, you just pretend she doesn’t exist. That was your approach.
Samantha: Yes. Pretended she didn’t exist because he didn’t bring it up and I’m not going to bring it up, definitely not.
Chris Seiter: And you are aware of the Being There method that we talk about in that situation, right?
Samantha: Yeah. Definitely aware.
Chris Seiter: So pretending she doesn’t exist, you were kind of just being there.
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you’re going to get on the phone eventually. How does that work out?
Samantha: Oh. During one of my … This was last year. I went out to go see a show and when I’m out getting in line or going to the venue, my ex is right there on the same street. I was like, “Oh no, I’m only in texting phase. I don’t want to jump the value chain or anything.” So I literally turned around to walk the other way, but at that time, he already saw me and he started to follow me.
Chris Seiter: When I write the articles for talking about accidentally running into your ex, I always try to look for … There’s this GIF of Seinfeld where … You know Seinfeld, right? The show?
Samantha: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chris Seiter: Where Kramer finds someone he doesn’t want to see and he does the thing you’re doing where he’s like … and he just decides to walk off.
Samantha: Yeah, that’s basically-
Chris Seiter: That’s exactly what you did.
Samantha: That’s exactly what I did.
Chris Seiter: But he saw you, so you can’t run away.
Samantha: Yeah. Well, I still tried to run away. I turned around.
Chris Seiter: Oh, that’s funny. That is so funny. But he catches you?
Samantha: Yeah, he catches me. He grabs my arm. But luckily, I looked great that night. He grabbed me and was like, “Hey, how are you? Wow. I wanted to talk. Do you want to go somewhere?” I’m like, “Oh, I have a show to go to.” And he was like, “Please,” begging me to just talk. And so I was like, “Okay, fine.” So we went to this nearby little park-ish like thing. It’s behind a winery thing. It’s a little cozy … there’s a little fire pit and then there are chairs.
Chris Seiter: Ooh, it’s kind of romantic.
Samantha: Yeah. I was like, “I should probably be going away.”
Chris Seiter: You were really jumping the value chain.
Samantha: Yeah, I know. And I was like, “Okay, we can talk for a little bit.” Then when he did that, we just sat down and he was just crying to me and apologizing-
Chris Seiter: Crying? Oh wow.
Samantha: And he’s like, “I messed up so bad,” and telling me, “Wow, you’re doing so great.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I am doing great.”
Chris Seiter: “Yeah, I am.”
Samantha: “Yeah, I am doing great.” And so we had a talk like that. It was maybe 30 minutes, and I remember because this was definitely jumping the value chain and everything-
Chris Seiter: And you leave first.
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: You had a built in excuse with your-
Samantha: Yeah, I had a built in excuse to my show. So I kind of showed that I had some compassion. I just put my hand on his arm, because his love language is physical touch, so I tried to comfort him. Then I just let him say all his things and then I was like, “Okay. I still have to go.” But he was like, “No, I don’t want you to go. I still want to talk,” and things like that. And so eventually, after all his crying session and … Also, at this point, in my head I’m freaking out. I was like, “Oh my God. This is bad. I’m going to mess things up. This is the value chain skipping and everything.” In my head, I’m freaking out, but outside, I was very stoic. I was super calm. I think if I was looking at myself outside, it would be like I was like a robot or something.
Chris Seiter: I don’t know, so you’re kind of cold a little bit?
Samantha: Yeah, a little cold.
Chris Seiter: And you end basically the entire interaction by having the built in excuse with the going to the show, and I’m assuming you go to that show.
Samantha: Actually, after that, I didn’t feel like going to the show so I just went-
Chris Seiter: You just went home?
Samantha: I just went home.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Okay. Yeah, all right.
Samantha: I called a Lyft or an Uber and just went home.
Chris Seiter: So you didn’t go to the show, but do you start … Because I notice that sometimes when these interactions go really well, other areas open up, like texting becomes a different level, you start talking on the phone. Did you notice that start happening? Did he reach out to you pretty quickly after that?
Samantha: Yeah, he did, actually. Not super fast. I still initiated the next three texts or something, things like that. But eventually, he would contact me more. He actually called me randomly one day. So that was like, “Okay, I guess I’m having call number one right now.” But that was-
Chris Seiter: All right, so how does that go?
Samantha: So that was maybe a week after [crosstalk 00:38:50]
Chris Seiter: The interaction?
Samantha: Yeah, yeah. And the call was very short. I think it was just 15 minutes and he just wanted to see what my holiday plans were, actually.
Chris Seiter: That was his excuse to call?
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So he’s fishing around for a date, essentially.
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay. I think he’s just … For me, he’s just feeling out whether or not you’re even interested in going on a date with him. How do you handle that in the moment? Because it’s out of the blue and it catches you off guard. What do you say?
Samantha: I just told him what my plans were and didn’t include him in the plans.
Chris Seiter: Okay, all right. So you told him what your plans were. Does he get cowardly after that and leave?
Samantha: No.
Chris Seiter: So he actually pushes and like, “Hey, do you want to do this with me?”
Samantha: Yeah, he did.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you-
Samantha: I think it was because I was just kind of not being super engaged with it.
Chris Seiter: What did you say? How did you respond when he says, like, “Hey, Samantha, I want to do this with you”?
Samantha: I was like, “I’m busy that day, but maybe another day,” so I would reschedule.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you’re making him jump through a hoop. Did he reschedule with you?
Samantha: Not right away. Sometimes he would figure out a better day or come up with a better activity.
Chris Seiter: Okay. And so your first activity ends up being what?
Samantha: This was around December or something, and actually my first activity wasn’t until January. So I’d been dodging him for a while.
Chris Seiter: It seems like he also kind of dragged his feet a little bit, which I understand because he doesn’t want to get hurt emotionally. But you see him in January, and what is the first activity?
Samantha: It’s running, actually, because I-
Chris Seiter: All that for running? I thought it was going to be something much more romantic.
Samantha: No, it wasn’t. It was just-
Chris Seiter: Running.
Samantha: I was particularly busy with all of my trinity work, and I kept saying I was too busy to do whatever he wanted. And so I think he ended up doing a low-risk activity where I said, “Oh, I’m going to be running today at this time.”
Chris Seiter: So we tend to recommend that low-risk activity to begin with for a lot of the people who are at that dating or in-person interaction stage for the very reason of not … Because sometimes, it overwhelms both parties if you go right to a romantic environment as you’re first building that rapport.
Samantha: Exactly.
Chris Seiter: And you essentially just follow that step naturally, it seems like.
Samantha: Yeah. I think it fell pretty naturally. So I said that, “I’m going to be running here,” and he was like, “Can I join?” I’m like, “Yeah, sure.” But-
Chris Seiter: Is he a runner at all?
Samantha: No, he is not.
Chris Seiter: Okay. There you go. So that’s a good sign.
Samantha: Yeah. He’s not a runner. What ended up happening was we were just running around a lake and I’m much faster than him so he’s literally chasing after me to keep up.
Chris Seiter: That’s great. That’s a great story. Do you end up having to stop for him?
Samantha: Oh yeah, sometimes I would slow down just so he could catch up.
Chris Seiter: All right. So the running ends. I’m sure you talk a little after the running ends.
Samantha: Yeah. And then I was like, “All right, I’ll see you later.” And then I went home.
Chris Seiter: Oh, okay. So no talk. You just basically did the run, “See you later.” You’ve literally got him chasing after you.
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay, what is the next interaction? How does that come about?
Samantha: Oh, and then we text a little bit more frequently.
Chris Seiter: Okay. It seems like every in-person interaction you have, you’re texting more and more back and forth.
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay. This is just a typical progression, it seems like.
Samantha: Yeah. It seemed really weird to me because I didn’t expect it to be so exactly like your program.
Chris Seiter: Most of the time it’s not. What I’m finding out with these … I’ve just been doing the latest batches of success stories because I know it’s been a while since I interviewed a lot of them. But I’m noticing a lot of them follow the strategy, but eventually they get in a situation where they have to make a choice on whether to jump the value chain or do this thing and adapt. And a lot of them make the right choices to adapt when it’s right. Usually, the progression is sort of there as a roadmap, but yours seems to just … You’ll notice yours didn’t follow perfectly because you accidentally ran into him and you did jump the value chain. But I actually think that helped you more than hurt you. But I don’t think that helps you unless you’re texting the right way and doing the social media stuff and having the mindset you have. Which if you just hadn’t found the program, you’re just going through a breakup and you might just be angry when you see him or something like that, or not have taken some of the steps you had taken.
Samantha: Yeah. I-
Chris Seiter: Okay, so … Sorry, go ahead.
Samantha: Oh, no. I also think that running into him sped things up because I was going to be in texting phase for a while.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, it seems like, though, it was working for you pretty well. I think when I look at your success … and we’re not even to the end yet, but I think the big thing for me is how you approached texting. You didn’t grow impatient with it, which is a huge problem I notice in the group. Women obsessing, checking their phone every five minutes to see if he’ll respond. I like the activity idea you had. So I’m assuming that kind of ideal kind of trickles down to all areas of your life when you’re going through this, the struggle.
Samantha: Yeah. I think what helped me a lot, too, was that a lot of my other Battle Buddies would ask help for texting, too. So I had a lot of practice coming up with new ways to say things all the time.
Chris Seiter: Well, that’s an underrated aspect, too, because if you have a Battle Buddy … and you said you got partnered up with seven … you can even witness what text messages they’re using that is working and not working on their exes and take bits and pieces for your own situation. But okay, let’s get back to the progression. So you’ve gotten the chasing date, we’ll call it, because he was literally chasing you. And he’s not a runner, which that should pretty much tell you where he’s at emotionally.
Samantha: Yeah. Really wanted to hang out.
Chris Seiter: So what happens next?
Samantha: Oh, we went on more runs like that, and then I-
Chris Seiter: So that became a normal thing, then?
Samantha: Yeah, that became a normal thing. And actually-
Chris Seiter: Did he get in better shape at any point?
Samantha: Did he?
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Was he able to keep up? Or was he still chasing every single time?
Samantha: I think I slowed down for him.
Chris Seiter: Oh, okay.
Samantha: But one of our texting or calls … I forget which one it was … ended up being talk about how I’m doing a half marathon in February. He was like, “Oh, I want to do it.” And so he randomly also signed up for this half marathon that I’d been training for a while to do.
Chris Seiter: And he’s not been training all for.
Samantha: Yeah, he’s not been training at all. He maybe had two, three weeks of training.
Chris Seiter: I’ve run a half marathon before. They are not easy.
Samantha: No. So what we ended up doing was that … I think we had maybe a few running dates like that, and then we just met up on a Sunday for the half marathon and we ran together for the half marathon.
Chris Seiter: So you purposely weren’t trying to go fast. You were just staying back to make sure he didn’t pass out? Is that what happened? Or did he walk?
Samantha: For our practice ones, I would slow down for him. But definitely for the half marathon, I went my normal fast pace, basically. So he had to really try and stay with me.
Chris Seiter: I’m assuming he didn’t stay with you.
Samantha: No, he was trailing behind for a while.
Chris Seiter: Did he walk at any point during this half marathon?
Samantha: No. He was a really good trooper [crosstalk 00:48:10]
Chris Seiter: Wow. That’s pretty good. That half marathon, did you go out afterwards to a restaurant or something?
Samantha: Yeah, we got some breakfast and we had some waffles and just talked for a while. Yeah, it was pretty fun.
Chris Seiter: Are we to a point where you start talking about your feelings yet?
Samantha: I think he is much more open about his feelings. He would tell me like, “Oh, that was so hard. I feel so tired,” and everything like that. But not really any feelings of romantic feelings yet. I think we just started-
Chris Seiter: When did that come? Because you’re seeing him in person pretty consistently, even though they’re kind of mechanical running dates. The activity, I would assume, bonds the two of you closer together. So what happens to make the feelings come out from either party?
Samantha: I think it happened after the half marathon, because after that, he got really sick. I think the flu or something.
Chris Seiter: So the half marathon ruined his immune system and he caught a flu.
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Hopefully not the coronavirus.
Samantha: I don’t think it was. It was in early February. Maybe it’s not. I think it was just the flu. And so then I was like, “Okay, I’m going to take a little bit more of a risk,” and came and brought him some soup and kind of took care of him for a few hours. It was like, “Oh, how are you? Are you doing okay?” So kind of showing this caring side of myself, and I think-
Chris Seiter: You say it like it’s nothing, “Just showing this caring side of myself.” Okay. I’m assuming that makes him feel really good and he’s stuck with the flu. Does he start blabbing about his feelings with the flu during this meetup?
Samantha: He says, “Oh, thank you so much. I love you so much,” things like that. It’s like, “Yes, I got him.”
Chris Seiter: Yeah, right. It just took a flu and a half marathon. That’s pretty great. Okay, so when I was prepping for this interview, I went to go look through the Facebook group to kind of understand how you guys got back together, and I read you guys … The last post I could see on the Facebook group that you had made was something along the lines of him basically treating you like a girlfriend but not officially giving you a title. What makes him eventually officially give you that title?
Samantha: I think time, actually.
Chris Seiter: So how much time goes by from the moment of the flu … which when he says, “I love you,” that’s big. Totally, even if he’s got the flu, right?
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: It’s kind of like being drunk. It doesn’t make you say things you don’t mean. It just to help make the truth be a little bit more blabby. How much time has to go by before he is willing to make the commitment?
Samantha: The half marathon was beginning of February, and so end of February, that’s when he got a promotion at his job and he wanted … He didn’t tell me he had a promotion at the time. He was like, “Oh, I have some really big news I want to share with you.” And so we went to this bar … a rooftop bar, actually … and we went into this cozy little place, really romantic … kind of like another fire pit thing overlooking the city on this roof. And he tells me that he’s got promoted and all this good news, and he thinks, “Oh, it kind of means that I want to focus on other aspects of my life, like family or like relationships and things.” And so then I asked sneakily … not really, but I was like, “Oh, do you mean with me?” And he was like, “Yes, with you.”
Chris Seiter: So he beat around the bush a little bit and you just took the first risk, really. To me, it just seems like he’s feeling because he doesn’t want to get hurt. But I noticed even after that, you were asking in the group, “How do I get him to say we’re boyfriend and girlfriend?” That happens eventually, I’m assuming, right?
Samantha: Yeah, yeah.
Chris Seiter: How much time goes by before that happens to break him down?
Samantha: After that, we were kind of just doing our normal dates and talking and he would just call me every night. And so-
Chris Seiter: So you’re acting like you’re together.
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Are you guys intimate at this point?
Samantha: Yeah, actually.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you were essentially a girlfriend without the title. But it may be one of those situations where he’s too afraid to ask and you’re too afraid to ask, and so you’re just sort of dancing around it.
Samantha: Yeah, I think so. So that was end of February. So beginning of March, I guess, that’s when I was asking in the group about things. And so I just thought that, “He just needs more time to understand that we’re really great together.” I actually saw it as, “Okay, I just got to be patient about it and keep doing my fun, lighthearted message and showing more consistency to him.”
Chris Seiter: Even though there’s no “title” with this yet, is there kind of self-imposed boundaries for both of you where you both aren’t going to be dating other people? Did you have a talk about that, or is it just assumed?
Samantha: Well, I asked him, actually. I asked him, “Are we just dating? What is this?” I asked him maybe around March or something. I asked him, “So, are we dating right now?” He was like, “Yeah.” And then he says, “I’m not seeing anyone else. I’m just seeing you.” And then, “Okay, this is great.”
Chris Seiter: So that’s sort of how it happens. You just ended up having to ask, “What is this?”
Samantha: Yeah. I didn’t ask, “What is this?” [crosstalk 00:55:14]
Chris Seiter: You had your own phrase, but essentially that’s the sentiment you’re trying to get through.
Samantha: Yeah, yeah. I definitely was really careful about my word choices, to not … I felt like I didn’t want to scare him away.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So he’s like a scared little puppy or something. It’s always interesting when couples get back together, because you can kind of get the inside scoop of what the other person was thinking. Did you at any point quiz him about what he was thinking when he broke up with you? Even thought the breakup was kind of odd and about the other woman? Did you understand his mindset at all?
Samantha: I did not, actually.
Chris Seiter: You’re just like, “Leave well enough alone.”
Samantha: Yeah. I-
Chris Seiter: Okay, that’s an interesting approach to it. I noticed in March was the last time you posted in the Facebook group. How long have you guys been back together?
Samantha: I think for two months now. [crosstalk 00:56:18]
Chris Seiter: Okay, so two months. So the two months you’ve had, how has that approach worked for you, the not talking about the breakup at all? Just kind of pretending it never happened?
Samantha: I think it’s working okay. Eventually, I do want to ask about it and process everything properly. But I don’t want to do that until I go into couples therapy or something to kind of-
Chris Seiter: Is that something he’s agreed to?
Samantha: I asked him and he’s like, “Yeah. I’d be okay with it.” And I still just have to find the appropriate counselor to … I basically have to do all the work to set it up because he’s not going to do it.
Chris Seiter: Well, yeah. Also, there’s kind of that negative stigma that’s attached to it. Sometimes people think there’s a problem if you go in. One of the first success stories I interviewed was in a similar situation, but the reason her ex broke up with her is because she suggested going to couples counseling and he was just like-
Samantha: Oh yeah. I remember that.
Chris Seiter: But she had a really good analogy. She just said, “Hey, it’s like going to the dentist. You go to the dentist to make sure your teeth are protected. The same thing with the couples counseling.” So that might be an interesting way to put it to him so that he doesn’t feel threatened. And also make it clear that this isn’t because there’s a problem. It’s just you want to safeguard the relationship and protect it. You can kind of make it cutesy like that, I’m sure. But overall, I mean, I can totally understand how you would have to do all the work for that, because there’s such a negative stigma behind it.
Samantha: Yeah, totally. So we haven’t really addressed the breakup or anything yet.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, I mean, it’s just kind of like it didn’t happen. It was just kind of like a blip. Is there any kind of resentment you still feel towards how … Because the breakup, I would agree, it’s a bad breakup. Not so much words being said, but just the action of not picking you up at the airport and just sort of him being with some other woman. Is that something that you’ve gotten over, or something that you’ve kind of pushed to the side?
Samantha: I’m still kind of angry about it, but I also see all of the effort he’s doing now.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I mean, he ran a half marathon. I mean, that kind of makes you feel better, too, because he jumped through a lot of hoops to get back with you.
Samantha: Yeah, a lot. And I can actually tell that he’s trying to be better about things.
Chris Seiter: When you look back at how everything came, what do you feel … Because you are in one of the rare situations where your ex moved onto another woman and then I don’t know how that went down. Maybe they were never defined as being together. But you structure it in a way to where somehow he has to win you back, where most of the clients we deal with are not. They’re trying desperately to win their exes back. So what do you feel was instrumental in getting that positioning?
Samantha: Good question. I think being less available for him. I wouldn’t drop evidence that I would do-
Chris Seiter: Would you say you were super available for him during the relationship?
Samantha: Yeah, definitely.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you would drop everything, like you would drop work or something if he needed something?
Samantha: Yeah. I did a lot of work and I realize that, okay, if we’re getting back together, I don’t want to do this. It’s [crosstalk 01:00:15]
Chris Seiter: Did you ever talk to him about those kind of boundaries, or is that just one of those things he innately senses?
Samantha: I think he just innately sensed it, that I wasn’t going to do all of the same stuff.
Chris Seiter: Okay. What do you think was instrumental in achieving that mindset for you?
Samantha: I guess realizing that I need to put myself as a priority, too. A lot of times in the past relationship, I put him kind of on a pedestal a little bit, that, “His needs are important. It’s okay if I’m uncomfortable right now.” But then with no contact and through texting, I realized, “No, I want to do this. I want to do this.” Or, “If I want ice cream, I’m going to buy myself ice cream,” or something.
Chris Seiter: Would it be accurate to say that now you’re looked at as his equal, whereas maybe before, he looked down, like he could take advantage of you potentially?
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: He grew very, very comfortable in the relationship to the point where he knows he can get away with things. But now he’s putting the effort in because he looks at you like you’re equals.
Samantha: Yeah. I think so. And also, I think when he just came up to me that random time, I was probably better. I think I was better than him in that [crosstalk 01:01:49]
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you were doing better after the breakup than he was. So it was one of those … You know that famous meme where it’s like, “How girls process breakups and how guys process breakups,” and the girls are super sad at first, the guys are partying, and then it kind of shifts as they go?
Samantha: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: That seems like that was a true circumstance, because he has the new girl after the breakup, he seems like he’s doing well. You’re not doing well, obviously. You’re hurt, you’re devastated, but as time went on, you kind of rebuilt yourself and made yourself into … You kind of achieved more of the potential that you had and he sort of was like, “What did I do?”
Samantha: Yeah. I think so.
Chris Seiter: That’s great. You have one of the more interesting success stories, especially your approach to the other woman. I actually kind of like that. When you’re dealing with a situation where another woman’s involved, were you constantly obsessing about her, or did you at a certain point recognize, “That’s unhealthy. I just need to pretend she doesn’t exist”?
Samantha: I mean, there were definitely times where I was curious about her, but I ultimately knew that if I obsess over her, she’s winning right now, and so I have to put that away and concentrate. It’s just me. It’s me doing my little slow rapport building now and then, and then if I just leave her alone, she’s going to just implode on herself with the whatever they’re doing with my ex, I guess.
Chris Seiter: Well, I like-
Samantha: Yeah. Completely ignore her.
Chris Seiter: I like your approach. It’s a healthy one, because it seems like you’re really good at focusing on the factors you have control over and forgetting about the factors you don’t have control over.
Samantha: Yeah. I think that was really important on me, I guess. I think the reason why I figured out not to … or pretend that the other woman doesn’t exist at all was actually because I asked a question on a Facebook live, and that was the answer I got and I liked it.
Chris Seiter: Okay. All right. Before we end the interview, someone who is struggling throughout this process, what would be the one piece of advice you would give them? If there was one thing they would take away from this interview, what would that be?
Samantha: I think really charting all of your texts and charting your social media game. I think that for sure helped me just look at this entire process as kind of like a very systematic thing that people have to do. You can put all your emotions in it, but then you might lose control out of all of that. So if you just look at this entire process as kind of like ticks almost, like a check mark list, then it’s a little bit easier.
Success Story: How One Woman Got An Ex Back Who Said They Had Personal Differences
Aug 13, 2020
As many of you know, I’ve been on a success story kick lately. In other words, I’ve been interviewing as many success stories that will be willing to come onto my podcast as possible. The end goal is always the same,
We want to find out what really works in real life
So far we’ve had some really interesting interviews come to fruition. But today’s success story I feel will hit close to home to so many aspiring “get your ex back people.”
I got the opportunity to interview Anne whose ex boyfriend broke up with her because of “personal differences.”
Which in and of itself sounds ridiculous but as you’ll soon learn, Anne is not to be taken lightly.
Enjoy!
How Anne Got Her Ex Boyfriend Back
Chris: All right. Okay. Today, we’re going to be talking to a success story who’s been in our private Facebook support group, has gone through the program and has successfully gotten her ex back, her name is Anne. And we’re just going to have an organic conversation to really get to the bottom of what worked for her. How are you doing Anne?
Anne: I am doing well. I’m super excited to be talking to you today, Chris.
Chris: Well, so what’s cool about Anne is she was telling me that she prepped for this interview, she actually went to her boyfriend and asked a bunch of questions, so we will get into that. But before we do, let’s get a background story and tell us your origin story. How did the breakup occur, and we’ll just take it from there.
Anne: Okay. So for our story, I guess we ended up breaking up in early May, I think it was, and we got back together mid to late June. So, that was pretty close to the timeline that we expected with no contact. We ended up-
Chris: Wow, that was fast. Those were two months, total.
Anne: I know. Pretty much. I’m [crosstalk 00:01:10]-
Chris: So early May to the end of June?
Anne: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris: How long of a no contact period did you do?
Anne: I ended up doing just past 30 days.
Chris: So, it was 31, 32 days or something like that?
Anne: Yeah. I didn’t want to make it exactly 30 days, because I know everyone in the Facebook group was like, don’t do it exactly on 30 days because you’ll-
Chris: Really? That’s interesting.
Anne: Well, just because it’s, you don’t want to be too obvious about it.
Chris: So, all right. So you’re obviously skipping over some important parts. Some stuff had to have happened during that. So you go through the breakup, but let’s talk about what caused the breakup, who broke up with who and what were the reasons given.
Anne: So my boyfriend of, I think we were just hitting four months. We’d known each other since last August, so close to a year now. He broke up with me and he cited, oh goodness, he was all over the place with it, but it was some personal differences. And then, just wasn’t sure he was feeling it, and it was just a lot of hot and cold stuff. We, near the end of our relationship, especially probably were fighting quite a bit. I think the stress of the pandemic was getting to everyone, but yeah.
Chris: So his reasoning was just, we’re two different. Was that it basically?
Anne: That was pretty much it. He saw some issues in the future that he didn’t feel could be worked out. And he didn’t, instead of giving me an opportunity to work that out, he just decided that it was going to be best for both of us that we go our separate ways.
Chris: How old is he and how old are you?
Anne: I am 23 and he is 28.
Chris: Okay. So there’s a bit of an age gap. So is he looking for more serious relationships? Is that why he was worried about the future?
Anne: Yes. He told me going into it that he was hoping to settle down with someone, he just needed to find the right person.
Chris: Okay. So he says basically we’re too different, I don’t think we should be together. But was there other elements? Was he having problems at his job because of the pandemic or were there other extracurricular elements that created the stress you’re talking about with him?
Anne: Yeah. I personally think that there was a lot of other stuff going on at the same time. He didn’t end up getting the promotion that he was hoping to get and there was just some other family stress going on as well. So just probably, I don’t really know again, entirely what was going on, but our communication for sure was very limited and strange. So, that’s probably why I didn’t really know.
Chris: So he breaks up with you and what is your first reaction? How do you respond to that?
Anne: I had a little bit of a freak out. I knew that-
Chris: Define a little bit for me. Is a little bit like, or just really big freak out?
Anne: Well, he was going to do it over text and I told him I was like, I am not prepared to discuss this over text, so we’ll see each other today.
Chris: Really. So, you made him break up with you in person, so you basically got to see his face as he told you that there’s differences between the two of you and you can’t work it out.
Anne: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah, which was really hard.
Chris: Did you beg?
Anne: You know what? I didn’t. I think I expressed that I didn’t agree and that I felt really sad about it and that I felt we can come to a compromise, but I told him, ultimately, I’m going to respect the decision that you make here and you know what, we can go our separate ways kind of thing.
Chris: So you turn a text message breakup into an in person breakup, which is interesting. And then after the in-person breakup, is it immediate like I need to get him back mode or do you go through a tantrum where you’re just like, screw him, I’m not going to try to get him back? What [crosstalk 00:05:40].
Anne: Well, I went in the middle, man. I had a really sad period of time where we were still texting probably about four days after. And he was like, his response times were getting longer and longer and I was just like, I don’t understand. This is so sad. And I think for me, what I didn’t realize and what I did realize after finding this program is I was still stuck in this idea that we were in a relationship and that I had to fight for this relationship instead of-
Chris: So you basically, as the Friends episode, you’re on a break. You’re like, we were on a break.
Anne: Yeah, exactly.
Chris: So that’s what you had to convince, but he didn’t view it that way, I’m guessing.
Anne: No, no. He was like, no, when I say I’m done, I’m done, so.
Chris: You got the last laugh there, but we’ll get to that. So you are texting him consistently four days, at any point, when does it hit that, okay, he’s really broken up and maybe I need to go search help online? Were you furiously Googling all throughout this four days or was it just … Take me back to that moment, where are you?
Anne: So I was in a bit of a depressed state. I think I was talking to some of my friends and I did a little bit of Googling, but I wasn’t really committed to any course of action at that point. I just really wanted to talk to him still and he was suggesting, oh, well, we might be able to be friends after some time. And I think it really hit me when I suggested I was like, well, maybe we could take a bit of time apart. And I guess we can talk at some other time. And he was like, yeah, I really think that time would be good for you. And I was like, oh, okay.
Chris: Okay. So at that point, when the realization hits, at that point, do you come Googling or looking for advice? How do you eventually find Ex Boyfriend Recovery?
Anne: That’s exactly what I did. I was like, what does it mean when your ex boyfriend says that we should be friends after a break up? And I just, I kept looking, I found a couple of programs. I was like, this just doesn’t feel right to me. And then I found yours and I was actually really intrigued, because I was like, oh, he’s not suggesting that this is impossible. He’s not suggesting a definite no contact. So.
Chris: So you probably take the leap of faith, you buy the program, you get into the program, you obviously get into the Facebook group. What is your approach at that point?
Anne: I think I was still thinking, well, I don’t really need to do no contact, we can just …
Chris: You’re talking yourself out of it.
Anne: I was. I was really talking myself out of it. And then the other thing that I think was challenging for me was this whole idea that it’s about you as well. You have to go through this authentic change, and I was like, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with how I’m doing things. I still didn’t think that I contributed to anything.
Chris: Was it a function of you looking at, you’re trying to pick apart the mistakes you made in the relationship? Is that what you’re basically saying?
Anne: Yeah, I went through the list of detractors that we have here in the guide, and I was like, well, I don’t know, what was it that actually caused the breakup? And I couldn’t come to a conclusion on that for a long time. I just was very confused about the whole reasoning.
Chris: So eventually, you decide you’re going to do the no contact rule and this is what I’m really eager to hear about. What do you do to stay sane during that no contact rule? Do you break it, do you see it through to the end? What are you doing with your time?
Anne: I threw myself into self improvement. I think that’s just the person that I tend to be anyway. So I worked on my trinity, I worked on also on goals that might align my worldview, my way of doing things a little bit more with his, because I hadn’t really been thinking about that. And I really sat down with myself and I was like, okay, what are we going to do if this works and if this doesn’t work? Well, presumably the same thing, so I should just do it.
Chris: Right. So, during the no contact rule, do you feel like you got to a point emotionally where you had a lot more emotional control over wanting him back or not wanting him back? Do you … Because I’ve been noticing this interesting trend and maybe you can tell me if you experienced it, as a lot of the people who seem to be successful in winning their exes back, get to this point during their self improvement type process, where they get to this point where they just don’t care about getting their exes back anymore. It’s almost like it’s intriguing, but there’s other things in life that I’m just as interested in doing. Did you ever get to a point like that?
Anne: Oh, absolutely. And I think it wasn’t until later in no contact though. I think the first couple of weeks, really rocky, really emotional, you’re still bargaining with yourself, but I think after, probably after three or four weeks, I was like, okay, you know what? Whatever comes, comes and I’m just going to handle this as maturely as I can, so.
Chris: What are some of the activities you throw yourself into to obtain this mindset? Because I find this the most difficult mindset for anyone to achieve.
Anne: It totally is. I think I really started looking at the situation for what it was. I started evaluating, you know what? What am I looking for? Not just in a partner, because I found that hard for a bit doing some goal setting. I was like, oh, what do I want in a romantic partner? Well, I want my ex, but I put that off for a little bit and I started focusing more holistically on everything else in life, improving my relationships. And I thought to myself, well, at the end of the day, he’s going to have to … He was the one that broke up with me. He ended up breaking that relationship off, and if he wants me back then he’s the one that’s going to have to work on it, right? I’m not going to be the one that’s just throwing myself out there because that’s just, I don’t feel like it was going to be congruent with the value that I’d found for myself and my time.
Chris: Okay. So you get through no contact, maybe towards the later stages you feel you obtain that mindset where you’re just like, you know what, if he comes back, he comes back. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t, whatever.
Anne: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris: Obviously no contact ends, and that’s where we start advising our clients to begin communication. What was that like for you?
Anne: Well, I think my story was a little bit different. I do work with my ex boyfriend.
Chris: So you had more of a limited no contact type thing or because of the pandemic were you forced … Was it one of those things where you could do a true no contact rule or you had to communicate with your ex for work?
Anne: There were, I believe there was one time, I think I had to reach out for something work related. So, it was pretty much no contact. I immediately started posting tons of stuff on my social media, even just work stuff. And what was interesting to me was he was liking a lot of my work stuff on my social media. He reached out after probably close to three weeks saying, hey, how did that presentation go? And so, I was like [crosstalk 00:14:11]-
Chris: Were you still in no contact at that point?
Anne: I was, yeah.
Chris: So you didn’t respond to that, I’m hoping.
Anne: I said it went great, thanks and I [inaudible 00:14:21].
Chris: So, you just used that as the excuse to do the limited no contact type thing.
Anne: Pretty much. And it was at work, it was work related, but I was like, what would I say to a casual coworker in this scenario? So I just said, it went great, thanks. Then, I think I had to reach out again, I think it was after 30 days, I want to say, with an offer from the committee that I was on to-
Chris: So you reached out to him with a work type text message?
Anne: Yes.
Chris: How did he respond?
Anne: He responded saying yes, absolutely, let me know if I can be involved. And then it was about 10 minutes later, he followed it up with something to the effect of, just a personal comment, then I ignored that and I responded, great, we’ll be in touch and I’ll send you a quick email and then Christine will take it from here or whatever. And then he was like, okay. And then about 10 minutes later, he messages me again, how have you been? So, I ignored that.
Chris: This seems to be a common thing for exes after the no contact rule, how have you been? How are you? You ignore it, what do you do? Just ignore it and wait a day?
Anne: Yeah, I ignored it. I was still in no contact during this time, I think, because I had initially I wasn’t sure if I was going to do 30 days or 45 days and I was back and forth between the two periods. So, I was going to leave it and then he messaged me again saying, oh, this is awkward, hope you’re doing great. I’ll take your silence as good, bad, or I don’t know. And so, I ignored that and I didn’t hear from him for a while. So, most people would freak out, I think, but I didn’t freak out. I was like, no, this is good. I’ll just keep him in the dark.
Chris: What I’m curious about is when you enter the texting phase, let’s say you have that mindset we were talking about, did at any point in literally communicating with him, did you lose that mindset? Was it … Because I find that when sometimes people they’re not talking to their ex, it’s easier for them to get that, I don’t care mindset. And then when they actually hear from their ex, they’re like, I care so much. Did you ever find a bit of a hip hopping like that? Hip hopping, horrible adjective.
Anne: I think no, because I was still really wary of the situation. I was like, I don’t know what he’s used this time for yet, so I don’t want to get ahead of myself in thinking that things are going to be great or that he even wants a relationship. So, we did some small talk. We did just some snap chatting, back and forth. I kept it really casual. And then he reached out one night, I’m trying to remember how it went exactly. But he was still really in the mindset of, oh maybe we could be friends and whatever and I was just like, I’m not going to play into this. That’s not how this is going to go.
Chris: When he says, hey, let’s be friends, did you ignore it or did you basically come out and say, I’m not interested in that?
Anne: I took as much of a middle of the road approach as I could. I said, you know what? I have definitely made a lot of changes in my life at this point. I’m doing a lot for myself, but I wouldn’t necessarily be interested in friendship. I wish you the best kind of thing.
Chris: So, it’s a more drawn out version of I’m not interested.
Anne: Yeah, essentially. I was like, I’m not going to beat around here per se, so I didn’t. And he, interestingly enough, he stopped responding to my messages and I knew he read them, because I saw that he read them. And so I waited till the next morning and he reached out midway through the morning saying, can I call you? And I was like, oh, I’m not going to jump on this. So I said, all right, I’d like to discuss further if you’ve got any thoughts, but I’m busy this weekend. So, maybe you can call me on Sunday night, I can make some time.
Anne: So I gave him, that was Friday, I think, Friday morning. So I gave him a couple of days just to think on it, to stew on it and turns out he did call me. And he said pretty much everything that I wanted to hear. He was like, yeah, I really feel we didn’t give our relationship a good enough chance. And he also said, I was watching this transformation happen. I kept hearing from people that you were doing so well, I kept seeing on your social media that you were just doing all these things and it got me super, super curious about what you were doing.
Chris: What else did he say?
Anne: Yeah, I basically said, well, I think that this is all great, but I definitely want to talk about what happened and where we go from here. And I said, I just want to take it slow. Let’s get to know each other again, because I think anything going forward is going to be a new relationship. It’s not going to be, hopefully not going to be what we had before, because that was ultimately not super great for either of us.
Chris: So you pushed for that in person conversation?
Anne: I did, yeah. But, I didn’t say exactly when, he asked me, I think at the end of the conversation, if I was free the following week. And so, I said, yeah, you know what? We can get coffee or something.
Chris: How long of a wait is this until you actually see him in person?
Anne: I saw him in person after my birthday in June, which was middle of June. So I ended up seeing him, we were only texting probably for a coupe of weeks.
Chris: So, you have this phone call where you set up this date, essentially. Do you notice the texting becoming a lot more frequent after that phone call?
Anne: Yes. And you know what? It was unfortunately me, because I was getting a little bit excited, and so I tried texting him, which we hadn’t texted since the last time that we had been texting and that didn’t go very well. I got a very neutral response there. So I was like, okay, time to be indirect again. So I went back to, I think it was Snapchat and I just, I tried to keep it light, but I was, I definitely increased the frequency of my messages to him during that time.
Chris: Well, was he mirroring the behavior at that point? Is he matching your texts intensity or frequency?
Anne: It was definitely less than what I was putting out. It wasn’t unfriendly, but I think he definitely still had a lot more reservations than I did.
Chris: That’s interesting. So how did this in person conversation go?
Anne: We didn’t actually have a serious conversation until later on. I decided to put it off. So I dressed up really nice and we went to this really cute cafe and basically just started to make some small talks, started to … And I tried to keep it as light as possible like lots of laughter and we just had a really nice time. He ended up texting me after saying I had such a nice time, I’d love to see you again. And then he started talking about how much that he had missed me during the time that we were apart. And I kept it as limited on my end as I could, because I was like, yeah, well I miss you isn’t I want to get back together though. So, yeah.
Chris: He says I miss you, how exactly are you responding to that?
Anne: I basically said, yeah, it was a good time apart, but I miss you too. And I had such a great time. I more focused on the situation at hand, which was, I had a great time we had.
Chris: You just reframed it basically saying, oh, that’s so sweet. I miss you too, but I’m more focused on this right now.
Anne: Exactly, yeah.
Chris: Okay. So you basically have this meetup. I try to frame it as meetup, medium date, romantic date. Do you go from this meetup to a romantic date and have this conversation or is it another couple of dates before you actually have this talk, we’ll call it?
Anne: Yeah. I’m trying to remember here, I don’t think we went on another date after that. I think we had another hangout and then I initiated a conversation about, hey, what are we doing? How are you? And he actually asked me to get back together, so.
Chris: Over text?
Anne: No, he asked me in person actually, because I think it was after my birthday.
Chris: So basically in the next hangout?
Anne: Exactly. I was out with some of my friends and then we ended up seeing each other in a friend scenario after my birthday.
Chris: So, it was like a group type thing, he just can’t hold it anymore and basically he says, can you take me back?
Anne: Yeah, exactly. He was like, I’ve really had time to think about it, and I really have enjoyed being reconnected with you the last little bit. I think we should give our relationship a second go.
Chris: Okay. So now I’m going to ask you a couple of really interesting questions, okay? You said that you talked to him to get some dirt to figure out exactly what was going on. I’m actually eager to hear what he had to say and then I’d like to contrast it to what you, your experience and if there’s any difference. So, what did you learn in prepping for the interview from him?
Anne: Well, I just asked him, I said, you know what? I’m optimistic about the future, but I’m concerned because I feel like what is it that’s really keeping us together this time that wasn’t a deal breaker last time? And he opened up to me and he just said, I know you’re concerned about the future, but he said, for me, I was seeing that there were some communication issues. There were some roadblocks that we would maybe touch on and then we wouldn’t actually talk about them. We just tried to move around them and plan for the future. And he’s like, but there were some sticking points in the ways that we were interacting and just the things that we were doing that I didn’t feel like were going to set us up for the future that we wanted. So he said, I felt it was better to cut it off early than to get a couple of years down the road to what he felt was the end of the line and break up then.
Chris: Okay. So basically his always has to do with future based stuff. He’s really looking for a wife that he could potentially marry it looks like.
Anne: Yeah, that’s to my understanding. Yeah.
Chris: Okay. So now I’m curious to get your take on what you feel worked. When you just look back on the entire experience, what worked for you in your opinion?
Anne: I think I realized I had become a negative in his life. I was lumped in with the rest of the stress that was going on and I just, we didn’t have that upbeat lighthearted relationship that we had before. I had become fairly critical and I was going through stress too, but definitely I feel just over time, proving through my actions rather than my words, that I’m somebody that’s super fun to be around and discovering that side of myself as well through the program. Just realizing that I am someone super fun to be around. I felt, again, just making a couple of life changes, just the way that I approached things, the way that I viewed things, he really saw us as people that were more aligned than we had been before.
Chris: So do you feel like that time that you “worked” on yourself during the no contact rule was the most essential aspect to your success?
Anne: Oh, absolutely. And that’s what I tell people now. I recommended a few people to the program and I’ve said, if this is not going to work, unless you really apply yourself to the self portion of this as well, because there was something, some reason that he broke up with you or you broke up with him and you’re going to go back to the same relationship if you’re the same person, unless it’s purely environmental factors, but that’s 100% my advice is, you have to fully apply yourself to the self improvement portion.
Chris: No, the one thing I’ve always honed in on in these success stories is the one trend, and so far it is 15 for 15. Literally the last 15 success stories that I’ve interviewed in the past month have all said that this concept exists, and it’s this concept of getting to this point where you’re just like, you don’t care if you get your ex back or not. I’m curious, you mentioned you had a bit of that mentality, right?
Anne: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris: So I’m interested in, what would it be that you would tell yourself when you would be having those type of vibes? Everyone always has a different way of phrasing it. I’m just curious what would be your mantra when it came to this?
Anne: Sure. I think the thing that made the difference for me was seeing the situation for what it was right now, at this present moment, not how I want it to be, not how it was, but I really started to … I didn’t reread the old text messages. I didn’t go through our photos, I didn’t go through our videos. I accepted that in that moment I was working on what I could work on and whoever my ex was, whatever he was doing, that’s not who he was to me at that very moment. That the choice to break up with me was his choice and his alone and he hadn’t gone back on it to that point. So, I was like, okay, you know what? This is what you chose, and I’m going to come to a real acceptance of that in my own mind. I’m not going to romanticize the past in a sense.
Chris: So I’m thinking that you must have used the Facebook group, right? You had to have used the Facebook group. Did you feel that was an essential support aspect to this? Because the no contact rule can be pretty brutal.
Anne: Oh yeah. The first couple of weeks, especially, I was constantly on there, sad and should I break no contact? Well, I think just a conversation would work this out and maybe it’s just a misunderstanding, and all the ladies on there and some of the guys as well were just like, no, you have to really take this time. This is good time for you. And I met a couple of really awesome people that became my battle buddies and I’m still in contact with them still, and actually I think too, both of them that I was in contact with also ended up getting back together with their exes. So, it was a success all around.
Chris: Where do you feel like most people go wrong in the group though? Because obviously not everyone gets their exes back and I feel like the success rate can be a lot higher than most people realize, but there’s something that they’re missing. What do you think that missing factor is for most people?
Anne: I would say the concept of emotional control. I think even the people that follow everything to the letter, it’s not about following it to the letter. I think it’s about reframing your understanding of the whole situation, really gaining that control over your emotions. Again, I found the resources in the group, like the books that were suggested were super helpful. The one on Crucial Conversations, the one on the emotional storm, Calming the Emotional Storm.
Chris: Right, right, that’s a pretty popular one. So you feel like it’s really just emotional control that people need to, that’s where they go wrong most of the time.
Anne: Yeah. I think we always want to be optimistic about what messages mean and what things mean, but I think in doing that, sometimes we jump ahead of ourselves a little bit and go full into something that’s maybe developing still. So, 100% even if your story deviates where maybe you didn’t do as long of a texting phase, or as long of a no contact phase, I think it’s still important to understand that there is a value chain here. There is a process that you do need to follow.
Chris: So you mentioned you have some battle buddy friends that even got their exes back. In talking with them, do you feel like they followed the template, the value chain value ladder concept, or did they go off into the weeds a little bit?
Anne: I think we all went off into the weeds a little bit because each situation was different. But I think the thing that was the common thread was, you have to have a level head when you’re going into any conversation or any scenario, right? The advice I got from them a lot was sleep on it. I know you want to send that message right now, but sleep on it and then reevaluate in the morning. And I found it super helpful, because I know things I wanted to say, I was like, I’m 100% sure I’m going to say this. And then I would wake up the next morning and I’d be like, nope, we’re not going to send this. This is a terrible idea.
Chris: It’s funny how often that happens, isn’t it?
Anne: Oh, for real.
Chris: So, from a perspective who is just listening to this, they are not in the program. They don’t know everything that’s entitled to make success. What would you tell just the average person to do? What is one thing they can do right now to just help them with their break up?
Anne: I think, get some good support around you, but I found that at a certain point, your friends get a little bit tired of it. So, having a community like Ex Recovery, I found super key. Just people that you can talk to because you’re going to be sad and that’s okay to be sad, but the last person that you want to be sad to is the person that broke up with you. So definitely, feel your feelings, but I would say get some people around you that you can talk to about all of this because you don’t actually want to talk to your ex about it. More than likely, the response you’re going to get is going to be really disappointing.
Her Ex Broke Up With Her Out Of The Blue And She Got Him Back
Aug 05, 2020
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of interviewing Sarah who is one of the success stories with the Ex Recovery Program. As many of you may have noticed lately I’ve been on this kick where I’ve been interviewing as many success stories as possible.
The goal here is simple,
I’m on a quest to understand what the successes are doing that is so different from everyone else who fails.
The interview here with Sarah was incredibly helpful because I learned that sometimes you need to learn to adapt on the fly.
But more on that later.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Chris: Perfect. Okay, today we’re going to be talking to Sarah, who is a success story who’s gone through our program. I don’t know much about her situation, so I’m going to be following along with the people listening here. How are you, Sarah?
Sarah: I’m doing well. Thanks for asking.
Chris: Why don’t I just hand the mic to you, and you tell me a bit about your situation, and I’ll just start asking questions based on the first things that popped into my head?
Sarah: Sure. Okay. I guess I should start by recapping what happened initially. I had been dating my boyfriend for about eight months, and honestly, it was probably the best relationship I’ve been in. Not that I’ve been in a lot, I only had one serious boyfriend before him. But from the get go, we knew that we were in a weird spot because we were both living in Montreal, but we knew that by the end of the year, I would probably be relocating to the UK for grad school because I was applying to Oxford, and UCL, and a bunch of schools there, and I wanted to move on with my studies. The relationship went very well, our senses of humor really match, and our personalities too, we had a lot of the same hobbies, and we got along great with each other’s friends. So all good signs, except I could see that the idea of me eventually leaving-
Chris: Going to UK?
Sarah: Yeah, he was a bit uncomfortable with that. And then when the breakup happened, he initiated it in October, I think. It took me by surprise a bit because of a variety of reasons. For one, he did it when I was sick, actually.
Chris: So you had the flu or something?
Sarah: Yeah, this was before the whole coronavirus thing.
Chris: It could have been the coronavirus though.
Sarah: Well, it was in October in Montreal, so I really don’t think it was. But it was like I don’t get sick very often, and it was one of the worst flus that I’ve had for a while. I told him the last night before I did like, “Oh, I feel bad.” He was like, “Oh, can I come over?” And I was like, “No, because I feel gross.” And he insisted to come over next day, and I was like, “Oh, cool. He wants to take care of me.” And no, not at all.
Chris: What was the breakup talk like? What did he say exactly?
Sarah: Well, he did it in a very kind way. As kind as you can be in that type of situation, of course. He said that he just didn’t feel comfortable anymore be in a relationship where he saw no future because he knew that I was getting my papers ready to move to the UK, and everything was feeling a lot more real all of a sudden. Plus it didn’t seem we had similar plans for the future. He was sure he didn’t want to have kids. And I thought I want to have kids, but I wasn’t sure. And he said, “Yeah, basically, I’m not comfortable being in a relationship where I don’t see any future anymore.” I tried to take it well, I remember the first thing I said after that was, “Of course, okay.” And then I started crying.
Chris: Did you do that in front of him, or after he had left?
Sarah: Oh, I totally did cry in front of him.
Chris: Okay.
Sarah: Yeah, I’m not proud to say that, but also, I mean, I was sick. I had a fever. I was not in full control.
Chris: Did at any point during the break up, did you think, “I must be dreaming, I’m having a fever dream or something. This can’t be real?”
Sarah: I didn’t fully believe that. But I did say to his face… The whole relationship was very honest, and the whole breakup was very honest too. It felt we were just throwing our feelings at each other, but not in an aggressive way. We were just expressing them right on the go. And I said at some point like, “Oh my God, this feels like a nightmare.” And he kept apologizing. He apologized a lot. And I could see that… he’s not a crier. He doesn’t cry a lot. But he was not-
Chris: Welling up. Getting emotional.
Sarah: Yeah. He was upset. He was not in a good place. And at some point, I asked for a hug. And he said, “Yeah, of course.” And he just hugged me for a while, and I was like, “Please, can we talk about this? If you’re going to break up with me, can you at least stick around to hear what I have to say for a while?” He was like, “Yeah, of course. I’ll stay as long as you want.” And while we were talking at some point, he said also, “You’re allowed to get mad at me, I completely understand if you get mad at me.” I remember I kept asking him… I don’t know if I apologized, but I kept asking him, “Did I make you happy? I just need to know, did I make you happy at least, did I succeed in doing that?” And he kept saying, “Yes, I’m not going to forget you.” And stuff that.
Chris: Do you think he initiated a breakup mostly because he knew you’re going to be going away to the UK?
Sarah: I think that’s it. Yeah. I mean, people have said to me, there’s always another reason and I’ve wondered myself. I must have done something, maybe I let myself go, maybe I wasn’t dressing up as much as I used to when we first started dating, or stuff that. But I think the main thing he decided was that, and when I told my family about it, because I’m very close with my family, and I immediately write to them afterwards. They said it does sound exactly like he knows that you’re going to be leaving, and he’s afraid that you’re going to break up first, so he did.
Chris: He’s protecting himself.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Like a premature attack to-
Sarah: Like a preemptive strike.
Chris: Right. Yeah, exactly. That’s the word I was looking for, not attack. Obviously, this breakup is devastating even more so because you have the flu, but what happens next, because eventually you get him back. What happens next to make that happen?
Sarah: Well, let’s just say at first I didn’t find your website until at least two or three weeks later after that.
Chris: Okay. In those two or three weeks, what had you done that was not okay, or okay? Because it’s like-
Sarah: According to your rules?
Chris: Yeah, according to the rules.
Sarah: Well, one thing that I perhaps… I don’t regret doing it, I think it was actually the right thing to do because immediately after the break up happened, I told my family about it, told my sister, told my best friends about it, and had a lot of people come over because I was like, “I can’t be alone right now.” Just not a good idea. And most of them asked me, “You should probably talk to him because it sounds he’s scared shitless but that he doesn’t really want to do this himself.”
Chris: Right. The preemptive strike type thing.
Sarah: Yeah. And that also, he sprung this on you, like he literally came to your house with all of your stuff in the box, and just left it on your doorstep, kind of, while you had the flu.
Chris: Yeah, it was planning it out like, “I don’t want to get hurt, maybe, so I’m going to do this.
Sarah: Kind of. Yeah. And I just felt like I didn’t have-
Chris: Closure.
Sarah: … my turn to speak. Yeah. And I wanted to tell him everything I thought, almost give him rational arguments for why you’re making a mistake right now. He broke up with me on a Monday, I think, and I asked him to come over to my house on the Friday to talk. Basically, I sent him a text. I was like, “I think that I deserved my turn to speak, and I would to talk with you a bit more, ask you some stuff to make sure I have an understanding of what’s going on, and what are your reasons. Do you mind coming to my house to talk about this sometime this week? And if you don’t want to, I completely understand, and just forget I said anything.” He said, “Yeah, of course, would you rather I come to your house or not? Or somewhere a bit more neutral, maybe.” And I said, “My house is better.”
Sarah: I gave him basically all my reasons as rationally as possible. And he still wasn’t really having it. But he said, “Thank you for telling me this. And I think it’s very brave of you to ask me to come over, and tell me all this.” And he said he thought that I was a lot braver than him and I was like, “Yeah, I agree.” At the end of this, we were still broken up, unfortunately. All of this happened with some tears, some crying, hugging, again. And at the end of it, I just told him basically, “No matter what happens between us, and no matter if we can be friends, or date again in the future, I just want you to know that you deserve to end up with someone who makes you happy, and you deserve a good person to be with you.”
Sarah: And I mostly said that because I knew that the relationship he had before me was not very healthy, basically, and had made him very unhappy at some points. I guess I was also afraid that by breaking up with me he would feel guilty and that would make him think that he didn’t deserve to be happy or something. I told him to see, “You’re a good person, and you deserve to be happy.” We hugged it out, kiss for a last time, and then he left my house. Then immediately after that, two days later, I went to France where my family lives, because I needed to be home basically, I needed to see my parents, my sister.
Chris: So you left?
Sarah: I left the country. Yeah.
Chris: You left the country, that’s a true no contact rule right there.
Sarah: I guess it is. Yeah. I don’t think I immediately unfollowed him, but I spent a lot of time off social media. Just before getting on the plane, I sent him one last message. It was like, “A gift from Futurama.” I don’t know if the show.
Chris: Oh, yeah, I know Futurama.
Sarah: Yeah, the time when Leela says to Fry, “Fry, the time we had together was short, but it was the best time of our life.” And it’s cheesy as fuck, I know, but I sent it out-
Chris: No. Is that a normal aspect of your relationship where you send memes or gifs back and forth? Like Pop Culture type stuff?
Sarah: Yeah. 100%.
Chris: Okay, so that’s just normal. That’s just normal for you.
Sarah: Well, yeah. It was still-
Chris: I mean, the context is little… Yeah, I get where you’re coming from though.
Sarah: Yeah. But it was kind of a send and go, because I sent this right before getting on the plane and there was no connection. The last two weeks I was at by parents, I’d never heard of the no contact rule before, but I was already thinking, “Anna, you can’t be desperate, just don’t text him. Don’t anything him.” I talked to his friends a bit, to one of his friends especially who was still rooting very hard for us, and was like, “You might get back together in the future.”
Chris: Was it a girl friend or a guy friend?
Sarah: I think right now they identify as non binary, but at that time they identified as a woman.
Chris: Okay.
Sarah: Yeah, and I was pretty close to them. It was maybe the closest friend in his circle that I knew. That makes sense.
Chris: So this person was cheering for both?
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: For you guys to get back together?
Sarah: Yeah, they were saying basically, “I don’t understand why exactly he did this. I don’t think he was in the best state of mind.” They actually mentioned that he might be depressed and suicidal too, which got me just the two first weeks after the breakup was hell for me, because-
Chris: Yeah, it’s pretty tough.
Sarah: … because I was miserable. And I was also thinking he’s maybe in a weird state of mind, he might be really miserable, too. He might not be exactly there, and I want to make sure that he’s not isolating, he’s not doing something bad to himself. But in the third week that I was at my parents, I found your website, I don’t remember what… I think it was through Google, a google search.
Chris: So you just wound up in an article there started reading and just maybe got engrossed in the content?
Sarah: Yeah, I think the first article I found wasn’t especially about getting your partner back, but it was more about surviving the breakup, dealing with it. That was really what I was looking for. And then I got on your website, and I found out what the website was for, among other things, and I discovered the ERP thing.
Chris: So you got into the Facebook group eventually?
Sarah: Yeah, I got into the Facebook group, but I never bought any of your books, actually.
Chris: Okay, so you got into the Facebook group, and what happens next?
Sarah: Well, I think is first I had to deal with a lot of self consciousness and awkwardness because, I don’t want to offend you or anyone else who’s in the group, but it was just something that was very unlike me to do. I never imagined in my life, I’d be doing this. And I’ve always prided myself on being independent, and very individualistic. I don’t even the concept of relationships so much. I’ve had people in my life, friends, family members who were very dependent on romantic relationships, and I’ve seen how much damage that can do. So I was always like, “That’s never going to be me. I’m never going to be desperate. I’m never going to chase.” And to be honest, signing up for that Facebook group and following the advice from that kind of website did feel a little bit like chasing and being desperate sometimes. So I had to deal with a lot of that.
Chris: In what way did you feel it felt like chasing? Because that’s interesting to me.
Sarah: Yeah, I know that you frame a lot of your advice to be exactly the opposite of chasing.
Chris: Right. The chasing, is it reaching out first in text messages, or the type of text messages sent that didn’t just jive with you?
Sarah: Oh no.
Chris: Well, so what aspect was it?
Sarah: Well, at that time, I was still in the no contact period. And I liked the no contact period because it was 30 days where you just do nothing. Where you think before acting, where you basically, whatever you do, don’t be impulsive. Give yourself time to think. And that really vibed with me for some reason, but I guess what felt chasing me a little bit, was how organized and planned it felt.
Chris: Okay. So it didn’t seem natural.
Sarah: Yeah, exactly.
Chris: It didn’t seem organic in a way, it was like, “Okay, you have to follow the texting phase, then the phone call phase, then the dating phase.”
Sarah: Yeah. And then the to reach out with the text and the hooks, that felt kind of contrived.
Chris: Okay. I’ve heard varying things about it. I’ve heard your perspective. I have also people’s perspective of like, “Oh, yeah, you should do it. You should try it.” Ultimately, I’m really curious to hear how you approached the situation, because I’m interviewing you trying to understand what you did that worked. So in your opinion, you felt like, “Okay, it looks a little contrived. It looks too organized, too unnatural.” So to speak. So what did you do? Did you follow it that unnatural way, or did you put your own spin on it?
Sarah: No, actually, I took a look at the first retail text, and I was like, “Yeah, no, that’s not going to be natural coming from me.” The first thing I did was of course, stick to topics that we were both interested in because, I don’t want to talk about something that I’m not interested in. Same for everyone. And then we had this habit of just not necessarily asking each other questions, or having this really very long text conversations, but we just send each other things we found funny, like memes, for example.
Chris: Right, like the Futurama gif, as an example.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: That sounds so much funny, but along those same lines.
Sarah: Yeah, along those same lines, basically. That kind of went against the advice you gave on your website, because they weren’t open ended questions, and you said that that was [crosstalk 00:17:19]-
Chris: But it was normal for your relationship, right?
Sarah: Exactly. And I think that’s a very-
Chris: So it just fit in the context of everything.
Sarah: Yeah. And I think like for me, the to reach out phase definitely wasn’t as important actually as the no contact phase.
Chris: So for you the no contact phase is where you did all that internal work, and maybe even just thinking?
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: I’m looking for patterns in success stories, and this is a pattern that I’ve noticed. Did you feel like the no contact rule was an essential aspect to getting your ex back because you built confidence during it? Like you rebuilt yourself up a little bit, or was there some Another aspect that I’m missing?
Sarah: Well, I think part of it was about rebuilding confidence. But, let’s be honest, I don’t think that 30 days or even 45 days is enough to-
Chris: Sufficient to making the most confident in the world. Right?
Sarah: Exactly. It’s not going to turn you into a different person, and you shouldn’t rely on it for that.
Chris: More likely in order for that to happen, it’s a lifelong pursuit to do that.
Sarah: Yeah, and what it-
Chris: But… go ahead, sorry.
Sarah: Yeah, what it did do was I’d say, I was already pretty confidence, I know what person I am. I know what I’m good at and what I can do before that, and when the breakup happened, it just threw everything in the air. And the NC period was about remembering all that, basically.
Chris: So getting back to the version you felt before, because I mean, you got broken up with during, arguably, the worst time, you’re sick, you’re no good, you got a fever. And then he drops this on you, so the emotions get involved in that, and maybe in that it just shell shocked you enough to where you’re just, “I don’t remember that person I was before all of this happened.”
Sarah: Yeah. Well, the NC period I’d say actually the first half of it was trying to get better from my cold, because it was a pretty bad cold.
Chris: Which we still don’t know if that was the coronavirus or not, for the record.
Sarah: Yeah, we don’t know. For the record, maybe I’m immune to it now. I don’t know. But yeah, the first two weeks maybe was just me feeling shitty emotionally, and then getting distracted by how shitty I was feeling physically, and then getting distracted by how bad I was feeling emotionally and vice versa. And after that, it was a lot of just watching Netflix on autopilots, watching a lot of Friends.
Chris: Friends.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: That’s like the number one Netflix show which is funny.
Sarah: It’s just like it’s not a high quality show by today’s standards, I guess.
Chris: I think it’s pretty darn high quality. It makes me laugh still to this day, but I grew up when it was still on the air. I remember watching its finale.
Sarah: Well, finale was in 2000 or something, I don’t remember.
Chris: Yeah, it’s pretty early, but I remember the Ross and the plane thing because I saw it live.
Sarah: Yeah, I didn’t see it live, but I really very much did grow up with it. So it was a comfort show.
Chris: I feel the same way about Seinfeld.
Sarah: I’ve never watched Seinfeld, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about it.
Chris: It’s so funny. But yeah, that’s the story. I didn’t grow up with it, but I saw it on reruns. But anyways, we’re getting off topic.
Sarah: Sorry. Yeah.
Chris: No. You’re talking about the no contact rule and the last half, the last 15 days.
Sarah: The last 15 days of the no contact rule. Well, during that time I was spending a lot of time with family, because I was living with them again. And it was nice because it was just to watch movies with them, share meals with them. Like when I told my mom is like, “Please just take me out, bring me to stuff.”
Chris: Distract me.
Sarah: Yeah, exactly. So we did all the super touristic things you do in Paris, which like-
Chris: Have you ever been to Paris before?
Sarah: Oh, yeah. I was born there actually. My family lives there-
Chris: Oh, okay. I’ve only been one time, and my wife got sick the first day, and so I wanted to go out and do all touristy things, and we could barely do any of it. We saw the Eiffel Tower, and we had one really good day where she wasn’t sick. She’s allergic to egg, and we don’t speak French, and so it’s hard to explain that so we think she got food poisoning.
Sarah: Yeah, she probably.
Chris: Yeah, so we won’t be visiting Paris again anytime soon.
Sarah: Sorry to hear that. I mean, French cooking is great, but there’s not as much that they do without eggs.
Chris: It is. That’s the problem. So anyways, you’re getting distracted throughout this period. And obviously you’re looking at some of the program, deciding about how you’re going to reach out. You look at it, you decide, “Well, it’s not really me.” I’m assuming the no contact rule finishes and you reach out first, or does he reach out first?
Sarah: Oh, no… wait, I definitely reach out first, I can remember. Yeah, I think the first one I reached out with something about politics, because it was a really interesting subject, which I thought was a good idea to distract us, as you said, not immediately start with a memory text or something that’s too close to the relationship.
Chris: Right. Just something that’s going to make them respond. And for whatever reason, you thought the political type of text would work, and it seems it did, I’m assuming?
Sarah: Yeah, it did. Because he’s very much into the politics of where he comes from, and I’m low-key into the politics of different countries because I come from China, and France, and also I was living in Montreal. So how to keep up with all three, that was something we talked about a lot too. So it was a familiar subject.
Chris: What happens next?
Sarah: What happens next? I think he took half a day to respond, or something, because of timezone differences, probably. And it was funny because he was like… I think he asked me how I was doing, the way he texted definitely seemed like he was happy to hear news from me, and maybe relieved that I didn’t hate him.
Chris: Yeah. Also, I mean, you’d spent 30 days if ignoring him.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Did he reach out at all during those 30 days?
Sarah: No.
Chris: No. Which I ran a poll and found out that around 65% of men will not reach out to you during no contact.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Which is interesting.
Sarah: Well, I think I kind of expected it. Of course, I was hoping, most days, to receive something from him. But I think also this guy broke up with you, right? And if he’s still sticking to his decision, he’s going to be like, “Okay, I don’t need to talk to her, we’re not together anymore.” But if he’s feeling that he made a mistake, and that he feels guilty, there might be an even higher chance that he won’t reach out to you because he’s going to be like, “Oh my god, I hurt her so much. She probably hates me right now. She probably doesn’t want to hear from me at all. I can’t do that.” And I think that’s where he was. Probably.
Chris: Well, it’s interesting. So you guys get into conversation, when do things really start to turn up, so to speak? Was it a pretty fast process or because of the timezone differences it took a little while to get things going?
Sarah: Probably the timezone difference played a bit in that, and I think I tried to use that to my advantage because I knew that there was a timezone difference and that even if he was replying to my messages straight away, he wasn’t able to because he’d probably be sleeping. So that actually helped me just be chill, and not obsessively check my messages for a response because logically I knew that it was impossible. I also used that to my advantage in that… I think one of your advice is don’t jump into a normal conversation too soon. You got to be just give him some crumbs and give and take for a while. So for about two more weeks, maybe more than that, I think we didn’t actually have a real conversation as a more than [inaudible 00:25:51] text exchange.
Chris: Just sort of back and forth, just feeling each other out, and then what sparks the normal conversation?
Sarah: I think it was once we had a little bit more time, I think it was about three weeks after I sent out that first text that we started having slightly longer conversations.
Chris: Okay, so you have longer conversations. And at some point, I’m assuming you come back to your home and you don’t have the time difference. Was that played into the conversations? I guess you’re texting back and forth, but eventually do you guys get on the phone, or you see each other in person? What does it take to make that happen?
Sarah: Okay, here’s the thing. We both hate phone calls. I think it’s part of our generation thing. You’ll see a lot of memes about hating phone calls.
Chris: Yeah, it’s funny. I love phone calls. I’m not great at texting. I’m kind of on the cusp of the millennial and the generation before that, so I’m on this weird area so I kind of straddle both.
Sarah: Well, I guess we’re both in the… I’m 22 and he’s 23.
Chris: Okay, so you definitely in the millennial age, so texting is the thing.
Sarah: Yeah, phone calls is like no, there’s no way we’re doing that.
Chris: That’s old, that’s like pagers to you guys.
Sarah: Kind of, yeah. I guess. It makes us both very uncomfortable. I knew that wasn’t going to be a part of it.
Chris: What about FaceTime, or Skype, or Zoom, or things of that nature? Is that out of the realm, or is it basically just texting to in-person for you guys?
Sarah: Well, I think we’d be okay with Skype, or Zoom now, but the thing is, we had never skyped before so that’s just-
Chris: That’s weird then. You don’t spring that on someone.
Sarah: Yeah, I didn’t want to bring that in.
Chris: Got it.
Sarah: Yeah, exactly.
Chris: So it was just basically you’re using text messaging to basically work towards seeing him in person.
Sarah: Yeah. I did have fun getting him confused when we first started texting, because, ignore him for 30 days and then come out with a text about French politics. And he was like, “French politics… wait, did you move back to France or something?” And I didn’t really answer that right away.
Chris: Had you been posting on social media at all during this time that you were in France?
Sarah: Yeah. I posted some pictures of me in front of the Paris City Hall with my family. And some pictures of me at-
Chris: Was he still following you on social media, on Instagram, and Facebook?
Sarah: He’s just not very big on social media, and especially Facebook. So I think he was seeing the post, but he wasn’t interacting-
Chris: He wasn’t going to comment or something. Okay.
Sarah: Yeah. No.
Chris: Seeing is just as important, especially if you’re texting him about French politics.
Sarah: I guess. And I think he saw that because one of the posts I made about getting a new gig and WatchMojo, actually, he saw it, and he liked it. And then that was one of our texting and he sent me, “Hey, congratulations, I’m really happy for you because I knew that you were looking for work for a while.” And I was like, “Yeah, thanks.”
Chris: Okay, so he actually reached out to you to tell you congratulations on the job?
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Okay, that’s pretty good.
Sarah: Yeah, it was. And then when I was about to come back home, I gave him some hints, but I didn’t say exactly which date or what time. And then he learned that through a Snapchat, I posted on my snap story.
Chris: So he’s definitely paying attention to social media. He’s just not interacting with it.
Sarah: Yeah, except, when I did post that to my snap story, he sent me a snap saying, “Hey, welcome back home,” and stuff.
Chris: Okay.
Sarah: When I hadn’t notified him specifically about that.
Chris: So you eventually come home, I’m assuming, and how fast did things pick up when you get home?
Sarah: Well, I think for the first week or so, I made it a priority to reconnect with friends, basically. Just spend a lot of time with my old friends, and having fun with them. And we kept the texting pretty much the same as it was before. Except we replied a bit faster. And I think I noticed at one point that we were texting in the morning, when I was already up and doing stuff. And he said at some point, ” Oh I probably have to go, I’m going to have to get out of bed.” And I was like, “Oh, it’s cool, he’s texting me when he’s not out of bed yet.” That’s a good sign.
Chris: Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah. And then at some point, I think that I said that I still had one of his shirts, and that I wanted to give it back to him.
Chris: That’s how you secured the in-person interaction there.
Sarah: Yes. It is.
Chris: Basically you have that instant date. Was that a conscious decision on you to not bring up the shirt until that point, or was it just happenstance, like you just got lucky?
Sarah: I think it was happenstance because I didn’t actually know that I still had that shirt. I was living at my parents, and then I come back, and I looked at my clothes, Spring fitting and like, “Oh, wow, this shirt is mine. It’s probably his.”
Chris: Okay.
Sarah: That was pretty natural, actually, I just sent him a picture and I was like, “Is that your shirt?” And he was like, “Yep, that’s one of my favorite CJ shirts.”
Chris: So beautiful. All right, that’s great. So that’s what would cause you to see him in person then.
Sarah: Yeah, at first he said, “You can keep it if you want to.” And I was like, “No, that’s weird. What do you mean?” I was like, “Actually, it’d be nice if I could give you back your shirt, want to meet up for coffee at some place? So I can give you back your shirt, basically?” And he said, “Yeah, sure.”
Chris: How quick did it take him to respond to that text?
Sarah: I don’t remember the exact time difference, but I think it was like 20 minutes or something.
Chris: Okay, so it’s pretty instant, because sometimes you do that, you don’t hear from them.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: There was none of that?
Sarah: Not really. No. I did do the thing, like I sent the text and just turned off my phone for the rest of the day, because I tend to do that normally, anyways. But that really took the pressure off.
Chris: Okay, so you turn off the phone, you turn it back on and you see the text from him.
Sarah: Exactly. Yeah.
Chris: How do you prepare for this meetup?
Sarah: I don’t remember if I did a lot of mentally calming myself down. I think I did some reading exercises probably before going. And I made sure to wear one of the outfits that he used to compliment me a lot on.
Chris: Okay.
Sarah: Yeah. Dress myself up, basically. And I also brought my computer, so I could be like-
Chris: Did you show up early to the coffee house?
Sarah: Yeah, actually, I showed up maybe an hour early because I also wanted to get some work done on strips I was writing.
Chris: Two birds, one stone, right?
Sarah: Yeah. So that way I could be there early, and could be like, “Oh, I wasn’t specifically waiting for you, this is the coffee shop where I work. I’m just meeting you here.”
Chris: So you played it really good. Did you ever seek the advice of the Facebook group at all?
Sarah: I think I did at some point. Yeah. I don’t-
Chris: Did they give you any suggestions about the coffee meetup that you took?
Sarah: I don’t think they give me… sorry. It’s hard to remember right now.
Chris: Oh, no, it’s okay. It’s all right. I’m just curious.
Sarah: I think some of the admins, by the way, the admins are amazing. They’re so on top of posts and everything. They give me general advice on just calm down. Try to be chill. Don’t be too intense on the first time. And I was like, “Cool.” Yeah, I know exactly that I’m supposed to do that. Let’s just hope that I can-
Chris: Do it.
Sarah: … put it in practice.
Chris: Right. So he shows up eventually, I’m guessing.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: How does it go?
Sarah: Well, he shows up, right on time, if I remember right. And, of course, for the first 15 minutes before he’s supposed to show up, I feel I’m about to throw up from distress, but I don’t.
Chris: Heart’s beating real bad.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: You’re nervous.
Sarah: Yeah, but I don’t throw up, which is a good thing. And then he shows up and he gets a coffee, and he’s like, “Hey.” I think we hug to say hello first. And he just sits down, and first thing he does is ask me, “So what you’re working on.” And I show him my computer, I tell him a little bit about what my gig at WatchMojo is like, and he’s like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” And plus, I think I was working on top 10 badass LGBTQ plus [inaudible 00:34:32] heroes, which was a topic that we were both interested in. So he was like, “Yeah, I can give you some suggestions if you want.” And then, for some reason, out of nowhere, he just takes my hot chocolate and takes a sip out of it, and I’m a bit weirded out by that because it’s-
Chris: Yeah, that’s an odd behavior. Okay.
Sarah: Yeah. It’s like a very familiar gesture. Right?
Chris: Right.
Sarah: I don’t when people do that to me normally.
Chris: It’s like taking food off your plate.
Sarah: Yeah, let alone when it’s someone who broke up with me three months ago.
Chris: Okay, so he takes a sip of coffee, and-
Sarah: I look at him and I’m like, “You’re welcome.” And he’s like, “Oh, well, you invited me for a cup of coffee. I’m having your coffee.” And I’m like, “Okay.” And it’s a bit awkward, but it’s also very familiar and very casual.
Chris: He must have been nervous though, to me, that seems he was nervous and trying to like… I don’t know.
Sarah: I think he looked very much he was nervous and trying to hide it, maybe as natural as possible. Almost like nothing happened, and we’re just buddies.
Chris: How long does this coffee interaction last?
Sarah: I think it could have lasted for a while, but I think it only lasted an hour and a half at that time before I cut it short, and I was like, “Okay, so it’s 8:00 PM now, it’s nice talking to you, but I should probably go home and make dinner now.” And he got up and was like, “Yeah, I should probably go home and get to work on my project as well. It was nice seeing you.” The thing is we always had a very, complicit, almost best friends vibe when we were dating.
Chris: Okay, so it’s real natural talking back and forth.
Sarah: Yeah, it felt we were going back to that friends vibe without the romantic stuff, if that makes sense.
Chris: Yeah, I get it.
Sarah: Yeah. And he was just goofing off, being his usual self, eating snow off the ground, and me scolding him for that, because that was something he used to do. And then he walked me back to my house, and hugged me. He initiated the hug, and I was like, “Okay, let’s go with it.” And then when he left, he said, “See you soon.” I was like, ” Okay, sure. See you soon then.” That’s new information to me. See you soon. Then I went home and felt very proud of myself for how I handled it.
Chris: Yeah. Seems it went really great. I mean, he took a sip of your coffee. In pre school or kindergarten, that means you’re dating. He’s half way got back already.
Sarah: I guess. Yeah.
Chris: After the coffee date, who reaches out to who first? Because that’s always a point of contention in the group. You get these women they go on the date, it goes well, and then they don’t hear from their ex.
Sarah: Oh, well, I think I actually sent a message right away as a follow up… No, not as a, “Hey, when are we meeting up again soon?” I just sent him a quick text saying, “Hey, it was nice to speak with you again and catch up.”
Chris: Sort of like the thank you for the interaction type text message.
Sarah: Yeah, kind of. Like when you send a thank you note after an interview that went well.
Chris: So is thank you text, or call.
Sarah: Yeah, basically. And I think that helped me because it takes the pressure off, again, “Who’s going to text who first after the meet up?” And at the same time, it’s not a text that says, “Wants to meet up soon.” Doesn’t sound desperate. It’s more like it closes off to interaction.
Chris: Yeah.
Sarah: And I liked that I was the one to do that because it felt I was in control of the situation.
Chris: He’s also probably feeling pressure about if he should text you first.
Sarah: Probably, too, and just takes the pressure off everybody.
Chris: Yeah. What happens next, I guess, because that’s a big interaction, but eventually, the momentum is going to pick up here in a big way.
Sarah: After that is what we started texting more often, I think, if I remember well, our conversations got longer too, still, all of this is completely over text. And at that time he was working on… He’s an engineer, and he was working on a video game project at an office building that was actually right next to my apartment building.
Chris: Lucky.
Sarah: Lucky, I guess. At some point, I remember he took a picture of my building from the office building where he was, he was like, “Guess where I am?” And I was like, “That’s fucking creepy dude.”
Chris: Yeah, right, you’re spying on me.
Sarah: Yeah, I was like-
Chris: Making sure you’re not dating anyone else. He’s got the camera thing making sure.
Sarah: It never felt like that. It never felt like he was pressuring me. No.
Chris: No, I just think it’s a happy coincidence, right?
Sarah: Yeah, that it felt weird too, and that made me think the chances were probably on my side. For a long time after that I was just like, “Okay, this is possible.” And also like, I have no idea what this man is thinking, or what’s going on through his head, or what he’s trying to do. But soon after that… I’m sorry, just a lot of things were happening at that time. And I had gotten back in touch with a guy I met on Tinder a year ago, basically. I met this-
Chris: You were in this limbo, where you’re like, “Well, things aren’t progressing to the dating with my ex. So maybe I should start moving on.” Was that the thing?
Sarah: Not really. This Tinder guy, I actually got back in touch with him as soon as I went back home to France, because I was like, you know what? I’m single. I’m heartbroken. I feel shit. But at least…
Chris: So basically the guy’s a distraction from-
Sarah: Yeah, it’s a distraction.
Chris: Got it. Okay.
Sarah: Yeah. And I was like, you know what? Yeah, might as well get something out of it. I got back in touch with him. And I was like, “Hey, you want to meet up again? You want to meet up for the first time, actually, one time?” And he was like, “Yeah.” So we basically scheduled a date for when I’d be coming back to Montreal. And I went on a date with him, but it was a very weird coincidence that I ended up scheduling my second meetup with my ex on the same day. As my first date with that Tinder guy.
Chris: Wow.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: That is an interesting coincidence.
Sarah: It wasn’t supposed to play out that time at first, but the Tinder guy had a cancellation. So we had to reschedule. And basically, what I’d heard about from my friends is that… we’ve heard about this board game bar that was fun. And we said, we all wanted to go together. And I let two subjects slip into a conversation with my ex and was like, “Yeah, that sounds a fun place. Have you ever been?” And he told me, “Yeah, I’ve been once actually. And it was pretty fun. I’d to go again.” And I was like, “Oh, you know what, you could join all of us.” Because we were all friends before. My friends liked him a lot, too. So I was like, “Yeah, you could join us then we could spend an afternoon there and just play games.” And he was like, “Yeah, sure.” And then it turned out that the evening of that day was my date with the guy.
Chris: Okay, so do you go to this place to meetup with your ex, and then have to leave to go with the other guy?
Sarah: Kind of, yeah.
Chris: Wow, that might have actually played pretty well for you.
Sarah: Yeah, it was a situation where I went to the board games bar, and my ex was the first person who was there too, so there was a time, where we were just alone, the two of us trying to talk. And I let it slip that, “Oh, unfortunately, I can’t stay too late today, because I have a thing tonight.” And he was like, “Oh, what thing?” And I thought, I could just say a date, but for some reason I didn’t. I was like, “Oh, just a meetup with someone from work that we got to do a project together.” And he was like, “Oh.” But then my friends came and my friends all knew that I had a date that night. So my friends didn’t ask questions about that. And while we were playing board games, I sometimes checked my phone to see if there were any messages from the Tinder date that night. And at some point, I could very obviously see him checking out my phone, and checking out my conversation.
Chris: This all plays out too perfectly.
Sarah: Yeah. At first I thought I was imagining things, but then we all went home, and my friend said, “Yeah, what was his problem? Why was he checking out the phone?” And I was like, “Oh, did you see that too? Was it obvious?” And he was like, “Yeah, it was obvious. That was very obvious.” And I think at some point, while we were playing board games, he pieced together that I actually had a date tonight, because then we all walked back home to my apartment with my friends, and that’s when he started having this weird conversation with me. We were talking about his old friends, just like we were dating again. And then he said, “Do you have any free time somewhere around February 14th, so we could maybe get a coffee?”
Chris: Valentine’s Day?
Sarah: Yeah. And also another thing because Valentine’s Day is actually the day of our first date.
Chris: Okay, so it’s an anniversary of sorts.
Sarah: It would have been our first anniversary. Yeah. He was like, “Do you have some free time so we can get together and have a cup of coffee? Maybe at that coffee shop where we first met?” And I was like, “Yeah, I guess I would have free time around that time. Why, is there something you want to talk about?” And he just looked at me without saying anything. Like I should know what he was talking about, and I should be able to guess, but I was like, “Ha ha ha, if you want me to guess I’m not going to do the hard work for you.”
Chris: Right, you’re the one who broke up with me.
Sarah: Exactly. So I just told him, “If there’s something you need to talk about, can’t you just tell me right now?” And he was like, “No, not really.” And I was like, okay, it’s time to put him out of his misery. So I just told him, “Look, if you want to talk with me sometime, send me a call, or a text. Let’s set up a date. And then you can tell me what you have to tell me. Sound good?” He was like, “Yeah, sound good.” And then when he walked me to my place, he hugged me, again, for a pretty long time, and then there was this awkward moment where he turned to my friends because all of them were still there, and he was like, “Yeah, well, since I hugged her, I got to hug all of you now otherwise, it’s weird.”
Chris: He’s feeling self conscious about it.
Sarah: Yeah. So they all hugged, and then he left. And my friends and I hung out my apartment for a while. And then it was time for my date with that Tinder guy.
Chris: Okay.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: So you go on the date with the Tinder guy. And I’m assuming, obviously, it doesn’t really lead to anywhere because you get back with your ex.
Sarah: Well, you would think so, right? Because, well, to be honest, I didn’t want to have anything serious with that Tinder guy, of course. To be honest, when I first met up with him, I was like, it’s probably just going to be sex, because he’s cute. And, yeah-
Chris: So he’s like the ultimate distraction for you?
Sarah: Kind of, yeah. And also he’s cute, but he doesn’t seem too much of a jackass. And he probably isn’t going to murder me. So it’s perfect. Except that after my ex tells me, “I want to talk to you on our first anniversary, at the coffee shop where we met.” I’m in this-
Chris: You decide not to sleep with him.
Sarah: Well, I’m in this very confused space where I’m like, “I probably shouldn’t sleep with him.” So what I do is I go to the Facebook group, and I’m like, “Guys, this very weird thing happened, but it’s probably a good thing. It probably means chances are good, but I don’t want to get too hopeful.” Because part of me was like maybe he’s just going to meet up with me again to say, “I thought we could be friends. But it’s too hard. I want to break up with you as a friend.”
Chris: Man, it’s funny how the mind runs to these places because the signs don’t look that at all.
Sarah: The signs don’t look at that, but [crosstalk 00:46:50]-
Chris: It’s hard logically when you’re fighting your emotions, and everything, and your fears.
Sarah: Yeah, because there were no signs before the breakup. Right?
Chris: Right.
Sarah: And so What a lot of admins and women from the group told me was that, “You don’t have to feel guilty, just go on your date because it was scheduled and enjoy yourself, but probably don’t do anything more than just talk with him since you’re feeling confused right now.” And I was like, “Yeah, okay, I’m going to be good. I’m not going to do anything. I’m just going to talk.” And then I got on the date, and he was very cute, and very good at talking. And there was wine, so we ended up sleeping together.
Chris: Okay.
Sarah: Yeah. And I ended up feeling a bit guilty about that. But, again, the Facebook group told me, technically you did nothing wrong.
Chris: Technically, you did nothing wrong. You’re broken up, you owe him nothing. He broke up with you.
Sarah: Yeah, exactly.
Chris: You’re allowed to do whatever you want.
Sarah: And he gave you nothing more than a few vague hints or something.
Chris: Right. If he wanted you he should have stepped up at the moment when he was doing the weird hug thing with you and his friends. He should have just said, “Hey, let’s go for a date right now.”
Sarah: Yeah, or just anytime before that. But basically it did give me an extra boost of confidence, and of calm, because I was like, “Even if this doesn’t work out, I’ve proven to myself that it’s possible for me to have fun with other people and to feel okay without him.” So I feel all that culminated to me not feeling so nervous for nerves when our third meetup came up.
Chris: So your third meetup comes up, which is on Valentine’s Day?
Sarah: Actually, no, because… sorry, there’s just a lot to unpack. Before our third meetup was scheduled, basically, he sent me a text saying, “I suggested Valentine’s Day because I thought it would be symbolic or whatever. But that was a dumb ass idea. So to have any time sooner, like this week?”
Chris: So he’s feeling the pressure then. He really wants to see you.
Sarah: I think he was. Yeah, I think he had a sense of urgency. And I said, “Yeah, sometime this week works for me. And yeah, I figured you were going for the symbolism.” Just to let him know that-
Chris: So you lead on that, “I know what this is about.”
Sarah: I know that you’re not being very subtle right now, basically.
Chris: Right. Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah, he said after that, “Yeah, this week would be great. I was going to suggest today because I’m close to your apartment right now.” And I was like, “Today, there’s no way. I got stuff to do, this is too short of a notice.” And he said, “Yeah, I figured it would be short notice, but this Saturday works.” So I go to my work meeting that day, and then I receive another message from them after my work meeting, which is just a long text block, where he shows his cards, finally. Where he’s basically-
Chris: The long text block, what does it say?
Sarah: It says…
Chris: You can just give me the broad strokes. We don’t need a word for word.
Sarah: I don’t know if my phone is actually dead, but it would be great… Anyway, he said that… Basically he started by saying that he was in the middle of a panic attack or something, and that he was sorry if it sounded a bit like he was rambling, but he just needed to get this out. He said that he wanted to meet up, and asked me to give him a chance to win the back, basically. He said that he had been spending the last three months not really trying to meet anyone else just doing his own thing, like thinking about life and what he wanted out of it. And what he wanted out of the partner.
Sarah: That yeah, he knew it was cheesy, but it was a truth, and that he basically realized he made a mistake, and that he’d given a lot of thought to what I’d said about me leaving for grad school. About us trying long distance, and that he absolutely did see things looking out. That he wanted me to give him a chance again. Basically. He also said that it’s been three months, and he knows that I might have found someone else, or I might have changed my mind. And that, if it was the case, that was completely okay, and just pretend he didn’t say anything, and it would change anything on his part. That we could still be friends, no hard feelings, basically. But that if I decided that, “Yeah, I wanted to give him a second chance. He’d do his utmost to show me that it was worth it.”
Chris: Okay, that’s pretty good text.
Sarah: That’s pretty much exactly what you want to hear, right?
Chris: Not pretty much. That is exactly what you want to hear.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: So what do you do with it? Do you just see him on that day, or do you wait until Saturday, or even respond?
Sarah: Oh, no. Yeah. I responded like I think 20 minutes later because it sparked a panic attack in me. So I had to take some time, and then I told him In a pretty cold way, maybe, that like, “I just got out of the work meeting, and this is one hell of a message to come back to. And I’m actually at a friend’s house right now, do you mind if I get back to you tomorrow about this?” And he was like, “Yeah, sure, take all the time you need. I know, it’s a lot to sprint up on you right now. There’s no rush.” So the next day, I think, I answered him, and I told him basically, this is a lot to unpack right now. And let’s discuss this more when we meet up, basically. And then the meetup happened. All of that led to the third meetup.
Chris: That is a lot to unpack, but with the context of the third meetup, how does that go?
Sarah: We met up at the same coffee shop that I had chosen, and in retrospect, I don’t think he came very well prepared because, the first two times, my text to him, like the time when I asked him to come back after the breakup, all of those were very… I spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to do, what I wanted to get out of that, and what I was going to say. I don’t think he did that preparation for the third meetup. Not really.
Chris: So he just came in, he’s like, “I’m going to wing it.”
Sarah: Kind of, but I want to give him some credit, because he definitely did seem very nervous. And we spent most of the first meetup just dancing around the subject, talking about memes, and friends and jokes as if nothing else was going on. And then I brought the subject on the table, again. And he went into what he had done the past three months, and what he was thinking about, and how he felt that basically he made a mistake. He told me about the two only dates he’d been on in those three months, and it made me laugh because he said on one of these only two dates had been on, the girl’s dog actually bit on the ankle. And I was like-
Chris: Not a great sign.
Sarah: I was like, “That’s amazing.” I laughed like 10 minutes straight, I think.
Chris: Dogs can be pretty protective if you approach their owner the wrong way.
Sarah: I guess so. He wasn’t hurt that bad, so it was okay to laugh about it. But still, I was like, “That’s amazing. I love that dog. I owe that dog a big one. Good dog.”
Chris: Good dog. This third meetup, because he sends you a text basically asking for you back, and I’m assuming a third meetup it was more talking through things. So was it just this natural unfolding of taking each other back, or did he have to ask again, or did you just have to accept on that third date?
Sarah: No. I made it thoroughly clear that it wasn’t going to be a thing where like, “Oh, yeah, we’re back together now.” I told him I think some of the-
Chris: He was going to work for it then.
Sarah: Basically, yeah. I feel I was pretty good at giving him all the signs that he was going to work for it. When he kept dropping those hints, and being like, “I think you know what I’m talking about.” I was like, “No, I might know, but I’m going to make him spit it out.”
Chris: Yeah, it’s the right thing to do.
Sarah: If you can break up with me face-to-face, you can ask for me back face-to-face too, I’m not going to do the work for you. And I think he got the message across, and I told him that we were going to start with a trial period, because after we talked at the coffee shop, it naturally progressed into a date where we went to get dinner at a restaurant nearby. And after a while, I told him, “You probably already know that I still have feelings for you, because I don’t think I’ve been hiding that.” And he was like, “Yeah, and you probably know that I still love you. But I feel you’re having trouble trusting me again.”
Sarah: And I was like, “I’m going to have trouble trusting you again for a long time. I’m going to ask to start with a trial period first. And I don’t know how long it’s going to be because I have no idea how long it’s going to take, for me to feel I can trust you again. I honestly can’t give you a timeline on that. I can tell you how long it’s going to be until I feel safe with you again.” And he was like, “Yeah, I understand that. Of course, that’s okay with me.” And I basically spent a long time giving him reasons not to do this, basically, telling him all the conditions about, it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be difficult. It’s going to take a long time. You’re going to have to be patient.
Chris: Give me an example of conditions you would give him?
Sarah: I told him, for example, “You know that I have a history of mental health, that this probably didn’t make it better. That I might go through phases where I’m angry at you, where I hate you, where I might not want to answer your messages. And you just might have to deal with that. And it’s going to be hard. Are you okay with that? Are you sure you’re ready to go through that to get me back, basically?” And he was like, “Yes. I’ve thought about this. And the answer is yes.” And stuff like I might not want to have sex with you for a long time because I might not feel ready to do that with you again for a long time. Are you okay with that? He was like, “Yes, I’m okay with that.”
Sarah: And I brought up also the reason why he had broken up in the first place. I told him, “You know that I’m still going to go to grad school, because it’s my dream, I’m still going to go study. I’m still going to move away, I’m still going to want to try long distance with all the hardships that it entails. And you have to deal with the possibility that, yeah, we might still break up. Because we’re both young, and our lives are ahead of us, and there’s no guarantee that we’re not going to grow apart. Are you okay with that? Are you willing to deal with that uncertainty? Which before you weren’t able to deal with since you broke up with me?” And he said, “Yes, I’ve thought about it. And yes.” I wanted to leave no stone unturned, basically.
Chris: Here’s a stone that I’m just curious about, so your trial period, which is an interesting idea to me, what are the conditions of it? Doesn’t mean both of you aren’t allowed to date other people? Do you just continue as is until you’re ready to take them back? Or is it like, “Hey, we’re going to be in a committed relationship, but in order for me to feel comfortable, you have to hit all these milestones.” But both of you you’re not allowed to date other people?
Sarah: Yeah. I’m not sure if I ever made clear during that time, but none of us were dating other people during that time. It wasn’t open thing or stuff because also one of the things that he mentioned during our first meetup at the coffee shop is that he was like, “I’m really not for open relationships. It’s really not my thing.” And I was like, “Cool. We’re on the same page then. None of that.” Probably.
Chris: Right.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: So it was almost assumed in the trial period. So you didn’t have to make it clear to him?
Sarah: Yeah. And I actually told him very soon also about the other guy that I’d slept with because-
Chris: How did he react to that news? I wouldn’t react well to that news if I was in his shoes.
Sarah: I was very wary about that. Because I was like that was the very day that you started dropping hints, and I felt like you were trying to cock block me, except that didn’t work. And I told him basically, “Are you okay with knowing that?” And he told me, “We weren’t together, we were broken up, you were single. You had every right to do whatever you wanted, and you have no reason at all to feel guilty for this. No reason at all. This is something I cannot at all hold against you.” So I added on, but that I might still think about that guy from time to time because we did have some chemistry, and the trial period includes that-
Chris: You really left no stone unturned.
Sarah: I didn’t want to.
Chris: Pretty impressive, also a little scary. I’d be scared to do that, if I was in your shoes, so you have some courage that not a lot of people would have.
Sarah: Thanks. Well, it was just the possibility of starting a new relationship with a lot of blind spots, and a lot of problems that we don’t talk about. That was 1000 times scarier to me. Because that feel like getting your foot snapped up by a bear trap and then putting it back in the same spot again.
Chris: Yeah, that’s a great analogy.
Sarah: I’m not going to do that.
Chris: You’re going to make every effort to make sure that bear trap doesn’t snap up, again.
Sarah: Yeah, or just put my foot in a different place.
Chris: So in all it took you about three months from start to finish to get them back or a little bit longer?
Sarah: Three months, I’d say, because by the time what would have been our first anniversary, came around, we were already sort of back together.
Chris: Okay. I mean, I think the moment he… that third meetup is technically the official, you got him back type thing, because it seems that that trial period is central for you. But going to ask you and just be as honest as possible. What do you think was the number one most effective thing that you did to make this come about?
Sarah: I’m going to stick with the NC period, probably.
Chris: So no contact.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Specifically, what about no contact, how you should be using your time for you, in your opinion, how should you use your time during no contact?
Sarah: It’s going to sound very cliche, but self care is just-
Chris: Self care.
Sarah: … number one priority because, for a long time, you’re going to feel you’re in a dark room, a huge, dark, messy room where you can’t see anything. And you’re just going to try whatever to make yourself feel better. And I think that’s the right state of mind to be in. You just have to get to a really primal state where you’re like, “This hurts. What can I do to make myself feel better?” And try not to think that getting back together with him is the only thing that can make you feel better, because it’s not.
Chris: It’s interesting you say that. And I’ve been asking this to all the success stories that I’m interviewing, because one of the patterns I’m picking up on is it seems a lot of them get to this point where, yes, they want their exes back, but they understand innately that they kind of don’t care if they get them back anymore. So it’s like, “If I don’t get him back, I’ll be okay.”
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: Do you feel a take… because when you go through a breakup initially, that’s not even possible to feel that way, because you want them back so badly, especially if it was unplanned and it came out of left field like yours did. Do you feel that was an essential thing for you to work on to gain that mentality throughout this process? Do you feel that was a central aspect of your success?
Sarah: Definitely. Is that probably you have to like… I don’t think you can ever be in a relationship with someone where you feel you need the other person, or you can’t do without.
Chris: You can’t survive without them.
Sarah: Exactly. And it’s okay to want them back. It’s very okay. But if you’re feeling like you can’t live without them, you probably have a lot of work to do before you can be back in a relationship with them. If it makes sense.
Chris: No, that totally makes sense. And that’s the thing I’m trying to get across anyone listening, is that a lot of it is counterintuitive because I feel sometimes people come to the website or they come to the group and they expect me, or someone else to give them a magic bullet, say this one phrase, and he’ll be on his knees begging, but quite frankly, the magic bullet is that mentality. Because it sounds counterintuitive, but it’s that mentality, I’m noticing it’s a pattern in almost every single success story because I talk to you about this stuff, and I’ll bring it up after I let you have a say and talk about what you felt worked, and it’s always something around that line of thinking. Where it’s like, “I worked on getting to this mentality where I was like, “Look, I want him back, but if I don’t get him back, I’ll be okay.””
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: And I feel that’s a hard thing for a lot of women to go through because it’s not the straight arrow type thing. It’s not like, “Hey, do the no contact rule, then do a texting phase, and then a phone call phase.” It’s the thing that you never stop working on and getting. And the thing I’m been asking the success stories is, is it something that you feel you can manufacture? Can you fake it at all, or do you actually have to feel it?
Sarah: That’s a tricky question. But I feel like there’s always a period where you have to fake it before you make it, or you’re going to have to… because some of the key things to feeling better is doing stuff. Like going out with friends, spending time with family, exercising, going to museum exhibits, anything that. And in order to do those things, you’re going to have to, in some measure, pretend that you’re okay, because it’s not socially acceptable to break up crying in front of the Mona Lisa.
Chris: Well, I mean, I don’t know, you could play it off as the beauty of the Mona Lisa brought you to tears.
Sarah: True. You could do that. Yeah. There is a component of projecting an outward air of like she’s got her shit together. Like she’s calm, she’s controlled, this girl does stuff, like go rock climbing three times a week, spend time with her sisters, spend time painting, spend time making sculptures out of clay, or stuff that I did. And it’s kind of like if you look at yourself on the outside, you’re like, “Oh, well, a person who feels completely heartbroken couldn’t do this. So obviously, I must be stronger than I think. Obviously, I must have some kind of shit together.” And then you convince yourself.
Chris: So the best analogy I’ve heard was from a different success story. It’s you can fake it at the beginning, but eventually, it’s only to build momentum until you actually start believing it.
Sarah: Yeah. Exactly.
Chris: And you felt something a similar experience.
Sarah: Yeah. And I’d say at the same time as I was doing that, I also let myself have my own time, have my own moments where I didn’t pretend that I was feeling better than I did. Where I just curled up on the couch and watch How I Met Your Mother episodes on autopilots.
Chris: Love that show. I love that show. But the funny thing about that show is it’s a carbon copy of Friends. You’ve got the obsessed… What is it, the guy obsessed with girls, you got Barney. Who is it on Friends? Joey, right?
Sarah: Yeah. Barney and Joey. Ted, Ross.
Chris: And then you’ve got the Ted and Robin, versus Ross and Rachel.
Sarah: Yeah.
Chris: It’s funny.
Sarah: And then you got the-
Chris: And then you got the married couple, Marshall and Lily.
Sarah: Yeah, the couple that gets together with minimal drama.
Chris: Right. It’s like How I Met Your Mother was like, “Oh, Friends, that formula works really well, let’s just make it.” But out of the two shows, I watch How I Met Your Mother way more than Friends.
Sarah: Really?
Chris: I don’t know why, but I love both a lot.
Sarah: Okay, I’m not proud of it, but I think also something that helped me with How I Met Your Mother specifically, is that the guy has to go through… Ted, has to go through all this trouble of falling in love with Robin, and being obsessed with her, and sabotaging all his relationships because of her for years, until he finally learns to let her go. And then eventually she comes back in his life at the end, which a lot of people were mad about.
Chris: What’s interesting about the finale of that show, is that they wrote the finale when they didn’t know that it was going to get picked up for a second season. So it was like the whole arc of the first season was supposed to be like if they got canceled, that was supposed to be the ending and they just stuck with it. I don’t know if that’s totally true, but that’s what I’ve heard. I always liked Barney, and Robin together. So I was disappointed when they broke up because they were just hilarious to me. But yeah, anyways, this is totally off topic. But I wanted to take a minute and just thank you for coming on and sharing your story, seriously.
Sarah: Oh, sure, no problem.
Chris: You were so detailed. And specifically, a lot of what you said, you were even not afraid to sit there and hurt my feelings. Say, “I didn’t agree with everything that you were teaching.” And that’s why I’m actually doing these interviews because every time I do an interview, I learn something more about how I can improve, to advise people. And the pattern I’m picking up on is that self care type thing you’re talking about, that devil may care attitude, where you’re just like, “I don’t care if I don’t get my ex anymore.” And the more and more I interview people, the more I actually start to realize that may be the key that we need to start pushing more and more, to our clients. So thank you so much for coming on.
Chris Seiter: Let’s rock and roll. Okay, today we’re going to be speaking to a really special guest. Let’s start over.
Olivia Reiman: That’s all good. Actually, I do have a question. Are you recording video too?
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I am.
Olivia Reiman: Okay, okay.
Chris Seiter: Although, if you want, I can literally… I’ve got a video editor who can just scrub it out so that he does… If you don’t want to be on video, that’s fine.
Olivia Reiman: No, it’s totally fine. I’ll make sure to only pick my nose like a few times. It’s fine.
Olivia Reiman: I’m doing wonderful. Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, so why don’t you kind of tell us a little bit about your backstory, and then maybe we can just sort of organically get into what I’m seeing with my clients and maybe how you can help them.
Olivia Reiman: Yeah, of course, of course. My name’s Olivia Reiman. I’m a mental health coach and author. Basically, my story is kind of… It’s been a wild ride. The first seven or eight years of my life is completely repressed. I don’t remember any of it. At age 13-
Chris Seiter: Seven years?
Olivia Reiman: Seven years all gone, which is-
Chris Seiter: You don’t remember it?
Olivia Reiman: No.
Chris Seiter: Well, I don’t remember anything past three, but I remember what it was like when I was… Wow, okay.
Olivia Reiman: Yeah, yeah. Emotional trauma.
Chris Seiter: Right, right.
Olivia Reiman: But yeah, so I don’t remember that. And then basically at age 13, I was diagnosed with bipolar. I was also dealing with depression and anxiety, what I like to call the bad. They tried the meds and therapy route with me. It wasn’t working.
Olivia Reiman: So of course, I tried to make myself happier, fix myself with alcohol, drugs, sugar. Just trying to do anything to change my mood. Also, trying to find myself or the thing that would fix me in relationships was a huge part of what I was experiencing.
Olivia Reiman: After a while and after many unhealthy relationships, then I decided enough was enough. Meds and therapy weren’t working. I had heard voices when I was younger. I was prescribed antipsychotics. I had tried to end my life multiple times. It was just not the prettiest way to start remembering your life, if you will.
Olivia Reiman: I finally just decided I’m done. I’ve had enough of this. I don’t care if anybody tells me that this isn’t possible to overcome, especially with bipolar disorder. I was determined to be happier, be freer.
Olivia Reiman: I spent almost 10 years just struggling, and then I spent the next 10 years almost figuring out how to beat it through my own means. And I did it, and I don’t live with any of those anymore. I’m happily married. I got two babies. Life’s just been very wonderful.
Olivia Reiman: So now what I do is really try to teach people one, how to break free from any mental illnesses that they might be struggling with, because I know firsthand how much that just holds you back from being who you want to be. I also help people reconnect with themselves and live confidently and really empowered as who they choose to be in as who they are. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: That’s pretty amazing, first off. What I’m dealing with a lot of people, they’re going through breakups, which is a really dark time in their lives. Because so many of them are just so wrapped up in this one person and oftentimes, they want to get that one person back. What we’re finding, especially when we actually talk to people who succeed in getting an ex back or even just succeed in moving on from the ex, it starts within. But most people don’t really get how you can sort of like cope with some of that struggle. The internal voices and everything that are happening within.
Chris Seiter: So I’m wondering what kind of framework did you end up coming up with in this… Basically, you said that there was this period of your life, 10 years, where you really struggled, and then you spent the next 10 years basically coming up with a framework that worked for you. What worked for you?
Olivia Reiman: For me the framework, and it was a lot of trial and error, it was a lot of figuring things out. But what I ended up finding and what I actually teach in my program, Beat the B.A.D., is the achiever method.
Olivia Reiman: First, we focus on action. How do you step in? Right? How do you start to make a change with the things that have become habitual? Even with those thoughts of… Just repeating thoughts, especially if a relationship ends, right?
Olivia Reiman: The second part is communication. So communicating with yourself, but also with other people, and being able to do that in a really constructive way that’s helpful and helps you grow.
Olivia Reiman: Then I focus on headspace, positive perspective, shifting the way that you’re seeing situations. I know I’ve done that a ton with past relationships, especially because my last one before my marriage was a mentally and verbally-
Chris Seiter: Abusive?
Olivia Reiman: … abusive relationship. Yeah. So kind of shifting how I see that, and gaining value from it.
Chris Seiter: That’s interesting. I often talk about this concept of a paradigm shift and how you need to look at things differently. But I have yet to find… When you talk to someone, sometimes you can see the light bulb moment go off for them, and finally it clicks. When you’re talking to people who are struggling with creating this kind of a paradigm shift with how they’re looking at the situation, what are some of the methods you’re using to help them achieve that?
Olivia Reiman: Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of times, we can get really focused on what was awful, what was going wrong. Or even the complete opposite of like, “What was the best parts about it?”
Olivia Reiman: So what I like to encourage people to do is especially when you’re reflecting back in those moments is where can you pull value? What lessons have you learned? How can you actually gain knowledge from this that’s going to empower you moving forward? And even especially with past relationships, it’s like, “What didn’t you like?” That’s valuable knowledge. What wasn’t working well? That’s valuable knowledge.
Olivia Reiman: Because I think when we are in that moment, we see it as a complete loss if a relationship ends. We see what we lost and we see what we’re lacking, right?
Chris Seiter: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Olivia Reiman: When you go in and dig for that knowledge and that insight, and what you think worked well, and what you think didn’t work well, what you preferred, what were your preferences? Those kinds of things. We actually start to gain something back. So we feel like we’re actually walking away with something rather than walking away from losing something.
Chris Seiter: When I have someone coming to me and they’re just super distraught over the breakup, and oftentimes I’ll tell them to do this work like, “Hey, you need to actually start focusing on yourself.” But they have this consistent sort of trend of not doing that. They kind of fall back into thinking so much about their ex. What are they up to? Why are they doing this? Are they dating someone new?
Chris Seiter: Do you have any coping methods that I can give someone who maybe is focusing a little too much on outward stuff as opposed to inward stuff?
Olivia Reiman: Yeah. I think when we focus on outward stuff like that, it takes our power away, right? We feel out of control. Our mood is then determined by what that person is doing or what they’re not doing. So I think when it comes to doing that internal work, it’s about asking yourself like, “How can I make myself feel good right now? How can I do something that would help me grow right now?” And knowing that when you focus internally, it really… What’s the word I’m looking for? It takes the attention away from what you actually can’t control, and gives it to what you can control, which is you.
Olivia Reiman: Those thoughts are probably going to linger. They’re probably still going to be floating up there. I think the problem… Not the problem, but the thing that a lot of people do is they immediately try to get rid of the thoughts. So they’ll try to distract themselves or beat themselves up for even thinking about the other person. It’s habitual. If you were in a relationship with that person, you’re going to think about them. That’s your brain’s natural response is to go back to what it knows.
Olivia Reiman: Sorry, that was a really loud truck.
Chris Seiter: Don’t worry.
Olivia Reiman: What’s so important is like I said, focusing on what you can control, but also… Oh man, that truck distracted me. We were talking about-
Chris Seiter: It’s okay. It’s all right.
Olivia Reiman: I was talking about… The thoughts.
Chris Seiter: Sort of the habitual habits people have.
Olivia Reiman: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, so you have those habits, you have those thoughts and so allow them to be there. They don’t have to mean anything. It’s just an automatic pattern that’s happening in your brain. It’s not you intentionally dwelling on it. It’s just your brain automatically doing it.
Olivia Reiman: So you can kind of follow that up… I like to do what I call positive chasers. If you go, “I wonder what they’re doing. I wonder if they’re with somebody right now,” you could literally flip it and be like, “Well, what am I doing right now? Could I be doing something fun right now?” You can flip it back towards yourself. What it does, it trains your brain to refocus your attention away from them and towards yourself.
Chris Seiter: I’ve recommended something similar in the past, which is kind of like catching yourself in those moments and trying to reframe it. Which essentially, I think that’s what you’re talking about.
Chris Seiter: But what’s interesting is what I’m finding is people will do that at first and maybe they’ll change that mindset at first, but then they kind of just get back into their old habits. So what about someone who is trying to do what you’re saying, but doesn’t have an easy time of sticking to it? Is there some way or advice you have to someone to get them to stick to it? Do you need to give them some sort of like, I don’t know, consequence if they don’t stick to it? Because sometimes I find…
Chris Seiter: There’s this really interesting website. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about it. But it allows you to basically put money up, and if you pay this-
Olivia Reiman: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Have you heard of that?
Olivia Reiman: Yes.
Chris Seiter: You pay the website the money, and then if you don’t hit the goal, your money’s gone. I found that actually works.
Olivia Reiman: Yeah, I’ve heard of that. I haven’t used it personally, but I have heard of it.
Chris Seiter: I haven’t used it either, but I’ve read a bunch of stuff on it. I don’t know, it’s a really interesting idea. But I’m just wondering what have you seen work to get people to stick to it?
Olivia Reiman: I mean, one, I think that’s accountability. The whole system of that is accountability. There’s multiple ways you can go about that. You can go to somebody else for support. I mean, that one’s a little trickier, just because you have to call yourself out-
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I know.
Olivia Reiman: … and be like, “Okay, I’m thinking about this person again.” Which honestly, a friend of mine does that with me. Find somebody who’s going to be honest and real with you. Because she’s like, “You won’t just let me sit in my pity party, will you.” I was like, “No, because I know you don’t want to.”
Chris Seiter: How does your friend hold you accountable, or how do you hold your friend accountable in that case?
Olivia Reiman: I mean, in that sense, she’ll bring some things up that it’s been dwelling, and I’ll give her… Again, another truck. I’ll give her another perspective to take or I’ll reflect something back to her. Not tell her that she’s wrong. Hearing her out, empathizing. But at the same time, being like, “Hey, you’ve already told me you don’t want to do this.” And yeah, helping her in that respect.
Olivia Reiman: But if you don’t have that person, I think what’s helpful, and I can’t speak for everybody on this, but I think a lot of times when we get out of that practice, we know we’ve gotten out of the practice. We’re not just completely oblivious to it, but we’re like, “Well, either clearly it didn’t work, so I’m not going to keep at it, because I’m back here,” right? Or it’s like, “Well, I’m too far gone now. What’s the point?”
Olivia Reiman: So I think it is just a matter of reminding ourselves like, “Hey, I can get back into this.” It’s like working out, right? If you work out for a bit, you feel great. And then all of a sudden, you’re like, “I haven’t worked out for a week.” There’s no too late when it comes to catching a habit that you’re trying to instill that you’ve maybe fallen off the wagon with. It’s never too late. Even when it comes to your thinking or your mentality and those practices.
Chris Seiter: What I personally see is when people go through breakups, I find there’s kind of like two types of people. There’s the people who are super action-oriented. They’re like, “I want to get stuff done.” And they can have kind of struggles, which I think is kind of what we’re talking about. And then you’ve got the people who just let it break them and they become super depressed, and they’re very upset.
Chris Seiter: What do you do with people like that? How can you get someone out of their depression where they’re lingering so much on this other person and how bad they’re feeling? What are some coping things that they can do?
Olivia Reiman: Again, it comes right back to action, that first piece of the framework I was talking about. I mean, it’s literally how I help people get out of depression when they’re bedridden and they can’t get up or they can’t leave their house because their anxiety is so bad. It’s taking a very little step, right? For me, it actually started with making my bed. Because I would maybe start-
Chris Seiter: Wow.
Olivia Reiman: Yeah, I-
Chris Seiter: So that’s like the first little small task that kind of leads momentum?
Olivia Reiman: Yes. That’s the whole intention behind it. So for me, I would get depressed in the middle of making my bed. Normally, I would just lay back down in it and I was like, “Okay, I’m done.” But I re-
Chris Seiter: What are some of the thoughts you have as you’re making your bed and become more depressed? What are some of the things that you think? Is it like one singular thought that kind of leads you down the rabbit hole? Or is it just there’s this cause and effect to it where you think one thought, and then the next thought’s worse, then the next thought’s worse, and it just kind of goes? For you personally, what was that as you’re making your bed?
Olivia Reiman: I don’t think it was as much thoughts, which I know is the case for plenty of people. For me, it was the habit of being sad. I was in the habit of being sad, and-
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you’re just so used to it. I think-
Olivia Reiman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So I would just all of a sudden start to cry. My big thing was I was like, “I don’t know why. I don’t know why I’m crying. I don’t know why I’m sad.” You don’t need to know why to take action and change it.
Chris Seiter: So you took action by basically making your bed first. Maybe it was a little-
Olivia Reiman: I would make myself finish.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so you had to make yourself finish. You’d have to kind of fight through the like, “Why am I so sad?” type thing. What was the next habit for you? I’m just trying to give people an idea of like, “Here’s what small looks, here’s what medium looks like, here’s what a big one looks like.” So what was the next thing you had to do?
Olivia Reiman: Yeah. In the course of making the bed or another example on top of that?
Chris Seiter: Yeah, so let’s say you finished the bed. What’s your next action to get you kind of going?
Olivia Reiman: Right. This is… I love to call it tough love. The tough part would be making the bed, right?
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Olivia Reiman: Which shouldn’t seem tough.
Chris Seiter: No, no. I mean-
Olivia Reiman: That’s what a lot of people beat themselves up about. They’re like, “All I did was make my bed.” Don’t shame that. That leads to the next point. So I’d do the tough and then I do the love. I’d make myself finish making my bed, and then I’d appreciate myself for making my bed and tell myself-
Chris Seiter: So you basically give yourself a reward.
Olivia Reiman: Yeah, just affirming.
Chris Seiter: So you [crosstalk 00:16:17] action. Okay.
Olivia Reiman: Rather than-
Chris Seiter: Your affirmation would just be something internally you would tell yourself?
Olivia Reiman: Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t even a specific affirmation. I’ve literally had times where I’d just pat myself on the back and I’m like, “You did it. Good job.”
Chris Seiter: What was the next action? Was it making breakfast or something?
Olivia Reiman: Yeah, another very small task. It could be picking up a couple pieces of clothes off the floor. It depends on how deep you are. The thing to be mindful of is if you’re pretty deep in that, it needs to be small and it needs to accumulate. If you’re not that deep, then maybe you can go bigger.
Olivia Reiman: But the goal is to not do something that’s… I don’t think there’s anything that’s too little. But you don’t want to go too big, because then it becomes overwhelming. Somebody might try to get out of depression and be like, “Today, I’m going to do laundry,” which includes four to five loads of laundry. That’s a big task. So they’ll do one load and then be like, “Oh my gosh, I’m sinking back into it.” But it was too big a task. So they weren’t able to complete it and then reward themselves and then go onto something else.
Chris Seiter: You almost have to have this consistency of these small tasks to build this foundation in which you can kind of move on to some of the bigger tasks.
Olivia Reiman: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: In your experience, when you’re going through these depressive bouts, I know…. I personally had never struggled from depression until last year when… I was a very active individual. So I would always go play tennis. I’d go for like six, seven mile runs a day.
Chris Seiter: I ended up getting something called a pilonidal cyst, which required surgery. The surgeon botched the surgery, and I was basically on bed rest and I couldn’t get out of bed. Literally can’t get out of bed. I’m laying on my side all day long. I couldn’t see my wife. I couldn’t see my kid. It was just like for months, this is… I had to get three surgeries, because there were complications. It just left me ultimately depressed where you don’t want to get out of bed. You don’t want to get moving. I remember even when I would try some of those small tasks, I had a tendency to kind of get kind of in that really bad state of mind.
Chris Seiter: So what of people who are trying to do what you’re saying, but they consistently maybe get some momentum going, but then their depression maybe just overcomes them a little bit? What do you do for someone like that?
Olivia Reiman: One thing I always recommend is letting… If you feel like if it’s really upsetting, let yourself let out the emotion. Now, a lot of times when we let out the emotion, we let the… Our thoughts can fuel our emotions. Our emotions can fuel our thoughts, right? It works both ways.
Chris Seiter: Okay. There’s like a synergy between the two.
Olivia Reiman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So sometimes there will be no thought, and an emotion will arise, right? All of a sudden you’ll just overwhelmingly feel sad. And then somebody will be like, “Okay, I’m just going to sit down and cry,” or whatever it may be. Or just not even cry, but just feel into that depression.
Olivia Reiman: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. However, what it will end up doing if you’re not intentional about it, is it will then fuel thoughts to justify why you’re feeling so sad, why you should be lying down, or why you’re not worthy, and why this and that and that. So that emotion will then start to spark a bunch of thoughts, which will make you even sadder. And then it will keep the whole thing going.
Olivia Reiman: So what I encourage my students do is to let the emotion out. Lay in bed, cry, get angry, whatever you need to do. But don’t feel like you have to justify it or feed a story or any of that.
Olivia Reiman: I mean, I literally, when I was putting this really into practice, I’d walk out of the room from my kids and I would sit down and cry for five minutes. That’s my other tip is to give yourself a time limit. Five, 10 minutes, let yourself be in that space. That’s okay. Your body wants to let that go. So I would cry and anytime a thought would pop up, I would imagine it was like a bubble and I would just pop the bubble. I’m like, “We don’t need to go there. I don’t need to do that. I just need to let my body let this emotion out.” And then once the timer was off, I would just take a moment again, kind of shifting into a positive headspace. I’m grateful that I just let myself do that. I’m proud of myself for taking a moment to take care of me, even if that means laying in bed. And then moving back out of that.
Chris Seiter: From what I’m noticing, you’re talking a lot about visualization as well, especially the bubble popping thing. Is that a consistent tactic you would try as well with… You talk about this kind of synergy between the thoughts and the emotions and how kind of one can feed the other. Was visualization something you would do to maybe stop that negative trend going?
Olivia Reiman: Yeah, yeah. I think it always depends on the person. Some people are very visual, some people aren’t. So I think whatever works for you. Even if a thought pops up and you’re like, “We don’t need to do that right now.” Just communicating with yourself. I don’t need to think that right now, I just need to cry or I just need to do this or that. So you can communicate with yourself, you can imagine it however you need to imagine it, and just loving letting that out.
Chris Seiter: So you obviously have students you work with. What are some of the most common problems you see when you’re working with people?
Olivia Reiman: That’s a broad question. Honestly, I think the biggest… And this is what led me to end up making my Follow Up program, is that when people are in that place of sadness or feeling lost or clinging to what’s outside of them, there isn’t a connection with themselves.
Olivia Reiman: I do see that very commonly. That’s why valuing self is one of the modules in my main program, Beat the B.A.D. Because we want to learn how to connect with ourselves, how to be who we want to be, regardless of anything outside of us or who we’re with. When people can create that connection, that fuels a lot of self-love. I know I’ve had students end marriages, leave relationships, and really be able to act on their behalf, and then get into relationships with people that are just so compatible with them, because they’re just being true to themselves.
Chris Seiter: You’re really talking about kind of having a strong sense of self, which maybe someone who’s depressed doesn’t have a strong sense of self. They kind of lose themselves in the depression. Is that an accurate sort of assessment?
Olivia Reiman: For sure.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so what are some of your tips to gain a stronger sense of self? Breakups are a little bit different, but I mean, there’s a lot of compatibility between the depression and the breakup. It’s kind of like a cause and effect. The breakup causes people to get upset, angry, depressed. And then in that, they focus so much on the breakup, they lose themselves. Sometimes many of them have lost themselves to the relationship to begin with. So one of the reasons maybe their partner broke up with them is the fact that they were too codependent on this person.
Chris Seiter: What have you seen work when it comes to retaining that sense of self or even gaining a sense of self in general? Because some people just use other people to kind of like gain their own sense of self. Some-
Olivia Reiman: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s honestly embedded in us through our culture that, right, we need the other half. We need the person that completes us.
Chris Seiter: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Find the one, right?
Olivia Reiman: Yeah. Yes, yeah. I think that’s-
Chris Seiter: So you’re saying we should blame society for it, right?
Olivia Reiman: For sure.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, yeah. Disney is who’s to blame. All those Disney Princess things.
Olivia Reiman: Yes. I was having a conversation with a friend. I was like, “Can I have the movie where I’m the prince and the princess, and that’d be it?” I save myself.
Chris Seiter: They try to reinvent the wheel sometimes, but they always never do. I think maybe Tangled was the closest thing to that. I don’t know. I have a-
Olivia Reiman: No, she’s still in a relationship.
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Olivia Reiman: She still gets saved by that brave-
Chris Seiter: Well, I’ve got a four-year-old daughter, so I’m up to date on all the Disney movies. Frozen II, I’ve heard it all.
Olivia Reiman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I think Elsa and then Merida from Brave is probably the closest-
Chris Seiter: Merida.
Olivia Reiman: … we’ve gotten. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: I don’t know Elsa though. Well, it’s her sister who’s in the relationship, isn’t it?
Olivia Reiman: Yeah, yeah.
Chris Seiter: Anyways. Sorry.
Olivia Reiman: I’m going on a tangent. I’ve got a three-
Chris Seiter: We’re going to talk two hours about Disney Princesses.
Olivia Reiman: Seriously. I’ve got a-
Chris Seiter: We’ve got to find one.
Olivia Reiman: I’ve got a three and a six-year-old, so I feel you.
Chris Seiter: Girl or boy?
Olivia Reiman: Girls.
Chris Seiter: Okay, so two girls. You guys have been to Disney yet?
Olivia Reiman: Yeah. We used to live in Florida, so that was like our jam. We would-
Chris Seiter: We lived in Florida like right down the road from Disney. Yeah.
Olivia Reiman: How awesome. Yeah, we-
Chris Seiter: Yeah, except that we had… Well, maybe we’ll talk after. This is getting way off topic here.
Olivia Reiman: Okay, okay. We’ll talk Disney later.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, yeah, right.
Olivia Reiman: Oh my goodness. What was I going to say? We were talk-
Chris Seiter: What was the question again? It was something in regards like, “Okay, you’ve got a sense of self. You’re trying to get your sense of self back.”
Olivia Reiman: Yes. Yes. Okay, okay.
Chris Seiter: Then somehow we got into this tangent on Disney Princesses and why there’s no Disney Princess that saves herself and she’s always saved by the guy in some way, shape, or form.
Olivia Reiman: There we go. Okay, we got it. We brought it all back. See, guys, this is just a good conversation. I’m all about tangents.
Olivia Reiman: But yeah, so when it comes to sense of self, I think personally, I know when my relationship ended, I was so into using that as an opportunity to choose who I am. I think that’s the beautiful part that a lot of people don’t see is when they feel lost, when they don’t know who they are, that’s an opportunity on a silver platter. You don’t have to find who you are. You get to create who you are, to a certain degree.
Olivia Reiman: There are things about ourselves… And I love to challenge beliefs a lot. But we get to accept parts of ourselves that are there. When you were sharing your story about having to be on bedrest, a part of your identity felt lost in that moment. You’re like, “I’m not an-
Chris Seiter: Huge part.
Olivia Reiman: There was an identity misalignment. You were like, “I’m not the active person I know I am.” So it was making you miserable.
Chris Seiter: That was my way of coping with stress too. That was like one of the actions I would do to get things out, and in that [crosstalk 00:27:08] way.
Olivia Reiman: Yeah. I think that’s where it’s about either kind of temporarily shifting our identity that in this moment, I’m not the athletic person, and that’s okay. But I can be somebody who’s still in touch with sports or learning or whatever. You know what I’m saying? You can find your outlets.
Olivia Reiman: But when it comes to relationships, we either look to another person to find our identity or yeah, we get so lost in it. So it’s just that constant affirmation of, “This is who I am,” and reminding yourself of that, and making that choice. I mean, literally a year ago, I was screaming at my kids a lot. It was a form of-
Chris Seiter: That is a very common problem. My wife is always like, “You need to stop yelling.” I’m just like, “I’m trying.” They always do something that kind of sets you… Like, “No, no, no, don’t do that.” We got a puppy, and she’s being a little too rough with the puppy. Yeah. But yeah, I-
Olivia Reiman: Yeah. It’s something that you do so repeatedly, it kind of almost becomes a part of your identity that you just scream. That’s what you just do.
Chris Seiter: They’re little mirrors too, so they’ll let you know.
Olivia Reiman: Yeah, they do.
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Olivia Reiman: I use my kids as my sounding board. When they start getting crazy, I’m like, “Am I being crazy?”
Chris Seiter: Yeah, right?
Olivia Reiman: But yeah, so I think it’s a matter of… I chose one day, I was like, “I don’t want to be the parent that screams. I don’t want to be the person that gets loud to be in control. I don’t want to be that person anymore.” So we kind of have to allow this death of the old self, because in order to be a newer version of ourselves or to choose our identity or who we are, we have to one, be intentional about choosing it. How does that person feel? How do they act? What do they believe? But at the same time, being okay with letting go of that other piece of ourselves.
Olivia Reiman: Some people really identify with being the girlfriend or being the boyfriend, or even being the victim or being lost. That is part of their identity. I think that’s sometimes what’s difficult is people don’t realize they have to actually let that piece go.
Chris Seiter: It’s interesting you talk about letting some of the, I guess, negative beliefs you have about yourself go. And maybe not being consumed by this… How like you’re using yelling as an example. You’re just like, “Wait, this is an opportunity for me to recreate my reality.” Have you found with your clients when you’re working with them, that people struggle with this concept of basically creating their new reality?
Olivia Reiman: Sometimes yes and sometimes no. It’s always going to depend on the person. Anyone that has struggled, sometimes they just need a reminder. They just need a reframe. So what I teach them is, again, those positive chasers. I use that to unearth old beliefs, old ways of thinking, instilling new ones, because once you chase it enough, it becomes the primary thought and the other one becomes secondary and then falls away.
Olivia Reiman: I mean, I used to be the champion of finding crap in everything. Just the worst in people, in situations. I had like a gold medal in it. Now I’m literally known for what I call gratitude nuggets. That was an intentional shift of how kind I am, how grateful I am about things. That was an intentional creation of self.
Olivia Reiman: With my students, sometimes experiences will throw them off. They’ll be this version of themselves that they want to be, and then all of a sudden… One of my students actually just reached out to me and she was like, “I’m just so sad. We’re selling our house.” It was just a lot of negative thinking. And I was like, “Well, here’s the opportunity in that. Here’s the beauty in that. Yes, you’re leaving your home, but you get to give it to another family.” It was just a slight reframe. And she was like, “Oh my gosh. Yeah, duh,” and she was able to click back into herself. She’s like, “Yeah, think positive and get back into that space.”
Chris Seiter: Well, that’s the perfect segue, because you have so much to offer on your website. I went to your about page before the interview. I don’t know, maybe you have more than this now, but you said you’ve written four books, you’re about to launch a program, you have a program, and you’ve got a pretty awesome podcast. So why don’t we talk about all of those things?
Olivia Reiman: Yes, yes, yes. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. Yeah, I have a podcast called Simply Happy with SimplyOli. I share lots of tips and strategies. It’s very tactical for people to apply. I talk about even relationships on there, so you can go listen to that. I also have my books, Back to Happy, Break the Chain, 10 Days to Self-Love, The Opportunity Journal. So I have-
Chris Seiter: Where can people find those?
Olivia Reiman: Yeah. Everything is at www.simplyoli.com.
Chris Seiter: So the books, are they eBooks type things? Can they be found on the Kindle Store? Or is it just all digitally on the website?
Olivia Reiman: Yeah, one of my books is digital. The other ones are available on Amazon and you can also get digital copies of them.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Hard book back. Okay, so-
Olivia Reiman: Hard books, yes.
Chris Seiter: … they’re legit books.
Olivia Reiman: They’re legit. They’re published.
Chris Seiter: Okay. What about the program? You mentioned before we started recording, you’ve got a new program running. But before we talk about that, let’s talk about the old program or the current program up.
Olivia Reiman: Yes, thank you. Yes. My signature program-
Chris Seiter: Which has a super cool name, by the way.
Olivia Reiman: Yeah, my signature program is called Beat the B.A.D. Of course, that stands for bipolar, anxiety, and depression. So that really is for people who are struggling with mental illness. Meds and therapy maybe isn’t working for you. You’ve tried all the things. Nothing feels like it’s working. That program is really how I beat it, and that’s what I bring to everyone. We have a community. It’s just a really great way to be. And people feel so heard and understood, because it’s coming from someone who knows what it’s like to be in that space. Not just textbook knows, but knows knows.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, yeah. Who’s gone through it and has… The way I look at you is you’ve basically used your own life as a way of figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. Maybe-
Olivia Reiman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I am my own guinea pig.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I guess so. But I’m assuming you find it’s different for every single person, right? What works for people. Or is the framework pretty much generalized, it works no matter what?
Olivia Reiman: The framework actually starts… We kind of start off teaching you some tools, right? To use, like stepping in, making the bed, stuff like that. Then we move into you actually understanding your own personal episodes. What your emotions are like, and learning how to practice what tools work for you and resonate with you. And then we finish it off with you kind of making changes in your life that you know would then better benefit you. So it really isn’t me telling you all the exact steps like, “Go breathe, exercise, eat food.”
Chris Seiter: Go breathe.
Olivia Reiman: Go breathe. Because a lot of people are doing that. They’re trying to tell you, “You just need to exercise more. It’ll fix everything.” It is different for every person. So that program is actually built for you to learn how to listen to yourself and be able to customize your approach.
Chris Seiter: That’s the current program, Beat the B.A.D., correct?
Olivia Reiman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes.
Chris Seiter: How much is that program?
Olivia Reiman: That program is 1,200, but I do offer payment plans that bring it down to about two something a month to make it a little more affordable for people.
Chris Seiter: Do they also get access to you when they get into the program?
Olivia Reiman: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Is it like a private Facebook group, or is it like one-on-one type coaching?
Olivia Reiman: Yeah, so they get lifetime access to the program and the Facebook group. We have grads in there that have been in there for years that are still supporting even new students that join, which is really cool.
Chris Seiter: Those are the best people, by the way, too, aren’t they?
Olivia Reiman: Yes. Yeah, the program is modules that they get to work through, but then we have the community where you get to ask questions. We do live coaching and Q&As. So I’m in there directly supporting you in that community, along with everybody else.
Chris Seiter: Let’s talk about the new program.
Olivia Reiman: Yes. Yeah. My new program is called Beyond the B.A.D., and it’s-
Chris Seiter: Which is, again, super cool name.
Olivia Reiman: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that one’s a 12 week program that is centered around really owning who you are, right? Creating who you want to be, and being able to navigate that and live confidently and fearlessly from that space.
Chris Seiter: When is that launching exactly?
Olivia Reiman: That is launching July 20th of this month. You can even go to my website or you can go to www.simplyoli.com slash I call it “beytb,” so B-E-Y-T-B. You can get on the waitlist there. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So she’s got a lot she’s doing, but… She’s got the podcast, she’s got four books, she’s got two programs. I highly recommend you check her out. Thank you so much for coming on.
Olivia Reiman: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
How One Woman Got Her On Again/Off Again Ex Boyfriend Back
Jul 10, 2020
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of interviewing Laura, a woman who is a member of our flagship course, The Ex Boyfriend Recovery Program.
Laura ended up successfully getting her ex back.
Anyways, she joined me for about an hour and I essentially picked her brain about what she did that worked and what other people are doing that aren’t working.
Her insights on mixed signals in particular were earth shattering.
But then again, any time we get to talk to a success story they always are.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
How One Woman Got Her On Again/Off Again Ex Boyfriend Back
Chris Seiter: Okay, so today we’re going to be talking to a very special success story named Laura, who’s successfully gotten her ex back. What we’re going to do is we’re going to be asking her all kinds of questions about how she did it. So how are you, Laura?
Laura: Sorry. What was that?
Chris Seiter: How are you doing Laura?
Laura: Yes, I’m good thanks. How are you?
Chris Seiter: I’m doing great. So, I know nothing about your situation. Why don’t you just kind of give us a little bit of a primer on how the breakup went down and what you had to do to get him back?
Laura: Yeah. So, basically, it was last February. I actually broke up with him, which I know a lot of the stories were that people broke up with them. And I was actually split up with him for about three-ish months before I found the program and then I decided to proceed with it and start my no contact. I did the first time- because we hadn’t had any arguments or anything like that like I know some people had previously. It was 21 days that I did, but I think I did like 22 or 23 the first no contact that I did. Then after that, we were doing the texting phase of the program where I’d send him messages and it was just normal texting, really, but using like the… I use the online stuff a lot, so through social media and ask him for help on like how to text in the right way so that I’m still getting responses, but it was always quite positive responses.
Laura: We live quite close to each other, so when I was going out I’d see him out and then he’d be asking me if I wanted to meet up and stuff like that whilst we were in the texting phase. We did meet up with him because he was saying, “Is there any chance that we can get back together?” That kind of thing. I’d already at that point, because I was focusing on me and like my trinity and stuff like that and making sure that I was making the most out of my situation at that time. I was planning on going away and I was going traveling over the summer. So although we were in the texting phase, it kind of wasn’t really working out because I had too many plans, so I’d like overdone it almost.
Laura: I came back in this September. So it was kind of June-time we were speaking quite a bit and then I went away and then I came back in this September and we’re speaking a bit more then. And then we met up and he said that he didn’t want to proceed with thing and he thinks he should date other people and I just said, “Well, if you want to date over people, that’s fine.” ANd spoke to some of the people on the group at the time and I decided to do another no contact for 21 days, but it ended up actually being 30 days because through that time I had seen him out like three times. So it’s like, ugh.
Chris Seiter: So you live close to him, so you just happened to like run into him?
Laura: Yeah, he lives like around the corner. So yeah. It was like at pubs and stuff like that. Like when you’re out with your mates and then he’d just turn up. And there was one situation where I was out and we were in a pub and he came up behind me. This is only like a week and a half after we’d had that conversation, so I was in no contact. And he came up behind me and I was with my mates and he slapped my bum in front of all of my friends. And, obviously, I told the people on social media and they’re like, “Oh no, just prolong your no contact for some more days.” So that’s why I did it for the 30 days.
Chris Seiter: Had he been drinking or something?
Laura: Yeah, I think he was definitely drunk.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Laura: So, yeah. Like throughout the no contact as well, he was like contacting me, which didn’t happen in the first no contact. He only contacted me in like the first couple of days. But throughout that whole 30 days, he was contacting me. And I think he thought, I don’t know, “She’s definitely gone now.” Because before I was kind of still hanging on, if you get what I mean. Like I don’t think I’d fully like left the situation, but by the time it had come September and I’d done all this stuff to like make him see me how I was, I guess, previously when we first met.
Laura: Then, yeah, I think it got to day 30, so he’d been sending me messages throughout, but I hadn’t responded. Then it got to day 30, and literally on day 30 he was ringing me. So rang me like three or four times, but I was on the way to meet one of my mates, so obviously I didn’t answer, but it was a Saturday as well and that’s off limits. I wasn’t going to answer anyway. And then on Sunday he rang me another three times, I think it was. And then I answered and we had a conversation and he said, “You originally said, ‘come with me.'” And I said, “I can’t meet you, Tim.” So we had a conversation over the phone instead, why I said that he regretted everything and he wanted to sort things out. And then we just kind of dated it after that.
Laura: So it was just dating. We dated until kind of December and then I was like thinking, “Oh, things aren’t going to work out,” at that point because it’d been so long that we’d been dating in my head. I think it was the same. Like, I think he was scared about getting back together, but then after New Year we got back together and yeah. It all worked out in the end and things are great now.
Chris Seiter: So from what I’m gathering, like originally going back, you’re the one who broke up with him. I’m assuming this happened last year?
Laura: Yeah. That’s all right. So it took, like in total, about 10 or 11 months for us to get back together after we broke up-
Chris Seiter: So, it seems-
Laura: … for three months prior. Sorry, go ahead.
Chris Seiter: So it seems to me like you initiated the first breakup? Am I remembering that correctly? And then he initiated another breakup. So it was kind of like this… You said, you got back together in September or something and then broke up again.
Laura: No. So, in the September, we were speaking again, but we hadn’t [crosstalk 00:06:08]-
Chris Seiter: Okay. I see. So you’re not official. You’re just kind of like talking.
Laura: Yeah. Yeah, [inaudible 00:06:14] would just talk and like dating and stuff at that time. But then I think he was going through a lot anyway, like personally. So it just wasn’t the right time for us to be getting back together then. So I think given, given that space that we had like made things a lot better, to what it is now.
Chris Seiter: So who’s the one who asked or got to the point where you’re asking like, “Hey, what are we? Are we back together?” Like how did that conversation go down? Where were you? What did he say? What did you say?
Laura: We’d had food at his house and I just said like, “Where are we with things?” And he said, “Well, we’re always together, so we might as well just be together.” And then we just, yeah. And then we’re just together.
Chris Seiter: That was it, huh?
Laura: Yeah, that was it.
Chris Seiter: Super easy. It’s almost surprising how simple it works to just like seal the deal, so to speak, in the relationship.
Laura: Well, it’s like that when you first meet someone. It’s just different because I’ve never been with someone, broke up with them and then got back together with them.
Chris Seiter: So, man, it took you a long time. I mean, we’re talking about almost a year. At any point, did you just sort of think to yourself, “Is this even worth it? Should I just give up?” Were you ever at that point emotionally?
Laura: Yeah. It was like kind of in the December. Like I felt like things were good like between us, but when you just like have a sense on this just isn’t going to work out, so let’s just leave nothing. That’s when he realized that he needs to do more for us to kind of get back together. There were other times like throughout where I thought, “Is this really worth like my time and effort?” Like when I was away as well, because I traveled around Asia and I was away and I was still speaking to him I’m like… Some of the time, it was a bit… not negative. What’s the in between? Where just like not really much conversation and felt a bit awkward. So even like you know them because I was with him before I broke up for four years. Like I know him, but it was weird because it felt like we couldn’t speak naturally like at times throughout the process, but then when it was natural, it was really good. And that’s when things are going well, but it was just that in that middle bit, especially.
Chris Seiter: So the middle bit, I guess, is what I’m more interested in. It seems like you went into no contact the very first time and it worked pretty well. And he got back in contact and the two of you kind of like were talking back and forth, but what, in your opinion, went wrong to make him sort of scared to not want to commit? Or like what did you think didn’t work about that?
Laura: Well, I think, given the fact that obviously I broke up with him, I think that like hurt him a lot. I could tell like it kind of destroyed him a bit and I felt terrible about it. Like when you see like your best mate going through like heartbreak. It’s a bit weird because you’re going through the same thing and that’s what kind of happened prior to finding the program. And then like after my first no contact, we went through that phase of like talking and not talk. And don’t really know what was going through his head at the time, but I could tell like he was not himself around me. Like it took a lot for it to get to that again. That wasn’t until after the second no contact and a bit more dating before we were back to like talking normally, but we didn’t really go on proper dates. It’s like the fast time after the first no contacts, we didn’t have anything like where we went out for a meal or that kind of thing. Whereas after the second, that’s what we were doing. Like when we’re going out, we’re going out properly. Not just like meeting because it’s easy to just meet up when you live around the corner from someone and just go for a walk or something and that’s what we were doing. [crosstalk 00:10:25].
Chris Seiter: You wouldn’t even like go for a walk at all after the first no contact whatsoever? Was it just more like you’re texting and calling each other, but not doing anything else past that point?
Laura: Yeah, there was like a week where we were both free. So we met up in that time and then I think he was on holiday, then I was on holiday. So it was like, there was very much we couldn’t really meet up. Like neither of us had the time to do that at that time. And I think that was why it didn’t work the first time because we both just had too many plans.
Laura: I’m pretty sure he was. Well, he has said that he did, so definitely did. I don’t know when. Like I’m not really interested in the detail, but I know they did. And for me I spoke to people, but I didn’t ever go on any dates with anybody else.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So throughout this 10 month period, after the first, no contact coming up onto the second no contact. What caused you to make the decision to jump into a second no contact?
Laura: I think it was like he was in a bad place where he was losing a family member, unfortunately. And I think it was just like… you know when you sit and have a conversation with someone and they’re like just a bit all over the place and you just know like this isn’t going to work when either one of us is going to be feeling like that. That’s kind of what happens. So, although like I wanted to be there for him, I knew that he didn’t want me to be there for him. Like I phoned and spoke to him and I could just tell like I was like, “I’m so sorry you’re going through that.” And he’s like, “Well, it doesn’t matter.” Like I just know that he didn’t want me there and then he started speaking about dating other people and maybe there was somebody else. And I said, “Well, if that’s what you want to do and that’s what’s going to make you happy, then just go and do that then.” And he kind of said like, “Well, I’ll just end up coming back to you.” And I was like, “Well, you just started going date other people.” It was a bit like, “Well, I can’t change your mind right now, so just go away.”
Chris Seiter: So, what I’m kind of curious about now is how effective the second period of no contact was. Because it seems like before you had done the second no contact, you had tried a lot of things, but your schedule and his schedule just wouldn’t overlap to the point where you could see each other in person pretty consistently. So you’re just sort of stuck in this limbo where you can only talk or text over the phone. The second no contact, I think you mentioned that he contacted you quite a bit during it. Is that exactly what happened? And what were some of the contents of the messages? Like what were some of the ways he would try to talk to you during that second period of no contact?
Laura: So we’ve always used the social media Snapchat quite a lot. Now, I never opened them until after because I was like, if I open and then he’ll be able to [crosstalk 00:13:36]-
Chris Seiter: He’ll know you read it.
Laura: It’s not really then no contact, is it? So I never opened them until afterwards. And then when I went through them, they’re just like random things that what he’s doing in the day and stuff like that. And I’d put Snapchat stuff as well, like on my actual story, and he’d like comment on them like, “Oh, can I come out for a walk with you? With your dog?” And stuff like that. But obviously I didn’t open them until after the 30 days, when we’d started speaking again. And then he did send one really long message and it was kind of middle of no contact, so like day 15 sort of time, saying like just out of the blue, just like saying that he doesn’t know where he’s at in his head and that type of thing. I can’t remember the whole message to be honest, but it was like an emotional sort of message, but nothing saying, “I want to get back with you.” And it was very much so borderline because all the way through, it was like, “I don’t know what I want,” sort of thing until we did know what he wanted.
Chris Seiter: So you guys eventually get back together, but going to that point, how many months did it take before you get out of that second no contact to the point where you’re actually back together? Like how long were you talking to him, seeing him in person, or was it what’s it like a pretty quick like race to the finish?
Laura: It’s about three and a half months. Three, three and a half months until we got back together.
Chris Seiter: And how often were you guys talking on the phone to each other or texting each other and seeing each other in person? Was it like an everyday occurrence?
Laura: No. So to start with, it was kind of like once every two to one week sort of thing, but then we were speaking in between by messages and I’d call him. And then it just kind of got closer together and then by Christmas we were seeing each of the like every couple of days sort of thing. And then-
Chris Seiter: So, you’re saying you’re-
Laura: .. it was pretty much not just after New Year, really, that we got back together.
Chris Seiter: So for you, you think seeing each other pretty much every single or every couple of days is really what spurred it on to get that sort of relationship back on track?
Laura: Yeah, I think so. I think like perhaps not. I don’t know, like it depends on the person that you’re with, I guess. Like we’re not like the sort of people that need to see each other all the time, even though like he lives really close. It’s not like I have to see him every day to feel like I’m in a relationship. But I do think like that closeness does make you feel closer, I guess, to somebody, if that makes any sense.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, it kind of does. It’s sometimes hard to remember years back, like what you did and everything. I guess when you look at your experience as a whole, of going through the process, what do you think was the most effective thing that you did? Like for you personally? Because every time I ask a success story this, they always come up with really different answers that I wouldn’t expect. So I’m kind of curious what yours is. When you look back at the whole situation, what is that one strategy that you use that you feel made the biggest difference for you?
Laura: I think it’s like being more matter of a fact. Like I think one of the reasons why we broke up in the first place was because we just weren’t very good at communicating. And so one thing that I did whilst I was in no contact and speaking to the people in the group was looking at things like crucial conversation on… like it’s not just about now. It’s about like whilst we’re now back together to have those conversations, it’s got to be started somewhere and rather than not coming across well.
Laura: Like before, when I was in a relationship with him, it was almost like everything just got shoved under the rug, whereas now, like we actually speak about things and about how it’s like enjoying that time as well. So even whilst we were dating, we were having those conversations and building that up. And like now, like we can speak about anything because of that, I think, like anything that’s bothering either one of us and we can have conversations. Whereas I really do think like that just wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t find the program.
Chris Seiter: So you’re saying- and this is interesting. You’re saying that one of the biggest things you took was the fact that you need to be better at communicating throughout the entire, I guess, conversations that you have with him. Did you take that approach when you were trying to win him back even? Like when you were just talking to him?
Laura: Yeah, definitely. Like I listened to like the whole program on YouTube.
Chris Seiter: Oh, that’s kind of cool. Can you give me like an example, when you’re trying to get him, back of a conversation that you would have with him in this new way of thinking?
Laura: Well, I mean, I suppose like that’s more like if we’re having like a complicated conversation, like talking about if I’m messaging another guy or if he’s messaging another girl even, like they might just be mates. But like those types of conversations where instead of just nagging and saying, “Oh, why are you messaging her?” It’s more like you’re having fun and you’re having a laugh and then in between you kind of sandwich in one of those types of conversations to say like… sort of like saying it the same, but trying not to say it in a naggy way, I guess. I can’t like put the conversation into words that we would have had like at those times, like those different moments. But I think like one of the things that we’re trying to do is kind of just be straight to the point like. And I think he’s a sort of person that would appreciate that.
Laura: I’m not saying that every single person that people are going to be with are going to appreciate that, but having that openness and just being like… Like the conversation that we had before no conta- well, if you’re not going to be happy with me, then go off with somebody else and being straight like that kind of, I think, that helped him to my advantage in the end. Like didn’t feel great at the time, but he didn’t know that. So to him it was like, “Oh, well she’s just doing her own thing.” But obviously inside, I was really thinking, “Oh, great. Now he’s just going to go off with somebody else.” But that obviously didn’t happen.
Chris Seiter: So it’s kind of interesting that you’re to the point because a lot of the clients that I work with are not ever to the point. And I’m kind of curious about your experience with it. Do you mind if I give you like an example and just you tell me how you would have approached it?
Laura: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So let’s say after your second period of no contact, because that seems to be really where you started to see the biggest difference for whatever reason, your schedules permitted seeing each other in person a lot more, it seems like you’re talking a lot more consistently than maybe you were before. But after that second period of no contact, did at any point he sit back and start asking you about like, “Hey, what are your feelings?” Or was he scared to initiate something like that? How would you handle that situation?
Laura: So he didn’t ask any of those types of questions. That all had to be me because he just doesn’t ask anything like that.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So how would you handle it? Did you bring that up at all and in what way did you bring it up?
Laura: So it was kind of like it got to a point with me where I was a bit fed up, like I’m just waiting around for you to kind of like ask me if we’re going to be together or where things are going to go from here. And I [inaudible 00:21:24] and say like, “Things do seem to be going well with, so when are we getting back together?” Like not demanding in that way, but like when are we going to sort things out and be back together because it was just getting a bit silly now. Like we are basically back together, but we’ve not got the label. And at that time he was a bit like, “Oh, I’m not really sure. I’m not really sure.” That’s how [inaudible 00:21:52] things, but then like two days later after we hadn’t spoken, he’s like, “Oh no, I do want to sort things out. Like when are we next going to see each other.” Although like we’d have those conversations, sometimes they required like time afterwards like whilst we were dating. Obviously not now, but whilst we were dating, I think like you’d have those conversations and then give it a bit of time and not like keep going over it because I mean, I’ve seen cases where people perhaps have done that in their situation and then it just starts an argument and we’d never had any of that. Like we didn’t argue at all through the process.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you said you would be the one to reach out to him and basically say, “Hey, what are we? Like this is ridiculous.” And he just kind of kept pushing it off. Would I be correct in assuming that when he would push it off, you just wouldn’t push any more?
Laura: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So what would happen… And this is just purely theoretical because it didn’t happen, but how would you handle him coming back and saying something like, “You know what? I really, really love you, but I’m just not ready for a relationship right now.” If you can put yourself back in that frame of mind where you’re trying to get him back, what is your approach to that situation? How do you think you would respond to it?
Laura: I’d just say, “Well, then we’re not going to date then, are we?”
Chris Seiter: And would you back it up, I guess is my point. Because I see a lot of people who say that, but they don’t back it up. But from what I’m gathering, it seems like one of your biggest advantages in getting a back was the fact that, like you said, you were willing to give him space after he was like kind of all over the place. And you said he had like a family member that had passed away and you just sort of gave him space. It seems like were you were willing to, quote unquote, “lose him” and you were okay with that if that’s what had to happen.
Laura: Yeah. So I’d say like if it had happened in kind of the first month of me like starting the program, maybe even the first two months, of sorting out, I’d have probably been a mess about it. But I think it just got to a point where I was like, “Well, I don’t need you. I just was looking, first, to sort things out and if it wasn’t going to be sorted out, then that’s fine.” And that does help. And I think that’s the point that I got to in the September. And that’s why the second no contact worked so well for me is because I wasn’t bothered anymore.
Chris Seiter: So, I guess my question for you would be, how does you get emotionally to that point? What were some of the things that you would do?
Laura: I mean, the biggest thing’s really like when I went through, obviously, the book that you guys have, there were different points. Like I focused on that first part of the book, really. I didn’t really read much of the text messaging part of the book, I read more of that first part where you focus on yourself and look at your own relationships and what you do in the day. Like are you spending time doing useful things or are you just sitting around type of thing. And I focused on my fitness, I learned how to play the guitar, which I can still play like a year into it. Well, less than a year, but sort of coming up to a year that I’ve now been playing and I’ve got really good at it. And that’s all from starting this program that kind of gave me that. I was doing like therapy as well at the time. And because I’ve gone through some stuff early, which kind of like was one of the reasons why we’d broken up and that helps and going through all of that like emotional clearance in my head and then taking the time to myself like all over the summer and just sorting out my own issues, my own problems and getting to a point where I just felt secure with everything.
Laura: Because I think like the biggest problem for me, like at the beginning of starting the program, is I felt like really insecure about it. Like, “Oh, we’re never going to get back together. I really care about him. This the end of the world.” But that was obviously not the case because that’s not realistic. But at the time that was how I felt in my head because I was a bit of a mess and I needed that going through the program. Like when I searched on the Internet I thought, “Oh. It’s just probably another scam.” Like no offense.
Chris Seiter: No worries, no worries.
Laura: But it’s like one of them things, like you look for stuff on the Internet, don’t you, when you’re like in a bit of a mess with yourself. And I think that was what it was. Like I’d never had problems like that before in relationships. It was just this one for some reason, it had just gone a bit of a mess and we will always fine up until like that kind of last couple of months. So yeah, I think just that focusing on myself, focusing in on the different that I could do, whether it be going out with my mates. Going and doing things on my own, like there was a lot of stuff even whilst we started dating again where we’d set that we were going to go and do it, but then I’d say, “Well, what do you want to come and do this with me like as a date sort of thing?” And if he said no, I’d still go and do it myself. And I think having that confidence and doing that through the program kind of helped me to achieve that.
Chris Seiter: You know, it’s interesting you bring that up. Almost every success story that I’ve talked to says something along the same lines of they stop focusing so much on what their ex was doing and started focusing on how they were using their time. But I’m also curious in how you use the program because a lot of people use parts of it and a lot of people don’t use parts of it. So when you look back at your experience, you had mentioned the Facebook group. What do you feel like was the most valuable aspect of our program for you?
Laura: I’d say probably it’s like the support of the Facebook group does really help because although like the book’s there and it is helpful like to read initially, when it actually comes to putting the masters together like you can’t read the other book, it’s always good to get somebody else’s opinion. And having like all them people to back you up on what you do and you just know you’re doing the right thing. And people that have gone through the program as well that have achieved that and whether they have decided whether they want their ex back or not, by the end of it, they know what they’re talking about and they just.. I see them like help people all the time and that definitely helped me through that. Like some specific people that really like gave me a lot of help whilst I was going through it with like the stuff that I’d send or just like generally like, “Oh, what would I respond to this type of thing rather than news?” And like the guide of the book is good, but because everyone’s situation is so different in some cases to what’s in the book, they kind of helped to kind of bring it together for each path and in their situation.
Chris Seiter: So would it be fair for me to say that you were at a point emotionally where you knew you were going to be okay, even if you didn’t get him back?
Laura: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: And would you agree with me when I say that that mentality you feel is important to your success of getting him back?
Laura: Yeah, definitely. And I think like all the people that I’ve spoken to on the Facebook group spoke like that’s this thing as well. Like they say that that’s how they felt and the people that then seem happier in the group are the people that have gone through that and focus that time on themselves and been like, “Yeah, do you know what? It’s not worth it anymore.” Or, “No, I still want him back, but if I don’t get him back, then it’s fine.” Or her.
Chris Seiter: Or her. 90% of the people in the group right now are females. So very rare to get males in there, but there are a few males. No, your situation’s real interesting to me because I think yours really, really embodies that sort of moving on without moving on type mentality that is so hard to get. And so the reason I’m asking you so many questions about it is I’m trying to… For you, and I’m just asking your honest opinion, do you feel like that’s something that you could sort of fake or it’s something that you really need to feel down to your core?
Laura: You definitely need to feel it. I think you can fake it to start with, but then there comes a point where if you keep faking it and you’re not really feeling that way, you’re just going to not come out the other end and just still feel rubbish for months and months when you don’t need to if you just actually took that time just to focus on yourself. I know like in the group who share like different ideas on what people can focus on. Like not everyone’s got loads of money to be splashing on everything. So there are loads of things that people can do to focus in on themselves, which stops you thinking about the other person in the situation.
Chris Seiter: That’s true. That’s true. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Laura. Your insight’s always valuable to help everyone listening understand the mindset you need to have in order to get an ex back.
Laura: That’s all right. Well, thanks for your helping getting my ex back.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So today we’re going to be talking to some pretty interesting individuals. And I don’t know if I told you guys this, but I don’t watch The Bachelor, or The Bachelor in Paradise, or anything very much. I think I maybe watched it once or twice when I was growing up, just curious. But when we had our daughter, my wife and I, we put her down, which is really important, you get that time together, and we just happened to watch The Bachelor in Paradise, and it happened to be you guys’ seasons.
Ashley: Aww, thank you.
Chris Seiter: And what’s really interesting is we both watched the whole saga, that whole season. I think that’s, to this day, the only full season we’ve ever watched of The Bachelor in Paradise. And we remember, definitely, you, Ashley. The way they edited you was… I remember thinking this can’t be real. Because the first thing they showed was you getting super emotional. And I always thought, “There’s no way that can be real.” And then I remember you guys meeting, and then I remember you were kind of hesitant to take the date or something, Jared. I don’t remember who had the date card or whatever, but I remember you guys, for whatever reason, just didn’t work out. And then I remember thinking, I told my wife, I said, “There’s no way she’ll ever get him.”
Chris Seiter: Flash forward to a couple of years ago, or whenever you guys got together, and I’m scrolling the Yahoo homepage, and I just see your wedding photos. And I’m like, “What? How?” And so, I guess that’s what I want to talk to you guys about today. How did that come about? Because we’re really focused on trying to understand what makes human beings that don’t want you all of a sudden want you again. So could we peel back some layers and try to understand what was it that you were thinking, Jared, as she’s trying to get you? And you’re just like, “No.” What made that 360 turn for you?
Ashley: Well, if you want the most articulate explanation of it, we have this video on YouTube. It’s called The Story of Us, and it’s 45 minutes, and it goes through each year.
Chris Seiter: How long is this saga? Is it like three or four years that it takes basically getting?
Jared: Well, no. It’s not about getting me. I don’t know if that’s the right phrasing. I don’t know if I’m the prize in this one, as Ashley can attest to, being my wife now. I think we met in 2015, and then we got together in March of 2018, I think we started dating.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you started dating. What year was that Bachelor in Paradise season that I’m thinking of?
Jared: 2015.
Chris Seiter: ’15. Okay.
Jared: We were on Bachelor in Paradise twice. We were on Bachelor in Paradise in 2015, and then we actually went back in 2016. And then we started dating off-camera in early 2018. So it almost took about three years to start dating after the show. So about three years of friendship.
Ashley: What they show on the show isn’t always… I mean, it’s part of the story. It’s just not the entire story. You don’t get every detail.
Chris Seiter: So what happened in that time? Because I remember the way… So that’s what I don’t know. I was just a normal viewer. You don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes, and I’m sure 90% of what happens is behind the scenes. They’re just editing it in a way to make it as drama-filled as possible, right?
Jared: Was that me?
Ashley: Yeah, that was you.
Jared: Yeah. I mean, they… Listen, they’re a television show, of course. So they’re going to try to make the best TV show, and the way to do that is to create as much drama as possible. But everything that happens within the show is real. It’s your emotions, it’s your reaction to things. And so, I think the thing about Bachelor is that it’s very condensed. It’s a very shortened period of time, where everything happens on speed dial. And I don’t really know if that’s conducive, at least for myself, and I could probably speak on Ashley as well. I think because we both are in our own heads a lot, specifically me, it takes a longer amount of time for me to really be OK to pursue things. And so, I think what happened was it was just… It’s very convoluted and complicated, but I think when I first met Ashley, I just wasn’t really in the best spot to date someone else, especially someone like Ashley, who’s the complete opposite of somebody I’ve ever dated in the past.
Jared: Somebody who’s, like you said, very emotional, very honest, very transparent, very persistent. All wonderful qualities, but I don’t think at that time I was ready. And then I think I started developing feelings a few months after the show, when we started hanging out. I got to see her in her element on the East Coast, we were hanging out, watching football games because we had a charity event together. And seeing her dynamic with her family, and it just made me more and more attracted to Ashley. It’s hard to put myself back into the place of why we didn’t start dating back then, but I think it just got to a point where it became so confusing and complicated, that it was so complicated, it was difficult to start dating.
Jared: And then I think we got in this lull of like a year and a half of true, just only friendship, and she wasn’t dating anybody and I wasn’t dating anybody. And so, I think, at least from my end, it just became this comfort thing, where it was like, “Well, things are really good right now. We talk almost every day. We hang out all the time.” So it’s kind of like we’re dating, but we’re not dating, because we’re not boyfriend/girlfriend, and we go on dates with other people, and we’re not romantic with each other. And then of course, she started dating someone else, and then I had to look in the mirror and reevaluate my values and what I was doing with my life and what I wanted to go for. And that’s what I did, and luckily, she still had feelings for me too.
Ashley: I used to tell people that he was my boyfriend who didn’t touch me. People will say like, “How long were you together before you got married?” And the answer is technically a year and a half, but we pretty much say we were together for four years.
Jared: Well, we don’t say that.
Ashley: We don’t really say that. But it’s like, “Too soon.”
Jared: Because it wouldn’t be true.
Ashley: No. But we knew each other the way a couple would know each other for four years.
Jared: Yeah. We were best friends.
Chris Seiter: So you attribute the feelings to getting cropped backed up based on you getting off the show and just being together for a long time, and just opening up and talking about things that normal friends wouldn’t talk about? So there was an extra layer to your relationship?
Ashley: Well, I think with Jared, a lot of his confusion and stuff was that he didn’t want to look, on TV, like he was confused. So he acted as if he was sure he didn’t want me, because he honestly thought that would probably look better on TV.
Chris Seiter: It seems like they really try to push you fast to make a decision on the person, right? That show, in particular.
Jared: Well, of course, because you only have… Bachelor in Paradise films for like 25 days. So it’s like, you’ve got to make decisions fast in that environment. And so, it wasn’t even so much a TV aspect for me. I’ve realized that I just do that in everyday life, where I try to put this persona on of me putting up this image in the world that I know exactly what I’m doing, and I know what I’m going for, and I have things together, which is the complete opposite of what is actually going on. But luckily, especially after being with Ashley, I’ve started tearing away at that facade, and being more honest with people, and vulnerable, and telling people, “Don’t listen to me. We’re all just learning every day.”
Chris Seiter: So Ashley, I remember you just being obsessed with him from moment one. Did that go away at all for you, especially when things didn’t work out on the show, or were there always underlying feelings there, as your friendship was going on?
Ashley: For the most part, the feelings were always there. There was times where it would be lessened, but that was honestly, usually because of times where he would be acting dumb, or he’d be pushing me away, and then I’d be like, “Oh, okay. Fine. I’m done with this.”
Chris Seiter: So you basically do, “I don’t care anymore.” And then just come back to it later, when you catch the feelings again?
Ashley: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: That’s interesting. So in preparation for the interview, because I only knew what I knew based on the season I had watched, I was watching some YouTube videos. And you guys have a real interesting proposal story, but it’s also kind of awkward in a weird way, because it looks like one of your exes was there to watch this proposal?
Ashley: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Was that ever a weird vibe to have with a proposal? Because it seems to me like no one knew what was going on, except maybe Jared. And then they push you over and the host is like, “Hey, let’s come watch.” Is that ever a weird feeling? Do you ever look back on that? Because I also saw you have some really amazing wedding videos and you have a really amazing wedding just to begin with. But do you feel like that was kind of a weird situation to be put in?
Ashley: Well, the televised aspect of our engagement was definitely flawed.
Jared: Yeah. So I was talking to producers about possibly going down and proposing to Ashley, and I never even thought that they would try to make it awkward, just because it’s a proposal, they’re not going to really do anything with it to ruin the moment. But then, of course, the night bef… We fly down there and I have this plan thing. And then I was talking to a producer beforehand, and I said, “Listen, if her ex is still down there…” Because you don’t truly know if somebody is still down there or not while they’re filming. They don’t tell you. And I was like, “Listen, if he’s just down there, please just have him go into an interview, or have him go on a date with someone. Just make sure he’s just not there, so it’s not awkward at all.”
Jared: And they couldn’t promise me that, but they said it wasn’t going to be awkward. Like, “Listen. You’re going to go. You’re going to see Harrison. He’s going to introduce you in front of the group. We promised that…” His name was his name is Kevin. “That he was going to be in the back of the crowd. And then you guys would go off and do your own thing. And that would be it, and it wouldn’t be awkward at all.” And so I said, “Okay, that’s fine.” Well, I didn’t say it was fine, but it was either do that or just cancel the proposal. So it was like, “Okay. Well, shit.”
Chris Seiter: Yeah. You have to go forward with it.
Jared: Yeah. I mean, it was 12 hours away.
Ashley: I obviously didn’t know I was going to get proposed to. I had an inkling there was a chance, but I knew that even being down in paradise, that they would add that annoyance to the storyline. Because they’d be like, “Oh no. We can’t have a pure storyline just celebrating Ashley and Jared at this moment.” So I was a little concerned, and I actually can’t believe that Jared was so naive to the fact that they would do something like that.
Chris Seiter: Well he’s in love. He wants to marry you.
Jared: Yeah. And the reason, too… So one of my buddies, his name is Tanner. He and Jade got engaged on Bachelor in Paradise, our first season, and they had a televised wedding. And Tanner was telling me a story about how he didn’t want her ex there, the former bachelor. Obviously it’s very different now. We’re all friends. But at the time, there’s still that awkwardness. And they were like, “Well, listen. He’s coming. He’s going to be there.” And they promised him it wouldn’t be awkward, and it wasn’t awkward at all. So I was like, “All right, it’ll probably be the same thing with me.” But then of course, lo and behold, we’re watching the engagement back, and Harrison invites everybody, including her ex boyfriend, to come watch the freaking engagement. It’s like, “Come on, guys.”
Ashley: Yeah. In real life, it wasn’t as awkward-
Chris Seiter: As it looks on TV.
Ashley: Yeah. But then they absolutely played with it.
Jared: But honestly, it’s fine. It was still a memorable moment. It sucks, because I would change some things, of course, because I wouldn’t want to do it in front of anybody. But I’m certainly over that, and we had such a spectacular and incredible wedding that it was honestly the best day of my life.
Ashley: Yeah. I don’t think about the proposal the way that it was on TV anymore. I think we did for a while. But now, the only time that I’ll think about the annoyance around it is when somebody brings it up like that.
Chris Seiter: Oh, okay. I’ll stay away from it. What I’m actually curious about… So, you guys start dating. At what point did you realize you knew you wanted to marry her, Jared?
Jared: Like I said, we were best friends for three and a half years.
Ashley: We kind of went from not dating to being married.
Jared: We knew that once we started… Because we knew each other so well, and there was a little bit of a romantic background with us. And honestly, it is true that because we were best friends, we knew each other so well, that the only missing part of our relationship was the romantic part. So once we started dating for a month, two months, and it was so easy, the romance felt so right, it was like, “Okay, this is obvious. I want to…” They always tell you, “Marry your best friend.” And then, here she is right now. So I knew very early on, and I think Ashley did too, that we weren’t dating just to date and have fun. We were going to date and figure out this was a lifelong partnership.
Chris Seiter: What was it about Ashley that… I’m sure you’ve had friends that were girls before, but Ashley just seemed to stand out from the rest. You’ve mentioned she’s your best friend, so what was it about her that got you to open up?
Jared: Ashley pushes me to be a better person. She pushes me to open up. Because I do have a lot of friends that are girls, but not romantically, obviously. Just friendship. The thing is, my friends that are girls are also not interested in me romantically. So with Ashley and I, there was a mutual want for romance there. But Ashley just pushes me to be a better person. She knows how to handle me better than anybody in this world. So those are some factors.
Chris Seiter: What about you, Ashley? What was it about Jared? Because it seemed like there was instant attraction from the moment you saw him, and it doesn’t seem like it ever went away.
Ashley: I don’t know. It was really love at first sight. It was weird, because it was even before Jared spoke. So that’s just indescribable. I can’t even put to words what that phenomenon is. But with Jared, I just have always admired his passion, the way that he gets so excited about certain things. And I had never seen that in a guy before, a guy that I was attracted to. And there’s just some sort of understanding that we have between the two of us. This is weird to describe, but it’s kind of like my sister, where I don’t really have to explain how I feel about something, he just comes and gets it.
Chris Seiter: So it just seemed like you guys were always on the same wavelength from the get-go.
Ashley: Yes.
Chris Seiter: What’s interesting, though, is during The Bachelor in Paradise, he seems to be kind of unsure if he wants to be with you or not. And I remember there was some guy who came up to you and was like, “He’s not going to be with you.” But you were just like, “No.” You just didn’t want to hear it. What was it about you that kept fighting?
Ashley: That was our best friend, Nick, who told us that, who cried while giving a speech at our wedding.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you were right, and he was wrong.
Ashley: Yes.
Chris Seiter: So what was it that kept the faith going, so to speak?
Ashley: Honestly, Jared’s behavior toward me.
Chris Seiter: So it was sort of like, he’d give you signs that he was interested, but he wasn’t all in just yet? Because it seems to me you may be a victim of the speed at which that show goes. If you’re only filming for 25 days, it’s hard to make a life… They almost seem like they want you to get engaged by the end of the show, and 25 days just isn’t enough.
Ashley: Yeah. There’s no, “Oh, you can leave as friends, or you can even leave as boyfriend and girlfriend.” You’re pretty much expected to either make a lifelong commitment, or I could leave single. But with Jared, I could just tell right after that moment with Nick. We had a two hour conversation, Jared and I, on a bed on the beach, and he couldn’t get up from the conversation. So I was like, “He obviously cares about me enough that he doesn’t even want to leave my side right now.”
Chris Seiter: And what was it like for you, Jared? Because it seems to me like maybe the circumstances just made it difficult for you to commit that fast. You just needed more time? Would you say that’s accurate?
Jared: Yeah. I think that’s accurate. I think it was a combination of circumstances and overcoming my own demons, so to speak. Not to cause sympathy, because that’s not what I’m trying to do. But I think for me, and just dating in everyday life, I have difficulty for a lot of reasons. And I think the problems I have in dating were just magnified within the Bachelor franchise because of the timeframe.
Ashley: And also, we like to say that just because I was right and Jared did come around after some mixed signals, I am the exception to the rule when it comes to, “He’s just not that into you.” I am the Ginnifer Goodwin character in the movie.
Chris Seiter: Well, I still think there’s something you can learn from your approach, potentially. Do you feel like you did something different than the average girl who’s in your circumstance? There’s some guy, he’s giving her those mixed signals, but he’s not super into her. Do you feel like there’s anything special you did to catch his interest?
Ashley: No. I got a boyfriend. I tell all girls who are getting mixed signals and are confused about a guy’s behavior and whether or not they have a future together to just start dating someone else. Because if he doesn’t come around when you’re dating someone else, he’s never going to come around.
Chris Seiter: So I don’t know if you know this about me, but we have quite a bit of people going through breakups that come through our website. And so, what we have as a ton of data. And what you said is something that we’ve learned. So after dealing with literally thousands of breakups and seeing what works to re-attract an ex or even get over an ex, a huge factor is moving on to someone new or emulating moving on. So believe it or not, you maybe just stumbled into the key. But I’m actually kind of curious to hear Jared’s perspective. When she started dating someone new, did that bother you on any level?
Ashley: Yeah. That’s what made him admit his feelings.
Jared: Yeah. Of course it really bothered me. And so I got-
Ashley: He had this whole something with his mom during Christmas break.
Jared: It wasn’t something with my mom. I just talked to my mom.
Ashley: No, he just revealed his feelings very dramatically, like in a movie.
Jared: Yeah. No. Because here’s the thing. It’s an ultimatum. Because now you’re really losing the person you want to be with, so you either have to fight for what you want or continue going down the path you’re going down, which is comfortability and not speaking up.
Chris Seiter: So ultimately, you guys get together, you have this really amazing storybook wedding, I mean truly storybook. How have things have been going, now that you guys are married? Because I noticed when I got married, actually things got a lot better. It just felt deeper. I’m wondering if you guys experienced something similar.
Ashley: See, we think it feels the same.
Chris Seiter: The same?
Ashley: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: What about you, Jared?
Jared: Yeah. The thing is, we lived together for over a year before we got married.
Ashley: Did you guys live together before?
Chris Seiter: We lived together for about six months, but our story’s a pretty complicated too, because we were long distance for like… It was very similar to yours, where we talked for months and months, and we felt like we knew each other. And then she lived in Pennsylvania, I lived in Texas, and I just decided to move, to take a chance. And we lived together for like six or seven months, and I just knew. So it was kind of similar, but for me, it was a real big shell shock. Because I moved where I knew everyone and my family was to just nowhere. I didn’t know anyone. So it was a lot of dealing with that. So when I had married her, I felt like, “Okay. Now I can relax. Because I don’t have to worry about her meeting some new guy and leaving, and I’m up here alone.” So maybe that’s sort of what came into it, but I’m always curious to talk to people like you.
Ashley: Oh, I can see how you’d be more comfortable and secure with that. I don’t know. When we moved in together, it didn’t feel like any sort of transition, which is really weird. I imagined moving in together would drive me nuts, because I’ve always liked my own space and the way it needs to be just so. But for some reason, I just didn’t feel bothered by living together with somebody after so many years of living alone.
Chris Seiter: What about you? Because I noticed, when I moved in with my wife, there’s really not much that bugged me about her, except the fact that sometimes she would eat these pretzels and leave them on the ground and forget to clean them up, and I’d have to clean them up. Was there any, moving in, you noticed these weird habits that kind of irked you?
Ashley: There was just honestly the stupidest things.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, it’s like the pretzel thing, right?
Ashley: Yeah, it’s exactly like that. He would leave his wallet, and some change, and, I don’t know, his headphones and stuff on the bedroom dresser. And I’m like, “That’s supposed to look all pretty and put together. That’s not a place for that. Put that in a drawer.”
Chris Seiter: I’m with Jared. I just put it. I just put it there.
Jared: Literally, it’s just my wallet, my keys, and AirPods. She’s making it sound like I’m throwing papers on this thing.
Ashley: But that’s a place for decor.
Jared: No. Not to toot my own horn, but I find myself very easy to live with, because I just clean up after myself, and I don’t really like to make my presence known. So it was very easy. It was very easy for me.
Chris Seiter: So, I want to give you guys, and I’ll let you guys talk as much as you want, but we were talking before we actually started recording about you guys have a couple of podcasts. It looks like Ashley has a podcast or a couple of podcasts, and you, Jared, maybe have a podcast as well. So could you tell me about them? And why should people listen to them?
Ashley: Well, for all the Bachelor fans out there, I have the Almost Famous podcast with Ben Higgins, and we recap whatever the episode is that aired that week, and we just talk about all the latest Bachelor Nation drama, and we have a lot of guests that come on and do in-depth interviews with us. And then I have the I Don’t Get It podcast, which is basically about millennial girl lifestyle. We like to think it’s kind of like a conversation that you’d find on Sex in the City, but on a podcast. And then, Jared has, ironically, a podcast called Help! I Suck at Dating.
Jared: That’s right. It’s called Help! I Suck at Dating.
Ashley: It’s probably similar to yours, where it’s all about relationships.
Jared: Yeah. So I host it with another bachelor alum. His name is Dean Unglert. It’s an iHeartRadio podcast, but you can get it wherever you get your podcasts. And why should people listen to it? I don’t know. It’s just two guys giving their opinion on dating, and that’s really it. No. And then, we have a lot of dating experts that come in, dating coaches. We have celebrity couples come in. We have a lot of really cool guests to come on and just give their perspective on dating or relationship, and try to advise us and help us get better at dating, whether you’re single, married, in a relationship, doesn’t matter. We all have things within the dating world that we can get a lot better at.
Chris Seiter: True. Very true. Where can we find these podcasts? So Jared mentioned iHeartRadio, or wherever. What about you, Ashley?
Ashley: Wherever podcasts live. Apple Podcasts app, iHeartRadio, Spotify, all the good stuff.
Chris Seiter: Well thank you guys for coming on, so much, especially with everything going on in the world.
Jared: Of course, man. Thanks for having us. This was fun.
Success Story: How She Got Her Ex Back When He Moved In With The Other Woman
Jun 23, 2020
Lately I’ve been doing this thing where I’m taking time out of my busy schedule to interview as many success stories as possible. You see, I’m a big believer in never being satisfied and always trying to get to the bottom of what the truth is.
I’m not silly enough to believe that “getting an ex back” can ever be an exact science but I will say that the more I learn the more I become convinced that there are ways that my program can improve.
Enter Bethany!
Bethany has been trying to get her ex back for over three years.
She’s had to weather some of the most difficult scenarios you could imagine.
Watch and listen to our in-depth interview and learn.
How She Got Her Ex Back When He Moved On To Someone Else
Chris Seiter: Okay. So today we’re going to be talking to a success story. This is Bethany who has a real interesting story. Man, she’s been in the group for a long time. So Bethany is one of the very few people who kind of stuck with the entire program and it took a while to get her ex back. So anyways, what we’re going to be doing today is asking her all sorts of questions to figure out what she did that worked and what she did that didn’t work, so we can help people listening to this. But how are you doing Bethany?
Chris Seiter: Okay. So don’t you give us like an overview of your situation from start to finish. Floor is yours.
Bethany: Okay. I had a year and a half relationship with my ex and we broke up. I was seven months pregnant so that was a very difficult situation. And I know you talk about, in the program, that that’s kind of a special situation. It was a committed relationship. We were living together. It was a planned pregnancy. It’s just, we were talking about engagement and then all of a sudden he said he wasn’t happy and we broke up. So since then, it’s been three years, just over three years, and because of the fact that we ended up having a child, we ended up having periods of time where we were able to be in close contact or almost had to be. And then there were times where I personally had to separate myself. I needed that space and I needed that distance.
Bethany: So there were times when I wasn’t actively doing the program, but I was doing kind of like the moving on without moving on, or even an indefinite no contact. I had a period of time when I had to do that. So basically my story touches on all the bases because I had an OW, he left me to immediately go back to his ex who he had a child with, like previous to our relationship. So this was his previous exactly. And then-
Chris Seiter: I’m laughing because, Bethany is always … So I would do these Facebook Lives in the group and she’d always show up to the Facebook Lives. So she’s got the purple hair and I’d be like, “Okay, there’s Bethany.” And I’d always know because of the purple hair “Okay, she’s got the other woman, she’s pregnant.” So, and it was just funny. Trip down memory lane.
Bethany: And that’s the thing is that my situation, and I actually, last year I had a woopsie moment where I became intimate with my ex and I broke the value chain. So my situation literally touches on all the things. My ex didn’t contact me during the no contact period. I did a full 30 days. He didn’t contact me immediately. I did that no contact because I didn’t know about the program for almost a month. And when I found it, I had almost completed that no contact and I stuck with it. Because, for me, I have pride. I’m a very prideful person. When someone leaves me when I’m pregnant, yes, I [inaudible 00:02:57] him, I texted him, I begged, I did all those things, but I ended up coming around and sticking with that 30 days.
Bethany: And he didn’t reach out. He didn’t reach out at all. And he said it was because he respected that he thought I wanted space. He knew I wanted to be alone and kind of deal with what I was dealing with. And we’ve spoken about all those things since. And he said like, “I struggled. Like I had a hard time. Like I missed you. I missed our life, our day to day.” But those are things that, when people in the group bring them up, I want to give them that reassurance that I’m standing here right now and that can be the case where those things happen and things go not the way you want them to. There’s an OW. And Chris, you immediately go, ” [inaudible 00:03:49]” That’s your knee jerk reaction. Like, “Oh, boy.”
Bethany: And then if it’s someone that they have a child with and a history with, it’s like, “Oh my God, what do you do with this?” And I think the only reason that I stuck with the program the entire time is that it wasn’t a bad thing. It was literally the best thing that happened to me. I was in shock when the breakup occurred. I was pregnant and going through something that I think a lot of people would, not pregnant, be overwhelmed with. And your program gave me hope. It gave me motivation that there was a path ahead of me. Working with Anna doing coaching, which I did in 2018. I wasn’t ready for it then. I was still basically getting out of shock of the relationship breaking up and my new life and what it meant to be a single mom.
Bethany: But I’ve since gone back and looked at her materials and I use them constantly. Your Live in February, I think it was, of 2018, I have rewatched that over and over and over again. It is the one about how to get your ex back, what attracts them, how to make them fall in love again, that Live I have shared-
Chris Seiter: Is that the one with the 11 fact-
Bethany: Yeah. The 11. Yes.
Chris Seiter: Right, yeah. Okay.
Bethany: Yes. And that is the number one thing I recommend to all my battle buddies, everybody in the group, all the new joining people. Like watching that Live, you can literally go, point by point, and go down the list and say, “This was lacking. This is still lacking. This is there, but it’s not a hundred percent there.” You can come up with the roadmap that Anna gave me, and that together gave me the blueprint. That was what I needed. I needed to literally use my social media, my sphere of influence that always worked in my favor, because his family loved me from day one-
Chris Seiter: Plus you have a child together with him.
Bethany: Yeah, exactly.
Chris Seiter: That can kind of help as well, in that regard.
Bethany: Oh, definitely. But you use those things to your favor and your advantage, and you use those 11. And basically like they’re putty in your hands and you know it. And your wife, Jen, she was instrumental in just giving me confidence and helping me realize that you can be a mom and you can be beautiful and you can be ambitious and you can be desirable and you can be so ungettable that you’re setting a standard for how everyone else will look at being a mom. And they almost like want to be a mom because they see how impressive you’re making it look. That’s what Jen models and teaches. Like she literally emulates that in everything that she does. Like being a mom can be cool. Being a mom can be awesome. Being a mom doesn’t limit you, it actually makes you amazing because you’re super, you’re literally super, no matter what you do.
Chris Seiter: Okay, man, there’s a lot to unpack here. Bethanhy is like one of my favorites ever. I want to go back to where he breaks up with you. Did you ever, because it’s been a long time since, I mean it’s been almost like three years, right?
Bethany: It feels like yesterday. It’s been over three years, yes. It was March 31st, 2017. And I remember the next day it was April Fool’s Day and I was like, “Why do I need an April Fool’s Day? My life is a joke.”
Chris Seiter: Yeah, right. The breakup happened on the wrong day, you know?
Bethany: Exactly.
Chris Seiter: So was it just like an out of the blue type thing? How did he have the conversation? Did he just leave?
Bethany: No, no. I wish I had had the program. I wish I had known, this is another component I can add to it, I have bipolar disorder. So there were mental health issues on my side. He had become depressed dealing with me and my pregnancy and the volatility of my moods. It was the middle of winter, the winter that never ended it felt like. And I think he gave me a heads up about six weeks ahead of time. He said to me, “I’m not happy.”
Chris Seiter: So he pre-warned you and what did you do with that?
Bethany: I said the worst possible things. Oh, I was ridiculous. I was hysterical. I was emotional. I came up with all kinds of crazy threats and I did exactly, like if I had had the program then, this wouldn’t have even happened. I came up with all kinds of crazy threats and ultimatums, and I said to him, “What are you going to do go back to your ex and be a fake ass family with her?”
Chris Seiter: And he actually did it.
Bethany: He did it. I gave him the blueprint and he just followed through with it.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. But I bet you probably beat yourself up over that for-
Bethany: Daily. Daily. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So you think it’s because of the emotional issues that because of the bipolar disorder and the pregnancy on top of that, making the mood swings potentially more volatile, that sort of-
Bethany: Yes.
Chris Seiter: Do you think-
Bethany: I had a lot of stress at work and I had taken on a new job because I was trying to kind of be ambitious, and it was just too much to take on. And I had morning sickness for about the seven months of my son’s pregnancy.
Chris Seiter: That sounds like Jen.
Bethany: The first two months I was okay, but the rest of it I was violently ill every single day. If I sat up, I was sick. If I laid down, I was okay, but that’s no life so it was rough.
Chris Seiter: No. And you’re going through it for such a long period of time, nine months. But for you, it was seven months. But at a certain point it probably feels like it won’t ever end.
Bethany: The day that I gave birth to my son, because it didn’t happen for two months. The day I gave birth to my son was the last morning I woke up, and it was every morning for the last seven months of this pregnancy, and I woke up and I had him that night, and I remember I woke up the next morning and I was like, “why am I not sick?” It was the first time in seven months.
Chris Seiter: You’d gotten so used to it.
Bethany: I just got used to just being violently ill every single morning and just dealing with it.
Chris Seiter: So he ends up going back. He ends up getting another woman. Was that like an instant type thing or did that-
Bethany: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: So it was like instant, like next day you notice he’s with the other girl. Did he move in with the other girl?
Bethany: Again, like I said, I disappeared. Like I didn’t reach out to him afterwards. Like I begged at first and then I just disappeared because I have pride. So he disappeared and so did I. Like I didn’t reach out, I didn’t try to entertain where he was going, I was just over it. And I pretty much was like, “You do you, I’ll do me.” And I did those 30 days. And then I started to reach out about information about the baby. And the only way I found out about the OW, definitively, was at the hospital giving birth to my son, when I was being induced. I invited him and I said to him, “You can come and be as involved as you want. And for the rest of his life, you can be as involved as you want. But I need you to be honest with me right now and tell me where you are and what you’re doing, because I’m not going to stand next to a stranger while I’m giving birth to my son.” And he did, he told me the situation and I said, “Okay.” I respected that. I already knew that, like I figured that was what was going on. So at that point we just moved forward as co-parents.
Chris Seiter: So before the breakup actually occurred, I’m just wondering his mentality of what … because I feel like maybe the mood swings and everything kind of set them off. Do you think there was ever like a crushing of like, “Oh man, this is getting too serious. We’re moved in together, she’s about to give birth to this baby.” Because I know when Jen was pregnant, it kind of freaked me out a little bit and I was married to her and that was a planned thing too.
Bethany: Yeah. And that’s the thing is that like he has a previous child with the OW but that was not a planned situation. That was more a they were broken up and she wanted to-
Chris Seiter: So he can maybe even associate that with like stress. Because I remember, like we plan to have my daughter, but I remember like the first month where you’re not getting any sleep and you’re like, our daughter had some sort of like lip tie issue where she would spit up all the time and it was just like-
Bethany: My son did too, yeah.
Chris Seiter: It was just like, “Oh my God, what did I do?”
Bethany: It’s rough.
Chris Seiter: But you love them so much. So I’m wondering if he equates that to the stress of maybe that incoming thing and he’s maybe looking for like an excuse to get out. Do you think there was that?
Bethany: It’s very possible? I’m a very pushy person, he’s used the word, I think nicely, intimidating. I’m a bully. I’m basically a bully. And he was along for the ride. Like he was willing to accommodate me and do what I needed and wanted the entire relationship. Right after I met him, I broke my foot and I was on bed rest basically for like a month because I couldn’t walk for three months because I had surgery. So basically he took care of me for the first half of our relationship. And that dynamic never really changed. Like he just did everything for me. And I think it just got to be too much for him. And towards the end of our relationship, he told me that he just didn’t feel like comfortable around me. He felt like every time I like made a comment about things, like a rude, nasty comment, that he was scared of how I was reacting. And I said to him one day, “I feel like I’m walking on eggshells around you.” Because I tried to be better, I tried to not say things. And later on he would tell me that that was the reason he left, is because he didn’t want me to feel like I had to walk on eggshells. He didn’t want me to feel I couldn’t be myself around him because that’s how he felt. So he was just like, “We’re both breaking it. It’s done”
Chris Seiter: It’s interesting. Your breakup’s really kind of complex if you think about it. I mean, sure there’s the pregnancy, there’s the mood swings, there’s obviously the bipolar disorder, but I think there’s an element of crushing and also the walking on eggshells thing. So I mean, let’s get to the interesting stuff, is what worked to get him back. So before I let you go, I want to ask you a question, because this is the point I’m making to ask every single success story that I’m interviewing. What I’ve noticed, and this is just purely me looking for patterns, is what seems to work for women when they get their exes back is they always seem to hit like rock bottom and they just stop caring about getting their Exes back. Did you experience that?
Bethany: Yeah. That’s exactly what I experienced. I experienced it twice actually.
Chris Seiter: Can you explain that essence to me? Because I’m trying to determine whether or not it’s … So I interviewed another success story and she was telling me about this concept as well, because I brought it up and I asked her, “Do you think you can fake it?” And she basically said, “Well, no, but maybe you could fake it at first to get the momentum going, but you still need to feel the essence of it.” So I’m trying to dive into this because the more and more I interview people, the more I think this is the key, this is the unknown key.
Bethany: It’s like that all is lost moment. And you go for broke, kind of. Yeah. That’s exactly what happened about a year ago. I thought we were kind of touching on a reconciliation. It seemed like that was going to happen. And we literally had a catastrophic thing happened that like I don’t go into too much detail about it, but he wasn’t able to see our son for about six to eight months. And I, as a mother, had to step in and be mama bear and say, “You’re not in a place to be his father right now.” And that was the hardest thing I had to do because then I had to say to myself, “Do I still love this person?” And when the courts decided that he deserved to be a dad again, I maybe wasn’t necessarily in agreement. And I dated someone else, I had had a year long relationship actually during this process, and I’ve had rebounds and I’ve had friends with benefits. So again, I touch on all the bases in these three years, and basically I got both of those back too.
Bethany: And basically what I came to realize is that, my therapist even said to me, “What would it take, Bethany, for you to stop loving him? Like what would it actually take for you to stop loving him?” And at that point I didn’t think I did. I thought I was completely done. I thought I was ready to just be a single mom and explore my other options out there and be done with the program and kind of do my own thing. And that was my indefinite no contact period that I had. And basically that was my gut check moment. And that was around the holidays this year when I said, “Oh my God, I still love this person. I still want to try to be a family.”
Chris Seiter: So after dating all of these people and having lots of time away from him and sort of like feeling like, “I’m done with this.”
Bethany: Maybe he’s not worth it, yeah. Maybe this isn’t worth it, he’s not worth it.
Chris Seiter: Eventually you have that come to Jesus moment where you’re kind of like, “Okay, maybe he means a little something more to me than I was-
Bethany: Yeah. And I said to myself, like a love like this, this is an epic love. Like this is not the kind of love … This is like, if you’ve seen Frozen 2 when Christoph says, “My love is not fragile.”
Chris Seiter: I have seen Frozen 2 way more times … So my favorite part of that movie is the Olaf song.
Bethany: This will all make sense when you’re older?
Chris Seiter: Yeah, it’s like [crosstalk 00:17:01]
Bethany: It doesn’t, it doesn’t Chris. But yeah, when Christoph says, “My love is not fragile,” that really hit me because it made me realize my love for him wasn’t fragile. I’ve gotten through three years of this and I still love this person, without it being cultivated always. So I want to explore this. So that’s why we really got our fresh start this year. 2020 wasn’t all bad.
Chris Seiter: Yeah right. Screw the pandemic.
Bethany: Exactly. And right after the holidays, like in the beginning of January, I reached out to him and I said like, “Okay, let’s try to see how we can …” Because we had gotten to the point of discussing reconciliation the previous summer, and I said to him-
Bethany: Yeah, yeah. And we had like just a really bad situation happened where I had to kind of intervene and basically say, “You don’t deserve me or my son right now.” And then basically I hit a reset button when it got to the point where we were going to be back in each other’s lives again. And I said, “Okay, let’s be real. Let’s be real with each other.” And I said, “Do you want to do this for the rest of our lives, because we have our son? Do you want to be negative around each other?” And I’m like, “I still like love you as a person and I want what’s best for you. But being this type of person isn’t what’s best for you.” And we had those just soul searching conversations via text, and we just decided to give it a real fresh start. Like an actual one.
Chris Seiter: So this conversation you had during the text messaging, you’re text messaging this like intense conversation back and forth. How long did this conversation last? Was it like a quick thing or?
Bethany: No, it was like hours.
Chris Seiter: Hours. Back and forth, back and forth.
Bethany: Yeah, yeah.
Chris Seiter: And what was the next step after that?
Bethany: We did exactly what the program would have you do. We started talking on the phone, we started doing FaceTimes. We started having meetups. And again, I touch on another base here, we never used to do anything but text. And then all of a sudden I decided let’s start doing FaceTime.
Chris Seiter: I remember, you said something, you’d like added a new element to your relationship with the FaceTimes and the phone calls.
Bethany: Yeah. And it was actually it was really nice. Like I wouldn’t discredit it. It gives you another facet and element to your communication. And I think it’s important to explore it. Just because you haven’t before, I don’t think that that’s necessarily a good enough excuse. So we basically followed, I followed the program and I basically did step by step by step.
Chris Seiter: So you followed it again. It’s just to me it looks like it took so much to get to a point where you and both him are kind of on the same wavelength. I mean like years worth, which is rare because I think most people just give up.
Bethany: I think you will if it’s not something that’s sustainable or that you have a cause to do it. And having a child with someone definitely gives you an advantage and it gives you an impetus to continue. But it also has to be some sort of like a really intense chemistry and love, and we’ve always had that.
Chris Seiter: So you’re talking on the phone, FaceTiming, phone conversations, everything like that. How long did it take to see each other in person and what did that interaction feel like or look like to you?
Bethany: Well, keep in mind we would see each other on the weekends to exchange our son and stuff like that.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So everything, it was kind of like painted in, like mostly you’re communicating most of the time through texting, maybe phone calls here and there, but you did, every once in a while, because you share the son, he would come and visit. So you’d see each other in person. It’s just I’m assuming you notice the difference in those interactions between the two of you as well.
Bethany: Yes. And I tried to schedule time during the week where we would get together once every other week or like once a week, because our schedules are difficult. Like I work nights on the weekends and take care of our son all week, and he works on weekdays like a normal person does. So we had to kind of find a time to schedule it. So it wasn’t super spontaneous and exciting, but we tried to make it interesting for us.
Chris Seiter: Your story is so fascinating on so many different levels.
Bethany: Thank you. Well, I touched on all the bases, Chris.
Chris Seiter: That’s why it’s fascinating.
Bethany: Love in the time of corona, like all of this stuff. I basically touch on all of them.
Chris Seiter: So this is something that a lot of women struggle with who just start the program. For someone who has been basically through hell and back, because that’s what it feels like, that three year period, basically to where he just moved in. Like he literally just moved in yesterday. We had to cancel our interview because he was moving in. What would you say to people, now that you’ve been through all of this, are some of the most important things to keep in mind throughout this process? Because I feel like you, especially with your bipolar disorder, it’s probably even worse for you, some of the mood swings that you go through throughout this process in general, it’s even heightened for you. What would you say is something for people who are just starting out to keep in mind?
Bethany: I would say to take it seriously. To literally use those no contact periods for self development and growth. My coaching that I got from Anna was instrumental in who I am today, but I literally had to take it in pieces. I wasn’t prepared for all the personal growth and work that I was going to have to do. Her work, she gave me like homework.
Chris Seiter: Homework, that’s what she calls it.
Bethany: I literally have still not finished it. I work on it constantly. I don’t think you ever do finish it per se, but I know that there are parts of it that I utilize on a daily basis. The Horsemen, the article that she gave me on the horsemen, those are things that are a constant issue. The love languages. Those are literally something you should be thinking about when you approach even your loved ones. There’s so much to unbox from all of that. And it’s a gift and that’s why I’m saying unboxing.
Bethany: Because when I coached with Anna, it gave me such support. And between that, the support you gave and she gave during the Lives and my battle buddies and the group itself, it’s been instrumental. But I think the most important thing to remember is to be serious about this, because to do it for a second and give up or to not take your own personal work seriously, you’re not going to get anywhere. Until I got my head right and I got myself in a place where I was ready to make the decisions I needed to make and to take the hard work and dig in, you’re not going to get anywhere. It’s not like taking a brand new selfie and being like super cool. It’s literally digging into yourself.
Chris Seiter: I think that’s a big misconception a lot of people have on the group.
Bethany: Yeah, it is.
Chris Seiter: You see it. They’re like, “Should I post this?” And a lot of it’s like, “Well-
Bethany: Like I’m not being a jerk, but yeah, like that’s not what this is about. I would literally say that this program helped me so much just as a person, but learning to take care of myself better, learning to love myself more. If you don’t love yourself enough or at all, doing this won’t get you back an ex. Like you aren’t lovable at that point, you need to make yourself into the person that you would want to be with. And I wasn’t that person. I was lost, I was absolutely lost. So this was really amazing.
Chris Seiter: To me the million dollar question, and I think it really goes down to that internal confidence level you have where you feel like, okay, no matter what goes wrong, I can be in pain, but I’ll be okay. Let me ask you a question. Do you feel like you’re at that point where, let’s say he broke up with you tomorrow, would you be okay? I mean, it would hurt but-
Bethany: I think you need to get to that point before the real-
Chris Seiter: You get back together?
Bethany: Yeah. I think for me, I was more prepared for it because of having my son and knowing what it feels like to be at rock bottom.
Chris Seiter: Also, do feel like having your son was an advantage? Because it feels like, to me, your mother instincts kick in so your priorities are maybe a little bit different. Because most women, when they’re coming through the program, they’re so focused on their ex. Whereas you have to be so focused on your son and your ex is maybe in the peripheral a little bit.
Bethany: My son is my greatest asset. He is my greatest strength. He’s my greatest inspiration. Like I said, I was lost. I was’ lost. And if I didn’t have him and the direction of this program, I don’t know where I would be right now. He makes it so much easier to be better, to want to be better. But he also is gorgeous. And he literally, I don’t know how to describe it, he’s probably my biggest selling point. Like the way I love him shows me that I’m capable of loving, and being a mom is absolutely amazing. I know I’m going to sound ridiculous when I say this, but I loved giving birth to my son because it made me learn that I was capable of anything. Literally, after having my son, I realized I was like super human. And I was like, “Wow, anything else is nothing on me. Like I can do anything.”
Chris Seiter: Wow. That’s such a great attitude to have, isn’t it?
Bethany: Yeah. All moms are amazing. Adopted or through birth. Like they’re all amazing. Because to love someone else so much that you sacrifice this much, you’re powerful. So powerful.
Chris Seiter: So my take on it has always been maybe a little unique because the line of work I do, I deal with thousands every single day. And I say that … like breakups. So I’m seeing two self-interested individuals. One person wants their ex back so badly. They only want their ex back because it makes them feel better. And the ex wants to get away because they think self-interestly they’re going to find someone else that can meet their needs better. But what has always struck me is I always used to have this real jaded view of human beings, because I’d see it. I’d be like, “Okay, everyone just seems to be self interested. They’re going to do what’s best for them in the end.”
Chris Seiter: Until my wife had birth to my daughter. And I finally saw someone be selfless. And I was thinking, “Man, that’s such a powerful, powerful thing.” Fun story, my wife got an epidural and it was like super late at night when this happened, but they said, “Sir, you’re going to have to sit down.” And I was like, “Why?” Like, “We’ve had some husbands like faint.”
Bethany: Pass out? Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Right. And so I was like, “All right.”
Bethany: My ex almost did.
Chris Seiter: So I sat down, they pull out this needle and I get white and I’m like thinking, “I’m going to pass out.” Because it’s like super freaky. Moms are amazing. Women are amazing in general.
Bethany: I was so excited for my epidural. And then they told me I couldn’t have one because my platelets were too low. And I was like, “That’s not what we talked about. Is that a maybe?”
Chris Seiter: I remember, she got the epidural and she said, “We need to write them a thank you note.” Like the entire time. And I was like, “Okay, okay.”
Bethany: I’ve heard it’s great. That’s awesome.
Chris Seiter: But yeah, anyways. Your breakup. We probably should get back on topic here. Yes. Would you say … Now you came in toward at like, I want to say like phase three of the program, when it wasn’t the Ex-Boyfriend Recovery Program, it was just like Ex-Boyfriend Recovery Pro. When you look at all the materials that you had, would you say that the group was the most valuable asset that you sort of took from everything? From the coaching to the …
Bethany: The group is probably way up there. Coaching was very helpful, but yeah I guess I would say the group. Because for the actual like written materials, I do use them and I reference them actually all the time. But for me personally, my situation was so specifically out of there, kind of. You know what I mean?
Chris Seiter: Yeah. Pregnancy and the [crosstalk 00:29:34].
Bethany: Like there was so many nuances and like multiple layers. Yeah. So I read the program and I use the elements of it, for sure. And I love a lot of them. But yeah, I think the group was probably the most helpful for me because your involvement, Anna.
Chris Seiter: Because of this community, battle buddy, Facebook Lives.
Bethany: It’s just the encouragement, the focus, the kind of constant accountability. I love that. I love that. And there’s a lot of amazing people in the group. I can’t say enough great things about Anna and MP and my battle buddies. I had Corey and Yvonne and I have Gabby now, and like we’re all super supportive of each other. It’s just amazing.
Chris Seiter: I tend to notice the people who are real successful also they aren’t afraid to integrate themselves and like make friends, you know what I’m saying? Because there’s some people, and one of the biggest complaints I get from the group is, a lot of people come in and they’re I’m like, “There’s a lot of people going through heartbreak and it’s just negative.” But when I talk to people like you, who’ve actually succeeded, all I hear is great things about the community and the support and everything like that.
Bethany: Oh my God, it was amazing.
Chris Seiter: What is the disconnect there do you think?
Bethany: I think some people don’t like always to have a mirror put up to them and have that accountability, where I love it. Like, if someone says to me, “You’re being stupid right now,” or if someone says, “You broke no contact.” I like that stuff, like, I’m a stickler for rules and I believe in the rules. But, you know, with my situation, everything had to kind of be like tailored a little bit and adjusted because having a child together-
Chris Seiter: You were a great candidate for coaching.
Bethany: Yeah. Exactly.
Chris Seiter: You’re like one of those candidates that is so, if there’s that many layers to it, like there’s nothing written in human existence that can help you other than just having personalized help. I guess that’s the point.
Bethany: Yeah. And basically even just, I had coaching with Anna and that basically gave me like the direction that I needed. And she basically, it was like I was that kid being put in the pool and then she was just kind of like pointing me in that direction, was like, “You got to kick or not. Do you want to kick?” And I had to decide when I want to just start kicking, and it wasn’t right away. I didn’t want to start paddling and kicking.
Chris Seiter: That’s a great analogy.
Bethany: She had me, she had taught me what to do. She had shown me. She had given me the tools. You had helped me. And along the way, I had the wives to constantly give me support and assistance with those little nuancey things like they’re not responding after a week, what do I do now? That kind of stuff. But I mean, I had it, I had it, but I had to decide if I wanted to go get it. And it got there eventually.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So is there any other things that you feel we need to touch on to help others who are struggling through this program that I haven’t sort of touched on yet?
Bethany: Oh, okay. There’s one thing that’s going to be almost like an unpopular kind of thing to bring up. But I want to bring up the issue of cheating.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Bring it up.
Bethany: That was another element that I can add to this situation. And there wasn’t cheating on me, but like I said, I had like a little issue with, obviously he was talking to the OW when we were together, things like that. And last year I had jumped the value chain and we were intimate. And I actually was seeing someone at the time. So I cheated. And I have never done that before in my entire life. And I almost feel like that needed to happen because it made me realize that I’m human and that people make mistakes. Good people, good moms. Good, awesome, try to be your best everyday people who are doing the work and putting in the work, make mistakes. And when there’s a cheating situation, for me that was always a deal breaker. That was like you did that, we’re done.
Chris Seiter: Your perspective changed.
Bethany: My perspective changed like that. And it made me realize that it can be a gray area.
Chris Seiter: So that was something you were holding against him then?
Bethany: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Seiter: So he’s with the other woman, and I imagine a lot of women, and this is something I know a lot of women who are terrified of their ex finding someone new, all they can think about is them sleeping together and all of these crazy thoughts. You probably had all of that, right?
Bethany: I did. I was like crazy about it. I was hysterical about just the idea of it and the thought of it made me sick. And then I came to realize that I found comfort with other people and that I have loved a couple of people at the same time. Like I felt loved towards two different people. You know, my ex and the person I was seeing. That’s possible. Like when men say, “They don’t know who they love,” people think, “Oh, that’s terrible.”
Chris Seiter: You see that a lot on The Bachelor. You got like 30 girls-
Bethany: Like nah, you can love multiple people. You can have feelings for them and you can feel, it’s just you’re not working towards being with them and you’re not committing to them. And your future with them, you don’t see that future with them. And I didn’t realize always that that was how I was too. Like I was capable of kind of splitting my focus like that. Being a mom, you learn how to multitask. So there you go.
Chris Seiter: Well, it’s interesting that you bring that up, the cheating thing in particular. Do you think, like you’re going to look at him, you’re thinking all these really negative thoughts about the other woman, and then you basically cheat on the person that you’re with, with him. And all of a sudden, does that kind of like create this sort of like different narrative within yourself about like looking at his actions and sort of like-
Bethany: Exactly. That’s exactly what it did. It gave me a different perspective. It made me realize that you can justify anything really, like there are certain things that you can justify to yourself and not really acknowledge that you’re doing something like terrible in those moments, you kind of lose yourself.
Chris Seiter: I think it’s also a good lesson on forgiveness, as well.
Bethany: I’ve heard people say that people don’t realize marriages and relationships take more forgiveness than they’d like to admit. And I think that’s really true. And that’s what I had to learn. Anna tried to get me to forgive him and myself and it took me years and I’m still working on it.
Chris Seiter: You weren’t willing to though. Yeah, it’s like an everyday thing. So is there anything else that we can sort of mine for here? Because you’ve given so much already.
Bethany: I took like little notes actually. But no, I think that’s basically it. Like the path of getting back with my ex, it took a long time because there was a lot of starting and stopping from my side and there was a lot of kind of discovery, self discovery, like learning is this what I want. And for me, I’m the type of person that, we’re very different in many ways, we have different attachment styles, and I need reassurance. I need that constant kind of feedback of how am I doing. Like how’s my driving? And you don’t get that. You don’t get that. So needing that feedback, it’s really hard. You have to give yourself that feedback, and if you’re not capable of doing it, you feel like you’re not making progress. So you kind of halt your progress. You stop your momentum. And that’s what I did numerous times, I kind of got in my own way and let myself get into my head.
Chris Seiter: Well, thank you for coming on so much.
Bethany: Of course. Thank you so much, Chris. Like I said, your program is amazing. I think pretty much anybody should do it, basically just to learn how to deal with making themselves better and being better, communicating better. I don’t even think it needs to be in the situation of a breakup really, because it helped out so many different elements of my life. So, thank you.
Chris: It started recording right now. Okay, so today we’re going to be talking to a very special success story named Laura who successfully gotten her ex back. We’re going to be asking her all kinds of questions about how she did it. So how are you doing, Laura?
Laura: Sorry, what was that?
Chris: How are you doing Laura?
Laura: Yeah, I’m good. Thanks, how are you?
Chris: I’m doing great. So I know nothing about your situation. So why don’t you just give us a little bit of a primer on how the breakup went down and what you had to do to get him back?
Laura: Yeah, so basically it was last February I actually broke up with him and which now a lot of the stories by the people… broke up with them.
Chris: Right.
Laura: And I was actually still with him for about three ish months before I found the program. And then I decided to proceed with it and start my no contact. I did the first time, because we hadn’t had any arguments or anything like that. I know some people that had previously. So it was 21 days that I did, but I think I did 22 or 23, the first no contact. And then after that, we were doing the texting phase of the program where I’d send him messages and it was just normal texting really. I use the online stuff a lot through social media and asking for help on how to text in the right way so that I’m always getting responses, but it was always quite positive responses.
Laura: We live quite close to each other. So when I was going out, I’d see him out and then he would ask me if I wanted to meet up and stuff like that. Whilst we’re in the texting phase, we did meet up with him. Because he was saying, “Is there any chance that we can get back together?”. That kind of thing. I’d already at that point, because I was focusing on me and my trying to end and stuff like that, and making sure I was making the most out of my situation at that time. I was planning on going away and I was going traveling over the summer. So although we were in the texting phase, it wasn’t really working out because I had too many plans. So I overdone it… almost.
Laura: I came back in September. So that was June time we were speaking quite a bit and then I went away and came back in September and we were speaking a bit more. Then we met up and he said that he didn’t want to proceed with things and he thinks he should date other people. And I just said… well, if you want to date other people, that’s fine. And I spoke to people on the group at the time and I decided to do another no-contact of 21 days. But it ended up actually being 30 days because through that time I seen him three times.
Chris: So you live close to him. So you just happened to like run into him?
Laura: Yeah, he lives around the corner. Yeah, it was at pubs and stuff like that. When you’re out with your mates and then he’d just turn up. And there was one situation where I was out and we were in a pub and he came up behind me. This is only a week and a half after we’d had that conversation so I was in no contact and he came up behind me, and I was with my mates, and he slapped my bum in front of all of my friends. And obviously I told the people on social media and they’re like… “Oh no, just prolong it. No contact for more days.” So that’s why I did it for the 30 days.
Chris: Had he been drinking or something? That just sounds…
Laura: Oh yeah, I think he was definitely drunk.
Chris: Okay.
Laura: So yeah, throughout the no contact, while he contacts me, which it didn’t happen in the first no contact. He contacted me in the first couple of days. But throughout that whole 30 days he was contacting me and I think he thought… I know she’s definitely going out. Before I was still hanging on… If you get what I mean. Thank and hopefully left the situation. But by the time it had come September and I’d done all this stuff to make him see me how I was a gas previously when we first met. Then now I think, it got to a date that… so he’d been sending me messages throughout but hadn’t responded. And then it got date that, and literally on date that he was ringing me, so rang me like three or four times.
Laura: But I was on the way to meet one of my mates. So obviously I didn’t answer, but it was a Saturday as well and that’s off limits. So I wasn’t going to answer anyway. And then on this he rang me like three times, I think it was. And then I answered and we had a conversation and he said.. he originally said come with me. And I said I can’t meet him. So we had a conversation over the phone instead. And… why I said that you regretted everything and he wanted to sort things out and we just dated after that. So it was just day in and we dated until December and then I was thinking… things aren’t going to work out at that point. Cause it had been so long that we had been dating in my head and I think it was the same. I think he was scared about getting back together, but then after the new year we got back together and it all worked out in the end and things are great now.
Chris: So from what I’m gathering, you… originally going back. You’re the one who broke up with him, assuming this happened last year?
Laura: Yeah. That’s right. So in total, about 10 or 11 months for us to get back together after we broke up for three months prior.
Chris: So… So…
Laura: Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
Chris: So it seems to me you initiated the first breakup… am I remembering that correctly? And then he initiated another breakup. So it was like you said, you got back together in September or something and then broke up again?
Laura: Nice. So in September we were speaking again, and… [crosstalk 00:06:11]
Chris: So you’re not official. You’re just talking.
Laura: Yeah, we were just talking and dating and stuff at that time. But then I think he was going through a lot anyway’ Personally, it just wasn’t the right time for us to be getting back together then. So I think giving that space we had made things a lot better to what it is now.
Chris: So when… Who’s the one who asked or got to the point where you’re asking Hey, what are we? Are we back together? How did that conversation go down? Where were you? what did he say? What did you say?
Laura: We’d had food at his house. And I just said, where are we with things? And he said, well, we’re always together so we might as well just be together. And then we were just, yeah, and then we were just together.
Chris: That was it, Huh?
Laura: Yeah, that was it.
Chris: It’s super easy. It’s almost surprising how simple it works to seal the deal so to speak.
Laura: Yeah. It looks like that when you first meet someone. It’s just different because I’ve never been with someone, broke up with them, and then got back together with them.
Chris: So man, it took you a long time. I mean we’re talking about almost a year. At any point did you just sort of think to yourself… is this even worth it? Should I just give up? Were you ever at that point emotionally?
Laura: Yeah, in December I felt like things were good between us. But you know, when you just have a sense this just isn’t going to work out to let you sleep. Nothing. That’s when he realized that he needs to do more for us to get back together. The worry all the time but throughout worry full, is this really worth my time and effort? When I was away as well when I traveled around Asia and I was away and I was still speaking to him some of the time. It was a bit, not negative… what’s the in-between like… not really much conversation and felt a bit awkward. So they even let you know because I was with him before I broke up for four years. I know him, it was weird because it felt like we couldn’t speak naturally. But at times throughout the process, when it was natural, it was really good. And that’s when things were going well. It was just that in that middle bit, especially.
Chris: So the middle bit, I guess, is what I’m more interested in. It seems like you went into no contact the very first time and it worked pretty well. And he got back in contact and the two of you we’re talking back and forth. What, in your opinion, went wrong to make him sort of scared to not want to commit? Or what did you think didn’t work about that?
Laura: Well, I think given the fact that obviously I broke up with him, I think that hurt him a lot. I could tell that it destroyed him a bit and I felt terrible about it. When you see your best mate going through heartbreak, it’s a bit weird because you’re going through the same thing. And that’s what happened prior to finding the program. And then when we, after my past no contact for a month through that phase of talking and not talking. I don’t really know what was going through his head at the time that I could tell. He was not himself around me. It took a lot for it to get to that again and that wasn’t until after the second no contact. and a bit more dating before we were talking normally.
Laura: We didn’t really go on proper dates like the first time after the first no contacts We didn’t have anything when we went out for a meal or that kind of thing. Whereas after the second, that’s what we were doing. We were going out, we were going out properly. Not just meeting. Because it’s easy to just meet up when you live around the corner.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
Laura: And we might escape for a walk or something and that’s what we would do. And in that time…
Chris: You wouldn’t even go for a walk at all after the first no contact whatsoever? Was it just more texting and calling each other, but not doing anything else past that point?
Laura: Yeah, it was like a week when we were both free. So we met up in that time and then I think he was on holiday then I was on holiday. So, there was very much we couldn’t really meet. Neither of us had the time to do that at that time. And I think that was why it didn’t work the first time because we both just had too many plans.
Chris: Did either of you guys date anyone else in the 10, 11 months it took for you guys to get back together, like officially?
Laura: I’m pretty sure he was. Well, he said he did. So he definitely did. I don’t know when and I’m not really interested in the detail, but I know that he did. And for me I spoke to people, but I didn’t ever go on any dates with anybody else.
Chris: Okay. So throughout this 10 month period. After the first no contact, coming up onto the second no contact. What caused you to make the decision to jump into a second no contact?
Laura: I think he was in a bad place where was losing a family member, unfortunately. And I think it was like when you sit and have a conversation with someone and they’re like just a bit all over the place and you just know this isn’t going to work when either one of us is going to be feeling like that. That’s kind of what happens. I wanted to be there for him. I knew that he didn’t want me to be there for him. I sat and spoke to him and I could just tell… I’m so sorry you’re going through that. And he says what does it matter?
Laura: I just know that he didn’t want me there. And then he started speaking about dating other people and maybe somebody else. And I said, well, if that’s what you want to do and that’s what it’s going to make you happy, then just go and do that then. And he said, Whoa, I’ll just end up coming back to you. Well, your just going to date other people. It was a bit like I can’t change your mind right now. So just go away.
Chris: What I’m kind of curious about now is how effective the second period of no contact was. Cause it seems like before you had done the second no-contact you had tried a lot of things. But your schedule and his schedule just wouldn’t overlap to the point where you could see each other in person pretty consistently. So you’re just sort of stuck in this limbo where you can only talk or text over the phone. The second no contact. I think you mentioned that he contacted you quite a bit during it. Is that exactly what happened?
Laura: Yeah.
Chris: And what were some of the contents of the messages? What were some of the ways he would try to talk to you during that second period of no contact?
Laura: So we’ve always used the social media Snapchat quite a lot. Now I never opened them until after. Cause if I open them, he’ll be able to…
Chris: He’ll know you read it.
Laura: It’s not really then no contact, is it? So I never opened them until afterwards. And then when I went through them, they’re random things… what he’s doing in the day and stuff like that. And I’d put Snapchat stuff as well on my actual story and comment on them like… Oh, can I come out for a walk with your dog and stuff like that. But obviously I didn’t open them until after the 30 days when we started speaking again. And then he did send one really long message saying, it was kind of the middle of no contact, say like Day 15 sort of time. Just out of the blue, saying he doesn’t know where he’s at in his head and that type of thing. I can’t remember the whole message to be honest. But it was like an emotional sort of message, but nothing saying I want to get back with you and it was very much so borderline. Because, all the way through I don’t know what I want sort of thing until we didn’t know what he wanted.
Chris: So you guys eventually get back together. But going to that point, how long did it take after he got out of no contact… how many months did it take before you get out of that second no contact to the point where you’re actually back together? How long were you talking to him, seeing him in person… or was it what’s it like a pretty quick race to the finish?
Laura: It was about three and a half months until we got back together.
Chris: And how often were you guys talking on the phone to each other or texting each other and seeing each other in person? Was it like an everyday occurrence?
Laura: No. So to start with, it was once every two to one week sort of thing. But then we speak and in between by messages and calling and then it just got close to Cameron. And then by Christmas we were seeing each other every couple of days sort of thing. And then it was pretty much not just after new year that we got back together.
Chris: So for you… you think seeing each other pretty much every single or every couple of days is really what spurted it on to get that sort of relationship back on track?
Laura: Yeah, I think so. I think my… perhaps not… I don’t know. It depends on the person that you both asked. We are not the sort of people that need to see each other all the time, even though he lives really close. It’s not like I have to see him every day. It’s feel like I’m in a relationship. But I do think that closeness does make you feel closer. I guess to somebody… if that makes any sense.
Chris: Yeah. It kind of does. It’s sometimes hard to remember years back what you did and everything. I guess when you look at your experience as a whole of going through the process… what do you think was the most effective thing that you did like for you personally? Cause every time I ask a success story of this, they always come up with really different answers that I wouldn’t expect. So I’m kind of curious what yours is when you look back at the whole situation. What is that one strategy that you use that you feel made the biggest difference for you?
Laura: I think it’s like being MOMA or of a fast life, I think one of the reasons why we broke up in the first place was because we just weren’t very good at communicating. One thing that I did whilst I was in no contact and speaking to the people in the group was looking at things like crucial conversation, it’s not just about now. It’s not like whilst we’re now back together to have those conversations, it’s got to be started somewhere and rather than not coming across well. I didn’t like before, when I was in a relationship with him, it was almost like everything just got shoved under the rug. Whereas now we actually speak about things and that helps out during that time as well. So even whilst we were dating we were having those conversations and building that all up. And like now, we can speak about anything because of that. I think anything that’s bothering either one of us, we can have conversations. Whereas I really do think that just wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t find the program.
Chris: So you’re saying… and this is interesting. You’re saying that one of the biggest things you took was the fact you need to be better at communicating throughout the entire, I guess, conversations that you have with him. Did you take that approach when you were trying to win him back? Even when you were just talking to him?
Laura: Yeah, definitely like a lesson of the whole program on YouTube.
Chris: Oh, that’s kind of cool. Can you give me like an example when you’re trying to get him back of a conversation that you would have with him in this new way of thinking?
Laura: Well, I mean, I suppose that’s more if we’re having a complicated conversation. Like talking about if I’m messaging another guy or if he’s messaging another guy even they might just be amazed. But those types of conversations where instead of just not getting and saying… Oh, why are you messaging her? It’s more like your having fun and you having a laugh. And then in between you kind of sandwich in one of those types of conversations to say… Oh, this is sort of like saying it the same, but not trying not to say it in a naggy way I guess. I can’t put the conversation into words that we would have had like those times at different moments.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
Laura: But I think one of the things that we’re trying to do is just be straight to the point. And I think he’s the sort of person that would appreciate that. I’m not saying that every single passing that people are going to be where they’re going to appreciate that. But having that openness, just being like the conversation that we had before. No concept. Well, if you’re not going to be happy with me, then go off with somebody else. And being straight like that, I think that helped him to my advantage in the end. It didn’t feel great at the time, but he didn’t know that. So to him it was like… oh well, she’s just doing her own thing. But obviously inside, I was really thinking or growing… I was just going to go off with somebody else. But that obviously didn’t happen.
Chris: So it’s kind of interesting that you’re to the point, because a lot of the clients that I work with are not ever to the point. And I’m kind of curious about your experience with it. Do you mind if I give you an example and just you tell me how you would have approached it?
Laura: Yeah.
Chris: Okay. So let’s say after your second period of no contact, cause that seems to be really where you started to see the biggest difference. For whatever reason, your schedules permitted, seeing each other in person a lot more. It seems like you’re talking a lot more consistently than maybe you were before. But after that second period of no contact, did at any point, he sit back and start asking you about… Hey, what are your feelings? Or was he scared to initiate something like that? How would you handle that situation?
Laura: So he didn’t ask any of those types of questions at all. I Had to be me because he’s just doesn’t ask anything like that.
Chris: How would you handle it? Did you bring that up at all and what day did you bring it up?
Laura: So it got to a point with me where I was a bit flat out lie. I’m just waiting around for you ask me if we’re going to be together or where things are going to go from here. And I did turn to him and say things do seem to be going well, so when are we getting back together? Not demanding in that way, but when are we going to sort things out and be back together? Cause it’s just getting a bit silly now. We are basically back together, but we’ve not got the label.
Laura: And at that time he was a bit like… Oh, I’m not really sure, I’m not really sure. That type of thing. But then two days later, after we haven’t spoken but I do want to sort things out. When, knowing were going to see each other. We would have those conversations. Sometimes they required time afterwards. Whilst we were dating and obviously not now, but whilst we were dating, I think you’d have those conversations and then give it a bit of time and not keep going over it. Because I mean, I’ve seen cases where people perhaps have done that. In that situation, it just starts an argument and we’d never had any of that. Like we didn’t argue at all through the process.
Chris: Okay. So you said you would be the one to reach out to him and basically say… Hey, where are we and this is ridiculous. And he just kind of kept pushing it off. Would I be correct in assuming that when he would push it off, you just wouldn’t push any more?
Laura: Yeah.
Chris: Okay. So what would happen… and this is just purely theoretical, cause it didn’t happen. How would you handle him coming back and saying something like… you know what? I really, really love you, but I’m just not ready for a relationship right now. If you can put yourself back in that frame of mind where you’re trying to get him back, what is your approach to that situation? How do you think you would respond to it?
Laura: I’d just say, well then we’re not going to date then are we?
Chris: And would you back it up? I guess is my point because I see a lot of people who say that, but they don’t back it up. But from what I’m gathering, it seems like one of your biggest advantages in getting him back was the fact like you said, you were willing to give him space after he was like, kind of all over the place. And you said he had a family member that had passed away and you just sort of gave him space. It seems like you were willing to quote unquote, lose him and you were okay with that if that’s what had to happen.
Laura: Yeah. So I’d say, if it happened in the first month of me starting the program, maybe even the first two months. So I’d probably been a mess about it. But I think it just got to a point where I don’t need you. I just was looking to… first to sort things out and if it wasn’t going to be sorted out, then that’s fine. And that does help. And I think that’s the point that I got into September. And that’s why the second no contact worked so well for me is because I wasn’t bothered anymore.
Chris: So I guess my question for you would be, how did you get emotionally to that point? What were some of the things that you would do?
Laura: I mean, the biggest things that I went through, obviously the book that you guys have and there were different points. I focused on that first part of the book, really. I didn’t really read much of the text message in part of the book or read more of that first part where you focus on yourself and look at your own relationships and what you do in the day. Are you spending time doing useful things or are you just sitting around type of thing? I focused on my fitness, and I learned how to play the guitar. Which I can still play and I’m a year into it, well, less than a year, but coming up to a year I’ve now been playing. I’ve got really good at it. And that’s all from starting this program. I was doing like therapy as well at the time.
Laura: And because I’ve gone through some stuff, which was one of the reasons why we’d broken up. And that helps in going through all of that, like emotional clearance in my head and then taking the time to myself all over the summer. Just sorting out my own issues, my own problems and getting to a point where I just felt secure with everything. I think the biggest problem for me, at the beginning of starting the program, I felt like really insecure about it. Oh, when am I going to get back together or really care about, and this the end of the world. But that was obviously not the case because that’s not realistic. But at the time that’s how I felt in my head because I was a bit of a mess and I needed that going through the program.
Laura: When I search on the internet, it’s just probably another scam, not no fun.
Chris: No worries. No worries.
Laura: It’s like one of them things that you look for stuff on the internet, don’t you? When you’re in a bit of a mess where you sell. And I think that was what it was. I’d never had problems like that before in relationships. It was just this one. For some reason, it had just gone a bit of a mess and we will always find often that last couple of moments. So yeah, I think just focusing on myself, focusing in on the different things I could do. Whether it be going out with my mates and going and doing things on my own. There was a lot of stuff. Even whilst we started dating again we said that we were going to go and do it. But then I’d say, well, do you want to come and do this with me? Like as a date sort of thing. And if he said, no, I’d still go and do it myself. And I think having that confidence and doing that through the program kind of helped me to achieve that.
Chris: You know it’s interesting you bring that up. Almost every success story that I’ve talked to says something along the same lines of, they stopped focusing so much on what their ex was doing and started focusing on how they were using their time. But I’m also curious… and how you use the program. Cause a lot of people use parts of it and a lot of people don’t use parts of it. So when you look back at your experience, you had mentioned the Facebook group. What do you feel like was the most valuable aspect of our program for you?
Laura: I’d say probably it’s the support of the Facebook group does really help. Although, the books there are helpful, to read initially. When it actually comes to putting the masters together, you can’t read the alpha book. It’s always good to get somebody else’s opinion and having all them people to back you up on what you’re doing. You just know you’re doing the right thing and speak to people that have gone through the program as well that have achieved that. And whether they’ve decided whether they want their ex back or not, by the end of it, they know what they’re talking about and they just see them help people all the time and they’re definitely helped me.
Laura: Some specific people that gave me a lot of help whilst I was going through it with the stuff that I’d send generally What would I respond to this type of thing rather than news? The guide of the book is good because everyone’s situation is so different. In some cases to what is in the book, they helped bring it together for each path and in that situation.
Chris: So would it be fair for me to say that you were at a point emotionally where you knew you were going to be okay, even if you didn’t get him back?
Laura: Yeah.
Chris: And would you agree with me when I say that mentality you feel is important to your success of getting him back?
Laura: Yeah, definitely. And I think all the people that I’ve spoken to on the Facebook groups, stuff like that, that’s the thing as well. They say that’s how they felt and the people then seem happier. I’m in the group of the people that have gone through that and focus that time on themselves they didn’t like. Yeah, do you know what? It’s not life anymore or no, I still want him back. But if I don’t get it, then it’s fine. For her.
Chris: Or her, usually in 90% of the people in the group right now are females. So very rare to get males in there. But there are a few males. No, your situation’s real interesting to me. Cause I think yours really, really embodies that sort of moving on without moving on type mentality that is so hard to get. And so the reason I’m asking you so many questions about it is I’m trying to, for you. I’m just asking your honest opinion. Do you feel like that’s something you could sort of fake? Or it’s something you really need to feel down to your core?
Laura: You definitely need to feel it. I think you can fake it to start with. But then there comes a point where if you keep faking it and you’re not really feeling it, you’re just going to not come out the other end and just still feel rubbish for months and months when you don’t need to. If you just actually took that time just to focus on yourself and those things don’t lie. I know the group who share different ideas on what people can focus on. And I know not everyone’s got loads of money to be splashing on everything. So there are loads of things that people can do to focus in on themselves which stops you thinking about the other path and in the situation.
Chris: That’s true. That’s true. Well, thank you so much for coming on Laura, your insights are always valuable to help everyone listening… understand the mindset you need to have in order to get an Ex back.
Laura: That’s all right. Well, thanks for your helping me get my ex back.
Chris: Okay. So today, we’re going to be talking to Becca, who is one of the more interesting situations we’ve had. She’s actually went through the program and has successfully gotten her ex back. And I’m actually coming into this blind so that I can sort of come at it from a listener’s point of view. But how are you doing, Becca?
Becca: I’m doing great. How about you, Chris?
Chris: I’m hanging in there. Crazy times, what they are.
Becca: Oh yeah.
Chris: So I guess, let’s just hand the mic to you and you tell us, how did you find the group? How did you find the program? And just take me from how did your situation start?
Becca: Okay, yeah. So, start to finish, we’ve been in a long distance relationship for the past three and a half years. Out of the three and a half years, three of them have been the long distance part, since I did go to graduate school in a different state in the middle of the country, because we’re both from the West Coast, and I went in the middle of the country. I actually chose to do my last year of rotations back on the West Coast so we can live together, to kind of delay this long distance and everything. And he got a promotion with his work where he was moving to the East Coast.
Chris: So, you plan everything to go meet up on the West Coast, and then he’s , “Nope, got to go over here.”
Becca: Yup. Yeah. Whipping coasts over here. Yeah. So, he ended up getting a promotion with his job that required him to move to the East Coast. And I was very supportive of all of it, but with this promotion came a ton of extra responsibilities. So, during this time, he’s been swamped with work, moving across country, leaving his family. And so, the stress kind of got to him as well as me, kind of. This was at the beginning of the pandemic, and so I thought that I would go in quarantine with him, since my school was switching to an online format. And so, at the beginning of the pandemic, I chose to quarantine with him for, it was supposed to just be two weeks. And that’s when all the stress got to him with work and everything because everything was being switched to an online format for him as well. And he needs to travel for his job.
Becca: So, he was very stressed on everything, and it ended up coming to, he broke up with me because, one, he was stressed out with his job. Two, he was pretty much just saying that it was honestly the stress, but also the long distance was getting to him. But I also feel just the relationship was just one thing he could control. And the fact that he couldn’t control his workload with his job position and everything. And so, I thought that if I quarantined with him for a longer period than two weeks, then he’ll regret this whole, “Oh, we’re going to break up everything.” Because pretty much, he told me that he just needs space. He told me, he’s , “I need space to find myself. You need to work on yourself. I need to work on myself. I need a month, Just leave me alone for a month.”
Becca: And so, my quarantine with him was supposed to be two weeks. I extended it to a month because I thought that maybe if I just quarantine with him and I’m just on top of him all the time that he would want to stick with me. That was not the case at all that entire time, at all. That entire time we were team we were quarantined, we were pretty much fighting the whole time. And he was telling me stuff –
Chris: So, not the no contact rule.
Becca: No.
Chris: The opposite of. Okay All right.
Becca: Opposite. Yeah. So, pretty much during that time that I was there, he was telling stuff to me , “You used to make me happy. I love you, but I’m not in love with you anymore. I care about you so much. I’ll always be there for you. But I want to just focus life on myself and do my own thing.” And so, I had to leave his house a month afterwards because I was actually starting my rotations on the West Coast that following week. So, I ended up moving across country and everything. But when he was kind of breaking up with me and everything, I ended up writing a six-page letter just full of emotions and everything. And I ended up giving it to him before I left. And on my flight over from the East Coast to the West Coast is actually how I found your program. I was just a hot ness in the plane. I was just Googling everything I could and whatnot.
Becca: And so, the first week I want to say I started no contact at the beginning of April, first week of April. And I broke no contact probably two or three times in the first week, and yeah.
Chris: Okay. Pretty common, pretty common. When I studied this, 80% of people who try the no contact rule break it the first time. So, pretty normal.
Becca: Oh yeah. And then I was reading your statistics on your page. The efficacy of it starts getting less and less the more times you break it. [crosstalk 00:05:18]
Chris: Finally, someone who pays attention. People just don’t get that, I guess. It’s common sense. But I’m glad to see that you took it seriously.
Becca: Oh yeah. Well, after I broke it the first time, I took it more seriously.
Chris: Yeah. You have to kind of make the mistake first.
Becca: I mean, you learn from your mistakes. That’s just how life works.
Chris: True.
Becca: Yeah. So, I ended up that one month-
Chris: Oh, so you did a 30-day no contact rule.
Becca: Yeah. So, according to your plan when I bought it and everything, I did the calculations, and I was only for a 30-day, since there was no other woman involved and whatnot. So, yeah. But I mean, I kept telling myself, I was , you know what, as much as I want to contact him, he also told me, just leave me alone for a month. And I’m , you know what? I’m going to do exactly what he wants. You know what? I’m going to take his wishes. I’m going to grant them for him. So, during the first week of no contact, he was texting me probably every other day. I got a few phone calls. And he was pretty much just making up excuses to contact me, , “Oh, did you change your Netflix password?” “No, I didn’t change anything.” Just any random excuse. And it came to the point where I just didn’t reply back to anything. He was viewing all of my Instagram stories, liking all of my posts on Instagram, and just following my social media. And I can tell too.
Becca: So, during that month, that no contact was probably the best thing I’ve ever done in my life post breakup. The reason for that is I focused on my trinity completely. Wealth, relationships, and health, everything. I ended up working out every day because that’s what made me happy. I’m kicking butt in my rotations right now. I’m highly considering a residency at this point because of how great I’m doing and how much I love it. And I’ve been hanging out with, well, not hanging out, Zoom sessioning with my friends and family, which is really nice.
Becca: But during this one month, I’ve always been scared of my own shadow. And I don’t know, I’m very self conscious about everything. And my self-esteem wasn’t that high during this no contact and me just working on myself, focusing on myself. I would come home from the hospital every single day, and I would just sit in my backyard. I’m like, I’m so happy with my life right now. It came to that point, and I was not expecting that. It just came out of nowhere, literally nowhere. And even when our song would play, I wouldn’t cry or anything.
Chris: So, what’s your song? What’s your song?
Becca: Oh my God. Give me a second. I have it.
Chris: I’m just trying of, when I met Jennifer, something from One Republic.
Becca: Oh!
Chris: Something. It wasn’t “Apologize.” It was something else. “Counting Stars” or something like that.
Becca: That’s a good song. Yeah. So, ours is called “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetics. It’s really good.
Chris: Well, so if you’re listening and you want to hear, look up that song, and there you go, good breakup song.
Becca: It’s really good because that was our song, throughout our entire relationship. And at the beginning of no contact, every time that song would come on, I would just skip. I can’t listen to this. But in the middle of no contact, I started getting the strength and everything, I want to say around maybe two and a half to three weeks of no contact. That’s when I just like, feeling great.
Chris: From 20-ish days, 14 to 20 days, you started of feeling like you’re hitting a groove.
Becca: Yeah. And it was just really nice because I just have never felt so confident before. And I was getting positive reassurance from my coworkers and my preceptors. And then I’m known at the hospital now as the very pretty pharmacy student. So that boosted my confidence exponentially.
Chris: Yeah, that’s good.
Becca: But yeah, so I ended up telling my battle buddy, when I was about to break 30 days no contact, I told her straight up, I was like, “You know what? As much as it would suck to not get him back, I know that I will still be happy if I don’t get a positive response or if I don’t get them back at all. I have a bright future. I’m very competent in myself. And I know the future is bright.” And so, ended up breaking no contact, and it was a really, really good back and forth.
Chris: So, do you remember the exact text message you used, or did you call him? How was the first interaction going?
Becca: Let me see. So, what ended up happening is I ended up going back and forth with my battle buddy. She’s a planner, so she likes to plan out her texts a few days in advance. I’m very sporadic. So I honestly did mine five minutes before I sent it out.
Chris: In the moment. That’s what we call that. You’re in the moment.
Becca: Yeah. Oh, this is what my first text was. He makes this really good chicken recipe to marinate chicken and everything. And he knows I don’t like chicken. So I pretty much just asked him what the recipe was and everything. And he played along with it and everything. And it was a really good conversation back and forth. The second conversation I brought up, I was asking him about workouts, because I’m planning on doing a 17-mile round trip to Half Dome in Yosemite at the end of August. And so, I just needed recommendations for back workout advices. Um, so that was my second-
Chris: Something that you would have no knowledge on, but he would have a ton of knowledge on.
Becca: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And then I waited three days to send my second reach out after I sent my first one. And after my second reach out, he texted me first every day for four days afterwards.
Chris: Wow. That’s great results.
Becca: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah, I’m working with a client right now who’s having a really interesting problem where she’s texting her but not getting responses. But when she calls him, the phone calls go really well. So, it just goes to show you every single situation is unique to whatever their environment is. I’m guessing that your relationship was grounded in text messages a lot.
Becca: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Actually through Snapchat.
Chris: Okay.
Becca: Yeah. And a big thing too was during no contact, I actually deleted my Snapchat.
Chris: Wow. Okay. But you still kept your Instagram, so you were doing the Instagram stories and everything like that. So, he was still spying on you.
Becca: Yeah. Because he’s very active on Instagram and Snapchat, but our main form of communication was actually Snapchat, through the messaging thing.
Chris: So, if you don’t mind me asking, what was the rationale behind deleting the Snapchat? Was that just a purely emotional decision, or did you feel like that was going to help you in some way, shape, or form?
Becca: I felt like that was going to help me because I know that our main form of communication was Snapchat. So I felt like if I deleted it, then he would have to try another method to reach out to me, which he ended up doing, and hitting me up on Instagram messenger and then texting me and calling me. And when I re-downloaded my Snapchat after no contact, I had a bunch of missed messages from him.
Chris: Okay. That’s a really interesting idea. I’m not sure. I’d love to see it work in mass scale to see what the results are, but it worked for you, so that’s good.
Becca: Yeah. It was really well and everything, but yeah. So, I ended up reaching out to him On the second one, he replied back to me four days in a row afterwards. And then it was my birthday, and he originally planned a one week of vacation during my birthday time. But he planned this in January. But because of the-
Chris: Was he going to come visit your or something?
Becca: Yeah. So, his family lives on the West Coast too. So-
Chris: Okay. So he was going to go visit the family, but see you. So, did he fly from-
Becca: Yeah.
Chris: Oh, so he did, did he tell you that he was doing this?
Becca: Yeah. So he-
Chris: How long had you been talking to get to that point?
Becca: When I broke no contact to when he started doing this?
Chris: Yes.
Becca: About two and a half weeks.
Chris: So, you reach out the first time, it goes really well. You reach out, you wait three days for the second time. What about the period from the second reach out to when he does this? Was it just back and forth all day long?
Becca: I mean, I still did the UG time with 1.5 times the amount of minutes that they do and everything, but yeah. So I did my second reach out, and then he texted me back and forth. I wasn’t replying a lot throughout the day. It was probably between both of us maybe 10 messages max, because I’m very busy too. And I don’t want to look very desperate with replying back right when he does. So, if I saw it, I would put my phone away and I would just go walk around and do my job somewhere else.
Chris: Just pacing in your office, back and forth. Is it time yet?
Becca: No.
Chris: No, no, no, I hear you. I got you. Can you hear me, Ashley?
Becca: Yeah, I can hear you.
Chris: Okay. All right. All right. Let’s just continue on nothing happened.
Becca: Oh no. Yeah, you’re fine. I was like, oh, no. Yeah, so I did my second reach out. He replied back four days back and forth. And that was a week before he was planning on coming out. So actually, when did he come out He came out last weekend. Okay. So, he actually came out on the 21st of May. So, he came out on the 21st, but he contacted me that Monday the 18th. And he was like, “Oh yeah, just letting you know, I’m actually still doing my vacation. I do it for your birthday every year. I’m coming for your birthday week,” blah, blah, blah. And I was like, “Oh, I didn’t even think about interaction,” because that’s jumping the value chain.
Becca: And so I was like, okay, kind of skeptical about it. But I thought, you know what? I kind of went with my gut on this mostly because he doesn’t come to visit the West Coast often. And he was like, “I would love to see you,” all this stuff. And he was planning out a camping trip, and he was planning on a camping trip that week coming into visiting me in California. And what he ended up doing is while he was on his camping trip, he kept texting me, “I miss you. I wish you were here,” all this stuff. “I can’t wait to see you this weekend.” I went with my gut and I ended up, when he asked me to come and visit him for the weekend, I was like, “I’ll come down for one day.” Plus I’m really close to his family too.
Becca: So, it was a little awkward seeing him because I didn’t really know how to react because we weren’t together. We’re completely broken up. I didn’t know how to react when I saw him. And I was talking to my battle buddy about this. I was like, “What if he tries to kiss me?” And she was like, “Give him your cheek.” I was like, “Or I’ll give them my forehead. Would that be weird?”
Chris: Yeah. I would do the cheek thing. But so, did he even try to kiss you at all?
Becca: No. He did go in for-
Chris: The hug?
Becca: … an extended long hug.
Chris: Okay. All right. Yeah, that’s the safe way to do it. Because I’m sure you’ve asked him by now, but he’s probably just as nervous as you when he saw you, you know?
Becca: Yeah.
Chris: So, how did the interaction go? And I’m assuming, it looks like from your previous relationship before this breakup occurred, you must’ve dated for a long time if you’ve known his family really well.
Becca: Yeah. So, we’ve been together, we’re going on four years.
Chris: Okay. So, it’s been a long time to really get your roots in and try to know his family, if he’s got a sister or brother. And also, you kind of went into the hornet’s nest, right? You went to go visit him and his family.
Becca: Yeah. It’s really funny because they call me their daughter. And then his sister calls me her sister-in-law, even when we were broken up. And I actually didn’t tell anyone about this breakup because I didn’t want a lot of feedback that I didn’t want to hear. So the only people that were aware that we were broken up was actually my battle buddy and his family. That’s it. And so, his family has been on my side 100% this whole time, and they really worked their magic with him. And it ended up coming to the point where our interaction when I came to visit them, it was really funny because his mom came up to me and she whispered in my ear. She’s like, “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay.” And I was like, “I’m freaking out.”
Becca: And she knew she can tell. And so, him and I, we went outside and we were just sitting on the porch and everything. He was like, “How’s everything going? How do you like your rotations?” And he told me that he could tell that there was something different about me. And I was like, “Oh, what is it?” He was like, “You just seem so confident and very happy. I was like, “I mean, I’m always happy, but what do you mean?” He’s like, “I don’t know. I think it’s this breakup. Are you happy that we broke up?” I was like, “No, Not at all. Not at all.” And then he asked the typical questions, like, “Are you dating anyone?”
Chris: Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. Did you return in kind?
Becca: What do you mean?
Chris: When he says, “Hey, were you dating anyone?” Did you say, “Well, are you dating anyone?”
Becca: I actually laughed. And I was like, “No, I’m just really focusing on myself right now.”
Chris: Oh, I’m going to steal that. That’s a really good interaction. That’s a great response to it. You just laugh.
Becca: Yeah. Yeah. I just laughed it off. And I was like, “I’m really just focusing on myself right now.” And I was like, “What about you?” And he’s like, “Yeah, actually, same thing.” He wasn’t dating anyone, and he was just focusing on himself. And didn’t tell me that he wanted me back until a few hours later after that interaction because we were just hanging out with his family having fun, did our Costco trip. Just fun stuff. And it was later in that night, we were just watching a movie and everything. And then he’s like, “I have to tell you something.” I was like, “What’s up?” He’s like, “I want you back.”
Becca: And I kind of cried. I actually was in shock. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what to do. And I kind of cried. I was like, “Wait, are you serious?” He’s like, “Yeah.” I was like, “Honestly, you really broke my heart. I kind of have my guard up right now.” I was like, “Are you sure this is what you want?” He was like, “I 120% know that you are the one.” Yeah. And so, he’s like-
Chris: That’s about as good as it gets.
Becca: I know, right? And he was like, “I regret the breakup” and everything. And he’s like, “I love seeing how happy you are.” And he’s like, “I want your happiness to be in my life as well.”
Chris: So, let me pause you right there. Let’s go back to what you said when the breakup occurred. What were some of the things that he had said? Did he say, “I need to move on,” or “I never loved you?” Do he see anything kind of like that at the beginning of the breakup?
Becca: Yeah. So at the beginning of the breakup, he was telling me, he was like, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you anymore.”
Chris: Okay, there’s one.
Becca: Yeah. And now that we’re back together, he just won’t stop saying it. He says it all the time now.
Chris: So I guess the reason I’m pointing that out is, I mean, it’s a universal problem. Men do this too, but so many women, when a guy says that to them, they take it at heart, and they don’t realize that that’s just how they’re feeling in the moment. And there’s often a lot of sort of a confluence events that creates them saying that that don’t necessarily mean it for good. This is just proof of that. I mean, look, it’s just kind of cool to see that trajectory. I mean, it’s as good as it gets, you know?
Becca: Yeah. Because when he said that too, it just was like a dagger right through my heart right when he said that. And I was like, “How did this all change? What is this coming from?” And I kind of realize that men say a lot of stuff they don’t mean when they’re very mad and in the heat of the moment.
Chris: Well, I think you can argue it’s just a human nature type thing.
Becca: Yeah. Women do it too.
Chris: Some people are just a little bit more disciplined about the things they say, but most people are just sort of, they’re a slave to their emotions, just like I am and just probably like you are in certain instances.
Becca: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris: So, wow. I mean, what’s interesting is how fast it all happened once you saw him in person, which I think is just a testament to all of that sort of work that you don’t really think anyone’s going to notice. That’s sort of what I’m gathering here from you. Also, you’re one of the very first success stories I’ve interviewed ever since we relaunched, the Ex Recovery Program. It looks you bought in when it was sort of the membership site, right, I’m assuming? When you would have to-
Becca: Yeah, I want to say this was in the beginning of March.
Chris: Okay. So yeah. I mean, you literally just caught it right as I launched.
Becca: Oh wow.
Chris: I think I launched March 2nd or April 2nd or something. So, it must’ve been right away. And so, what we’re finding is, I’ve actually got another interview next week from someone who purchased right around the same time. So, it’s actually really cool to see you interacting and taking a lot of the stuff we’re saying really seriously. You know how you were saying, “Oh yeah, I didn’t know if it was okay to jump the value chain.” Well, one of the faults of the program in my opinion is the fact that it kind of creates this one size fits all situation, and not situations are like that.
Chris: So for example, a long distance relationship, you sort of have to play a different game because a lot of it is just building the anticipation towards this one big meetup, and the meetup is supposed to be romantic. And you just kind of naturally gravitated towards that. I mean, you had to kind of go out of your way to actually go visit him at his parents’ house or his family’s house, but it worked really well. And it seems like it even caught you off guard when he did that. It seems like he must’ve been really thinking a lot about you when you were apart.
Becca: Yeah. And what was awesome too is your program, it really sets up a solid foundation, but since I was in a long distance relationship, I had to be a little bit more flexible with it. But I still got the outcome that I was hoping for and whatnot.
Chris: Yeah. That’s true. So, how are things now, now that you’ve gotten him back? And I will circle around and ask you more specific questions about what you think worked and what didn’t, but I want to just sort of, where do you guys stand now? It’s been quite a bit of time since May.
Becca: I mean, it’s been a week since we’ve been back together.
Chris: Oh, it’s been a week. Sorry, I got my timing messed up. Well, how are things in the week?
Becca: I mean, things are really good. It’s just really awesome because another problem with our relationship was during the time that I was in school and he was working full time and everything, I would text them all the time and just call him and everything when I knew he was working. I don’t know. But now that I’m working too, and I’m busy, we both have the solid foundation that we are both busy, but we’re still gonna talk to each other throughout the day. But don’t expect a text in return. And it’s really nice because it still reminds me of when I first broke no contact and was starting with my texting phase. But it’s really good. And then he also calls me every night now and tells me how much he loves me and everything, and he’s so happy he has me back. So it’s really cute. But yeah, it’s really nice.
Chris: Well, that’s really great. So, let’s talk about what you think worked versus what didn’t work, because one of the big assets I think of having an interview this is I get to actually ask you questions and get to the bottom of trying to make this more of an exact science, even though it’s going to always be an inexact science. So, when you look back at your experience, because you’ve gotten him back, what do you feel like was the most important things that you did that really helped you along the way?
Becca: Definitely focusing on my trinity and sticking through with no contact.
Chris: So, a lot of people who are listening to this have obviously not purchased the program. So, could you explain to them what you mean by the trinity?
Becca: Yeah. So, the trinity, it’s really nice because you focus on your health. So, focusing on yourself and whatnot. I exercised every day, which is really nice. Focusing on your wealth. So, I mean, I just started my rotations. I’m about to graduate soon with my doctorate, and I’m just focusing on myself. So, for my wealth, and then looking into residency programs and investing in myself. And then health, wealth, and relationships. So, being away from my family and my friends and everything, I used this no contact time, instead of just sobbing away about my boyfriend and everything, I would just talk to them, but I never told any of them that we were broken up.
Chris: When you were focusing on your relationships aspect, did you try to make any new friends, or did you just rely on the support? Because I saw you mentioned a bunch of times you had a battle buddy. Who would you say was the most beneficial aspect when it came to your relationships outside of your ex?
Becca: So, outside of my ex, it was really nice, because every time I felt like I wanted to text him, I would text my battle buddy. She was there with me through thick and thin. And I’m there for her just as well. And we’re trying to get her ex back too. We’re working on this. I think she’s on text number four coming up. So, we’re working on this and everything. And she’s been there through me through it all. And I honestly don’t think I would have been able to survive no contact if I didn’t have her.
Chris: So, that’s another interesting thing. To me, it looks like when I heard your situation, when you were explaining it, you really used your time during no contact extremely wisely. So, you focused on health, wealth, and relationships obviously, but was there anything else that maybe you did throughout this period of no contact that you felt made a big difference? Any kind of social media posts or anything that you worked on? I heard you mention you did some Instagram stories. What were some examples of Instagram stories that you did that caught your ex’s eye?
Becca: So, him and I were very big hikers. We like to hike outside a lot and everything. So, during the no contact, I would do pictures of the surrounding areas of me on my hikes or me running, everything else. Also, I just moved to a different city to do my rotations and everything. And so, I took pictures of my backyard, and just different things that I was just doing on my own. And it’s really funny, because when I first broke no contact, I took a picture of the pretty sunset in my backyard and everything. And I did my exit. I was like, “Oh, I gotta go.” I think I said, “I have a workout class I have to do.” He’s like, “All right, have fun. Nice backyard, by the way.” I was like, “Okay.”
Chris: So, are you saying that you sent him a text with a picture of the backyard, or-
Becca: Oh no. That was on my Instagram story.
Chris: Oh, so he just mentioned it out of the blue when you had broken the no contact. So, he was buying on you, obviously.
Becca: Yup.
Chris: Okay. So, when it came to texting him. So, to me, the hardest part for a lot of people is getting through no contact unscathed. And then it comes to the texting where you’re actually having to communicate with them. What do you feel like you did that made a difference? Because it seems like it went really, really well for you. So, was there any type of specific text message patterns that you used? I’m just trying to get to the bottom of what worked here.
Becca: So, I know when the texting phase, you’re supposed to be more formal on your first few reach outs. I mean, besides professionally, I’m formal, but normally, I’m not that formal. So I played around a little bit with it. I used exclamation points. I said, “Ha ha ha.” And he was very playful with it too. So, it’s really hard to flirt via text, but you could tell that it was going back and forth with that. And every time I ended at the high point, he would try to continue the conversation more.
Chris: Oh, that means you just ended it perfectly.
Becca: Oh yeah.
Chris: You just ended it perfectly.
Becca: Yeah. And I would just not reply, and that was really hard.
Chris: Yeah, I’m sure it was. But that’s an interesting caveat there. So you ended the conversation at the high point like I talk about a million times in videos, podcasts, and even in the program. Was he the one reaching out to you the next day?
Becca: After the second reach out, yes.
Chris: Okay. So from that point on, he was the one just consistently reaching out. And did you kind of do a really good job of extending the conversations? Every single conversation would get longer and longer? Or did it stay always in that 10 text message range that you were talking about?
Becca: It progressively got longer and longer. And it wasn’t more so on my end. It was on his. He was being a lot more open about stuff. And I know we’re supposed to do the word count and everything and text ratios and whatnot. And his were three times the amount of what I was sending.
Chris: Wow. That’s rare. Seriously, that’s super rare.
Becca: He was sending paragraphs.
Chris: Okay. So you know he’s really interested to hear what you’re up to and everything. But this is something that I’m seeing a lot lately, for whatever reason, and I think it’s maybe just spun on by the pandemic and the fact that everyone’s inside, and they can’t see their exes in person a lot of times. But did your ex ever try to bring up any kind of emotional topics? Did he try to get any kind of closure about the breakup or talk about the breakup directly? And if so, how did you handle those interactions at the beginning?
Becca: Yeah. So at the beginning when I broke no contact, he did try to bring it up, because what ended up happening is, he uses my Spotify account. And I saw that he made a new playlist. And they were very heartbroken songs and everything. And I’m like-
Chris: Almost indirectly trying to say, “I’m hurting over here,” you know?
Becca: Yeah, exactly.
Chris: That’s kind of funny. Okay.
Becca: And then that’s when I broke no contact. I was bad. I was like, “I just listened to the song that you posted.” I was like, “I don’t understand how you’re heartbroken. You’re the one that broke my heart.” And he was telling me, he was like, “No, I’m heartbroken too. You don’t understand what I’m going through.” And yeah, it was just-
Chris: Victim mentality always seems to… But when you get back in contact with him, did he even try to bring anything up like that at all, or did he keep it strictly formal like you were talking about?
Becca: He kept it strictly formal. Honestly, we haven’t really talked much about the breakup. And I wanted it to go that way, because I told him, when he said he wanted me back, I was like, “I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t want our old relationship back. I want to improve on our weaknesses.”
Chris: So, that’s a great mentality to have. But now that you’re back together, did you at least quiz him about what was going on in his head throughout the breakup, or did you just kind of think, leave well enough alone?
Becca: I actually did ask him the other day. And I did.
Chris: Tell us what insights you’ve gleaned from the male mind.
Becca: So, I was like, “So what was going on in your head and everything?” Because another thing too was because since he did move across the country, another thing he told me too was he wants to make new friends without me and experience life on his own, blah blah blah. And I ended up asking him that. I was like, “All right, so what happened when we broke up? What changed and everything?” And he’s like, “Well, I did make some friends, but they all got the wrong impression, because I just wanted to be friends with them, but they all were trying to date me. And I told them straight up that I’m still in love with my ex-girlfriend. I was like, oh!
Chris: Well, that’s nice. Did he say anything about besides just that, what he was thinking about what you were up to or any kind of struggles he was having not contacting you?
Becca: Yeah, yeah. So, what he said was that during that 30-day no contact, he was convinced that I moved on and I wanted nothing to do with him, because he didn’t hear from me. And he said that every single day, he would go to bed thinking about what I was doing. What I did during the day, who I met, everything. Am I dating someone new, did I move on? But really, I didn’t move on. I just fell in love with myself.
Chris: So, that’s interesting. Did he bring up anything about what he said about the breakup? You know how he said, “I’m in love with you, but I’m not in love with you?” I mean, what does that even mean? Did you even quiz him on what his mentality was when he actually said that? Because I’m just trying to think. A lot of people who are going to be listening to this are probably going to have their ex saying something similar to them. And if you can maybe get it from the horse’s mouth, it’ll make them feel a bit more comfortable about their situation.
Becca: Yeah, absolutely. So, when he did tell me that, I thought he was 100% serious. And I actually recently asked him about it when he asked me to be his girlfriend again. I was like, “But I thought you weren’t in love with me.” I straight up said that. I was playing around, all jokingly and everything. And he was like, “I just said that because I was really stressed out.” He said, “Just being so stressed out with work, being away from family with this whole pandemic happening and everything,” he said he felt like he had more control when he was able to say that he wasn’t in love with me anymore. But he just said it because he was angry, and regretted saying it. He said he regretted saying it a week into me going into no contact and not hearing anything from me.
Chris: Well, there needs to be a consequence for him treating you that way, right?
Becca: Exactly.
Chris: So, I guess it kind of worked. But what’s interesting is it just sort of validates what I always tell people. And sometimes, they just don’t want to believe me. But a lot of times, when people are highly emotional, they’re upset or they’re stressed out, they’re going to say things that they don’t mean. Sometimes they will mean them. But this is a case where definitely, he didn’t mean it. It just seems like all the stress factors just kind of imploded on him, and he just wanted to lash out. Like you said, you mentioned you thought the breakup was the one thing he had control over in his life, and he wanted to exert that control in some weird way that made him feel better. But ultimately, he just hurt himself.
Chris: But what’s interesting is just hearing all of the things that you went through. And you know how you were mentioning, you said you fell in love with yourself. I think that’s a big key and a great way of putting it that a lot of people miss. Could you talk a bit about, because for me, I think the turning point for you, and this is just my opinion, but I’d love to hear your take on it. But for me, the turning point for you is when you get to that moment where you’re kind of like, you know what? If I don’t get him back, I’ll be okay. What did it take to get to that moment, and what did that moment mean for you?
Becca: Yeah. That moment honestly meant everything to me, because that was the moment that I realized that, I mean, we’ve been together for almost four years now, and I haven’t been single in a while. And so, it was that moment where I was just really proud of myself with how far I’ve come, because I’ve always felt like I needed to be dependent on someone else, even though I’m extremely independent, which is crazy. But that moment was the turning point for me where my self-esteem, my confidence boosted and everything.
Becca: And what I would do is at the beginning of no contact, when I was crying a lot and everything, I would actually cry in the mirror. I have this thing where I [inaudible 00:38:30].
Chris: You cried in the mirror?
Becca: Yeah, I cried in the mirror because it allowed me to just get everything out. But then I could tell myself, “You’re going to be okay.” And so, the first week, I was crying a lot. But I would cry in the mirror and everything. And I’m like, okay, have my breakdown and whatnot. And then week two happened, and that’s when I started telling myself, “You’re going to be okay. You have a bright future. Everything’s just lining up for you right now.” And then week three, that’s when I started telling myself, that’s also when I heard at the hospital that I’m the good-looking one and everything. And that was a huge confidence boost.
Chris: Get a bit of confidence. That never hurts. Help you along a bit.
Becca: Yeah. And then that third week, that’s when I was looking in the mirror, and I was like, “Oh, you’re a catch.” I would just tell myself this all the time and everything, and then-
Chris: That’s kind of cute, actually, looking in the mirror.
Becca: Yeah. I’m a very positive and happy person. And that breakup, I’ve never been at the lowest point in my life. And the one person I really wanted to confide in, I just couldn’t.
Chris: Well, overall-
Becca: I had to learn myself.
Chris: Yeah. I mean, it’s just amazing. It seems to me like no contact was extremely hard because you’re in that state where, for the first two weeks, you said you were really having a hard time, but it was really between that second and third week that you start to kind of feel a lot more confident with yourself. Would you say for those people who are struggling with no contact right now, it’s just a function of getting through those first two weeks, that real hard period of time? And obviously, you were doing a lot during those first two weeks. Did it take you a while to kind of get the momentum going with some of the stuff you were working on for your trinity?
Becca: Yeah. So, the thing with me is, when I answered that, I actually did the quiz on your page with what are the chances of getting your ex back and whatnot.
Chris: For you, it would be 100%. But I’m sure that’s not what it said.
Becca: No. It said 76%. And so, there was one question at the end. And it was like, “Do you deal with uncertainty well?”
Chris: Oh yeah.
Becca: And I was like, “Yeah.”
Chris: I feel like I should weight that question more. But it’s hard to weight everything because there’s like 25 different questions it asks. But yeah. So, you answer the question, and what goes through your mind?
Becca: It’s just funny because when the breakup first happened and I took that quiz and everything, it’s like, “Do you deal with uncertainty well?” And I was like, “No, not at all. Not at all.” And I took it again in week two, and it was like, “Do you deal with uncertainty well?” And I was like, “You know what? I actually do.” That was kind of the turning point for me. I was like, okay. Everything’s looking up right now. I’m feeling good about myself. And I just know I’m making the correct strides that I want to make in life. And I set a lot of goals for myself. During that first week of breakup, I set at least four different goals for myself. Well, one that had to do with health, one that had to do with wealth, one that had to do with my profession and everything. And another one was just something that just makes me happy.
Becca: And so, I was able during no contact to just keep those goals in mind, but also knowing that I know that 30 days sounds like a lot of time to not talk to someone. But honestly, it flies by when you keep yourself preoccupied.
Chris: It does, yeah. So, it also depends on the individual, because some individuals, no matter how much you can tell them to get through the no contact and keep themselves occupied, they can’t help with themselves but just obsess about what their ex is doing and what they’re up to. But for me, one of the reasons I think you succeeded so quickly is your attitude. You kind of have a happy-go-lucky aspect to yourself, and I think that’s really a good attitude to have throughout really a dark time, just when you take the pandemic and everything, but you had a breakup on top of it. It’s extremely stressful. But having the happy-go-lucky approach just throughout the entire thing, maybe not the first two weeks of no contact, but that seems to have really helped you along.
Becca: Oh yeah. The first two weeks were really hard because honestly, I’ve never been depressed before, but that’s when I got to my all-time low where I was crying, hard to fall asleep. I would take melatonin to go to sleep just so I could make sure I’m up for work the next day and everything. But yeah, I think it was at the end of week two, I told myself, I was like, “You know what? Today’s the last day of me crying and sobbing over this. I really need to work on myself.” I was like, “If he wants me back, you know what? He’s going to work hard. He can get me back, but I need to make sure that he made changes as well.”
Chris: It almost seems like you just got angry. At a certain point, you’re just like, “I’m tired of feeling this way. I’m going to change it.”
Becca: Yeah. I don’t ever feel sad and everything, so it was a weird feeling for me, and I didn’t like it. That’s why I was like, “You know what? I just need to focus on me.” And that’s when my confidence went up, my self-esteem went up. It’s just crazy. I mean, I’m 28 now, and I’ve honestly never felt so confident before in my life. Not just personally with my relationship, but also in my profession. And it’s just really nice that I’m getting the positive reassurance from doctors and everything, but also my family, and also from him.
Chris: Yeah, which are the areas of your trinity, right?
Becca: Yeah.
Chris: Health is kind of going to be determined by yourself, how you feel. But you’re always going to feel good if you get at least some workout done or something. Wealth, you’re getting the doctors saying nice things about you, and also you’re doing really well at work. And then relationships, your family are saying good things to you. You got your ex back. So you’re getting validation in all these areas. And I wanted to ask you, because my personal theory has always been that there’s this innate connection between all three theories. And when one goes down, all can go down. And one goes up, all can go up. Did you experience that aspect at all to the trinity?
Becca: Yeah. Actually, when my ex broke up with me, I just felt like everything just fell crashing down. Everything. During the first week of no contact, the one where I broke it multiple times, I was just laying in bed and crying. I didn’t want to work out. I just didn’t want to focus on myself. And then I would obviously eat a bunch of ice cream and just [crosstalk 00:45:15]-
Chris: Mm. Ice cream’s so good.
Becca: So. And-
Chris: So, that funny analogy I use, sitting on the tub of ice cream, it’s true still to this day.
Becca: It’s so true. So true. But yeah. When one thing came crashing down, everything came crashing down. And it wasn’t until week two when I realized, you know what? I need a change. And I started focusing on one thing. And it led to me focusing on another. And everything just fell into place for me. And even over the weekend when I got him back and they did a birthday cake for me and everything, I honestly didn’t know what to wish for because I had everything in my life that I wanted.
Chris: Well, you could be greedy. It’s your birthday.
Becca: I mean, my wish, I probably shouldn’t say it. But-
Chris: No, don’t say it, don’t say it. It won’t come true. It won’t come true. Just don’t say, you know?
Becca: You’re right. I have to be optimistic about this.
Chris: So, I guess for me, a personal question that I have is actually, and I want your honest opinion and your honest feedback on this. I don’t want anyone listening to think that I’m coaxing her into saying something. But what did you think of the program and the Facebook group? Did you view that as an invaluable resource, or did you have to wing it a lot?
Becca: I honestly bought your program because of the Facebook group. Because I wanted a community so then I can get my answers questioned, but then I can also talk to people that were going through the same things as myself and everything. Because I was just watching all of your YouTube videos. I was like, okay, I can do this. But then an incentive of your ERP program was the Facebook group. And that’s where I found my battle buddy. And honestly, I don’t think I would’ve been able to get through this entire process without her.
Chris: So, that’s a consistent theme I hear among people who get their exes back. They really make use of the Facebook group. I don’t know the timing of when I started the Facebook Live stuff, again, because I had a lot of health issues for the past two years. But I’m assuming you probably watched a few Facebook Lives that I had done or maybe Anna had done. Did you attend any of those, or did you not have time with work and everything?
Becca: Yeah. Actually, I did attend one of yours, and you gave me a shout-out. Because I think this was for week two of no contact. My rotations got delayed, and I had to move back to the West Coast. And I had to move into his family’s house. And I didn’t know what to do because sphere of influence is one thing, but you’re not supposed to intertwine with it during a breakup. And so, yeah, I ended up asking you the question, “Okay, I’m moving back. What do I do?” Kind of thing. And then you pretty much told me, “Keep it professional, as in don’t talk about him at all. But also, be the best guest.”
Chris: Yeah, you want them to report all this stuff to him, you know?
Becca: Oh yeah.
Chris: That’s the best way to view it. I mean, it’s not great to say, yeah, use people as tools, but you need to use that sphere of influence, the people that your ex surrounds himself with, because a lot of people don’t know what that is. You know they’re going to chirp, so you just give them the right things to chirp about, and you just show them.
Becca: I am pretty confident that the sphere of influence was 95% of the reason that I got my ex back.
Chris: It surely helped. I wouldn’t say 95%, because it seems like no contact really impacted him a lot. Because if he’s going to bed thinking, “What is she up to? Is she sleeping with someone?” I mean, when you let your mind run, it can run wild with some crazy things or some crazy thoughts, so. But I am sure that helped a lot. Especially with how close you are to his family.
Becca: Yeah. And my mind would go everywhere too, “What’s he doing?” and everything. But I do remember reading on the Facebook group that someone called that monkey brain.
Chris: Monkey brain.
Becca: And I would tell myself-
Chris: It’s either potatoes or monkey brain. Some of the women come up with some crazy stuff. Yeah, for a lot of times, I walked into the Facebook group years ago, and all women are calling men potatoes. And I’m just like, what the heck are they talking about? And I have to talk to one of the moderators and be like, “What is this?” So, just crazy terminology, I guess. Monkey brain. Uh-oh. I may have lost-
Becca: Oh no. You froze for a second.
Chris: No, no, no, we’re good, we’re good. I got you again. So yeah, you used the Facebook group. Did you get through the program at all, the membership site, and going through all the modules and lessons, or did you just kind of use them both intertwined?
Becca: I used them both intertwined. I wish I had more time to do it. But I went through a majority of the book, actually. Because I would also jump around, especially when he wanted to meet up. I would refer back to the book. I’m like, okay, value chain. I’m like, uh-oh, I’m really jumping the gun on this one.
Chris: But sometimes opportunities are too good to pass up, so I’m glad you did.
Becca: Thanks, yeah. Even my battle buddy was telling me too, she was like, “You’re jumping the value chain here.” I was like, “Yeah, but you got to think, I have to be a little bit more flexible with this.” She’s like, “Yeah, you’re right. When’s the next time you’re going to see him?” I’m like, “Yeah, okay. Let’s do this.”
Chris: So, did you make use of any of the video walk-throughs that I had done when you were jumping around, or were you one of those people that downloaded the entire digital textbook to just have it to refer to at all times?
Becca: Yeah. I definitely referred to it at all times.
Chris: Okay, good to know. Good to know. So, I’m just trying to understand how people are interacting with the program so that we can continue to make it better. But what you’re saying is a lot of what we’ve heard when we talked to different beta testers, in that Facebook seems to be the most important thing, getting around that community of individuals, and attending the Facebook Lives, or asking questions and things. And obviously, the battle buddy seemed to be really invaluable for you in your situation.
Becca: Yeah. 100%. The Facebook group, the Live sessions, the battle buddy. That aspect of your program is the icing on the cake.
Chris: Yeah, it’s funny. It’s funny. It’s a beautiful thing how it’s all sort of come together. I mean, my wife was the one, she was like, “You really should do a Facebook group.” For the longest time, I was like, “No, no, I don’t want to do that.” But I’m so glad that I did because it’s grown into something pretty powerful for a lot of people, and life-changing in your case.
Becca: Yeah, yeah. So, thank you so much for the Facebook group.
Chris: Oh, no, no. Thank you. Thank you for following directions and getting the good result.
Becca: Oh yeah.
Chris: So, I mean, I guess there’s one more question I want to ask. And just be as honest and authentic as possible. If you were to pick one thing that you did that you feel was the game-changing aspect of what won him back, what would that one thing be?
Becca: Focusing on myself.
Chris: Focusing on yourself.
Becca: 100%, because he even noticed that, one, I had a glow to myself. He mentioned that. He mentioned that I’m looking good because I’m just focusing on myself. And he even told me, he’s like, “Wow, you look good.” And my response was, “I know.”
Chris: That’s a great response. So, I think for me, it seems like your attitude. You just have the right attitude that I typically see. A lot of times, when I interview success stories, I’m trying to pay attention to what they’re doing, but also how they are, and their attitude, and the way they think. It’s unique. And I think the more we can kind of distill this down to help people out, I love your happy-go-lucky approach. You just seem to have a very positive vibe about you, and I think that’s one of the big reasons why he probably wanted you back. That just shines through, and even just talking in this interview.
Becca: Thank you. Yeah. But no, that’s definitely. Because him and I, he’s the polar opposite. I’m the happy-go-lucky one, and then he’s more down-to-earth, not as optimistic as me. But yeah, he was telling me. It was just really nice when I finally got him back. It was really nice.
Why Does My Ex Talk To Me And Then Ignore Me?
May 22, 2020
Okay today, we’re going to talk about why your ex suddenly stops responding to you.
And if you stick around until the end of this podcast episode, I’m going to be answering some of the biggest questions that one of my one-on-one coaching clients is having about her breakup.
But first things first, if you’re going through this process, and you’re a little confused about your starting points, you should probably take our ex recovery chances quiz.
It’s a simple two minute free quiz designed to tell you what kind of chance you have of getting your ex back. And from there, it will tell you what your best next step is. And we’ll even be sending you a free video course over the next week on what you should be doing just generally do help you in your specific situation.
So again, if that sounds like something really reasonable and something interesting to you, all you have to do is just click on the prompt below.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Okay. I’m going to give you some background on this particular situation, because honestly, one of the most difficult circumstances you can be in is when you’re trying to get your ex back, you’ve built up all of this anxiety about how the process is going to work.
And that seems to be what’s happening here with one of my clients that I’ve been working with. And I asked her permission to share her situation a little bit, we’ll change the names and some of the circumstances and everything like that to protect her identity.
And God forbid if her ex is listening or something so he won’t ever be able to figure it out.
But mostly I just want to talk about the psychology of why exes stop responding.
And this is a topic that I’ve been studying a lot lately, because this is been happening a lot, especially in today’s day and age, where you get a positive response and then all of a sudden they just stop responding.
What could be going through their head?
Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
Getting The Background From My Client
So here’s the background on my one-on-one client.
She’s been working with me for about a month and we initially started, she found out about the program, she got the program and she started doing a no-contact rule and the maybe halfway through the no-contact rule, we started coaching together.
And she’s really amazing, to be honest with you.
She listens really well.
She puts things into practice.
She’s just like anyone else who has her own fears and insecurities about her breakup, obviously, but she’s basically done everything that we’ve ever told her and she’s gotten some really positive responses.
So she got through her no-contact rule.
She reached out to her ex and she’s gotten a response every single time she’s reached out to her ex, but something really odd as began to happen.
We have noticed that she gets a response immediately, but then he just basically will either respond one more time as she starts the conversation thread, or just stops responding altogether.
And then every time we tell her to kind of cut back, wait a week, try again, he responds again only to repeat the same behavior.
And after a certain amount of time, she’s getting a little frustrated with the process.
So what we’re trying to do is trying to explain the psychology of why men do this.
And I had her, what I told her, I said, “Hey, look, I would like to actually make a podcast episode out of your situation because I think we can just talk through it, because a lot of women not even trying to get their exes back, probably have this discussion with men that they’re trying to be interested in trying to attract.”
So I wanted to go through some of the psychology behind what could be going on in a man’s mind throughout the process.
So I had to write down some of our questions, some of the most relevant questions she could think of, of what she’s struggling with.
And I’m going to sit here however long it takes to answer her question.
So let me give you a little bit more background on her situation so that we know what we’re going into going forward.
So after she kept getting responses and then he’d suddenly stop responding, we theorized that since the relationship took place and most of the time they would communicate over the phone texting, wasn’t really natural for him.
He feels a lot more comfortable on the phone. So I even brought my wife in on it to ask her advice because she’s always been really, really good with texting and she even concurred and she thinks, “Yeah, I think getting them on the phone, we’ll start to see that momentum shift and things will just start to unfold really quickly.”
So we quickly changed our strategy for her to push the texting more towards a phone call. We’re going to try to advance her up the value ladder a little bit faster, so to speak, because we think a lot of the success for her will be happening in the phone call stage.
And we came up with the brilliant text that we thought might really, really work for her and her situation. So my initial theory is always when you’re dealing with men, they want to talk about things that they’re interested in.
The number one mistake we see in texting with men is a lot of the women engage them in topics that the women are interested in, but the men aren’t really interested in. So what we decided to do is we had our client come up with some of her best interests.
Like she knows her ex really well. What are the things that he’s really, really interested in?
And ultimately she determined that he was interested in X, Y, and Z. And we looked at the list and my wife and I were just both thinking, “Hmm, this isn’t going to work.” So we decided to approach it from a different strategy.
And so we came up with the idea of what, if we made him really intrigued.
We sent him a text that would make him so intrigued that he would have no choice, but to want to get on the phone.
So the text we came up with was, “I had a dream about you last night.”
And we told her, “Hey, you can work the interest into the dream when you get on the phone call with him.”
And the texts we figured would work really well, because it also has some sort of sexual connotations to it where he’s thinking like, “Oh, well, maybe she had a sex dream about me,” essentially.
And so what ended up happening was she sent the text out and it took maybe an hour to get a response, which was another really interesting thing.
I don’t know if we’ll talk about it right now, but this guy seems to take a really long time to get responses just in general.
And he simply just responded with, “Oh?”
So that’s a good sign, right?
So we decided, all right, now’s the time let’s go going for the kill.
And she texted and said, “Hey, I’m going to tell you about the dream on the phone.
And he didn’t reply.
And then oddly enough, he called her at 5:00 AM in the morning.
So what’s going on here?
What is going through his head?
Why did he just suddenly stop responding and then quickly shift gears and call her again at 5:00 AM in the morning?
Why I Think Exes Suddenly Stop Responding
I mean, that’s an odd time to call, right? So what’s going on here? Well, we’re not going to get to my client’s questions just yet.
So I’m a big believer in actions before words, meaning when someone says something, it doesn’t have a lot of value to me unless they actually do something to prove they mean what they said.
And this is a huge common problem that I see a lot of women who are trying to get a date for the first time or trying to find the right one.
They get lured in by a pack of lies.
You know, it’s like, “Oh, I love you so much,” or “I’m going to do this with you. I’m going to do that with you.” And when the time to come when the time comes to put up, he’s not there. He doesn’t do anything to prove.
Well, what’s interesting is when you’re looking at the situation with my client, we believe we sent the best text message out.
And I think we did get a really good response.
But why didn’t he respond or closely?
It’s Intimidating To Have A Sudden Shift In Medium
So I’m a big believer in conversation mediums.
So initially when you talk to your ex you’re in the protective bubble of the texting phase.
And then there’s also a protective bubble of a phone call phase, and a protective bubble of the in person phase.
But transitioning from one bubble to the next is never easy for people.
It’s intimidating.
And oftentimes they like to do it on their own terms.
And one of the reasons that we struggle a lot with our clients with getting really quick results is because they don’t really know how to navigate the treacherous waters of transitioning from one medium to the next.
And what works for one person may not necessarily work for another person.
So how do you transition these waters?
Well, to be honest with you, I think it really revolves around understanding patience.
Let’s look at our client’s situation here.
She got a response, “Oh?” Like, “Oh?” almost like, “Tell me more.”
And then she immediately tries to transition to that phone call phase.
That moment where she tries to transition to the phone call, she gives him an opportunity to come to basically accept the phone call, basically going to say, “Actually the dream is too good. I need to tell you on the phone.”
It’s like, “It’s only something I want to talk to you about over the phone.”
We try to lessen the blow of this transition from medium to medium, but making a reason intriguing for him to pick up the call.
But also what you’re rubbing up against here is fear.
I don’t know quite why men fear the transition, but it’s almost like they feel real safe when they’re texting. And then when you transitioned to a phone call phase, it puts them in uncharted and uncomfortable waters.
So sometimes it just doesn’t happen.
So what I think happened here is he was scared.
It just frightened him.
So his fight or flight response gets activated and he decides to run.
But it gnaws at him throughout the day. I mean really gnaws at him, to the point where he’s just overthinking and in the middle of the night at 5:00 AM, he can’t sleep. He’s just like, “Well, I got to find out, I got to figure out what to do.”
And then he calls her. But of course she’s asleep and he probably picks that 5:00 AM call because he knows she’s asleep and it’s a low probability of her picking up.
So it’s a way of him saying, “Well, I don’t want her to feel bad or feel like I’m ignoring her.
But at the same time, I’m not quite ready to talk on the phone yet. So I’m going to call at 5:00 AM.”
It’s really cowardly if you think about it and also kind of funny.
But I think sometimes coaxing someone into doing what you want them to do is a little challenging because you have to work this fine line between them choosing to want to do it and you forcing them to do it. And sometimes if you force them to do it too soon before they’re ready, they’re just not going to do it.
So honestly, I think the best thing she can do going forward is just to stay true on the strategy.
The timing just maybe wasn’t right for him to feel comfortable for a phone call.
And that is okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. He’s just scared. And you could tell, because she sends the text like, “Hey, let’s talk on the phone,” and he doesn’t respond. So he’s scared. He’s like, “Oh my God, I’m going to her voice.
But if I say something wrong, what if she just only talks about business stuff and doesn’t want to talk about relationship stuff.” He starts thinking in his mind, it starts gnawing at him and his fight or flight response gets activated.
And knowing what I know about this particular guy, he’s a very, very avoidant type of a personality. So he’s going to avoid the confrontation of a phone call, even though the phone call would have been very friendly and pleasant and nice and it’s meant to make him feel good, but you can’t do that unless they participate in the phone call first.
So it sits and gnaws at him all night long to the point where he’s like, “Well, I have to do something,” and he does it, and then he could sleep soundly because he can say to himself, “Well, at least I did something,” but of course, like I said, I wanted my client to leave me questions about, what is she struggling with?
What does she want to know? What perspective can I give him or give her about him? So here is her questions. Her first real one revolves around the fact that it’s been 48 hours since that moment, since he has basically given her permission to have a phone conversation, he’s basically said through calling her, “Hey, let’s talk.”
And they’re in this Mexican standoff where none of them is doing anything and she wants to understand, why hasn’t there been anything since then?
And I think it hearkens back to what I just said.
He is really having a hard time with a huge transition. And a lot of times just transitioning from texting to phone call is intimidating.
Even if he’s a phone call person just by nature. He’s also probably afraid of being hurt. And also the context of their breakup, she was actually the one who broke up with him, but she did it in a really odd way.
So I think he’s never fully gotten closure on that.
So I think also a lot of women they’re so obsessed with their own emotions, they forget to realize that men have emotions too. And there’s emotions attached to these phone calls. So it’s like playing emotional chess.
And I think he’s just banging his head on the wall, trying to figure out if he should be the one to reach out first or talk to something or say something and both of them are afraid.
It’s almost like we need two people to just nudge them together and say, “Talk,” but it doesn’t work that way because you want him to come willingly and you need to come willingly. So I think her question is, “Why hasn’t anything happened?”
And I think that’s why, both of them are just staring at each other across the cage, but they’re afraid to step out of their cage.
So her next question is, “Well, is he struggling more than me and how can I tell and with what?” Okay.
Is He Struggling More Than Me And How Can I Tell?
So as he’s struggling more than you, I think you guys are struggling equally.
A lot of times people think that they’re the ones who are struggling with trying to understand what the other person’s thinking, but I guarantee you, he is struggling trying to figure that out as well. And I think that’s one of the reasons why the two of them haven’t been able to talk.
It’s really an interesting dynamic going on here.
So she then asks, “Well, what kind of internal conversations do you feel he’s having with himself?”
The first one I think he’s having is he’s playing is the break up back in his mind. And he’s also maybe confused because we’ve tried different texts in the past and he’s responded to them, but he’s never engaged her in a full blown conversation. He just stops responding after a while.
So what’s really interesting is the first text. She kept it all about business, but there was a text in there where he wanted to talk about the breakup and she didn’t do that. She didn’t give him what he wanted and I think he’s still clinging on to that idea of, “Well, maybe I’ll get disappointed. Maybe we’re not going to have a conversation that I want to have.”
And I think he’s struggling with that in his mind. It’s just amazing what the mind, what kind of ideas the mind can come up with the prison that the minds will create around, these limiting beliefs we have over what the other person is thinking.
And what’s really cool is when you actually interview people who have gotten back with the exes, and there’s always that inevitable question of, “Hey, did you ask them what they were thinking about during the breakup?” And it’s really interesting when you hear what guys have to say about how they were really struggling.
And they were like, “Well, I’m not going to text her until she texts me first,” but they’re always like hyperventilating on trying to figure out what the other person is thinking.
So a lot of times when women say, “Well, is he struggling more than me? There’s no way he could be struggling more than me.”
There are certainly cases where men just don’t struggle, where sometimes you’re in a really, really bad breakup that has been so bad, it’s almost a relief to get away for you. But this is not one of those cases. This is a case where I think both people love each other still, maybe that’s going on a limb there.
I could be wrong, but I think both people loving each other still because why would they be second guessing themselves so much?
She’s second guessing herself constantly and I guarantee he is too. The difference between men and women, especially in this case is that she has surrounded herself with a very, very nice support group.
Not only is she getting coaching from me, but she’s also got a huge support group of women who she’s told them about, “Yeah, I’m using this program. It seems to be working so far.”
They’re supportive of her. I don’t think he’s got the same support.
So in a way he’s alone. And him being alone is terrifying sometimes. So it makes him less risk averse. He doesn’t want to put himself out there, so to speak. So her next question is, “Well, will he call?” And I mean, there’s a 50-50 opportunity he’ll call, but my gut tells me he’s too cowardly to do so.
My gut tells me that she’s going to have to be the one to get him on the phone.
And I think ultimately I’ll have to talk with my wife about the dynamics because I can come at it from, “Well, I think he’s thinking this,” and she can come at it from like, “Well, I’m pretty sure he’s thinking this and she’s thinking this,” and we can collaborate and think of the best next step.
If you didn’t know my wife and I were recently featured on Fox News!
But my gut tells me that she’s going to have to try something else to get him on the phone, that he’s too cowardly to call.
And that’s okay.
Because one one of the beautiful parts of human beings transitioning from the texting stage to the phone call stage is, a lot of it is like once you can transition them from the safe bubble of texting into the uncertain bubble of phone calls, they just open up and they take on a new life, so to speak.
And I think right now he’s just having trouble with that transition. It’s scary for him. And it’s good to understand that it is scary for him.
So do I think he’ll call?
No, I don’t.
I think he’s too cowardly to call and it’s important not to blame him for that. It’s just the environment he’s created around himself makes him scared of taking a risk.
And that’s cool because sometimes taking a risk for him might be scary.
But if you take the risks, it removes some of the fear from him.
That’s why I think sometimes it’s good for a woman to try to initiate things because it takes some of the pressure off the guy because the guy can work himself up so much because he’s afraid of emotionally getting hurt.
He’s afraid of taking risks.
He’s afraid of failure.
He’s afraid of being ignored.
He’s afraid.
And I think that’s a lot of what’s going on.
That’s why I think he’s got this limiting prison.
And I think if she tries to call it will show or signal to him that it’s okay.
I think she needs to do it in the right way.
And I haven’t quite worked out what that will be yet.
I’m not perfect.
I literally came into these questions blind.
I’ve had to stop the podcast multiple times so I can read some of the backstory to make sure that I’m telling the right story to answer the questions properly. But I’m coming to these questions blind. I like to come in blind because I like to just make my own assumptions as I go.
But my gut tells me that he is not going to call her.
She’s going to have to try again.
And I think the more she continues to try with someone like this, I was watching this episode of the Dog Whisperer yesterday, we’re about to buy a dog, so I’m trying to brush up on how to have a really happy, healthy dog.
And I really liked the Dog Whisperer.
It was something that I thought it was goofy at first.
Years ago, if you were to tell me I’d be watching the Dog Whisperer, I’d laugh in your face, but here I am watching the Dog Whisperer.
And what was really interesting is how he handles dogs that have these psychological fears.
So I’ll give you an example.
There was a dog that had the psychological fear of jumping from a dock to a boat, it was literally four inches of a jump. But because the dog had fallen in the water before it had the psychological belief that it couldn’t do it. So no matter how hard the owner would try to get it to come jump over from the dock to the boat that was tied to the dock, it wouldn’t do it. It just wouldn’t go. So what was interesting and I was thinking, “Well, just grab the dog, force it to go. It’ll figure it out eventually.”
But Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer said,
“It’s not about you forcing the dog to do it, the dog needs to be a participant.”
When they have this psychological fear, you need to nudge them a little bit and show them like, “Hey, I know you want to go, I know your fight or flight response gets triggered. I know you want to go run away, but we need to actually overcome this.”
So he’ll tug a little bit.
He doesn’t force them.
He didn’t force this dog to jump, but he gave it a little tug until it started doing it on its own a little bit.
And it jumped on its own because it became a participant at that point. And I feel like that’s kind of what’s going to have to happen here.
She’s going to have to kind of like tug and show him, “Hey, this is the right direction, I want you to act,” and eventually he’ll start participating himself.
If My Ex Exhibits This Behavior Does It Mean He’s Over Me?
So our next question is, “Is he over me or in fact, just the opposite in exhibiting this behavior.”
I do not think he’s over you.
If you look at his actions, he was responding to your initial text messages and then he struggles and stops responding to you. In this particular case I don’t think he’s over you. I think he’s talking himself out of it. This internal conversation he has in his head is preventing him from acting the way you want him to act.
This is especially true when it comes to this transitioning from text messages to phone calls.
He has this limiting belief, the psychological belief that if he gets on the phone with you, he’s going to get hurt.
So just getting him to overcome that belief, to get on the phone with you, I think is an important thing to do.
How Patient Should You Be With A Guy Like This?
Her next question is, “How patient understanding and forgiving should I be in this situation?
It’s hard because it hurts.
But at the same time, I’m trying to take a long view about a lot of the questions I’ve had as a very, very positive and victories.”
I think patience is really important, with a guy like this, because the guy liked this is, an avoid it, essentially. And you have to be extremely patient with them, but it’s important that you eventually them to participate. So it’s important that at a certain time, you lead the way enough to where they feel confident enough to lead the way themselves. And I feel like that’s the struggle going on here.
I’m not really sure if there’s much I can add to that other than it’s just clear to me that he’s… And it’s really interesting because when I talked to my wife about the situation, she was asking, “Why would he call?” or, “Why would he say it’s okay to call at 5:00 in the morning or 6:00 in the morning,” or whatever it was. And I said to her, “Well, I think he’s just debating back and forth and he’s having trouble with, “What do I do?”
He’s like, “Well, I’m going to try to take things on my terms,” because if he does it on his terms, he’ll feel more confident about the interaction.
And I feel like the ultimate confidence boost for him is if he could call you back and not get a response, he’s off the hook.
He doesn’t have to go through the stress of figuring out what to say on the phone call.
But we don’t want to let him off the hook that easily. I think it’s important to continue to push with little progress we’ve had into in person interaction because I feel like that that talk that they have over the phone will just propel them forward.
So I guess the final note I’d like to leave anyone listening to this and even my coaching client, who’s definitely going to be interested in listening to this one is being patient and understanding the society’s expectations that men take the lead sometimes create these limiting psychological barriers where we get scared because we’re lazy and we don’t want to take the lead.
And also I think when we take the lead, I know thinking back to my single days, I was terrified to take the lead because I didn’t want to get hurt. I didn’t want to take a risk on a girl, get her phone number, start talking with her, ask her on a date and get stood up, which has happened to me multiple times.
And a lot of times it soured me from the whole dating experience to where, I remember I went like five years straight where I was just single. And it wasn’t because I didn’t want a girlfriend, it was because I was afraid of being hurt.
I was afraid of initiating. And that’s what we have here.
Even though the interesting dynamic is she’s the one trying to initiate the phone call, the fact that he didn’t respond, put pressure on him to feel like, “Okay, well I need to respond to this in some way.”
And I think that’s what’s going on here. I think he’s a coward.
And it’s not to say like, “Oh yeah, he’s a coward.” I’m just saying, just understand that the pressure that society puts on men to be the ones to initiate can often trigger our fight or flight response. We’ll either fight and get angry about the fact that we’re not getting someone to respond to us or we’ll fight.
We’ll avoid the situation like I would when I was single for five years and I had multiple opportunities to not be single for five years, but it was because I was afraid of initiating things. I was afraid of being hurt. I had been in a couple of relationships, I had been burned really badly. I didn’t want to get hurt. So I wouldn’t initiate.
And that can even happen with your ex. I think you can even argue that can especially happen with an ex because they’ve already been hurt by the breakup.
So just be patient and understand that it’s not going to happen overnight. I feel like there’s this false belief that a lot of people have when they come into like, “Oh yeah, ex-boyfriend recovery,” they’ll hear from one of their friends, “Hey, I used this guy’s program and I got my ex back. It was amazing.” And then that person comes in and they expect it to work in 30 days. But it doesn’t.
I’m going to tell you that right now. If you want this program to work, if you want the ex boyfriend recovery way to work for you, you need to invest three months to a year into it. That’s realistic. Anyone who sits here and tells you like, “Oh yeah, you’ll get your ex back in 30 days or 45 days or two months,” it’s unrealistic. That’s not what we’re seeing at all. We’re seeing at a minimum, most of our success stories happen at three months.
So that means you need to be patient and that means three months. That is a long time for you to go through this wide range of emotions. Just understand you need to be patient throughout this process and also understand, men are cowards.
What Ex Boyfriends Think Before They Break Up With You
May 13, 2020
Today we’re going to talk about what ex-boyfriends think right before they break up with you.
What creates that decision to actually want to go through a breakup?
And what I think is going to make this particular article unique, as opposed to many of my other articles out there, is that I actually had a real conversation with one of my friends who is actually about to plan to break up with his current girlfriend.
And he gave me prime access to exactly what’s going on in his mind, every little weird nook and cranny in there.
And I learned some really fascinating things, because what we’re dealing with here, the moment before someone decides to break up with you, it’s arguably one of the most guarded secrets they will ever have in their mind.
I know when I would go through breakups younger, much younger, before I got married, I would never tell anyone this kind of stuff ever.
And maybe one of the reasons why Ex Boyfriend Recovery has been so successful, as not only a brand, but even a podcast, is the fact that I’ve been willing to kind of peel back the layers and show you what is going on in the mind of a man.
But what I wanted to do was I wanted to take you not through my mind, but one of my friend’s minds who gave me permission to basically unlock and show you what’s inside. So you can actually see really interesting things that you may not have learned before.
So if you stick with me until the end of this podcast episode, not only are you going to watch me have a conversation with someone who’s about to break up with their girlfriend, but we’re going to learn a lot about trusting your gut as you went through a break up, or you are going through this process of getting over them or trying to get them back.
We’re also going to learn about how someone can go from being so in love with your looks to, all of a sudden, finding you unattractive.
And we’re also going to talk about why it’s always a good idea to strive to become the ungettable girl.
It’s Important To Find Your Starting Point
But look, if you’re new to this website or you’re new to sort of how I do things, I’m a big believer in starting at the beginning.
And if you’re at the beginning of this process, where you’re trying to determine what kind of chance you have of getting your ex back and basically using that to determine whether or not you should be getting over them or getting them back or trying to get them back, my biggest recommendation for you is to take my Ex Recovery Chances Quiz.
It’s basically a two minute free quiz designed to tell you what kind of chance you have of getting your ex back so you can make a smart decision going forward on whether or not you’re wasting your time throughout this process on getting them back or if you should just simply be moving on.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Having A Conversation With Someone About To Break Up With His Girlfriend
Okay, let’s talk about break ups.
So I had a conversation with a good friend of mine about basically how his life has been going.
Yesterday was my birthday so I kind of got the day to myself to do what I wanted and one of the things I wanted to do was talk to my friend.
I hadn’t talked to him in maybe a month and a half. Now to put this into context, when I last talked to him, he was absolutely head over heels in love with this new girl he just met. I remember the first thing he said to me when he met this girl was
“Chris, you are not going to believe it. I just got a date with the prettiest girl I’ve ever dated in my entire life.”
I could just tell talking to him, he was happy.
I remember thinking, in my mind, this may be the one.
He may have found the girl he’s going to propose to.
And I was happy for him.
But you know how things kind of unfold, life gets in the way and life got in the way.
The pandemic, the quarantine, started happening.
I had to start, obviously start worrying about my business and exactly how I was going to structure everything going forward.
Plus I got busy.
So anyways, after a month and a half goes by, I decide yesterday, during my birthday, I was going to try to just sort of like reach out to him.
He reached out to me to say like,
“Hey, happy birthday, Chris.”
And so I responded back like,
“Hey, do you mind if we just catch up on old times? Let’s just sort of hop on the phone and see how things are going.”
And he agreed. I mean, how can you say no to someone on their birthday?
It’s like an easy birthday wish.
So I get on the phone with him and we just sort of talk like normal buddies would.
And I was really curious because I was happy for him that I felt like he found someone who he was like genuinely in love with.
He kept talking about how attractive she was.
Maybe like 10 minutes into the phone call, I tried to kind of slide it in there.
So I basically said, “Hey, how’s that girl?”
And he acted kind of standoffish, which immediately put up my sort of radar. I was like, hmm, red flag.
So I kind of didn’t touch it for a little bit.
And then I kind of prodded a little again because curiosity kills the cat and I just don’t have a filter maybe.
And I basically said, “So I can kind of sense something’s off with this girl. What’s going on?”
And he’s basically was like, “Man you’re really good at what you do. I didn’t even say anything.”
And he went on to tell me some really fascinating things about how he no longer views her as attractive or as attractive as he thought she was.
And how he kind views her as maybe a little bit immature and one of the really intriguing parts about her was her looks. And so all of a sudden it struck me that he would say that he doesn’t find her attractive anymore.
And so I basically said, “Are you thinking of breaking up with her?”
And he’s sort of like, “Yeah.”
And what I found really interesting was I asked him, “Why haven’t you done it yet?” And he was like, “I don’t know.”
And I basically said, “You know what I do for a living, right?” And he’s like, “Yeah, I know.”
“Okay. Well, here’s what I think you’re doing.”
And I went on to tell him,
“I think you’re just scared because you’re scared of hurting her feelings.”
And he’s like, “Yeah, that’s it. 100%.”
I was basically just fascinated, this is an unprecedented situation.
And I’d said, “Do you mind if I kind of like interview you? You don’t have to come on my podcast or anything like that, but do you mind if I just ask you a few questions, because I think what’s going on in your mind, the thoughts you’re having, are going to help hundreds of thousands of women out there who are maybe going through a breakup and trying to make sense of the broken pieces.”
And so he was like, “Yeah, sure man. Just ask me anything you want.”
And so I did.
Proof That Looks Aren’t Everything When It Comes To Relationships
And the first thing I really wanted to dive into was the looks.
I basically asked him, “When I first talked to you a month and a half ago, you found this girl incredibly attractive. That was like the number one thing you kept like hammering home, like, wow this is the prettiest girl I’ve ever met.”
Because I have long been a proponent of the fact that looks aren’t everything.
I believe that looks matter, but they only really matter to get you in the door. They don’t keep you in the house.
You can quote it. Chris Seiter said that.
But if you’ve ever been looking for proof that looks aren’t everything, we have a situation right here where you have a guy who was rabid about this girl’s looks. And he goes from being rabid about this girl’s looks to, a month and a half later, telling me that he doesn’t find her that attractive anymore.
And so I was really eager in trying to understand why don’t you find her attractive?
Her physical appearance has not changed whatsoever in this month and a half.
It’s not like she gained like 300 pounds. It’s not like she had some horrific car accident and half her face fell off.
She’s not two face.
So what went on?
And he proceeded to tell me something that I’ve never heard before, which is a really unique take.
The first thing he said was, he started talking about how, at the beginning, he built her up in his mind as sort of this really, really incredible girl that had all of these interesting layers to her. And the more he peeled back the layers, the more he kind of realized that the picture he had in his mind of her was not as great as reality. So it’s sort of like he built up the expectations in his mind, but reality didn’t meet that.
Watch this and you’ll get what I mean,
And ultimately I wanted to probe a little bit deeper.
And he said, “She’s kind of immature. She does things that are a little immature. And I kind of viewed her as this really mature woman and I find out she’s not mature. And that became kind of a turnoff for me.”
And I said,
“So that little thing, you peeling back the layers and finding she’s immature, is what made her physically unattractive to you?”
And he said,
“Yes and no. There’s a little more to it than that.”
So he said,
“Yes, the immaturity, finding out she was immature I found as an incredible turnoff. So immediately I look at her and she may have been the most beautiful girl, but I don’t view her as that beautiful anymore. All I can see is this immaturity aspect to her. But that’s not just it, that’s not the whole reason why I feel this way when I look at her.”
And so I wanted to probe deeper.
So I said, “What else is there?”
And he said,
“Well, the fact that there wasn’t anything left to learn about her. It’s like I had learned everything. I was going to ever learn about her and I didn’t like what I found.”
It’s just sort of like he got to the end of the movie and looked at me and said, “That’s it? That’s all there is to this?” He was disappointed. And that became sort of unattractive to him. And he’s not really great with words. That’s not necessarily true, he is great with words, but he’s not great at analogies.
So the analogy I gave him was so you’re saying it’s sort of like ogres or onions.
You know the famous Shrek line? You’re saying the more you peel back the onion layers, the less appealing you found the experience.
And he further reiterated the fact that no, it wasn’t just that. It was the fact that she didn’t have any more onion layers to peel back that made me kind of lose interest. And so I think this is a really intriguing lesson we can learn about the male mind, especially when it comes to just relationships in general.
I even told him about my theory of stability and mystery. This is something that I’m always going on and on about.
I’m trying to be less derivative and inject new ideas into my articles and podcasts episodes and YouTube videos and everything like that, but one thing that I truly believe in is that as human beings, we have these two competing needs.
Stability And Mystery Theory
We have the need for stability, but we also have the need for adventure and mystery.
The problem is that they’re not sort of mutually exclusive, if that makes any sense?
Meaning if you’re too stable and not enough adventure, the person can grow bored. If you’re too adventure and too much mystery involved and not stable enough, the person can grow scared and seek that stability. You need to try to find a way to balance both.
And it seems to me that he found sort of her stability and mystery factor was not in line with what he was seeking.
And he kind of agreed with me. And he said, “Yeah, that’s, that’s part of it.” But he really harped on the fact that she didn’t have any other facets to her personality that really intrigued him. That really would shock him to learn.
You Need To Become Ungettable
And I think this is just further validates what I feel like I’m always saying to women when I say, “You need to become ungettable.”
And I think this is just another way of putting that.
Because really what he’s talking about here is the ungettable girl.
If you don’t know, the ungettable girl is this girl that all men want, but no man can have.
Essentially it’s the girl that has so many layers to her, so much intrigue about her, that he’s always seeking to try to find the middle but can never find it. And I think, at a certain point, there’s a flaw in that type of thinking.
I’ll admit, there’s a flaw. When it comes to attracting men that’s sort of what works. I think I’ve studied this enough to know that the more facets you have to your personality, the more things that your ex can be surprised to learn about you, the more paradigm shifts you can give him, the more intrigued he becomes about you.
But I think the one flaw in that is that eventually there’s no human being with the infinite layers that they can just kind of peel back and continue to keep the man intrigued. Eventually he has to be happy with what he finds in the middle.
And I think this is where it takes two to tango.
As much as women want me to say, give me the secret to unlocking the man’s heart. Give me the secret to making a man fall in love with me and stay in love with me forever. I can’t do it without his cooperation. A man needs to be mature enough to accept you for the fact that no one is perfect.
And I think my friend doesn’t really have an issue with that. I think my friend knows exactly what he wants. And after peeling back the layers, he found this isn’t the girl he wanted.
I will also say one other thing. His situation with this girl is essentially a rebound.
He moved on to this girl like a month after getting broken up with by a girl, he admitted to me, he was in love with. He admitted that to me even at the beginning of the situation when he was basically going and saying, “I’m dating this new girl after so-and-so broke my heart. She’s the prettiest girl ever.”
So it’s kind of like this girl was a rebound and he’s maybe gotten to the center and realized, “I know what I’m missing.” And maybe that’s where regret comes into play.
Now a lot of you are sitting there and thinking, “What if I’m the rebound? I’m a rebound.” Don’t worry about that because I think what we can take from this is the fact that the onion layer, so to speak, the multifaceted personality, the more you can harp on those characteristics, the more you can develop these really interesting takes.
And I’ll give you an example of how to do this.
Let’s say your ex views you as someone who doesn’t take risks, but you go and skydive and post it on Instagram Live or something like that, or Instagram it. They’re going to see that and say, “I did not expect her to do that.” The more you can do things like that, the more intriguing they will sort of come to you. But no matter how tactically perfect you are, you need your ex to kind of work with you a little bit.
You need him to be okay with what he finds in the center. So this is something, I’m just going to tell you how it is. This is what I’m seeing. A lot of people who get back together and break up again, it’s because their ex gets to that center and doesn’t like what he finds.
I need to sort of find all the layers. And then when they find the middle it’s over for them, they would just lose interest. Until they meet that person that is right for them, that they find the middle and they’re like, “I like what I find.” So the big things that I want you to leave this episode with is the fact that looks are kind of overrated. Seriously. A lot of women put a lot of effort into their looks when they don’t really need to. A lot of women understand that looks get you in the door, but they fail to understand that it’s not what keeps you there.
In fact, this is proven by my friend who arguably said, this is his words, “This is the most attractive girl I’ve ever dated.” And then I talked to him yesterday and he finds her completely unattractive. And that all happened because of that layers and being like, “Well, she’s immature. I found out she’s immature. And I found out that she’s not this way I wanted her to be.” And it’s also being able to not put so much pressure on yourself to be perfect.
Because generally speaking, a lot of men who are obsessed with chasing those layers have a huge flaw and you’re better off without them. Now not to say that you should give up completely on getting your ex back if you’re worried that like what if he got obsessed with the layer thing and didn’t like my middle?
Most cases, he does like your middle. That’s why you were in a relationship with him. Especially longterm relationships. What I think most people can use this for is the fact that the more sort of intrigue, the more facets that you can have to your personality that he can learn about, it will cause him to become obsessed with you. And that’s the goal. That should always be your goal just in dating in general.
Well, what’s interesting is a few days ago I ran a Facebook live on our private Facebook group for our community members who have purchased the ex-boyfriend recovery program. And what’s really interesting is that there was a real huge common theme amongst a lot of the different questions that I would get asked.
A lot of it was along the lines of,
Why isn’t my ex responding to me?
Or why is my ex responding to me and then dipping out of the conversation?
And so I wanted to talk a little bit about the male mind during the texting phase, so that you can understand what’s really going on from a male perspective.
And I thought one of the best ways to do this was to actually take the situation of a coaching client that I’m working with right now who’s also struggling with this problem. And so rather than just playing you a traditional voicemail like I typically do, where someone asks me a random question, I thought it would actually take you into a coaching session and what that looks like so that you can actually see me depict what’s going on in an ex’s brain when you’re texting them.
And then what I’m hoping, is that this will give a lot of you different clarity on the many different struggles that you’re experiencing.
So, if you stick with me to the end of this podcast episode, this is going to be a really unique one, but I’m going to answer a lot of different questions from;
why is it taking your ex so long to respond
how do you handle the emotions that you get when you see his text message and you see his name pop up and your heart jumps for joy.
How do you stay disciplined during those situations?
I’m also going to go into what is your ex thinking?
Is he just rolling his eyes every time he sees your name and thinks, “Oh, she’s so annoying. Why won’t she just go away?”
I’m going to answer if he’s over you or not.
Or if he’s obsessing over the responses like you are obsessing over the responses when you’re texting him.
So, if you stick with me until the end of this podcast episode, we’re going to be giving a lot of insight into the male mind during the texting phase.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Like I said, I wanted this episode to be a little bit different than our traditional podcast episode where I just play a voicemail and then just sort of organically go from there.
Instead, I’m actually working with a coaching client right now and she’s having a lot of trouble in the texting phase and trying to understand what’s going on in his mind and everything.
So, I want to give you a little bit of what her situation is looking like because I think this is a struggle that I see a lot in different people’s situations when I’m working with them.
So, let me give you a bit of background. I actually think she’s got a pretty decent chance of getting her ex back. That doesn’t guarantee she’s going to get him back of course, but she’s very disciplined, she’s very smart, she’s very intelligent.
That’s basically all you could ask for in a really great coaching client.
But what’s interesting is when we talked on the phone, I told her she needed to get through a complete no contact period before she even thought about reaching out to her ex. And she agreed and she did just that.
She worked with me a little bit on trying to come up with a text message to get a response from her ex. And what I’m about to read to you is the text message that we came up with and the results she got.
And when I say results, I’m talking not just about the text message she used with the contents of the text message she used, but also how long it took him to respond, what he said.
And then I’m actually going to break this whole conversation down and actually answer a few of her big questions. And also some of those questions that I mentioned at the top of the podcast intro.
Okay.
So, here’s what happened.
She got through a 30 day no contact rule.
Great, right?
But she was really struggling on figuring out an authentic way to reach out to her ex.
So, we worked back and forth and I showed her… I gave her access to the private Facebook group that all of our members get access to if they purchase the ex-boyfriend recovery program or even a coaching session.
And I showed here is what real life successes look like with regards to texting.
This is what is yielding high level responses.
So, I gave her the theory of the hook, the pattern interrupt and keeping the interests all about his interests.
But where she found some confidence, was in seeing some of the other members getting positive responses.
And what seems to work for a lot of members is this damsel in distress type of a text message where you’re basically asking your ex for advice but only his advice. And so here’s the text message that we came up with.
“I have a problem and only really trust you on this one as it involves your area of expertise.”
So, she sent the text message and she got an immediate response.
A minute didn’t go by before she got a response.
And his response was, “Okay, what’s the question?”
And then he responded again saying, “How are you doing?”
Which is interesting, he added on to his original response.
But she’s smart.
Like I said, this woman is extremely disciplined.
And what she decided to do, she decided to wait about an hour before she would respond because she didn’t want to look like she was just hanging on his every word. She wanted to appear like she was super busy.
So, she responds, she says,
“I’m doing great. I actually need to order some stuff for work, any idea what companies cater to this type of a thing?”
And then he didn’t respond.
So, this is where things really got interesting.
So, she waited… Like I said, she’s disciplined, she’s patient.
She waited 48 hours before she emailed me again and basically asked me,
“Hey, why hasn’t he respond to this? Why would he respond so quickly to the initial text message and then not respond to me actually asking the actual question to him or me needing his help. Why wouldn’t he respond to that?”
And so, I have a little bit of an omission at this point, but I’m pretty darn busy.
So, a lot of times we’ve even cut off some of the email support, but this is a high level coaching client, so it took me a little while to respond, but eventually I did respond.
And so I responded literally probably a day after she sent me this message or she sent me this email.
And I responded and it was just something generic like, “Hey, did he respond yet?” And I gave her maybe some basic thoughts on what may be going on in his head.
And what’s interesting is, yesterday she got back to me and said, “Actually it’s the craziest thing, 73 hours went by and he finally responded to the question, what is going on?”
So, that’s what I want to… That’s the situation we’re in right now.
And I think this is… What’s interesting is in those 73 hours, I did a Facebook live and I noticed that a lot of the people asking questions throughout the Facebook live all related to this texting no response or little responses or late response type thing. And why would a man do that and what’s going on in his head.
So, I wanted to use… And I asked this client permission to do this. I wanted to use her as a Guinea pig.
So, she’s going to remain anonymous and the text messages are actually changed, so they’re not identical to what really happened, but I changed them up enough to get the spirit of what was really going on. So, what’s going on here?
Well, there’s a lot of questions to answer, but I think we should answer the first one most in why did it take him so long to respond?
Why Does It Take So Long For Men To Respond?
So, if you don’t know, she reaches out to him originally with the first contact text message and gets an immediate response.
Then she actually piggybacks off of that and asks him the actual question she wanted to ask and then 73 hours go by and then he finally responds.
So, what’s going on here?
Well, after seeing… It’s really funny because as you go through these processes and as you work with people, a lot of times you don’t have the full picture of what’s going on until enough time goes by, right?
So, she’s panicking at 48 hours thinking,
“Oh, why would he respond so quickly to my first text message and then not respond at all to my second text message?”
And I think ultimately that’s because he’s thinking about what he should say or if he should respond.
Let’s look at this from his perspective.
I am him and she reaches out to me after 30 days of not talking.
And her text message says something along the lines of,
“Hey, I have a really big problem and only really trust you to help me.”
All of a sudden, I’m really happy that she’s responded.
So, I respond really quickly. “Okay, what’s the question?”
And then I piggyback on that saying, “How are you doing?”
Now, what’s interesting is that second response he put in there.
So, usually when we’re dealing with exes, the first thing they’ll do is just go right into,
“Hey, what is the question? I’ll help you.”
But this one showed an extra bit of interest in his response, right?
So, the first one was, “Hey, what’s the question?”
Which is the traditional response we would hope to get from an ex.
But the second response that he added on top of that was,
“Hey, how are you doing?”
This is sort of an olive branch to talk about the relationship.
But I instructed my client not to talk about the relationship because oftentimes I’ve seen it go South enough to know it’s usually not a good idea this early in the stage. And so, rather than directly responding to his second question of, “Hey, how are you doing?”
She only responded to the first question, which was him saying, “Okay, what’s the question?”
She waits an hour to respond of course, and she basically says, “Hey, I’m doing great. I need to order some stuff for work.” And he… I think there’s a couple of things going on for how long it took him to respond to this.
The first one is he’s deciding whether or not he should respond to you or not.
And the second thing to look at is he’s maybe upset about the fact that he wants to talk about the relationship and you didn’t bite.
And the fact that you didn’t bite angers him a little bit. And it sort of, he has the knee jerk, “Fine, screw her. I’m not going to do that.”
But this is the beautiful thing about time and silence. 73 hours goes by, that’s a long time to think. It’s sitting in the back of his mind constantly.
He’s thinking about, “Why would she reach out to me and act like nothing happened?” It is gnawing at him. And eventually curiosity takes hold and he can’t help but respond. And so that’s why I think he ended up responding and taking so long to respond. Because you notice he does only keep it strictly business when he does respond.
But I think what he really wants to do is just have a conversation about the breakup.
But I don’t think it’s smart to have a conversation of the breakup at this early of a stage, it’s better just to act like it doesn’t exist for a while, get into some rapport building and then slowly start talking about those things.
But what’s interesting is that 73 hours, that period where he’s just sitting and he’s thinking and it’s gnawing on him, it tells you a lot about how it’s important to be patient.
I’ve been doing this long enough to see all types of clients.
There’s the clients who are extremely patient, there’s the clients who are extremely impatient. And so, I guess what I’m saying to my impatient clients, is a lot of times what you end up doing is when you reach out what the killer first text message and you don’t get a response, sometimes you need to wait three days because they’re deciding whether or not they want to respond to enough.
And sometimes what people do instead is they dig themselves in a deeper hole by sending another text message saying something along the lines of, “Hey, aren’t you going to respond or not?” It’s never a good idea to do that.
It’s almost always a good idea just to wait and see if he responds and if he doesn’t after three or four days, it gives you a good indication that maybe he needs to take a look at your text message and maybe there was something wrong in your text message, maybe the timing was off.
And you could learn a lot just by waiting. And it’s the hardest thing to do. And it’s a perfect segue into the next big thing that I want to talk about. And that’s how do you handle the emotions you get when you see his name pop up on a text message.
How Do You Handle The Emotions You Get When You See His Name Pop Up In A Text?
So, this is… I asked my client exactly,
“Hey, what are some of the burning questions or the struggles you’re having right now?”
And this was one of the questions and struggles she was having.
“Every time I see his text message, my heart leaps, I can’t help but just jump with joy, but it makes me a little overemotional maybe. And I want to know how can I keep those emotions in check.”
And leveling with everyone listening here, there’s not an easy quick answer to be honest with you because… And I guess the way I would describe it is… And I think I made this analogy a few podcast episodes ago, but growing up in high school and everything, I used to play baseball.
I was actually one of the best pitchers on my team.
So, I remember I would always be extremely nervous before the game started. And then once the game started, the nerves settled down as you’re doing this physical activity as you’re actually doing the activity you’re nervous about or nervous for.
And I feel like texting an ex is a little bit like that.
You’re extremely emotional, nervous, you’re worried, your mind’s going all over the place.
And ultimately the only thing that you can do to handle those emotions a little bit, is actually get engaged in the activity with them.
So, my best piece of advice for those of you who are extremely emotional, there’s two pieces of advice.
The best one is the more you get through this process, the less the overemotional happy heart jump thing will happen.
You just have to make a mental note to stay disciplined at the beginning. So, those are the big two things. The more you do it, the less it will happen, but at the beginning you need to be almost overly disciplined.
And so my best piece of advice for those of you who are struggling with this, I would say that you’re struggling with this or you’re having difficulty with this, if you send a text message to your ex and then an hour goes by and he doesn’t respond, but you’ve checked your phone over 20 times in that hour.
That’s a good indication that you’re not disciplined enough.
What are some of the ways you can be disciplined?
The best piece of advice I’ve ever given to people in situations like this is to try to find an activity that makes you so busy, you don’t have a chance to deal with your phone.
Sometimes the best thing to do is actually turn your phone off for 24 hours or something.
What’s really interesting is there’s this YouTuber that sometimes since I run an online business, I followed to try to learn about what are the trends? What can I be doing better? How can I reach more people?
I want more people to understand my message, right?
And so, this YouTuber was really brash, he’s really… Volatile, I guess is a good word.
A lot of people just have all sorts of different opinions on them. Right?
You either love them or you hate them. And sometimes people like that can be a little rough for people.
But I always found him interesting because I was like, “Okay, there’s a method to his madness. He’s clearly getting results. He’s doing really well.”
And as life has gone on, I get busy with my own business and trying to understand also the nuances of the human mind to try to help people through breakups.
And I got out of watching him.
And what’s really crazy is this morning, the first thing I did when I woke up was I actually checked YouTube. And one of his videos got recommended to me and I was like, “I wonder what he’s up to. it looks like he’s lost a lot of weight.”
And this guy was making literally millions of dollars a month.
This guy was rich beyond his wildest dreams and he just went into this gigantic story about how what he was doing wasn’t making him happy and he just quit his job and he didn’t even ask for a buyout.
He ran this multimillion dollar a month business and he just literally didn’t want to do it anymore and he didn’t want any friction between his partners or anything. So, we went to them and says, “Hey, you guys own 100% of this now.
I don’t want any… I’m not going to ask for a buyout or anything. I’m just going to do what I want to do.” And he went monk style minimalist. He got rid of all things that could distract him. He broke his phone because he didn’t want to get distracted by it.
He didn’t buy any furniture, he sold his house.
He had a bunch of Lamborghinis and things.
He sold that.
He just went like monk style minimalist.
And the whole point was he’s trying to remove distractions so we can focus all of his energy on to his new business that he’s starting.
And I found this interesting. And I think there’s something that we can learn from this level of dedication and this level of discipline when it comes to having trouble with the emotions when you see a text message response or you don’t get that text message response.
I think you’re going to struggle throughout this process because there… I guarantee you, you will go through this process whether you’re even trying to get over your ex or even trying to get your ex back. Something will not go according to plan. That’s just the way it works. And I think the only thing you can rely on is yourself.
And so, if you’re extremely disciplined and you remove distractions or distract yourself enough or become so busy, you don’t really have time to check your phone, you’re going to be in a good position.
Those typically, are the kind of people who do really great.
So, my best piece of advice, if you’re looking for a distraction, is to try to find something you’re just as passionate about as your ex and focus your energy on that because if you’re just as passionate about this hobby or this thing or this business, it’ll prevent you from looking at your phone and getting disappointed when they don’t respond to you like you want them to.
But let’s get back on topic here.
We talked about how you handle the emotions when you see a text response or when you don’t see a text response.
Is Your Ex Rolling His Eyes Thinking “She’s So Annoying” When You Text Him?
Let’s go into what he’s thinking. Is he rolling his eyes thinking, “Oh, she’s so annoying.
Why won’t she just go away?”
And ultimately when I look at my client’s situation, I don’t think that’s happening whatsoever.
The fact that it took him 73 hours to respond to the original text message or the second text message, tells me that he’s not thinking, “Why won’t she just go away?” Or, “Oh, she’s so annoying.”
To me, it says he’s thinking on, “Why would she send me this text message?”
So, he’s hyper analyzing everything and even trying to go through this pendulum swing of emotions on whether or not he should respond or not. And I think what’s interesting is when you’re looking at people or when you’re looking at exes, and I can only speak for myself, but I’m a really good litmus test for a lot of ex-boyfriends.
So, when I’m having these thoughts, when I’m rolling my eyes or they’re annoying or they’re not interesting enough or I want them to go away, usually I just won’t respond. But I’ve actually found that exes are sometimes a little bit different than me, in the fact that they have other types of behaviors.
So, what I’m going to do for you right now, is give you some of the three things that you need to keep an eye on if your ex is growing disinterested in the conversation with you.
Beware Of One Word Responses
So, let’s use my client’s original text message as an example.
The original text message was, “I have a problem and only really trust you on this one as it involves your area of expertise.”
His original response was,
“Okay, well what’s the question?”
If he just responded, “Okay,” usually not a good sign.
One word text messages are a sign of disinterest.
So, sometimes though, people freak out when I say this because there’ll be in a two hour long conversation with an ex and you’ll send a text message and he’ll say cool to it or something like that.
There’s a difference between a one word text response at the beginning of a conversation than in the middle of a conversation. So, timing of when this one word text message response occurs is important to keep in mind.
What we’re looking for is the beginning of conversations being one word.
So, you’re trying to start a rapport building type of a conversation, where you’re building up value and your ex is giving you nothing to work with.
Instead of saying, “Okay, well, what’s the question?” They’re saying, cool or okay. That’s the first thing I’d keep an eye on.
The second thing is more of a gut feeling. And this is what I like to call the being nice type of responses.
Beware Of The “Being Nice” Responses
So, have we ever been in a situation where we’re afraid of hurting our exes feelings so we just respond to them to be nice?
And usually the way you can determine whether or not this is happening is if you get into a conversation with someone and they seem responsive at first, but eventually they just trail and they’re dull. And ultimately a really great sign that they’re just being nice to respond is they take hours and hours and hours to respond to every single text message that you have.
And even the contents of the text message are vague, they’re not one word responses, but they’re just vague.
They offer no interest in what you’re doing whatsoever.
Ultimately, the best way to determine this is they’re just being nice, it’s a gut feeling type of a thing.
You need to keep an eye out for those because that’s a sign that your ex is growing disinterested in the conversation or they’re maybe thinking, “This person’s getting on my nerves.”
The third one is the most easiest one and the most frightening one for many people.
Beware If Your Ex Doesn’t Respond
And that’s if your ex doesn’t respond at all.
So, this is really hard, but I find that in most cases, probably above 80% of people do not have to worry about one word responses. It can happen once or twice, but usually at some point you have a conversation with your ex.
Generally speaking, when you’re looking at word responses, I don’t really think I need to explain this, but essentially it’s where you reach out with a really great text message and your ex does not respond to you at all. It’s a no response.
They don’t give you anything. Generally, there are reasons for why your ex will not respond to your text message. Number one, it is not intriguing whatsoever.
So, there’s not a good enough hook to hook them on the line, so to speak. But weirdly enough, I’m finding that more and more, it seems to be interest base. So, if you’re texting your ex about something that they’re not interested in, they’re usually not going to respond to that. So, if you can combine the two concepts of having a really killer hook that is about something they’re interested in, you have a really, really good text message.
And if you’re consistently sending those text messages and you’re not getting responses whatsoever, the third thing I’d take a look at is timing. When are you sending these text messages? And sometimes the craziest thing is 30 days might not be enough.
Maybe sometimes months might not be enough. It’s just the timing isn’t right for them to even be open to talking to you. And that’s sort of a perfect segue into the last thing I really want to talk about is, is your exit over you if they’re doing this no response or little response or taking forever to respond type thing? And are they obsessing over your responses as much as you are?
So, I think they’re obsessing… Okay. So, let’s talk about the obsessing over responses first. Your ex is probably obsessing over responses if you’re seeing something happening like the client example I’m using here, where it takes them 73 hours to respond. Whether you can tell they’re going back and forth on whether or not they should respond or not. That’s an indication that they’re obsessing over whether or not they should respond to you.
Is Your Ex Boyfriend Over You?
Now, with regards to if your ex is over you, that’s a really hard thing for me to determine because I don’t know your specific situation and it’s different for every single specific situation, but it’s been my experience that struggle and suffering changes minds like no other experience.
What do I mean by that?
Okay. I always laugh when people have opinions over things they never really experienced themselves before.
I’ll give you a personal example. Many of you don’t know this because it’s something I don’t like to talk about and something I’m actually still struggling with. But over the past year and a half, I have not been able to sit. I got…
Okay. So, I got something called a pilonidal cyst, which is basically the cyst that forms around your tailbone and it makes sitting an excruciating thing. Anyways, I got a surgery for it and the first surgeon improperly did the surgery.
He supposed to actually take it out and then leave it open so that it can heal from the inside out. He didn’t do that. He actually stitched it shut and put surgeon’s glue. And as a result, the wound got infected and no one caught it except me.
I was saying, “The pain’s worse than ever before,” but no one caught it. So, for months I was going around and the infection just kept getting worse and worse and worse to the point where I needed two extra surgeries after that to just clean out this infection and there’s almost always complications.
And the reason I’m talking about it now, is because it’s given me a lot of understanding for people who have chronic issues.
It’s something that I never really thought about before and something I always maybe was a little arrogant about. Like, “Oh, that will never happen to me.”
But I’m not afraid to admit that it’s been extremely one of the most difficult times of my entire life.
I’ve never not been… I’m always an active person, I like to play tennis, I like to run, I like to do active things outside. I have not been outside at all. A lot of people during the Coronavirus quarantine are freaking out because they can’t go outside and I just laugh because that’s been my entire life for the past year and a half and it’s still not over. I’m still healing and there could be another complication.
Who knows?
But my point is, you learn a lot about yourself and about what’s important to you when you go through difficult times in your life. And I always laugh to myself when women are really afraid of hurting their exes feelings.
And I try to explain to them that, “Him going through a difficult time, him being miserable without you is an essential part for him realizing that he’s not over you.” You want him to struggle.
Sometimes you even want him to go out and date and realize that the new girl isn’t as awesome as you are.
It’s important for him to experience pain and suffering and struggle for him to understand that he really misses you and that you were a stable, positive force on his life. Now, sometimes men go out and they have the exact opposite reaction.
They’ll struggle and realize, “You know what? I feel like I’m better off without her.” And that’s okay too. And the way I’m saying that is because usually if they come to that conclusion, it means that you guys were always on different wavelengths and you shouldn’t have been together in the first place.
But I think what makes the ex-boyfriend recovery program, everything that I’ve created, ex-boyfriend recovery so unique, is the fact that we’re authentic, but also we’re not afraid to tell people that, it’s okay if your ex struggles.
You want your ex to have a hard time without you, because that’s what will make the difference in the end.
But first, we always want to do this for anyone who’s new to this podcast/website.
One of the most asked questions we get, almost on a day to day basis is,
“Hey, do I even have a chance of getting my ex back or should I be getting over my ex or trying to get them back?”
Well, luckily we put together a special quiz where we basically answer this exact question for you.
It’s a quiz, it’s free. It will take you only two minutes to complete.
And I highly recommend for anyone who hasn’t taken the quiz yet, to take it. Because at a starting point, it will just tell you whether or not you should be moving on, or trying to get your ex back in your specific situation.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
But, I think before we started talking about that, we need to define what uncomfortable looks like. A lot of people don’t really understand what we mean when we’re saying, “Hey, your ex is acting uncomfortable.”
Ultimately, it means that they’re acting strange. They’re showing off. They’re really uneasy around you or they’re acting awkward.
Now, what is an example of this?
Well, so sometimes this is something that we see a lot when you go through a breakup. Then a few weeks later you’re out at the mall and you run into your ex at the mall and he’s acting completely odd. He’s showing off or he’s acting strange or whatever.
I think we’ve all been there.
And I can give you even a personal example from my life. And the reason I used the mall thing was because, when I went through my very first breakup, I was probably like 19 or 20 years old. So I was just awkward to begin with.
So anyways, I dated a girl for about a year. And then we went through a really bad breakup. I wasn’t talking to her, she wasn’t talking to me. And then one day, I was out at the mall with my best friend. We were just walking around, having a good time, probably looking to pick up chicks. And my friend, he nudges me. He says, “Chris, look over there. It’s your ex.”
And all of a sudden I clammed up.
I didn’t know what to do.
I was super nervous.
I didn’t know if I should go up to her and say hi.
So I just ignored her. I literally, walked past her. Didn’t say a word, didn’t even acknowledge her.
And I think ultimately, is because I felt super uncomfortable around her.
So, what I would like to do for you today is, help you understand why your ex may be acting uncomfortable around you. And it doesn’t always have to be an in person type of interaction where they’re acting uncomfortable.
It can also be over text messages. Sometimes you’ll notice they’re sending you text messages that are out of the norm or they’re not responding when they used to respond all the time. And this can help you understand why they’re acting that way.
The Top Five Reasons An Ex Will Act Uncomfortable Around You
Now, like I said at the beginning of this podcast episode, we’re going to be looking at the top five reasons that exes will be uncomfortable after a breakup.
So, what are those top five reasons?
Guilt Of The Breakup
Intimidated if You Are Too UG
Has Another Woman (Feels Wrong)
Doesn’t Want To Disappoint Friends Or Family
No Social Protocol For Breakups
Let’s dive in starting from the top.
Reason #1: Guilt Due To The Breakup
Well, the first reason, is guilt.
They have a lot of guilt wrapped up into the breakup.
And for this, I’m going to tell you another story. And this is a story that’s rather recent.
A few weeks ago, I was on the phone with my brother. And weirdly enough, him and I usually never talk about relationship stuff, but for whatever reason, he had just gotten back from a date that day, and he was like really, really falling for this girl.
Anyways, so it sort of bridged the gap between us because he knows what I do for a living. And I started asking him questions about, “Hey, what are some of the other girls that you’ve dated?” And he told me all these really interesting stories.
But one thing really stuck out in particular, and that’s the fact that, there was one girl who he really liked but ended up breaking up with her.
And I thought, “Oh this is perfect. I can actually ask him, what he was thinking and what he was feeling during this period of time.” And so what he said to me was that, he knew for about two weeks beforehand that he was going to break up with her. And I asked him, “But why did you wait that long? Why not just sort of rip the bandaid off? It’s easier for everyone. May be painful, but at least she’s not wasting her time in a relationship that you already know is doomed.”
And he said something fascinating.
He said, “I felt really guilty about the fact that I was going to break up with her. And I was also really worried or scared of hurting her feelings.”
They feel like they hurt you, and they feel like they’re in the wrong and they don’t like that conflict. Some people like conflict, but most people don’t like conflict. And so, an ex who’s acting uncomfortable, who they’re acting strange, they’re uneasy, they’re awkward around you, it’s oftentimes because they’re feeling guilty or they’re feeling like, “I hurt you and she must hate me.”
So that’s the first of the five reasons for why exes will act extremely uncomfortable after a breakup.
Reason #2: They Are Intimidated When You Are Too Ungettable
The second one, is a different type of situation.
That’s where they become intimidated, if you’re too ungettable.
And it’s essentially this idealized version of a woman that almost all men want, but no man can have, which makes them want her even more and they can chilly chase her, and she’s ungettable.
And, it’s a really, really good terminology I guess.
But what’s interesting is, a lot of women take the ungettable idea and they add to it. And it’s evolved into something I would have never even imagined. And even to prove that point, a few months ago, I ran a poll, in our Facebook group.
And ultimately what we were looking to do, was trying to understand, what are the different ways in which you can be termed ungettable? And I want to read to you. And I actually wrote this in a book, so give me a second. I’m going to actually need to pull the book here. But I want to read to you, what some of the terminology that people would come up with was.
So, here’s everything that an ungettable girl is.
She’s confident.
She loves herself.
She’s treated with respect.
She’s not ever a second choice.
She’s really great at setting goals and obtaining them.
Somehow the song can touch this plate in my mind.
Being confident in every choice that you make.
Living your best life. Being cooled in any situation.
Being positive no matter what life throws your way.
Being true to yourself.
Being other people’s… Actually I read that wrong. Blowing other people’s expectations of you out of the water.
Being the best version of yourself.
Being independent.
Upgrading your life in all areas.
Being happy and doing things for you.
Finding inner peace.
Being okay, doing things alone. Which is not an easy thing to do, by the way.
Not easily caught
Playing hard to get.
Finding joy in life no matter what every thought and action of mine or just celebrating the fact, that I am freaking amazing.
So let’s say you obtained this ungettable status. It is entirely possible, that when you obtain this ungettable status… It doesn’t happen overnight by any means. But it’s entirely possible that your ex sees how powerful and how attractive you have become, and they grow intimidated, and they don’t know what to do.
Reason #3: Your Ex Has Another Woman (And It Feels Wrong)
The third reason, an ex will act uncomfortable after a breakup, is when they have another woman.
They’ve moved on, and they know, it’s wrong and it will hurt you. And it feels like they’re going to be flaunting it in your face.
So this actually kind of goes back into that story I told of my brother about hurting that girl’s feelings. Well, it’s entirely possible for them to know that they moved on to this new person. And they don’t want to flaunt it in your face.
So they act extremely awkward.
Because they know, deep down, they did you wrong. And they feel wrong about the whole situation.
Again, most the times you’re going to find that a lot of the reasons that people act uncomfortable, after a breakup is because, they really don’t like conflict. So they do things to avoid conflict at any chance or any costs they can.
So there’s not really much to unpack there. It’s pretty obvious. If your ex has moved on to another woman, they’ll feel uncomfortable or act awkward around you or be little uneasy around you because, they know it’s wrong to flaunt the other woman in front of you.
Reason #4: They Don’t Want To Disappoint Their Friends Or Family
The fourth reason that exes will act uncomfortable after a breakup, is they don’t want to disappoint their friends or family.
I see this actually more often than you would think. It’s not the most prevalent situation, but it’s a lot more… It happens more often than you think. And that’s the situation where, an ex literally has introduced you to their friends and family.
And their friends and family absolutely love you.
Right?
But then they break up with you, and they catch a lot of flack from their friends and family.
“Hey, what happened to so-and-so? What happened?” And then he’s going to say something along the lines of, “Well, I broke up with her.”
And they’re going to say something along the lines of,
“How could you do that? She was perfect for you.”
Oftentimes I talk about this concept of the sphere of influence.
It’s basically the people that your ex surrounds himself with, whose opinions that he cares about.
Oftentimes, this is really strong family members, really strong friends, best friends.
If you have those people on your side, and they’re basically berating him for breaking up with you, it can make him feel really uncomfortable around you after the breakup.
Because, he knows that he disappointed friends and family. Again, this is another tie in to that conflict aspect.
Where they’re trying to avoid conflict and they know that they created conflict, with their actions, with their friends and family, with their sphere of influence. So that’s the fourth sort of big reason that an ex will feel uncomfortable, or act uncomfortable after a breakup.
Reason #5: There Is No Social Protocol For Breakups
The fifth one, is a new one.
And it’s something that I think every person can relate to. Because they know it’s true. And that’s the fact that there’s no social protocol for breakups.
We go to school and we’re almost taught how to do a lot of different things, but one of the things teachers never teach us is, how to handle a breakup with grace. Most of the time, I see people who handle breakups without any grace. They get angry. They get depressed.
They don’t really know what the social protocol is. They don’t know if it’s okay to see their ex after the breakup.
They don’t know whether it’s okay to talk about it. They don’t really know. And usually the people who know, have gone through so many breakups in their life that it’s almost become second nature on how they should respond to certain type of things.
And usually those are the kind of people, that you should stay away from. Because there’s a reason why they’re going through so many breakups.
They’re maybe not mature enough to handle a longterm relationship.
But overall, there’s really no social protocol for a breakup.
How do you act?
What do you do?
What do you say?
In fact, I think that’s the whole reason this podcast has taken off. Why we get almost 3000 listeners a day.
People want to know, “How do I handle a situation in this particular situation?” And that’s what this podcast is for. But what’s interesting, is that, how you handle a breakup if you’re trying to get an ex back, is different than how you handle a breakup if you’re not trying to get an ex back. So, there’s even more intricacies to these social customs that revolve around breakups.
Ultimately, this can create a lot of awkwardness or uncomfortableness around your ex because he doesn’t know what to do.
He doesn’t know what to say. And so he’s acting in a way that avoids that conflict. And that’s an important thing for you to also understand, to sometimes be patient and cut a guy a little bit of a break.
Give him a little bit of a break because he doesn’t know, and he thinks that it’s going to be really conflict heavy.
This is something for you to really… This is a podcast episode that, for those of you who are in the no contact rule, can really take to heart. Because, if you think about it, a lot of the times that your ex will act awkward to you when you try to get back in touch with them after the no contact rule, stems around this conflict thing. So it’s up to you to kind of dispel some of these things.
Now you don’t come out and say like, “Hey, don’t worry.
You moved on to another girl. I’m cool. Completely fine.” You don’t say things like that. But, you make it as nonconfrontational and as easy going, as possible. And I think that alone is enough to set your ex and make them calm. Because what’s really interesting is if you take an ex who’s extremely uncomfortable, they’re uneasy around you, they’re acting strange, they’re awkward, and you actually just get into a well-meaning conversation with them, you’ll start to notice they’ll start to return to their old selves.
And a lot of times… The best analogy I can think of. And it’s maybe not one that you guys can connect with. But, who knows, maybe. Is, if you ever felt the pressure of a sporting event, where you’re required to perform. Where like let’s say you’re like the best soccer player on your team, right?
And the whole team is relying on you. Well before you actually go into the soccer match, you’re extremely nervous. And you kind of like let it get to you a little bit. You start thinking about all the negative things that could happen.
But once you actually start playing soccer, the nerves kind of go away because you’re doing something physical. It’s a little bit like that. The uneasiness and the awkwardness and the uncomfortableness will go away, if you can get your ex into a conversation, where there’s no conflict. And you’re just having fun. I think that’s an important thing or an important lesson, for you to take home.
Today we’re going to be talking about five real life signs that your breakup may be temporary.
And when I say real life signs, I’m talking about real life people that we have worked with throughout the ex boyfriend recovery program that have gotten their exes back.
These are some of the interesting signs that we noticed that they exhibited or had in their specific situations to basically help them get back with their exes.
And what’s interesting is that as we look at these five signs, some of them are impossible for you to have, and some of them are based purely on luck.
But these are what we have found to be true and can maybe be a signal that your breakup is a temporary circumstance.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Well, before I actually start getting into the signs, the first thing that I do want to say, is that we took each one of these signs, we took inspiration from a success story in our private Facebook support group.
So, if you don’t know how that works, essentially we give people access when they purchase our program, our flagship program, the ex-boyfriend recovery program.
We give them access to this special private Facebook group where they get all sorts of little extra attention. They can integrate or communicate with other people going through breakups and similar situations to them.
I do Facebook Lives when my schedule permits, coach Anna does Facebook Lives when her schedule permits, and ultimately it’s all about helping individuals.
And what’s interesting is the more one on one attention people get, the better their results tend to be.
And we have a lot of really great success stories to draw from within the private Facebook group. And so, I thought it’d be a fun exercise to go through and look at some of the commonalities we are seeing in success stories. And what’s helping them basically get their ex back, and what are some of those signs that they need to look at.
So, let’s start with sign number one.
Sign #1: Sharing Children Or Working With Your Ex
Sign number one is something that we’ve noticed that gives people a certain amount of advantage, and that’s the fact that you share children with your ex.
And this is something that we’ve noticed and it does make sense if you think about it in a standard point of view.
If you share a child with your ex, then that means there’s something that will always connect the two of you basically forever.
So, we actually drew inspiration from one of our success stories in the private Facebook group.
And here’s exactly what she had to say.
“Hi everyone. I wanted to give you some hope as well as a warning. Here’s a brief yet still wordy summary. I originally joined ERP around August of 2017 and applied Chris’s teachings along with similar advice from other sources. I won’t divulge as I’m not going to market for someone else. I successfully got my ex back today. We’ve known each other for 23 years, and after a 10 month breakup involving another woman, he initially blamed me for the situation as I gotten fed up with the wishy washy BS, pushed him away and of course, he went running to her. So yes, it is possible to get your ex back in another woman’s scenario. It actually wasn’t that difficult.”
Now here is the relevant part that I want to highlight.
“I did the limited no contact as we share a 21 year old son and we work together. Boy did the other woman hate that.”
So that’s the relevant part.
Now, do we need to basically point at this person’s situation and to protect their identity?
I’m not going to tell you what her name is. But is it just the fact that her and her ex share this 21 year old son, that is the reason that she got him back?
Not necessarily.
Usually in my experience, there’s a confluence of factors that need to combine in order for you to successfully get an ex back.
But we cannot deny that the fact that she was working together with her ex, and also that she shared a 21 year old son together, connects the two of them and often gives them an instant reason to talk.
The other really interesting thing, is the fact that there’s another woman involved in this particular scenario.
The other woman being involved in the scenario often will get irked by the fact that, Oh my God, he has a child with someone else. And especially women place a little bit more emphasis on the fact that, you’re sharing children with someone else, that it can intimidate them a little bit and can cause them to implode for me.
So, here’s more that she had to say about her situation.
I won’t get too wordy because of course we need to move on and talk more, but here’s what she had to say.
“Now it completely works to my advantage. What also helped, well, after two months of me barely acknowledging his existence, when we did start occasionally eating lunch together, he claimed that he was completely honest with her about our long relationship and that she knew everything. This was a huge win for me because even if he told her one fourth of our history and truth, it was more than enough to scare the crap out of her.”
Remember what I said? This is like a huge win or maybe even a knowledge moment, for people who are trying to get an ex back and the ex has moved on to another woman. The other woman can be extremely intimidated and will 100% look up to see what you look like, and see what you’re posting on social media. And they almost take everything that you’re doing to the max, if that makes any sense. So, what we think here, is that there’s two factors that really helped this particular woman get her ex back. The fact that she shared this long history and had a 21 year old son with the ex, and the fact that they work together, this just caused the other woman to implode.
So, that’s the first sign that the breakup may be temporary. The circumstances of you maybe even working with your ex, or even sharing a child with your ex, can actually help you in a weird way.
Sign #2: Your Ex Admires You From Afar
Okay, let’s move on to the next sign that your ex or your breakup may be temporary. And that’s the fact that your ex will begin to admire you from afar. So, I’m going to be citing just a little snippet of a huge success story that one of our people had in the group, and then riffing a little bit off of that. So this person got her ex back, and she was giving a long write up of how she got her ex back. And she basically said, she failed no contact a bunch of times. She tried to go into no contact the second time and she thinks that there was a turning point for her.
And she says,
“During my second no contact, I did a number of things differently that I believed helped me make progress in the process, which ultimately led to my success. Number one, I really committed myself to therapy, did all of the homework my therapist assigned to me, spoke with her in depth at least once a week. And number two, and this is the one I want to highlight, I aggressively pursued new job opportunities and freelance clients, which better aligned me with two of his top core values. Ambition and creativity.”
So, why am I highlighting this?
Well, there’s a number of reasons.
But the first reason ultimately I think is, one of the big ways that we try to approach every breakup situation is we try to… As we try to help women stop putting men on pedestals. Because one of the worst things that you can do after breakup is give your ex this god’s status, where you’re literally like looking at him and romanticizing the past and everything like that.
When ultimately the whole goal is to literally get them to admire you from afar. Where you’re in the middle of a no contact rule, you’re doing things that make them a little jealous, or make them wish that they were with you. And that seems to be what this woman did to actually help create that confluence of events that will help her get her ex back. So she obviously said she committed herself to therapy.
That’s great. But what’s interesting is she actually pursued new job opportunities and freelance clients, which better aligned her with two of his top core values. So, he really values ambition and creativity, and so that she did things that hit home on those points, so that he’s looking from afar and saying, wow, I had her pegged wrong. She’s a lot more ambitious and creative than I would have ever imagined.
And so what I think is important to take, the important lesson to take from this is, is when you look at your ex, what are the values that he is attracted to? And when you’re in the middle of a no contact rule, and you’re doing social media game and different things after the breakup, you need to be doing things that will make him admire and regret his decision. And it seems like this woman did just that.
Let’s switch gears and talk about the third reason that your breakup may be temporary.
Sign #3: Your Ex Gets Riled Up By A No Contact Rule
So this is like the third sign, and that’s the fact that your ex will get riled up by a no contact rule. Okay, so there’s a lot going on here, but I’m going to actually draw inspiration from a very, very long write up one of our Facebook members did in our private Facebook group, where she talks about her success story.
And so what’s interesting is I’m going to take very specific snippets from her success story.
But if you want to read the whole snippet of the success story, I actually highly recommend you actually come to our website, and actually find this particular podcast on our podcast page.
And read this show notes where I actually literally word for word show you what these success stories look like, and I screenshot them and everything like that. So, here is what she had to say about the no contact rule.
“No contact is literally, she says that in all caps, the only part of the program that I followed because it’s the first step, and it’s slowly drove my ex crazy and he’s stubborn as F. I joined CrossFit and began working out. I went out, made new friends, through work colleagues had decided to go on more spontaneous trips, bought a new car, wrote and released a new book, started cool new projects, et cetera. Life was good
The point of this long recap is that complete your no contact. But not because you are waiting around for him to take you back into his life. But you can create your own life and be your own happiness. Please prioritize your mental health over any boy who doesn’t even know what he wants. You will thank yourself in a few weeks. You never know what amazing people and things that you open yourself to. And maybe you’ll realize you didn’t need him back as much as you think you did.”
So, what’s important here?
Well, there’s two main points that I want you to take from this write up. And obviously, I just basically gave you the cliff notes version of the actual real writeup. But here’s the two new points.
Number one is, she did the no contact rule and by her own words, it slowly drove her ex crazy.
He’s reaching out to her. She’s doing everything right too, notice how she went out more. She began working out more. She made new friends. She decided to go on spontaneous trips. She bought a new car, released a new book.
That even ties into the second thing, doing things that make an ex admire you from afar. Because they can’t directly talk to you, because of the no contact rule. But the other thing she really reiterates at the end here, is that the no contact rule isn’t meant to help make your ex miss you totally.
That is one of the symptoms of doing a no contact rule, but ultimately what you’re trying to use the no contact rule, is so that you can create your own life, and be your own happiness, and prioritize your mental health. And ultimately, I always view the no contact rule is only successful if you’re doing those things.
Because so often we get clients that come in, they hear about the no contact rule, they’re like, Oh, sold, I’m doing it. They do it, but they miss the entire point. The entire point is to take the focus off of your ex and put it on to you, which is way more important in the end.
So, the third sign we’re looking up here, is your ex getting super riled up by the no contact rule. But I’ll even caveat there and say, it’s also important that you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing during the no contact rule, and that’s putting the focus on you.
Okay, let’s move on to sign number four. And without a doubt this is the sign I hate the most. So, what is the sign that your breakup is temporary, that I personally hate the most?
Sign #4: Timing And Luck
There’s no doubt that timing plays a gigantic factor in an ex wanting to take you back. Think of it like this. There’s two points of time that are essentially awful to try to get your ex back in. The first point is immediately after they break up with you, because the decision at that point for them seems final and they just want to move on, and you pestering them isn’t going to help.
And the second point of time that’s basically awful to try to get an ex back in, is like 10 years down the road after they’ve lost all feelings for you. So, ultimately there’s an element of timing that you always have to look at. And also there’s an element of luck.
And I hate admitting this, but it’s something that I think I’ll be doing you a dis-service if I don’t admit in the fact that, luck is without a doubt one of the things that you will need to be successful here.
Because sometimes you’re just lucky in the fact that the timing is right. And I actually want to a cite from success story where I actually view that as being the case. So, she has a long, huge writeup here, but there’s ultimately just one paragraph that I want to take care and dissect.
“We ended up meeting the next day. He told me he wanted to move forward, said he was thinking of me, and I had messaged him at the perfect time. And it was almost like all the stars aligned. We’re officially back together. Our parents both know and we’re both happy.”
So what’s interesting is by this ex’s own admission, she had messaged him at the perfect time and the stars had perfectly aligned. And honestly it can be difficult. Because if you actually look through more of her writeup, she even says something like she did the 45 day no contact rule, but he did not reach out to her once.
Then the 45 days turned into 137 days where there was no contact in between. You can’t look at a situation like that, and you can’t really advise anyone in a situation like that, without sometimes luck being involved and the timing being right.
So, if you’ve ever been wondering if timing matters, it absolutely does. In fact, this is why we actually believe the no contact rule is one of the most effective ways of getting an ex back, if that’s the route you want to go. And that’s because it helps the timing a little bit.
And sometimes the timing, a 30 day rule, or 21 day rule, or 45 day rule, like in this person’s success story isn’t even enough.
Sometimes it takes 137 days for the timing to be right. But that’s why I think it’s really important for you to always switch your mentality from the short game to the long game. Because if you’re playing and looking at this like a marathon, you don’t get so upset when things don’t go your way. And you are almost guaranteed to have things not go your way at some point throughout this process.
And that’s a normal part. Just to understand that sometimes the timing needs to be right, and sometimes you need to just be lucky, and sometimes luck is one of the best things you can have.
But I’ll tell you what, people tend to get luckier the more they follow our program. So, I think there’s a correlation between being a little bit lucky and also following our program, just saying.
Let’s move on to the fifth and final reason or sign that your ex or your breakup with your ex may be temporary.
This is an underrated factor and it’s something that I do talk about in some of my reading materials, and program, and everything like that. But I don’t give it the attention it deserves that
I’m about to give it right here.
So, if you actually go to our website, ex boyfriend recovery, find the show notes of this particular episode on our podcast page, you’ll notice that I’m actually attaching an image of a question that was posed in our private Facebook group. And this is a just a woman who’s having a really, really tough time. She’s wanting at least something, some type of hope to hold onto. So, she’s basically asking,
“Has anyone had any success stories with an ex if they didn’t reach out at all during the no contact rule? I’m going into my second week and I feel like I won’t hear anything because my ex is really stubborn.”
And so after some time she got a response from one of our members who actually successfully got her ex back. And she said,
“Actually, yeah, mine did not reach out at all. And then he answered right away when I reached out to him first. Also, I did a few more no contacts where he would reach out later on. And now, two years later, he has come back around full swing and wants to be with me. Trust the process.”
So what’s the important thing to remember here? Well, if you’ve listened to any of my recent YouTube videos, you’ve listened to any of my recent Facebook Lives in the Facebook group, or you’ve listened or read any of my podcast episodes or articles, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of this phrase. “It doesn’t matter who reaches out first. What matters is who ends the conversation first.” And I think that’s what we’re seeing here. A lot of people obsess the fact that, “Hey, my ex isn’t reaching out during the no contact rule. Does that mean the no contact rule is failing?” No, not necessarily.
What matters more is the fact that, when you do have a conversation with your ex, he’s responding quickly, he’s responding in an engaged way, and you’re ending the conversations first. Think of those as like the Holy Trinity to texting. So, you’re looking for, engaged responses, quick responses, and a way for you to exit the conversation after you’ve noticed that the conversation has become enjoyable for him. And what happens is, if you can juggle these three trinity type factors, you’ll notice that the snowball effect occurs, where all of a sudden he’ll start reaching out to you first.
You always have to earn that right, I noticed after breakups. But ultimately the thing that we’re looking for here is quick responses. Notice how this person who got her ex back said, “Yeah, mine did not reach out at all. And then he answered right away when I reached out to him.” So, some exes, especially during a no contact rule, will literally sit on the sidelines waiting for you to reach out first. But they’re so stubborn, they say to themselves, I am not going to reach out to her first. She’s going to have to break down to me first. And that happens way more… That’s happening in success stories. So just understand that’s normal part of breakup behavior. And as long as you understand it’s normal, you can almost use it to your advantage.
We’re going to hear from a listener named Lauren who’s going through a really, really difficult situation where this is exactly happening to her.
Before we hear Lauren’s situation, the first thing I want to say is that if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re determining whether or not you should be trying to get your ex back or simply moving along from your ex, the best thing you can do for yourself is to actually take our Ex Recovery Chances Quiz.
Literally, the quiz will be right there for you to take, and just take it. It will take two minutes and your answers will be right there for you. You can sort of get an idea of where you’re at. With the personal plug out of the way, let’s hear from Lauren.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
She Wonders Why Her Ex Suddenly Went Cold On Her After Things Were Going So Well
“Hi Chris. My name is Lauren. I’m going to try to summarize everything really fast and then ask my question. My ex and I dated for 10 months. We’re both 20. We were both each other’s first serious relationship. We’re living in different states for the semester, across the country, doing internships.
He broke up with me at the beginning of the semester. I don’t think it was because of long distance because I was pretty clingy. I did no contact for 22 days. It went really well. When I reached back out to him, went really well. I ended up doing a phone call and hanging up in the middle of it. He was like, “Oh, text me tomorrow.”
Then he ended up texting me the next day. Everything went really well until I pushed him to FaceTime with me and kind of told him that I missed him. I could tell that that made him uncomfortable. I went into no contact again. I saw on your site that that might not be as effective now. We did text a little the other day. He ended up ending it. Then today he reached back out to me. I don’t know. Should I just wait until next semester? Should I try to be friends for now? Because I know he’s lonely at his internship and he hasn’t made a lot of friends. I don’t really know what to do. Thanks.”
A Recap Of Laurens Situation
Lauren is in a real interesting situation.
It looks like her ex broke up with her after 10 months of dating.
They are in that long-distance relationship situation.
He’s the one who broke up with her.
She thinks it’s not because of the long distance but because she’s been clingy.
They started talking again after she attempted a no contact rule.
She lasted 21… 22 days, rather.
It looks like things were going really well, but she was going a little too fast, too soon.
What I’d like to do today is talk to you guys, and Lauren personally, about why exes will go cold on you.
There’s four really common reasons we see that happening.
Also, what to do if they go cold on you, assuming that you want them back. Or, even if you don’t want them back, what should you do?
How should you approach that situation?
The Four Reasons Exes Suddenly Go Cold
First things first, let’s look at the many reasons an ex will go cold on you.
There are really primarily four reasons that we have seen exes go cold.
We think or rather, I think, Lauren fell into the trap of reason number one.
Reason #1 Going Too Fast Too Soon
Reason number one is going too fast, too soon.
This is a really common thing that we see after the no contact rule.
The no contact rule stipulates that you ignore your ex. Lauren lasted 22 days. Probably she should have lasted 30 days, but 22 days is more than 21 days, which I assume is about three weeks.
What happens in that three-week time period where you’re not talking to your ex is you’re constantly thinking about them. What happens when you actually do start talking to them again, you want to rush the process.
This is a process that doesn’t do well when you rush it.
I’m going to talk about that in a little bit, but one of the primary reasons that going too fast, too soon doesn’t work is because it’s almost like you’re trying to force your ex into doing what you want them to do without letting them make their own decision or come to their own realizations. You’re kind of forcing them down the path.
That’s not the way to approach this.
Usually, we don’t look at this as a sprint. We look at this as a marathon. Ironically, the people who look at this like a sprint usually fail. The people who look at this like a marathon usually have a lot more success. The first reason that an ex will suddenly go cold on you after they seem to be kind of hot with you at the beginning is you’re going too fast, too soon.
Reason #2: Your Ex Found A New Alternative
The second reason is a little bit more sinister. The second reason is that they found a new alternative.
I’ve long been a proponent of the interdependence theory, and that posits that human beings will make commitment decisions based on costs and benefits. Essentially, they make a pros and cons list in their head, and they compare you against other suitors in this pros and cons list.
The pros and cons list is usually made up of three primary factors: how invested they are in the relationship with you, how many alternatives out there that they feel are suitable, and how satisfied they felt in the relationship with you.
You’re almost on a grading scale throughout your entire relationship where they have these internal ways of tagging you like, “Hey, she was an 8 out of 10 with satisfaction, but I feel like there’s someone else out there better than me.”
What we find is a reason that an ex can go cold on you is that they’re finding a new alternative. Now oftentimes, you’d be so surprised about how often new alternatives turns out to be kind of more grass-is-greener situations where they’re like, “Oh, I thought this person would be better,” and then they’re not better.
We cannot deny the fact that sometimes, a reason that an ex will go cold on you is because they do find that new alternatives. That’s reason number two.
Reason #3: Your Ex Thinks They Have You
Reason number three is something that I actually see a lot more of than even going too fast, too soon and finding a new alternative.
Reason number three is thinking that they have you. There’s no more challenge involved.
Playing hard to get works. I hate to break it to you, but it does.
One of the reasons it works is because men kind of like the chase. When the chase isn’t there anymore, when they feel like they have you, all of you… This is a really difficult thing for women who are trying to get their exes back because oftentimes, guess what? They’ve already had you. They know what that’s like.
You need to bring something new to the table, a new facet of yourself, a new personality aspect of yourself that you haven’t shown them before.
Maybe it’s being a little bit more disciplined in how you’re ending conversations, and ending conversations at the high point, and things of that nature. The moment that an ex thinks that they have you, there’s no more challenge involved.
The sort of excitement of trying to date you becomes a little dull. It’s tough because they’ve already dated you, so you almost have that working against you constantly. It’s difficult when they already feel like they know everything about you.
The thing I usually tell my clients is, “Don’t try to seek to reinforce some of the normal type of dating behaviors that you enjoy. Try to enforce the good aspects, of course, but also try to bring something new to the table that they aren’t realizing.”
I’m actually going to talk about this a little bit later when I talk about what you can do when an ex goes cold on you.
Reason #4: Overemotional Texting
We still have one reason for why an ex will go cold on you, and that is overemotional texting. Now I also have a really fun acronym for this, and this is called gnatting. G-N-A-T… Going nuts at texting.
We have a tendency when we’re extremely emotional after a breakup to just go nuts, and want responses, and want closure, and get angry when we don’t get immediate responses. Sometimes when an ex is engaging with you, you can be a little too overemotional, a little too overtaxing with texting.
It becomes a little bit of a burden and a little bit of an annoyance on their part.
They’re like, “Ah. Every time I talk to this girl, she’s always bringing this up.” Or, “Every time I talk to this girl, she’s so high-strung.”
Those aren’t attractive behaviors for men when they’re making decisions, whether or not they should get back with you.
Now, Lauren, I’m not saying you did any of this. I’m just showing you. I think one thing that we can agree on is you went too fast, too soon. That’s the one sort of reason I think your ex is starting to go cold on you. It’s freaking him out a little bit.
For people like you, Lauren, who are in a situation where an ex is kind of playing the mixed signals, hot and cold type thing, and they’re in the cold aspect, what can you do to heat them up?
Okay. This is great. I’m going to use a cooking analogy. First time I’ve ever done this on the Ex Boyfriend Recovery Podcast, but here we go. I’m going to give it a try. You freeze something in the freezer. You decide it’s time to cook that bad boy up. Let’s say it’s meat or something. After all, men are nothing more than pieces of meat, right? You decided you’re going to try to cook this frozen thing. What is the way you would thaw that bad boy out?
Would you leave it outside and wait for it to melt? Or, would you slowly heat it up? Or, would you stick it in the microwave and heat it up as fast as possible? What do you think is the way that would make that food taste the best? Well, I think probably the best way is to slowly heat it up. It’s a slow burn. That’s how you need to look at your situations with your ex.
The Importance Of The Slow Burn Strategy
Also, I do acknowledge that was an absolutely atrocious analogy. Sometimes in my head when I think this stuff up, I’m like, “Oh that sounds really cool. That’s a new way of putting things. Maybe a few light bulbs will go off for the listeners here.” Then when I say it, it just didn’t work. I think you got the point I’m trying to make here.
When you’re trying to get an ex back or you’re trying to deal with a situation like this, “It’s almost always better to look at your overall sort of approach as a slow-burn strategy. In fact, your strategy, when it comes to getting him back, needs to happen so gradually that they don’t even notice that it’s happening to them.
This requires a lot of patience on your part. This is why the going too fast, too soon doesn’t really work so well.
The analogy I often give when it comes to texting is a lot of people are like, “Hey, how many text messages should I send? How many text messages is right for my situation?” My response to them lately has been, “I don’t know. It depends.”
I teach them about my tide theory. If you’ve ever been walking on the beach in the morning, the tide, the way the waves come out on the beach are at a certain level. If you stay in the same spot on the beach for 24 hours, you’ll notice that that level will change.
It will get closer, and closer, and closer to wherever you have your towel laid out, for example. Do you notice this happening in one fell swoop? Is it like, hey, you close your eyes and next thing you know, there’s water that’s ruining your belongings? No. It’s such a gradual process. You don’t even see it happening. That’s how you need to be approaching getting your ex back.
Don’t look at this as a sprint. Like I said, look at this like a marathon. What are you supposed to do? Well, I can’t help but notice, Lauren. In your situation, you did a 22-day no contact rule and then you went really too fast, too soon. One thing that I think is lost on a lot of people is some of the aspects that they’re supposed to be accomplishing during the no contact rule. The no contact rule… Most people look at it like, is this a way to play hard to get and get your ex to want you? That’s actually one of the worst ways to approach the no contact rule. I’m just going to say that right now. One of the best ways to approach the no contact rule is understanding, yes, this will do that. This can help you. You make an ex miss you.
The Ungettable Mindset
What you use with that time apart from your ex, how you reshape your life, how you add that new aspect of yourself that intrigues him is almost as important as ignoring your ex on purpose. I’ve talked a lot about this in a book I was writing called Ungettable. I was talking about… What is an ungettable girl? Because one thing I always talk about during the no contact rule is you need to seek to grab this ungettable mindset.
You need to feel ungettable. What’s really fascinating is when I went to our private Facebook group for everyone who has access to the Ex Boyfriend Recovery Program, I surveyed the women there to see, what does ungettable mean to you? Here were some of their answers. I’m actually going to pull it up here. It’s real fascinating because all of them are kind of about the same thing.
Anyways, here’s what women had to say being ungettable looked like:
being confident
loving yourself
carrying a big stick and scaring men away
being treated with respect
not being a second choice
setting goals and obtaining them
Somehow the song can’t touch this played in my mind.
Being confident in the choices you make
living your best life
being cool in any situation
being positive
no matter what life throws your way
being true to yourself
blowing other people’s expectations of you out of the water
Being the best version of yourself
being independent
upgrading your life in all areas
being happy and doing things for you not for him
finding inner peace, being okay doing things alone
not easily caught
playing hard to get
finding joy in life no matter what
every thought and action of mine, or just celebrating the fact that I am freaking amazing.
Why did I just do that exercise? Because the things, those adjectives I just described, becoming ungettable, are the things that you need to be trying to do during the no contact rule. The two I really want to point out here is blowing other people’s expectations of you out of the water and having a positive outlook no matter what life throws your way. Let’s start with the first one: blowing other people’s expectations of you out of the water.
I’ve said multiple times that when you reinsert yourself and try to get your ex back, you need to present this new aspect of yourself that is like, “Oh, I didn’t know that about her. Maybe I had her pegged wrong.” People, your ex especially, will have certain expectations of you, but if you could find a way to add a new facet, you can find a way to add a new version of what you can bring to the table, it will intrigue your ex.
Usually, the best way to do this is to get other people to notice you. This is why I always talk about social media and why it’s so important. If you’re doing things to appear ungettable or trying to achieve that ungettable mindset, you’re not only going to just sort of interest your ex, but you’re going to interest all sorts of other men out there. The more men that finds you intriguing and interesting, makes fear of loss work when it comes to making a commitment decision. The second thing I think is having a positive outlook no matter what life throws your way.
Success Is Not Linear
I was in the Facebook group yesterday trying to answer a few people’s comments. It was really interesting.
There was a woman in there who was really struggling with the day-to-day process of going through a no contact rule and obsessing about what her ex is saying, and doing, and everything like that. I told her. I said, “A lot of people have this misconception that success is linear, but that’s not how success looks like.” Oftentimes, success is taking three steps forward, four steps back, two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, two steps back, five steps forward, two steps back. You get the picture. A lot of times, it’s not just, hey, I’m going to just keep walking forward. It’s also understanding there are going to be setbacks along the way. I think if you can have a positive outlook no matter what setbacks get thrown your way, it does a real great job for your overall mentality, your outlook, and also just, you’ll do really well in life.
One of my favorite quotes is, “This too shall pass,” because no matter what, it’s applicable to almost everything. The good times won’t last forever, and the bad times won’t last forever. This too shall pass. The final thing I think I want to leave you with, Lauren, is a quote from the Way of the Samurai. If you don’t know, I’m kind of a nerd. I like philosophy. I love the Way of the Samurai because I think the samurais really had life pegged. Samurais would live their life in a way where they’re achieving or trying to achieve total perfection with the knowledge that total perfection is impossible. What’s important is not the fact that you achieve perfection, but the fact that you strive to achieve perfection every day. I think we are only living full, fulfilled lives if we’re constantly exhausting ourselves at the end of the day and maxing out our potential.
Here’s the quote I want to leave you with, “One should spend their whole lifetime diligently learning as much as they can. In this way, you will become a more developed and fully realized human being with each passing day. The goal of total perfection has no end.” I think what I want to say about this and how it relates to you, Lauren, is you should seek to achieve this ungettable mindset, this ungettable status, not for your ex or to get next boyfriend back, but because it’s you achieving your maximum potential. Just understand that a symptom of becoming ungettable is that your ex will find you more intriguing and more interesting. That goes for everyone here. You should always be seeking to better yourself, no matter what. You always should be seeking to take a step back, looking at your situation, and say, “How can I do better?” Even if it’s as perfect as it gets, never be satisfied. Always keep moving forward.
What It Means When Your Ex Responds So Quickly
Mar 30, 2020
Today we’re going to be talking about why your ex responds to your texts immediately.
It’s interesting, most of the time when I’m dealing with clients, the number one problem that they have isn’t in the fact that their ex is responding to their text messages, it’s the opposite.
Their exes aren’t responding to their text messages.
But today we’re going to hear from a woman named Ella who basically is in the situation where her ex has responded to her but she doesn’t really understand why or some of the mechanisms behind why he responded to her.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Ella Asks: Why Is My Ex Responding So Quickly To Me?
Hey, Chris. So it’s been two weeks since my boyfriend and I broke up. We’ve been together for a year and the breakup was a mess. I actually slapped him in the face. I felt bad about it so I apologized by sending him a somewhat long text message, which basically sounded like a closure letter.
I told him I was sorry for what I did that night, that I understand now why he was confused about his feelings for me, and that I have accepted the breakup, that I’m doing well now with family, friends, and work, and I hope that he is too. I ended it by saying not to give up on himself and always take care of himself, and I wished him luck.
So I sent this to him. I know, I’m sorry I broke the no contact rule, but it’s at my own peril anyway. And then he replied with three messages consecutively. First, “Hey, I just woke up and read this.” Second, “I forgive you for that night.” And the last message was, “You know me well enough to know I don’t hold grudges, right?” With a question mark.
I haven’t replied to him and I have no immediate plans to. I want to finish the no contact rule and then follow your texting strategy, send two texts, Sunday one, and another two on day two, and so on. I still want to have another try with this guy, but not with how he is at the moment. I just want to know why did he reply so quickly but so briefly. He literally just focused on the slap and ignored the rest of the letter. And his last message was a question. Is expecting me to reply to him? I’d really appreciate some insight-
A Recap Of Ella’s Situation
So it looks like Ella got cut off there a bit at the end, but we got the gist of her situation. So what I like to do in typically these type of podcasts is I like to recap the person’s voicemail so that I’m on the same page and then from there just organically talk about what I think about her situation.
So from what I understand, Ella went through a pretty rough breakup.
In fact, she actually slapped him when he broke up with her, which is kind of mean but also kind of funny at the same time.
Maybe I’m wrong there.
But, she immediately apologizes to him and she enters into a no contact rule.
But then she does what I hate the most and breaks the no contact rule by sending this really long text, which is kind of looked at as an apology but also at the same time is like this closure text messages, or text message rather.
So she’s wondering why he replied so quickly and so briefly. He only focused on one aspect of her apology text.
And if he’s expecting her to reply to him.
The Red Flags To Watch Out For In This Situation
So really, we’re going to be talking today about why your ex responds to your texts immediately.
But what I’d like to talk about first has to do with Ella. I think Ella actually has a lot of work to do because there’s a couple things that she said that struck me as a little bit of red flags.
Now, what are red flags? Well, red flags are things that will prevent her from not only getting him back but also prevent her from having a successful relationship.
The fact that she was moved to physical violence during the breakup is a bit alarming. It also says something about her emotional state at the time. So it seems like when she gets highly emotional she can act out physically.
And this is not something that really is conducive to a great relationship, but it’s great that she recognizes that it was a wrong thing to do and she apologized for it. It is great. But I would actually have preferred her to apologize first before she went into a no contact rule.
She actually did it kind of backwards.
She actually went into a no contact rule and then broke the no contact rule to apologize probably after sitting and festering a bit.
You Are Probably Not The Exception To The No Contact Rule
But ultimately, what’s really, really interesting I find is when we’re dealing with clients who are sitting there and they’re thinking they’re the exception to the rule, to the no contact.
But perhaps the most ironic part about the no contact rule is that there’s almost no exceptions.
So Ella has this need to break the no contact rule and think that there won’t be consequences. And I want to take this as a lesson to maybe not only teach her but anyone who’s listening and thinking about breaking the no contact rule.
What we found from a pure statistic-driven sort of study is people who break the no contact rule consistently this easily during their first no contact, maybe just this early, have a really hard time of sticking with the no contact rule for maybe the second attempt, or the third attempt, or the fourth attempt.
What alarms me about Ella’s situation is the fact that she’s just basically … She even admits it’s at her own peril, but she admits that she’s not going to try the no contact rule again.
She’s just going to go forward. But, it’s essential to the overall process for you to actually fully complete a no contact rule, even if you’re in a situation where you’re forced to do a limited no contact rule or a indefinite no contact rule. You still want to sort of serve your time, so to speak, because that time not only serves you well but it also serves your ex well.
And sometimes getting back in touch too soon can have the opposite effect of what you’re trying to achieve, and that’s getting your ex back.
That’s sort of looks like what Ella wants to do.
So Ella, even though she recognizes that it’s a mistake, she sort of plows forward. It’s a mistake, Ella. I just want to tell you right off the bat. I can’t tell you how oftentimes people in our private Facebook group break the no contact rule and think that there’s no consequences, but there is. Usually, the consequences come in the form of when you actually start having a conversation because you haven’t done any soul searching. They haven’t done any soul searching. So when you’re actually communicating with them, it’s almost too soon to be having any kind of talks.
Also, your other mistake, I think, Ella, is the fact that you got way too emotional way too soon. You sent this apology text, but it’s not really an apology text. It’s more of a closure text, which is extremely emotional. That’s not going to really end up well for you. But, why?
Why Will An Ex Respond To Your Text Messages Immediately?
Well, I think first we should answer the original problem or the original question, and that is why does my ex respond to my texts immediately.
Like I said, most people have the opposite problem. They can’t get their exes to respond to their texts at all. So just be thankful that you’re in that situation where you have an ex that wants to respond to you. But, why?
Well, in my mind there are two reasons why exes will respond to text messages immediately, especially if they’re happening a little too soon.
Your Ex Is Thinking About You A Lot
She Reached Out With A Highly Emotional Topic
Let’s talk about both reasons now.
Your Ex Is Thinking About You A Lot
The first one is that they’re thinking about you a lot. So I’m not really sure how to expand on that other than the fact that you go through this breakup.
Your ex is obviously upset about the whole situation, but they can’t stop thinking about you.
Sometimes when you implement a no contact rule, like Ella has attempted … She attempted the no contact rule but broke it.
I don’t know how long she was in the no contact rule for. She didn’t specify. But let’s just assume she’s been in it for a week. So a week has gone by. She hasn’t reached out to him. He hasn’t reached out to her. And maybe there’s kind of like this war of attrition going on. Well, I’m not going to reach out to her until she reaches out to me first.
And she’s thinking, “Well, I’m really upset. I want to talk about the breakup.” But the interesting thing is him. From his perspective, he’s thinking about her. Even if it’s I’m not going to reach out to her first, he’s thinking about her. So then when she breaks down, reaches out to him, which is what exactly happened here, he’s like, “Okay, okay. I could talk to her.” He gets really excited, right? That is probably what’s going on here.
He looks at like, oh, point for me. And if you don’t think men do this, if you think we’re all mature, I’m sorry to break it to you, but we’re not, especially when it comes to emotional topics and relationships. We are so immature it is almost laughable. But the same can be said for women from what we’ve found working with men who are trying to get their exes back.
So maybe it’s not accurate to say men or woman, but human beings can be extremely immature when it comes to relationships. And granted, breakups often attract immature relationships because usually there’s a reason that relationship failed, and usually that has to do with one member’s immaturity. And ladies, it’s usually not you. So that’s the first reason I think most exes will respond to your texts immediately. They’re thinking about you a lot.
She Reached Out With A Highly Emotional Topic
The second reason is if you do what Ella did and you reach out with an emotionally charged topic very, very quickly after the breakup. What do I mean by that? So let’s look at Ella’s situation. She slapped him, which is not okay by any means. Thinking about it is a little funny. I’m allowed to say that. But it’s not okay.
It’s not something that you want to do. She recognizes that that is not an okay way to go about your situation. But it makes for a one heck, one heck of an emotionally charged topic.
So what’s interesting is she sends this closure/apology text message to him where she mentions, “I am sorry for slapping you. I am really sorry. That is not the way a woman should treat a man. I’m sorry.” It is a highly emotional topic. He’s thinking about her a lot. He’s maybe even thinking about the fact that this is the first time in my life I’ve ever been slapped by a woman. So he wants to respond.
I think the important thing to remember with the emotionally charged topic is that it has to do with recency. There is a recency bias. If the breakup just happened and then three, four, five, even a week later, three, four, five days in or a week later, you reach out to your ex with a closure/apology texts, which is a mistake … And I actually have done a YouTube video and written an article about this.
Go check that out if you haven’t. Your ex is going to want to respond. So the more recent or the closer you are to this emotionally charged topic like a breakup, the more likely they are to respond.
But here’s the thing. When we’re looking at responses, we don’t really care if … Sorry. I’m saying that wrong. Boy, I just sort of blanked out there. What we do care about really more than anything is the type of response that you’re getting.
You’re looking for a neutral to positive responses.
And really, if you were to chart these on a spectrum, the best you could get is a positive response.
The second best is a neutral response.
The third best is a negative response, because a negative response is … It’s kind of like credit. Having bad credit is better than having no credit.
Well, as you could guess, no response is the worst thing you can get, indifference, being ghosted. Horrible. We don’t want that.
But what ends up happening typically when you enter into a conversation with your ex and he responds to this emotionally charged topic or text message that you send very recently after this emotional time, the responses maybe start out cordial, neutral, but quickly deteriorate to negative and eventually to no response.
We don’t want that to happen. That is not a recipe for success.
Do Not Send Closure Text Messages
Now, what’s interesting is Ella points out that, well, I sent this huge closure text message. I talked about a lot of things, but he only focused on one thing, the slap. Why? So why is he only focusing on this one thing in this gigantic closures/apology text? Well, it’s probably because it’s the part that he feels he needs to address. It’s also the part he’s thinking about the most, and it’s the most emotionally charged aspect of the topic.
Also, there’s this concept of how human beings understand or organize their memory.
Your brains are amazing tools, but one thing that you may … Anyone who sits there and tells me they have great memory is actually not realizing how our brains really work. Our brains, our memory centers essentially try to decipher what is important enough to put in long-term memory, and what’s important enough to put in short-term memory, and what’s important enough to not put in memory at all.
So what’s really interesting is when you send this closure text, I mean, you’re making a lot of mistakes here, Ella. I’m not trying to sound like I’m picking on you, because I’m not, but think of it like this. You send a closure text where you’re essentially starting and apologizing, and everything else you’re talking about is sort of what you wanted a response to.
Let’s just assume your closure texts or apology/closure text started with an apology about the slap and then quickly goes into some of the issues with the relationship, and how he treated you, and how you felt wronged and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So why isn’t he touching on the things that you want him to touch on and he’s touching on the things that you really don’t want him to touch on? Well, it’s because the thing that you don’t want him to touch in on also coincides with the end of your relationship.
So I’m a big proponent of this concept called the peak-end rule, which basically is a way of showing you how human beings organize their thoughts, right? They think that if you put a list in front of people, they will organize that list based on the most exciting aspect of it in the end of it. So when you’re looking at memory, I don’t even think I explained that right, so let me try it again.
When you’re looking at memory, when you’re thinking back on your relationship with your ex, you’re thinking about two points most distinctly, the most emotionally charged moments, the exciting ones, the ones you can’t get out of your head years later, months later, days later, and the bad one, the breakup, the end of the relationship. It just so happens that your closure message is highlighting the end of your relationship, Ella. You’re talking about the slap and how you feel bad about it, how you apologize for it. But the fact of the matter is the slap happened at the end of the relationship and it is also an emotionally charged moment. Of course he’s going to focus on that. He doesn’t want to talk about anything else.
He feels, number one, that he’s won by getting you to reach out to him first. And he also feels, number two, that he doesn’t care about any of the mumbo jumbo stuff that you want him to talk about. He only cares about the stuff you don’t want to talk about, the slap, how you were mean to him. He maybe has a bit of the victim mentality. But what you need to understand above all is that this is why we don’t break the no contact rule. This is also why I don’t believe in apologies until you’re kind of close to getting back together.
If you really think about it, there’s two points that we want to hit on here. Why shouldn’t you break the no contact? Well, number one, if you break the no contact rule and have a conversation like this, it’s a prime example of what can go wrong. And what can go wrong is he will only focus on the negatives as opposed to the positives. Our goal, especially if you want to take a bird’s-eye view of this whole thing, if you’re trying to get your ex back, is to get your ex to remember the peaks of the relationships when all he’s remembering is the end of the relationship.
The other thing I think we really need to touch on is this aspect of apologizing. Now, it may seem weird to me, but why shouldn’t Ella apologize? Because ultimately, when you’ve been wronged, I mean really wronged … Because relationships, when you go through a breakup, you feel it down to your soul. And when you’ve been wronged to that extent, words alone cannot help you recover or make you feel better.
So in the end, all Ella is doing by sending this closure/apology text … And you may disagree with me, and you’re welcome to disagree with me. But in my opinion, all she’s doing is trying to make herself feel better. She recognized it was wrong, so she reaches out and apologizes for it. But it’s not going to make him feel better.
The also important thing to keep in mind here is when you apologize, you want to make sure your ex is in the right state of mind to not only accept it but sort of reciprocate. Because believe it or not, Ella, he’s not innocent either. He did something that hurts you to the core, and he might … He should be held accountable for that. Not to the point where you slap him, of course. But if you apologize in a way that only makes yourself feel better … And oftentimes the only way you can tell if it will make herself feel better is timing. You should only really apologize to your ex, in my opinion, if you’re in a situation where you’re very close to getting them back. And it’s okay for you to have these emotionally highly charged conversations about your past relationship without them walking away or getting freaked out. And clearly 6, 7, 8 10 days into a no contact rule is not the time to have that conversation. And that’s the big issue.
Timing Matters More Than You Think
So ultimately, if you want to figure out why getting an ex back is difficult, it’s because timing really does matter. Not a lot of people think of it like that, but it does. When you say things, when you do things, what you do, all of it encompasses to create your overall chances of success. And most of the time that success is fleeting because people don’t have the self-discipline to stop themselves from reaching out and make an apology like Ella, reaching out and talking about an emotionally charged conversation before they’re ready to have an emotionally charged conversation.
I can tell you so many stories of women who went down Ella’s path and did not get their exes back. Now, that’s not to say that Ella can’t get her ex back if that’s what she wants to do. But my advice to anyone who’s in a situation where they’re thinking about breaking the no contact rule, where they’re thinking of having emotionally charged conversations with their ex is, number one, do you really want them back? And number two, if you do want them back, do you have enough self-discipline to time these conversations correctly? Because we’ve outlined it in the Ex Boyfriend Recovery Program. These are when it’s okay to share your feelings. This is what it’s okay to have these types of conversations.
And most of the time, people make two errors when they’re looking at the Ex Boyfriend Recovery problem. They take it as it’s the word of God, as if they don’t follow the words and timing exactly they’re going to fail. And then you have the other people who don’t take it seriously enough. You need to be a little bit in the middle I guess is my overall point here. You have to be open to adaptability, but that doesn’t mean you should adapt so much that you lose sight of the overall template that we’ve provided.
So ultimately, what you’re looking to do is have enough knowledge that you know what you should be doing as a template from a bird’s-eye view, but also having enough micro knowledge to adapt when the situation calls for it. That’s why it can be so hard for us to work or create a resource that just is a universal all-size-fits-one. We’ve tried our best to do that. But so much uniqueness is involved in each individual situation that each individual situation needs its own sort of built-in template and that decision to build that template or what that looks like lies with you.
More often than not, if you listen to what we say, you will have good success. But the people who don’t listen to what we say, who don’t follow the directions, who aren’t open to adaptability because adaptability is something that we really think you need to have, they’ll fail. I think in the end it really boils down to discipline. Are you disciplined enough to make the hard decision that you don’t want to make? If the answer to that question is yes, you got a really good shot. If it’s no, then you probably don’t. That’s as simple as I can make it.
What He Means When He Says He Doesn’t Want A Relationship
Mar 20, 2020
Today we’re going to be talking about, what your ex means when he says he doesn’t want a relationship.
There’s a lot to dive into, but the first step you should always take if you are sitting there and determining whether or not you should be trying to get back with your ex, or trying to move on with your ex, is by stopping everything you’re doing and taking our ex recovery chances quiz.
It’s a special two minute quiz designed to tell you what chance you have of getting your ex back, so you can make a smart decision going forward and not sacrifice or waste your time.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
What Does It Mean When He Says He Doesn’t Want A Relationship?
So, today we’re going to be taking a question from a woman who wants to remain anonymous. But when I heard her question I became inspired to talk about something that I don’t think I’ve ever talked about before.
But before I get into that, I think it’s probably best if I just play her question.
Last week, my boyfriend of three months broke up with me. He said that his main reason was that he realized he didn’t want to be in a relationship, and he wants someone to hang out with, but he doesn’t want the commitment. He knows that’s not what I’m looking for. And he also knows that people our age really are not looking for that kind of relationship. I’m 37 and he’s 44. Prior to breaking up though, we had a conversation about sex, because in our three months together we had never been sexually intimate. And I had even spent the night with him a couple of times and nothing ever happened.
So, I wanted to ask him about it because I just was wondering. And he revealed to me that he has erectile dysfunction. And while he is interested in sex and he is attracted to me, he was worried that if we tried to have sex or fool around or anything, that he didn’t know what the outcome would be. So, I think that was a little worrisome for him, and embarrassing for him for us to even attempt that. So we never did attempt anything physically like that. But I was supportive, I didn’t want to break up with him over that. I wanted to be as encouraging as I could and help him. And I was willing to stick with him and work through this together. So, I’m wondering if you think which reason is the primary reason he wanted to end our relationship?
The Exception Mentality
So this is a situation that is becoming more and more common.
You’re with someone, things seem to be going okay, and then he drops this bombshell.
I don’t want a relationship.
People our age aren’t doing that, whether that’s being young or old. And a lot of women come to me and they ask me, “Well, does he mean it?”
This is a problem, because you’re not the exception. When a man sits there and tells you he doesn’t want a relationship with you, does he mean it? He absolutely means it in the moment. Now things can change. Who knows what the future holds. But women sometimes take this to mean that, yeah, he means it right now, but I’ll change his mind.
And oftentimes their efforts lead them astray and they fail.
And I want to explore this concept of thinking that you’re the exception.
Because you may well be the exception, but you probably don’t have the mentality it takes to see the results of that.
Now, what do I mean by that? Well, it’s interesting the longer I’ve been doing this, the more important I realize mentality is over anything else.
You give me two people. You can give me someone in the worst situation you can imagine, their ex says they hate them, they block them. They have no way of getting in touch with them. And then you can give me someone who has an ideal situation. But the only difference is the mentality. One person, the person with the worst situation has the right mentality. And the person with the easiest situation has the wrong mentality. And I will take the person with the right mentality every single time.
The Pedestal Mentality
And that’s because, women I’ve noticed have this tendency to place men on pedestals. And that’s a problem. Because men are human beings just like you are a human being. And human beings are not perfect.
In fact, we’re often defined by our imperfect nature. Putting your ex on a pedestal gives them power over you. It gives them leverage. One of my favorite TV shows is this British TV show called, Peaky Blinders. It’s basically this like period piece set right after World War I. It’s set in Britain and it just follows this leader of this gang.
I’m not really one for gang type stuff, but this show is awesome.
And I remember the moment that I was sold on the show.
The main character basically says, “Never parlay when you’re on the back foot.”
Basically, don’t deal with someone until you have leverage. This is something that I’ve tried to teach women countless times over the years.
If you have no leverage, you are not going to get your ex back.
That’s as simple as it gets.
And what you do by placing your ex on a pedestal, by looking at him like he’s this perfect being and that your life is over without him, you give him that leverage. Now, I’m not saying that’s what the caller did here.
No, she is the victim of a symptom of society.
So yeah, she may be placing her ex on a pedestal, most women do. Until I can explain to them why they shouldn’t be doing that. But even when you sometimes explain to a woman why she shouldn’t put a man on a pedestal, they have to experience the pain and heartbreak first for them to realize, Oh, that’s why I don’t do that. But, what do I mean by a symptom?
The Peter Pan Syndrome
Well, a man who sits there and says to you, he doesn’t want a relationship, oftentimes they suffer from something I like to call, the Peter Pan Syndrome. Now, I’m a weird person I’m not going to lie to you.
At night one of my favorite things to do is just surf YouTube and try to find inspirational videos or philosophical videos that get my mind thinking. And last night I stumbled across something, and I’ll actually post the video in the show notes of this episode on our website.
Because it struck me so much and I not only agreed with it, but it’s something that I’ve seen happen time and time again. There’s this, he’s called the professor, but I view him more as a philosopher. His name is Jordan Peterson. He’s very controversial.
He has very controversial views, but I don’t think anyone can doubt his intelligence.
And what’s interesting is he did this talk about men or women in general who reject this concept of growing up, Peter Pan Syndrome. And I feel that most men who sit there and say, I don’t want a relationship. I can’t commit to you. Especially in anonymous’ situation here where she’s 37 and he’s 44 or something. I actually don’t remember his age. But I know he’s in his 40’s. People our age aren’t getting married. No. That’s BS. People your age are married.
That’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard. Excuse my language. It gets me angry because what we have here is a classic case of the Peter Pan Syndrome.
How The Peter Pan Syndrome Works
No, I don’t want to claim that I came up with this concept by myself because I didn’t. I was inspired and made some tweaks to it.
So, like I said, I’ll post the video on the show notes. So you can watch the video as a whole and see for yourself. But this is Jordan Peterson, and he talks about this concept of Peter Pan and how Peter Pan is this children’s book, right?
And when we’re children we’re nothing but potential, we can be anything. And Peter Pan is a magical boy, but he never wants to grow up. Plus he could fly, which is pretty cool. But he never wants to grow up because he never wants to give away that potential. Peter Pan, he just doesn’t want to give it up.
So, he wants to have that potential be there forever. And he’s surrounded by children who adopt the same mentality in this make-believe place called Neverland. Now that’s not to say he isn’t surrounded by adults, he is.
The main adult in Peter Pan’s life is Captain Hook. Which is an evil man with a hook, who is constantly chased by a crocodile with a clock in its stomach. What’s interesting is Peterson makes this distinction that, the crocodile with a clock in its stomach is time.
So, you have this crocodile with a clock in its stomach constantly chasing Captain Hook. A man who’s constantly running from time. So, Peter Pan sees this main adult, this crazy, ugly, mean old man with a hook, running from time, looks at him and says, “I don’t want to do that. I’m not sacrificing my childhood for that.”
But what’s interesting is that being a child does have its sacrifices. See, one of the biggest benefits of growing up is establishing a relationship. A loving relationship with someone that you can rely on and trust in, someone that will be there for you when times are good and when times are bad. And as a child, that’s something that you sacrifice. And Peter Pan does have to sacrifice that. As a child he can’t ever have a real relationship with a woman. The woman in his life, of course being Wendy. A girl, she’s not a woman technically yet, but she’s accepted her maturity. She’s accepted the fact that at some point she will have to grow up. She wants to grow up, she wants to have kids, she wants to have a life. And perhaps the moral of the story is that growing up does require you to sacrifice your childhood.
And here we’re going to talk about your ex a little bit, anonymous. Some men resist this notion. Some men are Peter Pan. And what we have is often… When we’re growing up, we can do things when we’re 20, mid 20’s and we’re still looked at as, that person has potential. But if a person never changes, if they never grasp their potential, they’ll wake up when they’re 30 or 40 being the same child with no difference. And what I think happens often to men who say they don’t want a relationship and they’re old, is they literally reject the notion of growing up. They’re literally spitting on their potential. Because potential cannot be achieved without sacrificing your childhood.
Yes, you have potential as a child, you can be anything you want to be. But having potential, and fulfilling potential, are two completely different concepts. And perhaps the most ironic part about all of this, is that growing up will happen to us whether we do it or not. So, we’re ultimately faced with these two choices.
You choose your skill, fulfill your potential, and sacrifice your time. Time is currency in this instance. Something that we can spend and never get back. So, what are we doing when we spend our time? If we’re not doing anything to fulfill our potential, we’re wasting our time. Or the second result or choice that people have, and this is what I find often happens with men who say they don’t want a relationship, they don’t want to commit, they resist, they resist growing up. They become Peter Pan, but the bill comes due no matter what you do.
The Rules For Running Into Your Ex During No Contact
Mar 12, 2020
Today, we’re going to talk about something that I don’t really cover a lot, but it’s something that I see a lot from my one-on-one coaching clients and a lot in our private Facebook group, and that’s how to handle running into your ex during the no-contact rule.
Now, we’re going to hear a question from a woman who wants to remain anonymous, but she called into the podcast because she is dealing with this very issue and she doesn’t know how to handle it.
So we’re going to give her some clarity, but before we get to her question, the first thing that I want to say is that everyone always is looking to answer one simple question, should I get my ex back or not?
I’ve actually put together a special quiz that I believe helps you answer this question to the best of your ability by trying to help you determine what your overall chances are of success.
It’s a simple two-minute quiz that’s designed to tell you what kind of chance you have of getting your ex back.
But more than anything, what it wants to help you do is determine if you’re going to be wasting your time or not, because a lot of people don’t realize that there’s a big time commitment to being successful in trying to win an ex back.
It will help you understand if you need to be putting your time towards getting your ex back or putting your time towards moving on from your ex. If you want to take that quiz, all you’ve got to do is just click the link below,
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
I haven’t contacted him at all after we broke up and he hasn’t contacted me either. I thought it might be a good opportunity to show off the new and improved me and just be confident, but yeah, I wasn’t sure if it would be breaking that rule.
Yeah, that was it. Thank you.
Handling “Run Ins” During No Contact In Three Ways
All right.
This is as cut and dry as they come.
We have a woman who wants to go to an open mic night stage type of event and she knows for a fact her ex is going to be there.
Well, I’m going to divide this up into let’s say three sections.
First we’re just going to talk about run-ins in general.
Then we’re going to talk about what to do when you run into your ex, or rather, the rules of engagement.
Then finally, what a successful “run-in” looks like.
It’s also important to preface this by saying that this woman’s in the middle of no-contact, that means she’s not supposed to have any contact with her ex whatsoever.
So we’re going to help her navigate these tricky waters so that she can get the maximum result.
The Two Types Of Run-Ins
All right, so let’s start by talking about the two types of run-ins. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and when it comes to the no-contact rule, there are a lot of emotions involved that cause you to want to see your ex.
It makes sense, because you’re ignoring your ex so therefore you want to see them, you miss them. This creates what we call a staged run-in. Like I said, there are two types of run-ins.
Staged Run-Ins
The first type is staged run-ins.
What is a staged run-in?
Well, it’s a fabricated situation that you’ve arranged so that you can interact with your ex essentially.
Now, a staged run-in, it looks like this.
You’re in the middle of a no-contact rule, let’s use our Anonymous’s situation here. She’s in day 19 of the no-contact rule and she purposely wants to see her ex, so she shows up into an area that she knows he’s going to be in.
It’s a staged run-in, she’s trying to fabricate a situation that she can talk to her ex.
Genuine Run-Ins
Then you have the second type of running that’s a genuine run-in.
A genuine run-in is when you’re basically minding your own business and you are walking down the road and your ex just happens to be there. This is what we call a naturally-occurring situation, where you are forced to interact with your ex.
The big misconception I think a lot of people have is they take no contact to heart, meaning they should literally have no contact with their ex, but no contact doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be rude or mean to your ex. It just means you need to ignore your ex when possible.
If you have a genuine run-in, you are walking down the road, minding your own business, and hey, there’s your ex, he just happens to be around, you don’t have to ignore them.
You can interact with them in a small, quick way, which I’m going to cover in a little bit.
But first things first, let’s talk about our situation here, Anonymous’s situation. I think the important thing here is the intent.
Is she going just because she wants to see her ex? She mentioned that she wants to show off some of her positive changes to him, which is kind of cool, but would lead me to believe that maybe she’s going just for that reason. I think that’s not a good idea, because it means, whether she realizes it or not, she is staging this run-in.
Now, if she happened to go to that open mic night and he just happened to be there, she didn’t know beforehand, what should she do?
In all, there are five rules of engagement when you have a genuine run-in.
Rule #1: Don’t Initiate
What do I mean by that?
Well, a lot of people overreact when they see their ex. They see their ex and they immediately think, “Oh, I should say something. I should wave.” No, you shouldn’t. Think of it like this, a genuine run-in is one where you’re walking through the mall and your ex happens to be there.
You don’t want to initiate contact with him until he initiates contact with you first, then you can engage with him.
Rule number one, don’t initiate.
Rule #2: Keep your distance.
If you see him and he’s way across the mall and he hasn’t seen you yet, don’t go closer to him, just keep doing what you were doing.
But let’s say that he sees you, walks over and starts to talk to you, what do you do then?
Rule #3: Match His Greeting
Well, this is where rule number three comes into play.
Match his greeting.
Let’s say he comes up to you and says,
“Oh, hi. I’ve missed you so much. How are you doing?”
First off, don’t say that you’ve missed him, but match his greeting, match his style of greeting.
Just basically say,
“Oh, hi. Yeah, I’ve been doing really, really well. How about you?”
This actually leads us seamlessly into our fourth rule of engagement, keep things simple.
Rule #4: Keep Things Simple
A lot of people have a tendency when they interact with someone that they love deeply to not keep things simple, to immediately get into the emotional things, to immediately say, “I’ve been really struggling without you. I really miss you. I love you.” No, we’re trying to keep things very simple.
We’re going to talk small talk.
Now, I’ve talked a lot about the five different types of conversations that you should be having with your ex. You have small talk, then you have telling stories, sharing opinions, talking virgin ground, and then sharing feelings. This isn’t a time to share feelings or share opinions.
Talk about things that are relevant to both of you that are non-confrontational, the weather, maybe something that’s going on in the world right now. Coronavirus seems to be a big thing, talk about the coronavirus.
Weird, but that’s keeping things simple.
Rule #5: Excuse Yourself
Then we have the fifth rule of engagement, and that’s excuse yourself.
Let’s go through the five rules because I think excuse yourself kind of encompasses all of this. Number one, we don’t initiate. Number two, we keep our distance. Number three, if he initiates, you match his style of greeting.
Number four, you get into a quick, simple conversation with him, and then you excuse yourself. How do you excuse yourself? You say, “Well, I’ve got somewhere to be at 5:00 PM so I’ve got to take off here, but it was really nice seeing you,” bam, out of there.
Keep it short and simple.
Those are your five rules of engagements if you have a genuine run-in with your ex, but then of course we need to look at the broader picture.
What Does A Successful Run-In Look Like?
Well, number one, we know it should not be staged. It should be genuine, meaning it should catch you off guard. Number two, we need to strictly follow the rules of engagement. You only want to interact with your ex if you are forced to interact with your ex.
But success, what does that look like? Well, a run-in needs ultimately be kept short, sweet into the point, but ultimately there’s one end goal that you want to leave your ex with and that’s the fact that it should be a positive interaction that leaves your ex wanting more information.
You should be bubbly, you should be happy, you should be smiling a lot.
You should always look good while you’re going out just in case. But more than anything, if you’re in interacting with your ex and you’re keeping it short, sweet, and to the point, and then you’re leaving, he needs to leave that thinking positive things about you.
He also needs to leave that interaction thinking, “What’s going on with her,” so that he becomes more curious. Curiosity is the one thing that will make him go onto Facebook, Facebook stalk you, see what you’re going, see where you’re doing, see what’s up in your life. It gets them thinking about you, and that actually helps during the no-contact rule.
Now, let’s insert the million-dollar question here. Having a genuine run-in, does that mean you have to start no contact over? No. If it’s genuine, that means you don’t need to start it over. If it’s genuine and you followed all of the rules of engagement, you left him with a positive feeling, wanting more information, you just keep doing no contact.
If you’re on day 19, finish up your 30 days or 45 days or 21 days, whatever you chose. But if it’s a staged run-in, you need to start no contact over from the very beginning. It’s tough, because believe it or not, more often than not, we’re dealing with staged run-ins, not genuine run-ins.
I’m left to believe that the person who left the voicemail, Anonymous, her heart is in the right place, but she is manufacturing a staged run-in, and that is something that I cannot recommend that she does.
Now, if it was a genuine one, if she didn’t know he was going to be there, then she could go, but the fact that she knows he’s going to be there, I feel like what’s important is not the fact that it’s a staged run-in, it’s where her mind is.
Notice she called into this podcast asking for help about a staged run-in.
She wants the rules of engagement of how she should act, but one thing that I haven’t told you about people who stage run-ins is that their mind is not capable of following the rules of engagement.
That’s a pretty bold statement by me, but why? Well, it’s because her mind is only going to be thinking about getting her ex back.
It’s only going to be thinking about, “I need this to go well.” She’s going to appear inauthentic.
One thing that I’ve learned in the decade I’ve been doing this is that someone who comes in and organically lets a conversation unfold always ends up appearing more positive to an ex than someone who comes in with prepared material.
So if you’re sitting there and you’re in the middle of the no-contact rule and you are trying to stage your run-in, think twice about it, because it could actually hurt you more than help you.
Five Conversations To Have With Your Ex
Feb 28, 2020
Today we’re going to be dissecting a question I get a lot and that’s what specific things should you be talking about with your ex when you want them back.
Overall I’m going to go through five types of conversations you should be aiming to have with them.
Small Talk
Telling Stories
Sharing Opinions
Virgin Ground
Sharing Feelings
This shouldn’t exactly be new since I’ve talked a lot about this before.
Now, before I really get started and begin talking about those things, I feel it’s important to mention that if you’re in a space where you’re really kind of confused about what you should be doing next, you should sort of hit the pause button and take a look at a special quiz I put together.
The quiz is basically designed to tell you what kind of chance you have of getting ex back. After you take that quiz, you’ll learn things about what to do next or even if you should be trying to get your ex back. So it’s the ultimate perfect starting point for most everyone listening to this podcast.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Lauren Asks; “What Should I Be Saying To My Ex To Make Our Conversations More Powerful?”
Hello, Chris.
My name is Lauren, and I first off want to thank you for your website, Ex Boyfriend Recovery. It’s helped me immensely in navigating some of the reactions and responses that I get from my ex in our communications.
I also really want to thank you for the information about the no contact rule. I did do the no contact rule for 30 days and then when even back into no contact for a while because I just didn’t feel ready after that.
But, I am hoping now that you can help me navigate where I am now. My ex and I have been broken up for about five months. We do speak here and there and the interactions are okay, but I’m trying to push through from okay to great so that we can have those kinds of connections that we need in order to build a better relationship because I do believe he’s the one, I believe he believes I’m the one, and I really want to make this work.
So I’m hoping you could help. Thank you so much, Chris. I appreciate any input you can give me. Thanks. Bye.
A Recap Of Laurens Situation
I want to take a minute and thank Lauren for having courage to come on and ask questions that are sometimes a little bit difficult to ask. Now, as always, what I always like to do is go through Lauren’s particular situation just to make sure that in case you guys skipped ahead or in case that I’m … Because I’m answering these organically in the moment, make sure I have a grip on everything that’s going on.
So Lauren has been broken up with her ex for five months.
She has heard about the no contact rule and has implemented it.
But she actually didn’t feel ready when her no contact rule was over to reach out to him, so she stayed in the no contact rule a bit longer and then ended up reaching out to him.
They’ve been speaking here and there after their no contact rule, but she can’t really seem to hook into having incredible, meaningful interactions that will move her sort of progress forward.
So today we’re going to talk about that.
The Correct Way To Start A Conversation
I guess I’d first like to start off talking about what we’ve talked a lot in the past about, and that’s how we start a conversation.
So if you go through our website, Ex Boyfriend Recovery, or even go to our YouTube channel, which is the Chris Seiter YouTube channel, you’ll hear me talking a lot about how to start a conversation with your ex.
And that seems to be the big thing, the big buzzword everyone’s sort of obsesses about.
We’ve come up with sort of an idea of some of the conversations or starters that you can have.
So our kind of idea revolves around this idea of pattern interrupts or having a hook that your ex is going to want to respond to you, and usually that hook has to be something self-interested. Some of the most common examples that we’ve used in the past are starting off a conversation by saying,
“Have you heard the news?”
A great pattern interrupt, something that sort of has a curiosity hook embedded into it. He gets a text that says, “Hey, have you heard the news?” And immediately that intrigues him to want to respond.
Another really common one that we’ve seen work really well is,
“I need your help but only really trust you to answer.”
This is self-interested, meaning it’s something that sort of strokes his ego a little bit. It also has a really interesting pattern interrupt and a curiosity hook embedded into it. What does she need help with?
And then finally, the very first original pattern interrupt,
I have a confession to make…
Which is sort of a double-edged sword if you don’t really have a great confession to make.
So like I’ve said, we’ve talked a lot about how to start conversations in the past.
But one thing that we’ve kind of glossed over a little bit, and maybe that’s my fault, but also it’s something that we kind of talk more about in the Ex Recovery Program.
And that’s this idea of once you have a conversation started, how do you keep it going?
How Do You Keep A Conversation Going Once You’ve Started It?
How do you keep it going and organically build value?
So that’s the next thing I’d like to talk about.
A lot of you guys will … How do I say this nicely?
A lot of you guys will force things that really aren’t meant to be forced when you’re having a conversation with your ex. And it’s not hard to see why. You’ve just been through this long period of no contact where you are wanting to talk to your ex so badly. And now that the moment is finally here, you just sort of want to rush to the end.
So what do I mean by that? Well, ultimately your main goal is to convince your ex-boyfriend that he made a mistake in breaking up with you or that you need to be the number one priority in his life. And you really only do that by building value in his eyes.
So the thing that we tell women is that don’t try to accomplish this all in one conversation. I often use this example, which is featured prominently in the Ex Recovery Program, and that’s this concept of tide theory.
What Is Tide Theory?
Well, the analogy I use so often, you can even see in my a YouTube channel, even on this podcast, and even in the articles I write for Ex Boyfriend Recovery, you’ll hear me talk about this concept of when you go to the beach in the morning, the tide is pushing the waves up the beach at a certain level.
If you stay at the beach for the entire day, you’ll notice by end of the day the tide has pushed the waves all the way up to where maybe you had your towel when you went to the beach. This is such an incremental process that you don’t even notice it even as it’s happening.
It just happens organically. It happens in such a subtle and minute way that you’re not even aware of it.
When we say build value with your ex, that’s what we’re talking about. We want it to be this organic, slow process that’s … And that’s not going to happen overnight. Sometimes it can even take months.
But how do you have conversations that does this naturally? So what we’ve done through many different years of research and talking to our clients is we’ve sort of compiled a list of the five types of conversations that you can have with your ex.
Now, these conversations range from small talk to sharing feelings, but what’s important is that there’s a certain hierarchy that the conversations sort of fall into.
The Five Main Types Of Conversations
So, like I said, there’s five main types of conversations that you’re going to have with your ex. It’s important to remember that you’re going to have these conversations at different stages of the process. Because if you try to go from stage one to stage five, you’re just going to fall flat on your face.
That’s the big issue we see a lot of women sort of going into.
So what are these five types of conversations that will help you build value with your ex?
Well, first up we have,
Small talk
Telling stories
Sharing opinions
Virgin ground
Sharing feelings.
Let’s talk a bit more in-depth about these five types of conversations.
Dissecting Small Talk
Now, what’s interesting is if you start at the beginning with small talk, small talk is a type of conversation that you can have with literally anyone, a stranger on the bus, a stranger that you’ve never talked to at work.
You can even have it with your parents, or your lover, or your best friends. Small talk is the universal conversation you can have with anyone, and it’s because there’s nothing risky about it.
A perfect example of small talk is, man, we’re having some great weather today. You’re talking about topics throughout small talk that aren’t going to offend anyone.
But, small talk more often than not is just usually to hook someone into a conversation.
It’s a way to break the ice.
Where really value starts to get being built is in the next level of conversation, and that’s telling stories.
Dissecting Telling Stories
So telling stories, I don’t think I have to do a lot of this, but storytelling is one of the biggest time honored traditions of the human race. It is something that we share with our ancestors when they were cavemen.
They would sit around the cave and draw pictures to tell stories or they would sit around the cave and tell stories about their day.
Stories captivate us. And stories can do so many things if you have or rather tell a story to your ex.
You can tell a story to your ex that makes him interested in talking to you more. You can tell a story to your ex that’s funny, meaningful, insightful, upsetting. There’s so many ways you can do it.
But here’s the thing, stories are usually things that you only tell strong acquaintances, I would say. You could tell a story to your boss. You can tell a story to a work colleague. But you’re not going to tell a story to a random stranger on a bus.
Usually, they have to get to know you before you’re comfortable telling a story. And the type of story that you tell someone who you’re aware of, someone who’s a friend is going to be different than the type of story that you’re telling to someone that you just met for the first time, for example.
You kind of have an idea of what they’re like. It’s not like you met them for the very first time just a minute ago. But maybe you’ve met them and have known their acquaintance for a couple of hours. You’re not going to tell them a super embarrassing, funny story.
You’re just going to tell them a story that makes you attractive, a story that makes them want to hear more.
Well, think of it like this.
When you’re talking and telling stories to your ex, at first, you don’t want to tell them stories that are a little too personal. You want to tell them stories that make them want to hear more. It’s like any good TV show.
We call this often the Zeigarnik effect, which is a concept that people remember interrupted or incomplete tasks better than completed ones.
So this is a huge thing.
I use this example all the time that Hollywood uses as they’re telling stories. Think of one of the most popular TV shows of all time, Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones, every single episode ends on a cliffhanger that makes you say, “I want to know what happens next.” Well, when you tell a story to your ex, that’s what you want him to say.
But again, telling stories, you can only get so far with that. So let’s move up to the next rung of the organic value building conversation ladder, and that’s sharing opinions.
Dissecting Sharing Opinions
Now, sharing opinions is something that you do not do with anyone.
The old phrase or the old saying is that you will never … leave politics out of … leave your political beliefs out of meeting someone new because it just always ends up creating friction. That’s because it’s an opinion of yours. So usually you only share opinions when you know the person and know they’re vibing with you.
So you’re comfortable sharing opinions with your parents. Oftentimes, we get into arguments with our parents because we want to share our opinions and they don’t let us share our opinions. We’re comfortable sharing our opinions with our friends sometimes.
If you’re not comfortable sharing your opinions with your friends, that means you’re not very comfortable around that friend.
And most of the time, we’re comfortable sharing our opinions with people who we are romantic with. We want them to be opened up to us.
So if you’re at the stage, usually, the biggest mistake people make is when they start … They get through the no contact rule, and they start conversing with their ex over text message or over the phone.
They go right and start sharing their opinions. That’s a mistake. Because what you’re supposed to do is break the ice with some small talk, engage them with stories. And sometimes stories can last weeks.
You just sort of tell different stories or different things that you learned throughout the day, which is a type of story.
That’s all building a foundation of value.
Once that foundation is built and you trust in it, that’s when you start sharing your opinions, and it can be an opinion about anything. But generally speaking, you don’t want to go crazy about something that you know for a fact will upset your ex.
But, sharing opinions is a way of building on that foundation. But the next one is really the big one, and that’s virgin ground, the fourth rung of the ladder. Notice we haven’t gotten to sharing feelings yet because a huge strong foundation needs to be built before you truly share your feelings with your ex.
Dissecting Virgin Ground
Now, virgin ground is something that’s a little hard to describe, but here’s the way I try to describe it to most people. You’re looking to get your ex to talk to you about something that he’s never told to anyone before or things that he’s told very few people before.
So it’s sort of like only the two of you are in on this secret thing, and that really builds a close connection. And here is the best way to sort of talk on virgin ground. It’s this idea of reciprocation.
The last podcast episode I talked about these four pillars of attraction and how one of the pillars was reciprocation.
Reciprocation is where when I say I love you I’m expecting them to say I love you too or I love you back. That’s reciprocation. Well, oftentimes, getting an ex to say something or tell you something that he’s never told anyone before can be a little hard. So you have to break the ice first and you have to be the one to share something with him that you’ve never told to anyone before. And that builds sort of a strong bond.
And it’s important when you tell your ex something that you never told anyone before you literally follow it with saying,
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that before. You’re the first person I’ve ever told.”
It makes them feel special and more bonded to you. And what you’re looking for is for them to in turn reciprocate the behavior, to tell you something. Now, the trick here is that you can’t fish for it. Generally speaking, if you’ve done a really amazing job of small talk, you’ve done a really amazing job of telling stories and sharing opinions, it makes them more open to sharing little known details about their life.
Then once you’ve built a foundation of those four things, that’s when you share your feelings.
Dissecting Sharing Feelings
A huge mistake we see people making is jumping right from the no contact rule to sharing feelings.
Now, here’s the one prerequisite I tend to tell people when it comes to sharing their feelings. Only do it in person. It’s a lot more meaningful, and it’s not as … You kind of get a gauge on whether or not it’s okay.
You can gauge if they’re vibing you. But more often than not, if you’re doing things right, your ex will be the ones sharing their feelings with you first. I can’t tell you how often …
There was one client we had one time that … She was a mess. I’m not going to lie. She really, really struggled a lot with knowing exactly what to do and when to do it. We just sort of reiterate this concept of these conversations.
Make sure you’re building value in small talk, and stories, and opinions, virgin ground. She was doing a great job of that. And then finally the time came where the two of them saw each other in person. I think he invited her back to his house.
Whatever.
So they’re sitting there on the couch, and he literally just starts gushing his feelings towards her.
She tells me afterwards … She was like, “I was really so obsessed or worried about when I was supposed to share my feelings with him, and here he is sitting on the couch sharing his feelings with me, and I didn’t know what to do.” So that’s when it’s also important for you to reciprocate.
So more often than not, if you do a really great job of small talk, stories, opinions, virgin ground, your ex will be at a point where they want to share their feelings.
Now, it’s a lot more complicated than just dividing things up and do five different types of conversations, but think of it like this. These conversations categorize the types of things that you should be talking about and when you should be talking about them.
So hopefully that helps you, helps clarify the picture a little bit more of what you’re supposed to do to get the maximum results with your ex.
What To Do If You Act Completely Desperate After A Breakup?
Feb 26, 2020
Today we’re going to be talking about a situation that one of my podcast listeners, Denise has been struggling with.
She has acted completely desperate after her breakup, and she’s a little confused as to how she should approach her situation and what she should do next. And I wanted to feature her particular situation, because I feel like it’s a situation that most of you probably are in.
You’ve either acted desperate after your breakup, and you don’t know what to do next.
Well today, that’s what we’re going to be talking about.
And if you read this article to its end we are also going to cover the following topics.
Defining What Desperate Looks Like
Why Is Desperate Behavior So Bad?
If You Need To Start Over From Square One After Your Breakup
The Role No Contact has In Resetting Things To Square One
The Four Pillars Of Attraction
But before we actually start hearing from Denise, I first want to reiterate that if you haven’t taken our Ex Recovery Chances Quiz, which is a free two minute quiz that we’ve designed, to help you understand what kind of chance you have of getting your ex back, you should stop everything you’re doing take that quiz.
It’s a free two minute quiz. And it’s perfect for anyone who’s a newbie, anyone who’s starting out and doesn’t know what they should do, whether that’s getting over their ex boyfriend, or moving on from their ex boyfriend, or even trying to get their ex boyfriend back.
Once you understand what kind of chance you have, it’ll give you a little bit of an idea of what route you should be taking. And more than that, we actually give you personalized results or personalized next steps on what you should be doing next, based on your quiz answers.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Denise Has Been Acting Extremely Desperate After Her Breakup
Okay, so now that that’s out of the way, let’s hear from Denise.
Hi Chris, my name is Denise. My boyfriend and I actually broke up October 17. We got into a really big fight and then I popped up by his house, and then we just got into a really big fight and then we broke up. Ever since the breakup, I’ve been calling, calling, calling. I even popped up at his house a couple of times. I’ve been texting him every day. And then I actually ended up running into him one day while I was out. And I was talking to him or at least trying to make him smile, but he just wasn’t budging I guess.
So now, it’s Saturday, December 14th, and I started the no contact rule December 1st, but I feel like every day is getting harder and harder. So what do I do after my no contact rule is over? Please help, I really miss him a lot and I really, really want him back.
Okay, so before I get started, and there’s a lot to talk about here, I’d like to give a quick rundown of Denise’s situation just so that I make sure that I’m having it straight before I get started. Because a lot of times, I just sort of end up organically riffing off of what I hear in the moment.
Okay. So Denise has broke up with her ex in October, I believe. And the two of them got into a massive fight. What’s interesting is she keeps showing up at his house, which is kind of a big no-no. If you listened to any of my other podcast episodes or read any of my articles, or even gone to our YouTube channel, you’ll know that I’m not a big believer in doing desperate kind of weird things like that.
A Quick Recap Of Her Situation
She’s been calling him nonstop again, going to his house
Texting him like crazy.
She actually ran into him while he was out and he seemed completely uncomfortable during that interaction.
She’s trying the no contact rule out for the first time, which she should’ve just done originally.
So I guess she’s sitting there and wondering, “Well, what do I do next? Now that I’m doing the no contact rule, what happens after it’s over?
What am I supposed to do?”
Let’s Define What Desperate Behavior Looks Like After A Breakup
Okay, so the first thing I’d like to start off with, is this concept of defining what desperate is.
So I think we can all agree that Denise has acted a little bit desperate when it came to interacting with her ex after the breakup. They’ve gotten into multiple fights, she’s showing up at his house unannounced, she’s been calling him, texting him like crazy, blowing up his phone.
These are all very desperate behaviors, but there’s more desperate behaviors that I guess I want to cover.
Because, this is something that we see with our coaching clients all the time, right? So not only do they gnat …
Now gnat, if you aren’t familiar with The Ex Boyfriend Recovery way of going about things, gnatting is G-N-A-T, going nuts at texting.
So Denise seems kind of like a gnatter, right?
She’s showing up at his house unannounced, she’s texting him, blowing up his phone with text messages.
So it’s not enough just to blow up his phone, showing up unannounced. It’s also the types of conversations you’re having with your ex. Anything that can be construed as desperate, which often is begging for them back. “I want you back. I made a mistake,” that whole spiel.
Because this is something that I don’t think anyone really talks about. It’s just universally looked at as this bad type of behavior. Well, there’s a reason why people think being desperate is not a good idea.
After a breakup. You see, if you act desperate, if you beg, you gnat, you show up at his house unannounced, you actually reinforce their decision to remove you from their life.
At every point of a relationship, whether the breakup was mutual, or where the breakup was one sided, at some point, deep down, the man is having this internal conversation like, “Okay, I’m removing her from my life.”
You shared so much together, some of the most intimate moments you’ve maybe you’ve had together, and he’s making a decision to remove you from his life. Every time you show up unannounced, every time you text him, every time you blow up his phone begging for him back, you reinforce his decision to remove you from his life. And it makes him validated.
It makes him think, “Ah, yeah, it was a good decision to remove her from my life.”
Is There Such A Thing As Starting From Zero Or Square One?
And there’s another concept that I feel like a lot of my peers don’t really talk about this, this idea of starting from zero.
So whether you realize it or not, getting an ex back simply boils down to one simple concept. And that’s this idea of leveraging the best moments of your relationship together and minimizing the worst moments of your relationship together.
So, oftentimes when you beg, you act desperate or you’re reinforcing their decision to remove you from their life, you’re finding ways to actually reinforce or leverage the worst moments of the relationship. Because fighting, arguments, maybe you have trust issues, all of these things coincide with acting desperate. And it creates this perfect storm where an ex is looking at you like, “Yeah, I don’t want to get into that situation again.”
But what do I mean? Because I feel like I’m getting off topic here. What do I mean by when I say starting from zero?
Well, a lot of women have this really, really wrong notion about getting an ex back. So a lot of women go into the process thinking, “Okay, well it’s just like I’m starting from zero again. Right? If I get to level 10, that means I’ll have gotten him back.” You break up, so you’re starting back at square one, but it really doesn’t work that way.
You see, last week I was asked a question by someone in our private Facebook group, privately.
She asked me, she said, “Chris, what would you rather have? Someone who’s just meeting a guy for the first time and is trying to make that guy her boyfriend? Or someone who is trying to get her ex back after they’ve shared a three month long relationship together?
And after a while I thought about it and said, “Well, I actually think it’s easier to teach someone to get a boyfriend for the first time, than it is to get an ex back.”
Why?
Well, so the person who’s never met this boyfriend for the first time, they’re just trying to convince this guy to be in a relationship with them, is truly starting from square one; they’re starting at zero, rather. That’s not the case with a lot of the guys and girls listening to this podcast.
You’re trying to get your ex back. That means you’re not starting at square one or square zero, you’re starting at square negative one.
You see what you have going against you, are all the negative moments of your relationship. This idea of, you have to find a way to not reinforce your ex’s decision to break up with you. Because most of you, at least from studies we’ve done from people who are actually visiting our website, Ex Boyfriend Recovery, 80% of you are coming in, and you’re the ones that have been broken up with.
That means you’re starting from negative one, because not only do you have to re-convince an ex to be re-attracted to you again, but you actually have to overcome the mistakes of the first relationship, the trust issues, all of the things, these internal conversations your ex will be having in his head. He’ll be sitting back and thinking, “You know what, I don’t want to get back with her, because.”
It’s always a little bit more difficult.
Now don’t want that deter you away from trying. I’m just telling you how it is. And actually it’s interesting, because this is why no contact rule is such an important aspect of getting your ex back. The no contact rule is meant to get you closer to that square one or square zero mark. It’s to get you out of the negative and back on neutral ground by using time.
The No Contact Rule Can Help Reset Things Back To Square One
Now we’ve talked a lot about this concept of the no contact rule over the years, and how there’s many different psychological ramifications for it. It utilizes a psychology, a psychological concept called reactants, by removing a behavioral freedom from your ex, you’re making them more likely to want to respond or reach out or get that freedom back. It’s letting you have time to cool down, letting your ex have time to cool down, putting some distance between you and those negative memories that he’s having of you.
The no contact rule won’t get you fully back to square zero or square one, however you define that.
But it’s going to get you closer, and that’s an important thing. Because what happens after the no contact rule, is almost definitely, I would say, just as important as the no contact rule itself.
So we’ve gone back and forth. Everyone has their different ways of recommending what people should be doing when it comes to, okay … Because Denise, the last question she asked in her voicemail was, “What do I do after the no contact rule is over?”
The question she should have been asking is, “How do I get through the no contact rule without any hiccups?” But let’s actually answer her original question.
What do you do after the no contact rule is over?
The Role The Four Pillars Of Attraction Plays
Everyone has their different concepts or different ideas of what they should do. Some people recommend going and seeing your ex right away in person. Other people recommend a strong texting, rigid idea, game plan, whatever you call it.
Well we employ something called the Socratic Method.
So what we do, is we come up with what we think is the best sort of approach, and then we basically let people go out and they report back to us, and we find out if that approach was the best.
So we kind of look at it like this ever evolving science.
So I’m not going to say this is the quintessential way that you should be going about it, but from what we’ve learned so far, in all of the strategies that we’ve recommended, this is the best way to go about it.
So how do you handle what you should be doing after the no contact rule? So we utilized two concepts called a value ladder and a value chain, right? So what are these two concepts?
Well, it’s important, because these are relatively new concepts, and a lot of people haven’t been indoctrinated into this idea of what they are.
What Is A Value Ladder?
But a value ladder is simply where you are climbing this ladder and adding value every time you climb the ladder. So after the no contact rule, the first rung of this ladder is considered this text messaging phase where you text message your ex, get back on good terms with them, build some attraction, build value. Bam, you’re climbing up one rung of the ladder.
The next rung in the ladder is phone conversations, video conversations, whatever you utilize, building attraction there. Bam, moving more value up. You’re on the second rung of the ladder. Third rung of the ladder. Okay. Now that you’ve texted so far, you built value on the phone, you will be moving up to the in person interaction phase. That’s where you see your ex for a non-romantic meetup. Build attraction there, build value there. Bam, you’re on the third rung of the ladder almost to the top.
The fourth rung of the ladder is the romantic dates, the romantic dates. You’re building value and attraction there. Bam, you’re at the top of the ladder. By then, you should be at a phase where your ex either asked for you back or you’re in a position where you can insinuate the ask quote unquote. But that’s just a value ladder. That’s just sort of the methods of communication that we recommend that you have in an organic way.
What Is The Value Chain?
The value chain is something that pairs with the value ladder, it’s the types of conversations that you have. By chaining together specific types of conversations, you can actually move up the value ladder. Because ultimately, when we looked at it, there’s five types of conversations that you’re going to be having. Each conversation becomes more and more intimate as you get through the chain.
So the first type of conversation we want you to have is small talk.
The second one is sharing stories.
The third one, sharing opinions.
Fourth, we have virgin ground.
Then we have the fifth aspect of the value chain. That’s where you share your feelings.
So you pair a value chain and value ladder together and we have this organic way of approaching it. Now it’s a lot more complicated than a simple 20 minute podcast then can detail. That’s why we’ve actually created The Ex Recovery Program, to actually explain this delicate concept of how this is supposed to go. But what we found, just from a bird’s eye view, is that’s what works best.
And why?
Because it utilizes the four pillars of attraction.
The Four Pillars of Attraction
So I was watching this really interesting Netflix limited series a couple of weeks ago. It was all about sex, basically all aspects of sex you can imagine. So things like sexual preferences, what we find attractive in another partner, childbirth, birth control, everything you can imagine.
Well anyways, I kind of naturally gravitated towards the attraction aspect, because not only did I think it would help me in writing an article or filming a podcast, but I’m always game for learning new things.
What’s interesting, and this is something that I’ve seen and have already talked about many times before, but they talked about when it came to attractions, scientists universally agree that there’s these four main pillars.
These four main pillars are going to be what makes you attracted to another person and vice versa. And what’s beautiful about the way we’ve structured the value chain and the value ladder, is they actually utilize these four pillars, they’re just embedded within it.
So what are these four pillars?
Pillar #1: Physical Appearance
Well, the first pillar is the most superficial and obvious one and that’s physical appearance.
We are obviously going to be attracted to someone who we believe is beautiful, who we look at. And what’s interesting, is beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
They did all of these really interesting studies when it came to men.
Specifically, they showed men all of these really different and diverse body types of women.
And they just basically said, “All right, pick your ideal match.”
Okay, so you would obviously be thinking kind of the skinny sort of really, really attractive woman would be what they picked. And it was at first. Then they went to a different area. I think it was like Africa where AIDS is a big, big issue there. And they asked that the men there, “Pick your ideal body type.” And the men picked the larger sort of a big boned woman. Why? Why could it be that different? Is it beauty’s in the eye of the beholder?
Well, it’s thought of that a super skinny woman in Africa might have AIDS, and that obviously is unattractive towards men in Africa. So they wanted bigger, more fleshed out women.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
And I’m not saying this to insert myself into the … Ah, I don’t even have great words. You always want to say the right things, so you’re not offending anyone. I’m just telling you what the documentary said. But it kind of creates a seamless transition into the next pillar, and that’s geography, right? So the first pillar is physical appearance. Obviously we’re going to be attracted to someone who we think is pretty.
Pillar #2: Geography
Next is geography. We’re going to be attracted to someone who’s closer to us as opposed to who’s farther away. This further proves what I always say about long distance relationships, in that every single long distance relationship is doomed to fail. So your number one goal when you get into a long distance relationship should always be to find a way to close the distance, so that geography is close together.
So what can we expand on here?
Well, not much to be honest with you, because physical appearance, we expanded there, beauty’s in the eye of the beholder. Every man is different with the preferences he has of physical appearance.
Geography, there’s not a ton to expand on, other than the closer together you are to a potential mate, the more attractive you’re going to find that person.
So any of you who are in long distance relationships, I’ve been saying this for years, if you’re in a long distance relationship, realize that that relationship is doomed to fail unless you have a plan to close the distance.
Pillar #3: Similarity
So those are the first two pillars of attraction. The third one is similarity. The old adage of opposites attract is simply untrue, and I’ve been saying this for years as well. From what we’ve found, if you have two people and their personalities are completely opposites, they are not going to be drawn together. And it makes sense.
Have you ever been out and about in a group setting, and you have that one sort of very, very uncouth friend maybe? And maybe you like them for their outward bursts of energy, but deep down, you know you would never get into a relationship with them, because they’re a little too much. They’re too dissimilar to you.
And I’ve had this multiple times, where men will come up to me and they’ll say, “Oh man, look at that girl. She’s so attractive.”
And I’ll think to myself, “I don’t find her attractive at all, just because her personality is maybe a little too much for me.” And sometimes what’s interesting, is I think as you look at these four pillars, and I know we haven’t gotten to the fourth pillar yet, but each man has a different way of weighing which ones means more to him. For some, it’s physical appearance. For others, it’s similarity.
I like to think that I’m sort of even a with most of them. Geographies out, because I’m married, so I obviously live with my wife, so I don’t really have that one. But the other ones, I feel like I need them all.
But similarity is an important thing to talk about, because if you and your ex don’t share any interests, that’s a problem.
I’m not saying you should give up on trying to get your ex back, but I’m saying this is a huge problem I see with women when they actually have a conversation with their ex for the first time after the no contact rule. They often talk about things that interest themselves and not things that will interest their ex.
So I’m often saying, think about a conversation from his point of view. When you’re entering into a conversation with him, you want to make sure that you’re talking about a topic that he’s going to hook into, that both of you maybe like, that’s the middle ground that you’re shooting for.
Because the more similar you are, the more likely you are to connect and have that organic rapport that we’re looking for.
Pillar #4: Reciprocation
So what is the fourth and final pillar of attraction? It is simply reciprocation. There’s nothing worse … Okay, I did this with my wife in the car. I was telling her about these four pillars of attraction. And so I went through physical appearance. She was like, “Obviously.” Geography, she was like, “Obviously.” Similarity, she was like, “Obviously.” And then we went to reciprocation, and she’s like, “Can you explain that to me?” And I said, “Okay, here’s how it works. When when you say I love you to me, what do you expect me to say back? I love you too, right? That’s reciprocation.”
So we liked that when we hug someone, we want them to reciprocate and hug us back. Sometimes, we see this a lot with couples who are married, who are having trouble in their sex lives. One person is initiating, the other person doesn’t want anything to do with it. That makes that one person initiating feel bad, because they’re not getting any type of reciprocation back. So think back to your relationship. Were there any moments … And this could be something that’s different for each person, because maybe you’re the one that was initiating and you’re not getting enough reciprocation, and that makes you feel bad.
What’s interesting though, is every man has a different way in which they reciprocate love. That’s also why we tell our clients to go through those five love languages, that famous quiz. And take it and pretend that you’re your ex. Because then, maybe you need words of affirmation, that’s your way of getting reciprocation. But maybe your ex needs more physical touch for reciprocation in some way. Keep these things in mind.
So here’s the beautiful thing. When we talk about the value chain and value ladder, these four pillars of attraction are naturally built into them, specifically when it comes to physical appearance and similarity. Because one thing we talk about when it comes to physical appearance during the no contact rule, we want you going out and posting things on social media, that make you look like a total badass. That’s what we want, because we understand that your ex will be paying attention. We want him to pay attention to the best version of you.
Similarity, this is something that really comes into play when you’re having conversations with your ex in the texting phase or the phone call phase. Reciprocation is something that comes into play when you’re in that in person interaction phase. So Denise, back to the original question. What should you do after the no contact rule? Everything that I’m saying here, from the value chain to the value ladder, all the way to the four pillars of attraction. These are all the things that you want to do. Ultimately, where I think you’re making a mistake, is you are reinforcing all of the poor aspects of your original relationship. We need to get rid of that, and move on to the new exciting aspects of a new relationship with your ex.
This Is Why You Fail To Get Your Ex Back
Jan 24, 2020
Yesterday I was filming a video specifically for one of the new products that I’m created called The Ex Recovery Program. Now, I’m not sitting here to sell you anything, but I was filming this particular program, this particular section in this program and I got inspired.
I got so inspired about what I was talking about.
I said, “Rules, I’m not going to listen to them.” I think everyone who’s trying to get an ex back or who’s trying to get over an ex needs to hear what I’m about to say.
What’s interesting is I’ve been doing this for over a decade.
That means I have had a lot of people come through the program. I’ve had a lot of people succeed. I’ve had a lot of people fail. And I’ve been able to notice and pick out certain types of behaviors between people who succeed and people who fail.
Most of the time I’m talking about people who succeed, people who go through the program and either get their exes back or have a complete revitalization around their life. They look at life in a new and different way.
But that’s not what I’m going to do today. Instead, I’d actually like to turn the camera to the other side, to people who fail and look at those patterns. Look at what those people are doing that isn’t working.
And what I’m hoping is anyone who’s watching this who doesn’t have enough money to buy a program or do certain things can watch this. And if they see that they’re implementing these behaviors, they can know they need to change something.
They don’t necessarily need to buy something, but they need to change their fundamental approach into how they’re either getting their ex back or moving on from their ex. And the first thing I really want to talk about is this idea of understanding a concept versus implementing a concept.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
You see, it’s not enough to simply understand something. The one thing that separates the losers from the winners when it comes to this get your ex back game or get over your ex is people… understanding a concept is easy.
It really is.
You sit there and listen. I tell you what to do. Someone else tells you what to do and you understand the fundamental reasons for why we’re telling you to do what you’re supposed to do. But that’s not the same thing as you actually going out and implementing that. You see, it’s kind of like a puzzle.
Understanding a concept gives you half of the puzzle. Implementing the concept gives you another half.
So what I want you to understand is that trying to gain knowledge is only half this battle.
It’s up to you to take that knowledge and put it into action.
That’s a common theme you’re going to see when I give you these types of behaviors from people who fail.
Speaking of which, let’s start talking about that.
Reason #2: People Aren’t Willing To Own Their Actions
A common behavior that we see from someone who fails is they aren’t willing to own their actions. I talk often about how when exes go through a breakup, they often like to paint themselves as the victims. They like to make it all about them even if they were the ones to break up with you.
But I’ve also noticed a pretty jarring pattern emerging between people that I work with who aren’t willing to own their actions, whether that be in the relationship with their ex or whether that be what they’re doing.
They’re so easy to blame someone else for their lack of success that they have no peace of mind or function of looking at themselves.
In the end, I can lead you to the water, but I can’t make you drink it. I can give you the best pieces of advice, but if you don’t implement that advice the way it’s meant to be implemented, it’s not my fault. It’s really yours.
The people who succeed own their actions. When they make a mistake, they are able to take a step back and say, “You know what, that’s on me.”
They don’t paint themselves as the victims. Painting yourself as a victim always means you’re blaming someone else. And if you’re blaming someone else, that doesn’t really translate really well into relationships when it’s all about working together for the common good.
And in this case, hopefully the common good is that you’re winning your ex back.
Or in this case, maybe it’s coming to a realization that you no longer want your ex back. And if you’re not willing to own your actions, if you’re not willing to take responsibility, nothing can really help you. So that’s one of the most common behaviors I’ve noticed.
Reason #3: Not Relying On The Right Types Of People
Another common behavior is people aren’t willing to rely on the right types of people. Now, what do we mean by that?
Well, as I’m sure you’re aware, if you’re going through a breakup and you’re talking to a friend or family member, they aren’t necessarily the most supportive, especially if you tell them you’re thinking of getting your ex back.
What’s interesting is because you have such trust in your friends, you have such trust in your family, you know them better than you’ll ever know me, you’re much more willing to take what they say to heart as opposed to what I say. Which is interesting because I’ve been doing this for a decade.
I’ve been doing this for every day of my life for over 10 years. Your friends and family have not, they haven’t seen what’s working. They haven’t seen what’s working. Everything that I ever recommend to you is not something I just made up out of thin air.
At one point maybe that’s true, but I always went out and tested it.
I always said, “Hey, try this out and report back to me and see what the results are.”
And if those results are positive, I tested out even more. And if I keep getting those positive results, next thing I know, I think, you know what? This might actually work. I try to view getting an ex back or even moving on from an ex as a science.
I put it through the Socratic method or the scientific method. I constantly create a hypothesis and test the hypothesis. Your friends and family aren’t necessarily doing that. They’re giving you age old advice that sounds like it’s right.
And sometimes they’re not even supportive at all where they’ll just simply say, “Hey, there’s other fish in the sea. Move on.” Which is not what you want to hear.
It’s important that you listen to the right people and the right people are always those who have experience, who have done it before. That’s also why I keep pushing people to get into our private Facebook group. Why? Well, it’s not because I think it’s not going to help them. It’s because it’s going to put them in an environment where everyone is on the same level, where everyone is experiencing much of the same types of emotions.
Listen to someone who’s actually gotten their ex back, not someone who hasn’t.
Reason #4: Not Willing To Look At The Big Picture
Another huge reason that people fail in ex recovery is they aren’t willing to look at the big picture.
Now, this one’s really self-explanatory, but I think maybe it’s important for me to explain it to you because this is something we go through life sometimes with blinders on and fail to look at big pictures. When I’m talking about looking at big pictures, I’m not talking about creating a game plan.
I’m talking about understanding the game plan as a whole. Understanding why you’re doing the things you’re doing right now. Most people only have a tendency to look at the next step and they often judge success based on that next step. But again, it’s kind of like a puzzle.
You’re judging the whole picture of a puzzle based on one singular puzzle piece. That’s not a smart thing to do and sometimes, no, not sometimes. Almost all the time, everyone who has gone through this process, who has been in your shoes is going to fail.
They will. Things will not go their way. Maybe they think I’ve got the perfect text message.
They send it out to their ex and it doesn’t work. No response. Now, people who look at the big picture understand, okay, well, if that happens, here’s what I need to do. But people who often aren’t looking at the big picture take that as the end of the world. “Oh, my chances are completely over.
Oh, I’m waiting too long.” It doesn’t work that way. Take a bigger, broader view.
Run a marathon, not a sprint.
Reason #5: Work The Program
Another huge reason people fail is they aren’t willing to work the program. Again, earlier I talked about this idea of, look, I’m trying to view ex recovery as a science. It’s an imperfect science, sure, but there’s a reason why we’ve gotten so many successes. Why people are willing to come on and do one-on-one interviews with us.
Why people are willing to buy our products continually. And it’s not because we just made everything up out of thin air. It’s because we tested everything that we’re recommending for people to do. Now, some people come in with what we call a fixed mindset.
They come in believing that they won’t be able to get their ex back, believing that they won’t be able to live without their ex. And no matter what you do, you cannot do anything to change that mindset.
No matter how many success stories you show people like that, they’ll still have that innate belief that they won’t be able to win their ex back.
They still have that innate belief that if they don’t get their ex back, it’s the end of the world. They won’t be able to survive. People with fixed mindsets will fail more often than not. What we try to encourage and develop our clients into being is having a growth mindset, willing to be open to possibilities, willing to be open to change, which I’m going to talk about in a minute.
In order to do that, you have to work and trust in the program that we’ve created and the advice that me, any of the coaches, any of the moderators in the Facebook group are recommending to you.
It’s not because we don’t think you are capable of doing it, it’s because sometimes you don’t know the way and we do.
Reason #6: Not Setting Clear Goals
Another really, really big reason people fail is they don’t recognize the importance of being able to set clear goals. I talked a bit in the big picture section about this idea of looking at the puzzle as a whole, not judging success based on one small failure.
But often you also have to work in tandem or in parallel with this idea of being able to set a clear goal. When I come up to people and I say, “Okay, what is your goal?” They’ll say, “I want my ex back.”
But clear, that’s not clear.
Clear, when we’re talking about clear goals, we’re talking about specific. Your overall goal is probably always going to be, “Hey, I want to move on from this,” or, “Hey, I want my ex back.”
But that’s not a clear goal. That’s your overall goal. A clear goal is, “You know what? By next week I am going to get a positive response from my ex.” But here’s the other thing. People who set clear specific goals often have a tendency to freak out when they don’t hit those goals. Why? Well, it’s this relationship we have with failure.
A lot of people believe that we’re born in a society that only rewards success it feels like. No. Some people can debate on that, and I could even debate on that a little bit because sometimes even early ages were given, “Hey, here’s a participation trophy.” Which I think is a horrible thing to do because it devalues the actual people who won. But that’s another rant for later.
Here’s the thing. People who are afraid of failure will never grow because you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes. Anyone who succeed at anything in life will not have an epiphany, will not have a grow moment.
They’ll have a fixed moment. They’ll say, “Ooh, I like this success. I’m not going to continue to evolve. I’m just going to try to keep doing what I’m doing.” And so they continue to do what they do and maybe they have more success, which in turn creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, but eventually the success will stop.
And when they face failure for the first time in their lives, they freak out and they don’t know how to deal with it.
People who are successful at this process are those who embrace failure, who take the failure as a learning experience. I’ve even gotten to the point where when I fail at something in life, I’m no longer that upset.
Sure I can get upset just like anyone else, but I look at it as a growing moment. This is a moment where I can learn something.
What did I learn from this failure? Hmm. Okay. Well, I did this thing and it didn’t work. Or I tried this little business strategy, hmm, it fell flat on its face. Before I would just get so upset about failing a business or something like that. I would go and play video games for a week, but now I look at it like, “Oh, okay, what can this failure teach me?”
And sometimes that’s why we need to set clear goals. We’re all little scientists throughout this process. We go through it. We’re trying different things out and when we fail, rather than getting upset, the smarter thing to do is to take that failure and say, “What did this teach me?”
Reason #7: Not Being Able To Track Their Progress
Another really, really big reason people fail at this program is they’re not willing to track their progress. Before I was talking about this idea of embracing failure, but oftentimes one of the best way, if you’re going to take a scientific approach to embracing failure, you’re going to learn from it, is you need to be willing to track your progress.
Human memory is not as perfect as you think. And what’s interesting is people who track their progress are able to see why things failed as opposed to why things didn’t fail. They’re able to see what’s working and what’s not working. This is a great exercise you can practice when you’re texting.
Take something as basic as counting the amount of times that your ex reaches out to you first versus the amount of times that you reach out to him first. Now, if you notice that there’s like a 2:1 ratio where you’re reaching out two times to his reaching out one time, you know, okay, this is what I need to be working on.
I need to be working about evening that ratio up so he’s reaching out to me first as many times as I’m reaching out to him first. You can even do this with who ends the conversation first. I’ve often said, well, don’t focus so much on who starts a conversation but focus more on who ends a conversation.
If you’re the one ending the conversation all the time, this is a really great thing because you are forcing him to want more. You’re forcing and putting him in a position where, okay, you know what? I wanted that conversation to go longer and it got cut of. And then maybe he starts reaching out to you more.
But you’ll never know that if you’re not tracking your progress
Reason #8: Not Holding Themselves Accountable
Another huge reason people fail is they aren’t willing to hold themselves accountable. Now, this is a little bit different from being willing to work the program. People who aren’t willing to hold themselves accountable are people who often have really poor discipline.
What do I mean by that? Well, the no contact rule is something that we talk a lot about because it’s one of the most effective strategies that you can employ when it comes to winning an ex back. But our estimations are that 80% of people who will attempt the no contact rule will fail it. Meaning they’ll break it.
They’ll reach out to their ex first or they’ll cave when he reaches out first or she reaches out first, whatever your situation may be.
The people who don’t fail in the no contact rule are the people who find ways to hold themselves accountable. They either block their ex’s number or they erase their ex’s number and give it to a trusted friend and tell that friend, “Hey, no matter how much I beg, plead, whatever, if I ask for that number, you do not give it back.” And then they erase the number from the phone and they don’t know his number. So next thing they know, they have no temptation to reach out because they can’t.
Holding yourself accountable is finding almost a way to punish yourself in a way that makes you afraid to break a rule.
I’ll never forget, I watched this really, really interesting episode of the show, Nathan for You. Now, Nathan for You is like a comedy spoof.
It’s on Comedy Central where this fake businessman will go into businesses and purposely give them horrible advice. It’s an interesting look at human nature and how willing we are to listen to poor advice. And sometimes the advice he gives people is just absolutely hilarious.
But he did this one skit this one time where essentially he took four or five people and he made them write an embarrassing letter about themselves, about something they thought about a coworker or take an embarrassing picture or pretend that they had an affair when they really didn’t.
And he used this as a way to holding these people accountable so that they reach their goals. So here’s how it works. I think it was for weight loss, something really simple. So essentially it was like, “Okay, you need to lose five pounds this week.
And if you don’t lose this five pounds, we’re going to send this embarrassing footage or this embarrassing picture or this embarrassing letter to your boss, wife, whatever.” And almost every single per person lost the weight.
One person didn’t and she lost her job as a result. Now maybe that sounds so funny, but the idea was all about holding yourself accountable.
Now I’m not saying you need to do something embarrassing and send a picture out or an embarrassing picture out to your friend or something, but find some way to hold yourself accountable. And sometimes that’s even relying on other people. People you trust to say, “You know what, if I don’t do this, take my phone away. I love my phone, take it away. I’m not allowed to have it.” People who are successful find these subtle ways to hold themselves accountable so that they’ll follow through.
Reason #9: Failing To See Your Power
Another huge reason people fail is they aren’t willing to see their power. I see this a lot with women, but even sometimes men, mostly women though. Women have this tendency to put men on pedestals, especially if they want to get them back.
They look at their ex as some sort of, if I don’t get him back, it’s the end of the world. They put them on a pedestal, they let them get away with murder essentially and it results in a devaluation of themselves.
They maybe don’t have a stronger self-esteem because their whole identity is wrapped up in this guy. People who are successful with this program almost find ways to knock the pedestal down, to put him on equal footing.
And sometimes men don’t like this because they like being held as some sort of God. But it’s important for you to see that you have a lot more power than you realize and a lot of what we’re trying to do is to get you to open up and see that. Usually I tell this to women all the time. The woman who’s willing to lose the guy will more than often get the guy.
Reason #10: Believing That Purchasing A Program Is All It Should Take
Another huge reason people fail is they feel as if purchasing a program, any program, not just mine, is all it should take to get their exes back. Think about that for a minute. We live in a society where we expect instant gratification.
Now, it used to be, think about this for a moment, before the invention of GPS in the cell phone, people would actually have maps in their car and they would have to learn the roads from a piece of paper map. But now all you have to do is, you get your car, you plan the coordinates, the phone does it all for you. Instant gratification.
Google has even gotten a lot more specific about this.
You may have noticed that often when you go to Google now, you type in, “Hey, what’s the weather like?” Immediately, without even having to click on any kind of result, the answer is given to you.
Google has surfaced the web, found the correct answer, and given it to you. But getting an ex back, moving on from an ex, these are things that will not happen instantly. These are things that must happen over time. The average length it will take to get an ex back, we have found is three months. That’s the average.
Sometimes it can happen sooner, but most of the time it happens longer than that. A lot of people don’t have the patience to wait that out, to see that through. And they expect that when they buy something, they should get that result when ultimately we can show them how to get that result, but it’s up to them to implement the result. And even then, it’s not a guarantee. That’s what’s so hard about this.
Reason #11: Not Prepared To Change
Another huge reason people fail is they aren’t prepared to change. Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different result.”
It’s insane to expect that the way you’re doing things, if it’s unsuccessful, is going to give you success. You have to be willing to change something, to change some variable. Now, I’m not saying you need to change your personality.
You should never change your personality. But you have to be willing to change your approach. Your approach is important because a lot of people have the wrong approach. And if they just make a few subtle tweaks here and there, they can have great success.
Now, I hate to do this comparison, but it’s probably the best one I can think of. My wife and I sometimes watch that… now that I think about it, it’s a poorly edited show, but my gosh, sometimes it’s just fun to watch. It’s called the Dog Whisperer.
It’s basically that guy, he goes and rehabilitates really, really bad dogs. A lot of times the dogs’ owners are doing the right things, but they just need to tweak something here or something here and they get the results they want. But sometimes you’ll find he’ll tell these people, “These are the changes you need to make. Make sure you don’t feed the dog like a dog. Make sure he knows that it’s you feeding him. You hold the bowl as he eats. You hold the bowl as she eats.
Don’t just put the food down, walk away and expect the dog to give you respect. You’re treating it like a dog. You need to be the alpha of the pack. It needs to know that it can rely and trust on you.” What’s interesting is he’ll give these people homework and some people are incredible at implementing while others are not. They’ll often come back a few months later after the show is over to catch up and see, did it work? And you can always see the people who didn’t stick with it and it never works. And the people who did stick with it, and more often than not, it works.
The Real Life Story Of How One Woman Got Her Ex To Marry Her
Jan 09, 2020
Today we are going to be talking about marriage. Specifically how one woman convinced her ex to take her back and eventually propose to her.
I talk to to Loan Pham who not only went through the program to get her ex back but she actually just got back from her honeymoon.
So, whether you’re struggling with your ex or you are just interested in her story you are definitely going to get something powerful from this one on one interview with one of our best success stories.
The Interview Transcript
Chris Seiter: And it’s begin. Okay. So, today we’re going to be talking to someone really, really special, Loan, who not only got her ex back but is now currently married to him and just got back from her honeymoon where she was telling me she went to all of these different places from the Philippines to Japan for a month straight. So, she’s a little jet-lagged, but she’s been living the life lately. How are you doing Loan?
Loan Pham: I’m doing great. A little tired, but great.
Chris Seiter: So, let’s just start by talking about your situation and you were telling me a really interesting story before we started the recording about your ex before the EBR or ERP, however, you’re denouncing that ex that you got back and are now married to. Why don’t you just start from the beginning and tell us sort of the whirlwind romance that led to this marriage?
Loan Pham: Well, when I met I guess my EBR ex, it wasn’t anything new because every guy that I’d met before, I’ve always been right, pretty honest from the get-go that I was living next door to my ex before that. And so, it was a little bit of an awkward arrangement, but he kind of stuck around because I guess he felt that I was worth it, and he was chasing me. And so, I was pretty cautious being that it took me a very, very long time to get away from my previous guy. I don’t know, It was five years, I believe it was somewhere around there, and we were together for seven years previous to that. So, I’m not really sure where you want me to go with this.
Chris Seiter: Oh, well, so basically your EBR ex is chasing you, knowing that you’re living next to your ex ex and how did it unfold to the point where you gave him a chance and you started dating to when you guys broke up and what were some of the reasons behind the breakup?
Loan Pham: Well, he chased for a while and then I finally just gave in and said, “You know what? Let’s just give it a try and see what happens.” Because when I initially met him, believe it or not, we met off of Tinder and-
Chris Seiter: Much more common these days than you’d realize.
Loan Pham: Yeah, now it is. But I guess it’s been almost five years since I’ve known him now and the Tinder thing back then was pretty new still.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. That’s true.
Loan Pham: Yeah. And so, we did our Starbucks meet up and then apparently my understanding was that he had never been in a relationship before. So, there was a girl before him, and he labeled her the trial girlfriend. And we’re a lot older in age. At the time when I met him, he was 30. I want to say 33, and very inexperienced when it came to relationships because he was a player pretty much before.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Got it.
Loan Pham: And so, when he started chasing me, I was just kind of like, “I don’t know. I’m not looking for anything like that. I’m looking for something serious.” And he said that he was ready to try and settle down. He was done with the playing around and such, and he really wanted to know what it was like to have a girlfriend hence the trial girlfriend before me.
Chris Seiter: The trial girlfriend.
Loan Pham: He labeled her the trial girlfriend, and they were together for, I think he said it was like somewhere on an off for… I don’t know, seven months or something like that. He was pretty honest with me. He told me everything, right? He didn’t really treat her very well either, and so I kind of was upset with him about not treating her well.
Chris Seiter: It makes you a little bit leery about even giving them a chance.
Loan Pham: Exactly. But at that point I was like, “you know what, I’ve learned not to chase, so let’s see what happens. If he keeps chasing me it means that you know, he’s interested and maybe to keep his attention, I will just keep letting him chase me.” And he told me later on, he goes, I was probably the most difficult girl that he’s ever met to try to get. I was like… Because I guess later on I found out from his friends that they labeled him the closer, I don’t know if you understand what that means.
Chris Seiter: No. I got it. I got it.
Loan Pham: But I didn’t, but I kind of figured that out afterwards so to say.
Chris Seiter: Did you have to ask your girlfriends what does this mean or did you ask him directly?
Loan Pham: I asked him. He was really embarrassed when his friend Ashley brought it up in front of us because we were having dinner with a group of his friends, and then they called him the closer. And I looked at him like, “what does that mean?” And then he’s looking at his friend, he’s like, “Shut up.” I don’t know why he’s starting to turn beat red, right? And so, I guess that’s kind of when I really knew that he actually genuinely liked me because he’s getting embarrassed about it.
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Loan Pham: Yeah. And so, I gave him a chance. And he put up with a lot with the ex next door and the drama that was being created between the two of us.
Chris Seiter: In a weird way, it might’ve kept him honest.
Loan Pham: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Well, we were really open and honest from the very beginning and that was just something that I had set in place because I’m not really the jealous type. So, I was fine with listening to his stories about the exes and stuff and just kind of understanding everything because my take on the whole situation is you are a byproduct of your experiences. So, listening to it and understanding why he is the way he is from his previous experiences with other girls and whatnot, kind of made me understand him more. And I felt like if he could hear me and listen to me talk about the ex and talk about my experiences and stuff like that, he has accepted me for who I am. So, I guess it just started like that.
Chris Seiter: So, you’re dating and how long do you date before basically this breakup occurs?
Loan Pham: We were together for a little over two years.
Chris Seiter: So, pretty long time.
Loan Pham: Yeah. I think leading up to the breakup, we had been fighting for probably about six months on and off.
Chris Seiter: Was the fighting about the ex next door or other trivial matters?
Loan Pham: Partly, it was the ex next door, but I think he was just frustrated because there were certain things that I didn’t want to do to upset my ex and because I had to live next door to him, I had to deal with it when he wasn’t around. But it also had to do with a lot of him not really understanding what a relationship was because he had in his mind what the perfect relationship should be. And because we were fighting, he started to, I guess in his mind he was building up to all the excuses leading up to the breakup.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Loan Pham: So, he’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, she’s like this. Oh, she’s like that. She won’t listen to this, or we’re fighting about this,” and that sort of thing. And he’s just kept like a bank of all this stuff and it just kind of added up into the breakup. And I think after we celebrated our second year anniversary, and then I was fighting with him because I wasn’t getting enough of quality time with him because we were so busy. When I met him, I had actually just started my master’s degree, and I think three months after I met him, I quit my job. It was just one of those things where I had been with the company for over eight years and I decided that I needed a change, and I was going back to school, so I was getting really stressed out. And so, I wanted to focus on school. And then during that time I also got diagnosed with a medical condition. So, between hospital visits, and my health being compromised, and the stress of school, and the ex, everything, it just kind of added up.
Loan Pham: And I was under a lot of pressure and a lot of stress, and I was acting out. And he didn’t understand that I needed his support because he wasn’t giving it to me. Instead, he was kind of like, “Oh, well, you’re being antisocial. You never want to go out,” and all this other stuff. And I was trying to explain to him that it’s not that I don’t want to go out, it’s just I’m always tired because of my medical condition. We’re going through therapy and all this other stuff trying to figure out the proper treatments for me, and in the meantime, I’m suffering and then I’m dealing with school full time and all those other things, all those factors, work.
Chris Seiter: So, it’s just like building up all of this stuff.
Loan Pham: It was building up.
Chris Seiter: You know they say when it rains, it pours. I’ve found that to be true.
Loan Pham: And he didn’t understand any of that. And so, he was being really selfish and saying, “You need to come out with me more. You need to hang out with my friends. You need to talk to my friends. You can’t keep going home or falling asleep.” And eventually, we figured out that due to my condition, I became really low iron, so I was sleeping 16-hour days and still not being able to function.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, that’s pretty rough.
Loan Pham: Yeah. So, I was having a really, really hard time. And I guess he kind of gave up on us because he didn’t realize that this was where I needed him most. And so, our last straw was I said to him, I go, “We really need quality time for each other.” So, after we celebrated our second year anniversary and my birthday, he broke up with me. I think it was a week after my birthday, and we had gone away for the weekend for my birthday, just to try to have some quality time.
Chris Seiter: Did things seem good when you went away or was it a little stressed?
Loan Pham: I can’t say that it was perfect, but I felt like we were getting somewhere and then somewhere out of the blue. I don’t know what happened. Came back and I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I think we got into a tiny little argument over something really stupid. And then the next thing I know he, messages me from work, and he’s just like, “Oh, we need to talk.” Right? And then he came over to my place and walked through the door and basically just said, “We need to break up.” And he goes, “I’ve made up my decision. I don’t feel the way I should about you anymore. I don’t think that we could ever be together ever again. I just don’t feel that love for you anymore.”
Loan Pham: Yeah. He did. He says, “I fallen out of love with you. I don’t think I’ll ever fall back into love with you.” He goes, “I really care about you still. I want us to be friends, but we can’t be together anymore. There’s no chance for us down the road.”
Chris Seiter: Now, here’s what I find fascinating is after he says this to you, do you take it at face value or do you kind of be like BS?
Loan Pham: For me, I was kind of expecting that we would probably end up having a break because I really needed the break from the stress of everything. And when he said that I just took it for what it was. I didn’t really fight with him. I just basically said, “Well, you’ve made up your decision, there’s really no point in me trying to beg you back or change your mind because you’ve already made up your mind. So, if we have nothing else to say then you might as well just go.” And so, he left and that was it.
Chris Seiter: So, this is where it gets interesting. What is the immediate reaction that you have after this? Like it seems to me initially when this happens, you’re kind of like, “Well, okay. Fine, go. I could use the break.” But at what point do you even start considering like, “Maybe I should try to fight for this?”
Loan Pham: Well, after he left, I had a good cry. I actually-
Chris Seiter: Oh, okay. So, you’re not as immune as… Okay.
Loan Pham: And I thought about it and then I got really upset, and I was just like, “This is stupid. Well, I need-
Chris Seiter: Was it like an instant thing where you’re jumping online and looking for answers or did it take a few days before you actually do something like that?
Loan Pham: I kind of just let it simmer and that night I was just like, “Oh, shoot. What do I do? Is it really over?” And then at the same time, I had my thesis that I was working on and it was due soon, so I was really stressed out. I really couldn’t really think about the relationship too much. But I think it wasn’t until probably two, three days later that it actually hit me.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Loan Pham: Yeah. And at that point, when he left-
Chris Seiter: Did he contact you at all during those two or three days or was it just stony silence?
Loan Pham: It was silent, but I did text him the next day just to tell him that I understood where he was coming from, and if that’s what he wanted then we’ll just leave it at that. And we didn’t talk again for probably a week or so I guess. And it was just like a quick message basically. And then I don’t know what happened during that time, it’s been a little while now because that break up was probably about two and a half years ago I think.
Chris Seiter: Right.
Loan Pham: Yeah. And I just remember kind of sort of going nuts. Feeling like this is so dumb. Why’d he break up, why’d he give up on us? It shouldn’t be over. We could have worked through all this stuff because it was all trivial. Everything that he was talking about was all trivial stuff that we could’ve gotten through together. It wasn’t worth it for a breakup. And so, his mom actually reached out to me probably about two weeks after the breakup. And I thought it was the oddest thing because her and I, we didn’t really have a relationship, but we talked. And she reached out wanting to meet up, and I was just like, “Is this a good idea? Does your son know?” And apparently I found out later that both his mom and dad were kind of on my side about the whole situation thinking he kind of jumped the gun and left.
Chris Seiter: Wow. That’s rare.
Loan Pham: Yeah. So, we talked about it and his mom and dad actually sat down with him and had a chat with him about it telling him relationships are not always perfect and it’s how you two deal with it and run with it. And if you really think you’re worth it for each other, then you work through everything. And I think before he broke up with me, I found out later from his mom was that he actually did sit down with his parents to tell his parents that he was going to break up with me.
Chris Seiter: So, he holds his parents at a very high esteem to do something like that.
Loan Pham: I guess.
Chris Seiter: Like he-
Loan Pham: I mean, he’s never brought a girl home before. I’m the first girl he’s ever brought home.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Okay. All good signs.
Loan Pham: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, you’re going through the breakup and eventually at some point you come across probably ex-boyfriend recovery, I’m guessing is what you came across.
Loan Pham: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: How did that occur? Do you reach the boiling point to where you’re just going online and searching for answers?
Loan Pham: Yeah, that’s what I did. I was just like, “This is ridiculous. It doesn’t make any sense.” So, in between doing my schooling and everything, anytime to fill a void, I was online searching because I didn’t feel like it was over. I felt like he jumped the gun.
Chris Seiter: So, you’re searching every key phrase you could possibly imagine.
Loan Pham: Everything. Yeah. And then when I came across it, I was reading everything that popped up with EBR and you guys kept popping up on all my searches.
Chris Seiter: That’s good. That’s what we want.
Loan Pham: And so, I’m like, “You know what? I’m going to give this a try.” So, I started downloading everything and reading everything over and I’m just like, “Huh.” And so-
Chris Seiter: And eventually you get into the Facebook group. I’m sure of that.
Loan Pham: Yeah. The Facebook group was probably during my first no contact stage after I read about the no contact. So, what happened was I didn’t speak to him for about seven weeks.
Chris Seiter: Okay. That’s a very open period of no contact.
Loan Pham: Not seven weeks, sorry. I did two no contacts with him each for 21 days. Sorry.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, 42 days.
Loan Pham: Yes. So, the first three weeks… It was 21 days, right?
Chris Seiter: Right.
Loan Pham: So, what I did was during that time when I read about the no contact, I applied it right away. Because it made more sense because when I was reading all the content, I was sitting here going, “My God, I was such an idiot with the previous guy. I’m not ruining it for this one.” So, I went into no contact and then after about 21 days I reached out to him. And at that point, he decided that maybe we should meet up and talk. So, we met up to talk and it didn’t turn out very well because the whole conversation was him blaming me for everything and making up excuses for everything as to why the breakup happened.
Chris Seiter: So, there was no rapport building, no kind of warming him back up, it was just immediately from zero to 60 you’re seeing him in person and essentially it goes with him blaming you for the breakup?
Loan Pham: Yeah. Everything.
Chris Seiter: Which is fascinating because I’ve found continuously with exes, they always paint themselves as the victims even when they’re the ones who broke up with you. And it’s just like it never fails. And then maybe this is just an example of that and obviously I’m sure you have a really unique perspective because you actually got him back and you’re married to him now, so maybe you even asked him about his mentality a little bit, and we can dive into that later but you’re at this dinner or was it during the day or during the night?
Loan Pham: It was in the afternoon. He had just came from his parents, I think it was lunch or something. So, we just met out in the open along a trail near my place. It was just out in the open public. And the kicker was he said that he had read somewhere online after he broke up with me about no contact. So, he applied it on me.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Loan Pham: That’s the reason why we didn’t talk for like a [inaudible 00:18:30].
Chris Seiter: All right. So, you got two periods of no contact going. Okay. So, that’s interesting.
Loan Pham: So, the first no contact was him applying no contact on me while I was doing no contact on him.
Chris Seiter: But do you even quiz him about the fact that maybe that’s even an admission, that he’s trying to get you back because that’s usually what no contacts used for. I mean, I guess someone who’s trying to get over an ex can do that but did you even quiz him on that or did you even think of it?
Loan Pham: I just asked him why he thought that he needed to do that on me. He read it somewhere that it would be good for me.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Loan Pham: Yeah. And so, I said to him, I go, “Are you sure you read that right? Because that’s not really what… Well, yeah. It’s good for me, but it’s good for me to have no contact with you, not for you to apply it on me.” So, after that, I just lost it on him and basically said, “You’re blaming me for everything and yet you’re not willing to take responsibility for any of your actions.” And I kind of threw a lot of things back in his face and then after that, he’s just like, “Well, I really care about you, and I want us to be friends, and I want you in my life.” And I go, “You can’t have it both ways.”
Loan Pham: And so, I said, “We can’t. I can’t have anything to do with you. This is still really fresh and raw and I need to be focusing on my school and everything else and you’ve missed out on a lot already as is, and we’re just going to leave it at that.” At the same time, he also had a lot of people around him that were also influencing him because like I said, his parents were on my side. One of my really good girlfriends worked with him, so every day she would just be like, “You’re an idiot.”
Chris Seiter: Also, she’s like the ultimate spy telling you everything he’s doing.
Loan Pham: Yeah. She was telling me this and that. And I never really pressed her for any information really. But whenever I talked to her she would say, “Oh he’s such a dumb-ass for breaking up with you.” She’s like, “What’s wrong with him?” And apparently he buried himself in his sports because it was summertime, so he’s playing baseball and slow pitch. So, he’s on three different teams. So, he’d just-
Chris Seiter: He’s like the softball type… Coed, softball, underhand. Yeah
Loan Pham: Yeah. He was on three different teams, so he kept himself busy all summer.
Chris Seiter: Okay. Distraction. Got it.
Loan Pham: Yeah. And then in the meantime, I’m keeping busy because I was trying to-
Chris Seiter: Of your schoolwork.
Loan Pham: Yeah. I guess I was going through all my medical therapy and stuff, and I was starting to feel a lot better and I had a lot more energy. So, then I decided, you know what, I’m just going to focus on myself, which I should have done from the very beginning and not lose myself. Because I used to be a marathon runner-
Chris Seiter: Nice.
Loan Pham: …So, I thought I got back into running again and I ran my first race. He missed out on that.I graduated.
Chris Seiter: Did you post it on social media?
Loan Pham: I did. I did. And then my girlfriend that worked with him also told him about it. And I said to her, “What was his reaction? And she’s like, “He kind of looked pretty sad that he missed out on it.” So, that was a good win.
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Loan Pham: And so, what happened? And so after that talk, the initial meeting, I did another no contact on him, so that was the second no contact. And that again lasted another three weeks.
Chris Seiter: So, 21 days. And are you also kind of going through the Facebook group and taking their temperature on that?
Loan Pham: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I posted it because it got to a point where I started cleaning up the house, and he’s a red head, so he burns easily.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Loan Pham: I had bought like a whole ton of, I guess bulk sunscreen, and I had a bunch sitting around, and I am that girl-
Chris Seiter: So, obviously, the first thing you think of is him.
Loan Pham: Yeah. And so, I didn’t reach out to him for 21 days and then I decided to send him an email. I probably shouldn’t have poured my heart out in an email, but I just felt it was just something I had to do. And obviously, I think it was probably wrong for the most part because it was a lot to pour onto him, but at the same time, it got a reaction out of him, and he actually contacted me. And so, I don’t know what happened, but he didn’t really know how to respond. But he just said thank you because I sent him a copy of my thesis for him to read and just to show him what that last year has been like for me trying to get this thing together. It wasn’t like I was ignoring him or anything like that. It’s just it was my schooling. That’s a lot of money I put into school. I can’t just drop out.
Loan Pham: And then I guess he sent me a text or something to say thank you for the email and whatnot. And then out of the blue I just sent him a text., I said, “Hey. I know you’re playing. You have all your baseball and softball stuff and all the stuff going on this summer, I found a couple bottles of sunscreen. Do you want it?” And I go, “Just let me know when you can pop by. I’ll leave it outside for you.” So, I wasn’t intending to meet up with him at all to give it to him. I was just going to leave it there, and he can grab it whenever he wanted. And this was around Kennedy and July the fourth. Because Kennedy’s on the first, so it was just like the first to the 4th of July there.
Loan Pham: And I guess he was busy, out partying or whatever with his friends, so he never got back to me. And then the next thing you know, I get this text message from him and that day I was working a double shift, so I left my house at like six in the morning and I didn’t get home until almost midnight. And he had been texting me all day long saying he wanted to pop by. But I said to him, I go, “You never let me know when, so I didn’t leave it out.” Right? And I never responded for the whole day. And so, I actually posted that onto the Facebook group and everyone was telling me that he was fishing. Nobody goes out of their way to get sunscreen. You can go buy it, it’s that cheap.
Chris Seiter: Yes.
Loan Pham: And so, I get home and I’m just like, “You know what? I’m not going to respond to him. I’m going to shower and do my thing, and he’s probably in bed already.” And then I got another text message from him or around midnight, “Are you up? Can we talk? I can’t sleep.”
Chris Seiter: Ooh.
Loan Pham: And so, I was just kind of like… Oh. Before that, his text message was, “If you’re ignoring me, I get it.”
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Loan Pham: Or something like that to that. Yeah. So, I think he kind of knew that I was ignoring him, but at the same time, I was working and I didn’t really want to respond anyway. So, I ended up calling him after I got out of the shower. We are ended up talking for a couple hours into the night, and then he really wanted to meet up. And so, we met up for dinner. I think it was like a day or two later. And from that point it just kind of went forward.
Chris Seiter: So, was it pretty quick when things started to click?
Loan Pham: Yeah. It was almost like… He said, “You know what? During this time apart, I kept busy with working with my sports and stuff. I tried going on a date again. It just didn’t work out.” And I think he started to understand that he wasn’t really there supporting me when I needed him the most. He felt bad about missing out on everything, like my achievements while he was gone because I bought a new car when he was away. I showed it to his parents because I still had a relationship with them. I met up with them and, they’re like, “Check out my car and everything.” So, they were telling him all these things. And I think with that, was it the sphere of influence or the circumference?
Chris Seiter: Yep.
Loan Pham: Yeah. So, I think that really helped a lot because like I said, majority of our family and friends felt like he jumped the gun.
Chris Seiter: Well, you also have many assets that most people don’t I feel like because most people when they’re ex breaks up with them, the parents of the ex aren’t usually on the person’s side. They’re on their kid’s side. And I mean I think that really helps a lot. But what I’m actually kind of curious about is when things start to kind go swimmingly, who asks who first if they want to give us another try, essentially?
Loan Pham: I think he always knew that I wanted to get back together because the first meeting and the second meeting, I was always the one who initiated the contacting.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Loan Pham: But at the same time I also said to him… I think he wanted to get back together. He initiated it and then I said to him, I go, “Well, I don’t want to have to go through this fighting and stuff again. We really need to lay all our cards on the table and discuss this openly.” And if we ever had issues with each other that we’d talk about it right away and not let it simmer and pester and build up. And so, we had always established an open communication, but I think at some point he kind of lost that. So, we started off slow.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Loan Pham: I guess when we were initially together, we didn’t really see each other very often anyways because we were so busy. I would either come and stay over at his place once or twice a week, and he would come over and hang out with me and go home because I’d always send him home. I did it out of respect for my ex. And I think he hated that.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, I would too if I was him.
Loan Pham: Eventually, I was just like, “Screw the ex. He can stay.” And so, I’m like, “Yeah. You can stay if you want.” And then I think it was… We were both invited to his cousin’s wedding.
Chris Seiter: Weddings are such a great place to get back together, aren’t they?
Loan Pham: Yeah. And so, what happened was we were invited before the breakup, and so when the breakup happened, I had sent his aunt just letting her know that to touch base with him on the guest list because I don’t think I’d be coming anymore.
Chris Seiter: Right.
Loan Pham: Yeah. And so, some of the family by that point they knew that we had broken up. And so, I said to him because I was really uncomfortable about going to the wedding because we had just gotten back together, and we hadn’t made it official with his family yet. And so, I said to him, I go, “Well, let’s just give this a try and see how things go.” And I said to him, I go, “When do you want to make this official with your parents at least, so they’re in the know.” So, he kind of said then, “Well, let’s give it a few weeks and see how it goes.” And then I guess after we started dating again for a couple of weeks. He one day just said to me, “I’m going to let my parents know next week.”
Chris Seiter: Wow.
Loan Pham: I’m like, “Okay.”
Chris Seiter: So, it was sort of like this secret type thing and I guess it became official when he tells his parents.
Loan Pham: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Seiter: Well, that’s a really interesting sort of outcome. Now when you kind of get back together, and you’re not sort of technically official but are technically official, did you ever quiz him on his frame of mind and why he did some of the things he did or said some of the things he said and what did he have to say about that?
Loan Pham: I still bug him to this day actually.
Chris Seiter: Ooh. Good.
Loan Pham: I just bothered him about it this morning. I told him that I was going on this interview with you and he’s like, “Really?” I’m like, “Yeah, I think it’s actually something that’s really good that came out of this. You should be happy about it, right.” And I go, “Who knows, maybe he might ask if he wants to talk to you.” And he’s like, “No, no, I can’t.” We’re really goofy, and like I said, I know I don’t hide anything from him, right? I’m pretty open about it all. And I think that’s one of the qualities that he likes about me is that I-
Chris Seiter: I think that’s a good quality actually because you’d be surprised at how many women are so scared to tell their exes that they got help to get them back. I can’t tell you how many success stories I’ve interviewed that do not tell their ex.
Loan Pham: Oh, he knows all about it.
Chris Seiter: Well, I think that’s a great quality. I really do. I think that sets you up for success long-term, but share the details. What’s going on in his mind? What was he thinking? What is his explanations? Because I think a lot of women are probably wondering.
Loan Pham: I don’t even know sometimes because when I ask he’s just like, “Oh, why are you asking me about this? I don’t know. I don’t know.”I’m like, “You do know. Oh, you just don’t want to tell me.”
Chris Seiter: You do know.
Loan Pham: You do know you just don’t want to tell me. I think he just sort of realized that he didn’t give me a fair chance, and he had told me in the past that it was easier on him to break up with me because he had already known that he was going to do it for a while. And it was a complete surprise to me, so he knew that he needed to give me time to sort of process everything. And then I ask him all the time, I go, “We are married now. Did you ever think this was going to happen? The time that we were apart and whatnot. Are you glad to be back?”
Chris Seiter: You don’t want to… Yeah.
Loan Pham: And his explanation is that he’s the type of person that takes a while to make a decision, and when he makes his final decision, he commits to it but it takes him a while. It’s a process for him. That’s mostly the answer I get from him. He doesn’t like to tell me much because he… I don’t know. He keeps everything in, right? But he tells me when I push him enough he will. But he’ll always say, “I don’t know. I don’t know what I was thinking.” And so, for the breakup part, he has acknowledged that he was scared, and he ran
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, maybe scared of what specifically? Have you probed him for that?
Loan Pham: His feelings. He was scared of his feelings.
Chris Seiter: So, was it just getting too real or it’s getting too serious or?
Loan Pham: Yeah. He didn’t know how to process it because he’s never been in a real relationship before.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, maybe he’s got no baseline other than the trial seven-month period girl-
Loan Pham: Yes.
Chris Seiter: …of what like a successful rate relationship looks like. And sometimes it’s not easy. Sometimes you have to actually put work in like his parents were telling him.
Loan Pham: Yeah. Exactly. He didn’t have a baseline, so it was really hard for him to figure things out. And so, for him, he felt like he just needed to step away from it and process it. And when he realized that he made a big mistake, and he actually admitted that he made a big mistake.
Chris Seiter: In what context did he admit that?
Loan Pham: He basically said leaving was the wrong choice. He should’ve stayed and worked things through with me because a lot of things we fought about were things that could have been easily fixed.
Chris Seiter: So, tell me the details of how this engagement goes down. How did he propose? How long did it take for him to propose?
Loan Pham: Okay. This is where you’re probably going to laugh because the proposal never really happened.
Chris Seiter: Oh? I don’t think I’ll laugh. I’ll just that it’s more curious.
Loan Pham: So, we just started talking about getting married, and we’re like, “Okay. Well, we need to set a date.” So, we worked backwards.
Chris Seiter: So, it’s a mature proposal, kind of like just assumed.
Loan Pham: What happened was we went through the whole motions of planning the wedding in secret because there was no proposal and yet. He didn’t propose yet. And so, we went and had the rings designed and I started planning the destination, so only the people who were coming to the destination wedding knew.
Chris Seiter: Okay. How did you tell the people?
Loan Pham: We just said we’re getting married.
Chris Seiter: I’m assuming it’s like his parents and your parents probably.
Loan Pham: Well, my mom actually passed away six months ago, so…
Chris Seiter: Oh. I’m so sorry.
Loan Pham: Oh, that’s okay. It was a sad moment, but we just had to move on. I don’t really have a relationship with my father, so he wasn’t really involved anyway. [inaudible 00:35:05].
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, his parents are showing up though, I’m hoping.
Loan Pham: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, we just invited the people that were coming for the destination. Because we wanted a small gathering only, and we’re actually holding a big reception here in the next few months, so I’m still planning. And so, we just kind of told everybody, but I didn’t announce any engagement or anything, so people knew we were having wedding, but everyone was like, “Oh, so when’s he going to ask you? When’s he going to ask you?” And they were like, “You guys are so funny. You’re planning this whole wedding thing and you haven’t even had a proposal.”
Chris Seiter: Were you wearing the engagement ring at all? So, no, no,. Did you at least make him try to propose?
Loan Pham: Well, he got the ring. We went and had the ring designed in December 2018, and everything was ready to go. He had the ring hiding in the house from April 2019 and-
Chris Seiter: Be honest. Did you go fishing for it?
Loan Pham: No, I didn’t.
Chris Seiter: Oh, man.
Loan Pham: I literally did not. I had all the say in the design of the ring, so-
Chris Seiter: Oh, okay. So, essentially you knew everything about it.
Loan Pham: I knew, but I didn’t know the final piece.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Loan Pham: I didn’t see the final piece. And so, it had been hiding and I said to him, I go, Shawn, we really need to sort of announce the engagement at some point because we got to get our engagement photos done. We had to do our invites for the reception, like something’s got to happen soon. And so, I think it was August. I had just come home from work and every day I come home from work, he lets our dog out to come greet me at the car, and so she comes running out, and she’s got the ring box on her collar.
Chris Seiter: Oh, that is pretty clever.
Loan Pham: Yeah. So, that was pretty much the proposal. My dog asked me on his behalf.
Chris Seiter: Got it. So, he didn’t get down on one knee?
Loan Pham: Nope. He still hasn’t asked to this day.
Chris Seiter: Well, let me tell you from someone who has had to get down on one knee, it is so nerve-wracking. I was even so cowardly, I couldn’t do it in public, so I set up this really, really elaborate thing throughout the house or the apartment we had. And still to this day, it makes me nervous getting down on one knee. It’s just kind of a nerve-wracking feeling. But I wish I had went with the dog thing. That’s pretty genius.
Loan Pham: Well, the thing is, like I said, I’m short, so even if he was on a knee, he’d still be taller than me.
Chris Seiter: No, that’s not true.
Loan Pham: Oh, I’m really short. I don’t exaggerate about that. I’m 4’8.
Chris Seiter: That is pretty short. My wife’s 5’2, so.
Loan Pham: Yeah. So, it’s just kind of that ongoing joke. So, I’m like, “To this day, you haven’t actually proposed and I haven’t given you an answer.”
Chris Seiter: But you’re married.
Loan Pham: Yeah, I’m married. Yeah. So, we just laugh about it all the time. But like I said, we had our rings designed and ready to go by… It was all ready in April. It wasn’t that, I guess we would call that the official engagement happened in August of this year or last year. 2019. It’s the new year now, isn’t it?
Chris Seiter: And you went on like some sort of super honeymoon after you guys got married. You were telling me you went from like the Philippines all the way to Japan and lasted for a month. That sounds amazing.
Loan Pham: Close to it, yeah. We got married in the Philippines, and then we traveled through to, was it Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Japan.
Chris Seiter: That’s just so good.
Loan Pham: It was a lot of traveling and it was a lot of planning because the first part of the trip, we traveled with my two best girlfriends who were the bridesmaids.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Loan Pham: So, that was actually pretty fun. We went with them from the Philippines right up to Vietnam, and then we split off from there. We visited my brother in Taiwan. So, when we think about it, the only time we actually were alone for our trip was Japan. We were there for seven days in Japan, I would probably call that the official honeymoon, I guess.
Chris Seiter: Well, I think our honeymoon was in the Florida Keys and it was only about 10 or 11 days. And to this day, I wish it had been longer. It was so fun.
Loan Pham: Mm-hmm (affirmative). For me, it was really stressful because we had to prep everything before we left.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. There’s a bit of that. We also got married in the Florida keys, so.
Loan Pham: Oh, yeah. Okay. And packing everything for the wedding was not fun and making sure I had people taking stuff back for me because we were continuing on.
Chris Seiter: Weddings can be extremely stressful when you’re planning it.
Loan Pham: It was very stressful. Well, to this day we’re still talking about the whole story. I met up with my girlfriends last night, and they were like we should meet the producers, or what was it? The Hangover?
Chris Seiter: Oh, yeah. The Hangover.
Loan Pham: And you’ve been a real life story that they could base it on and call it Destination Wedding.
Chris Seiter: Destination Wedding.
Loan Pham: Because you have no idea what happened. Before we left, there was a typhoon that hit the Philippines.
Chris Seiter: When did you get married? What month?
Loan Pham: December 2nd.
Chris Seiter: Okay. So, the only reason I say that is because I have a video editor that works out of the Philippines. And he literally just messaged me like a couple of weeks ago saying that he’s real sorry. That he went on vacation but then there was like this category four typhoon that hit.
Loan Pham: Yep.
Chris Seiter: And living in Florida, there was almost a category five hurricane that hit us this year but then it hit Puerto Rico and destroyed them instead.
Loan Pham: Yeah. The typhoon happened. They canceled our flight.
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Loan Pham: And we had only a four day window for the destination, and so there was a lot of stuff going on trying to get us there. We arrived a day late.
Chris Seiter: How did you get there? Did you just wait until the tickets opened up?
Loan Pham: No. What happened was they had canceled our connecting flight, and then they changed our flight from here to Manila to connect, and so we ended up missing our connecting flight. So, we ended up staying a night in Manila when we should’ve been at the resort. Half of my wedding party was already at the resort because the Vancouver crew, there was a group of 11 of us that was coming, so we all got delayed. Luckily, the typhoon was more North. On the island and that we were going to was further South, but it had just missed Manila but the Manila Airport actually closed down for 24 hours.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. They do that.
Loan Pham: So, there was a lot of drama getting there and a lot of drama that came with getting there and there.
Chris Seiter: Weddings are stressful.
Loan Pham: Well, I could go on about the wedding itself because there’s things that happened that you wouldn’t even think would happen. His sister’s girlfriend got kicked off the flight for fighting in the airport.
Chris Seiter: Seriously?
Loan Pham: Yep. My older brother got thrown in jail in the Philippines for fighting.
Chris Seiter: Jeez.
Loan Pham: He got so drunk, he was in a stupor the night before the wedding. My younger brother almost killed himself drinking. It just kept going on, and I’m sitting here going, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”
Chris Seiter: Just make it to the day.
Loan Pham: Well, the thing was, because we arrived late, we couldn’t do our bachelor and bachelorette with that day in between for us to rest.
Chris Seiter: Ah.
Loan Pham: Yeah. So, a lot of stuff happened, but at the end of the day, we got married. It all worked out. Very stressful, no sleep, and we just kind of continued on there. But just the stories, we laugh about it now, but when it happened we were just like, “Oh, my goodness.”
Chris Seiter: They’re great stories to laugh about but it’s not so fun when you’re like in the midst of it.
Loan Pham: The typhoon was the one that scared me the most because that’s forever.
Chris Seiter: Yeah, because there’s nothing you can do about that.
Loan Pham: Yeah. So, we were lucky that we made it, but if the typhoon hit further South, we would have had to cancel the wedding altogether.
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Loan Pham: Right.
Chris Seiter: But it didn’t and you’re married.
Loan Pham: Yeah. And I said to him this morning, I go, “So…” Because I call him Shobby just because his first initial is S and, hobbies, I just added the S to it to call Shobby.
Chris Seiter: Okay.
Loan Pham: Yeah. So, I’m like, “So, how’s it feel? Has it finally kicked in that we’re married.” He’s like, “No. Not really.”
Chris Seiter: It will. Don’t worry.
Loan Pham: Well, the thing is, we still have to have our reception here.
Chris Seiter: Wait until you have kids.
Loan Pham: Yeah. We still have our reception here to deal with, so that’s happening in two months. So, there’s still a lot of planning going on. So, the wedding is still going. T.
Chris Seiter: The stress is not completely gone then.
Loan Pham: Nope. Nope. I’m chasing people down for RSVPing right now.
Chris Seiter: All right. So, that was a really great interview and I want to end by just asking you a simple question. Throughout this entire process, what do you think was the most impactful direction or action that you took that made a difference on getting him to come back?
Loan Pham: Honestly, I think it was the no contact.
Chris Seiter: The no contact rule. [inaudible 00:44:49].
Loan Pham: Yeah. I wish I had done that before with the previous because giving yourself that space to process your emotions and giving him the space to process his emotions, it’s such a huge, huge benefit for both of you. Because when you say things you’re saying it in the moment, right? And you take it to heart. But I’m like, “Well, that’s just how you felt in the moment. Feelings change.” Right? Sometimes, you say it because you felt it at that exact moment. That doesn’t mean you’ll feel it later. And when he said that he didn’t think that… He basically said there’s no chance that we will ever get back together because there’s no way he would ever feel that way about me ever again.
Chris Seiter: Pretty devastating to hear but-
Loan Pham: Yeah.
Chris Seiter: …reality’s a bit different isn’t it?
Loan Pham: It is. And I think that how I responded when he did break up with me was probably in my favor because I just let him say what he had to say and then I just let him go. I didn’t argue with him. I didn’t fight with him. I just like, there’s no point in me convincing you otherwise. You’ve already made it your mind.
Chris Seiter: Yeah. You’d be surprised at how just staying calm in the moment makes a difference because it’s like they’re expecting you to have the freak out and when you don’t have it, it’s different than they thought. It’s like when they think they know you. They know how you’re going to react and you don’t react that way, it confuses them.
Loan Pham: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. And even with after our first meeting, after the first initial no contact, him blaming me for everything, it made me see another side of him and what he was processing and how he was feeling because I never really heard any of this from him. And it also gave me a chance to sort of defend myself at the same time and let him know where I was coming from when I was in those moments where I felt the way I did or I did things the way I did them. And I think that was the hardest part was him not understanding that it was all one side on his part, and he wasn’t willing to listen to my side. It was just like, “It was mine. She did this, I don’t like it. This happens all the time. I don’t like it. It’s not going to work.” And also made him realize that a lot of things that I did and me sleeping all the time, it was out of my control.
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Loan Pham: It was my health. I didn’t have control. The meds, everything I was on, the therapy and all this stuff, it just took its toll on me. I’m glad that we were able to work things through, and I think the breakup for us was actually a good thing because it made us realize that if we could get through that, we could probably get through more. And being able to have the open communication now, I mean, we still fight. We fight, we bicker a lot, and we fight, but at the end of the day, we don’t go to bed pissed off at each other.
Chris Seiter: Yeah.
Loan Pham: Right? We talk it through. And if I don’t want to talk, he’ll be like, “No. We have to talk about this.” And now he’s like, “You know what? Give me an hour. I need to calm down.” And then we talk about it.
Chris Seiter: That’s good advice.
Loan Pham: I think that’s very helpful for both of us going through all of this and realizing that if we could make it through that then we’ve got a good fighting chance down the road.
Chris Seiter: Well, it seems like you’ve done really great so far, even despite the crazy wedding, and the typhoon, and reception still to be planned. Seems like you’re doing really great, actually.
Loan Pham: I hope so. I mean, we still have our moments and our days and whatnot, but I think roll with the punches. When it happens, we’ll cross the bridge. We’ll deal with it.
Chris Seiter: Well, I think that’s going to do it. Here, I’ll stop the recording.
If Your Intuition Is Telling You He Will Come Back, Don’t Ignore It
Dec 10, 2019
Hello, and welcome to another great episode of the Ex Boyfriend Recovery podcast.
Today we’re going to be talking about what to do if your intuition or your gut is telling you that your ex is going to come back. And how maybe, just maybe you shouldn’t ignore that.
But I would be remiss if I didn’t first introduce you to the ultimate starting point that I think everyone who’s even considering getting an ex back, or wanting to move on from an ex should start. And that’s by hopping over to our website at exboyfriendrecovery.com and taking our ex recovery chances quiz.
Now a little bit about the quiz, the quiz we designed in three parts, specifically to ask you probing questions about your relationships so that we can get to the bottom of taking those questions and then comparing them to the average situation that we see.
And how often those average situations get their ex’s back.
So it’s a great way of putting your answers through a sophisticated algorithm and spitting out a score, that’s an approximate idea of if you should be trying to get your ex back or if you should be trying to move on. So again, if you’re interested in taking that quiz, all you have to do is stop by our website, exboyfriendrecovery.com.
And all the information will be there on the homepage for you.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Should You Trust Your Intuition If Your Gut Is Telling You That Your Ex Will Come Back?
Okay. So intuition, if your gut feeling is telling you that your ex is going to come back, maybe you shouldn’t ignore it. So I’m a firm believer in logic and looking at reality, and the intuition side of things is almost the exact opposite of that.
Oftentimes you’ll hear from people who have their ex’s come back to them.
They’ll say something like, “I just had a feeling he would come back.” Or, “My gut is telling me this is not over. My gut is telling me I need to keep trying.”
And also you’ll have those people who say that, but they’re not looking at their situation in a clear manner. They really have no chance of getting their ex back.
Well, let’s look at intuition as a whole. And intuition by nature is a pseudo science. Often people will call it hocus-pocus, it’s sort of the psychic side of things. But let’s look at what is commonly referred to as women’s intuition.
Which is ironic because I think it’s usually men that are calling them… that are labeling it that way. So what does research indicate about intuition, specifically when it comes to women? Well, research has clearly shown that nonverbal communication skills within women as a group are better.
They’re better at reading facial expressions of emotions than men. They’re also seen as more empathic than men, and that they’re more likely to see themselves as more empathic. Therefore, they tend to be more open to others, emotional messages, nonverbal cues, things of that nature. Women seem to have a headstart on men.
The Main Difference Between Men, Women And Intuition
And I find this extremely fascinating and I think I’m a really, really good person to point this fact out, is the fact that I do have two websites. One for men, and one for women. Now the women’s website, Ex Boyfriend Recovery versus the men website, Ex Girlfriend Recovery.
The women’s website is obviously so much bigger because there’s not only more women out there searching for help, but it’s just the website I started first. So it’s obviously has more of my soul poured into it.
So that may be one of the reasons why it’s more successful.
But what’s interesting is I have a lot of data between how women act when they go through breakups and how men act when they go through breakups. And for the most part, the reactions are exactly the same. I mean breakups are one of the more stressful aspects when people are going through it in general.
So it’s not shocking to see men and women act the same way. But there are some really, really interesting differences that I noticed.
The first difference I noticed is that women actually struggle more of a starting things, right? They have a have a lot of struggle with creating a spark, sparking up a conversation, sparking up a relationship. Starting the rapport building to rebuild attraction and things of that nature.
Whereas men don’t really struggle with that. And my theory has always been that men, because they are… There’s this socially acceptable nature in which men, they’re basically the people or the person in the relationship that takes the lead. It’s socially acceptable for that. So by nature it seems normal for them. Women necessarily aren’t.
Now what’s interesting though is the opposite is true when it comes to keeping things started, right? So men tend to struggle not with starting things up, not with starting a conversation or starting the attraction building process. They struggle with keeping their ex’s interested.
They struggle with keeping things going, so to speak. Now, what does that tell us about intuition? Well, I’m not really sure it tells us much to be honest with you. Other than the fact that when it comes to starting things up with an ex, women seem to have a clear disadvantage, right?
But maybe, I guess the point of why I’m trying to explain this to you very, very poorly if I might add. Is that maybe men struggle more with keeping things started because they aren’t as adept at reading nonverbal communication skills.
They’re not as adept at reading between the lines which women seem to specialize in. And maybe that specialization, the nonverbal communication skills, the empathic side of them allows women’s intuition to be stronger, which allows them to keep things started much more adeptly than men.
But when it comes to intuition, I think it’s kind of impossible to ignore the fact of statistically, what does the average sort of thing happen when it comes to breakups? How often do ex’s try to get back together? How often are ex’s thinking about their partners? How often are they staying friends? Well, it just so happens for this particular podcast episode. I wanted to do just that. So I went through and found some very, very reputable sources and looked at how on point women’s intuition was when it came to breakups.
What Do Statistics Say About Your Overall Chances With Your Ex?
So here’s the first thing that stuck out to me. NBC did a poll maybe 10, 15 years ago where they surveyed people and asked them, “Well, how often have you stayed friends with their ex?” And 48% of people that they surveyed had said, “Yeah. I have stayed friends with my ex.”
While 18% of people said, “Well, I tried to stay friends with my ex, but it didn’t work out.” So if you’re actually doing the math, that means after a breakup there’s a 66… According to NBC at least, there’s a 66% chance that your ex is going to be open to staying friends with you.
And what’s interesting is maybe the intuition a lot of women have is also from the fact that research has clearly pointed out that staying friends with an ex, usually only ends in one of two ways. Now I say usually because there are always outliers to it, but usually ends with a reconnection or another sort of break of the friendship.
Now here’s the other interesting thing. YourTango, the website YourTango, also did a poll a few years ago where they asked their readers, “Well, how often do you guys think about your ex?” And 71% of people said that they thought about their exes too much. And one of my favorite studies, I think that was done maybe in 2014 or 2015, is We TV did a poll, where they asked their exes, “Well, how many times have you guys actually gotten back together?” And 41% of people admitted that getting back together with an ex happened in their lives.
So when people or women… When I hear women saying, “Yeah. I have this intuition, my gut is telling me he’s going to come back.” Statistically the statistics are on your side. Now I’m always really quick to point out that these polls don’t exactly measure the thing that we really want measured is, how often do ex’s get back together?
Well, one thing I do have tons of measurement on are our success rates. And I am very, very candid about them because I like to be honest with people.
A lot of people actually believe the odds are stacked against them. And that’s kind of true. But one thing we have made clear so far, at least I hope I’ve made clear in the research portion of this sort of podcast episode, is that a lot of people try to be friends with their ex. A lot of people think about their ex’s too much. And even though it’s not a… Even though it seems kind of low, 41% of people have admitted to getting back together with an ex.
So at the very least your ex is probably open to talking and being friends. But what does a success rate look like when you’re actually attempting to get your ex back and you’re using the strategies that we teach?
So over the course of, I think this year maybe we haven’t had that many, but we’ve taken on… I’ve been injured for most of this year, so most of them this year has been me trying to recover from three surgeries. I don’t know if I opened up on the podcast and told anyone that, but that’s what’s been going on with me. But anyways, over the course of this year, we’ve taken on 10 high value clients.
Now these are clients that are not normal. And what I mean by that is, normally we do one-on-one coaching sessions over the phone. We usually do an hour, to an hour and a half. But for people who pay top, top, top dollar that we’ve been working with for months and months and much months, we’re responding to all of their messages all the time, we’re holding their hand throughout the entire process.
For those people, we estimate… Not estimate, seven out of the 10 have gotten their ex’s back, right? So that’s, if you are trying to get your ex’s back, the odds are actually better than you think. So that still kind of skirts the issue of intuition and what I personally believe about intuition. Now, one thing I’ve tried to move Ex Boyfriend Recovery towards or the ex Recovery program, or any of my little relationship empire towards is this idea of logic, and how we’re going to make informed decisions based on logic.
Intuition Vs. Logic
Well, here’s the funny thing.
Intuition is the exact opposite of logic, isn’t it? I mean if you were to add it, or look at it as a spectrum, intuition would be on one end and the logic would be on the other end.
They just sort of don’t coincide. But what’s interesting I find is that I can’t tell you how often that the people who have success in winning their ex’s back, assuming that’s what they want to do. Well, will say something along the lines of, “I don’t know why I said that.” Or, “I don’t know why I did that. I just felt that it would work.” Or, “I can’t really explain to you Chris, why I said this certain text to him that sort of sent him off in a positive way. I just felt that it would work.”
So I think there is a time for intuition.
I think there is a time for trusting your gut, but I think the ultimate goal should be for everyone who’s going through this process is to try to trust your gut in a logical way. So it’s kind of like finding a balance between both logic and intuition.
And oftentimes I think everyone is connected to their intuition, but often they don’t label it as intuition.
We’ll say, “It just felt right.”
Well sometimes, and this is especially true when you’re reconnecting with your ex, you’re talking to them again and you’re trying to rebuild connection with them, or attraction with them. That’s like I said, where most women shine.
And I think they shine because they are able to trust their gut. Whereas men have maybe a little bit of a harder time because they don’t have that honed in intuition. They’re not great at picking up nonverbal cues.
They’re not even great at picking up texting cues or things of that nature, where I can’t tell you how often women in our private Facebook support group are literally dissecting everything that their ex is sending them through a text message.
And trying to understand it and they’re getting all sorts of views from all sorts of other women, and a few men as well. So I think trusting your gut is an important thing to do once you are in the proper place.
Now what do I mean by that? The proper place? Well, the worst thing… The biggest mistake that I see people making always happens around the no contact rule. They’re either breaking it too early or finding an excuse to break it early. So I think what’s important is at the beginning you just almost want to be clinically logical, right?
Because you do not want to break the no contact rule for a trivial reason. But after the no contact rules over, after you feel like you’re in a better place emotionally and you do start talking to your ex again. And you get into a conversation if you feel the flow is right. I think it’s okay to trust your gut sometimes.
I’m always saying adaptation is the one thing that I’ve seen successful people do, that unsuccessful people don’t do. Unsuccessful people are too book wormish. I know that’s a horrible thing to say, but they don’t allow conversations to unfold organically.
And I think that’s more of an intuition or gut type of a feeling.
So if you’re sitting there and you feel, “I feel like he is going to come back.” I think it might be okay to trust your gut.
But before we actually start taking her question, the first thing that I think you should do if you’re listening to this podcast or even watching this podcast on YouTube since we’re doing that now, is take the starting quiz.
Do you have a chance of getting your ex back?
So one of the most asked questions that I get almost every single day is people are wondering what kind of chance they have of getting their ex back. And that’s a good thing to answer because there’s nothing worse than wasting your time on a situation where you really have no chance of getting your ex back.
So luckily for you, I’ve put together a special quiz on the website, exboyfriendrecovery.com that will answer this exact question for you.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
My Ex Wants To Be Single And Have Fun… What Does That Mean?
Okay, so now that that is out of the way, let’s talk about what it means when an ex wants to be single and have fun. But first let’s hear from Astrid.
“Hi Chris, my name’s Astrid. I just had a question in regards to a recent breakup I’m going through. So he broke up with me about a week after my birthday and we went on a trip and whatnot. He wanted to make things work, but he said he just didn’t want a longterm commitment and that he wanted some change and this and that, and that he wanted to be single.
And now I find out that he brought a girl home the night he broke up with me, he slept with her. And he’s still in contact with her and he’s been hanging out with her. I’m not sure if they’re dating. But anyways, we work together and we go to school together. So it’s really complicated. But he was telling me that he had feelings for me still, and that he loved me and that that would never go away. Then he still wants to be friends. I just kind of want to know what this means. Is this girl a rebound, what’s going on? And she’s complete opposite of me. Like everything, it’s so weird, she cheated on her boyfriend the night that they slept together.
Everything’s so messed up.
So I just need some advice and I just want to know where… It’s hard to know where his head’s at, especially if he’s telling me he still had feelings for me, still cared about me, but he just didn’t want the longterm commitment. And he wanted that change. I think he just wants this bad girl for the time being. Okay. Thank you. Bye.”
So I want to take a minute and thank Astrid for leaving the question. It seems like she’s having a really tough time.
A Quick Recap Of Astrid’s Situation
So let’s do a quick recap of her situation and then there are some big questions that I want to provide answers to, not just for her but for everyone listening because having an ex basically say that he wants to be single and have fun is a lot more common than you realize.
But there’s also a lot of things that are interesting about her situation.
So let’s do a quick recap first.
Astrid basically has gone through a breakup recently.
Her ex told her that he’s obviously single and wants to have fun.
He broke up with her a week after her birthday, which poor timing there.
He said he didn’t want a longterm commitment, but he brought a girl home and slept with her quickly after they broke up.
So that seems to kind of poke a hole in the “I don’t want a longterm commitment” theory, or maybe even helps it a little bit. We’ll discuss.
The issue with Astrid’s situation is that she’s actually working together with her ex and they go to school together as well.
He sometimes will tell her that he is having feelings for her and still loves her, but he’s with this new girl now.
He’s kind of in that limbo phase between being official and not being official. So she’s wondering if the new girl’s a rebound and what’s odd is the girl is a complete opposite of her.
So there’s a lot to unpack here. But let’s kind of go through some of the big questions that I think people are having in your specific situation. So the obvious thing people are obviously wondering when they’re in a situation where their ex says, “Hey, I want to be single and have fun,” is does he actually mean it?
And another question is, what do they actually mean when they want to be single and have fun? T
hen I wanted to cover on Astrid’s situation is why he’s attracted to someone who seemingly is the opposite of her and why he brought her home so quickly and slept with her immediately. And then finally this new girl if she’s a rebound.
So there’s a lot to cover here.
So let’s take it from the top.
Does My Ex Actually Mean It When They Say They Want To Be Single And Have Fun?
The first big question that people are often wondering is when an ex says they want to be single and have fun, do they actually mean it?
And in my opinion, yes, they actually do mean it in the moment.
Otherwise they wouldn’t have broke up with you.
So I recently just posted a YouTube video on my YouTube channel covering kind of a similar situation, which is when an ex actually sits there and tells you, “Oh, there’s no chance of us getting back together” or “I don’t love you anymore,” and things of that nature, do they actually mean it? And like I described there, yes, in the moment when they’re actually saying it, they actually mean it.
Here’s the video in case you were interested in watching.
But you need to understand that old adage, when emotions run high and logic runs low, certainly runs true here.
When we go through breakups, we go through arguably some of the most emotional experiences through our life.
We’re experiencing emotions at an unnatural clip. So it’s completely normal for people to say things that they don’t mean in the moment. But I actually think they do mean it in the moment. But circumstances are prone to change. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard from a success story who’s gotten their exes back, where they’ve actually asked their ex and said, “Hey, you said that you wanted to be single and have fun,” or “You said that you didn’t think there was ever a chance between the two of us getting back together again, but we’re back together again.
What was going on there?” Only to have the exes say, “Well, yeah, I mean I felt that in the moment, but after some time I realized that I couldn’t live without you.”
So what I think people struggle with is this understanding between emotions and logic. So a lot of people try to get their ex back with logic and that’s not going to work. If you want to get your ex back. It has to be through emotions. But the problem is the timing needs to be right. Because right now the emotions are often what’s preventing you from seeing success.
What Does My Ex Really Mean When They Say They Want To Be Single And Have Fun?
Well, one of two things immediately pops into my mind.
The first thing is, it’s essentially another variation of “it’s not you, it’s me.” You’ve heard the old Costanza thing. “It’s not you, it’s me.” George Costanza on Seinfeld was famous for saying that.
But an ex saying that they want to be single and have fun is another sort of variation of that idea where they don’t want to tell you the real reason they’re actually breaking up with you. So in order to make it sound more like it’s not something that you’re doing, they’re going to say, “Well, you know, I just want to be single and have fun.”
Well, the very definition is “I don’t want to be with you. I want to try to be out with someone else.”
The second thing that kind of pops into my mind is that people who say this are often freaked out by longterm commitments and they just want to avoid it by distancing themselves with or… Distancing themselves, excuse me, distracting themselves with other people.
So what they’ll do is when things seem to get serious in a relationship and you notice out of the blue they just sort of disappear or out of the blue they break up with you and say this phrase,
“I just want to be single and have fun.”
I actually think that they’re a little freaked out by the longterm commitment. So it might be a sign that you were moving too quickly in the relationship.
So those are the two things that immediately pop into my mind when people say, “Hey, I just want to be single and have fun.” But what’s interesting in Astrid’s situation is that she really points out that this new girl is the complete opposite of her. And she also points out, why did he bring this girl home and sleep with her immediately? And this is a concept I’ve been trying to popularize for years now.
The Importance Of Stability And Mystery In Relationships
It’s this concept between the relationship of stability and mystery. So oftentimes people will talk to me about, “Chris, I got my ex back, thank you so much, but how do I stay in relationship with them?”
Well, there’s a lot of different things that you can do to stay in a relationship with someone, but what I really tend to notice is that in order to have a relationship thrive, you need both stability and mystery.
And this is kind of an interesting paradox because they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum.
They’re exact opposite.
Someone who’s extremely stable isn’t going to be adventurous or mysterious, whereas someone who’s adventurous and mysterious by nature tends to not be very stable.
So what I think is happening here is that your ex broke up with you because he was feeling a little too stable with you and not enough mystery and excitement. That also can feed into this belief of,
“Hey, I want to be single and have fun.”
The have fun part is the mystery and excitement part.
Stability can be fun if you place a high value on that. But even people who like stability want some spontaneity, they want some mystery and adventure kind of ejected into their relationship, and I think that’s potentially what happened with you, Astrid, where maybe you were the stable force in your ex’s life and he wants to be single and have fun is just another variation of him wanting to get the mystery.
So it’s interesting that you say the new girl’s the complete opposite of you, because in my opinion, if the new girl’s to complete opposite of you it means he’s found someone who’s extremely adventurous and mysterious.
But it’s sort of like in a weird way I think you guys will cancel each other out. Because if you’re the stable force and you were only the stable force, he didn’t like that he broke up with you eventually because he wanted the mystery, the adventure, the spontaneity.
Well, if this new girl is all of those things, then potentially she’s not going to be able to bring stability into the picture. What you’re looking for is every single man that you date or every single partner that you have will have this sort of moving and sliding scale on how they determine what matters more to them, stability or mystery.
I’ve already established that I believe everyone needs to have both in order to have a successful relationship. They need to have both stability and mystery. But not everyone wants more stability than mystery. Not everyone wants more mystery than stability. I’ll take myself as an example because I can only speak to myself. I highly value stability over mystery, but at the same time, stability can get boring. I do want some mystery and spontaneity injected into the relationship every once in a while.
So imagine it like this.
The perfect girl for me would be probably anywhere between 60 to 70% stability and a 30 to 40% mystery.
Every man you’re with has a different scale of what they want or what they prefer, if that makes any sense. So when you’re asking questions like why is he dating someone the complete opposite of me? I think that sort of informs that decision. And why did he bring the girl home and sleep with her immediately? Well, that by nature is spontaneous and mysterious and something maybe is new for him that he felt was lacking in the relationship with you.
Is The New Girl A Rebound?
Now let’s switch gears and talk about the rebound side of things. So Astrid talks about yes, the ex wants to be single and have fun. Well, is this new girl just simply nothing more than a rebound? Well, what I think you need to understand about rebound relationships is it really depends on a lot of different factors. So some of the big factors are how long that you were with your ex. If you were with your ex for a month, okay, that’s usually not enough time to warrant a rebound because it’s more likely that you are rebound for him or just a fling for him. But if you were with your ex for years and years and he’s quickly moving on to someone else, then maybe it has sort of a rebound vibe to it.
So I think the first fact you need to look at to determine rebound is how long that you were actually with your ex. The second factor is if him and the new girl actually started dating very, very quickly. So the speed of which they were dating, the length of time in which you were dating him, and, this is the most difficult part for people to sort of wrap their heads around is the average rebound length.
So I’ve done multiple studies on this and ultimately have come to the conclusion that the average rebound lasts anywhere between three to six months. But when you actually average it all together, it will be 5.2 months. So if your ex is with this new girl for more than 5.2 months or more than six months, it starts to look like this is not a rebound. It’s something serious. And you might need to change your tactics on how you approach your situation, whether that’s focusing on moving on or even focusing on sort of having that paradigm shift that this is going to take a lot longer than you realize.
So I think as we look at Astrid’s situation, we can gain some insight into the single and have fun mentality. And a lot of times, like I said, they do mean it in the moment. And I think it’s connected directly to the fact that maybe they’re saying this because you were the stable force that didn’t provide enough mystery or spontaneity into their relationship.
What Does It Mean When An Ex Watches My Snapchat And Instagram Stories?
Nov 21, 2019
I figured we would switch gears for this particular podcast episode and answer one of the most asked questions that I get, almost on a daily basis and that is why does my ex view my Snapchat and Instagram stories?
So in this particular episode I’m going to answer many different questions.
Does it mean anything when they view your Snapchat and Instagram stories?
When it does mean something.
the reasons for why an ex will view your Snapchat and Instagram stories.
And finally how you should be using Snapchat and Instagram throughout the process that we’ve created?
But before we actually start worrying about social media and how to handle it and what it means and if it means something, you need to figure out a starting point with how to handle your breakup. Right?
The Right Starting Point For You After A Breakup
Breakups can make us feel many different things.
Some people want to get their exes back immediately. Some people don’t want anything to do with their exes. If you’re in that sort of crossroads, I’ve got great news for you. I’ve put together a special resource, a quiz designed to tell you what kind of chance you have of getting your ex back. So you can make a determination on if you should be trying to get them back or if you should be trying to move on if that’s what you want to do.
There’s nothing worse, believe me, than wasting your time trying to get an ex back.
So take the quiz on my website to help determine what you should be doing and it will give you the best next steps for how to approach your particular situation.
Now, there’s many different ways to find out how to take the quiz.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
If you’re actually reading the show notes of this episode, I will literally link the quiz in the show notes.
It’s pretty simple, you just click a button on your mouse or on your phone. If you’re listening to this on iTunes or Stitcher or any other podcast place, all you’re going to have to do if you want to go take our quiz is go to our homepage, go to our website, exboyfriendrecovery.com.
And if you’re watching this on YouTube because I’ve now started uploading these videos or these podcast episodes into YouTube, all you’re going to have to do is look in the description link below the YouTube video and click on it.
With that out of way, let’s start talking about why exes view Snapchat and Instagram stories.
How Often Will Exes Watch You Via All Social Media Platforms?
And contrary to popular belief, it’s actually the social norm.
I’ve done research on this with my own clients and research backs me up. There was actually one very, very fascinating study done by a graduate student that found that over 88% of people after a breakup will Facebook stalk their exes.
Now, Facebook stalking is not so much a thing anymore because there’s so many privacy features on Facebook nowadays. But what’s important is the intent of the behavior. There’s a need, an inherent obsessive, addictive quality to watching what your ex is up to via social media, spying on your ex via social media, and before you sit there and think, well, my ex blocked me. Well my ex wouldn’t care about things like that.
I can personally attest to so many stories I’ve heard of exes going to mutual friends and using their social media profiles to spy on what you’re up to.
So, and it also really makes sense when you’re looking at it from the lens of viewing Snapchat and Instagram stories. If your ex hasn’t blocked you or unfollowed you, then your stories are more likely to show up in his feed. And if that happens, it’s only natural for him to want to watch it. I mean, I would. So this is actually why so many exes will block or unfollow you to begin with.
They can’t stand the constant reminders of your presence. So they actually sit there and block you to A, stop thinking about you, and stop feeling the pain that is associated with the breakup. So it’s important to understand that this social norm, it’s normal, but does it mean anything? And if so, what does it mean?
Does An Ex Viewing Your Snapchat And Instagram Stories Mean Anything?
So in my opinion, it doesn’t really mean much.
You can quote it, you can put that in bold lettering.
“In my opinion, nine times out of ten it doesn’t mean much.”
There is one singular exception when you’re looking at Snapchat and Instagram stories. But before I talk about that, let’s talk about why I believe it doesn’t mean too much. People read way too much into this and it doesn’t always have to mean something. So I always view an ex watching your Snapchat or Instagram stories as normal behavior, since it is a normal behavior.
So the only difference with Snapchat and Instagram is that it gives you the ability to directly see who’s viewing your stories. Right? This isn’t really possible with a website or app like Facebook or Twitter. Maybe there is, Twitter. I’m not really sure. I’m not real well versed in Twitter. I don’t know how many people really use Twitter for dating. I mean, I’m sure it exists, but most times they won’t let you see who’s watching your stories or your feeds or your post or viewing your profile. This isn’t LinkedIn, right?
So what’s interesting about it is because Snapchat and Instagram gives you the ability to view someone’s stories and make them aware of that fact, it’s getting a light shone onto it.
And it sort of creates all of these questions on if it means something and what does it mean? But ultimately it’s just a difference of visibility, right? The normal behavior we know, close to 90% of people will spy on their exes after a breakup.
They have many different ways of doing this.
Some people use Snapchat and Instagram, some people use Facebook, some people use any other dating apps or WhatsApp or things that they’re sort of looking at after the breakup. Or was the norm throughout their relationship.
But when you take that behavior, the only difference between Snapchat and Instagram and a website like Facebook or an app like Facebook is that it just gives you visibility on who’s spying on you. Right? Facebook doesn’t do that.
So I mean your ex could be spying on you through Facebook just as much, but since it doesn’t give you the ability to see if they’re spying on you or not, you would never know. But Snapchat and Instagram does. So obsessing too much about the meaning of what I consider to be a normal behavior can lead you to look extremely insecure and desperate.
Don’t be the girl that asks your ex, “Hey, why did you view my story?” It almost proves to them that you’re thinking about them and you ultimately lose your value. And I actually have a personal story to share with this.
My Embarrassing Personal Story
So when I grew up, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, they weren’t really in existence. They didn’t exist. The big social media platform that everyone used was Myspace, which isn’t even a thing anymore. But Myspace was famous for having these profiles that you could create much like Facebook, but anytime you would go onto someone’s profile, you could also have music accompanying that profile, right.
And so when I was a high schooler, right, I wasn’t really savvy with the normal dating behaviors of today and didn’t sort of grow into the human being that I am right now. I would obsess about this anytime I would like a girl. Right. So I remember there was this one specific girl who was named Dani, right? D-A-N-I, right. She was this very, very beautiful blonde girl. And I had a huge crush on her, right. And her brother and my brother were both friends. They were both younger brothers for both of us.
And my brother one day came home from their house and said,
“Hey, so-and-so’s sister said that you look hot.”
It was the first time a girl had ever called me hot and I just, it blew my mind. So immediately I friended her on Myspace and just started sort of chatting back and forth. And what was fascinating about this was I became so addicted and obsessed about trying to win this girl that I would obsess about everything that she was posting on her wall, everything that she was posting, even from music. And I remember one specific thing.
When her and I first started talking, I was so obsessed and maybe so insecure because I had never had a girlfriend in my entire life. She ended up, like a day or two after we started talking, she ended up changing her music accompanying her Myspace profile to the Red Hot Chili Peppers song and Dani California.
Well, I took this to mean, oh my God, it has to mean something about me when in reality her name is Dani and the song is called Danny California. And she looked just sort of like some California model would. Right?
And so it made me, when I actually started approaching her about it, I said, “Hey, but you changed your music. It has to mean something related to me.”
She never talked to me again ever. I mean, that was it. Super embarrassing. So here’s my point. Don’t be that girl to your ex. You lose your value completely. Now I did mention something about, well there’s one specific situation or scenario where it does mean something if your ex is viewing your Snapchat and Instagram stories, and I’d like to talk a little bit about what that situation is.
The One Exception Where An Ex Viewing Your Snapchat Or Instagram Stories Means Something
In my opinion, the only exception when I think an ex viewing your Snapchat or Instagram stories means something is if they watch every single story that you put out over the course of like a month. Right?
But I don’t think this says anything about them, like they have to have you back.
I think it says more about their addictive nature and ability to obsess about what you’re up to.
In essence, you’re winning the breakup if they’re obsessing so much that they’re watching every single thing that you put out. So now that we kind of understand, well okay, it means a little something.
They’re sort of obsessed with thinking about you, they haven’t gotten over the breakup yet. I think that’s ultimately what it says. Now that we know that, what are some of the reasons exes will view your Snapchat and Instagram stories?
Legitimate Reasons Exes View Your Snapchat Or Instagram Stories
Let’s look at all three of those reasons and dig deeper.
Curiosity
The first one I think is pretty self explanatory. They’re curious. Curiosity, right? It’s sort of like you go through this breakup, you’ve poured your heart and soul into maybe this relationship and you’re just kind of curious to see what they’re up to. Even I, now, even my wife gets curious about what her ex is up to.
And I remember the other day I was thinking, I wonder what my old ex is up to. And of course I had blocked her and she still remains block to this point, but every once in awhile I kind of wonder what she’s up to. If she got married, if she has any kids like I did. I’d want the best for her.
I’m just a nice guy like that. My wife kind of thinks about that sometimes. How can you not? I think it’s human nature to be curious about something like this, but it’s not the only reason for why exes will view your Snapchat and Instagram stories.
Anger
The second reason is anger. Have you ever been so angry? There’s like this, when you’re obsessed and addicted to watching someone’s Snapchat and Instagram stories, you’re almost as obsessed to the feeling of anger. As weird as this sounds, some men will literally get into the habit of watching her Snapchat and Instagram stories because it makes them angry and they like to feel like they have the moral high ground, right?
I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard exes say something when they’re at complete fault for the breakup. But they like to paint themselves as the victim because their ex made them feel this certain way, and it’s their fault and they kind of like to get sort of angry.
They like to be angry for the sake of being angry.
I can also attest to doing this. There was a breakup I had where I literally would watch their posts on Facebook and get angry just because. Not sure I even have a reason or can even peel back the layers. Is that a healthy thing to do? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But it’s also not the only reason for why an ex will view your Snapchat or Instagram stories.
Habit
There’s a third reason and that’s habit. Let’s say that you’ve opened up a Snapchat, Instagram story two or three times, right? And that curiosity just kind of keeps you coming back for more and more and more. Next thing you know, you’ve gotten into the habit of watching their stories because you can’t stop the habit essentially.
In my opinion, those are the main reasons for why exes will view your Snapchat and or Instagram stories, but how should you be using Snapchat and Instagram? Where does social media stuff like this fall in the overall process that I and my team have created? Should I say my team and I, that’s a better way of putting it. Makes me sound less important, which I like.
How Should You Be Using Your Snapchat And Instagram Stories After A Breakup?
So if you didn’t know, we are really, really trying to push this new way of looking at things. Right? And that’s always using the no contact rule. If you don’t know what the no contact rule is, hop by our website and read articles about it. Or if you bought a product or did a coaching session with me or one of my coaches, you should know what the no contact rule is. But essentially there’s three phases throughout the sort of get your ex back, or get over your ex process.
That’s before the no contact rule, during the no contact rule, and after the no contact rule. So where does social media fall or Snapchat and Instagram fall throughout the process, the overall process that we are famous for creating?
Well it’s going to fall in two areas: during no contact and after no contact.
Right?
So you should be using social media like Snapchat and Instagram stories in a specific way during the no contact rule and after the no contact rule. So the obvious next question is, well, what is that way?
How should you be using Snapchat and Instagram stories? Well, I want you to use it as a way of determining if your ex is keeping tabs on you. Think of the technology that Snapchat and Instagram has created as a scientist would. You can perform different experiments to see what types of things your ex is watching.
You can chart them and then do more to get his addictive side working. Right. This is especially important for people who want to get their exes back, who want to stay relevant during a no contact rule when they’re so worried of an ex not remembering who they are. Which is an irrational fear to begin with because you just went through a breakup and you’re doing a no contact rule. They’re not going to forget you in 30 days. Right.
But if you’re worried, one way that you can sort of stay in touch with them indirectly is by using Snapchat and Instagram and posting stories, just to see if they are watching those stories. And what’s interesting is I’ve actually had people in our private Facebook support group who do this, who literally use Snapchat and Instagram as a way, as a litmus test of figuring out what things their ex is interested in.
Maybe they make their story about one thing, they chart to see if he watches and then they do the same thing with a different topic, chart to see if he watches. And if they start to notice patterns developing, hey, he always seems to watch when I’m doing sort of some makeup tutorial or something like that. Or he always seems to watch when I’m doing one of those vlog type situations. I don’t know what you should be using your Instagram stories are.
I’m sure we can come up with specific things you can do.
But ultimately you should use Snapchat and Instagram as a way of charting your ex’s behavior to see what’s getting him to obsess, right. And then making more of that type of content so that you can indirectly stay in touch with him during the no contact rule.
You can also do this after the no contact rule to constantly be on his mind. So ultimately that, in my opinion, is the deal with Snapchat and Instagram stories.
My Ex Says They Don’t Feel The Spark Anymore
Nov 14, 2019
Today, we’re going to be talking about sparks.
Specifically, when an ex says that they don’t feel a spark with you anymore, do they mean it?
And we’re going to be hearing from a woman named Andrea, who obviously had an ex who just said this to her.
But what was interesting is the more I looked at her situation and tried to come up with a plan on what she should do next, the more I realized that she’s not really wondering if he means it.
But I think she also wants to understand a little bit about his frame of mind, and then of course, what to do afterwards. But the other interesting thing that I’m going to include in this podcast is if this idea of a spark is overrated.
So let’s take a minute and hear from Andrea.
The Listener Question About An Ex Not Feeling The Spark Anymore
Hi, Chris. My name is Andrea.
I’m 33. My boyfriend, Jason, who’s 35 just broke up with me two days ago. We’d been dating five and a half months.
He basically completely changed his tune. He had always said he saw things long-term with me, to never worry about things. And we talked a lot about this. He was kind of a reserved person.
It was hard to get him to open up. He didn’t really like communicating, but we’ve been working on it a lot.
And he told me that he wanted to get better at it. He grew up in a family where they didn’t really do that. But he reassured me several times he saw me long-term. And the last time we talked about this was about a week ago.
Because he’s very bad with the phone, he wasn’t contacting me very much. And he’s the kind of guy… anyways, he was finishing school. He was remodeling his house.
And about a week later, he was still acting the same. And I knew he was busy and I tried to give him space, but I eventually said, “Why is this happening?” Get him very upset. “We had talked about this. You said that you were going to work on this, and I know I haven’t seen you in a week.
You haven’t answered my calls or my messages.” And he became a completely different person. I called him on the phone. I had never heard him this way in five and a half months, and he said that he didn’t think things were working anymore. He sounded very angry and frustrated. He said that he hasn’t felt a spark with me, and he’s felt like this for a long time.
And he doesn’t see a future with me, and he wanted to break up. And I really need to know what to do and I would love your advice, Chris.
A Quick Reminder To Take The Ex Recovery Chances Quiz
Hey there. Before we get started and help Andrea out, the first thing I wanted to do is let everyone who’s listening to this podcast episode, whether that be on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, or even YouTube, I want to let you know that the number one thing that you should be doing if you’re trying to figure out your breakup, or if you have a chance with your ex, or if you don’t want to get back with your ex, but you’re still curious to see if you have a chance with your ex is actually go to our website, exboyfriendrecovery.com, and take our ex recovery chances quiz.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Take the quiz It’s a simple two-minute quiz that should literally only take you a few minutes.
You just fill out a few questions, and then we use our advanced algorithm to take a look at your answers and then compare them to what we have seen and give you an idea of the approximate score you have of getting your ex back.
And we also give you a few extra tips and tricks on what you should be doing in your specific situation based on your specific answers.
So if this sounds like something you’re interested in, it’s really easy to take the quiz. If you’re on the podcast, all you have to do is just go to our website on the internet, exboyfriendrecovery.com.
And if you’re listening to this on YouTube, all you have to do is simply look in the description link of the YouTube video, and it’s the first link that you see there. All right, let’s get back and help Andrea.
A Recap Of Andrea’s Situation
Okay, so when I typically take listener questions, the first thing I always like to do is do a quick recap of their situation. So obviously, I’m going to do that here.
The woman who called in asking for our help is named Andrea.
Her boyfriend broke up with her literally two days ago.
So this breakup is extremely fresh.
Now, they dated for about five and a half months.
And what’s interesting is she noticed… if you notice their ages, they’re early to mid 30s.
So they are on that time where they are potentially looking at getting married, which I have some thoughts on that I’ll express a little bit later.
But what’s interesting is that he said he always saw things long-term with her and to never worry about things.
It’s hard sometimes to get him on the phone to open up. She says that’s because of his family and his upbringing.
And over time, he agreed that he would work on this aspect of himself.
But she grew upset because he just fell off the map and he wouldn’t answer calls and messages.
And when she called him on it, he grew upset, got angry at her and said he doesn’t feel the spark any more.
He doesn’t see a future with her anymore. And then promptly broke up with her. And now,
Andrea is left trying to figure out what to do next.
Now, what’s interesting is that I always hear that statement from exes who break up with you.
It’s that, “I don’t feel the spark anymore. The chemistry isn’t there anymore.” And what’s interesting is a lot of women take exes at their word when they say this.
So that’s the first thing I’d like to cover today.
Does He Mean It When He Says He Doesn’t Feel The Spark Anymore?
And my answer may shock a few people.
Most people were probably expecting me to say, “Well, no, he doesn’t mean it.”
But I’ve found the opposite is actually true.
In the moment when they say that they don’t feel the spark anymore, they don’t see the future anymore, they definitely do mean it.
But here’s the interesting thing. Minds are prone to change.
One of my favorite success stories ever was a woman by the name of Sarah Michelle. And I think she’s doing pretty great now.
But her situation is, I believed her fiance broke up with her. And it was a similar situation to you, Andrea, where things seem to be going well, but slowly but surely he drifted off and she was just trying to figure out what happened.
All of those kind of stereotypical statements that you would hear from an ex. And he came back to her.
And I think when she asked him, he said, “Oh, yeah, well, I meant it then. But time is great at giving you perspective, I suppose.”
But what’s really fascinating is he actually broke up with her again. But she got him back one time. She knew our process, and so she did the same process to him again and he wanted her back a second time.
No, I think that’s an interesting success story to explain to you, Andrea, or anyone listening. It’s because when an ex says rude or mean or hurtful things, like I don’t see the spark anymore, there’s no future, I never loved you, maybe they mean that in the moment, but their minds are prone to change with time. So that answers our first question.
But the second question is, let’s try to understand his frame of mind.
Understanding His Frame Of Mind
And I think in order to understand this, why is he saying that he doesn’t feel the spark anymore? When someone says that in general, what is going through their mind?
And I think it’s important to remember here is how experience actually interacts with memory.
So I’m a big proponent of this, and stop me if you’ve heard this before, but this psychological concept called the peak end rule.
So let’s say that you have two people, person A and person B, and both of them go into the same movie.
Now, person A goes into this movie and they immediately have a negative experience with it. But over time, that experience grows extremely good.
They’re having a really enjoyable experience, and that enjoyable aspect of the experience stays consistent throughout until the very end of the movie.
And then, of course, you have person B. Now person B, on the other hand, goes into the movie and has a negative experience. And then as the movie hits its midpoint, they have a positive experience.
And then as the movie hits the end point, their experience grows to be negative again. When you look at these two people, which one had the better experience? Well, the person A’s the obvious reason or the person A’s the obvious answer.
But what we need to understand is the reason for why. So the peak end rule helps us understand how experience actually interacts with memory.
We aren’t great as human beings at compartmentalizing an entire experience based on the experience or an entire memory based on the overall experience of the memory.
The human brain has so many processes running.
So it learned over time to adapt, to look at the main distinct points of the experience to make up our thoughts on that experience. So it often is the peak of the experience, the most exciting or the high point of the experience and the end of the experience.
Well, person A who went into that movie actually had an incredible experience from the midpoint on until the very end. So their peak in the end was very positive. And while person B had a positive experience towards the middle of the movie, the end of the movie was negative for them. So obviously, that means person A had a better overall experience.
Now, how does this relate to an ex saying, “The spark isn’t there anymore”? Well, in my opinion, it has a lot to do with the fact that there’s two things that we can unpack here. The first one is when an ex says they don’t have the spark with you anymore, they aren’t remembering any of the peak parts of the experience.
They’re only remembering the negative aspects of the experience.
So a great example is the movie, 500 Days of Summer.
The 500 Days of Summer Example
It’s actually one of my favorite movies ever, and it may be one of the only romantic, comedy-type movies that I’ve ever enjoyed.
But I actually really like it because of how authentic it is to the actual experience of dating someone in these millennial times.
So if you don’t know, I’m not going to spoil any of the main parts, but the entire movie is about a guy who’s trying to win his ex back. And what’s interesting is throughout the entire movie, he’s built up this girl to be this ultimate sort of the one who got away.
But over time, he starts to look at the experience as a whole. And he starts to realize that a lot of the things that he thought were positive for him weren’t positive for her.
So she didn’t have a great experience throughout the entire relationship, and yet she wouldn’t break up with him. She stayed with him for a very, very long time.
And I think I’m getting a little bit of a vibe sort of like that with your ex, Andrea. I believe he probably was feeling confused throughout the epitome of the relationship. And I think it’s kind of one of those 500 Days of Summer where he’s a little unsure if he wants to break up with you.
He has clear feelings for you, but he’s unsure overall about where he stands. And so he’s left in this holding pattern. That’s why he’s falling off the map, that’s why he won’t answer your calls and messages. He doesn’t place your value as high as someone who maybe means a little bit more to him.
So the obvious question you’re having at this point is, well, what can I do? When I would get calls like yours, Andrea, I used to say, “Okay, you’re going to want to do X, Y, and Z. Do these things exactly.” But over time, over the past few years, we’ve actually had kind of a culture shift. So what’s interesting is we noticed that people who actually stick to the process that we teach, half of the people after they come out the other end of it don’t want their exes back anymore, and then half of them still do.
What Are You Supposed To Do Next?
So I look at the process that I’m about to explain to you as the ultimate gauntlet. If you can get through this process and still want your ex back after the end of it, then you’re probably setting yourself up for success. But if you get through the process, and at the end of it, you don’t want your ex back anymore, you’re just in a better place overall.
So what is this magical process? What is this culture shift? Well, there’s really two key components I want you to understand.
It’s the idea of the ungettable girl and also the idea of the no contact rule. So the no contact rule is the foundation for everything that we’ve built essentially. The no contact rule is this period of time where you’re ignoring your ex with the intent of making them miss you, but at the same time, giving you some time to cultivate your own personal life. So what we find is during this no contact period, let’s say you’re doing a no contact period for 30 days, you’re going to ignore your ex for 30 days. What we used to teach I think was wrong. We used to teach people in the no contact rule to focus only on their exes.
Well, that’s wrong for multiple reasons. Number one, you don’t have any control over your ex. And number two, sometimes focusing on your ex too much can lead you on these downward spirals of irrational thinking, where he responds to one text message, or he likes some specific comment you make on Facebook and all of a sudden the world’s falling apart. Sometimes he takes down pictures on Facebook, the shared pictures you had together, and again, all of a sudden the world’s falling apart. You have all these irrational fears that crop up to the surface. Well, what we found is that we tried to divide our process up into three distinct points. I actually talked about this in the very last podcast episode I did, and this is just me piggybacking off of the momentum in that podcast where I was talking about on-again and off-again relationships.
So what we find is this kind of like three distinct points that you want to focus on, Andrea, the before the no contact rule period, the during the no contact rule period, and the after the no contact rule period. And throughout the entirety of that process, you’re going to be working to become what we consider to be ungettable, sort of becoming a woman that almost every man on planet earth would want. And it’s just a simple mindset shift that has led to so many successes. And defining success is a difficult thing. One person will define success as, “Hey, I won my ex back, you helped me get my ex back.” That’s successful. Another person will define success as, “Hey, I got through the breakup, I got through the no contact rule, and I don’t want him back anymore. And you helped me realize that fact.”
What do you define success as? Well, we used to be kind of forceful because most of the people when they would enter our space would immediately want their exes back. So our whole thinking was, “Okay, well, let’s not teach anyone how to get over their exes. Let’s just teach people how to get their exes back.” But we found that there’s this interesting shift that occurs when we were teaching people how to get their exes back, because a lot of getting your ex back is actually weirdly enough focusing on yourself, becoming ungettable. And what happened is after people would get through their no contact rule, they would enter that after the no contact rule phase, where they actually start having to reconnect with their exe and re-attract to their exe. What we found was fascinating. Roughly around 50% of the people that would get through the no contact rule and felt that they were ungettable after the end of the no contact rule, which I have thoughts on that very shortly, it’s probably impossible to be ungettable after 30 days.
But what’s important is the mindset shift. They had this paradigm shift in their minds. They no longer wanted their exes back anymore. And after we learned that, we determined that we shouldn’t ever push our agenda onto people after a breakup, when they’re in an extremely vulnerable state. We found a happy medium between the best of both worlds. We found a way to not only help you get your ex back, but also at the same time help you get over your breakup because getting over your breakup is actually required to get your ex back. When emotions run high, logic runs low. We know that for a fact. I’ve experienced in my life, you’ve definitely experienced it in your life. Well, in order to get your emotions at a neutral state, you need to learn how to get over the breakup. And the best way to do that is to do a no contact rule and focus on yourself.
So, Andrea, here’s my suggestion for you. I think you should actually familiarize yourself with our teachings and specifically the last podcast episode I just recorded. And if you’re wondering, I will link to that podcast episode in the show notes of this episode on our website, exboyfriendrecovery.com, because I did a really great job at detailing exactly what I think should be done during the three phases of the no contact rule. And another thing that I’m working on right now with my product developer, Ashley, is creating this new culture, this new way of approaching a breakup. Now, not much is changing as far as the, “Hey, this is how you get your ex back, these are the strategies that you use,” but what’s changing a little bit is how we’re employing them in order.
So like I said, there’s three phases that we like, the before the no contact rule, the during the no contact rule, and the after the no contact rule. Well, after the no contact rule isn’t really changing much. We’ve spent years, almost the entire existence of this business has been focused on helping people understand what works to re-attract an ex. But most of that happens after a no contact rule has already been completed. But what we’re finding is that we’ve made a mistake. And our big mistake is the fact that we haven’t prepared people during the no contact rule well enough. And this is something that we’ve subtly noticed over time in our private Facebook support group with women who are actually doing a no contact rule and actually reshape their lives and grow more inspired and feel ungettable.
So we’re doing two things. We’re updating our program, and I’m writing a book called Ungettable to teach people this mindset that they need to be adopting. So that’s what I think you should do, Andrea. But there’s one other thing I wanted to touch on, and that’s this idea of a spark.
Is The Idea Of A Spark Overrated?
The spark has many names over the years. Some people call it chemistry, others call it attraction, most people call it spark. And it seems to be what we base most of our initial relationship decisions on, or how often have you been on a date with someone where they felt a spark and you haven’t. You make your decision not to actually go on another date with that person because you didn’t feel the spark. I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum where I’ve been on dates and I felt a spark and the other person haven’t. And I’ve been on dates where I did not feel a spark and the other person hasn’t. And the results are always the same. The spark dominates.
But here’s what’s interesting. There’s actually a yin and yang approach to the spark that no one realize. So what is the yin and yang? Well, it’s this Chinese philosophy that basically says two opposing opposites can actually work together to create a greater whole. And the spark is kind of like that. So what you need to understand is the spark is great for helping you get a relationship, but it’s horrible, horrible at helping you keep that relationship. Why do you think most people break up after they felt extreme chemistry at the beginning? Because the spark alone has nothing to do with qualities in a relationship to make a relationship strong. So here’s the yin and yang approach. You need the spark, which a lot of what we’re teaching you to do on the podcast and on the website is teaching you how to light the fire with the spark, but you also need the tools to make a relationship last.
I’m sick and tired of helping people get back with their exes, only to have them break up again. That was entirely what that last podcast episode was about. This on-again, off-again relationship. It’s a huge problem. We actually find that, oddly enough, just like how many people there are that actually don’t want their exes back after a no contact rule, 50% of the people who get back with their exes end up breaking up again. Why? What separates the people who are breaking up from the people who are not breaking up? Well, the people who were not breaking up actually have tools that help them succeed in relationships. So we can talk for hours about these tools and what makes a relationship great and what makes it last, but we don’t have enough time.
So here’s what I’m going to do instead. I’m going to tell you about the number one most important aspect for making relationships last over the long-term. It’s something called the kindness golden ratio. We looked at married couples, 80% of them have exhibited a certain pattern, married couples who’ve lasted their entire lives. And that’s the fact that they were kind to one another, odd, right? Kind. But researchers have actually found that there’s a golden ratio between five kind acts to one negative act. And what does that mean? Well, that means that for every negative act, for every fight, disagreement, argument, things of that nature, there needs to be five kind things that you’ve done for one thing to another. So that goes for both people, both parties in the relationship, you need to do things that are kind for your partner, and they need to do things that are kind for them.
So a really cool strategy if you’re in a relationship with someone and you want to keep it going well is maybe you make it a habit at the end of every day to say, “Hey, these are the five kind acts I’ve done for you. What are the your five kind of acts?” Getting in that habit can actually help you realize how little kindness there is in most relationships because we’re always self-interested. We’re worried about things like work and what your parents are doing and things of that nature. Sometimes we just forget to be kind to one another. But remember, being kind actually might be the key to keeping your relationship going over the long-term.
On Again/Off Again Relationship Advice
Nov 01, 2019
Today we’re going to be talking about on-again and off-again relationship advice, specifically, what you should be doing if you find yourself in one of those situations or have ever found yourself in an on-again, off-again relationship.
We’re going to hear from a woman named Jennifer who is going through a really difficult time, and is having trouble deciphering what she should be doing in her own relationship, if she should get back with her ex, who is in the off-again phase of their relationship, or if she should just simply move on.
So I don’t like wasting a lot of time, so let’s just hear from Jennifer right now.
A Real On Again Off Again Relationship Question
“Hi Chris. My name is Jennifer, and me and my ex are 29. We were together for 13 years and lived together. We had some rockiness, but we always came back together and made it work. In 2018, we broke up and he took it more seriously than I did. Had dated, may even had sex a little bit.
But it didn’t work and we eventually rekindled.
He came back and told me everything he needs is with me. He wanted to work it out. We were happy and everything seemed great. We talked about our future together and he was incredibly sweet and affectionate, but my insecurities got the best of me. At times I acted irrational over stupid things which is the catalyst it is [inaudible 00:01:17] break up after all only a year from the previous one.
Now he believes there is a better fit for us again, but does not want to date for a while.
We’re tied to this apartment and I talk so much of this interrogating him time after time. He still loves me and cares, but doesn’t see a future with me anymore. Is no no contact still an option after I broke it so many times?
I still want to be his friend and I still want to be around him so it doesn’t feel right to get rid of it. We had a good and lengthy relationship.”
A Recap Of Jennifers Situation
Now it’s a blatantly obvious after hearing Jennifer’s situation that she’s going through a really difficult time.
So hopefully what we can do with this podcast episode is give her some clarity on if her ex still cares and also give anyone who’s going through a similar situation to Jennifer or has gone through a similar situation to Jennifer, some clarity on what they should be doing. What’s the best way to approach the on again, off again relationship.
So first off, let’s do a quick recap of what Jennifer’s situation is.
So obviously the person who called is named Jennifer,
she’s 29 years old and she’s been with her ex together for over 13 years.
So this is the one relationship in her entire life that has lasted longer than anything other than her maybe familial type relationships.
She’s been with this person for 13 years. Just imagine how many firsts that they’ve experienced together. Right?
So they’re currently in an on again, off again relationship.
Now, the latest iteration of the breakup happened in 2018 but it seems like he took it a little bit more seriously.
But since then they’ve kind of been on again a little bit. They’ve had sex together.
He seems like he wants to work it out.
They talked about the future, but she still felt insecure, which is a very obvious when you’ve gone through the trauma of an on again off again relationship for over 13 years.
Now he wants to break up for good. He says he doesn’t want to date anyone for a while, which I think is a blatant lie most men will tell. And he doesn’t see a future with her.
So is no contact an option in her particular situation after it’s been broken so many times.
There’s so many things to unravel here.
But First… A Quiz To Help You
Hey, I just wanted to make a quick break in the episode here to let you know that no matter what, no matter what situation you find yourself in, the very first thing that you should always determine is if you have a chance with your ex.
If you’re going through a breakup and are kind of figuring out what you should do next, that is always the first place that you should start. Now, luckily on my website, exboyfriendrecovery.com I’ve put together a special quiz that’s designed to answer this exact question for you.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
The whole quiz should only take you about two minutes long.
It’s really easy and it gives you an idea of your approximate chances of getting your ex back, what we think you should be doing and some next steps going forward. So if you’re interested in taking that quiz, all you have to do is just click pause on the podcast.
Or if you’re watching this on YouTube, just look into the description link of the YouTube video and click on the link you see there.
But if you’re listening to this on the podcast, click pause on the podcast, go to your phone or wherever you’re listening to this from, and go to our website, exboyfriendrecovery.com and you’ll be able to see the prompts for the quiz on the home page.
All right, let’s get back to the episode.
Why Are People So Prone To Enter Into On Again Off Again Relationships?
All right, so I think one of the biggest things that we need to determine first is why are people so prone to enter into on again, off again, relationships.
They seem completely unhealthy, but research has suggested that they’re actually really common. Over two thirds or almost two thirds of adults have experienced an on again off again relationship, at least one time in their lives.
But why are we subjecting ourselves to this pain?
Well. I want you to listen to what Jennifer had to say?
She was saying things like,
I still want to be his friend. I still want to be around him. It doesn’t feel right to get rid of it. We’ve had a good and lengthy relationship.
So if you didn’t already know, I’m a big proponent of something called the peak end rule, which basically determines how human beings remember experiences, whether that’s positive or negative.
They found that usually the human brain is not great at processing every single aspect of an entire experience.
So instead what it does, it will remember two distinct points, the peak of the experience and the end of the experience.
So the peak of the experience obviously being the most exciting or engaging part of the experience and the end of the experience being the actual end of the experience. So what I think tends to happen when people enter into these on again off again relationships is it’s a little bit of the peak end rule at work.
They tend to forget kind of the difficult aspects of the relationship and only remember the peak parts of the relationship. Some more interesting, exciting parts.
So they, in essence romanticize the past.
That’s a little bit of what a Jennifer’s doing.
But I think there’s also another aspect that’s really not talked a lot about. So Jennifer is in this really fascinating situation where she’s only 29 years old and she’s been with this person for 13 years. So most of her entire dating life has been spent with this one person.
Just imagine how much that she has invested into the relationship, not just time, but energy and mental energy. Monetary aspects have been invested into this relationship. She feels like if she lets the relationship go it’s going to be kind of like a waste of her time.
All that time is going to be invested for nothing.
The Five Types Of On Again Off Again Relationships
And in an odd way I think that her ex actually probably feels the same, which is why he keeps coming back. Now, one of the interesting things that happened when I was researching on what I was actually going to say for this podcast episode was, I like to do actual research.
So I base everything on science and also what I know to be true based on my own internal research here at the Ex Boyfriend Recovery.
And one of the best places that you can find actual scientific data is the website Psychology Today. So obviously when I started researching on again off again relationships, a whole bunch of articles popped up. I read a few, but what’s always interesting, I find about Psychology today, they’re absolutely one of the best websites for learning about sort of scientific type things.
But oftentimes they’ll quote studies that are done by really incredible professors, psychologists, psychotherapists, that whole spiel.
But they only kind of pick and choose the data points that they’re actually going to talk about. So they read the whole study or maybe not even reading the whole study. They just have access to the study and they pick some of the parts that they think are the most important parts and they include that in their articles.
Well that obviously doesn’t give you all of the details of the study. In one of the on again off again a relationship sort of articles. I came across a study that they were citing called a dimensional approach to characterizing on again and off again, romantic relationships. It was done by, it looks like four professors from Austin, Texas and a few universities in Seoul, South Korea.
And so anyways, I downloaded this PDF document. It’s it’s really, really long document, looks to be like 200 pages long. And I didn’t read the whole thing.
I just read exactly the part that I was sort of picking and choosing. But they, Psychology Today article left out a really, really important thing.
And that’s the fact that there are actually five types of on again and off again, relationships. And as I was reading through this, it’s just amazing and uncanny how often you can actually point to this type and say, “Okay, this person’s actually this type.”
So what are the five types of on again, off again relationships?
Type #1: The Habitual Type
Well, the first type is called the habitual type.
Now this is where the relationship feels relatively easy and they’ve gotten actually into the habit and don’t want to get rid of the habit of sort of the relationship.
So what does that mean?
Well, it’s sort of like the whole thing, they’ve gotten grown so used to what the relationship habits are like that when the habits are taken away, they kind of don’t like that and they want to get back into the relationship. And they usually stay in that on again off again relationship until they find someone better looking or that will better meet what they feel their needs are.
So that’s the first type of on again off again relationships.
Type #2: The Mismatched Type
The second type is called the mismatched type.
This is where partners have incongruent quality such as personalities and desires or even geographical distance or schedules conflicting.
So this is the whole long distance relationship kind of a situation where a person feels like they can’t do long distance anymore and then they either regret it or they’re long distance situation changes and they’re back into relationship or the schedules conflict.
So that’s where like, “Oh, school is too hard. I have to break up right now.” Or, “Oh I want to focus on my career, I have to break up right now.”
And then next thing you know, they’re back with the person again.
So that’s the second type of on again off again relationship.
Type #3: Capitalization of Transitions
The third type is called capitalize on transitions.
So this is people who wanted to use the breakup as a test to manage the problems or create opportunities to improve their relationship.
So I found this fascinating.
This was the only one of the, if not the only type of on again off again relationship that’s actually saw a positive net change if a reconnection was made.
So I’m going to talk a little bit about those capitalize on transitions type of on again off again relationships as we grow later into the podcast episode. But let’s continue on down the five types of on again off again, relationships.
Type #4: Gradual Separation
Type number four was called gradual separation.
So this is where the two people eventually realize that the relationship was not going to work or they were no longer interested in continuing the relationship.
Here’s the thing though, it just took them an extremely long time to realize it.
Not too much to unpack here.
Type #5: Controlling Partner
And finally we have number five, which is a controlling partner type of on again off again relationship.
This is where one partner controls the progression of the relationship or would use manipulation or control tactics to get back together.
Right? So when you look at Jennifer’s situation, just hearing that little blurb, to me it seems like a either a habitual type of on again off again relationship, which is sort of what I’m going to sort of say that she’s currently in, which is where the habits are so ingrained over 13 years that her partner just kind of tends to want to get back in the relationship.
But where she’s failing, in my opinion, is that she’s not capitalizing on the transitions.
Right? So I’ll talk about that in a little bit.
Are On Again Off Again Relationships Healthy?
But first things first, let’s actually tackle a bigger question and that is whether on again, off again, relationships are actually healthy.
So what’s interesting is recent research would actually suggest that rebound relationships are healthy.
So if you break up with someone, go on the rebound, it’s actually a great way of getting over the person you were just with. But is that kind of true in an on, again, off again relationship?
Well, if you actually look at the situation where a rebound relationship is involved, you’re actually … There’s a breakup occurring with you and your ex. Right? And then you are moving on to someone new.
And even though it’s morally gray, you’re actually using that someone new to get over the experience. And sometimes using that someone new can blossom into a great relationship.
But the same thing doesn’t necessarily work within on again off again relationships.
So think of it like this, with rebound relationships, you’re breaking up with your ex and moving on to someone new, an on again off again relationship is you are breaking up with your ex and then you’re not moving on to someone new, you’re moving on to your ex again.
So it’s actually found to be kind of un-health. There are some a fly in the ointments here, there where there are some studies that say it can be healthy, but I think that’s only in cases where people capitalized on transitions.
Can On Again Off Again Relationships Ever Work?
So can they work?
So you’ve been in this on again off again relationship.
We’ve determined that, “Yeah, it’s not necessarily the most healthy situation.” Can they work well?
Yes, it can absolutely work.
You see, in my opinion, there are two types of on again off again relationships.
The first type is those who grow.
And the second type is those who don’t.
This is what research has suggested based on the research findings that I cited. Where the one couple or the one person that seemed to have a positive net change if an actual reconnection was made, were those who actually capitalized on transitions.
Where they wanted to use the relationship as a test to manage the problems or they used it as an opportunity to improve the relationship. So again, that was the only type of on again off again relationship that saw a positive change.
That’s what I mean by those who grow.
So if you’re going to get into an on again off again relationship, you need to view it in that way.
The problems that caused the relationship to begin with need to be talked about. You need to learn some communication skills and you actually need to do a lot of research about what it takes to make a healthy relationship work.
But here’s the thing, oftentimes people who are in situations with on again off again, relationships fail to realize what type of on again off again relationship they’re really in. So I’ve cited so far, five types of on again off again relationships and basically honed in on one type where, “Hey, it can work out if you’re this type.”
But more times than not, people are in those habitual type of relationships. They are in those mismatched type of relationships. They are in gradual separation. Sometimes they are trying to get back with the controlling partner in which you should never do.
So the question now becomes, is there a right way to transition into the on again phase?
And in my opinion, absolutely.
The Right Way To Transition Into The “On Again” Phase
There’s an absolute way that you should transition into this on again phase if you find yourself in the on again off again relationship. S
o the program that we teach, we’ve had seven years to define this now.
So we’ve refined this process time and time again so that we can figure out what’s best for these on again off again relationships. The program that we teach allows women time to assess the breakup, time to work on their own personal growth and time to determine if they really want to get back together.
Now the bedrock of our program, Jennifer mentioned, and that’s the no contact rule.
Now before you roll your eyes and say, “I’ve heard this a million times before, Chris.” Or, “It doesn’t work.”
I want you to understand how we use the no contact rule.
So if you don’t know, I’ve written about the no contact rule a zillion times on Ex Boyfriend Recovery.
So I don’t think I need to explain to you what the no contact rule is.
But for the the spare viewer there, who’s listening in is thinking, what the heck is the no contact rule?
Here is what it is.
The no contact rule is simply a period of time where you ignore your ex with the intent on making them miss you, but also at the same time giving yourself some time to cultivate your own personal life.
And I would add onto that definition, giving you time to determine if you want to get back with your ex or not. Right? So what’s different about the way that we use the no contact rule as compared to our competitors?
For example, what our competitors often only focus on the missing your ex part. So they’re thinking, well, if you ignore your ex, they’re going to miss you and then by default they’re going to want you back.
We actually don’t look at it that way.
So we like to sort of divide it up into three phases.
There’s a period of time on what you’re supposed to be doing before the no contact rule
A period of time of what you’re supposed to be doing during the no contact rule
And a period of time on what you should be doing after the no contact rule.
So let’s take a little moment and describe what you should be doing during each of those three phases.
Phase One: Before The No Contact Rule
So phase one is there before the no contact rule phase.
So this is where you’re going to be doing a breakup assessment, determining whether or not you’re in an ideal situation to get back with your ex or not.
You’re going to learn about what the no contact rule is.
So many of you listening to this entire podcast episode are probably in the before the no contact rule phase. What you’re failing to do is you’re failing to learn the ins and the outs of everything related to the no contact rule.
So for example, most people can’t do a strict no contact rule straight up because they live with their ex, like Jennifer. Most people can do it because they’re pregnant, they have children with their ex, they work with their ex.
What do you do in those situations?
That is what you’re supposed to be doing before you do a no contact rule.
You need to do all of your leg work, all of your homework so that you know what you’re getting yourself into.
This is also a time for you to interpret your ex’s behavior and try to understand what’s really going through his mind and adopt an action oriented mindset. So there’s a difference between understanding something and implementing something.
So this is everything you’re supposed to be doing before you go into a no contact rule.
But what about what you’re supposed to be doing during the no contact rule?
Phase Two: During The No Contact Rule
So let’s say during the no contact rule, you’ve learned everything about the no contact rule.
You’re implementing it. You have that action oriented mindset. You are still a little unclear on whether or not you want your ex back, but you’ve taken some time to interpret his behavior so that you can better understand what’s going through his mind.
This period is basically spent on you. Right? So you’re going to be learning about concepts like the value ladder, what un-gettable means. You’re going to learn about what we consider to be the Holy Trinity, health, wealth, relationships and how those interact and the synergy between them.
You’re going to learn how you should be handling your social media profiles, what you should be posting, what you should be saying, what’s the the okay things to do, what are not the okay things to do. And also you’re going to learn about what it takes to maintain a healthy relationship. That’s an important part for someone who’s in an on again, off again relationship because learning what it takes to maintain a healthy relationship is something that almost no one does when they enter into that on again phase again.
Phase Three: After The No Contact Rule
So far we’ve talked about what to do before the no contact rule, what you should be doing during the no contact rule, but what about after the no contact rule?
Here’s what we find is fascinating.
People who listen to us, people who go through this breakup phase, they divide the no contact rule into the three phases, before, during and after.
People actually do what they’re supposed to do before and what they’re supposed to be doing during the no contact rule often have a much different outlook after the no contact rule is over.
This is really where they can do their real soul searching. They can really determine, do they want to move on or do they want to attempt to reestablish contact and reconnect and learn to maintain a healthy relationship? This is that moment. This is the frame of mind that you should be in when you do everything.
A lot of times people make impulse decisions when it comes to getting back with an ex. I’m not dumb. I know, I’ve seen, I’ve been there. I know exactly what it’s like when you go through a breakup and some of the decisions that you make. It’s nothing against you.
Remember when emotions run high logic runs low. That’s been sort of a phrase that everyone’s been saying for years. Right? Often the decision to, “Hey, I want to get back with my ex is done in an extreme emotional state of mind. But after you’ve got some time to think about it, after you’ve worked on the important aspects that you’re supposed to be working on after a breakup, that’s when you should determine whether or not you want to move on or attempt to reestablish contact and reconnect with your ex.
Because what we find is it’s literally 50/50. Half the people who go through the no contact rule and do everything as suggested, will still want their ex’s back and half of the people will not. They see their ex for what they really are. They want to move on. They want to have a better version of a relationship than they had with their ex. There’s nothing wrong with either approach, but my whole point is before you make a big decision, like whether or not you want to get back with your ex, you should determine whether or not he’s worth getting back. Now, why am I going through all of this for Jennifer, who’s 29 years old? She’s got plenty of time to find and settle down. She’s been with this person for 13 years. While that’s just it. She’s been with this person for 13 years. They’ve been off again on again, probably for most of that time.
What she needs to do more than anything is determine if he’s worth getting back with. But she can’t do that right now because she’s going through a really highly emotional time. She needs to divide things and simplified things up into these three phases and then after she’s gone through all of the work, make that decision. But the beautiful part is even when you’re going through that before the no contact rule phase. Even when you’re learning about that during the no contact rule phase, you’re still learning about what you should do if you want to get your ex back and if you want to move on. That’s all part of working on yourself.
I did an episode once where I interviewed a woman, I think her name was Veronica Grant. She’s a real nice girl. She had adopted this mindset that I think is worth adopting. It’s called dating yourself. Right? A lot of people don’t date themselves. They don’t spend time to work on themselves or do sort of nice things for themselves after a breakup. They just start obsessing about what their ex is doing, who their ex is, seeing things of that nature. But this is a time to date yourself. And then after you come out the other end of that one to two month time period, you’ll be in a frame of mind to make a decision on whether you want to move on or attempt to reestablish, contact, and reconnect.
This Is How Long You Should Be Doing No Contact For
Oct 24, 2019
Today we’re going to do something a little bit different.
Traditionally this podcast has had two formats. The first format is pretty straight forward, I take listener questions from people going through breakups and give them advice about what they should be doing in their exact situation.
And the second format is just straight one on one interviews with either people who are going through breakups themselves to help them so that you can see a live coaching session or talking to experts in other fields, or relevant fields that I think will help you.
But I think it’s important to be able to also have educational episodes and while maybe that’s not something that you were interested in hearing for a long time, like 20 minutes or 30 minutes, I’m going to try to keep these relatively short to the point and simple.
And we’re going to be covering some of the most asked questions that I’m seeing from people who are a little bit afraid to call in because they’re afraid of being featured or they’re afraid of their ex picking up on their voice, which is a relevant fear that I can completely understand.
But when I only feature people here on the podcast who have called in, one of the biggest issues is the fact that we’re only getting a small subset of the overall questions that the collective whole have. That’s not necessarily a problem that we see in the comments section of our website, in our private Facebook support groups, and sometimes even on one on one coaching sessions. So I think it’s really going to be helpful for a lot of people listening to this podcast who have always wondered how to answer some of the more relevant questions.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
And it’s a really interesting question, I think, and there’s … it used to be a simple answer.
In fact, when I first started my website, Ex-boyfriend Recovery, I would just recommend a 30 day no contact rule but as we’ve learned more advanced and improved our techniques, we’ve complicated our answer.
And to make matters worse, oftentimes we find that most of the people who come into our space and are interested in either getting over an ex or getting an ex back will also go and seek other expert’s opinions to compare them to our opinions.
And every single expert has an idea of what they think the standard no contact period rule should be or how long it should be done for. I certainly have my own thoughts and when you add in my thoughts, other expert’s thoughts, oftentimes you’re left in this crazy situation where you’re trying to determine what’s best for you in your particular unique situation and you have four different timeframes that you should be following.
Now let me tell you a little bit about how I try to approach questions like these.
I try be very scientific.
See my use of the socratic method,
You see, I feel like the one big advantage that I have over my peers is data.
I have so many people that we’ve done one on one coaching sessions with, I communicate with my coaches all of the time, I’ve done many different one-on-one coaching sessions. We have so many people talking to us, telling us about their experiences with the no contact rule in our website comment section, in our simple contact form, but most importantly in our private Facebook support group with over 3,000 members.
We’re able to see what works, what doesn’t work, and report those data … report those data points back to you essentially.
Now I also like to look at the advice that we give as a living and breathing entity. Oftentimes you’ll hear … I’ll hear from someone who’s maybe gone through our program a couple of years ago. Maybe they didn’t get their ex back or maybe they did but they went through a breakup again and then two years later they come back, and say, “Chris, why has the advice changed?
This is different from what you said.” Well it’s because, like I said, it’s a living, breathing thing.
So if we find something that we think works better than what we previously advised people to do, we will absolutely update our website and training materials to reflect to those changes.
And one of the things that we have noticed have changed a lot over the years, especially when you’re looking at effectiveness, is the length of time you should be using a no contact rule for. Now I thought I had written a post on the website about this but I haven’t.
This is one of the reasons why I wanted to record it in podcast form because I feel like I can better communicate some of the changes and why they’ve occurred.
The Three No Contact Timelines
So the one thing that we are known for at Ex-boyfriend Recovery is this idea or this concept of the three different timelines.
Most people you’re going to run into will tell you to do the no contact rule for a month. Now some people will say 90 days, some people will say 60 days.
I’ve certainly got an opinion on those timeframes but in my opinion there are three timeframes that we have experienced the best results with.
A 21 day no contact rule
A 30 day no contact rule
And finally a 45 day no contact rule.
Now the rules for how they should be applied have changed, especially from when I first introduced this concept of the three different timelines, but before we get into how they should be applied I think it’s important to understand why we don’t recommend very, very long periods of no contact.
Now for some of you you may hear that 45 day period and think, “Wow, Chris, that is extremely long.
Do I need to be in a no contact rule for that long amount of time?”
Well, believe it or not, when you compare it to some of our peers that’s actually short. I can tell you for a fact, many of our peers will recommend going into a no contact rule, dead silence, for something like 60 days or 90 days.
That’s the equivalent of two or three months of not even contacting or acknowledging your ex in any way, shape or form.
The Habit Rule
Now, why is that a bad idea?
Well one thing that we’ve learned over the years is there such a thing called the habit rule. I don’t know if that’s a scientific or technological phrase but it’s something that I often talk about and have coined that phrase.
So Google is often pretty funny.
Sometimes when you can type in to Google they come up with these things called featured snippets.
Essentially it’s their way of trying to give you a quick answer. So when you type in, “How long does it take to make a habit or break a habit?”
What used to come up was 21 days but what was happening was if you actually clicked on the featured snippet and went into the article, the article was explaining that most people believe it only takes 21 days to break or make a habit but research has found that it’s actually much longer.
In order to make or break a habit it takes 66 days.
Well the important thing to remember here is that if you look at our three timeframes, you’ll notice that none of our three timeframes even come up or close to exceeding that 66 day time limit. See, our thinking is that if you ignore your ex you’re essentially forcing a habit onto him or her, right?
And so if you understand the habit rule and the fact that it will take actually 66 days to get out of the habit of talking to you and so on and so forth, you can understand why a long no contact period can actually be detrimental to your success. It won’t help you in the long run.
That’s why the longest no contact period we recommend is 45 days.
And we have certain rules and regulations about when that 45 day rule should be applied.
Now I’m going to go into those in detail in this podcast but I think the first thing we need to understand is how all of the three timelines should be applied. Now everyone has a unique different situation, in fact, that’s the number one thing I hear all the time.
Oftentimes it’s, “Hey, how long should I be doing the no contact rule?” or, “Hey, Chris, do you think I have a chance?” \But usually I’ll also hear this phrase, “Chris, my situation is unique. You’ve never heard anything like this before.”
Well let me put this in perspective for you. Over the course since we’ve been in business, I think back in 2012, 30 million men and women have visited our website, Ex-boyfriend Recovery. Roughly around 150,000 of those people have left comments on our website and every … pretty much every situation we’ve seen. There are very, very unique situations and I mean extremely unique situations that we haven’t heard.
And let me give you an example of an extreme situation.
Extreme situation is something that we could never even guess would happen. We once had a woman who came to us in a coaching session who literally told us that her ex broke up with her because his mom or someone close to him convinced him that being with her would be like being with the devil. Very religious people, I’m guessing there.
So we’ve seen situations like that. So even though you think your situation is unique, we’ve had 30 million … technically 30 million.
I mean, I guess we haven’t communicated with 30 million people but we’ve communicated with over 150,000 people and that’s quite a bit if you really think about it.
Your situation is not unique as you think, but I’m getting off topic and went into the weeds. Let’s circle this back around so that we can actually talk about the three timelines.
So we have three ideal timelines in which you should be using the no contact rule, the 21 day rule, the 30 day rule and the 45 day rule.
Now like I’ve already said, how we have recommended our clients to actually implement these no contact rule periods have changed over time. So generally speaking you’re always going to … Well I think probably the best way to do this is to tell you a little bit about each one of these no contact rules.
Who Should Be Doing The 21 Day Rule
So who is the best candidate for a 21 day rule?
Well the 21 day rule is perfect for people who have not been together for a very long time.
Now when I say that, not together for a very long time, is usually a month or less, right? And the 21 day no contact rule is also perfect for people who are in a situation where the no contact rule is working too well.
Now I’m going to get into that in a moment but let’s … now that we understand the 21 day rule, let’s jump over to the 30 day rule.
Who Should Be Doing The 30 Day Rule?
Now the 30 day rule is pretty much going to be the standard no contact rule that 90% of our clients and probably 90% of the listeners of this podcast who are interested in getting an ex back are going to fall into.
It is pretty much the standard breakup no contact rule but what you need to learn to do is you need to learn to call audibles when you’re in the middle of a no contact rule that is 30 days long.
And again I’m going to get into the audible thing because that also hooks into what I was saying with the no contact working too well in that 21 day rule that we were just talking about.
Who Should Be Doing The 45 Day Rule?
Now let’s jump forward and talk about the 45 day rule.
Who is a perfect candidate for a 45 day rule?
Well the perfect candidate we’ve found … there are two for a 45 day rule no contact, is if your ex has moved on to someone new.
Now, why?
Why do you think that is?
What we found that … We use to recommend a 21 day rule in those particular circumstances, our thinking was probably much … very much in line with the public’s thinking which is, “Hey, if your ex has moved on to someone new, you don’t want to give them a lot of time together because if you give them a lot of time together they’re going to forget you.”
But we found the opposite is actually true. If you move in too fast when your ex has moved on to someone new it can actually harm your overall chances because they look at you as a threat and it actually bonds the two of them together.
And if you really think about it, it can make sense because during a 45 day rule you’re giving your ex and his new girlfriend some time to fight a little bit, to come down off that honeymoon period of a new relationship. And remember in one of the last videos that I did on our YouTube channel, we found that the average rebound relationship length is 5.2 months.
So you need to mentally prepare yourself for … that’s going to be at least how long it takes probably for their relationship to last before a breakup occurs.
But there’s also one other circumstance in which we recommend a 45 day no contact rule.
That’s a situation where you’ve GNATTED your ex.
Now GNAT is an acronym we came up with that is basically G going, N nuts, A at, T texting.
If you went nuts at texting, and you know who you are, you’ve blown up his phone after the breakup, you cannot bear to imagine him with someone new. So you’ve blown up his phone, you’re worried, you’re freaking out. You’re having one of those moments, you’re GNATTING him like those annoying gnats that fly around your head that you can’t ever get rid of.
Even when you sprint, they seem to follow you. He just wants to get away from you.
We find in these particular circumstances, the 45 day rule is ideal.
But the new little wrinkle I’m going to add in here is this idea of calling audibles.
Don’t Be Afraid To Call An Audible During No Contact
Now what is an audible?
Well I realize I’m talking to an audience full of women who aren’t probably football savvy but in America there’s a sport called football, because I know we have a lot of audience members from Canada or from the UK or Australia where football is not very popular.
But in America it’s the most popular sport. A
nd so you get basically two teams, they line up on the line of scrimmage and then the quarterback at the last minute is allowed to call an audible. If he can look at the defense and determine, “Hey, the play we were going to run to try to advance the ball up the field isn’t going to work.
Let’s change the play at the last minute.
Maybe that will work.” So they change it at the last moment. So it’s an in the moment decision that a great leader needs to make in order to help his team win.
We found that people who tend to call audibles during the no contact rule, especially when it relates to the length of the no contact rule, tend to have better success after they come out of their no contact rule.
So what do I mean by that?
Well if you really think about it, what you really want to do is determine if you should be … The average person who’s starting a breakup should always … almost always start in a 30 day no contact rule. But you need to learn to call audibles along the way.
So how do you do that?
Well the one question that you need to ask … and think of it like one of those decision tree charts where you’re asking yes or no and you go on a different path based on if you answered yes or no. So think of it like that.
You’re starting your standard 30 day no contact rule, right? But let’s say you’re a little worried that it’s too long. Is there a way that you can shorten your no contact rule?
Well actually yes there is.
So the first question you needed to asked during the midst of the 30 day no contact rule … And remember let’s say you’re on day seven or day eight of the no contact rule, this is about when you need to start asking yourself, “Is my ex excessively reaching out to me?”
If he isn’t then you basically stay in that 30 day no contact rule. If he is you have another question that you need to answer and that is, have they contacted you with at least seven positive reach-outs?
Now this is an important thing and an important distinction to make, not all attempts to contact you are created equally.
There’s a difference between him saying, “Well, you know what? I never wanted to talk to you anyway” in the midst of a no contact rule, he’s throwing a tantrum, versus him saying, “I miss you so much. I want you back so badly,” right?
That’s a different thing. So if you’re having seven positive reach-outs and the fact that they’re saying things like, “I miss you,” or, “I want to talk to you so badly,” and you’ve had at least seven in one day alone, then you may call an audible, and shift your 30 day rule into a 21 day rule because it just shows us that the no contact rule is working too well. The 30 day rule is going to probably be a little excessive, right?
I’m a big believer in momentum, especially when it comes to the no contact rule and getting an ex back. Oftentimes if you ride that momentum you’ll find that your opportunities to get back together are much grander.
But I also like to have very strong constraints so that people aren’t abusing this audible rule because next thing I know everyone who’s doing a 30 day no contact rule will change or shift their no contact rule into 21 day no contact rule when they have no business doing it. That’s why understanding the seven positive reach-outs part of this is an important thing.
Now here’s what I’m going to do for you. Now I realized that was a lot to swallow, especially if you’re on the go, you’re listening to this on a bus, you’re listening to this on the treadmill while you’re working out or you’re doing dishes. If you’re anything like me you’re probably listening to podcasts all the time in those places. Or maybe you’re in the midst of school and just blowing it off, and listening to this.
In that case, “Hey, good for you.” But what I’m going to do for you is I realize that was a lot to take in so I’m actually going to put this little decision tree chart in the podcast show notes on our website.
So all you’ll have to do is basically go to our website, go to the podcast section on our website and find this podcast, which is basically going to be titled or sound something along the lines of, “Hey, how long should you be doing the no contact rule for?”
And then you’ll be able to actually see that decision tree chart. And then you can actually take a screenshot on your phone so that you can actually always go back and look and make a decision if you need to call an audible or not.
But I’m just going to warn you, 90% of the people who are doing a 30 day no contact rule are not going to be in a situation where they should be calling an audible. But for those of you who are, Hey that just probably means that this process will work for you a little bit better than the average person. Good job.
Listen To This If You Can’t Stop Thinking About Your Ex
Sep 19, 2019
Today, we’re going to hear from a woman named MJ who’s having a really difficult time. She’s having a really difficult time because she just cannot stop thinking about her ex, about the breakup, everything that’s relating to it.
It just seems her mind is struggling with thinking about anything else. She can’t concentrate.
So I wanted to record this episode to not only explain to her what to do, but explain to you what to do, because this is one of the most common effects of a breakup, where you’re constantly obsessing about your ex and you can’t think about anything else or get anything else productive done in your life (like getting over them.)
I wanted to talk a little bit about why we do that, why we obsess about our exes, some of these symptoms of obsessing about an ex, and most importantly, the three most important factors to help you calm your emotions after a breakup.
This is kind of a universal topic that we’re going to be covering today.
But first, if you’re kind of struggling about what you should be doing with your ex, I highly recommend that you stop by my website, and take the Ex Recovery Chances quiz.
The biggest question that I get from almost every single person listening to this podcast or reading any of the articles on my website or even watching videos on my YouTube channel is,
Well, I put together a special quiz on my website, that is designed to answer this exact question. It’s divided up into three parts that asks you questions about you, your breakup and general situations that you find yourself in, and also your ex and what’s going on with him.
So with that out of the way, let’s hear MJ’s question.
“Hi, Chris. This is MJ. It’s been two weeks since my boyfriend of one year and I broke up, but we’re going to see each other next week so he can return my laptop to me.
I was the one who initiated contact because I really do need my laptop back and couldn’t wait, so I chatted with him for the first time since the break up to talk about when to meet up, and he was very casual about it.
I mean, I was being casual too, because I wanted to have a positive non-stressful conversation with him, and I know he can’t read emotions in a chat box, but I just felt that he isn’t taking it as hard as I was, that he didn’t even miss me at all in those two weeks.
At one point in the conversation, I even asked him if it’s okay if his best friend be the one to give me the laptop instead. And then he said, “You don’t want to see me?” And I answered, “No, you just might be busy. Ha ha.” And that’s the thing. He sounds busy. I mean, I’m busy too, but why is it that it seems to be easier for him than for me.
I think about him 24/7 and he sounds like he hasn’t thought of me at all. I don’t know. I would really appreciate your help.”
But I think what irks her the most is that she feels that she’s constantly obsessing about her ex and what he’s doing, and probably nitpicking every single little action that he’s basically engaging in, and it seems like he’s not doing the same thing to her at all.
She’s struggling with the fact that maybe he’s not thinking about her at all.
Well, I’m here to tell you, MJ, that your ex is thinking about you, and I think what you’re doing is a little bit putting your own internal assumptions about how you’re approaching the breakup onto an ex.
Everyone has a different, unique way of approaching a breakup and I think it’s really common for exes to act like your ex is acting, like everything’s cool, nothing’s bothering them, but you don’t know what is happening during the private moments when you’re not around, and that’s usually the part with the most impact of the whole process.
So I wouldn’t worry so much about what he’s doing. I’d worry more about what you’re doing, and specifically I wanted to tackle this issue of,
“Is it normal to not stop thinking about your ex?”
And to answer the question, really to the point, yes, it is completely normal to go through a wide variety of emotions after a breakup.
I often relate to this or make an analogy of the fact that this is a little like having a pendulum swing from one end of the spectrum to another end of the spectrum.
It’s completely common for you to see exes be really into you one minute and then cold the next. It’s really common for you to be into an ex one minute and then really angry at them the next.
You will notice it’s kind of like you go from one wide range of emotions to another wide range of emotions at the drop of a hat.
It’s like the pendulum is swinging back and forth and back and forth.
But many of our clients, or many of the clients that I’ve worked with experience kind of similar symptoms, and these are kind of the symptoms that are common and present throughout a breakup.
So what are some of those symptoms?
No Motivation
Mood Swings
Fatigue
Lack Libido
Immune system weakens
Inability to Concentrate
Well, you may find yourself have a lack of motivation. Nothing really motivates you. Work doesn’t motivate you, because you can’t stop thinking about your ex.
And I’ve been through breakups where you go through the breakup and you’re just so frustrated or so kind of messed up emotionally that you can’t think about anything else other than what your ex is doing and when they’re going to contact you.
Another really common side effect of thinking about an ex too much or experiencing a breakup is having overwhelming fatigue and obviously the mood swings.
So anyone who says that a breakup is only internal and doesn’t take on any physical characteristics, I would submit that they’ve never been through a real difficult breakup.
It’s really common to get fatigued and even to lose your appetite, but probably the biggest thing that I’ve noticed happen is people who get sick after a breakup.
So what happens when you go through a breakup and it’s affecting you really, really internally and you’re taking everything in, you’re really stressed about the whole thing, you’ll notice that your immune system weakens, and it leaves you susceptible to colds and things like that, which obviously brings you further down into the depths of despair.
You lack your libido sometimes. You have an inability to concentrate.
I feel like a broken record here, but I think I’m kind of getting the point home to you guys.
If you’re feeling any of these things, it is completely normal. It’s completely normal to not think about anything else other than what your ex is doing. But luckily, over the years, we’ve found that there are three really important factors that you can engage in or do to help calm your emotions after a breakup.
So anyone listening to this, if you’re going through a breakup, there are three things that I would recommend that you do that can help calm your emotions.
I cannot guarantee that you will stop thinking about your ex. I actually think it’s impossible to have anyone say like,
“Yes, you will stop thinking about your ex if you do this, this, and this. If you meet someone else, you’ll stop thinking about your ex.”
I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think anything that you can do will make you stop thinking about your ex, but I think what you need to understand is some of the science behind what’s going on.
When you go through a breakup, all sorts of emotions and chemicals get released into your body, and it’s kind of like your body has a natural regulation of how it regulates all of these chemicals, but when you go through a breakup, the regulations get thrown out the window and the chemicals take control of the party, so to speak.
So it’s simply a factor, if you want to get back to more of a playing regulated level, you need to do some things to help with that.
And there are three factors that I want you to consider
Factor number one is diet
When you eat like crap, you’re going to feel like crap. You see, your body cannot properly balance the chemicals that I’m talking about that are going crazy if you feed it crap food or if you don’t feed it at all.
Remember I said loss of appetite is a really common breakup behavior that we see, or breakup symptom. So make sure that you’re feeding it properly so that you can balance how you are feeling, and I think there’s another way that this can go.
Sometimes people, when they go through breakups, they have no problem eating, but they’re just eating the wrong types of food, which in turn make them feel worse. So make sure that you’re taking care of your body with the right type of diet.
Now, when I say diet, I’m not saying that you need to lose weight.
This has nothing to do with that.
What I’m saying is that you need to be eating healthy kinds of foods, or the very least eating normal foods, that you can help stack the odds in your favor to help your body regulate all of the crazy chemicals going on inside of your body.
Factor number two is exercise
Now, Newton’s first law of motion states that an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion.
Out of the two outcomes here, the worst thing you can do is stay at rest, and this is the biggest issue I see with most of the people when they start working with me. When you go through a breakup, there’s a tendency to kind of fight or flight, if you look at it in those kind of terms.
Some people want to avoid the breakups so they do everything they can not to think about it, or do anything productive. Some people want to fight, so they lash out at the thing that’s causing them the most anger, which of course is their ex.
They’re the catalyst for why they’re feeling this crazy way.
What you need to understand is inaction is your enemy when it comes to breakups. You always want to be in motion.
Motion is better than no motion, and exercise is a great way to start that motion. Now, when I also say and cite Newton’s first law and the fact that an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion, and the fact that I believe as long as you are acting and doing something positive, you’re going to end up in a better place.
What you need to understand here is that if you sit around and rest and just wait for your ex to come to you, you feel like you’re not doing anything productive, which can allow you to have some time to sit and think, and oftentimes you really get down on yourself.
That’s why I say inaction is your enemy
If you’re not doing anything, if you’re just waiting around, you’re going to end up talking yourself out of things, and the chemicals, that internal conversation in your head, will release the negative chemicals that will just continue this negative spiral that you’re on. So I want you to not just look at it as,
“Oh, I need to exercise.” Look at it as, “I’m always going to be doing something productive at every single moment.”
That’s factor number two. It goes beyond exercise.
Basically, I want you to do something productive at all times so that you feel like you’re kind of moving towards a goal as opposed to just waiting and hoping the goal comes to you.
Factor number three is environment
Now, we find that your mind tends to reflect your surroundings. If you allow clutter and junk to pile up around you, you’ll likely have trouble organizing your thoughts.
The same goes for your outward appearance.
If you clean up your appearance and your environment, then you could effectively trick your brain into being more optimistic and processing things more clearly.
Environment can have an impact on your life
It’s amazing what environment can have and the impact it can have on all facets of your life. Now, we’re talking about things like, okay, when you were really depressed, you just kind of don’t care about cleaning things up, and you know that godliness is next to cleanliness type idea comes into play here, but I think it’s a little bit more than that.
If you think about the correlation that environment has to love, I would argue that environment can have a gigantic impact on how you can fall in love with someone.
Think of it like this.
You’re not going to fall in love with someone at the drive through of McDonald’s. You’re more likely to fall in love with someone at the most romantic date you can possibly think of. That has to play a factor, so don’t really throw environment out like it’s not this big thing that you can focus on.
I would actually argue it’s one of the most important things that you can focus on. If you make sure that your surroundings are really, really stacked, and the fact that you have a good handle on everything, you’re probably going to feel a little bit better about yourself.
See, I think that’s one of the greatest features of life.
If you really think about it, entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, is always inaction. The universe tends towards a state of disorder. In fact, many of the best scientists believe that life was created out of the fact that the universe is in disorder.
The fact that the universe has created, and the world was created out of the fact that everything is tending towards entropy, and that only in this span of time can life exist.
My point here is, without getting too philosophical or sciencey, is the fact that entropy is a real thing.
Your surroundings, your life will always tend towards disorder. The greatest fact or the greatest ability of human beings is to create order from the chaos. You’ve gone through a breakup. You have entered into a phase of your life where chaos is reigning.
There are two ways that you can handle it
You can give in to the chaos and allow it to reflect your surroundings;
your mind,
your environment,
your appearance,
or you can attempt to create order from the chaos by;
taking control of your appearance,
making sure that you look better than ever before,
by taking control of your environment,
making sure that you’re not letting clutter pile up,
by finding ways to organize your thoughts in a better way
That’s what this is all about. Creating order from chaos.
Does No Contact Work If Your Ex Has You Blocked?
Sep 13, 2019
Welcome to another episode of the Ex Boyfriend Recovery podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking about the no contact rule, specifically does the no contact rule work if you’ve been blocked?
We’re going to hear from a listener named Diana who has a question about just that. But before we hear her question, I first want to let you know that no matter what situation that you’re in, you’re always going to need a starting point.
Whether you want to get your ex back or you want to get over your ex, the best thing you should always do is start on our website, and take our ex recovery chances quiz.
Now, I know, I know I sound like a broken record always talking about this quiz, but that’s because I think it’s the perfect starting point for you to determine what you should be doing about your situation.
Most people, when they start trying to get exes back, have no idea where to begin. The first question they always have for me is,
“Chris, do I have a chance of getting back with my ex?”
Even if they’re a little on the fence about it, having that knowledge can help them make decisions going forward.
Now, I put together a special quiz designed to basically answer this exact question. It’s on my website. Again, exboyfriendrecovery.com.
All you’ve got to do is simply look in the navigation bar and click on the quiz tab. It’ll take you right to the quiz where you can take a two minute assessment where I’m going to ask you all sorts of questions about you, your ex, and your past relationship together.
Then based on your answers, I can give you an approximate idea of what your chances are.
If you’re interested in taking that quiz again, hop over to my website. But now that that’s out of the way, which I can’t tell you how glad I am that that’s out of the way, let’s hear from Diana.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
“Is there a way for the no contact to work if he blocked me from his cell phone? I am one week into no contact, will this still work?”
Now, I chose this question not only because it’s shorter, which is always easy for me to handle because we get so many questions every single day, but because really what she’s asking here is two questions.
She first wants to figure out will the no contact rule work for her, especially if she’s been blocked. But also she wants to learn how to handle the no contact rule if she’s been blocked.
That’s what we’re going to focus our time on today. Basically, I’m going to teach you if the no contact rule will work, if you’ve been blocked a little bit, about how the no contact rule will work, and also what to do if you’re blocked during the no contact rule.
Let me first start off by saying, I think there’s a really big misconception about the no contact rule. Most people, when they hear about the no contact rule, they only focus on one aspect of it.
They focus on the aspect that can potentially happen where an ex will reach out to you.
Sometimes they’ll say, “Oh, I made a mistake,” or, “I miss you,” or they’ll reach out to you or get a little upset that you’re not responding to them.
But I think this is a really common misconception because people who only focus on this aspect of a no contact rule are kind of missing the boat of what the no contact rule is supposed to do.
Here’s the common misconception that I’m seeing time and time again, people believe that the no contact rule doesn’t consider or isn’t considered working if you don’t hear from an ex.
What you really need to understand is, technically speaking, the no contact rule can work if one of three criteria are met.
What are those three criteria?
Well, number one is by implementing a no contact rule, it’s supposed to give both you and him time to let your emotions settle. You see, usually during a breakup, there’s quite a bit of anger, resentment, and, quite honestly, genuine despair between you and him or her.
Now, these are all incredibly strong emotions, and emotions tend to override our ability to act and react rationally. We’ve all heard that phrase, when emotion runs high, logic runs low. That is sort of what the no contact rule can do, it can help kind of get your logic back in line and in control.
By implementing a no contact rule, if you stick to it for, let’s say, the entire 30 day rule that we recommend, and sometimes people will do the 21 day rule, the 45 day rule, depending on their situation. But, generally speaking, most people are going to fall in that 30 day time frame.
If you’re doing that 30 day rule, the no contact will can technically work because it will give you time, both him and you time, to settle down and let logic win out.
But there’s also a second criteria that can be considered working with the no contact rule. That’s it gives you a chance to evolve.
It allows you a chance to become a better version of yourself.
That’s never a bad idea, especially when you reconnect with your ex, when that time does come, you need to bring more value to the table than he expects you. I think that’s really what it’s all about, right?
Most of the people who focus on the no contact rule get so settled on what their ex is doing, they forget to kind of look internally.
I know it sounds very cliche, but sometimes the cliches are there for a reason, so that’s the second criteria that I would use to consider a no contact rule technically working.
But the third one is the more kind of common one that you would think of. The no contact rule can allow you to turn your ex’s mindset against him, so he’ll expect you to contact him and, when you don’t, his thoughts become, “Well, why isn’t she contacting me?”
Technically speaking, these are the three criteria that can dictate whether or not the no contact rule is working, but I think what you probably also need to learn is a little bit about the psychology behind how the no contact rule works because it’s not just hitting these criteria that matters in the grand scheme of thing, it’s also gaining understanding about why we implement the no contact rule.
Why We Implement The No Contact Rule
Now, there’s been this alarming trend lately where we’re having some ‘experts’ out there say that the no contact rule is a bad idea and that it doesn’t work. But all of our research psychology wise says something different.
What I’m going to point to today is two psychological researches that I often point to to prove to people, yes, this is something that you should be doing and using.
What are those two specific psychological ideas behind how the no contact rule is meant to work?
Well, there’s one, which is the theory of reactance, and there’s two, which is the information gap theory.
What are those two things?
The Theory Of Reactance.
The theory of reactions refers to the human need to react when someone or something interferes with things that come naturally, also called behavioural freedoms. You see, when you implement a no contact rule, you’re taking away your ex’s ‘free will’, the choice to talk to you or not talk to you was his and someone has taken it away, you.
Now, ideally this will cause him or raise the chances that he’s going to react. He will try and force you to talk to him. It’s a little bit of this idea of like, hey, I’m going to take your cookie away, now all of a sudden, you want your cookie back.
But of course that’s not all that sort of powers the power of the no contact, rule, we also have information gap theory.
Now, information gap theory is a little bit harder to describe because you kind of need some visualisation to sort of fully understand it, but I’m hoping that you can open your minds to maybe visualising some of the things I’m going to be talking about.
What is the information gap theory?
Well, the information gap theory basically states that when it feels as if we are missing out on something, the mind seeks to fill the void. Imagine that there’s a triangle, right?
We all know what a triangle looks like, but let’s say that the bottom of the triangle isn’t closed, it’s just an upside down V. You look at that, and your mind just gets a little annoyed by it. Every so often you just kind of want that bottom of that triangle to close.
Another really great example is, let’s say that you and I are best friends and I invite myself over to your house one day. I knock on the door, you say, “Hey Chris, what’s up?” I say, “Hey, can I come in?” You’re like, “Oh yeah, sure. Come right on in.” You invite me in and I don’t close the door, I leave it open.
You, in the back of your mind are like, I want to close that door, but I take you away from the door. I take you into your living room and say, “Hey, this is a really cool painting. Tell me about who painted that painting,” all the while you’re sitting there, obsessing about the fact that the door is open, it’s annoying you.
You have to close it. You can’t focus on anything else.
The no contact rule acts as the ‘open door’ for your ex. There’s unfinished business that needs to get finished.
Now, that we understand a little bit more about how the no contact rule works psychologically and even how you can look at the criteria to determine that it works, let’s switch focus on what you’re probably dying to learn about, and that’s what to do if you’ve been blocked during the no contact rule.
There Are Four Points
There’s really four points that I want to leave you with on this particular section. Let’s go down them one by one, and then we’ll define each one of them later.
Point number one, it’s that over 70% of exes who are blocked get unblocked at some point.
Point number two is understanding what soft blocks are versus hard blocks.
Point number three is learning to create mystery on social media to capture your ex’s attention.
Point four is sending them a text from a new number, which I have some interesting thoughts on, but let’s start from the top and go through it.
Point number one with what to do if you’re blocked by your ex is understanding that over 70% of exes who are blocked get unblocked at some point. What we learn is that oftentimes when an ex blocks you, it is usually due to a knee jerk reaction. Most of the time breakups don’t go really well.
There’s a lot of anger involved from your side, anger involved from his or her side. You’re just kind of fighting a lot, right?
Sometimes our fight or flight response gets triggered, and the people who are ‘fighting’ from this situation will block you because they don’t want to deal with you anymore. But that’s the brilliance of the no contact rule. Sometimes just ignoring your ex is enough to null, kind of inception yourself into their mind, so they start wondering what you’re up to, what is going on.
That’s why we see a high level of people who have been blocked by simply doing nothing will get unblocked just by being patient.
Now, it’s one of the hardest things to do because when you’re blocked and you are basically being no contacted by your ex, that reactance kicks in, you start to basically get really upset by the fact that you don’t have an ability to talk to your ex.
Usually, most of the time, you need to understand that you will get unblocked simply by doing nothing, just by playing the odds in your favor, but we don’t want to just play the odds in our favor.
We want to go a little bit deeper and come up with a plan for grabbing an ex’s attention to get him to unblock you or, barring that, finding some way of communicating, right, so that’s really the first point that I want you to understand.
The second point is understanding the difference between soft blocks versus hard blocks.
When there’s these knee jerk blocking reactions by your ex, there’s also knee jerk reactions that you guys tend to have when you’re talking to me or Coach Anna or even my wife sometimes.
You’re saying, “My God, he’s blocked me on Facebook. My God, he’s blocked me on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, whatever.” I don’t know many guys who use Pinterest by the way.
What you need to understand is that there’s a difference between soft blocks and hard blocks.
Soft blocks are pretty simple. It’s meaning you’re blocked maybe on Facebook, but you can still talk to him or communicate with him through cell phones.
Hard blocks is the exact opposite. You are blocked everywhere imaginable.
Now, let’s go back to soft blocks a little bit. If you are soft blocked by your ex, maybe you’re blocked to communicate on the phone with him, but you’re still able to communicate with him through Facebook. What you need to first do before you start figuring out how to handle being blocked by your ex is figure out which category you fit into.
Are you a soft block or are you a hard block?
Usually most of our clients fall in the soft block category, but if you are stuck in kind of the hard block category, what can you do?
Well, that’s where step number three really comes into play here, and that’s creating mystery on social media to capture their attention.
Now, you’re probably sitting there and wondering, well, why? That doesn’t even make any sense because if you’re ‘hard blocked’, how would your ex even see your social media account?
Well, what we’ve learned through research and also our own personal findings is that most exes, in fact, research has the number up to 90% of exes will Facebook creep or stalk their ex digitally after the breakup, they get curious to see what you’re up to.
They just want to lock themselves in a room and feel sorry for themselves, and that I totally get, believe me, I get that more than you probably realize.
But the smarter thing to do is actually to use social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, all of the tools in your tool belt, even if you’re blocked, to create the narrative that you want to have created about you.
If your ex broke up with you because he thought you were too stable, do something adventurous. If your ex thought or broke up with you because you were too adventurous or too mysterious, do something stable.
Find a way to reshape his perception, to change the paradigm in your favor.
All right, now we get to the final one
This is something that I don’t love to recommend to people, but I feel a need to mention its existence because we have had clients do this, though, I will say not many of them have been successful, and that’s sending an ex a text from a new number.
There’s a very specific way to do this, and I’m going to go on the record right here, right now, I say more times than not, 9.5 times out of 10 do not do this, but if you have for six months you’ve been blocked, you’ve tried everything to not seem like a creepy stalker, to not show up your ex’s door.
You’ve done everything we’ve recommended. You’ve learned that you’re in a hard block, you’ve waited enough time, you’ve created that mystery on social media, you’ve gone out, you’ve improved your life.
If you’re still blocked and you still are just dying to hear from your ex, one thing we have seen our clients do is to go out, buy a new phone, get a new number, and text their ex with the following text,
“Hey, I’m just letting you know I got a new number. I didn’t know if you would need it. This is like a mass text I’m sending out to everyone.”
We have had a few clients who haven’t gotten much overall success but have gotten responses from exes who have done that. Now, here’s the issue with this, sending a new text from a new number. Sometimes it is enough to creep an ex out to where you lose your chance forever, right?
But it is the only option we see for people who are hard blocked to find a way to kind of throw that last hail Mary. I want to reiterate, this is something I actually would not recommend, but it is kind of my duty to show you every possible thing that you can do.
Now, when you take all that into account, Diana,
Yes, the no contact rule can definitely work if you’ve been blocked.
My Ex Said He Doesn’t See A Future With Me
Sep 10, 2019
Hello and what’s up? Welcome to another episode of The Ex Boyfriend Recovery Podcast, where we’re going to talk about your exes.
How to get them back, how to move on from them, or just men in general, and what works to get them to commit to you, so that you can get a lifelong commitment, because that’s really what we’re here to do.
So today, we’re going to be talking about what it means when an ex actually says that he doesn’t see a future with you. We’re going to hear from a woman named Shauntee, whose ex ironically has just said this exact thing to her.
But before we get started, I do want to let you know, if you’re considering getting your ex back, the first place that you should always start is on our website, to take our ex recovery chances quiz.
It’s a two-minute quiz that is simply designed to answer one question, what kind of chance do you have of getting your ex back?
Believe me when I say there’s nothing worse than working to try to get an ex back in a situation that is probably impossible. It’s a waste of your time. It’s a waste of their time.
So, we want to weed these types of situations out immediately, or help you improve the odds of your chances, but in order for you to understand that, you have to go to my website and take the quiz.
So again, just go to Google, type in ex boyfriend recovery.
My website will pop up, and look for the quiz there. There’s only one quiz on the website, and it is the quiz I’m talking about right here in the podcast.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Okay, so now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about what your ex means when he says he doesn’t see a future with me, and I’m going to play a voicemail I got from one of my readers named Shauntee.
The Listeners Question
“Hi Chris, this is Shauntee.
My boyfriend broke up with me about a week ago because he said that he thought our relationship had reached a plateau, and that he really didn’t see a future for us, and that to continue dating me would basically be leading me on at this point.
I’ve read through your website. I didn’t really see an example of a success story from that sort of situation.
So, I’m just wondering, do you think there’s hope there, that someone who doesn’t think that you’re the one, may realize that they made a mistake, I guess?
Like I said, it’s been a week. I haven’t spoken with him. I haven’t tried to contact him. He hasn’t contacted me.
He’s actually not on social media, one of the very few people in the world. So, it’s not like I’m looking at his social media, or anything like that, or he’s not looking at mine because he’s not on it.
I don’t know if there was another woman in the picture or not. So, I guess, like I said, my question is just, do you think there’s any hope for that at this point, for any hope for any reconciliation?
Thank you.”
I just wanted to take a moment and thank you for having the courage to send me a voicemail, Shauntee.
If you’re listening to this podcast, and are interested in sending me a voicemail, you can actually go to my website, and actually, record a 30-90 second voicemail for me.
Sometimes, I pick the best ones, or the ones that fit the criteria that I’m looking for, and I will answer your question on-air.
He Doesn’t See A Future Together
So today, let’s do a quick recap of Shauntee’s situation.
It looks like her ex broke up with her about a week ago. Her boyfriend broke up with her, and says he doesn’t see a future together, says dating her would be like leading her on.
Now, Shauntee is obviously very discouraged by this. She’s wondering if there’s still hope. Will he realize that he made a mistake? And interestingly enough, her ex doesn’t have any social media.
So, when I look at your situation as a whole, Shauntee, there are two things that really stick out to me.
Number one is, what the heck is going on in his head when he actually says he doesn’t see a future with me?
I’m sure a lot of people listening to this are wondering that as well.
But on top of that, I’m also going to spend some time helping everyone listening, and you Shauntee, understand how men make their commitment decisions.
Because I think, interestingly in this case, the two are kind of linked.
So, part one of this podcast will be dedicated to figuring out what’s going on in his head when he says this.
Part two is going to be helping you understand how men make their commitment decisions.
So, let’s get right to it
Part one, what is going on in his head when he says he doesn’t see a future with you?
All right, so first off, the first thing you need to understand is, does he believe what he’s saying?
I would say yes, he does, right now. In this moment, he’s broken up with you, it’s still very fresh, he does believe that he doesn’t see a future together with you.
Every man who breaks up with a woman, citing this, will believe that at the time, but interestingly enough, the one agent in life that you can count on is change. Feelings change, circumstances change.
In many cases, anyone who says, “Yeah, he does not believe this,” they’re lying to you.
Absolutely, he believes that he doesn’t see a future together with you. Why else would he break up with you?
But what you are counting on, and it’s what I’ve seen happen in countless situations, is that change can occur, and he can change his mind.
Now, let’s distil down a little deeper, and try to understand the actual process going on in his head. Why is he getting this thought?
Well, in my opinion, I think he thinks that there’s a better alternative out there for him.
The thing you need to understand about men is, often when we’re making commitment decisions, we’re doing it based on a cost and benefit scenario.
In other words, we’re looking for an opportunity that’s going to provide the most benefits and minimize the most costs.
So, he’s in the relationship with you, and he’s enjoying his time potentially, because he thinks,
“I’m getting a lot of benefit out of this relationship and it’s not costing me much. My feelings are still into this,” but somewhere along the way, there was a catalyst, a catalyst for change.
This is actually a technique that I use with my coaching clients, because what I find is, that a lot of the women who I coach, and also who Coach Anna coaches, will be a little blind to the real reason that caused the breakup.
There’s always a catalyst, there’s always a turning point. Sometimes it’s not one singular moment, it’s a combination of many singular moments.
But it’s important for you to be aware of what that catalyst is, that catalyst that turns things for the worst, that makes him think,
“You know what? This is costing me too much. There are not enough benefits. The benefits don’t out weigh the cost anymore.”
So, it’s important to think back. In most cases it can be something as simple as a comment like, “Oh yeah.”
My wife and I, interestingly … I’ll give you a really inline idea of this process at work. My wife and I often will watch The Bachelor, or recently we’ve been kind of getting a kick … at least I get a kick out of it … this idea of The Bachelor in Paradise, where essentially they get all these couples together on a beach, and you can only advance at the competition as long as you’re in a couple.
There happened to be a woman and a guy who were really hitting it off. It looked like she liked him and he liked her, and then she made some comment.
Now, the interesting thing, the trademark you need to understand here, is with The Bachelor in Paradise, they’re often introducing new people into the equation, and the new person has the opportunity to take someone out on a date.
It just so happened that the men had the power, which means the men have these roses.
I know this sounds like a ridiculous show, but the men have these roses, and they are allowed to give it to the women of their choice, to advance in the competition.
Of course, the couples that were already together don’t necessarily stay together, because there’s always new women coming in, that are going to ask the men on dates.
There was one couple that seemed really strong, and what ended up happening was, the woman felt a little insecure about the facts that there’s another girl that’s going to come in, that could potentially ask her man on a date.
She got so insecure, she decided to test him. Her test was, “Hey, if you get asked out on a date, I want you to do what’s best for you. I want you to go on the date.”
Now, the man was really into the girl, but this kind of took him aback, because he was looking for an actual commitment out of the person he was with, and it made him feel like the girl he was with wasn’t as committed because she was doing this test.
And so of course, the girl, the new blood, comes and asks him on a date, and he takes it. Of course, the girl who gave him the test is in tears.
This is all because the new alternative came in and he felt, you know what?
Maybe there is a better alternative out there for him. This caused the catalyst for this dissension, this break up, so to speak.
It can be something as simple as that, or something as complicated as, for 15 weeks straight you fought every single day.
Those are the kinds of catalysts we’re looking at. Once you have those identified, you can get an idea of the moment he starts looking for alternatives.
Think of it like this. If you look at the pros and cons list of being in a relationship with you, the second the cons start outweighing the pros, the second he starts looking for more alternatives.
Now, does him saying this to you …
Hey, my ex said he doesn’t see a future with me. Does him saying, “You know what? I don’t want to be with you anymore. I don’t see us being together when we grow old,”
Does that impact your overall chances of success with getting him back? Not really.
I know that’s a weird thing to say, especially after I gave all this evidence saying, “Yes, he does believe what he’s saying in the moment. Yes, he’s thinking there are better alternatives out there,” but here’s the trick.
Thinking there are better alternatives out there aren’t the same as there actually being better alternatives out there.
And if you listen to what I’m about to say, if you take some time and understand how men make their commitment decisions, you can actually turn this in your favor, because the agent of change will occur. He can change how he’s feeling.
You’re a week out from your breakup, Shauntee. The emotions you’re having, and he’s having, are at the highest state.
So, I don’t know about you, but most of the time when people are in highly emotional states and tell you something, they’re doing it as an impulse reaction.
That impulse might not be the same a year from now, six months from now, three months from now.
So, let’s take some time and understand how men make their commitment decisions. Because your ex, right now, is looking for a new type of commitment.
Four Major Factors
In my opinion there are four major factors that you need to take into account:
Satisfaction
Alternatives
Investment
Fear of loss
Let’s talk a little bit about each one of these.
Satisfaction
How satisfied is your ex in the relationship he’s in currently?
Alternatives
We just spent a whole bunch of time talking about this, but alternatives.
Is there someone else out there who can meet his needs better?
Remember, when I view alternatives, or when your ex is viewing alternatives, he’s looking at a pros and cons lists.
He’s looking to see, “You know what? This girl has more pros than cons, than the current relationship I’m in, or the current relationship I was just in.”
Investment
How much money, and time, and emotional energy has he spent invested into the relationship?
This is a really undervalued factor, and I’d argue it’s one of the most important, if not the most important factor to commitment decisions, investment.
What we found is, as long as an ex has invested a lot of time, energy, emotional energy, resources into a relationship, even if that relationship is starting to become unsatisfying, even if the alternatives are ripe, he can still stay in the relationship because he feels like it’s a waste of his time.
There’s nothing people like less than wasting their time, even if we spend all day wasting our time.
And then finally,
Fear of Loss
Oftentimes to me, this is the agent that gets the action of commitment in play.
It’s not enough just to be satisfying. It’s not enough to be the best alternative. It’s not enough to get his investment sometimes, or get his time invested into you.
Sometimes, we find that when we teach our clients about this process, and they actually work to try to get a commitment from their ex, they do a great job of getting satisfaction, alternatives, investment.
It’s not enough to push him over the edge. It’s not until he feels like he’s about to lose you forever, that he will take action.
So, what does this mean?
Well, when you look at understanding how men make commitment decisions, it gives you the game plan going forward, especially with an ex who says he doesn’t see a future with you.
So, an ex who says that, is essentially talking almost about investment.
What are breakups, if not an admission that, “You know what? I think I can do better than you.”
It’s your job, your mantra, to live your life in a way that he feels like he’s going to miss out on the alternative of being with you.
It’s your job to live your life in a way, and romanticize the past for him, so that when he does start meeting other alternatives, other women, he’s comparing them to the bar that you set, and the bar that you set is so high.
My Ex Always Responds But Never Initiates
Aug 30, 2019
Hey, hey, hey, and welcome to another episode of the Ex-Boyfriend Recovery Podcast, where we’re going to be talking about everything from getting an ex back, to getting over an ex, to just men in general, and how to have the dating life that you deserve.
Today, we’re going to be talking about one of the most asked questions that I get, and that’s what to do if your ex always responds to your texts, but never initiates.
How can you get that opposite effect to occur? How can you get them to be the ones to reach out?
I want to preface this by saying that if you’re even interested in getting an ex back, this isn’t the first place that you should be starting. The first place you should be starting is by going over to my website, and taking my special quiz there.
It’s a quiz that will basically teach you the approximate chances you have of getting your ex back, so that you know whether or not you’re wasting your time in your particular situation. So, taking that quiz is simple.
All you got to do is pause the podcast, go onto your phone, click open the Google Chrome or Safari apps, type in Ex-Boyfriend Recovery, and literally, the quiz is on my website.
Take the quiz, and then come back and listen to this podcast, so you can figure out how to get your ex to actually initiate conversations.
Today, we’re going to be hearing a question from a woman who wants to remain anonymous, so let’s play that question right now.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Hey, Chris. I’d really love your advice on this situation, as it’s not in your book or in any of your podcasts.
My ex and I broke up in the beginning of September. It was a super normal breakup. I’ve been doing the program, and so far, have been super successful, made it through no contact, got onto texting and then phone calls, and about a week ago, he started asking me to hang out with him and, like, meet up.
I waited a week, as I was busy, so we finally met up this week. The date ended up being amazing, but it ended up going a lot longer than it was supposed to, so it was basically date three on the first day, and that’s probably because we had a little too much wine.
He ended up staying at my apartment, and we did not have sex, because I refused.
But anyway, so on the date, his behavior was super complimentary, apologetic, like very loving, and he was telling me how much he missed me like over and over and over again, talked about making plans for this weekend, and then inviting me to his sister’s birthday in two weeks with him.
Since then, he’s been a little distant, in the sense that I’ve had to make first contact with him, and I feel like it’s day three now, and I kind of think that he should be doing more of that contact, so I’m a little concerned in that sense.
So, I wanted to get your feeling on the situation, and the rules for after you start hanging out with an ex?
Why Did Her Ex Go Cold?
All right, so we’ve heard from the woman who wants to remain anonymous, and I always find it’s best when you’re dealing with things like this to recap the situation.
This woman, so far, has done the no contact rule, and everything seems to be going well, so well in fact that her ex actually initiated and wanted to hang out with her.
Now, the date, according to her, went extremely well, but they did not have sex, so now she’s noticed an interesting change in dynamic, and that’s she’s always making the first contact, and he’s never reaching out first.
She gets this feeling that he’s a bit distant, and is probably worried. Ultimately, the question she wants answered is she wants to figure out how to get him to contact her first.
When you look at her situation, honestly, there are two questions embedded here;
Why did her ex go cold? What are the reasons for that?
And how can you get him to reach out and respond to him, or initiate conversations with her?
So, let’s answer those two questions
Let’s first tackle the more psychological one. Why did the ex go cold?
I’ve got three potential reasonings for why this happened. Exes who are hot and cold are really common in this situation, because breakups tend to make people act a little crazy, and it tend to confuse people on how they feel.
So, my first initial thought when I heard about your situation was that your ex maybe went cold because he’s potentially bummed that you aren’t as easy as he thought.
Don’t put it past your ex to want to engage in a friends with benefits situation after a breakup.
It’s something that we’ve seen time and time again. We have dealt with literally thousands of situations, and when you deal with that many situations, and you’re talking to the people, you start to begin certain patterns emerge.
Now, I am not the type of person that can say, “Yes, you can distil a human being down to patterns, and that’s how they always are.”
No, there’s always variables that you just cannot account for, but one of the interesting patterns that we’ve noticed has emerged is that exes, given the opportunity to be friends with benefits, and this is only really.
Because we don’t have enough data yet on how women react in this circumstance, this is only dealing with men who’ve broken up with you, but given the situation between being friends with benefits with you or getting into a relationship with you,
They will pick friends with benefits seven out of 10 times. So, don’t put it past them to be above something like this.
What I’m thinking maybe happened here is he went a little bit cold on you, anonymous, because he was thinking maybe you were a little bit easier than you actually were.
He was thinking, “Yes, we could have some breakup sex or makeup sex,” and that didn’t exactly happen.
The other two reasons, I think, also apply to your situation as well, and that is that he still feels a little bit confused about how he’s feeling in general.
We also have noticed an interesting pattern emerge between breakups where there’s this pendulum effect, where someone will go from extremely interested in you to extremely disinterested in you within the course of a day.
Anything can tip the scales to create that dynamic
Sometimes, it is going on a date, and them feeling like, “Oh, I felt like I would be more into this,” and then sometimes it’s being away from you gets them to remember all of the great experiences that you had together.
That makes them kind of like, “I need to have her now.” Do not be shocked.
This is a common behavior, so what we tend to find happens is immediately after a breakup, the pendulum will swing to being hot, and then it will swing to being cold.
But as time goes on, that pendulum swing becomes less and less, and they become more centred.
That’s why we talk about timing.
It’s not best to try to get an ex back immediately after the breakup, because that’s when the pendulum was swinging at its most, and that can be extremely hard to deal with, because you’re dealing with a lot of different volatile emotions.
The third reason for why I think he potentially went cold here is that he’s remembering the wrong experiences.
We do know, based on our research, that human beings really, when they’re remembering the whole of experience, remember two distinct points, the peak of the experience, the most exciting part of the experience, and the end of the experience.
Psychologists have coined this term the peak end rule, so generally speaking, when you think back on experiences, you’re not going to think about the boring details.
You’re going to think about the most exciting part, or the end.
Now, typically with breakups, the end is among the most difficult to deal with, because it is among the most depressing aspects to deal with, the most angering.
You want your ex to be remembering the right experiences, and there’s a lot of things that you can do to get him to do that.
Namely, the most effective way that we’ve found is by using this concept called miss-attribution of emotions.
Going on a date, engaging him in something extremely exciting, so that he attributes the emotions, the exciting emotions that he’s feeling, onto you.
You can create a new peak, so to speak.
Those are kind of the brief overview of why I think your ex potentially went cold here, why he’s sort of pulling back, or you’re feeling that he’s pulling back from you a little bit.
But that leads us to the second question that we need to have answered today, and that’s how can you get him to reach out to you and respond?
Well, we already know that he’s responding to you, so really, the question here is how can you get him to reach out?
The Three Things
Keeping Conversations Interesting
Number one, and this is a big mistake I see a lot of women making when they initiate conversations with their ex, or even have any type of conversation with their ex, is that they engage their ex in conversations that he is not interested in.
This is where there’s a bit of a wavelength theory coming into play. Sometimes, two people are not meant to be together, because they’re on completely different wavelengths.
You talk about things that only interest you. He talks about things that only interest him.
What you need to understand is that if you want to get him to reach out to you first, you need to engage him in pleasing conversations.
The conversations need to be satisfying to him, which means you need to take an interest in his life and talk to him about things that he is interested in.
Now, this is where it gets difficult, because there’s a fine line that you need to walk here. If you only talk to him about things that he’s interested in, you’re kind of serving only to his needs.
There also needs to be some type of a reciprocation, where he’s asking you, or bringing up topics that you’re interested in. But more often than not, what we see happens is if you engage him in conversation that is interesting to him, it’s a topic that he is obsessive about…
For me it would be books. I am a fiend for fiction, fantasy, science fiction books. Anyone who’s interested in me should talk to me about that. I will open up a lot easier than if you talk to me about the latest figure skating techniques. I do not care about that at all.
So, you engage your ex in a conversation that is interesting to him.
Think outside the box. Get outside of your own paradigm.
End Conversations First
The second way, or mistake I see people make, is they do not end conversations first.
Now, here’s where they kind of mess up a little bit. It’s not enough just to end conversations first. The timing of when you end the conversations is almost as important as the fact that you need to end conversations first.
What tends to happen is when you engage someone in a conversation, through text, through phone, or even in person, and you really are in love with that person, I mean, you want that person extremely bad, you have a tendency to overstay your welcome.
What I mean by that is, conversations have a certain flow to them, right?
Usually, if it’s a good conversation, it will get off the ground, and there will be a high point to the conversation, meaning there’s a point where you will sit back and think to yourself,
“I don’t want this conversation to end. If I could, I would make this conversation last forever,” which doesn’t really do anything for the fact that hey, you need to pull back from the conversation.
In fact, all that does is make you invest more into the conversation, and cling to it so that you make sure that it doesn’t end.
Now, the issue, the big issue I’m seeing most people have, is they get caught up into this, “I don’t want this conversation to end,” mentality, and they stay in the conversations too long, and the conversation dies out.
It’s kind of like a fire. Think of a fire.
It takes a lot of energy to start the fire, and then once it’s going, you have to feed the fire to keep it going, but eventually, every fire will sort of die, and how long it lasts is up to what you feed… how many logs you feed the fire, so to speak.
My point is what if you fed the fire, and made it as big as possible, and then walked away from feeding it?
That becomes a lot more impactful, and that also creates a reason for why he would want to initiate a conversation with you next time.
But, here’s the trick. How you end the conversation is also important. You can’t just all of a sudden say, like… You know, you’re texting him.
You have this amazing conversation going, and disappearing. Sometimes that can work, but more often than not, you need to have a legitimate excuse.
“Hey, I’m sorry. My boss is looking over my shoulder. I can’t talk.” Leave the conversation.
The more times you do this, it’s kind of like paying it forward a little bit.
You may not get him to initiate conversations with you first right away, but the more you do this, the snowball effect will occur, and you’ll notice he will start to engage in conversations with you and initiate.
One Last Thing
Now, there’s one more thing that I think you can do to get him to initiate conversations first, and that’s to embed strategic pauses in between your conversations.
We all have heard that phrase, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” yes? Well, that phrase is highly dependent on the fact that you are absent.
Your ex will have no chance to miss you, or think about you, or daydream about you if you are with him all the time, talking.
So, what you need to do is embed these strategic pauses, where maybe you take a day or two off from talking to him, after an amazing conversation so that hey has time to miss you.
My wife, when I was courting her, if I can say that, that was maybe six, seven years ago, would do this better than anyone I had ever met.
We would have this amazing conversation, and then me being the stubborn person, I would sit there and say, “She’s got to reach out to me first.” But of course, she wouldn’t, so we’d have this amazing conversation.
I knew it meant something to her. I mean, it meant something to me. Usually, I have a pretty good idea of sympathizing with people, and understanding,
“Hey, this is how they’re feeling,” but then she would go cold, and slowly but surely, the annoyance would gnaw at me.
I would sit there and think, “Why isn’t she reaching out to me? Why hasn’t she responded to me? Why am I sitting here? Should I just be waiting for her? Should I be reaching out to her first?”
All of these doubts creep into your head, and eventually, I would break down and reach out to her, and say like,
“Hey, what’s up? What’s going on?” Now, that wasn’t the greatest conversation starter, but she wasn’t my ex. She was someone I was pursuing for the first time.
The problem is, when you’re dealing with people who are trying to get their exes back, embedding these strategic pauses are extremely difficult for them, because they want their ex almost more than anything.
But it’s important that they do that
So anonymous, if you do those three things, I think you can get him to reach out to you first, but don’t expect it to happen right away.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you’re not going to get him to reach out to you first in a day. It’s kind of like you have to put the energy in first to earn the right to get him to reach out to you first.
So that’s going to do it for this episode of the Ex-Boyfriend Recovery Podcast. Again, if you’re trying to get your ex back, the best place you should always start is to go to my website and take my ex recovery chances quiz.
It’ll give you an idea of an approximate chance you have of getting your ex back, so that you’re not wasting your time trying to get them back in a situation where you have no chance of getting them back. So, make sure you take that quiz.
Again, all you have to do is go to my website, look in the navigation bar for the word quiz, and take the quiz. Pretty simple. I’ll see you guys next time.
So we’re going to be taking a listener question from a woman named Fran, who has one of the more unique situations that I’ve encountered over the years.
But first, before we take her question, if you’re listening to this podcast, or even watching this podcast episode on YouTube, because I know everyone has different ways that they like to consume the content here.
My best recommendation for everyone listening, if you’re considering getting back with your ex or even if you are just sort of on the fence about it, is to hop over to my website, and on the homepage you’ll find many different prompts to take our ex recovery chances quiz.
It’s a simple two minute quiz designed to tell you what kind of chance you have of getting your ex back.
So if you’re listening to this on the podcast, all you have to do is simply go to our website. Just type in ex boyfriend recovery in Google, or if you’re watching this on YouTube, simply look in the description link below and click on the link you see there.
All right, now that the “pitch” is out of the way.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Hi, I’m reaching out regarding my ex boyfriend situation. It’s a bit of a soap opera. We’ve known each other for about 10 years. He had asked me to marry him and I had said no, because I just wasn’t feeling him 100% there with me.
Six months later he ended up marrying someone else. She was three months pregnant by the time they were married. So we both went our separate ways.
He kept in touch every now and then, just small talk, asking how I was and things like that, but nothing ever further than that within these ten years.
About a year ago, he ended up getting divorced, and we started talking again two months ago. He keeps saying how he’s in love with me and how I was the love of his life and he’s never stopped loving me and how he wants to be with me and how I’d make him happy.
But yet when it comes to doing something about it, it just seems like he’s not willing to go that extra mile. I live in the US. He lives in Mexico. I think when you love someone, you do everything in your hands to be with them.
But for him it’s just more like, you know, it’s just … I feel like he’s never been willing to fight for me, and I don’t know if he just wants to keep his candle lit, or keep his options open with me or if he really does feel this for me, if he really does love me, and I just don’t know what it is.
It’s been ten years, and I’m kind of ready to either go all the way with him or move on.
Why He Is Not Committing?
All right, Fran. So I think probably the best way to start off is by summarizing your situation as I see it and giving you some of my thoughts on what is going through his mind.
Why he is “not committing” and maybe giving you a quick action plan for how to get him to commit.
So for anyone listening to this, if you’re sitting here and thinking,
“Well you know, my situation is to completely different than Fran’s,”
I would actually kind of pump the brakes a little bit because one thing that I noticed throughout my seven and a half to eight years of doing this is that everyone always thinks they have a unique situation.
I can’t tell you how often I get a email from someone or someone in our private Facebook group says, “You know, Chris, you’ve never heard of my situation before.”
And nine times out of ten I have. So usually the situations aren’t as unique as you think, but they are unique to you, and there are certain aspects that are not going to be easily replicated for other people.
But if you’re sitting here thinking, “Well, you know, I don’t know, Fran’s situation seems so different than mine.” Don’t sit there and look at it that way.
Look at it on how you can take some of the more common things that are happening to her.
Her ex won’t commit to her. He’s kind of hot and cold.
And let’s look at what we can do to peel back the layers so that you fully understand what’s going on through this particular ex boyfriend’s mind, and also how you can get a man to commit.
So if those things interest you, hot and cold behavior, the grass is greener syndrome, and getting a man to commit, this is the right podcast episode for you to listen to or watch, if you’re watching this on YouTube.
All right, so here’s a quick rundown of Fran’s situation. She’s unique in the fact that not many times do we deal with clients that have actually turned their ex down, right?
So he proposed to her at one point and she wasn’t ready for marriage. Eventually a couple months later, he gets married to someone else and gets that girl pregnant.
A few years go by, he gets divorced and gets back in touch with Fran, even though he’s sort of been off and on in touch with her throughout the entire marriage, and I guess divorce process.
He says he’s in love with her, that she was the love of his life, yet he won’t commit.
Now there are long distance considerations. She seems to be based in the United States. He seems to be based in Mexico.
So as you’re going to find a little bit later that will come up, and that is an important thing to consider here, and she ends by asking, “What the heck is he thinking? I don’t know what to do. Should I be moving on? Should I be hung up on him?”
The Grass Is Greener Syndrome
So let’s first tackle your ex boyfriend’s mindset, Fran.
So this is kind of a really common type of behavior that I have seen for years now. And that’s the grass is greener syndrome. It’s sort of when you move on to someone else, you tend to romanticize the past, if you will.
So I talk a lot about this grass is greener syndrome, and I talk a lot about these sort of bars that get set.
So if you will imagine every single person has a a scale in which they rate their relationship experience, right? So just to be real crude here, maybe let’s say that he’s rating his relationship experience on a scale of one to ten, one being awful, 10 being amazing, right?
When he breaks up with you or when you break up with him, the scale tends to be extremely low, but as time goes on, you have a tendency to romanticize the past.
That’s mostly due to the fact that we remember experiences based on two distinct points, the peak, which is the more exciting parts of the experience, and the end of the experience.
So right after a breakup, when a man is going through a breakup, they’re going to only typically remember the end of the relationship, which for most people is pretty rotten.
But the more time goes on, you have a tendency to romanticize the past, because you’re remembering the peaks, the more exciting aspects of the relationship, and you could actually just do this with your own memory.
Think back on some of your favorite movies. Do you remember every single little detail of the movie? Probably not.
You probably remember the more exciting parts of the movie, whether that was at the beginning or in the middle, but the more exciting parts and also the ending, right?
That’s why everyone kind of hated Game of Thrones. That’s why a lot of people right now say, “Game of Thrones sucked. It ended awful,” and I was among one of those people that thought the finale could’ve been better of course, but the important thing is I think as time goes on, what you’re going to see happen is people will start to romanticize Game of Thrones.
It will be looked at a little bit more fondly and that’s mostly due to the peak end rule. We’re just having that gut check reaction right now in the moment because guess what? The end was just so near. Well, that’s kind of going on with him.
When he’s thinking back on his relationship with you, he’s not necessarily remembering the bad parts or the the crushing parts. He’s remembering the really exciting and happy parts, right, and as a result he’s painted you as the one that got away.
That’s why he’s saying he’s in love with you, or that you were the love of his life because he feels that in the moment, but the interesting thing is he still hasn’t committed.
You say that he’s saying all these nice things to you yet he won’t commit.
He won’t take that next step to solidify a relationship, and that’s where this gets interesting because when you look at commitment, there are a lot of factors that come into play here.
Number one, I think in your particular circumstance because one thing you’re going to learn about me is that when I take on clients, I’m very big into taking their situation and just looking at their situation.
Sure. Most of the time their situation is not as unique as they think it is, but there are certain caveats and your particular situation. The difference here is that you are in the United States and he is in Mexico.
That has to be playing a factor on why he’s not committing to you, but there’s also another X factor that you have to keep in mind here, and that’s something I like to call the interdependence theory.
The Interdependence Theory
Now I learned about the interdependence theory maybe two or three years ago.
I learned about it or reading about it on some psychology website like Psychology Today or or something like that, and basically it posits that human beings, when they are looking at making commitment decisions, they kind of do a pro and con chart, right?
And generally speaking, if they determine that it benefits them, if there’s more benefits than there are costs, they’re going to enter into that relationship.
And when psychologists were looking at how people made or came to these decisions, they looked actually at three main factors:
How satisfied they were in the relationship?
If there were better alternatives out there?
Or, how much they’ve invested into the relationship?
To me, when I heard about this, it was mind blowing. I thought,
“Yes, yes, this. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for to talk to my clients about,”
but over the time I’ve actually refined it, and added a few more aspects that I think the psychologists didn’t quite consider.
So in my opinion, I believe there are five aspects that you need to consider if you want someone to commit to you, and this doesn’t just apply to ex boyfriends, this applies to any man in general.
If you’re having … you’re talking to a guy, you’re really vibing with him, but you’re funny, he’s kind of hot and cold and he’s not committing.
You can actually plug these five things, chart them out and figure out where you’re going wrong.
The Five Factors
All right, so let’s talk a little bit about what these five things are.
I’ve already told you three, but I’m going to go back and kind of explain a little bit more in depth what these three things entail.
So factor number one, satisfaction. This revolves around how satisfied your ex or your partner is with the conversations or experience that they’re having with you, right?
So generally speaking, if they’re looking back on your time together fondly, that’s good for you.
Pretty self-explanatory there. But what most of the time happens is when a lot of my clients try to reconnect with their exes, they make kind of a big mistake and that’s that they’re kind of boring, and the conversations are not very satisfying to them and as a result they grow bored, right.
So that’s sort of satisfaction in a nutshell.
Alternatives also kind of plays into mind here, with your situation, Fran. So alternatives is basically when your partner is looking at other alternatives, he’s looking at other women and he’s kind of comparing them to you.
This is a direct connection to the grass is greener syndrome, which is that sort of romanticizing the past.
So what I think is happening in your particular instance, and it’s working pretty well for you, and that’s maybe one of the sole reasons why he’s saying that he’s in love with you or that you’re the love of his life, Fran, is because he’s looking at alternatives.
He’s already had experience with his ex wife and he’s comparing that experience, the experience with you, and you kind of trumped the ex wife.
So if you’re with a guy and you start to notice him wavering a little bit, start to look at things from his perspective, he may actually be looking or thinking about an ex and how things felt with them.
And I always like to try to quantify this by telling my clients to imagine a bar, right?
So a one through ten scale, everyone gets a grade and it kind of creates, it sets the bar so to speak. So let’s say that you’re in a relationship with a man and he deems that the relationship with you is an eight out of ten.
It’s really … His entire experience with you is an eight out of ten. that’s probably the best way that I can put it, but he’s romanticizing the past and as a result, he’s looking at his ex, and that relationship was a nine out of ten.
All of a sudden he’s going to be more drawn to that alternative.
So ideally what you’re trying to do, and there’s maybe a little bit of synergy that goes in to these first three factors, but you’re trying to make sure that your ex is as satisfied as possible.
As a result, if he’s satisfied, and when I say satisfied, I’m not talking about sexual aspects.
I’m talking about conversational aspects. Make sure you make that distinction, but the more satisfied he is in conversations and experiences with you, the less likely he is to look at an alternative.
But there’s also investment to take a look at, right?
So what is investment?
Well, a lot of people when they think of investment, they think of investment in monetary terms. They think, “Okay, how much money is my ex spending on me?” Well that’s one form of investment.
But in my opinion, the more important investment to take accounting of here is time.
How much time is your partners spending with you?
So Fran, this is, if you’re looking at these three aspects, I think you maybe have one and two covered.
Your ex seem satisfied when he’s talking to you, and he probably doesn’t think there’s a better alternative out there, even though he could go on dates and everything like that, but where you’re struggling is with investment.
Maybe you’re talking a lot, but you’re not talking a lot in person.
So not all time is created equally. I know that’s kind of a weird statement, because time sort of should be equal to everyone, but there’s a difference between talking through text, talking on the phone, and talking in person.
Each one becomes more powerful because it really leads itself and lends itself to the satisfaction aspect. But when I’m looking at investment as a whole, I’m not looking at just money.
How much money is this person spending on you, or investing into the relationship? I’m also looking at time, how much time has this person spent investing into you?
And what we found is that the more time and money invested into the relationship, the less likely they are to leave that relationship. So what do I mean by that?
Well, they can be extremely unsatisfied with the relationship. They can think, “Man, I could do way better than her,” but if they’ve invested a lot of time and energy and money into the relationship, it makes them think twice about throwing the relationship away.
So those are the first three aspects of the interdependence theory.
The fourth aspect is scarcity
So scarcity is kind of showing that you’re one of a kind, and often I’ll refer to this as the fear of loss.
There always needs to be embedded scarcity in the overall strategy that you’re going to employ, because there’s the difference between tactics and strategy when you’re trying to get an ex back, right?
Tactics are ideas like the no contact rule. That’s a tactic, but the overall strategy is the overall combination of tactics that will get you to obtain your goal.
That’s the overall strategy.
You need to always sprinkle in fear of loss, or always needs to be some type of way that your ex is feeling like he could lose you forever. Whether that’s not talking to him, whether that is something as simple as going on a date with someone else, employing small jealousy ploys.
I’m not, at the top of my brain here, coming up with great examples of this, but there are plenty of examples of how you can create scarcity and fear of loss. But what you’re going to find happens is as a result of your scarcity and fear of loss, it’s going to create urgency, right?
So urgency is really what is needed to make a man commit to you, right? So think of it like this. Satisfaction, alternatives and investment are all kind of interchangeable.
As a result, there’s kind of a … not interchangeable, that’s not a good way of saying it, but there’s a synergy between each three. They all kind of bleed into the other.
So the more satisfied he is with you, for example, the least likely he is to look at alternatives.
And the more satisfied he is and the more he thinks he can’t do better than you, the more he’s going to invest time into the relationship. And the more of those three things that you can get can get to synergize, it’s going to help when you do your scarcity plays, right?
So when you try some jealousy, the jealousy is going to be extremely effective, and as a result, he’ll feel this urgent need to commit to you.
Now, women who do this interdependence theory idea, do these five aspects, tend to get men to commit to them. Every once in a while they have to play the whole, you know, bat the eyelashes, what are we, card. But more often than not, that’s not the case.
And so what I’m thinking is happening here, Fran, in your specific situation is you’ve done probably a good job with satisfaction and alternatives, but what you’re struggling with is investment, and not investment of a texting form.
I’m talking about an investing, getting him to invest his time through phone calls, getting him to fly out to see you.
The more you can kind of work on that, the more you’ll start to also be able to sprinkle in some scarcity plays, maybe try some small jealousy tactics when you’ve got satisfaction, alternatives, and investment shored up. Then as a result, you’ll start to create the urgency that’s needed to get him to commit to you.
So that’s where I think you’re maybe going wrong, but more often than not, I’m a big believer in only focusing on the aspects of your life that you can control, and one of the aspects that you cannot control is him, right?
But what we can control, everything I’ve told you today, the interdependence theory, satisfaction, alternatives, investment, scarcity, and urgency, all of those things you have some measure of control over. And ideally, if you do a really good job, you can get the result that you’re wanting to get.
So in a nutshell, that’s why I think your ex has the grass is greener syndrome. He’s romanticized the relationship he had with you, but you probably need to do some more work on investment, scarcity and urgency.
And there’s always more work to be done on satisfaction. Alternatives, weirdly enough, kind of gets taken care of if you get him to invest a lot, and get him extremely satisfied in conversations and experiences with you.
One Final Tip
The other one final tip I would give you is if you do see him in person, try to do something together for the first time.
There’s nothing like bonding you together with another person than having a first experience together. Let’s say he’s never been on, and this is just coming to mind, a hot air balloon ride.
Well, maybe you guys go and experience that together. It’s the first time you’ve been on a hot air balloon and the first time he’s been on a hot air balloon and it’s exciting and will form a bond that can create another one of those peaks that we were talking about with the peak end rule.
So in a nutshell, Fran, that’s what I think you should be doing.
Not a lot of people talk a lot about this, so I figured I’d give it some attention because it can be an important tactic that you use during your strategy if you have to break the no contact rule.
All you have to do if you want to take the quiz is simply go to my website, exboyfriendrecovery.com, or if you’re watching this podcast episode on YouTube, simply look in the description link below the YouTube video and click on the link you see there.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
All right, so, what are the rules for seeing your ex during the no contact rule?
I get asked this question a lot, and not everyone knows how to handle the situation, so I’m going to give you a few guidelines to follow.
Four, to be exact. So, guideline number one is pretty simple.
Guideline #1: Is Your Meetup Important Enough?
Now, what do I mean by that? Well, most people, when they are confronted with a situation in which they have to break no contact, will sometimes play their cards a little too poorly.
And what I mean by that is, the number one issue that we have in my business is getting people to actually complete a no contact rule.
It’s not hard to understand why, because we have found out that breakups are akin to going through a drug withdrawal.
Your body, your mind, your essence, your very soul is obsessed with seeing your ex. So it is easy to construct reasons to want to break a no contact rule simply so you can see your ex, when sometimes those reasons aren’t important enough, right?
Let me give you a few examples of reasons that I’ve seen over the years that are important enough to break the no contact rule.
So, if your ex actually asks to exchange items with you, in this case, there’s pretty much nothing you can do.
You can’t sound like a rude person by not agreeing to exchange items. So, in this case, you’re going to have to break no contact rule. Another really popular case in which it’s okay to break the no contact rule is if your ex has important documents that you need to get to.
I had someone who I think even came onto this podcast once, who was telling me about a circumstance in which their ex had some tax documents for her father.
That seems like an important thing that you would need to get back after the breakup, so it’s okay to break the no contact rule in that instance.
And it’s okay to break the no contact rule to talk about your children. Now, that means you’re probably not going to be doing the strictest sense of a no contact rule, you’re going to be doing something called the limited no contact rule, but for now, let’s just keep it very easy.
Let’s say you’re in a strict no contact rule, you don’t share kids with your ex. These are some of the reasons that you need to be looking at that are important enough to break the no contact rule, which means it’s not okay to break the no contact rule to get a single shirt that you don’t care about.
I was just watching that famous Friends episode yesterday where Ross decides to break into his ex-girlfriend’s apartment to get this salmon-colored shirt, and then of course his ex-girlfriend comes in with a new guy, and he’s stuck there hiding in the apartment to try to get the salmon-colored shirt, and of course the girl gives the salmon-colored shirt to her date because the date spilled something on himself.
Don’t be like that. It’s also not okay to ask for a toothbrush back. You can go to the store and buy another toothbrush for like $5.
That’s not a legitimate reason to break the no contact rule. Make sure that your reason, if you have to break the no contact rule, is important enough, and these are a few examples of things that are important.
Guideline #2: Get Your Ex To Jump Through Hoops For You
Now, the next thing you need to keep in mind is see if you can get your ex to jump through hoops for you.
What do I mean by that?
Well, there was someone once who came onto the podcast who successfully won her ex back, and she had this brilliant strategy of using game theory to get her ex to follow her from room to room to room. The idea here is, well, there’s kind of a twofold idea here.
Number one is, by getting her ex to follow her from room to room to room, it creates a type of pattern of following, so it sort of establishes her as the dominant presence. He’s moving with her from this room to this room to this room. The second reason is she said she wanted him to look at her butt.
So that’s more of a physical direct reason, but I found it to be brilliant. And ironically, that very day during the meetup, her ex asked for her back, so, seemed to work out pretty well.
So, make sure you can get your ex to jump through hoops for you if it’s possible. But when I say hoops, I’m not saying just force your ex to jump from room to room to room.
That was an idea that she had that was specific to her. Find an idea that is specific to you.
Maybe jumping through hoops is canceling at the last minute and reestablishing a new place to meet up. That would be jumping through a hoop. Basically, you need to get your ex to do something that goes the extra mile for you, but make sure it’s not a ridiculous thing. Right?
Guideline #3: Look Your Best Obviously!
The next guideline or rule I would like you to follow is look your best.
I don’t know really how much more to say it, other than make sure you’re looking your best. I can’t tell you how often someone will come in and look super depressed. So, the other aspect I’d like to touch on here is the fact that most people, when I talk about the no contact rule, only think about the aspects that will affect their ex-boyfriend.
But what really the no contact rule about is, yes, it’s about making your ex miss you, it’s about all of that reverse psychology type stuff, but it’s also about resetting your own life and trying to get your life back on track a little bit, because we all know when we go through breakups, we’re kind of a mess, right?
So, this is your opportunity to show your ex some of the physical changes that you’ve undergone, whether that’s getting a new haircut, getting a new clothes, maybe you’ve lost a few weight in the 21 days or so that you’ve been ignoring your ex. This is an opportunity to put your best foot forward, and to show instead of tell your ex all of the changes that you have made positively.
Guideline #4: Leave Your Ex Wanting More
Now, the final guideline, and this is probably the most difficult thing, I think, for most women who I work with, is to leave your ex wanting more. Now, what does that mean, leave an ex wanting more? I can get all technical and talk about the Zeigarnik effect and all of those cool tactics, but here’s what it means, basically.
Here’s what you’re trying to get. I find that we often fly too close to the sun when we meet an ex and we’re not prepared for it.
What I mean by that is, you can get so sucked into a conversation because you’re so in love with this person that it is really hard to peel back. What matters most isn’t necessarily who starts the conversation, but who ends the conversation, right?
Oftentimes, women have been fed this false narrative of an ex has to be the one to reach out to you first, but I find the opposite’s actually true. It doesn’t really matter who ends up talking to you first. What matters is who ends up ending the conversation, because if you end the conversation, especially when it’s getting good, and you end it at a high point, it gives your ex a reason to want to reestablish a new conversation with you. And pretty soon, if you are very consistent about ending conversations or leaving your ex wanting more… And those are two separate ideas because it’s easy to end a conversation first, but your ex won’t want more, so it’s important to engage your ex in a conversation that he’ll enjoy, and then suddenly have to leave, right?
And it’s great, this is a technique that a lot of Hollywood screenwriters use. They put a ticking time bomb in the room. What I mean by that is, they establish the time is of the essence here. So let’s say that you are going to meet your ex, right? And you meet your ex, and you tell him right before, “Hey, I can only stay for about 30 minutes,” and you talk to your ex for 30 minutes, but a ticking time bomb has been established. It creates a sense of urgency for him to maybe want to talk to you more, and you’ve already got your built-in reason to leave. And the key is, if you do it right, you’ll have left your ex wanting more.
7 Texts to Send to Your Ex When You Miss Them
Aug 08, 2019
Welcome to another episode of the ExBoyfriend Recovery Podcast.
I’m your host Chris Seiter and today we’re going to be talking about 7 Texts to Send to Your Ex When You Miss Them.
And these seven texts are going to be based on real life results.
I’ve done a lot of research trying to figure out what the best way was to conquer this particular topic and figured out what you probably really want is to see some real life results from some of my clients and that’s what I’m going to show you today.
So, you’re going to get seven texts that real people have used to start conversations with their exes.
Now, before I get started, my recommendation to everyone who is starting the process of trying to get your ex back is to hop over to my take my Ex Recovery Chances Quiz.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
We find that this is an important element and one of the reasons that these seven text messages worked on their exes was the fact that the people who had implemented the text messages had also implemented a no contact rule.
So, what I need you to do is before you even consider sending these texts, pick one of the timeframes that best suits your situation when it comes to the no contact rule.
Either the 21 day rule
The 30 day rule
Or the 45 day rule.
And then stick to it and do your no contact period.
Once you’ve done that, we can talk about the purpose of texting your ex.
The Unknown Purpose Of Texting Your Ex
So a lot of people think that the goal of sending a text message to your ex is to get them back, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and you certainly are not going to win your ex back in a day.
It’s best to think of text messages as a tool to help you get to your overall goal and that overall goal is to get your ex back. But in order to do that, conversations must first be had.
So instead of thinking of a text message as this be all end all tactic where you get your ex to respond to you and declare their undying love, think of it first as a way to simply start a conversation and you’re going to find that’s the common theme among every single one of the text messages that I’m going to show you today.
Speaking of which, let’s get you our first text message.
Text Message #1: “I have a question and I really only trust you to answer it.”
This person said, “I have a question and I really only trust you to answer it.”
Now, why did this text message work?
Well, let me first off start by saying that this person who sent this text message got a response from the ex within 35 minutes of sending it.
Well, because it really creates that damsel in distress vibe.
By simply saying, “I have a question and I really only trust you to answer.”
You’re putting your ex in the hero role. He’s the only one to answer. He’s the only one that you trust enough to respect their answer. So the other interesting thing about this is usually when you say, “I have a question and I really only trust you to answer.” The ex is going to respond, “Hey, what is it?”
Well, she was able to allow the conversation to unfold because she tapped into one of his interests and I believe the interest is she tapped into here was glasses, specifically for going shooting. I guess her ex was a very avid gun expert and she wanted to get his advice on what kind of glasses she should wear if she wanted to do that and that got him to open up. And you’re gonna notice that’s a common theme throughout many of these text messages.
So let’s move on to text message number two.
Text Message #2: “I have a confession to make. This is [insert name]. I don’t know if the new sim card messes with these things.”
The second text is; “I have a confession to make. This is [insert name]. I don’t know if the new sim card messes with these things.”
Now first thing I want to say that simply by using the, “I have a confession to make” texts, we found that that yields close to a 90% response rate and in this case it got a response within one hour. So a little bit longer than you would hope, but it did get a response.
Now, she also tried a really interesting strategy here, the secondary part to the text message. “Hey, this, you insert your name, I don’t know of the new Sim card messes with these things.” It’s an interesting strategy because I believe that she was blocked and she had to go get a new number with the new sim card and she had memorized her ex’s number.
So she tried to put the sim card statement in to get away with the fact that this is kind of like a “strange number” texting the ex. And interestingly enough, he was very responsive when she did this, even though he had been the one to block her. He went around to say something like, “Oh hey, yeah. The new sim cards working great.”
And the trick here is though, she needed to have a delicate confession to make that wasn’t going to freak him out. So her confession was she liked one of the shows that he recommended and that opened the floodgates to a pretty nifty conversation.
Text Message #3: “So have you heard the news?”
Now text message number three is pretty basic. Someone just simply said, “So have you heard the news?” This works basically because it’s based on curiosity, right? So one thing that we’re learning here is that pattern-interrupts seem to work real well. Suddenly saying like, “Hey, I’ve got a fashion make.” Or “Hey, have you heard the news?”
That’s a pattern-interrupt.
But also curiosity.
Embedding some type of curiosity in the text message works really well too.
That’s exactly what this text message is. “So have you heard the news?” The intended thought that the ex is supposed to have is, “What news? I want to hear this news.” And she got a response within 32 minutes, which isn’t too bad. And his responses were, “??” and then a little while later, “Well?”
I don’t have really much more to go on the conversation that happened here because she just simply screen shotted the immediate response after 32 minutes and was just giddy over the moon that her ex even had reached out to her or responded to her initial text message.
So this is something that you can put in your back pocket and use when you need it.
Text Message #4: “Jesse Pinkman has entered the Westworld-verse. Where do you think they’re going this season?”
This one is pretty straightforward too.
“Jesse Pinkman has entered the Westworld-verse. Where do you think they’re going this season?”
Now, this is an interest based text almost immediately.
Now what do we mean by that? Well, it’s taking one of her ex-boyfriend’s interests and embedding it into the initial text message. I don’t have information on how long it took the ex to respond to this, but he engaged with her immediately and even said that he was really glad to hear from her.
So really we’re noticing patterns developing here. Pattern-interrupts, curiosity, and interest based text message. If you can find a way to combine all three, it looks like you found the Holy Grail. Let’s keep going.
Text Message #5: “Hey there, I need your monster truck expertise.”
Text message number five. “Hey there, I need your monster truck expertise.”
Here is yet another interest based text message. Though interestingly enough, it didn’t get a response really quickly. It got a response within four hours, which is a pretty long time and I bet you my client was freaking out throughout those four hours saying, “This doesn’t work. Oh my God, this was an awful idea.” And then of course when the response came, 360. Or 180, I suppose.
Now what’s interesting here is that she weaved some jealousy into the text, so the initial text was like, “Hey, I need your monster truck expertise.” And of course he was like, “Hey yeah, shoot, what do you need?” She responded by saying, “I got asked to a monster truck show.”
That is an excellent way of weaving in jealousy because guess what? He’s going to be sitting there and thinking who asked her to the monster truck show? That sounds like a date. I hope it’s not another guy. That gets his wheels turning a little bit. Really effective use of text messaging there.
Text Message #6: “I keep seeing your bike.”
Now text message number six is kind of a weird one. “I keep seeing your bike.”
Her ex was a very avid motorcyclist I suppose. Now this is kind of a mix of an interest based text message and curiosity based. So the curiosity actually comes in by simply saying, “Hey, I keep seeing your bike.” He’s curious and saying, “Where are you when you’re seeing my bike?”
But it’s also interest based because guess what?
He’s really into his bike.
It took him a while to respond to this one as well, three hours to be exact.
And her ex of course was really into bikes, but he quickly shifted the focus onto her asking about a triathlon that she had coming up. A great example of a text message that’s just simply meant to bridge the gap and start a conversation. That’s the best use of first text messages starting up conversations.
Don’t try to win everything with one specific text message. I hate to break it to you guys, but the magic bullet of a text message that immediately brings a man to his knees doesn’t exist. I’ve never seen one do that,. but I’ve seen one create conversations that can do that. So her ex being really into bikes quickly shifted the focus by asking her about her triathlon coming up. That’s text message number six that we have found worked.
Text Message #7: “Guess what I got to try out?”
Finally, here it is. “Guess what I got to try out?”
An almost entirely curiosity based text message once again. So what is the pattern we’re seeing develop here? Pattern-interrupts, curiosity, interest based. All of these things really make a difference at getting responses from ex. So how long did this text message take to get a response?
Well, in all it took 28 minutes for this particular woman to get a response and she allowed the conversation to continue by implementing one of his interests, some type of headphones. So the conversation initially went like this: “Hey, guess what I got to try out?” He goes, “What?” The headphones that he recommends and then the conversation flows from there.
So the big thing I want you guys to take away here as you’re listening to this podcast episode, or even watching this on YouTube as I put it up on YouTube, is the fact that when you’re looking at creating a text message, don’t try to do too much with the first text message.
Just simply look at it as a tool to start a conversation. Create enough curiosity, interest, and a big enough pattern-interrupt to grab your ex’s attention. The idea here is when he sees a text message from you, he’ll look at it and immediately want to open it up and respond to it.
But the interesting thing is looking at these seven text messages, not all of these women got responses really quickly. In fact, I believe the shortest one was 28 minutes. That’s pretty long time because usually when I get a text message and I’m interested in talking to someone, I’ll respond immediately.
Some people had four hours until they got a response. So it’s important to be patient here.
The general rules of dating don’t necessarily apply when you’re trying to get an ex back or trying to make an ex miss you, or even trying to start a conversation with your ex. So keep those things in mind.
This is a question that I personally receive more than anything.
There’s always some variation to it, whether it’s,
“Hey, what kind of chance do I have of getting my ex back,”
or,
“Hey, do you think I have a chance?”
Well, this presentation is meant to answer those questions.
A Quick Word Before We Get Started
If you want to fast forward and get a really quick idea of where you’re standing with your ex, I would actually recommend that you not watch this video, or finish listening to my podcast. Instead, I’d recommend that you go here and take the special quiz I’ve put together there for you.
It’s a simple two minute quiz that will teach you what kind of chance you have of getting your ex back by asking you all sorts of questions about your breakup, what your relationship was like before the breakup, and it is one of the things I’m most proud of.
We run your answers through an advanced algorithm that will spit out one of four types of answers.
Let’s get started.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
I figured the smartest place to start was to create a baseline by looking at what the standard chances that anyone who is going through a breakup would have?
I did this by looking through the internet and through the historical documents that I have saved over the years and identifying four very legitimate studies on breakups.
But what defines legitimacy?
Well, oftentimes, these are going to be big type brands, whether that’s Associated Press or accredited universities.
I’m looking for actual legitimacy behind the numbers, so that we can actually create a baseline.
Then, we can compare how my strategies work as I will tell you about some of the experiences that I have had coaching and teaching people.
Here are the four studies that we will be using to create our “baseline.”
The first big accredited source that I would like to talk to you about today is the Associated Press.
A few years ago, the Associated Press came out with a really interesting poll that they did on the WE-TV channel. I believe the WE-TV channel used the Associated Press to poll their subscribers and ask them all kinds of questions about exes.
One of the questions that they asked was, “Hey, how often have you ever tried to get back together with an ex?”
Over 2,000 were polled, and 41% of people admitted that they have, at one point of their lives, tried to get back together with an ex.
41% Of People Admitted They Have Tried To Get Back Together With An Ex.
The second one is actually a study that comes out of the University of Texas.
A woman, or professor, by the name of Rene Dailey found that when she studied over the course of maybe a year, all the college breakups that were going on in the University of Texas, she found that 65% of those relationships ended up getting back together.
Now, I actually think the reason it seems so high because, to me, 65% of getting your ex back seems kind of high, and I think the reason why that’s high is because this is only focused on university students.
It’s not focused on the world abroad, if you catch my drift.
65% of University of Texas college breakups tried to get back together
We have 41%, 65%, which I explained the reasons why I think that’s a little bit high, and 37%.
But there’s only one more study that I trust and think is legitimate enough to use to create our standard benchmark.
4. Study From Journal of Adolescent Research
There is a study that came out of the Journal of Adolescent Research that found that 50% of people actually tried to rekindle a broken relationship, and 57% tried to have sex with their ex.
I think there’s an important distinction to make here before we go any further. This number isn’t based on 50% of couples actually get back together.
No, we’re talking about people in general, and the intent of wanting to get back together.
50% Of People Tried To Rekindle and 57% Tried To Have Sex With Their Ex.
When you take those four legitimate studies and average them all together, you’re looking at roughly 48.25% chance that your ex may want you back at some point in the future.
48.25% Of Individuals Want Their Exes Back After A Breakup According To Research
Now, I do want to point out that this number is based on other research, so do not expect your results to perfectly align with this, especially if you’re using the strategies that I’m going to teach because now we’re going to do something really fun, we’re going to put me on the hot seat and figure out what my results look like.
How do my results compare?
How Our Results Compare
In 2018, me and my wife took on a total of just 10 clients.
Now, we don’t take on clients very often because when we take on clients, we like to look at it as a three to four month process where we’re giving our undivided attention to this one person.
Well, out of the 10 people that we worked with all of last year, seven of them ended up getting their exes back. Though, it really should be eight because one ex asked for one of my clients back and she said no, so I’m not technically going to count that.
7 Out of 10 Of Our High End Clients Got Their Ex Back
Now, I want to take a minute to really talk about what sets us apart because, when you’re looking at 7 out of 10, again, that’s not a huge sample size, right, because we’re giving our undivided attention to these people with our high-end coaching, and many times, these people are paying us over thousands of dollars throughout the course of all of the coaching sessions that they do with us.
But what sets us apart, because, when you’re looking at a standard benchmark of 48.25%, and you’re looking at some of the results we’re able to get when we put all of our full force behind someone’s situation, you’re looking at an almost 20% difference there.
What creates that 20% difference and how can we use that for your personal situation to help you out to get you to see great results?
The Benefits Our High End Coaching Clients Have That You Don’t
Well, I want to start off by saying that these results are not typical.
Look, these 10 people had the benefit of a lot of extra attention through;
Facebook Messenger
Email
Phone calls
Skype
More than one coaching session with either me or my wife.
Usually, when they would have a question on the fly, we would be there to answer them.
Not all of our product purchasers or customers get this kind of attention.
This is really high level coaching.
You cannot expect your results to be the level that I’m talking about here without some of these kind of things happening.
We also did not count if they stayed together as part of their success.
An Unfortunate Drawback To Reuniting
This is one of those unfortunate things that no one talks about, and a lot of other gurus sweep under the rug. Roughly around half the people who end up getting back together break up again, and that is exactly what we saw.
Out of the seven people who ended up getting their exes back, three of them ended up breaking up again.
So, a lot of what you need to understand is, it’s not just about trying to get your ex back.
It’s about trying to get your ex back and having a long-lasting relationship, and that’s something that a lot of people really struggle to get.
The Big Takeaways
What are the big takeaways here?
Well, the big takeaway so far from everything that we’ve talked about are the success rates that you can expect to get, right?
The standard benchmark between success rates that you can really expect to get throughout the course of your attempt to try to get your ex back ranges anywhere from between 37% to 65%, though, I will say, we have been blessed in the fact that our success rate is actually significantly higher than the average for a lot of different reasons that I’m going to get to in a moment.
Also, it really seems important that you have a very strong game plan, because if you do have a strong game plan, it can significantly increase your chances of success. Again, there are no guarantees to getting your ex back, even a great success rate over 65% to 70% has a lot of failures to it, right?
How Did My Clients Beat The Benchmark?
What are some of the things that our clients did to see these kind of incredible results?
Well, the first thing is that they were high end coaching clients, right, so they got a lot of extra attention.
Oftentimes, most of the people who want to see results will buy our program, right?
But sometimes it takes more than just buying the program, which, ironically, is the number two thing that I’ve seen a lot of success rates do.
They actually buy our program, but they just don’t buy it, they know it inside and out.
When you pair the fact that, look, they’ve got a grounded knowledge of what they’re supposed to be doing to see success, and they’re high end coaching clients of us, so that we’re giving a lot of our undivided attention to their situations, they’re getting a lot of extra attention through Facebook, email, Skype, just getting on the phone with them, answering their questions on the fly, they’ve got all of that going for them, and they’re actually really active in our private Facebook support group.
If you didn’t know, we actually have a special thing that we actually let all of our Ex Boyfriend Recover PRO Purchasers into our private Facebook support group.
This is kind of a special service that we give where we connect all of the people going through breakups to each other, so that they can ask questions of each other and also see how difficult this process is on other people. But it really creates a really cool community.
You have other people that are taking photos to make their exes jealous, for example, and they’re saying like, “Hey, anyone can use this photo,” so we have like a huge accumulation of photos in this group where you can like take a photo that someone else took and use it for your situation.
You’re also going to see people who are trying to, let’s say, get their ex to respond to them through text messages, you can see what some of the more successful text messages look like. Anytime you’re having a tough day, you can just come in and say, “Look, I’m having a tough day, can you guys help me out? What should I do in the situation?”
Because we can’t be everywhere all the time, me, my wife, Anna who’s another one of our coaches, all of us cannot be together to help you out every single second of the day. Well, the private Facebook support group is kind of our version of creating a resource for you that can do that.
Finally, the number four thing that I’ve seen a lot of our clients do to see incredible kind of results is that when they coached with us, we actually acted as a force to hold them accountable. A lot of times, there’s a couple of things that you need to understand about seeing success. There’s the implementation aspect of it and the understanding aspect of it. Usually, people are good at one thing. It’s the people who are good at both things, or at least create an environment that makes them good at both things, that they actually start to see incredible successes.
You can see, there’s a lot that goes into upping your chances from the standard baseline, and even then, there are not guarantees. But we like to think that we do a really good job of helping you guys do that.
What Your Ex Is Feeling During No Contact
May 22, 2019
Today we’re going to be talking about something that a lot of people ask me about and that is, “What is my ex feeling during a no contact rule.”
Now, if you don’t know what a no contact rule is, I have plenty of resources on my website, YouTube channel and podcast describing what that actually is.
But to give you a quick crash course,
A no contact rule is simply a period of time, where you’re ignoring your ex on purpose.
Now, this creates a lot of questions, especially around if it’s effective or not, and what happens when it is effective.
Well, that’s what this presentation is about today.
A Quick Word Before We Get Started
Now, before we get started there are a couple of things that I think you should do if you’re a newbie and you’re trying to get your ex back.
The first thing is to actually stop by my website Ex Boyfriend Recovery and take my ex recovery chances quiz.
It’s a simple two minute quiz that I put together that will ask you a lot of questions about your situation, when your breakup was and the circumstances around your breakup. Using that information I can actually put it through an advanced algorithm to give you an idea of what kind of chance you have of getting your ex back.
So, if you want to take that quiz all you simply have to do is go to my website or click the button below.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
All right, let’s get started and talk about what your ex is feeling during a no contact rule.
The Five Stages Of Feelings During The No Contact Rule
When I was brainstorming how to present this information to you, I came up with kind of, an interesting idea and that was, breaking up the feelings that your ex is feeling into five distinct stages.
Almost like the five stages of grief, but in this case it’s going to be the five stages of “feeling” in no contact.
So, assuming a no contact rule is working on your ex, you’re implementing it, you’re staying disciplined, you’re not making any mistakes in breaking the no contact rule. These are the five stages you can expect your ex to feel during a no contact rule.
Calm And Assured Of Their Decision (3 Days To A Week)
Worry After They Don’t Hear From You (Week To 2 Weeks)
Anger After They Realize They Are Being Ignored (2 Weeks To 2.5 Weeks)
Confrontation About What They Lost (2.5 Weeks to 3 Weeks)
Hope Of Contact (3 Weeks To 4 Weeks)
I feel like I should include in this conversation that a typical no contact rule will last anywhere from 21 days to 45 days depending on the severity of your particular situation. This means that every ex will react a little bit differently to the no contact rule. For example, sometimes stage one can last for two weeks while stage two can only last a few days.
But generally speaking the dates that I’ve outlined here are pretty accurate.
So, let’s take a moment and dissect what each one of these things means so that you can get in your exes head and understand exactly how they’re feeling.
Stage #1: Your Ex Is Calm And Assured Of Their Decision
So, stage number one is that they are calm and assured of their decision.
This one is pretty simple.
They feel very calm and as if they made the correct decision to leave the relationship. Like I said, this will typically last from anywhere between three days to a week. So, when you’re doing a no contact rule for the first three days to seven days they’re feeling kind of, good about themselves.
It’s important to keep in mind that, really, they haven’t confronted their feelings just yet.
They’re still in that honeymoon period of,
“Wow, I don’t have a relationship to prevent me from doing this.”
It can be an exciting time for them.
Usually during this stage you’re not going to hear from them.
But if you do hear from them, and that does happen sometimes, you’ll usually get basic messages like,
“Hey.” Or, “What’s up?” Through texting.
Now, where things really heat up is with stage two.
Stage #2: Worry After They Don’t Hear From You
Stage two is worry after they don’t hear from you. Relationships are often defined by their patterns. This is especially true when it comes to communication.
Often when we are locked into a relationship with someone we get into certain communication patterns with that person.
Well, when that pattern gets interrupted with a no contact rule you can start to notice worry within your ex.
Especially after your ex is thinking,
“Oh yes, he or she will break. For sure they’re going to contact me first.”
So, in this stage they begin to worry after a week potentially has gone by and they haven’t heard from you.
That’s when you’ll start to notice an uptick in checking social media accounts.
You’ll start to notice, they are stalking your Facebook profile and you may start to see them begin reaching out to you in this stage. And this is usually rare, but does happen, especially if you are on your social media game.
They can worry that you’ve met someone else.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Stage #3: Anger After They Realize They Are Being Ignored
Now, stage three really ratchets up the tension another level.
Stage three is all about anger.
They are angry when they realize that you are ignoring them.
By this point it’s been usually, about two weeks into the no contact rule.
They maybe have reached out to you a few times, you have ignored their attempts to reach out to you, or they’re simply angry that you’re not reaching out to them first.
This is a very common breakup behavior. So, there are a couple of things that you may see them do in this particular stage. Obviously they’re going to grow angry and that anger can create two different outcomes. Outcome number one is, they may just completely ignore you.
Some people when they get angry are passive-aggressive.
They like to ignore you.
The other approach, or the other thing that you may see start to happen is, they will start to text you.
And the texts will not be nice.
Something like, “Oh, you’re ignoring me now.” Or, “You know what? I’m glad I broke up with you.”
Things of this nature are simply a reaction to stage three. They’re angry. They’re angry that they’re being ignored. Things aren’t going the way that they thought they would, and they’re lashing out at the only person that it makes sense to lash out to and that would be you, the source of their frustration and pain.
Stage #4: A Confrontation About What They Lost
Now, stage four is where things start to take a turn for the better.
That is, a confrontation about what they lost.
In stage one I talked about the fact that even though they’re calm and assured of their decision, they really haven’t confronted their feelings just yet.
Well, stage four is that confrontation.
They’re starting to realize maybe they’ve lost you forever.
So, part of them potentially may have hoped that you would beg for them back after the breakup.
I know certainly, I have been through multiple breakups where I have thought this exact thing.
“I’m going to make her beg for me back.”
And when that doesn’t happen you begin to look at the person in a whole new light.
You begin to realize,
“You know, maybe I had them pegged wrong.”
And reactions also can vary here just like in stage three.
Some exes will get in touch with you to try to make amends for their outbursts in the angry stage.
They’ll say something like, “Hey, you know what? I’m really sorry I lashed out to you. I was just having a tough day.”
And others can remain stoic and silent.
They can sort of, take the confrontation and say to themselves, “Well, you know what? I’m in a lot of pain here. I’m realizing that I may have lost this person forever, I’m scared to reach out and put myself out there. I’m just going to wait and see how things play out.”
These are the most common type of reactions you’re going to see from people in this stage.
Stage #5: Hope of Contact
Now, stage five is kind of, the fun part.
By this stage you’re about three to four weeks into the no contact rule. So, 24 to 30 days you have really stuck to your guns in the no contact rule. It’s really worked it’s magic on your ex and they start to hope that you’re going to contact them.
They’ve been through a rollercoaster of emotions up until this point. So, your ex really starts to shift gears here in hopes that you’re going to contact them. They may fidget and constantly check their phone to see if you have reached out.
This is an all throughout the day kind of, an activity where maybe they’re at work and they’re hoping that they hear from you.
And maybe it’s a false hope, and maybe they realize that maybe there’s a small chance that you will reach out.
So, every once and a while when they get a text they immediately pull it out hoping that it is from you, they check and see it’s not from you and they get angry and upset, because they realize they want you to be the one that’s texting them.
And also, here is where you’re going to see a huge uptick in social media stalking, whether that’s Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook.
Those are the three most common ways that people will kind of, check up on you and see what’s going on. “Has he or she met someone else? Am I kind of, fool hearted here for hoping that maybe, they’re going to contact me? Are they okay? How are they living life without me?”
These are all questions that they’re wondering in their head, and the way to get those answers without directly asking you, is to go through social media. Also, you’re going to hear or see another uptick in hoping that they’re going to respond to their text messages.
So, you may start to see a flood of text messages coming in towards the end of the no contact rule as well. And those are the five stages that are most common with how your ex is going to feel after a breakup.
1. The 11 Factors For Making Them Fall In Love With You
A few months ago I talked about 11 factors that are really commonly linked to love and even did a youtube video on it (which is the video above.)
If you want an in-depth look at what the 11 factors are and how they can help influence your ex to fall in love with you I recommend watching that video from start to finish.
But if you’re anything like me you probably won’t so what I’ve done is put together a really quick crash course version of what I talked about in the video.
There are 11 factors that scientists from around the world have linked to helping release the chemicals that create the feeling of love.
Those 11 things are as follows,
Similarities
Familiarities
Desirable characteristics
Reciprocation
Social influence
Fulfilling needs
Environment
Specific Cues Or Particular features
Readiness
Alone time
Mystery
I know I went really fast and I do want to say that me expanding on each of these aspects isn’t going to do it the justice that I do it in the video above so watch that if you want more clarification on these 11 factors.
Let’s move on.
2. Body Temperature
It was a guy by the name of John Bargh that found was that body temperature temperature can really play a crucial role into helping someone fall in love.
Apparently there were quite a few studies that were done which found that ideally you want to feel kind of warm around the other person.
So, let’s say that you’re taking your significant other out on a date.
Actually, since we are talking about exes here let’s just assume you’re taking your ex out on a date and you want to take them to an ice cream parlor.
Well, last time I checked ice cream was very cold and cold body temperature isn’t going to help your chances at making your ex feel warm and loving towards you.
Especially when they are licking an ice cream cone every five seconds,
Instead, what you want to do is pick a comfortable restaurant to go to where you ex isn’t going to get too cold. I also feel it’s important not to pick a place that is so hot it’s uncomfortable.
One last thing before we move on. Don’t get caught up into thinking body temperature is the be all end all tactic to use on your ex.
The one thing I want to reiterate here is that if you’re looking to influence someone to fall in love with you don’t just expect to employ one small tactic and expect them to get on their hands and knees and ask you to marry them.
It doesn’t work that way.
Rather it’s a combination of many different tactics working together that leads to success.
Let’s move onto the next scientific thing that you should be paying attention to.
3. Prolonged Eye Contact
Scientists have done studies and have actually found that there’s a correlation between how often that we look into someone’s eyes and love.
On average when you’re talking to a normal person you’re going to be spending about 30 to 50 percent of the time looking directly into their eyes.
This may sound pretty normal to you as you use your own personal experience to verify it but where it gets interesting is when they paid attention to how people interacted when they were in love.
They found that eye contact significantly rises to the point of where you’re looking at them 70 percent of the time.
My suggestion is to actually take this a step deeper by having prolonged eye contact with your ex when you are in the midst of a date.
Now, this brings up an interesting question.
What constitutes “prolonged eye contact?”
Honestly, it’s really up to you and the sort of individual characteristics that your ex is going to be drawn to.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all.
Some people will like it if you stare into their eyes for a minute straight.
Some people can’t stand it.
I think you just have to use your gut feeling and draw on your own experience.
Let’s move on to the next factor.
4. The Benjamin Franklin Effect
So, what is the Benjamin Franklin Effect?
Put simply, contrary to popular belief, we believe as human beings that if you do a favor for someone that person is likely to reciprocate the favor.
Actually that’s not the case at all.
What’s more likely to happen is that if you do someone a favor you are more likely to do that person a favor again.
So what you’re looking for with the Benjamin Franklin Effect is to use this concept to your advantage.
Ask your ex for a favor
If they do the favor for you they’re actually set up to want to do you another favor.
Another analogy that I use when I’m talking to my clients is to think of this like you are making your ex jump through hoops and you are progressively increasing the intensity of what those hoops are.
Let’s move on!
5. The Good Feelings Vs. Bad Feelings Theory
This is my brain child and I’m very proud of it.
And recently there has been some research released that back my findings up.
So, what is the good feelings versus bad feelings theory?
I’ve talked to a lot about this in articles and I think I’ve even mentioned it in a few podcast episodes.
People tend to be drawn to the things that make them feel good and they’ll going to want to repel the things that make them feel bad.
So, the example I commonly use is by telling people that they are drawn to things that taste good and hate things that taste bad.
For example, you are drawn to ice cream and most likely cakes.
Why?
It feels and tastes good.
But we don’t really enjoy things that taste bad do we?
The same principle applies when it comes to our feelings. We are really drawn to people who make us feel good or make us excited or have some element of mystery to them.
And most likely we’re going to be avoiding people that make us feel bad.
6. The Deficit Of Presence
If you are anything like me you probably read this and are wondering what the heck it is.
Well, in my opinion this is arguably one of the most important and under-talked about things there is.
Well when scientists started testing people they found that the ideal way to make some want to see you again was to create a “deficit of presence.”
Essentially it’s scientific proof saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Let’s say you’ve got two couples you’ve got a couple that spends all day, every day together. They love each other no doubt but eventually it starts to wear on them. Both parties start to get bored or one party gets bored and the other is still not bored and you end up running into problems.
And then you have the next couple. This couple also spends a lot of time together but every once in a while one of the members of this couple will just take some time for themselves.
Exes don’t always come back to you but don’t let that frighten you.
There’s a lot that goes into making an ex want to come back to you. Let’s tackle that first.
The first thing I talk about with a lot of my coaching clients is the fact that there are actually three distinct points of time that are important to understand when an ex begins making a decision to come back to you.
The three points of time are pretty straightforward,
What Happened Before The Breakup?
What Happened During The Breakup?
What You Do With The Time After The Breakup
Let’s take a moment to look over each one of these period of times so that you have a better handle over them.
What Happened Before The Breakup?
When I talk about “before the breakup” I’m really trying to understand what your relationship with your ex was like. The way I explain it to my coaching clients is that there’s always kind of a catalyst for when things go downhill.
Something happens where you’ll notice a change in your ex’s behavior and things just go downhill from there.
What is that catalyst?
When did it occur?
I’ll give you an example.
Catalyst Theory
Let’s assume that you’re in a relationship for six months and the first four months of the relationship are great.
Then something happens and the last two months of the relationship are awful.
In this particular case, when your ex thinks back on this particular relationship they’re going to probably think more about the good times than the bad times.
Why?
Because they have four months of good behavior/memories to draw upon and only two months of bad behavior to draw upon.
Now, let’s use another example.
Let’s say that you dated your ex for a year (12 months.)
The first two months were incredible, exhilarating, exciting and intense
But the next 10 months were not.
They were awful.
They were everything that’s wrong with the relationship.
When this particular ex looks back on that experience they’re probably not going to remember very fondly.
Why?
Because there’s 10 months worth of data right there that is bad.
That is really hard to overcome.
Ideally you’re looking for a good split where most of your time together was positive and not a lot of your time together was negative.
What Happened During The Breakup?
There’s not a lot to unpack here with “during the break up” as a time period.
Why?
I’ve been on record saying that 95 percent of the time I find that exes will lie to you about the real reason they want to breakup with you.
I don’t love you anymore.
I’m just not ready for a relationship.
Are two of the most common reasons for why they’ll break up with you and I’ve also found interestingly enough in success stories that it’s total BS.
You’ve heard that phrase,
When emotions run high, logic runs low.
That’s certainly the case of during an actual breakup so I don’t I don’t put a lot of credence into this time period.
However, I have found that it can impact people negatively.
I’ll give you an example, let’s say that you and your ex are in a relationship and you go through a horrific breakup.
I mean this thing is really bad, lamps are being thrown, you are yelling at each other, police get called on the two of you because you’re being so loud .
What do you think your ex is going to remember when they think back on your time together?
Probably this awful breakup.
What You Do After The Breakup
The third and probably most important time period to focus on is actually what you do after the breakup.
Contrary to what most “experts” out there will tell you it is possible to completely screw your chances up by not doing what you’re supposed to do after the breakup.
For more information on what you are supposed to be doing go here.
There’s a client that I’ve been dealing with recently that should have had their ex back. In fact my wife and I have worked with this person a lot.
This person literally has everything going for them except they don’t have the discipline or the mentality that it takes to get their ex back at this point of time.
We tell them to do something, they agree and then don’t execute.
They obsess about their ex in all the wrong ways.
It’s uncanny how they keep shooting themselves in the foot time and time again.
This is a classic case of not using the time after the breakup very wisely.
I’d make the argument that this is probably the most important time period to focus on because you have some measure of control over it if you really think about it.
Unless you have a time machine, you have no control over the past.
You can’t go back and change what happened during your relationship.
You can’t go back and change how you acted during the breakup itself either but you can change how you act after the breakup which is why I tell my clients to focus most of their energy on this.
Now, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that these three time period that we covered are the essential thing to grasp to understand if you want to know if your ex will come back to you. I’ve actually found three additional factors that you need to keep an eye on.
The Miscellaneous Factors
The first thing I want to say is don’t worry if you’re a little intimidated by the look of this list because I don’t expect you to know it until after this article is over
Overall, there are three additional miscellaneous findings that my team and I have happened upon that definitely play a role into making an ex want to come back,
Moving On Without Moving On
Positioning And Timing
The Importance Of The Internal Conversation
Like before, I’d like to take a few minutes to go over these factors with you.
Moving On Without Moving On
I’ve noticed through a lot of work with clients and also on our Private Facebook Support Group that it’s uncanny how often people will try to get their exes back, fail miserably then give up only to have the ex suddenly come back into the picture.
I’ve thought a lot about why this happens and I think after years of studying this phenomenon and trying to understand it I’ve come to my conclusion.
I believe it revolves around a number of factors.
The first is that a lot of this process of trying to make an ex want to come back uses a strategy where we play hard to get.
We’re going to talk a little bit about positioning and timing in a few minutes so this will come up more directly there but part of the positioning piece is playing hard to get.
The problem is that my clients want their exes back more than anything which makes “playing hard to get” for them extremely difficult.
Whether they believe it or not they exude that longing for their ex in a type of aura.
When the ex picks up on this they think,
“I can get this person back whenever I want”
And that’s not appealing to them.
I was explaining this concept to a client the other day where I talked about the fact that men and women tend to get bored of things that are too easy.
Now, what do I mean by that?
Consider for a moment that you see a movie for the first time and it’s a really good movie, maybe one of the best you’ve ever seen.
You see it again a day later and it’s still awesome, it’s still great and you still like it but it’s not the same as the very first time you saw it.
Then you see it’s 17 more times.
Well, by that 17th time that you see it, it’s boring to you.
You’ve seen it too much, you know what’s going to happen, you’ve got all of the words memorized.
Your ex needs to think that they aren’t going to get you. They need to think that something new is going to occur because if you’re talking to your ex there’s a sense of,
Oh I’ve got her or Oh I’ve got him.
You need to find a way to remove that and the only way to do that is moving on without moving on.
Let’s move on to the next thing.
Positioning And Timing
So what do I mean by positioning and timing?
Well, in my opinion one of the things that needs be present in the equation for an ex to want to come back into the picture is that you need to first be positioned properly and the timing needs to be right.
These two things are essential elements that need to be present.
Let’s talk a little bit about them and what I mean by positioning.
The fact of the matter is that I think you cannot talk about positioning without timing and timing without positioning.
Pretend that you are trying to get your ex back for six months and finally the time is right.
The stars have aligned your ex is ready and open to wanting someone back in their life but they only view you as a friend.
That is a scenario where the timing is right but the positioning isn’t right.
Then you have the scenario where maybe you’ve positioned yourself brilliantly but things are happening a little too quickly and you can’t get your ex to commit.
The funny part about this concept is that if you look at my website it’s actually a study of these two elements.
Every article I’ve ever written, every book I’ve written is all focused on one of these two elements or both of these elements.
I’ll give you an example, The Texting Bible is a book I wrote to teach people how to text their exes after a breakup which is a fancy way of saying it focuses on positioning. However, while writing it I also noticed that there needed to be some talk about timing.
How is timing involved in texting?
Well, when you text is almost as important as what you text.
Think about that.
Understanding The Importance Of The Internal Conversation Happening In Your Exes Mind
A lot of people don’t realize this but all of the decisions your ex makes with regards to you happen after your interactions.
Think about the actual act of how an ex is going to take you back.
They’re not going to sit there and make their decision impulsively.
Some of them do.
But what you find is sometimes when an ex will make an impulsive decision to get back together with you they’ll end up backing out a few days later.
Why?
Why does this happen?
Well, it happens because they’ve literally talked themselves out of committing and that all happens via an internal conversation in their head when they’re alone.
The beautiful part about the internal conversation happening in your ex’s head is that it harkens back to that first part of this presentation where I was talking about the three points of time to foucs on.
When you look at the conversation in your head that your ex is going to have it’s really going to focus everything that happened before the breakup.
I’ll give you an example, let’s say that you are trying to get me back.
We go on a date.
Things go really great.
I say I’m or make some statement to you like,
Have you ever thought about getting back together?
This of course opens the gates for you to to try your commitment speech out.
I eventually decide, yes I’m interested in getting back together with you.
Then three days later I message you saying I don’t think this is going to work out.
What happened?
Throughout those three days I’ve had time to sit and consider what actually has happened. I’ve thought back to how things were before the breakup.
What was that first relationship like?
I remember that you were super naggy. I also remembered that you kept flirting with other men and it made me extremely jealous and I don’t want to go through that again. The more I thought the more the kernel of the idea grew in my head and the more unattractive you became until eventually my internal conversation or the internal narrative that I’m having talked myself out of being with you permanently.
The 3 Best Ways To Make An Ex Chase You
Aug 20, 2018
Today we’re going to be talking about what you can do to make your ex chase you.
However, before we get started on that the first thing I recommend to all newbies wondering if they have a chance of getting their ex back is to check out our Ex Recovery Chances Quiz. So, here’s everything I want you to do,
In the video above I actually put together a presentation to teach you the basics behind how you can actually accomplish the seemingly impossible goal of making your ex miss you. I can’t recommend watching or listening to it enough.
Oh, and make no mistake about it.
Forcing your ex to chase you is not an easy thing to accomplish.
The first thing I would like to talk about are some of the biggest misconceptions that people have about making an ex chase them.
The Biggest Misconceptions People Have About This Process
The first big misconception that people have is that you can’t expect one singular strategy to get the job done. Instead, I’ve always found that it’s going to be an arsenal of strategies working together in tandem that does the trick.
People have this belief where they think that if they just try hard enough and they do what I say their ex is going to chase them 100% of the time.
Reality doesn’t work that way.
There are a lot of details that I don’t have about your situation that can make or break you. I don’t believe in one size fits all solutions. Human beings are much too complicated for that. But what I do believe in and can show you are the best practices to dramatically stack the odds in your favor.
The final big misconception that people have is that this is an easy process.
So, getting them to do a complete “180” is not an easy thing.
3 Strategies To Make An Ex Chase You
I’ve learned over the years that making an ex chase you can be boiled down into three pretty simple concepts.
These concepts are going to create a necessary foundation that you are going to use to build your entire “ex back” campaign.
The No Contact Rule
Creating A Sense Of Mystery
Utilizing The Fear Of Loss
So, the first thing that we’re going to be talking about is the most popular strategy in my area of expertise, the no contact rule.
The second thing we’re going to be talking about is creating a sense of mystery.
The third thing we’re talking about is going to be raising the stakes by creating a sense of a fear of loss.
Lets begin,
1. The No Contact Rule To Make Your Ex Chase
What is the no contact rule?
Well I’ve written about 50 articles on it.
I’ve done multiple videos on it,
I’ve even done a lot of podcasts about it and a lot of people really use my ideas of how to employ the no contact rule when they actually go about trying to get their exes back.
However, if you want a quick crash course version it’s pretty simple.
The no contact rule is simply a period of time where you ignore your ex no matter what.
This is done in an attempt to make them miss you while at the same time cultivating your own personal life.
(Side Note: there are some situations where you can break the no contact rule in certain areas)
For the most part the bare minimum definition of the no contact rule is, you ignore your acts for 30 21 45 days and hopefully by the end of that they’ll start missing you but here’s the thing that a lot of people seem to forget,
As you can see above, I have put a picture of a foundation being built for a house.
Why?
Well, it’s really the best analogy I can think of to describe how the importance of the no contact rule.
People who are building houses lay down the foundation first. They do this to make sure that the house is being built on something steady. After the foundation has been laid they actually start building out the rest of the house and giving it the character that every house needs.
In home building you can’t build a house on a weak foundation. The same is true of trying to make your ex chase you.
You need a strong foundation before that starts happening and that is what the no contact rule is going to do for you.
2. Creating A Sense Of Mystery
The second thing that I would recommend that you try to do is create a sense of mystery.
Well, the first thing I point them to is some research done by a Russian scientist named Bulma Zeigarnik.
She is perhaps most well known for coming up with a concept called the Zeigarnik Effect which I know might sound familiar to some of the avid readers of Ex Boyfriend Recovery Program.
Zeigarnik Effect: Basically states that people remember uncompleted tasks better than completed ones.
Let’s say that you are having a conversation over the phone with your ex and then somehow the phone suddenly hangs up.
What is your first reaction to this circumstance?
It’s to try to immediately get your ex back on the phone, right?
This is a result of the Zeigarnik Effect.
Your task, of talking to your ex, got interrupted.
It created an open loop that you would do anything to close.
That’s where this whole idea of open loops and cliffhangers comes into play in Hollywood.
Have you ever taken notice of how TV shows are structured? Each episode tends to end on a crazy cliffhanger.
Why?
Well, it’s because week by week you’re getting drip fed a new episode and they know they have to do something to make you come back.
I suppose Netflix is kind of bucking that trend lately by releasing everything all at once however, the basic principle still applies in order to ensure that someone is going to continue watching your show.
The reason “binging” is a thing is because after the episode ends on a cliffhanger you immediately want to watch the next one to find out what happens next.
So, here is my ultimate point.
Every once in a while don’t be afraid to weak a few “open loops” into your conversations with your ex. It’ll really go a long ways to creating that sense of mystery you are finding so elusive.
3. Don’t Be Afraid To Use The Fear Of Loss
The third and final thing that I believe that you need to create if you want to make an ex chase you is a fear of loss.
The best analogy I make here is to actually point at one of the most popular shows on TV currently, game of thrones.
What is it about Game of Thrones besides great writing, great acting and great directing that makes it so great?
(Spoiler Alert)
Well if you look at the plot of Game of Thrones a lot of people die.
And I mean A LOT,
It gives you this sense that anyone could die at any moment and it raises the stakes so everything that happens carries an extra weight.
I think a lot of times when people are trying to get their exes back they haven’t raised the stakes.
They’re not willing to do everything it takes to really create a fear of loss. They aren’t willing to convince their ex that they have moved on.
I’ve often been quoted on this site as saying,
You have to be willing to lose the guy, to get the guy
I still stand by that statement because I’ve seen it work just like that time and time again.
How To Steal Your Ex From The Other Woman
Aug 16, 2018
Today we’re going to be talking about how to steal your ex from another woman.
But before we debate the morality of attempting to steal your ex from “the other woman” I’d like to point you to our “Ex Recovery Chances Quiz.”
I want to do this for one singular reason. I don’t want you doing anything in the “morally grey area” if you have zero chance of getting your ex back.
You’ll just look like a fool.
So, here’s what I’ve done. I have put a simple two minute quiz together for you. My intent is to help you understand what your chances are of getting your ex back.
Once you’ve given us some basic background information we’ll basically run your answers through an advanced algorithm that will spit out a number and tell you what kind of chance you have of getting your ex back.
Perhaps more importantly is you’ll get an idea on if this is worth your time.
When I first started out and someone would come to me with a situation like this, the gif below pretty much summed up my feelings,
But now when someone comes to me with a situation where their ex has moved on this is me,
But why?
Why is it that I’ve done such a complete 180º on this situation?
Well it’s actually because I’ve learned an epic strategy. Granted, it’s a little bit in the grey area morally but it works.
Today I’m going to teach it to you. So, let’s talk about the strategy that has been revolutionizing the way my clients have been getting their exes back if their ex is with someone else.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Warning – This Strategy Might Not Fit With Your Morals
Today we’re going to be talking about how to steal your ex from the “other woman” but before I begin I do want to warn you that this strategy might not fit with your morals.
I firmly believe that it’s my job to show you what I’ve found that works and doesn’t work.
I’m going to leave it up to you to choose whether or not you want to employ this strategy. However, before I begin I do want to warn you that this strategy that I’m about to unveil to you might not fit with your morals and if that’s the case, it’s ok.
Don’t feel that I’m painting you into a corner and making you choose to implement a strategy you aren’t comfortable with.
With that being said I feel this is an important strategy for you to fully grasp before you start judging it.
You can determine the morality of what I’m about to show you after you learn what I have to teach you.
Sound fair?
Let’s begin!
The Key To Stealing Your Ex Back
The key to “stealing your ex back” is to not steal them back at all.
Rather it’s to present them with a situation or put them in a position where they choose to come back to you.
Now, you may be reading those words and think that, that’s impossible to achieve.
However, I’m not just basing this strategy on conjecture. No, what I’m about to show you has actually been proven by psychologists and I’m going to show you proof to back up that claim.
So what is this elusive strategy that is kind of in this gray area morally?
The “Being There Method”
Well, what I’d like you to do is that if you find yourself in this situation and you want your ex back from the new person he’s with is to utilize something called being there method.
And it’s actually pretty easy to grasp.
However, just because “the being there method” is easy to understand doesn’t mean it’s easy to implement.
Here’s how it works,
When your ex moves on to someone else you need to become a constant presence in their relationship
To clarify, constant doesn’t mean sexual.
On the contrary, you just need to be a friendly presence not even trying to steal him back but a constant one nonetheless.
Eventually that constant presence will indirectly intimidate the other woman to the point where she will issue him an ultimatum and it will ultimately lead to their demise.
Why Becoming A Constant Presence Is So Important
Becoming a constant presence actually does a couple of things,
What woman is ok with her boyfriend talking to his ex?
It creates a natural competition
You can compete for his time with the other woman
Ultimately the other woman will grow so insecure she will issue him an ultimatum
The most brilliant thing about “being there” is technically you’re not doing anything wrong.
You are NOT going to be trying to sleep with him or get him to cheat with you.
Instead, you are just becoming his friend. Essentially you are going to be friend zoning yourself on purpose hoping that, that simple act will intimidate the other woman.
The Being There Method Is Backed By Research
What if I told you that researchers have actually shown data proving that the being there method is effective.
Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?
It’s not.
Earlier this year psychologists released a paper where they actually started studying the effect that keeping in touch with a past partner has on your current relationship.
Here’s a quote directly taken from the Psychology Today article,
What implications does this have for people’s current relationships. In general those who stayed in touch with an ex tended to be less committed to their current partner than those who did not. But contact with an ex wasn’t associated with how satisfying they found their current relationship.
Now let’s pause there.
I find that really interesting. In the first study they did actually did find that those who stayed in touch with their exes tended to be less committed to their partners than those who did not.
However, it didn’t mean they were less satisfied with their relationship. Now I have a problem with that because my own research using my own data says the opposite.
People who keep in contact with their exes tend to be less satisfied with their relationships.
But that’s why I have this second part actually quotes below because the Psychology Today article said researchers actually conducted a second study.
The researchers further explored how contact with exes relates to the quality of the current relationship by examining people’s reasons for staying in touch with exes. They survived. Excuse me they surveyed 169 undergraduate students and relationships who said they communicated with an ex at least once every couple of months. This time the team found a link between contact with exes and the quality of the current relationship. The more frequent the contact with an ex the less satisfied participants were with their current relationships.
There you have it.
The being there method is essentially backed by psychologists and this was an actual scientific paper released earlier this year.
Final Thoughts
Let’s talk about the debate between the morality of if you should do that being there method or not.
Here’s my stance,
It’s not my job to debate morality with you. My job is to simply give you options to use as you attempt to try to get your ex back.
3 Things You Absolutely Need To Do If You Want Your Ex Back
Aug 10, 2018
Hey what’s up Chris Seiter here.
And today we’re going to be talking about three of the most important strategies that you need to be employing if you want your ex back. But first, one of the most asked about questions that I get is,
I put together this quiz and designed it to help you understand what kind of chance you have with your ex. It will only take you about a minute and a half to complete. It’s a really high quality quiz and it’s not like one of those quizzes that you see on one of those “for fun” websites.
You know like what kind of Jedi are you or something like that.
This is an actual quiz that will take your answers, put it through an algorithm and give you an idea of everything I’ve seen from my experience and what your chances are from it.
So, if you want to take that quiz all you have to do is stop by our website exboyfriendrecovery.com and click on the “start here” button.
And also if you are watching this on YouTube and you want to take the quiz simply look in the description link below and click on the link there. It’ll take you right to the quiz were you can complete it.
Alright!
Let’s begin!
Three Strategies To Employ If You Want To Get Your Ex Back
I’ve been doing this for about six and a half years.
And so what I’d like to do today is show you what those three strategies are and make sure that you’re implementing them correctly if you are trying to get your ex back.
So, one thing that people always tend to ask me is they’ll come to me and say,
Chris what are the very best strategies for getting an ex back?
And there’s a lot of different strategies.
I’ve covered many on my YouTube channel and my website. But after six plus years I began noticing a very interesting “through line.”
There are certain strategies that people typically employ to get results and I always find it helpful to point these strategies out to people so they can actually see what other people are doing that is working.
So, those three strategies are,
The value chain or the idea of the value chain.
The no contact rule which I’ve talked about quite a bit
A synergy of commitment.
Now, some of these things you may have heard of and some of these things you may not have heard of.
I’m going to go really quick give you a crash course on each one of these three strategies starting from the top.
Let’s start with the value chain.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
But you’ll notice that each one of these levels of the value chain has certain sub levels so there are certain things that you need to do to get the most out of the no contact rule and once you do those things you can advance on to texting and so on and so forth.
That’s really how the value chain is meant to work.
Personally, I notice that when people stick to this basic value chain blueprint they tend to get a lot better results than people who, let’s say do a no contact rule and skip immediately to that in person interaction.
By doing so, they’re skipping two important processes of the value chain.
So, the value chain is one of the most important strategies for getting an ex back and really the big takeaway I want you to take from this is that it takes discipline to see this through to the end.
Let’s move onto the next big strategy.
2. The No Contact Rule
If you actually go back towards the value chain you can see that the no contact rule is the first step of the value chain.
And the no contact rule, to my knowledge is responsible for about 70 percent of the success stories that we’ve had on our website. But that number is even greater because I believe 100 percent of our success stories in our private Facebook group have utilized a no contact rule as well in some way shape or form.
So, what is a no contact rule?
Well I’ve done lots of videos about it so if you want a more in-depth explanation go to our YouTube channel, type in “no contact rule” and I have done multiple videos on it.
But the quick crash course definition is,
It’s a period of time, usually between 21 to 45 days where you ignore your ex in an attempt to make them miss you while at the same time cultivating your own personal life.
So that’s the no contact rule.
From what I’ve seen what separates the people who are successful with the no contact rule from the people who are unsuccessful is that the people who are successful use their time wisely.
Let’s say you are ignoring your ex for 30 days.
Chances are, you’re not going to sit around twiddle your thumbs and hope the sky falls and he’ll come drop into your lap.
No, the people who tend to get better results are the people who really work on cultivating their own personal life. They really try to make leaps forward in areas that they’ve always wanted to make leaps forward in.
Think of yourself as kind of like a caterpillar. A caterpillar is ultimately undergoing this metamorphosis over into a butterfly, right?
So, when you start the no contact you’re kind of a caterpillar but by the end of the no contact rule you want to be a butterfly.
That’s the best maybe visual imagery I can give you.
Now let’s move onto the synergy of commitment.
3. The Synergy Of Commitment
What do I mean by synergy of commitment?
Well we talked about the value chain and we talked about the no contact rule. Those are two key strategies that we’ve seen work time and time again but when actually comes to getting a commitment out of an ex that’s a different thing.
I’ve notice that there’s a synergy between six different principles.
Satisfaction
Alternatives
Investment
Scarcity
Urgency
Fear of loss
If you can create these six different components there’s a highly likely chance that you’re going to push your ex over the edge and he will want to commit to you.
Let’s talk about each one of these things
Satisfaction
So, what is satisfaction?
Well, in this context satisfaction is how satisfied your partner is with the relationship
Alternatives
This is if he’s sitting there thinking,
Wow I could do better than her.
Is there a better alternative out there?
Investment
How much has he invested into the relationship?
The most common misconception I see with investment is people actually come and sit and think that investment is only in the form of him saying certain nice things to them.
Investment can be things like,
how much money he’s investing
how much time he’s invested
how much emotional energy he’s invested into this relationship
They’ve done really interesting studies and they’ve seen that actually when you look at people who are very unsatisfied with their relationships and you look at people who really believe that they have better alternatives out there than the person they’re with they will still not leave that relationship if they feel like they’ve invested too much time, energy and money into it.
So, investment is kind of the big 500 pound elephant in the room that no one ever talks about.
Scarcity
Scarcity is if you feel you have done a good job of making your ex believe that you are one of a kind. T
Not too much more to unpack here.
Urgency
Is there an urgent reason that you would make your ex want to actively commit to you?
Again, not too much to unpack here
Fear of Loss
If he doesn’t commit to you have you done a decent job of making him think he’ll lose you forever?
Over the years I’ve noticed there’s a really interesting synergy between these six principles. What I’ve noticed is that there are six principles in all that really go into getting a commitment but you can group these six principles into two different categories,
You’ve got the category that attacks his reasoning
Category #1: Factors That Attack His Reasoning
Every ex will have a reason for why they don’t want to commit back to you.
These three principles,
Satisfaction
Alternatives
Investment
Really work to attack that reasoning to convince him that he should commit to you.
Category #2: Factors That Make Him Want To Commit NOW
And then of course are the factors that make him want to commit NOW.
So, factors that attack his reasoning aren’t always enough to make him want to commit right NOW.
Well, that’s where the second category comes into play.
As long as you can couple scarcity, urgency and fear of loss you can create an active reason so that he wants to commit to you right now.
This is how you get a commitment from a birds eye view and those are three of the most common strategies that I’ve seen people use time and time again.
Now, generally when I start interviewing people who have gotten their exes back they know exactly what they did to actually win that ex back.
Sophia was different.
You’ll find that she admits that she has no clue why she got her ex back.
Then she proceeded to tell me her entire story and I started noticing a fascinating trend.
Perhaps the most interesting part of her situation was that her ex had literally blocked her and she was in a constant state of worry trying to figure out.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Should I Get Back Into A Relationship With My Ex? What Are The Red Flags?
Feb 28, 2018
Most of the clients that I work with are at a crossroads where they have to pick between two choices.
Should I try to get my ex back
Should I just move on
Often I find that at the beginning of the process almost everyone picks choice number one. However, as time goes on women can skirt the two choices jumping back and forth between them. It’s a fascinating thing to witness.
I was super excited to talk to Natasha because I was hoping that she could shine some light on the red flags that you need to keep an eye out for if you are considering getting back into a relationship with your ex.
Natasha didn’t disappoint.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
I did something I don’t think I’ve ever done before.
I asked our Private Facebook Support Group if they wanted to ask me a question for the podcast. I figured it would be fun to take questions from the support group and answer them in a day in an in-depth way,
I made it first come first serve so the very first person to record a question was answered. Interestingly, the first person to ask a question was a coaching client whose situation I knew pretty well.
She finds herself in a situation that I’ve noticed is a little too common.
The interesting thing is that I’ve notice the common theme of “other women” with a lot of my coaching clients so I’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out what to do and I talk about that in this episode of the ex boyfriend recovery podcast.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
What’s up and welcome to the exboyfriend recovery podcast.
Like always I am very excited to have you here today. So, we’re going to do something a little bit different today. I actually–not that I’m running short on voice mails or anything like that. I have probably 10,000 just sitting there but typically if you don’t know how this podcast works, I like to take voice mails from my visitors, readers, clients, so on and so forth and answer their questions in an in depth way because sometimes when you’re answering question on the website or through an email, you normally have time to put 20 minutes into a detailed explanation.
And so, usually what I do is I have a speakpipe page where people can come in and ask a question and then I could take a question and post it here but I thought I was going to do something different today.
I went to our private Facebook group, there’s currently around 1300 members in there and basically said, “Ok guys, I am literally about to record a podcast. I am going to post that podcast live to the website today. If you want your question answered here’s the link, go record and the first person to ask me a question I am going to take and answer the question in depth. ” And interesting enough, one of my coaching clients asked me a question first.
And so, I’m going to be doing a lot of episodes this week. Actually one every single day, so I have my work cut out for me but one of my coaching clients ended up asking me a question and there was some issue–there was some technical issues on her side of things trying to actually record. She was able to figure those issues out luckily but when I actually downloaded her mp3 file, it was all choppy.
I could still hear her question obviously but it was all choppy. So, rather than actually posting it here like normal, I am just going to tell you what she said.
So, just to kind of give you some insight, we had a coaching session last week. I gave her some pretty, pretty actionable advice. I told her to–there’s a graphic designer on our Facebook group that I told her to go contact and create a specific post using this graphic designer and by using the strategy–and I won’t get too far into it because I want to protect my client’s privacy obviously but without getting too far into it, by doing this thing and just posting it to Facebook to all of her friends, her ex caught wind of it and reached out to her.
They ended up going on date and on that date on Friday it kind of took a turn for the worse.
Not to say that her situation is completely horrible but she went on this date on Friday with him which was instigated by him as a result of the strategy that her and I kind of came up with. He let her know that he didn’t want a monogamous relationship. She left the date a little broken hearted.
He asked to be friends with her and she told him that she just wasn’t interested in that. He’s already reached out to her which she has ignored. And then after she ignored the first reach out attempt, he reached out again and sent her a text saying hi and asking her how she was.
Now, she kind of confused on how to deal with this kind of a situation. She’s getting a lot of mixed signals and doesn’t know if s`he should respond or what not. And so, just to give everyone listening and just to give my client sort of the detailed timeline of what happened, her and I had our coaching call early last week.
I think it was like a Tuesday or a Wednesday and she ended up getting an instant date on that Friday and then that Friday he ended up saying this comment about “I don’t want a monogamous relationship.” And just to put this in perspective he is dating other women and he is–we kind of think–sleeping with other women as well. And so, he’s probably enjoying that single life type mentality and then on a Sunday it seems like he reached out to her and then today or maybe late Sunday again, he reached out to her again. And so, now she’s sitting and wondering, “How do I even handle this situation?”
There’s a lot of ways to handle situations like this but mostly the thing I like to start out by tackling is what the individual client which my client in here–particularly I already know what she wants because I know her situation very well. I would typically start off by asking, “Ok, what is the end goal here?” We need to find out your end game. And so for my client, the end game is obviously she wants to get him back.
That’s where her heart’s at. She’s wanting to get him back. So, looking at everything that I see here, the first thing that you have to understand is the idea of not falling back into the no contact rule.
A lot of people, not just my client–but a lot of people just believe that the no contact rule is a very empowering strategy and it is. If you’re doing the no contact rule correctly, it can be one of the most empowering experiences of your life. You can basically make him miss you while at the same just looking like a total bad A. I think it’s important to note that the no contact rule while it’s an important aspect of the strategy for getting an ex back, it isn’t everything.
In fact you cannot get an ex back if you do not communicate with them. And so, for my client who’s wondering how do I handle this situation?
I think if the end game here is to get him back, you have to understand, going back to the no contact rule I think at this point might hurt your chances.
You can sprinkle in little mini no contacts where you just kind of disappear for a few days but I think at this point what we need to do isn’t so much, “Ok, I’m going to sort of punish him or I’m going to go into the no contact rule so, he misses me and it makes me look like kind of a strong woman.” I think that’s effective only immediately after a break up. Right now, I don’t think it’s going to be effective at all.
So, instead of doing that, what we need to do is change his perception of you. I think we talked a lot about this on a phone call that you and I had on the one on one call that we had but one thing that I didn’t talk about was the idea of how he views his relationship life right now. So, the important piece of information to get here is that this particular ex boyfriend has multiple options. You’re just basically one option.
We’ve already kind of took an educated guess and it seems that that educated guess was correct from his monogamous comments during your date that he’s got other women lined up, that he’s sleeping probably with 2 or 3 other women or at least flirting with them.
So, when I ran into men like this, they’re a little bit difficult to get back because, ok well, if you’re not playing the game or if you’re not playing his game, guess what, he’s got other options to go to right?
The big fear is if you do the no contact rule, he’s just going to say, “Ah, whatever. I’ve got 2 or 3 other women on hold I could just go to.” If you get angry and curse him out well guess what? Ah, whatever, I’ll just go to the other 2 or 3 women. So, if you’re really wanting this guy back, there’s the question of, if you do get him back, what’s going to change?
Is he still going to be like sort of be attracted to those other women? Is he going to cheat on you? That’s something that you have to internally kind of figure out and determine if this is even worth the effort but I already kind of know what you’re going to say.
You’re going to say it’s worth the effort, I want to make this happen. So, what can you do? Well, I always like to give an analogy. 09:14 seem like a weird analogy but bear with me here, I’ll circle around when I’m dealing with men like this. He’s like a spider and you’re caught in his spider web.
So, a spider puts his web up overnight or if it goes over the course of a week. I don’t know how–I don’t know the logistics of insects but or–I don’t know if it is an insect–bugs. But the spider will put the web up and the idea is that a bug of a fly or something will get caught in the web and it’s stuck and it can’t move and then the spider can go and eat it right?
Your ex is kind of like a spider right now and you’re caught in his web but you’re not the only woman caught in his web. You’re one of many. He’s a spider and you’re a bug or something caught in his web. So, are the other women as well.
And so, naturally the spider is going to be drawn to what tastes the best. He’s always going to go for what sort of makes him the best or taste the best.
He’ll basically eat that up and then move on to the next best thing and the next best thing and it’s almost the same thing with relationships except instead of eating you he is using sort of like falling for you or using sex for example. So, what you’re going to have to do is find a way to outshine those other woman. The big advantage you have is the other women, they’re not dumb either.
They’re going to figure out that he’s talking to other women. It seems like when you were dating him, you figured that out but the key here is to become so appealing to him that you hoard his time.
So, the end game for you is to get him to commit to you right? And so, there’s really two set of strategies that you’re going to have to use to create a commitment. Number 1 is the interdependence theory and number 2 is the scarcity and urgency and fear of loss theory. I won’t go too deep into them but I think if you understand the spider analogy and understand, “Ok, If I’m going to compete with these other women–” because make no mistake about it, you are in a competition with these other women, especially if you are trying to get this guy back.
You have to find a way to become the woman that he spends most of his focus on.
And that’s the only conceivable way I can think to make this situation work and the only kind of way you can bring that about is if you actually do communicate with him. So, even though I feel like that you stood up for yourself and you said that hey, we’re not going to be friends. I want you to almost treat him like he’s your’e gay best friend. That he’s beneath you and that you’re not interested in him at all but you want to kind of flirt with him and make him interested in you.
And so, basically what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to hoard his time. So, you’re trying to get him 12:11 of your text messages, you’re trying to have really engaging, interesting conversations. You’re also trying to see him in person. So, as long as you can do these things, you can really stand out from the other woman because you’ll be hoarding his most valuable asset right now which is his time.
Now, here’s where things get a little bit tricky, this goes against everything that is probably in your mind right now. You’re thinking, “Well, why should I have to do this?” And that’s a legitimate concern to have but if he doesn’t want that monogamous relationship, let’s make him suffer.
So, the way to make him suffer is to –this is evil! But the way to make him suffer is to make him fall for you while not giving him many of the physical benefits other than maybe like kissing here and there, making out maybe but sleep with him–you don’t go past second base with him.
Basically there always has to be more for him to desire. So, to get to that upper level, to get to have sex with you because I think clearly he’s ruled sort of not by his brain but his other organ, we need to use that to our advantage here. And so, imagine this, Imagine that like he’s starting to fall for you again.
He wants to have sex with you again, imagine if you were to spend the entire night just laying next to him and him wanting to have sex with you but you keep turning him down. Imagine how that would drive him crazy.
That is the frame of mind that you need to get him in because that is going to be so much different than the other women right?
The key here is–I guess the concern you’re having right now is, “Well, if I do that, and the other women are a little bit easier than me, won’t he just be attracted to the other women because they’re easier?” Potentially, but that’s why it’s important to be such a time suck. You want to basically have the entire market share of his time because if that’s the case, you really have the interdependence theory working for you. So, I’ve found and we’ll kind of shift gears into getting a commitment from him because I know ultimately that’s what we want to work towards but I’m talking in huge broad strokes here.
With commitment,there’s really two strategies that you have to look in. You have to look at the urgency, scarcity, fear of loss strategy and you also to look at the interdependence theory strategy. I think what you need to harp on is the interdependence side of things.
So, the interdependence theory basically posits that human beings–we commit to each other based on a cost and benefit scenario. So, we’re always trying to maximize our benefits with an individual and minimize our costs. We’ll always have that going on. That’s just how we couple up generally.
And you can look at three main factors within the interdependence theory to kind of determine, “Ok, like, this is the cost, this is the benefits.” Those three things are satisfaction, alternatives, and investment. Ok?
So, satisfaction–one thing that you need to do is ensure that he is more satisfied with you than the other women. I think you have an opportunity there. I think the fact that his reaching out to you right now means that he’s feeling a little guilty about how that went down. He doesn’t want your feelings to be hurt. Ok, let’s take advantage of that. We can use that to springboard into a conversation and within the conversation kind of connect with him and make him feel a little bit satisfied.
What you’re struggling right now is with alternatives right? He’s thinking there are better alternatives out there than you and that’s the problem So, in order to dispel that, we need to use investment on him.
If you can invest his money, time and mental energy and also I guess sort of like little love notes or flowers or things like that, those are all little forms of investment. So, the more investment you can get from him, the more invested that he’s going to become into you and you’re going to stand out a little bit more to those other women.
Now, that is how much work it will take to get this guy back. So, let me ask you. Do you think this is worth all the work? Because I think clearly we talked, –he’s went through a divorce. So, he’s kind of–it’s playing into his mind the fact that he doesn’t want history to repeat itself again.
Not to say that you didn’t–marriage isn’t totally on the table here but still he’s going to think that you want marriage. This guy probably, it’s going to be real difficult to get him to change his ways is my opinion.
I think realistically this is the best strategy you can use to get him back but is it worth the work? Do you have the patience to do it? Because it’s sort of–it’s not necessarily taking–I mean it is taking a huge aspect of your time to get him back–and it’s not taking you off the market per say because I think you should weave in jealousy.
We’ve talked a little bit about how we can use jealousy and if you’ve tried that, what kind of effect that has but there’s some sort of emotional investment that you’re having into him and it’s going to take a toll on you. So, my question to you is, do you think is this worth getting him back if it’s a constant cycle or this happens again where he breaks up and finds–he’s wondering about the other alternatives out there? Sometimes the biggest enemy that we face when we’re trying to get exes back are other women or other alternatives out there.
Because if a human being has too many options, they’ll just go crazy trying to try every flavor if you will.
Whereas if we can give him one clear option that’s a cut above the rest, he’s more likely to be drawn to that but sustainability to me is the issue here. It’s not so much strategizing on how we can get him back. It’s more about will history itself and what steps we can take to ensure history doesn’t repeat itself.
So, I will get off my soapbox and stop preaching here. Here’s what you got to do, I say short term step here is you respond and you get into a little conversation with him and then you end the conversation at the high point. You continue this and you slowly start flirting and work on more dates to get him more and more invested to get him to fall for you, to get him to flirt with you. Try to flirt in a way in which you’re not actually the one who’s sort of leading it.
You’re just giving him an opportunity to flirt.
So, you’re putting yourself in kind of a sexual situation where he can kind of like tie into that and you can kind of like test him to see just how into he is but the more time and energy and investment you can get from him the better because it means you’re still in the market share from those other women.
The problem here is there is some sort of long distance factor or you’re not like super close. So, that means you’re going to have to utilize texting and phone calls, facetime a lot but I would also say try to see what you can do about getting dates in every once in a while.
The name of the game here is finding a way to stand out compared to the other women. That’s the mentality that you need to have. So, hopefully that answered your question. Again if you guys who are listening to this are saying, “Wow! This guy really has great advice!” You can just simply go to our SpeakPipe page. I’ll link that up in the show notes of this episode on our website exboyfriendrecovery.com .
If you are enjoying this episode, if you’re enjoying this podcast, please, please, please go to our podcast page in Itunes and leave us an honest rating and review.
I don’t care if you blast me. I don’t care if you sing my praises. I don’t care if you think I’m some sort of god. Just leave an honest rating and review. That’s all I want because that is actually how this podcast can survive. So, that’s going to do it for this episode of the exboyfriend recovery podcast. As always, it was a pleasure. I’ll be back tomorrow and we will tackle another listener question. Take care!
The Best Way To Make Your Ex Boyfriend Interested In You Again
Feb 01, 2018
Today I got asked a really interesting question,
Chris, what do I have to do or say to make my ex boyfriend interested in me again? How can I re-create the spark?
Now, when you run a website like this as long as I have you tend to see a lot of questions like this and I feel like I’ve answered it to best of my ability multiple times.
But every time I feel I answer this question to the best of my ability I learn something new that shifts my perspective on it.
What’s up and welcome to another fine episode of the Ex Boyfriend Recovery Podcast. If you don’t know, The Ex Boyfriend Recovery Podcast is basically where we take viewers questions and talk about how to improve your situation after a break up whether that’s getting your ex back, if that’s what you want or getting over an ex.
And usually we do a lot of different things on this podcast, sometimes I interview experts, sometimes I take random questions from my listeners and then sometimes I’ll just ramble around. Today we’re going to be hearing from a woman name Sue who has probably one of the most common questions that I get asked on a daily basis. But before we hear from Sue, I first want to give you an opportunity to figure out what kind of chance that you have with your ex.
One of the smartest things that you can do is hop by our website, Ex Boyfriend Recovery and take our Ex recovery chances quiz. It’s a simple little two minute quiz that can give you a general idea on if you even have a chance with your ex or not. Again, really, really easy to do. It takes two minutes.
All you have to go to is our website exboyfriendrecovery.com and it will prompt you to take that quiz right away.
Basically take the quiz in two minutes and it will give you a real accurate estimate of your chances with your ex. So, you can figure out if you’re wasting time with him or her or not. So, ok, now that that’s out of the way, let’s hear from Sue.
Sue:
Ok, I’ve never had a problem getting an ex to be interested in me again but for some reason I’m having a lot of trouble with this one, my most recent ex, whom 02:26 I was together with for four years. I tried talking to him about mutual interests like cars, or sports, just anything I know that we share interest in.
So, I wanted to know if there is anything else that I can do because I don’t seem to be lighting that fire to spark his interest in me again.
Chris:
Thanks for recording that Sue.
If you don’t know Sue is actually really kind of having a very common question that I get asked here every single day which is “How can I get my ex to be interested in a conversation with me? How can we create that spark, that fire, that’s really going to make him excited and kind of set the foundation for falling back in love?”
So, just in case you’re wondering or just for whatever reason you couldn’t hear Sue, I’m going to do a quick recap of her situation. And then what I’d like to do is talk about the number 1 tip that I can tell you to help you understand how you can attract your ex boyfriend and get him engaged into conversations with you.
Yes, it’s my number 1 tip and ironically, it’s the only thing I think I’m going to be talking about today on this podcast episode because it’s that important and it might take a little while to help you understand what I mean by it.
Ok, Sue is kind of an interesting case. She says she’s never had a problem getting an ex back before or getting an ex to become interested in her again but she’s having a problem now with this particular ex and she’s trying to figure out what she can do to hold his interest. That was basically her question.
What can I do to make him interested in me? Now, it’s really interesting, I’ve done multiple videos on Youtube about making your ex interested in you again.
I have done articles on making your ex interested in you again and those articles are really, really great; articles, Youtube videos, everything. In fact if you want to read those articles and if you want to watch those videos, I suggest you pop by our website and come to this particular episode of the podcast and I will link those things up in the show notes and in fact, just so I don’t forget, I’m going to write those down .
So, article interest and video interest. Ok, so I had that written down now and I will ensure that immediately after I record this episode, I’ll type in the show notes so, that I don’t forget to include those things. Now, the interesting thing about when I wrote those articles and when I recorded those videos is that I learn as I go along right?
So, if you’re to take me when I first created Ex boyfriend recovery back in 2012 and you’re to take that version of me and pit him up against my current version and everything that I know about getting an ex back, the current version would be far superior. I’ve learned so much more just by dealing with clients and seeing many different kind of situation on what works and what doesn’t work.
And so, the articles that I’ve written on making your ex interested in you again or catching his interest or creating that spark, don’t include probably the number 1 factor I’ve learned that matters to an ex when you’re talking to them and it’s interesting, it’ something that I’ve learned with working with people 1 on 1.
I get so much more on working with someone 1 on 1 than I do just answering a simple comment for example, or a simple email because I can actually hear in their voice how much it’s hurting them. I can literally understand more about their situation because guess what, if I have a question, I can ask them right there and then.
Alright so, what is this all being number 1 factor for making your ex interested in you again?
Well, I want you to repeat the following phrase after me.
“What’s in it for him?”
Yes, that’s right. Human beings, we tend to be very selfish creatures. I often talk about getting an ex to commit to you is based on the interdependence theory. So, the interdependence theory posits that human beings, we base our relationships on a constant benefit scenario. We’re always looking to make sure that the odds are the greatest for us.
That we’re putting ourselves in the best situation possible. Now, obviously, those odds, they’re ever changing. What you felt for your ex or what he felt for you at the beginning of the relationship maybe is no longer the case at the end of the relationship but at the beginning of the relationship he’s always trying to do something where he feels like you’re going to benefit him. So, anytime that you’re talking to him, you need to be asking,
“Well, how does this conversation benefit him? What is he going to get out of this conversation? What is he going to get out of this text message? What is he going to get out of this phone call? What is he going to get out of this date?”
If you can’t come up with a compelling reason, or a compelling thing that he’s going to get out of a date for example or a phone call or a text message, you’ll find his interest start to waiver. Now, this is really, really interesting when you start pairing it with what you know about your ex.
I’ll give you an example. Let’s pretend that your ex is really into reading science fiction books. So, I am a pretty big science fiction nerd when it comes to books. Le’t s say your ex is just like me and he’s a science fiction nerd. So, you’re taking something that you know interests him, something that you know will benefit him. And let’s say you compose a text and a text is,
“You are not going to believe what I just saw at Barnes and Noble.”
So, he decides to bite.
“Ok, what did you see?”
“I just saw that Pierce Brown-“
Who is a science fiction author who just came out with a book this year, in case you are wondering.
“–is doing a reading and a signing and a q&a session. You totally have to check that out.”
Ok, now do you see why this would be beneficial for him? He’s a huge Pierce Brown fan. He’s a huge science fiction fan and if you’re the one to deliver that information it’s going to spark up a conversation and allow you to get him to be interested in you. Now, what is he getting out of the conversation?
Well, he’s getting information that he didn’t have before. The information interests him and he’s also attaching those feel good things- the sort of misattribution of emotions. You put someone in an environment where they start feeling things, they’re more likely to attach those things onto that thing.
Let’s talk about misattribution of emotions for a minute. What we have here is a situation where you are composing a text message and telling him that his favorite author is doing a reading and a signing at a local Barnes and Noble that you both frequent.
So, the misattribution of emotions states that if you put someone in an environment where they are bound to feel emotional things whether it be bad or good, they’re going to attach those things on what makes the most logical sense. So, they’ve done studies where they actually put people–it’s a kind of an interesting study in case you didn’t know this.
They had two groups of people. They had a woman stand at the edge of a bridge and the bridge was just basically over like 5000 foot cliffs or something like that–maybe not 5000 feet but you know, 500 ft cliffs or something crazy like that. So, you’d fall to your death if you are going on a rickety bridge if you will.
They had two groups of people and they had a woman standing at the edge of each bridge. It was the same woman for both bridge. What they did was one bridge was sturdy. There was practically no chance that it was ever going to fall. What they were measuring was to see if the men who crossed the bridge would ask for the girl’s number. They found roughly around like 20% or something like that asked for the girl’s number.
And then they had a second group of people but they had them walk on a rickety, creaky bridge that looked like it could fall at any minute and you’d fall to your death. And so after the men got to the end of the bridge, guess what? It’s like 75 or 80% of them asked for the girl’s number.
They started doing tests like this where they would put people in situations that made them emotional and they found that they often times, they attach those emotions onto the person that they’re with or the person that they’re romantically linked to.
So, what we have here is a situation where you’re telling him something that will make him feel something, make him feel what he feels when he reads those books; excitement, and he can attach those emotions onto you. It’s a very subconscious type of a thing.
If you really want to hammer home the misattribution of emotions and you’re sort of like, “Ok, well I kind of get that and I understand that logically but I don’t feel that that’s true.” Well, take for a minute and consider for a minute when you watch a music video or I think nerdy people call them AMVs, like Game of Thrones show or something and they kind of like partner it with music. The music will make you feel something. Hearing music makes you emotional.
Now, can you imagine watching some sort of music video without the music? You’re not going to attach any emotions to it. You’re just going to be like what the heck is this? But you add music into the equation, all of a sudden you start feeling this things, you start attaching what you’re feeling onto the images that you’re watching. I mean you can even distill this down to movies.
One movie that comes to mind is the movie called Interstellar by Christopher Nolan. Now, this movie is really incredible because it is again a science fiction movie but what’s really incredible to me about it is that throughout the entire movie from start to finish music plays.
There’s never a moment where I don’t think music plays at all. It’s playing throughout the entire movie. Sometimes it’s real loud and exciting type of music and then it kind of goes down and there’s like hardly any music at all but you could just barely something in the background. And I think that’s a conscious decision on Christopher Nolan, the director’s choice, to ensure that you start attaching emotions to this characters and for me–now that movie is very confusing for people who can’t really understand science fiction or time loops or worm holes or really complicated sort of string theory type stuff–which again I don’t understand. I’m not sitting here saying I’m smarter than you. I’m not.
I’m just as normal as the rest –the next guy but what I’m saying is the movie really works for me because of the music. I literally will sometimes work with that music in the background because of the emotions that makes me feel and the excitement and the sort of the epicness of it. All I’m saying is that if you want to interest your ex, make sure you can sort of use this misattribution of emotion and idea and couple it with the what’s in it for him type of mentality.
So, if you’re always thinking what’s in it for him. He has to get something out of this conversation. Then, what is he going to get out of this conversation? He’s going to laugh. And then he’s going to attach those emotions onto you. I mean that’s the idea. That’s the way that this probably should work synergistic-ally.
Does it always work out that way? Is it always as clean as when I go on this podcasts and give this in depth answers? No. It’s not. Sometimes it’s really difficult to get an ex who doesn’t want to cooperate engage with you but I think a lot of times exes who don’t want to cooperate, they feel like they’re not going to get anything out of talking to you. They feel like nothing’s in it for them. So, what you have to do is really create a compelling list that matters to him.
So, if you’re for example I can only–really use myself as a really great example because I know myself better than anyone. So, if you’re trying to think of a way to text me, there’s certain topics that you should talk about with me. Topics that I’ll always perk up on and become interested in. Reading, any book series I’m reading or you expressing interest in the book series that I’m reading that I’m actually enjoying, I’ll probably tell you about it. Talking to my about business, my business, this Ex boyfriend recovery thing, I do it for a living.
I love doing it for a living. Talking to me about it will get a response. Why? Because something’s in it for me. I get to kind of brag about myself. I get to brag about the business. I get to strategize with the person I’m potentially talking to. I love talking about this stuff. Buffy, the vampire slayer, every one knows I’m a huge nerd for that show. So, if you like one minute geek out and like say, “Oh my god! Remember that episode when Xander got cloned?” I’ll be like, “Oh, yeah! He’s like an actual twin in real life!” I’ll really get into stuff like that but what I’m saying is, I’ll probably only respond to you when I feel like there’s something in it for me. A lot of times also it can be sex.
If you’re talking to your ex boyfriend and he turns sort of, whatever, casual, flirting you’re doing into a more sexual type flirting. Well, it’s because he thinks is in it for him is sex and that’s what he’s hoping to get out of it. Let’s make no qualms if ands or buts about it.
That’s what’s happening. It’s important for you to understand Sue that if you can really come in with this with the mentality of every single time that I contact him, I am going to actually have some sort of causality chain, some cause and effect chain where I can figure out,”Ok, here’s his mindset, here’s what he’s going to get out of it. This is the end result that I’m wanting to have from this conversation. If you can do that at the beginning of every conversation, it’s going to pay dividends like you wouldn’t believe.
Alright. So, that’s going to do it for this episode of The Exboyfriend Recovery podcast. Again, before we end this, I want to tell you, if you’re kind of on the fence about getting your ex back or if you want to know what kind of chance you have of getting your ex back, I highly recommend you stop by our website: exboyfriendrecovery.com and take our ex recovery chance quiz. It’s a super simple, 2 minute little quiz I put together that’s going to give you a really good idea on if you even have a chance with your ex or not.
We based our questions and the things that we’re going to ask you on real results with real people. So, it should give you a really good general idea on if you have a chance to get him/her back or not.
Alright guys, that’s going to do it for this episode of The ex boyfriend recovery podcast. As always it’s a pleasure. I’ll see you next time.
How To Make A Long Distance Ex Commit
Jan 23, 2018
Making a long distance ex commit to you is pretty tricky.
Mary knows!
Today I opened up my Speakpipe page and got a really interesting message from a woman named Mary. Basically she wants to figure out how to get her ex on board for a long distance relationship.
You know how these things go.
The ex has preconceived notions about long distance relationships.
Mary being the optimistic ex girlfriend has romanticized notions.
The ex doesn’t want to play
Mary leaves heart broken
So, as I was listening to her voicemail and I started reminiscing about my own experience with a long distance relationship and I have to say that I learned a lot.
In fact, I learned so much that I am willing to pass it on to Mary here!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
I also wanted to take a minute to let you know that my team will help you in the comments section of this website. So, if you have a question about this episode or about your situation don’t be afraid to leave a comment below.
Have you ever been talking to someone and literally thought to yourself,
This person is so annoying
All you want to do is leave an never talk to that person again.
But lets change the script up a little and pretend that you desperately want your ex back but he finds you so annoying that he wants nothing to do with you. Not a really great position to be in, huh?
Well, that’s a position that Sydney has found herself in as she believes she was too much of a text gnat and scared her ex boyfriend away.
No worries Sydney, help is on the way!
But first, there is something very important I’d like to talk to you about.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
If you didn’t already know one thing that I like to do with my podcast is field listener questions and answer them in an in-depth manner but I have never really stopped to explain how I choose the listener questions.
Basically there are three things I am looking for when I pick a question to answer.
THING #1: It has to interest me
I feel like sometimes my entire life revolves around answering breakup questions and sometimes it can get a bit dull. So, one thing I look for when asking a question is if it interests me or not.
Asking a basic question like, “Should I break the no contact rule?” isn’t going to cut it.
With this episode I remember taking Sydneys question and thinking,
Wow, I don’t think I’ve talked about this on the podcast before. I am going to pick it.
That, plus she also met the other three requirements.
THING #2: I have to understand the person asking the question.
One thing that makes it difficult to choose a question sometimes is the fact that I can’t really understand the person. Sometimes they have a thick accent that I can’t pick out and other times they literally call in using a different language (true story.)
It becomes increasingly difficult to pick a question out like that, just saying!
THING #3: A clear connection
Sometimes someone will call in and I can understand them and their question is interesting but their connection is kind of bad. Either I can only hear every third word or I can hear a construction crew outside hammering away.
But enough about that. Lets get down to business now and talk about what I cover in todays episode.
What I Talk About In Todays Episode
What it takes for me to choose a question and record an episode about it.
What is going to happen if your ex blocks you
What I see happening a lot of times if they block you
Figuring out how to adapt when things don’t go your way
The Confluence Of Events (What Are They?)
Nov 21, 2017
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and ultimately determined that I needed to let you in on some of my thinking, specifically the idea of “a confluence of events.”
The Confluence Of Events = The series of events that have to occur in order to successfully get your ex back.
Of course, before I began writing I decided that the best way to help you understand my crazy brain was to record a podcast episode. Now, this episode is different than almost every other episode I have ever done because It’s just kind of like an insight into my stream of consciousness. I literally just talk about the different ideas I have and make a big deal about the confluence of events when it comes to getting an ex back.
Lets just chalk it up to me freestyling and seeing what comes of it.
Anyways, I just listened to this episode and it wasn’t half bad so I decided to publish it.
Enjoy!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
How To Take Charge Of Your Life After A Breakup (One Woman’s Incredible Story)
Oct 12, 2017
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, right?
Well, there is something I would like to show you guys,
This is Christina Bautista, one of the kindest human beings I have ever met and she has quite the tale to tell.
And about a week ago I had the pleasure of interviewing her for about an hour.
So far, it’s my favorite interview ever and that is saying something because I have had some incredible interviews before.
Now, I know what you are thinking,
Umm Chris… this is a website about breakups so why are you going the weight loss route?
Well, it turns out that a breakup was the ultimate spark that caused Christina to lose weight but along the way she found that she was losing the weight for herself as opposed to showing up some guy.
Important Things We Talk About In The Interview
Christina’s Hollywoodesque Story
Her personal transformation and what it says about our society
The right way to react after a breakup
How to rebuild your confidence along the way
How this experience has changed Christina’s life forever
What You Should Do If Your Ex Boyfriend Breaks Up With You Again
Oct 03, 2017
One of my all time favorite interviews was with Buffy,
Yeeouch!
Actually, when I refrence the interview with Buffy I am talking about a girl who is widely known in our Facebook Support Group, Sarah Michelle Stevens!
You see, Sarah Michelle ended up getting her ex boyfriend back after he told her all sorts of ridiculous things like,
Well, a few weeks ago I recently conducted a follow up interview with Sarah Michelle to see how she was doing and most importantly, if she was still with the ex boyfriend that she fought so hard to get back.
What ensued afterwards was one of the best interviews I have ever conducted.
Let me just put it this way, I think this woman is the true “ex whisperer.”
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
A Real Interview With An Ex Boyfriend And How It Can Help You!
Sep 27, 2017
There are a lot of things I am used to when it comes to Ex Boyfriend Recovery.
I am used to writing very long, in-depth articles…
I am used to interviewing experts on certain theories…
Hell, I’m even used to interviewing highly emotional women who have just gone through a breakup.
Do you want to know one thing I am not used to?
I’m NOT used to interviewing an ex boyfriend who has gone through a breakup.
And that’s where Aaron comes into the picture. You see, Aaron has a very unique case because not only did he succeed in getting his girlfriend back but he was also using the EBR method, but backwards. Luckily, when I heard about Aarons result I reached out to him to see if he’d be interested in coming onto the podcast and sharing his experience.
You see, I thought it would be interesting to get a mans perspective on a breakup from an actual ex boyfriend.
So, buckle up because Aaron and I are about to drop some serious bombshells and help you understand the way men think.
Understanding Your Breakup With Imago Therapy
Aug 18, 2017
To say Evie Shafner knows her stuff would be an understatement.
She’s been in practice for well over 30 years counseling individuals and couples with problems in their relationships and when I was told that she had agreed to come on to my show I was ecstatic.
Now, if you don’t know my interviewing process it’s relatively straightforward and can be broken down into three steps.
Step One: The person agrees to the interview
Step Two: I research the person so I know what questions to ask them
Step Three: I conduct the interview.
See, simple!
Now, I have been doing this a long time so it is rare for me to come across something I have never heard before and that is exactly what happened when I started researching Evie!
Now, I am not quite sure I can do it justice as I am not an expert on the topic so I am betting you’d rather learn about it from Evie herself in our interview,
The Thought Process Of A Man Going Through A Break Up
Jul 18, 2017
Gather round, gentle viewers!
It’s storytime!
I got a really interesting question the other day from a woman whose name I’m not going to even try to pronounce…
Jariwah…
Jarieewah…
Jahrawah?
Ugh, I give up.
Nevertheless, this awesome lady asked,
Can you just tell me what the heck is going on in his head?
And this got me thinking,
You know what, I can!
So, I decided to peel back the layers and tell you guys some of the things that my fellow men don’t want out there. Now, this is really good stuff because I am going to be going into some of my own breakups and the thoughts that had influenced my actions.
Well, that is the question that I am going to be answering in this episode of The Ex Boyfriend Recovery Podcast!
Make Sure You Subscribe And Leave An Honest Review
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In addition if you are enjoying the material then don’t forget to subscribe!
Important Things Mentioned In This Episode
The interdependence theory
The importance of investment on all levels
How society views dating and why it holds YOU back
Learn How She Got Her Long Distance Ex Boyfriend Back
Jul 03, 2017
Long distance relationships are tough.
Long distance relationship breakups are even tougher.
And yet despite all that the guest I have on this episode of The Ex Boyfriend Recovery Podcast overcame one of the most difficult situations and got her ex back.
I’d like to introduce you to Kris!
Side Note: This is the woman version of me!!!
Kris is actually one of the most active members of our Private Support Group so Jen (my wife) and I were thrilled when she told us that she had gotten her ex back.
But upon hearing her story firsthand I was blown away on how much she had to overcome just to get her guy to agree to be her boyfriend again.
Luckily, I recorded my entire conversation with her!
Well, in my experience it is because they overextend themselves.
Think of it like this.
Your ex boyfriend breaks up with you which causes you to immediately want him back. Of course, you are a very smart person and you know that you need to have a sound strategy if you are going to convince him to take you back. So, you go online and search everywhere for a reputable source to help you with your pain.
Eventually you stumble across my little gem of a website here and read about the no contact rule.
Now, don’t get me wrong.
The no contact rule is without a doubt an essential strategy to getting your ex back but it has a bit of a downfall to it.
Generally, by doing a period of no contact it makes you want your ex even more and causes you to go a little too fast too soon.
Hence, you overextend yourself before enough of a connection has been built and you end up rejected.
In fact, that is exactly what happened to Taylor, the subject of our episode today.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
And then she overextended herself a bit and ended up rejected
She now wonders what to do
One thing that you are going to notice about this episode of the podcast is that I talk a lot about one thing,
Connection
Often times, getting an ex back revolves around how connected you can make him feel towards you and making him connected to you revolves around the four levels of conversation,
Small Talk: Anyone can talk about, it can be a stranger in a shop or in a bus
Swapping Facts: We only do this with people we are loosely acquainted with and is the sort of conversation you might have on a first date.
Discussing Opinions: Tend to do with with people you are familiar with, You know they won’t judge you too harshly
Sharing Feelings: Usually reserved for family members and romantic information.
Don’t worry, I talk a lot more in depth about it in the episode (give it a listen!)
At the start of this year I created a private support group for our ex recovery program members where women, going through breakups, could go to get advice and interact with others going through the same thing they are.
As a result, I have gotten to know a lot of amazing people and their situations.
And despite having this personal coaching from me, my team and likeminded individuals they still struggle to make it through the no contact rule.
I can’t tell you how many times I receive a message like this from them,
Chris… I made a bit of a boo boo. I called him during no contact. What do I do next?
And then you have me over here like,
So, I thought I would do something interesting and talk a little about how you can survive your no contact rule.
What you can do to make it through it unscathed without breaking it, ever!
Which leads me to Hannah.
Now, Hannah is unique in the fact that usually when a reader calls in to this podcast they usually hound me with questions.
“What does it mean when he does xyz”
“He told me to F-Off… What do I do?”
But Hannah called in not to ask me a question but to recommend I advise people to do something.
Want to know the craziest part?
I agreed with her!
But before we get started,
Is There A Chance Your Ex Will Take You Back?
Take The Quiz
A Couple Of Important Going Ons At Ex Boyfriend Recovery
I haven’t really made a big deal about this yet because I kind of wanted to surprise you guys but around three months ago I hired a pretty awesome designer to redesign the website.
Now, there is still some work to do on it but one thing that I had him do was redesign the podcast as well.
What do you think?
Pretty awesome, right?
Tell me what you think in the comments of this page!
Why Would An Ex Try To Make You Jealous?
Jun 27, 2017
If you have recently gone through a breakup then you are probably no stranger to jealousy.
Often, I have found that most breakups contain some aspect of jealousy.
But perhaps the most interesting thing out of everything I have seen here on Ex Boyfriend Recovery is that most women want nothing more to learn how to make their exes jealous.
You see, they believe that if they can make their ex jealous he will have some sort of epiphany that will cause him to suddenly wake up and smell the roses (the roses being you.)
But women often forget that while making an ex jealous can be powerful it’s even more impressive to have an ex try to make you jealous and that is what seemed to happen to Kate, a reader of this website.
Now, Kate was kind enough to leave me a voicemail and ask me a question on my speakpipe page.
And here I am answering you, Kate, with a 20 minute podcast episode .
But before we get to the meat of this episode and I teach you why an ex would try to make you jealous I have a bit of a favor to ask.
Is There A Chance Your Ex Will Take You Back?
Take The Quiz
Can You Do Me A Quick Favor?
Recently, I have made an internal decision to put more focus on this podcast and become much more consistent with the content I produce for it.
However, in the grand scheme of things this podcast needs subscribers, ratings and reviews to survive.
So, if you could take a quick second out of your day and leave an honest rating and review on our iTunes page,
And after that if you could please subscribe to the podcast so you get weekly updates of when the episodes come out that would be a tremendous help!
What Do You Do If Your Ex Is Talking To You Before No Contact?
Jun 13, 2017
A question that I have been getting a lot lately is,
“Chris, what if my ex and I are talking a lot to each other before I start the no contact rule? Isn’t it just rude to cut him off suddenly? What if he gets angry?”
It’s really funny because it takes everything I have not to just scream out,
But I suppose that wouldn’t be very friendly of me. So instead, I figured I’d do a whole podcast episode explaining why it’s important to “JUST DO IT” when it comes to the no contact rule.
Today we are going to hear from a woman named Mallory.
Now, the thing that struck me about Mallory is the fact that she seems to be an amazing implementor. She came by Ex Boyfriend Recovery, read some of my stuff and immediately put it into practice.
However, now she can’t but wonder if it was a mistake to do the no contact rule after she was already on semi decent terms with her ex after the breakup.
Let’s discuss!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
How To Keep Him Engaged While Texting
Jun 09, 2017
I can’t tell you how often I receive an email like this,
“Chris, I am trying your text message strategies out on my ex but I’m only getting “neutral responses” back. How can I keep him engaged while texting me?”
That is certainly what Becky thought when she sent me a voicemail.
You see, Becky is in a really difficult situation.
Her boyfriend broke up with her and didn’t speak to her for a few weeks. In a moment of panic she penned a letter to him (which I never recommend) and followed up with a few text messages. He has received both the letter and the messages but has only replied in a neutral way which is far from ideal.
This of course leads her to wonder if neutral responses are a good thing or a bad thing?
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
One of the most difficult/annoying situations to be in is one where you start seeing some incredible progress with your ex.
You have him responding to your text messages.
He’s the one reaching out via phone calls.
Heck, he even tells you that he still loves you.
However, despite all this amazing progress you can’t seem to get him to take that crucial next step of admitting that the two of you are official again.
Such was the case with Vanessa, a woman who left a voicemail on my SpeakPipe page. It seemed that no matter how hard she tried she just couldn’t get her ex to take that extra step and commit. To make matters worse she is caught between a rock and a hard place as she has taken a job out of the country which could be causing her ex to not want to commit.
So, how can she make him commit to her?
But before we dive in to that I have a bit of a favor to ask,
You’ll notice in the episode I gave Vanessa a very clear and detailed game plan about how she can make her ex commit to her but a lot of the things I recommend to her are universal in the fact that when the time comes you can apply them to your own ex.
I’d like to take a look at those things now,
Getting a man commit to you really revolves around two main factors
Investment
Reassurance In Moderation
Now, investment can come in many shapes or forms but generally when I am talking about investment I am talking about things like,
Emotional Investment
Physical Investment
If you can get your ex investing a lot of time into you the more he is going to want to lock you down.
The other thing that you need to take a look at is the reassurance part.
Sometimes your ex boyfriend will say or do certain things to test the waters to see if you are ok with the idea of getting back into a relationship. It’s important to not forget that while you may be frightened of rejection, he is too!
If you notice him doing or saying things that are indicative of him testing the waters then I’d recommend you to reassure him but don’t get into a habit of doing it. Make sure you do it in moderation.
Getting Your Ex Back With The Law Of Attraction
Jun 02, 2017
One of the really amazing things about our Private Support Group is the fact that women are always talking about different strategies that I don’t really cover in all that much detail here on Ex Boyfriend Recovery.
Now, one of the most popular strategies on the group right now is “the law of attraction” or “LOA” for short.
I remember the first time that someone ever told me about this I just rolled my eyes and thought,
There is no way that will ever work. That’s stupid….
It’s a sentiment that I am sure a lot of people have when they hear about it for the first time.
Nevertheless, I gave it a try and really tried to open myself up to it and I have to say that it’s pretty incredible what this mindset shift can accomplish.
So, I decided to take things a step further by doing an interview with one of the worlds most popular law of attraction experts, Arielle Ford.
I really wanted to get a sense of how this stuff could apply to getting an ex back since that is what I think most people here are gunning for.
Watch our interview below,
Now, if you are interested in learning more about Arielle and her course I highly recommend you check out her website.
However, just because it is difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
On the contrary, I just got done interviewing an amazing woman who got her ex back who she shares two children with.
One that was born just months before the breakup occurred…
And another one that kept interrupting his mom ( the woman I was interviewing) during our interview.
No seriously… I totally left it in so you guys could see just how difficult she had it.
And despite these difficult circumstances she prevailed by using a new strategy that we have been testing out in our Private Support Group called “The Re-Breakup Text.”
Matt is a really interesting guy because not only is he a therapist but you may have seen him in a few commercials on TV.
In addition to that he also has his very own podcast called “Dear Mattie”
Oh, and I forgot to mention that he is our first ever repeat guest on the podcast.
Now, I can honestly say that I have interviewed a lot of different people from all walks of life but Matt has this certain happiness about him. Every time I talk to him I literally walk away from the conversation feeling great about myself and I have a feeling you are going to pick up on that vibe when you watch our interview together,
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
One day Mary is walking around thinking everything is fine and the next day she wakes up to find that her boyfriend has disappeared from her on Facebook.
He wanted to breakup and this was his weird way of informing her.
So, Mary did what ever self respecting woman does in that situation, she begged for her ex back.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t having any of it.
So, how the heck did Mary get her ex back?
Well, find out by watching the video below as I interview her,
She Got Him Back After Contacting HIM First After The No Contact Rule!
Mar 02, 2017
I don’t know why but it seems like so many women out there like to challenge the fact that I recommend that they contact their ex after the no contact rule first.
You’d think I would have asked them to sacrifice their first born with all the crazy looks I get.
Kelly was certainly in that group of people who thought that “A MAN” should always contact first.
Oh, perhaps I should back up a second and explain the fact that Kelly is in the Private Facebook Group so my team and I helped her out a lot with her situation. And for the most part she was excellent at implementing the advice we gave her.
There was just one “itty bitty” bump in the road.
She refused to text her ex first…
Here’s what she had to say about the whole thing,
And then I started battling with myself. I went back out and started looking other sites and they’re like don’t you ever text first.
It was at this point that my team and I calmly explained to her all of the benefits of texting first,
How you can approach the conversation with a plan
How you can come at it from a position of strength
How he’s probably dying to hear from you.
And guess what?
All of what we had told her was confirmed when she got him back.
This is Kelly’s story.
Oh and by the way. If you want to read an awesome book I wrote on this topic, go check out “The No Contact Rule Book“!
For those of you who aren’t “in the know” when you buy Ex Boyfriend Recovery PRO I actually give you an opportunity to join a Private Facebook Group where I help women through breakups. One of the coolest things about this is I am always doing “Facebook Lives” on the group where I just take questions for about an hour.
Well, one day a woman joined one of the Facebook Lives named “Sarah Michelle.”
Now, me being the Buffy aficionado that I am couldn’t help but compare her to Sarah Michelle Gellar (AKA: Buffy)
Well, turns out that our Buffy doesn’t just slay vampires she gets exes back as well. Watch the video below to learn more.
Update To Buffy’s Situation
So, I wanted to come back to this post and update it since there has been a development with Buffy’s situation.
Turns out that yesterday our little Buffy got engaged to her ex!
Yep, and here’s my proof,
So, what’s the moral of the story?
Well, if your ex boyfriend tells you that “he hates you” or that “you’ll never get back together” he doesn’t always mean it. In fact, it seems like more of a reaction than anything. Just ask Buffy, she knows!
If you would like to learn more about how to get your ex boyfriend back please check out,
However, just because I may be one of the best in the world at helping women through their breakups doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t have my limitations.
Unfortunately, one of those limitations is clothing.
Look, I am a guy and the truth of the matter is that I know nothing about “what looks good” or “how to pick out the perfect outfit for a date.”
Which is why I brought someone in who does.
Enter Rayne Parvis, a professional stylist and media personality.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Rayne and was blown away by the insights that she dropped during our conversation.
In fact, Rayne was kind enough to send me her book. And just to prove that I’m not lying,
Watch our interview below.
Here’s What To Wear When You See Your Ex
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
What The Professional Bridesmaid Has To Say About Making A Relationship Work
Jan 30, 2017
Jen Glantz is a fascinating woman.
On a whim one day she decided to create a “Craigslist ad” to see if anyone would be interested in hiring her as a bridesmaid.
She woke up to over 200 emails the next day from desperate brides looking for bridesmaids.
That little kernel of an idea soon turned into a full fledged business that she runs where she is literally a bridesmaid for women on their big day. Now, on first glance you may be sitting there wondering,
Umm… what the heck does this have to do with my ex?
Well, Jen Glantz has literally taken part in more weddings than anyone I have ever met so she is up close and personal to what it takes for a couple to get married. I thought it might be interesting to get her opinion on what she thinks makes a relationship work.
Her answer actually caught me off guard a little bit.
Watch What Jen Glantz Had To Say About Making A Relationship Work
What We Talk About In This Episode
How Jen came up with the idea for her business
Some hilarious wedding stories
We don’t live in a Disney movie
Wedding breakups
Brides have problems letting go of exes
Jen Glantz’s personal story and brilliant idea for dating
Do you have a chance of getting him back?
Take Our Quiz
Brad Vs. Chris… The Battle Of The Breakup Gods
Jan 09, 2017
Brad browning is one of the few “breakup experts” that I can put my stock behind.
As sad as this is to admit we live in a world where there are some really sketchy people out there who are trying to take your hard earned money. As a general rule, I say you should never trust a “breakup expert” if they aren’t willing to show their face or go in front of a camera.
Of course, that’s never been a problem for Brad or me,
As you can see, we are more than willing to go on camera to dish out advice.
But that’s when my good buddy Brad got an idea.
Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we did a “versus” video where we basically asked each other questions from our viewers to see how our advice differed?
So, without further ado I give you the “Brad Vs. Chris” video,
Now, just so you know the product we kept talking about in the video is called “The Ex Factor” and you can get it by visiting the big link you see below,
Here’s How To Deal With Anxiety In Your Breakup
Dec 29, 2016
Stop me if I sound like a broken record but going through a breakup is the equivalent of going through a cocaine withdrawal.
Now, that’s a pretty bold statement but it’s actually true.
Studies have proven that the part of the brain that becomes active when you are heartbroken is the same part of the brain that lights up in cocaine addiction.
And to top it off the amount of anxiety you are experiencing with a breakup can be overwhelming for a lot of people which is why I brought Gina Ryan, from “The Anxiety Coaches Podcast” onto the show today to give you some techniques that you can use to deal with the anxiety that you are experiencing in your breakup.
How To Deal With Anxiety In Your Breakup
What We Talk About In This Episode
Gina’s inspiring story about how she handled her anxiety struggles
My familiarity with panic attacks
The affect anxiety can have on your body (hint hint: it’s not good!)
The two fold strategy for handling anxiety issues
The RAIN acronym
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
What To Do When Things With Your Ex Don’t Go According To Plan (With Christine Hassler)
Dec 12, 2016
When life doesn’t go according to plan it can be difficult.
When things with your ex don’t go according to plan it can be downright painful.
-Chris Seiter
I have been doing this for a really long time and the one thing that has become clear to me is that even if you have the best laid plans your ex can do something to completely screw your plans up.
It’s at that point that adaptability kicks in and becomes your best friend.
The problem is that most people struggle to adapt.
Well, that’s kind of what my guest today is a specialist in.
Christine Hassler is kind of a big deal, she has authored “Expectation Hangover” which is essentially the “go to” guide when things don’t go according to plan and runs one of the top podcasts on iTunes.
No seriously, she is super famous!
And to say she “brings it” in this episode is an understatement.
Check it out!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
How To Survive A Soul Crushing Breakup (With Samantha Burns)
Dec 06, 2016
A lot of people don’t know this but there are different levels of breakups.
Some hurt really bad for a while and then eventually we get over them
Some hurt less than we are expecting (though I will admit that this is rare)
And then you have the “soul crushing breakups.”
These are the kind of breakups that shake us up for years. For many, it can feel like their hearts are exploding when in reality they are just beating fine.
So, how do you deal with these “soul crushing breakups?”
Do you simply accept the situation for what it is and work on moving on?
Or
Do you refuse to accept the situation and try to get your ex back?
This was the question I posed to Samantha Burns, the millennial love expert.
Now, I have had the pleasure of interviewing a lot of different guests but I was absolutely blown away with what Samantha had to say. In fact, throughout the interview I referred to her as my new favorite expert.
This is something you don’t want to miss, trust me.
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
Do You Have The Same Values As Your Ex? (With Chase Kosterlitz)
Nov 30, 2016
One of the things that we never talk about on Ex Boyfriend Recovery is if your values match up with your exes.
I learned a long time ago that when you are dealing with someone who is going through a breakup they don’t necessarily care if their ex have the same values as them.
They get what I like to call “tunnel vision.”
Tunnel Vision: Not caring about anything except the goal that’s right in front of them.
But there’s a major problem with this kind of thinking.
You see, the way I look at it is that right now you are at a crossroads and you are about to make a decision that’s going to affect the next few months of your life greatly,
Do you try to get him back?
Or
Do you try to move on?
How do you know what the right decision is for you?
Well, that was the question I posed to today’s guest Chase Kosterlitz,
Now, Chase is an interesting guy.
He runs a very popular podcast on iTunes called “IDo Podcast” with his wife so I thought I would have him on the show to pick his brain on breakups.
Specifically I asked him how you know when you should try to get someone back as opposed to letting them go.
His take was fascinating.
He thinks that you really need to look at your core values and see if they match.
Check it out!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
How To NOT Break The No Contact Rule With Glenn Livingston
Nov 07, 2016
It’s not often that I say this but this may actually be one of my favorite episodes that I have ever done.
And no, it’s not because I am talking about the no contact rule, AGAIN!
Let me give you some background so what I say will make sense.
Dr. Glenn Livingston is a superstar in the “Binge Eating” world.
(I promise this will make sense in a moment.)
In fact, this guy is so credentialed I was a little in awe while I was interviewing him,
He is a veteran psychologist
Long time CEO of a multi-million dollar consulting firm
Has been featured in Chicago Sun Times, CBS Radio, New York Times
And is the author of Never Binge Again
Now, originally I had planned to make this interview all about the poor eating habits that I have seen women adopt after a breakup.
However, after Glenn and I got to talking something interesting began to happen. Instead of only focusing on binge eating we turned our attention to the no contact rule.
As it turns out, the technique that Glenn created to prevent people from binge eating is a perfect fit to stop people from breaking the no contact rule.
Now, I have written a massive book on this topic, “The No Contact Rule Book”, so feel free to check it out!
Now, bear in mind that this is a book for binge eating. However, almost everything in it can be in some way, shape or form be applied to the no contact rule.
Oh, and if you think this isn’t something that is worth your time to read you might want to rethink that because I was so impressed with Glenn’s technique that I am going to modify it and add it to my overall core strategy when it comes to the no contact rule.
Check out our interview below,
Watch Glenn Teach His Technique To Me
What We Talk About In This Episode
Glenn’s Personal Struggles With Binge Eating
How He Kicked “The Binge Habit”
How His Technique For Binge Eating Can Be Applied To The No Contact Rule
Fighting Your Inner Pig
And Much More
Are You Wasting Your Time With Your Ex?
Take The Quiz
They Broke Up And Now They’re Married… Find Out How
Oct 20, 2016
About a month ago I got a really interesting email from a woman named Jessy,
The gist of the email from Jessy said that she broke up with her ex and using Ex Boyfriend Recovery PRO she ended up getting him back. Not only that but he proposed and they got married.
Now, this actually hasn’t been the first time that I have had a hand in getting a couple married.
Well, it’s probably due to the fact that Jessy was so forthcoming with her situation. She was willing to get on camera (with her husband) and make a testimonial for me,
And on top of that I actually got her to agree to coming on the podcast to talk about what she did to win her ex back.
Honestly, I think it’s best if I cut right to the chase on this one.
Here’s How You Know If Your Ex Boyfriend Is The Right Man For You (With Marni Battista)
Oct 15, 2016
One of the worst predicaments that you can find yourself in when it comes to getting an ex boyfriend back is that somewhere down the road you come to the realization that he isn’t the right guy for you.
I mean, I can’t tell you how often I have woken up to an email like this from a woman,
“Chris, I ended up getting my ex boyfriend back (thank you) but after dating for a few weeks I came to the realization that he isn’t the man I want anymore. I think I made a mistake. What should I do?“
Sometimes we can get what I like to call “tunnel vision” when it comes to getting an ex back which basically means you can ignore some pretty important signs telling you that he isn’t the right guy for you because you are so focused on getting your ex back.
And that’s why I brought Marni Battista in for you.
Who is Marni Battista?
Well, Marni runs the very popular website, Dating With Dignity, and she has been featured in publications like ABC, CBS, Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan and Glamour.
To say that she knows her stuff would be an understatement.
She’s an expert in the selection process of men. And the thing I really love about Marni is the fact that she opens up and tells her own story about the mistakes she’s learned along the way.
And I have to say it’s an incredible story that you can read.
But like I said, I brought her on today to talk about how YOU should be making YOUR selection process when it comes to getting your ex boyfriend back.
Check it out,
Video Of This Episode (How To Know If Your Ex Boyfriend Is Right For You)
What We Talk About In This Episode
Marni’s incredible story
How she fine tuned her “man picker”
The importance of not being resistant to what you need to see
What is a “quality man”
What the first step is to finding a quality man
Limiting beliefs and how to overcome them
What is the best place to find a quality man
And of all things… The Bachelor
Are You Wasting Your Time With Your Ex?
Take The Quiz
Using The No Contact Rule With Brad Browning
Oct 12, 2016
The no contact rule is one of those strategies used by all sorts of experts out there in the “ex back” niche. However, I will be the first person to admit that most of the people who recommend it are scammers looking to make a quick buck.
It’s sad but true.
My general rule of thumb is that if someone isn’t willing to get in front of a camera to teach then they aren’t worth your time.
Well, with that segue I would like to introduce you to Brad Browning,
Brad pretty much is the “go to” guy for YouTube advice (as you can see from the picture above) on getting your ex back and his advice WORKS!
He has also written one of the only books that I am willing to recommend on getting an ex back outside of my own,
Brad is one of the very few experts on the planet that I trust. He is also one of the very few experts who you should listen to (me being the other one of course .)
Empowering Women After A Breakup With Marina Margulis
Oct 11, 2016
Marina Margulis is pretty much a super star.
She is the founder of NY Socials,
Which offers a number of personalized matchmaking services, which vary from a range of individual matchmaking packages to our signature Socials memberships or any combination of both.
She has been certified as a professional CMM (certified match maker)
She makes a living by being a dating/relationship coach
Oh, and to top it off in 2014 she was named woman of the year by the NAPW (National Association of Professional Women)
To say that this woman knows her stuff when it comes to dating is an understanding and I was lucky enough to convince her to come on the show to talk to you!
Now, usually when I am trying to get someone to come on the show I do what’s called a “pre-interview.”
Pre-Interview- Essentially this is the interview before the interview. Think of it like a “get to know you” session.
Well, when I conducted my pre-interview with Marina here I was blown away about how passionate she was about empowering women. I mean, I could hear it in this woman’s voice. Which is why we agreed that we wanted this episode to be all about empowering you AFTER your breakup.
Check out the epic episode below,
Video Of This Episode (Empowering Women After A Breakup)
EBR 063: When Texting Goes WRONG With Your Ex…
Oct 06, 2016
When it comes to getting an ex boyfriend back one of the most asked questions that we get is,
How do I text him?
And if you are pretty familiar with our site you would know that I have put together quite a few guides over the years detailing exactly what to do. Well, I want you to take a moment and imagine something for me.
Imagine that you read all of my “in-depth” guides and had a pretty good idea of how I teach texting. And yet, when you actually went to implement my teaching it turned into a disaster.
Well, this is the exact thing that happened to the woman featured in today’s episode.
She sent a string of text messages and they didn’t work out too well for her.
Well, today I am going to dissect her messages and show you what she should have done.
Video Of Episode 63 (When Texting Goes WRONG With Your Ex…)
Pretty crazy, right?
Here’s a better explanation of the situation we are talking about in this episode,
The Situation We Are Talking About
The woman wanted to remain “anonymous” so we are just going to refer to her as anonymous
She completed the 30 day no contact rule
She began texting her ex like she was supposed to
He ended up not responding well to it at all
She has no idea on what to do
Important Things We Talk About In This Episode
The importance of being interesting with your texts
Every text you get is information and it’s important that you use that information properly
My crazy new phone number and the calls I get from it
Not going too fast, too soon
Looking at the situation from your exes perspective
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
What It Takes To Make A Relationship Work With An Ex (With Erik Newton)
Oct 04, 2016
It’s not often that I say this but you really need to listen to this podcast episode.
Not only because it can help you with your ex but it can help you with pretty much any relationship you find yourself in.
Today’s guest is a man by the name of Erik Newton!
Now, the interesting thing about Erik is the fact that he used to be a divorce lawyer. Yes, that means that the man has probably seen more breakups than I have which makes him a very interesting resource for you.
Of course, I say he “used” to be a divorce lawyer but he quit to follow his true passion.
Yup, he quit to talk to couples about relationships through his website and his podcast “Together” which ironically my wife and I were on.
Anyways, so far this has been my favorite episode that I have ever done.
I don’t think I have laughed this hard in a long time.
Handling The First Time You Talk To Your Ex After The No Contact Rule (Live Coaching Session)
Oct 03, 2016
About a year ago I announced on my podcast that I was considering doing coaching. Of course, that coaching was going to be paid.
I know…
I know…
I’m greedy.
But that all changed a few months ago when I was sitting with my wife in my office and I asked her one simple question,
I want to create content that blows people away. Something that they have never seen before…
That’s when she suggested that instead of asking people for money to coach them that I do it for free.
I’ll admit, it took me a little while to fully wrap my head around the idea because no relationship consultant, dating coach or match maker would ever do what they do for free.
But I guess we do .
That’s what makes us different.
That’s why people trust us and continually come back to visit this site.
Enter Whitney!
Whitney was someone who I had been helping for about a month so I knew her situation pretty well. I had identified her as a potential coaching client because her situation was interesting enough to feature.
After some bartering back and forth we agreed that she would be the ideal first live coaching client that I would take on. Here’s the video of our session,
Now, the thing that I am expecting you to get out of this is the simple fact that this is free.
Also, I am doing these live coaching sessions to prove a point.
The Point I Want To Prove: That out of all the “get your ex back” people out there I am pretty much the only one who has the guts to get on camera and coach someone.
My belief has always been that the proof is in the pudding and someone shouldn’t be a coach to someone if they don’t know what they are doing.
In other words, I am trying to show you through actions that I know what I am talking about.
But enough of the “power trip” by me.
Let’s take a look at Whitney’s situation.
Whitney’s “In-Depth” Situation
Before we started our one hour live session I asked Whitney to send me anything she could to help me better her chances.
Well, she did just that.
She did just that in spades.
I remember opening up my email and receiving this uber long PDF document highlighting all of their important dates. Now, normally I would attach this document so you could see it with your own eyes. However, it’s important that we respect Whitney’s privacy.
So instead, I would like to show you the notes I took on her situation.
But before I do that I would like to let you in on what really is confusing Whitney.
Whitney want’s to know how to handle the first interaction with her ex boyfriend after the no contact rule.
That’s really where she stuck and really what we talked a lot about during this live coaching session.
Ok, so here is a quick rundown of her situation,
Whitney and her boyfriend were madly in love
He actually ended up flying her across the country to meet his parents
Things seemed to be going so well until “out of the blue” he broke up with her
Whitney guessed that the reasons for the breakup may have been the new roommates he had or a very serious health condition that he contracted
Hmm… you know what. We do a much better job of covering her situation in the actual recording so I will just leave it there.
I’d like to show you the notes I took on her situation
Looking at Whitney’s situation I can tell that there are going to be some major “headwinds” that she is going to face when it comes to getting him back.
The Major Headwind’s She Will Face
Headwind #1: Why Did He Really Break Up With Her?
Things seemed to be going so well and then “all of a sudden” he does a complete 180 and breaks up with her, why?
The Potential Reasons For Break Up:
The Health Condition (We have some evidence backing this up)
Going Too Fast, Too Soon (Not enough “chase” anymore.)
Something Unknown (Worst case scenario)
Headwind #2: Did You Date Long Enough To Form A Lasting Connection
Generally the better/stronger the connection that you have with your ex the easier it is to get them back.
She dated her ex for a little under two months. This probably wasn’t enough time to build a super strong connection.
So, we are going to have to find a way to make him establish more of a connection with her. We are going to try to weave that within her conversations with him.
My Personal Questions For Whitney
What are your overall goals for a relationship with him? (Marriage, just dating and seeing where it goes?)
Is there a major age difference between the two of you?
Why do you want him back? What is your main reasons for wanting him back?
No Contact
Side Note: Most of the words written beyond this point are reminders to me on what to teach her during the live coaching call.
Whitney is actually in the minority of people who have approached the no contact rule in the right way. Make sure to congratulate her.
Make sure you make her list out every positive thing that she did during the no contact rule.
This seems to be where Whitney is stuck. She is afraid to start a conversation with her ex.
Her Goal With Texting Should Be…
The Tide Theory Mentality: Slowly but surely advancing the conversation intensity and frequency
The ultimate goal here is to get back on the speaking terms with her ex. Much like she was at the beginning of the relationship. However, I want her to be utilizing a few principles throughout the period that she attempts this.
Interdependence Theory: Teach her about the interdependence theory to highlight why he wouldn’t commit. Basically the interdependence theory states that human beings commit to each other based on a cost and benefit scenario. We try to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs. Three main factors are looked at,
Satisfaction: Seemed high in his relationship with Whitney
Alternatives: Average! I would say due to the fact that he might have wanted to live it up because of the health condition thing
Investment: Low… 2 months dating?
Whitney can utilize her conversations with him to improve satisfaction, lower his alternatives and improve his investment in you
The other thing I want her to weave into her conversations is to utilize “The Peak-End Rule”
Peak-End Rule: Human beings usually remember an experience based on the peak of it and the end of it. Since you have such a STRONG peak and such an amicable end I think she would do well by doing subtle things to reinforce her peak or things that make him remember it.
Finally, I need to teach her how to construct a perfect first contact text message utilizing the following factors,
Knowledge
Story
Action Phrase
The Tie In (Optional)
The Results Of Our Coaching Session
Almost immediately after I had stopped recording our live coaching session Whitney wanted to try out the first contact text message that we had constructed on the coaching call.
EBR 062: I Unfriended My Ex Boyfriend On Facebook… What Do I Do?
Sep 27, 2016
It’s funny, I still remember the days when MySpace was a thing.
(If you don’t know what that is don’t worry, I got your back)
But then Facebook came along and took over as the social media giant!
And as the years ticked by and Facebook became more and more mainstream it started to work it’s way into relationships. Heck, I suppose I do owe Facebook a debt of gratitude because without it I wouldn’t have met my wife.
(FYI: we met on Facebook!)
Don’t believe me?
Well, here is our very first conversation ever,
Honestly it’s really funny looking back at it but I don’t want to get too off topic here.
As Facebook has worked it’s way into dating there are certain rules that you need to abide by if you want to achieve the maximum results with it.
And that leads us to today’s episode.
A few days ago a woman contacted me and asked a relatively simple question,
I have unfriended my ex on Facebook as a result of the advice of my friends but when I found your website I noticed that you advised against unfriending your ex. What am I supposed to do?
I’m not going to lie.
This is a question that I get all the time and in this episode I tackle it!
What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?
EBR 061: Turning Your Breakup Into A Golden Opportunity
Sep 19, 2016
Have you ever heard of the term, renaissance man, before?
Well, a renaissance man is defined as,
A person with many talents or areas of knowledge.
And that’s who I feel like I have featured on today’s episode of the podcast.
Allow me to introduce you to Neil Sattin,
A professional dog trainer
Singer/songwriter
Strategic intervention expert
Relationship/life coach
He is also today’s featured guest as he is going to teach us about how to turn your breakup into a golden opportunity. Neil and I talked for about an hour and I have to say that after that hour was finished it really inspired me to look at breakups in a different way.
Heck, even Amor, one of our top team members, loved his interview,
So, believe me when I say that this is a MUST WATCH interview.
Video Of Episode 61 (Turning Your Breakup Into A Golden Opportunity)
What We Talk About In This Episode
Neil’s fascinating background that led him to want to help people with their relationships
Source Point Therapy
The Relationship Alive Podcast
How to become yourself in the relationship
How Neil got his ex back (who he is engaged to)
The healthy way to break up
The one simple question you should ask yourself after you do something
EBR 060: “Dating Yourself” During No Contact With Veronica Grant
Sep 16, 2016
Have you ever heard of a philosophy called,
Dating Yourself?
Well, I have to say that after Veronica Grant, a HUGE proponent of the theory explained it’s premise to me I was totally sold on the idea.
So, what is “Dating Yourself?”
Well, I think it’s best if I allow Veronica’s words to do the talking,
Dating yourself is kind of what it sounds like. Doing things for yourself that you would either want or expect your significant other to do for you. So, it can be things like buying yourself flowers, writing yourself a love note, taking like a hot bubble bath, taking yourself out for a drink or for a nice dinner but really the deeper essence of it is making yourself feel how you want to feel on your relationship.
What an idea, right?
Well, in today’s episode of “The Ex Boyfriend Recovery Podcast” I talk to Veronica Grant, a dating mindset coach/yoga teacher all about breakups and how to handle them.
Enjoy!
Video Of Episode 60 (Dating Yourself During The No Contact Rule)
I have to admit that I enjoyed the interview with Veronica so much that I decided to start incorporating them into the podcast a lot more.
I mean, sometimes all it takes for “relationships” to really click for someone is to have a person come at it from a different angle and I think that’s what these interviews do for you.
I also want to take a moment to thank Veronica Grant for coming on the show.
If you are reading this Veronica (which I am sure at some point you will) thank you so much!
EBR 059: How To Get Him Back If You Were Engaged…
Sep 09, 2016
One of the things that I am proudest about when it comes to Ex Boyfriend Recovery is the fact that we help so many women out in so many different (and unique) situations.
One of those situations is where women are going through breakups with the men they were engaged with.
Luckily, this is a situation that we have actually seen a lot of success with,
In today’s episode you are going to hear from a woman whose engagement was just broken by a man for a ridiculous reason (which I will tell you about in a second.)
What you really need to grasp as you listen to this episode is that even when a situation seems bleak there is hope.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the ex boyfriend recovery podcast. As always, excited to have you here today and as always we are filming with two really nice cameras and if you are listening to this on Itunes, we would like to welcome you to the show! Alright, so what’s going on lately? Today were going to talk about engagements. Specifically what happens if you are engaged to a man and he breaks up with you. How do you get him back? Should you get him back? Should you just try to move on? We’re going to hear from a woman named Anonymous. She didn’t leave her name for me. So, I can’t really give you her real name.
So, Anonymous has found herself in this exact situation where she was engaged to a guy, madly in love with him. They had an argument and they broke up. There’s some other external factors that are going into her situation that makes it interesting and most importantly, it makes it a challenge for me but before we get to that, I have another announcement to make.
For the first time ever, we are going to start doing live coaching on air. If that makes any sense. I suppose it’s not live because it’s not being streamed live but we are going to do coaching where you and I could potentially talk one on one. We’ll record the call. It can be an hour long call where we, you know I just give you advise on your situation and the cool thing about this is that it’s completely free. Now, I know that seems too good to be true but it isn’t and I know there’s going to be a lot of peope who want to try this out and were not going to be able to do everyone. We’re not going to be able to do this live coaching 101 on the podcast with everyone but on top of that. On top of the live coaching, are us going to start interviewing other people. Other people in the relationship industry. Other people who are Doctors who have something insightful to say about break ups or relationship in genereal. As our intention to make this podcast the best it possibly can be and the best way to do that is to start offering new types of content.
Yes, we will always do this questions where you can call in, ask me a question and I’ll feature it and I’ll do my best to answer it in about 25-30 minutes but the thing is that can get a little bit stale. I always like to produce new types of content. When we first started ex boyfriend recovery, we just simply created articles and it was just me alone. I would create articles. I would do the best I could but eventually we hit a point where I knew you guys probably want something else. so, we created this podcast. I thought it was a great way to connect with the audience.
Of course, I wanted to do better and that’s where our Youtube channel came into play and now we are even transcending that. We want to do live coaching on the podcast and on Youtube. As well as, interviewing relationship experts out there so we can truly give you the best chance of getting your ex back or getting over your break up which is what we’re all about here.
We want one of those two avenues for you. Ok. So, enough talk. Enough chit chat. Let’s get down to business. Let’s hear Anonymous’ question as I blankly stare at the screen and listen to it.
Anonymous:
Hi Chris,
So, long story short. I have been with my exboyfriend for two years. He proposed to me so, we have been engaged closing in on a year now and he broke up with me last week over an argument that we had where he said something hurtful and I compared him to my ex husband which he despises. In all fairness, he said if I ever did that again, he was going to leave me. We moved away from my family, from his family, for a fresh start. We’re only two months into a year long lease and my children from my previous marriage live with us. He’s super close with them and I’m really only 4 days into complete no contact after begging and pleading and doing all of that which I’m completely ashamed of at this point. I really want him back. I really love him. I really want to get married and I just don’t know what to do at this point. He’s so angry and we’re in this limbo where I’m not in a position that I can leave right now. So, I don’t really know what to do or how to modify this no contact and I just wanted to know if you can give me some insight and some feedback, some advice, I’d really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Chris:
Alright, thank you so much anonymous for calling in and asking your question. I know it’s a difficult situation to be in especially when you are so close to getting that ring. So, I probably just going to do everything in my power to help you out and I’m also going to review one of our best success stories from a woman who found herself in a situation just like you. But first things first, let’s recap your situation. Often time, a lot of people call in, they give me fluff. So, I’m just going to talk about the most important points to your situation. So, we know what to do kind of going forward. So, you’ve been with your ex for two years. Very important point to know that. You can kind of tell the seriousness of the relationship. The longer you’ve been with the person, probably the more serious it is. He proposed to you and you’ve been engaged for a year. Which is, that’s good. I think that’s positive. You know you’re very close to getting married. Typically engagements do last that long.
You broke up over an argument where you compared to your ex husband. Now, that is a petty reason to break up and I will talk about that a little bit later. You are two months into a year long lease and your children live with you. You’re 4 days into the no contact rule but it’s kind of difficult because you do live with your ex and you don’t know how to approach that. At the same time, you’ve made pretty much the general mistake that everyone makes. You’ve begged, pleaded, prayed that he would come back and you’ve embarassed yourself but let me assure there’ s no reason to be embarrassed about this. Most of the women who come to exboyfriend recovery, who seek my help, who seek my advice are in this situation where they beg for their exes or they made a lot of mistakes. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to impact your chances negatively going forward. Obviously, it’s going to impact it negatively but not as much as you think and you find yourself in kind of a limbo position where you don’t know what to do right now and you’re hoping that I can shed light on that. Alright, so, let’s talk first about hope because I feel like a lot of the women who come to exboyfriend recovery have no hope. One of our–in fact, let rephrase that.
Our most asked question that we get every single day, “Do I have a chance?”. Women without hope ask this. They want hope and so I’m going to give that you right now. I’m going to give that you right now. I’m going to read you one of my favorite success stories from a woman named R. Weird name I know but it is a fake pen name because she didn’t want her name out there. Kind of like you Anonymous. So, R is someone who came to our website, exboyfriend recovery and commented April 19th of 2015. That’s relatively recent, within in a year. Alright, so here’s what she says.
R:
My fiance and I broke up about a month ago and I was DESPERATE for him to come back. I begged, I cried, I even made him cry lol! I couldn’t believe that someone who prepared to marry me and spend their life with me could suddenly just decide that he no longer wanted to be with me. Whatever. I quickly dried my tears and in my typically R style, I brainstormed. I Googled like you have never seen a woman Google. I spent hours and hours trying to fair out not only what he wanted, but how to get what I wanted. Well, I decided that I wanted him and then Googled the crap out of how to get my ex back. I kid you not. I read every single article that Google threw at me. Even my Facebook advertisements starts offering me solutions hahaha! However it all came to a crashing halt when I found your site. I read every single thing that I can find that was relevant to my situation and I attempted to follow every single rule that you’ve laid on table. No contact obviously killed me and I didn’t do too well at it other than not starting any conversations through Facebook, calling and others. However everything else yeah. I joined boxing, revamped my personal style, got my hair done, reached to numerous friends and family and made plans. I took this past month to really, really remember who I am. Bottomline is, I became the girl he fell in love with again. Well, long story short. He came running back with speeches of undying love and happiness. R-1, Fiance-0. I’ll invite you to the wedding. Thanks a ton. You saved my ass big time.
Chris:
Pretty cool right? Pretty cool situation where someone gave us her feedback. So anonymous when you’re listening to that story, that success story, I want you to be filled with hope and know that this isn’t completely over. Ok, so let’s look at this logically. Your exboyfriend broke up with you because of an argument. An argument where you compared him to your ex husband. Now, I can see where he’s coming from. No man likes to be compared to an ex. Especially an ex that is vile or someone that you mentioned that your ex boyfriend hates with a passion but looking at this logically, isn’t that kind of petty reason to break up with someone? because they compared you to their ex in a moment of anger? I mean surely, if he’s old enough and has experienced enough relationships, he knows that sometimes when couples fight, they can be dirty. They can be really nasty. They can throw out things that they know is going to hurt the other person especially if they feel like they want to hurt the other person and I think that’s essentially what happended here. I think you found yourself in a moment of anger. You compared him to your ex and the blew a gasket. Now, to me this is actually good news.
Good news because it is a petty reason to completely throw out an engagement. You fought. Fights are normal. And if I were him and listening to this, just dude, realize, fights are normal. This kind of things happen. Don’t take it personally. She just probably said it because she was upset with the current situation and probably if you didn’t break up with her, it would have blown over the next day and things would have been smooth. That’s generally how most couples fight, at least healthy fights. So, I think it’s a good reason. I think it gives you some hope anonymous because it is a petty reason to break up with you and it is the type of reason where I can see him coming back and thinking, “You know what. I really messed up. That girl, she was the best girl. She was the best thing that ever happened to me and I messed up. I really regret the break up.”” Now, another thing to give you hope is something called, The Peak-End Rule. Have you ever heard of this? It’s really cool. It’s the psychological principle that basically states that human beings don’t remember an experience based on the sum of it’s parts. They don’t remember expereince 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 with that person. They don’t remember that. They remember it simply from the peak of the experience, the most intense exciting moment and the end.
So, when you compare that to you break up, I don’t know what your peak was but your end, personally speaking, I have seen a lot worse in my time and that gives you hope. Definitely, definitely think when he remembers your relationship, yes he will remember the break up, which really wasn’t that bad. You compared him to your ex husband. Big wop. He’ll get over it but I think the peak of your relationship, he loved you so much he was willing to marry you. That’s a really positive sign. The peak is going to outweigh the end. I think that’s important to remember.
Especially when you’re getting an ex back because this peak end thing hold true. They’re done multiple studies in different aspects. It holds true with food. It holds true with movies. It holds true with relationships ok? And I think a key component to the peak-end is that if you’re going to have a really good chance of getting your exboyfriend back, the peak needs to outweigh the end. Essentially what you have here is an exboyfriend remembering a relationship from two points, the most exciting point, and the worst point. So, if the worst point outweighs the exciting point, chances are he may remember the relationship in a negative way. But if the peak, the high point of the relationship outweighs the end point which I think is definitely in your case Anonymous, you have a pretty good chance of getting him back, assuming you followed the directions that I give you. Now, does that mean I am a god to getting an ex back?
Can I see the future?
Can I guarantee that you can get him back?
Can’t do that. I’m not going to lie to you. Anyone, who does do that is lying to you. I can’t guarantee that you’re going to get your exboyfriend back. All I can do is help yo improve your chances and I think I came up with a game plan for you. So, the first thing that we need to talk about is something called the interdependence theory. Something–one of my favorite theories that I’ve stumbled across recently and I keep talking about it over and over again like a broken record but that’s because that’s how much I believe in this. So, what is the interdependence theory? Well, before we get into that, let’s look at your exboyfriend, he wasn’t willing to marry you ok? He was willing to throw the relationship out over a fight. To me, I’m getting a sense that he may have been a commitment phobe.
Yes, he was willing to marry you and that is an action that he took that says yes, I’m willing to commit to you but you were engaged for a year. You’re probably close to your wedding date, as it gets closer he starts to realize, “Wow, this is for life. Can I be with this one person for life?” And it scares him and he looks for any reason he can to break up with you. Don’t rule it against him. It’s normal for a human being to be a little apprehensive especially they’re about to enter into a lifelong commitment. It’s really rare for a human being not to have some worries about that. Everyone has kind of a commitment phobia in them. I know my wife tells me a story about before she met me, she was such a commitment phobe that she coudln’t even commit to a cellphone plan which she told me this before we actually dated and it freaked me out so much I was kind of worried about dating her because I was thinking this could girl could break my heart.
Luckily, I’m Chris Seiter. I’m awesome haha and arrogant!
Anyways, so, let’s look at your situation. Here’s what I think is happening. He may have been a little commitment phobic and usually we can use the interdependence theory to determine that. So, what is the interdependence theory?Well, the interdependence theory really revolves around three factors,
So the interdependence theory as a whole basically states that human beings commit to another on a cost and benefit scenario or basis excuse me. In other words, what were trying to do when we commit to a person is maximize the benefits that we get out of the relationship and minimize the cons that we get out of the relationship. Imagine you had pro and con column. You know, how you put the pros are positives, cons are negatives. Imagine we did that. Imagine we created a pr and con for your relationship with your ex Anonymous. What your ex boyfriend is trying to do is he’s trying to maximize the benefits that he gets out of you. She’s beautiful-benefit, I love her personality-benefit, maybe she’s a little annoying when these certain things happens-con. Essentially what he’s trying to do is minimize the cons, so there are no cons and maximize the benefits and you can use three factors to determine that. So, the first factor is satisfaction. So how satisfied is your ex boyfriend in the relationship? The second factor is–excuse me, alternatives. I almost said attraction. The second factor is alternatives. Is there anyone else out there that can meet my needs better than this person? And as I get to talking about the interdependence theory, I’m going to kind of group satisfaction and alternatives together because as, you’ll find out later when satisfaction goes up, alternatives go down. And then finally the third thing is investment. How much time, how much effort, how much money, how many resources have you invested into that sort of relationshp. Using this three things, we can really determine how likely a man is to commit to you or break up with you.
So, let’s look at your situation.
So, your ex boyfriend broke up with you after a fight. A fight where you compared him to your ex husband who he despises which again I think is kind of a petty reason for a break up. I mean don’t you? But the thing is that probably lowered his satisfaction with the relationship and as his satisfaction lowers with you Anonymous, his alternatives go up. He starts thinking, “You know what? I can find someone better than her. I really can. I could find someone better than her. ” And of course investment. We already know that investment was pretty high. He was willing to marry you. So, that’s a pretty bold action of putting his resources towards the relationship.
He was with you for over two years, which is a positive thing. Most of the break ups that we see here are below a year. So, you are definitely in that minority where you have gotten a long lasting commitment out of him. So, here’s what I think happened. Satisfaction went down and as a result the alternatives went up. So, he was less satisfied with the relationship. After the fight, he began thinking I can find someone better than this. I can find someone who doesn’t treat me like this and even though his investment was high into the relationship, the fact that his satisfaction went down and the alternatives went up was enough to cause him to break up with you.
And the cool thing about the interdependence theory is you can reverse engineer it. So, you know why he broke up with you essentially. You know that three main factors that went into that. You can also use this three main factors to reverse engineer the situation to help you get him back. So, what does that mean? Well, we know that in order for him to have less alternatives to want to date, his satisfaction with you has to go up and his investment with you has to go up. So, that’s where I’d focus in most of my energy on. When it comes to getting your exboyfriend back Anonymous, getting this engagement back, getting married to him, you really need to focus on the satisfaction that he has with you and you need to focus on getting him to invest time. Now, like I said, the alternatives and satisfaction aspect of the interdependence theory are connected. So, when his satisfaction with you goes up, his alternatives will go down and as long as the investment is high, you’re going to get him back most likely. I can guarantee it.
Excuse me. Kind of got a cold. So, you are in a really difficult situation specifically because the no contact rule is going to lose a lot of it’s effectiveness, due to the fact that you’re living with your ex and you can’t exactly get rid of a lease especially if it’s a year long lease and you’re only two months into it and speaking from someone who had to break a lease early to move into a house, it can be expensive breaking a lease. So, if that’s financially not happening which I’m guessing it’s not because of your call, you’re going to find a way to do the no contact rule with him in the house and often times that’s impossible to do a full no contact rule.
You can just do minimal contact. So, essentially don’t speak to him unless spoken to. If you are spoken to by him directly in person, don’t text him, don’t call him, don’t do anything like that. If you are in person with him and he just says, “Hey, nice day outside.” Keep it short, brief, not kind of bitchy. Say, “Yeah, it is.” Statement, simple. Don’t do anything to engage him in a conversation because that’s just not going to benefit you in any way. Now, you’re situation with him also kind of mention our plan of the value chain. So, if you know exboyfriend recovery, if you read my book exboyfriend recovery pro. You know that I’m a big believer in taking things slow. Letting things unfold naturally. I think things always worked out better with an ex when they appear to be natural.
Even if you’re kind of manipulating them to where they’re not a little bit natural. As long as they appear to be natural, you’re in pretty good shape but that’s kind of difficult to do, especially if you live with this person. You can’t exactly text them you know or call them. What purpose would that serve if you’re living with the person? I mean you could text him when he’s at work and everything but not going to be the same if he’s coming to you every single day. So, obviously if it’s possible, get out of there, leave. I know it’s kind of difficult thing to see. If it’s possible. That’s the key thing I want to say here. If it’s possible and you can afford it and it’s not going to uproot your children’s lives to drastically, do it. Find another apartment, live there. If not, here’s the game plan I would follow.
So you’re going to do the minimal contact rule. 21-30 days, by ear, just play by ear. You’ll be the best judgment when it comes to this. Now, letting things unfold naturally is going to be difficult especially if you live with the person. You can’t essentially just text them and hope everything works out especially if the person is there.
So, what do you do?
Well, you want to take things slowly. That’s the key thing here. You can talk to him in person but keep it very slow. Almost like a text, almost like bringing up a conversation with him, interest him and then leave. Kind of do this slowly.
If I were to chart this on a graph, the graph would go up on how slowly you’re building attraction. Don’t just from 0 to 60 and this is the biggest problem that women have when they live with an ex and they’re trying to get them back. They do the no contact rule and they think ok, that’s it done. Alright, let’s go on a date. Mistake. Re-attraction needs to be built here, before you go on date. Going on a date is almost– I don’t want to say stupid but it’s almost pointless when no attraction has been built before hand. There’s nothing that you’re going to get positive out of t. he date. In short, most women think, “Ok, the date is the big thing where
I’ll build attraction.” But that’s not going to work. It’s too much too soon. It’s from 0-60. You’re going from 0-5, 5-10, 10-15, 15-20, so on and so forth. Slowly build the attraction ok? Start off small. Talk to him a few times a day, and then a few days later talk to him a little bit more and then a few days later, talk to him a little bit more and essentially eventually you’ll get to a point where you are texting him constantly.
Phone calls aren’t out of the question. You’re talking to him pretty normally. That’s when you want to strike. Have those kind of interesting conversations where he’s going to be fascinated with you ok? Satisfy him ok? Become the version of yourself that he fell in love with which if that sounds familiar, that is exactly what the person who got her ex fiance back did, R. She essentially became the version of herself that her ex boyfriend fell in love with and a lot of how she did that was doing things for herself ok? She entered a boxing club, she started working out, she changed her hair style, she did things that made her feel beautiful. I can’t stress this enough.
We have seen that people who use their time wisely, during the no contact rule have a much better chance of success than people who don’t. And there’s that old phase, I’m going to kind of end the episode on this old phrase, quote as suppose.
Time heals all wounds.
Right? You’ve heard that right? Time heals all wounds. I don’t necessarily believe that. Time only heals all wounds if you use that time wisely. You can’t sit here and tell me that a woman who’s going through a break up and says some really nasty stuff to her exboyfriend or her exboyfriend says some really nasty stuff to her, that a woman is just going to sit there and get over it in a couple of weeks. It could happen. You know, she could come to her senses and realize, “You know, he really didn’t mean it.”
But something tells me that a woman who has an ex boyfriend who says some really nasty stuff to her and then she actively goes out trying to prove him wrong. She actively goes out improving herself, making herself feel good. That woman is probably going to get over it sooner than the woman who just sits on her hands and does nothing which I’m sorry to break it to you guys, that’s what a lot of you do. You expect that the no contact rule is going to do all of the work for you. Let me tell you a secret. It’s not. It is only half of the strategy that we teach and I need to brainwash you into believing that because it hurts me when women come to the website, they do the no contact rule and they come back and say it didn’t work. And then I probe into their situation a little bit and find out that that’s all they did. They didn’t follow the value chain. They didn’t try to rebuild attraction slowly before they got a date. They didn’t do any of that. That is the most important thing to do ok?
So, keep that in mind as you’re trying to get your ex boyfriends back.
EBR 058: Why He Really Broke Up With You…
Sep 07, 2016
“How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.” W. Somerset Maugham
It is said that when one goes through a breakup they go through a withdrawal period. Similar to that of a drug addict. It is also said that some breakups can be so devastating that you can feel a sharp pain in your chest. Similar to that of an heart attack.
Here’s my point.
Going through a breakup is not easy. Which is why I make an active effort to help out as many people as I can through this website.
I prepped for this episode for an hour before recording it because I really wanted to have something insightful to say since McKensie’s situation is pretty complex.
Enjoy!
Video For Episode 58 (Why He Really Broke Up With You…)
How are the videos coming along in your opinion?
Slowly but surely the “Ex Recovery Headquarters” is coming to fruition. If you couldn’t tell we got this epic glass dry erase board with our logo etched into it,
Plus a pretty awesome logo sign so we have a more professional look around the office,
Honestly, I can’t wait until it’s done!
But enough of that. You probably want to hear about McKensie’s situation!
McKensie’s Situation
She is currently on day 9 of the no contact rule
She dated her ex boyfriend for a total of 9 weeks
Both of them were 28 years old
They got serious very quickly
She was the first girl that he had ever introduced to his family (not sure I buy that completely)
A few weeks after introducing her to his family he started acting weird
He started saying “things just aren’t right” and broke up with her
He removed photos of them on Facebook but left a few of her where she was tagged in but didn’t actually appear in
Two weeks into dating he picked up two new roommates who were 22 and 23 years old
He recently tested positive for a heart mutation
Also, his workload is crazy
What We Talk About In This Episode
The role of him testing positive for a heart mutation played in the breakup
The “roommate factor”
Why his workload is an important aspect to look at
Taking Facebook pictures down is a common practice