The Ex Boyfriend Recovery Podcast

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My Relationship Ended Badly; Can I Sill Get Him Back? Sep 28, 2021

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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. So let’s tackle the big question first, should you get your ex back? Can you get them back? 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 the quiz 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 there’s an article on our website called The Red Flags of Not Getting Back With an Ex. 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 w…

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How Do I Break Down My Ex Boyfriend’s Emotional Wall? Sep 19, 2021

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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? Take the quiz 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 th…

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My Ex-Boyfriend Wants to Hang Out Sep 08, 2021

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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? Take the quiz 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. This is the way you should be approaching trying to get an ex back. That’s the approach that you want to take. 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…

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He Went Back To His Ex, But Still Texts Me Sep 05, 2021

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Today I’m super excited to talk about what to do when your ex goes back to their ex but still ends up texting you. In fact, this is a situation that we’ve talked a lot about in the past. Ultimately I think there are three big questions we need to consider answering. Defining what this situation actually looks like in real life Understanding the reasons for why an ex will do this Unpacking how avoidants operate and how this plays into the equation. If that didn’t make a lick of sense to you try not to worry. I’m going to be answering each of these questions in depth. Let’s get started. What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back? Take the quiz What This Situation Actually Looks Like All right. So what does this look like? 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? So what is going on here? What is going through your ex’s brain? Why did they leave you? Why did they go to this new person? Why are they texting you? Does that mean they want you back? 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.The post He Went Back To His Ex, But Still Texts Me first appeared on Ex Boyfriend Recovery.

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Success Story: How One Woman Got Her Fearful Avoidant Ex Back Aug 24, 2021

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If you’re interested in learning how to get a fearful avoidant ex back then this is definitely the success story you want to pay attention to. I had the pleasure of talking to Aimee who is a tenured member of our program and ended up getting her ex back. Don’t believe me? We talked about, How she got her fearful avoidant ex back If following the ex recovery program actually worked How her ex proposed And much more Let’s just right into it. What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back? Take the quiz How Aimee Got Her Fearful Avoidant Ex To Propose 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…

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I Ran Into My Ex! What Do I Do Now? Aug 18, 2021

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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? Take the quiz Tip #1: Adopt The Outgrowth Mindset 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 m…

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I Broke Up With My Boyfriend And He Went Back To His Ex Aug 11, 2021

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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? Take the quiz If Your Ex Went Back To His Ex Will It Last? Your ex went back to his ex, will it last? All right. 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. You should do it after a no contact rule, of course. 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…

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The Best Statuses To Make Your Ex Jealous Aug 10, 2021

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Today, we’re going to talk about social media posts or statuses that can make your ex jealous. Now, as always, we try to make this an all encompassing guide on jealousy through social media. 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? Take the quiz The 9 Statuses That Can Make Your Ex Jealous 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 it’s always like the bane of my existence, I’ve even done entire podcast episodes, I think even entire posts talking about why it’s important not to break the no contact rule for a simple birthday sort of greeting. 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 a…

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How To Stay In No Contact Aug 08, 2021

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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? Take the quiz Defining What The No Contact Rule Is So, what is the no contact rule? 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…

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Why Is My Ex Trying To Hurt Me? Jul 20, 2021

Show notes

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? Take the quiz 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. They give their emotional support to their partner when things are tough. They’re comfortable being alone and use that time to explore and innovate. They also have a really strong capacity to reflect on how they are being in a relationship, whether this relationship is something they want to continue with going forward. 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 an…

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