Today I’d like to talk about why I believe ditching your ex after a breakup makes you more attractive to them and can eventually lead to them asking for you back.

It seems to be common knowledge that a certain phenomenon seems to exist when it comes to “ditching exes.”

And perhaps it is this comment from quora that best sums it up,

Well, it’s that “bolded part” of the comment that interests us.

“I cannot explain it. It’s like some mysterious energy that when you genuinely pull out, the other person comes back into your life.”

Now, I’m not a big believer in “mysterious energies” but I can’t tell you how many comments and experiences I have that prove this.

Like this comment,

And this one,

And this one,

I’ve written in the past that this phenomenon occurs when you seem to genuinely ditch your ex for good and the great irony with it is that often times when you get to a point where you are “over” an ex you don’t want them back anymore. This ultimately leads to the narrative of exes coming back at the wrong time, when you don’t want them.

So today, I’d actually like to peel back the layers even more and look at the reasons for why this phenomenon exists.

In my opinion it boils down to a combination of four things,

Let’s get to work.

Ok, so for this one I’m going to really cite my knowledge of avoidants.

As many of my readers know, our average client believes that their exes contain avoidant characteristics.

But avoidants are interesting in the fact that given enough time they can begin to romanticize past relationships.

In fact, according to Free To Attach,

Avoidants are free to long for an ex once that person is unavailable out of the relationship, and typically out of contact so they are untouched by actual engagement and their deactivation systems aren’t triggered.

So, once enough time goes by an avoidant literally begins to tap into nostalgia.

But I actually think there’s something deeper at play here. It’s often not as simple as,

Go through a breakup

Wait

Then your ex has nostalgia

I think the reason we are seeing “time” work so well is that it gives the ex enough time to reflect and think back to how good they had it with you.

That’s what the nostalgia is doing and ironically this leads us pretty seamlessly to our next discussion point.

I’m pretty big on looking at commitment when it comes to reverse engineering the breakup process.

Generally human beings have six main criteria when it comes to making commitment decisions,

But I’d really like to highlight alternatives as a commitment point today.

Alternatives basically argues that we are always looking for the best alternative out there. Can someone better meet my needs than my current partner?

If you really think about it almost all breakups happen because one person thinks they can do better or that they deserve better.

It’s the old grass is greener syndrome.

If I leave the person I’m with then the grass is surely greener on the other side and almost always, at first it is.

Remember, with every new relationship there’s a honeymoon period where things seem overly great at first but eventually that honeymoon period wears off and the real comparisons begin to set in.

And that’s when an interesting phenomenon occurs.

A long time ago I wrote an articled called, The Ungettable Girl.

In it I make an argument that we are always internally comparing our partners to our past partners whether we are conscious of it or not. This “scale” changes based on our relationship journey. At the beginning we are bound to always choose our current partner over a past partner because everything with that new person is, well, new. However, over time that “rating” may change and that rating is particularly relevant to what we’re talking about here.

This might partially explain why exes are coming back later and later in the game. This is because enough time has to go by to where they can make a true comparison with you.

Of course, one other thing tends to occur.

Lately I’ve been talking a lot about my concept of the pedestal effect,

Essentially I argue that the smartest thing you can do after a breakup is to knock your ex down off the pedestal. Too often I see men and women holding their exes up like they were the great lost loves of their lives. This naturally causes them to place their exes up on a pedestal and exes are smart enough to realize this.

And you know the only place you can look when you are at the top of the mountain?

Down.

So, exes who know you are in love with them, more than they are in love with you begin to lose respect for you but not only that, you lose value to them as well.

This is why I’m always going on and on about the importance of finding something you care about more than your ex in the post breakup period. It helps you knock them down off the pedestal and move past them.

I don’t think I’ve ever told this story before but here goes.

One of my early breakups when I was in college was with this girl who held me on a pedestal. While to so people having a person hold them on a pedestal sounds amazing, it didn’t so much for me at the time. After thinking back and reflecting I think it had to do with the fact that someone putting me above them on the pedestal made me feel like I was better than them.

As a result, I felt like I could do better than them.

Now, when you break up with someone like this a natural assumption gets formed. So, I break up with this girl and my assumption is,

She’s going to obsess about me, act really anxious, try to win me back, etc.

Only she didn’t.

In fact, she was so adamant about moving on after the breakup that I began to reconsider everything I had ever thought about her before.

Did she not love me as much as she claimed?

Did I mean so little to her?

What is going on?

Ultimately the thing I learned from the experience was that when someone begins to move on from you after a breakup you actually gain more respect for them and it kind of turns your world upside down because you start thinking that your time together wasn’t as valued by them as you thought.

Of course, one other thing starts happening.

Now we get into the win/lose the breakup territory.

No one wants to lose the breakup.

It seems like a petty thing to talk about but it’s true. Now, if we operate under the assumption that your ex believes they are “above you” on the pedestal then they naturally will believe that they are going to win the breakup.

They’re expecting you to,

Basically they think you are going to act super desperate after a breakup.

But what if you didn’t?

What if instead of all that you simply ditched them.

Not to say that you don’t still care about them, it’s very hard to turn off your feelings completely.

However, instead of begging for them back you simply ignored them.

Instead of blowing up their social media accounts you did fun things and posted them on your social media.

What if instead of having the worst time of your life after a breakup, you had the best time of your life?

That’s prone to make your ex jealous. Make them feel like I felt in that story I told above about. All of a sudden it becomes less about how great their breakup decision was and more about why you are doing so great without them.

Did you even care about them?

So, ditching your ex after a breakup will make you more attractive to them because of four interchangeable reasons,

It’s always amusing to me that people argue with this too. I mean, it’s been proven time and time again that moving on from an ex after a breakup makes you more attractive to them but here’s the rub, it can’t be faked. I think one of the mistakes I made in my early days of Ex Boyfriend Recovery was talking about “moving on without moving on” from a “fake it, till you make it” approach.

That doesn’t work.

It needs to be authentic.

Ditch your ex after a breakup, reap the benefits.

Today I’d like to have an in-depth discussion on avoidants specifically as it relates to them falling in love and what that looks/feels like.

Now, most of the time when one of my peers covers this topic they focus on the major signs avoidants love you and what that looks like. In fact, I think I’ve even written an article covering that as well but when you talk about what love feels like from an avoidant perspective the discussion becomes really complicated.

Take for example this little nugget of knowledge.

An avoidant will typically have two big waves of “love” that they’ll feel for someone. We can divide these waves up into two phases,

And that’s exactly how we’re going to divide this article up.

Let’s begin.

In researching this article I do what I always do, I peruse the forums and often I’ll find myself having two reactions.

For some odd reason I had a lot of eye roll moments in researching this but that’s because a lot of people have a basic misunderstanding of how avoidants operate. For example, the narrative often goes like this:

This is the problem with how most people view avoidants. They think they are incapable of love but that’s simply not true. In fact, one of the worst raps that avoidants get is that most people think they are incapable of love but the truth is that many avoidants want love very badly.

They’ve just never been shown how to “love” in a healthy way before.

And that really transitions perfectly to my next point.

One of the biggest misunderstandings that avoidants have about love is they are convinced it occurs during the honeymoon period.

In other words, they grow addicted to the feeling of the honeymoon period and when it ends they convince themselves that they’ve fallen out of love.

And though I’ve not been able to find exact reputable research to back up what I’m about to say, I do have a theory for why they do this.

Life is set up in a way so that the first time we experience something it usually hits the hardest both positively or negatively. The example I always use is pointing to your favorite movie and asking you what it felt like the first time you saw it. What about the fifth time?

It can still be amazing but since you know everything that’s going to happen it loses a lot of its emotional punch.

This is a rule of life.

The first time will always hit the hardest.

Everyone who has lived long enough inherently understands this, avoidants included. So, this can partially explain why avoidants are drawn to the honeymoon period. They know it’s arguably the best they’ll feel in the entire relationship BUT I’m insinuating something far more devious.

If an avoidant subconsciously knows that a honeymoon period is going to end that actually plays right into their hands.

Remember, avoidants are always caught in this paradox of wanting someone to love them but never wanting to let anyone close enough for that to happen.

So, it’s entirely plausible that an avoidant can use the honeymoon period as an internal clock for the end of a relationship. Kind of like a doomsday clock. Once the honeymoon period ends, they know the relationship should too. I’m not saying that all avoidants operate in this way.

One look at my avoidant death wheel shows that some avoidants stay in relationships far longer than a honeymoon period exists,

But I would by lying if I didn’t mention that I have noticed avoidant exes in our program that do this.

They essentially use the honeymoon period as a crutch.

Hell, I’ve even been guilty of this.

By the way, if you didn’t know, I’m classified as a dismissive avoidant,

My first breakup scarred me so mentally that I was single for five years. That was a very conscious choice because I didn’t want to grow close to anyone but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t play the field in those five years. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t go on dates.

In fact, one of my favorite things to do was to go on dates, exist in the light of the honeymoon period and then cut the other person off after I felt the honeymoon period was ending for my own protection. I’m hardly the first person to do this.

So, that’s the first wave of love an avoidant will feel.

And for the most part that’s where most of my peers stop but I’ve actually found that there’s a second wave of love avoidants will feel.

So, the entire thought process behind this exists because of the phantom ex syndrome,

I wish I could claim credit for thinking this up but the truth is that this first came onto my radar when I was pouring through avoidant attachment website, Free To Attach,

An avoidant person often has a story of a perfect ex in a relationship that wasn’t fully realised, the ‘one that got away’ to whom no one else can measure up. In reality the idealised relationship was often lacklustre or insecure and unlikely to be highly functional

So, just like an avoidant confuses love with the honeymoon period during a relationship with you they will also confuse love with the phantom ex syndrome and create a kind of “the one that got away” loop that they want themselves to be stuck in.

It’s all a protection mechanism to prevent themselves from getting hurt but it really helps you understand why so many avoidant exes are resistant to overtures. Remember, this is all happening in their head and they like to keep it that way. There’s nothing an avoidant feels more comfortable with than the daydream effect.

They’d rather have a pretend fantasy relationship with you in their head than in reality.

This explains why when it comes to allowing romantic connections to unfold in the post breakup period you have to do almost all of the work.

And this we actually have research to back up,

Last year I was shocked when I surveyed our private facebook group about the no contact rule and learned that over 60% of exes don’t reach out to you during no contact. When you consider that the vast majority of exes we deal with are avoidant,

It begins to make more sense.

A relationship that only exists in their head is more preferable to one that exists in reality.

It also explains why, if you want a reconciliation to occur with this type of ex, you will be the one that has to do most of the work. At best, they’ll give you a “look” but not many people know how to decipher a look.

And the phantom ex syndrome has short term prospects and long term prospects.

This is the final thing I’d like to leave you with today.

The phantom ex syndrome is one that revolves around “the one that got away.”

But they can have more than one, “one that got away”

Complicated, right?

But think of it like this.

Imagine that you are dating an avoidant and all throughout that relationship they were comparing you to another one of their exes. For them, this ex was “the one that got away.” A fantasy relationship that they most likely misremembered or inflated the importance of.

You can never measure up to this person because in reality they don’t exist. It’s as if they took the best qualities of this phantom ex and forgot about their worst qualities.

This is the long term “one that got away.”

Additionally though, after an avoidant breaks up with you they start to give you the same treatment. You become the short term “one that got away.”

Yes, an avoidant can have two phantom exes.

The aim is almost always the same.

They intend to create a scenario to hold off commitment because commitment threatens independence.

In the end this much is true, love is a complicated affair for an avoidant.

Today I’d like to talk about the one behavior that your ex can’t seem to resist.

Achieve this one behavior and you’ll dramatically raise the chances of them reaching out and showing interest.

(I can’t guarantee they’ll come back. No one can but I can guarantee if you do this they’ll show interest.)

So, what is this special behavior?

Well, let me prime this discussion a bit.

As you know, starting in 2020 I really started leaning heavily on success story interviews. Specifically I became interested in what was actually working for real life people. What was it that they were doing that caused them to be irresistible to their exes?

If you’ve read any of my earlier articles or watched any of my older videos you’d know that the conclusion I came to is that they were able to achieve this mentality where they didn’t care if they got them back or not. In other words, they were able to outgrow their exes.

So, that’s the key, right?

Outgrow your ex and you’ll be golden.

Well…

What if I were to tell you there’s more to it. That we should actually dig deeper.

That’s what I’m going to be focusing on today.

You always hear me talk about the importance of outgrowing an ex but what does that actually mean?

Does that mean you are letting them go?

Not necessarily.

Does that mean you are forgetting about them?

Definitely not.

So, what’s this magical thing to outgrowing an ex. Well, I think it revolves around your focus. For the first time in arguably a long time you aren’t completely focused on them. You begin to focus on yourself. Cliche, I know but hear me out.

One of the things I noticed from the success stories is that they seemed to be incredible at using focus that they used to have reserved for an ex for themselves and with that focus they were able to achieve incredible things. That’s the hidden layer of this entire puzzle that no one seems to talk about.

It’s not just about outgrowing an ex that makes them fawn over you.

It’s about what you do with that time when you are outgrowing them.

All of the time, energy and emotions invested into them have now been freed up to invest into yourself and with that level of focus, you should be capable of doing something that they themselves aren’t capable of.

THIS is the behavior that I’ve yet to see exes resist.

When they see how brightly you are shining without them they become drawn to you the same way the planets revolve around the sun.

But first a story.

I’m going to start this discussion with a real life scenario that happened in my life with two of my exes.

And how I reacted to these two women tells you everything you need to know about how important your time is after a breakup.

So, let’s start with ex number one.

Ex number one

We actually didn’t talk after the breakup for about a month. The only time we did talk was after a hurricane hit our hometown. She reached out to see if I was ok. In the months that followed this interaction I didn’t really regret my decision to break up with her. She seemed to simply move on with her life (which is fine) and I moved on with mine.

I followed her on Facebook but after a while I got so sick of seeing updates that I decided to block her just so I could move past the relationship.

That’s ex number one. Typical breakup, right?

Well, let’s take a look at ex number two.

Ex number two

Ex number two here is a far more interesting breakup case. All throughout our relationship she had a dream of making the college volleyball team. She wasn’t particularly tall but she was quick. Unfortunately, after walking on to our local community college she failed the tryout and was sent home.

Then I break up with her…

I know…

Pretty bad of me but I promise it had no correlation to the volleyball thing. I simply felt that my connection with her wasn’t as strong as it could be with someone else.

Anyways, fast-forward about a year and I run into her walking to a different class. We are cordial but I am stunned at how different she looked. It was like she was an entirely different person. Twice as fit, twice as confident, surrounded by other women, volleyball women.

And they were looking up to her. Almost like she was leading the pack.

I go home and look her up on Facebook only to find out that she’s made the volleyball team and has been named one of its captains. I’m stunned and reach out to her. For the first time since knowing her I feel intimidated. Like I’m actually nervous if she’ll respond.

She didn’t.

BUT the lesson is there plain as day.

You have one ex who sort of just stayed the course of how things were. Didn’t do anything particularly noteworthy with her life and then you have the other ex who did.

And for me that’s the biggest key with breakups.

If you want to be irresistible to an ex accomplish a goal that they themselves are incapable of accomplishing.

Not only will you garner attention from others but from them as well.

Do you think I can make a volleyball team?

Hell no.

I don’t even know how to keep a ball going back and forth across a net.

But no one talks about this.

And that’s why I’m going to pick a bit on the breakup community here.

The breakup community is kind of dumb in my opinion and I’m not giving myself a pass because I’ve certainly been guilty of promoting the superficial things.

Too often I’ll go to YouTube and see titles like,

Get your ex back in 30 days.

or

Here’s what’s guaranteed to work on an ex.

or

The no contact rule is guaranteed to make an ex miss you.

It’s frustrating because it gives people unrealistic expectations. Even if they don’t watch the video the fact that there’s even a video out there making the claim is enough to make someone believe it’s possible and I absolutely despise it. The only thing that has ever worked for me or my clients is self improvement.

That’s the most important thing you should be doing after a breakup.

You want to know what exes find irresistible.

You accomplishing a feat greater than they thought possible.

That’s what gets attention.

And it becomes a healing mechanism as well. In the pursuit of accomplishing this great feat your life gets put in perspective. The breakup gets put in perspective. You knock your ex down off the pedestal you have them placed on.

But how does one choose a worthwhile feat?

Well, that’s where your magnum opus comes into play.

But in terms of our program it’s the one thing that intersects the holy trinity.

What one thing can you do that will positively benefit the three areas of the trinity?

Oh, and one other thing.

It’s not easy to accomplish.

Something that could take at least a year to bear fruit but can be transformative in the pursuit?

Engaging in that type of behavior is ultimately what makes exes want to come back. It’s what draws other to you.

All of the other stuff.

Texting correctly.

Social media etiquette.

It pails in comparison to the pursuit of your magnum opus.

And the craziest part is that no one is talking about this because it’s not popular, it’s not sexy but for me there’s nothing better than accomplishing feats that others cannot. There’s nothing that makes me feel more alive in the pursuit. It’s how I know I didn’t waste my time on this earth.

How I know that my life is worth something.

What’s yours?

Today I’m going to show you the eight most common mistakes people make after a breakup.

And I brought in the brilliant Coach Shaunna Nicol to help me.

Here are the major mistakes,

Let’s dive in a bit deeper on each of these.

Generally speaking there are a few type of clients that come to us.

Each of these types of clients has a unique relationship with the no contact rule.

So, for the people who are familiar with our way of doing things, they have no problem implementing a No Contact Rule.

That’s not the case for people who are maybe new to our program and don’t really see the No Contact Rule as anything other than a way to manipulate your ex.

Yet, every single success story that we have, has used some version of the No Contact Rule, or at least attempted to use some version of the No Contact Rule.

So the first major mistake I see people making is not even doing a No Contact Rule. Usually, they have a lot of different reasons for why they’re not willing to do a No Contact Rule.

But usually, they all revolve around some version of worry worried of my ex, forgetting about me, or I’m worried of how this will make my ex angry.

But I think the No Contact Rule in and of itself gets a bad rap because a lot of the breakup industry only pedals the it will make your ex miss you aspect. And I actually don’t think that’s what makes the ex miss you.

So I think it’s kind of like a correlation, not causation type scenario that we had playing out with regards to a no contact rule.

So obviously, people who implement a No Contact Rule, they are under the belief that by ignoring their ex for a certain period of time, their ex is going to miss them.

But what I’ve actually found through interviewing hundreds of success stories is the exact opposite is true.

The No Contact Rule in and of itself, just ignoring your ex doesn’t really help make your ex miss you. It’s actually what you’re doing with that time away from your ex that can help make them miss you.

So for our clients that are able to kind of outgrow their ex during that no contact period, I find that they are way more likely to get a positive response when they do eventually get back into contact with their ex. So for me not implementing the No Contact Rule isn’t necessarily the biggest mistake.

It’s not implementing the No Contact Rule the correct way. So yes, mistake number one, don’t. Not doing a No Contact Rule essentially, is the mistake.

Okay, so mistake number two would be moving on too soon.

So what we discussed was that after a breakup, there are those few people who can’t cope with being alone, they don’t want to be in their own company.

So when their ex doesn’t want them back, they’ll immediately go out and find somebody else to be in a relationship with. While it’s technically a rebound, it’s also them not dealing with the way they feel they’re not processing the breakup their emotions, they don’t even start to consider what went wrong in a relationship.

Why did that breakup happen?

And what do what work do they need to do on themselves.

So even though in the program, obviously, we do suggest that you date, it’s just don’t immediately get into another relationship, you’re just filling a void that your ex has made by putting someone else in there and you’re just going to repeat history, and you gotta keep making the same mistakes, repeated relationship breakdown, and probably never actually process any emotions, just ignore them and dismiss them as much as you possibly can.

And then, when you want your ex back, you’ve not done any self work. So you’re not really going to get the actual goal which is getting over a breakup.

Get back into a healthy relationship, you just end up in the same cycle.

Okay, so mistake number three is actually snooping on social media.

This may not initially seem like a mistake, but I think it is.

So Shaunna and I, before we started recording, we were talking about another mistake on our list. And it actually kind of connects with this one.

And that is the fact that a lot of times you need to look at breakups as sort of a drug addiction.

So when a when a drug addict is going through a withdrawal period, they’re looking for a fix.

And so anytime that you’re engaging in any kind of obsession about an x, it kind of just makes the problem worse, you cannot stop focusing on your ex. So Facebook stalking, looking on their Instagram looking Snapchat, I guess tick tock, although I don’t I haven’t heard too much about tick tock in the Facebook group.

The point is, if you are not a very disciplined person, and you feel like snooping, on your ex is going to make you want to reach out to them after their breakup.

I don’t think it’s worth your effort to do so I think one of the biggest mistakes we see as people who really want to try to move past a breakup, but they’re unable to because they keep engaging in this addiction.

They keep feeding it they keep, Oh, I wonder what he or she is up to, oh, no, they’re doing this without me. And then they get upset and it becomes this emotional thing.

And it just kind of does not help you move past the breakup. So I think for me if you’re an incredibly undisciplined person, and no, you just won’t be able to help yourself, it might be a good idea to unfollow your ex on social media. And some way not necessarily block them, not necessarily unfriend them.

But to try to maybe just like, like, make your password to your social media accounts, super complicated. And then lock it away somewhere and logout so you don’t know how to get in it.

Just so that you can take a break and kind of regain composure before you can kind of talk to them again. So anyways, that’s mistake number three snooping.

So, mistake number four, we’ve got trying to get that closure conversation with your ex.

So there’s this idea that you need to have that conversation where you talk about the relationship and where things went wrong, and how you could have been better apologizing.

But during this conversation with your ex too soon, it’s just an excuse to see them your mindsets more about how can I get him to see me if he can see me and I can tell him I’m sorry.

And I know where I went wrong, that you’ll eventually get to the point where you’re going to start wanting to talk about getting back together. And eventually your ex is going to say no, again, because it’s probably straight after the breakup.

And you’re going to restart the process of feeling heartbroken all over again.

And you’ve not achieved what you want it you haven’t got closure, new upset, because your ex still doesn’t want to get back together with you, which is what’s leading to the other point that we’re going to talk about later, which is the begging stage.

So yeah, mistake number five, which is breaking the No Contact Rule prematurely.

This may not seem like a big deal, because essentially, the rule with the No Contact Rule, assuming you have just like a general situation where you’re doing like a 30 day or 45 day, no contact rule and your ex.

What happens is, if you meet, we’re kind of expecting you to break it because most people, I think most people do break it. I think I did some research on that.

But I can’t remember off the top my head but Well, I’m just going to operate under the assumption that you’re going to break it well. Generally speaking, when you break it, you just have to start over from the very beginning.

But the one thing that never gets talked about by many of our peers in the breakup industry is the fact that the No Contact Rule isn’t like this thing that you can continue to leave go back to and it be the same level of effectiveness. So each time that you’re breaking the No Contact Rule.

Let’s say you say hey, I want to do a 30 day no contact rule but you get through a week of it and you contact your ex and you have to start over from the beginning. That’s second time that you have to start over, it’s going to lose a little bit of effectiveness. And each subsequent time this happens, it loses more and more effectiveness.

The analogy I often like to use is, it’s kind of like watching a really great movie in the movie theater for the first time, you’re feeling the emotions of that story, to the maximum effect.

But if it’s a good movie, you want to go watch it again. So you maybe pay for another ticket, you’ll watch it again. But it’s not as it’s still potent, but it’s not as potent as it was the very first time and each time you’re trying it over and over again, it’s losing a little bit of a of its potency.

So breaking the No Contact Rule one time, we’re kind of expecting to happen that’s sort of built into the system, but breaking it five times, breaking it six times, it’s not going to be as effective anymore, and you’re just harming yourself, assuming you either want to get over your ex, but you’re really harming yourself if you want to get your ex back. So that’s Mistake number five.

So Mistake number six is the gnatting and begging of your ex. So the gnatting is where you would send lots of text messages, emails, phone calls, any form of communication, you can to your ex, to the point where you are driving him crazy.

You pleading you’re begging, you want your ex to take you back so badly, you’re offering the planets, if you could, it doesn’t work, and it’s not going to get the results you want.

If anything, it just sets you back in the process. And it also kind of makes you lose yourself respect in a way. Because you are literally begging a person to to be with you.

And that’s just, it’s not worth it. And the more that your time that you spend going to nothing and begging is more likely your ex is just gonna block you everywhere. So you can’t contact him anyway.

Or her obviously.

And then when you spend that time, you could have been doing the no contract that Chris just mentioned, you can be working on yourself, rather than showing your ex that you’ve not worked on yourself, you’ve not changed, you’re not respecting their decision to not want to speak to you right now.

I think that damages your chances more than most of the other things to be honest, because there’s just no self control there at all.

Yeah, to actually add on to this, I would say from an attachment style perspective. A lot of times what we see happen is avoidant ex anxious you.

So that’s like the most common relationship pairing.

And so what ends up happening when you’re begging your ex one of the reasons and avoid it will break up with someone who has an anxious attachment style is their anxious attachment style starts to kind of grate on their nerves.

But all your end up doing when you’re nagging or begging and nagging for those of you who are uninitiated is going nuts at texting. So it’s just basically like you’re begging by going crazy for texting like a gnat.

But what ends up happening is by begging, that’s a very anxious behavior. And so you’re actually triggering, if you have an avoidant X, you’re triggering that avoidant side to get them to leave you even more.

So there’s no advantage to you to do it at all. That’s my that’s you can take the next one.

So obviously, we say use social media. So how great you’re doing. And to show that you’re moving on. However, there are the few that go over the top, those who are given the impression that they were so great without their ex, they’re basically rubbing it in their face.

Now, even though you think that looks like you’re doing amazing, you get all the likes and comments, and all these people are saying how great you’re doing.

That’s like a small fix. But that wears off so quickly. Because you’re not actually dealing with how you truly feel, as well as the fact that you’re doing something else.

So just get more of that like attention. It’s going to look desperate to your ex.

And it’s also going to be a little bit of attention seeking as well. And they’re probably thinking like, why are you doing all this out of character to the point of extremes, and also the fact that you’re wanting attention of almost strangers.

Obviously social, social media has got people that you actually know in real life, but also the people that you just sort of know that acquaintances and their opinion doesn’t really matter.

But it’s a way to deal with the fact that you’re feeling a bit rubbish.

And this the likes on Oh, you look amazing.

Oh, that’s so cool. It makes you feel better short term. But again, it does doesn’t look good from your ex’s point of view.

Yeah, I actually think that leads pretty seamlessly into the eighth mistake, which to me is the most important mistake of all, and that’s not being able to let go of the breakup.

So think of it like this. 2022 has been sort of the year that I personally have done a ton of research on Attachment styles, with specific sort of study on the avoidant attachment style.

The reason for that is I did a poll in 2021 where I asked our clients Like, hey, what attachment style do you think your ex is, and over 62 I think percent of them said that they believe their exes are avoidant, or it could have even been as high as 70. I can’t I don’t have it in front of me.

But I just know, it was enough to make me feel like, Oh, this is significant, I need to really understand everything I can about avoidance.

Well, one of the interesting sort of quirks of avoidance is that they actually don’t allow themselves the opportunity to miss you until they feel like you have moved on from them. And this actually tracks was what we found when I interviewed success stories.

So another thing starting in 2020, that I did is I started actually having Shana. She would go through the Facebook group and line up interviews where we can basically sit down with people and ask them a bunch of questions for an hour to figure out like, Hey, what did you do that worked versus what do you that didn’t work?

And the one interesting thing that I wasn’t expecting out of the study is like I, you know, I was expecting like, oh, every success story did some form of no contact, every success story was this type of situation. But what I wasn’t expecting is the common thread that kind of bound them all wasn’t the No Contact Rule so much. I mean, yeah, it was present.

But not all of them, completed a full No Contact Rule, not all of them did the same type of no contact, you know, some of them did a limited no contact.

But the thing that bound them all was each one had projected and gotten to the place where they had given up. So they were like, You know what I’m done with this, I don’t want my ex anymore.

And boom, that’s when they would come back. And you can actually just go to our Facebook group and look at how often this phenomenon occurs.

And I think this really has to do with the avoidant attachment style and the fact that when the avoidant feels like you’re getting to this place where you moved on from them, all of a sudden, they kind of are allowing themselves to feel the nostalgia that’s necessary that needs to happen for them to want to come back.

And the cool part about this is this is exactly what no one else’s advice out there advising you to do. And yet it’s the very thing that works the best.

So for me not being able to let go of the breakup, but more I think kind of the the core belief there is not being not being able to move on from it.

If you’re still hung up on it, you know, you’ll notice that that’s kind of a common thread with some of the mistakes we’re talking about.

It’s really not being able to handle the breakup, not being able to move on from it not being able to grow from it, all of it combines to create this projection.

And it’s not something you can fake. It’s something that you authentically need to feel.

And that’s what is the biggest difference maker for me. So not being able to let go of the breakup is the eighth and final mistake we see our clients making.

Today we’re going to talk about if exes ever come back to you after dating someone new.

Like most things in the breakup industry there is a short answer and a long answer to this.

Really quick, here’s the short answer;

It is definitely possible for an ex to come back to you after dating someone new but certain conditions need to be present,

There’s a lot to talk about here.

Let’s begin

Initially this may seem like an odd take. Anyone who knows even a little bit about attachment styles can surely argue that avoidants tend to value their own independence over everything else.

However, our internal research has consistently shown that most of our clients end up dating people who are avoidant.

To the tune of 70% actually. This means that most of the research I’ve done over the past decade has been on understanding how avoidants operate.

Last year I filmed a video called, How To Make Your Avoidant Ex Miss You,

In it I essentially argue that,

Avoidants are free to long for an ex once that person is unavailable out of the relationship, and typically out of contact so they are untouched by actual engagement and their deactivation systems aren’t triggered, revealing their long-suppressed attachment and switching their operating attachment wound from the fear of engulfment to fear of abandonment.

So, three things need to happen in order for an avoidant to even consider “going out” with you again.

Here’s the thing about avoidants. Their M.O. is all about independence so it shouldn’t come as a shock that they begin having nostalgia based feelings when they also have their independence back.

But there seems to be a flaw in that thinking, right?

How can they feel independent if they are with someone else?

Great question. I think the best way to look at avoidants in relationships is that they are addicted to honeymoon periods.

This is what the typical relationship life cycle looks like for an avoidant,

I’ve been through this so many times on dozens of articles so I don’t really feel like repeating it but to be really quick about it here are the eight stages that avoidants go through from the beginning to the end of a relationship,

The stage that’s of interest to us is this one,

The depression part where they wonder why they can’t find anyone for them. That’s the most important thing to conceptualize because it really explains WHY avoidants actually can go on the rebound.

And really if you look at the whole death wheel above one thing becomes very clear. Avoidants live for the honeymoon period.

It’s soon enough into the lifecycle of a relationship that not a huge commitment is needed and obviously you are feeling great.

Yet the moment a relationship gets more serious. The moment independence becomes threatened they begin to work their way out of the relationship.

So, really the way I’ve always viewed avoidants is that they are constantly chasing the “high” of a honeymoon period and this is a really great distraction tool so they don’t have to deal with the complicated emotions that surface on the onset of a breakup.

That brings us very nicely back to that light green section on the upper left-hand quadrant of the death wheel.

An avoidant will do everything to stave off this stage. Once it begins to set in they will find ways to distract themselves (usually with other people) which really explains why they are going from relationship to relationship chasing the distraction of the high.

So, let’s play devils advocate here.

Your ex is on the rebound with someone else but you have a strong belief that your relationship was more impactful.

If that’s the case then you might be a good candidate for being painted as a phantom ex.

I define the phantom ex as,

A past partner that you can’t seem to stop thinking about. Instead, you hyper focus on them and romanticize your time together. Even when that time together wasn’t all that great.

From an avoidant perspective this is like hitting the jackpot. Remember, an avoidant is constantly living this balancing act where they want love but they refuse to let anyone close enough to them to receive that love.

Often their solution to fixing this paradox is to find a phantom ex.

A partner that they can fawn over from afar without the threat of losing their independence.

But there’s something really interesting about this phenomenon. Inevitably it fails, especially when they are on the rebound.

So, here’s what usually happens.

This is often how most of our success stories have occurred where another person was involved but there is another big piece of the puzzle I’m leaving out.

The being there method is essentially the spearpoint that helps you attract an ex back who has gone on the rebound.

Here’s how it works,

Basically the theory behind is revolves around attachment styles.

There are four major attachment styles,

All of the attachment styles have an interesting relationship with the secure attachment style in the fact that it’s an attachment game changer.

Throughout our lives based on our experiences our attachment styles can change.

Take an insecure attachment style like an avoidant and partner that person with a secure attachment style and an interesting phenomenon can occur.

The avoidant attachment style can actually begin to change and become more secure themselves. Of course, the opposite can also happen,

The secure attachment style can get worn down by the avoidants insecurities and become more insecure themselves so what really unfolds with every relationship is an attachment battle,

Pretty wild, right?

So, all the being there method really is, is you becoming more secure and staying in contact with your ex. That’s it. You aren’t trying to win them back. You aren’t trying to break them and their new partner up. You are just going to be there.

You are going to let your secure attachment do the work for you.

And what happens is usually twofold.

Now, in the spirit of honesty I will say that the being there method can be a bit morally grey. Some people will not feel comfortable using it.

But the core principles remain sound.

Work on making your attachment style more secure and you will reap the benefits not only with your ex but in other areas of your life.

Today we’re going to talk about why your ex jumped into another relationship so quickly after their breakup with you.

And really I want to highlight two areas that often don’t get talked about enough,

So, buckle up buttercup because we are going to be diving into things that are rarely talked about in the breakup industry.

Let’s begin!

Generally speaking when you are looking at a situation where your ex quickly jumps into another relationship after their breakup with you, you are looking at a rebound relationship.

Of course, when you are looking at rebounds there are certain held beliefs that people have about them.

But what if I were to tell you that most of what you believe about rebounds might be wrong. In fact, many of the stereotypes you have about them are simply false when looking at the data.

Take the “unhealthy” aspect.

So, most people believe that rebounds don’t give you time to process your emotions and properly grieve. I suppose the expectation is that you are supposed to go through the five stages of grief after a breakup before moving on to someone else.

But what usually happens is that right around when we get to this stage or this stage,

You’ll notice your ex go on the rebound. They’ll push their pain away but instead of processing it. They’ll use another person to distract themselves from it.

That’s the stereotype. That’s the argument for why people say that rebounds are “bad.”

That’s the whole argument of the breakup industry.

But they’re wrong.

In fact, according to an article written by Psychology Today in 2014,

New research shows rebound relationships are surprisingly healthy.

Recent evidence suggests, in fact, that people who dive into rebound relationships get over their ex-partner more quickly and feel more confident in their date-ability (Brumbaugh & Fraley, 2014).

It was actually me stumbling across this research that convinced me that our concept of the being there method was the correct way to go in a post breakup period assuming you want to get your ex back if they are in a new relationship.

But we are kind of dancing around the big elephant in the room.

We still haven’t explained WHY exes move on so quickly. To be honest with you I struggled with this question for years before finding an answer that I felt made a lot of sense.

Often when writing about avoidants you’ll see me cite the following poll,

Essentially it proves that most of our clients believe that their exes tend to have avoidant attachment styles. It’s the whole reason I’ve essentially dedicated all of 2022 to studying avoidant exes.

And you want to know what I’m learning?

That you can learn a lot about why exes act the way they act by simply understanding their psychology. Them jumping into another relationship is no different.

Take the avoidant death cycle as a perfect example.

This is essentially a graphic I put together to help explain the life cycle of a relationship for an avoidant. There are eight core parts to it.

I’ve talked about them extensively in many of our most recent articles in our blog.

The eight stages are;

I’ve always thought of the cycle as a wheel with each revolution claiming another relationship in its path. Now, for our purposes the important part of the graphic is actually this part here,

This essentially highlights that post breakup period and how an avoidant handles it. According to Free To Attach avoidants will often go through a “separation elation” period,

After a relationship ends, people with an avoidant attachment style tend not to show much anxiety or distress, often feeling an initial sense of relief at the relinquishing of obligations and the sense that they are regaining their self-identity, and not tending to initially miss their partner – this is “separation elation” as the pressure to connect is gone.

Which interestingly is followed pretty closely by a period of repression,

Experts in repressing emotions, they do not feel much initially, typically appear to recover quickly after relationships and can move on fast, more comfortable seeking a new pursuit situation. They envisage that a new person could be the solution to their woes.

So, this seems to line up pretty well with the rebound stereotype I just took aim at earlier. So, am I wrong or is there something I’m missing?

Well, what’s interesting is that while it is true that avoidants use rebounds to repress their emotions this is a coping mechanism that’s been present since childhood.

They don’t know any other way of “dealing with it.”

As such they jump from relationship to relationship and heal from breakups that way and it’s actually effective for them. In fact, one of the things we are finding is that the more “experience” your ex has of handling breakups in this way the more effective it is for them to “move on.”

But I’m getting off topic.

Generally speaking new relationships are romanticized by avoidants. Remember, a contradiction lies at the heart of every avoidant,

A need to be love but a protective mechanism that prevents them from letting anyone get close enough to give them that love.

Naturally they prefer relationships where there are “no strings attached.”

Or no large threat to their independence.

Rebounds fit this criteria because ultimately in their head they have no intention of “falling for the other person.” Rather, it’s more about falling for the chase.

Romanticizing that honeymoon period.

But this is all happening subconsciously. Without their knowledge.

They start out every new relationship optimistic that things are going to work out. Remember the start of the death cycle?

“I just want someone to love me.”

This is ultimately what everyone thinks before entering into a relationship. Avoidants are no different at the beginning.

They fall for the honeymoon period. Things are looking great until the newness wears off and their avoidant tendencies begin to come to the forefront.

It always revolves around a threat to their independence.

Once that honeymoon period is over, once that rebound makes an attempt to draw them closer they begin to self sabotage the relationship. They want their independence back.

I suppose the big thing I’d like you to take from this article is that avoidants don’t really view rebounds as viable on purpose.

Remember, their whole M.O. is that they want to keep their independence by any means necessary. So, the reason they jump so quickly from one relationship to the next is they are sucking up the honeymoon period out of each.

It’s a little like drinking a milkshake.

They get into a relationship with you, drink the honeymoon milkshake, but the second the shake goes dry is when their avoidant tendencies cause them to want to move on to someone else.

To drink another milkshake.

Honeymoon period to honeymoon period.

Today we’re going to talk about what it means when you’ve gone through a breakup with your ex but you are still acting like a couple.

And I’ve brought my new partner in crime, Shaunna Nicol, who just happens to be the newest addition to our coaching team to help me out with this article.

Really the two of us are going to take two tracks to help with understanding this complicated situation.

Let’s begin.

Generally speaking when you are looking at a situation where you are still acting like a couple after a breakup we’ve found the following behaviors to be the most consistent among our clients,

I’d like to clarify a bit on two points in the list above.

Most people naturally assume I’m talking about sleeping together with an ex when I mention intimacy but that’s not necessarily the case. This can be something as rudimentary as holding hands or even kissing.

The point is you are crossing over a line that friends should not cross and in my mind any physical touch that can escalate to sexual behavior can be viewed as over that line.

But let’s assume that you are still sleeping with your ex. Where this becomes more complicated is figuring out what their true intentions are. After all, we’ve definitely seen some exes be total jerks and just get back in touch or “play nice” so they can sleep with you.

As a general rule when we see people in a Friends with Benefits situation they’ll sleep with their ex, and then disappear.

Technically that’s an entirely different situation and not one we are talking about in relation to “being a couple.” After all, most relationships even if they aren’t in the best of shape don’t have one part ghosting you after a one night stand.

The next thing I’d like to clarify is actually an idea put forth by Coach Shaunna,

My example is if you share children, and you’re deciding to go away together with the children, that’s like mixed signals, it’s you spending time together as a family, even though you’re not a couple anymore. So it’s like, you don’t really know where you stand with the other half, but you’re still having that family time that family bond is still there.

One of the things that I think gets lost in translation is the idea of other people connecting you together. So, when you’re going on a vacation or a holiday, and you share kids together, it’s giving a lot of mixed signals to all involved and in a weird way, makes everyone’s life more difficult.

But the question that is haunting most of you is “Why?”

Why would an ex act like everything is fine around you and all the kids but refuse to commit?

What does it all mean?

Well, let’s talk a bit about that.

I think there are three main things you can point to when trying to explain this breakup behavior.

Let’s start first with avoidant behaviors

A few days ago I was working on an article about avoidants and if they feel guilt that I actually think is really relevant to this discussion.

One of the things that I found fascinating when I was researching this subject is how an avoidant will often hold on to guilt as an excuse to avoid a commitment.

And what I think usually happens when you go through a breakup with someone but they’re still acting like a couple, is that they are falling victim to very classic avoidant behavior where they avoid a commitment, but they’re still getting the benefits of a relationship.

So the avoidant, you need to understand, they have this contradictory nature, which is, on the one hand, they want love. And on the other hand, they don’t want to let anyone close enough to give them that love. And so they’re constantly at odds with themselves.

Ultimately what we’re seeing with this behavior is an extension of that contradiction.

So you get into a relationship with them, they break up with you but they still want to act like a couple, because they still want that the benefits that you get from being in a couple, but they don’t like the commitment.

And so they’re kind of keeping you in an arm’s length by still having their cake and eating it too.

The next explanation is something directly from Shaunna so I’ll just quote her directly,

So what I was saying was the fear of like letting that person go, you don’t want to be with them. But you also don’t want them to move on. You want them like on the hook so that you can come back to them if you don’t find somebody better. So spending that time with him, making sure that they’re still there hoping that you’re going to change your mind, you’re gonna come back to them.

What I find really interesting about this is that when you pair it with the avoidant concept it almost seemingly contradicts itself.

But what’s important to remember is that there’s two types of avoidants there’s the dismissive avoidant, which usually is all in on avoidant behaviors, and then there’s the fearful avoidant.

So I would argue that most of the people that are broken up with you, but still act like a couple are more likely to be fearful avoidants and not dismissive avoidants. So like Shauna says they’re afraid of letting you move on. They don’t want to let you go. So the keeping you on the hook, that’s really their anxious side coming out and taking control.

But there’s a strange subtext to all of this. An underlying jealousy aspect here. Like they know, they’re not going to do well with jealousy. If they let you go, and you’re with someone else they know they aren’t going to be able to handle that. They don’t want to see you happy with anyone else except them, but at the same time they don’t want to get into a full blown relationship with you.

And that’s really their anxious side coming out again with the jealousy but they then they get ruled by their avoidant side.

So they’re constantly at odds with one another.

And this, this is often really classic with why the mixed signals are happening because people, when they get into relationships with fearful avoidants are often left really confused.

Because on one hand, their ex is giving them very like, Hey, we’re still together type signals.

And then on the other hand, they’re like, No, we’re not together. And the mixed signals confuse people. And that’s really common for a fearful avoidant individual.

When you’ve been together for a while you fall into this routine and this habit of spending time with that person, talking to that person.

And we see it with most of the clients that come to the program, they, they are so obsessed with reaching out to their ex, they need to speak to their ex, they’re just thinking about what they’re doing, why, what who they spending time with.

And that’s why we enforce the No Contact Rule telling them that they need to spend that time not focusing on their ex, whereas those that fall into the habits can’t seem to just pull themselves away.

Today Coach Shaunna and I are going to be covering the major signs that your ex is still attached to you after a breakup.

In all, we believe there are six core behaviors that most exes who are still very attached to you will exhibit,

As always, we’re going to dive in a bit deeper so you have a greater understanding of what is meant by all of these.

Lets begin!

As stated above, Coach Shaunna and I teamed up for this article and one of her contributions was pulling from her own personal experience in paying attention to the way your ex speaks to you after the breakup.

Using her exact words,

So I was thinking, the way your ex speaks to you can be indicative of a lot of things. Most people think it’s a bad thing if an ex is really angry with you but we’ve actually found that, that particular behavior usually shows that he still cares. On the other side of the coin, if he’s really nice to you and doing all these little sweet things it’s sort of like there’s a little remnant left over from the relationship that he can’t contain.

Shaunna continues,

I myself am an EBR success story, and pulling from my experience during the post breakup period. Well, my now husband and I, we obviously have pet names for each other and sometimes he’d accidentally call me by the pet name while we were broken up.

Essentially Shaunna’s argument is to pay attention to the way your ex is speaking to you when you’re communicating in the post breakup period. If they’re falling back into old habits, like names, certain turns of phrases, I guess, even like inside jokes would be included here.

One final thing I’d like to include here. If you ex is growing angry with you it doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. In fact, in most cases it’s the opposite.

Believe it or not, we’d actually much rather see that as a sign that an ex is still attached to you because usually the signs that an ex is kind of moving on from you are when they’re indifferent, or they are using their own indefinite version of no contact on you. Which I think is a really, really important distinction to make because the opposite of love isn’t hate its indifference.

But why don’t we move on to the next sign.

If your ex is in a situation where they’re taking a lot of time and spending time with you then obviously there’s still something that they’re interested in.

In fact, in a weird way, paying attention to how long they’re spending in conversations with you is a good thing. I know this is kind of a loose connection a little bit but one of the things I’ve noticed is that exes who are really investing a lot of time energy into you, they tend to text you with longer sort of word counts and text messages.

So I actually think paying attention to stuff that most people would gloss over like,

All of that stuff is a good way of determining if your ex is still attached

In fact, Shaunna and I were actually doing a joint coaching call last week with someone and one of the suggestions we had was revolving around the importance of tracking text messages and things like that. So you can actually pay attention to this kind of stuff.

Let’s move on!

This sign revolves around your ex making up ridiculous and sometimes funny excuses to reach out to you.

Again, this is one of Shaunna’s contributions so I’ll let her exact words guide us here,

So obviously, we encourage our clients to reach out during the texting phase but if your ex is reaching out to you on their own accord for seemingly minimal things then it’s time to pay attention to their behaviors. Pulling from a personal experience, when I was apart from my ex, obviously, the conversations that we’d be having were such that I’d almost question why my ex was even asking me about those things was.  So it was things like, Oh, do you know what day one of our children had an appointment? And I was like, you already know, it’s that day. And then the next question was just so, trivial attempts to get a conversation going.

Shaunna’s answer her kind of triggered me because looking back at some of my breakups I’ve literally been in similar shoes where you run out of things to talk about.  But you want to keep someone talking. So you’re just grasping for straws. And so you’re just throwing anything out there.

So, the big takeaway here is that if you notice your ex asking you;

Usually those are good signs.

Sign number four revolves around your ex having one of their friends spy on you.

So, one of the things that we’ve been seeing a lot lately is the people undervaluing sort of the concept of sphere of influence,

The sphere of influence for an ex, or even for you are sort of these people that you surround yourself with, who influence your life in a positive way, they impact your life in a positive way.

But these are the people that you’re surrounding yourself with that kind of shape the way you view the world and what’s interesting is that sometimes when you get into relationships with, you know, like an ex or something your sphere of influence and their sphere of influence almost kind of overlap a little bit.

And so there’s like this interesting overlap where maybe you have some mutual friends, but if, let’s say you do have a mutual friend with your ex, but that mutual friend goes back a little bit further with your ex.

One of the interesting things we’ve been noticing is that your ex will almost use that mutual friend as a way to spy on you, especially if you’re doing the No Contact Rule.

Or I guess in a weird way, sometimes some of our clients will block their ex is from seeing them on Facebook or what have you.

But that doesn’t mean that their exes aren’t interested in what you’re doing.

So, if you’re finding that all of a sudden this mutual friend that you were kind of cordial with but didn’t really talk to a lot with is talking to you and trying to ask you questions that are not part of the norm then they’re most likely being sent by their ex to pay attention to what you’re doing, and reporting that back to their ex.

I’ve actually experienced this firsthand with one of my very first breakups ever. All of a sudden, this girl’s best friend wanted to talk to me. And I think I was dumb enough to actually have like a three hour conversation with her I just poured it all out and of course, the girl went right back to my ex girlfriend and told her everything that I had said.

So yeah, basically, having one of one of your exes, friends or mutual friends spying on you is indicative of the fact that they’re still attached to you.

Let’s move on.

This one is super straightforward.

If your ex is trying to make you jealous then they are still very attached to you.

In fact, Shaunna herself has a specific example of this playing out for one of our clients.

Once again quoting her,

Yeah, we had one person post about how their ex worked with them, and they’d met someone else through work. And he made changes to spend time with this new person spending lunch with them. And obviously, the person in the group was really upset. Like he didn’t do these things for me. But we were like, yeah, they’re just trying to get a reaction. They want you to act.

Personally I think that there’s that aspect of jealousy go a layer deeper. Generally speaking, the rule of thumb when it comes to jealousy is again that age old phrase opposite of love isn’t hate, its indifference.

There’s almost like a certain revenge aspect to jealousy I’ve found. Usually an ex who tries to make you jealous, is trying to get back at you at some way.

They’re trying to kind of, for lack of a better word, sort of stick it to you like “win” the breakup in some way. They come away with the attitude of, “I’m going to show you how much better I’m doing without you.”

But in the end, it’s kind of a hollow pursuit. Most of the time it doesn’t seem help and so this is the difficult part I’ve noticed with ywith jealousy. The initially do it as some are sort of like a vengeance tactic to kind of quote unquote, win the breakup, but it is hollow I think in the fact that it’s usually only after the fact after the dust is settled that they realize how how immature it is and how ridiculous it is.

I’ve seen some really ridiculous really upsetting jealousy things like we once had someone in the Facebook group have their ex literally post a picture of him in bed with another woman to try to make the person jealous, which is just really wrong on so many levels.

But in a weird way.

It makes me also question the sanity of the girl that was willing to pose in bed with this guy because no I don’t think I don’t think any woman wants to be like a second wheel so it’s almost like are you still so hung up on your ex that you’re willing to do this so that’s why we say that your ex is usually still attached to you if you’re if they’re still hung up enough to want to get sort of this revenge through through jealousy but I’m just going on and on let’s move on to sign number six

Once again, this was Shaunna’s contribution.

So, I’ll just quote her here,

So I was saying that if you needed help with something, advice or health care related and your ex drops everything to help you when they don’t need to it’s usually a good sign. Usually if they’re not interested they’d be like, nope, sorry, I’m busy. Whereas I found that with my situation, if I needed help, he’d be like, “Yeah, no problem on my way.” That’s been my experience.

Believe it or not but  I think my wife, when she was really, really involved in the group, she sort of came up with this text message that was sort of coined the damsel in distress text message, which is to kind of like manufacture this purposeful situation where you’re almost testing to see if your ex is willing to jump through these hoops for you.

We’ve had some like, actually a godly amount of success with this type of a text message.

And I think what Shaunna is talking about here kind of harkens back to that concept of, you know, you’ve got this problem, and your ex really wants to help you solve it, they’re willing to jump through these hoops.

Today I’m going to answer if the silent treatment actually works on an ex.

In my humble opinion, the silent treatment can be effective on an ex if you want to get them back and if you want to get over them. However, in both cases it requires you to have great emotional control and the ability to take your ex down off the pedestal you probably placed them on.

I’d like to have an open and honest discussion about how many of my peers warp the silent treatment (in the form of the no contact rule) for their own gain and completely miss the point. So today, here’s some of the things I’m going to dig in on,

Let’s begin!

I think there’s a common misunderstanding that most people have when they hear about the silent treatment.

They believe it’s a perfect strategy to use to gain their partners attention but what’s often missed is this,

The silent treatment should only be used for a small period of time after a breakup and not during a relationship

I know this seems like a simple concept but you’d be surprised at how many of our clients miss this completely and almost fall in love with constantly using a no contact rule in their relationships to punish their partner.

So, here’s my declaration. Everything I’m about to say and break down about the silent treatment should really only be used on an ex who has broken up with you.

Got it?

Good!

Of course, most of the people who are probably reading this article have been broken up with from an ex and are often left reeling.  Often, they’ve surfed online and learned a bit of the lingo revolving around the no contact rule and how it’s sold as the foundational strategy upon which your ex will want you back.

If you haven’t then allow me to quickly educate you. Most of my peers define the no contact rule as,

A period of time where you ignore your ex (no matter what) in an attempt to make your ex miss you.

And yes, technically that can happen. However, when studying real people going through real breakups the results of what actually works might surprise you.

I think the first question we need to answer revolving around this isn’t so much dissecting the effectiveness of the silent treatment. We will do that for sure in a moment. I actually think we need to create parameters for what an effective silent treatment looks like?

Usually it’s revolving around reactions.

So, you use this period of no contact on your ex and they react in some way that indicates they miss you.

Some of the best examples include,

Well, I hate to burst your bubble but more often than not the silent treatment isn’t going to yield these results. And that’s really my problem with the breakup industry. Many of my peers (and I suppose even there was a time I was guilty of this) but many of my peers they’ll frame the silent treatment or the no contact rule as a guaranteed way of getting these results.

What does the actual research say?

In 2020 I decided to poll our private facebook support group full of people utilizing the no contact rule (a form of the silent treatment) and literally ask them how often their exes reached out to them during it,

62% of individuals who responded to that poll said that their exes did not reach out to them at all during the no contact rule.

What does this tell us?

Put simply, the silent treatment doesn’t work the way you think it does to make an ex miss you.

Why?

Well, we think it has something to do with attachment styles. Specifically the avoidant attachment style which many of our clients exes tend to veer towards,

One of the interesting thing about avoidant individuals is that after a breakup they aren’t likely to reach out to you. In fact, they are more dedicated to reclaiming their independence or distracting themselves from the pain but eventually the toll will come.

In this video,

I make the argument that,

Avoidants are free to long for an ex once that person is unavailable out of the relationship, and typically out of contact so they are untouched by actual engagement and their deactivation systems aren’t triggered, revealing their long-suppressed attachment and switching their operating attachment wound from the fear of engulfment to fear of abandonment.

So, only when they feel safe, aka;

Will the avoidant ex will give themselves permission to daydream about your time together. This is why we are flushed with so many stories of exes coming back into the picture months to years after the initial breakup.

So, this seems to indicate that even though an ex isn’t likely to reach out to you during a no contact rule the silent treatment might be essential for helping them to eventually reach out. So, it’s still an important part of the process.

Yet my team and I have learned something else interesting about the silent treatment and that leads to perhaps the biggest point of a silent treatment on an ex.

In 2020 we started really studying our success stories to figure out what separated people who succeeded in the art of getting an ex back versus the people who didn’t succeed.

Our big takeaway from this practice was that what separated successful individuals was that they embraced one simple philosophy.

They found some purpose that they cared about more than their ex before they started talking to their ex again.

As weird as this sounds half of the battle when it comes to ex recovery revolves around life coaching. About finding that magnum opus type purpose. I was just on a coaching call the other day and you’d be surprised at how difficult finding a purpose outside of an ex is for some people.

Here’s my point.

What you do during a no contact rule is even more important than if it’s working.

Don’t be fooled or seduced by the crazy stories you hear online of these men or women who implement a no contact rule and their ex comes running back. You can’t take a chance that you are the exception to the rule. A much better use of your time is to use it productively in pursuit of a goal that means just as much to you as your ex.

Devote yourself to that purpose. Become a master and your ex will take notice. They’ll realize they’re missing out but that’s not the point. The point is you are realigning your priorities so that your world doesn’t revolve around your ex but rather this greater purpose.

You know you’ve found a worthwhile purpose when it’s all you can think about. Time and energy once spent on obsessing about an ex is now spent obsessing about achieving this goal outside of your ex.

Only then should you make a decision on if you want your ex back or not because it really puts your whole situation in perspective.

So, for me a silent treatment isn’t about manipulating an ex. It’s about taking back control of your life. Of course, it’s up to you to do that.

What are you waiting for?

Today we’re going to talk about why your ex is flaunting their new relationship all over social media. Unfortunately, this is something that we see a lot of in our private Facebook support group.

I’m of the opinion that there are four core reasons for why an ex would “flaunt” a relationship on social media.

We’re going to spend some time today going through each of these core reasons so you have a greater understanding.

We start first with a philosophical question about intent.

What separates an ex flaunting a relationship on social media versus them simply making their relationship official?

Well, let’s take some real life situations and show you an example of flaunting.

Flaunting:

Not Flaunting:

It’s been my experience that folks who flaunt tend to be all about garnering your attention in some way. I mean, think about the mere act of flaunting.

To flaunt a relationship, especially on social media, implies that you are seeking attention.

It’s a sign of insecurity and a sense of unhappiness. Typically happy people don’t need to tell everyone how happy they are, they just are.

But what could your ex want attention for?

I think the motives of flaunting are a lot more sinister than most people would have you believe and that leads us nicely to core reason number two.

Put yourself in the shoes of someone wanting to “flaunt” a relationship in your face. There’s a certain admission there.

They want to “show you how good they have it.”

They want to “win the breakup.”

And how do you win the breakup? 

Well, by finding someone better than your ex, right?

It harkens back to a much more primal need that exists in the human heart, a need for vengeance.

To do unto others the wrongs that have been done unto you and the great irony here is that most of the clients we work with have been broken up with, they are the victims, yet their exes claim that they themselves are the victims.

Which is selfish but very on brand for someone who has to use anger to craft this false reality.

Each of us is the hero of our own story but relationships often force us to be our true selves and sometimes we don’t like having the mirror shown in our face.

Here’s my point.

Many times an ex will feel that they have been wronged by you.

You have made them hurt.

So, they’ll flaunt a new relationship in your face to get back at you. To make you feel the hurt they are feeling.

Which is very on brand for avoidants.

The vast majority of the exes we’ve studied have avoidant tendencies,

The avoidant aspect is an important piece of information to have because almost all avoidants fall victim to the same cycle, this one,

Now, before I go into why this is relevant to “flaunting” relationships I would like to read you a quote from one of my favorite websites regarding avoidant attachment styles,

Once a breakup is enacted, the avoidant person must justify it to themselves and others. Central to the dismissive subconscious worldview is to expect partners to be too demanding and troublesome, so they will look out for anything that can justify this, regardless of how accurate it really is.

That’s important because of this tiny part of the wheel right here,

Usually what happens is that they use those “worrying things” as an excuse for why the person they are dating is not “the one.”

Of course, if you look at their past relationship history that’s what you tend to find with all of their relationships. There’s always an excuse for what was wrong with the person.

It’s a perfect deactivating strategy to ensure that they don’t ever have to get close to anyone.

After all, an avoidants idea of a perfect relationship is one that they can fawn over from afar without actually risking being hurt.

Where it’s relevant to our purposes is that they often use the “worrying things” to break up with you and then move on to the next person who they then put through the wheel.

But it’s easy to get caught up in its own hype.

Look at the second part of the wheel. That’s the sunshine and roses portion. One where they get caught up in the honeymoon period of the new relationship. The part where they might actually believe that this new person is better than you because at first they are.

Don’t you see how easy it is to rub that feeling into your face?

Yet it’s a fleeting thing.

With enough time the honeymoon period of this rebound wears off, they find some worrying things and on and on it goes.

I’d actually say paying attention to how quickly your ex starts flaunting the new relationship in your face is an important consideration to make.

Of course, there’s one other core variation my team and I have noticed over the years with flaunting.

The no contact rule has been widely talked about throughout the history of this website.

For reference, our official definition is as follows,

The no contact rule refers to a period of time where you cut off all conceivable communication with an ex after a breakup. The intent of this tactic should NOT be used to make your ex miss you but instead should be used to rebuild your own life so that you outgrow your ex. By doing this, the no contact rule can have the added benefit of making an ex miss you

No matter how you slice it you will be using a no contact rule to take a break from your ex from anywhere between 21-45 days.

The results speak for themselves.

However, success isn’t always linear and exes aren’t always quiet. Sure, the majority of exes actually don’t reach out to you during no contact.

But the ones that do…

Oh boy, do they reach out to you and when they encounter a wall of silence in return this just feeds into that theory of reactance.

In case you aren’t familiar, the no contact rule revolves around a psychological theory called reactance,

Reactance is an unpleasant motivational arousal that emerges when people experience a threat to or loss of their free behaviors. It serves as a motivator to restore one’s freedom.

So, here’s my hypothesis.

Sometimes in an effort to get your attention (factor #1) and as a way to get revenge (factor #2) they’ll flaunt a new relationship as a way to get you to break no contact.

Their weapon of choice, jealousy.

So, I guess you could say that factor #4 here is a combination of all the factors that came before it.

One constant remains though.

Flaunting = A Need For Attention

Your ex wants your attention and they’ll do anything to get it. Even flaunting a rebound in front of your face.