Today, we’re going to talk about the chances of getting an ex back after the no contact rule.

Now, in the past, we’ve done articles and YouTube episodes and podcast episodes on your overall chances of getting an ex back.

But one thing that we really haven’t hyper-focused on that we’re going to do today is what kind of impact that completing a no contact rule actually has on your overall chances of success.

We’re going to do our best to come to a definitive answer, but, as I think you’re going to learn, there’s no such thing as a definitive answer when it comes to breakups.

So, I thought probably the smartest thing to do first is to define what we consider to be a successful no contact rule.

So, we’ve all heard about the no contact rule, this magical period of time where you purposely ignore your ex, usually, no matter what the circumstances are, for anywhere between 21 to 45 days, and hopefully at some point, they’ll miss you.

Now, the no contact rule in and of itself is actually a lot more complicated than this average, generic definition would have you believe.

For example, we’ve learned that, really, what you do with your time during the no contact rule is one of the biggest indicators on if you’re going to have a successful reach-out or meet-up with your ex after a breakup.

To give you an example, imagine there’s two people, Person A and Person B. Person A does a no contact rule with the pure intent of trying to make their ex miss them. Person B does the no contact rule, not necessarily to get over the breakup, but at some point throughout the no contact rule, they decide, “I’m going to focus more of my time on me instead of on my ex.”

Now, when you compare the two experiences of Person A and Person B, Person B ends up having a lot more depth when they actually do get back in touch with their ex. Why?

Well, I think it ultimately has to do with the rate of change.

While Person A and Person B are both doing essentially the same things, Person A is still obsessing about their ex and oftentimes has anxious tendencies that still have a tendency, pun intended, to come out when they actually do get back in touch with their ex, whereas person B may start out with anxious tendencies, but through this time away, through the internal growth that occurs because they’re actively trying to improve their own lives during the no contact rule, they shed some of those anxious tendencies and then get back in touch with their ex, and their ex looks at them like they’re this whole new person.

Now, the other element that we have to consider when we’re looking at the overall chances of getting an ex back after a no contact rule is what our research has found to be the average chance of success of getting an ex back without our help.

So, a few years ago, I did this study where I was trying to find real-life data on what the average chance of someone who wants to get their ex back actually has when they’re just sort of going through a breakup.

What’s interesting is there’s not a lot of research that has been done on how often couples reunite after a breakup, and the research that is done is either not done by a reputable source or is so specific to conditions that you always have to take it with a grain of salt, essentially.

For example, some of those conditions would be something like, you know, we’re only looking at people in college, we’re not looking at the holistic experience of individuals across all age ranges. Things like that, you need to keep an eye out for.

But nevertheless, I ended up finding some reputable resources that had done research on how often people would reunite after getting an ex back.

And it turns out that, on average, there’s a 48.25% chance that you can get your ex back without our help, roughly 50/50, which doesn’t really tell you much more than you probably already know.

Now, it’s important to keep in mind that this chance of success here actually happened where the no contact rule really wasn’t implemented, and if it was implemented, it was implemented just based on what that particular individual felt was right for their situation.

So, oftentimes, no contact in these types of circumstances is indefinite, meaning they have no intent of ever talking or trying to get their exes back, which I realize is not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it helps us for answering the overall question that you’re here to learn about, which is, “What are the chances of getting my ex back if I use a no contact rule?”

One other factor that I think is important to keep in mind is we’ve had a lot of success or have been blessed with a lot of success stories, people who have gotten their exes back throughout their time on Ex Boyfriend Recovery and our brother site Ex Girlfriend Recovery.

But what’s interesting is we need to take a look at how we define success, because I want to be transparent with you. So, for me, success can mean usually one of two things. Number one is the most obvious one. You know, you want to get your ex back, you implement some strategies and tactics, and ultimately get them back.

Doing Thing A leads to Thing B, very obvious.

I think also success can be considered if you come into this process wanting your ex back more than anything, and then exit this process choosing not to get them back, but also having them, or them exhibiting signs that they are interested in you, but you haven’t decided you don’t want them back anymore, essentially. I’d consider this to be a success as well.

So, when you look at that, how you define success, or rather, how we define success, I did this interview with our head coach, master coach, Anna, who’s our head coach here at Ex Boyfriend Recovery, and we were just talking, and she mentioned that she’s had a success rate of her clients of over 70%. And I asked her specifically, “Well, how are you defining success?”

And she basically gave the same parameters that I gave: either you get your ex back, or things are going really well with your ex but you decide you don’t want them back anymore. So, those parameters had to be in place.

What’s interesting is, before my wife ended up moving on and doing something different, she was actually a coach here at Ex Boyfriend Recovery as well, in… I believe in the years 2018, or, I think 2017 or 2018, I can’t remember exactly, because years just kind of blend together, she ended up taking on 10 high-value clients. I mean, these were clients that worked with her day and night, every single day.

And her success rate was a seven out of 10. Seven of them got their exes back; three of them did not. One of them technically… One of the three technically did get the ex back; the ex literally looked at her and said, “Do you ever think about getting back together?” And she didn’t know what to do, so she texted my wife. So, there’s a little bit of an issue from there, so it could’ve been actually higher, but…

I think what’s interesting is when you take the basic strategy, the basic overall baseline, our chances of getting your ex back without any kind of help from us or any other coaching practice that helps you through this difficult time, helps you through this grieving process, you’re looking at roughly a 48.25% baseline chance. There’s a 48% chance that your ex will come back to you.

We cannot guarantee that. I’ve been on record saying multiple times that even if I sit here and say you have a 99% chance of getting your ex back, there’s still a 1% chance that you won’t get your ex back.

There’s no guarantees in this.

But what this tells us is a 48.25% chance is kind of the baseline. Yet our clients… We are obviously very, very big people, we think very highly of the no contact rule, if you will. Our clients are having over 70% success rates, and they are using the no contact rule.

So, if you’re looking for any kind of way of gauging what the no contact rule can sort of add to your overall baseline percentage of chances, I think roughly it’s going to add 21.75% improvement on your chances of success.

And look, this is not necessarily talking about the generalized no contact.

I realize this is very, very difficult to kind of get to the bottom of what’s working and what’s not, like I said. The way we define the no contact rule is it’s supposed to be this period of time where you work on outgrowing your ex.

This is the single… In fact, this is the single most important factor that we’re finding helps you get your ex back. It’s the ability to get to this place emotionally where you’ve outgrown them, where you are willing to let them go forever and be okay with your life.

How many of you listening to this or reading this right now are at that place?

Chances are, probably not a lot of you. So, if you’re not doing a no contact rule with that in mind, you can kind of kiss these improvements goodbye. But the impact, the overall impact that a no contact rule has on your chances is just impressive. To me, it still baffles my mind when someone wouldn’t even want to try it out.

I guess I… Playing devil’s advocate, the reason most people don’t want to try the no contact rule out, usually they fall into two camps. Number one is it seems like kind of a mean thing to do to an ex, someone who you care about so deeply.

And number two is you think that it is a type of a strategy meant to manipulate your ex. And we’re trying to reframe the way you’re looking at the no contact rule.

This is not a strategy that’s about your ex. This is a strategy about you. This is a strategy where you will work to heal after the breakup. This is the important part that we’re trying to get across.

So, the first thing we would say about, like, look, the first big improvement that the no contact rule will have on your chances is it’s really going to help the internal work that you’re going to be doing. It gives you time to create some steady habits, to create an efficiency of habit stacking that allows you to have more depth.

We have no control over the length of our life, but we have control over the depth of our life. And I’m a big believer in becoming someone so impressive that your ex just is naturally drawn to you, and you don’t really do that by obsessing about them and trying to play games during the no contact rule on making them miss you. It’s not about that. We need to sort of put that off. So, I think that’s the first big thing that can really improve the impact that the no contact rule will have on your overall chances of success.

For me, the second big thing is actually by looking at the data. We’ve had a lot of success stories, thousands that have come through our program, and I’m not kidding you, literally thousands.

I’ve been lucky enough to interview, I think I’ve got like 50 or 60 hours’ worth of interviews on YouTube just for free, where I sit down with success stories and interview them for anywhere between 35 minutes to an hour, talking to them, trying to pick them apart and understand what they’re doing that’s working.

And what’s interesting is that in 90% of those very same success stories, they used a no contact rule. So, the no contact rule’s clearly a huge factor for those who are successful at getting their exes back.

We also think that it’s a huge reason for why our program is so successful. What I think sets our program apart is that we initially started as one of the traditional, like, “Hey, look, we will teach you how to get your ex back,” but over time, we learned what actually work isn’t necessarily the tactics to make you more desirable to your ex. What matters more is that you make yourself more desirable to yourself, and by default, your ex finds that more desirable.

And I know that’s, like, incredibly cliché, and I think that’s why a lot of people, when they hear something like that, they kind of scoff and roll their eyes and say, “Well, that’s cliché, I’ve heard that a million times.”

But what I’m proud of is the way in which we empower men and women to actually make a difference, and the no contact rule is sort of the vehicle in which we give them the… Think of it like this. It’s the first big domino that falls.

Once we can get them to do the no contact rule and get them to adopt the no contact rule from an outgrowth mindset, we find they just end up improving week after week after week, becoming more empowered, becoming more confident to the point where, at the end, our end goal for everyone that comes through our website, program, everything is at the end of a no contact rule, we want to see such a change internally within you that you don’t even really want to get your ex back anymore, because that’s how we know, look, now you have all the leverage.

You talk to them, you don’t care if they respond, you’re not going to be looking at your phone every five minutes. You’ve kind of grown past them. You kind of have to ask yourself, “Are they willing to meet me at my new level?”

I also think that you need to understand that the no contact rule is a tool and not the entire strategy for getting an ex back. Look, the no contact rule will absolutely make anger dissipate, and will absolutely make people nostalgic, but that’s pretty much all it does from a stand from a “this will make my ex miss me” standpoint.

If you’re looking at the no contact rule, just purely what it’s going to do to your ex, it’s going to do two things.

It will make them calm down after the breakup, and it will help make them more nostalgic; our research on avoidance has suggested that. But we add this extra element of, like, “Okay, while that’s going on, let’s also do this work here. Let’s move on.”

This is not a popular thing to say, because I think most people come into this…

Most people come into this because they think their ex is the man of their dreams. And what we’re trying to make you realize at the end of it is, he may very well be, but also, so is this guy, so is this guy, so is this guy, and you have your pick of the litter.

So, the first thing I would say is you really need to understand that the no contact rule is just the first step to this overall strategy. It’s not the entire strategy. I think that’s a huge mistake people make. Right? There’s a synergy between all of the three core components that make up our program. So, if you were kind of to divide the three components of our program up, you would have three specific categories. You would have the no contact rule, you’d have the concept of the value ladder, and then the concept of the value chain. So, the no contact rule is all about internal work, the value ladder is all about external work, and the value chain kind of combines that value ladder and no contact work together.

All right, so the way I try to explain it to people who get confused, because sometimes I don’t do the best of explaining it, is simple. The no contact rule, this period of time where you’re ignoring your ex, is all about you fixing you. Not saying that there’s anything wrong, but there’s improvements that we can make. Everyone has improvements.

The value ladder is all about helping you understand the mediums in which you’re going to be communicating with your ex, and how you need to communicate with your ex. So, for example, after a no contact rule, what do you do? How do you get your ex back? Well, the first thing you’re typically going to want to do is build value through text messaging. Once enough value is built through there, you’re going to move up to phone calls, or sometimes video chat or Skype, or what have you. Once you build enough value there, while still using text message, you add on meetups. Meetups are kind of not romantic dates, they can be [inaudible 00:16:41] kind of hangouts, but they’re not romantic yet. So, while you’re doing texting and video chat, phone call, things like that, you’re also doing meetups.

Once you do a couple of meetups, that’s when you try to go for the romantic date. And usually, if you’ve gotten to that romantic date and you’ve sort of climbed your way to the top of the ladder, that’s usually enough for most women to have a man come and basically say, “I want you back.” But in cases where they don’t say that, there’s strategies that we teach that can help you do that as well.

But then, you kind of have this understanding of like, “Okay, I do the no contact rule, then I do the texting phase, then I do the phone call phase, then I do the meetup phase, then I do the romantic date phase. What the heck do I say? How do I build value?” Well, that’s where the value chain comes into play, by looking at the types of conversations you’re going to be having. Right?

So, generally speaking, I think there’s four or five main types of conversations that you’re going to want to have based on where you are at in the value ladder. So, the first types of conversation is small talk, basically. It’s the type of conversation that you can have pretty much with anyone, you know, like, “Hey, how’s the weather? What’s up?” That’s small talk. Next, you have telling stories, right? So, telling stories, you usually only tell stories to people who are acquaintances. They’re not necessarily strangers; they could be sort of work friends, they can be your closest friends, so there’s a wide variety. Next, you have sharing opinions. Sharing opinions is usually only reserved for close friends, family members, people you’re dating.

Then you have sort of the virgin ground. Virgin ground is where you start diving into topics that you’re maybe a little afraid to talk about. Usually, it’s not about your past relationship with your ex. This is usually sort of new ground where you’re kind of opening up and showing your ex the depth you have, and hopefully, in turn, your ex is sharing depth they have. And what you’re looking for is them to literally say, “Wow, I’ve never told anyone that before.” You’ve hit virgin ground. And then the final one is where you share feelings. You usually only share sort of romantic feelings with people you’re romantic with. So, there’s even kind of like a value ladder stair-step aspect to the types of conversations you’re having, and you sprinkle these all throughout the value ladder.

Now, how to do that is another article, another podcast episode, another entire YouTube video in and of itself. But that gives you kind of the idea that the no contact rule in and of itself will help improve your chances, but it’s not going to be the entire strategy. And the more you realize that, the more power the no contact rule can have, because you know, “Okay, this is just building the foundation for everything that’s to come.”

Today, we’re going to talk about how to tell if he’s not over his ex.

Now what’s really interesting about this topic is that on our website, Ex Boyfriend Recovery, we mostly deal with people coming at it from the other side of the equation.

Meaning they’ve been broken up with by an ex, they’re trying to get that ex back or trying to move on from an ex.

But I thought an interesting way to thread the needle is by looking at it from the perspective of someone who’s actually dating a boyfriend and has suspicions that this boyfriend is still into their ex.

So this is kind of this interesting way of threading the needle between both encampments, whether you’re currently in a relationship with someone and you have a suspicion that they may still be harboring feelings for their ex.

Or you’re coming at it from the perspective of you have been broken up with by your ex-boyfriend, he’s moved on to someone new, and you’re trying to figure out if he’s still into you.

Let’s get started.

So today we’re going to talk about the eight definitive signs that he’s not over his ex and these definitive signs are not just taken out of a hat.

I’m famous for trying to use real life research to back up every assertion that I make. Now, luckily on Ex Boyfriend Recovery, we’ve had a wealth of success stories from people who have gotten their exes back.

And what’s interesting is we learn a lot by talking to the individuals who got their exes back and asking those individuals, if they actually asked their ex what their perspective was during the breakup.

So specifically I want to hyper sort of look at our success stories in which another woman was involved, because I think that will help us understand how to tell if he’s not over his ex, when he’s dating someone currently.

And we found eight definitive sort of signs that you need to keep an eye out for and some of these signs, if you’re not new to this website, and you’ve read a lot of our articles will not be anything new to you.

But if you are coming to our website and kind of devouring the content for the first time, I’m sure a lot of these signs are going to be incredibly interesting to you. So let’s just get started.

Here are the eight definitive signs that he’s not over his ex.

Sign number one, time investment from a texting perspective.

All right, so what’s kind of interesting about this is we know based on a lot of different scientific research out there, there’s this concept called the interdependence theory, which posits that human beings commit to one another based on a cost and benefit scenario.

So in essence, human beings are always trying to find the best deal for themselves from a relationship perspective. And usually they use three types of criteria to determine whether or not they’re going to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs.

And those three bits of criteria are how satisfied they tend to be in the current relationship that they’re in. If they feel they’re not very satisfied, what typically happens next is they start thinking that there’s a better alternative out there for them.

They think I can do better than the person I’m with.

And then of course, they look at investment from a monetary perspective, but more important, from an emotional and time perspective.

Now what’s really interesting is they’ve done a lot of research on these different facets, these different tenants.

So we have,

And what’s interesting is they definitely seem to find correlations between investment and everything else.

And what I mean by that is let’s imagine you take a pretend scenario here.

Let’s say that you’ve been married together with someone for 25 years, and you’re incredibly unhappy with the relationship, you feel unsatisfied.

And every day you wake up thinking to yourself, I can do better than this.

I need to find someone better than this. I need to leave this person. And what’s interesting is that person in this pretend scenario never leaves that person. Why? Well, it’s really from a investment standpoint.

They have found that even if you are unsatisfied in a relationship, and even if you feel like you can do better than the person that you’re with, you tend to not to change your situation if you have invested a lot into it.

Because people don’t want to feel that their time was wasted ultimately.

So what we’re looking for here is a time investment from a texting perspective. So if you were one of those people who is very comfortable, very secure with yourself, and you’re okay with your current boyfriend texting his ex, and you start to notice that that boyfriend is spending more time texting his ex than he does texting and spending time with you, this is a sign that he is feeling more feelings towards her.

It’s not a good sign.

It’s a sign that he’s not over his ex essentially.

Now staying on the same investment standpoint this leads us to actually sign number two, which is time investment from an in-person perspective.

So texting is pretty much the thing that all couples do nowadays.

Usually we’re finding that across all age brackets, texting is probably the easiest way of communication, but it’s not the most meaningful way of communicating.

If you notice that your ex or your current boyfriend is spending a lot of time with his ex, what that typically means is he is investing a lot of meaningful time with this person. And it is not a good sign. Generally speaking, people who are happy in their relationships do not spend time with their exes if they can help it.

And what I mean by that is there are always, those constraints revolved around sharing kids, or if the person works for you or works with them, or what have you, circumstantial things like that don’t really count.

We’re talking about him spending time with his ex when he doesn’t have to, and an in-person perspective.

So the one sort of tricky thing here is it’s really easy in sign number one to say like, okay, if he’s spending more time texting his ex than he does texting you, not a good sign. It means he’s still not over his ex.

With sign number two, what we’re looking for here isn’t necessarily the guy’s spending more time with his ex in person, but rather we’re looking for, if he’s spending as much time with this person as he is with you, he still has feelings for that person.

Let’s move on to sign number three.

They come to her rescue every chance they get. Now, what’s interesting about this one is it really backs up what we’re finding with regards to the damsel in distress text message.

So if you’re not familiar, Ex Boyfriend Recovery was originally conceived as a strategy website for helping people who are trying to get their exes back, actually accomplish that goal.

Over time, as it has evolved more into a self-help development type of a strategy, which if done correctly can help you achieve that goal.

But more than anything, it’s helping you gear your time towards repairing yourself after a relationship, kind of picking yourself up off the ground. But what is kind of cool about all of our experience in helping individuals get back with exes, we’ve kind of learned tricks of the trade.

We’re kind of learning what works when exes are kind of engaged. And what we found works better than anything seems to be these damsel in distress type text messages.

So a prime example of this is we had a client once in our coaching practice who wanted to find a way to get her ex to see her in person. So it turns out that her air conditioning was broken in her apartment and she didn’t know how to fix it.

And she didn’t have the money to hire an air conditioning repair guy. And it just turns out her ex was really handy around the house with things like that.

So she sent him a text, “Hey, could I get your help on something?” And he dropped everything and came running.

If you’re noticing that your boyfriend keeps running to repair things for his ex, it is a good sign that he harbors some feelings for her. Otherwise he would just sort of say, “We’re not dating anymore. I don’t care about that. Figure it out yourself. I moved on to someone new.”

That’s what you want to see happen. What typically does happen in situations where your boyfriend has feelings for his ex is he will literally drop everything at the drop of a hat and go fix whatever she needs fixed.

Let’s move on to sign number four.

All right, so sign number four is the avoidance side of him gets triggered when you bring her up. You are not dumb. I realize that’s a very simple statement to make. You already know that.

And what I mean by that is when you are in a situation or scenario where you are worried if your current boyfriend has feelings for his ex, you are most likely going to bring this up to him, not in necessarily the most calm manner or in the ideal manner, but you will bring it up to him.

What you’re looking for here is to draw on your past experience and look and see how he reacts. What you don’t want to see is his avoidance side getting triggered. What you do want to see is him not see me bothered by it.

Him just simply explaining that it’s not true and I’ll explain why.

What you don’t want to see is the avoidance side getting triggered.

So what do I mean by that?

Well, we really talk about attachment styles a lot on this website.

So attachment styles, basically there’s four core main attachment styles:

Avoidant attachment style is what we’re looking at here.

We’re finding most ex-boyfriends that we deal with on our website tend to have avoidant attachment styles. That means they really value their independence. So when they feel like they become threatened or their independence becomes threatened, they tend to push people away out of their lives.

Well, in this odd way, you bringing up the boyfriend triggers or can trigger this side because it feels like an assault on his independence. And this is kind of a weird sort of thing. So what you don’t want to see happen is him to withdraw and almost disappear.

This would indicate he’s still harboring feelings for his ex, because what we notice happens with avoidant people is they tend to only allow themselves to feel nostalgia for past relationships when they are sure that they can never get that past relationship back.

So this happens one of two ways.

The first way is the way we recommend to people, which is try to project that you’re moving on after your breakup, even if you don’t feel like it because this will help that nostalgia come out.

The second is if that avoidant begins to date with someone new, AKA you, and they can think back positively on their past relationship. So this is what we’re looking for. We’re looking to see if his avoidance side gets triggered. So what are some avoidant things to do?

Well, I gave you the most common one, which is they simply shut up and sort of very slowly disappear. You’re looking for any type of withdrawal aspect coming from them. This is not a good sign.

Let’s move on to sign number five.

Sign number five is they fixate on how their past relationship went wrong.

Okay, story time.

When I was 19 years old, maybe 20, I had gone through my first breakup and I’ll never forget this.

I was really upset about how the breakup ended, because I felt like I could have done better in the relationship.

I felt like I was given an unfair scenario. I felt like her friends ganged up on me. I felt a lot of stuff. What’s kind of interesting about this is I was not over the breakup clearly. So after about like eight weeks or so, I meet this girl, really lovely girl, nothing but great things to say about her.

I consider her to be prettier than my ex. She was basically more intellectual than my ex.

She was, in my eyes, better in every single way. There was a attraction, there was a mutual attraction there but I was still not over my ex.

And so what ended up happening is as we began dating and going on dates, I just could not help myself and fixate on how my past relationship went wrong. And I almost did these comparisons between her and my ex in front of her.

That was an immature 19, 20 year old kid. I can’t remember. It’s been so long ago now.

But I was this immature kid that literally did these comparisons in front of her. And nothing screams you are still into your ex more than if you spend more time talking about your ex than you do about any other aspect of the relationship.

So if your current boyfriend is fixating on how their past relationship went wrong, what either they could have done better. But most of the time there’s going to be a lot of blame.

They’re going to blame their ex.

Their ex was this, their ex was that, their ex was this.

And they just fixate on that and they can’t let it go. It’s a good sign that they have some type of feelings and they’re not over their ex completely.

Let’s move on to sign number six. Sign number six is they grow jealous when their ex dates someone new.

This is probably the most obvious sign that there is. There’s a clear cause and effect happening here. Your boyfriend notices that his ex-girlfriend begins dating someone new and they immediately say that they’re not jealous, but they exhibit all the jealous type of behaviors.

They try to rub the fact that they’re dating someone new, AKA you, into their ex’s face.

They specifically pick arguments with their ex and just seem upset for no reason whatsoever. And usually what happens is you don’t find this out in such a simple manner.

What usually happens is the effect comes first before you can find the cause. So if all of a sudden your current boyfriend is doing out of character things like, hey, take this picture with me here.

Hey, take this picture with me here. And then after some research on your part, you find out, oh, the ex of my boyfriend is now dating someone new. This is not a good sign that he’s completely over his ex.

Remember the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.

What you’re looking for here weirdly enough is you want your current boyfriend to be indifferent about whatever his ex is up to.

Let’s move on to sign number seven. You catch them using pet names with their ex.

This always bugged me. And I think it still does to this day. I have not been in a situation where I’ve had to worry about that, thank goodness.

But let’s say you start dating someone new.

And there’s always this weird question in your mind on how much you can trust this new person, because you’re opening yourself up to them.

You don’t want them to hurt you. And then we kind of come up with the pet name scenario, which is babe, or honey, or hon or whatever the pet names we use are in our relationships.

And this thought enters your mind, which is, do they only do this with people that they’re intimate with or close with, like romantic with?

Or do they do this with everyone?

I was taking a trip down to my parents, I drove kind of like a cross country trip down to my parents and I got to Alabama. So I live in Florida. My parents live in Texas so I had to drive all the way from Florida to Texas. And we go through Alabama. Go through Alabama, and the people there are just like very Southern, very sweet, but they always call you hun. And this almost becomes like this cultural thing in Alabama.

So I would stop. I think I stopped at like a Chick-fil-A and this woman kept calling me hun. And I started thinking about this concept of pet names. It almost like devalues the pet name.

So you need to kind of account for pet names. And if it’s normal for your current boyfriend to use it with everyone.

And for some people, this may not seem like a big deal. For other people this is the biggest deal in the world. I think though, what we’re looking for here is the intent of the pet names.

So if your ex or if your current boyfriend is calling their ex by pet names and you know, or you catch them doing this, and you know that they only do this with people who were their romantic with, that’s a bad sign.

Like a really bad sign.

Let’s move on to our final sign, sign number eight, they become overly protective of their phone.

Now I’m not suggesting you pick up your boyfriend’s phone, look through it, nothing like that. In fact, that’s wrong.

You should not do that. But what you’re really looking for here is if, when you and your boyfriend are in the same room and they immediately like … They’re on their phone, they immediately kind of put their phone down or try to hide it from you. It’s not a good sign. And I think this is kind of like the gut check type thing.

Everyone knows when they’re doing something wrong. And probably the litmus test for figuring this out is, are you willing to … I mean, let’s just use you as an example, and let’s not just throw your boyfriend under the bus.

If you’re doing something that you think is wrong, you will feel the need to hide it from people.

Usually you hide it from people because you want to protect their feelings because you’re afraid of them. Maybe it’s even an ego thing. You want to protect their feelings, but you’re also at the same time afraid of how it will look on you. What you’re looking for here is this type of thing.

If you can notice the subtle shift in energy when you’re around your boyfriend and you notice that they’re becoming overly protective of their phone, usually it means … I mean, we all have things that we don’t want our significant others to find out about us.

But usually in cases like this, when you already suspect that he’s not over his ex, it doesn’t take a hard cause and effect line to figure out what’s going on here.

So pay attention to how protective your boyfriend becomes of their phone.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The second big thing I would say to do during the no contact rule if you want to get your ex back is to really embrace this idea of the Holy Trinity.

Now, we’ve been talking about the Holy Trinity a lot throughout the history of this website. Health, wealth, relationships. But I’m going to add an addendum to it. I no longer think life can be divided up into three simple categories.

I think there’s actually four categories if we’re being realistic about it. There’s health, which is anything that impacts your health physically or mentally. So this could be things like working out, or seeking out a therapist to talk to, or seeking out one of our coaches to talk to. These are things that impact your health positively. Then there’s of course wealth. This is probably the most obvious and straightforward one. This is anything that gets you money. Anything that helps your wealth as a whole. This can be investment opportunities. This can be quitting a job and starting a new one. This can be starting a new business. This can be anything in those realms.

And if you’re really young, let’s say you’re still early in college and you don’t really have much of a job, you can still work on this. There’s different things that you can do. And then of course there’s relationships. But the addendum here, or not the full addendum, but an addendum is with regards to the Holy Trinity, the relationships aspect, it’s outside of your ex. Too often we get clients who are so razor focused on the breakup they neglect all the relationships outside of that breakup. So this is friends. This is family. This is other romantic partners. Remember when I said people are afraid to go date new people because they’re afraid of failing, not with the new person, but failing with their ex. Well, this is kind of an opportunity to focus on those things.

And this is how you rebuild your life after a breakup. But the issue I had with the Holy Trinity, or the realization I had maybe last year or a couple years ago, was truly if you just live your life in a way … So I always try to practice what I preach. So I’m always, every single day try to function my time to where I’m doing something health wise, wealth wise, relationship wise, always seeking that ever elusive balance. And yet what I found to be fascinating was seeking that balance to not give my life meaning. Sure, I can easily argue that talking to you and helping people through their breakups and relationships should give me meaning, but it didn’t. Sometimes stuff like this feels like work to me because I have to do a lot of it every single day and put out fires every single day, and it kind of takes the fun out of it for me.

And it wasn’t until I found sort of the fourth pillar of the Holy Trinity that I began to realize this is fun again. And that’s sort of the Magnum Opus pillar. This is the pursuit of your life that you feel gives your life meaning. This could be anything. But the important part is that it gives your life a meaning. This is kind of the legacy component. So for me, it’s writing stories. I’ve always been incredibly passionate about that. For my wife, I think it would be creating something that helps parents with children. That’s something she’s incredibly passionate about. This could be anything. The important part is that you’re super passionate about, you can work on it. It’s almost like when you’re working on wealth based stuff, it’s the thing that you’re thinking about while you’re like, I just want to get this done so that I can work on that. And what we find is when I tell people to do this, all sorts of really interesting things come up with their Magnum Opus concept.

And really the Magnum Opus concepts is kind of the thing that you want to be remembered for when you’re gone, the statement you want to make on life. And it could be anything. It’s personal to you. And if your relationship ended badly, what you’re going to find happen is if you fail forwards, if you work on this Holy Trinity, health, wealth, relationships, Magnum Opus, a subtle shift is going to take in how you view, not only the past relationship with your ex, but how you view yourself. You create confidence for yourself. Other people start to notice that confidence and it creates momentum. The momentum eventually gets back to your ex. Your ex eventually wants to figure out what you’re up to. So this is kind of the first foundational of work that you do before you do any, any reach outs, or text messages, or sort of strategies or tactics.

A lot of people think if they say the right thing or do the right thing, that’s the key. Well, no, it’s kind of a combination of everything. Success is not linear. It’s a lot of ups and downs. It’s a lot of squiggles and circles. And it’s messy. It’s kind of like doing everything at once. The stoic philosophy, I think this is the old Roman Marcus Aurelius kind of was a famous stoic, and there’s something about it that I really like, and that’s the ability to focus on only what you can control. So the stoic man or female is only concerned with things that he has control over. He’s only concerned with, or she, she’s only concerned with reaching her maximum potential in all areas of life. And it’s kind of that statement where you have to check yourself, when you say, am I doing everything I possibly can in this area? And if you’re not saying yes, the stoic, that’s the thing that bothers them.

They’re not bothered by losing a job. They’re not bothered by losing a relationship. They’re not bothered, I don’t know, by something else that happens that they have no control over. They can’t control other people. They can’t control the weather. They can’t control society. What they can control is their soul. They can’t control their actions. And they are hyper, hyper obsessed with controlling their actions and maximizing their potential to help humanity. This is the kind of philosophy that you need to have when you go through a breakup, especially if the breakup ended badly, because the key thing that you need to hear, but no one ever wants to hear is the true secret to succeeding after all of this heartbreak is by focusing on yourself-

Today, we’re going to talk about how to break down your ex-boyfriend’s emotional wall.

All right.

So let’s just jump right into this.

What does an ex putting up an emotional wall typically look 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.

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.

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?

Well, there’s a lot of things you can do. I think the first thing really revolves around understanding the anxious and avoidant mentalities.

If you understand that you have anxious tendencies, you can work on those tendencies so that you are not appearing as anxious, and if you understand that your ex has avoidant tendencies, you can make sure behaviors are present that will not trigger avoidant tendencies, or you’ll figure out the language to speak to the avoidant person.

So just understanding the concept of anxious and avoidant mentalities will help you in your road.

Now I’m going to go out on a limb here and say most of the people reading this and are serious of getting their exes back, have anxious tendencies, they have anxious attachment styles. And that is the first place that you need to start when you’re looking at how to break down someone’s emotional wall. You start with it. This is kind of a weird thing, but you’re going to start with your time. So we notice that someone with an anxious attachment style tends to dedicate most of their time towards that romantic relationship.

So if you imagine, and this was an analogy given to me by a really, really smart woman named Antia Boyd, who I’ve done multiple interviews with, and I’ve done multiple webinars with and seminars with.

And her jam is attachment styles, and using attachment styles to help understand romantic relationships.

And she gave this analogy once, and I thought it was maybe the most brilliant thing I ever heard. Imagine that your time is like a cake and an anxious person, 70% of the cake is dedicated to their romantic relationship, whereas 30% of the cake is dedicated to all of the other areas of their life.

The smartest thing that you can do, if you find yourself any situation where you realize or recognize, hey, I have anxious tendencies and 70% of my time is spent worrying or trying to win back my ex-boyfriend, you need to shift that. Instead, you need to shift that to maybe 30%. So it needs to be the exact opposite of the ratio that you’re at now.

Most of your time literally needs to be spent on health, wealth, Magnum Opus ideals and relationships outside of your ex.

So 70% of your time needs to be focused on those four distinct categories.

So again, I’ll repeat health, wealth, relationships, and Magnum Opus, but the relationships aspect is only relationships outside of your ex. So, friends, family, even other romantic relationships with different partners. 70% of your time needs to be focused on those things, and then 30% of the time needs to be focused on your actual ex and the process of winning them back. Now, why? Why is this a good idea?

Well, because it signals to your ex, to your ex who has the emotional wall up, that you are no longer as obsessed about them as they would have you believe.

The other concept that I want you to understand is when you do get back in touch with an avoidant ex who has an emotional wall up, this is the principle you need to live your life by. When they pull back, you pull back.

Why?

Well, because it shows a maturity on your part, and it shows that you are different because in the past, when your ex has pulled back, what have you done? You have chased and tried to fix. That has not worked.

The often quoted Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Well, if you have chased your ex over and over again, and they’ve just avoided you more, put more of an emotional wall up, well, that approach isn’t going to work anymore.

What we’ve noticed is when you’re dealing with someone who has anxious tendencies, and you’re dealing with someone who has avoidant tendencies, when the avoidant pulls back, the anxious person should also pull back and give that avoidant person space, give them time to work through and realize, eh, I’m being ridiculous, and then they’ll come back. This is what secure attachment styles do. And the beauty of this is this all integrates with that cake analogy. So often times, you’ll have no problem pulling back in your romantic relationship a little bit if your ex pulls back, because you have all these other things on the cake that you can spend your time doing.

The final thing I want to talk about that you can do to break down your ex’s emotional wall is actually using the fear of loss. Now, I was actually trying to research for this specific topic. How do you break down an exes emotional wall? And one of the best places I always start is actually with real people, because I find sometimes if you go to Google and you type in, “Hey, how do you break down someone’s emotional wall?” And you try to find psychological research, it’s kind of bland, and it also doesn’t answer the exact question that you’re asking about.

So what I did is I went to our private Facebook support group. There’s over 6,300 people in there, currently, all of them going through breakups, some of them trying to get over their ex, some of them trying to get their exes back. And what’s interesting is literally today, there was a comment from someone who made a post in the Facebook group talking about the dumper’s experience. And it was fascinating to me because this girl ended up dumping her ex and putting up an emotional wall, it was just becoming too much for her. And so she broke up with her ex while he was on vacation. And what’s really interesting about the whole thing is that he came back from vacation and tried to win her back and tried to talk through things. And she almost gave in and said, “Yeah, I made a mistake.”

And what’s interesting is she went on and said that basically, the reason she did not admit that she made a mistake or took him back or anything was because she was having this huge internal turmoil. So one part of her just wanted to hug and kiss, forget any of it ever happened, let the nightmare end right there. But on the other hand, she was extremely scared and she was extremely emotional, and she was really frightened of things going bad a few more months down the road and she wanted to protect herself. So the prototypical, the emotional wall is up, she needs to protect herself. But it really wasn’t until she found out that he had someone new two months down the road, that her mindset shifted a little bit.

Now this is interesting, because I’m going to use her exact words here to describe what she felt when she saw the fear of loss at play.

“Well, it wasn’t until I found out he had someone new two months down the road. That day I received the news, I kept feeling something weird running down my spine. I tried to shake it off, but it kept piling. I only understood what that feeling was that night, when I finally got engulfed by it. It was the sense of loss. I only felt this sense of loss when I realized he was gone. So it’s true. We really need to evoke the sense or fear of loss in our ERP exes. If not, they wouldn’t budge. I’m not saying we got to find a rebound for that to happen, but we need to definitely evoke that fear in some ways.”

So as odd as it sounds, I think the best approach isn’t to go in the rebound, but I think it is to put forth signals that you are moving on. And this actually meets up with the literature and the psychological research, because what we know about people who have avoidant tendencies is that they don’t begin to miss you until they feel like you have moved on. And this is the case here with this woman. She didn’t feel like she lost her ex or missed her ex, until he had completely moved on to someone new.

And I think this is a lesson that we can all take, because you notice if you want to break down the ex’s emotional wall, a lot of the things that I’m instructing you to do, understanding the anxious versus avoidant mentality, make sure you have your time management skills so that the cake is not taken up directly by the romantic relationship, making sure that when they pull back, you pull back, making sure that you are instituting a fear of loss, however you’re doing that, are all things that indicate you are okay with moving on. And this is the key to breaking down an ex-boyfriend’s emotional wall.

Today, we’re going to talk about what it means when an ex-boyfriend wants to hang out with you.

So ultimately, we’re going to be defining what that situation looks like and it’s not necessarily the most common situation that we encounter within our coaching practice, but we do see it from time to time.

So without further ado, let’s just jump right into it. All right.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 work out because ultimately your ex-boyfriend is looking for some time type of need to get met. Either usually they want an emotional need met or a physical need met. Once those needs are met, once you hang out with them, the chase is over. They’ve gotten what they’ve looked at and they’re thinking to themselves, “I didn’t really want her back anyways.”

Yet, the approach is different if you make them work for it a little bit. And I’m not saying like physically, I’m saying, make them work just for your time. All of a sudden they value you more. So that is the thinking behind why you should sort of say yes, but schedule.

Okay. So how should you act if you decide to hang out with them? This is a really good question.

And to be honest with you, if it’s your first meetup, I think you should only come into this with a few tenet rules that you’re abiding by. If you come into this with the script of exactly what you’re going to say, it usually ends up being super awkward and not so efficient.

Instead, come into this with only a few guidelines.

The guidelines are, you’re not going to really bring up the past relationship. If they bring up the past relationship, don’t pretend and it didn’t exist. Acknowledge it, and then change the subject and say, “Yeah, I’d really like to talk about where we are right now.” Or, “I’d really like to talk about something else interesting.” I don’t know, think of something. The second big rule that you want to do is you should always look great.

Show them what they’re missing out on. And really the third big rule is if you’re going to compare with something, it needs to be something important that you do during the no contact rule. So we’ve been talking a lot about the no contact rule and the concept of the Holy Trinity.

And really the Holy Trinity is a fancy way of saying someone who has anxious attachment tendencies will… If you can imagine their time is like a cake. Someone who has anxious attachment style tendencies, 70% of that cake is dedicated to their ex, 30% is dedicated to all the other aspects of their life. What we’re really trying to get you to do during the no contact rule is to make your ex only 30% of the cake and the rest of your life 70% of the cake. That’s what we’re trying to get you to do. And then what you’re doing with your time should be noteworthy enough to mention.

Here’s an example using a health-based type thing. So I recently have gotten into cycling. I’ve sustained an injury in my foot. I was training for a marathon. So I sustained an injury in my foot and I needed something low impact to do. So I got into cycling and started really getting into it and trying to understand like, “Okay, what are the best bicycles? What’s the best cadence? And what’s the best way to train?”

So I bought a bike and realized there’s this really cool program online called Zwift, which allows you to basically set a real bike up in your house and ride in a digital world with other people. And it’s really cool. I just literally was doing it before I started talking about this topic. And it’s really cool because you could see other people’s paces.

So you get to kind of race them a little bit, but also you get to see all sorts of cool things. The scenery alone just helps you not focus on how much pain it is to continue pedaling. And it’s really cool. If you get a smart trainer, it simulates what it’s like to actually go up a hill.

There’s really cool maps on there. There’s like a map where you can ride through a volcano. There’s a map where there’s dinosaurs around and you’re just riding. There’s pre-programmed workouts. It’s just this really cool thing.

Now, if you tell that type of a thing to your ex, it’s going to do a couple of things. Number one, is it going to say, “Wow, she’s been working out.” Number two is, “Wow, that’s really cool. Zwift, I’m going to have to check that out.” And it’s even better if you have some sort of physical… like the Zwift has this app that you can use on your phone, where you can show people your workouts and make friends. It’s like a bicycle support group type thing.

But it’s like a cool story to sort of share. You just need to come into the date, or the hangout, or the meetup with that type of a mentality.

Just talk about what you’ve been doing without your ex and don’t rub it in, just make it really interesting.

Talk about one aspect and usually that’s enough. So that’s going to do it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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Let’s just right into it.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

So remember when I said we need to be friendly? Well, One of the best ways of not being friendly is for you to spill your emotions about how sad you’ve been, or how depressed you’ve been, or how angry you are at your ex. So what really tip number seven is all about is obtaining emotional control.

If you have trouble in a conversation with your ex where you’re having trouble not spilling your emotions, what it tells me is that you have not taken tip number one very seriously. Someone who has outgrown their ex has gotten to a place emotionally where they just don’t dwell on the past too much anymore.

They’ve grown past it. I guess the good analogy I could think of is think back if… Now, some of the listeners or some of the readers here may be in situations where they are with their first loves, but let’s assume that all of us are 40 years old and we’ve been through multiple relationships.

Maybe some of us are married. And we think back fondly to the very first person that we were with, the very first person we ever had a relationship with.

We broke up with that person or they broke up with us for whatever reason.

But when you look back, you don’t really think too much about that anymore. You’ve outgrown it. You’ve learned so much more. You’re not upset about some of the stuff they did anymore.

Even if they did cheat on you, I found sometimes you’re just kind of like, “Oh, well we were kids,” and you can move past it.

This is what you should always be striving to do. You’re trying to put this mentality on speed dial. I don’t know.

I’m trying to find a really good analogy, and I can’t think of one off the top of my head, but you get what I’m saying here.

We’re trying to accomplish the outgrowth mindset so that you do not spill your emotions and seem like a blubbering anxious mess in front of your ex.

Tip number eight, be prepared for a worst case scenario.

All right, let’s imagine a situation where you and your ex run into each other accidentally. You do everything right. You’ve outgrown them. You’ve been preemptive. You’ve kept interactions friendly and… I’m not sure, we’ll get to that in a minute.

You’re interested in what they’re saying. You don’t initiate any physical contact. You feel like you look your best. You’re not spilling any emotions, but your ex is being consistently a jerk. They’re consistently bringing up the relationship.

They’re consistently bringing up everything you did wrong, when in reality, they’re the ones who broke up with you because of things that they did wrong. Worst case scenarios are when things go wrong in every possible way you can imagine.

You need to be prepared for what’s going to happen or how to handle that situation if it does happen. So how do you handle it? Well, ultimately, I would approach it like this. If it was me, I would do everything I just said, all the tips. I would outgrow my ex. I would be preemptive. I’d be friendly. I would act interested in what they’re saying.

But what they’re saying is rude, I would allow them and not respond to it one time. I would allow them to get it out and not respond to it one time. But if they continue to dwell on it, and the conversation becomes polluted with it, I would just simply smile and say, “Well, it looks like you need some more time to process, so I’ll give that time to you. I really apologize for how you’re feeling,” and then simply exit the conversation.

I don’t believe in apologies when it comes to things that you didn’t do wrong. So ultimately, notice how I phrased that “apology.” It’s a tricky phrase. You’re apologizing for how they’re feeling. I’m sorry you’re not over this yet is essentially what you’re saying. And then exiting the conversation.

When someone is this angry at you, when someone has erupted, and you have found yourself in the middle of a worst case scenario, nothing you say or do in this moment is going to change their mind. Really ultimately, anger is nothing more than your ex wanting to blame someone else for their problems, because it hurts to look inwards.

It hurts to feel that way. So it’s easier for us to project that hurt onto other people and blame them, especially when it comes to breakups. So don’t give them the satisfaction of being their punching bag. Don’t be rude. Say, “I’m sorry you’re feeling this way,” and exit the conversation.

So I guess in that case, you want to keep the conversation as short as humanly possible.

So here’s the wrap.

Really how you act when you run into your ex is super dependent on where you are in the no contact rule.

If you’re not familiar with the no contact rules, without a doubt, the most popular and important strategy that creates the foundation of everything that you do, whether you want to get over your ex or get your ex back. And where you are in the middle of no contact or out of no contact dictates what you’re going to be doing going forward.

So for example, if you’re in the middle of no contact and you run into your ex accidentally, and things seemed to go well, can you break no contact early?

No, you still continue on with your no contact. You’re not going to try to reach out afterwards to say, “Hey, that was a really great interaction that we had,” or, “It was really nice seeing you today.” You’re not doing that. You’re going to finish your no contact out and just be thankful that you had this opportunity to stick in your ex’s mind.

The situation is a little bit different if you’re out of no contact.

Now we teach a specific strategy out of no contact where we try to stair-step using what we call the value ladder.

And the value ladder is this concept where we believe in doing a no contact rule first, and then engaging interaction or rebuilding attraction through text messages, then through phone calls, then meet ups, and then romantic dates.

It’s just upping the ante with every new conversation medium. Well, generally speaking, if you’re already out of no contact, maybe you’ve reached out to your ex a few times, and then you accidentally run into them, it is a good idea to use this meetup, maybe later that night, after eight hours have gone by, to reach out to your ex and say, “Hey, it was really nice seeing you today.” That’s all you got to say.

And that can get a conversation started, and you can go from there.

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,

So, we’re going to talk about every single one of those questions.

So let’s just start from the top.

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.

“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.

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.

So, let’s move on to the next question. “My ex has a new girlfriend. Does he miss me?” I think in cases like this, where your ex is moving on to his ex, the truth is they’re going on the rebound to try to forget you.

And that’s maybe a hurtful thing to hear, but bear it out.

They aren’t going to miss you at first.

This is an important thing to consider, because I think there’s this misconception people have when their ex moves on to this new person, the new person doesn’t measure up to the expectations that your ex maybe had. And they begin to miss you.

That seems to be what happens, but it happens on a much longer scale than you can possibly imagine. So, if your ex does have this new girlfriend, and this new girlfriend is their ex, it is possible that he will miss you but it will not happen right away.

In fact, the chances are actually higher due to normal circumstances or due to the abnormal circumstances you find yourself in because your ex is going back to a known commodity.

What I mean by that is, the honeymoon period or the honeymoon phase that they’re likely to experience is going to be a little bit shorter because they’ve already experienced a honeymoon phase with this person. And after that honeymoon phase is over, it’s usually when they began to miss you or begin to harp on the alternatives factor.

What do we mean by that?

Well, there’s this concept called the interdependence theory, which basically helps us understand why human beings make commitment decisions. Basically it says, human beings make commitment decisions based on costs and benefits scenarios.

So they’re always trying to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs. And the way they grade this in their heads subconsciously, is through three external factors. How satisfied they are in the relationship with the person that they’re with.

How much they’ve invested into the relationship with the person that they’re with, money or emotions. And then, of course, alternatives. Is there someone out there better?

Well, at some point your ex thought there is a better alternative to you in another relationship. This is why he went into a relationship with this new person. But the same can also be said when he moves on to the new person.

Eventually they don’t start seeking out other alternatives or having the idea of other alternatives until satisfaction comes down. And satisfaction usually comes down when the honeymoon phase is over. And this is an important thing to understand, because satisfaction itself won’t cause an ex to want to break up with their new person and come back to you.

What ends up doing that, is when they began to realize they’re investing more time into you via the being there method than with the new person.

Then all of a sudden you look like the best alternative. So that’s when you can expect an ex to begin to miss you.

Ah, but what if they go back to their ex and still call you, what should you do? This is, again, a variation of the being there method. After our no contact rule, of course, you want to gain a monopoly on your ex’s time.

All right.

So this goes back into that interdependence concept of satisfaction, alternatives, investment.

You want your ex to invest as much time into you as possible.

So if they’re calling you and talking to you, it’s always a very good sign. But why is investment so important? Well, they’ve done studies and realized, people will stay in unhappy marriages where they definitely believe that there’s a better alternative out there for them if they feel like they’ve invested so much into the relationship.

Why?

Because they don’t want it to be for nothing.

So, if you’re to grade these three factors of the interdependence theory and try to understand which one matters more, it would definitely be investment.

Because even if satisfaction is low, alternatives are high, they will still stay in an unhappy relationship because they don’t want their time to be wasted.

This is important to understand, because if you’re able to take the monopoly on your ex’s time, all of a sudden you remove that off the table, and they really start to make decisions based on how unsatisfied they are with this new person and how you’re the better alternative out there.

So, let’s go with the big million dollar question of, “Why is it that my ex said that he loved me but he still went back to his ex?

There’s a lot of different reasons, but I think ultimately understanding attachment styles is the number one thing that you can do to help navigate the understanding of men and break up. So, one of the cool things about having an audience is, we have a lot of data to sort through.

We have a lot of experience to sort through. We noticed earlier last year when we started really diving into attachment styles, that most of our clients have anxious attachment styles, and most of their exes have avoidant attachment styles. Now, why is this important?

Well, people with anxious attachment styles value relationships pretty much more than anything else in their life, almost to an unhealthy level. They become almost very possessive of the person that they’re with. This often leads them to extreme bouts of jealousy, extreme bouts of possessiveness, controlling, things like this.

In their minds, they believe that they’re doing it to create a meaningful connection with the person. And that the connection is this mass thing that is amazing. This is the exact opposite of what an avoidant ex wants, or an avoidant person wants. An avoidant person wants space every once in a while, because they feel they value their independence more than anything else.

So the irony is, avoidance and anxious people are drawn to one another, but they’re doomed from the outset because their natural attachment styles just grate on each other’s nerves. So, why is it that your ex says that they love you but they go through this breakup with you and then go back to their ex?

Well, I think it’s an understanding an avoidance need of valuing their independence. Sometimes when things get so emotionally intimate between two people, an avoidant will literally start to think, “Oh my gosh, I’m getting too close.” Or, “Oh my gosh, what happens if I lose my independence? What happens if I’m no longer able to do this or no longer able to do that.”

And they freak out and leave.

But the interesting thing about avoidance is, a lot of people misunderstand and think that they don’t want an intimate relationship.

They do.

They want an intimate relationship more than anything else, but they are stuck in the self-fulfilling cycle.

Where they start out wanting an intimate relationship because they’re tired of being alone, but they do value being alone at the same time. So they enter into a relationship with someone who gives them all of the intimacy that they are seeking.

Someone who is an anxious attachment style. But when the anxious attachment style person’s tendencies begin to grate on their nerves, they start to realize what a mistake it was to get into a relationship and they bow out of the relationship.

Of course, then they start to feel bad about themselves and feel sorry for themselves and create this self-fulfilling narrative in their head of, why is this always happening to me?

And then they start to look for someone else. But what about the known commodity where they begin to realize, “Hey, remember my old ex, maybe I’ll try things up with them?”

And this actually completely is understandable if you understand how avoidance tend to miss people. So, avoidance are famous for literally loving these, what if scenarios.

They love to admire from afar, to have nostalgic reverie from afar, when there’s no chance they could ever get back together with you is oftentimes when they begin to miss you because it’s safe to miss you.

So, then when they get out of this relationship with you and they begin to think back on their whole relationship status, it makes complete sense that they would want to go back to an ex because they begin to have nostalgia about maybe the good times with this one ex.

Of course, interestingly enough, if they get into this relationship with this one ex, and if that ex, this new person that they’re with, has anxious attachment styles it’ll eventually grate on their nerves and they will be stuck in the same process again. And ultimately, maybe want to come back to you.

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.

So like I said, nine different statuses or posts that can make your ex jealous.

So let’s briefly cover what those are.

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 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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 actually think a smart approach would be doing what Paula does. Imagine this. Imagine you are so busy, you forget it’s your ex’s birthday. You’re busy living your life and having fun.

So you actually go out with friends, not necessarily to a bar, but it could just be at a restaurant. You’re going out, meeting up with friends at this restaurant, or even a bar for drinks. And you’re posting pictures on your ex’s birthday. Now this can be taken two different ways from an ex.

The first way is the most common way, which will be your ex is so wrapped up into what you’re doing, they kind of forget the fact that maybe you’re doing it to get their attention. So that’s the first way.

The second way is they just literally think you’re doing it to get their attention. So you need to really have a good handle on the type of person your ex is and how they’ll react to jealousy if you use it.

Now, the idea here is by going out, having fun with friends, you’re kind of hitting the relationships aspect of the Holy Trinity. But at the same time, what you’re also doing is showing your ex that you’re having a good time on their birthday.

And it’s also kind of showing your ex, hey, this is what you’re missing out on. We could have had a good time on your birthday. Instead, I’m replacing you with my friends. This is a less subtle form of jealousy. But again, it was incredibly effective for Paula who said her ex got jealous and she thought she was blocked at the time.

All right, next, we have the having fun with someone else post.

And this one is coming to us from a woman named Katie, which basically says, “I posted a picture of me laughing with a male friend.” All right.

So here we have our form of direct jealousy via social media. The way this works is pretty simple. You with a platonic male friend, have someone take a picture of the two of you sharing a laugh. That’s it. But this is a direct form of jealousy. My advice always would be if you want to make your ex jealous, and this is your primary directive on what you’re doing.

First approach it through indirect means, through subtle means.

So try to make your ex jealous through some of those Holy Trinity posts, through the food jealousy, drink jealousy, mirror and the selfie post, even the going out on the birthday post is pretty subtle.

But the second you actually include a member of the opposite sex that your ex or someone that your ex could potentially become jealous of in the picture, even if you’re not “making out” with them and doing ridiculous things romantically with them, this is still a form of direct jealousy because it looks like you are trying to make them jealous.

But you can not deny the effectiveness. So it really depends on the type of person your ex is.

And also it depends on the type of person you are.

And I say that because if you have a history of posting pictures with other guys having fun, purely platonic, there’s nothing wrong with that.

In fact, this type of a post fits right in tandem with your previous history of posts. So it kind of just looks like you’ve picked right back up where you left off before you started dating your ex.

And the next one we have is called the killing it at work post.

Now this one’s kind of a fun one because it directly hits on the wealth aspect of the Holy Trinity. And it comes to us from a woman named Carmen who basically said, “I posted a pic of my first week back in the office that got a ton of attention. He was calling me within hours of me posting.”

And she doesn’t actually specify what it was that she posted. But I’m just going to go out on a limb here and say her posting a picture at work.

I think reading between the lines here, her ex must’ve been jealous of some of the males she worked with at her specific job. And for those women who are listening here, who think, well, my ex isn’t like that, think again. Because like I’ve already stated with subtle jealousy, oftentimes it’s what you can’t see that makes you more jealous than what you can see.

Yes, what you can see can make you incredibly jealous, it can make you feel like the person’s being unfair to you, flirting with this person in front of you.

But it’s oftentimes when you’re left alone with your own mind that you have to go to war with it and your mind knows exactly what to say or what to think to attack you in the weak areas.

So if your ex has a history of becoming jealous with the fact that, hey, you work with other guys, you’re an attractive woman, other guys hit on you, including men at work. All of a sudden it’s a different sort of feel to posting a picture of going back to work.

So if you think your ex has a history of doing this, where they’ll just be driven nuts by the fact that other men find you attractive, especially at work, posting a picture at work, even if it’s just you sitting there around other guys at your desk can be an incredibly effective motivator with regards to jealousy.

And the final jealousy status post/update that can make an ex jealous is called the look where I am post.

And this is actually one of my favorites. It comes to us from Amanda, who basically says her “Posting pictures of her traveling and checking out places that he always told me we would go together made him jealous.”

All right. So here’s kind of an interesting, funny thing that happens in relationships. Oftentimes men and women have a tendency to future pace relationships. So when we’re in the midst of a honeymoon period, when we’re feeling really good about ourselves, what we do is we will start projecting of what things will be like in the future. And usually we do this through locations. Oh yeah.

We’re going to take a trip there one day. Oh yeah. We’re going to go there one day.

So if your ex is saying, you’re going to do all these things together and you’re going to go all these places together, but never comes close to doing it, one of the really cool ways of making them jealous and also making them a bit regretful is having that experience without them. Sometimes you can do this alone.

Usually it’s best to go with a friend, but I think a primary easy example is actually not with regards to going places that they tell that they would like to go with you. It’s with regards to doing things that they told you that they were going to do together with you.

So this can be usually … So usually I’ve noticed a lot of exes will say like, hey, we should do a romantic, like private hot air balloon ride together.

Well you don’t have to necessarily do a private hot air balloon ride, but maybe what you can do is look up where hot air balloons take off somewhere nearby and sign up and go on one. I’ve actually been on a hot air balloon ride, and it was one of the most incredible experiences I think I’ve ever experienced.

In fact, I got some really cool stories out of it because I went with my wife when we were engaged and I had actually already proposed to her before I went on the hot air balloon ride. It was actually like included in the engagement proposal. So when we went on the hot air balloon ride, we were actually already engaged.

But what’s interesting is I didn’t know this about hot air balloons, but when hot air balloons land, they sometimes don’t know where they’re going to land. And so they have a car that’s almost like, kind of like chasing the hot air balloon ride, so that it knows like, hey, there’s a communication between the two. Our hot air balloon pilot basically set up like, hey, we’re going to be landing here.

And so when we landed, we actually landed in this really, really open neighborhood. There was like no fences or anything, but there was like this gigantic kid’s birthday party going on. And so as we’re getting closer and closer to landing, you could see people coming out of their houses and pointing out our hot air balloon.

So it’s this really cool experience. And we landed literally in the backyard of this like eight year old birthday party. So this eight year old’s having a birthday party, and we were the ones who like landed. I’m pretty sure he thought like his parents, like, oh yeah, mom and dad, thank you so much. It’s the best birthday ever. A hot air balloon ride in the backyard.

The truth is though that it was like completely by chance, but it was really cool because when we got out, everyone assumes that I had popped the question on the hot air balloon ride, but I had already done it way before then.

And we were just so tired of people literally asking us this question that eventually we just sort of like, went with it and were like, yeah, that’s what happened.

So we have like a bunch of pictures of us landing in this hot air balloon, this backyard with a hot air balloon. All these kids are coming out and trying to roll the hot air balloon up. We’ve got pictures. People like posing with us and stuff like that, showing off the engagement ring and everything like that.

And while that’s an incredible story, imagine the story you can have, if you were to do one of these experiences that your ex always “said that they wanted to do with you, but never got around to doing it.”

Not only can that make them jealous of the fact that you’re doing it without them, but it also can make them regret the fact that they’re not having this experience with you.

So it works.