Why Get Your Ex-Back Strategies Are Futile
I’m willing to bet that one hundred percent of the people reading this have something in common. You’ve all had your heart broken by an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend. A smaller group of you have even googled “how to get your ex back” after being dumped. I have, and not just for this article. Insert grimace.
A million dating coaches are kept in business by the heartbroken masses who want a strategy to get their ex back. If you google it right now, it returns over 3 billion search results. I’m serious.
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The bad news is that these “strategies” will probably waste your time and money (please don’t give them your money) if you use them to get your ex back. They are, strangely enough, a good idea for moving on with your life.
If you need a strategy to get your ex back, you’ve already assigned too much value to them and put them in charge of your happiness.
I understand you’re hurting; your ex is the only one who can take your pain away.
That almost sounds like an addiction. That would make sense considering the cocktail of hormones and chemicals that shoot through your brain when you love someone. They break up with you, and now they’ve taken it all away cold turkey.
Quitting anything cold turkey is hard.
What about these strategies? What are they?
They all involve the same ideas. They want you to go “no contact” for a certain amount of time (21–90 days generally), become hot and awesome by going to the gym and developing your life, and then reinitiate contact after that time when you’ve become hot and fabulous. Or you’ve been taking pictures of yourself and your new excellent life and strategically posting them on social media.
Your ex sees and becomes intrigued enough to reach out to you.
The theory is that if your ex has had some time to cool off, they’ll see how awesome you are doing and reach out because they see you’ve changed or are jealous. Or, when you reinitiate contact to “test the waters,” they’ll be receptive because they’ve had some space. You can set up a meetup for coffee or something light to catch up.
Then they’ll see how hot and awesome you’ve become and regret dumping you, which opens the door!
If your heart is broken and your emotions are getting the best of you, the strategies will make sense, but even reading back through it while editing this article, it all strikes me as silly. It seems like much effort to put into someone who has decided they don’t want to be with you.
You’d be better off removing the last step, just using the first two steps, and moving on with your life.
Let’s look at the foundation of most of the strategies.
1. No contact rule. What is it? This is precisely what it says. You do not, under any circumstances, contact your ex. No calls, texts, emails, IMs, voice notes, DM’s on social media, etc. You go completely silent.
The thinking behind this is that an ex will wonder why you aren’t blowing up their phone trying to get ahold of them. You were just dumped; you should be begging to get back together. Instead, you’re playing it cool and are moving on. This will make your ex intrigued and wonder about you. Did they make the right choice? Maybe they were wrong about you!
Common sense should tell you that if you get dumped, the dumper doesn’t want you around and most likely doesn’t care what you are or aren’t doing. Just think of the times you’ve dumped someone. If it’s false, that person is likely playing games, and you want to avoid them anyway.
Going no contact is not a tool to get your ex back. It’s a tool to help you get distance and protect yourself from further emotional harm and torment. No contact should be used for you to get a handle on your emotions. And, more importantly, move on.
2. Take the extra time to make yourself hot and fabulous. The next part is to immediately get into the gym and work on your body so that you become “hot!”. Also, pick up new hobbies so your life can become more awesome. You are also to work on your “flaws.”
The whole point is to completely reinvent yourself in whatever arbitrarily short time frame has been given to you. It’s probably between 21–90 days because you don’t want to wait too long. If you do, your ex might move on.
The reality: How much can you change in 21–90 days? Will that be a lasting change? If your sole motivation is your ex, what happens if they don’t take you back? Do you go back to the old ways that got you dumped?
It would be best if you wanted to be better for yourself because you are you, and you deserve it. Not because you think it’s what it will take for your ex to want you again. Why give your ex that much power over your life?
3. Reinitiate contact to test the waters/let them contact you after they see how extraordinary your life is on social media. After the arbitrarily set timeframe, and you’ve made yourself hot and awesome, you’ll send a feeler text to check the temperature.
They should respond, and you’ll keep the conversation going before asking if they want to meet for coffee to “catch up.” Of course, they say yes. You meet up, and your ex is blown away by how much you’ve changed and gotten yourself together over the last however many days since you broke up.
They then rush right back into your arms, and you’ll both live happily ever after….
Until your ex doesn’t return your text, is colder in their response, or says no when you ask them if they want to meet up. Then you are right back at square one with a broken heart, and all your work has gone out the window because it was all based on your ex. Not your desire to better yourself because you believe you deserve it.
If someone shatters your world when they leave, they shouldn’t be able to fix everything just by returning. You’re giving them too much power over you if they can. You’re worth more than that.
The other scenario is that maybe your ex will see how awesome your life has become in the pictures you’ve posted online and decides to reach out to you. Wouldn’t that be awesome?
This is your best chance to get back together. Allow some time to pass; your ex reaches out to you. You shouldn’t be the first person reaching out if you get dumped.
It sucks getting your heart broken. Just understand that your worth is not tied to your relationship. Your value has nothing to do with that person letting you go. You determine your worth, and nobody gets to tell you what it is.
You think getting them back will solve everything, but it’s likely just kicking the can down the road. You’ll probably just be heading for another breakup. Things usually end for a reason. That reason doesn’t just go away.
It would be best if you didn’t have to beg and plead for someone to take you back or to stay with you. Your person won’t put you through all that.
Your best bet is to go ahead with no contact to get control of your emotions and process them. The space you’ll be creating will allow that to happen. Then work to improve yourself for yourself, not for them. It’s great to figure out what you could have done differently in the relationship to have been better but use that as a lesson for future relationships.
Maybe your ex will reach out in the future, and you can try things again, but odds are, as the dumper, your ex won’t think they need to work on anything. If that’s the case, you’ll be on a different level, and all the problems you had in the relationship previously that you ignored will come back in full force.
And you’ll be right back to square one, but you’ll be the dumper this time. Your time would be better spent leveling up and finding someone on your level.
