When you’re finally moving on and your ex gf comes back. Ahhh! This is one of the worst!!! It’s one of the breakup scenarios that probably has driven millions of men insane, so let’s talk about it and hopefully you’ll be a little less insane by the end of this post! Hey guys, welcome back to the Breakup Corner, I’m Andi Galster. Here I teach men how to move on from their ex-girlfriend. 

This type of post is the kind of topic that I’d love to talk about in person at physical events, because if I would, I could do a raise of hands to ask the men in the room if it ever happened to them. I guarantee you, almost every guy would probably raise his hand.

There’s probably no man above his 30s, who doesn’t have an ex-girlfriend who came back… But only after he was struggling with the breakup like crazy, and then eventually he learned to cope with the loss of the relationship and the harsh truth that his ex-girlfriend just didn’t care about him at all. And eventually, he came out stronger from it. And then… when he least expected it, maybe he barely began to move on, the ex-girlfriend sent him a message!

It’s such a classic scenario. In fact, when I started my relationship coaching over five years ago, I focused on the advice of re-attracting ex-girlfriends for quite some time. Now I don’t do this anymore, exactly because this behavior pattern is extremely common among women and it’s really a bad way to treat a man.

Ex girlfriends move on as if it was nothing, and they tend to have little regret about the breakup in the early stages of the breakup, but after some time, they realize that moving on as if it was nothing was a big mistake. 

And most of the time, once they had a few unsatisfying rebound relationships, they will hit up their ex-boyfriend. Now, this pattern sounds pretty evil, manipulative and selfish, but of course, I am oversimplifying the entire story.

Some women definitely are cold-hearted and treat men merely as options and will only reach out to their exes to recycle an old partner, and some other ex girlfriends sincerely miss their ex-boyfriend and they realized that they made a mistake trying to move on from the relationship, and they realized it very soon after the breakup. That’s fine, of course. The bad one is when exes come back way too late.

Whichever the case that it may be with you and your ex-girlfriend, one thing is relatively certain. Once you have gone through a strong personal growth phase after the breakup, and if your ex actually noticed that you are more attractive, seem happier, and so on, she will be tempted to reach out to you.

The really awful part of this is that of course, for you as a guy, the first few months of the breakup were likely absolute torture, whereas for your ex-girlfriend it’s usually the reverse. Women have a very short burst of extreme breakup pain, comparatively actually more than men, but then they end up doing their own thing very fast, they end up going out and begin dating new men because it is so easy for them, but eventually, even they have to realize that moving on so quickly wasn’t a good solution. 

And then they will have to go through the breakup pain phase for a second time, but this time, much longer of course. Whereas men tend to go through one prolonged breakup pain phase, and eventually they will get over it, or at the very least, they gradually worked on improving themselves and getting better. And this is of course, why so many women reach out to their exes after long stretches of time, because by the time that women go through the real griefing stage, men have already been hustling and working hard… Or at least, they’ve gone through a long stretch of being fucked up, and they’re slowly finally establishing new habits to BECOME attractive again.

Honestly, I think women tend to not go through as much personal growth after breakups as men. The truth is, as an average or above-average attractive woman, a lot of deep inner work is not required. Yes, of course, it’s very much likely that a lot of women will read books about relationships, or other philosophical books on personal growth, but reading about how to grow as a person and applying it in your real life are two completely different realms of reality. If you’re a man and you read, but don’t apply, your dating life is ruined. You will seem extremely unattractive, and no woman will want to be with you. 

But as a woman, even if you only barely picked up a little bit of new wisdom after a breakup, you will still have 100s of options with men who find you attractive. Honestly, even if you did nothing, you would have almost the exact same amount of men who would want to be with you.

This is not meant to belittle women’s personal growth. There are always many outliers and women who go through extreme transformations after breakups. And this is honestly the type of woman that I would WANT to be with. A smart, patient, introspective woman who is very thoughtful about her relationship.

But, this generalization is more to lay out the general reality of dating dynamics between men and women. Women simply have it easier after a breakup to re-enter the dating market, and so it is much more likely that you did more work after the breakup to turn yourself into an attractive partner. Maybe not initially because you were super messed up, but eventually, you probably realized that it’s time to get off your ass, stop wallowing in your tears, and get moving again. At the end of the day, every guy, no matter how much he’s been beaten down, has the fighter in him, and maybe you’ve already discovered that fighter. Maybe you’re discovering it right now. Or you might discover him very soon.

But a woman who just had a breakup is automatically already attractive. There’s NO struggle. She doesn’t HAVE to fight to get any male attention. In fact, to a man, her being vulnerable and easily available makes her MORE attractive, not LESS attractive. With men, it’s the reverse.

After your breakup, your neediness, insecurities, low self-esteem and so on were extreme deterrents for most women. So I am sure that you are either soon to go through a lot of personal growth because you’re clashing against the wall that we call reality, or you’ve already gone through that phase, and now that you’ve changed yourself so much for the better, you have finally received the magic words from your ex-girlfriend: “Hey, how are you doing?”

And this is usually the worst time to hear those few words from your ex-girlfriend, because it’s roughly the time when you are finally beginning to move on. You no longer miss your ex as much, perhaps it’s even been weeks or months since you thought about her, or even if you thought about her occasionally, it’s just a fleeting short moment of missing her, but slowly and surely, you are feeling Ok to be alone again.

You have started a new life, you have learned new things about yourself, you have taken on new hobbies, perhaps you got a new job, or you have been hitting the gym and you are extremely attractive now. Whatever you’ve been up to, chances are that you are feeling much better now. Maybe you’re even considering to start dating again, or you already started casually dating a girl, and perhaps it’s not even a rebound relationship — in short, you’re roughly ready to move on with your life and you are at the transition stage where you are moving on to a brand new chapter. And this is exactly why your ex girlfriend is reaching out to you. She can feel that this is what you are going through. She knows that soon, you will be out of reach. Pretty much forever.

It may be an evil, calculated and selfish strategy. Or just an almost subconscious feeling because she really misses you and she knows if she doesn’t say something now, you’ll be gone forever. Whatever the reason, when you get that message from her, it can be extremely confusing. The thing is, I can’t tell you clearly what to do here. It is your choice how you want to proceed. And it really depends on how it all is going down, and how she treated you.

What I can tell you for sure is that if your ex-girlfriend reaches out to you, obviously in the hopes of rekindling the relationship with you, then she better make it extremely easy for you to get back together, if that is something you want to pursue. No mixed signals, no hot and cold, no constant confusion where you stand. No beating around the bush, or vague messages or promises or any of that stuff. When you go on a date, it should be light-hearted, no buts and ifs, no indecisiveness, and so on.

If you want to give things another try when your ex reaches out, the moment that you can notice a red flag or indecisiveness on her part, you should pull back and continue with what you were up to, everything else will only set you back in your healing progress. 

But, likewise, sometimes you may be ready to already date another girl, or maybe you even started dating already. In such a case, most of the time, you probably shouldn’t even talk to your ex-girlfriend. I know, the “what-if” ruminations could be big in such a scenario, where you wonder if you should have given it another try to at least meet up with her, but believe me, if you were already on a good trajectory with your breakup recovery AND you were even dating, then most of the time, rekindling a relationship with your ex doesn’t make sense any longer.

There’s a window when it is OK to rekindle a relationship, and that’s probably within the first 1, maybe 2 years. Everything beyond that just complicates your entire life and by that time, I hope you will have found something else that brings you happiness. Whether that’s a woman, new habits, a new job, or a new dream to pursue. 

So when you have been starting to move on from your ex-girlfriend and then she reaches out to you unexpectedly, be sure that giving the relationship another chance isn’t something that you are considering simply because it is convenient or safe. Obviously, when your ex reaches out to you, she’s reaching out for that same reason: She knows what you are like, and so giving the relationship another try seems tempting. It’s a comfortable familiarity. And in theory, there is nothing wrong with it, but in the end, both of you should ultimately rekindle the relationship because you love each other, not because it’s the easiest choice for both of you.

So if she reaches out to you, and if you go on a date again, don’t just easily start dating again. This needs to be a conscious choice, not something that you do on a whim because it’s extremely easy to spend time together again, make out, and be a couple again. 

If it’s easy to get back together, then you probably haven’t talked through all the previous relationship issues that need to be resolved. Getting back together with an ex-girlfriend shouldn’t be an easy task. I mean, it should be light-hearted and still feel warm and fuzzy. But it should also be something that requires work, clear communication, and commitment to meaningful change.

Just as I am sure you have been working hard on yourself, and hopefully she has also worked on herself, when you talk with an ex again, you both either work together towards something new, or you’re better off just calling it quits and continuing with your new life that you’ve been building for yourself.

So, if you heard from your ex-girlfriend, don’t panic. Don’t make any rash or impulsive decisions. There’s no harm in exploring whether you can get back together, but be sure that she is as committed to a serious relationship that’s built on hard work to be compatible with each other, rather than it being an easy escape route. And if she just came back out of nowhere, after an extremely long period, especially if you tried hard to get back with her, maybe it’s best to just let go, and be happy with the girl that you’re currently seeing. Or start seeing some other girls. Maybe not right away if your ex just reached out to you, because that might put you in a state of confusion, but generally, perhaps it’s a good idea to make the decision to keep on moving forward with your life, and very soon, take the next big step.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this time.