Why do you want her back in the first place? It’s such an important question that every guy who wants his ex-girlfriend back, should ask himself if you’re thinking about using the no contact rule. Especially, if you think that it’s almost like a guarantee that you can work things out by using it. Because believe me, that is NOT the case, and you have to make sure that you don’t end up in a spiral where you are using no contact for the wrong reasons, potentially endlessly chasing your ex-girlfriend and only becoming more and more miserable in the process.
I think the no contact rule can provide massive value for a man after a breakup, but only if you’re doing things the right way. And that all starts with the right motivation for why you are doing no contact. Using it to re-attract an ex-girlfriend generally is not the best motivation. But, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to start with that motivation, if you CAN change it to become something more. Something more meaningful.
I already mentioned this in a previous video, that not every client that I’ve worked with, actually wanted to get back with his ex-girlfriend. Often, after a few coaching sessions, when we spent time talking about their relationship, the things that went wrong, how their ex-girlfriend treated them, and so on, it sometimes became clear that she wasn’t good for them at all.
Some guys were blind to the reality that their ex-girlfriend sucked. And that’s not meant to say that they were naive, stupid, or idiots… They were just biased by all the breakup pain. It’s pretty understandable that you can’t always see everything clearly, especially when it’s about a woman that you love like crazy.
Actually, back in the day, I used to think that an ex-girlfriend of mine was the most amazing woman that I had ever been with, but in reality, in hindsight, several years later, I understand that she was actually the worst woman that I’ve ever been with. Even worse than this crazy jealous, super possessive girl that I dated a long time ago. That girl was REALLY crazy back then. But honestly, looking back, I really don’t think that she’s a bad woman in general. She just was immature and didn’t have a good control of her own emotions. That should tell you a lot about how easy it is to have the wrong impression of your ex-girlfriend after a breakup. One girl, who seemed like a terrible girlfriend at the time, in hindsight will actually not be that bad with a bit of distance and perspective… Meanwhile, the girl who seemed absolutely perfect, who makes you think like it was all your fault, will turn out to be the worst woman that you’ll ever have met.
So, I want to talk about why we want our exes back. What’s the reason we can’t go on without our ex? Because I’ve seen this firsthand, that many guys do no contact for the wrong reasons and they can’t rationally assess whether they should still have any hopes about the relationship, or whether it’s better to just move on with their lives. And of course, even if there’s hope, that doesn’t mean that it’s a good thing that you’re getting back with an ex-girlfriend. An ex can miss you, or at the very least, want you back, but it turns out she is an awful woman. So, why do we get so obsessed with an ex-girlfriend?
This is actually one big psychological principle that I discuss in my book “No Contact Myth”. A lot of the ideas in there, especially in that one chapter about the core principles of breakup addiction, are based on my own breakup experience, my experience working with lots of men, and based on the things I’ve read in breakup studies.
When I first became a relationship coach, I modeled my approach, or my advice I guess, a lot after my own experience of how I went through a breakup many years ago. Back then, I desperately wanted an ex-girlfriend back, and in that process, I read tons of books about personal growth and especially relationships.
Ironically I really got lucky, because I asked her brother for advice, and he suggested to me that I’d read “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”… That was the first time I actually read a book about understanding women, and holy shit, did it open my eyes. I thought I finally understood some of the problems from that relationship, and I felt that maybe, if I learned more, I could work things out with my ex-girlfriend.
It was a massive period of growth and introspection for me. I read more self-help books in that short period, than I have in my entire life combined. Of course, I started using the no contact rule because I wanted her back. And I really jumped on the hype train in the beginning. So I was a bit naive about it, but ultimately, wow man, after just three or four months, so many things in my life began to improve because I took real actions to identify my weak spots as a man, and I genuinely tried to improve myself.
And of course, the obvious thing happened… Since I also read a lot of books about dating and attraction, countless women started to be attracted to me… Way hotter women than I had ever dated before. I basically transformed from a super shy guy without any dating skills, to a super confident guy who was chased by one woman after another. It seriously was like magic. So eventually, I found a lot of value in my personal transformation, and I never chased my ex-girlfriend again. But of course, in the beginning, I did.
I can still remember how much I tried to change her mind. But after a short while of struggling a lot with the breakup, I kind of got over it. I remember, back then I only looked at her Instagram account one single time. I think that was maybe 3 months after we broke up. Until then, I still sent her a few messages here and there. And then I looked at her IG account when I missed her a lot because I could no longer resist the temptation. It was ironically also the time when we both had the same idea, and had traveled to Bali literally maybe one week offset form each other. I guess many people travel to Bali for a broken heart, which is really hilarious. But hey, if you have a broken heart, maybe a piece of beach and jungle would do you good.
Anyway, of course, her IG was full of the “look at me and how happy I am” kind of posts. So that wasn’t exactly helpful. So I decided to let go, accept that I couldn’t change her mind and that looking at her pictures would only bring me pain. And from then on, I never looked back. Definitely, having so many girls being attracted to me, and just in general, seeming a lot more confident in myself helped a LOT.
Otherwise, I think I probably would have just continued being addicted to the idea of being back together with her. Of course, even when I had let go, it’s not like I didn’t still love and miss her, but there’s something powerful about the decision to move forward, despite your love for a girl.
And in hindsight, I’m really happy that I made that choice to let go, because that ex-girlfriend of mine was a terrible woman. She did a LOT of bad things and moving on with my life and dating other women was the right choice. That’s not to say that every breakup will be like that. Not every woman is terrible. But that’s not the point of this video… The point of the video is to talk about the right motivation for why you want your ex-girlfriend back. I think almost everybody starts out with that initial motivation of just wanting their ex-girlfriend back because we’re addicted to her. We think that the only way for ourselves to feel happy again is if we’re back together.
There’s been studies on this, that the type of people who want their ex-girlfriend back, are often the ones who lack their own internal compass. In general, they feel lost, insecure, have an insecure attachment style, and they’re probably quite codependent. Of course, a part of that is because of the breakup itself, but those studies highlighted more that we ourselves feel incomplete, and we think our ex-girlfriend will make us feel whole again.
In other words, getting back with the ex-girlfriend isn’t really about her and profoundly loving her, but rather, it’s about how she makes us feel. It’s about the addiction to the girlfriend. Without the ex-girlfriend, life seems meaningless and in shambles. We think we can’t go on any longer if she’s not part of our lives. And this is the danger of the no contact rule, or well, the false promise, that you will get back together with your ex-girlfriend.
I can’t say for certain, whether it was by pure accident that I had the right no contact approach, where I mostly focused on my own personal growth, or whether it’s my personality style… Maybe it was the right timing… Or maybe, it really just was that one book that I ended up reading, that completely opened me up emotionally… Maybe it’s a combination of several factors.
I’m lucky that things worked out so well for me. And I’ve seen the same thing work out with some of my clients. There’s something that wakes up some of us after a breakup and massively helps us change ourselves for the better. And I’ve even had clients who got back together with their ex-girlfriends, and they improved themselves and their relationships. So it’s not like it’s impossible. Of course, it’s reasonable that a couple can learn from their mistakes and improve their relationship if they’re both willing to.
But just as my approach worked really well, and I was able to drastically help some guys with a similar mentality and approach, unfortunately, I’ve also seen that on average, many guys do not follow this kind of approach. I’ve seen this quite a lot during my coaching sessions. Many guys don’t have this mindset to let go of the need of being back with their ex-girlfriend. But this really is the only way how no contact should be used in the first place. For personal growth and to learn where things went wrong, so you can be in a happier relationship in the future. It really doesn’t matter if that would be with your ex-girlfriend or another woman. Sure, it CAN be fulfilling if it’s with an ex of yours, but it doesn’t HAVE to be.
The percentage of men who didn’t obsess endlessly about their ex-girlfriend was very small, and this is of course, why I wrote my book. I eventually came to the conclusion that this psychology of feeling lost, and as a result, wanting an ex-girlfriend back, is a very dangerous combination. And it’s kind of “already baked into the cake,” as they say. Either you have an internal mental framework that encourages you to not look for the automatic secret formula to get an ex back, and you have that mindset of growth. Or, you have something that’s called a destiny belief, where you think that your ex-girlfriend is the one, and all you care about is to get her back.
If you’re the type of person who has an insecure attachment style, most likely an anxious attachment style, then it’s really almost like Russian Roulette whether or not no contact for re-attraction produces good results for you. And I’m not talking about getting back with your ex-girlfriend to be the good result. I mean, whether you find that level of peace again…
You could also get stuck in that endless loop of just clinging to hope, and wanting your ex-girlfriend back non-stop, and even after months of watching countless videos about no contact, reading books about re-attraction, or even being on several calls with a breakup coach, you could still be exactly in the same place, having learned practically nothing useful in the process, or not made any meaningful changes. And I’m not over-exaggerating here… I’ve been on paid coaching sessions with clients who were like that. And I had to make myself unavailable to them because I saw that there was just no way that they would ever change their approach.
Ultimately, the only guys where I’ve seen great results, whether that was about getting back with their ex, or whether it was just a sense of peace and new understanding of themselves, and so on… The guys who were like that, were the ones who took the time to first understand themselves and why they wanted to be back with her in the first place. Your ex-girlfriend isn’t supposed to just be an addiction that you follow mindlessly. She has to be a person who enriches your life and teaches you something meaningful about yourself. If you miss your ex-girlfriend, whether you two get back together or not, the best thing you can do is try and learn from your time together, and ask yourself what all of it meant for you.
So ask yourself, why do you actually want her back? Are there good reasons for it? Now, I’m not a fan of saying relationships are bad, in general, when they failed. Usually, bad relationships still had more good than bad. It’s just that by the end, the bad heavily outweighed the good. But, sometimes, you really were in a relationship that generally was bad most of the time.
Your girlfriend was toxic, never listening, always blaming you for the problems, partying too much, and so on. There are countless reasons why it may not be a good idea to get back together with an ex. Sometimes, some of these issues are resolvable, if the relationship was more good than bad. But you still need to have the right motivation for why you want to get back with her. You can’t just do no contact and hope to re-attract your ex-girlfriend because you can’t go on without her.
That by itself is the problem. And if that’s your motivation for wanting her back, then you need to focus on something else entirely: Focus on rebuilding your confidence and independence. You should WANT to be back with an ex, not NEED her back. You need to have your own identity independent of the identity that you shared with her. You’re your own man, so walk your own path first and foremost. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this time, until we make contact again.
