Being dumped is the experience that hurts like the first time, every time it happens.
The shock, the anxiety, the racing heart – a panicked reaction seems like the only sane one to have.
The person you thought you knew seems to be a sudden elusive mystery. Whereas they seemed warm and close to you – maybe even just a few days ago – now they seem cold, distant, and heartless.
The hurt, the loss, and the confusion become the perfect recipe that causes many people to beg their ex for mercy.
“Please take me back! I’ll do anything!”
Based on what you know of this person, surely they’ll take you back. Surely they’ll care.
But everything you know is wrong. According to relationship expert and coach, Lee Wilson, “At this moment, you and your ex are at polar opposites. You are pulled toward them and your ex is convinced that they won’t be happy going forward with you. So you are asking them to do something that they don’t want to do. It can actually come across as selfish on your part, that they should stay with you when they don’t want to just because you want them to. Though it seems like you are reacting out of love, in that moment of panic and hurt, you are being more selfish than you realize.”
But Coach Lee is quick to point out that all hope is not lost. “If you two had a good thing up until now, you have a good chance of getting your ex back or saving your marriage if you are able to take charge of your response. Even if you responded poorly when your ex told you they wanted to break up with you, you can likely still regroup and give yourself a decent chance of turning things around.”
According to Lee, the key is to re-attract your ex. “Instead of asking your ex to show mercy on you and do what you want but that they don’t want, the way to get them to seriously consider taking you back is to rebuild their attraction for you. A breakup is almost always due to a drop in attraction. Most people don’t realize that, often because their ex gives bogus and vague reasons for why they want to break up. We know some of the cliches, such as, ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ and, ‘I need to work on myself.’ Those are simply vague excuses that your ex thinks you can’t argue with. If your ex was attracted to you enough, they would want to stay with you and would find a way. So the key is to increase the attraction your ex feels for you while also causing your ex to feel that they are potentially losing you.”
Most people aren’t willing to do what Coach Lee suggests. In nearly two decades of coaching clients who desperately want their ex back, he has found that most people resist what works the best – leaving them alone.
“People tend to rely on their instincts that are totally misleading them in this situation. Most people think that if they could just speak to their ex that they could get them to take them back. They believe this despite the fact that most of them have already tried to talk their ex into taking them back. They think if they have just one more shot at it, they could get somewhere. After thousands of cases in twenty years, I can tell you that you can almost never talk someone into taking you back and in the rare cases where you might, it is temporary. That’s because they didn’t just wake up and decide to break up with you. Even though this is likely new and unexpected for you, in most cases it’s been at least weeks but usually months of your ex thinking about breaking up with you, going back and forth on the idea, and then finally deciding. So they are way ahead of you in their thought process. Most people aren’t expecting me to tell them not to talk to their ex, not to appear to fight for them, and to completely back away. It doesn’t make since to them.”
Whereas most people only have a handful of personal breakup experiences, Lee has observed thousands of cases over the last twenty years. Though he is used to the doubt, he says that when people apply his coaching and use the No Contact Rule, they have a good chance of things turning around and their ex pursuing them for a change.
Lee says, “When you let your ex actually experience the breakup, they can learn that they don’t like it, but if you don’t allow them to see what it’s really like, they’ll just want you out of their hair. Most people express how much they want their ex to miss them, but are often surprised when I point out to them that their ex can’t miss them if they won’t leave that person alone. You have to disappear for them to experience day after day without you for long enough that they miss you. That’s the first step, but most people break down and reach out to their ex, again, fooled by the feeling within them saying they could talk their ex into getting back together or that interacting with their ex will stoke something within their ex causing them to want to get back together. I can tell you that it just doesn’t work. You’ve got to give your ex the breakup and completely back off.”
According to Coach Lee, it takes discipline, knowledge, and perseverance to get an ex back, but it’s possible if you can fight the urge to allow your panic and hurt to dictate your actions.
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