If you’re wondering if getting back with an ex is a good idea, you first need to understand that not every relationship should get another chance. Unhealthy, abusive, imbalanced, and relationships in which couples lack respect and feelings should end permanently. They should end for good so couples or ex-couples can learn from their mistakes, heal, and move on with someone better suited for them.
Someone who shares the same goals and values and wants to work on him/herself and the relationship. Exes shouldn’t rush to get to know someone new, but they should emotionally prepare themselves for a new relationship and avoid wasting time with their ex.
Their goal should be to learn why their relationship ended, work on their shortcomings, forgive themselves and each other, and figure out if they can benefit from getting back with an ex they failed with. By reflecting on the relationship and assessing their compatibility and feelings, they can make rational and emotional decisions.
Without feelings, a relationship feels unfulfilling whereas without rationality, a relationship is emotion-driven and lacks the tools to deal with problems. There must be a healthy balance. Both the dumper and the dumpee must be partially detached to see where they went wrong as a couple and what they must work on together and individually.
If they get back together without making any changes, they’re bound to treat the new relationship as the previous one and break up when they feel angry, unheard, and overwhelmed.
Although getting back together may sound and feel nice (especially to dumpees), it’s not always the right thing to do. Some relationships end because couples can’t communicate, grow, appreciate each other, or get the same things out of a relationship. Relationships like that must terminate (and stay terminated), so couples can stop being unhappy and find create their own happiness.
On the other hand, not all relationships that end in a breakup have a good reason for ending. Many breakups occur simply because couples take each other for granted, develop false negative opinions, neglect each other’s good points, and claim relationships are supposed to work and improve on their own.
Even though nothing major goes wrong in the relationship, they develop the grass is greener syndrome and act on their temptations to seek happiness elsewhere.
Whether they decide to seek it alone or with the help of another person, they determine they can get more out of life and be happier without their ex. Such couples don’t necessarily deserve another chance, but they do leave due to a lack of healthy relationship habits, gratitude, and bonding. With some changes, they could become aware of each other’s importance and maintain the relationship properly.
Every relationship has different dynamics. Some relationships require more work, affection, communication, and reassurance than others. That doesn’t make a relationship worthless. On the contrary, it means that a couple has room to grow and may have unique benefits and advantages that other relationships lack.
For example, an emotional couple may find it hard to stay level-headed during disagreements, but they may also experience love more strongly. By keeping that in mind, they can focus on their advantages, stay grateful, and commit to working on impulse control.
So if you’ve broken up and are looking for reasons to get back with your ex, keep in mind that every relationship is unique and has different positives and negatives. You’ll never be in a perfect relationship, but that’s okay becauase you don’t need to be. You just need to choose someone you’re compatible with and can grow with.
You don’t want a partner who’s way too comfortable with who he or she is and refuses to make healthy changes. Romantic relationships require open-mindedness and growth. They can’t succeed if someone is constantly lagging behind in terms of common goals, values, maturity, affection, and behavior.
That’s why you need to carefully look at reasons to get back with your ex and determine if you can even be happy with your ex. Does your ex bring happiness and stability to your life or do you feel rejected, lonely, depressed, and lost? If you’re going through a rough patch (especially because of your ex), getting back together may not be the right solution to your problems.
Your ex may be able to help you feel better at the moment, but if you’re not a good match, old problems are bound to resurface and destroy the relationship from within. I suggest you get back with your ex only if you had a strong emotional connection built on respect and virtues. A strong foundation is necessary for lasting love and is a precondition for reuniting with a former partner.
In this post, we outline the key factors necessary for reconciling with an ex. Read on to see if your relationship meets these criteria.
1)You’ve both grown or committed to growth
Growth is one of the most important factors for making a failed relationship work. Without growing as people and partners, your new relationship won’t be any different. It will operate like the previous one and fail when it faces similar issues.
You must ensure you’ve done a lot of work on yourselves or at least realized where you went wrong and committed to changing certain aspects of your lives. As exes, must admit your faults and really want the relationship to succeed. When you want it to work bad enough, you’ll feel inspired to invest in yourselves and each other.
This means you’ll be prepared to do anything to change, be perceived as changed people, and avoid hurting and disappointing each other.
Couples or ex-couples who truly value each other fear making mistakes and being perceived negatively. They have romantic expectations and want to make a good impression on each other. A good impression increases their chances of getting back together and staying together.
If you and your ex have made significant personal improvements and think the issues that broke you up are gone, you have one of the best reasons to get back together. With self-awareness, motivation, and continuous investment, you may be able to take the new relationship into a new direction and avoid breaking up again.
2)You share the same values and goals
One of the most important things couples need to make a relationship successful is similar values and relationship goals. These things act as a blueprint in a relationship and determine its direction and purpose.
Values and goals aren’t everything, but they are extremely important. When couples want different things and have different ways of doing things, they tend to argue and feel misunderstood. That tends to lead to doubts and an emotional and physical disconnection.
If you don’t agree on important relationship matters such as kids, location, ethics, conduct, responsibility, fairness, and compassion, you’ll do yourselves a favor by not getting back together. It’s unlikely that you’ll change your values before you fall out of love and break up.
So make sure you and your ex are similar in terms of values and relationship expectations. Don’t get back together just because you had fun and miss each other’s company. That would soon bring back old problems and create unwanted results.
3)The relationship was healthy and loving
If you got along and loved each other from start to finish, you had good reasons to be together. The relationship thrived and had a good reason to exist until something or someone affected your or your ex’s perception of it. Whether it was stress, unhappiness, or temptations to be with another person, your relationship worked for a while.
It stopped working when you faced issues you weren’t ready to deal with.
Today, you may be better equipped to deal with those issues, especially if you took the breakup seriously and worked on yourselves. Most couples need a few months of space to improve their mentality and unhealthy behavioral patterns.
A few months of space and hard work can help them remember they had a good relationship and that they threw it away because they weren’t capable of maintaining it with their level of maturity.
Many couples break up despite loving each other. Some overfocus on negative traits whereas others lack the tools to deal with personal problems such as insecurities, trust issues, or emotional unavailability caused by the end of the previous relationship.
If they get therapy and/or deal with their problems, they may realize they let negativity overwhelm them and make the decision to break up for them.
So if your relationship was healthy and fulfilling for the most part, it’s worth considering that it could work again if you both remember the good moments, discover each other’s worth, and develop feelings. Healthy reconciliation will require effort from both parties; otherwise, the feelings will be one-sided.
You can give the relationship another chance if the relationship was healthy and the dumper is willing to give back power. The relationship must be balanced in terms of power and interest—or the more invested person could get hurt.
4)The breakup happened due to external factors
If external factors such as physical distance, disapproving parents, or pressure from the career caused you to become stressed, unhappy, and confused, you can consider getting back together when these factors are gone or when you learn to cope with them. You may be able to fix things if you grow within and realize that incompatibility had nothing to do with the breakup.
It was your beliefs and relationship mentality that caused you to put other people or goals above your relationship.
External factors break up many couples. Usually, couples lack the maturity and/or willpower to protect their relationship from them, so they develop negative thoughts, become resentful, and succumb to pressure. They convince themselves they can’t move forward with their partner and that it’s better for them to be single than to deal with the issues created by their partner.
Some couples break up for the most trivial reasons you can think of. They give those reasons extreme importance and leave to prioritize their happiness.
Some insignificant reasons for breaking up are:
- upcoming exams
- communicating not as often as they’d like
- not going out enough
- disliking pets
- incompatible zodiacs
- different social lives and hobbies
Oftentimes, people disguise the true reasons for a breakup by blaming trivial and external factors. They lack the willpower to compromise, so they break up, thinking their life will immediately improve. If it doesn’t, they have an epiphany, want their ex back, and become open to working on internal and external factors.
5)You had personal problems
Another good reason to get back together is if you broke up with your ex because of personal problems such as low self-esteem, insecurities, fear of abandonment, traumas, depression, anxiety, death in the family, and lack of purpose. For most people, these issues are temporary.
This means they can fix them and become open for a new romantic opportunity.
If you broke up because you were dealing with your problems and couldn’t focus on your partner, you can consider being with your ex once you’re cetain your issues are gone and won’t come back. You can contact your ex, apologize for leaving, and commit to handling problems better.
It’s not fair to push a person away for selfish reasons because he or she committed to you, but if you learned your lessons and improved, you may be able to have a better relationship with your ex. I urge you to engage in introspection and figure out if you’re ready for an emotional investment with your ex.
Ask yourself if you’ve done enough work to go back to someone you pushed away to focus on yourself.
6)You got over the past and forgave each other
Forgiveness is also very important. By forgiving yourselves and each other, you can let the past stay in the past and open a new chapter of your lives. To forgive each other, you must understand why you said and did the things you did and get rid of all anger and resentment.
You can do this by taking accountability for your actions and committing to working with each other.
It’s not easy to forgive an ex, especially if he or she left you for someone else and showed no regard for your feelings. I strongly advise you not to get back together if you haven’t processed the past and forgiven your ex for hurting you. The relationship won’t last long because you’ll keep dragging your ex to the past instead of focusing on the present and future.
When starting over, you must treat your new relationship as its own separate entity. By all means, discuss the past and learn from it, but don’t accuse your ex of mistreating you and make him or her feel guilty. If you want the best for yourself as well as your ex, you must prove it with actions.
7)You have genuine reasons for getting back together
The last point is pretty obvious. Think about being with your ex if you genuinely love your ex and see yourself being with him or her long term. Going back to your ex without feelings, respect, or maturity will likely lead to another breakup.
Believe it or not, some dumpers get back with their ex just because they’re lonely, stressed, bored, or confused. They want their ex to fix their issues for them and/or enrich their life, so they apologize for leaving and lean on their ex for all kinds of perks and benefits.
Such dumpers soon lose interest and break up once more. They don’t stay with your ex because they don’t see their ex as the best romantic option.
All in all, make sure your reasons for getting back with an ex are genuine and that you both want to be together equally. If you want it the same, you’ll consistently work on yourselves and the relationship and stick together through thick and thin.
What do you think about the reasons to get back with your ex? Share your views in the comments below.
And lastly, if you’re on the fence about being with your ex and need help deciding what to do, get in touch with us. We’ll analyze your breakup and figure out what you should and shouldn’t do.
My name is Zan and I’m the founder of Magnet of Success. I enjoy writing realistic relationship and breakup articles and helping readers heal and grow. With more than 5 years of experience in the self-improvement, relationship, and breakup sphere, my goal is to provide advice that fosters positivity and success and avoids preventable mistakes and pain. Buy me a coffee, learn more about me, or get in touch today.
