No Contact For 30 Days: What To Do And Expect?

No contact is the hardest when you first start following it. It feels like you’re forcing yourself to do something you don’t want and decreasing your chances of being with your ex rather than making your ex want to be with you.

Although it can feel scary to stay away from your ex and be on your own, no contact is exactly what you need. You need it to process the initial shock from the breakup and allow yourself to grieve the relationship.

You also need to do no contact to give your ex the space he or she needs to self-prioritize and feel free and relieved. You must let your ex be and feel in control of the breakup so that your ex can process negative post-breakup emotions and not consider you annoying, desperate, and in denial.

Therefore, no contact has two main purposes.

1. It helps you heal, preserve your worth, and demand respect.
2. It lets your ex stop feeling suffocated and allows him or her to enjoy other things or people.

I know you don’t want your ex to have fun without you, but that’s what your ex wants and needs. He or she has to feel positive emotions and not worry about what you’re thinking and feeling. By focusing on him/herself rather than you, your ex can process suffocation, anger, repulsion, and other pent-up emotions and thoughts.

Once he or she has processed them, your ex could see the relationship/breakup from your perspective and become guilty, curious, or nostalgic. It depends on your ex’s ability to reflect and admit fault.

Until your ex makes emotional progress, be patient and forget about your ex. Work on your flaws and passions and strive to become the best version of yourself.

If you make enough healthy changes and improvements, you may not even care about your ex by the time you hear from your ex. You might realize your ex did you dirty and/or that your ex doesn’t deserve your time, love, and commitment.

It’s unlikely that you’ll come to this conclusion within 30 days of no contact, but that’s okay. You shouldn’t break no contact after 30 days anyway. If your ex doesn’t reach out and want you back after 30 days, you should switch to the indefinite no contact rule and continue to improve yourself and your life.

30 days are seldom enough to get over a person you fell hard for and got dumped by. Usually, they’re only enough to see that no contact helps you emotionally and that it’s not worth reaching out and putting your ex in charge of your happiness and well-being.

The 30-day no contact rule may be the most common no contact rule, but that’s because coaches advocating it benefit the most from it. They know you’ll still want to be with your ex after 30 days and that their advice and promises will keep you hopeful and eager to purchase their services.

So try not to get suckered into putting your faith in the 30-day no contact shenanigans. By all means, count no contact days up till the 30th day as it will show you how far you’ve come and give you a sense of control.

But when the 30 days are up, do your best to stop counting the days since you got dumped or entered no contact. Remind yourself that it doesn’t matter how long it’s been since you last spoke to your ex and that your goal is to detox from your ex and find happiness and purpose outside of the relationship with your ex.

You’ll still want to talk to your ex and be with your ex after 30 days of no contact, but counting the days won’t help with that. It will only keep you obsessed with your ex and no contact.

Anyway, doing no contact for 30 days will take some serious commitment and perseverance. You’ll have days when you feel anxious, scared, and lonely and doubt the effectiveness of no contact. You’ll likely read or hear people say that no contact is deceptive or unnecessary and that you’ll lose your ex if you don’t take action.

All I can say is don’t listen to them. You can’t lose your ex because that has already happened. Your ex left and showed a lack of love and interest in fixing things. Now that the breakup happened, your ex isn’t waiting for you to reach out and express a desire to reconnect. 

If your ex wanted to be with you, your ex would have taken the initiative, apologized, and asked if you wanted to get back together. Since your ex hasn’t expressed regret and love, your only option is to do no contact.

Start with 7, 14/15, or 30 days of no contact and observe your healing and thought process. You should notice (separation) anxiety getting better with time and that you’re less desperate for validation and affection.

Although you’ll still have bad (setback days), they’ll be less severe and last shorter than before. This will be all the proof you need that no contact is working because you’ll know you’re recovering from the breakup and becoming more and more emotionally independent.

You’ll need to keep doing what you’re doing. Eventually, you’ll get your ex out of your system and wonder why you even obsessed over your ex and wanted to be with him or her.

In this post, we discuss what you’ll likely feel during no contact and how you can successfully do no contact for 30 days or longer.

Week 1 of no contact

The first week of no contact will be the hardest – especially if you start no contact right after the breakup. You’ll constantly think about your ex, check your phone for texts and calls from your ex, analyze your ex’s social media posts, and question your actions, worth, and decision to go no contact.

Anxiety and low self-esteem will play with your head, prevent you from accepting reality, and tempt you to give up on staying away from your ex. It will be extremely difficult to resist the temptation to break no contact because you’ll continuously wonder what you did to deserve so much pain and why your ex fell out of love, flipped on you, and changed so much.

Because your ex won’t empower you anymore, you’ll crave validation more than ever and fear that your ex will move on and validate someone else.

The last thing you want is to find out that your ex replaced you with another person and that the relationship meant nothing to your ex. Seeing your ex happy on social media or in person would hurt you immensely and make it difficult for you to accept the breakup and love yourself.

The first week of no contact could be brutally painful. Most dumpees who start no contact shortly after getting dumped experience immense feelings of rejection, abandonment, and denial. They can’t eat and sleep, focus on work or school, and find the motivation to participate in activities they enjoy.

Dumpees relive the breakup a million times, dream about their ex, and have their childhood fears and issues mess with their emotions and health.

Because they feel crushed, physically sick, and disoriented, they think they have nothing else to lose and that they should quit no contact and let their ex know how they feel. Such dumpees have the highest probability of presenting themselves as weak and desperate individuals who need their dumper ex to fix their self-esteem issues.

Due to high expectations and the projection of pain onto their ex, they tend to cave into anxiety, overwhelm their ex, and make their ex want nothing to do with them. In simple terms, they destroy or lower their ex’s respect and interest in them and suffer when their ex rejects them again.

Some dumpees even experience suicidal thoughts and consider ruining their ex’s life because of it. Pain exposes their insecurities and brings out the worst in them.

The worst includes revealing their ex’s secrets, throwing away their ex’s belongings, calling their ex names, withholding children from their ex, warning their ex’s new partner, damaging their ex’s car, suing their ex, and posting their ex online for revenge.

They do such vengeful things to release their rage, complicate their ex’s life, and feel empowered by their ex’s pain/reaction.

You should keep in mind that it’s normal and okay to feel depressed and angry. You were attached to your ex and didn’t think your ex would pull the plug on you and hurt you so much. What’s not okay though is to take your anger and pain out on your ex.

You won’t benefit from it, and neither will your ex.

During the first week of no contact, you should learn why the breakup happened. Don’t be hard on yourself. Merely acknowledge your mistakes and things you and your ex could have done to fix problems and avoid breaking up.

Also, make sure to learn more about breakup dynamics and work on accepting the breakup. It won’t be easy to accept the relationship has ended and that it needs to stay over for a while. But if you get back together right away, it’s highly likely that you’ll break up again.

You’ll encounter the same problems, disconnect emotionally, and suffer again.

That’s why you need no contact. You need it to create some space and reflect on the relationship. The first week of no contact is very important. It will help you get out of denial and begin a very important process – the letting go process.

No contact will encourage you to start accepting your powerlessness and that the decision to reconcile rests with your ex. Your ex left, so naturally, your ex must have an epiphany, discover his or her mistakes and shortcomings, and see you as an equal and reliable partner.

Unless your ex’s perception of you changes, your ex won’t come back. He or she won’t return regardless of how much you improve and how long you stay in no contact. 

So start your 30-day no contact journey as soon as you can. The sooner you go no contact, the sooner you’ll start accepting things that are difficult to accept and rejecting things that sound too good to be true.

Since week 1 of no contact is the hardest, you should seek help immediately. Find professional help, surround yourself with friends, and engage in productive and captivating hobbies. You’ll likely feel exhausted and depressed, so you won’t have much energy to do anything but rest and obsess over your ex.

Despite that, you need to do your best to stay busy and keep your mind engaged. The less time you have to think about your ex, the less you’ll miss your ex and want to get back together. 

Look, no matter what you do, you’ll obsess about your ex all the time. But if you’re able to not obsess even for a minute a day because of a busy schedule, that’s good enough. The next day, you won’t think about your ex for 2 minutes, and then the following day for 3 minutes, and so forth.

Slowly, you’ll stop crying and develop a habit of prioritizing your health and enjoying your life.

Week 2 of no contact

The second week of no contact will get significantly easier. You’ll still feel more anxious and scared than you’ve felt in a long time, but you’ll start to accept the breakup, get used to pain, and develop immunity to pain.

Your sleep will normalize (or start to normalize), your stomach, kidneys, or heart will stop hurting, and your ability to focus will return.

Compared to what you felt during the first week of no contact/the breakup, the difference will be like night and day. 

Of course, every dumpee processes denial and acceptance at different rates. Some need up to two weeks to be able to function again and start to detach whereas the most depressed dumpees need even longer.

If you’re one of those dumpees, give yourself more time to go through the dumpee stages and feel better.

There’s nothing wrong with experiencing difficulty sleeping after a couple of weeks of no contact. You’re just different from other dumpees and need some more time to detox from your ex.

If you talk to other dumpees going through similar situations, you may learn that they have different problems and pain and that everyone experiences heartbreak differently. 

No matter how the breakup affects you, 2 weeks of no contact are nothing. You’ll still miss your ex so much you’ll feel sick and want your ex to come back and love you. You’ll be willing to do anything to reattract your ex and get another chance with your ex.

That’s why you’ll dig for information on how to impress your ex and maximize your chances of getting back together with your ex. 

2 weeks into no contact, you should remember that you barely started to heal from the breakup. You just got out of denial and will need months to recover fully. You’ll need to keep distracting yourself and resisting temptations to check up on your ex and contact your ex.

You’ll be able to do that by unfollowing your ex, staying off social media, and spending as little time as possible at home. If you’re home and have nothing to do, you’ll think about your ex more and feel more tempted to do stupid things.

Things such as sending your ex gifts, driving by your ex’s house, scrolling through conversations with your ex, and indulging in old photos and videos of the two of you together.

If you do no contact, you should follow all the rules of no contact, not just the ones that are the easiest to follow. Do it out of respect for yourself and those who care about you.

Week 3 of no contact

In the third week of no contact, your healing will accelerate. You’ll notice that you don’t think about your ex literally all the time and that you also have moments of internal peace.

There will be times when you feel neutral about the breakup but also times when you feel angry with your ex for leaving you and putting you through so much pain.

You’ll likely hit the anger stage of a breakup and want your ex to feel what you feel. You’ll want him or her to understand what he or she did to you mentally and emotionally and take accountability for it.

You’ll despise the fact that your ex is happy (possibly with another person) while you’re depressed and left to suffer alone. Due to pain and anger, you might contemplate telling your ex what a horrible person he or she is and feeling a sense of justice.

It wouldn’t be unusual for your emotional state to fluctuate between feelings of anger and depression.

Anger often arises from feelings of pain and victimization, leading to a fluctuation of emotions where you may despise your ex one moment and long for his or her presence the next.

Dumpees go through emotional rollercoasters on a daily basis. They experience a myriad of negative emotions and unwanted thoughts. The best way to get rid of them is to talk about the dumper when they’re anxious and depressed and distract themselves when they’re okay.

They have to do this until they no longer feel abandoned and desperate for recognition.

Week 4 of no contact

4 weeks into the no contact rule, you could notice that you’re much stronger emotionally than you used to be. You’re able to control your emotions better and avoid thinking your ex is the best person in the world for you.

Rationality will start to return to you, so you’ll know that your ex is far from perfect.

He or she has imperfections like you, me, and any other person. But you’ll finally be able to notice them because you’ll detach to the point where you no longer blame yourself for the breakup.

If you haven’t discovered your ex’s negative traits yet, take a pen and paper and write down everything you can remember about your ex. Write down the things your ex said or did to hurt you throughout the relationship and after—and how your ex should have treated you instead.

Read your ex’s imperfections often, especially when you miss your ex like crazy and want your ex to take you back.

Moreover, if you worked on yourself diligently, you should also start to realize some of your changes in thinking and behaving. You should be much more pragmatic overall. That doesn’t mean you’ll be healed, but that you’ll understand your ex is just a human being.

A human being that you still depend on for validation and self-love.

You might realize that your ex helped you make some positive changes in your life and that you need to keep working on yourself. The work you do on yourself will determine your happiness and success in your next relationship, whether it’s with your ex or someone else.

So make sure to utilize no contact and get the most out of the breakup. Initialize, do no contact for 30 days. But when you reach 30 days, change to indefinite no contact.

Don’t tell yourself you’re feeling better and that it’s time to end no contact and take a more aggressive approach. No contact ends when your ex takes romantic interest in you or when you’re ready for friendship.

That’s when you can consider talking to your ex and seeing whether friendship is possible and something you want.

Were you thinking of doing no contact for 30 days? Did you learn what to expect in no contact and what you should do to preserve your worth? Share your opinion and no contact experience in the comments section below. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

And if you’d like to talk to us about doing no contact for 30 days or longer, subscribe to coaching and get in touch.

Zan

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.