If you’re wondering if you should get back together with an ex, bear in mind that not all ex-couples should get back together. Some exes should stay broken up (at least for a while) until they’ve resolved their personal problems, differences, and unhealthy beliefs.
They should work on themselves before they get too excited and start a new relationship with a person they failed romantically. If they start a new relationship without addressing their reasons for breaking up, there’s a high probability they’ll experience the same relationship dynamics and problems and soon break up again.
The breakup is unavoidable when they remain who they are as people and expect different results.
Some couples get back together just because they’re lonely, bored, or scared of being alone. They fear that they’re running out of time and that they’ll end up single for life. They don’t understand where their fear and anxiety come from, so they listen to their feelings, put all their eggs in one basket, and try to revive an old relationship that shouldn’t be brought back to life.
Rationally, they understand that the relationship isn’t the best for them and that they deserve better or something different. But emotionally, they can’t bring themselves to stay away from their ex because the relationship gives them a feeling of safety and purpose and helps them meet societal expectations.
Many people would rather be in a relationship than not be in one at all – even if it’s not healthy for them. In fact, they value the unhealthy relationship more because they get addicted to the constant emotional rollercoaster their partner rides with them.
Such people tend to have low self-esteem or various unaddressed codependence issues and needs they can’t fulfill without their partner. That’s why they stay in difficult relationships or return to them despite knowing they can find better romantic prospects to bond with.
To them, stability doesn’t matter as much as an emotional connection because they learned or were taught to seek highly emotional situations. They’d rather be with someone they feel strong emotions for than be alone or with someone who doesn’t make them “feel alive.”
So keep in mind that getting into a relationship for the wrong reasons is a recipe for disaster. It’s likely to make you use your ex for your lack of success and happiness outside of the relationship and bring you even more unhappiness and pain.
When you over-rely on your ex, you’ll overwhelm your ex and give him or her power over you. You’ll continue to depend on your ex for needs and problems you should be able to take care of on your own.
However, if you get back together because of boredom and confusion, then you’ll eventually get tired of the relationship, find your partner boring or annoying, and waste your and your partner’s time.
Sooner than later, you’ll get everything you need from the relationship and decide to leave/look for fulfillment elsewhere.
It would also be a waste of time to reconnect with someone you couldn’t communicate with properly. Your ex may make you feel validated, but getting back together when you failed on the most basic level would create a lot of arguments and pain.
It would hurt you unnecessarily and cause you to break up in the end.
It’s better not to get back with an ex when he or she was and probably still is mean, rude, abusive, unloving, or incapable of expressing himself or herself maturely. A relationship that failed due to a lack of maturity, understanding, and self-understanding is likely to fail again when you stop feeling excited about being together.
I hate saying it, but the breakup happened for a reason. Whatever that reason may be, you can’t just ignore it and expect everything to be great. Instead of doing nothing with your spare time, work on the things you need to improve.
Improve your shortcomings and hope that your ex will do the same. There’s no guarantee that you’ll both feel motivated to work on yourselves (dumpers typically don’t). But don’t get back together if you change nothing about yourselves and continue to resolve problems the same way as before.
A lack of growth and progression will give you a killer headache and cause you to break up.
These are just a few examples of when you shouldn’t reconcile with an ex. In this post, we’ll talk about the biggest red flags to look out for when getting back with an ex.
1)Anxiety, depression, or general unhappiness
Look, if you’re not happy on your own, your ex won’t make you happy either. He or she may be patient and supportive at times, but probably not all the time.
Eventually, your ex will get tired of helping you feel good, think that the relationship makes him or her miserable, and see that the relationship requires a lot more work than he or she expected and is willing to put into it.
When your ex develops the belief that you’re high maintenance, your ex will get exhausted from helping you feel happy and think that he or she deserves happiness and someone better equipped for life’s challenges.
So before you even think about your ex’s red flags, think about your own emotions and cravings. Ask yourself why you feel drawn toward your ex and if getting back together with your ex is even the right thing to do. Many dumpees think it’s the right thing to do solely because they feel rejected, hurt, and depressed.
They ignore their emotional well-being as well as other aspects of the relationship that caused their relationship to fail.
All that matters to them is how the relationship makes them feel when things are working. They focus on their ex’s good traits and forget about the bad ones. This is a huge red flag and a sign that their relationship won’t make them happy, nor last long.
2)The relationship was unhealthy
If you and your ex blamed each other, yelled at each other, blocked each other, or hit each other, the relationship obviously shouldn’t get another chance. Violence and poor communication are huge red flags. They’re not something most people can work through – especially in a few weeks or months.
Serious issues like that require lots of deep reflection and sometimes even professional help. Don’t think your ex has magically grown and changed while you were gone.
If you dumped your ex, it’s possible that your ex has made some changes as dumpees are capable of immense and fast growth. But if your ex was downright abusive, then a little bit of time probably wasn’t enough for your ex to break his or her abusive tendencies and grow into someone who can give you the kind of relationship you want.
Unhealthy, or as some like to call them “toxic” relationships tend to experience the same issues when exes get back together. Reconciliations don’t make turn them into different people. Only pain, hard work, and commitment do.
So unless you’re certain you’ve both worked on things that needed improving, it may be best to consider unhealthy relationship dynamics a huge red flag when getting back together.
3)You broke up before
A breakup or multiple breakups are also unlikely to give you the relationship you crave. Every breakup significantly lowers couples’ commitment to the relationship and desire to grow. It makes them see they don’t need to work on themselves and the relationship because they always get back together with just an apology and a promise.
Therefore, the bigger the number of breakups, the larger the red flag that the relationship with your ex won’t work out. Breakups not only indicate relationship issues but also an inability and unwillingness to take the relationship seriously and change for the better.
If you keep getting back together, you’ll stay emotionally hooked and keep breaking up until one of your breakups is the last one.
If you believe in second chances, believe in them. But don’t naively believe in third, fourth, or even fifth ones. Remember that every time you get back together and break up, you treat the relationship as something disposable you can get rid of when it no longer serves you.
So depending on who breaks up with who, keep in mind that a broken relationship lacks certainty. It makes the dumpee feel insecure and anxious and the dumper doubtful and tempted to leave at the first sign of trouble.
4)You’re incompatible
We’ve already mentioned that you shouldn’t get back together if you were unhappy or if you argued a lot. But we didn’t specifically talk about incompatibility.
There are many types of compatibilities in a romantic relationship. The ones most people hear about are emotional, physical, sexual, intellectual, and spiritual compatibilities. These are very straightforward and don’t need any explanations.
We should talk about other types of compatibilities couples often forget about.
Some couples have different values, goals, relationship expectations, communication styles, coping mechanisms, and energy levels. Most of these things can change over time, but sadly, many couples choose not to do anything about them. They have certain beliefs they don’t want to change just so they can be in a relationship.
Since they can’t accept each other or change in ways that are important to them, they tend to quarrel and show each other they’re better off alone or with more flexible and compatible individuals.
People aren’t born incompatible. They’re brought up differently and/or develop thinking and behavioral patterns that aren’t compatible with all personality types. To be compatible, they have to get to the root cause of their beliefs and accept people’s differences.
Unfortunately, beliefs are extremely hard to change. When a person believes something, nothing and no one can make him or her think otherwise. If people want him or her to think how they think, he or she may get defensive and feel tempted to fight back.
Politics is a good example of how stubborn people can be with their beliefs. They’d rather lose a friend or family member than look at things from other perspectives and admit their conversationalist may have a point. It’s not even about being wrong. It’s the constant brainwashing that gets them to believe they’re right and others are wrong.
Repetition causes them to adopt their beliefs and accept them as true.
Anyway, different beliefs and lifestyles can be changed, but usually something or someone must influence or hurt people immensely to think and feel differently.
You probably won’t be able to do that on your own because your ex no longer respects your opinion and feels motivated to change. Your ex will have to reach his or her own conclusions and want to fix things on his or her own.
If you can’t agree on the most important ones, forget about changing your ex. It’s better not to get back together just because you think it’d be nice.
5)You lack healthy motives
Couples shouldn’t get back together if they don’t understand why they broke up and how they can avoid breaking up in the future.
They should consider the possibility of reconnecting as partners only when they’ve done the necessary self-work and realized their new mentalities, beliefs, commitment, and willingness to invest in the relationship will help them be happy and avoid breaking up.
If they lack healthy motives for getting back together, they should consider it a huge red flag as unhealthy reconciliation motives don’t indicate growth and commitment. They indicate that they want to reconnect purely for the relationship benefits the relationship provides.
Some bad motives for getting back together with an ex are:
- anxiety
- loneliness
- boredom
- guilt
- shame
- societal expectations
- loss of self-esteem and purpose
- financial problems
- fear of starting over
- societal expectations and pressure from the family
If you want to get back together for the right reason, you must do it because you feel ready for it and want to do it, not because others think it’s good for you. The decision to reconcile must come from the heart, but it must also be rational.
7)The dumper has trust issues
It’s normal for the dumpee to have trust issues. He or she got broken up with and experienced pain like never before. It’s not normal, however, for the dumper to constantly bring up issues from the past and refuse to forgive you for them.
Relationships are built on trust. Without it, couples can’t invest emotionally and make their relationship strong and resistant to doubts and temptations. They can’t make it work long-term because they wish to look for safety elsewhere.
If you and your ex can’t trust each other (especially if someone cheated) and don’t want to actively work on resolving trust, save yourselves the trouble and stay broken up. You’ll feel much better if you move forward with your life and find someone you can be vulnerable with.
8)The dumper has all the power
When the dumper hogs all the power and refuses to give it back after reconciliation, you have one of the biggest red flags when getting back with an ex. The retention of power shows that your ex feels victimized and that he or she doesn’t want to let you control the reconciliation process.
The dumper expects you to do as he or she says and wants you to put all the work in. And because the dumper expects you to invest significantly more than him or her, it’s only a matter of time before the breakup happens.
The relationship won’t last when the dumper doesn’t think of you as an equal and doesn’t work on the relationship the way normal and healthy couples do.
So if the dumper has no intention of returning the power he or she stole from you, don’t try to get back together. You’ll just end up getting hurt and abandoned.
9)Your ex doesn’t give you a label
If your ex wants a friendship with benefits or a relationship with no label, your ex doesn’t deserve your time and investment. He or she deserves to stay broken up and have a label-less relationship with someone who’s okay with it.
Most people won’t be, so don’t even worry about it. They’ll look for something more meaningful and long-lasting.
Don’t let your ex manipulate your feelings and make you think that he or she needs to get to know you again. Your ex already knows who you are and either wants you back or doesn’t. If your ex offers you a no-label relationship, consider it his or her way of saying he or she doesn’t want to commit to you and wants to be a free person.
Let your ex be free by cutting him or her off and getting ready for a relationship with a label.
10)Your ex doesn’t make time for you and appears to be inconsistent
Inconsistency and a lack of effort show that your ex doesn’t feel excited to reconnect with you. Your ex values and prioritizes other people or things instead. This means your ex is with you for certain benefits and won’t stay with you forever.
If the relationship isn’t good now, it won’t get better with time either. If anything, it will get worse – much worse. Slowly, it will deteriorate, increasing your expectations and pain. Eventually, you’ll feel so unhappy and confused that you’ll confront your ex and make your ex leave you again.
You can avoid this by understanding that inconsistency and a lack of time and investment are some of the biggest red flags when getting back with an ex. They’re so big, your ex will hurt you again and make you regret getting your hopes up.
Always look at your ex’s actions. Whether you’ve already gotten back with your ex or are still thinking about it, his or her actions over time will demonstrate his or her regrets, feelings, expectations, and desire to make the relationship work.
Forget about his or her words as words can be empty. Look at what your ex does and what your ex expects from you. It will tell you everything you need to know about your ex.
Do you agree with the 10 flags about getting back with an ex? Can you think of any other red flags? Let us know in the comments section below.
And if you’d like to chat with us about your ex’s red flags, check out our coaching services and get in touch.
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.
