Getting your ex back after no contact doesn’t mean getting back together on your terms. It means waiting for your ex to reach out first, offer an apology, and express the wish to get back together. Once your ex has sought your attention and given you a clear reason to consider ending no contact, you’re free to end no contact and make a realistic reconciliation plan.
Don’t end no contact just because it’s been 15, 30, 45, 60, or any random number of days.
Even if your ex reaches out and appears friendly, that doesn’t mean no contact is over and that you can go back to full contact, aka saying what’s on your mind and making your ex feel trapped and uncomfortable. Your ex may have finally shown some interest in you and told you that he/she misses you, but that’s not enough to consider no contact over and start pursuing your ex.
Instead of getting your hopes up, recognize that your ex is currently processing the breakup and that no contact is starting to have some effect. While it hasn’t fully reached its goal of making your ex miss you romantically and want to come back, it has partially accomplished its job. It’s showing your ex that you aren’t as bad as he or she made you out to be and that it may be interesting to keep you around. If your ex keeps thinking this way, he or she could eventually have an epiphany and realize that breaking up was a huge mistake.
As a dumpee, you should never chase your ex. You especially shouldn’t chase if the dumper broke up with you, said mean things, and showed no respect, care, or patience. Remember that an angry, cold, smothered, or disinterested dumper has a negative view of you and can’t be brought back with words and actions. He or she has to experience life without you and determine that his or her new life is way worse than life with you.
When the dumper believes that, he or she often reaches out and talks about his or her mistakes, regrets, feelings, goals, and expectations. The dumper talks with care and affection and sets the stage for the key question: “Do you want to get back together?” The dumper’s happiness depends on the dumpee’s feelings, so the dumper butters the dumpee up with compliments, praise, or charm and hopes to receive another chance.
Another chance is the official end of the no contact rule and the start of a new beginning.
So if you want to know how to get your ex back after no contact, keep in mind that ‘after no contact’ means after your ex has had enough time to be truly free, compare the new life to the old one, and learn that leaving you made things worse, not better. When that happens, your ex will do everything you’ve been thinking of doing and more.
Your ex will reach out, apologize, explain things, compliment you, promise to be a better partner, and much more. You won’t have to Google how to get your ex back after no contact because everything will fall into place on its own. Your ex will express his or her regrets clearly and hope that you still want to be in a relationship.
If you do, all you have to do is listen and ask questions that determine your ex’s eagerness to be with you and make things right. You must ensure that your ex is serious about you and wants you back for the right reasons. If he/she just wants relationship benefits without effort and commitment, you’ll break up when your ex gets tired of investing or when you get tired of feeling neglected.
So change how you view reconciliations and convince yourself that you don’t get your ex back after no contact, but that your ex gets you back by putting in the effort and earning your trust, love, and forgiveness. If you think the responsibility of getting back with your ex falls on you (the one who was dumped), you’re likely to break the no contact rule too soon or mess things up when your ex finally reaches out.
Hence, it’s essential to understand that no contact ends when:
- Your ex wants you back.
- You’re over your ex and want to be friends.
You can also break no contact temporarily, but only if you need to discuss something important, such as children, finances, shared items, etc. In such cases, you should say what you need and resume no contact afterward. Don’t get stuck in a conversation with your ex just because you miss talking to your ex.
If you talk about unimportant things, you’ll learn things you’re not supposed to learn and get hurt. You’ll suffer and regret thinking you could somehow change your ex’s perception and feelings.
You probably heard a lot of conflicting information about the no contact rule, so let me make things clear. No contact is indefinite. You mustn’t end it the moment your ex feels bored, curious, guilty, or lonely—and decides to check up on you.
Many dumpers check up on dumpees. That doesn’t mean they want their ex back, but that their ex can help them get something, feel something, or stop feeling something. More often than not, the reachout is about them, rather than their brokenhearted ex. You should remember that when you feel tempted to start talking to your ex and reeling him or her back in.
Your ex doesn’t need to know that you still want to get back together. When he or she wants you back, your ex won’t fear rejection more than long-term unhappiness. You can be certain that your ex will muster the courage to profess his or her feelings and the desire for an exclusive relationship.
The point of no contact is to regain your power and create mystery. The less your ex knows about you and your feelings, the more curious your ex will be. And the more curious your ex is, the more likely it is that your ex will rediscover your romantic value.
The title of today’s article is How to get your ex back after no contact. We’ll discuss what “after no contact” means and how you can boost your chances of success.
How to get your ex back after no contact?
If you’re like most dumpees, you probably want no contact to bring your ex back. You want it to give your ex space and time to process breakup emotions and to inspire your ex to invest in you and the relationship. That’s understandable since your ex abandoned you and made you feel unloved. Every fiber in your body tells you how important your ex is to you and that you need him or her back at all and any cost.
Although you badly want your ex to validate your importance and ease your suffering, you probably won’t get your ex back on your terms by reaching out and saying you want another chance. Dumpers find dumpees’ initiation and begging repulsive and think less of dumpees who seek attention and recognition. Oftentimes, they ignore, block, or get angry with them.
Their negative responses show they’ve made up their minds and that they don’t want to change them just because their ex insists on giving the relationship another chance.
Dumpers want to be in charge of their life and emotions. They don’t want to get back with someone who makes them remember unpleasant or stressful moments from the past and forces them to re-experience them.
The only time they want to go back to their ex is when their life falls apart. That’s when they struggle to love themselves, engage in reflection, and see their ex’s personality and ability to make them happy. If they don’t want to stay unhappy or lack the tools or patience to help themselves, they remember the strength their ex depicted during or after the breakup and consider their ex their savior.
That means they come back not because their ex really wants them to, but because they determine their ex can make them feel valued, distract them from their failures, and lower their pain. Dumpers both come and leave for themselves and the same reasons. They leave a relationship when they’re unhappy and think they can be happier without it, and they come back when they’re unhappy and think they can be happier with it.
For them, it’s a matter of happiness and convenience. If they have more to gain than they do to lose, they break the silence, run back to their ex, and lean on him or her for all kinds of physical and emotional benefits.
So how to get your ex back after no contact?
Work on yourself, including your health, happiness, and detachment, and wait for your ex to miss you and the benefits you used to provide. If your ex is the nostalgic type, capable of reflection and forgiveness, your ex might come back when he or she is tired of hitting dead ends and feeling stressed or unfulfilled. No contact must stay in place until your ex realizes he/she can’t blame you anymore and that you weren’t solely responsible for making the relationship difficult.
When your ex understands his or her mistakes and takes accountability for them, your ex could reach out and want you back as more than a chat buddy. It depends on your ex’s post-breakup happiness as well as your handling of no contact. If you spend most of your time crying and feeling sorry for yourself, your ex is unlikely to return after reaching out. That’s because your ex will see that you need help and can’t contribute to his or her problems and life.
Whatever you do, don’t tolerate your ex’s breadcrumbs. You won’t make your ex want to be with you by being nice, asking questions, showing off, flirting, or manipulating your ex’s emotions. You’ll get your ex back by giving your ex space, focusing on yourself, and letting your ex come to you after he or she has reflected and realized your romantic worth.
If you entertain your ex for hours every time your ex reaches out, you’ll become your ex’s go-to person and get friend-zoned. And as you probably know, the friend zone is hard to climb out of. Most dumpees fail to impress their ex and successfully transition back into a relationship. You can avoid additional pain by learning how to recognize breadcrumbs and ending the conversation before you receive unnecessary/hurtful information.
With that said, here are my tips on how to get your ex back after no contact.
What if my ex wants me to bring up reconciliation?
Your ex doesn’t want you to start the reconciliation topic. Your ex is focusing on him/herself and enjoying the newfound freedom. If, for some reason, your ex expects you to ask for another chance, it’s not only unfair but also manipulative. It suggests that your ex has ego issues and lacks the emotional maturity needed to resolve conflicts and sustain a healthy romantic relationship.
A dumper who wants you to do the heavy lifting usually doesn’t want a relationship badly enough. He or she is okay with or without getting back together. If such a dumper receives the invitation to reconcile, he or she doesn’t make any personal changes and, as a result, falls back into the same patterns. Those patterns sooner or later create the same problems and cause another breakup.
I’ve witnessed many exes break up because the dumper had all the power and felt no desire or need to evolve. Instead of humbly addressing shortcomings, he or she continued to act instinctively and make the relationship difficult to grow. Because the relationship was severely damaged by the breakup, it couldn’t withstand additional problems and unprocessed emotions.
There’s a reason why it’s the dumpers’ job to come back. When dumpers return willingly, they return the power they stole from their ex and invest in the relationship. They understand their mistakes and feel responsible for trying harder. If they don’t try hard enough, they risk disappointing, hurting, and angering their ex.
So don’t worry about what might happen if you don’t chase your ex and ask for forgiveness. Worry about what might happen if you let your ex waltz back into the relationship and take you for granted. You won’t only waste your time and emotions, but also slow down your growth and make it harder to detach.
You’ll blame yourself for letting your ex close to you and go through another breakup.
My advice is to convince yourself that your ex needs to do most of the work, at least initially. When he or she has earned your trust and made it safe for you to invest, you can then talk about ways to make the relationship stronger. But until then, you must preserve your worth, self-invest, and let your ex admit that he or she has made a huge mistake.
Are you still wondering how to get your ex-boyfriend back after no contact? What are you currently working on and how long are you willing to wait? Let us know in the comments below.
However, if you need help with understanding no contact or staying in it, feel free to reach out via our coaching plan. We’ll go through your breakup together and devise a custom-tailored plan.
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.
