I Want To Reach Out To My Ex

It’s expected of you to want to reach out to your ex after a breakup. Most people in the position of a dumpee are eager to communicate with their ex and fix things. They’re prepared to do literally anything to re-establish contact and get back together with their ex.

But sadly, reaching out to an ex doesn’t change the fact that the dumper doesn’t want to communicate and reconcile. All post-breakup communication does is show that the dumpee is anxious and desperate and that he or she doesn’t respect the dumper’s space and desire to self-focus and not be reminded about the breakup.

Dumpees need to understand that if the dumper wanted to talk (especially about getting back together) the dumper would have reached out on his or her own. The dumper wouldn’t put the dumpee in charge of the reconciliation and expect the dumpee to do all the work.

Whether the dumpee made more mistakes during and after the relationship is irrelevant. The dumper was the one who decided to quit and break the dumpee’s heart, which is why the dumper knows that he or she is responsible both for re-establishing contact and starting a new relationship.

If the dumper doesn’t initiate and show any interest in getting back on talking terms and reconnecting intimately, it’s evident that the dumper hasn’t learned the lessons he or she needed to learn to get back together.

The dumper still thinks that life is better the way it is and that it would be a big mistake to get back together.

Your ex’s mentality and perception of you remain unchanged. That’s why you can expect your ex to keep engaging in activities he or she previously lacked the time and right to do. You can expect your ex to talk to other people and enjoy his or her life without you.

I know you want to reach out to your ex very badly. You especially want to contact your ex because your ex doesn’t seem to miss you and care about you. He or she is focusing on other things and people and making you feel incredibly alone.

That makes it extremely hard for you to resist the urge to reach out and feel validated. You feel unbelievably tempted to pick up the phone and text or call your ex. But because you know you can’t reach out to your ex on your terms, you keep your composure anyway and try to get your mind off your ex.

You do what you need to do to make your ex respect you and avoid making your ex reject you again.

So if you want to reach out to your ex more than ever and you don’t know how much longer you can stay away from your ex, know that you’re doing a great job. The fact that you’re fighting your instincts and leaving your ex alone shows that you know what you need to do and that you have the strength to stay away from your ex.

The only problem is that you keep telling yourself you want to reach out. Self-talk like that makes it slightly more tempting every time to abandon no contact and find out what your ex is thinking and feeling.

It makes you cling to hope and tells you that your ex might be waiting for your message and that perhaps a single reach-out won’t cause much damage after weeks or months of no contact.

Maybe it won’t cause much or any damage to your ex, but a reach-out will nonetheless make you anxious and pin your hopes on your ex. It will put your health and well-being at the mercy of your ex, hinder your recovery, and prove you haven’t processed the breakup and found better people to talk to.

An unsolicited reach-out will only complicate the breakup and make it harder for your ex to feel anything for you.

So no matter how badly you want to reach out to your ex, remember that talking to an ex who dumped you might feel good for a while if your ex feels nostalgic and wants to catch up. But it will also hurt you badly if you discover things you’re not ready for and/or get directly or indirectly rejected.

Many dumpers start dating someone new right away. They dump their ex for someone else and can only focus on talking and being with the new person. If their ex reaches out while they’re in love with someone else, their ex instantly reminds them about what they did, suffocates them, and gives them permission to say and do what they want.

And what they typically want is to punish their ex and/or get rid of their ex for making them feel the kind of emotions they’re trying to stay away from and forget.

Dumpers don’t want to think about their ex. They want to focus on themselves, their friends, family, and the people they’re seeing. If they can’t do that because their ex reaches out and makes them feel bad, they often get angry and respond in angry ways.

This further hurts dumpees’ self-esteem and destroys their healing.

In this post, we shed some light on why you want to reach out to your ex and what you can do to stop yourself from reaching out.

Why do I want to reach out to my ex?

The main reason why you want to reach out to your ex is because your ex rejected you, destroyed your self-esteem, and made you dependent on him or her for validation, closure, and self-love.

Your ex hurt you so badly that your instincts instruct you to contact your ex and rely on him or her for the problems he or she has caused. It’s not that you love your ex so much you can’t go on without your ex, but that you don’t love yourself.

Your ex made it difficult for you to do so by withdrawing his or her love and making you think you don’t deserve love. As a result, you’re now suffering from the lack of happy hormones your ex’s love and acceptance empowered you with on a daily basis.

The withdrawal effects can be compared to heroin addiction withdrawal as your brain constantly tells you that you need your ex to be happy and that not having your ex in your life romantically is harmful to your health and well-being.

A lack of reassurance and happy hormones make you obsessed with your ex and prevent you from moving on and enjoying your life.

As long as you’re addicted to your ex, you can expect to crave your ex more than anything and find it hard to let go of your ex. The pain will do its best to convince you that your ex is good for you even if your ex emotionally and physically abused you.

It will tell you to ignore everything bad your ex did to you before, during, and after the breakup and instruct you to keep seeing your ex as the best person in the world.

No matter what pain tells you, try not to listen to the emotional side of your brain too much. You may be suffering a lot, but pain doesn’t necessarily mean that your ex is the right person for you and that you should reach out and try to make your ex love you again.

As a dumpee, you don’t have the power to make your ex fall back in love with you. You can’t make your ex do that because you can’t convince your ex that you’re the missing piece of the puzzle in his or her life. Your ex has to discover your importance on his or her own.

And your ex can do that only through failure and suffering.

Something must go seriously wrong for your ex to realize that the path he or she is on can’t make him or her happy now and in the future. That’s the only way your ex can return and invest in you.

Anyway, keep in mind that you want to talk and be with your ex because your ex doesn’t want to talk and be with you. You don’t like that your ex can carry on without you like you’re nothing while you’re suffering immensely and struggling to love yourself.

You want your ex to suffer as well so that your ex can acknowledge your pain and make you feel better.

You want to reach out to your ex because your ex isn’t reaching out to you. A positive conversation with your ex could potentially take your pain away and replace your pain with positive feelings.

And that’s what you’re after. Your wish is to engage in productive conversation with your ex and obtain information that creates positive feelings.

I can tell you right now that as long as you think you can benefit from reaching out, the urge to reach out will remain. It will tempt you to break the rules of no contact and interact with the person who has put you in the situation you’re in.

Although there’s always a chance that your ex will help you feel better, you must understand that your ex could also make things much worse. Your ex could ignore, block, and delete you and make you feel rejected and unworthy.

That could destroy your emotional progress and make you even more obsessed with your ex.

If you feel the need to reach out to your ex weeks or months after the breakup, it’s not because you need answers (closure). It’s because you need to detach and heal. You need to accept the answers you have and find ways to let go of your ex.

By letting your ex go, you’ll stop feeling the need to reach out to your ex and find better things to focus on. Things that make you feel positive emotions.

That said, here’s why you want to reach out to your ex after the breakup.

How to avoid reaching out to your ex?

The best way to avoid reaching out to an ex who dumped you is to learn more about breakup dynamics and become aware of the consequences of reaching out.

By understanding what could happen if you initiate a conversation with your ex, you should be able to convince yourself that reaching out is not worth the risk of annoying your ex, pushing your ex away, destroying your hope, and getting unwanted answers.

A conversation started by you (the dumpee) will put you in a position of weakness and let your ex respond in hurtful ways if he or she wants to. How your ex responds depends on your ex’s personality, perception of you, mood, and the things you say and do.

If you ask for explanations and your ex lacks the sympathy and empathy to give them to you, your ex will probably accuse of of things and treat you like an enemy.

That will make you take the blame personally and tell you to defend yourself. Defensive behavior will then aggravate your ex and cause you both to react negatively to each other.

So if you don’t want to get hurt, remember that talking to your ex is risky and that it will likely make you feel worse than no contact. It will hinder your healing and growth and make your ex glad the breakup happened.

You can avoid reaching out to your ex by staying busy as much as you can. Hang out with friends, spend time with your family, focus on work, create and stick to a workout plan, and do what it takes to take your mind off your ex and not reach out when you feel anxious and sad.

The breakup will push you to your limits. It will test your willpower and self-control and exhaust you emotionally and mentally.

Despite that, you need to stay strong and avoid contacting your ex. You need to remember that your ex isn’t waiting for you to reach out and that your ex would have reached out already if he or she realized your worth and wanted you back.

Your ex would have put in the effort and showed you that life isn’t the same without you.

If your ex isn’t contacting you and discussing getting back together, you shouldn’t reach out to talk about that either. You should understand that this isn’t the time to talk as you’re both still processing the breakup.

You’re relearning to love yourself and detaching whereas your ex is disassociating from you and living life the way he or she wants to live it.

You can be friends later if you want to. But while you feel a strong urge to reach out and reconnect with your ex, it’s better for your safety and well-being that you don’t engage in conversation with your ex.

With that said, here’s a recap of what you can do when you want to reach out to your ex:

• remind yourself of the consequences of breaking no contact
• tell yourself nothing will change and that the dumper needs to be the one to reach out
• surround yourself with people and distract yourself
• do whatever it takes to avoid reaching out

Do you still want to reach out to your ex? What do you want to tell/ask your ex? Share your plans in the comments section below, and we’ll get back to you soon.

However, if you’re struggling to stay in no contact and want to confide in us right away, check out our coaching options and get in touch. We’re here to help you get back on track.