Seeing Your Ex For The First Time After No Contact

Seeing your ex for the first time after no contact may scare you, but know that you have nothing to worry about. If your ex regrets abandoning you and wants you back, your ex will be way more nervous than you. He or she will overanalyze what you think, feel, and say and appear vulnerable and desperate for reconciliation.

You won’t even have to say or do anything to reattract your ex because your ex will already be attracted to you and ready to be with you.

Regretful dumpers are extremely receptive and willing to talk and bond. They regret leaving their ex so badly, they apologize, explain they’ve made a terrible decision, and ask for one more chance. Waves of anxiety and discontent about the actions they took hurt them badly and compel them to secure a spot in a relationship with their ex.

The mistake many dumpees make is that they believe they can use words to entice their “unenticeable” ex back. They completely forget that an ex who doesn’t have feelings for them can’t realize their value and miss them romantically.

Not with conversation and determination alone.

Dumpers already know dumpees inside out. They don’t need to converse with them to realize how foolish they were for letting them go. Yes, speaking to dumpees in person can make dumpers nostalgic, but more often than not, nostalgia doesn’t make them miss the romantic aspect of the relationship.

It’s the friendship part of the relationship that dumpers miss. And friendships, sadly don’t lead to romance. They get dumpees friendzoned and strung along.

Keep in mind that friendships don’t help dumpers forget their doubts, fears, and bad memories. They don’t help them develop romantic feelings either because feelings require more than reminders of the past. They require strong cravings for love and bonding.

And what makes exes develop these cravings? Usually, it’s realizations, triggered by something bad.

Therefore, it’s unlikely that seeing your ex will fix your ex’s problems and make your ex fall back in love with you. It’s much more likely that it will bring back your old/unprocessed or half-processed feelings and make you hungry for your ex’s recognition again.

If you don’t want to get hurt again and experience painful emotional setbacks, you have to ask yourself whether it’s worth seeing your ex again. You may think it is because you miss your ex and wonder what your ex is up to, but you may not be emotionally ready to communicate yet.

This is especially true if you’re anxious about how the meetup will go because in that case, you’re still going through the process of rebuilding your self-esteem and detaching from your ex. You’re going to get your broken heart crushed again if things don’t go well because you have high expectations of your ex.

So as long as you expect or hope that your ex will get back with you, I suggest you avoid seeing your ex in person (or on call). Stay far away from your ex as high expectations indicate you don’t just want but also need your ex to recognize your romantic worth and give you the love and attention you deserve.

The only time you can make an exception (stop detaching and healing) is when your ex expresses or hints at wanting to talk about getting back together.

Although it’s possible that your ex wants you back right now, it’s also possible that your ex just wants to be friends. Until you’re certain or almost certain your ex had a change of heart, you should stay in no contact and wait for your ex to be more direct.

You can’t risk getting hurt again just because your ex is afraid of getting rejected and is mustering up the courage to ask you out.

The title of today’s topic is “seeing your ex for the first time after no contact.” We’ll discuss what “after no contact” even means and what the best course of action is.

Seeing your ex for the first time after no contact

If you’re about to see your ex for the first time after no contact, we need to discuss the circumstances you’re seeing your ex under.

If you’re attending a friend’s wedding, for example, and you know your ex will be there, this kind of meetup is least likely to cultivate desired results. You probably won’t resolve your differences and fall back in love because you won’t be ready to do that.

Depending on how the relationship ended and whether your ex has processed the breakup, you might, of course, talk for a bit and then decide to give conditional friendship a try. Conditional friendship means that you stay wary and try to figure out if you’re both happy to treat each other as if nothing ever happened between you two.

What you and your ex do depends on how detached you are (how much you pressure your ex) and whether your ex had enough space, feels respected, and wants to be friends.

As far as your relationship goes, the most you two will be after meeting a mutual friend’s gathering is friends. It’s extremely unlikely that romance will flourish from this random encounter as romance requires premeditation, forgiveness, and cravings.

You’ve got to remember that dumpers need a reason to want to be with their ex. Their reason (whatever that may be) gradually grows into a desire for intimacy and commitment and forces them to reach out and commit.

They don’t sit idly and wait for their ex to make the first move. That wouldn’t make any sense as they lost feelings and left, not their ex.

Secondly, if you’re seeing your ex because you need to exchange belongings or talk about kids, divorce, or something essential, you also won’t meet up to talk about getting back together. You might ask some questions regarding the breakup and get closure, but when it comes to restarting the relationship, unfinished business is unlikely to be the reason you get back together.

You’ll meet up just to give each other personal belongings back. You won’t meet up to flirt and see if the relationship is worth giving another chance. That’s why the most you can get out of seeing your ex for unfinished business purposes is an apology and an explanation as to why the breakup ensued.

You might engage in this kind of conversation if your ex feels bad for breaking your heart and kicking you out. Some dumpers feel very sad and express discontent (cry). If your ex does that, just keep in mind that tears don’t indicate love and regret. They indicate guilt, shame, and the reality of the situation.

Lastly, if you agree to meet up with your ex as “just friends,” know that you’ll probably indulge in recollection of past events and feel confused. On the one hand, you’ll know that your ex doesn’t care about you romantically, but on the other, you’ll wonder if it’s possible to make your ex feel love for you again.

This could trigger your sentimentality and make you want to impress your ex and trigger your ex’s old feelings.

If you flirt with your ex and successfully activate your ex’s sexual urges, you could also cross the friendship boundary and progress to the next stage – the friends-with-benefits stage. In this stage, you could end up sleeping with your ex from time to time and no matter how hard you try, fail to progress to the last and final stage (the romantic stage).

Why is that?

It’s because an emotionally detached person doesn’t feel emotionally attracted to his friend. He only finds her physically attractive, which means that all she can be to him is a familiar person who can satisfy his sexual urges.

She can’t change into someone he sees a future with. Again, not without a proper reason.

We used a guy as an example, but women have no strings attached relationships with exes as well. They feel lonely, emotional, and aroused and think they may as well get the most out of life.

So far, the article has been pretty gloomy and hopeless as you probably hoped to hear some good news. You wanted to read that seeing your ex for the first time after no contact is a positive sign. I get that and understand how you feel because I was a dumpee too. I wanted to read only hope-giving fairy tales and picture my breakup having a happy-ever-after ending.

But if you do that, it won’t be productive for you. Instead of detaching and moving on, you’ll find yourself stuck in a dreamlike mental state detached from the harsher reality of life. And that won’t be alright as it will delay your recovery and cause long-term problems.

Although miracles happen, it’s much healthier for you not to pin your hopes on miracles. You’ll have a much higher chance of success with your ex if you follow a realistic breakup plan and do what’s best for your happiness and health.

Some dumpees think they must either suffer and try to get their ex back or give up on their ex, heal, and decrease their chances of getting back with their ex. If you think that way, I have to inform you that breakups don’t work that way. You don’t need to choose between one or the other as things aren’t that black or white.

Rest assured that you can maximize your reconciliation chances by starting no contact and staying in it for as long as you need to. You need to stop thinking about communication after no contact and wait for your ex to make a romantic move on you.

What does “after no contact” even mean?

We’ve discussed what no contact is before, but because people still don’t understand it, we’ll do it again. No contact means no verbal or non-verbal communication with your ex. It requires you to leave your ex to his or her devices so you can heal and regain happiness and direction.

While your ex is enjoying life and staying away from you, you must avoid breaking no contact at all costs. You mustn’t reach out because if you do, you’ll force your ex to communicate and feel pressured or overprioritized. That could bring a bad response out of your ex and worsen your ex’s perception of you.

If you’ve spent a lot of time browsing through breakup topics, you’ve probably been brainwashed into thinking that no contact is supposed to last a certain number of days and that you can take back control of the breakup once it ends.

This is sadly not true. As a dumpee, you don’t have the power to influence your ex.

You have to wait for your ex to become receptive and willing to communicate. And you’ll know your ex is ready to communicate not after 30, 45, or 60 days but when your ex shows or says he is. That’s when you can try to figure out how your ex feels and why your ex wants to communicate.

If your ex doesn’t say or do anything that proves you can stop detaching and moving on, no contact must remain indefinite. There is no such thing as “after no contact” as no contact ends with reconciliation (or friendship if enough time goes by and couples feel detached and respected).

So if you’re seeing your ex for the first time after no contact, figure out what “after no contact” mean for you. Does it mean a certain number of days had gone by before you reached out to your ex and arranged a meetup?

Or does it mean your ex reached out and showed some kind of interest in you?

If it’s the former, that’s not the end of no contact as you invited your ex out yourself. If you weren’t honest about your intentions, your ex probably assumed you wanted to be friends.

But if your ex reached out to you and wanted to see you in person, then it might be the end of no contact for you. This depends on what your ex hopes to achieve by seeing you. Many dumpers want to appease guilt, bury the hatchet, or settle for friendship.

Only a small fraction of dumpers reaching out and asking to meet up actually want to get back together.

What to do if your ex wants to see you for the first time after no contact?

When your ex wants to see you, the very first thing you should do is ask your ex why he or she wants to see you. This is important so you don’t get too excited and jump to conclusions.

You must keep your hopes low at all times and remember that your ex may want to see you for reasons unrelated to getting back together.

Reasons such as:

• friendship
• acquaintanceship
• friendship with benefits
• nostalgia
• emotional support
• guilt
• closure or to provide closure
• unfinished business

If you keep that in mind before meeting your ex, you should have enough time to decide if meeting your ex is even worth it. If you decide that it is because it looks like your ex wants you back, you should prepare for the meetup and get straight to the point.

Ask your ex how he or she has been and why he/she wanted to meet up. If you learn that your ex just missed you as a person (not a partner), you should finish your coffee or whatever you’re having and make an excuse to leave. You needn’t and shouldn’t stay long if your ex just wants to catch up.

Catching up is detrimental to your health as it gives you too much unnecessary information.

So if you know that seeing your ex again won’t change anything, don’t go through with it. Avoid it at all costs and focus on recovering from the breakup instead.

Are you seeing your ex for the first time after no contact? How does that make you feel? Post your comments below.

And if you don’t know how to feel and act—and want our help, sign up for a coaching session with us.

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.