What If He Doesn’t Contact Me During No Contact?

Many dumpees fear that they won’t hear from their ex during the no contact period. Their anxiety runs high, so they worry that no contact will push their ex further away (possibly toward someone else) and make their ex move on and forget about them.

What they don’t understand is that the worst has already happened and that no contact won’t make the situation worse. It can’t make it worse because it gives the dumper plenty of space and time to enjoy his or her new life and avoid feeling responsible for helping the dumpee get through the breakup.

For the first time in a while, the dumper can just focus on himself or herself and feel in total control of his or her life.

If you’re thinking about what will happen if your ex-boyfriend doesn’t contact you during no contact, you first need to know that no contact has no expiration date. There is no “during no contact” as no contact is indefinite. It ends when your ex reaches out and wants you back or when you recover from the breakup and want to be friends.

Every other time, no contact stays in place and keeps doing what it’s meant to do – prevent you from making breakup mistakes and protect you from emotional setbacks.

So forget limited no contact rules, such as the 30, 45, or 60-day no contact rules. These pre-set self-imposed rules most likely won’t be enough for your ex to process the breakup and feel nostalgic or guilty. And even if they are enough, your ex won’t feel the need to get back together.

He will still remember the bad times or reasons why the relationship ended.

Your ex will probably need months, years, or even decades to fail miserably and realize that his journey of self-discovery isn’t bringing the fulfillment he hoped for. Many dumpers don’t have an epiphany (for a long time) because they don’t forgive, reflect, and admit their flaws. They prefer to blame their ex for their unhappiness, decisions, and negative reactions.

Such dumpers aren’t worth waiting for. Holding on to them would give you unnecessary hope and waste a lot of your valuable time. Time that would be better spent detaching, healing, and focusing on growth

So don’t think that your ex must contact you within a specific number of days. Most dumpers don’t reach out within the set timeframe. Those who do usually just feel bad and want their ex to know they’re sorry and willing to be friends.

Friendship should be the last thing you accept from someone who rejected and hurt you.

If you agree to friendship, you’ll receive tons of pointless information from your ex and make healing extremely challenging for yourself. Instead of making recovery easier for yourself, you’ll make it easier for your ex because you’ll assuage his guilt and give him relationship benefits at the cost of your detachment and happiness.

So say no to friendship and change your understanding of no contact. Convince yourself that no contact is permanent and that you mustn’t end it on your terms or when your ex just wants to check up on you/get something from you.

The only time you can end the no contact rule is when you don’t want your ex back anymore or when your ex actually wants you back.

Some dumpees think they must hear from their ex during no contact (a preset number of days) so they can start reeling their ex back in. They think it’s their job to impress their ex and change their ex’s perception of them. Such dumpees lack breakup knowledge as they strongly believe they hold the power to influence their ex’s thoughts and feelings.

What they don’t know is that they lost the ability to positively affect their ex’s perception of them and that any attempt to bring their ex back will end in rejection. Consequently, rejection will invalidate their romantic feelings and drag them back to the start of their healing journey.

So whatever you do, don’t believe all the hopeful things you hear on the internet. When things sound too good to be true, it’s because they usually are. No set number of days can guarantee that your ex will learn a meaningful lesson and become open to reconciliation.

Try to put yourself in your ex’s shoes and ask yourself what you’d need from your ex if you initiated a breakup and felt how your ex felt. It might be hard to do that now that you’re hurt, but give it a try anyway. Imagine you made the decision to leave your ex and had all the power.

You likely wouldn’t want to be near your ex, let alone talk, bond, and reconnect. The breakup would set you free and make you wonder why it took you so long to walk away and put yourself first.

Your ex isn’t any different. He’d been wanting to break up for a while. Because he didn’t (probably lacked certainty or courage), he kept his negative emotions inside him until he couldn’t do that anymore and decided to quit.

Expecting him to want you back anytime soon would be unreasonable. He has to go through the breakup stages first and become emotionally vulnerable. Once he’s vulnerable, he might run into an obstacle, get hurt, and see that he overestimated his ability to live a happy life without you.

No one can predict the future. But if you’re following a 30-day no contact period, the odds of your ex going through all the breakup stages in a month are slim. There are 5 stages in total, and your ex might not even reach the second one by the time 30 days of no contact have passed. Your ex will still feel relieved and/or elated when your pre-set no contact rule expires.

It’s not impossible for your ex to want you back before 30 days are up, but it’s unlikely that your ex will process everything he needs to process and redevelop feelings.

Some dumpers come back days after the breakup, but such dumpers don’t truly intend to leave. They still have feelings as they merely want to express discontent and force their ex to make personal changes.

One of the few reasons your ex might return within 30 days is if he meets someone highly incompatible, compares him to you, and realizes he took you for granted. That could make him hurry up and take you back before it’s too late.

Of course, other unwanted/painful things, such as fallouts with friends and financial problems could also make your ex come back relatively quickly, but such hindrances typically don’t trigger a reflection deep enough to reconcile.

Usually, it takes a blow to the dumper’s self-esteem for the dumper to have an ‘aha’ moment and consider coming back for validation and security purposes. Therefore, the most likely scenario in which your ex returns is also the least appealing one.

If your ex comes back, it won’t be because he spent time reflecting on how to be a better person, but because something didn’t work out for him. Whether it’s a relationship, college, work, or a friendship, something or someone let him down and urged him to seek comfort in what once felt familiar.

In other words, you’re his backup plan or emotional safety net. Keep that in mind if your ex suddenly acts like you’re the most important person in his life. You don’t want the guy to use you and dump you again once you’ve served your purpose.

Today’s topic is “What if he doesn’t contact me during no contact?” This article will reaffirm that no contact usually lasts much longer than 30 days and that your ex might still contact you at some point in the future. It could happen after you’ve recovered and moved on, but that possibility still exists.

What if he doesn’t contact me during no contact?

If your ex doesn’t contact you during the first few stages (months of no contact), it doesn’t mean that your ex never will. No contact is indefinite, which means your ex has plenty of time to stop feeling pressured and victimized and find a reason to get in touch.

Whether this reason is driven by curiosity, guilt, shame, confusion, a need for advice, emotional support, a favor, or simply a desire to bury the hatchet, your ex might eventually contact you to get something from you.

You might not want to talk to your ex when he does, but he might nonetheless reach out and test the waters. He might tell you that he’s been thinking about you and misses you. That might give your ego a quick boost, but it would also burden you with false hope and obsessive thoughts.

So try not to worry about what might happen if he doesn’t contact you during no contact. Worry about what could happen if he contacts you for the wrong reasons. Talking to him when he has no intention of getting back together could leave you feeling unimportant, used, confused, and emotionally drained.

You’d end up feeling worse than you did before your ex reached out and told you things you didn’t need to know.

Simply put, you shouldn’t talk to your ex unless your ex wants you back. You should be keeping your distance and letting your ex live his life. The only time you should allow your ex into your life is when your ex realizes he’s made a terrible decision and affirms that he’s ready to make things right.

Making things right includes taking accountability, promising to value and treat you well, and working on himself. If your ex texts or calls you for any reason other than getting back together, you must consider it a breadcrumb and stop interacting with your ex. Don’t talk to your ex just because your ex finally showed a little bit of interest in you.

Talking might benefit your ex, but it won’t benefit you. At least not in the long run. It will only keep you obsessed with your ex.

It’s better not to hear from your ex at all during no contact than to hear from him and see that his feelings haven’t changed. The best thing your ex can do for you if he doesn’t love you is to leave you alone. By staying away from you, he can avoid triggering your repressed feelings and allow you to get over him once and for all.

It might help your recovery to remind yourself that hearing from your ex during no contact is bad for your healing. It’s especially bad if your ex shares something that gives you too much hope or crushes all your hope at once.

Too many dumpees concern themselves with what might happen if they don’t hear from their ex within a certain timeframe. They think that their ex will move on and forget about them. The truth, though, is that the dumper has already moved on and can’t move on more than he or she already has. The dumper is fully detached and needs time to enjoy his or her post-breakup life. That’s the only way the dumper can deal with negative post-breakup emotions and encounter problems necessary for reflection and letting go.

Rest assured that not hearing from your ex during a few months of no contact doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t make your ex dislike or resent you for not taking the initiative. Only immature dumpers take their ex’s silence personally and get their egos bruised. Such dumpers are usually extremely impulsive and hard to work with. They react to problems rather than act on them.

Try to think of no contact as time for your ex to evolve and change his way of thinking. In a way, your ex is testing his emotional strength and maturity while quietly searching for reasons to need you. As long as your ex is still searching for reasons to contact you, your ex has no use for you and doesn’t feel the urge to contact you and be with you.

Your ex is prioritizing other people and making no contact seem ineffective.

Bear in mind that no contact is working. It may not have made your ex reach out so far, but it did prevent your ex from associating more negativity with you and allowed your ex to cool off. All your ex needs now is an emotional incentive to reconnect. Your ex may find it by encountering various difficulties and seeing what life is like without you.

Having said that, here’s what it means if he doesn’t contact you during no contact.

How long should I give my ex to contact me?

You won’t wait for your ex forever. When you regain your ability to love yourself, you’ll stop thinking about how nice it would be if your ex were to reach out and validate you. You won’t need your ex to validate you and make you happy because you’ll be emotionally detached from your ex and meet your own emotional needs.

When that happens, you can expect to kick your ex off the pedestal and put yourself first. You’ll spend your time thinking about people and things that actually matter.

Hence, there’s no point in setting a time limit for how long you should wait for your ex to reach out. If you commit to no contact and all its rules, you’ll gradually lose the drive to communicate and be close to your ex. Over time, you’ll see that you can be happy or perhaps even happier without your ex and that your ex’s reappearance could disrupt your peace and progress.

You’ll probably want your ex not to contact you and let you continue to heal/enjoy life.

If you must give your ex time to contact you, give your ex a few months. A few months should be enough for your ex to process the breakup and wonder what you’re doing. Many dumpers get curious and reach out 3 – 4 months into no contact. They don’t want a relationship, but still act like everything’s fine. Some even call their ex pet names and make it seem like they’re coming back around.

Such dumpers feel excited to talk to their ex and usually cause more harm than good.

If your ex doesn’t contact you within a few months of no contact, you must start letting go of the idea of your ex coming back. It’s better for your emotional well-being to give up on being with your ex than to hold on to hope and keep waiting for your ex to have an epiphany. As I’ve mentioned before, your ex might never come back, or he might return years later.

Since his return is impossible to predict, you should get him out of your system. Your happiness and health will improve tenfold once you stop expecting to hear from your ex and no longer wait for his texts and calls. Not only will you stop obsessing about things that are out of your power to control, but you’ll also focus on yourself and feel grateful for the people who remain in your life.

My advice is to give your ex a little bit of time to contact you. But while you’re waiting, make sure to work on yourself and get rid of your attachment to your ex. You’ll see that letting go doesn’t mean giving up, but rather, choosing peace, clarity, and growth over endless pain, hope, and confusion.

Are you still feeling anxious and wondering what it means if he doesn’t contact you during no contact? Post your comments below.

And lastly, if you need support with your ex-boyfriend/no contact, reach out to us via our coaching page. We specialize in helping dumpees find closure and (when possible) reconnect with their ex-partners.

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.