I get it. You want to know the chances of getting your ex back, so you’re educating yourself on the signs that will help you determine those chances. I commend you for your commitment. But here’s some sobering advice that you should know.
The more you obsess over the signs your ex will eventually come back, the higher your chances of sabotaging the act of getting them back. Plus, the whole thing is toxic for your well-being, productivity, and emotional and spiritual health.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing toxic about knowing or being aware of the signs your ex might come back. The toxic part is obsessing about them.
I know most blogs won’t tell you these things, and you’re probably looking funny at me right now, but I’m spewing truth here. Fine… I’ll prove it to you.
Below, I’ll go over eleven imperative signs indicating your ex might come back, so we’re all on the same page about what we’re discussing, and then I’ll explain the consequences of obsessing vs. simply keeping those signs in mind.
SIGNS YOUR EX WILL EVENTUALLY COME BACK
1. Your ex contacts you on the regular. They may suddenly call you and ask how you’re doing or text you about a movie that reminded them of you. The context of their messages/calls, romantic or not, doesn’t matter much. Any form of contact from your ex indicates interest on their part.
2. Your ex lingers near your orbit. Sometimes ex-partners who want you back will purposefully go places where they know you’ll be. So if you keep seeing your ex wherever you go, it might be a sign that they are trying to communicate how they want you back. Or it’s just a coincidence. Sorry.
3. Your ex wants to spend time with you. Maybe they call you, text you, or tell you this in-person. In any case, it’s an obvious sign of interest. Hell, it’s not even a fucking sign. It’s a giant billboard with the words,” Take me back, daddy,” written on it.
4. Your ex hangs out with your friends. Pretty self-explanatory. If your ex keeps hanging out with your friends — this excludes mutual friends — after the breakup, they’re probably curious about your life and recovery. Hence, they probably still like you.
5. You broke up with your ex for external factors. Sometimes breakups don’t occur as a result of incompatibility or toxic tendencies. They occur because of external factors, like long-distance or familial/peer/societal pressure.
However, these kinds of breakups are rare. In most cases, people simply lie to their exes about why their relationship didn’t work to protect their feelings. In other words, it’s way easier to tell a person, “I left you because of the distance,” as opposed to saying, “I left you because you’re a spineless, clingy, and desperate little bitch.”
6. Your ex is second-guessing the breakup. We all second-guess our breakups. So it’s normal if your ex does it from time to time, and it doesn’t mean anything. But if they keep second-guessing — maybe even obsessing — about it, then it could be a sign that they want you back.
7. Your breakup was never official. If your ex never told anyone that they broke up with you, it could indicate that they want you back. But then again, they might be just shy about telling everyone about their heartbreak. This is usually the case with younger couples. 20 to 30-year-olds, to be exact.
8. Your ex keeps drunk-texting you. If this happens once or twice, I wouldn’t think much about it. But if your ex keeps drunk-texting you consistently over the following weeks, they probably still have unresolved feelings for you.
9. You have an on/off relationship with your ex. An on/off relationship is a form of a toxic relationship where two people frequently keep breaking up and getting back together. It’s the dance between the love avoidant and the love addict; the anxiously attached and the avoidantly attached; the perennial giver and the perennial taker. Pro tip: get the fuck out of there. Please break up for real, and immediately after, seek therapy.
10. You broke up with your ex in the heat of the moment. Sometimes emotions make us say and do things we didn’t really want to say and do. One of which is ending our relationship or calling our ex some degenerate slur, so they end it. If that’s the case with your breakup, maybe you still have a chance to turn the whole thing around. Hence, regard it as a sign your ex might come back.
11. Your ex stays in touch with your family. When determining if this is an actual sign that your ex wants you back, you must consider the whole context. Ask yourself, why are they contacting your family? If they don’t have any good reason to do so, it probably is a sign of interest, but if not — if they’re just “tight” with your family — it’s usually not a sign of interest.
WHY YOU SHOULDN’T OBSESS OVER THE SIGNS YOUR EX WILL COME BACK
To start, most of these signs you notice or read about are bullshit. Let’s go over three that keep popping up across many authority breakup advice sites. These are the sort of signs I would deem inaccurate. Maybe even dangerous.
1. Your ex wants you back if they express happiness about your achievement/growth. Meaning they congratulate, compliment, and tell you how you’ve changed. Ok, which 5$-a-page-Fiverr-writer came up with this? Countless people (including myself) have no problem expressing happiness towards their exes, even when they don’t want them back.
2. Your ex wants you back if they’re nostalgic. Again, what the hell? Who wrote this? People get nostalgic about their exes all the time, even when they don’t want them back. Hell, the same philosophy applies to all other areas of our life.
For example, I get nostalgic for my one-night stands. I get nostalgic for my shallow parting buddies. I get nostalgic for waking up in the middle of the street, shitfaced. But guess what? Even though I’m nostalgic about these experiences — sometimes even teary-eyed — I would never go back.
3. Your ex wants you back if you had a good relationship and a lot of chemistry with them. Sometimes I wonder if breakup advice is written for 12-year-olds. Saying that a good relationship (whatever “good” means to you) and high chemistry with your ex equates to a sign that they’ll come back is absurd. It just doesn’t make sense.
The next reason you shouldn’t obsess over the signs your ex will return is the stress the fixation produces.
In general, the more you obsess about something, the more you stress and frustrate yourself. And the more stressed and frustrated you feel, the higher your chances for performing irrational, needy and self-destructive behaviors.
In your case, these behaviors include: spamming your exes phone, sending them love letters, overanalyzing their every response, and stalking them on social media and accidentally liking their post from 2015. Yikes!
The last reason why obsessing over the signs your ex will eventually come back is dangerous is tied to ever-expanding fear. Let me illustrate this for you.
When I was a kid, I was terrified of air travel. I always feared that the plane’s engine would malfunction and make the whole bird crash. So whenever I got onto a plane, all I could think of were things blowing up. And the more I focused on the fire and smoke and the screaming people that swooshed out of an airborne plane, the more my fear expanded — the more nervous I became.
Consequentially, my monstrous fear blinded me from reality and made me overthink things: turbulence, flickering lights, and tired expressions of the stewardess all became signs of impending doom.
The mental-vomit I’ve gone through in my childhood is the same mental vomit you might be experiencing at the moment.
When your ex asks you for their stuff back, you might jump to the conclusion that they want to rekindle things, and so you start acting like they’re your girlfriend/boyfriend again. In reality, they just wanted their damn stuff back. Or when your ex likes your new Facebook profile picture, you think they love you, so you shoot them a sappy text message about getting together again. In reality, your ex doesn’t love you. They simply liked the photo because of a random emotional high that went away as quickly as it manifested.
Relax. Chill. If you want to improve your chances of getting your ex back, stop obsessing about them. I know this is difficult. But it is possible.
To motivate you even further with this, here’s what will happen when you shift your focus from your ex, the signs, and the chances of reconciliation to what actually matters — you.
THE BENEFITS OF FOCUSING ON YOURSELF
First, by focusing on yourself instead of your ex, you’ll free your mind from heaps of unnecessary stress, worry, and frustration. You’ll also preserve a lot of mental energy this way — the energy you can now direct toward things that actually matter: recovery, well-being, and personal development.
And by the way, when you stop fussing about your chances of reconciliation, you often become unreactive to your ex. This trait is highly attractive and will often make your ex reach out. When that happens, all you have to do is invite them on a date. If they accept, it’s likely you’ll end up rekindling things.
Second, by focusing on yourself instead of your ex, you can detect why your relationship didn’t work out much faster. You have a lot of mental energy since you’re not fussing about your ex, after all.
So why hasn’t your relationship worked out? Incompatibility? Toxic tendencies? Buttloads of daddy issues? Mistakes on your part? The sooner you find these answers, the better your chances get of making your next relationship last — be that with your ex or with someone new. I mean, think about it.
If your relationship failed because you wanted kids, while your ex didn’t, now you know that your next partner should probably also want kids.
If your relationship failed because your ex was a serial cheater, now you know that it’s a bad idea to commit to anyone with a history of cheating.
If your relationship failed because you had weak boundaries and allowed your ex to walk all over you, now you know that you need to quit being a spineless pleaser.
Third and last, by focusing on yourself instead of your ex, you can adequately determine if getting them back is even a good idea. How do you know when this is a good/bad idea? In short, observe your intentions.
If your desire to get back with your ex comes from a place of love — a place where you don’t try to force or entice them to return, nor do you expect them to — give it a stab. Maybe it’s worth a try.
But, if your desire comes from a place of fear — the fear you’ll never meet anyone better or the fear that no one will ever love you the same way as your ex did — I would focus on letting go of the old and finding someone new.
Whenever you’re trying to get an ex back out of fear or insecurity, your reconciliation attempts will frequently backfire. And as a result, you’ll push your ex even farther away from you.
Note (This will sting): If you’re reading articles about getting an ex back (like this one), you probably want to rekindle things out of fear, not love. Don’t take this personally. I’m not judging, mocking, or calling you a bad person here. I’m merely stating my observations. Use them to help yourself. If you quit digesting “get your ex back” content at some point, yet you still want your ex, you’re probably wanting them out of love. Or at least not out of fear.
A BETTER WAY TO DETERMINE IF YOUR EX WILL COME BACK
Do you think it’s possible to heal, rebuild yourself and turn your life around if you’re focusing half of your waking energy on your ex, the signs they’ll come back, and your chances of rekindling things?
Probably not.
So let me repeat: focus on yourself and not your ex, even when you want to fix things between the two of you.
If your ex really wants you back, they will let you know head-on, without you having to fuss and maul over some fucking signs. They will message you. They will call you. They will, in some way, shape, or form, communicate that they want to try again. Be that in the form of a committed relationship, friends with benefits type relationship, or casual dating. Whatever.
But if none of that occurs — if your ex never contacts you again or blatantly rejects your reconnection attempts — they probably aren’t too eager about rekindling things. Therefore, think twice about wanting them back. A relationship where you’re the only one putting in the effort will not survive.
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Previously Published on maxjancar.com
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