How to get your ex back

By Love and Relationships Staff

Can’t sleep. Can’t eat. Can’t stop eating. Or smoking. Or drinking. Running over the break-up scene, over-and-over in your head.
So you want your ex back. Just last week he was your boyfriend, your partner, your husband. There is a sudden, gaping hole in your life.

Stop – and take a minute. Breathe a little.

There are no magical cures for your pain, but there are practical steps you can take now to start making yourself feel better. And you do want to feel better – right? Falling back on these old, self-destructive habits will not help you. Rather, it’s about taking this an opportunity to finally do something for yourself, to set yourself and your life in the direction you want it to go.

So what should you do?

1. Exercise. It seems simple or stupid but exercise is the single most effective thing you can do to feel better now. Running, going to the gym, swimming or playing sport with friends – anything that will raise your pulse will give you energy and a natural high. It will also help you sleep better.

2. Smiling. Standing in the mirror and smiling for ten minutes a day has been shown in psychological studies to be an incredibly effective way of lifting mood. Why? After a time you simply cannot feel bad when you’re smiling.

3. Enjoy your life. Spend time with friends, get your hair done, buy some nice clothes, make yourself feel sexy again.

4. Talk to someone you feel comfortable with. If are lucky enough to have a friend or a family member you can really talk with and trust, speak with them. If not, it may be worthwhile talking to a professional.

5. Always wanted to learn the guitar, go to dance classes, or learn how to cook great Chinese dishes. Now you finally have the time to do what you want – use it.

But what do these things have to do with winning your ex back? Nothing - and everything. First it is important for you to win back respect for yourself, to prove to yourself that you are a worthwhile, loving and lovable person. With some distance, and a more positive view of yourself and the future, you can look back on your relationship with him with a clearer head. Why is it that you want him back? What was good and what was bad in the relationship? Do you still really want to be with HIM, or are you simply lonely? Why did you break-up, what were the problems, could they be addressed if you were to get back together? If you still think it is worthwhile to see if a relationship with him would work, there are now steps you can take to win him back.

But you have already taken the most important step: you have won your own self-respect back. If you have no respect for yourself, how can you expect someone else to. No man wants to be with a woman who is desperate, dependant, who has no respect for how she looks or comes across. And nothing is more attractive than a woman who is confident, alive, sexy and independent. By making your own life, you can prove to yourself and to him that you are not desperate and that you are not dependant on him for your happiness.

But none of these things have anything to do directly with winning my ex back? That’s exactly the point. Calling him up constantly or when you’re drunk, or sending sloppy text messages won’t win him back. You may well be feeling weak and pathetic, but you must not let him see that. Remember, respect is the key.

Often relationships break-up because they have become boring. If you’re honest with yourself, you probably felt bored too. That spark you felt when you first met had gone out, simply because of the hum-drum routine of life. That incredible feeling of being together had subsided to a dull normality. By taking control of your life again, by enjoying yourself, and by looking and feeling good, he will be drawn to you, just as he was when you first met. If he loved you, he cannot simply forget you.

So what steps can you take to win him back.

1. Winning your own self-respect is the most important step.

2. Speaking to him or writing to him to say that you understand why you broke-up. This shows that you understand him, that you have taken time to think, and you realise that everything was not perfect.

3. Let him keep in contact with you. Be friendly with him, but do not make yourself too available. You don’t have to play games, but you don’t have to be at his beck-and-call either. By being in control, and that means not saying I need you, I love you etc, he will feel that you can live without him. Casually remembering a good moment that you had together could help twinge his desire for you too. He will be sure to think about it later when you’re not there.

4. Don’t get into arguments, don’t blame him or try to make him feel guilty for things that have happened. If your relationship was really so good that you want him back, you both would have made mistakes that caused it to crumble. Now is not the right time to talk about these issues – and arguments and blaming each other won’t ever fix the problems.

5. If things do start to go well again, take it slowly the second time around. Do not fall straight back into bed. You have both been hurt by the break-up, you are vulnerable, you need to take some control of your feelings. Most of all that respect you have won for yourself through making your own life will be destroyed. If he’s not prepared to wait for you, he doesn’t really want to be with you.

After a time you will need to address the reasons you broke-up, or it may happen again. What happened to the love you had? How did it grow stale? How did you neglect each other? Keeping the passion in a relationship is an incredible challenge, and it is something that needs to be worked on. If it the relationship is worth it to both of you, you will work on doing it right the second time around. After a time, many couples find that the break-up was really the thing that saved their relationship.

It may seem like cold comfort for those who don’t win their ex-back, but this whole process can be an incredibly valuable experience. It depends on how you see it. Viewing it as an opportunity to really become yourself, to fulfill yourself in other aspects of your life, to feel good about who you are, in time you will be ready to be build a healthier, happier relationship with a more suitable partner in the future.

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New Comment Created by toady on 21/11/2010 21:11:08 Some good tips for sure Post A Comment Your Name Title Comment New Comment Enter the code