Understand your real motivations

When your partner has just left you, you find yourself alone without knowing whether you will soon meet someone. If your fear of being alone or of not meeting someone else is high, it can completely cloud your mind when it comes to knowing whether or not it is worth getting your ex back . It is a normal reaction of your reptilian brain faced with the unknown, which prefers what it knows, even if it is worse for you. To counterbalance all this, you can do the following 2 things:

• Remind yourself of all the times when you thought you would never meet anyone again and when you finally met someone afterwards.
• Reassure your reptilian brain that you are not going to end up alone:
  • If you are rather rational, you can for example look at the statistics of single men in your age category in your city.
  • If you are more emotional, look at the women who are like you and who found a partner at your age and are now happy in a relationship. Here it is important to find a case you believe in, where you do not feel that woman is “superior” to you and where you find that her guy is a good one, so that your reptilian brain believes that thanks to this example you also have a chance.

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Understand why the separation happened

A separation does not happen by chance. It is the result of an underlying problem in the couple. Before going back to your ex, take the time to identify what the problem was that you were going through, which, in your view, led to your separation. The following questions can help you in your reflection:

• For what official reasons did he leave you? What he told you.
• What are, in your opinion, the unofficial reasons, that is, what he did not say but what you felt?
• What, in your opinion, was not working in your relationship?
• What did you not like in the relationship?

And if you did not find any criticism of your partner, do the exercise again, because the faults are always shared. There is a nuance to be made depending on the length of your relationship. Leaving a person in the first months of a relationship (in episode 6 I talk about the different stages of a relationship) means making a choice and deciding whether I want a serious relationship (yes or no) and whether I want to continue with this person (yes or no). There is not necessarily an underlying problem but rather an incompatibility of desire, timing or personalities. When you have answered this question, honestly ask yourself whether these reasons are irreversible or not and what would need to change to avoid ending up with the same result (the separation), whether on your side or on your partner’s side. Because wanting to get back together with your ex without taking the time to understand why it did not work is to make sure you return to square one, the separation, a few months later. If you think that changes are possible and that this relationship has a future, you can move on to the next step.

Assess your faults

If you decide to go back to your ex, it is important to be ready to work on what you consider to be your faults, which is not necessarily 100% of what your ex-partner blames you for. Ask yourself the following questions to help you in this reflection:

• Do you want to change everything your partner blames you for or only part of it?
• Can you do it alone or are your actions ultimately the consequence of certain actions of your partner?
• If this fault is the consequence of your partner’s behavior, then ask yourself how you can change this way of functioning together.

If I take an example: He blames you for your fits of jealousy: do you recognize having unjustified fits of jealousy or is what is behind your fits of jealousy your partner’s ambiguous behavior? For it to work, ask yourself in which situation you can learn to be less jealous and in which situation he could be clearer.

Assess the relationship with your ex

Before investing your time and energy in the process of getting your ex back, which can take time and remains without guarantee, think about whether the relationship you had with him matched your ideal, whether your needs and your limits were respected and whether this relationship has a real chance in the future. And if your answer is not a big and unanimous YES You may be trying to get your ex back out of habit more than out of love. It would be good to identify what mechanisms you have in love to understand the real reason hiding behind this desire to get your ex back:

• Do you tend to cling to your partner when he rejects you?
• Do you tend to stay with your partner even if your needs are not heard?
• Are you afraid of being abandoned or betrayed? (more resources in episodes 14-15)
• Do you tend to be dependent in love? (more resources in episodes 73-74)
• Do you think you have to be perfect to be loved?

Go back to the other person sincerely

If, after these steps of reflection, you are certain you want to get your ex back, the best thing is to sincerely share your inner reflection with your ex-partner, notably by acknowledging your share of the fault, by confirming that you still love him and that you wish to start a relationship with him again and that together you can change the way you interact. The mistake that is often made at this stage is to go back taking on 100% of the failure of the relationship, to maximize the chances that he agrees to start a relationship again. The problem with doing this is that you risk returning to a relationship that will not make you happy because the faults are always shared, no matter who decides to end the relationship. So see this conversation rather as an open-hearted invitation to put things on the table and to give your relationship another chance. It may take some time for you to agree on each person’s faults and for him to reverse his decision. If your ex still loves you, he will also be able to acknowledge his share of the fault and he will also be able to acknowledge his wish to come back to you.

Make the decision to start a new relationship

The key to making it really work is to have understood the mistakes you made and to consciously decide to act differently. Which is harder when you have already formed habits with someone. To help you in this process, I suggest that you write down every day/week all the actions you have taken that show this change.

And if he says no?

It is his choice and his right. As difficult as it may be for you, you cannot force the other person to come back to you. This attempt to get back together will at least have allowed you not to live with regret, because you will have tried everything to get him back. And all this work of reflection will help you avoid making the same mistakes in your next relationship. This moment is also the ideal opportunity to do some work on yourself in order to equip yourself with tools that will ensure the success of your next relationship.

This is what we do in Opening up to love. You can take the Day of the Past option, a day of Somatic Deprogramming: a psycho-corporal practice to deprogram the automatic patterns of the nervous system and reprogram new relational reflexes.