Watch the subtitled video above if you prefer to listen to my advice.
In this video, I have a situation from a guy who’s using the no contact rule wrong and I titled this video “smart contact versus no contact versus active no contact versus passive no contact versus radio silence”… What the hell! Before I talk about his situation, I want to talk about going down the rabbit hole. There are so many different methodologies on how to get an ex back and I think it makes you go crazy! So I want to talk about all of these methods quickly and give my thoughts on them and how I see going no contact, on the best strategy for getting an ex back, and what is the best no-contact rule approach. And then I’ll talk about his situation.
Radio Silence Method
The Radio Silence Method, essentially means staying under the radar — like a stealth bomber or ninja. You can’t be reached and your ex can’t figure out what you’re up to. Your Facebook account might be locked, or you don’t post anything on social media. You restrict your privacy settings. The strategy is that your ex has no idea what is going on with you and that makes her miss you. My thoughts on this are that this is probably not the best way to go about it because of certain biases. So I wrote down a few biases that I think are very helpful for getting an ex back.
Social Proof Bias
For example, the Social Proof Bias, which leads us to believe that when your ex can see that other people/women like you, or when other people/girls can see that you are successful in life, that gives you social proof. You might not even be on top of your game, but if you’re surrounded by many people, it implies that you can be trusted. And that’s why your ex might want you back. Because your ex doesn’t know if she can trust you after the breakup.
Halo Effect
The next bias is the Halo Effect. If your ex can see that you’re doing well with your fitness, then she might assume that you’re also doing well in your career, or in your dating life. That is called the Halo Effect because it’s hard to ignore your shining halo. Attractive people are automatically perceived to be competent, smart, desirable, etc., similar to how we often admire influencers & celebrities. The more attractive you look, the more likely your ex is to want to reach out to you.
Zero Risk Bias
Next, another important bias is the Zero Risk Bias, which is the phenomenon that we want to always reduce our risk to zero, rather than taking another risk and reducing it just a little bit. So your ex wants to know “Is there any risk in getting back together?” She’d rather go for 0 risks if possible. So certainty is important for her. And by the way, women avoid risks a lot more in general. This is why if you’re doing the Radio Silence Method, your ex doesn’t know if you’re dating someone. So in effect, she can’t reduce her risk of getting back with you because there’s a higher risk of rejection if she can’t “stalk” you.
Cheerleader Effect
Then we have the Cheerleader Effect, which is similar to the Social Proof effect. It’s been studied that if you are in a group of people, people have a better opinion of you. You look more physically attractive. So for example, if you have group selfies, party pictures, and so on because you go out to events, you’re meeting people, you’re having fun at parties, and you have those pictures on your social profile, then your ex is going to have a better opinion about you. Simply by being in group photos, your face will look more attractive. And looking attractive goes back to the Halo Effect. Obviously, if you’re following the Radio Silence Strategy, she has no idea what you’re doing, so she can’t form a better opinion about you.
Anchoring Effect
Then we have the Anchoring Effect, which states that we always anchor our opinions of everything related to something or someone else — an anchor. So for example, if your ex is dating some guys that really suck but then she can see you doing really well, you’re improving your life, and everything about you is new-and-improved, better than before, then she has an anchor — the bad guy who doesn’t make her happy. Like a rebound guy who will fail. Now you seem to be even better, because not only have you really improved yourself, but in relation to her anchor, some other guy who’s screwing up, you’re now massively attractive. So that’s why you shouldn’t worry about other guys, rebound relationships, and again, it shows why Radio Silence doesn’t show her how much better you are compared to other guys that she’s dating after the breakup.
Less Is Better Effect
The next bias is the Less Is Better effect, which suggests that sometimes, “underpromising” can be helpful. What it means is that your ex expects not that much from you. She’s done with you. She thinks you screwed up big time, she believes that doesn’t love you anymore, she feels as if she is over you. She’s had enough of you! Or so she thinks. After the breakup, your ex girlfriend has very low expectations about you. But then, when you turn out to be much better than what she expected because you’ve been working hard on your personal growth, then she’s going to be blown away and much more attracted to you. Again, if you’re doing radio silence, she doesn’t know what’s going on with you. She doesn’t know that you’re much better than she expected, reducing your chances. Give your ex-girlfriend the opportunity to peek at your progress every now and then.
Sleeper Effect
There’s also an interesting bias called the Sleeper Effect. This originally was discovered in marketing / politics. It has been observed that over time, people can be influenced by certain opinions, by certain statements, especially when that person doesn’t agree with that opinion — ironic, isn’t it?! The key for that to happen is frequent exposure to the opinion we do not agree with. So for example, if you’re portraying on your Facebook or on your Instagram, etc, that you are happy, or rather you’re not just portraying it and putting up a face — No, you should be happy and you work on becoming happy! If your ex can see that, over time she’s going to be convinced that you are an attractive man, that you’ve changed, that you’ve improved. You’re happy… Without her! WHAT?! It will drive her crazy. That doesn’t happen overnight but over time she’s going to change her negative opinion of you. This is the Sleeper Effect, because she’s being influenced almost in her sleep, without noticing it.
As you can see, there are actually a lot of biases that suggest it makes a lot of sense to show your ex what you’re up to. Not by flexing, but in a natural way. I don’t think that the Radio Silence Method is the best way to go. There are pros to the radio silence method as well. It makes her wonder a bit more about you, but overall, I think these biases that I mentioned definitely speak for a different method.
Bad No Contact Method
The no contact method. The behavior is in the name. So dating coaches suggest that you should not contact your ex at all, even if they get in touch with you. For example, you have a predetermined time for how long you keep this up. 30 days no contact. Or 60 days no contact. 90 days no contact. And the idea is that if your ex messages you during whatever timeframe you’ve determined while you’re still doing no contact, and it’s only day 21 of 30 days no contact, then you don’t respond to the messages of your ex. Now that is pretty dumb advice because if your ex messages you, that means she’s interested again! She wants to know what’s up with you and if you then ignore her — man, you’re in for a rude awakening! imagine if you’d be ignoring anyone. If you ignore your best friend multiple times and he reaches out to you, he’ll be like “Well, what the hell! Stop ghosting me, man! What the hell! Come on! Reply, dude! What is up with you?” Imagine how you’d feel if your ex ignores you. You’d either be hurt or pissed, based on your situation. So this is a terrible ex back strategy.
Passive No Contact Vs. Active No Contact
Then we have two methods that some breakup coaches call passive no contact and active no contact. Passive no contact means that you don’t contact them. You could possibly contact them if they reach out to you but the bottom line is you don’t really do anything while you’re doing no contact. So essentially, you’re not working on yourself, you’re not improving yourself, you’re just waiting for your ex girlfriend to reach out to you. And that’s a bad way to go because if you don’t work on yourself while you’re doing no contact, then even if you get back together, you’re very likely to screw up again with your ex. You’re gonna run into the same relationship problems. That doesn’t work. Therefore, certain coaches suggest doing the active no contact rule instead, which means:
You only contact your ex if she messages you. And the idea behind active no contact is that you keep on working on yourself in the meantime until your ex texts you. You improve yourself. You get back on track. You work on your purpose. Your passion. Your goals. This is the way to go. You want to get better. You want to show your ex that you’re improving. You want to be the best choice for your ex, and so you have to do actual work, not just wait and hope for your ex to come back to you. Further down below I’ll share my PhoenEx 3-Step Blueprint that focuses exactly on that. The most important thing is that you keep on focusing on yourself and improving yourself because that is the only way how you can get your ex back.
Smart Contact™
Lastly, we have something called Smart Contact. Trademark! I apologize. I think I didn’t say trademark in the beginning of the video. So yes, someone seriously trademarked the approach of not talking to your ex. How dumb hahaha! Their idea is that you only contact your ex gf when she messages you, and you only reach out when it is important. Well, it makes sense. Obviously, you don’t message your ex for every small detail. You should only reach out, for example, if let’s say you have kids and you have to take care of something important, like your kid has to go on a summer camp, or get enrolled in school. Or you still have an old dog that you have to give her. Or you’re returning your exes’ tings back to her. That would be a reason why you would reach out to her because you have to — but not because you want to. It’s just because it’s a necessity. You’re being smart about no contact. *badumtiss*
Smart Contact Trademark! As you can see, there are so many different ways how to win your ex back and it gets really confusing. The bottom line is that the way that I see no contact is that you don’t talk to your ex. You don’t reach out to her. But if she reaches out to you, then you’ve got my approval to respond to her because it shows that she has interest, and a “high level” of attraction for you again. And while you’re doing no contact, while you are not talking to her, you keep working on yourself — your passion, your purpose, your contribution goals. I call this your Dharma. Or rather, in Hinduism it is called Dharma.
And this sweet spot where you reach your passion, your purpose, and your contribution goals, the things that you want to do for your community, this is where you become an amazing king. You want to unleash the king within and that is the point when your ex wants to get back with you. Now, I just want to briefly go into some principles and psychological biases why the no contact rule works so well. I talk about all of those and more in my PhoenEx 3-Step Blueprint in detail.
Reactance Theory
Number one, we have Reactance Theory. Essentially, humans don’t like to have their freedom taken away. We don’t like to be told what to do. If someone tells us to do something that we don’t want to do, or takes opportunities away from us, we react negatively to it. Therefore, if you don’t contact your ex, she will want to contact you because she thought that she can reach out to you all the time. She falsely believed that she can have you back even though she walked away from the breakup with seemingly no breakup regret. But that’s not the case. You are focused on yourself first and foremost and not rolling out the red carpet. You’re waiting for her to show you that she still cares about you. Reactance makes her want to reach out to you again.
Scarcity Principle
Then we have the Scarcity Principle. Things that are hard to gain & hard to obtain — so any scarce object — increases in value. For example, if you are at a party and you’re not that easy to get, if you don’t drool all over every woman and you’re just having fun with everyone at the party, the women will want to talk to you. Likewise, if you stop begging and pleading to get your ex back, you become more scarce to her, and then your ex might think “Why haven’t I heard from him? Is he dating someone else? What’s going on? He’s becoming more valuable because he’s becoming scarce. Has he found someone else?” What you can’t have, you want to get! This is by the way also why you’re probably trying all the wrong things to get your ex back and why you need a proper plan.
Fading Affect Bias
Probably the most important bias of them all: The Fading Affect Bias. The Fading Affect Bias is the scientific observation that memories, especially bad memories, actually reduce in negativity over time. What that means is that the longer time passes from a negative event, the more positive we look back to that event. It no longer hurts. We are no longer as bitter. A breakup is one of the worst events in your life that you can have — the 2nd most painful according to the Holmes Rahe Scale. It’s an incredibly painful, traumatic, negative event. The sweet spot with the Fading Affect Bias, is roughly one year. So after one year, you have the biggest reduction of negative emotions about the negative things that happened.
After one year, your ex will have the least negative view of your breakup, or you and this is the best time to get back together in terms of lack of resentment vs attachment to you. But it already starts much sooner. Roughly three and a half months after the breakup is probably the sweet spot where most exes come back. And over time, the negative emotions fade more and more over the long term. After four and a half years is the largest drop in negative emotions, but three and a half months to one year is the best time when the Fading Affect takes precedent and when your ex starts to realize “These things were not so bad. Let me reach out to him. Let me see what’s going on with him.”
Mere Exposure Effect
Next, the Mere Exposure Effect, which describes the phenomenon that we prefer things that we are familiar with — things that we’re merely exposed to. Your ex is familiar with your past relationship and that is why she comes back to you because that is much more familiar to her than some guy who she just met. She doesn’t know how he sucks. She doesn’t know if he’s right for her. There are many things that couldn’t work out with a new guy. She knows all your good qualities, even though there were some bad ones, and that’s why she comes back to you because she’s drawn in by the familiarity that she feels towards you.
Ambiguity Effect
Similarly, there is the Ambiguity Effect, which is the subconscious behavior that we prefer options that are known to us, but in this case, we prefer them because they are less risky. Because your ex knows what you’re like, there’s less risk involved. To give you an extreme example: Your ex could meet another guy and this guy could be a rapist. He could be a really awful guy. He could be abusive. With you, sure, maybe you sometimes fought with her about stupid shit that you shouldn’t have fought about, but you’re overall a good man. The Ambiguity Effect suggests that because she knows you and she knows that you’re less risky, you are higher on her priority scale.
Endowment Effect
And then lastly, there’s the Endowment Effect. Once we own something, or once we feel like we have ownership over something, we value it a lot more and we are afraid of losing it. So in a relationship, while you don’t own your partner, it kind of feels that way. It feels like they are a part of you, especially the longer you’ve been together due to something called attachment theory. You built a really strong bond with your ex-girlfriend. You both feel like you own each other. She’s a part of you. You are a part of her. You keep each other in your soul & heart. You deeply care about each other, despite the bad things that went down.
So in that sense, because you have such a strong bond, you are both more afraid to lose each other and what this Endowment Effect also suggests is that we would rather not lose that thing that we have ownership over, rather than obtain something that we don’t have ownership over yet. That means if your ex just met some guy, she doesn’t really know him. She’s not really invested in him. She does not own him in her heart and so she’s not that interested in obtaining him, whereas she’s much more scared to lose you because you’re close to her heart. Of course, over time, that can change, but especially with the first rebound, statistically that almost never happens.
No Contact Rule 101: The Ultimate No Contact Psychology Guide
Now, if you found all of this overview of biases helpful, then you’ll like the course I created on how to re-attract an ex, in which I go into much more detail about many of these biases and many not even mentioned here, with illustrations, examples how to use these to your advantage with real action, and most importantly, everything is incredibly well-researched and ties in with dozens of breakup studies to create one cohesive blueprint for reattracting your ex. Not only that, it’s packed with worksheets to help you make the most progress possible. The program is called PhoenEx — The 3-Step-Blueprint To Reattract Your Ex and as a thank you to my blog readers / YouTube viewers, the link contains a substantial promo. Alright, now let’s get into his breakup ex back problem.
Breakup Ex Back Advice
Hi coach, I need your advice. My ex-girlfriend and I broke up two weeks ago. I really messed up when we had an argument. She got upset and said that I wasn’t making enough of an effort to go see her and I got very offended and angry at her for saying that because I felt as if she wasn’t relating to my busy work schedule. I did say some rather rude things and said that she was overreacting. Long story short, I really didn’t handle our argument well, and she eventually broke up with me two days later.
This is not a good way to go. If your girlfriend needs attention from you, you don’t necessarily stop working. If you have a busy work schedule, she can understand that you have to do your work unless she’s incredibly insecure, but you just have to give her some micro affirmation and validation. She’s essentially just doing something that is called a Bid For Attention, conceptualized by John Gottman. This means that she wants to see that she matters to you. She needs a little reassurance on a frequent basis. All you have to do in a case like this is acknowledge her in small ways.
So, for example, if she messages you during the day, reply to her, take two minutes, one minute out of your busy schedule to say “Hey, can’t wait to see you. I’m doing this right now. What are you up to?” Something like that. It doesn’t need to be a lot of texting. You just need to acknowledge that you are there for her. You’re her loving boyfriend and you care about her and you’ll take two minutes out of your busy schedule to talk to her.
Ultimately, her desire for bids of attention shows that she cares about you, and whenever your girlfriend craves your attention, you have to make a bit of extra time for your girlfriend. Always be prepared to need to find a little bit of time to give her some attention. Also after work. But you don’t have to do this all the time. You just have to make it a regular habit. It’s a ritual to reconnect with your girlfriend because that’s what she wants. She loves you. That’s why she wants to be with you. You didn’t do that properly. In the future, you have to improve this.
I really messed this one up. I overreacted and took her for granted. So after realizing my mistake, I begged her to forgive me and that I would make an effort to work less and make more time for the relationship, but she didn’t want to hear any of it and she pretty much ignored all my attempts at fixing my relationship.
Of course, your begging and pleading was a big breakup mistake, however, after a breakup you have to show your ex that you’re remorseful and I think the good thing is that you’ve shown her “Hey I made a mistake. I will make more time for us.” Now that it’s said and done, you should not do this again. You’ve told her what you’ve learned. You’ve learned your lesson. You’ve told her once about your breakup regret. This is enough! Now you need to stop the begging, pleading and don’t try to convince her in the future again.
All you have to do now is wait for her to come back and you don’t have to repeat this over and over. Don’t repeatedly reiterate “Hey, I made a mistake and I realized that I made this mistake, and this is what I did wrong, and please forgive me.” This is what a lot of guys do wrong after a breakup. They keep on reiterating how they screwed up. One time is enough. Two times, fine. Three times, no! You state your grievances, such as the things that you did wrong, your remorse, and then you move on and wait for her to realize “Okay, he learned his lesson. Fine. Let’s give it another shot,” and if she doesn’t, you will find another woman, trust me!
So after about a week of trying to talk to her multiple times I gave up and ever since then I have been doing no contact. It’s been 21 days now and earlier she sent me a message for the first time. She just asked ‘Hey, what are you doing? But I haven’t replied to it. I’m confused about what to do because it’s been less than 30 days of no contact and I am really scared that I will screw this up if I reply now. I’m essentially undoing my progress with no contact and I don’t want her to be reminded of her anger towards me. What do I do now? Can you please suggest to me how I should deal with the situation? Thanks so much, take care.
Nope, you’re not undoing your progress by talking to her. If your ex is reaching out to you it means that she’s reconsidering to get back together. As I said, no contact is not a strategy that you apply for a certain amount of time. It’s a mindset or mentality. You just do it until she reaches out to you and has re-evaluated the situation, which she clearly has. She’s asking “Hey, what are you doing?” so maybe she wants to hang out with you. If she asks you “Hey, what are you doing?” I would just reply really short with one sentence, or maybe two sentences. Like “I’m at the gym right now, working out. What are you up to?” …and that’s it. So you start the conversation and if she says something like “What are you doing?” she probably wants to do something with you and then you can eventually lead it further to a meetup.
Now, is she going to get angry again? Is she going to remember all the ways how you screwed up? Maybe, if you say and do the wrong things. But she will do the same thing after a month, or after two months, or three months, or one year. It doesn’t really matter when you talk to your ex again. As long as you say the wrong things, your ex will get angry again. So that is why you have to work on yourself, reflect on your mistakes, and prepare yourself to talk to her again. And you already told her that you reflected on the mistakes, so it looks like to me that she is realizing “He learned his lesson. He understands that he needs to pay more attention to me.”
So now she’s probably thinking “Fine, let’s try this one more time, and let me see if he gives me more attention this time. If he stops really working less. If he replies to me sooner. If I reach out to him or if he has more dates with me.” So you’re already on the right trajectory and you shouldn’t box yourself into this ideology of “I need to use no contact for a certain amount of time and I’m not going to reach out to her. I’m not going to message her even if she messages me”. That is really dumb. That is just going to turn her away. That’s going to turn her off. It’s probably even going to agitate or disappoint her because she feels like she’s been ghosted. Based on her personality that could piss her off or make her really sad. So what you have to do after a breakup is always the same: Set up a date. You’re almost there. She messaged you. Perfect! She’s attracted again or at least interested.
So now all you have to do is facilitate for the next date to happen and then seduce her again. Now you get to prove to her that you are a king and that she should get back together with you. Now you can make her fall in love with you again. Remember, it’s all about unleashing the king within because once your ex sees the king within you, she wants to get back to you. Confidence is king. So all you have to do is hang out, make out with her, have some fun, do the same things that you used to do. Don’t have drama. Don’t talk about the problems. They will come up eventually, but if they don’t even come up, don’t even mention them. That’s all you have to do.
So that’s my advice for you. Keep it simple! Don’t overthink this. Don’t think you have to follow a certain formula. She came back to you, that’s all that matters! Send her a message. Don’t ghost her. Make her happy. Make her excited by talking to you again.
