Watch the subtitled video above if you prefer to listen to my advice.

What is up, kings? It’s Andy Graziosi, helping you unleash your confidence. Grab your favorite beverage. Today we’re gonna talk about something that a lot of you do that I think is not a great approach to getting an ex back, and that is too much accountability. Specifically with a letter to an ex. I will get into this at the end of the video why specifically, because of something called the fading affect bias, but basically, it sounds kind of nice to have a lot of accountability and say “Hey I screwed up. This and this way,” Really long to say “This is what I did wrong.” It sounds perfect and your ex is going to forgive you. But actually, most of the time it does more damage than it helps. So I have a situation from a guy. He sent a letter to an ex. Let’s see what’s going on there.

He says: “Dear Mr. Graziosi, I really hope you can help me turn around my situation with my ex-girlfriend. I really messed up hardcore. I am 27 years old and my ex and I were together for roughly two and a half years. I really made a huge mistake. I am ashamed to say it but I emotionally cheated on my ex. She and I had been fighting a lot and weren’t getting along for several months before our breakup. I hate to say it but when my ex tried to communicate with me it rubbed me the wrong way and I thought that she was criticizing and attacking me all the time. Because of this and because of stress at work, I became easily irritated, and eventually in my disappointment with her, I became closer with an ex-co-worker of mine.”

So typically, when an ex criticizes you or if she’s just trying to tell you something that she doesn’t like, it’s not like she’s putting you down on purpose. It’s not like she’s trying to be mean. It’s not like she’s doing it because she hates you. Maybe sometimes she does it if it’s really bad. Maybe she does that if she’s a narcissist. Then she might be out to get you on purpose but most healthy women, most women who don’t have a lot of narcissistic traits, they will just try to communicate with you, and their grievances are really just expressions of love in the sense of “Hey, here’s something that’s not making me happy” but we men, typically, unfortunately, often see this as criticism and attacks. But it could, of course, be the case that your ex didn’t really know how to express the criticism and that made you feel criticized. But the bottom line is typically when you see something like this, it’s really your woman trying to connect with you.

So of course, the worst thing that you can do is in a case like this when you feel criticized, when she’s expressing her needs, the worst thing that you can do is to pull away and essentially find closeness from another woman. It just doesn’t work. Obviously, if you want to fix your relationship, if you want to improve them, you have to talk even about the things that are scary. About the things that are uncomfortable. And sometimes, let’s face it, maybe you did some things that she didn’t like. Maybe it was your fault and you have to admit it. Likewise, she might say certain things that she doesn’t like and aren’t really your fault, or it’s not something that you can’t change, but the bottom line is you have to communicate.

So he then says: “Nothing specific happened. We didn’t have sex or made out but we had been talking a lot and unfortunately, my ex-girlfriend found out and broke up with me. She was furious and I can understand why. I had a huge lapse of judgment. This is something I never should have done and it’s all my fault. After the breakup, I was devastated. I realized how much I screwed up and started seeking help. I read a few books about infidelity and read the book ‘Men are from mars, women are from venus’…”

This, by the way, is a really great book to read. It talks about basically the communication differences between men and women. It’s a great book just to get a bit of epiphanies on how we function differently as men and women. And how we don’t understand each other. It’s an amazing book.

So he then says: “This gave me my epiphanies why I did what I did. So in the hopes of convincing my ex to give me another chance I wrote her a long letter laying out all the details of how I screwed up. I used the ‘clean slate’ template that I found online to communicate ‘here’s everything that I did wrong. Let’s start from scratch’ and I thought that this was very vulnerable and transparent with my letter and I didn’t sugarcoat anything on my part.”

So you would think that sounds great. I didn’t sugarcoat anything! I take accountability for my issues! All the flaws. All the things that I did wrong. And yes, accountability is incredibly important, obviously. You want to admit when you did something wrong, otherwise your ex-girlfriend or the woman that you’re dating, she will just think that you’re a piece of shit! You can’t admit when you make mistakes. And it’s very important to signal to a woman that you can learn from your mistakes and improve your behavior when you’re doing something that’s not right. Now the problem is that essentially, what’s probably gonna happen is when you send a letter like this, it’s gonna go unnoticed because after you’ve really pissed off your ex-girlfriend after you’ve made a huge mistake, what’s going to happen most of the time is she’s just going to ignore it because she doesn’t want to have anything to do with you.

And the problem is that most likely if at all, she’s going to read this letter, she’s going to read it later on down the line. Maybe six months from now, or maybe a year from now. So what’s going to happen is when she then reads all of these things that you’ve done, she gets reminded of all the bad qualities of yourself. So there’s this thing called the fading effect bias. It’s a psychological principle that essentially suggests over time, negative emotions or memories, they fade more than positive emotions. So over time, your ex is going to remember the positive stuff with you much more than the negative stuff. So she’s gonna kind of forgive you by herself over time. But then you send her that letter. She ignores that letter and eventually when she starts forgiving you or forgetting the bad things, she might actually come back to the letter, read all of this stuff of you cheating or emotionally cheating. All these bad things that you’ve done.

And now she’s back to remembering all these bad things. Now, obviously, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be held accountable. This is what kings do. Kings hold themselves accountable to be better men. This is what my channel is all about. It’s about unleashing the king within. And you wanna say the things that you did wrong. You wanna become a better man but I think a long letter is not the right way to go about this. You wanna have a little bit short accountability. Yes, a short message here and there. But that’s it. You don’t want to basically turn yourself into a beta male who is begging for her to come back because that’s essentially what a long letter like this is.

So anyway, he then says: “I took full accountability for how I messed up and sent her the letter via email. After I sent her the email, I sent her a long message also through messenger to let her know how I felt. That I wanted to make things right but she never got back to me about the message. She just read my message and then never replied.”

It’s like I said: You think that if you’re sending her a long wall of text, she’s going to read all of this. She’s going to realize “Wow, he’s really learned his lesson, and then she’s going to forgive you” but the reality is if you’ve just been broken up, you screwed up, she wants nothing to do with you. And now she receives that long letter and that long message…

You know what she’s gonna think? She’s gonna look at this long message and she’s gonna be probably kind of disgusted, or disappointed, or annoyed, because all of this time you wouldn’t want to listen, and all of a sudden magically, you’re listening. And she’s going to think the only reason why you are listening is because you want her back. And of course, that is partly the reason, of course. Now, you also clearly think that you did something wrong. You’ve learned from your mistake and you probably don’t want to repeat this ever again but she can’t see that point of view of yours.

So all she can see is you being desperate and doing whatever it takes to get her back. And so she probably doesn’t believe the words that you’ve wrote in the message, in a letter. She might believe those words in a year from now when she reads that letter but like I said, when she then reads it, she might actually be reminded of all the bad things, instead of just her reaching out and then talking about the good stuff.

So he wraps it up saying: “Now I don’t know what I should do. It’s been over two months since I have sent my heartfelt apologies and she didn’t even acknowledge that I sent the letter. It hurts a lot to see her being so cold. It feels like I tried everything now. Even after pouring my heart out on paper and nothing seems to reach her. What can I do for her to stop ignoring me and giving me another chance? Please help me. This guilt is killing me and I feel torn up inside that she won’t acknowledge my desire for change.”

So you should not be bothered about her not acknowledging your desire for change. It’s clear that you want to change so that is the first step. What can you do to stop her from ignoring your messages? Absolutely nothing to be honest! This is exactly why we do no contact because it has to be her idea to get back together. It has to be her idea to forgive you. You can’t make her forgive you. It’s her choice to forgive you. Now, you’ve already expressed that you’re sorry. Maybe she’s gonna see this later on and she’s going to have a change of heart but the most likely reason why she’s going to have a change of heart is actually that over time, as I said, she’s going to forget all of the negative things and then she’s going to reach out.

And when she reaches out she wants to know have you changed? And that is the better time to show her that you actually have changed. Not with words but with your actions. With your behavior. And what you then do is when she reaches out, you set up a date. You meet up. You have a good time and you don’t even necessarily have to talk about these issues yet. I typically suggest if you can avoid it, talk about it when you’re actually becoming a couple again. Because you just want to show her that it’s fun to be around you again. You want to show her that you have changed. That you can treat her right. And eventually, most likely, it’s actually her who’s going to bring it up. And then all you have to do is to explain exactly what you just sent her in that letter. The lessons that you’ve learned and how you’ve been reflecting and you said it yourself: You read this book… Men are from mars women are from venus…

So show her that you’ve read this book. How many men go through the trouble of reading books like this? There are actually studies. There are actually studies on this that suggest that women read most of the relationship books out there. At least the percentage is much higher. I forgot the exact percentage but it’s definitely much higher for the women compared to the men. Makes sense! Because women care much more about relationships and connection than men do. So a man who actually learned his lesson and picks up a relationship book and tries to figure out how can he do things better in his relationship, that is quite rare. That’s exceptional! That’s a true king. That’s the kind of man that you can stick around with long-term. He made a mistake but now you’re proving that you can do better. So all you have to do is give it some time.

I know you’re trying to think of ways of how you can resolve it. The clean slate letter. The good memory text. Sending her random messages. It won’t have any effect. The only effect it’s going to have is if she can see that you’ve changed and the way that she’s going to see that is if she can see you as a changed man. A happy man who’s taking accountability, but not in the sense of pushing it on her. She just wants to probably spend time on her own. Maybe she’s gonna date someone else and she’s gonna probably from occasion to occasion look at your social media profile. Look at what are you up to. Trying to figure out have you changed? And the most likely way how you can improve your chances with her is not to become a better man. I know accountability is great but you don’t want to go down on the floor and beg for her to come back. And that’s kind of how a letter feels to an ex.

So typically, it’s much better if you just very calmly tell her your lessons and the things that you’ve done wrong, rather than seeming kind of desperate, and weak, and needy. And when you can express very clearly, very calmly, without seeming like you need your ex and you can show her “look here’s what I did wrong” very stoically… You’re going to show her what you did wrong when you meet up with her on a date. Or maybe after a few dates when you actually bring up the topic that is the right moment to show her that you’ve changed, and that you have grown, and that you’ve learned your lesson and that you now actually better understand how women function. You better understand what didn’t work for her. What didn’t make her happy. Why she criticized you. Maybe you can also tell her what you feel like that she could have done better. She might do the same thing. She will tell you what she should have done better. And that’s when you get back together. Alright, so that was my advice for you.

As I said, I’m not a big fan of the clean slate letter because of the fading effect bias. Just use time for her to forget the negative emotions. So give me your thoughts in the comments. Let me know what you think about this. Give me a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel and never forget to unleash the king within. You are going in a good direction by trying to figure out what went wrong. You’ve already read a few books. Everybody who is on this channel, you should do the same. Try to figure out what were your flaws and your mistakes in the relationship so that you don’t repeat them in the future. That’s what kings are all about. Tyrants, on the other hand, they would just say “my ex sucks I did nothing wrong” or you would think that she has to forgive you, or you would think that the way that she criticized you was wrong. But you are realizing that her criticism was definitely valid. Maybe she didn’t express it the right way and you’ve changed so that’s a good step. So never forget to unleash the king within. I’ll see all of your kings in the next video.