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 staying friends with an ex, what does it mean when an ex stalks you on social media, and there are typically two scenarios for this. There have been studies on why partners stay friends after a relationship. Why they might keep in touch. And there are basically two reasons. One of them is essentially due to narcissism, and the other reason is due to sentimental feelings. So some of the reasons why exes stay friends are sentimentality or reliability. So that is typically a little bit more on the romantic side. On the feeling side. So you care about the person.

Then there is pragmatism or convenience. So basically, it’s nice. The person has a lot of money. You have a lot of money. Your woman, your ex-girlfriend likes it, or she gets a lot of favors from you. It’s convenient. I don’t know, maybe you know how to fix computers, or you know how to fix household items. Stuff like that. Or you know how to help her out with her business, her career, her job. And then the third reason is that the person still has feelings for you. So deep romantic feelings that have been unresolved. And so it has been studied that if it is more on the pragmatic side, so it’s for convenience, then that person is more on the narcissistic trait side. So that means the person, your partner, your ex-girlfriend, she’s a little bit narcissistic and that basically just means that she’s using you.

So in this dating advice, we’re gonna talk about the scenario of your ex-girlfriend is not narcissistic but it’s important to keep in mind that if an ex wants to stay friends or she’s stalking you, or she’s coming back to you every now and then, there might be a chance that she might be narcissistic and she doesn’t really care about you, She’s just using you for something called supply. But anyway, I have a situation here from a guy where I believe that his ex does care about him. It’s about unresolved romantic feelings. So let’s see what is my advice for him.

So he says: “Coach, I need your advice. My ex-girlfriend and I have been broken up for nearly seven months and even though she was the one who ended our relationship and was insistent on us not getting back together, she has been checking out my IG stories but for roughly three months after our breakup, she was 100% clear on wanting nothing to do with me, mainly by being unreachable and ignoring me as much as she could.”

So that is basically the textbook scenario. It’s the ex-girlfriend, or the girlfriend, typically, who breaks up because women are much stronger on the relationship side. They are much better at nurturing relationships and because of that they also pay attention to the fact that a relationship is not working out. And so they’re also the ones who are trying to initiate to fix relationships but if their attempts to fix the relationship don’t work out, either because they don’t know how to fix it properly, or they tried it but it still didn’t work and they did it properly, but it didn’t work, then they’ll basically leave the relationship.

And so then they are done. They’ve had enough. They want to find someone else who will make them happy, or they will just want to be happy with themselves. They want to explore themselves, be single, maybe just hook up, or maybe not date anyone at all. But the bottom line is: They want to discover themselves and have some fun again because in the relationship they haven’t had a lot of fun lately. And so then after a while, they realize: “I screwed up!”

So he then says: “I messed up a lot with begging, sending her messages and letters for probably two to three months until I accepted that it is over and decided to focus on myself instead and started to work on myself.”

That’s a good thing! Obviously, the begging never works and it doesn’t matter how long you beg. It doesn’t matter if you do it for one month, two months, three months. It doesn’t matter how you beg. Voice messages, emails, letters, text messages, showing up in front of her house. Whatever. It doesn’t matter and the longer you do it, actually, the worse it gets because you don’t give her time to forget you you don’t give her time to forget the negative things that happened in the relationship. Instead, you’re basically just rebooting what happened. The bad stuff. Over and over and over again. Reinforcing the belief that she thinks she needs to find happiness elsewhere.

And obviously, that didn’t work and then you started focusing on yourself which is the right thing to do. Most guys make the mistake that they only do this after a while. As soon as you’re broken up, even if you want your ex back, even if you want to try and see if you can fix it eventually, you should focus on yourself. You are a king! You should turn yourself into the best version of yourself and hopefully, of course, the woman that you love is going to realize that you are a true king, you improved yourself, you can do better, what didn’t work out in the relationship won’t repeat itself. But if she doesn’t realize that, then you’re still happy all by yourself. And that’s essentially what your ex is doing as well when she breaks up with you and she doesn’t want anything to do with you. Because she’s done with you and she thinks “I’m gonna turn myself into a queen.”

Maybe she already thinks she’s a queen. She thought that she deserved better but she didn’t get it from you, so she looked elsewhere. So she wants to be a queen, you should wanna be a king. Work on yourself as soon as possible and when she comes back, that’s mostly just a bonus because trust me, as long as you focus on yourself, you’re going to improve yourself. Your career, your social circle, the friends you hang out with, the women that you meet, the results that you get in life, your body, your hobbies, your passion, everything is going to improve so much by focusing on yourself. And of course, that will then ripple out into other areas of your life, and especially your romantic relationships. Then either your ex comes back or you’re going to date a woman who is likely even better than your ex.

Anyway, he then says: “We broke up in the middle of 2021, and around the start of December, she started checking out my IG stories.”

What a coincidence! You basically have been messaging her and begging, and annoying her, essentially, for two to three months. So you broke up in July and then two to three months, July, August, September, October. So roughly October-ish. That’s when you stopped begging and then in December she messages you, so or she checks out your IG story, sorry. So she’s starting to realize: “He’s gone. What’s going on? He’s been begging?” and now she’s starting to miss you. Now, maybe, maybe she’s realizing things are not that great.

He says: “And last week she even liked one of my IG posts. I really don’t know what I should do. I want to reach out to her and start a conversation but I am afraid to say the wrong thing, or maybe worse, what if she still doesn’t want to talk to me?”

Well, I’m assuming December came up. Christmas season came up and I don’t know how long you’ve been in a relationship. You didn’t mention this here but let’s assume that maybe you’ve spent at least one Christmas together. You spent one of the great holidays together. You had Christmas, New Year, maybe Valentine’s Day. What else is there? Maybe you’ve spent Thanksgiving. All of these occasions where you spend time together as a mini family, as two partners who really love each other and value each other and who want to build the life together. Now all of a sudden that is gone. All of a sudden, you are now finally gone. You stop begging, it’s December, Christmas is around the corner, New Year is around the corner but you’re not there anymore. All of a sudden she’s starting to miss you. She probably starts to feel lonely. She probably is realizing that just breaking up didn’t solve her problems.

Yeah, she wasn’t happy with you but it doesn’t mean that she’s automatically happier without you because now she’s realizing all the good things that you had. So whatever didn’t work out in the past, of course, that sucked! Of course, you both need to work on that, but relationships have good and bad sides and as long as the good sides heavily outweigh the bad ones, then a relationship is actually good. So of course, for some reason, the bad things in your relationship outweighed the good ones in that instance. So you have to flip it around, of course, if you get back together. But she also realizes there were a lot of good things and right now she’s just not focused on the bad things. That’s how psychology works.

It’s called the fading affect bias. We forget the negative stuff after a while and so even though, honestly, I believe that probably during your relationship things were bad… So you could say that for every good interaction in your relationship, you probably had three bad ones, and your girlfriend just didn’t want to take it anymore. But now she’s forgetting these bad things. So all you have to do is basically get back together and then reboot and no longer have this bad balance. You have to have the balance, all the way flipped around, basically. So three good interactions for one negative one. And that’s all just about being conscious and paying attention to your relationship. But anyway, you want to know “What am I gonna do? I wanna reach out to her but what if she doesn’t wanna talk to me?”

Well, the fact that she’s checking out your stories and your Facebook, or was it your IG post… Well, she’s liking them, so she’s sending you a signal. She cares about you but you should not be the one who messages her. She’s the one who broke up so she made a mistake. It wasn’t a mistake to break up, of course, because you didn’t make her happy probably for some reason. But she needs to admit that maybe she has been too impulsive. She didn’t give you another chance. She didn’t give you a chance to try to fix it. She didn’t give you a chance to listen to you and see what’s your side of the story and try to figure out how can you resolve this. That was a mistake.

So now she’s realizing “I miss you” but she probably doesn’t want to message you. She’s too shy. She’s insecure. She’s afraid of rejection. But that doesn’t mean that you should message her. You are a king! You should keep on working on yourself and it has to be her idea to get back together. It has to be her idea to rekindle. And what I would say is, typically if this wouldn’t be a breakup… So women always send men signals. They reply to an Instagram story. They watch your stories. they will look at you when you go out in bars. They will send you signals that they like you and then it is up to the man to basically take action and walk over to her and talk to her. But often, also it’s just a woman who sees a story from Instagram, or a video on TikTok, whatever, and that’s a chance for her to message you and she will do that on her own. But sometimes it’s also you, the man, who has to take the action. But in this case, in a breakup… Nope! You’re not gonna take action!

She has to show you that she wants you again and even if it is hard for her to do that… I know that’s very scary. She has to do it. She has to overcome that fear. She has to show you that she really means it and there’s no other way of getting back together because you have to value yourself and you have to respect yourself. So do not message her. I know you think right now she’s looking at your story, so hey! This is the perfect opportunity to message her! But no, it’s only great to talk to her if she really makes an effort. And if she doesn’t make the effort, well, then let her burn a little bit more in loneliness hell. She’s eventually gonna come around and if she doesn’t come around, then it is her loss and you’re going to find someone else who makes you happy.

So he then says: “Maybe I am reading too much into this but seeing her interact with my social media has given me hopes and excitement that we could fix our relationship. Given that we haven’t talked since the last time that I begged and she has been looking at my stories for about the last five-ish weeks, do you think it’s time for me to reach out to her? We basically have been in no contact for several months. I checked out her TikTok account and most of her TikToks are videos about her being happy, enjoying life, etc, so I am afraid to message her. Please give me some advice on what you suggest I should do. Thank you.”

So I would suggest that your no contact is working out. Now there might be scenarios where messaging an ex when she shows some signs that she’s into you again could work, but I think most of the time it’s going to backfire. You’re going to do something insecure. She might already start the conversation or think when the conversation starts that you’re insecure. That you’re needy. And she doesn’t want that. So if you already started off that way by reaching out to her, she already has a suspicion. She’s looking out for signs that you are going to be needy and insecure and then she might throw some tests at you.

And honestly, sometimes we fail these tests and it’s not 100% our fault. Of course, if we’re insecure and someone throws a test at us, a woman throws a test at us, if we’re insecure, that’s our fault. But maybe she already throws you in the wrong spot where it becomes harder to actually pass that test. So of course, you want to put yourself in the right position. And so you want her to reach out to you because then it becomes easier. She’s already shown you a very clear sign. She’s into you once she reaches out to you and then maybe she’s going to test you, yes, but it’s probably going to be easier to pass her shit test to see: Are you strong? Are you confident? Are you not going to resort to begging and all that stuff again?

She wants to see that you fixed yourself and that you are a king again. Because she wanted to live a life as a queen and she realizes well, she is a queen, but without you, everything is not complete. The kingdom is not complete. So she wants to see if she messages you, she talks to you, are you going to be happy? Are you going to talk to each other with security? Without insecurity? Are you not going to cause drama or going to be obsessed with her? And then she realizes “You are a king again. I’m a queen. We’re both not perfect but let’s get back together and build that kingdom from scratch and build it on a better foundation!” So you have to wait. I think your no contact is working!

You think that the videos say that she’s happy and everything is fine. You’re afraid of messaging her. My advice for you is in general about her social media, you should maybe mute her stories and not look at them. She probably did the same thing when she broke up with you. That’s why you didn’t see her looking at your stories but now she’s obviously doing it again. She probably pressed that mute button. She didn’t want to see your stories and what you’re up to. And maybe on your TikTok, she unfollowed you. I’m not sure if you can mute on TikTok but I’m assuming you can. And you know, she didn’t want to see it. Now she wants to see it again but I think for you, maybe seeing her account just makes you overthink. You’re basically interpreting too much into this and she is pretending to be happy and enjoying life.

Okay, it could be the case. I’m not saying that she couldn’t be happy. Of course, she could move on. She could have moved on and be completely over it but then why would she check out your Instagram? Why would she be interacting with you? Clearly, she’s curious. And I think it’s kind of unlikely that she’s already moved on after just seven months. It’s very, very, very unlikely. And so she’s probably just trying to find a way to get back in again, but of course, there is the possibility that she might have moved on, and then yeah maybe she’s just interacting with your post because she just wants to stay friends and she really just means it like that. But I would not assume that this is the reason why she’s interacting with your social media. I’m thinking she’s missing you.

But you should not assume that she’s happy just because she’s posting happy stuff. To give you an example: Right now, or actually for the last few months, one of my exes, she has been messaging me and she messages me basically whenever there’s trouble in paradise or after she’s broken up. And that’s when she starts watching my Instagram stories again and maybe she actually doesn’t necessarily interact with my stories, but then when I check out her Facebook posts and I’m just curious you know, what is she up to? I wouldn’t mind maybe having some sex with her, although I’m not so inclined to get back with her. But anyway, I check out her Facebook posts and they are happy but I know there’s trouble in paradise. I think she already broke up with the boyfriend and she’s not sure… “Should I get back with him?”

So she’s looking at the previous partners, trying to figure out maybe I should get back with them. Maybe they are better choices. And if I look at her previous ex, pretty sure I’m a better choice. He didn’t seem like he really takes care of himself & his body. He seemed very insecure. Not really an alpha male. He’s someone who needs to do a lot of work on himself. So that’s why it’s really obvious why she’s messaging me and why she’s reaching out to me and so then I see her stories that are a complete contradiction. Life is great! She’s enjoying herself! She’s going out and going on trips on Instagram and doing all of these…

These selfies where girls pamper themselves and “our life is so great!” and they’re at a resort and they’re at the pool and blah blah blah and all that crap. But you know, deep down they’re super fucking unhappy. So you know, she might be super fucking unhappy! Honestly, we can’t know for sure. I’m not saying that she is super fucking unhappy. You really need some experience to be able to read this and understand what a woman is going through. Obviously, as a dating coach, I look at this stuff all the time and I can immediately just spot when a woman is not happy and when she’s pretending. I just know. It’s like my spidey sense is tingling and I can just read the crystal ball, basically. Here’s my crystal ball! And I can tell when a girl is not happy. I just look at their Facebook posts, or their Instagram posts, and whatever, and I know what’s going on. So you shouldn’t read into this. Your no contact is probably working.

She needs to reach out to you! You’re a king! You’re not going to take her back. You’re not going to grovel. You’re not going to beg her and go on the floor, on your knees, and do whatever it takes to get her back. You love yourself. You respect yourself. And like you said: You’ve been focusing on yourself and working on yourself. I don’t know what it has been that you’ve been doing to work on yourself… Keep focusing on this! Even if maybe right now that feels like it’s hard, at some point, it gets really, really, really, really fun! To give you an analogy: I’ve always wanted to become a musician but I’ve always not gotten through that point of playing the guitar where it’s not fun… where it is just too much work. It hasn’t been fun. And I never got over that moment to work hard enough once I’ve reached that tipping point where it becomes so fun and easy and like a real habit.

There’s a great book called Atomic Habits by James Clear and he talks about this. I forgot the name of what he calls it, but he calls it like the chasm or something of something, or whatever. It’s basically at that point when you become good at something and that’s when it really pays off and you start to have fun. I recently hit that point with guitar, where my regular practice that has been so tedious, and so boring, and so frustrating, has become so fun. So practicing scales and trying to force myself to learn music theory has been so fucking annoying but now it’s finally fun.

So what is it that you’ve been working on for yourself? And if it’s not fun yet, keep on working on it. Become a king at whatever you want to become good at. And then the chicks, the women, they’re going to follow. Success is going to follow in your life. Either with her or with another woman. So that was my advice for you. Let me know in the comments what you think. Of course, give me a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and never, never, never forget to unleash the king within!