Watch the subtitled video above if you prefer to listen to my advice.
In today’s video, we’re going to talk about moving on versus no contact. So I got a message from a guy who actually came to my channel because he wanted to get his ex back. Like probably a lot of you came to my channel. Maybe you’ve never heard of my channel. Chances are that you probably came here just for moving on right now because this video is about moving on. But most people come to my channel because they want to get their ex back. They find out about no contact, about getting their ex back and then they want to work on themselves. But if you watch my channel, sometimes you also realize that maybe your ex is not good for you. Maybe she’s narcissistic. Maybe she’s toxic. Maybe she just didn’t appreciate you. Maybe she was just always seeking confrontation. Maybe she didn’t give you the sex that you wanted. There could be all kinds of reasons why your ex was actually not good for you. And sometimes moving on is actually for the better.
Moving On From Her Is Hard: Overcoming The Paradox Of Wanting Your Ex Back and Moving Forward
Well, so the hard part is, though, that if you came to my channel because you wanted to get your ex back and then you changed your mind, you realized that I should probably move on. Just move forward. And typically, actually, even if you want to get your ex back, you should move forward, move on, let go of your ex and hopefully she comes back in the future. But basically, if you already were in that mindset that you first thought is about “I want my ex back,” then you changed your mind. Or even if you still want her back, you decided, I’m going to move forward if she comes back. That’s great. If not, then you can’t change that, It is still difficult to deal with that mindset or that paradox. You still love your ex. You want her back. At the same time, you want to move forward. You want to show strength. You want to either move on with life, do something new, rebuild yourself, rediscover yourself. But it’s tough, right? So in today’s video, we’re going to talk about how to move on, especially with the context of a guy who had that problem. He came to my channel because he wanted his ex back and now he changed his mind. So let’s see what is my advice.
When She Breaks Up With You: She’s Been Thinking About Leaving You For A Long Time
Dear Andy, I am writing to you in hopes of getting some advice on how to move on from my recent breakup. Five weeks ago, my girlfriend of two years ended our relationship. The way it happened was that she came over to my apartment and told me that she had been feeling unsure about our relationship for a while and that she needed some space. At first, I was in shock and didn’t know how to react, but I went back to her to stay and work things out. But she was firm on her decision and left. She said she felt this way for a long time, but she didn’t know what to do.
First of all, I’m calling bullshit on that. She didn’t know what to do? No, she probably knew exactly what she should have done if she really felt that way, if she really felt that, let’s say, maybe for a year. She knew “I’m not happy with this guy, but what am I going to do? I don’t want to break his heart.” She was just afraid of confrontation, basically, right? She didn’t want to be the heartless bitch. Whatever the reason was for her to not break it off with you. Essentially, what she’s doing if she knows that she doesn’t want to be with you for a long time is… She’s leading you on. I don’t know if it was convenient for her. If you paid a lot of her bills or dinner and so on. Lots of good stuff. Conveniences like going on trips, vacations and so on. She had a reason to stay in the relationship, obviously. But the problem is she only stayed most likely because of convenience. Yeah, sure. Some girls, they don’t know what to do. They don’t want to break someone’s heart.
Honestly, if you’ve ever broken someone’s heart yourself, it’s not a pretty thing. But if you are in a relationship with a person… No person or very few people stay in a relationship with a person for a year, knowing that that person is not right for them. At some point, they’re going to break up. So, she knew that she should have broken this off much sooner. So she didn’t really appreciate what you did for her. She didn’t appreciate how much you committed in the relationship. And it’s much better to just break it off if you’re not happy. And I actually see a bit of a red flag here about what you mentioned. You said that she was unsure about you. And I could already notice this from basically the first sentence. You said that she came over to your apartment. Right. And you’ve been together for two years. So I know some people might only want to move in after marriage.
Maybe if you’re like super old school or depending where you live, maybe in Asia, it’s more common to not live together. But even in the Philippines, for example, I used to live together with my girlfriends at least after a certain while. Here in Indonesia, they’re a bit more conservative and it depends on the girl, I suppose, and also where you live. But if you live in the West and most of my channel viewers come from the U.S., for example, most of them, maybe 70 percent or so are from the U.S. And so I can imagine that most of you would just want to move in together. Now, the fact that you both had your own apartment, I don’t know if that basically was her own choice. Like she tried to keep her doors open or if it was your choice. Did you not want to move in together? It is a bit strange to not live together after two years. Typically I’m moving in with my girlfriends after like six months to 12 months. Once I know that I’m serious about them, then why are we staying in two different places?
We’re just spending more money, we’re wasting our time. We have to see each other. We have to come and meet up together. It would be much nicer to basically live together. I typically go the route pretty fast with my girlfriends that even if we’re not living together, “Hey, either I stay at your place or you stay at my place.” Sleepovers, right? For a week or so, something like that. The fact that she basically didn’t commit to live with you for two years… That kind of says it all. So I think she was not really into you and she kept her options open. And that’s why she was so firm with the decision to just leave and break it off. And why she has been thinking about this for a long time, because she probably knew for quite some time, “This doesn’t really make me happy. But yeah, what am I going to do? It’s kind of convenient. So I guess I’ll go along with it until the point when I can no longer stand it.” So that’s something important to recognize, because this is about moving on. This video. If you want to move on. And you should recognize how she probably didn’t respect you, didn’t appreciate you and how she probably led you on a little bit.
Can’t Sleep After A Breakup: When A Woman Breaks Your Heart Make Plans For What’s Next
Ever since then, I haven’t been able to get her out of my head. I can’t sleep. I can’t focus at work. And I even had a panic attack when I saw her at the grocery store. I tried to learn about the no contact principle to get her back. But after watching some of your videos, I realized that my ex is possibly not good for me and that I need to focus on moving on. I think it’s best for me.
That’s awesome! The first thing that you should do is: Really stick to that decision. That is so important. Even if you’re someone who typically watches my videos for no contact, as a man, always stick to your decisions. For example, I often have clients and they want to do no contact. And we have calls about exactly what to do. And not everybody has the mental fortitude to actually stick to that. For example, you decide to move on. But then, next thing you know, a week later, you decide to message her impulsively. Or maybe you say, “I’m going to do no contact and I want her back. But I’m going to do my own thing and I’ll wait for her to reach out to me.”
And then again, maybe you’re drunk, maybe you feel lonely at night. Maybe you had a shit weekend and bam, you’re messaging her! Nope. You made up your mind right now to move on. Then make up your mind 100%. Now, I’m just saying: Write this down on a pen and paper. Write down what you want to achieve with this. Why do you want to move on? What do you want to get out of it? It’s pretty important. Obviously, you want to get over the pain. But what does that actually mean for you? Build some clarity around what would your life look like when you actually moved on? Once you are no longer hung up over her or once you’re no longer hurting, how is your life improved? Write it down on pen and paper because then it becomes a lot easier to actually follow that goal, essentially. All right.
Thinking About Her: You’ll Miss Your Ex Girlfriend Even If She Wasn’t Perfect — Recognize She Wasn’t
The reason I want to move on is that during our relationship, my ex was emotionally and even physically and sexually unavailable.
It’s a no-go. If you see that your ex’s or your girlfriend is physically and sexually unavailable, especially sexually, you’ve got to bring that up pretty fast. And if nothing changes, then you should leave your girlfriend. If you can’t fix it and she still withdraws sexually from you, there’s no reason to be with that person. Because honestly, you can get sex these days quite easily. And if the woman that you’re with who loves you, or who should love you, won’t give you sex, even though your bond and your social capital that you have is much stronger, if she won’t give that to you, that’s a big red flag. Oh, I also want to mention actually earlier, I noticed that you still referred to your ex as your girlfriend. I know it’s only been five weeks since the breakup, but it’s important to recognize she is your ex and your words that you say to yourself matter.
Now, I know that you know that she’s your ex, but you still say that she’s your girlfriend because it’s still in that frame of mind. So just an important reminder to recognize she is your ex. And in this sentence right now, you actually said ex, but I think you mentioned it two or three times in your message. that she’s your girlfriend, not your ex-girlfriend. She’s obviously your ex-girlfriend. So I know that’s a small detail, but for me, these small details matter. This shows me what kind of mentality you currently have. You still consider that she’s a part of you, but right now that’s done. She’s gone. So she’s no longer a part of you. So she’s an ex-girlfriend. All right.
Your Ex Wasn’t Into You: When Your Ex Girlfriend Didn’t Love You As Much As You Did
She would often cancel plans, not respond to my texts or calls. And when I would try to talk to her about it, she would brush it off and say that I was overreacting. I also noticed that she was always on her phone and didn’t give me her full attention. Somehow she was always not satisfied, even though I have never been a bad boyfriend. I watched many of your videos and me and my girlfriend never had fights or anything like that. Well, a few, but not many. But overall, when we were together, it was good. I don’t know why she felt unsure about us, despite the fact that we were never a toxic couple. I kept on trying to figure out what I did wrong, but I just can’t see what it was. Maybe you have an idea.
Well, yes and no. I have an idea. She just wasn’t into you enough. She wasn’t in love with you enough. For some reason, something about you didn’t draw her closer. She didn’t want to be closer with you. That does not say anything about you. There’s nothing wrong with you just because someone doesn’t love you properly. It doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you. Obviously, if you make obvious mistakes, that’s a different scenario. But you said it yourself. You were never a bad boyfriend. Now, that could also mean that you maybe were too much of a nice guy, perhaps. But let’s go under the assumption that you were a good boyfriend. You had some fights every now and then, but you weren’t a simp. You weren’t too nice to her. You held your own in the relationship. You were a leader in the relationship. There was no toxic fighting and all that stuff. Overall, a good relationship. You weren’t a shitty boyfriend. There are many boyfriends that are much worse.
And now you’re stuck here wondering, “Well, I don’t know. What did I do wrong? I can’t figure it out.” And you probably don’t have any closure because she just left and she was like, “I can do this anymore. I have no feelings for you.” And you’re like, “Why?? What what the hell is going on?” Honestly, you will probably never get the answer to that question. And you’ve got to learn to be OK with that because if you don’t have a fight, if nothing’s wrong in the relationship and the woman just leaves and she won’t even tell you why, then she probably has no proper reason. She just didn’t feel like it. Whatever it was. A waste of time. Or it was like, “Yeah, that’s a nice way to spend my time to get through the years. But now I probably found someone else.” She probably found someone else now who she finds more exciting. And she decided, OK, it’s time to finally let this go. So I would not try to figure out what is wrong or what went wrong here.
Typically, in my videos, I say you should figure out what went wrong, especially after a breakup when there was no contact, and especially if there was a lot of infighting in the relationship, or fighting in the relationship. But if there wasn’t much fighting and it was just that she was low interest, then, if she’s low interest, you just can’t do much. If you were a good boyfriend and you weren’t too… You know, you were smothering her too much, then it’s not really your fault. Unless she withdrew emotionally because you were smothering her too much. Then it would be your fault. But if that wasn’t the case and you were just quite reasonable about wanting to spend time with your girlfriend and she didn’t give that to you, then look, you can’t figure this out.
You could try to ask her for closure, but she might not give you that. And typically, find the closure yourself. Reflect a little bit on the relationship. Not necessarily about what went wrong on your side, because if you don’t think that you did anything wrong, then you can’t do anything. You can, of course, read some books and try to see if you find something that you did wrong, but there’s no point about obsessing over it. So I’m not saying you shouldn’t be reading like one or two or three books and see if you can see some patterns. But don’t beat yourself up too much. And even if you find some patterns, that doesn’t mean that you were primarily the reason for that breakup. She was basically just low interest, most likely. So don’t beat yourself so much up.
When You See Your Ex Girlfriend Everyday: Dealing With The Pain Of Seeing Your Ex In Public
The thing is, it’s not just the emotional pain that it making it hard for me to move on. It’s also the practical side of things. We live and work in the same area, so I see her almost every day. I work at a coffee shop near her office and I see her with her co-workers all the time. One of her favorite lunch places is very close to the coffee shop. I’ve even considered quitting my job because it is too painful to see her every day. It took the last two days off because I can’t manage with the stress right now, but I have to get back to work tomorrow.
Do not quit your job! First of all, you don’t want to quit your job for an ex or don’t let your ex ever dictate what’s going on. There are some rare scenarios. Or maybe moving to another city might be beneficial, for example, with a very narcissistic woman where it just completely crushes you like crazy, who is already fucking some new guys after two days. And you can’t deal with this shit. Maybe she’s talking shit about you to her friends. And you just can’t cope with the pain. Sometimes it’s OK. If your circumstances allow it, like, for example, if you would be working online and you can live anywhere, I would say, sure. Yeah, you know what? Move to another city for a while. Kind of like a nomad, right? And heal a little bit. But you are working as a barista, so you live in a specific city. And it’s probably not that easy to find a new job in a different city or just moving in general.
And if you have a job right now, I can just guarantee you probably the most important thing that you need after a breakup is stability. What’s the biggest mistakes that you can make is to just try to do lots of new different things. This is one of the kind of pitfalls after breakups. We want to reinvent ourselves and you actually should reinvent yourself. But you’ve got to do this with a little bit of stability. So, for example, I can give you an example of a friend of mine who used to be a nomad for, I don’t know, maybe seven years or something like that. He’s always been moving around one place here, one place there. And it’s crazy to say it, but he never had a proper place to rent long term. He never had a one-year contract. Now, for maybe six months or so, he now is renting a proper house. It’s the first time that he’s been living here in Asia, that he properly rents a house. And that’s kind of crazy to me because he probably spent like twice the amount of money that he should have spent in the last seven years, maybe three times the amount of money.
And it just was unnecessary, basically. And also, like the stress of always having to move or having to pay rent again and, well, not having your shit sorted out really makes life much tougher. And likewise, with breakups, if you have a good job right now, or at least a job that provides for you that’s stable, I would keep that job! I know that your ex is basically working nearby, which really sucks. It’s tough, but you’re probably putting too much attention to that. Unless you can look out of the window and you can see her all the time, you will probably just see her like maybe every once a week or so. Right. So, I know it’s tough, but I would stick with that job. And let’s see what you say about the fact that you can’t deal with the heartbreak right now and you’ve been thinking about quitting your job. And you see her obviously near the job, near the office. So let’s see what that leads to. So you say… That you have to go back to work tomorrow.
On top of that, my sleep schedule is all out of whack. I’ve lost weight and I’m having a hard time concentrating and functioning at work, which is really bad when you are serving people. I got so many orders wrong in the last weeks. I’m lucky that I have a kind boss. I think he is easy on me because he knows that I broke up with my ex.
See, it’s another reason to stick with that company for now. If you want to start something new, go for it. Definitely. If you want to level up, work at a better coffee shop or become a manager at a coffee shop, for example, that could be something that you might want to do in your own coffee shop or work at a new prestigious coffee shop, or something like that, or work at a really cool coffee shop in a really cool location. By all means, do that, but don’t do it impulsively. Have a plan. You build this road map slowly. And once you feel like you can make rational decisions again, that’s when you would say, OK, now it’s time for me to move on to something new. I definitely would not suggest to make these kind of decisions in the first three months after a breakup, because that’s the time when you make the worst decisions possible.
Rebuilding Confidence After A Breakup: How To Feel Better After A Breakup For Guys
I know that I need to start the process of moving on, but I don’t know where to start. I’m struggling to come to terms with the fact that she’s not coming back and that our relationship is over. Can you please give me some advice on how to start the process of moving on? What are some things I can do to take my mind off of her and improve my mental and physical health? Thank you.
OK, first of all, I’m going to be honest with you. You won’t have it so easy to take your mind off of her and struggling with the fact that for her it’s over. It’s going to take time to move on. What you can do is write down on a pen and paper all the negative things that you already mentioned to some extent. The physical unavailability. The emotional unavailability. Being on her phone. Maybe if you were on a date she would look at her phone all the time and not making time for you for dates or whatever. Write all of that stuff down, because obviously that stuff is a reason to not stick with her, not to want to get back with her. I talk about this in my course, actually, to some extent, because I actually made the course a lot about moving on as well, even though it is about getting an ex back. that one of the ways that we move on from our exes, or how we move on faster is if we make ourselves clear about the negative stuff.
So, for example, one study, quite frankly, said that basically trash talking helps, right? So if you make yourself very painstakingly clear about how your ex was not good for you with words, either talking to your friends or writing it down, that helps. The second thing that I would suggest to you is if you want to get your mind off of things. Now, I mentioned this in my last video that I recently started hitting the gym maybe a month ago, and now I’m going every two months, every two days. And like whatever happens, I don’t care how busy I am. For example, today, I am super busy and I was just editing some YouTube video earlier, and then I still had to prepare this content here. And I still had to make all the thumbnails and all that stuff. And I’m recording actually quite late. It is almost 7 P.M. right now here. And right now, after that, I’m going to hit the gym and then I’m going to have to edit again, probably late at night to get the video out. So it’s pretty tricky, but I’m always hitting the gym. So stability is really important. Ever since I started hitting the gym every two days, my energy levels have gone up like crazy. And I’m also much less distracted. I’m more able to meditate. I can highly recommend going to the gym, in general.
Like, for example, I go to the gym twice a day every two days. And I actually also don’t listen to music while I hit the gym. Sometimes I listen to music. Sure. I’m kind of like 50/50. And sometimes I do listen to audiobooks, but it’s quite rare. Now I actually even started not listening to music at all because it’s like meditation to clear your mind. Now, obviously, you feel like that’s obviously the worst, the least thing that I want to do. Clear my mind or try to focus on my mind when I’m only thinking about my ex all the time. But that’s basically meditation. You’ve got to teach yourself to empty your mind. Something like gym stability helps you to kind of get some balance back. Because if you’re really in balance, you have a shit job, you’re not happy in your relationship, and you’re not happy where you’re going, you’re not happy how you look. All kinds of different things that might not be making you happy. You can imagine if you have all of these stress points in your life, you’re just spinning in circles over and over and over. But then if you have everything in balance, you don’t have to overthink much, right? And then it’s much easier to just stay focused.
And something like gym or a routine is really helpful to actually get back to that stable focus that kind of stops you from overthinking. Not initially. That kind of doesn’t work. You need some time to actually get used to that new habit. Right now, your habit is basically being heartbroken, thinking about your ex all the time. It has become your new habit. Breakups are incredibly addictive, incredibly painful. They are the second most painful or, yeah, the most painful life event that happens to us, according to something called the Holmes-Rahe scale. So it’s really tough to go through this. And so now you’re basically embracing this new lifestyle. A style of pain, basically. That’s the new life that you know now. And you’re turning this into a habit. And you basically just have to replace that habit with a better habit. So start something new. It could be the gym. It could be playing the guitar. It could be going to a runner’s group. It could be, bouldering, for example. I just saw a cool video on TikTok on bouldering. I used to love bouldering when I was younger, not younger, a few years ago. I’m actually thinking, man, I should go back to bouldering. Maybe that’s something that I should try again. Find something that you can do every two days, every three days. I would suggest every two days. It’s not necessarily every day. You don’t want to go crazy. You need to have a life as well, of course.
Step-By-Step Breakup Recovery: Rediscover Yourself After A Breakup & Trust The Process
So, the first process of moving on is really, first of all, recognize that, well, you already recognized that it’s time to move on because she was not good for you. Write it down on pen and paper. What was wrong? How was she not right for you? And write down what does that actually mean for you? If you would still be in that relationship, what kind of outcome would you have right now versus soon in the future when you move on? And I don’t mean like write this down like… If you hear this, maybe everybody who is watching this might think like, “What’s that going to do, writing something on a pen on paper?” Well, I don’t want you to just write a short document. I want you to write like a one or two pager on a letter size, A4 in Europe, a big paper and fill the entire paper to get some clarity. And then look at that. Look at that more than once. Look at it for a week, basically every single day. Once you do that, OK, this is the right thing to do. And then pick something that you want to do, something new. Now, like I said, don’t quit your job. Do not move.
I know you want to be somewhere else because you basically run into her very often. But think about how you would feel if you can get through this. You would be so much happier. I don’t know how old you are, but I can guarantee you you’re going to have to deal with more heartbreak in the future, not just with an ex. But in general, you’re going to run into things or people where things are really fucking painful. And that’s part of life. You’ve got to confront the things that really freaking hurt you. And that actually is one of the things that separates winners from, in quotes, losers, people who get beaten down. They confront that fear. They confront that pain and they say, I’m not going to take this pain. No way in hell! One of the reasons why I hit the gym was because it has been kind of tough for me to let go of the Philippines. I guess I’m kind of done with it now, I suppose, like the last few steps of letting go of my life in the Philippines, before Covid, are kind of done now. But it took me a really long time to do that. And so now I’m hitting the gym.
Now, next month, actually, I’m going to move and I’m going to rent also like my friend, a house for a year, and these kind of things, letting go and making a step forward. It’s important when you get beaten down. You can sit in place and keep on being sad and you feel sorry for yourself. Or you can say, no, I don’t want this. I deserve a fucking amazing life because I am fucking amazing. I’m a king and I’m going to get up now and I’m going to make the best out of life. So that’s what I want for you. How can you make the best out of your life? How can you improve your mental health and physical health? Imagine if you would get through this right down. That’s another thing to put on pen and paper. If you get through all of this, all this heartbreak, where do you want to be? How can your mental health and physical health improve? What’s your ideal life? Like, let’s go back to being a barista. Me personally, maybe in the future, I would love to open a coffee shop, but that’s probably still far away because I’m not good enough with Indonesian yet. And I’m about to stay in this country. Maybe in the future, maybe in two years when I’m better with Indonesian. And that’s like one of my big dreams that I might want to pursue in the future. And I’m slowly building towards that.
And I’m thinking about that might be something that I want to do that kind of gets me out of the tech-centric stuff a little bit. You know, even with video editing, I used to work in tech, all the time and video editing… It gets gets a little bit tiring sometimes and doing something more with people every single day or frequently is really fun. When I see my friends who are coffee shop owners, they don’t really work all the time, but they hang out at the coffee shop every now and then. And yeah, they have a lot of interaction with people and it’s kind of fun. You know, so that’s something that I might be looking forward to! I don’t know yet if that’s going to be a thing. Maybe, maybe not. I’ll have to see. What is it that you want? Think about where are you going to be in three years from now if you start making your first move now? And I know it’s kind of tough, but you got to make the first move. And I guess that stability and routine is the number one thing. All right. So that’s my advice to you. Let me know in the comments what you think. Give me a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel. And never forget to unleash the king within.
