Watch the subtitled video above if you prefer to listen to my advice.
Today we’re going to talk about whether no contact actually works? Especially after a bad breakup. And the thing, of course, with a bad breakup, or a breakup in general, if you really care about the woman, is that you think it might not work. So first of all, grab your favorite beverage. It’s an interesting topic. I have a message from a guy who had a pretty bad breakup and he thinks… Well, he’s anxious and he doesn’t really know what to do anymore. And I actually had a short story yesterday on my YouTube channel where I talked about this.
Breakups are, of course, very difficult, but they are also an opportunity to rise from the ashes like the phoenix. So it’s all about reimagining yourself. It’s about unleashing the king within. About improving yourself. Improving your relationship with your ex-girlfriend and in the future have a stronger relationship. So of course, breakups are really, really difficult, but they’re also an opportunity to grow from it and so I want to talk about what are the good things about breakups? And what can you take away from it and can you actually fix a bad breakup? So let’s get right into his situation and let’s see what I have to say.
Panic Attack After Breakup: Dealing With Anxiety During No Contact When You Miss Your Ex Girlfriend
Hi coach Andy, I hope I can get your assessment of my situation with my ex-girlfriend. I am feeling extremely anxious and hopeless. My ex-girlfriend and I broke up two and a half months ago and I think I had a panic attack last week at work. I never felt this way for my entire life.
So I want you to know that this is normal. If you’ve never felt this for your entire life, then chances are that this is, of course, the relationship that has meant the most to you throughout your life so far. Maybe you are in your late 20s, middle 20s, 30s, whatever it is, but you’ve never had a relationship that was so important to you. So of course, now you’re feeling really awful and it’s really not nice to have anxiety attacks but it gets better over time. You don’t know what you’re going through right now. It’s very new to you. If you’ve never had a proper panic attack or an anxiety attack, it’s really terrifying, I know. You feel awful but it gets better.
One thing that’s important with these situations is to learn to really regulate yourself. Regulate your breathing. And calm down. I know that sounds hard because you’re so overwhelmed with your emotions and your feelings, and how your body feels, but as you get more used to this feeling, you’ll understand how to deal with it. Just how we get more used to dealing with breakups. So if you’ve ever had a bad breakup as you have right now, if let’s say in the future you have another relationship and that’s a bad breakup as well, it becomes easier because you know how to deal with it and how to regulate your body. So you have to fight through this. I know it sucks but I know you’re gonna feel better soon. Just give it some more time.
What To Do When Starting No Contact: The No Contact Rule After A Bad Breakup Is For Your Healing Process
My heart was palpitating and I felt really sick. I was sweating a lot and I even asked my co-worker who has some medical experience if she knows some medications that I could use and that I could get without going to a doctor. The breakup with my ex has been extremely difficult for me to deal with and I really need some advice.
So the first piece of advice that I would have for you is that acceptance is key. So I think a lot of the mistakes that people make, and men make after a breakup is that they don’t want to accept the breakup and they might realize it’s over but they’re not really accepting that it is over. And so then you get panic attacks because you try to fight the inevitable reality that right now it’s over. Right now your ex-girlfriend wants nothing to do with you.
That is a tough and hard pill to swallow but you have to swallow that pill. You have to accept that right now you can’t do anything with your ex-girlfriend. You tried a lot of things most likely already and she doesn’t want to be with you right now. So if you keep on ruminating on those feelings and try to fight what is not going to work right now, you’re just going to bring that anxiety back up over and over. But you could use that time better for yourself to rise like the phoenix from the ashes. To reflect more on who do you want to be.
One of the reasons why you’re feeling so distraught right now is because you feel like you don’t know who you are anymore because of that important breakup or that important relationship that failed. So right now you feel so lost. You don’t know who you are and you have to rediscover that, even without your ex. So then in the future when she reaches out, you know who you are. You know what you want. You know what you want to give to her. You know what you want to receive from her. And then you all have clarity and you can come back together stronger. It’s really important.
No Contact Rule After Arguments: Getting Back Together Takes Time To Give Her Space After A Fight
Unfortunately my ex and I had a really bad breakup. Before our breakup we had been a couple for two years, living together, and while I didn’t tell her that, I was ready to marry her. I love her so much but something in our relationship was wrong and until our breakup, I was too afraid to confront it. As we became a couple, over time we began having smaller or bigger fights. Most of them probably started after one year of living together and it just got worse and worse the more often it happened.
So it sounds to me that instead of properly confronting it and just telling her very clearly what you need and she telling you what she needs, you basically just sought out to have a fight and the reason why we have fights is that we become very defensive. We feel that our needs are not met but we don’t know how to communicate those needs. So obviously, it seems that both of you didn’t know how to communicate each other’s needs and instead you just attacked each other. And it’s very ironic that we believe that by attacking another person that person is going to love us back.
But of course, that will always result in the opposite result. If you attack your partner, even though you mean well, you want to kind of let them know what you need from them, if you do it as an attack that’s not going to work out. They’re not going to hear you. They’re not going to hear what you need. And if you don’t hear what you both need from each other, then you won’t build shared understanding. It’s really about properly understanding what does my partner need from me?
So for example, if your girlfriend would be a very anxious type and she is kind of clingy and sometimes she’s questioning the relationship, she’s not sure what to think, let’s say maybe she sees you with another woman and that woman is hitting on you, for example. Maybe your girlfriend needs some validation. If you know that she needs that, if you understand her needs, you can very easily give it to her. It’s solved in a minute and the problem is over and you can get back to having a great relationship, having good sex, having a good time together, going to bed happy. It’s very important that you understand what your partner needs and your ex-girlfriend also needs to understand what you need.
So that’s something to learn about and one thing that I want to mention is, it’s actually a very good thing that things are cooling down right now. So most people think, especially if you had a really bad breakup, you think it’s unresolvable. There’s no way we could fix this! We fought so hard! We had a really big argument! We screamed at each other! My girlfriend just ran out of the house really mad. Whatever, I don’t know what happened, but the thing is we always forget the bad things in a relationship after a while. And so obviously, if everything was so bad already, you lack the skills to communicate properly.
By breaking up, it’s actually a solution to the problem because right now, back then, you didn’t know how to solve it and you just made it worse, and worse, and worse. Now you’re broken up. So the good thing is your ex-girlfriend is going to forget over time all of the bad stuff. She’s going to look at your relationship more fondly. She’s going to focus more on the positive stuff because of course, there was a lot of bad stuff happening in your relationship but there was also a lot of good stuff. And human biases cause us to think more about the positive stuff than negative stuff. So it plays in your favor because she forgets the negative stuff.
Now, if both of you learn how to communicate your needs properly you can actually come back together stronger. So it’s not a bad thing. So after a bad breakup, yes, it’s actually possible to fix it, and often if you’ve been fighting like crazy, a breakup will actually be beneficial for both of you because one: You cool down. as I said. And two: Maybe you spend time, both of you to reflect on it, maybe you read some books, you watch some youtube videos, and you try to figure out “How can I do things better?” and then when you come back together, you’re not so angry anymore. And now you can discuss what you need from each other in a calm and collected manner.
How To Fix A Breakup With Your Girlfriend: What To Do If We Both Mistreated Each Other Before The Breakup?
Near the end of our relationship things got extremely bad. Our fights got worse and we both would not treat each other properly. I cannot speak for how she felt but I had become very resentful in the end and after I had some time to reflect on everything I realized how there have been many fights that could have been avoided but I didn’t control my emotions and frustrations. In the end, things got so bad that we started to look for affection from other people. I don’t know if she cheated on me but I started swiping on Tinder in secret. She, of course, found out and we nearly broke up over it. She on the other hand started flirting with guys when going out with friends. Things were really bad back then.
So basically again like I said: The problem was you were fighting. You were not telling each other the needs that you needed being met. Instead, you were trying to find the flaws in the other person, and then unfortunately what often happens in relationships when we go into this vicious cycle of fighting, fighting, fighting, we seek further attention outside of the relationship, which makes no sense. Of course, if you want attention from your partner, you have to turn to your partner, not away from them. So that’s important to understand in the future. You have to turn to your ex-girlfriend and like I said: It’s a good idea to let things cool down.
So it’s like the tea here that I’m pouring. When I pour this cup it reveals this “unleash the king within” text because it gets hot. But because it’s so hot, often, let’s see… Okay, I can drink it now but often I’m very sensitive to it being too hot so I always have to wait with my tea a little bit to drink it, which is why ironically, I often don’t drink it in my videos. But I really love this idea of the revealing of the unleash the king within. But you gotta let it cool down. It’s fine. You gotta wait and then when it’s cooled down, guess what? It doesn’t hurt so much anymore. And it actually eventually feels pleasant again. Now I’m enjoying this tea but if I would have started drinking this tea five minutes ago, it would have probably hurt.
I might have burned my tongue. So let it cool down. Like I said, just give it some time. Yes, obviously, you might be very terrified. You’ve been cheating in a way. You both have been cheating. I mean you don’t know what she did, you’ve been on Tinder, it essentially was emotional cheating. If there was an actual physical act of cheating, we don’t know. Neither of you really know, I assume. Maybe it happened. Maybe it didn’t. You both, obviously, made huge mistakes here but you can fix it. Obviously, you broke up over it or you broke up eventually because it got so bad. So you both recognize you don’t want this. There are a lot of couples where they just stay together and they cheat on each other and that is actually worse than cheating on each other and then breaking up, because if you break up, even if you maybe had some emotional cheating, you at least recognize this relationship as it is. The status quo is broken.
Some people never accept that status quo, and if you can’t accept that something is broken, you can’t fix it. So I know it sounds awful. You think your breakup sucks. You think that your breakup is a sign that it’s over but actually, as I said: The phoenix rising from the ashes. It’s an opportunity to start from scratch and acknowledge what didn’t work and then improve it.
She Didn’t Come Home Last Night And Broke Up: After A Bad Breakup Is It Possible To Get Back Together?
You’d think that that was what ended the relationship but we reconciled for a while until one day when we had another big argument over really dumb shit about her family, which ended in my ex not coming home that night and sleeping at her best friend’s place. The next day she broke up with me and said that she doesn’t want to be together anymore because she felt that all that’s left in our relationship is resentment and hate for each other.
And of course, she was right. She recognized everything was fucked up. She recognized was broken. “This is not going anywhere. We’re not fixing it,” and so as I said, the breakup was actually a good decision. Now you can cool down. She might already slowly start to forget the negative things. Two and a half months, of course, is not that long yet. If I remember correctly, the fading affect bias, which leads us to forget the negative things, it starts very early already, excuse me, it starts very early already after like a day or so, but I think then after a month you start to see some better benefits from it, and then I think afterward, it’s three months, that’s almost the highest benefit that you get from the fading affect.
So after three months, that’s when an ex starts to forget more about the bad stuff, and then… I gotta drink something… Then the highest peak with the fading affect bias or the highest peak that’s reasonable is after one year. So you’re currently in that period, in the time zone, three months to one year, where your ex is slowly starting to forget all the bad stuff and she’s starting to look at the relationship with pink rose-colored glasses. So she now is starting to forget the bad stuff and eventually if you keep up the no contact, most likely she’s going to reach out to you. So I know you’re very anxious right now but you have to keep it up. Stay strong. Stay a king and instead of focusing on your ex, focus on yourself. Unleash the king within!
I also mentioned this in my YouTube short from yesterday: You have to focus on yourself after a breakup even though you don’t want to. It’s like you feel compelled to focus on your ex more than anything, but of course, that doesn’t work because you have to focus on what part of you didn’t work so that you can fix your behavior. Because you can never influence your ex’s behavior. So if you get back together, after a while, if you don’t realize what you have to change, even if for example your ex has changed, well, if you don’t change your behavior, she’s gonna run away again.
And vice versa, you can’t change how she behaves. And she can’t change how you behave. You can influence it a little bit for sure. So if you treat each other nicely, obviously, and try to not seek out fights and instead try to find out some methods how you can talk about your needs in loving ways, that definitely helps, but ultimately it’s always up to your ex to decide how she wants to treat you. And it’s up to you to decide how you treat her. So focus on yourself.
Feeling Hopeless After Breakup: She Wants Space After A Fight — Don’t Think No Contact Isn’t Working
I couldn’t stop her from leaving back then but after she left I tried so hard to change her mind through begging and pleading, but she had made up her mind and nothing would change it. My ex became unreachable and very cold towards my begging until I gave up and stopped messaging her. I know about the no contact rule but it seems this is hopeless. I tried everything which resulted in nothing and now I have not heard from my ex for over one month. I can no longer live with my anxiety and I don’t know what I should do. I feel completely broken without her in my life and I wish I could turn back time and make things right. What should I do now after nothing has worked to get her back?
As I said you should focus on accepting the situation. You say you feel broken, you don’t know how to cope with your life anymore, so it’s time to put the pieces back together and stop focusing on her. I guarantee you if you keep up no contact, she’s at least going to reach out to you after a while. It does get a little bit harder with an ex if she’s very avoidant. If she’s typically the type of person or the type of woman who pushes their partners away, it might take longer but she will very, very likely reach out to you eventually if she doesn’t hear from you for a while. So focus on yourself.
It is not hopeless and you haven’t heard from her, well you’ve been begging and pleading a little bit so I don’t think if you mentioned this for how long you kept that up but maybe it has been a month or a few weeks. So you’ve been begging maybe let’s say, let’s say hypothetically you’ve been begging for two weeks, or three weeks, so roughly one month long, half a month long. And then basically she hasn’t heard from you for one month, roughly, right? One month. Maybe two months tops. It’s not that long yet, so maybe she’s starting to wonder when is she going to hear from you again. It might be already starting. Maybe she’s already starting to miss you. Maybe she’s wondering why she’s no longer hearing from you and I’m assuming if you’ve been begging and pleading, you also told her multiple times what you did wrong so she knows that you’re trying to fix the issues. You’re resentful. You want to make it right. She knows that already.
So now all you have to do is focus on yourself. Unleash the king within! What is it that you want to do for yourself? Stop focusing on her. Stop focusing on what kind of things can you do to attract her back because action for reattraction rarely leads to satisfaction. And a woman who trusts discovers her lust. Obviously, after the breakup, at the end of the breakup, she just lost all faith in you. You both cheated on each other. That’s basically the biggest form of betrayal of trust, so you have to re-establish that trust by giving her the space, by giving her the time to reflect on things and wondering if she wants to give it another shot, and then it is her idea to reach out to you. That builds trust.
When you then, once she reaches out, don’t have fights anymore… If you show yourself from a better angle. If you no longer point out each other’s flaws. If you no longer say “This is what you did wrong” or if you no longer seek to agitate each other because you’re thinking this gets a reaction out of each other, and then you start to have dates again… You go on normal dates just like you did when you started dating. Everything is fine again, you’re having fun, there’s no drama, there’s no fighting, instead of that, you just focus on having a good time and re-establishing what you had in the beginning because that’s what you have to get back to.
Relationships are really easy in the beginning and then that’s obviously why we love them so much but then they get harder and then we get back to this unfamiliar territory where we fight with each other. So you have to figure out how do you get back to the state of your relationship in the first year? The infatuation period. And now that requires work. It requires communication skills. It requires honesty, authenticity, it requires courage to say what you don’t like about each other in a loving way. That’s conscious. It’s not antagonistic. It’s about becoming a team and so if I work in a healthy team, for example at work… I used to work as a product manager when I was younger a few years ago. And in technology, we have this thing called agile or SCRUM.
The idea is that you want to work with your team in a way that you figure out what isn’t working because otherwise you build shitty software that sucks and it breaks. Like, imagine if you build UBER, for example, and then all of a sudden users can’t log in because you made a mistake with your team. It’s much better to learn from that mistake than to just point a finger at someone, right? So you have to learn what didn’t work and basically, you have to apply this mindset that J just mentioned: Agile mindset. It’s about learning. It’s about learning about each other because couples who stay curious will never become furious. It’s all about you understanding your woman and she has to understand you. So do some reflection and also focus on yourself. You didn’t really mention anything about you that you’re passionate about or that you really care about but you should stop thinking so much in the moment about her.
You’re basically always trapped in the past or in the future. You’re thinking about all the things that didn’t work out in the past and that she thinks so badly of you. She’s really done with you and so you’re trapped in this anxious thought of she hates you. Or you’re trapped in the thought in the future, that she’s not going to want you back, she’s going to forget you, she’s going to move on, or she’s already having sex with some other guy and she’s dating other guys. And so you’re thinking about what’s happening in the future. You need to focus on the now. What can you control right now? About your life, about your passions, about your desires, about your purpose, about your work?
Like you said: You’re really messed up right now at work. It’s really tough to work with anxiety. I had some anxiety attacks for the first time in my life about a year ago and when I went through that, that was fucking awful. I got stuck here in Germany and just got thrown out of my life and I didn’t know what to do anymore. It was really really difficult for me to be separated from all my friends all of a sudden. When I had these panic attacks I had no idea what the hell was going on and then I got used to them. I learned how to deal with them. I focused on my breathing and I learned that it’s not so bad and that I can get back to a normal life, even though I’m 7000 kilometers away from all my friends. All my life that I’ve built for seven years…
I can get back to normal. I can control myself. And I can control what I can control right now. The power of now! What can you focus on right now on your happiness? Because you can’t control what’s going to happen in six months from now. You can’t control if your ex reaches out to you in a month from now, in two months… It could be six months. We don’t know. It could take a long time and you can only focus on what you control for yourself. As I said: You can’t influence your partner. You can only influence yourself. So that is my advice for you. Focus on unleashing the king within. Let me know in the comments what you think about this. Give me a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and as always, unleash the king within!
