Watch the subtitled video above if you prefer to listen to my advice.
Today we’re gonna talk about breakups. When your girlfriend wants a break and actually, I want to talk a lot about principles to maintain healthy relationships. So I talk a lot about this in my book, actually, to be confident. To be a confident leader in your relationship. Because every woman wants to be taken care of by an alpha male who knows how to lead the relationship in the right direction because most men don’t know how to lead a relationship in the right direction. So it’s all about unleashing the king within. It’s all about being strong and making sure that the relationship is going in the right direction. And then at the end of the video, I’m also going to talk a little bit about well, what do you do if you can’t save the relationship? What if she still wants a break?
Ways To Fix Your Relationship: Relationships Can Be Fixed Before She Needs Space From The Relationship
But before that, I want to give you a bit of an analogy. I actually believe that most relationships can be saved. According to studies, according to research, roughly 75% of all relationships can be saved if you know how to actually do it. How to lead the relationship. How to have good communication. It’s really important to understand this and if you know how to do this, you can save your relationship, very likely. Most of you can save your relationship. But the problem is a lot of people don’t know how and so I want to give you a bit of an example, or an analogy. Roughly five, no, no, seven years ago, I moved to the Philippines. I moved to the Philippines because I won a startup competition. So I won this competition to build a business and then I was like “Hell yeah! I’m going to build a business in the Philippines!”
So I moved to the Philippines super impulsively because I won a competition on vacation, actually, and I got lots of prizes, and I was like I’m gonna be an entrepreneur. I’m gonna build a business but I had no idea what the fuck I was actually doing. So I’ve been working & hustling like crazy back then. I was roughly 25 years old and I was working so hard and I thought I was making progress, but I actually didn’t have any idea what the hell I was doing. I was doing so much unnecessary work. I was focused on the wrong stuff. I didn’t have my priorities straight. I didn’t know how to get stuff done and I felt like I was moving forward but I actually wasn’t moving forward and eventually I gave up. That business was a total failure. There was a lesson learned.
And the same thing happens in relationships as well. We think that we’re making progress, we think that we’re fixing it, we think that we’re having good communication, we think that everything is fine again, but actually, nothing is fine. So it’s important to have awareness and have experience and learn what works and what doesn’t work in relationships. Okay, so I have a situation from a guy. His girlfriend basically wants to break up. She “wants to find herself“… You probably already know what that means. She’s basically done with the relationship. Let’s see what I have to say.
Relationship Infatuation Phase: She Doesn’t Love Me Anymore But We Were So Happy In The Beginning
Hello coach, I hope you can help me. I am absolutely stuck trying to convince my girlfriend to stay together. We have been a couple for about two years and a quarter. At first, everything was great. My girlfriend and I have had great chemistry and we have been living together for a long time. We didn’t have much drama in our relationship. At first, whenever we do something together, these days spent were one of those memories and pictures that you could show your kids when you’re older, but lately, our relationship has hit a few bumps.
It’s very normal that in the first especially roughly 18 months in the relationship, everything is fine. It’s called the infatuation period. It has been studied that it lasts roughly two years. 18 months. Something like that. It could be shorter, it could be just 10 months, it could be 20 months. But on average, it’s roughly 18 months. So during that time, everything is super fine. You don’t piss each other off. You don’t care about each other’s flaws. So it’s normal that everything is fine during that time but it’s also important to understand by the way: Just because you have some nice pictures for your gram, or for TikTok, or whatever, it doesn’t really matter. These things are just the highlights of your relationship but what really matters is not the highlights! What matters is the average of the relationship.
You don’t have to care about the peaks. You have peaks but it doesn’t matter because these peaks go down again. You have downs, doesn’t matter. They come up again. What matters is where is your average? And your average, obviously, should be neutral to good. It shouldn’t always be on average more down there. So even if you have some good peaks with your relationship, if on average the relationship is shit, all of these pictures don’t mean anything. So I know it’s nice that you can show this to your children in the future, but it doesn’t matter if you won’t have children in the future.
Things have been tense between the two of us for approximately four months. It all started with small disagreements here and there, but as of late, we’ve been having more arguments. Sometimes she’s mad at me, sometimes I’m mad at her. And our fights have gotten worse over the last months. I thought despite our occasional fights that overall everything is okay but two weeks ago my girlfriend completely came out of nowhere telling me how she feels.
Well, I don’t think it came out of nowhere. How can it come out of nowhere? You’ve been having fights or arguments for four months. So you should have seen it coming. And a lot of guys make this mistake. They think that they got back to normal. They get back to having normal breakfast, they go out every now and then, they have a dinner every now and then, they do some basic stuff that you expect from couples. You have these nice selfies and they think everything is fine but just because of that, it’s not fine. Normal is not fine. You want to go back to great! You want to be in a great relationship! And just because your relationship is barely functioning, and it’s okay, that doesn’t mean that your relationship is great! And your girlfriend probably didn’t think that everything is great and she basically has enough.
So it didn’t come out of nowhere. You think it came out of nowhere but it didn’t really come out of nowhere, and of course, it’s normal that sometimes you are mad, sometimes she’s mad, but obviously, it turned into a vicious cycle and you’re not breaking the cycle. So you’re basically not paying attention to how happy is she? And you’re thinking just because you resolved it quickly, that problem won’t come up again. But obviously, you have to understand how does your girlfriend feel. If you don’t know how your girlfriend is feeling, if you don’t understand if she’s happy, then you’re just gonna spiral into more and more arguments until it eventually snowballs and becomes so bad that you can’t reverse it anymore. And so this is why your girlfriend is now coming and telling you how she feels.
She Wants A Break: Girlfriend Says She Needs Space And She Wants To Find Herself — What To Do?
Her explanation of how she feels was so cliche that it almost sounds like a parody. She said I love you but I’m not in love with you anymore and that she doesn’t feel happy anymore. She then continued and said that she thinks we need to have a break and that she needs some time to find herself. I tried to convince her to give us a chance and that we can fix this. I had been begging like crazy, which seemed to work at first but after three weeks of her being extremely cold and distant with me and looking like she’s half-dead and emotionless, she started bringing it up again how she doesn’t feel happy in our relationship.
So this might sound scary. Okay, first of all, you’ve been begging and that kind of fixed it, but obviously that was just a duct tape solution because she probably saw you crying or saw you very desperate and she thought “Okay, fine, you really care about me. I’ll give it a try” and she thought maybe it will get better. But of course, that doesn’t solve the problem. And then it doesn’t get better and eventually it comes back again and of course, you can’t really convince someone to get back together. What you can do is make someone happy. And what I noticed here is, she said, you know, the cliche thing of “I love you but I am not in love with you anymore” and she doesn’t feel happy anymore. But the question is: What does that actually mean? Have you actually asked her what that means?
So does she feel anxious? Does she feel like she’s not being heard? Does she feel like you’re not listening to her? Does she feel like the relationship isn’t stable in terms of money and how stable you are as a family? Does she feel like she doesn’t get to spend time with her friends? Does she feel alone in the relationship, so even though she’s with you she feels lonely? Does she feel like the sex isn’t great, or that she doesn’t get the sex that she wants? Or does she feel like you’re not paying attention to her sexual needs and you’re just trying to satisfy your own sexual needs but hers aren’t met? So for example, maybe she doesn’t have orgasms because you’re not paying attention to her clitoris?
How To Fix A Broken Relationship: How To Make Your Girlfriend Love You Again By Playing “Rate Me Baby”
There are all kinds of reasons why your ex-girlfriend might not be happy. Happy is a very generic emotion, but how does she actually feel? You have to check in with her and figure out how does she feel, and so obviously, you are already at the stage where you kind of know that she’s not happy. So one thing that I really like, that I picked up from a book many, many years ago from… his name is Darren Hardy. He has this book “The Compound Effect” It’s a great book on how to build habits and how to become successful, how to keep going until it compounds. Until all your efforts basically become like an exponential growth curve, and everything compounds on top of each other, just how an investment works.
And anyway, he had this idea in this book that I really liked. I don’t know why he had it in there. It’s not even a relationship book but he had this idea of “Rate me baby!“, which basically is sitting together with your girlfriend, or your wife, spouse, whatever you want to call it and you ask her: “Hey baby, and on a scale of one to ten, how happy were you this month? Or how happy do you feel in general on a scale of one to ten right now?” And then you can see, okay, well, she’s at a two. And then you could ask her “Why are you at a two? Why are you so dissatisfied? Why are you why are you so unhappy?” and then you can actually ask “If you are at a two out of ten, what could I do this month that makes you happier? That makes you a five?”
Or if you’re at a six, you could ask her what can you do to get to an eight? “What is it that I can do for you so that you feel better about us?” So that’s number one. You have to check-in, and obviously, you already know that she’s not happy, so you should ask her “how do you feel?” and “what could I do to make you happier?” and you need to figure out not just she’s not happy, she doesn’t love you anymore, she’s kind of telling you…
She’s not happy but what does it mean, right? The question is what does this really mean and well, he then says:
She Needs To Find Herself: Can’t Fix The Relationship? Let Her Leave — Time Will Make Her Miss You
We haven’t broken up yet because I guess last night things had been super intense and we even had makeup sex but I don’t think that the situation is solved. I still think that she doesn’t want to be in the relationship with me and I feel like the only thing that completely keeps this relationship from falling apart is essentially me trying to convince her with a lot of tears and emotions ‘let’s give this another shot’… It’s like we are completely stuck and I feel that we are on the brink of a breakup. Please, I need some help. Thank you.
Well, so like I said: You shouldn’t be applying a duct tape solution to this. You have to figure out how does she feel and then you can hopefully course-correct. Once you understand what you need from each other you can probably give it to her and she will probably revert back to normal. This is kind of related to a book that I really like: Five love languages, which talks about an emotional bank account. Right, so if you make someone happy, over time they will reciprocate. It’s very simple, straightforward. You just need to know what your girlfriend wants. Then you give it to her and she’s very quickly going to return. She’s going to turn around, be happy again, and she will not care about whatever she’s feeling right now. She feels pretty distant right now. So she must be very disappointed. She’s feeling emotionless, probably maybe almost depressed. Like it’s not going anywhere. And she thinks there’s no resolution to this situation. So that’s what you have to do.
So the question is what if it’s not going to resolve itself, right? So some of you who are watching this probably is already past this tipping point. It’s been too late already. You didn’t figure out how to solve it and she’s gone. She wants time to find herself. What does it really mean? Basically, she means she wants time to be happy again. And with you, she’s not happy right now. So finding herself really just means finding her own happiness and that could be with another guy, that could be with her friends, maybe she’s feeling happier with her friends, hanging out with her friends, than she is with you. Maybe just spending time with you makes her really miserable. So finding herself doesn’t necessarily mean that she needs to completely rediscover herself. Yeah, maybe, a little bit because she’s kind of together with you. She’s bonded and your life together, it’s kind of interwoven at this point. So you’re two people, but then you come together and sometimes we forget who we are and this is why after breakups it has been studied that it kind of coincides with a loss of sense of self.
And that’s why after breakups we have to rediscover this. That’s basically what she wants to do. So you can’t convince her to get back together if you can’t solve it, or anyone who’s watching this where it’s already too late, and she’s already broken up, you can’t convince her to get back together. If she needs to find herself and re-establish who she is well that’s fine. She has to do that and the only way how you can then get her back is if she realizes well, she’s changed some things about herself, whatever she didn’t like, and despite some changes that she’s made with her life…
Maybe she has a new circle of friends. A better work. Maybe she’s moved. Maybe she has a new hobby. But is she happy romantically? Is she happy with the guys she’s been dating? Or maybe she couldn’t find someone who made her happy? Maybe despite the problems that you’ve had, you had a really great connection? You were mostly compatible? It’s just that you didn’t know how to communicate the issues and the reality is every couple will run into these issues and it’s all a matter of figuring out how to resolve them. And some people are better than others at resolving these conflicts. And so what I mentioned earlier at the beginning of this video, that the infatuation period roughly lasts 18 months…
So most couples spend roughly 18 months and after that, it becomes harder to maintain a relationship. So if you are in that range, 18 months, that means you could probably stay a couple for the rest of your lives because believe it or not: There are people who are just fucked up as couples after four months. After three months. They’re fighting so much and it’s just not working out despite all the hormones that should make them happy and satisfied. So you are actually not that bad off. The problem is just you didn’t know how to facilitate and lead the relationship to make things work. You have to figure out how does she feel and then you have to really figure out okay what can you do about this? So for example, if she feels lonely on the weekends because you’re not doing anything together, then obviously you should go on more trips and you should spend more time, not just on trips actually, but just in general to pay attention to her. To listen to her. To have small mini rituals in the morning, during the day, in the evening, even during the weekend when you don’t do something special to just reconnect. Spend the moment with her.
What are the needs that she needs to be fulfilled? And likewise, of course, she needs to do the same thing with you. It’s all about understanding. It’s all about taking charge. It’s all about leading the relationship! Unleash the king within. Don’t be too afraid to talk about these things because obviously, if you don’t talk about them it just gets worse, and then it leads to something like this where she eventually gives up and she wants a break. But she doesn’t really want the break, actually. Because she told you twice she’s not happy. So that means she’s trying to communicate with you that she’s not happy but she probably also doesn’t know how to properly communicate what she exactly needs. She is probably a little bit afraid, or maybe she wants you to figure out, to know what she needs.
But you can’t read her mind. Women, just like men, always think that we can read each other’s minds and we expect it, especially women, but that’s not the case. So you have to take charge and ask her “What do you actually need from me? Why are you not happy?” Once you figure that out she will first of all feel heard. That will make her happy by itself already because she finally feels like the relationship is going somewhere again. You’re paying attention. You’re really taking care of her needs even though you haven’t really arrived at the destination yet. At least you started the journey in the right direction. And then you just steer it in that direction. You make small steps to improve it.
As I said: “Rate me baby” is a great technique where you just check in every now and then, especially if right now it’s really bad, check-in once every two weeks, once every month. It depends obviously on the relationship. Every relationship is different but basically check in with each other and see how can you improve it. It’s all about being conscious. Be mindful about your relationship. And if you reach that stage with your relationship like I said, you can solve the problems in your relationship. So like I said according to studies, roughly 75% of all relationships can actually be saved.
So obviously, the best thing that you can do, always with breakups, or relationships in general, is prevention, rather than fixing the shit that has already piled up into this huge clusterfuck, into this huge pile of problems, right? It’s not nice. It’s not comfortable. So it’s better to tackle these problems one by one and small bite-sized. Much, much better. All right so that was my advice for you. Let me know in the comments what you think. Give me a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel, and of course, never forget to unleash the king within. Take charge in your relationship.
