How To Show Your Ex You’ve Changed While You Are In No Contact Rule Mode

I’m going to tell you how you can show your ex that you’ve changed.

A lot of people who are starting the No Contact Rule want to know how they can show their ex that they’ve changed if their ex is not hearing from them.

How Important Is Change To Your Ex Right Now?

First, you need to know that right after the breakup, your ex does not care that much about whether you’ve changed or not.

Mostly because they don’t want the relationship right now and they don’t believe that you’ll really change. They also know that there hasn’t been enough time to pass for it to be a legitimate change.

Here’s the deal. Even though there might be issues that your ex wants you to change and has maybe wanted you to change for a long time, at the breakup, they don’t care about those issues.

That might sound surprising, but basically, things like the way you interacted or things you didn’t do caused a drop in attraction, and it was pretty severe.

It took a while to happen, but when it did, even if you could snap your fingers and change instantly, it would not change how your ex feels yet.

The reason for that is because the damage has been done. Their attraction for you is lower than it was and it’s too low for them to want to be in the relationship anymore. So, because they are not attracted to you to the same level as before, even if you were to make a sudden change, it takes a while for there to actually be an impact on your ex.

This is not always the case, sometimes making a change quickly can have an immediate effect, but that’s usually before they break up with you.

So, what’s the solution?

Giving them the breakup, backing off, letting them experience life without you, and for them to experience a real breakup is so important. It’s vital and you cannot rush the process no matter how badly you want to!

So, be patient. Patience is a superpower for you in this situation.

Some changes take time like weight loss. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a few weeks or months to really start to see some progress. So, you need to go ahead and do that if that’s part of it because sometimes the physical part plays a role — especially if there has been a negative change physically like weight gain.

The good news is that once that improvement happens, it’s visible. They can see it so you don’t have to say “I’ve changed, I’ve lost weight.” Obviously that’s difficult if they can’t see you, so subtle pictures on social media can be helpful.

No contact is still the way to go to have a good chance of getting them to where it even matters to them and to where they want to see you and to interact with you. This is the point where they’re considering the idea of getting back together with you.

If it’s a change they can’t see, let’s say it’s an emotional change, maybe you’re not as argumentative, maybe you’re not as dramatic, maybe you allow more peace, maybe you want to show them equal affection or greater affection whereas, maybe before you were not affectionate enough or it was one-sided. Or maybe you’re going to stop rejecting them.

If you just tell them that you’ve changed, first of all, it makes it look like you’re just changing to try to get them back. So, it doesn’t look like you’re changing because you want to or because you know you need to. Their attitude will be “Oh, so I have to break up with you to get you to change?”

That causes them to be angry and bitter at you, which pushes it further down the road in the opposite direction. You don’t want that!

It’s very important and I strongly recommend that you don’t ask them, “Have you seen that I’ve changed?” or “Can you tell I’m doing better?” However, if it’s a matter that they really took issue with and they complained about a lot and you are making a promise to change or you’re telling them that you understand the problem — that’s something you should do.

You should only do it once. Ideally it would be at the moment that they break up with you but that might not have happened.

If you haven’t done that and there is an issue or there are multiple issues that they have said is a problem and you know it’s a problem, then you do need to reach out and tell them but don’t say it as though you’re telling them, “Okay, I’ve said this so now let’s get back together.”

First of all, that will seem manipulative so they are less likely to believe it and their attraction is not high enough yet for them to want to do that.

They want to see it, but at the same time, they don’t care so much because their attraction is low and it will take time for that to come back and then it can matter a lot to them. So only tell them if it is an issue that they have brought up and it’s an issue where you have not yet said that you’re working to change it.

If they know that you’re working to change, then you don’t have to say it again. As a matter of fact, I don’t recommend that you say it again because it will look manipulative.

Like I mentioned before, the best thing to do is to stay away from them, to stay in no contact, and let them experience the negatives of being away from you. Let them reflect on the good times and at least come back to the table to where they’re open and they’re wanting to talk and interact a little bit and just kind of see what they feel.

A lot of people think that no contact is supposed to make them completely want to get back together with you. Sometimes it does, and I’m really happy when it does. And as a matter of fact, that happens a decent amount of the time. But a lot of times, what no contact will do is get them to the table to where they do miss you.

They are able to reflect during that time and see that there were good memories with you and they may think that their decision to breakup might have been hasty and it might have been a mistake. And so, they just kind of want to start interacting with you to see what they feel, to see if maybe you have made some small changes.

Doesn’t mean they’ll dive in right away, but they at least want to see that, and so they are coming to the table, so to speak, to talk with you about it. That’s where no contact can get you. The rest is going to be your ex determining if you have truly changed and if they think that you are you going to be the person that maybe you were when the relationship was good.

Relationship Peak?

Maybe the relationship had reached a peak, maybe this person wanted a stronger commitment and they were hoping for a relationship that would result in marriage or something else where the relationship is moving forward.

Be patient. The key here is patience because you will want to overwhelm them with evidence. That probably seems like what you need to do. What you really need to do to give yourself the best chance of this progressing and building back into the relationship that you want is you need to be patient enough to let them see it in parts.

You don’t have to give it back to them all at once and show them all the changes all at once. In fact, that is less likely to work because it’s not as believable and can seem manipulative. You want them to slowly come back to the relationship because if it happens too quickly, a lot of times they can get “buyer’s remorse.” In that case, they just feel like they have been swung around too quickly and they don’t trust themselves.

It also can make them doubt that your changes are authentic. In this situation, speed is not your friend. You want the changes to be something that they see over a period of time so that they believe it.

You will have opportunities. They will come up, and even a small example can be very helpful. You’re just looking for progress here, you’re just looking for small steps in the right direction. That’s how you’re going to rebuild your relationship.

The quick things go out just as quickly, and it’s very important for you to know that one thing that can happen is that when you have been in no contact and you two are interacting again, a lot of times the contact is not as frequent as it was when you were fully a couple. Maybe you two have started talking a little bit and you’re hearing from each other throughout the day, but you’re not seeing each other quite as much, and it’s slowly building back to where your communication is regular again.

The good news is, showing them a small change, just a step in the right direction, gives that silence more power because they start to see you through that lens and so while you’re not interacting with them as much, their reflection and their memory of you from yesterday or last week to today is that you have improved. That’s a big deal!

So they start to build on that and attraction, which is something that comes from within them towards you, can start to build. So it’s very key here that you allow that to happen and that you don’t rush any of this.

It’s also very important to understand that breakup dynamics are different from relationship dynamics. So a lot of times, people will say, “Well, they broke up with me because I wasn’t showing them enough affection or I rejected them a lot” (or something else). And so, “I’ve got to do those things differently to show them in person or else they won’t want to come back.”

Whereas that makes sense if you’re in the relationship together, or maybe they come to you and say, “I’m just not feeling it. I want to keep trying, but these are the issues.” Yes, in that case you need to focus on immediate change. You need to be very communicative with them.

But after a breakup, you need to allow it to happen in small pieces, and you get that opportunity when you have stayed away and given them the breakup. Because then, what you do is magnified, because it actually matters to your ex.

So, to review quickly, the reason you don’t just overwhelm them with your change right away is because it doesn’t matter to them right away.

That’s why you go into no contact to rebuild some of the value of the relationship, to allow them to reflect, and to let them experience being without you so that they can miss you. Because then, what you do matters more.

If they do not miss you, if they are glad to be away from you, which oftentimes they are in the first couple of weeks after the breakup, then those changes do not mean much to them.

But if they can see the relationship with more value, see you with more value, and begin to think they’ve made a mistake, then those changes matter a lot more.

The simple secret is that all you have to do is show them over time where examples will come up, and you can show that you’re responding differently. You don’t need to overwhelm them, and that can actually be bad. What you need to really focus on is positive interaction, conversations, closeness, and rebuilding some of that. And they will, along the way, be able to see those changes. So, it’s something you don’t need to rush, and it will actually work a lot better.

My Emergency Breakup Kit expands on this and provides more sophisticated strategies that work to get your ex back.

After you access the kit, you’ll be surprised at how much someone can learn about getting an ex back after two decades in the relationship-recovery service.

-Coach Lee
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Originally published at https://myexbackcoach.com on February 8, 2023.