Not all breakups are made equal - some can be very amicable where two people mutually agree to the break up, while other can be nasty to the point where fights, quarrels and even getting physical is common. All in all, it still remains a break up.
In some cases, you probably feel like you still miss your ex and that you want your ex back in your life. Here are some strategies and tactics to tilt the chances of getting your ex back in your favor.
The Popular No Contact RuleIf you have been searching the web long enough, I'm sure you are already familiar with this method. Basically what this is that you avoid any contact with your ex. Be it calls, texting, in person, or just through emails, you don't want any contact with them.
The principle behind this rule is simple: not contacting them is meant do a few things:
- Work on yourself so you start feeling positive again. This is important because you want to get yourself to the best condition that you can possibly become. The only way your ex can be attracted to you again is if you make yourself attractive again. And you can't be attractive unless you are your best self.
- It lets the bad feelings, emotions and memories fade in your ex's mind. This is important because if your ex is still angry or holding a grudge towards you, it can be hard to get your ex to feel positive towards you again. I'm sure you have probably been really mad with your ex in the relationship before. And if you tried to resolve things when you are still feeling heated and very angry, chances are that it won't work very well. So instead, you walk away for a while and let yourself cool down. So when you come back and approach the matter this time round, you would be more calm and in a position to really think properly. So it's the same idea here.
- The plus side of the No Contact Rule is that you can get your ex to miss you! Now, this is not always the case, but sometimes you and your ex just badly misunderstand each other and end up mis-communicating. But at the end of the day, you two still care for each other. And as the saying goes "absence makes the heart grow fonder", there is a chance that your ex might miss you after not being in contact with you for a while. So that's also something that the No Contact Rule aims to do.
I call this the Happiness-In-A-Pic Strategy because basically what it is is to let your ex see you in a very positive light. For this strategy, it utilizes the social media to let your ex see a different side of you than the you your ex experienced towards the end of the relationship.
But if you are blocked on social media, then you want to read this post on how to get yourself unblocked first.
Benefit #1 - You Can Actually Have FunThe gist of this strategy is basically you taking photos of yourself either alone of yourself looking really good and portraying happiness, or with a group of friends and showing you smiling and again looking really good.
So here's the psychology behind this strategy: We aren't just randomly taking pictures of yourself and posting it on your Facebook for no reason. There is actually a lot of psychology behind doing this that is beneficial for both building the attractiveness in you and getting your ex closer to you.
You see, when you take pictures of yourself having fun, you imprint that picture of you in your mind. When you see that picture, you start to associate those feelings of you had when you were having fun in that picture without your ex.
It's exactly like how whenever you see a picture of your ex, or a place where you two used to hangout, or the stuff that he bought for you, you start to suddenly feel down and depressed and maybe even start crying.
Why is this so?
Because we humans associate our feelings to our senses. And because you have associated strong feelings to your ex, you have unconsciously conditioned yourself to feel sad, depressed, or angry whenever anything you see reminds you of your ex.
There was a very famous experimental study called the Pavlov's Theory where he conditioned a dog to salivate upon hearing the sound of a bell, when the dog normally only salivated when it saw food.
What Pavlov did to change this condition was that whenever he gave food to the dog, he would ring a bell. He would repeat this until one day, Pavlov just rang the bell on its own without giving the food and sure enough, the dog would start to salivate. The dog had unconsciously been conditioned to link the sound of a bell to food.
So in your case, the reason we want to take picture of yourself having fun with a group of people is because we want to condition you to bring up this particular memory you have and feel happy whenever you see the picture. You have the capability to genuinely have fun and enjoy yourself even without your ex!
Now, I have had some clients tell me that they are only just "covering their true feelings", which is sadness, depression or anger in them. Really? What is considered "true feelings" to you?
Benefit #2 - You Gain More ConfidenceYou see, we humans are complex and odd creatures. Sometimes we choose to tell ourselves things to justify what we want to feel. Remember the Mind- Frame Shift Technique that I taught you. It is what we want to focus on that causes us to feel the way we feel.
If you wanted to feel good, all you had to do was focus on positive thoughts and images in our mind. And that is one of the important reason why we want to use the Happiness-in-a-Picture Strategy to help you see that you can have fun and be happy whenever you want.
When you see yourself having fun, you actually gain more confidence in yourself. I have many clients, just like yourself, tell me that they realize that they feel so much better about themselves after seeing the pictures and realizing that they don't actually need their ex to give permission to themselves to have fun!
Benefit #3 - You Build Deeper Bonds with Your New FriendsThey now see themselves in a totally different light than the sad, depressed self they were when they just broke up with their ex. The good news is that you are no different.
When you take more Happiness-in-a-Picture, you start to build new memories into your mind and soon, all the recent memories are of you having so much fun that you don't want to ever go back to feeling depressed again!
The comments that you made are strategic in the sense where you firstly only talk about non-negative things, and where you actually will be forging deeper bonds with your new friends.
For example when you make a comment on your pictures saying that you had so much fun at the meet up and you receive a comment like "Yea, let's do it again guys! We had so much fun!" You start to feel good as well.
More and more recent research have shown that lack of bonding can affect one's ability to recover from negative emotions including sadness, depression, anger, worthlessness, or even suicidal feelings. One study has shown that a person who is suffering from extreme depression is much more likely to recover when introduced to new people than when being alone.
Benefit #4 - You Will Attract the Attention of Your ExThis research illustrates that when we have a bonded relationship, we are alive and growing. When we are isolated, we are slowly dying. So create a deeper bond with your new found friends as that will make you feel good and is part of our strategy to make you have an Attractive personality.
Trust me, every little subtle thing counts to how you will interact with your ex in the last week's lesson where you finally get to make contact with your ex. So you want to build all these foundations right starting from here.
This is probably the part you are looking forward to. If you have your ex on your Facebook or Twitter, chances are your pictures will show up on his feed and he can't help but notice how much fun you are having in a group.
Your Happiness-in-a-Picture accomplishes several things:
Firstly, your ex will notice how different and fabulous you look.When they see how good you look now, it will cause them to have the Regret Syndrome, which causes them to regret breaking up with you in the first place.
Your ex may lower his/her defences against you making it easier to contact them later on. When they see a change in your looks, and have the Regret Syndrome, they may perceive that you have changed and would even entertain the thought of speaking with you again.
Your ex will start to be curious after seeing many pictures of you having fun. They may even want to contact you after see your happiness-in-a-Picture. I had a couple of clients whose ex have text them after seeing these pictures and asked them how they we recently.
Your ex will start to reminisce the fun times they had with you.This is a good thing because when they remember the good times with you, they will not think of the quarrels you two had.
Your ex may have the impression that you have changed and consider getting back with you. This is very possible and your ex may even contact you to ask you out. At this stage, if your ex asks you out, you have to ask yourself whether you are emotionally ready. Emotionally ready as in that you have the strong mental fortitude that you are okay just being friends, because your ex may just want to be friends with you only.