Today we’re going to talk about the psychology of an ex when you text them.

It’s going to be much in the same vein as some of the articles and videos that I’ve created or wrote over time.

For example, one of my most popular articles ever was, The Male Mind During The No Contact Rule.

Well, what’s interesting is a few days ago I ran a Facebook live on our private Facebook group for our community members who have purchased the ex-boyfriend recovery program. And what’s really interesting is that there was a real huge common theme amongst a lot of the different questions that I would get asked.

A lot of it was along the lines of,

• Why isn’t my ex responding to me?
• Or why is my ex responding to me and then dipping out of the conversation?
• Or why is my ex only responding to me, but they’re not very interested?

And so I wanted to talk a little bit about the male mind during the texting phase, so that you can understand what’s really going on from a male perspective.

And I thought one of the best ways to do this was to actually take the situation of a coaching client that I’m working with right now who’s also struggling with this problem. And so rather than just playing you a traditional voicemail like I typically do, where someone asks me a random question, I thought it would actually take you into a coaching session and what that looks like so that you can actually see me depict what’s going on in an ex’s brain when you’re texting them.

And then what I’m hoping, is that this will give a lot of you different clarity on the many different struggles that you’re experiencing.

So, if you stick with me to the end of this podcast episode, this is going to be a really unique one, but I’m going to answer a lot of different questions from;

why is it taking your ex so long to respond

how do you handle the emotions that you get when you see his text message and you see his name pop up and your heart jumps for joy.

• How do you stay disciplined during those situations?
• I’m also going to go into what is your ex thinking?
• Is he just rolling his eyes every time he sees your name and thinks, “Oh, she’s so annoying. Why won’t she just go away?”
• I’m going to answer if he’s over you or not.
• Or if he’s obsessing over the responses like you are obsessing over the responses when you’re texting him.
• So, if you stick with me until the end of this podcast episode, we’re going to be giving a lot of insight into the male mind during the texting phase.

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The Psychology Of A Man During The Texting Phase

Like I said, I wanted this episode to be a little bit different than our traditional podcast episode where I just play a voicemail and then just sort of organically go from there.

Instead, I’m actually working with a coaching client right now and she’s having a lot of trouble in the texting phase and trying to understand what’s going on in his mind and everything.

So, I want to give you a little bit of what her situation is looking like because I think this is a struggle that I see a lot in different people’s situations when I’m working with them.

So, let me give you a bit of background. I actually think she’s got a pretty decent chance of getting her ex back. That doesn’t guarantee she’s going to get him back of course, but she’s very disciplined, she’s very smart, she’s very intelligent.

That’s basically all you could ask for in a really great coaching client.

But what’s interesting is when we talked on the phone, I told her she needed to get through a complete no contact period before she even thought about reaching out to her ex. And she agreed and she did just that.

She worked with me a little bit on trying to come up with a text message to get a response from her ex. And what I’m about to read to you is the text message that we came up with and the results she got.

And when I say results, I’m talking not just about the text message she used with the contents of the text message she used, but also how long it took him to respond, what he said.

And then I’m actually going to break this whole conversation down and actually answer a few of her big questions. And also some of those questions that I mentioned at the top of the podcast intro.

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Okay.

So, here’s what happened.

She got through a 30 day no contact rule.

Great, right?

But she was really struggling on figuring out an authentic way to reach out to her ex.

So, we worked back and forth and I showed her… I gave her access to the private Facebook group that all of our members get access to if they purchase the ex-boyfriend recovery program or even a coaching session.

And I showed here is what real life successes look like with regards to texting.

This is what is yielding high level responses.

So, I gave her the theory of the hook, the pattern interrupt and keeping the interests all about his interests.

But where she found some confidence, was in seeing some of the other members getting positive responses.

And what seems to work for a lot of members is this damsel in distress type of a text message where you’re basically asking your ex for advice but only his advice. And so here’s the text message that we came up with.

“I have a problem and only really trust you on this one as it involves your area of expertise.”

So, she sent the text message and she got an immediate response.

A minute didn’t go by before she got a response.

And his response was, “Okay, what’s the question?”

And then he responded again saying, “How are you doing?”

Which is interesting, he added on to his original response.

But she’s smart.

Like I said, this woman is extremely disciplined.

And what she decided to do, she decided to wait about an hour before she would respond because she didn’t want to look like she was just hanging on his every word. She wanted to appear like she was super busy.

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So, she responds, she says,

“I’m doing great. I actually need to order some stuff for work, any idea what companies cater to this type of a thing?”

And then he didn’t respond.

So, this is where things really got interesting.

So, she waited… Like I said, she’s disciplined, she’s patient.

She waited 48 hours before she emailed me again and basically asked me,

“Hey, why hasn’t he respond to this? Why would he respond so quickly to the initial text message and then not respond to me actually asking the actual question to him or me needing his help. Why wouldn’t he respond to that?”

And so, I have a little bit of an omission at this point, but I’m pretty darn busy.

So, a lot of times we’ve even cut off some of the email support, but this is a high level coaching client, so it took me a little while to respond, but eventually I did respond.

And so I responded literally probably a day after she sent me this message or she sent me this email.

And I responded and it was just something generic like, “Hey, did he respond yet?” And I gave her maybe some basic thoughts on what may be going on in his head.

And what’s interesting is, yesterday she got back to me and said, “Actually it’s the craziest thing, 73 hours went by and he finally responded to the question, what is going on?”

So, that’s what I want to… That’s the situation we’re in right now.

And I think this is… What’s interesting is in those 73 hours, I did a Facebook live and I noticed that a lot of the people asking questions throughout the Facebook live all related to this texting no response or little responses or late response type thing. And why would a man do that and what’s going on in his head.

So, I wanted to use… And I asked this client permission to do this. I wanted to use her as a Guinea pig.

So, she’s going to remain anonymous and the text messages are actually changed, so they’re not identical to what really happened, but I changed them up enough to get the spirit of what was really going on.
So, what’s going on here?

Well, there’s a lot of questions to answer, but I think we should answer the first one most in why did it take him so long to respond?

Why Does It Take So Long For Men To Respond? 

So, if you don’t know, she reaches out to him originally with the first contact text message and gets an immediate response.

Then she actually piggybacks off of that and asks him the actual question she wanted to ask and then 73 hours go by and then he finally responds.

So, what’s going on here?

Well, after seeing… It’s really funny because as you go through these processes and as you work with people, a lot of times you don’t have the full picture of what’s going on until enough time goes by, right?

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So, she’s panicking at 48 hours thinking,

“Oh, why would he respond so quickly to my first text message and then not respond at all to my second text message?”

And now the question has changed to why did it take him so long to respond to the second text message?

And I think ultimately that’s because he’s thinking about what he should say or if he should respond.

Let’s look at this from his perspective.

I am him and she reaches out to me after 30 days of not talking.

And her text message says something along the lines of,

“Hey, I have a really big problem and only really trust you to help me.”

All of a sudden, I’m really happy that she’s responded.

So, I respond really quickly. “Okay, what’s the question?”

And then I piggyback on that saying, “How are you doing?”

Now, what’s interesting is that second response he put in there.

So, usually when we’re dealing with exes, the first thing they’ll do is just go right into,

“Hey, what is the question? I’ll help you.”

But this one showed an extra bit of interest in his response, right?

So, the first one was, “Hey, what’s the question?”

Which is the traditional response we would hope to get from an ex.

But the second response that he added on top of that was,

“Hey, how are you doing?”

This is sort of an olive branch to talk about the relationship.

But I instructed my client not to talk about the relationship because oftentimes I’ve seen it go South enough to know it’s usually not a good idea this early in the stage. And so, rather than directly responding to his second question of, “Hey, how are you doing?”

She only responded to the first question, which was him saying, “Okay, what’s the question?”

She waits an hour to respond of course, and she basically says, “Hey, I’m doing great. I need to order some stuff for work.” And he… I think there’s a couple of things going on for how long it took him to respond to this.

The first one is he’s deciding whether or not he should respond to you or not.

And the second thing to look at is he’s maybe upset about the fact that he wants to talk about the relationship and you didn’t bite.

And the fact that you didn’t bite angers him a little bit. And it sort of, he has the knee jerk, “Fine, screw her. I’m not going to do that.”

But this is the beautiful thing about time and silence. 73 hours goes by, that’s a long time to think. It’s sitting in the back of his mind constantly.

He’s thinking about, “Why would she reach out to me and act like nothing happened?” It is gnawing at him. And eventually curiosity takes hold and he can’t help but respond. And so that’s why I think he ended up responding and taking so long to respond. Because you notice he does only keep it strictly business when he does respond.

But I think what he really wants to do is just have a conversation about the breakup.

But I don’t think it’s smart to have a conversation of the breakup at this early of a stage, it’s better just to act like it doesn’t exist for a while, get into some rapport building and then slowly start talking about those things.

But what’s interesting is that 73 hours, that period where he’s just sitting and he’s thinking and it’s gnawing on him, it tells you a lot about how it’s important to be patient.

I’ve been doing this long enough to see all types of clients.

There’s the clients who are extremely patient, there’s the clients who are extremely impatient. And so, I guess what I’m saying to my impatient clients, is a lot of times what you end up doing is when you reach out what the killer first text message and you don’t get a response, sometimes you need to wait three days because they’re deciding whether or not they want to respond to enough.

And sometimes what people do instead is they dig themselves in a deeper hole by sending another text message saying something along the lines of, “Hey, aren’t you going to respond or not?” It’s never a good idea to do that.

It’s almost always a good idea just to wait and see if he responds and if he doesn’t after three or four days, it gives you a good indication that maybe he needs to take a look at your text message and maybe there was something wrong in your text message, maybe the timing was off.

And you could learn a lot just by waiting. And it’s the hardest thing to do. And it’s a perfect segue into the next big thing that I want to talk about. And that’s how do you handle the emotions you get when you see his name pop up on a text message.

How Do You Handle The Emotions You Get When You See His Name Pop Up In A Text? 

So, this is… I asked my client exactly,

“Hey, what are some of the burning questions or the struggles you’re having right now?”

And this was one of the questions and struggles she was having.

“Every time I see his text message, my heart leaps, I can’t help but just jump with joy, but it makes me a little overemotional maybe. And I want to know how can I keep those emotions in check.”

And leveling with everyone listening here, there’s not an easy quick answer to be honest with you because… And I guess the way I would describe it is… And I think I made this analogy a few podcast episodes ago, but growing up in high school and everything, I used to play baseball.

I was actually one of the best pitchers on my team.

So, I remember I would always be extremely nervous before the game started. And then once the game started, the nerves settled down as you’re doing this physical activity as you’re actually doing the activity you’re nervous about or nervous for.

And I feel like texting an ex is a little bit like that.

You’re extremely emotional, nervous, you’re worried, your mind’s going all over the place.

And ultimately the only thing that you can do to handle those emotions a little bit, is actually get engaged in the activity with them.

So, my best piece of advice for those of you who are extremely emotional, there’s two pieces of advice.

The best one is the more you get through this process, the less the overemotional happy heart jump thing will happen.

You just have to make a mental note to stay disciplined at the beginning. So, those are the big two things. The more you do it, the less it will happen, but at the beginning you need to be almost overly disciplined.

And so my best piece of advice for those of you who are struggling with this, I would say that you’re struggling with this or you’re having difficulty with this, if you send a text message to your ex and then an hour goes by and he doesn’t respond, but you’ve checked your phone over 20 times in that hour.

That’s a good indication that you’re not disciplined enough.

What are some of the ways you can be disciplined?

The best piece of advice I’ve ever given to people in situations like this is to try to find an activity that makes you so busy, you don’t have a chance to deal with your phone.

Sometimes the best thing to do is actually turn your phone off for 24 hours or something.

What’s really interesting is there’s this YouTuber that sometimes since I run an online business, I followed to try to learn about what are the trends? What can I be doing better? How can I reach more people?

I want more people to understand my message, right?

And so, this YouTuber was really brash, he’s really… Volatile, I guess is a good word.

A lot of people just have all sorts of different opinions on them. Right?

You either love them or you hate them. And sometimes people like that can be a little rough for people.

But I always found him interesting because I was like, “Okay, there’s a method to his madness. He’s clearly getting results. He’s doing really well.”

And as life has gone on, I get busy with my own business and trying to understand also the nuances of the human mind to try to help people through breakups.

And I got out of watching him.

And what’s really crazy is this morning, the first thing I did when I woke up was I actually checked YouTube. And one of his videos got recommended to me and I was like, “I wonder what he’s up to. it looks like he’s lost a lot of weight.”

And this guy was making literally millions of dollars a month.

This guy was rich beyond his wildest dreams and he just went into this gigantic story about how what he was doing wasn’t making him happy and he just quit his job and he didn’t even ask for a buyout.

He ran this multimillion dollar a month business and he just literally didn’t want to do it anymore and he didn’t want any friction between his partners or anything. So, we went to them and says, “Hey, you guys own 100% of this now.

I don’t want any… I’m not going to ask for a buyout or anything. I’m just going to do what I want to do.” And he went monk style minimalist. He got rid of all things that could distract him. He broke his phone because he didn’t want to get distracted by it.

He didn’t buy any furniture, he sold his house.

He had a bunch of Lamborghinis and things.

He sold that.

He just went like monk style minimalist.

And the whole point was he’s trying to remove distractions so we can focus all of his energy on to his new business that he’s starting.

And I found this interesting. And I think there’s something that we can learn from this level of dedication and this level of discipline when it comes to having trouble with the emotions when you see a text message response or you don’t get that text message response.

I think you’re going to struggle throughout this process because there… I guarantee you, you will go through this process whether you’re even trying to get over your ex or even trying to get your ex back. Something will not go according to plan. That’s just the way it works. And I think the only thing you can rely on is yourself.

And so, if you’re extremely disciplined and you remove distractions or distract yourself enough or become so busy, you don’t really have time to check your phone, you’re going to be in a good position.

Those typically, are the kind of people who do really great.

So, my best piece of advice, if you’re looking for a distraction, is to try to find something you’re just as passionate about as your ex and focus your energy on that because if you’re just as passionate about this hobby or this thing or this business, it’ll prevent you from looking at your phone and getting disappointed when they don’t respond to you like you want them to.

But let’s get back on topic here.

We talked about how you handle the emotions when you see a text response or when you don’t see a text response.

Is Your Ex Rolling His Eyes Thinking “She’s So Annoying” When You Text Him?

Let’s go into what he’s thinking. Is he rolling his eyes thinking, “Oh, she’s so annoying.

Why won’t she just go away?”

And ultimately when I look at my client’s situation, I don’t think that’s happening whatsoever.

The fact that it took him 73 hours to respond to the original text message or the second text message, tells me that he’s not thinking, “Why won’t she just go away?” Or, “Oh, she’s so annoying.”

To me, it says he’s thinking on, “Why would she send me this text message?”

So, he’s hyper analyzing everything and even trying to go through this pendulum swing of emotions on whether or not he should respond or not. And I think what’s interesting is when you’re looking at people or when you’re looking at exes, and I can only speak for myself, but I’m a really good litmus test for a lot of ex-boyfriends.

So, when I’m having these thoughts, when I’m rolling my eyes or they’re annoying or they’re not interesting enough or I want them to go away, usually I just won’t respond. But I’ve actually found that exes are sometimes a little bit different than me, in the fact that they have other types of behaviors.

So, what I’m going to do for you right now, is give you some of the three things that you need to keep an eye on if your ex is growing disinterested in the conversation with you.

Beware Of One Word Responses

So, let’s use my client’s original text message as an example.

The original text message was, “I have a problem and only really trust you on this one as it involves your area of expertise.”

His original response was,

“Okay, well what’s the question?”

If he just responded, “Okay,” usually not a good sign.

One word text messages are a sign of disinterest.

So, sometimes though, people freak out when I say this because there’ll be in a two hour long conversation with an ex and you’ll send a text message and he’ll say cool to it or something like that.

There’s a difference between a one word text response at the beginning of a conversation than in the middle of a conversation. So, timing of when this one word text message response occurs is important to keep in mind.

What we’re looking for is the beginning of conversations being one word.

So, you’re trying to start a rapport building type of a conversation, where you’re building up value and your ex is giving you nothing to work with.

Instead of saying, “Okay, well, what’s the question?” They’re saying, cool or okay. That’s the first thing I’d keep an eye on.

The second thing is more of a gut feeling. And this is what I like to call the being nice type of responses.

Beware Of The “Being Nice” Responses

So, have we ever been in a situation where we’re afraid of hurting our exes feelings so we just respond to them to be nice?

And usually the way you can determine whether or not this is happening is if you get into a conversation with someone and they seem responsive at first, but eventually they just trail and they’re dull. And ultimately a really great sign that they’re just being nice to respond is they take hours and hours and hours to respond to every single text message that you have.

And even the contents of the text message are vague, they’re not one word responses, but they’re just vague.

They offer no interest in what you’re doing whatsoever.

Ultimately, the best way to determine this is they’re just being nice, it’s a gut feeling type of a thing.

You need to keep an eye out for those because that’s a sign that your ex is growing disinterested in the conversation or they’re maybe thinking, “This person’s getting on my nerves.”

The third one is the most easiest one and the most frightening one for many people.

Beware If Your Ex Doesn’t Respond

And that’s if your ex doesn’t respond at all.

So, this is really hard, but I find that in most cases, probably above 80% of people do not have to worry about one word responses. It can happen once or twice, but usually at some point you have a conversation with your ex.

Generally speaking, when you’re looking at word responses, I don’t really think I need to explain this, but essentially it’s where you reach out with a really great text message and your ex does not respond to you at all. It’s a no response.

They don’t give you anything. Generally, there are reasons for why your ex will not respond to your text message. Number one, it is not intriguing whatsoever.

So, there’s not a good enough hook to hook them on the line, so to speak. But weirdly enough, I’m finding that more and more, it seems to be interest base. So, if you’re texting your ex about something that they’re not interested in, they’re usually not going to respond to that. So, if you can combine the two concepts of having a really killer hook that is about something they’re interested in, you have a really, really good text message.

And if you’re consistently sending those text messages and you’re not getting responses whatsoever, the third thing I’d take a look at is timing. When are you sending these text messages? And sometimes the craziest thing is 30 days might not be enough.

Maybe sometimes months might not be enough. It’s just the timing isn’t right for them to even be open to talking to you. And that’s sort of a perfect segue into the last thing I really want to talk about is, is your exit over you if they’re doing this no response or little response or taking forever to respond type thing? And are they obsessing over your responses as much as you are?

So, I think they’re obsessing… Okay. So, let’s talk about the obsessing over responses first. Your ex is probably obsessing over responses if you’re seeing something happening like the client example I’m using here, where it takes them 73 hours to respond. Whether you can tell they’re going back and forth on whether or not they should respond or not. That’s an indication that they’re obsessing over whether or not they should respond to you.

Is Your Ex Boyfriend Over You?

Now, with regards to if your ex is over you, that’s a really hard thing for me to determine because I don’t know your specific situation and it’s different for every single specific situation, but it’s been my experience that struggle and suffering changes minds like no other experience.

What do I mean by that?

Okay. I always laugh when people have opinions over things they never really experienced themselves before.

I’ll give you a personal example. Many of you don’t know this because it’s something I don’t like to talk about and something I’m actually still struggling with. But over the past year and a half, I have not been able to sit. I got…

Okay. So, I got something called a pilonidal cyst, which is basically the cyst that forms around your tailbone and it makes sitting an excruciating thing. Anyways, I got a surgery for it and the first surgeon improperly did the surgery.

He supposed to actually take it out and then leave it open so that it can heal from the inside out. He didn’t do that. He actually stitched it shut and put surgeon’s glue. And as a result, the wound got infected and no one caught it except me.

I was saying, “The pain’s worse than ever before,” but no one caught it. So, for months I was going around and the infection just kept getting worse and worse and worse to the point where I needed two extra surgeries after that to just clean out this infection and there’s almost always complications.

And the reason I’m talking about it now, is because it’s given me a lot of understanding for people who have chronic issues.

It’s something that I never really thought about before and something I always maybe was a little arrogant about. Like, “Oh, that will never happen to me.”

But I’m not afraid to admit that it’s been extremely one of the most difficult times of my entire life.

I’ve never not been… I’m always an active person, I like to play tennis, I like to run, I like to do active things outside. I have not been outside at all. A lot of people during the Coronavirus quarantine are freaking out because they can’t go outside and I just laugh because that’s been my entire life for the past year and a half and it’s still not over. I’m still healing and there could be another complication.

Who knows?

But my point is, you learn a lot about yourself and about what’s important to you when you go through difficult times in your life. And I always laugh to myself when women are really afraid of hurting their exes feelings.

And I try to explain to them that, “Him going through a difficult time, him being miserable without you is an essential part for him realizing that he’s not over you.” You want him to struggle.

Sometimes you even want him to go out and date and realize that the new girl isn’t as awesome as you are.

It’s important for him to experience pain and suffering and struggle for him to understand that he really misses you and that you were a stable, positive force on his life. Now, sometimes men go out and they have the exact opposite reaction.

They’ll struggle and realize, “You know what? I feel like I’m better off without her.” And that’s okay too. And the way I’m saying that is because usually if they come to that conclusion, it means that you guys were always on different wavelengths and you shouldn’t have been together in the first place.

But I think what makes the ex-boyfriend recovery program, everything that I’ve created, ex-boyfriend recovery so unique, is the fact that we’re authentic, but also we’re not afraid to tell people that, it’s okay if your ex struggles.

You want your ex to have a hard time without you, because that’s what will make the difference in the end.