Today I thought it would be interesting to conduct a study on how long the recovery and reconciliation time is on a breakup by looking at our success stories. So, here are the rules. We are only looking at actual successful reconciliations.

For each of the “types of breakups” we talk about I’ll attach the 30-60 minute interview I conducted so you can watch it and glean insight for yourself. In all thought we’re trying to answer one specific question.

Does the type of breakup you had with your ex correlate to how long it will take to get them back?

In all, there are 12 types of breakups that we’ve found and here’s how we rank them,

1. You break up with them (1 month)
2. You don’t do a no contact rule after the breakup  (1 month) *I believe this is an outlier
3. You have a long distance ex (1.5 months)
4. You’ve been blocked by an ex (1.5 months)
5. You act overly anxious after the breakup (1.5 months)
6. You go “all in” on the no contact rule (2 months)
7. They break up with you (3 months)
8. Your ex is extremely fearful avoidant (6 months)
9. You’ve been ghosted by an ex (10 months)
10. You are in an on again/off again relationship (10 months)
11. Your ex breaks up with you when you are pregnant (15 months)
12. Your ex moves on to someone else (36 months)

(Side Note: I do want to point out that this study has a bit of a flaw. We only have one data point for each of these “types of breakups.” This is for three primary reasons, privacy, success bulk, combo situations. Many who succeed with our program aren’t comfortable being interviewed in the public domain and so we aren’t able to count them. Additionally most of our success stories fall into one singular category, an ex breaking up with them out of the blue and so it sort of skews our data. Finally, some of the success stories featured here actually were combo situations meaning we had to make decisions on how to categorize them so that skewed data as well)

Let’s dive in to these breakups a little more in no particular order.

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You Break Up With Them

The success story I’d like to highlight here is one of my favorites. It also happens to be the first time we had a client not only get an ex back but eventually marry her ex.

Here’s a bit of background on her situation.

• Name: Jessy
• Type of Breakup: She broke up with him after she wanted him to talk to a counselor and he didn’t want to.
• Time Apart Before Recovery: May of 2016 to June of 2016 (1 Month)

Now, I will say that I believe you breaking up with an ex makes getting them back a little bit easier from a positioning standpoint but even Jessy’s situation seems abnormally quick. My gut tells me that she’s more of an exception to the rule but the data point is there staring us right in the face.

They Break Up With You Out Of The Blue

This breakup story is one of our most recent success story interviews from a woman named Lee who just essentially took the ungettable persona to another level.

• Name: Lee
• Type of Breakup: She believes everything is fine and then one day, before she’s about to go to the beach with her boyfriend he hits her with a bombshell, he wants to break up
• Time Apart Before Recovery: 3 Months

What gets lost often with Lee’s story is that not only did she get her ex back but she had a complete mindset shift in that time apart that after having him back for about a month she decided to be the one to break up with him. She no longer thought HE was good enough for her.

*mic drop*

Your Ex Moves On To Someone Else

Bethany here is another success story that really stood out to me. In fact, I had a really tough time categorizing her “type of breakup” because… well, she had essentially more than one,

• Her ex left her when she was pregnant.
• Moved in with another woman
• Constantly arguing with one another

I decided to categorize hers though as an an ex moving on to someone else because we already have another pregnant situation on this list.

• Name: Bethany
• Type of Breakup: An ex moved in with another woman
• Time Apart Before Recovery: 3 years

Again, just like Jessy I believe Bethany was an exception to the rule. My general sense is that if your ex moves on to someone else it typically takes longer but Bethany was a really special case in the fact that there were a lot of external circumstances that culminated into some pretty serious headwind.

Nevertheless, she persevered.

Your Ex Breaks Up With You When You Are Pregnant

This is another one of those really interesting success stories where our client not only get her ex back (or had an ex ask for her back) but she decided she didn’t want him and is now married to someone else. Yep, sometimes it’s a good thing to reject your ex.

• Name: Rachel
• Type Of Breakup: Her ex leaves her two months after the baby is born
• Time Apart Before Recovery: 15 months apart (1 Year and 3 months)

To be honest with you this is one situation where I’m so happy that Rachel got a happy ending and a guy that treats her the way she deserves. It’s not easy being a single mom. Much less when the father leaves two months after the baby is born. So, the fact that she found someone better that loves her, supports her, accepts her and is now married to her.

What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?

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Sometimes there is justice in the world.

You Act Overly Anxious After The Breakup

So, if you’ve ever done any of the following,

• Showed up to your exes house
• Consistently broke no contact
• Argued on the phone
• Had screaming matches in the middle of the night

Then this success story is probably one you’ll want to listen to.

• Name: Sophie
• Type Of Breakup: Acting anxious after the breakup and making every mistake you can possibly make
• Time Apart Before Recovery: 1.5 Months

This was actually the most surprising success story time frame of the bunch because typically making gigantic mistakes and acting overly anxious is supposed to lower your chances of success. Nevertheless, if anything it should bolster your confidence that just because you act anxious and make mistakes in the post breakup period it’s not going to ruin your chances entirely.

You Have An Extremely Fearful Avoidant Ex

So far this year has really been the year where we’ve dug in our heels and started dissecting avoidant attachment styles. We’ve even been lucky enough to have a few success stories revolving around fearful avoidant exes.

In fact, this particular one yielded a proposal.

• Name: Aimee
• Type of Breakup: Her ex broke up with her because he fell victim to his fearful avoidant tendencies
• Time Apart Before Recovery: 6 months

So, what Aimee really learned through our program wasn’t so much the basics of the value ladder and things of that nature but more-so how to communicate with a fearful avoidant and how it’s ok to give them space when that avoidant side gets triggered. Personally I think that was instrumental in her success in getting that ex back.

You Decide To Go “All In” On No Contact

Harley’s situation here is the opposite of Jenny’s above. While Jenny didn’t use a no contact, Harley lived by it.

• Name: Harley
• Type of Breakup: Generalized but she used the no contact rule perfectly
• Time Apart Before Recovery: 2 Months

I’m inclined to believe that Jenny above is more of an outlier than anything else but what’s fascinating to me so far about this little study is how the results aren’t coming out how I expected. Sure, some are but it really just proves the every persons situation is unique and no matter how hard I can try to create a framework that works for everyone it’s impossible to get it to 100% effectiveness.

Let’s keep going.

You Decide You Aren’t Going To Do No Contact Post Breakup

Blasphemy… Blasphemy I say.

Sometimes you’ll have a client that decides not to use a no contact rule at all and guess what, sometimes it can work out (though not usually.) That was the case for Jenny here.

• Name: Jenny
• Type of Breakup: Generalized but she specifically didn’t use a no contact rule
• Time Apart Before Recovery: 1 Month

So, I’m going to say something a bit controversial here but I think that no matter what would have happened. No matter what type of tactics were involved, Jenny probably would have gotten her ex back. Nevertheless, I find it incredibly interesting that her ex came back after a month which just so happens to be the most popular time frame for no contact.

I’d also be interested to see if they are still together now.

You Have A Long Distance Ex

Long distance relationships have always been one of the most commonly requested situations to get advice on. In the case of Karina here she not only had a long distance ex but an army one as well.

• Name: Karina
• Type of Breakup: Long distance army ex
• Time Apart Before Recovery: 1.5 Months apart

If you dive a bit deeper into Karina’s history with her guy you’d find that they were together for a total of 7.5 years. I think that is the reason for why her ex was so quick to come back to her. Nevertheless, the odd results continue. It only took about 45-50 days before Karina’s ex came back to her which you wouldn’t expect in a long distance relationship

What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?

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Let’s keep going.

You’ve Been Blocked By Your Ex

Jo was in the unenviable situation of having her ex block her. And once again what I’m finding difficult about these situations is how to “categorize them.” Yes, Jo was blocked but her ex also started dating someone else which actually probably correlated to the block a bit.

• Name: Jo
• Type of Breakup: She was blocked by her ex after he started dating someone new
• Time Apart Before Recovery: 1.5 months

I’m always trying to explain to my clients that being blocked isn’t usually as big a deal after a breakup as you might think. Sure, there’s always that risk that exes will leave you blocked forever but playing the number, that’s usually very unlikely to happen.

You’ve Been Ghosted By Your Ex

Samantha’s situation here is odd. While waiting to be picked up by her ex at the airport her ex literally ghosts her. I can honestly say I’ve never seen a ghosting happen in that way before but here we are.

• Name: Samantha
• Type of Breakup: Her ex ghosted her while she was waiting for him to pick her up at the airport
• Time Apart Before Recovery: 10 months

To be fair this is a combo situation. What I haven’t mentioned is that her ex got a new woman which probably made this last longer than it could have and also contributed to the ghosting. Nevertheless, not bad for someone who was completely ghosted.

You Are In An On Again/Off Again Situation

Laura here was caught up in the typical on again/off again cycle with her ex boyfriend.

Name: Laura
Type of Breakup: On again/off again
Time Apart Before Recovery: 10 months

One thing that is probably important to note here is that we are looking at the breakup as a whole and how long it took these clients to get their exes back together. We aren’t starting the clock on when they found our program. For example, in Laura’s situation she found our program three months after her ex broke up with her.

Key Takeaways

Here are a few key takeaways I learned from doing this study.

• Type of breakup is not a great indicator in telling you how long it will take to get an ex back.
• Taking a look at what the relationship was like before the breakup is important
• In every case where an ex moved on to someone else it added significant time to the success time frame
• The same can be said about pregnancy. If you are pregnant expect it to take a lot longer to get an ex back
• Many of these situations were “combos” meaning they had two types of breakup situations at once
• Outliers exist (see the no contact situations above)
• 16% of these success stories ended up marrying their exes
• The average time it took the success stories in this study to get their exes back was 7.3 months