Today I’d like to talk about why I believe ditching your ex after a breakup makes you more attractive to them and can eventually lead to them asking for you back.

It seems to be common knowledge that a certain phenomenon seems to exist when it comes to “ditching exes.”

And perhaps it is this comment from quora that best sums it up,

Well, it’s that “bolded part” of the comment that interests us.

“I cannot explain it. It’s like some mysterious energy that when you genuinely pull out, the other person comes back into your life.”

Now, I’m not a big believer in “mysterious energies” but I can’t tell you how many comments and experiences I have that prove this.

Like this comment,

And this one,

And this one,

I’ve written in the past that this phenomenon occurs when you seem to genuinely ditch your ex for good and the great irony with it is that often times when you get to a point where you are “over” an ex you don’t want them back anymore. This ultimately leads to the narrative of exes coming back at the wrong time, when you don’t want them.

So today, I’d actually like to peel back the layers even more and look at the reasons for why this phenomenon exists.

In my opinion it boils down to a combination of four things,

1. Time
2. Difficult With Alternatives
3. Your World No Longer Revolves Around Them
4. Jealousy

Let’s get to work.

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 Thing #1: Time

Ok, so for this one I’m going to really cite my knowledge of avoidants.

As many of my readers know, our average client believes that their exes contain avoidant characteristics.

But avoidants are interesting in the fact that given enough time they can begin to romanticize past relationships.

In fact, according to Free To Attach,

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Avoidants are free to long for an ex once that person is unavailable out of the relationship, and typically out of contact so they are untouched by actual engagement and their deactivation systems aren’t triggered.

So, once enough time goes by an avoidant literally begins to tap into nostalgia.

But I actually think there’s something deeper at play here. It’s often not as simple as,

Go through a breakup

Wait

Then your ex has nostalgia

I think the reason we are seeing “time” work so well is that it gives the ex enough time to reflect and think back to how good they had it with you.

That’s what the nostalgia is doing and ironically this leads us pretty seamlessly to our next discussion point.

Thing #2: Difficulty Finding An Alternative To Match Up

I’m pretty big on looking at commitment when it comes to reverse engineering the breakup process.

Generally human beings have six main criteria when it comes to making commitment decisions,

1. Satisfaction
2. Alternatives
3. Investment
4. Scarcity
5. Urgency
6. Fear of Loss

But I’d really like to highlight alternatives as a commitment point today.

Alternatives basically argues that we are always looking for the best alternative out there. Can someone better meet my needs than my current partner?

If you really think about it almost all breakups happen because one person thinks they can do better or that they deserve better.

It’s the old grass is greener syndrome.

If I leave the person I’m with then the grass is surely greener on the other side and almost always, at first it is.

Remember, with every new relationship there’s a honeymoon period where things seem overly great at first but eventually that honeymoon period wears off and the real comparisons begin to set in.

And that’s when an interesting phenomenon occurs.

A long time ago I wrote an articled called, The Ungettable Girl.

In it I make an argument that we are always internally comparing our partners to our past partners whether we are conscious of it or not. This “scale” changes based on our relationship journey. At the beginning we are bound to always choose our current partner over a past partner because everything with that new person is, well, new. However, over time that “rating” may change and that rating is particularly relevant to what we’re talking about here.

This might partially explain why exes are coming back later and later in the game. This is because enough time has to go by to where they can make a true comparison with you.

Of course, one other thing tends to occur.

Thing #3: Your World No Longer Revolves Around Them

Lately I’ve been talking a lot about my concept of the pedestal effect,

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Essentially I argue that the smartest thing you can do after a breakup is to knock your ex down off the pedestal. Too often I see men and women holding their exes up like they were the great lost loves of their lives. This naturally causes them to place their exes up on a pedestal and exes are smart enough to realize this.

And you know the only place you can look when you are at the top of the mountain?

Down.

So, exes who know you are in love with them, more than they are in love with you begin to lose respect for you but not only that, you lose value to them as well.

This is why I’m always going on and on about the importance of finding something you care about more than your ex in the post breakup period. It helps you knock them down off the pedestal and move past them.

I don’t think I’ve ever told this story before but here goes.

One of my early breakups when I was in college was with this girl who held me on a pedestal. While to so people having a person hold them on a pedestal sounds amazing, it didn’t so much for me at the time. After thinking back and reflecting I think it had to do with the fact that someone putting me above them on the pedestal made me feel like I was better than them.

As a result, I felt like I could do better than them.

Now, when you break up with someone like this a natural assumption gets formed. So, I break up with this girl and my assumption is,

She’s going to obsess about me, act really anxious, try to win me back, etc.

Only she didn’t.

In fact, she was so adamant about moving on after the breakup that I began to reconsider everything I had ever thought about her before.

Did she not love me as much as she claimed?

Did I mean so little to her?

What is going on?

Ultimately the thing I learned from the experience was that when someone begins to move on from you after a breakup you actually gain more respect for them and it kind of turns your world upside down because you start thinking that your time together wasn’t as valued by them as you thought.

Of course, one other thing starts happening.

Thing #4: Jealousy That You Are Doing Well Without Them

Now we get into the win/lose the breakup territory.

No one wants to lose the breakup.

It seems like a petty thing to talk about but it’s true. Now, if we operate under the assumption that your ex believes they are “above you” on the pedestal then they naturally will believe that they are going to win the breakup.

They’re expecting you to,

• Beg
• Cry
• Flail
• Blow up their phone
• Show up unannounced
• Leave sappy breakup posts on social media

Basically they think you are going to act super desperate after a breakup.

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But what if you didn’t?

What if instead of all that you simply ditched them.

Not to say that you don’t still care about them, it’s very hard to turn off your feelings completely.

However, instead of begging for them back you simply ignored them.

Instead of blowing up their social media accounts you did fun things and posted them on your social media.

What if instead of having the worst time of your life after a breakup, you had the best time of your life?

That’s prone to make your ex jealous. Make them feel like I felt in that story I told above about. All of a sudden it becomes less about how great their breakup decision was and more about why you are doing so great without them.

Did you even care about them?

Conclusion

So, ditching your ex after a breakup will make you more attractive to them because of four interchangeable reasons,

1. Time
2. Difficult With Alternatives
3. Your World No Longer Revolves Around Them
4. Jealousy

It’s always amusing to me that people argue with this too. I mean, it’s been proven time and time again that moving on from an ex after a breakup makes you more attractive to them but here’s the rub, it can’t be faked. I think one of the mistakes I made in my early days of Ex Boyfriend Recovery was talking about “moving on without moving on” from a “fake it, till you make it” approach.

That doesn’t work.

It needs to be authentic.

Ditch your ex after a breakup, reap the benefits.