By Chris Seiter

Published on January 16th, 2023

Today I’m going to show you why you need to master the art of walking away to make him miss you.

In this in-depth guide you’re going to learn,

  • The Theory Behind Walking Away To Make A Guy Miss You
  • How The Peak End Rule Ties Into This
  • The Thing Everyone Is Afraid To Tell You About “Walking Away”
  • Why Walking Away Isn’t Really Walking Away

So, if you’re ready to go “all in” on this idea of losing the guy to get the guy then you came to the right place.

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The Theory Behind Walking Away Making A Guy Miss You

So, let’s address the elephant in the room first.

Does walking away from a guy actually make him miss you?

The truth is that no one can guarantee you anything. However, generally speaking walking away, be it a form of no contact, or a form of finally standing up for yourself usually creates a situation conducive to having them miss you. Of course, this wholly relies on your past partner having enjoyable memories with you.

Think of it like this.

We don’t miss the people who made our lives miserable. Rather, we miss the people who we feel regret with.

But more on that in a minute.

For now you’re probably interested in the nuts and bolts of how this works psychologically.

Well, in the past I’ve written a lot about silence and its impact on making exes miss you. Even filmed a few videos on it,

In a perfect world here’s how its supposed to work.

Our own internal research shows two things.

Our average client tend to have anxious attachment styles,

And our average clients exes tend to have avoidant personalities,

These two are like oil and water. Generally, when there is friction in the relationship an anxious individual is going to react in a way that tries to “fix things.” You see, they operate from a place where their worst nightmare is to be abandoned. This contradicts with the avoidants core attachment modus operandi, independence.

So, you have one party pushing to fix things and the other party running away from that to get alone time.

After being in a relationship for a period of time the avoidant person almost comes to expect this is of the anxious person.

Using silence, walking away is a new look that the avoidant hasn’t really experienced from you before. You are essentially giving your partner the space they desire and doing so, research tells us, can actually be the thing that makes them miss you.

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A few years ago I recorded this video,

And in it I cite this research,

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, revealing their long-suppressed attachment and switching their operating attachment wound from the fear of engulfment to fear of abandonment. (source)

Essentially, give an avoidant enough space and they begin to have what I’ve coined as nostalgic reverie.

And this ties directly into the peak end rule.

How The Peak End Rule Ties Into This

If you aren’t familiar with what the peak end rule is then I suggest you watch this,

Basically the concept argues the following,

The peakā€“end rule is a psychological heuristic in which people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience. (Direct Quote From Wikipedia)

You can see why this concept interests me particularly.

Generally speaking when you are looking at the demise of a relationship it’s going to look something like this,

  • There’s going to be the beginning which is marked in a honeymoon period. (A slow incline of a rise)
  • There’s going to be the middle (the actual peak of a relationship)
  • The end (which is generally marked as the low point)

Usually when you are considering walking away you are going to be at the endpoint of the relationship.

This means that things aren’t particularly warm and fuzzy. Rather, they are cold and harsh.

Here’s the thing though, your partner is only thinking about how they are feeling at that end point and so one of the arguments to make for walking away is that it will give your ex (or guy, or whatever) time to re-remember the peak moments.

This plays into that nostalgic reverie concept I mentioned above.

Walk away, give your partner time to remember the high points.

Of course, this is completely contingent on one thing, that you actually had enjoyable peak moments.

What Everyone Seems To Be Afraid To Tell You

Figuring out what I was going to say for this discussion was actually pretty difficult. I spent 30 minutes spinning my wheels trying to find an interesting angle of attack. My process for writing article is actually deceptively simple. I’ll choose my topic and almost immediately know what I’m going to say. However, every once in a while I’ll get stuck and only have a handful of ideas.

Usually if I’m in that predicament I’ll go to me peers to see what they are saying.

For this particular article that’s what I did and I found something interesting but it wasn’t anything they specifically said, rather, it had more to do with what they weren’t saying.

Walking away from a guy only works if they had an enjoyable time with you.

My peers want to make it seem like walking away works in every situation, it doesn’t. To say that it does is simply false.

Let’s use the peak-end rule to illustrate the point I’m trying to make.

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Generally when I talk about the peak end rule I use a graphic that assumes the peak moments are positive.

But what if all the peak moments were negative?

Remember, “peak moments” don’t always have to be positive. In some cases they can be negative.

So, you walk away and expect your ex to remember the good times but all they do is remember the bad times.

What then?

Well, generally in these cases my advice would be to work on moving on. No relationship that has toxic moments as the “peak moments” is worth getting back.

I’d like to turn my attention now to what most people do wrong when it comes to “walking away.”

Why Walking Away Isn’t Really Walking Away

As you can imagine, with this being a breakup website a lot of the discussion had on it revolve around the no contact rule.

One of the “walking away” methods.

What’s funny about it though is there’s a common misunderstanding.

People think that walking away really means walking away.

They think all they need to capture their exes attention again is to simply use a no contact rule and sit on their hands waiting for him (or her) to come back begging.

Except we know from research that usually doesn’t happen,

The truth is that what you do with that time away from your ex is more important than actually ignoring your ex, than walking away.

This comment on a recent video of mine really nailed it,

No contact works when you’re actually getting thing’s done. Going to the gym , taking care of your skin, getting that glow. When you achieve new things and get a side hustle that’s better than your 9-5 and you’re actually leveling up, financially and dressing well, then you Ex sees that, they’ll go crazy

They are right.

Silence…

Walking away…

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No Contact…

Yes, they rely on your ex having good memories from their time together with you but they also rely on something else, opportunity cost.

If they had stayed together with you then their life would be better than it is right now.

Usually that requires you to actually do things, or accomplish things that they admire.

Most people don’t.

They go through a breakup, get depressed or sad and allow that to be their reality.

But a few, a small few, look at the breakup as an opportunity.

They go out and accomplish new things, things that captures their exes attention.

So, if you really think about it “Walking away from a guy to make him miss you” needs two things to really work.

  1. They need positive memories together with you
  2. They also need to see how good you are doing with out them to create regret

Obtain these two things and you’ll be in good shape.

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