In this video, we're going to talk about what to do when your ex wants to be friends. But
first my name is Clay with modernlove.life. We help you get the great loving relationship
that you're looking for, without having to play mind games without having to play hard
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So what do you do when your ex wants to be friends? What do you do when your ex says,
hey, we should just be friends for the time being? First of all, don't worry about the
friend zone. I've talked about this before in many videos, but your ex probably is not
losing attraction for you. I've been helping people with breakups since 2009 and I've never
had an actual client who's ex has legitimately not been attracted to them any longer.
Once somebody is attracted to you, they're basically attracted to you, unless something
really major happens. Like, you gain or lose a truly significant amount of weight, a hundred
pounds or something like that, not five pounds, or if you get in some sort of major accident
and your body just doesn't look the same anymore or something like that. Or if you have some
sort of truly deep rooted personality shift or something like that, that potentially could
make that happen. Although I haven't actually seen that happen,
but usually what's going on, is that there's an emotional thing going on under the surface
that's blocking the emotion, the attraction from running its course and bringing the two
of you together. Basically, if you could somehow wipe your ex's mind of all of the history
and baggage and things that happened between the two of you, they'd probably still think
that you're an attractive person. It's just the emotions and stuff like that
are getting in the way and blocking that attraction. So what we want to do, is we want to not worry
about them just putting us in the friend zone. They most likely still are attracted to you,
again, I doubt you're going to be the first person that I've ever worked with in all of
these years that has had that actually happen. But understand that when they say something
like, hey, we should just be friends or we're just friends or something that.
What they're really doing is they're not talking about the attraction stuff, they're most likely
talking about a sense of pressure or expectation that they're feeling on what's happening between
the two of you. That is to say, they are feeling that they have to make some sort of all or
nothing decision about what the two of you are. That if the two of you are spending time
together, it means that you must be dating or it means that you must be getting back
together or it means that there must be something between the two of you.
And although that might sound good if they're thinking this, if they don't have the emotional
foundation in place to actually start to make that sort of decision, they're probably going
to be scared by it. They're probably going to be a little bit intimidated by that decision.
And so they'll often back away, they'll often do things like, hey, we should just be friends
or something like that. And so what you want to do is, you want to
bring their expectations down to focus on just connecting, because as the two of you
connect more, as the two of you build more positive interactions, as the two of you actually
enjoy spending more time together, it's going to give them more of an emotional foundation,
that's going to allow them to actually start to make that decision of, maybe we are dating.
Maybe there is something between the two of us.
So pull down the expectation and that's going to relieve the pressure and give them permission
to spend time with you. This means that the emotional connection is where you want to
focus on, this means that the emotional connection is what you really want to laser focus on.
Because again, the emotional connection is what's blocking the attraction from running
its course, because they're filled with all of these images in their mind of how you betrayed
their trust or how you said the thing that hurt them or how you, whatever happened in
the past led up to the breakup. They're so clouded with all of that emotional
intensity that they can't let that attraction flow through. So you want to focus on the
emotional connection, focus on clearing that emotional block that's stopping the attraction
from running its course, and you want to focus on of course, building positive emotions,
so that there's not just like, hey, let's go back to the good old days, but it's more
like, hey, we actually enjoy spending time together, let's create something new, great
and amazing together. That's not just an echo of the past, but something
that's cool and amazing, and a great possibility for us in the present and also in the future
as well too. Also know that if your ex says that they just want to be friends, they're
probably divided. They're probably divided about you. There's that one side of them that
still does feel attracted to you. There's that one side of them, the spending time with
you, there's that one side of them that wants to be close to you, but there's also that
side of them that remembers the history, the baggage, the hurt, the emotions, that's unsure,
that's still building trust, that's still having its doubts.
And that's what you want to focus on. You want to focus on untangling that emotional,
not on that side of things. And you want to focus on also strengthening the positive side,
and that's what's going to happen when you focus on removing the emotional block and
increasing positive interactions between the two of you. So this is really what's going
on when your ex says that they want to be friends, they are not just seeing you as some
sort of platonic friend that they never felt anything for.
I guess that could theoretically be true if the two of you were never in a real relationship,
but if the two of you were in a relationship and romantically involved with one another
and intimate with one another and all of that stuff, I totally don't see any real reason
why the two of you would actually be in the friend zone, barring any massive physical
changes or barring any personality shifts towards the negative or anything like that.
Usually it's just the emotional block that's causing the attraction to not be felt by them.
So what we want to do is, we want to decrease the expectation on them and just let them
know that, hey, it's totally fine if we are just friends for the time being. I'm not trying
to force anything that's not there, because again, we don't want to do that. We want to
be connection focused rather than relationship focused. We want to be focused on enjoying
our time together in the present moment, rather than using them as a means to an ends, to
tick the box and say, okay, I'm in a relationship now, okay, I'm back together with you again
now, get over whatever you're feeling, let's just get back together.
That doesn't feel good. And so what you want to do, is you want to stay focused on the
connection, stay focused on clearing out that emotional block, stay focused on building
positive interactions and oftentimes the best thing to do when your ex says that they want
to be friends with you, is to just agree with it and say, yes, I think it would be a good
idea if we were friends, I don't want to force anything that's not there. So let's just not
try and make anything there. Let's just be friends and let's just enjoy spending time
with one another. And that is often the best thing that you
can do when your ex wants to be friends. It keeps that expectation low, and it creates
more of a context for them to actually want to spend time together with you. Because they're
probably going to be having this rattling doubt in the back of their mind, if they are
in that high expectations zone, where they're wondering, why am I texting with my ex? Why
are we talking to one another? Why are we getting together? Why are we meeting up? And
if they don't have a solid answer for that, they're going to assume the worst.
They're going to think, well, I'm leading them on. Or, I'm toying with their emotions.
I don't even know how I feel. Or, maybe they're trying to get back together with me or something
like that. And they're going to start to go into this black or white thinking, which we've
already talked about, is not going to help you. So what we want to do, is we want to
give them an answer as to why the two of you are interacting, talking, all that stuff and
just give them an answer that gives permission to continue to spend time with you and continues
to interact with you while the two of you still feel each other out and figure out how
you want to interact with one another. And if they have that answer ready to go,
we're talking because we're friends, then they're going to say, okay, great. That makes
sense. I can go ahead and talk with them. I can go ahead and meet up with them. I can
go ahead and text with them. I can go ahead and just share and enjoy connecting with them.
Now, we've also talked with people in the past who have been concerned that, okay, if
I'm friends with my ex, friends, air quotes, then that means I have to sit around and listen
to them talk about how great their rebound relationship is.
No, that's not the case. First of all, most people have enough tact to not actually bring
up the person that they're dating around the person that they used to be dating. That is
usually something that most people would avoid doing. However, if they do veer into that
territory, you can always say, hey, I understand you're totally excited about this, however,
just given our history, I don't feel very comfortable having this conversation. So you
can just not worry about that. Just keep that in check, under control and just know that
you can do something like that. But the whole agreeing to be friends thing
can be really beneficial for a lot of reasons. Anyway, once again, if you want some help
with all of this stuff, we do have that email newsletter, you can find it down below in
the description box, totally free to sign up. You get that nice report that pulls apart
a lot of the myths and false beliefs that people have about getting back together with
their ex. So that is pretty cool. But also if you like what we're doing here,
give this video a thumbs up, subscribe to this channel and hit that bell icon, so you
can get notified when we post new videos. But once again, my name is Clay. Thanks so
much for watching. And if you want to learn more about what your ex is thinking, experiencing
feeling, be sure to check out this video series over here, or you might want to check out
this video right here, but thanks so much, take care, and I'll talk to you next time.