Clay Andrews: Can you get your ex back by being friends
with them? Yes, but probably not in the way that you think. That's what we're going to
be talking about in this video. But first, my name is Clay with ModernLove.life
where we help you get the great loving relationship that you're looking for without having to
play mind games, without having to play hard to get, and without having to pretend to be
someone or something that you are not, because you deserve to be loved for the unique, amazing,
and wonderful person that you are. If you agree with me, please do me a favor
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when we publish and upload new videos as well too.
Also, I did want to let you know that we do have our course called the Ex Solution program.
You can find out more about it down in the description box below, but basically it takes
you through this process of building an emotional connection and foundation with your ex so
that you can create a new possibility for getting back together with them. Not going
to twist your arm though, so if it's not right for you, no worries. But if you're curious
or if you think you're ready for it, down below.
All right, so let's get into this whole topic of being friends with your ex. Now, first
and foremost, I know that a lot of people are really terrified about the friend zone.
I mean, maybe your ex has even said something like, "Hey, I just see you as a friend," or,
"We should just be friends," or, "I lost all attraction for you," or, "I love you, but
I'm not in love with you," or one of these other wonderfully cliche things that people
say. But basically, you don't need to genuinely
be worried about the friend zone with your ex, assuming you were in an actual relationship
with them where the two of you were close and all that stuff, because basically there's
a switch that's flipped with them and they see you as an attractive person. Otherwise
they would have never been in a relationship with you. That switch is going to remain activated
as long as you still are that person, right? As long as you haven't gone through some sort
of like really, truly dramatic personality change or physical change for what your ex
might consider the worse, they're still going to be attracted to you.
Okay, so don't worry about this. I've yet to actually have a client in the, as of right
now in 2020, 11 years that I've been doing this, I've yet to have a client who has legitimately
their ex has not been attracted to them anymore. Their ex has legitimately been in the friend
zone with them. What exactly does this mean? What exactly
is happening? Your ex is attracted to you. They do find you attractive, but what's going
on is that the attraction is being blocked by the negative emotions, and history, and
challenges that the two of you have had in the past that caused the two of you to break
up, right? Like if it was somehow possible to just wipe their memory of everything that
happened between the two of you, then they would probably still be able to look at you
as an attractive person. Maybe you can even do this with previous relationships
that didn't work out. You can say, "Okay, yeah. That didn't work out for obvious reasons,
for whatever personality differences, for whatever they were going through, but if I
can just set all that aside, I still think they're kind of an attractive person." You
might be able to kind of get yourself in that mind frame and you can kind of see that this
is happening. In this respect, being friends with an ex
isn't actually being friends with an ex. It's actually giving your ex permission to continue
to spend time with you so that you can build up an emotional foundation that's going to
bring the two of you closer together on an emotional level.
This is important because when the two of you break up, your ex has all of these unanswered
questions in their mind. Why are we interacting with one another? Why are we spending time
with one another? What does it mean if we spend ... if we talk? What does it mean if
we meet up? What does it mean if we hang out? What does it mean if all of these things happen?
Does it mean we're getting back together? Does it mean that I'm leading you on? Does
it mean that I'm giving you false hope? Does it mean that any of these other things might
be in place? Oftentimes, your ex may not feel prepared
or ready to answer some of these questions, and so what they can sometimes do, and maybe
this might seem a little bit familiar to you, is they will stall. They will create distance.
They will pull back. They will play it safe by not interacting with you or not engaging
with you at the full level that you'd like them to.
When you agree to be friends with an ex, it will actually give them something that they
can tell themselves to give themselves permission to interact with you. They'll say, "Why are
we spending time together? It's because we're friends. Why are we talking? Why are we texting?
Why are we getting together? It's because we're friends. Okay. That gives me a reason
to actually spend time with you." This is important. Now, again, I know that
at this point some people might be thinking, "Well, I don't really want to be friends with
them. Isn't this like having some sort of ulterior motive or playing some sort of mind
game?" Not really, if you think about it, because you probably don't just want to get
back together with your ex for the sake of getting back together with them. You want
to get back to go with them because you want some sort of connection, or bonding, or closeness,
or something, right? It makes sense that you would kind of go for that feeling first, as
opposed to getting the relationship and hoping that the feeling follows. That makes sense
if you're actually being friends with them. You're just hanging out. You're spending time
together. You're just seeing if the two of you click, if the two of you have something
in common, if the two of you can bond, if the two of you can connect and all of that.
If that happens, it makes sense that a relationship would naturally and organically arise from
that. In that respect, being friends makes total
sense if you can get past that like outcome focus of trying to get back together at all
costs and say, "Okay, let's connect. Let's connect and see if we have something in common.
Let's connect and see if it makes sense for us to even have this dialogue about getting
back together." In that respect, it actually makes a lot of sense to be friends with your
ex, okay? The important takeaway from all of this is
you're giving your ex some reason to tell themselves for why they can hang out with
you and spend time with you. You're giving yourself an ability to actually interact with
them in a context where you're not so outcome focused. What's going to happen in this space
is that the two of you are actually going to hopefully start connecting on an emotional
level and you're going to start to build up an emotional foundation step by step, bit
by bit, little piece by little piece. What's going to happen is as this emotional
connection gets stronger and stronger and stronger, you're going to naturally start
to remove that emotional block, the pain, the hurt, the history, the baggage, all of
this stuff that caused the two of you to break up, and you can start to smooth that stuff
out. When that is smoothed out, what's left is the attraction that the two of you feel.
What happens when two people are naturally attracted to one another and there's not all
of this intense baggage? Boom, they come together and most likely they're going to form a relationship.
That is why it's totally okay to be friends with an ex. That's how being friends with
an ex can actually bring the two of you back together. But you have to have this mindset,
right? You can't be outcome focused. You can't have an ulterior motive. You have to genuinely
say, "Hey, I don't know if it makes sense for us to be together or not. Let's just connect
and find out. Let's just be friends for the time being. Let's not force anything that's
not there. Let's just take it one day at a time. Let's just be friends for now and see
where this goes," right? That totally makes sense. Within that context, you take a lot
of pressure off of your ex, you take a lot of pressure off of yourself, and you create
a space where the two of you can just connect. If you want to learn more about how to connect
with your ex, we do have a whole video series on what we call it advanced relational skills.
You can find that video series right up there. Just go ahead and click on that video card.
It can help you kind of get a good sense about what it means to connect on an emotional level.
But yeah, this is a good strategy that I typically recommend to a lot of my clients, to actually
pull back that expectation both from yourself and from your ex to try to define things right
up front, to try to make a relationship, to try to force a relationship before the emotional
connection is there, and to create a space where the two of you can actually just start
being present with one another, just start enjoying each other's company, just start
bonding and connecting. When that happens, you can actually create the emotional foundation
that is going to be needed to really bring the two of you together. When that emotional
foundation kicks in, you can of course leverage that, and you'll get back together, and you'll
be able to say, "Oh, we were just dating in our own weird, quirky little way this whole
time," and it totally makes sense, right? Again, what we've covered so far, don't be
worried about the friend zone. You don't need to be worried about it. I understand that
it is a big concern that a lot of people have. I'm also not saying the friend zone isn't
real. It's definitely a real thing for people who have not actually been in a relationship
with one another. But if you have been in a relationship with your ex, you probably
don't need to worry about it. I've never had a client who was like legit in the friend
zone. I doubt you're going to be my first one. Once the attraction's there, it's going
to be there pretty much for the long haul, unless there's been some sort of like truly
dramatic like personality shift towards the worst, a physical thing that caused you to
significantly gain or lose a massive amount of weight to the point where you don't seem
like the same person, or maybe you acquired some sort of injury or disability or something
where you just aren't the same person like that, right?
Don't worry about this. You can do this. Being friends with your ex is a valid way to get
back together with them if you have a lot of the things in place that we've talked about
in this video. Once again, if you do want a little bit more
help with making this journey happen to create that emotional connection with your ex, feel
free to check out our course called the Ex Solution course down in the description box
below this video. Once again, if you do like what we're doing here, help a guy out, hit
that thumbs up button and subscribe to the channel so that you can get notified when
we publish and upload new videos. Thanks so much for watching. If you do want
to learn more about those advanced relational skills, we've got this video series for you
right here, or you might want to check out this video over here. Thanks so much. Once
again, this is Clay. Please take care, and I'll talk to you in the next video.