In this video, we're going to be covering six texts your ex might send to you,
and how to reply to them. 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. If you like what we're doing here, and if you want to support this channel,
please hit that thumbs up button for the algorithm, and please subscribe to the channel,
leave a comment below, all that fun stuff. Well, before we get into this video, though,
I did want to share with you a quick little cool success story that we got from someone who signed
up with Connect and Commit, I guess, within the past six weeks or so. But, she wrote in and said,
"Six weeks ago, my fiance ghosted me. He began to have a rebound affair, and I was devastated.
I signed up with Connect and Commit, and I trusted that God put me in your hands. I followed every
step, and yesterday, we were married," with, what is that, six exclamation points. Understandable,
I think. That's a pretty big step and a pretty big move. Anyway, she continues on with, "It all
came so suddenly. I thank God for all and I thank you for your wisdom. God bless," and her name is
Lisa. We'll have the last name out for anonymity. Of course, she gave us permission to share this.
But, yeah, I just wanted to share that with you. That's probably one of the fastest turnarounds
that I have, at least, heard of, but really, really extreme swing in there, back and forth,
from ghosting and getting into a rebound relationship, to then getting married just a few
weeks later. I'm really touched and humbled when we do get feedback from people like that, who have
had these major successes in their relationships and in their love life, at least partly because of
the stuff that we've been able to help them with. Obviously, she did all of the work, but maybe
we might've been able to point her in the right direction and guide her in some way. I'm really
humbled when we receive stuff like that, and it really makes my day. Anyway, with that being said,
she did sign up with Connect and Commit. If you want to learn more about it, it's down below,
check it out. But, with that being said, let's go ahead and talk about the six text messages that
your ex might send to you and how to reply. Okay, so the first text message here is
what I might call the dead fish. Okay? This is something that's not really giving you a whole
lot to go on here. It's something like "hey" or "what's up" or "how you doing," or something like
that. They're not investing a whole lot. You're not getting a whole lot from them,
and you're just not sure how to respond. What you probably want to do is you want to meet them at
approximately the same level of investment. We've talked about this before with investment theory.
You don't want to, if they're going to invest here with a, "Hey," you don't want to invest with,
"Oh my goodness, it's so great to hear from you. Here's everything that's been going on in my
life," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You don't want to do that. That's way too over-invested.
But, you also don't want to just, they give you a dead fish, and you don't just to want to give
them a dead fish back, and it's like, "Hey." "Hey." "Sup." "Sup." "What's up?" "Nothing.
You?" "Nothing." "Okay, bye." Because, obviously, that's just going to be like, okay, why are we
talking? This is pointless. What you want to do is actually meet them more or less where they're at
emotionally, but a little bit more invested, just a little bit more. Not crazy up here, but just a
little bit more invested. Then, you want to slowly see if they take the steps up with you and see if
the two of you can actually start to increase both of your levels of investment in the interaction.
You might just say something like, "Hey, it's nice to hear from you.
What's new?" Then they might say something like, "Oh, not much," or whatever. That's telling you,
okay, they're still at that lower level of investment. That's when you might start to share
a little, teeny bit more about what's going on with you. Like, "Yeah, not too much is up with me,
but the other day, something cool happened to me." Then, wait for them to say, "Oh, what was it?"
Then, the two of you can actually start to deepen that emotional connection a little bit more. Then,
of course, use a lot of the stuff that we've talked about, getting to that state of rapport,
build that emotional bond, all that stuff. Right? The next text is,
I guess you'd call this the angry text. I don't know, I'm not feeling particularly creative today.
But, it's the angry text. Right? This might be them just sort of lashing out at you for maybe
something in the past that happened. This can happen sometimes. You're not talking to your
ex for a while, maybe you're doing no contact or something. Then, they just send you this big text
about them just ripping into you about something that happened during the relationship,
how you disappointed them, how they're upset with you about something that happened in the past,
or whatever. Right? What you want to do in this situation is you want to avoid, first of all,
getting too defensive. There are a lot of people who, in this sort of situation,
will just simply become defensive. They'll say, "Oh no, that's not what happened at all. Actually,
this is what I did," and all that stuff. All of that might factually be true, that's not what
you want to actually do right now with your ex. What you want to do is you want to validate their
emotions, want to validate how they're feeling. Because, as long as they're in this angry sort
of space, anything that you say to them is just going to be sort of deflected off of
that anger. What you want to do first is you want to remove the armor, remove the external veneer
of that anger so that you can actually get through to them, and actually start to have a meaningful
conversation. One of the most important things that you can say is something along the lines of,
"You're right. You're right. I totally understand that you might be upset
thinking that I did that." Then, you can just take the conversation where it's going to go
from there. But, you got to diffuse that anger first. You got to diffuse those hurt feelings.
One of the most important things that you can to do that is to validate the feeling. Tell them that
they're right. Tell them that how they're feeling is totally normal. Right? Because, once you do
that, you're actually in a bigger picture sense, swinging yourself to being on the same team as
them, and creating that "same team" dynamic, and then from there you can open the door to
actually start to create an emotional connection. Of course, I'm not in any way suggesting that you
become a doormat and say, "Oh, you're right. I suck as a person. You're always right, and
I'm always wrong," or anything like that. I know that sometimes people do that.
I don't think anyone out there is advocating that you do that, but sometimes people do that,
and it doesn't go over well. We have to ride that line
between posture and collapse. Obviously, I'm not recommending that you collapse. I'm obviously not
recommending that you posture either and say, "Oh, you're wrong. This is what happened," or
anything like that. But, what I am saying that you do is that you just connect with them emotionally,
and just own what happened, and then just move forward there towards what you want. You might
say, "Yeah, that must be really hard for you, thinking that I did that. Do you think that I
did that intentionally?" Then you just take that conversation where it's going to go.
Okay, text number three is the positive text. Now, this is one of the easier ones to respond to,
because your ex is responding to you positively. They're bringing back some sort of
positive emotions, some sort of positive experience, some sort of positive thing
that happened, or whatever. It's great, because they're messaging you in some sort of positive
state of mind, and they're, obviously, open to connecting with you at this point in time.
What you want to do at that point is meet them where they're at emotionally, just like what
we talked about with the dead fish text, but you're starting at a higher level of investment,
and you can meet them there and maybe take it to a greater level of investment together.
Pulling down to that emotional level, creating that state of rapport,
bonding, taking things to that next step. Whether that's asking to meet in person, if you can meet
in person wherever you live. I know it's 2021 and things are a little bit weird right now. But,
meet in person if you can, or take the interaction to a deeper level. Go from texting to talking on
the phone, or video calling, or whatever might make sense for you. I probably don't need to go
into this one too much, because it's a positive text, probably not here for help with that.
The fourth text is what we would call a sideways text. This is where your ex is just
texting about some trivial tangential thing. Right? "Is there a time that I can come by to
pick up my mail," or, "I still owe you some money for the shared cell phone plan that we have," or,
"did you see that thing on TV," or, "Oh, I just ran into so-and-so." Just, little things like
this, where you get a sense that they're trying to connect with you, but they're not being
very direct about it. They're being really indirect about it, that's why it's sideways.
What you can do is, again, you're meeting them at this lower level of investment. They're not being
direct about it, but basically, you're getting the sense that they're trying to connect with you in
some way, but they're a little bit sheepish about it. They're trying to go about it in a sideways
sort of way, because they feel uncomfortable about being direct about it, or something like that. Or,
maybe they're just testing the waters to see where you're at emotionally. Again,
you want to meet them where they're at emotionally, and then start to slowly deepen the
investment and deepen the commitment between the two of you in the conversation.
You might just simply start by talking about whatever the tangential thing is,
but then start to move it to that emotional level by asking those conversation deepeners and getting
into that state of rapport to build the emotional connection between the two of you. Okay. That's a
good way to go about doing something like that. But, again, you want to meet them
where they're at on that emotional level. The fifth text that they might send is,
I'm going to call this the physical text. I think it was about two weeks ago, we put up a video
about physical texting, except we were just being direct about what it was. That video kind of got
sandbagged because we were using words that, apparently, aren't so great with
YouTube. I'm just going to, for the sake of euphemisms and for the sake of all of this,
your ex is sending you physical texts. They're wanting to engage with you in a physical sort
of way. This can be a little bit confusing. People don't really know how to respond.
You have to be careful about this because, on one hand,
yeah, great, okay, they're interested in you. But, on the other hand, you also want to make
sure that you're cultivating that emotional side of the dynamic between the two of you, not just
the physical side. I know oftentimes some people are so terrified about being in the friend zone,
that they just go with it and they're like, "Okay, great. I'm not in the friend zone.
Excellent." They just hope that that's going to be how it works, and that somehow the physical
route is somehow the back door to an emotional connection and an emotional commitment. But,
it's not necessarily that way. You want to make sure that you're building up both sides of that.
The physical side, and also the emotional side. If you are building out the emotional side, hey,
cool, great. Go to town and have fun, if that's what you want to do.
But, if you're lacking in the emotional side, you definitely want to build that up first.
When it comes to this, I mean, you also want to start thinking about
your own personal boundaries and what you feel comfortable with and what you don't
feel comfortable with. There are some people that think, "Okay, certain things I shouldn't
do until I'm in a committed relationship, or I shouldn't do until I'm married."
That's fine. I obviously want you to hold up that value and hold up that boundary, whatever it might
be for you. I'm not just going to tell you some arbitrary thing, like never do this, always do
that or whatever. But, feel into it and see if it's something that you feel good about, assuming
this interaction never actually leads to some sort of commitment or some sort of relationship.
If it is something that you feel good about and you could just enjoy it for what it is,
okay, great. Go ahead and see it through to its conclusion. But, if not, then you might want to
enforce some boundary in a loving sort of way. When it comes to enforcing these boundaries,
you don't want to do it in a way where you're punishing them for their desire in you, because,
obviously, you do want to be in a relationship with someone who does desire you, so you want to
reward them for that, but also lovingly let them know that you have a certain boundary in place.
That's what I'd recommend if you're getting the physical texts. By the way,
we did do a video, again, I think it was about two weeks ago, on physical texts,
right up there. Feel free to check out that video card if you want to watch that video that didn't
get a whole lot of exposure, but maybe if you do want to click on that, you can check it out.
Anyway, the next text is the emotional confession text. Okay? This is where they're coming out
and they're telling you something kind of heavy emotionally. Not necessarily that they're angry
about you or anything like that, but maybe that they miss you. Maybe that they regret the way
things ended with you. Maybe that they really are wanting to get close to you, or something along
those lines. These kinds of things can come out of nowhere, and they can strike for any
number of reasons. Maybe the two of you recently had a really positive interaction. Maybe they've
just been dealing with a fit of loneliness, or maybe they just are looking back at the
positive times that you had together, whatever. There could be any number of reasons why they're
feeling this way. But, here, you're meeting them at a high level of emotional investment,
most likely, and so you can meet them at that high level of emotional investment as well, too.
If they're being honest with you, you want to respond by being honest with them. Otherwise,
they're going to start to feel a little bit silly for pouring their heart out, and then just having
to be like, "Wow, cool, thanks," or, "I hear you," or something like that. You don't want
to give them a dead fish back. You want to meet them back where they're at. If they're telling
you something really vulnerable and emotionally honest, be emotionally honest with them back. This
is going to let them know that it's okay and that it's safe for them to continue to open up to you,
and that it's safe for them to continue to share what's going on, because they're going to feel
validated in opening up and sharing with you, and they're going to also know
that you're committed to the interaction, you're committed to actually texting with them.
Because, if they're sharing something deep and meaningful with you,
and then you just send a little simple one or two word response, or you just don't respond at all,
or something like that, they're going to feel a little bit silly and they're going to say,
"Okay, that was me being silly. I'm just going to close myself off and not
share that sort of stuff again." Definitely meet them where they're at, and definitely take that
conversation wherever it's going to go, emotionally speaking. Okay?
Anyway, I hope you've liked this video. If you did like this video, please give it a thumbs up,
and also, you might want to check out our course called Connect and Commit. Again, that's what the
gal shared with us at the beginning of this video. It goes through seven make or break moments with
your ex that could go very poorly, and it tells you how to respond in those moments to turn them
into opportunities for greater connection. We also did just recently add a new bonus to that whole
course that goes through the big picture strategy, how all of this fits in together with the five
stages, and the triangle of commitment, and the three Cs of commitment, and all that stuff. But,
anyway, go ahead and check that out down below. If that seems like it's a good fit for you,
feel free to sign up. If not, no worries. But, anyway, take care, and if you want to learn
more about texting with your ex, please feel free to check out this video series over here,
or you might want to check out this video right here. Once again, though,
my name is Clay. Please take care, and I'll talk to you next time.