What is one skill that you can use to get your ex's respect? That's what we're going to be
talking about in this video, as well as why your ex's respect is actually important. But first,
my name is Clay with modernlove.life, and we're here to 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 of course
deserve to be loved for the unique, amazing, and wonderful person that you are. And if you agree
with me, do me a favor by giving this video a thumbs up. It helps us out with the YouTube
algorithm, and please also feel free to subscribe to the channel, as well, too, so you can get
notified when we upload and publish new videos. Also, we are talking about advanced relational
skills. This is going to be one of those skills. And if you do want to learn more about advanced
relational skills and how to use them to connect with your ex, and navigate your ex's emotional
world, and get back together with your ex, we do have our course called the Ex Solution
Program. You can find information on that in the description box below this video. Feel free to
check it out. If it's right for you, you're more than welcome to sign up. If not, no worries.
We're talking about respect. Now, there are a lot of people out there, a lot of people who
give others advice on getting back together with their exes, that break down this whole
process of getting back together with your ex as if it's some sort of power struggle, as if it's
something that you have to come out looking like you're higher status than them, like you have more
power than them, like whoever cares the least controls their relationship. It's so hard for
me to get that right, because I disagree with it so much. But there are people that believe that,
even prominent people whose other advice I don't disagree with, but they say this.
And first of all, I just want to say that if you're looking at this dynamic that you have
with your ex as a power struggle, then you're going to have an extremely difficult time
transitioning that into a great, loving, thriving relationship, even if you do somehow manage to get
back together with them. And so what we want to do is we want to look at how people often
deal with these power struggles that we, I guess on some level, instinctively believe
is at play when it comes to relating to our ex and getting back together with our ex,
versus what's actually going on and what's actually going to help them respect you, and
what's going to actually help them move forward and see a new possibility together with you.
So when people feel that there's a power struggle at stake between them and their ex,
like their ex has all the power, they have none of the power, because they want to get back together,
or they might feel that way, but they need to somehow turn the tables on their ex and make it
seem like they have all of the power and that their ex needs to crawl over broken shards of
glass to get back together with them or something like that, these are difficult mindsets. Because
when you're in this state of mind, you are likely to respond to the challenges in one of two ways.
The first way is that you might respond by what we would call
collapsing. That is to say, bending over and giving into your ex's every
need, desire, want, being overly accommodating, walking on eggshells,
over-analyzing the text messages that they send, trying to read between the lines, trying to look
at, like, why did it take them 34 minutes to respond to that one, but it only took them 12
minutes to respond to this one, and it took them four hours to respond to the one after that.
I've seen a lot of people do that a lot. I've seen a lot of people analyze emojis. Like, what did
it mean when they did the winky face emoji versus the heart eye emoji versus all these other things?
And this is really a form of collapsing in this situation. This is one way that people try to
manage this sort of insecurity that they feel, this feeling of like, okay, there's this power
difference, and it's causing me to kind of collapse to it. It's causing me to give in,
be overly accommodating, spend way too much time over-investing, analyzing things, and such.
And I think that, admittedly, probably most of us have been there when it comes to at least the
initial stages immediately after a breakup. I've been in damage control mode myself. I think many
of you have probably been in damage control mode, as well, too. Occasionally I do meet someone who,
for some reason, somehow doesn't do this, but I think most of us
have been through this phase at some point. And we quickly learn that it doesn't work.
Clearly, if it did work, you would probably have gotten back together with your ex by now.
Things would be great. You'd be back together again. But if you're here watching this video,
it didn't work. It doesn't work. And so what often people do is they try to swing to the opposite
side of the pendulum and they think, okay, I need to show my ex that I don't care about them.
I need to do this no contact sort of thing to show them that I control the power. That way I'll leave
them wondering why I disappeared. Then they'll miss me so much that they'll crawl over broken
shards of glass to win me back or something like that. Or, I need to post pictures of me
online with attractive people, so they can start to feel jealous that they're losing out on me or
something like that. And that way I'll be the one that's desirable. I'll be the prize. And they'll,
once again, come crawling over broken shards of glass to admit they're wrong,
or something like that. Or, I need to always seem like my life is put together. I need to always
seem like I'm happier when we're not together or something like that, so that they see that
I'm a happy, positive person and they want to be together with me or something like that.
And what this is, is it's just a reaction to that previous way of being. It's a way
of relating to this perceived power difference between you and your ex. And so what you want to
do is you want to realize that this is really kind of, at least how you're approaching it,
when you're going from one of these two positions, is you're looking at it as if it's some sort of
power dynamic and both of you are, at least in your own mind, trying to compete to see who can
have that dominant position in the power dynamic. And where we're coming at today is that this is
not a healthy and good way to go about having a great thriving relationship with someone. Sure,
if you're into power stuff and whatever, sure, okay, great. But
at least for most people out there, that's not really what you want to do. You want to have
a great relationship where you can actually have someone by your side who you can trust,
who can be supportive, who you can support through challenging times and all of that.
And this isn't going to happen if you're caught in this constant power war with someone else.
And so this brings us back to the topic of respect, what you can do to get your ex to
respect you, to really see that you are someone that's worthy of their respect. And when someone
respects you, they'll stop playing the games and they'll start being more honest with you. They'll
start being more straightforward with you. But what you can do is you can realize that this whole
power dynamic thing is a bankrupt game. The longer you play it, it doesn't matter how long you play,
you're never going to win. You're always going to be feeling anxious. You know,
am I coming across as high value, of high status enough, important enough? Am I making myself seem
above you enough, to the point where you don't care or something like that, to the point where
I don't care that you actually want to impress me? Or is it the opposite? Am I
pleasing you enough? Am I accommodating enough? If I meet all of your needs for you,
then we turn around and finally meet my needs. This is all a bankrupt game in terms of just
managing anxiety, managing insecurity in this perceived power struggle.
And so what you want to do is realize that this whole power struggle is an illusion.
And if you are going to have this great, connected relationship with someone, you need to just be
able to be transparent, vulnerable, forthright about what you want, what's going on with you,
what your concerns are. You don't need to manage this anxiety. You don't need to say, "Oh,
I shouldn't ask that question, because it might come across the wrong way." Just be like, "Eh,
whatever. What did you mean when you said that? I find it kind of frustrating when you make plans
with me and then back out at the last minute. How are we going to deal with this moving forward?"
You're not coming at this from a am I dominant, am I submissive? You're not coming at it from
one of those mindsets. You're just saying like, "Okay, this is where I'm at, and this
is how you're behaving in this situation, how it's affecting me, and this is what's
coming to mind. If we're going to interact with one another, then we're going to have to come
up with some consistent ways to make agreements that we can both keep. Does that work for you?"
If you say something like that, it might come across, like if they're caught in the
whole bankrupt power game, they might see that as like, okay, you're being dominant.
But if you're not trying to paint yourself as this dominant person, if you're just
genuinely saying like, "Hey, whatever's happening, it's not working. What are we going to do,"
and that's where you're at, then you're just being transparent. So they might perceive it
within that bankrupt game if they're caught up in it. But if you're just being transparent,
then you're not caught up in that bankrupt game. You're not trying to manage the anxiety,
and the anxiety isn't going to start to seep out in other sort of weird, neurotic ways in
the future. You're just going to be in alignment with what you want. You're just going to be able
to know what's important to you, and you're going to go ahead and act congruent with that.
So that's really the most important thing that you can do, is to give yourself
permission to just say what's on your mind. Give yourself permission to just speak your
truth. Give yourself permission to just ask the questions that are going on in your head,
or to realize that that is a question that they can't answer, and only I can answer for myself.
And so if you can start to do that, if you can start to give yourself permission to
just genuinely express yourself and your needs and your desires and your thoughts,
then that is truly something that your ex is going to respect. And that is what is honestly what
most people will find very attractive, and that's going to help bring the two of you into alignment
for creating a great relationship, assuming your ex is in a place emotionally where they
actually are ready to have a relationship with someone who's vulnerable, transparent,
and willing to just call it like it is. So anyway, once again, if this is something
that you would like to learn more about, we do have our course called the EX Solution
Program. You can check it out down in the description box below and feel free to sign up
if it's right for you. If it's not right for you, no worries. But if you want to check it out and
if you're curious about it, go ahead, it's right down there. And if you do want to learn more
about all of this stuff, we of course have this video here on advanced relational skills, or you
might want to check out this video right here. But once again, my name is Clay with modernlove.life.
Thanks so much for watching. Please take care, and I'll talk to you next time.