What do you do if your ex contacts you during no contact.
That's what we're going to be talking about today in this video.
But first, my name is Clay with modernlove.life.
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There's a couple of different possible things that you might encounter if you're finding
that your ex is contacting you during no contact.
First let's talk big picture.
Okay, so there are some people who do no contact because they want to get over their ex and
they want to move on.
If that's you and you don't need to be in contact with your ex and you have no particular
desire to be in contact with your ex, then you don't need to respond, okay?
You can also politely tell them that, "Hey, I'm not really in a good place to respond
to you right now, maybe later on," or something like that.
But that's probably the slim majority of people.
Most people who are using no contact want to actually get back together with their ex.
So let's talk about that and we want to be a little bit careful about this, because if
you think about this the wrong way, you could potentially do more damage than good to your
situation.
So if your ex contacts you during no contact, I don't want you to necessarily think, "Okay,
great, I have won, they've cracked under the pressure and now they're crawling back over
those broken shards of glass that everyone seems to be talking about."
I don't know.
Someone just needs to stop dropping glass objects on the floor or something.
I don't know.
Again, does anyone actually want their ex to crawl back over broken shards of glass?
I've yet to meet somebody who actually wants this.
If you're approaching no contact as a mind game, then this is where things start to get
problematic.
That's just say you're approaching no contact as like, "Okay, I need to do no contact so
that my ex will reach out to me or so that they will confess that they miss me or that
they still love me or that they can't live without me or they want to get back together,"
or something like that.
If you're approaching no contact in that way and your ex contacts you, then it may seem
like you have won.
It may seem like things are getting better, but just know that this is your one chance.
This is your one chance to start having positive interactions with your ex and to start improving
things between the two of you.
If you make a mistake and your natural inclination, like many people who use no contact as a mind
game, is to retreat back into no contact whenever things don't go their way, then your ex is
going to catch on really quickly and they're going to see that you were using no contact
as a power play, a mind game, some sort of manipulation tactic or something like that,
and they're going to lose interest really easily, because they're going to get the message
that when the going gets tough, I pull away.
That might work once, but it's a longterm strategy.
It is not going to help you because you are broadcasting the message to them, "When the
going gets tough, I pull away."
I pop quiz time, take out your number two pencils.
Is, "When the going gets tough, I pull away," is that a strong indicator that you are relationship
material or is it a strong indicator that you are not relationship material?
Most people who are in longterm relationships that are good, thriving, successful, happy,
all that stuff, they don't pull away when the going gets tough.
They turn towards their partners.
They work together collectively to work things out and all of that.
So that's probably not the best strategy.
If you're doing no contact because you need to work through some things yourself.
Maybe you're doing active no contact, like we've talked about.
Maybe you are just healing from the breakup or something like that, then this is a completely
different game.
Now, of course if you're in damage control mode, if you're highly panicked, anxious,
all that stuff that people very often are after a breakup, you want to get that taken
care of.
And many times doing something like no contact can help you, not just cutting contact by
itself, but doing some things while you are in that no contact period can really help
you.
That's the foundation of active no contact.
We've talked about that in our series on the no contact rule up there.
So check that out.
But you want to definitely get that under control.
So if your ex contacts you during no contact and you...
Check in with yourself and say, "Okay, am I ready to be in contact with my ex?"
If you're still emotionally sensitive, shaken, anxious, or something like that, then it's
probably not a good idea to be in contact with your ex.
At this point, you might be wondering, "Okay, what do I do?
Do I ignore them and finish my no contact?
Do I let them know that I'm not ready?"
I don't think that ignoring them is a good idea because again, we're sending the wrong
message that we're not relationship material.
So what I would do is I would probably suggest to them sending them a quick message like,
"Hey, I saw that you messaged me, contacted me, called me... whatever.
Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm working through some things from our breakup.
I promise when I'm ready, I'll get back in contact with you, but right now I'm just not
there yet."
And then just go ahead and continue your no contact until you start to feel emotionally
ready to be in contact with your ex.
What I want you to make sure that you're doing though is that you want to be able to focus
on developing advanced relational skills, interpersonal skills, things like that so
that when you actually get back in contact with your ex, there's going to be something
meaningfully different.
We're not just looking for that quick hit of, "Okay great, now they want to talk to
me," or something like that.
We want to actually shift the dynamic over the long run because it's not just enough
to take the tiny little thing in that moment and to say, "Okay great, now they're talking
to me again.
Now I can just let it all go."
But we want to actually be able to take the dynamic that we're having and actually move
it up in a more productive way towards having better emotional connections with our ex or
with anyone really.
And also being able to move us towards being more open, honest and forthright with one
another.
Because if you're seeing your ex as an enemy, as an opponent, as somebody that you need
to have these calculated moves against, then that's also not a very strong relationship
indicator.
People who are in great thriving, healthy relationships play on the same team.
They don't play on opposite teams.
So we want to be moving towards having that kind of dynamic where we can play on the same
team with our potential partner and if you don't have the emotional connection in place
to facilitate that you need to be practicing that during your active no-contact period.
So that means practicing in a low stakes situation such as with friends, family members, coworkers,
people that you happen to see on a day to day basis as you're making small talk and
stuff like that.
Practice shifting down from surface level communication to emotional level communication
and practice doing all the advanced relational skills stuff that we talk about in our advanced
relational skill series.
Again, that's up there.
You may want to think about doing these sorts of things and once you start to get a handle
on that and once this whole connecting with your ex stuff starts to become second nature,
then that's when it's probably a good idea to start to think about coming out of no contact.
But you don't want to just come out of no contact simply because your ex has contacted
you or reached out to you or called you or texted you or whatever accidentally run into
you or something like that.
You want to come out no contact when you are emotionally ready and prepared to have a positive
interaction with your ex.
That means number one, you're out of damage control mode.
Number two, you are in a place emotionally where you can actually have positive interactions
with other people.
If you're able to do it in low stakes situations, then you're probably likely to transfer some
of that skill set over into higher stakes situations such as interacting with your ex.
I mean there's nothing objectively low stakes versus high stakes.
It's all just in your mind, but still a lot of people see interacting with their ex as
a high stake situation.
So that's what I'd recommend that you do if your ex contacts you during a no contact.
Once again, if you like what we're doing here, make sure that you give this video a thumbs
up and subscribe to the channel, if you're not already subscribed.
Once again, my name is clay.
If you like what we're doing, you may also want to check out this series on the active
no contact rule or this video over here.
Anyway, take care and I'll talk to you next time.