My ex replies, but doesn't initiate. What can I do to get them to take more initiative
in our interactions? That's what we're going to be talking about in this video. 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 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.
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Program. It is a sort of a start to finish course that lays out an entire blueprint for
helping you to get back together with your ex by focusing on the emotional connection.
We've helped a lot of people go from a place where maybe their ex is responding, but not
initiating towards actually wanting to commit to a relationship with them. And it all comes
from focusing in on that emotional connection between the two of you.
Anyway, I'm not going to hard to sell you on the Ex Solution program, but if you're
curious about it, you can find out more information about it down in the description box below
this video. Anyway, let's get into this video. So if your ex is responding to you, but not
initiating, then let's go ahead and reverse engineer what's going on here. So they're
talking to you and that's a good thing. They're open to being in communication with you, and
maybe they're even opening up significantly with you. But they're not initiating with
you. Now, there can be a lot of reasons for that.
That is to say, they're interacting with you and they might even enjoy interacting with
you, but there's something emotionally that's stopping them from taking the initiative.
What could that be? Now we want to first start by taking a look at them as a general overall
personality type. Are they maybe just more of a passive sort of person in general? If
you look back at your time together, we're they passive in the past? Were they not the
kind of person that took initiative? If so, maybe that's just kind of how they are.
But if they used to take the initiative, but now they're not hat kind of lets us know that
there's something else going on, on the emotional level that could be keeping them from wanting
to take the initiative. So let's go ahead and look at some common reasons why your ex
might not be taking the initiative. So first of all, they might feel guilty for hurting
you in the past. They might feel guilty for breaking up with you and they might be thinking
to themselves like, "Maybe I miss them and maybe I want to contact them, but who am I
to do that when I hurt you so badly?" Would that just make me like someone who's
giving them false hope or maybe I shouldn't be the one to make the first move because
I've been such a jerk to them in the past. I've heard them I've caused them to cry potentially.
And so that can sometimes keep your ex from reaching out, a sense of guilt. Another thing
that can keep them from reaching out is high expectations. Oftentimes, people's exes think
that it has to be either all or nothing if they're going to be in contact with you.
Either, they're going to get back together with you and date you and want to commit to
you again, and all of that stuff if they're in contact with you or it's nothing at all.
Now obviously that is not a great place to be because there needs to be sort of this
nebulous kind of period in the beginning, usually where your ex and you were just sort
of like feeling each other out and without any sort of expectation, seeing how you want
to interact with one another, and how the two of you are going to fit into each other's
lives. And it can be really hard to have this time
if the two of you are trying to decide, "Okay, we're going to be everything or nothing at
all." And so what you may want to do is you may want to decrease the amount of expectations
they have, so they can feel comfortable initiating with you without thinking that it has to necessarily
lead to something or that it has to mean something significant, or something along those lines/
that can definitely play a role as well, too. Because your ex might be afraid to reach out
to you because they might think, "Oh, well, I don't know how I feel about them just yet,
but I'm afraid of giving them false hope or I'm afraid of leading them on. I'm afraid
that it might be that a-hole that uses their ex or something like that. And I don't want
to be that guy. I want to be a good person." And so that can sometimes keep them from taking
the initiative because they're in a place of indecision themselves. And they don't feel
as if they can take the initiative until they have some degree of certainty. But of course,
they're not going to have that degree of certainty until the two of you interact a little bit
more and they build up the emotional connection between the two of you and actually have some
good emotional feelings and bonding between the two of you, so that they actually start
to feel that degree of certainty. So again, we need to have that sort of expectation
free period where the two of you are able to connect with one another without it necessarily
leading to something or meaning something or anything like that, really important. And
oftentimes building that emotional connection can come through focusing on advanced relational
skills. So if you do want to learn more about advanced relational skills, we do have an
entire video playlist on the topic. You can find it right up there in a video
card. This is really kind of the foundation about what we teach, advanced relational skills
and emotional connection. So if you're new to me or this channel, you might want to check
that out. Again, it is right up there in the corner. And so if your ex is responding, but
not initiating, oftentimes it's some sort of block like that that's keeping them from
taking that next step. Now, there could obviously other things as well, too, like for example,
maybe they're in a rebound relationship and they think that like, "Oh, if I'm contacting
you, my ex and I'm in this relationship with someone else, does that make me a bad person?
Does that make me someone who's going to like two time on my rebound or something like that."
And you might want them to do that because you want to see what's possible between the
two of you, but they might feel the sense of guilt in doing that. They might start to
feel that their identity is starting to veer towards the negative side of things. If they
start to think like, "Oh, maybe I'm not being faithful. Maybe I'm not doing giving my new
relationship a fair shake." And again, that's just that expectation thing. So what we want
to do is we want to pull down that expectation so that they don't think that we are necessarily
interacting with one another out of an overtly romantic sort of way.
And we want to just say something like, "Hey, like let's not force anything that's not here.
Let's just enjoy interacting with one another as friends for the time being." And this can
often help create a better a situation between the two of you where you can connect better.
In fact, I often recommend that people actually overtly put themselves in the friend zone,
and this can be kind of scary for a lot of people, because a lot of people are really
terrified of the friend zone and they're terrified that their ex is going to put them in the
friend zone. And that they're just going to end up with some like platonic friend while
their exes sitting there gushing about their new rebound partner or something.
This does not usually happen. So do not worry about this. I've never had a client who was
legit in the friend zone. Instead, putting yourself in the friend zone just gives your
ex permission to interact with you. Permission to spend more time with you. Something to
tell themselves when their mind starts asking the question, "Why are we meeting up? Why
are we talking? Does this make me a bad person because I'm dating someone else? Are we giving
them false hope or something? But instead they have this answer that says,
"Oh, well, we're friends. So that's why we're talking, right?" And so this is a good context
for rebuilding that emotional connection. And when the two of you get back together,
you'll probably be able to look back at this period of time and say, "Yeah, we were dating
in our own way the whole time." You're not really friends. And asterisk here, I have
to kind of point this out because people sometimes get confused on this.
But when you do this, you don't want to just be kind of interacting with your ex as a platonic
friend. You obviously want to do things like flirt with them when and if the situation
calls for it, when and if the mood is right and all of that. You want to be kind of probing
things out, but you don't want to just kind of box yourself into this platonic vibe, right?
You want to give them something to answer the question, "What are we?" So they don't
have to jump to conclusions and say, "Oh, we're dating. Oh, we're getting back together.
This is way too much pressure for me. I'm going to create more distance."
But you want to give them something to answer it with and say like, "Oh, we're friends.
That's why we're talking. That's why we're getting together. That's why we're doing things
together." And that creates more of the context for you to build up that emotional connection.
And once that emotional is stronger, then they're going to start initiating more. And
once there's less of expectation on them about trying to define what the two of you are at
this point in time. Again, we don't want to be in this sort of nebulous, quasi-relationship
friend zone thing indefinitely. We want to get to a point where we can build
up that emotional connection and then start to work on defining what we are. But there
does need to be that time and place where we start to just feel out what we are for
one another, without any sort of expectation. And that can be really helpful. And if you
do this, the emotional connection between you and your ex will start to improve, and
you'll find most likely that they will start to initiate a lot more.
So, anyway, I hope this has helped you out. If you like what we're doing on this channel,
please help me out by hitting that thumbs up button and by subscribing to the channel.
The more you hit that thumbs up button on my videos, the more it tells YouTube that
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us out. So please feel free to do that. And if you do want to learn more about how
to connect with your ex on an emotional level, please check out this video series over here
on advanced relational skills or check out this video over here. But once again, my name
is Clay with modernlove.life. I hope you found this video helpful and I'll talk to you next
time. Please take care.