What do you do if your ex monkey branched into a new relationship? That's what we're
going to be talking about in this video. But first, my name is Clay with modernlove.life,
where you help you get the great loving relationship you're looking for without mind games, without
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Let's go ahead and get onto this video though. So monkey branching. This is a term that basically
means when someone leaves one relationship and immediately goes into another relationship.
It's based off of some theory that a monkey won't let go of one branch until it has another
branch in its clasp. Only then does it feel safe to let go. And sometimes people behave
in a similar way in relationships. They won't let go of one relationship that's not working
for whatever reason, unless they have some other relationship already lined up and ready
to go. So what does it mean if this happened with
you and your ex? Basically they were together with you and then they monkey branched into
a new relationship with someone else. Well, first of all, obviously this is a sign of
a rebound relationship. Now, you probably don't need me to tell you this, but rebound
relationships have a whole set of problems and issues and challenges. It's very well-known.
It's probably a rebound relationship. We have a whole video series on rebound relationships
by the way, you're probably going to want to check that out. It's right up there. You
can just click on that and then it'll start up and it'll tell you about all the ins and
outs of rebound relationships like displacement, how to tell if it's a rebound, how to tell
it's not a rebound, all sorts of stuff. Rebound relationships are incredibly fascinating
and strange when it comes to human behavior. But basically there were probably issues in
your relationship that were brewing for a while, right? Your ex isn't just going to
leave one relationship and go to another relationship just because. There's obviously something
in the relationship that they had with you that was not satisfying for some reason. Maybe
it is that you even know what that might be. Maybe you know that it was because of some
challenge that you had. Some conflict that you had. Some thing that never really got
resolved all the way. Some hurt feelings from the past.
I don't know, but whatever that was, that you can look at as the actual point when the
breakup happened, but they stayed with you and the relationship emotionally dead end
until they could kind of get things ready to the point where they could then monkey
branch into the next relationship. And you can look at that point when things got bad
as the emotional point where the breakup happened, not necessarily that conversation that you
had was like, "We need to talk. So things haven't been working with us. And by the way,
I'm dating Chad over here." No, that's not when the relationship fell apart. It fell
apart when the emotional disconnect started to happen in the first place, okay?
And so if you want to save things between you and your ex, you need to address what
that original emotional fracture point was. Whether that was a break of trust, whether
that was, they just didn't feel an emotional connection to you, whether that was you didn't
do what you said you were going to do, whatever it was. You got to start by looking at that.
And then you have to demonstrate to them that things are going to be different moving forward.
Now the beneficial thing about all of this is that your ex is in a rebound relationship.
And rebound relationships are a little bit different in that the relationship that they're
having now, the one that they monkey branched into, is really a reaction to the relationship
that they had with you, right? So whatever wasn't working in that relationship is informing
their choice in this new relationship. And you'll see this in all sorts of strange ways.
Like, oh, they'll get into a relationship with someone who's the exact polar opposite
of you, or shockingly similar to you in [inaudible 00:04:29] sorts of ways.
These are very high rebound relationship frequency activities that people have observed. And
there's all sorts of other things as well too, like psychological displacement, which
is basically where you and your ex had a certain level in your relationship. Maybe you were
talking about moving in together, or talking about getting engaged, or maybe you were engaged
and talking about getting married or whatever. And then they end up in this new relationship,
and then they just fast forward that relationship up to about the same level of commitment.
And it's like, "Wow, it took us a year to talk about getting engaged and you're getting
engaged in a matter of two months. What's up with that?"
It's not that this new relationship is so much better. It's just that they have a certain
level of comfort in the relationship that they had with you, and they want to fast forward
this new relationship to that similar level, because it feels comfortable, it feels familiar,
it feels safe to them. And so they want to experience that as quickly as possible. In
that respect, it is like the same relationship just with a different person. It's a really,
really weird thing. Once again, you can find information on that in that video playlist,
in the cards that I mentioned. But basically if you do want to get back together
with your ex, you're going to have to leverage what we call the decoy strategy. And the decoy
strategy, this comes from a book by Dan Ariely called Predictably Irrational. And yeah, he
actually talks about this. I believe it's in the first chapter of the book. So you're
not going to have to get too deep into it if you're not a big reader. But basically
he says that the mind has a difficult time comparing two very different people. It's
like, "Okay, am I better than this other person? Is this other person better than me?" It's
hard to say, right? But the mind can make decisions much more
easily between two similar things, even to the exclusion of other options out there,
which means that if there's the version of me that you broke up with, and then there's
a better version of me, an upgraded version of me. A version of me that got my stuff together
versus a third option, you're going to ignore that third option and then choose which one
do you like better. The old version of me or the new version of me. That's how the decoy
strategy works. And so you want to be able to leverage that
in order to re-establish an emotional connection with your ex, rebuild it and get them to potentially
get back together with you. Now, of course, we want to address the core issues about why
the two of you broke up, which is what you want to do as the two of you are exploring
what is possible between the two of you together. You want to address that. Demonstrate to them
that whatever caused that initial emotional rift in the first place is resolved and it's
not going to come back, okay? And that's what's really going to make this decoy effect work.
We can't just talk about how we've changed. We can just talk about how things are better.
We have to demonstrate through our actions, our words, our deeds. I guess words yeah,
but we're also demonstrating to them through how we're conveying things through our way
of being. I mean, the specifics about what you're going to need to actually demonstrate
depend on how the two of you broke up in the first place, but that's the key takeaway here,
okay? There's a lot that you can do when it comes
to getting back together from a rebound. Obviously we're just scratching the surface in all of
this, but either way, you're probably going to be dealing with some high stakes communication
issues. And if you do want to learn more about all of that, please feel free to check out
our new course called Effortless Connection. It's available down in the description box
below, check it out. If it's right for you, you're more than welcome to sign up. If it's
not right for you, don't worry. Not going to twist your arm.
Anyway, thanks so much for checking out this video. Once again, if you do want to learn
more about rebound relationships, we have that video series right over here. Or if you'd
like to check out this video, that would be helpful for you too as well. But thanks so
much, please take care and hit that thumbs up button. Talk to you next time.