It’s not easy to follow no contact for 3 months straight. No contact requires blind fate and immense determination and perseverance. Only those who understand the benefits of no contact and the consequences of breaking it stay committed to it for 3 months or longer.
Such dumpees detach from their ex a bit and start to find purpose without their ex. They start living for themselves and realize they don’t need their ex as much as they needed him or her right after the breakup when they were highly anxious and depressed.
Thanks to no contact, they have an easier time controlling their impulses and staying away from their ex. Their life becomes a priority.
On the other hand, dumpees who lack self-control and understanding of breakups oftentimes encounter difficulties. They rely on no contact for reattracting their ex and make very few changes and improvements.
As a result, they stay hopeful and desperate for reconciliation and often break no contact in an attempt to feel validated and loved.
Such dumpees do no contact entirely for their ex and fail to see that no contact is meant for them more than their ex.
If you’ve been following the rules of no contact for 3 months or longer, you should be proud of yourself for making it this far. It mustn’t have been easy to stay away from an ex you wanted to be with more than ever.
Despite your feelings telling you to contact your ex and attempt to reconcile, you remained hell-bent on leaving your ex alone and giving him or her the space he or she asked for and needed.
Not every person can do that. Many dumpees succumb to anxiety and let doubts and fears break their will. They decide that no contact isn’t the right approach for them and convince themselves that couples must talk and fix things verbally and maturely.
Little do they know that communication is for couples, not ex-couples, and that ex-couples need silence rather than communication. Silence is the only thing that makes them happy and gives them the independence they crave.
It lets them process the separation slowly and thoroughly whereas communication forces them to relive the past and brings out their anger and pent-up frustrations. By talking to each other prematurely (before they’re ready), many exes fail to give each other what they need to detach and recover.
They tend to misunderstand and pressure each other. This complicates and delays their healing process and makes them crave the opposite things from each other.
Dumpees become anxious and obsessed with validation and love while dumpers feel guilty and suffocated and need to be left alone.
If they aren’t left alone soon (and they usually aren’t), they often explode in anger and push their ex away by force. Consequently, the dumpee feels rejected once more and gets his or her self-esteem crushed (again).
Basically, post-breakup communication creates an unhealthy cycle of expecting unrealistic things from each other and hurts them when they fail to get them.
And when they fail to get them, pain creates a strong urge to be understood. This cycle of unrealistic expectations keeps repeating itself until they get tired or used to not getting what they want. Eventually, they either accept it as a new normal or stop communicating altogether.
Either way, it’s best to avoid unnecessary suffering by ceasing all communication (going no contact) as soon as possible. The sooner you start no contact, the less you’ll hurt yourself and your ex and the quicker you’ll recover.
Fortunately, you’ve been in no contact for 3 months now. This implies you’ve convinced yourself that talking to your ex can’t change what it needs to and that you need to stay in no contact to avoid angering your ex and making things worse.
You don’t need me to tell you that breaking no contact would put you at great risk of expecting your ex to love you and reset your healing. Similarly to dumpees who don’t do no contact, you could fall into the cycle of wanting love -> expecting love -> not getting love -> and trying different approaches to feel love.
Ultimately, all of your attempts would fail and make you wonder why you even reached out and made yourself dependent on your ex.
3 months of no contact is a great achievement; one that resolute dumpees achieve by constantly reminding themselves they need to keep their distance from their ex. Distance returns their lost power. But sadly, many dumpees seem to forget the effort it took them to get to the 3rd-month mark.
They feel a bit better (more in control of their emotions), so they start entertaining thoughts like, “I’ve done no contact for 3 months. What’s the worst that can happen if I reach out?”
While it’s true that they may not suffer as much as they did when they got broken up with, most of them will suffer when they reach out and get ignored, blocked, mistreated, or not treated the way they expect to be treated.
Dumpees who suffer the most are those who were in an unhealthy relationship, those who got cheated on and left, and those who were with their ex for years. 3 months is not enough to get over a long-term relationship (a relationship that lasts longer than 6 months).
Couples get attached and need much longer than that to detach. In most cases, they need at least 8 months to accept the breakup and be okay with talking to their ex while their ex is in a new relationship.
The point I’m trying to make is that dumpees take for granted the hard work they’d put into resisting temptations to reach out. When things get easier for them months into no contact, they sometimes lose the determination to stay away from their ex and reach out for unimportant reasons.
One particular dumpee informed his ex about a movie that came out. His ex was looking forward to that movie when they were together, so he made an impulsive decision to let his ex know. Although his ex didn’t react poorly, she didn’t react lovingly either.
It was a normal reaction the dumpee didn’t need, nor know what to do with.
In the end, he concluded that staying in no contact would have made him happier because he wouldn’t have learned that his ex was still set on moving on and pursuing other people.
In today’s article, we discuss what dumpees can expect and should do if they’ve been in no contact for 3 months or longer.
No contact for 3 months
It’s okay to initially start no contact to reconcile with an ex. Most dumpees go no contact not to heal but to reattract their ex and stop feeling invalidated and hurt. They want to feel needed and important and desire to reach their goals with their ex next to them.
But eventually, dumpees start to detach and realize they don’t need their ex to live a happy life and that no contact has helped them accept the breakup and process it. It has helped them mature as well and helped them see that their relationship wasn’t as flawless as they thought.
It had problems they brushed off because the breakup destroyed their self-esteem and affected their perception of their ex.
3 months into no contact, dumpees enter a new stage of a breakup in which they regain portions of their rationality and start to rebuild their self-worth.
They aren’t over their ex, of course, but they do start having more good than bad days. They experience anxiety less often and to a lesser degree and as a result, start to change their perception of their ex.
Because they feel less anxious and more in control of their thoughts and feelings, they blame themselves less and see things realistically. They understand their ex gave up when the relationship needed work the most and that they must hold their ex responsible for giving up or the way in which he or she gave up.
This is when dumpees start feeling more and more powerful. They’ve gone through the anger stage already, so they don’t feel uncontrollably angry with their ex. But they do think their ex made lots of mistakes and has lots of flaws.
After 3 months of not speaking to their ex, they’re about 1/3 into their recovery. However, despite being only 30% in, they feel way less anxious than before. This is because they’ve learned to live with pain, fears, and self-doubt and don’t need their ex to love them that much anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, they still want to be with their ex (most dumpees do), but they don’t lose sleep over it. They’re able to go to work, eat, sleep, and function just fine.
If they can’t function properly, they may not be following no contact properly or may have mental health problems to address.
Don’t forget that the main purpose of no contact is to feel better and move on with your life. If you don’t feel better and haven’t been able to focus on yourself after 3 months of not speaking to your ex, you need to take a closer look at your post-breakup behavior.
Are you stalking your ex obsessively and asking about him/her? What are you doing to fall in love with yourself and enjoy your life? Ponder on these questions and figure out if you’re doing everything right. You should soon understand what the problem is and how to resolve it.
The rules of no contact include no checking up on your ex and learning new things about your ex. They require you to cut your ex off completely and focus on things that matter in your life. Things like work, education, self-improvement, family, friends, and rebuilding your self-worth.
If you’ve been in no contact for 3 months, you’ve probably already discovered that your life doesn’t or shouldn’t revolve around one specific person. It should keep you busy with many people and activities that have nothing to do with your ex.
If you can focus on other people and things, you’ll slowly stop thinking about your ex and wean off your ex.
Every day in no contact should feel a tiny bit better. You must stay committed to no contact even if it seems like it’s not working on your ex.
The truth is, it’s working on you. It’s helping you get yourself back and live your life with purpose. Don’t give up on no contact just because someone told you to act fast because your ex might be seeing someone else.
You can’t reach out and risk hurting yourself just because your ex is doing fine and doesn’t seem to regret anything. Dumpers don’t regret much or anything until they find themselves in the same position as you.
They reflect and realize what they’ve done only when life gives them lemons and affects their self-esteem.
That’s when they have an aha moment and try to make amends by apologizing and/or asking their ex to take them back.
That said, here’s what you can expect 3 months into no contact.
If you’re waiting for your ex to have a change of heart, know that you’re waiting for something to go wrong in his or her life. You’re waiting for something out of your control to knock your ex down and hurt him or her so much that your ex sees no other way to be happy than to get back with you.
A reconciliation would instantly boost your ex’s ego and self-esteem and reduce his or her pain. If you think about it, this is what you want your ex to do for you. You want your ex to realize your worth, validate you, get rid of pain, and make you feel good.
The million-dollar question is are you willing to do that for your ex even though your ex isn’t doing it for you? Sure, your ex would take you back and empower you but don’t forget that your ex would do it for himself or herself.
As important as you’d be to your ex after your ex has had an epiphany, your ex currently doesn’t care that you’re hurting.
Your ex doesn’t and won’t care about it until your ex can benefit from you.
You can’t take this lightly because someone who let you suffer for months thought that it was necessary to dump you and put you through hell.
In my opinion, such a person shouldn’t be taken back, forgiven, and helped the moment he or she encounters problems and needs your help.
You should first analyze his or her motives for returning and make sure that he or she has improved and stopped being selfish. Once you’ve made certain that he or she has learned valuable relationship lessons and improved, you can slowly let your ex back into your heart.
Keep in mind that a reconciliation is nothing but a backup plan for dumpers. It’s their last resort when their expectations fail to manifest.
Ask yourself, why should they have it easy when you had to suffer for months?
It’s not about who suffers more but about awareness and care. If your ex doesn’t know or care that he or she has hurt you, you shouldn’t take your ex back on a whim because such a person could use you and hurt you again.
To change, your ex will need to understand what he or she has done and regret it wholeheartedly. And your ex must do that by showing you that things will be different next time around.
Read this article if your ex wants you back.
What should you do 3 months into no contact?
3 months into no contact, you should notice that you’re feeling much better. You won’t be fully healed, but you should realize that the world goes on with or without your ex and that you need to stay in no contact regardless of what your ex is thinking, feeling, and doing.
If your ex isn’t reaching out to you, you shouldn’t be reaching out to your ex either. You should be continuing to heal and grow as much as you can. The more the breakup hurts you, the more inspired you should be to make long-lasting personal changes.
My advice is to use this difficult time to learn why the breakup happened and what your shortcomings are. The success of your future relationships depends on what you improve about yourself. So put in the necessary effort and reap the rewards later.
No contact may not have affected your ex in ways you want it to yet, so you probably don’t have any other options but to self-prioritize and grow. You have to persevere and strive to detach from your ex.
It should be gradually getting easier to stay in no contact as you should become emotionally stronger and see your ex’s flaws.
Right now, you still crave your ex’s affection despite your ex’s flaws and lack of feelings, but give it a few more months and that will change. You’ll realize that your ex doesn’t deserve you as he or she is and that you should spend your time productively.
It will be difficult not to think about someone who abandoned you, but despite that, you should do your best to think about other things. Keep yourself busy and surround yourself with people you like.
Before you know it, another 3 months of no contact will go by. And when they do, you’ll get so used to not having your ex in your life, it will seem completely normal to you.
How do you feel after 3 months of no contact? Do you still struggle to accept the separation? What are you doing to ease the pain? Share your tips and experiences in the comments below. We’ll respond shortly.
However, if you’re trying to understand what went wrong and get closure, feel free to subscribe to our coaching services and get in touch.
