Oftentimes lost and anxious dumpees wonder when exes come back. They want to know if they should wait and how long they should wait for the person they love to reach the regretful stage of a breakup and come running back.
The answer I give most dumpees is “don’t wait at all” because waiting puts their life on hold and makes their happiness and health dependent on their ex’s choices and actions. It prevents them from moving on and improving the things they need to improve about themselves and their new life.
As for when they come back, it varies for each dumper. Some dumpers need a week or two of space because that’s how long it takes them to realize they still love their ex and that they haven’t detached from their ex yet.
They only need a little bit of time to see that their ex won’t beg and plead for their love and attention.
Other (most) dumpers, though, need months or years to become regretful. They need that long because they need life to slowly teach them some powerful lessons. Lessons that their partner had what they wanted but that they couldn’t appreciate it at the time.
When they learn the lessons they need to learn, they then become scared of feeling left behind and losing their ex forever. The breakup essentially flips on them. It turns them into dumpees who desire a plateau of security in life.
We like to think that exes come back entirely for us, but that’s not entirely true. They mainly come back for themselves because our presence, behavior, and convenience give them certain benefits and positive feelings.
These benefits and feelings usually take their pain, regret, and shame away and replace them with reassuring emotions.
So don’t expect exes to come back just because you were nice to them. To come back, they need to undergo a rational, mental, and emotional change.
This change must severely impact the way they think and feel about you. Only when they change their mentalities can they come back and give you something to work with.
If they come back entirely for non-romantic reasons such as guilt, loneliness, and friendship, they typically don’t redevelop romantic feelings. They just use their ex for emotional fulfillment and leave once they’ve gotten what they needed.
Sadly, exes don’t always fall back in love. Sometimes they just feel curious and nostalgic and want to see how their ex thinks and feels about them. Such exes reach out to breadcrumb their ex for selfish reasons. In their minds, they think it’s okay to reach out and talk about random things when they feel or don’t feel a certain way and think their ex should help them.
This makes dumpers very inconsiderate of their ex’s healing.
So if you want the answer to “When do exes come back,” they come back when they’re certain they (not you) made a terrible mistake. They return when they stop viewing themselves as victims and consider you a person of high romantic value.
This usually happens when something bad happens to them rather than when a certain number of days or weeks go by. Time has nothing to do with romantic regret.
Regret needs an incentive; one that convinces them their chosen path will end in failure and misery. Only unhappiness can dissuade them from pursuing happiness without you.
Don’t think that you must prove your worth to your ex and make your ex see that he or she won’t be happy without you. As a dumpee, you don’t have to prove anything. Even if it was your job, you don’t have that kind of power.
You can’t make your ex see the things he or she needs to see because your ex believes his or her perception of you is 100% correct. Your ex made up his or her mind about you a long time ago, which is why you’re the last person on Earth who can do anything about it.
The reason you lack control is that you’re directly involved and responsible for your ex’s negative thoughts and feelings. I’m not saying you said or did something to make your ex lose feelings, but your ex certainly thinks that there are incompatible elements that broke you up.
Something or someone made the breakup more attractive than the relationship. This must change for your ex to feel the drive to reconnect romantically and invest in the relationship. Your ex must go from thinking “My ex wasn’t right for me” to “My ex was a great match and a catch.”
Such thinking can trigger a sense of urgency and make your ex want you back before you move on and fall in love with someone else. It can change the power dynamics in the breakup and force your ex to respect you and crave your validation and support.
Until that happens, you must hold on to your value by avoiding breakup mistakes. Mistakes include begging, communicating, trash-talking, and doing anything that shows you’re in pain and still want to be with your ex.
Breakup mistakes don’t completely eliminate your chances of getting back together with your ex, but they do lower them as they show you’re attached and that you need your ex to be happy.
If you begged for a few days post-breakup, it’s probably not the end of the world. Most dumpees act on feelings of denial and try to reason with their ex. They’re in so much pain they refuse to accept the breakup and walk away with their head held high.
That’s why they do things that attempt to change their ex’s mind and make them feel validated and needed.
It’s much more concerning if you begged for another chance for weeks or months as months of pressuring can cause irreversible damage to both you and your ex.
It can repulse your ex and permanently affect your self-esteem. Those who don’t leave their ex alone after the breakup tend to struggle to love themselves and re-attract their ex when life gives their ex lemons.
In this post, we talk about when exes come back. We also discuss how you must conduct yourself if you want to preserve your worth and not make things worse.
When do exes come back?
Exes don’t come back only because you loved them and treated them well. They come back when they realize they aren’t and can’t be happy without you. In other words, they return when they see that the life they have now is much worse than the life they had when they were with you.
And the only way they can see that is by comparing the present to the past. When they compare now to back then, they can regret their choices and actions and come running back to secure a place in your heart. That’s when they finally say how sorry they are and that they’re ready to recommit to the relationship.
I suppose the real question is when do exes compare the past to the present? What needs to happen for them to want to compare their new life to the life they shared with you?
Well, most people need to experience some kind of failure, followed by a powerful shock. They need to experience so much anxiety and for so long that they start looking for solutions to their problems in the past.
People often look for solutions to present times in the past, but they do that only if they can’t find any viable solutions in the present.
When they’ve exhausted all options and still feel hurt, they question their worth and wonder if they could have treated people better and made better decisions.
Your best bet is to wait for your ex to hit a snag and reminisce about the good times with you. I’m not saying that will definitely happen when things get tough (some exes don’t look back), but if it does happen, it will be when your ex fails to find peace and happiness without you.
It will happen when your ex gets hurt and wants to feel better with you.
Therefore, dumpers realize they made a mistake when something painful shocks them and shows them they have the grass is greener syndrome. This syndrome makes them understand they underestimated their ex and overestimated their ability to live a joyous life on their own or with someone else.
It normally takes them another failed relationship to understand that the relationship with their ex wasn’t perfect but that it could have been worked on and improved. Romantic failure or in some cases multiple romantic failures can give dumpers a new perspective on their failed relationship and make them nostalgic.
Pain can make even the most stubborn dumpers anxious, depressed, jealous, envious, nostalgic, and insecure. The bigger the issue and the worse they feel, the bigger the chance that they’ll fall back in love with their ex and try to reconcile.
With that said, here’s when exes come back.
Exes come back when they’re unhappy, not when they friendzone the dumpee and slowly through conversation see that they can trust and love their ex.
Slow reconciliations don’t occur very often. In fact, they rarely do.
When dumpees try to talk their way back into the relationship, they more often than not fail and make things worse as they pressure their ex into reciprocating their actions.
Some dumpees even push their ex so far that they get a restraining order against them.
So forget about talking to your ex and making your ex feel good. Before your ex should feel good with you, your ex should feel unhappy without you. Your ex should fail so that he or she can engage in introspection and understand why he or she needs you.
If you give your ex relationship benefits just because you’re nice and want your ex to do the same, you’ll quickly find out that you can’t make your ex fall in love with you before he or she fails in some important way and becomes receptive to you.
The only way your ex can and should come back is of his or her own accord. A reconciliation that occurs on your ex’s terms has the highest chance of short and long-term success as it happens naturally when your ex is ready for it.
So if you want to know when exes come back, it’s not when you want them to. They come back (most of the time) after you’ve detached as that’s when they see you don’t need them anymore and can give them the emotional stability they crave.
The reason exes return when you’ve moved on is because they need time to feel that they’re not as important as they thought. Time helps them process the post-separation relief and gets them in trouble.
If they lack the tools to resolve issues alone, they could contact you and ask for help. Again, every dumper deals with stressors and behaves differently. Your ex might not be the type to confide in you about his or her problems.
He or she might internalize problems and deal with them alone.
If that’s the case, your ex probably won’t come back even if he or she gets cheated on and dumped. This is also true if your ex can’t let go of his or her negative perception of you. A dumper who feels victimized and vengeful will associate negative beliefs and emotions with you for a very long time.
He could do that for the rest of his life if he never evolves as a person.
So keep in mind that exes come back when their character, maturity, and unpredictable circumstances allow them to rather than when you say or do something to make them fall back in love with you.
Sure, your behavior is important. But other than avoiding breakup mistakes, keeping busy, and enjoying your life without bragging about it, there’s not much you can do. You have to keep letting go of your ex and displaying the ability to take care of yourself and others.
Your ex will come back if he or she redevelops feelings and wants you back romantically.
In the meantime, focus on detaching and improving yourself. It will help you in your everyday life as well as in your next romantic relationship.
When do you think exes come back? What must happen for them to reflect on their mistakes and realize they lost someone amazing? Share your views in the comments below below. We’ll get back to you shortly.
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