When you and your ex are still in love, things will unfold naturally. You won’t have to explain yourself, persuade your ex to come back, and work hard on earning your ex’s trust back. Your ex will willingly trust you, invest in you, and rebuild the relationship.
Your ex will do that because being with you will feel better than losing you and starting from scratch with someone else.
An ex who loves you after the breakup won’t just tell you that. He or she will show you love with actions by making a plan on when and how to reconnect. He or she will talk about ways to get back together as quickly as possible and try to obtain various relationship benefits from you.
I’m talking about reassuring benefits and feelings that make his or her life better.
Lots of dumpers claim to love their ex. They say things like, “I still love you, I want to be with you but can’t, I care about you so much it hurts.” They say such things because they feel sad, depressed, or bad for hurting their ex and ruining their ex’s relationship goals.
Some dumpers also confuse love for guilt and anxiety. They think love is complicated when, in reality, it’s either there or not there. Mainly dumpers who were forced to dump their ex due to cheating or something disrespectful feel that they still have feelings for their ex.
But even such dumpers don’t love their ex. They feel attached to their ex and need more time to create a life without their ex. Rationally, they know their ex isn’t the right person for them, so they keep detaching until they eventually stop missing their ex and craving their ex’s affection.
If you and your ex still love each other, you do so rationally and emotionally. You’re convinced you’re the right people for each other and that getting back together is the only option. It’s the only way to stop hurting, missing each other, and feeling unfulfilled.
If you truly love each other, you have nothing to worry about. Love will encourage communication and bonding and guide you back to each other. Reconciliation is imminent because you’ll be eager to reconnect and/or feel scared of losing each other.
Assuming you’re the dumpee, your ex will text or call you to get back together. Whether your ex is prideful and stubborn is irrelevant. He or she will easily overcome any obstacle when love is there. It’s only a matter of time because your ex won’t want to suffer and move on without you.
On the other hand, if you were the one who left the relationship, then your ex may or may not come to you. This depends on your ex’s separation anxiety and the breakup plan he/she follows. If your ex is doing no contact, trying to heal, you shouldn’t expect your ex to contact you.
That wouldn’t make sense to your ex because he or she knows that contacting the dumper is weak and strange.
When you and your ex are still in love, love will do the job for you. It will romantically interest you in each other and compel you to get back together to feel secure. You’ll want to be exclusive and spend as much time as possible with each other.
That’s what mutual love does. It releases love hormones and makes you feel validated. If your ex doesn’t love you, reconciliation won’t happen. Your ex will make excuses, delay things, blame you for the breakup, appear scared and uncertain, date other people, ignore you, get angry with you, and show no romantic interest.
He or she will find hundreds of reasons why not to be with you instead of a single reason to be with you.
An ex like that shouldn’t be near you. He or she should be left alone and kept far away from you. The last thing you want is to think that your ex still loves you when he or she doesn’t.
Someone who loves you will give you love and want your love back. He or she won’t be happy without receiving your acceptance and validation.
So don’t take your ex seriously if your ex merely told you that he/she loved you. Many exes do that to ease their ex’s anxiety and lower their guilt. They have no intention of actually putting any work in and trying to get back together.
They just say and do what’s best for them, which coincidentally, isn’t best for you. If they cared about you, they wouldn’t give you false hope and delay your healing. They would either let you go or get back together with you.
In this post, we discuss what it means when you and your ex are still in love and share some tips on what you can do about it.
What does it mean when you and your ex are still in love?
When you and your ex are still in love, you communicate in a loving way, look at each other in a loving way, and expect the relationship to restart and improve. You want each other to be present as much or more than before and wholeheartedly invest in each other.
Love gives you cravings for security and connection as it makes you want to know that you’re committed and willing to stay together long-term. If you know that you both want to be together, you can focus on setting goals and reaching them.
Goals give the relationship purpose and give you something to look forward to.
Ex-partners who love each other don’t stay away from each other and do their own things. They reconnect emotionally and do everything they can to fix the issues that broke them up. Love motivates them to identify their flaws and warns them they’ll lose everything again if they mess it up.
Hence, you can expect an ex who loves you to want to prove changes and improvements to you. Your ex will do this to impress you and gain your reassurance, forgiveness, and loyalty. The consequences (pain) of not having your love will be the main motivator for getting back together with you.
Dumpees and dumpers feel hurt when they love their ex and want their ex back. They see their ex as someone who can accept them and help them deal with their failures and pain.
A relationship with their ex allows them to cling to their ex for acceptance and helps them forget their problems.
So bear in mind that when you and your ex are still in love, emotions will guide you toward each other. They’ll instruct you to reconnect and get what you need from each other. The sooner you reconnect as partners, the sooner you’ll deal with problems, feel validated, stop hurting, and stop missing each other.
With that said, here’s what it means when you and your ex are still in love.
What to do when you and your ex are still in love?
If love is mutual, everything will work out in the end. You just have to reciprocate your ex’s feelings and let things progress naturally. Your ex won’t reject you when he/she regrets breaking up and wants to make things right.
Regardless of whether you dumped your ex or your ex dumped you, you’ll get back together in a matter of days. It won’t take longer than that because if it does, your ex is missing one of the most important catalysts for reconciliation.
That catalyst is called a sense of urgency. Exes feel it when they realize they made a mistake and need their ex back to be happy. When they understand their ex’s importance, they become afraid of not ending up with their ex.
They fear their ex will find someone else and forget about them.
An ex who isn’t in a hurry to reconcile sadly doesn’t love you. He or she is probably doubtful and thinks he or she will be doing you a favor by getting back with you. If the dumper thinks that way, he or she will be in total control of the breakup and won’t develop romantic feelings and urges to be with you.
The dumper will continue to remember things that made him or her unhappy and look for other ways to be happy. Other ways include other people and hobbies that entertain or validate him or her.
So if you and your ex are still in love and want to make the relationship work, all you have to do is talk about the plans to reconcile. Normally, the dumper brings up reconciliation of his/her own accord, but if you already know the dumper loves you, it doesn’t matter who talks about getting back together.
Start the topic so you can see how your ex feels and if you should keep communicating with your ex. You can say, “What do you think we need to work on to get back together and avoid breaking up in the future?”
In the worst-case scenario (if your ex doesn’t want you back), you’ll know that your ex doesn’t love you and that you must start no contact and do what you need to heal.
No contact will let you let go of hope and show you that you’ll be fine without your ex.
The main thing you need to do when you and your ex are still in love is 1)figure out if your ex means what he/she says and 2)talk about reconciliation. If your ex loves you, your ex will appreciate you starting the topic and use the opportunity to get back with you.
A quick reconciliation will allow your ex to feel valued and important.
On the other hand, if you and your ex don’t love each other but merely like each other and want to be friends, then neither of you will want to reconcile as romantic partners. You’ll instead use the word love synonymously and confuse each other.
I suggest you avoid using the word “love” with your ex. Whether you’re friends, friends with benefits, or on your way back together, you should save that word for your partner – the person who commits to you. That person deserves and needs your love whereas your ex doesn’t.
He or she shouldn’t hear it as long as you’re just exes.
So if you’re still in love with your ex, make sure that your ex is too. Do so by talking about the relationship and plans to get back together. If your ex is open to the idea of being partners, you can reconnect very quickly.
But if your ex makes excuses and leaves things up in the air, you need to understand that your ex doesn’t love you. Your ex is pretending that he or she does just to avoid rejecting you and hurting you.
In that case, you should go no contact with your ex and get as far away from your ex as possible. You need to keep your distance from your ex, fall out of love with your ex, and fall back in love with yourself.
Self-love is the only love you need when your ex doesn’t love you or doesn’t want to fall in love with you. As an ex, you must know what to do when your ex doesn’t want to return your feelings and give you what you want.
That way, you’ll avoid getting strung along by someone who claims to love you and want you back.
What do you think you should do when you and your ex are still in love? Do you think you should talk about getting back together only when you’re the dumper or that you should avoid reconciling altogether? If the relationship wasn’t healthy and can’t grow, you should let the relationship be and take some time to process it. Share your thoughts below.
And if you’re undecided and need some help with your breakup, feel free to reach out to us. We help dumpees and dumpers understand breakups and make positive changes that boost their self-love and chances of reconciliation.
