Re-attracting an ex or even attracting a new person seems like an art, but what if I were to tell you that it can actually be scientifically broken down into 11 key factors that create the chemicals our brains know as “love”.

Today I’m going to take you through 11 factors that psychologists have identified as the catalysts that make up the feeling of love.

After all, most feelings/emotions are just different combinations of chemicals in our heads.

Pay close attention to these even if you’re not trying to get your ex back because they’ll help you attract the right type of person into your life whenever you want.

Let’s dive right in.

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The Eleven Factors That Can Re-Attract Your Ex Girlfriend

If you’re familiar with my work on Ex Boyfriend Recovery then what I’m about to tell you about today shouldn’t be shocking.

I’ve long been a teacher of elven factors that you can reverse engineer to create the feeling of love within an ex girlfriend.

1. Similarities
2. Familiarities
3. Desirable Characteristics
4. Reciprocation
5. Social Influence
6. Fulfilling Needs (Love Languages)
7. Environment
8. Specific Cues or Particular Features
9. Readiness
10. Alone Time
11. Stability Vs. Mystery Ratio

Let’s begin by looking at each of these specific factors and defining what they are.

Factor #1: Similarities 

The age-old adage of “opposites attract” can be true but in most cases, it’s not.

We find that especially when it comes to breakups, more often than not our clients who are getting their exes back have a lot of similarities with their exes.

A similarity means something that you enjoy that your ex also enjoys, and you can bond over. The more passionate you are about your shared similarities, the closer you will be.

Now, this doesn’t mean you need to reinvent your whole personality and start adopting all their hobbies.

All I’m saying is that you should focus and highlight the similarities you already have when you get into conversations with them.

For example, let’s assume your ex is a bodybuilder and you were kind of into working out but not too much into the diet side of things. When you start talking to your ex again after a no contact rule, you can ask him questions about eating food to gain muscle so he can see that you’re trying to expand your knowledge about a shared similarity.

Factor #2: Familiarities

Similarities are the easiest thing to understand – you and your ex both like the same things and bond over them.

Familiarity is slightly different and is an extremely helpful advantage that most of our clients have over random men and women trying to date their ex.

Familiarity comes down to knowing someone and their norms so well that they cannot help but be drawn to you.

The more time you spent with someone, the more familiar you are with them and the more likely you both are to love each other and being comfortable in each other’s presence.

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You can’t really form deep familiarity in a one-night stand because that kind of intimate connection can take months or even years.

So, the more history you have, the more emotional knowledge you can tap into to show how you’re the best person for your ex.

Factor #3: Desirable Characteristics

Every single person on this earth has specific characteristics they prefer about other individuals that are unique to them. Here I’m talking about the emotional and mental characteristics rather than physical characteristics because desirable characteristics are about how you make the other person FEEL.

For example, some people only date extroverts or people with the same sense of humor as them because they appreciate feeling socially active and funny.

Here’s the good news – you clearly already have some of the personality traits from your ex’s desirability characteristics because they have already been attracted to you. They chose to date you because you matched with the characteristics they were looking for so all you have to do is emphasize those again to grab your ex’s attention.

On the other hand, this can also hurt you if you don’t have those desirable characteristics, or worse – have some undesirable characteristics. An undesirable characteristic for most people is having clingy partners.

Well, if you have an anxious attachment style, chances are your clinginess went into overdrive after your breakup and you started blowing up your ex’s phone. That kind of behavior is a huge turn off that does not improve your chances,

So being aware of your desirable and undesirable characteristics can help in cultivating the exact image and positive perception you want your ex to have when you start talking to them again.

Factor #4: Reciprocation

Reciprocation – if you put yourself out there, you’re not going to fall in love with someone unless they reciprocate your feelings and efforts.

The same goes with your ex – we find this happens a lot especially during a no-contact rule. We’ll tell our clients to do a no contact rule and then get back in touch with their ex after the no contact period is up.

However, sometimes they get so caught up in the no contact rule and everything good it’s doing for them that they forget or don’t care about talking to their ex anymore.

That’s cool if you were going for moving on from your ex.

But for most people, the main goal of a no contact rule is to rebuild themselves and the foundations of a new relationship with their ex.

But if you do an extended no contact rule for let’s say 30 days and your ex reached out to you multiple times during it, if you don’t contact them again till day 45, they may feel disrespected.

They tried putting themselves out there and you didn’t reciprocate so now they’re over it. The longer the no contact rule, the more chances of this happening. This is also why we don’t recommend doing an extremely long 60+ day no contact rule.

Now, don’t misunderstand this and think that you have to respond to your ex if they reach out during a no contact rule. Absolutely do not reply to an ex during no contact (unless it’s an emergency) or you will lose any leverage you’ve gained.

This reciprocation rule is about the first contact you establish AFTER a successful no contact rule.

Factor #5: Social Influence

Social influence comes in two forms – the social norms of dating and the sphere of influence.

Social norms of dating are what we think of as the socially acceptable “dos and don’ts” of dating.

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For example, if you and your ex have a big age difference, then social norms are not okay with that and it’ll be harder to get back together because of the external pressure.

In fact, our whole business of helping people get their exes back is against social norms because most people have a knee-jerk reaction saying, “why would you ever want to get back with an ex?”.

To us, we’re in the business of building back relationships just as people try to save marriages. Saving a marriage is seen as a good thing in society but getting back together with an ex you weren’t married to isn’t. That’s hypocritical like most social norms are.

Besides, we never tell people to go back to abusive exes or anything, just those cases where one of both sides made human mistakes and wish to give it another shot.

Sphere of influence is the people your ex surrounds themselves with whose opinions they care about and listen to. These people can make a big difference on whether they take the step of getting back together with you.

Being on the good side of these people can go a long way in your favor but the opposite is also true if they don’t like you. Honestly, there’s not much you can do to change social influence on your ex so it’s best to leave those factors alone.

There is some hypocrisy in these norms and spheres of influence, but it can blow up in your face if you point that out so it’s better to let your ex come to these conclusions on their own.

Factor #6: Fulfilling Needs

Simply put – people have certain needs they need to be fulfilled and if you don’t fulfill those needs, they will fall out of love with you and fulfill their needs elsewhere.

A great psychological way of understanding this factor is with the five love languages and the concept of a daily emotional cup.

The daily emotional cup is a concept I’m borrowing from my wife’s work as an expert in early childhood education. She is working on a program to help people raise children in the best way possible and one of the key concepts she uses is how every child has a cup.

The cup needs to be filled with things like undivided alone time with parents, childlike play, Storytime, etc. – basically, all activities that show kids their parents care about them. By the end of the day, you need to fill the cup up to the top and if the cup is filled to the top, you’ll be amazing at how well behaved your kids will be. The same is true in relationships.

Everyone has a cup that they need to get filled so how do you fill the cup? Just like people prefer different ratios of sugar to milk in their coffee, people prefer different ratios of expressions of love or love languages.

The 5 main love languages are words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch.

Some people prefer giving and receiving gifts as their way of expressing love while some prefer acts of service such as doing chores for each other etc.

It’s on you to identify your ex/partner’s love languages and fill their cup up with those every day.

If you want to learn more about love languages and how they relate to breakups, I highly recommend you check out the recent video interview Coach Anna and I did about Using Love Languages To Get Your Ex Back.

Factor #7: Environment

The environment is one of the most underrated aspects that people tend to overlook in the factors of love and reattracting exes, but I believe it can be incredibly powerful if used correctly.

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There’s a difference between going on a date at McDonald’s and going on a date in a hot air balloon, right? One is clearly a non-romantic, last-minute location (even though the food is great) while one is an extremely romantic and carefully planned location.

Which of these is more romantic?

Of course, you’re more likely to fall in love in an air balloon because of the romantic environment.

I actually did similar research about the interpretation of emotions on dates with experiences.

If you go on a date and do something life-altering or adrenaline-filled like skydiving, you will attach all the amazing emotions from the experience to the person you were with. The same can happen with locations too.

A great example of this is when shows like bachelor have people going on dates in these extremely romantic locations to accelerate falling in love. It almost always works, and it makes for great TV too because location matters a LOT for romance.

So, when it comes to going on a date with your ex or someone new, consider the environment in which you have a conversation because it can make a world of difference in how your counterpart experiences and remembers your interaction.

Factor #8: Specific Cues or Particular Features

This factor is almost identical to the “desirable characteristics”, the way I separate the two is:

Desirable characteristics are more in line with personality traits – how a person makes you feel because of their actions or personality quirks.

Specific cues or particular features are more in line with physical traits – how a person makes you feel because of their physical appearance or physical gestures they do.

This can range from preferring blondes vs brunettes to something as simple as loving the way someone’s nose crinkles up when they laugh. Everyone has specific cues or particular features that they find attractive and look for.

In the large scheme of things, you can’t really change someone’s physical preferences or your physique so you shouldn’t worry too much about this one.

It’s out of your control so it’s one of the least important factors throughout this article.

Factor #9: Readiness

Readiness is just another word for timing. There’s a difference between someone ready to fall in love and someone who is not ready to fall in love. This is one of the big reasons we say you should not try to get your ex back immediately after a breakup.

They’re going through an emotional roller coaster and are definitely not ready to love again so the timing couldn’t be worse. You need to give them enough time to realize they made a mistake and regret their decision of breaking up with you.

Here are two of the best (albeit a bit extreme) examples of readiness:

1. Not ready: someone who recently lost their parents and does not feel like talking to anyone – falling in love is the last thing on their mind.
2. Ready: Someone whose been going on a few dates and finally had the perfect date with someone they’re highly attracted to – they’re ready to fall in love ASAP.

So, don’t undervalue the concept of timing. People often incorrectly assume “the timing is always right because you can make it right”- that’s simply not true. You can’t force your way into someone’s heart or life if they’re not open to it.

In fact, the more you push someone when they’re not ready, the more they push you away.

You must accept this truth, move on and be patient with your ex till they are ready. In fact, our whole process from the no contact rule to slowly building the value chain is created to maximize the time they need to get ready and you need to gain leverage.

Factor #10: Alone Time

This is something we’ve learned when we deal with marriages specifically and why marriages fail.

One of the biggest reasons marriages fail especially when you have all sorts of things going on like career stress, money problems, kids keeping you busy is that you don’t create enough alone time with your partner.

When I say alone time, I’m not talking about a movie night where you both spend half the time on your phones.

That’s not alone time. Alone time is where both of you put your phones down, go for a walk, and spend about an hour chatting and trying to really check in with each other.

This is the time you can update each other about your lives, understand how you both feel about current world events, etc., or have meaningful conversations about philosophical topics that are important to you.

Right now, you’re going through a breakup, but I want you to look back to your relationship and ask yourself how much alone time you had together? I bet the answer isn’t nearly as much as you’d want.

We notice this is a huge problem especially for long-distance relationships because there’s no way for them to physically be together. Of course, you can text, call, play games together, etc. but you’re missing out on that physical element of looking into their eyes and picking up on subtle body language cues.

Factor #11: Stability Vs. Mystery Ratio

The concept of striking a balance between stability and mystery in a relationship is something we have talked about for a long time.

This concept may not have as much psychological proof as some others on this list but that’s mostly because it’s hard to quantify into specific numbers.

However, we have seen a lot of proof in our clients that this concept exists. So, what is mystery?

Mystery is the ability to always feel like there’s something more to learn about your significant other because they’re always doing and trying new things.

On the opposite side, stability is the person who is always trustworthy and dependable but will never do anything out of the ordinary. They have a set routine that they love and will not deviate from.

Now much like filling the cup of love languages, each person has a different percentage preference of how much stability vs. mystery they want in their relationship.

Too much stability can be boring and repetitive, but too much mystery can be tiring and uncertain as well. This is why it’s very important to strike the perfect balance that works for you and your ex.

The more time you spend with someone, the more you know about whether they prefer stability or mystery more.

Lots of relationships break down because there is too much stability – getting into routines and taking them for granted to the point of never doing any spontaneous or mysterious acts. So, you need to recognize what you were lacking towards the end of your relationship and stay consistent with the stability vs, mystery needs of the person you’re trying to win back.

Conclusion:

I know this is a bit of a long read, but I promise if you apply all this to your exes or your future/current relationships you’re going to have a much better and love-filled relationship.

Here’s a quick recap of the 11 eleven factors that ultimately work in synergy to create the feeling of love:

1. Similarities
2. Familiarities
3. Desirable Characteristics
4. Reciprocation
5. Social Influence
6. Fulfilling Needs (Love Languages)
7. Environment
8. Specific Cues or Particular Features
9. Readiness
10. Alone Time
11. Stability Vs. Mystery Ratio