“I don’t love you anymore.”

Those five little words are enough to bring even the toughest man to his knees. And the hardest part is dealing with the urges that come afterward.

When I was little, I had this friend who was always eating licorice by the bag-full. Now, I have never liked licorice. In fact, I still don’t. But there was a moment when I turned down the offering of a piece once. He basically said, “you couldn’t have it even if you wanted.” Oh, you know how determined I was to get at it then?

Well, two scraped knees and a trip to the principal’s office later, and I think he would’ve given me the entire bag if it hadn’t spilled on the floor. All it takes is one word, no, and there is nothing that will stand in my way.

I find a lot of people are like that. We don’t want something until it is no longer available to us.

Case-in-point, your ex has told you that she doesn’t love you anymore and now you can’t stop thinking about getting her back. It permeates every second of every day. Don’t worry, I’ve been there. It’s totally normal.

In a movie, you would make some grand gesture to win her back. Unfortunately, this isn’t a movie and grand gestures don’t fix underlying issues that caused her to fall out of love in the first place.

I mean, falling out of love doesn’t happen overnight because of one moment. Sure there may have been the last straw, but usually, it boils down to little things that happen over time.

How Your Ex Girlfriend Falling Out of Love Happens

Firstly, let’s just go ahead and get honest. Whatever one reason you think there is for your ex falling out of love… you’re wrong. It is highly unlikely that there is only one thing, one action you did, that caused this.

Relationships, at least good solid ones, have seven traits that help the people in it feel safe and comfortable.

• Respect
• Trust – Benefit of the doubt and accepting each other’s word
• Accountability – Admit mistakes and taking responsibility
• Cooperation – Asking for something and not just expecting things, accepting changes, compromises, and making decisions together
• A Feeling of Safety – Not using intimidation to convince each other, respect personal space
• Honesty – healthy communication
• Support – sense of solidarity on choices, be encouraging, valuing each other’s opinions

I think each of these is equally important, as I am sure your ex would agree. But you can’ just say,” Hey, I respect you,” and then that be it. It takes a continuous effort on both of your parts if you want it to be a long-lasting relationship. You can’t just say here’s how it’s going to be.

Just like a car. You don’t just buy it and never do any maintenance. A relationship takes constant maintenance and attention.

My guess for anyone who’s in a situation with someone who fell out of love is that several of these areas were lacking in your relationship. I mean it doesn’t just boil down to hogging the covers or leaving a dirty dish in the sink. It’s the message those things convey when compiled over time.

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The Common Misconception

Love isn’t like a book that you buy and you just have it from then on until you decide you are done with it. No! Once you fall for someone, you tend to keep falling for them over and over in different capacities. It’s part of getting to know someone.

For example, I had this guy friend in college who fell for this girl in one of his classes and they started dating. They had been together for a while and one morning he and I were studying together and it came up. He was telling me about how they met. And he said, ” I knew when I met her that I loved her, but this morning she was arguing with the coffee maker and I fell in love with her all over again.”

I felt like I was listening to Jim talk about Pam. (Any Office fans?) It was disgustingly cute how serious he was.

I get it. You get comfortable with someone and you start to expect things to just coast onward without having to work at them. It would be a heck of a lot easier if that was the case. I mean, we could just go on to focus on other things in life and just have this person that we love along for the ride. Unfortunately, focusing on work or a hobby more leaves a partner feeling neglected if the effort isn’t made to fill the gap.

Let’s Get Real Though

The reason we fall so hard for someone the first go around can be contributed to what I call the “feel goods”, you know, serotonin, norepinephrine, and oxytocin. The thing is, the second time around, reason outweighs emotion. So you have to deal with their more reasonable side before they will let you in.

But I am going to tell you a secret… Love is just like any other emotion. Think back to the last time you were truly afraid.

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If I think back, it has to be back when Paranormal Activity came out. We went to see it in theaters. The thing is, as jumpy and as weird as the whole movie was, it wasn’t really all that scary to me. But there was this one scene where they were laying in bed and all of a sudden her leg jolts out of the bed as if someone was pulling it. She gets pulled out of bed and dragged down the hallway. It wasn’t that it scared me. My brain just couldn’t figure out how they did it.

I had nightmares for months.

I couldn’t control it. I knew it was absolutely bonkers.

Some people say things like “Yeah, fear does that to you.”

And, yeah, that’s true… kind of.

It’s emotions. They get the better of us, fear, jealousy, anxiety, self-pity… there are so many. And when they get going, we have no control over when they boil up and when they don’t.

Did you know that one of the most common ruses in manipulation is to manipulate someone while also making them fall in love? They hide their true agenda by bombarding their target with serotonin, norepinephrine, and oxytocin. That kind of distraction only works once, especially if they had a solid reason for falling out of love in the first place.

The real secret is, you can use actual psychology to make her fall back in love with you.

Using Psychology to Make Things Happen With Your Ex Girlfriend

Every person has a list of what they’re looking for in a person that makes them “relationship material.” No not a list on paper, but a tiny list that just hangs out in the back of your head that you run all of your interactions against. Even I have one. So, do you even if you don’t realize it.

For some people it’s physical. For others, it’s common beliefs or backgrounds.

That is why there are people out there that find it so hard to “find love.” In reality, they might meet someone who checks off most of their boxes, but the other person might have already written them off after comparing them to their list.

The agitating part is that through our experiences we evolve our lists. For example, some people alter their lists to avoid someone with similar attributes to an ex that they had a falling out with. Or in some circumstances, they try to rewrite history by looking for someone with similar attributes to someone who dumped them.

It’s all situational and depends on the person.

Okay, so what do you know?

You know that, at some point, you were compatible with your ex’s list. And you also know that now you aren’t. So, what’s changed? I know she probably gave you are a reason, but if you look at yourself when she first CHOSE to be with you and the person you were when you split… what’s different?

Have you become preoccupied with work? Or maybe you’ve started slacking off on chasing your dreams. Maybe you’ve developed a wandering eye. Whatever it is, you have a unique opportunity here. You spent time with her. Hopefully, you got to know her. (If not, I can tell you right now… that’s your problem.)

So with that knowledge, you already know what she values in life and consequently a partner.

We have a lot of people that contact us not knowing what to do during No Contact other than not contact their ex. I have always held to the idea that you should use that time to better yourself. Who am I to say that those changes can’t lean towards what made her like you. It’s your choice, but my guess is that it can only better your chances.

There’s another advantage you have that is in the same realm. You can use the time during No Contact to consider how she sees herself. Like I said after a breakup people generally have a dip in self-esteem. In order to correct that, you can consider the things you know she considers to be her strengths. In your time of self-betterment and No Contact, you could also line your strengths up with hers, since you can be sure that she’ll be looking to balance the feelings of inadequacy that come with a breakup.

Push Pull

After a breakup, most people don’t put themselves in situations to be hurt. That means they keep everyone at arm’s length. So, in order to get close to them, you have to do this little dance, after No Contact of course.

I think we can agree that the goal after no contact is to get close to your girlfriend again, but you can’t just jump back into things or she’ll run the other way. What you want to do is follow the Texting tactic that Chris has laid out for you. And during this I’m going to suggest you step forward and then pull away,

A lot of people would consider this, playing games, but really you will be letting her make the moves. This makes her feel more in control. As a woman, I can tell you that’s preferable.

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Brain Ninjas

In your attempts to reconnect and get her to build on that connection, you will have opportunities to plant ideas during your interaction. In order to let those thoughts take seed and prosper, you are going to avoid negatives speak. That means avoiding the words and prefixes no, un-, without, and not.

Then, for example, you want her to start associating you with thoughts of affection. You can say things like,

“I loved that movie.”

“I adore how they get along.”

Like the Push Pull Method, you want all of your moves to be indirect. If you go at her head on, she will automatically block each one. And on top of that you’ll seem needy.

And then if you want her to picture a future with you… there is one thing you can do that will make any woman take notice, be good with kids, especially babies.

I have never wanted kids… but you could put one of my exes in front of me being cute with a kid and I’ll start wondering if maybe we ended things too soon. So, that’s something to keep in mind.

Pay Attention to How You Are Perceived

In your No Contact and Re-establishing contact stages, you will surely interact with mutual friends and family. Mind how you talk to people. Note, that everything you do along with everything you post is being watched by your ex or your exes friends.

It sucks but, no matter how hard you try, people will pay attention to the things that you do. So, pay attention and allow your reason to make the call when your emotions come into play. You want to keep those moments of emotional outbursts close to the chests.

For example, a friend of mine and her boyfriend split because of his anger problems. He spent the time of No Contact trying to convince her he’d changed when he really hadn’t. Then h,e got in a fight at a bar. Everyone in our friend group ran straight to her saying, “Did you hear what happened?” She never slipped up and check on him the entire time and yet she still knew what was going on with him.

Do you think she was convinced that he had changed?

If you guessed, “no,” then you would be right.

Put it into Practice

As always I would love to hear how you use this info. Somtimes I get comments from guys telling me how they would modify an idea I’ve laid out and that works too. Mostly I just want to know wat worked for you and what didn’t.

So… Go! Do good things!

Finally, if you haven’t already read Chris’ article on how to make your ex fall back in love with you I recommend you check that out.

-Ashley