It doesn’t matter how badly you want a second chance with your ex, certain mistakes will destroy your chances and leave you with no choice but to move on.
So the question is: have you ruined your chances with your ex or is there still hope?
But let’s start off on a positive note: You’re not alone. TONS of people tell me on a daily basis that they wish they’d started following my advice sooner.
Sometimes, people are worried that something they said to their ex in the heat of the moment was the final nail in the coffin.
Other times, people will watch some of my videos after their breakup, only to realize that everything they’ve done up to that point is the exact opposite of what I recommend.
The point is that this is very very common. The details of each situation vary a bit — maybe you said something you regret, maybe you begged and pleaded with your ex incessantly, sent them angry or cruel messages, or tried to get revenge… whatever it was, there’s no sense in beating yourself up over the past… we all make mistakes.
The important thing is that you learn from them and move forward.
In many cases–in fact the majority of situations–there’s still a pretty good chance you can save things and still have a shot at getting your ex back.
How Long Has It Been Since Your Breakup?
If it’s been a few weeks or less since your breakup, and you only made a few mistakes during that time, then your chances are going to be a lot better than if it’s been 9 months and you’ve made countless mistakes throughout that period of time. It’s usually not one mistake, but a series of mistakes that puts you in this position.
Now, that’s not to say you can’t still turn things around if it’s been a long time since your initial breakup, but it definitely makes things more difficult.
As a general rule, the longer it’s been since your breakup and the longer you’ve been making mistakes or exhibiting unattractive behaviours, the more dire your situation.
That being said, time CAN be helpful. For instance, if it’s been a few weeks or you’ve gone through a period of No Contact since you last did something that pushed your ex away — if you said something hurtful and mean to your ex the day after breaking up and you haven’t spoken them for 2 weeks since then — that 2 week period will help your ex let go of their initial emotions and start to miss you, which will make them more open to reconnecting with you when the time comes.
On the other hand, if you’ve been begging and pleading with your ex for weeks every day since breaking up, it’s going to take a while and a period of No Contact before they’re likely going to forgive and forget.
But often it’s less about what you did and more about how it affected your ex.
How Does Your Ex Feel About You?
Take a second to think about things from your ex’s perspective. How does he or she think of you right now? Do they see you as a desperate, lonely, ‘creepy’ ex….? Or does your ex see you as a friend? Or, if things really haven’t gone well since the breakup, does your ex hate your guts right now?
That’s unlikely, obviously, but it really helps to try to imagine your ex’s perception of you right now…. Think about how you’d feel about your ex if the tables were turned.
Let me give you a quick example…. Let’s say your breakup was clean and didn’t involve any huge arguments, cheating, or heartbreak.
Maybe it was even a mutual thing, where you both agreed that things weren’t working out, and that breaking up and moving on was the right thing to do.
Then, a week later, perhaps you sent your ex a love letter spilling your guts and begging him or her to take you back…. which, of course, is absolutely NOT a good idea.
That type of mistake probably isn’t going to make your ex suddenly start seeing you as a “creepy loser who must be avoided at all costs”…. So in a case like that, there’s still a very good chance of getting back on the right track and reversing your breakup.
But if you sent them a letter, and then flowers, and then showed up to their work crying…that’s a pattern and that will change your ex’s perception of you in a significant way.
Or let’s say you cheated on your ex with their best friend… or spread lies about your ex through Facebook and swore never to speak to him or her again… you’ve probably killed your chances of getting them back. I mean, imagine you were in their situation. Would you still be interested?
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely see people overcome situations even that bad from time to time, but if you did something truly awful to your ex or you’ve pestered them to the point where they’re calling the police on you… odds are slim, and you probably need to come to terms with that and think about moving on. Especially if you take my free quiz and get a very low score.
Now… most of you probably fall somewhere in between. Maybe you’ve made more mistakes than the first scenario I just described, but you haven’t been a complete trash fire or shattered your ex’s heart into a million pieces.
In that type of situation, obviously the specific details of your breakup and the mistakes you’ve made will determine your chances of success, but generally speaking it’s safe to say that you probably have a chance of getting back together…. IF you stop making mistakes and you start using my techniques.
If you really want a second chance with your ex… if you KNOW they’re the one for you and you desperately regret losing them… you absolutely can’t afford any more mistakes from this point on.
WHY Are You Making Mistakes?
With that in mind, you need to look at WHY you’ve been making those mistakes. Often this is just because you didn’t know they were mistakes at all. There’s no roadmap for this stuff and when you act on instinct alone that can really get you into trouble.
But more common with people who REPEATEDLY do things that upset their ex and scare them away, it’s that they have trouble dealing with their emotions around the breakup and this causes them to act out.
Obviously this is a MUCH bigger issue that will take time and effort to fix but recognizing that this is what’s driving you is the first step.
In this case you really need to ask yourself what your priority is here. Because if your main goal is to get your ex back then you need to let go of your secondary priority here which I think is to get revenge on your ex or to show them how upset you are about the breakup.
These kinds of issues can be hashed out once you two have reconnected but that will never happen if you keep acting this way.
Begging, Pleading & A Fresh Start
One of the most common mistakes people make after a breakup is to beg and plead with their ex… you know, asking for another chance, promising you’ll change if your ex will give the relationship another shot, apologizing over and over again… that kind of thing.
Those are obviously NOT the kind of things that will make your ex want you back — in fact, begging and pleading with is a surefire way to make things worse, as I’m sure you know by now — but they’re usually something you can overcome if you play your cards correctly from this point forward.
Sometimes, you may have killed your ex’s attraction to the point where they’ve genuinely gotten over you… but in many cases you can turn things around, especially if you only begged and pleaded for a brief period and didn’t continue to pester your ex repeatedly for weeks.
What you need now is a fresh start. While you can’t completely change your ex’s mind about you in this moment, you need to show them that you know that you messed up and that you’re going to back away.
To make this happen, you need to send a message to your ex to erase the negative image of you that they have in the back of their mind, and start to replace that mental image with something more positive.
Is this going to instantly make them interested again? Absolutely not, but it is better than any alternative because it shows your ex that you’ve gained a little self awareness and they don’t need to be worried about you and what you’re going to do next.
So writing this is going to be different for different people and different relationships but basically it’s a text or email that acknowledges past mistakes while subtly showing your ex why that wasn’t the real “you” who was begging and pleading.
So here’s just a basic one that you can adapt to your specific situation:
Hey, I’m sorry for how I’ve been treating you lately. This whole thing has been really hard on me but I shouldn’t take that out on you. I’m going to give you some space and try to figure out my own stuff.
Pretty basic, right? But that’s really all it takes to let your ex know what to expect next. It shows self awareness, regret, and offers them space.
Depending on what you did, you may have to be more specific with your apology but don’t overdo it. And write it in a way where they don’t feel the pressure to respond or you’ll get into a bigger conversation that could potentially create more drama. So don’t end it with a question.
BUT before you send this message, you need to know this. MOST PEOPLE will NOT need to send this message to their ex. It is intended for really bad situations and won’t work at all for a lot of people, even if you did do a bit of begging and pleading in the early days after breaking up.
So don’t use this an excuse to break No Contact because it will actually hurt your chances unless you’re in a bad situation like some of those that I described above.
Your Mindset Moving Forward
Now that you hopefully have a bit better sense of whether you’ve completely ruined your chances or not… there’s one thing you need to do from this point onwards regardless of how bad you think your situation is right now…
You need to avoiding doing ANYTHING else that make matters worse, obviously… but you also need to stop beating yourself up over the past and not replay all your mistakes over and over again in your head. It’s pointless.
No matter how badly you screwed up with your ex, you can’t go back in time and change things… you can only try to shift how your ex feels about you from now on.
Focus on the road ahead and how you can turn things around rather than fixating on something dumb you did last week or last month.
