Getting My Ex Back

Successful relationships require effort. They also require honesty, especially with yourself.

After a breakup, if you're having second thoughts and looking for a way to get back together with your ex, it's time to take a close look at yourself. It's time to accept responsibility for your role in the breakup. Were there things you could have (in fact, should have) done differently?

Take the time to sit down and examine the role you played in the relationship. How you made the relationship better. How you weakened the relationship. When you were on your best behavior. When you were on your worst. The things you knowingly did to undermine the relationship. The things you tried to do to strengthen it.

The purpose in this process isn't to burden yourself with guilt. It's to help you understand what you can do from this point on to help rebuild the relationship.

Being honest with yourself is a powerful first step.

Open and honest communication is the cornerstone of a successful relationship. However, if you're trying to get back together with an ex after a breakup, it can be a little trickier.

You want to keep the communication lines open, but you don't want to be constantly hounding your ex. After a breakup, it's time to back off for awhile. You don't want to appear needy or desperate. You want your ex to enjoy hearing from you occasionally, and feel a little curious about how you're doing in between your communications.

A quick email or text message asking how everything's going is fine. Maybe once a week. But do yourself a favor if you ever plan on getting back with your ex - avoid sending a flood of emails or text messages or calling constantly. Such nuisance, needy communications will have the opposite effect of what you want ... they will scare your ex away.

A breakup is almost always painful. This is true for both sides, though you'll often believe that you're the only one suffering because your ex appears to be doing just fine without you. But trust me, both of you are hurting. It takes time to fully recover from a breakup, and even longer to rebuild a relationship.

So when you're fresh out of a breakup and have the intention of perhaps getting back together again sometime down the road, the best thing you can do for yourself is to move beyond the immediate pain. As hurt as you feel, dwelling on it will only sink you deeper into unhappiness. It's far more beneficial to allow yourself to enjoy the little pleasures in life during this period.

How do you do that?

Well, you don't isolate yourself. Call up a friend and head out to the coffee shop for an afternoon or go to a movie. If you have a passion, such as the theater or volunteering at the local hospital or browsing antique stores (it doesn't matter what it is) ... use this time to enjoy yourself in these activities.

Sometimes it helps to move the focus away from yourself. Instead of slipping into depression, get out of the house, participate in community activities, give your time to serving others. As terrible as you feel, there are others who are far worse off. A little community service can quickly put a new perspective on things.

This is a time when you want to feel alive again. Shake off the feeling that you'll never meet anyone else, that the relationship was perfect (trust me, it wasn't), that you'll never be as happy as you were.

Prove yourself wrong.

Even if you don't feel like it.

One of the most difficult steps to getting your ex back is admitting when you're wrong. It's also one of the most important steps. It's a demonstration to your partner that you understand what part you played in the relationship's troubles, that you're willing to take responsibility for your role, and you're willing to make the effort to correct the problems.

Of course, in order for an apology to be accepted you have to be sincere and you have to know what you're apologizing for. There's no need to say you're sorry for issues that clearly weren't your doing. Do, however, take responsibility for those issues that you obviously own.

One note caution ... it's easy when you make an apology for your ex to use the situation to take advantage of your sincerity and begin to blame everything on you. This, of course, can lead to an argument, which is the last you thing you want. So be prepared to keep your emotions in check and do your best to avoid getting defensive. Simply admit what you've done wrong in the relationship and leave the door open for further discussion on making sure it doesn't happen again in the future.

If you've been torturing yourself with thoughts such as getting my ex back is impossible, well, this is an important step in the process of turning that thought process around. Most relationships (not all, but most) can be saved.