Rebuild Your Ex’s Attraction Through Positive Psychology

Whatever reason your ex gave for the breakup, chances are their main motivator was loss of attraction.

Studies show again and again that attraction is the key that keeps relationships on track, smoothes out issues and maintains connection through difficult times.

So you need to rebuild attraction if you want any hope of winning back your ex.

This is not to say that attraction can solve all your problems but it keeps you both interested and on the same page so that you’re actually willing to do the work required to solve your problems.

And so if you can rebuild your attraction in the eyes of your ex, they’ll be more willing to work through whatever it was that came between you.

So first we’re going to talk about why your ex lost attraction to you and then we’ll talk about how you can rebuild that attraction through psychology.

Positivity is the key here so that means we’re not going to use manipulation or negativity to try to change their minds. It’s all good vibes.

Loss of Attraction

Loss of attraction is something that everyone deals with to some extent. It’s hard to maintain that red hot passion that you felt when you first laid eyes on each other.

I mean psychologically speaking, we just get used to someone if they’re a constant presence. Attraction almost always fades over time with repeated exposure. It’s called habituation, or taking someone for granted.

But there are ways around this. You can build up the relationship so that when attraction naturally settles, you have lots of other points of connection keeping you two together. Or you can make attraction a priority and find new and exciting ways of keeping the spark alive.

Ideally, you need to do both if you want to maintain a happy, healthy relationship.

But what about after a breakup? Well I won’t lie to you, a breakup is a big signifier that your partner has suffered a MAJOR loss of attraction.

But there’s good news: loss of attraction is very common and it’s reversible. And going through a breakup can actually have major advantages for those looking to rebuild attraction and get a fresh start together.

I’ll explain why but first, let’s talk about why people lose attraction.

According to a 2024 study published in The Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, when relationship satisfaction dips below 65% for either person, the relationship is heading for a breakup. And one of the biggest deciding factors in relationship satisfaction is attraction.

So why do we lose attraction? Well here are the major factors at play:

#1: Boredom & Predictability

Early on in a relationship, attraction rules all of your interactions. You can spend hours just exploring your physical and mental connection and the time feels like it flies by. You live in your own little world, basically.

But because that attraction was more than enough in the beginning, we can come to rely on it far too much as the central pillar in our relationship. That means that we stop finding new ways to connect so we get stuck in a rut. We keep having the same interactions and the same boring dates, because we assume that the magic will always be there.

#2: Changes In Physical Appearance

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that if you let yourself go and gain a bunch of weight, your partner can lose attraction to you. But the same goes for if your appearance changes in any significant way, even if it might seem like a good change.

Remember, attraction is difficult to really pin down. So maybe that haircut, while flattering, exposes your ears in a way that reminds them of their great aunt. Maybe your new tattoo draws attention to your double chin. You just don’t know how something small like that is going to affect how your partner sees you.

#3. Unresolved Conflicts

Conflict is not typically destructive to a relationship. But repeated conflicts can wear you down and turn you and your partner against each other. It can make you see one another as obstacles rather than soulmates.

From their POV, you’re refusing to see their side of things and so it feels like you don’t really care about them. It’s almost like you have a giant stain on your shirt that you refuse to clean up and they can’t stop staring at it. And pretty soon, the thing that you don’t even recognize as a problem has ruined their attraction to you.

Rebuild Attraction With Your Ex

Now let’s talk about how to use psychology to rebuild that attraction that you’ve lost. I know that many of you will say that it’s impossible. If your ex lost physical attraction towards you, then what kind of psychological trick is going to change that?

Well first off, their attraction isn’t fully gone. It’s not like your ex is now disgusted by the sight of you or anything. They’ve just lost touch with that part of themselves that was initially attracted to you, due to the factors we’ve previously talked about.

And secondly, I’m going to point to a very surprising fact that will show you that this is not only possible but it’s actually something that people achieve every day. And though it seems unbelievable, it has been borne out by the results of several studies. And that fact is this:

People with good personalities are reported as being more physically attractive, regardless of how they look.

Now, of course, being nice, funny, and extroverted is going to make you more attractive to most people but what’s surprising is it actually changes how we rate another person’s physical appearance. It literally changes how we see.

This has been studied extensively, as recently as a 2023 study by the University of Rome. The study is even called “Good Conduct Makes Your Face Attractive” so if you don’t trust me, trust the science.

So while getting in shape can help, it’s much faster and more rewarding to change how your ex perceives your appearance via your personality. So here’s some advice you can actually use:

Use Spontaneous Trait Transference To Impress Your Ex

So people tend to try to win someone’s heart by flattering the other person or by trying to make themselves look more impressive than they actually are. But science has found that there’s a more effective way to do this and it’s through something called Spontaneous Trait Transference.

Spontaneous Trait Transference is the idea that the qualities we ascribe to OTHERS often get ascribed to US. So basically, if your friend keeps telling you how smart they think your brother is, you’ll usually end up thinking that your friend is the smart one.

Scientists aren’t quite sure why this phenomenon exists but several studies from the Journal of Personality And Psychology found it to be extremely reliable under a number of different circumstances.

My theory is it goes back to a classic childhood comeback: “it takes one to know one”. Basically, if you’re talking about it, you must be an authority. So if you say someone is smart, honest, or reliable, chances are you are those things also.

But again, this is only my theory. Because it doesn’t really explain why someone will think you’re hot if you call another person beautiful.

RELATED: Get Your Ex Back By Letting Go

The important thing is, it works. So don’t overthink it. When you’re in conversation with your ex, I want you to praise other people. And I want you to specifically praise the attributes that you want your ex to see in YOU.

But a big disclaimer: I think steering clear of physical compliments is a good idea right now. If you’re telling your ex how beautiful you find their sister, this isn’t going to work out in your favour, trust me.

But complimenting people close to your ex is going to be a good idea because it will seem more natural in the conversation. So for example, say they’re talking about something their mother told them, you could quickly say, “I believe it. Your mother always was super smart.”

That’s the way to do it: quick, subtle and in the context of the conversation. This isn’t one that you should lean on too often. It’s only going to take a couple of these to shift your ex’s perception of you.

And if you’re not in contact with your ex yet, just try this out on your friends and those close to you. It’s going to improve their perception of you which is going to make them nicer to you, which is going to improve your happiness and confidence and therefore, make your ex more attracted to you when you two do speak again.

Really, this goes beyond just positive trait transference. It’s about looking at the world and the people around you in a more positive light. This is the kind of thing that you can easily lose during a breakup so if you can show your ex that you still have a good outlook, despite your sadness, it’s going to go a long way to making you attractive.

Supercharge Your Attractiveness Through Mystery

A 2011 study titled “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not” found that people were more attracted to someone when they were uncertain about how much that person liked them.

This is something that we’ve all seen in practice. Desperation really puts a damper on your feelings for another person.

But doing the opposite doesn’t work either. Showing someone that you don’t care about them at all and that you’re not attracted to them may catch some people’s interest for awhile, but eventually they’re going to get bored of trying to reach someone who doesn’t reciprocate at all.

So the real answer is to hide your feelings, be a little mysterious and don’t overshare.

So first off, keep your feelings for your ex completely under wraps for now.

They shouldn’t know that you love them, that you care about them deeply or that you desperately want them back.

If you’ve already revealed this stuff, then you’ve hurt your position, but all hope is not lost.

This is when No Contact becomes a powerful tool. If you stop talking to your ex for a month or even six weeks, when you two do reconnect, they’re going to be very curious about your feelings towards them.

And curiosity is your best friend here. Because if your ex knows how you feel–positive or negative—then they have nothing to wonder about. If they’re not sure, then it’s going to stick in their mind.

They’re going to run the question over and over in their head, looking for clues about your feelings one way or another. And when they’re thinking about you all the time, that’s when their attraction towards you is going to build over time, without them even realizing it’s happening.

But mystery needs to go beyond your feelings. You need to embody it in every aspect of your life. In fact, one of the reasons that No Contact works is that it makes creating mystery effortless. All you need to do is stay quiet and they’ll be unable to figure you out.

And social media is going to be another great way to create mystery, through selective disclosure—basically, revealing enough to make them curious.

I encourage you to post infrequently but in a targeted way. Your posts should create more questions than they answer. For example, a photo of you with someone they’ve never met is going to be way more powerful if you don’t caption it “this is my friend Henry who I met at the pub”

If you leave it blank, then this person could be anyone…even someone you’ve started dating. You see how that works? In the intelligence world, they call this a limited hangout…where you reveal a little information but keep the most important stuff to yourself.

Keep in mind that this information still needs to be true. You’re not trying to deceive your ex here or destroy their trust. You’re just managing what they know and when they know it to make yourself as attractive as possible.

And once you reconnect, keep the mystery alive by continuing to play it cool. Don’t tell them everything you’re feeling and thinking. Don’t share all your plans and what you had for lunch. Keep it mysterious and they’re going to fill in the blanks in a big way.

The Benjamin Franklin Effect

As a founding father of the USA, Benjamin Franklin was a very accomplished statesman and politician and this obviously involved convincing a great many people to do things for him that they might not want to do.

And along the way he discovered something interesting. He found that once someone has done you a favour, the more they tend to like you and the more they’re likely to do other favours for you in the future.

This is the opposite of how you’d think it would work. You’d think that if you do a favour for someone, they would like you more, instead of the other way around.

But if you think about it, it makes sense. We typically only do favours for people who we care about. So this has created a natural link in our heads between doing a favour and caring about the person we’re helping.

In essence, you’re tapping into this principle but in reverse. So they think “I must like this person if I’m helping them” and that increases their attraction to you.

Now this one can be tricky to pull off in the context of a breakup. So if you haven’t talked to your ex in months and the last thing they said to you was “go screw yourself”, don’t call them up and ask them to borrow a thousand dollars.

But if the two of you have been talking more, don’t be afraid to look to them for support in various ways. It might be hard to put yourself out there but you’ll be surprised at the difference this can make.

For example, I had a client who was trying to get her ex back, and at the same time, she was trying to remodel her house so she could sell it. Some people are just overachievers. Now she was on a deadline because she had contractors coming in so she had to do a bunch of demolition work before they arrived.

So she was so busy that she missed a few texts from her ex and he started to think she wasn’t interested. On top of that, her ignoring his messages was one of the reasons they broke up the first time so she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to lose him again but she had to focus and get this done.

Out of options, she ended up asking her ex to come over and help her with the house. She was worried that she’d scare him off by asking him for such a big favour but to her surprise, he was happy to get his hands dirty and that project ended up giving them an excuse to spend time together and rebuild their bond by doing something they both enjoyed.

It took a few weeks, but they did indeed end up back together. It doesn’t always end happily like that, but often it does.

So that’s just another way you can use positive psychology to build your ex’s attraction for you. It’s not only effective but it’s very achievable and it works quickly. That’s because positivity is always going to be more effective than negativity.

You want to inspire your ex, not manipulate them. That’s the way attraction lasts because it comes from a real, honest place.

Brad Browning

Brad Browning is widely regarded as the world's most trusted breakup experts, boasting over 12 years of experience working with clients from around the world. Brad's #1 best-selling breakup reversal guide, The Ex Factor, has helped more than 130,000 people from 131 countries to re-unite with an ex. Brad is also the author of Mend The Marriage, a comprehensive self-help guide that teaches married couples how to save their dying marriage and prevent divorce. Brad’s YouTube channel has over 400,000 subscribers and 50 million views, and he has been featured in a number of well-known media outlets and industry journals.