Your Ex Must Feel The Consequences

Your ex will only come back once they’ve felt the full consequences of their decision to break up.

This will come in the form of sadness, fear, and other specific negative emotions.

If you can maximize these feelings in your ex, you’re going to dramatically increase the odds that they’ll cave in and ask you to get back together.

It doesn’t matter if you were dumped, or you were the one who initiated the breakup initially… as long as you are currently trying to get your ex to take you back, and they aren’t willing to agree to that right now then you need to heed my advice.

What Are The “Consequences” Your Ex Needs To Feel?

So, when I talk about “consequences” here, what I mean is pretty simple: it’s the changes in your ex’s life that stem from the breakup. It’s everything–positive and negative–that will be different for your ex and in terms of their daily life post-breakup.

Let me give you a few examples, starting with a few of the positive consequences:

Freedom & fewer obligations: as a consequence of being single–no longer being in a committed relationship with you–your ex is going to have fewer obligations.

They no longer need to text you every evening to say goodnight, they don’t have to worry about flirting with other people, and they never have to check with you first before scheduling dinner with friends or their weekly game night or whatever. Basically, they’re just going to feel more freedom to do what they want with whomever they want.

No more fights or drama: even the healthiest romantic relationships have some occasional bickering or disagreements and maybe you and your ex didn’t really fight very often, but even so, breaking up put and end to any kind of drama or bickering that went on in your relationship. If you and your ex tended to fight often and it was part of the reason for your breakup, then this one will be even more impactful.

Relief: this is likely only going to apply to your ex — or whoever initiates the breakup — but a breakup can lead to feelings of relief.

Your ex may feel relieved that they’ll no longer have to endure frequent bickering, drama, clingy or unattractive behaviour, jealousy, etc… and they may also feel relief that it’s done and they no longer have to dread the actual process of breaking up. This tends to be very short-lived.

Now, those are a few positive consequences of breaking up… obviously, these are not the ones that you want your ex to feel to the fullest. In fact, it’s ideal if your ex does not enjoy any of these benefits, but for the most part that’s out of your control.

However, when it comes to negative consequences, there are a number of them… and these are the ones that you want your ex to feel. I’ll cover a handful of these negative consequences briefly, and then we’ll talk about how to actually ensure your ex feels all of them to the maximum extent possible in order to increase the odds of them changing their mind and taking you back.

Guilt: Simply put, your ex–or whoever made the decision to break up–is likely to feel guilty about having to hurt the other person. So if your ex dumped you, they probably deeply dreaded having to break the news to you, knowing it would be devastating and heartbreaking for you… at least, unless your breakup was crazy toxic and full of anger.

Most people can’t help but feel guilty for hurting someone they loved or once loved, and your ex is likely no different, so they’re going to feel that guilt for a while after breaking up.

Loneliness: this one is simple… obviously, your ex will be far more likely to feel lonely without you in their life. Your absence will leave a void in their heart, and in their social calendar, that can be really painful at first. They no longer have someone to eat dinner with on weeknights, or watch their favorite shows with, or take to a friend’s wedding as their date.

Along with the obvious downsides of feeling lonely, your ex will also lose one of their biggest fans and supporters by breaking up with you… maybe you helped edit their school papers, or washed their car every month, or just provided your ex an outlet to vent their fears or frustrations. By breaking up with you, they will lose one of their closest confidants.

Loss of confidence: pretty much everyone who goes through a tough breakup is going to take a hit to their self-confidence or self-esteem. It sucks to be vulnerable, emotional, and heartbroken, whether the breakup is your decision or your ex’s. Chances are very very good that your ex’s self-confidence, just like yours, has taken a big hit since breaking up.

Of course this will be more significant for some people than others, and in time both of you will be able to regain that confidence, but at first any breakup can be a confidence killer.

Embarrassment or awkwardness: Again, pretty much every breakup leads to some degree of embarrassment, especially if your relationship was serious and long-term.

You have to tell your friends and family that you and your ex are no longer together… you need to trade belongings, sort out who pays what bill or gets to keep shared items… you have to be reminded of the breakup every time a friend or colleague asks about your ex or offers sympathy.

Uncertain future: When you’re in a relationship with someone, you tend to build a picture of what your future life will look like… in a month, a year, or ten years down the road.

And for many of you, your ex was probably a part of that vision for the future. You maybe looked forward to a vacation you and your ex had planned for the summer, or you planned to attend events together as a couple, or even envisioned yourself happily married with this person who is now your ex.

Whatever your vision for the future was before breaking up, it’s almost certainly going to be a lot different now… and for both you and your ex, there’s probably a lot of uncertainty now about what the future will actually hold. Basically, breakups blow up our expectations for the future, and lead to a lot of unknowns and “what ifs”.

Physical and sexual deprivation: Obviously, at least in the majority of breakups, the end of the relationship means the end of your sex life… at least temporarily.

Maybe you’re able to land a date just a few days after breaking up, or go to the bar and meet someone for a one-night stand… but really, it’s very unlikely that initially you’ll be able to satisfy your sexual and intimacy needs as easily as you could when you were still with your ex.

How Do These Consequences Help You Win Your Ex Back?

It’s pretty simple: the more your ex’s life changes after the breakup — particularly the negative changes — the more shocking and painful the breakup is going to be for them.

Sure, most people know roughly what will happen after breaking up, but they don’t know exactly how painful and emotional they’ll feel… how much they’ll miss their ex and all of the things that person brought to their life… and how long and intense their heartache and loneliness will feel.

So when you do everything in your power to help your ex feel all of the negative consequences of the breakup… when you maximize how lonely they feel, when you focus their attention on all the great aspects about you and your relationship that are now gone, and remind them what an awesome person they’ve let walk out of their life… you’re forcing them to be uncomfortable, lonely, heartbroken, and confused.

RELATED: What Makes Your Ex Miss You?

You’re making them think twice about their decision to end things.

And of course, your ex has a simple way to stop all of the pain and stop worrying about these consequences of the breakup: to get back together with you. And often times, based on my 14 years of experience as a breakup coach, this will make your ex cave in and ask you for another chance.

Now, to the other question…

How Can You Make Your Ex Feel These Consequences As Much As Possible?

There are a few ways to do this, most of which don’t actually need a lot of explaining. Let’s begin with an easy one: physical and sexual deprivation. To make your ex feel this consequence, just don’t let them sleep with you or enjoy any physical intimacy after the breakup.

Make them understand that if they want to get in your pants, they need to be willing to commit to a real relationship with you. Not only that, you can even take this a step further — if the situation allows for it — by continuing to flirt and build sexual tension with your ex, while continuing to withhold sex.

Basically, flirt and tease them so they want you badly, but don’t actually sleep with them. This is especially powerful for the ladies out there — don’t let your boyfriend use you in a friends-with-benefits type scenario.

Next, there’s the uncertain future. This one is harder to really control, but you can at least avoid committing to doing anything with your ex, and hold back on sharing any details about what you plan to do with your life now that you’ve broken up.

Whenever you can, try to be ambiguous about whether or not you plan to still do anything with your ex that you had planned before breaking up — for example, maybe you RSVP’d to a friends wedding this summer as a couple… if you can do so without being rude, hold off on agreeing one way or another to attending the wedding with your ex.

Tell them you’re not sure and you’ll get back to them.

Or if you had planned to take a 2-week group tour with your ex this summer, tell them you’re not sure if you’ll still be going. Overall, you want your ex to remain uncertain about what the future holds for them and for you, so any way you can maintain that mystery and uncertainty is going to help.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly… you can really force your ex to feel uncertain about things by not giving them any real sense about where you stand on the idea of getting back together. Or how much the breakup is affecting you emotionally, and how fast you’re moving on.

Basically, the less your ex knows about what you want — do you desperately want them back, or are you already moving on and doing just fine without them? — the more worried they’ll be that you’re not going to be around for much longer unless they quickly change their mind before it’s too late.

As far as the embarrassment and awkwardness that comes from a breakup… this is one where I would recommend you exercise caution. On one hand, you could tell the world (subtly) that you’ve broken up… this will help ensure that everyone in your ex’s life will know about the breakup and ask about it when they see them. You could also insist they collect their belongings from your house, decide who gets to keep your shared pet goldfish, etc.

These things will likely force your ex to be embarrassed or face awkward conversations sooner or more often. But overall, I don’t think this is a consequence that is going to be important enough to justify really trying hard to force it on your ex.

But this brings us to the most important consequence of all: loneliness and your absence from your ex’s life. This is far and away the one that can make the biggest difference to how your ex feels about the breakup and the idea of getting back together.

RELATED: Does My Ex Want Me To Contact Them?

You need your ex to miss you like crazy if they’re going to take you back… you need them to be shocked by how suddenly and completely you’ve disappeared from their life. You need them to know exactly how painful and lonely it is to go about their life without you.

How do you make someone miss you? By disappearing.

By not being there, physically or emotionally, for your ex. You must make your ex feel your absence, as soon and as fully as possible after the breakup.

When you do this–and you can of course call it No Contact or radio silence or just ignoring your ex–your ex simply will not be able to avoid feeling the full consequences. And if you only do it half-assed and continue to talk to your ex and see them occasionally, then you’re still not going to allow your ex to fully feel the consequences… which again, is the whole point of this, and key to making them change their mind about breaking up.

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.