Jariel said:
When I met my ex, I was a good example of a Don Juan - a bit of a player, 2-3 dates every week, great social circles, confident, bold, masculine and sexual. I swept her off her feet and she fell for me so fast and hard. But as time went by I became soft, dependent, accomodating, predictable and available. She said she wanted me to be more of a family orientated guy, wanted to see more of me, and I did the dumbest thing ever and gave her everything I thought she wanted.
I'd become so dependent on her and I'd made her and her kids the centre of my life, the inspiration for my goals and my source of happiness, so when we broke up it felt like my whole life had lost purpose. This wouldn't have happened if I'd maintained my independence, at least not to the same extent.
But now I'm back to the man I used to be and I'm back in the field. I've got a lot of girls in the palm of my hand, meeting some great girls and having great experiences and I'm having fun with life. The great thing is, this time I'm not putting my happiness on one woman or women in general and this feels very liberating.
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I am quoting Jariel in my post but I am really writing this post for the guys I see on the thread that are pretty new in their no contact effort (thorninmyside, fuko2007, brighty, adz this is for you!) Jariel's advice here is golden, read and re-read this my friends.
I have been mulling over what to say in this post for a couple of days, its been a couple of weeks since I have posted and I actually went out with and spent the weekend with my ex a few days ago.
One of the things that is perhaps a bit frustrating about this thread is that people have a tendency to drop off the thread when they either move on or the reconcile with their ex.
If you are new in No contact and leaning heavily on the forum (which I HIGHLY recommend by the way) you might have followed one guys story through each of his posts only to find his story just stops without revealing what happened in the end. Frustrating. Also, if you are really hurting right now over your ex then you are probably looking through this thread looking for stories about guys who saw their ex and/or reconciled with them. There is not a lot of these stories out there so out of appreciation for this forum I want to share my story (so far) for you guys.
Quick recap of my story
Dec 10th-found a dodgy SMS on my gf's phone. Stood up, walked out, and instinctively started no contact before I even knew what no contact was. Deleted her numbers, facebook, email etc. Didn’t pick up her call. Threw away every picture and every gift from her.
Dec 17-20th- multiple emails and calls from the ex I didn’t answer.
Dec 27th- took drugs, sent a pretty emotional email to her, she never answered
January to February 8th- no contact
Feb 8th-she emails me, I don’t respond.
Around day 58 of my no contact period I start using an old phone that has a chat application installed where she is one of my contacts. She sends me a couple of messages over this application. I don’t respond.
day 62 of no contact I send her a few messages.
Day 64 in a moment of absolute sudden weakness I send her a message telling her I love her, miss her etc. She responds in a non-committal way that kind of reopened my wounds about her.
Day 10 of the restarted no contact we get into an email conversation that basically ends with her asking me out on a date.
I guess you can say that I kind of barely made the 60 day no contact challenge and at the end of this period I contacted her. She didn’t respond in the way I hoped she would and after about 5 days of pretty intense misery over her I actually resolved to let go of the idea of getting back together with her.
This girl first hurt me way back on the 10th of December. The first time I spent at least 45 days in deep deep pain. I am talking about the kind of pain where your chest aches, you cant sleep and for me, I couldn’t even sit still.
She hurt me again almost 90 days later. This pain lasted about a week. The point I am trying to make is that no contact is going to make you a lot harder stronger man than you were before. So what changed?
That pain you are feeling right now is a powerful force. That pain will make you push yourself out of your comfort zone and it will force you to change how you are living today. While that pain lasts you have a big time opportunity for personal growth that you need to jump on because that pain will eventually fade and you are going to have a hard time finding something to motivate you like that again.
Here is what that pain made me do over 90 days leading up to my ex and I meeting again.
1) I finally got aggressive about approaching and hooking up with a higher overall quality level of women. There were nights I just flat out could not sleep. Some of these nights were spent obsessively reading no contact posts on this forum. Some of these nights were spent obsessively googling my ex's name. But a good portion of these sleepless nights I spent going out, even if it meant going out alone. I got blown out more times in the last 90 days than in the previous three years but I also managed to hook up a lot. The hookups were generally sad affairs, I spent some nights crying afterwards, missing my ex. When I look back on these 90 days however I realize the blowouts were as important as the hook ups to change me. If you do this you will end up making about a million tiny adjustments to your body language, your facial expressions and your approach with women. You learn from mistakes and the mistakes are therefore invaluable.
2) When you are in an intense relationship there is a tendency for your world to narrow and when your girl removes herself from your life...you look around and realize how narrow you let your world get. I made a sustained effort to go out and meet guys and girls and kind of expand my social life. My overall social life is far better than it was even before I met this girl.
3) I took a hard look at my exercise regime ( I been hitting the weights pretty hard for about two years) and decided it was time to cut. I went from about 90kgs to about 84 kgs today. If you have a decent physique with more than like 20% bodyfat. I encourage you to use your no contact period to cut the fat. I think most of us are pretty agitated in the early days of no contact, you are probably not eating normally. Most guys need to lose some fat and a loss of 5kgs of fat will make you look like you gained 5kgs of muscle. No contact should be cutting time.
If you are a skinny dude maybe ignore this advice but get your ass in the gym anyway.
4) At some point during my 90 days of more or less no contact I started to realize that I wasn’t going to be able to party and fck my way through the pain. I made some small but significant positive changes in my work life, my family life, and in my spiritual life that have ended up giving me more comfort that all of the above.
5) Finally, the most significant moment of the entire 90 days was the moment when I actually resolved to let go of the idea of my ex and I getting together. This moment came along with a huge realization that I want to share.
If you are on this forum posting about your situation you have already lost all control over your relationship with this woman and you have lost the ability to get her back. If she reaches out to you it is not going to because of something you do or say. The possibility of reconciliation with your ex is controlled by a host of random factors completely outside of your control. It is therefore senseless for you to fantasize, dream, plan, or hope that she will come back.
It doesn’t matter how you do it but you got to let go and abolish the hope that she is coming back. Trick yourself, distract yourself, but get yourself to this mental state as quickly as you can. This is key.
For me, I had my moment of "well...its time to let go of her for real this time!" and I ended up having an incredible date with an extraordinary new woman less than a week later. The fact that I was out with this woman was a product of all the hard work I had done over 90 days, the fact that I had an incredible time was a product of finally letting go of the dream of my ex coming back to me.
When I originally started composing this post my idea was to share to you guys what SHE was up to during the no contact period. I thought that it would be helpful to you. I spent a pretty awesome intimate time with her and learned quite a lot about how she coped, what she did etc. However I think it is counterproductive to talk about her because we are all spending too much time thinking about what she is up to during our no contact. It is better for me to encourage you to kill all thoughts of her in your mind and focus on what you can be doing right now to get better.
I'm not sure what is going to happen with her and I moving forward except to say it probably wont work out long term and my daily task these days is to be ok with that. We had an incredible time together and still love each other but in the end "I" am more important than "us" and my personal path is the priority.
Thanks for listening
