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Shadow Work and Masculinity

Shadow work

Shadow work is rooted in Carl Jung’s concept of the “shadow” (the unconscious parts of ourselves that we repress or deny).

Video – C G Jung

It can be a transformative process for a man to step into a more authentic, grounded sense of masculinity. Here’s how shadow work can help with that…

Uncovering Repressed Emotions

Society often imposes expectations on men to suppress vulnerability, sadness, fear, or even deep desires. Shadow work helps to confront and integrate these repressed emotions. By acknowledging these parts of himself, a man can experience a fuller emotional range, allowing him to express his masculinity from a place of wholeness rather than societal conditioning.

Healing Toxic Masculinity

Toxic masculinity thrives on domination, emotional repression, and avoidance of perceived “weakness.” Through shadow work, a man can recognize unhealthy patterns, such as aggression, control, or emotional isolation, that stem from unresolved fears, shame, or past trauma. By confronting and healing these wounds, he steps into a healthier form of masculinity—one based on strength, empathy, and emotional intelligence. Shadow work can therefore help a  man step into his full, wholesome masculine power.

Building Authentic Confidence

When a man works through his shadow, he no longer needs external validation to feel confident or “manly.” Instead, he develops a sense of self-assurance that comes from accepting all aspects of himself—the good and the bad. This authentic confidence allows him to navigate the world with a stronger sense of purpose and integrity.

Breaking Free from External Expectations

Many men feel burdened by societal, familial, or cultural expectations of what it means to be a man. Shadow work allows a man to challenge and deconstruct these external beliefs and narratives. By doing so, he can define masculinity for himself, in alignment with his true values, desires, and strengths.

Integrating the Feminine

Every person, regardless of gender, carries both masculine and feminine energies. Shadow work helps a man to acknowledge and integrate his feminine aspects (empathy, nurturing, intuition), which are often suppressed due to societal conditioning. When these are embraced, his masculinity becomes more balanced, creating a sense of inner harmony.

Developing Emotional Resilience

By confronting hidden fears, insecurities, and unresolved trauma, shadow work allows a man to build emotional resilience and find inner peace. This emotional strength enables him to handle life’s challenges from a place of calm and grounded masculinity, rather than reactionary behavior.

Improved Relationships

Men who engage in shadow work often see significant improvements in their relationships. As they become more self-aware and accepting of their own shadow, they become better at communication, empathy, and emotional connection. This can lead to healthier dynamics in romantic, familial, and platonic relationships, where their masculinity is no longer defined by power dynamics but by mutual respect and vulnerability.

In essence, shadow work helps a man access his full potential by peeling away layers of repression and conditioning. As he does so, he steps into a more authentic, empowered version of masculinity that is flexible, self-assured, and in harmony with both his strengths and vulnerabilities.

Finding the right practitioner to guide you through shadow work is important because they can help you navigate the process with support, insight, and expertise. Here are some steps to help you find a practitioner who can assist in your shadow work journey:

Look for Jungian Therapists or Analysts

Since shadow work is based on Carl Jung’s theories, Jungian therapists or analysts are often well-versed in this approach. These practitioners specialize in helping individuals integrate unconscious parts of themselves. You can search for Jungian therapists through professional organizations such as The International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP) and the C.G. Jung Institute. Also, many countries have their own Jung Institutes with trained professionals.

Search for Shadow Work Facilitators

There are coaches and therapists who specifically specialize in shadow work and personal transformation. Many shadow work facilitators may not be formally trained as therapists but have extensive experience in guiding others through this inner exploration process. Look for facilitators who have:
– Positive reviews or testimonials.
– Training in related fields such as trauma healing, personal development, or emotional integration.
– Workshops or group programs dedicated to shadow work.

Attend Men’s Retreats or Workshops

Many men’s retreats or workshops focus on helping men reconnect with their authentic masculinity, which often involves shadow work as part of the healing process. Some well-known men’s organizations include The ManKind Project (MKP), which offers workshops, such as the New Warrior Training Adventure, that incorporate shadow work to help men explore and integrate deeper aspects of themselves. These retreats can provide a safe environment for deep work and can connect you with experienced facilitators.

Seek Out Trauma-Informed Coaches

If your shadow work involves dealing with past trauma, it’s helpful to work with a trauma-informed coach or therapist. Trauma-informed practitioners are trained to provide a safe, supportive space for processing deeper emotions and experiences without causing re-traumatization.

Online Communities and Workshops

Many shadow work practitioners and coaches offer virtual sessions, which can be more accessible. Some even run group programs or one-on-one coaching online. You can also explore platforms like Instagram or YouTube, where many shadow work practitioners share their philosophy, tools, and offer consultations.

Holistic Healers or Spiritual Guides

Many spiritual guides, shamanic practitioners, and holistic healers incorporate shadow work into their practices. If you’re open to a more spiritual approach, these types of healers can offer alternative methods to help integrate your shadow, often through ceremonies, energy work, or somatic practices. If you know someone who has undergone shadow work or other deep personal development work, ask them for recommendations. Personal referrals can be one of the best ways to find someone trustworthy.

Check Credentials and Compatibility

Once you’ve found a few potential practitioners, it’s important to look for training, certifications, and testimonials that reflect their experience. Also, schedule an introductory call or session: this can help you gauge their style, approach, and whether you feel comfortable working with them. Ask about their approach, for shadow work can be emotional and intense, so it’s important to find someone who aligns with your goals and feels safe to work with.

By following these steps, you’ll be able to find a practitioner who can help guide you through shadow work and into a more authentic and empowered version of your masculinity.

Reading is a powerful way to deepen your understanding of shadow work and masculinity.

Here are some recommended books that focus on shadow work, masculine development, and self-awareness:

Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche by Robert A. Johnson is a concise and approachable introduction to shadow work. Johnson explains the concept of the shadow and how recognizing and integrating it can lead to a fuller, more authentic life.

Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature edited by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams is an anthology which brings together various essays by different authors on the concept of the shadow, including insights from Carl Jung, Robert Bly, and more. It’s a thorough exploration of how shadow work can heal individuals and society.

The Shadow Effect: Illuminating the Hidden Power of Your True Self by Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, and Debbie Ford. This is a practical and spiritual take on shadow work. The book explores how embracing your shadow can lead to personal growth, fulfilment, and transformation.

The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford.  A highly recommended book for shadow work beginners. Ford provides practical exercises and insights on how to recognize, accept, and integrate the parts of yourself that you’ve disowned or suppressed.

Masculinity and Personal Development
King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette
– This book delves into four key masculine archetypes and how their balanced integration can lead to mature and healthy masculinity. It’s a great complement to shadow work, as it helps men recognize both their strengths and the shadow sides of these archetypes.

Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly.  This is a classic exploration of modern masculinity, based on the ancient myth of Iron John. Bly examines how men can reclaim a more authentic sense of self by reconnecting with their inner wildness and healing from societal conditioning.

No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover. For men struggling with people-pleasing tendencies or feeling disconnected from their true desires, this book offers practical guidance. While not specifically about shadow work, it explores how repressing parts of yourself to fit social norms (your shadow) leads to frustration and dissatisfaction.

Way of the Superior Man by David Deida is a spiritual and practical guide for men on how to embody masculinity in a conscious way. Deida offers insights into how to balance masculine and feminine energies within relationships and in life, addressing themes such as purpose, vulnerability, and self-expression.

Man and His Symbols by Carl G. Jung
This book is one of the best introductions to Carl Jung’s theories, written for a lay audience. It covers the concepts of the unconscious, archetypes, and, most importantly, the shadow, which is key to understanding shadow work on a deeper psychological level.

The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious by Carl G. Jung
For those wanting a more in-depth exploration of Jung’s theories, this book dives deep into his ideas on the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the shadow. It’s more academic but highly insightful for those serious about shadow work.

Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self by Carl G. Jung
One of Jung’s most profound works, this focuses on the integration of the shadow and how it relates to the development of the Self. It’s a challenging read but valuable for a deeper understanding of shadow work.

Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach.  This book is about self-compassion, which is an essential part of shadow work. Brach teaches how to accept all parts of yourself with mindfulness, which is especially helpful when dealing with shame, guilt, or other difficult emotions that arise during shadow integration.

The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness by Rhonda V. Magee. This is a unique book that addresses how shadow work intersects with race, identity, and collective healing. Magee offers mindfulness practices and reflections that can aid in personal shadow work, especially for those interested in healing societal divides.

The Mask of Masculinity: How Men Can Embrace Vulnerability, Create Strong Relationships, and Live Their Fullest Lives by Lewis Howes.  This book explores the emotional armour many men wear, such as anger or detachment, and provides guidance on how to break free from these limiting behaviours. It encourages men to embrace vulnerability and emotional depth as part of their growth.

To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power by Robert Augustus Masters. He focuses on helping men develop a healthy, integrated sense of masculinity by embracing emotional literacy, vulnerability, and inner strength. He incorporates elements of shadow work and trauma healing into the exploration of authentic manhood.

These books cover a broad spectrum—from practical exercises to deep psychological and spiritual insights. Together, they can guide you in integrating your shadow, understanding your masculinity, and stepping into a more balanced, authentic self.

Reflections on Masculinity 2

What is it that makes a man different from a woman?

Well, there’s the obvious, of course: penis and balls, greater body size, more muscles, and so on…but that isn’t really the answer. What really makes us different from women lies inside our minds and our brains.

Sure, you may say we are all humans, and therefore we should be emphasizing our similarity. Well, yes, let’s emphasize our humanity, but let’s also cherish and honor the differences that make us masculine and feminine.

If you believe that all significant differences in gender are socially conditioned, learned or constructed, and that conventional gender boundaries should be erased, this may be of interest to you.

Video – what does gender mean?

Yet surely, in romantic relationships, it’s the polarity of masculinity and femininity that leads to passion and excitement?

If you’re in a relationship with someone you see as a good friend, but with whom you have no polarity, there’s not likely to be much passion. But what exactly does polarity mean?

What defines masculinity and femininity?

In biological terms, the difference in human behavior, thoughts, feelings and attitudes between male and female comes from the effect of testosterone on the brain of the male baby at two crucial points in its development in the womb.

These two surges of testosterone make the male brain develop differently from the female brain. The differences are explained in detail in many books, such as Why Men Don’t Iron by Anne and Bill Moir, but you’ll probably recognize some of the differences here:

Boys are more aggressive, more active, have a shorter attention span and are more competitive than girls. They are much less socially oriented and bond by “doing” , rather than “being”.

They are much more spatially aware and less verbally aware. He is good with things – she is good with words. Her brain sees more, hears more, communicates better, and possesses more verbal resources.

Men solve problems, women talk about them. Men find risk taking and problem solving to be stimulating, even necessary to their self-esteem. Men’s brains can focus much more closely than women’s. Men work well in teams and, though competitive, tend to respect each other. Women don’t. And so on.

Men are visually stimulated. Women are much less so. Men are quick to arouse, quick to come and quick to move their attention onto something else.

Novelty and variety are sexual stimulants monogamy may be a great sacrifice for a man in terms of his freedom to “do what comes naturally”.

On an emotional level, a man does not want to be changed by his partner into something more like her. He does not want to be mollycoddled by her. He wants a partner in the true sense, a woman who makes him complete by allowing him to be himself and who respects his maleness. Yet, as I implied in the first post on this subject, many men do not know how to embody masculinity. But as I also implied, there are ways to embody masculinity. Successful sex which satisfies both partner is one good way (see the text below about the CAT for more about this.) Another way is for a man to get some therapy or coaching to overcome the wounds of childhood. Shadow work is particularly good for this, especially if a man has put his masculinity into shadow. (see here for a list of shadow coaches who can help wtih this kind of work.)

His job is to win her, to cherish her and to protect her, and to be strong in the face of her emotions while remaining true to himself.

In other words, to be there for her in a safe, respectful way. A way that gives her a strong point of reference to bash against as the tides of her feminine emotions sweep back and forth from day to day.

Do men and women think differently? (Hint: Yes)

It’s that centered quality which women look for in a man, by constantly testing him. A woman’s test of a man can take many forms, but the most obvious example of it is the kind of needling provocation, the can’t-let-go-of-this-behavior, the relentless pressing of an issue, that a woman will engage in.

Most men respond to this by placating or reassuring her, a skill they pick up at the hands of their mothers, who, more often than not, react to the wildness of their young son by repressing his male energy and enthusiasm, trying, in effect, to feminize him, to make him more like her.

Since a young boy needs his mother’s love he often learns to adapt to her requirements, a skill which in all too many men continue to display into their adult relationships with women.

It’s wrong that a man can only be a man in the company of other men. He needs to be true to himself all the time, for it is this true essence of his masculinity that his woman is really seeking when she tests him.

In other words, he needs to be able to tell her, respectfully, how he feels and what he wants and needs from her; even if that is for her to stop doing something.

In doing this, the more masculine his response, the more firm and centered he is, the better. That is what she is looking for.

But why does a woman test a man repeatedly? And what does she want? The answer to the second question is simple. She wants a man who will stand up to her without being blown off course. The answer to the first question is more complicated.

One of the reasons she tests her man is a deep-seated fear that he will leave her, that he won’t always be there for her.

Subconsciously she reasons that if he can be knocked off course by her, then he can be knocked off course by any other woman. And there is good reason for this fear, of course, because men are naturally promiscuous, at least to a degree: fidelity is a choice.

So the powerful question for most men comes down to this: how to you maintain your masculine strength in the face of a woman’s “test” of your emotional & masculine resilience?

To conclude – a word about sexual relationships

In pursuit of greater sexual pleasure (and so harmony between the sexes), the coital alignment technique (CAT) has great value.

This has revolutionized many people’s sex lives in recent times. It provides a way for the man to bring a woman to orgasm during intercourse. While it can be challenging to stimulate a woman’s clitoris during intercourse with your hand, the CAT overcomes this challenge. 

The idea of the coital alignment technique originated in the 1970s. It has proved to be an effective technique for increasing sexual pleasure for women. It’s a modified kind of “missionary” or “man on top position”, which requires the couple to make love in such a way that the man’s pubic area repeatedly and gently rhythmically stimulates the woman’s clitoral area.

This is not, I must emphasize, stimulation applied directly to the clitoris by the man’s penis or fingers. Nor is it the “base of the man’s penis” touching the woman’s clitoris. The reality of the matter is that it is the general area of the man’s body around the base of his penis which is designed to bump into the area of the woman’s clitoral structures. This is not the same as the glans of the clitoris nor indeed the legs of the clitoris. Nor is it the G spot inside her vagina.

Most women’s clitorises are located too far away from the vaginal opening to receive any stimulation as the man thrusts in and out in a horizontal plane. This is more or less the orientation of the erect penis during normal man on top sex.

However, in coital alignment technique, a couple will orient their bodies so that the man’s erection is angled rather sharply downwards. In fact it approaches an angle of as much as 90° to his body.

This is done by him entering the woman in the normal way. He then shifts his body upwards towards her head. In the process his erection bends backwards, or downwards. This brings the area of his pubic mound into connection with her clitoral area.

And that is the whole idea behind the coital alignment technique: to allow the man and the woman to move in such a way that the rhythmic rocking of their pelvises will bring those two parts of their bodies into contact in a way that will stimulate the woman to orgasm.

Video  – Coital Alignment Technique

This is actually a very effective way of bringing to orgasm a woman during intercourse. Only about 10% of women can reach vaginal orgasms by thrusting of the erect penis in the vagina. However, practiced correctly, 80% of women will orgasm with the CAT during sex.

Perhaps men ought to be increasing their ability to last longer during intercourse. But most men are not interested in lasting longer during sex. So what this means is that the coital alignment technique provides an effective and useful way in which a woman can potentially achieve orgasm during intercourse.

And the benefit of orgasm during intercourse is that it can bring a couple much closer together spiritually and emotionally during the act of physical union.

However, the instructions that are generally given for the coital alignment technique are complex!  recommend you go to a useful website which is devoted solely to the subject. This will explain to you the alignment of male and female bodies necessary before the CAT works. 

Reflections on Masculinity 1

Reflections on masculinity, male sexuality, and being a man

Men often show up as weak in some way:

  • A weak masculine self, somehow feminised
  • A swaggering John Wayne macho image of immature masculinity
  • A chaotic and confused adolescent maleness
  • A masculinity which includes acting out violence and aggression (often against women)
  • A masculinity that is afraid to stand up and show itself in all its glory
  • A masculinity that is afraid of women, or seeks to placate them, or dominate them with physical and emotional manipulation. This cripples a man in his relationships, both sexual and emotional, with women.
  • A masculinity which turns against itself, and abuses itself with drugs, addiction, violence, self-harm
  • A feminized masculinity in which a man is ashamed of being a man.

I sum up true masculinity with words like strength, consistency, clarity, compassion, care, vulnerability, emotional literacy, gentleness, protectiveness, anger, joy, grief, fear, courage, excitement, adventure, risk-taking, providing for others, protecting others, and so on.

Some masculine stereotypes may be innate, though

Perhaps small boys, big boys, and men all want to have adventure, excitement, and take risks (even little ones). And maybe women are fearful of this.

It may be that men are more interested in going out to work and bringing home the hunted animal (or a pay packet) than making a nest.

It may be that men are genetically programmed to be providers and women are programmed to be more nurturing. Maybe men think differently to women, so that communication between the sexes will always be difficult. And maybe a woman wants stability and a man wants excitement – in many ways, including sex.

So dare we accept that men and women have evolved with different genetic programs to do different things? To feel different things? To be moved by different things?

Most importantly, can we learn to accommodate our true differences as best we can? Can we stop pretending that actually we’re all really the same regardless of our gender, and we could all get along nicely if only we men would be more like our womenfolk?

YES! But if we do this, then along come the responsibilities: in particular:

  • To learn what true masculinity means for ourselves and for our brothers (i.e. other men).
  • To care for our families instead of going off and fucking the next willing, attractive woman who comes along.
  • To raise adolescent boys so that they know what true maleness is, and so that life is not ruined for all of us by leaderless gangs and undisciplined males acting out aggressively in our society.
  • To behave towards women with self-respect and other-respect. To stand up for ourselves with women assertively and not aggressively or abusively.
  • To learn that the meeting of the true masculine and the true feminine is complementary.
  • To understand that the sexes can be true to their own gender while still respecting the other. Not to fear or hate or be violent towards each other.

Video – Masculinity

There is little doubt that the different brain wiring patterns of men and women are in large part responsible for the different behavioral patterns of men and women.

If you want to read a good popular book on this subject, which includes a test for you to complete so you can judge the degree of masculinization/feminization of your own brain, buy: Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps, a book by by Alan and Barbara Pease.

According to Barbara and Allan Pease, science now confirms that the way our brains are wired and the hormones pulsing through our bodies are the two factors that largely dictate, long before we are born, how we will think and behave. Our instincts are simply our genes determining how our bodies will behave in given sets of circumstances.

That’s right: socialization, politics, or upbringing aside, men and women have profound brain differences and are intrinsically inclined to act in distinct – and consequently frustrating – ways.

To make things worse for men…

Many men are brought up in families without much male emotional support or physical presence. And so they may lose a masculine sense of adventure, of risk, of maleness itself. For boys brought up in single parent families, without any male role models, no matter how wonderfully caring their mothers may be, one thing is certain: there will be a time when they need an adult older male to show them what it means to be a man.

Meanwhile, the feckless man who leaves his children, the adolescent gangster, the wife-beater, the man who uses abusive porn, the deceiver who seduces woman and abandons them: they have all got one thing in common – they are shamed by society without compassion.

And yet, who ever taught them to be men? Whoever gave them the models they needed to respect, to look up to, and whoever taught them that a man needs a vision and, if not a vision, a role?

Yes, that’s right – no-one. And who cares? Well, many men. You just have to find them.

Many years ago, I went on a ManKind Project weekend, a men’s group. Here, I and another 40 or so men were given the chance, probably for most of us for the first time in our lives, to get up on our feet and talk openly. To talk, without judgment, about our lives as men. And the pain and pleasure that emerged were profoundly moving. 

In this complete cross-section of society, from the humblest and most disadvantaged guys, who had been injecting drugs for years, surviving on their wits on the edges of society, to the wealthiest white middle-class guys and the educated black classes – the experiences were the same. Every man’s story was a part of every other man’s story. We are indeed all brothers under the skin.

Between one third and one half of the men there had paid for sex, either once or regularly. Perhaps when their wife was pregnant. Perhaps because their wife or partner was not interested in sex. Perhaps in addition to having sex with a partner or girlfriend.

Some men who had lost their virginity to prostitutes, sometimes because their father or an older uncle had taken it upon himself to initiate the lad in this way.

As one guy said: “The bastard told me: ‘I’ll make a man of you.’ Thanks a lot, Dad. Unfortunately you started 15 years too late.”  And the product of this was shame and guilt.

Nearly all the men had used porn – some obsessively, some for years, from adolescence onwards.

Some had filmed themselves having sex with their girlfriends, either openly or secretly. Their women had often reluctantly gone along with this to please their man. All the men masturbated regularly – some many times each day. They all had many ways to pleasure themselves. About twenty per cent of the men in this group had had sex with men at least once. And many more had wondered if they were gay. Many spoke of having erections all the time, saying that they felt as if their penises ruled their lives. 

But what fascinated me most was that the overriding desire, spoken again and again by men of all classes and colors and educational levels, was simple. To have a real heart-centred relationship. To be in an intimate, connected relationship of love, respect and sexual fulfillment.

It seems we as men have two conflicting needs here: on the one hand a need to fulfill the dictates of our testosterone by reaching orgasm freely and liberally. And on the other hand, a need to satisfy our very human desire to meet another human being from a soul connection. In other words, to love a woman and be understood by her, to have intimacy and love. Yet often the testosterone wins. And there is no shame in that.

But the point is this: we are men. We do what we can, yet we can always do better.  Celebrate your masculinity.

A book about masculinity: understand more about being a man

Warrior Magician Lover King by Rod Boothroyd

The author describes each of the title’s four archetypes in turn, explaining both the positive and negative aspects of each one, and how each can interact with the others.

A great book for readers turned off by self-help works that are either too simplistic or too mystical. And, as the reviewers have pointed out, much of it would appear to be of interest to women as well as men.

Iron John : A Book About Men
by Robert Bly

Bly feels men are in trouble, and tries to explain why. He also attempts to define a real man: one who has the courage and conviction to fight, but also has the compassion and tenderness to feel. Men in our society seem to be too much on one side or the other. We have too many wild, violent, brutal men with no feeling.

We also have too many submissive, weak, ‘Yes Dear’ type of men. He tries to give reasons for this ‘downfall’, using important themes such as: 1) Young men without responsible, older men in their lives, 2) The industrial revolution separating father from son 3) The elimination our link to nature as a result of the Industrial Revolution, and 4) How the feminist movement, while absolutely necessary, has had an adverse effect of creating a culture which portrays men as complete idiots.

Stress – part 3 – When does stress become harmful?

When does stress become harmful?

There is no easy way to predict what sort of stress, or how much, will produce an individual’s optimum level of emotional arousal.

However, it is easy to identify groups of people who, on the whole, are at risk from harmful stress. An obvious one consists of people who are stressed in their employment. For example, doctors in the more stressful roles such as general practice or anaesthetics had a level of heart disease almost four times greater than that of pathologists and dermatologists in one study conducted in 1962.

However, are these investigations overlooking the fact that heart disease is linked to particular personality traits such as enthusiasm and determination? These qualities could easily explain why people are given greater responsibility at work or seek tougher jobs.

The connection between personality and heart disease was investigated by Friedman. His work led to the concept of Type A and Type B behaviour.  who analyzed the personalities of many heart patients. He found that they showed a particular set of characteristics:

  • an intense sustained ambition to achieve self-selected but poorly defined goals
  • a greatly pronounced tendency and eagerness to compete
  • a persistent desire for recognition and advancement
  • a continuous involvement in many different job aspects all of which are up against time limits
  • a marked tendency to work more quickly than necessary, both physically and mentally
  • constant mental and physical alertness

If you recognize yourself in the above descriptions (Type A), it may be wise to take steps to reduce your stress.

Video – Type A Behaviour

However, other factors are involved in heart disease besides personality. To take just one example, the relationship between smoking, dietary fats, exercise, stress and hart disease is not completely clear. But stress at work clearly predisposes some people to develop heart problems and actually making yourself aware of this could prevent a fatal attack.

The Importance of Good Fathering

Another factor here that is highly relevant to stress and resulting illness is the fact that many men in society are stressed because they did not have adequate fathering. And women are no different here! They need someone to teach them how to emotionally hold themselves just as much as boys do. 

It is good fathering which enables a man to make good choices, to live with the consequences of them, to take responsibility for his actions, to be accountable for his actions, and to be strong enough to survive life’s vicissitudes. In effect, good fathering allows a man to “hold himself” emotionally, physically and spiritually through stressful times.  “Holding yourself” means, basically, not being overwhelmed by what is happening to you. The same thing, expressed differently: having enough internal resources such as fortitude and resilience to keep emotional balance and a clear and rational perspective.

So what if you did not have adequate fathering or mothering? Try therapy or counselling. Try anything that leads to a process of spiritual or emotional growth and development for you. 

Type A and Type B Personality

All the characteristics in the list of Type A traits above are traits of personality which would lead to someone taking responsibility very seriously. And a person who takes responsibility seriously is likely to be disturbed by the prospect of any failure.

Responsibility also leads to worry, which is a major cause of stress. But there is, of course, more to it than that. Tom Cox and Colin Mackay have developed a theory to explain the origin of employment-related stress. They suggest that stress develops when somebody is subjected to internal and external demands which exceed his capability to meet those demands.

Internal demands take the form of one’s own desire for a fulfilling job conducted in a reasonably comfortable environment with good working conditions and pay. Fulfilment may be interpreted individually. For example, work which presents a mental challenge or provides a particularly appreciated reward for success may be fulfilling for one person but not for another.

External demands are basically the psychological and physical requirements of an individual’s employment. They are the sum total of such factors as the length of the working week, the periods of rest provided, the quality of work and the physical effort required.

Nobody realized for many years that physical factors could be important in inducing stress. But now we know that problems such as intense noise and repeatedly doing the same simple physical task produce stress and anxiety.

One other demand which may be placed on somebody in their work is the need to play a role which is unsuited to their basic temperament and personality or the need to play two contradictory roles simultaneously. Therapy and counselling can help to overcome such issues because it resolves the split personality and heals the emotional wounds which led to the original split.

For example, if an individual’s role is ill-defined, he is also likely to be stressed. This is because he is unsure of his objectives, his colleagues’ expectations, whom he should report to, and what his responsibilities are.

Problems like this lead to tension, lack of fulfilment, sense of futility, reduced self-esteem and confidence, and these feelings must in turn cause even more stress. All in all, millions of working days a year are lost through employment-related stress, not to mention the amount of job dissatisfaction which exists because of it.

Another major cause of stress is unhappiness in personal relationships.

Video – is stress ruining your relationship?

Relationship stress often shows up as irritability, moodiness, aggression, anxiety and depression rather than in a more physical way. People who are under stress for reasons like this are often well aware of the cause of their stress but do not know how to deal with it. 

Worry, too, is a common cause of stress and increased arousal. This is because worried thinking actually involves the creation of perceptions of threat. (In other words, one spends time and energy imagining all the possible ways in which things might go wrong, and the possible effects if things do go wrong.) Such thoughts can trigger the body’s stress response system as effectively as objectively real threats. 

Recognizing Harmful Stress

Stress is generally not harmful over a few days or even a few weeks, as long as it is not intense. But when it is prolonged over a period of months or years it will be harmful in one way or another. If it does not produce some physical effect, it may well lower your efficiency to a point where effective coping with life and work is no longer possible.

Additionally, stress lowers your resistance to psychological trauma and physical illness, besides simply making you feel wretched. So how can you tell whether or not you are stressed?

There are, in fact, several methods. Some rely on simple self-observation; others are slightly more sophisticated and involve some system of measurement. The simpler methods of self-observation are:

Physical and Emotional Symptoms Of Stress

Stress shows up either as physical or emotional symptoms, or both. You can check the list below whether you have any obvious symptoms of stress. Some particularly common symptoms are physical tension, poor sleep, a general emotional malaise or feeling of dissatisfaction with life, anxiety, irritability, and depression.

Coping Behaviour

It is possible to identify stress through some of the ways in which people try to deal with it. Some people respond to stress with frantic activity, aggression or drive in the belief that they are mastering their situation and working very efficiently. In reality the way they throw themselves from activity to activity in a relentless effort to leave the stress behind simply causes further problems. Others try to lessen the effects of stress with tranquillizers or alcohol, or any of the other coping behaviours listed earlier.

The Quality Of Your Personal Relationships

The best clue may be the people around you. If the atmosphere in your family seems to have changed, or your friends seem to shun your company, or your employees remark on the fact that you used to be a much more agreeable person, perhaps the problem lies with you, not them?

A Decrease In Personal Efficiency

Stress tends to reduce your ability to discriminate between the essential and the non-essential, so that you may become preoccupied with unimportant matters while major problems remain to be solved. This means you work more and more but achieve less and less. Stress can also adversely affect your mental and physical co-ordination and muscular skill.

Lifestyle

The fact that your lifestyle can be a sign of stress is pretty obvious. Many people in society struggle on against their stress-related problems without clearly recognizing the situation they are in. For example, many of us will be able to think of at least one high-powered man or woman: someone who takes on more and more work, never delegating responsibility for fear of the job not being done correctly; always busy, often frenetic, showing signs of sleeplessness and increasing fatigue.

And then there is the stress of being a parent, cooking meals, keeping house, coping with children, dealing with money worries, and so on.

Oddly enough, being passive can also produce stress. If you allow events and circumstances to determine their course through life, perhaps because they do not know how to control events or because they lack the confidence to stand up for themselves. Such a passive acceptance of events can be genuinely stressful and lead to resentment, loss of self-esteem and depression. There is more about the causes and effects of stress here. Finally, in our current western world, another common cause of stress is unemployment with its attendant financial and social problems. Family life and home affairs, too, are all potential causes of stress. 

Stress – part 2 – Sexual problems and depression

Sexual Problems and Depression

If you are depressed and have sexual problems as well, you’re not the only one. Sexual problems, such as erectile dysfunction (ED) or lack of orgasm – anorgasmia – often exist alongside depression. Happily, doctors can treat sexual problems at the same time as depression.

How are sexual problems and depression linked?

The brain is a very sensitive sex organ. Indeed, sexual desire begins in the brain and flows along neural pathways thanks to special chemicals known as neurotransmitters. These increase communication along nerve cells and work to stimulate blood flow to the sexual organs. But when a person is depressed, brain chemicals fall out of balance.

Many women and men who are depressed speak of low or absent sexual desire. Of course this can be troubling for sexual partners in intimate relationships. It is therefore very important to examine any sexual problems that may be causing frustration or anger between the members of a couple, because a highly accurate indicator of the state of a relationship is the frequency of sex.

Indeed, regular sex keeps a relationship healthy, and sex is one of the first things to disappear from a relationship when a couple are experiencing some kind of communication problem. 

Video – positive and netaive interactions in relationship

This can be approximated to the number of times positive and negative interactions occur. The ratio needs to be at least 5 positive communications for every 1 negative.

Are sexual problems caused by antidepressants?

Antidepressants can be very useful to help improve mood or sense of self-worth, but it is also true that some antidepressants – especially selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can have some side effects which cause sexual problems.

Antidepressants will boost emotional mood in many people with depression by affecting brain chemical balance. But since these chemicals are associated with the sexual responses of men and women alike, antidepressants effect on them can cause sexual dysfunction. In particular, erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation are affected by these compounds. The sexual side effects of antidepressants appear to increase as the dose of medication increases.

What sexual problems are linked with antidepressants?

Sexual problems that you may experience on antidepressants include:

  • an inability to initiate or enjoy sex
  • erectile dysfunction (ED) for men
  • decreased sexual desire
  • an inability to achieve an orgasm

How can these sexual problems be treated?

There are several ways to manage the side effects of these antidepressant medicines while still allowing treatment of the depression. Some of the more recent antidepressants work differently, and as a result may not affect your sexual function. A doctor may change your prescription to some other type of antidepressant, so that your sexual ability is less affected. And there are some medications which can be prescribed together with antidepressants that may improve a person’s sexual function.

Without you telling him about sexual issues like this, a doctor is obviously unable to help. So it’s essential to talk openly with your sexual partner and your medical doctor. Ask your doctor for advice! And as for your partner, when they understand that the sexual problems associated with depression medication can be treated, they will be more supportive; as a result people with sexual problems who are on antidepressants continue taking them.

How does depression affect a person’s sexuality?

The brain is our most sensitive “sex organ.” Sexual drive or desire starts in the brain so any mood problem affects our sexual functioning. About 35 percent to 45 percent of people with depression experience some kind of sexual problems. Of course, the severity of the sexual problem depends on the severity of the depression and whether or not you have any anxiety. For those people who have a more severe form of depression, as many as 60 percent have sexual problems.

Video –  the sex starved relationship

Video – Sexual repression leads to depression

Video – why anti-depressants kill your sex drive (and what to do about it)

Most men and women have difficulty discussing their depression-induced sexual dysfunction, symptoms of which may include decreased libido, erectile dysfunction, and ejaculation problems. Patients tend not to report sexual problems resulting from medications. Sometimes only the partner complaining can make them admit there is a problem. Even then, it may be rationalized away, as the product of social values and practices, and this is especially true in the elderly.

Sexual problems may not be the subject of enquiry by doctors: in one study patients taking SSRI were four times as likely to mention sexual dysfunction when asked directly by their doctor.

More information on depression and sexual function

Depression affects every part of our lives – including our sexual relationships – and if your partner is depressed, your sexual and emotional relationship may suffer very badly. Of course the irony is that a good relationship is really helpful for anybody with depression, because they need expression of support and closeness more than ever.

So if your partner has depression, they will feel withdrawn. They will have low energy, perhaps so little they cannot do all they normally do with the family or in their relationship. This can cause the partner who isn’t depressed to feel unwanted or unloved. They may misinterpret the depressed person’s moods as anger or evidence that the depressed person wants to end the relationship.

But being the partner of someone who is depressed is extremely challenging. This is especially true around sexual issues: if you’re desperate and your loved one cannot focus on anything positive, they may also find their depression affect all their bodily systems, most marked around sleep and sex.

You may wish to check out the symptoms of any illness which causes you to lose your libido or feel ill – especially if they interfere with sexual activity due to the discomfort they cause. 

A lot of people who are depressed lose interest in sex. Even though this isn’t always so (a few depressed people have normal sex lives) in most men, the general slowing down of brain activity is associated with loss of libido and erection problems. In women, there is often lack of interest in sex, and difficulty in reaching orgasm. As you may expect, all these issues get better as the depressive illness reduces in severity.

Both the illness and antidepressant medicines such as Prozac can affect sexual function. One of the most common effects is that orgasm is delayed or doesn’t happen at all. If this happens, and you want to have sex, ask the doctor about changing medication. Depressed people can help their relationship by making an effort to show appreciation to their partner.

Here are some self help ideas for depression

  • Go for a walk every day with your partner. Walking gives you a bit of an emotional boost, and releases endorphins in the brain..
  • Try a therapy such as counselling or shadow therapy (aka shadow work) to get to the root of the problem.
  • Practice gratitude for small moments like a bird singing or the warmth of your fire. Every day you can find several things for which you are grateful – research shows this helps lift people’s mood.
  • Eat a balanced diet and in particular consume five pieces of fruit a day.
  • Listen to music that is important to you.
  • Have faith that your depression will pass, as it will.
  • If full-on sex does not appeal, at least cuddle. Touching and closeness like this will keep a relationship intact.
  • For the partner:
  • Don’t claim you understand your partner’s experiences. Just be alongside them.
  • Many depressed men and women lose interest in sex. This loss of sex drive is not personal!
  • Don’t despair. But hang on in there. Love and constant support will help your partner more than anything.
  • Get professional help available. Alternatives to anti-depressants include cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). Many doctors provide CBT. This can have a good effect quickly in many cases.
  • Act as if your partner is recovering from physical illness or from surgery: with tender loving care.
  • Do nice things for yourself. Being around someone who’s depressed is very draining, so  look after yourself: take time alone, see a movie, see friends. Do not stay home and do nothing!
  • This period in your life will eventually pass and that your partner will be the same person as before.
  • Take exercise together – depressed people usually feel their mood improves when they do something physically demanding that raises the heartbeat – and this will help you too.

The Causes and Effects of Stress – part 1

Stress and Relationships

We all experience stress; we cannot avoid it. Because of this daily contact with stress, we all have a vague idea of what it is and what it can do to our physical and mental health. And of course, stress puts a massive strain on relationships. The number of marriages and long term relationships that split up during the covid pandemic was very high: But if you were asked to define stress, what would you say? Mental strain caused by the demands of life and work?

Video – the definition of stress

That would be a typical answer, but it does not reveal why a stressed executive develops an ulcer, nor does it explain why stress causes depression in one man and an ulcer or heart attack in another, nor does it suggest that stress can be a result of either boredom and inactivity or overwork. And so, a comprehensive definition of stress will set the scene for a better understanding of the problem, whether within relationships or without. This is it:

Stress is the reaction in an individual’s body or mind when that person perceives a potential threat to his emotional or physical well-being.

Perception is everything

An event or situation is only stressful if you perceive it (that is, interpret it in your mind) as threatening. For example, if you were confronted in a dark street late at night by a man obviously intent on robbing you, your reaction would depend on how well you believed you could cope.

If you were confident of your ability to defend yourself, you would remain much calmer than someone who expected to lose a fight. 

However, as our definition of stress makes clear, the same principle applies to any experience which might affect your emotional well-being (i.e. your happiness, sense of security, self-esteem and so forth). So, for example, being criticized by someone is particularly stressful if you depend on that person’s approval to maintain your own self-esteem.

Similarly, the break-up of a relationship is far more stressful when your emotional security depends on the relationship than when you are emotionally self-reliant.

Stress and relationship break up

So, really, there is no situation which, in itself, is stressful; even very dangerous situations only evoke a reaction if a person sees them as potentially harmful.

You can see that this is true if you consider a young child playing on the edge of a busy road. Although he is in grave danger, he may well be quite unaware of the fact, probably feels quite happy, and only when he has been taught that roads and cars are dangerous will he perceive the threat to himself and react in some way.

This view of stress emphasizes that a stress response is made up of different parts: the event, situation or environment in which a person finds himself, his appraisal of whether it is threatening or potentially harmful; and, lastly, his physical or emotional reaction to it. This reaction may be either a conscious action – such as leaving the stress situation – or a subconscious reaction.

(The conscious part of your mind is the part with which you think and observe the world; it is made up of everything in your mind of which you are aware while awake. The subconscious, by contrast, is outside conscious awareness, but nevertheless works 24 hours a day to control memory, thinking and sensory processes, and basic body systems such as breathing and digestion.)

A person’s appraisal of a situation also involves subconscious as well as conscious processes. And so he or she may experience the symptoms of stress without knowing why. A simple example at this point will illustrate the idea. Consider a man who is stressed by his job but does not consciously realize that this is the cause of, say, his irritability.

The problem may have begun with a conscious thought (I hate this job!) which was then suppressed because it was unacceptable (But I can’t leave it because my family needs the security of my employment).

However, suppression of a thought from the conscious mind does not make it go away: it remains in the subconscious and produces a stress reaction of one sort or another. This is basically what we could call the shadow side of the mind. It’s a term which refers to any repressed material that we suppress out of consciousness.

The pain of a break up is often all too obvious; the longer term pain may be suppressed and not felt if we do not deal with it, perhaps through counselling or therapy.

One way to deal with this kind of pain is to find something that makes you feel better. Time with friends, distracting pastimes, alternative therapy, such as Reiki healing or reflexology, exercise, and so on. And of course you can always seek counselling.

Video – counselling after a relationship break up

The effects and cost of stress

1 Subjective effects

Anxiety, aggression, apathy, boredom, depression, fatigue, frustration, guilt and shame, irritability and bad temper, moodiness, low self-esteem, threat and tension, nervousness, and loneliness.

2 Behavioral effects

Accident proneness, drug taking, emotional outbursts, excessive eating or loss of appetite, excessive drinking and smoking, excitability, impulsive behavior, impaired speech, nervous laughter, restlessness, and trembling.

3 Cognitive effects

Inability to make decisions and concentrate, frequent forgetfulness, hypersensitivity to criticism, and mental blocks.

4 Physiological effects

Increased blood and urine catecholamines and cortisol, increased blood glucose levels, increased heart rate and blood pressure, dryness of mouth, sweating, dilation of pupils, difficulty breathing, hot and cold spells, ‘a lump in the throat’, numbness and tingling in part of the limbs.

5 Health effects

Asthma, amenorrhea, chest and back pains, coronary heart disease, diarrhea, faintness and dizziness, dyspepsia, frequent urination, headaches and migraine, neuroses, nightmares, insomnia, psychoses, psychosomatic disorder, diabetes mellitus, skin rash, ulcers, loss of sexual interest, and weakness.

6 Organizational effects

Absenteeism, poor industrial relations and poor productivity, high accident and poor labor turnover rates, poor organizational climate, antagonism at work, and job dissatisfaction.

7 Sexual Effects

This website does not explicitly deal with the effects of stress on sexual relationships, because this is an extremely complex aspect of the subject. But, in short, stress can cause low sex drive, erectile failure, premature ejaculation, and anorgasmia in men and women.

8 Lack Of Control

To take control of your life you must have some direction or aim, some vision or purpose. It is that which motivates us to try harder, to strive for success, and ultimately pursue our heart’s desire. Some of the men and women with whom I work have found deep emotional work helpful in finding their direction. Emotional process work is something that can help you explore and remedy dysfunctional behaviour and emotional problems. 

Alternatively, you could try an alternative therapy such as Reiki or learn to use Reiki in your life as a tool for stress reduction. See Reiki training in Frome, Somerset, and Bath for more information. The point is this: for emotional problems caused by stress, and especially by the break up of your relationship, it can be helpful to consult a qualified counselor, alternative therapy practitioner, or even your doctor.

 

After Breaking Up: Getting Your Confidence Back

Staying Happy

One of the big issues that people write to me about all the time is how to get over a breakup.

Specifically, how to improve how they feel, or how to make themselves feel better when their ex-boyfriend is gallivanting around with other women.

The whole objective of this website is to give you some strategies and ideas about how you can successfully re-establish a relationship with your ex-partner, so hopefully you’ll find that very useful.

Taking care of yourself

But the object of this particular article is to consider how you can take care of yourself after a breakup, whether you’re looking to get back together with your ex-boyfriend or not.

To start with, if you aren’t gentle with yourself after you’ve broken up, who is going to be?

What this means is not being self-critical or self judgmental, cutting out negative self talk, and especially finding positive things with which you can affirm your desirability, your beauty, and your self-esteem.

The first and most obvious way to do this is stop dwelling on your failures, and to stop thinking about what you could have done differently.

The simple truth is that you obviously couldn’t have done anything differently, because had you been able to do so, you would have done.

We’re all tempted to think about the things we could have done when something’s gone wrong (like a relationship ending), rather than looking forward positively to the future.

inspirational text after a break up
Look on the bright side! In every adversity there lies the seed of a greater benefit.

So if you’re finding it difficult to look forward positively, try saying some affirmations into a mirror every day.

If you look at yourself long enough, you’ll see your beauty shining through, and at that point you can use affirmations suited to your particular circumstances:

  • Everything I need comes to me easily and effortlessly
  • I attract fulfilling and happy and worthwhile friendships
  • I have a job which I really enjoy, and abundant prosperity because of it
  • I experience lots of pleasure, happiness and fun in my life
  • I am my own person and I know how to live and what I want and the universe delivers it all to me
  • I accept and love myself deeply and completely exactly the way I am

So you can imagine, I’m sure, how to find affirmations that will suit your particular circumstances.

Believe me, affirmations are a powerful way of changing your self-image. 

General advice on relationships, breaking up and making up, can be found here.

Stay Healthy

Another thing you might find after breaking up is that you’re tempted to start binge eating, or eating things that aren’t good for you, or perhaps even drinking too much.

You might have difficulty sleeping, and turn to food for comfort, or you might have no desire to eat at all. You might crave unhealthy food after a breakup, and you might feel tempted to eat the kind of things that superficially make you feel better (chocolate, chips) but in fact do you harm in the longer term and don’t really satisfy you anyway. This is all about soothing the pain of separation.

Try to maintain a healthy diet, with all the foods which you know are good for you. And of course one of the great advantages when you’re able to do this, is that you’re soothing your wounded and unhappy inner child.

She’ll be feeling lonely and isolated, so an occasional treat, which won’t pile on the pounds is quite acceptable!

Stay Fit

If you can take exercise you’ll be in a much better space than you will be if you slob around in front of the TV mindlessly watching boring programs and trying to feel better, while actually feeling sorry for yourself.

Go out to the gym or go running, perhaps even take up something like yoga! This will really help you feel better. You’re out of the house, you’re doing something interesting, mixing with people, and getting some exercise – all of which which can release endorphins and another feel-good chemicals in the brain.

Besides which, taking up a new sport or indeed any new activity, and then losing yourself in it by deeply engaging with it, can be a great way of distracting yourself from the emotional pain of the break up; it can also increase your confidence.

This is a great time for personal reflection, i.e. thinking on a personal level about where you’re going in life and what you really want.

If your major goal is to get your ex back, then fine – but plenty of people need something that gives them a sense of purpose after a break up.

after a break up be assertive
Get what you want from life!

Being in a relationship with another person can easily make you lose sight of your goals and objectives, so after a breakup, you might wish to consider what you actually want from life, and make sure that you find a way of getting it.

If you really want to change your image, have a complete makeover – but don’t do this alone! Have a friend come along with you so that you can share the fun and experience something positive for yourself.

Obviously caring for yourself with treats like a massage, facials, and pedicures can be a great way of feeling better about yourself. Much better than eating endless amounts of chocolate or ice cream, anyway.

While these ideas sound like simple things (which they probably are) the reason we mention them here is because this is the kind of relationship advice which people offer after a breakup!

It’s all about nurturing yourself and giving yourself some pleasurable experiences to boost your self-esteem, help you feel better, and (whether or not you get back together with your ex), help you make a new start in life.

Change Your Psychology

More importantly than anything else, perhaps, is the changes you can bring about in your internal world – increasing your self-confidence and your self-esteem, getting some therapy or counseling, and focusing on the positives not the negatives after a break up.

That way, your self-esteem and overall outlook become more positive. Practicing gratitude and joy so that you focus on the positive rather than negative is also very helpful.

You might also take some action to deal with anything that’s holding you back in life; for example, things you accumulated during your relationship and which serve as a reminder of it.

Take A Time Out

You might want to have a timeout; a period of no-contact with your ex, so you don’t see them at all for a while. You might especially want to do that if your relationship ended badly!

But even if you’re thinking of getting your ex boyfriend back, you might want to take some time and space.

Above all, the important thing is to get out and have fun. Losing a relationship is like losing anything – you have to go through several stages of grief.

First there’s denial. Then there’s anger, followed by bargaining, depression and ultimately acceptance.

Going through this can be a growth experience. You can discover that losing your ex boyfriend isn’t a sign your life is over and you’ll be single forever. You can accept that you may not get him back, no matter what you would like to happen.

During the acceptance period, you may find it easiest to get out into the world and mingle with other people, but the point where you probably need to do that most is during the first stages of grief after your breakup.

And of course when you seek out a new relationship, be that with your ex boyfriend or with a new partner, remember there are some things you really can control!

For example, you don’t have to settle for the first man who comes along. If you’re trying to get back together with your ex boyfriend, you don’t have to settle for the same man you had when you broke up.

You may want more than your ex had to offer – I mean, you certainly broke up for a reason! If he hasn’t changed, maybe it’s important that any positive benefits you can get from this breakup do fully emerge into reality for you.

Women – Get Your Guy Back (Part 3)

Relationship Advice

If you’re looking to get your ex boyfriend back, read on!

Part 1 of this article on getting your man back is here.

Part 2 is here.

We’ve put together a great little guide about some of the things you can do to persuade your ex-boyfriend to get back together with you in a happy relationship.

To start with, remember that it doesn’t matter who broke up with who, or why you broke up. All that matters is this: you’re looking for ways to get your ex boyfriend back because you know he really is the man for you.

getting back with an ex
No matter how lovely, you broke up for a reason which needs to be dealt with.

But….. why is he now your “ex boyfriend”?

There must have been some powerful reasons why you broke up, and unless you do something about them, the second time around might just end the same way!

Here’s what you have to think about.

Do you know whether or not your ex wants to get back together with you? Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. Either way, you can raise your chances of getting back together into relationship with him.

But first, you need to really think about these questions:

  • Why did you breakup?
  • What went wrong with the relationship?
  • Do you know how he feels about you?
  • Are you absolutely sure that he’s the right guy for you?
  • Were you fully committed to the relationship?
  • Deep down, do you have any lurking suspicions that he might not really be the right man for you?

These are important questions, and you need to answer them as objectively as you can.

As you answer them, don’t be critical of your ex-boyfriend just because you’re not in a relationship with him any more. Instead, take an objective view of his strengths and weaknesses. 

Think hard before you get back together! You don't want to repeat the break up second time around.....
Think hard finding out how to get your ex back! You don’t want to repeat the break up second time around…..

And don’t be critical of yourself, either. The emotional BS in your relationship and the disagreements you had are probably a major part of why you broke up. It’s important to understand why they happened without blaming your ex boyfriend or yourself.

If you’re honest, and you spend some time thinking about those questions, you’re very likely to come up with some powerful insights about the relationship.

And if you have any doubts, then discovering how to get your ex boyfriend back is probably not a good idea.

On the other hand, if the reasons you guys fell for each other in the first place are still valid, and they still make you feel connected and fond of your ex boyfriend, then you stand a good chance of getting back together with him successfully. (And maybe getting back together fast.)

Another important question you might want to think about is when feelings of intimacy and connection began to disappear, and what happened to make them fade away. Did you get lazy about your relationship, perhaps?

Like I said, the reason for taking these questions seriously is because they help you work out whether or not you really want to get your ex boyfriend back.

They will also reveal, deep down inside, when you know it ain’t gonna work, no matter what you do.

You have to want him back because you believe it will make your life better, not just because you’re feeling lonely and miserable.

In other words if you don’t have a complete total belief that this is the right relationship for you, then why bother getting him back? There are plenty more fish in the sea.

So, assuming that you’ve decided this really is the relationship for you, are you ever going to find out how you can get your ex-boyfriend back?

1 Improve Beyond Recognition

You might think you’re attractive and friendly and nice to be around – but presumably if your ex felt that way, he’d still be in a relationship with you?

There was a reason you broke up, and if this was something to do with your feelings, thoughts and behaviors, then you need to change. To put it bluntly, you need to be way, way more desirable than he remembers.

And that means nicer emotionally, as well as more attractive, better dressed, better groomed, and dare I say it, better in bed (of which more later).

The idea is that when he sees you, he realizes how amazing you are. Far better than when you were together in the relationship, in fact!

break up recovery with ex boyfriend
You may have to change how he sees you – perhaps by making yourself more desirable, more adorable?

Whether or not you think this is shallow, you have to understand that for many men the initial pull to be in a relationship is physical attraction, no matter how much they like a girl.

Of course we’re not denying that men want a girl they can talk to, live with and feel comfortable with – sure they do. But looks are important too.  So the better you look, the greater your chances of being able to get your ex-boyfriend back.

And of course that’s only a first step.

2 Forgive Him

You’ve probably read a great deal about forgiveness and how important it is in any relationship.  Unfortunately, perhaps, everything you’ve read about the importance of forgiveness is absolutely true!

For as long as you hold resentment or anger towards your ex-boyfriend because of what happened in your relationship, you are destroying your chances of getting back together and having a good, intimate, loving relationship.

If you can discuss whatever went on between you, and deal with it in an adult, emotionally mature, way then you will have a strong foundation for a good relationship.

It’s too simple and blunt to say, as some relationship advice columnists do: “Whatever he did wrong – just get over it.”

How can you “just get over it”? After all, you’re feeling pain, or anger, or sadness, or maybe even fear, about some of the things that happened between you.

But unless your ex boyfriend deliberately set out to cause you pain, which is very unlikely, then it will be helpful to recognize he’s only human, and he makes mistakes.

(Of course if you believe that he deliberately set out to wound you in any way, emotionally, verbally or physically, then dump him now, once and for all.)

The problem is that it’s not so easy to forgive someone – especially an ex boyfriend – for what they’ve done to you when you’re still feeling the pain of it all.

So maybe you need to let go of your anger, sadness or fear, to make a clean break and a fresh start?

If you don’t have a technique for doing that, then get some help from a counselor or therapist, or talk to a good friend whom you trust, someone who might be able to give you an objective insight into what’s going on for you.

Because once you’ve let go of the past and the emotions associated with it, you open up a whole new field of possibility.

And speaking of possibility, do remember that you have to forgive yourself if you’ve made mistakes.

inspirational thinking
Start looking for solutions, not problems!

You might be blaming yourself right now for the things you did which you believe destroyed the relationship and drove him away.

And while you could spend your time and energy regretting and agonizing over it all,  you’d be better of if you redirected that energy into growing emotionally.

That way, you will become a better and bigger person, a more attractive person. Again, counseling or therapy might help, as would talking to friends, or joining an organization which supports women in their efforts to become the best they can be.

Remember that every day is a great opportunity to have a great relationship with a great guy – whether that’s your ex-boyfriend or somebody new.

But to have a great relationship you need to be in a happy and emotionally mature place, where you’ve let go of the resentments of the past.

3 Don’t Hook Up With A Guy Just To Feel Better

Sure, you might feel miserable and lonely and want male companionship, but if you’re really serious about finding ways to make your ex-boyfriend come back to you, then why hook up with some random dude for an evening just to feel better?

Worse still, why hook up with some random dude just to have sex?

You probably won’t feel great about yourself afterwards – although if it helps, then go for it!

And if you’re doing it just to get one over on your ex boyfriend, or to get back at him, forget it. You’d really be doing it for the wrong reasons, and that mindset shows you still have some work to do on yourself.

You see, if you think that getting revenge on your ex by posting pictures of you drunk, or being sexual with another guy, is going to help, you need a reality check. And you certainly need to do some work on yourself.

And by the way, if you think he’s going to respond to that kind of blackmail, then he really isn’t the kind of guy you need to have as your boyfriend anyway!

Remember that if you do something to hurt “your” guy, that’s probably exactly what will happen – he will feel hurt. And if he feels hurt he’s not going to want to get back together with you, that’s for sure.

If you feel like you want to punish him, or make him see your side of things, the best prescription for you might be to have some time and space away from him. This will allow you to heal after breaking up with your man.

However, if you do see him, and you feel ready to rebuild the relationship, then you can hint that you might like to get back together with him.

And if or when you start feeling negative, blaming or attacking him, then take it as a sign that you really do need to step back and give yourself some time and space to work out exactly what you want.

4 Change Who You Are

change yourself to get an ex back.
Do you need to change yourself to be a more attractive partner?

You may find it hard to accept, but you must take responsibility for changing yourself.

If you’re serious about your ex, and you really do want him back in your life in a loving relationship, then you both may have to change.

We all know that this isn’t necessarily easy, but just think about it – if you go into your relationship from the same level of emotional development you did before, what’s gonna happen?

The answer, in case it isn’t obvious to you, is that you’ll have the same outcome. A break up. Your ex boyfriend will stay your ex boyfriend.

So, the question is “What did you do in the relationship that he didn’t like?”

Be careful here. Guys have their issues too, and he might not like being told what to do, or have you asserting yourself or setting boundaries, even though you have a perfect right to do those things if you want to. Those are the kind of things you’re expected to do in life, and they’re not what we’re talking about here.

What we’re really looking for here are the things you can identify in yourself as learning edges or growing edges.

For example, did you nag him, were you disrespectful to him, were you needy and clingy, were you cranky, demanding, unfaithful, or bad in bed? You, better than anyone, know the answers to these questions!

Bottom line: you need to fix whatever you identify in yourself as a serious fault, the cause of your relationship break up.

Understanding each other is essential for a good relationship.
Understanding each other is essential for a good relationship.

And because time moves on and your ex may fall for another woman as his memories of you gradually fade, you need to get on the case pretty fast.

We all know that deep-seated issues won’t go away with one or two pieces of counseling or therapy or support. But the point is this – your ex needs to see that you’re making progress in your emotional development, and that you’re really committed to becoming a better and different person than the one he broke up with.

And once your ex-boyfriend sees how different you are, he will probably wish you’d never broken up, and he may be much more ready to give the whole relationship another chance.

Having said that, you don’t want to be doing this work – finding out how to get your ex boyfriend back – just to please your boyfriend – you want to be doing it because it’s going to be good for you.

Essentially, the same thing is true if it’s your marriage you’re trying to save. In either case, some personal growth work can move you into a place where you’re a much more attractive partner. (Here is one such possibility.)

Having said that, it could be that as you grow and develop emotionally, and as you get rid of your old emotional baggage, you suddenly start seeing your ex boyfriend in a new and less than adequate light.

People do outgrow each other, and when they do, relationships are often put under strain because the couple want different things as they go through different stages of emotional development.

You just have to take this chance, because the one thing that’s absolutely certain is that staying the same will not fix anything, and it won’t get him back.

5 How to Get In Touch With Your Ex Boyfriend

Suppose you’ve given each other some time and space apart, you’ve worked on giving up your anger and negative emotions from the past, and now it’s time to take the big step of seeing your ex-boyfriend once again.

You intention is to get him back for your happiness’ sake.

Only you know when it’s right to get back together with an ex-boyfriend. It could be two weeks after you broke up, or it could be as long as a year; maybe even years later.

But one thing’s for sure: you need to meet him face to face.

Many things can happen at the first meeting with your ex after a breakup;  one which you need to think about in advance is the possibility of sex rearing its head unexpectedly onto the agenda.

Generally speaking, if you make it clear that you’re willing to go to bed with an ex-boyfriend he’s probably going to take you up on it. This is a bad idea.

To be honest, you need to make him want you. You need to make him work for you. That helps him feel committed to you.

You want to make him see how much fun he would have if you were in every area of his life, including the bedroom.

Even if you were together for a long time, make him work harder for you – don’t just give yourself to him straight away!

In fact, when a woman looks good and is sexually provocative, a man can be powerfully motivated to “win her” and “chase her”. So one approach is to to make him want you, very much.

You can use this as a way of conveying to him how much you’ve improved, how much you’ve changed, how sexy you are, how fabulous you are, and don’t you just know it!

But don’t overdo it, don’t lie, and don’t tease him – none of these things is going to endear you to him, particularly if he’s feeling resentful about the breakup.

Basically, you need to be honest and straightforward, showing yourself as the person you’ve become, rather than person you were when the relationship broke up.

If you do decide to have sex with your ex, either on the first meeting or later, then make sure that it’s mind blowing.

how to make up with an ex boyfriend
Be great in bed and have fun! He’ll never forget it!

Men are motivated by an attractive woman who’s good in bed. We all know that. But what you might might not know is that when a man has good sex, he opens up to his loving feelings. So this can work well for you.

But in the end it is just a bribe which you’re throwing out there, maybe desperately, in the hope that he’s going to come back to you. Probably not the right strategy.

Whatever you do,  do it with confidence and self-assurance. Anything which lowers your self-esteem or makes you feel cheap – forget it. Don’t do it again.

Having A Conversation With Your Boyfriend

So what do you talk about with your ex? The guy with whom you’ve been in a relationship, known intimately, both emotionally and sexually, broken up with, and now the guy with whom you hope to get back together?

Well. In the situation we talking about here – getting back together with your ex boyfriend – you’re definitely not going to talk about the could haves, should haves, and the blame for the break up.

If you start off down that track, you’ll only get into the same dynamic you were in before: and look where that got you!

But if you feel the love, convey it with your eyes rather than your body. Giving him access to your body in a sexual way comes later, maybe when he’s giving signs he’s serious about wanting to get back together.

6 Enjoy The Sex

Although it’s a cliche, men love a beautiful woman who can make love skilfully, and give them the ride of their life.

So when you go to bed with a man, he’s going to compare you, one way or another, to every other woman he’s been in bed with. This is something men do!

There’s nothing right or wrong about it, because as a woman you probably have something similar going on.

But, the point is this: if he’s going to do that, you need to shape the outcome. He needs to put you at the top of the list!

After all, by now you are the one who’s better than every other woman he’s ever known…..  how you look, how you dress, how you hold him, how you touch him and pleasure him….  your job is now showing him you’re the best lover he could ever have.

And if you do that, he’s not likely to look anywhere else.

Why would he? The moment he reaches orgasm with you is the moment when he may finally understand that you’re the woman he should be with.

To put it bluntly, you’re aiming to conquer his heart by satisfying his sexual urges and showing him the best time he’s ever had in bed.

Therefore, if you’ve never really paid much attention to sex, now’s the time to learn some new sexual techniques, and to throw your whole feminine energy at your ex-boyfriend, both emotionally and physically.

But what if the sex was always good? What if this isn’t going to make him come back, because he’s just getting the same pleasure he had before?

In this case you’ll have to work harder and look deeper to find areas of the relationship where you can actually give pleasure to your ex-boyfriend by being smarter, funnier, wiser, more mature, or a better companion. That’s how to get your ex back!

7 Don’t Be Complacent

You may feel things are going really well with your strategic plan for restoring your relationship.

You may think you know how to get your ex boyfriend back. You may already believe you are going to get him back. He may already be back with you.

But the only question which matters is – have you saved your relationship?

When people get back together, they may rapidly revert to the behaviors we’re all so familiar with in relationships. (Criticism, judgement, blame and so on.)

This happens when you haven’t made any fundamental changes to your attitudes, and so you fall back into the same old, same old patterns.

couple enjoying sex after breaking up
Good sex can keep a relationship together!

This can happen surprisingly quickly – which is a shame, because it’s in this early stage of the relationship where your guy is most likely to run, having decided that getting back together with you was a terrible mistake! 

If you don’t treat him in the right way, with respect, as a separate being, entitled to his own opinions, ideas, behaviors and expectations about the world, he may well walk away from you.

(And if he treats you with disrespect, then you ought to walk away from him.)

In the end, having a successful relationship, with or without  a ring on your finger, is all about seeing your partner as a separate person to yourself. Seeing him as someone worthy of respect, who you treat decently and to whom you show your loving heart.

At the same time, you also know he is separate from you and his his own rights and responsibilities and you accept he is not there simply to pleasure you.

If you behave like this, and if you expect the same in return from your ex-boyfriend, you may well be able to get back together with your ex-boyfriend and enjoy a good – maybe even a great – relationship.

Women – Get Your Guy Back! (Part 2)

Following on from here (Part1).

You want to know how to get your ex boyfriend back… well, here’s how.

This is Part 2 of How to Get Your Boyfriend Back.


Getting Back Together – Part 2

Tip #5 Initiate Contact With Your Guy

Someone has to make the first move when it comes to getting your ex boyfriend back. That’d be you, then.

This isn’t a foolproof way to get your ex back, but as relationship advice goes, it’s not bad: you’re the one who has to initiate contact, regardless of how long it was since you and your man broke up.

And of course you can’t get back together over the phone – you have to meet in person, face-to-face.

So get together for a coffee – or something. But whatever you do, don’t have sex on your first “date”. Discovering each other, and finding out how to get your ex back is a slow process.

When you get back together, no matter how long you’ve been with each other before, things will be different. After all, you’ve broken up, and for many people that implies a lack of trust.

(Sure, you may well still feel fond of him. But to get back together you need more than fondness.)

And having sex with someone you don’t trust is always a bad idea.

couple making love after breaking up
Why get into this situation unless you trust a man?

And in any case, if it was his behavior or his attitude which caused the breakup, you really don’t want to sell yourself short. You want to know he has changed. Or is willing to change.

So while you can certainly be (sexually) provocative, and you can be sexy and seductive, don’t give in to his requests or demands that you go to bed together just for the sake of old times!

You see, you’re demonstrating how much you’ve improved – how desirable you are. You’re showing how much more worthy of a good relationship you are…. that is a great way of discovering how to get your ex boyfriend back.

And along with that goes a whole slew of behaviors: maintaining your dignity, being polite, apologizing for anything you did, listening to what he has to say, and also respecting yourself by setting boundaries.

In this particular case, boundaries around going to bed – or rather, not going to bed.

And you’re also not going to take anything he dishes out which diminishes you, are you? So if he starts accusing you of doing things which caused you to break up, then you need to step in and stop him.

The focus here should be on the future.

Can you get back with an ex boyfriend or ex partner? Yes, of course you can, but you most likely won’t do it by going over the past. You won’t do it by holding grudges.

Instead – adopt a more constructive strategy of discovering how to get your ex boyfriend back. Perhaps by making your ex-boyfriend want you back.

ex boyfriend and ex girlfriend
Your future should look very different to your past if you are to have a chance of getting your ex boyfriend back – and being happy!

To that end, even though it is your desire to be back in relationship with him which is driving the whole sequence of events, it’s you who must consciously decide when to take your ex back into relationship.

So, in the context of being better than you were before, you’re going to have to tone down being sexy and provocative. And also you have to show him how different and better you are, and how well you’re doing. 

This can be difficult – you might be feeling lonely and abandoned inside, but you don’t want to let him see that.

What you want him to see in you is the woman he wants to be in relationship with!

You need a fair bit of confidence and self-esteem to do this successfully.

And your guy might need time to appreciate the new you.

And you might want to make sure you don’t have him back in a relationship overnight. You need to make him work for it.

And if you do have sex, let him worry about you, and make him work to get you back. Let him wonder whether or not he’s made a mistake seeing other women.

Let him wonder what your motives, desires and wishes are.

In short, make him want you. Make your ex want you like he did in the early days of your relationship.

Like I said above, don’t talk about the past or why you broke up. Ask him about where he’s going, what he’s doing, and what’s new in his life.

If you want to talk about the past, refer only to the positive events that you experienced together.

At this stage it’s best to keep things light and easy. Right now, deep emotional conversations about what happened are not the order of the day.  Don’t talk about what you could or should have done differently. This will most likely take you back to the place you were in when you broke up.

No matter how great the temptation, don’t talk about negative stuff.

Effectively what you’re aiming for here is a new relationship.

In fact, you could even see it as a new relationship with a new and different boyfriend. Like I said above, if he’s still the same man as he was when you broke up, getting back together’s probably not going to work too well.

6 How Important Is Sex In Making Up?

Extremely important. At least to your guy. Hopefully to you too.

how to make up after a break up
Loving sex is the foundation of all relationships – that, or trust, love, affection, respect, intimacy, mutual support…..

And bearing in mind how important physical intimacy is, it’s up to you to make sure that when sex eventually happens, it’s going to be absolutely fantastic for him.

Of course that means you need to work at making it good, perhaps even being a bit manipulative as you do so.

Remember the pleasure he experiences with you in bed may have a significant influence on whether or not he wants to get back together with you.

Like it or not, men are motivated to feel love by good sex. So if you can be a better lover than any woman he’s had since you split up (or ever in his life), then you may significantly increase your chances of getting your ex boyfriend back into a relationship with you.

This means everything you do in bed has to be as good as you can make it.

Maybe you already know what excites him, but you might want to try something new. Maybe he asked for oral but you never got around to it. Maybe he’d have liked you to talk dirty but you felt too prudish. Perhaps your body issues meant sex under the covers with the lights off…. well, how about shedding a few inhibitions?

In short, whatever you need do to woo him, to seduce him, and to make him realize in his joy at the moment of sexual climax that it’s only you who can satisfy him, DO IT!

(With dignity, of course. Don’t prostitute yourself.)

That’s the essence of your feminine power as a woman… your sexuality. It is your feminine power which can give you the edge in getting your ex boyfriend back. Truth is, you know how to do this, just as generations of women before you have known how to do it.

You may realize, by now, that there’s a responsibility resting on you to make sex work for him. If you don’t really enjoy sex, or you don’t how to make sex good for a man, then take some advice from a counselor, your best friend, or your inner goddess.

You can’t underestimate how important sex is in a loving relationship – and the better the sex, the more likely that your ex-boyfriend will wish to come back into relationship with you.

After all, if his physical needs are satisfied, why would he go anywhere else?

But how soon should you have sex with him?

Well, you’re a woman, so you can work on the strategies and schemes that women have employed for generations to woo and seduce their men – no matter that he is a “new” partner, and he’s also been your boyfriend in the past.

If this feels like a new relationship for both of you, then you’ll naturally employ all the strategies and techniques you intuitively know about to seduce him and win him over.

7 Don’t Let Him Get Away With Being The Same Man He Always Was!

When you’ve had a few dates, and it looks like everything is going well, and you think you’re going to get your ex-lover back, you need to just pause and check.

You know how, in the early days, any relationship  can appear to be wonderful and romantic and loving.

Until, that is, after a few weeks, reality dawns, and couples begin to see each other as they truly are. (This is the end of idealization.)

Well, the same can happen here if you’re not careful.

When you’re building a relationship – no matter that this is a NEW relationship with the man you’ve already known and loved and split up with – you have to do all those things which help you grow and develop together both individually and as partners in relationship.

Respecting, communicating, honoring, giving time to each other, supporting, loving…. and a whole lot more.

If you start behaving like enemies, neither of you is going to benefit from re-establishing a relationship and your reconciliation with your ex will go down the pan straight away. You haven’t put all this work into discovering how to do this, how to get him back, for that to happen.

There are several things you can do which help relationship renewal to go smoothly.

First, make sure you don’t believe you own him (in any sense whatsoever) – and if he behaves as though he owns you, then ditch him.

By the way, jealousy is the clearest sign that a man thinks they have some proprietorial right to you, your body, or the right to invade your boundaries.

From the other perspective, the one thing that disturbs a man more than anything else is a woman treating him as though she owns him, especially by not respecting his particularly male need to protect his personal space and boundaries.

Another thing you need to be doing is making sure that you’re working at the relationship all the time.

In other words, doing things that give you the best chance of making up and staying together.

What does it all add up to?

Well, you need to put in a lot of effort to sustain your relationship. You need to research techniques about how to get your ex boyfriend back. You need to live them. In fact, you need to live to your highest potential.

Only then will you live in a great relationship with your man – a relationship which makes your heart sing with joy.

Should You Break Up Or Make Up?

Judging by the amount of information on the Internet about how to get back together after a break up, there must be a whole lot of people who break up, and then realize they’ve made a terrible mistake.

If you’re in this situation, have you any idea how you can get your ex back?

Do you know how to reconcile with your ex, overcome the disagreements which caused you to break up, and move forward more strongly?

Let’s find out.

how to get your ex back in relationship
Can life ever be the same again? No, but it can be much better!

Making Up Or Breaking Up:
What’s The Right Thing to Do?

The very first thing to consider is whether or not getting back together is actually the right thing for you to do.

And yes, I know the feeling of loss and grief and sadness after a relationship ends can be intense.

In fact, it can drive you rapidly to the conclusion that the only thing you need in the world is for your ex to be back alongside you.

But of course whether or not that’s true depends on how your relationship finished.

If, for example, you made a rash decision to split up during a blazing row, and false pride is preventing you from reaching out in a gesture of reconciliation, you might well want to get back together with your lost loved one.

On the other hand, if you realize that you wanted to break up because you were fed up with the way things were going, the relationship was making no progress, and you were feeling you were with the wrong person, it’s probably not a good idea to get back together, no matter how strong your grief might be!

What I’m saying is – think about it before you make any rash moves.

Give This Some Thought:
Do You Really Want Your Ex Back?

The question is whether getting back together with your ex really is the best thing for both of you.

When people break up, they sometimes look back on the relationship with selective vision, seeing the good times, and somehow overlooking or eliminating the bad ones from the memory.

Knowing that you don’t have to make a decision right here, right now, about renewing the relationship, do you think it might be a good idea to take stock? To give some serious thought to what you really expect and want from a romantic and sexual relationship?

And in particular, whether or not your ex-partner, whether that be your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, really is the right person, for you, forever.

What this comes down to, I guess, is whether the quality of your life will be improved by having your partner in it.

If you had to rate your quality of life on a scale of 0 – 10, what score would life with your partner get?

Now, be honest. Would life without your partner rank higher?

Find a way to get back together with your ex
Is life going to offer more with or without your ex?

Or perhaps you now realize there’s no advantage or disadvantage to having your old partner in your life? In which case why would you want to know how to get your ex back? That sounds like it would be a very mundane relationship.

The other side of this, be aware,  is whether or not your ex partner benefited from you being in his or her life! Just think about that for a moment. Did you improve the quality of your ex’s life? Really?

There are many more questions you need to ask yourself before plunging headfirst into relationship renewal.

One of them is whether or not you want to know how to get your ex back because you’re frightened of being alone.

Perhaps you fear never meeting anyone else who’s going to accept you as you are?

And keep in mind that when you’ve worked through the immediate anger and distress and sadness and grief about the breakup of your relationship, you might surprise yourself by finding you really are better off without your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend.

If You Decide You Want To Get Back Together With Your Ex….

There are some things that you really shouldn’t do when you’re trying to re-establish a relationship.

You’ve probably heard about these before, but we all know that the power of our emotions after a break-up can make us behave stupidly and irrationally.

So just stop for a moment and consider some of the things you really shouldn’t be doing – they’re explained below. If you think these will play any part in your reconciliation, think again!

1 Don’t Beg Your Partner To Take You Back

Any worthwhile relationship advice about how to get your ex back will tell you that you need to keep your dignity and your sanity.

Being needy and dependent is unattractive to almost everyone (except perhaps those who need to be needed, which is almost as bad). Where’s your own inner strength and sense of self?

And the other point here is that even if you behave desperately, expressing your sadness and your grief, weeping and wailing, sending desperate text messages late at night after you’ve had a few drinks, and your ex begins to feel sorry for you…… well, really, do you want her or him to take you back just because you begged and pleaded?

Surely your relationship needs to be built on something more substantial than “your need not to be alone”?

The best breakup advice is this: if you feel desperate, and you think your world is over, do some work on feeling better about yourself before you approach your ex partner.

And even though you might feel right now that begging and pleading is OK, you have to think about how you’re going to feel in the longer term. You don’t want to feel ashamed of how you behaved, surely? How will you live with that if you do?

You cannot get back together in a spirit of desperation, and not expect this energy to impact your relationship in some way…. badly.

2 Punishing Your Ex Is Forbidden!

You might not believe this, but some people actually want to find a way to get back with their ex so they can get their own back on him or her.

In other words, people can be so hurt they wish to teach an ex boyfriend or girlfriend a lesson!

(Usually the lesson they “ought” to have been able to see for themselves is about how good you are, how wonderful you are, and how fortunate they would be to have you in their life. All of which happen to be signs of a low self-esteem on your part.)

And those are only the most extreme forms of games that people play.

Getting over an ex is challenging, of course it is, but making the process more difficult for everyone by playing games is weak. A common one is trying to make your ex jealous by pretending someone else is interested in you.

This isn’t that a strategy which involves much integrity or honesty. In fact, it’s downright manipulative, and if you do ever get back together, this kind of thing will have an impact on your relationship.

Break up advice
What’s the reality behind your break up?

3 Emotional Blackmail Is A Bad Idea

We’ve all seen the extremes of emotion people can work themselves into when a relationship’s ended.

Screaming, crying, or even worse, threatening to “end it all”, if your ex boyfriend won’t have you back, or your ex-girlfriend never wants to see you again, is really undignified…… let alone a very clear statement of your emotional immaturity.

4 Show Your Ex How You’ve Changed

It’s no use just telling your ex-partner you’re different, and that everything’s going to be fine in the future.

He or she isn’t likely to believe that, unless they also feel desperately lonely and want to get back together because life seems so empty – and that’s called clutching at straws.

In reality you need to understand that the best way to get an ex-boyfriend back, or a good strategy to get back with your ex-girlfriend, is to show them how you’ve changed.

So if they accused you of being insecure, you can show them you’re not insecure at all by refraining from contacting them, or stalking them on Facebook, or sending them emails and texts every few minutes.

Break up and make up advice for couples
Be different! Be the person your partner deserves! And show them who you can be at your best!

Or, if your ex decided that they didn’t want to be with you because you didn’t show your feelings, then you could make a start on writing a letter to show them that you really are a sensitive and caring individual.

That’s a more sensible strategy – it shows you know how to get your ex back from a place of emotional balance not desperation!

And if you commit to changing what you do and how you do it, remember change isn’t likely to happen unless you have a definite intention to change, and a plan about how that’s going to happen. (In other words, you really, really mean it.)

For example, here you could tell your ex what’s going to be different and how you’re going to ensure you stick to your promises.

5  Say Sorry If You Need To

Although you might not think an apology means very much, you’d be mistaken.

It’s one of the most powerful ways to get your ex back. To start with an apology can be a sign of respect (at least, if the apology is sincere).

But more than that, it’s an acknowledgement you are ready to admit you did something wrong. Long story short: research has demonstrated that if partners can apologize to each other, relationships are much more likely to survive.

6 Romance Is A Good Thing

If you’re a man trying to get back with an ex-girlfriend, you might recall that in the early days of your relationship you were very keen on romance – in fact you probably enjoyed romancing your partner, because most men do.

But then, once you’ve won your woman, the job is done, and somehow romance seems to take a back seat!

So do you think it’s possible that a little bit of romance in your relationship might make a big difference to your ex’s willingness have you back?

Worth a try, surely?

And in amongst that romantic approach, don’t forget that talking about the good times you had together can be a powerful reminder of why you were together in the first place and of all the good times you shared.

Focusing on the negative is all too easy when you feel hurt.

Focusing on the positive when you’re carrying feelings of anger and sadness can be harder, but it can produce more constructive results.

7 Accept Things Are Different and Let Go Of The Past

It’s possible your relationship ended with mutual agreement, but it’s also possible that you broke up because either you or your ex decided enough was enough.

Perhaps there was infidelity, perhaps your ex met somebody else, or perhaps you did. Maybe one person felt they’d been carrying all the emotion in the relationship and they were prepared to do it any more.

Whatever the reason for the breakup, there aren’t any foolproof ways to get your ex back, but what you certainly can do is take some constructive steps to get back together.

The best way to approach this is probably to talk about how you would do things differently in the future.

Focus on what you can do together in the future, and what you want from your partner in the future, particularly if they were the one who instigated the breakup.

This way, you might be able to save your relationship. You might even be able to save your marriage rather than divorce if that’s where you’re at.

Certainly this takes willingness and openness on both sides, a readiness to see the other person’s point of view.

It also takes a fundamental conviction that your (ex) partner really is the right person for you.

And it also takes genuine desire to find out how to get your ex back because you believe you will be happier together than apart.

More advice:

After Breaking Up: Getting Your Confidence Back

How To Decide What You Want After A Break Up

How To Tell If You Should Breakup or Not

Tips For Saving A Relationship

 

Exploring How To Get Your Ex Back – Basic Advice

What To Do Now:
A Common Problem After A Break Up

It seems to be one of the most popular questions on the Internet net at the moment – “How do I get my ex back?” or “How can I get back together with my ex?”

There are many issues here – first of all, why would people break up and then (apparently in great numbers!) decide they made a terrible mistake and want to get back together with their ex boyfriend or ex girlfriend?

Why do people NOT find the courage to strike out, accepting that they broke up for a very good reason, and now is the time to find a new relationship?

All great questions, but not what we’re going to answer here.

How To Get Your Ex Back

Perhaps you’ve made a decision to get back together with your ex because you’ve realized that the boyfriend or girlfriend with whom you split up is really the person you now want to be with – perhaps even for the rest of your life.

What steps, in this situation, can you take to get back together with your ex? In other words how can you get back together with the boyfriend or girlfriend who you dumped or were dumped by?

Here goes: a step-by-step on how to get your ex back, aka a guide to relationship repair.

Getting Back Together

Step one

Take time to reflect on what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Make sure you really do want to get back with your partner because you believe that he or she is the right person for you, rather than because you are frightened of being alone, or trying to avoid shame and humiliation from others.

Work out what went wrong first time around, and think of ways in which you can avoid the same thing happening again. It stands to reason that if you go back into a relationship with exactly the same mindset that you had before, it isn’t going to work any better now than it did last time.

Just why do you want your ex back?
Just why do you want your ex back?

Step two

You need to find a way of showing your ex partner that you have reflected on why the relationship ended, and that you are prepared to do something about it.

You need to show him or her you are willing to change, and you have to show a thoughtful response to things that have happened in the past. That way your ex-partner should be more willing to reconsider the relationship – restarting the relationship, that is.

Getting back together with your ex requires emotional maturity on your part and also on your ex’s part. It requires good communication, and that in turn requires you to admit what you might have done wrong that contributed to the breakup.

Let’s face it: if you want to get an ex back, then you need to know how to do it. Read on.

Step three

Whatever you do, don’t put pressure on your ex partner, or pursue him or her with a high level of energy immediately after the breakup. Your ex-partner will require space and time away from you to re-establish their own emotional and intellectual stability.

Therefore if you start calling, texting, or even appearing in person, or indeed, trying to insert yourself into his or her life on Facebook too soon, you are likely to irritate them, and convey a feeling of desperation, neither of which are going to be helpful to your aim of re-establishing the relationship.

In fact, you could well persuade your ex girlfriend or ex-boyfriend that instead of getting back together with you, the thing they need to do most urgently is run in the opposite direction.

The best of all possible worlds is if your ex-partner comes to you.

Advice for women on getting a man back.

Advice for men on getting a woman back.

Step four

Take time for yourself, and do things that you enjoy with people whom you like. You can reconnect with who you are if you do this, and you can avoid the pressure that comes from feeling beholden to another person.

You should have a strong sense of self that will sustain you whether you do get back together with your partner or not. And really, I suppose, in the end what this comes down to is the old advice you’ve heard so many times before: you can’t love someone else until you love yourself.

Ways You Can Try To Get An Ex Back

Step 1

Take responsibility for what went wrong the first time around.

If you can, sit down with your ex and explain to them that you have understood where you went wrong, what you did wrong, and that you are eager to avoid doing the same thing in the future.

You might say for example, “I know I never paid you enough attention and I never listened to you and I didn’t take any notice of your needs.” Whatever it is, don’t just tell them what you’ve understood about yourself, tell them what you will do in the future to make things better.

dumped partner wanting her ex back
Help, I need somebody, help!

Step 2

If you can, focus on moving forward rather than going backwards.

It’s all very well saying that you want to get back together, but the point is you broke up for a reason, and you have to ask yourself a very deep and important question: did you break up because were fundamentally incompatible or because you and your ex didn’t have good enough relationship skills?

You see, you don’t want to spend your life giving up your needs and personality to satisfy the needs of somebody with whom you are basically incompatible.

Trying to establish exactly what did go wrong can be difficult. You might ask yourself questions: “I felt like you got annoyed with me whenever I wanted to spend time alone, and I think it might have been because you’re too dependent on me. What can we do about that?”

(In case you didn’t realize, I should add that’s not entirely serious suggestion about how to get your ex back, but it does give you an idea of the kind of thing that you might try.)

Step 3

You need to know exactly what you are trying to do.

So if both of you have decided to restart a relationship, have you got a clear plan about how you’re going to make it work this time around?

Have you found out what each of you wants from the relationship that you weren’t getting before?

Can you tell each other what you need from each other without being accusatory, blaming, or being triggered into a state of anger, fear or sadness?

Step 4

Talk, and talk again, and then talk some more.

Whether you know it or not, women like to talk things through, while men like to think things through.

Men like to come up with solutions to problems and they don’t like lengthy emotional discussions.

But the whole point about being in a relationship with another person is that you are going to be able to meet their needs in some way, and they are going to be able to meet yours.

To sum it up: when you want to get your ex back, you will need good emotional communication, the ability to compromise, a willingness to accept difference in the other, and an ability to extend yourself into a place of behavior, thoughts, and feelings that may not be a natural one for you to inhabit.

How To Tell If You Should Breakup or Not

If you read around the Internet, you’re going to find a lot of websites with a formula for knowing whether or not you “should” break up. Usually it’s a simple question: are you happy or are you unhappy?

But as you might be suspecting by now, it isn’t really as simple as that. If it were, you wouldn’t be reading this article, and you wouldn’t be wondering whether or not to break up (or maybe to try and text your ex back!)

After all, the reason anyone wants their ex back is because they feel they made a mistake in breaking up.

And that means you weren’t certain whether you wanted to be with them or not.

(Unless of course you have broken up and now you see – oh so clearly – that you really do want to be with them for the rest of your life…

If that is the case, you can try Texting Your Ex Back – see the right hand column of this page for details of how the right use of SMS messaging and cell phone contact can win your ex back.

Advice On Not Breaking Up

But the problem is that although there’s lots of advice on how to text your ex back all over the Internet, there isn’t a great deal of information available on how you can decide whether you want to break up in the first place.

To help you, I found seven questions on the Internet which look helpful, perhaps even helpful enough to save your relationship. So I’m giving them to you right now, so that you don’t have to engage in all the palaver of texting your ex back after you’ve broke broken up and found out it’s all been a terrible mistake.

First of all: why do you want your ex back?

In the early stages of a relationship, as you know, both boyfriend and girlfriend feel special because their partner seems to have no other interest but them. As the shine (it’s called idealisation) wears off, reality can set in. Neither partner is seen as a really unique and special individual any more. Instead, you both become ordinary human beings who can see each other for who you are, complete with all your failings.

But of course each of us wants to be really special: we want to be part of a couple where nobody else matters.

So is that why you want to get back with your ex? To feel special and wanted? And if you don’t feel special, can you honestly say that your partner no longer makes any effort to try and make you feel special? Or do you expect too much?

how to get back after a break up - text your ex back
Do you treat your partner as special? What would it take to make YOU feel really special?

Question 2

Next, are there any circumstances which could have contributed to the breakup or impending break up?

In other words, are you under stress in a way that you wouldn’t normally be, and could that stress have put more pressure on you, to the point that your relationship broke up? If you think you can find someone who can withstand stress better than your current partner or your ex-partner, then you’re might be disappointed – stress is a part of life, and none of us really know what we can cope with until it hits.

So if it’s stress that made you break up (or is making you think of breaking up), did you make any effort to try and find a way of getting over the stress and staying together?

And if you get back together will the same thing happen again?

Question 3: This is a difficult question – will you miss your ex if you separate?

I mean, how do you know this before you split? But knowing the answer is particularly important if you’re getting a lot of your confidence, safety and security from being with your partner.

And by the way, that works both ways – a woman can hold a safe space for a man, just as a man can offer a safe space for a woman. So will you miss the safety and security that your partner offers? And if you get back together again, will you feel that once more?

Question 4:  Are you just taking your partner for granted?

Perhaps that’s something you need to look at right now, before you break up, so you can establish whether or not you’re the one who might be contributing to the tension in the relationship?

A very valid reason for separating from a partner is your personal growth. The sad thing is that two partners rarely grow at the same rate; so if you have an ambition, a dream, or a desire to be more than you currently are, and your partner doesn’t, then there’s a tension between you which might not be resolvable. Of course it’s important to actually put those ideas to your partner to see how he or she reacts – for all you know, they might want to join in with your plans. Such communication is the basis of intimacy.

Before you break up on the basis that your partner is a stick-in-the-mud and you aren’t, why don’t you just tell them what you want to do and see how they respond? That will be a real clue as to whether or not they’re on the same page of life as you!

Intimacy and break up
Ongoing intimacy is important in relationship.

Q5: Are You Experienced in Relationship?

Some people get together with a  partner without much previous experience of the world or other people.

If you’re thinking about breaking up, and your previous experience of relationships is quite limited, then it’s probably going to help you to find out more about the world by breaking up now and getting more experience of life, the universe and everything. If, of course, you don’t believe you’ve met your soul mate.

You see, deep compatibility in terms of core-values is fundamentally important to a relationships long-term chance of success.

And when you’re not compatible, breaking up isn’t the end of the world, especially if you’re confident enough to know that there are plenty more fish in the sea – and that you really are good enough to attract one of them!

Remember too, relationships just go through turning points and phases – you won’t feel wonderful all the time in any relationship because that’s just not how life works. People get distracted, people have issues, people fight, people make up. The question is whether or not, at a basic deep level, you value your partner, respect them, and love them?

Oh yes, and do you like them?

Question 6 Is Life Easier Together?

An interesting question few people ever ask themselves is whether or not their partner makes their life better and easier, or worse and harder?

Making things better can be done in subtle ways, support, empowering (and the opposite is undermining and disempowering). So what’s the overall tone of your relationship. Does your partner have your best interests at heart?

Only you can answer these questions, but they form a fundamental basis for deciding whether or not you should split up in the first place. Of course, if you don’t split up, you’ll never need to be trying to Text Your Ex Back, or trying to find out how to get them back.

Tips For Saving A Relationship

Tips That Could Help You Avoid Breaking Up

I found some wonderful tips on how to save a relationship on the Huffington Post site.

These were written by a relationship coach, who starts off by saying we are very quick to find our partner inadequate and even quicker about deciding to dump them.

But most of us who do this will then go on to find a new partner who has exactly the same emotional issues as the previous one, so that we are not in a better situation after the relationship has broken up and we have moved on…..

Video – How to survive a break up

Hold on – going all spiritual for a moment here….. maybe your partner has been given to you “by” the universe so that you can learn something essential for your well-being and growth – and perhaps their well-being.

If so, why not stay the course and find out what that is?

And of course this is a spiritual point of view which suggests any relationship  worth keeping involves emotional work. Sure, but the payoff can be very rewarding, because you will find you have a depth of connection which is probably unimaginable at the moment.

And that is profoundly affirming and rewarding.

But What Does It Mean To Me?

Starting from the idea that you can “sort through” people until you find somebody who is absolutely ideal for you is simply naive – there is no such person.

Even when you think you’ve found your ideal soulmate, living together or being in relationship together will very quickly dispel that illusion – as you may well already know!

And trying one relationship after another, without taking any relationship advice, or indeed any breakup advice, is just going to lead you into disappointment.

While it’s tempting to believe that your particular relationship is in some way different or special, the truth of the matter is that you are not different to anyone else, and you will not have stumbled into some kind of fairytale relationship….

… which means that if you find yourself on the verge of breaking up, you might wish to decide NOT to break up. Instead, you might make the decision that your relationship is worthwhile and deserves some work.

1 Find out why you’re together

The idea purely random chance got you into relationship with somebody is extremely unlikely! So you can start by asking yourself what drew you to this person? What kind of qualities did they have that you found desirable?

Do you still find those qualities desirable? What qualities in your partner have you not previously appreciated?

You can open a dialogue together – if you’re willing to do so – to explore what you love about your partner and what your partner loves about you.

In the process, if you’re willing to hear it, you can receive constructive criticism, suggestions and information which can help you develop in areas of personality where you are currently weak.

How to stop a relationship breaking up
Hard but necessary – learning from your partner…

2 Establish good communication

And of course it’s inevitable that when partners try to communicate their fundamental truths about each other, things may go wrong – for none of us have learned how to communicate in the “right way” – that is to say, with LOVE.

And what that means is to Listen by Observing your partner, by Verifying that you’ve picked up their meaning, and Empathising with what they’re saying.

Good communication is probably mostly about silence and space – not “jumping in” to respond to your partner or, worse, reacting to your partner with an emotional response without really having heard what they’re trying to say.

The reason this happens, of course, is because we feel attacked and immediately respond to that sensation or perception with defensiveness. It can be very difficult indeed to open ourselves up and make ourselves vulnerable to criticism, particularly if you have sensitivities left over from childhood.

But to make this process easier, you can stay away from emotional conversations when you’re both stressed, particularly when you’re both tired and/or emotional – such as at the end of a long workday!

By putting the value of your partner’s feelings above the value of your ego, you’ll find that communication becomes much less contentious. And while these things are easy to say, they are not always so easy to do – which means practice is essential; perhaps getting help with having stressful conversations would be helpful.

How to get your ex back
This is probably the wrong way to converse with your partner!

A deep conversation can go to the roots of understanding the relationship in its most profound way, and certainly leads to a feeling of intimacy and connection.

It may be necessary to revisit the same subject many times before you fully understand each other, before you actually get down to the core of the matter.

But without doing this, you may never understand what your partner is trying to say, and if you don’t understand that, you may never understand your partner either.

3 Some relationships become mired in heavy communication

One way to get over this is to actually do light-hearted things together – visit special places, revisit those places you knew a long time ago, or perhaps simply take time for each other with a weekend away. Then, you can revisit or “practice” the skills of romance with your partner – just as you did when you first met.

It’s well worth doing things like this together because the excitement of a shared or new experience produces hormones which promote emotional bonding. And it doesn’t have to be anything major; simply sitting together in a park watching your children play can be very bonding and intimate, and produce a deep feeling of love for each other.

Here, action is necessary – it’s no use just talking about doing these things – you actually have to do them!

4 Sometimes outside influences affect our relationships and make them toxic. Avoid them.

Your primary responsibility and loyalty in a relationship is to yourself and your partner.

Any loyalty to your friends or family which betrays that loyalty is striking at heart of the relationship. In any event, unless somebody is actually standing in your shoes, how could they possibly know the answers to your problems?

(I draw distinction here between mentoring and counseling as a friend and the much more pernicious “advice giving” and “tittle tattle” which many people seem to indulge in.)

A much better way forward is for you to open the doorways to communication with your partner, and establish an emotionally connected relationship with them.

texting your ex back
I guess you find out how much you loved someone when they’ve gone!

5 Forgiveness is everything.

Well…. in fact forgiveness is probably not everything, but it certainly is a great deal.

That’s why we’ve heard so much about it in recent years. Some people think it means putting yourself in a “one-down” position, but the truth of the matter is that forgiveness does not mean forgetting.

No, it means letting go of the emotional rage, anger and bitterness you hold towards your partner, for these are emotions which definitely stand between you and a wholesome relationship.

And yes, there needs to be some kind of emotional resolution for you about the wounds you feel you’ve suffered at the hands of your (ex) partner. You might find this helpful if you’re interested in the subject forgiveness.

6 Don’t keep secrets.

Of course you don’t need to divulge every minute aspect of your life to your partner – all of us have certain things we need to keep to ourselves to maintain our integrity to ourselves and in our relationship. But honesty is vital in any relationship, and living a life of authenticity and integrity can help too.

7 Have clear boundaries

boundaries vs merging
Merging with a loved one can be very pleasurable. But so can maintaining separate and clear boundaries.

If you don’t really know what boundaries are, then it’s worth getting some help and information from a counsellor or therapist.

Boundaries are about maturity, about being in the world in a safe way – safer for yourself, and safer for others.

You only have to walk down a street where people are drinking late at night to understand what a lack of boundaries means!

Over-rigid boundaries produce a rigid, very defensive personality, whereas loose boundaries produce somebody who is a pushover and exploitable by others.

Clear firm boundaries speak of self-respect, and establish that you know who you are and what you’re going to tolerate or accept in life. With clear boundaries, any relationship is more defined and healthier than without them, and it allows you to learn and grow by finding the place where your partner’s limits exist – and the same, of course, is true in reverse.

be a person with a clear identity
Stop being your partner’s appendage and become a person in your own right.

There are many other relationship tips we could give you, but in essence they all come down to one thing: tolerance and communication – and perhaps those qualities, as well as mutual respect, are the basis of true love that lasts a lifetime.

If you don’t really understand these concepts then please get some help and advice from somebody who is qualified to take you on a journey to a more loving place – counsellor, therapist, Minister…. Whatever suits your particular way of being.

*I found some wonderful tips  on how to save a relationship here.

How To Decide What You Want After A Break Up

What To Do If You’ve Broken Up:
Should You Try and Make Up?

If you’re in the unfortunate situation of having broken up, read on to see our therapist’s advice on what you can do to get your ex back or decide to stay apart.

First of all, you have to remain rational.

100-1 (4)How do you feel when you get a text or an email, or you see a Facebook message, or some other indication of your ex occupying space in your social environment? Do you feel a sinking sense of fear, or some excitement, perhaps?

Or do you simply feel anger? Perhaps you feel excitement and glee, because this seems like it could be the start of a new renewal of your relationship?

Whatever, the first thing you have to do in the face of all these emotions is to remain rational and calm. And you have to take things slowly. Perhaps it was plunging too quickly into the relationship in the first place which did the damage for you last time around!

But whether it was or it wasn’t, one of the things you really need to know is that all the unresolved problems in your relationship will come back at you again – unless both of you have done some serious emotional growth work in between breaking up and getting back together.

Relationship advice – should you break up or make up – is to be found here.

Video – Relationship Therapy

So here are some questions that really need to be answered “yes” before you get back together.

And they need to be answered in the affirmative by BOTH of you…. But then, you knew that didn’t you?

1 Plan ahead so that when things get difficult you have some way of dealing with them.

You see, the problem is that unless you make some effort to focus on the areas which act as emotional triggers, simply wanting to be back with your partner (maybe because you feel lonely) isn’t going to change anything.

In fact, if you feel disappointed that they’re no different this time around than they were the last time, getting back together can be even worse than it was the first time. You will have more disappointment to deal with….

If you’re getting over a breakup, to go back into the same territory can be challenging.

That’s why you really need to have some strategy to deal with, if not eliminate, the anger, the shock, and the sadness – not to mention the fear – you’ll feel if or when you realize your ex hasn’t fundamentally changed from who they were!

Will it ever be the same again? No - it will be much better!
Will it be the same again, with your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, second time around? No. Why should you put up with that, if it can be much better with someone new?

And to be honest, if you try to save your marriage, or save your relationship, you might well have to do some personal growth work – that could mean seeing a therapist together, or perhaps doing shadow work, but it certainly means exploring the issues which caused you to split up in the first place.

Ask yourself honestly – are you ready to do that? Are you ready to do whatever it takes to bring your ex back and to live happily ever after?

2 As you know, a lot of us wear masks which hide the real self we feel and believe ourselves to be, deep down inside.

Sometimes we think we’re socially unacceptable in some way or we feel we’re not good enough, or we aren’t lovable, or perhaps  even that we’re bad. Most people believe they aren’t as beautiful, intelligent, clever, self-confident, or whatever, as the next person. It’s the human condition…..

Do you show all of yourself to your partner?
Do you show all of yourself to your partner?

But wearing a “mask” into any relationship (where the essence of success is openness and honesty) is a recipe for disaster.

That’s not to say we should reveal every aspect of ourselves, but it’s certainly necessary to be open and honest with your partner to show them who you really are, and for them to show you who they really are. In other words, what this amounts to is no trickery, no lies, no deceit, and no games. Otherwise, what chance of success do you have?

Now, are you willing to be ruthlessly authentic and honest with your partner?

3 Are you committed to each other? Are you committed to each other enough to stick together so that you can win her back or win him back?

There has to be some kind of commitment that you’re going to stay together for a while (or permanently) while you work on the changes that are necessary for you to rebuild a harmonious and loving relationship.

You need some kind of contract or agreement which is actually a statement of your readiness to stay in the relationship and hold hands, both physically and metaphorically, when the inevitable issues between you arise, and particularly when you trigger each other into a vulnerable state.

4 Are you both prepared to take it slowly, and to really work at rebuilding the relationship?

It’s probably worth you doing this if you really love your partner or somewhere deep down you believe this person might be your soul mate. Then of course it’s worth rebuilding the relationship and finding out how to get the relationship advice that will bring you back together.

But there are traps here: if it was just sex that kept you together in the first place, you may find that the desire to jump into bed to reconnect is very strong, but really, is that going to deal with the issues which broke you apart in the first place?

Going on dates while you learn more about each other, hoping to see each other with eyes that are not blinded by “the scales of infatuation” is a very worthwhile exercise. After all, you might want to be friends before you become lovers, and you might want to be lovers before you try for the soulmate status!

A good question to ask yourself is how safe it feels to reveal yourself with your ex partner – if you find you’re hiding parts of yourself, or not completely trusting them, then your choice is simple – allow the breakup to go ahead and find a new partner, or get a commitment to work on the difficulties between you that cause you to feel this way.

5 Do you have the same goals for the relationship?

Video – goals in a relationship

The question here, really, is whether or not you both want the same thing in the long run. For example, does one of you want to get married and one of you has no intention of doing that EVER!

Or suppose he wants children, and you don’t. These are fundamental differences which really need to be examined. Not many people who are way apart on important issues like these can establish a successful long-term relationship without one of them either losing their hopes and aspirations or having their heart broken.

You need to be at least on the same page, have the same expectations, and generally speaking want to move in the same direction in life.

The problem is that most people spend more time planning their annual vacation than they spend planning their lives! So sit down and talk about what you want!

If you want to avoid a breakup in the future, and if you want to get your ex back so you don’t breakup again, first you must find out whether there’s enough common ground between the two of you for your relationship to work long-term.

6 Accept that human relationships are never perfect.

It’s extraordinary to me that some people really seem to think that just by getting back together with their ex,  they will mysteriously learn the lessons they needed to know in the first place to feel close and connected with their partner.

In fact the truth of the matter is that we all come from an emotionally wounded place in childhood – which means that during our childhood nothing was perfect and there were emotional wounds inflicted on us,  no matter how well-intentioned our parents may have been! And these wounds need to be dealt with for us to grow into emotional maturity and equip us to be in relationship with a boyfriend or girlfriend, a lover, or a spouse.

From years of working with people in relationship, I know there are very few men and women who are truly prepared to do the emotional exploration and repair work necessary to overcome their wounds and in the process find out how they can get their ex back.

The good news is that this doesn’t have to be big scale work. It only needs to be something which explores mutual understanding and empathy, the kind of work from you which can move forward together. This could, for example, simply be something like going to see a relationship counselor together to discuss what it is that “triggers” you and causes the fights.

Unless you do this you might find you’re not going to get over your breakup and you’re not going to get back with your ex.

Understanding each other is essential for a good relationship.
Understanding each other is essential for a good relationship.

And that’s true even if you know you made a mistake in breaking up.

Everybody has a level of tolerance for fights, disagreements and arguments, and it’s better to do some emotional work so they are reduced in number and the impact of them is much less, rather than to let them fester in the relationship simply because you don’t know what to do about them.

7 Accept that relationship breakup may be the right thing for you.

Just because you feel a large amount of pain at the ending of your relationship and the loss of your loved one doesn’t necessarily mean you were wrong to breakup.

There’s a theory in psychology that we come together to heal the wounds, resentments and issues of the past (i.e. childhood) , and if we don’t heal them in one relationship we will move into another relationship, taking the same stuff with this. Often the person we meet will also give us the opportunity to heal these emotional wounds.

So you may as well do it in your current relationship as in the next one!

And doing so can give you a true sense of value and worth, and perhaps also a sense of mutual appreciation which will grow into true love.

But if that’s not going to happen, you may have to accept that sometimes a breakup is the only thing that’s going to allow you to move forward and truly show who you are to the world.

In fact, sometimes a breakup is not an opportunity to get your ex partner back, but a chance to have a NEW relationship which will really make you feel good – perhaps even the relationship your heart desires.

So the act of breaking up can allow some people to grow as individuals, perhaps discovering how to be assertive and confident, so they can move forward into a much better relationship.

And whatever you do, you should aim to find a way of making sure that love comes out victorious over fear.