Keep you ex where he belongs- in the past!
Wondering who to avoid contacting your ex? We've all been there. You've lost a relationship and you're finding it HARD to not pick up the phone to him. Hayley Quinn is joined by top Break Up Coach Laura Yates to discuss:
- Why you shouldn't reach out to your ex
- Tips for what to do when you get tempted
- Why there's no such thing as closure
The interview
To help me examine love today, and talk about how not to contact your ex after you've broken up. Because we've all been there, right? Where you're not used to the fact they're not in your life? You still feel there's loads of unresolved stuff. Some things are left unsaid. Their photos pop up with another woman on their Facebook feed. Stuff's getting tense, and your hand is wandering towards the phone. And you know you shouldn't do it. Joining me is the amazing Laura Yates. She is a breakup coach. If anyone's going to know how to deal with this kind of stuff, it's this lady. Thanks for joining me, Laura.
Laura
Thank you for having me, Hayley.
Hayley
If you guys are listening, I've just gone through a horrible breakup that was really difficult. On the Attraction HQ episode, my other podcast, there is an episode that I did with Laura on breakups. So if you're finding that difficult to deal with, or you want some great advice on that, please head over and subscribe there as well. But today, we're talking about that phenomenon, which is, I think it's really natural actually, to keep trying to want to engage with someone that you've had a romantic relationship with, particularly if you've had a bad breakup.
Laura
Definitely. people are like drugs. They are very addictive. It's almost like going cold turkey and that's why it's so difficult when they're not in our lives anymore. And we're having that communication with them. We're not having that physical interaction with them anymore, we really feel that void.
Hayley
A lot of the time I found, this is terrible, but a very honest thing to admit to is, a lot of my past relationships we stayed together so long because we were thriving on drama. The drama was the thing that was feeding them. We should have broken up bloody years ago.
He would usually act spectacularly badly, be withdrawn, cold, probably felt too much guilt to end the relationship, could never please, cheated. And I'm there all the time trying to scrape things together, not having the self-esteem to end. You start chasing your tail. Sometimes with bad relationships, the best analogies I've ever heard it's like that bad local bar that you know, it's bad and terrible. But because you've gone there so many times, you just keep going in there and expecting for it to pay dividends, because you've chucked so much time and energy and effort into it. Things have got to get good at some point.
Laura
When we invest, especially in those relationships, which are very up and down and quite toxic, we always crave that drama. So when that side of it isn't there anymore, we don't know what to do with all of that energy, right? We invested in it.
Hayley
Both sides of the coin and I'm very guilty of this myself, whether it's the person who's withdrawing, refusing sex, being cold and distant, potentially having a love affair, or the person who's desperately pursuing, becoming extremely emotional, checking up, feeling jealous, you're both controlling each other, are the same mechanism. So when that control is broken, suddenly your ex is free and loose and wheeled into the world. And you obviously imagine that you're suffering, and they're having this amazing life since they left you. All these awesome love affairs, that presses some pretty serious emotional buttons. So yes, if you feel tempted to text someone or contact them, that's normal, isn't it?
Laura
Everything that you're feeling is completely normal. We've all been there. We've all felt it. What you said, Hayley about seeing people, seeing your ex may be on Facebook or whatever. It's very important to understand that just because you see your ex doing all of these things on Facebook it can often be a very unrealistic trail of what's happening. But it pushes our buttons, right?
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