I get a few different types of questions that all center on interpreting an ex’s behavior:
“My ex wrote me an email the other day, what does that mean?”
“My ex girlfriend texted me last night, do you think she wants to get back together with me?”
“My boyfriend has been calling me pretty often, do you think he is interested in getting back together?”
Unfortunately, the nature of relationships is so complicated that there really isn’t anything definitive that I am able to tell you or anyone else about the correct interpretation of a certain behavior. Does it seem like a positive thing that your ex is contacting you? Sure, it seems positive but that’s obvious. The exact meaning of that action is known only to him or her … and maybe not even to them.
Besides, it really doesn’t matter why your ex did something or what it means. If you want to get back with your ex then you should be focused on pursuing that end *** . It would be helpful to know if they want to be with you but if you are serious about being with them then you’ll have to take steps on faith alone. Trying to read into their behavior will only leave you confused and may lead you to make assumptions that aren’t true. It’s best to just focus on working the plan in my book about getting back together with an ex.
[*** Now, of course, this doesn't mean that you should ignore blatant signals that they DON'T want to be with you. If your ex makes it inmistakeably clear that they don't want anything to do with you then you should respect that. The overwhelming majority of the time, I am contacted by men and women who are wanting to know if something their ex did is a positive sign and that is the audience I am writing to. I'm including this disclaimer so someone can't use what I'm saying in this article to stalk or harass their ex.]
For all you logical thinkers out there….
Relationships are so complex and subjective that it’s difficult to understand what exactly went wrong and eventually led to the demise of the relationship. Sometimes relationships are easier to understand if you break them down mathematically or logically and think about them in a very general way. Math is definitely not one of my strong suits but I think I’ll be able to get my point across. Let me know if you find any errors in my logic.
When someone is ready to break up with another person the basic equation of their mindset looks like this:
BREAKUP:
L – R > L + R
Where:
L = Their life
R = The relationship
Their life without the relationship is better than their life with it. When the relationship equation looks like this a break up is inevitable… it’s just a matter of “when.”
In order to understand how a person arrives at this conclusion we need to go one level deeper into the math and break down the values L and R. We end up with:
THE RELATIONSHIP:
R = G + 2 (-B)
Where:
R = Their perception of the relationship
G = The positive things about the relationship
-B = The negative things about the relationship
The relationship is all the good things about the relationship subtracted by all the negative things multiplied by two. The factor of two is to take into account how the things that are wrong with a relationship tend to bother us more than we focus on the things that we like about the relationship. The lower the end value of this equation is (the closer it is to, or below, 0) the more likely the break up.
HOW THEY VIEW THE RELATIONSHIP:
L = R (1.5 * PO)
L = Their life
PO = Perceived opportunity. Their perception of what their life could be like given the options available to them.
R = Their perception of the relationship
Their perceptions of opportunities available to them are always exaggerated (hence the multiplication by a factor 1.5). When the values of their perceptions of the relationship and their perceived opportunities are multiplied together you end up with either a very positive or a very negative value. If their perceptions of their relationship are negative you will end up with a very negative value. If their perceptions are positive you will end up with a very positive value. In other words, when things are going good they are going very good. But, as soon as things start going poorly, they are perceived to be going extremely poorly.
The relationship is always factored against an exaggerated view of their opportunities. This is to take into account the “grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” aspect of human nature. If the relationship still has a positive value to them then all is well… the end value will be that much higher. But, if the relationship value is negative, the relationship will be perceived very poorly. There is very little chance for a slightly positive or slightly negative value. This is to take into account our human nature to genarally think in terms of black or white.
So, to put this together again:
BREAKUP:
[ R (1.5 * PO) ] - [ G + (- B) ]
If this value is less than:
[ R (1.5 * PO) ] + [ G + (- B) ]
… then the relationship is in serious trouble.
Of course, when someone is ready to get back together the equation is:
GETTING BACK TOGETHER:
L – EX < L + EX
L = Their life
EX = The person they broke up with
Getting the equation to have these values is the "trick" to getting back together. If you would like to learn more about how to do this please look into my book.