No contact Worked For Me So I came Back To Tell You

no-contact-rule
21

Hmm, I’m interested to hear your thoughts on my case.

I met a guy on POF. I’ve been married before, he’s just sorting out his divorce & stuff & we both have young kids. After 2 months, he ended it coz he was having a hard time with the divorce & stuff at work, etc. He said it just didn’t feel right whereas it had before. He knew we got on well, loved being with me and though I was great. But he just wanted to be friends. There were a lot of “right nows” and “at the moments”. This was four weeks ago. Oh, & he went straight back on POF and Match.com.

A few days later, his best friend Katie (we’d never met) contacted me. She told me he just didn’t know what he wanted relationship wise & he was very messed up, confused & stressed by all his ex problems.

I text him to say hi a week later and we exchanged a few texts, but then he stopped. I emailed him a few days later to give him my thoughts/feelings, but he again said as it stands for him now we would just be friends.

Last week, we both went to a Foo Fighters concert, but separately (we’d each got tickets before we’d met). He didn’t contact me whilst we were there. However, he contacted me the next day to ask what I’d thought of it & we were pretty much constantly texting for 14 hours. We both went to sleep & it stopped there.

On Tuesday this week, my friend noticed him on POF & got talking to him. He had no idea who she is. In a nutshell, he told her that there was one girl recently that he kind regretted finishing with, she had ticked all his boxes apart him he wasn’t sure if he 100% fancied her. Then he back tracked & said he didn’t regret it, just felt bad that he didn’t feel the same about her as she did him. Then he said he might have been hasty finishing it; she was/is nice and they got on well but it wasn’t meant to be & that was down to him, he guessed. He started overthinking it & his parting message to her was “You’ve got me seriously considering giving this girl a call you know. To be honest, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind for a couple of reasons when we ended it, so perhaps that had something to do with it?! Anyway, I’m sleeping on it.” She replied on Wednesday morning; he picked her message up but hasn’t been back on POF at all since then.

So, in addition to not going on POF (which he normally does several times a day), he has also gone very quite on Facebook and Whatsapp. The only thing he does on Facebook is often likes my posts or pictures - he never does this with anyone else’s? & he has only started doing this since we split up?! Half the time, he only goes on Whatsapp for about 3 or 4 seconds; long enough to see if / when someone else has been on (i.e.) me, but not long enough to type and send a message…

He hasn’t contacted me yet. And obviously, I haven’t contacted him (& don’t intend to). Thoughts???!!!

22

Ok, remember I’m not an expert or anything, just a guy with a keyboard and a half informed opinion.

With that said, I would guess that you moved faster than he like and he cut it off because of it. Most guys I know that use POF use it as a one time hook up app and not a long term dating outlet. So meeting you on there and then continuing on for 2 months is basically against the grain of why he was there in the first place.

No contact would probably work for you (but Im not sure if youre up for it because it is really, really tough no offense) because it does sound like he may have some regrets. He obviously expected you to text him first at the concert (which is an example of NC working btw) and maybe hes keeping tabs on your other pages. Maybe not.
But if you stay available and keep him comfortable ie; he thinks you’re going to hang around, he’ll use that until he finds someone else to occupy his time.

When I say “I’m not sure you’re up up to it” I don’t mean you’re not capable, Im just not sure you would truthfully be willing to completely cut him out long enough that he realizes what he lost and eventually returns.

You have to completely remove yourself from their lives. Completely, not just until they send a smiley face or seem sad,


    completely

until they are as desperate as you.

23

Sooo… I have an update. I waited 4 days to respond to my ex’s “I miss you” text. We ended up meeting and he said how much he missed me and now we’re back together! He told me he was so glad I asked him to meet, realized how much he missed me, thought I moved on (because of NC). I know it wasn’t 30 days… but it’s all about timing. :slight_smile:

24

Congratulations! Timing is everything.

Good luck.

25

Well said ItWorkedForMe… The POF thing may be true for most guys, but there are guys (me) who have used it to meet people and gain long term relationships from it. My ex and i met on that site and we we’re together for about 10 months. It’s all on how you look at the site and what you’re looking for. It had been a nice way to filter out people and determine if they were good/bad apples.

26

ItWorked4Me - were you a little weary when you got back with your ex?

27

Thanks, ItWorked4Me…

I am quite a strong person (some say stubborn…) and I absolutely will not contact him. I’m afraid I’n the type that will sit at home stewing, knowing he’s out somewhere, before I would contact him!

Interesting thought that you see me not contacting him at the concert as NC - I haven’t even thought of it like that?? Do you think he really thought I would contact him? That possibility hadn’t even crossed my mind (I guess with being so stubborn, lol).

He has always claimed to be looking for someone special and something long term. Whilst he’s very outgoing, he can be a little shy when it comes to approaching women. Katie reckons he;s not very confident in that way, so I guess POF is an easy way of doing that (he might has said something along those lines to my friend too).

I’m doing NC as much as I can, and if he texts me again, or messages me in any way, I will either ignore it completely or certainly wait several days to get back to him.

Do I really need to delete him off everything though? If he’s checking my facebook and whatsapp and stuff, would I not be better posting the odd fab pic of me and making it known that I am out and about and maybe even have the odd date? I’m just worried that deleting him entirely will signal that I want nothing more to do with him and he will accept that (perhaps unhappily) as it’s quite final.

Are there any other tips you could give me to encourage him to come back??

28

You can try and block him but the odds are that if he wants to see your postsbad enough, hell find a way. The common thought is that if you ignore them too long and theyll eventually give up; which i can say i felt the same way too at many points throughout the process.

If you’re trying to bait him into saying something, drop a pic or two on Facebook with you and someone else and see what happens. Stubbornness will help but patience is better.

@ras217. Yes i was very hesitant and remained so for weeks after. Be cautious and conscious you don’t fall back into the patterns that lead to your break up in the first place. Try not to hold anything against them and move on ward and upward with your NEW relationship.

29

I am very cautious of timing, I agree.

I think I’ve cottoned on to the game and am learning for this is gonna work. I’m realising how to reel him in and how to make him jealous. And I think it’ll the most effective thing for me.

He and I are both into fitness; we both run (not together obvs), I swim, he goes to the gym a lot and does circuit training, etc. He is into his running quite seriously - does marathons all over the world. Not long before we split, he asked if I wanted to go circuit training with him as it’ll improve my strength which will improve my running distance ability. We talked about it again the next day and I said I wouldn’t go the next session, but would start after that,. Then we split anyway. Remember, this was about 4 weeks ago.

Anyway, yesterday lunch time I put a status on Facebook saying “Hmmm. Think I need to start doing some circuit training!!!”. He saw it mid afternoon, I think. Then last night, I purposely logged out of all social media and dating sites after 7:30pm. I actually went to bed to catch up on sleep, lol, but he has no clue of that. I set my alarm for 1am and logged back into it all. He’d been on Facebook at 12:20am, liked my status and COMMENTED on it!! He said “What do I keep telling you !?”. I don’t think I’ve known him to comment on anything on Facebook, ever! I hadn’t reacted to it yet in anyway, but at 1am, I put another status on just saying “What a night!!!”. Nothing else.

I haven’t been on yet today, thought I’d wait until about 10 - 0:30am to make it look like I’ve slept in after a late night, lol.

30

I’m not sure what to reply to that comment about circuit training, or when to reply? If at all?

P.S. - I also found a guy on there that I know vaguely through friends and added him. Dom is bound to wonder who the hell he is…

31

ItWorked4Me,

I need your advice on thread I just started… (Broke NC, not sure if I should have). I’m really hoping I just didn’t screw things up for myself…

32

Time to pull out and stay out. You opened the door more than once (you didn’t have to notify her of either package shipment,you were hoping the contact would lead to more obviously) and she politely said thanks but no thanks.

In my honest opinion you should never, under any circumstances contact her again for any reason. Ever. She has her stuff, you reached out, nothing came from it, time to move forward.

It may hurt to hear but this is a high stakes game of life poker and she bluffed drawed you into a pot you have zero chance of winning at the moment.

33

Yup, I hear ya. I wasn’t planning on contacting her again. I thought about after the 30 days, but at this point,I feel she needs to be the one to make the first step. She’s extremely head strong and stubborn, and the more you talk to her, the more she backs into her shell.

In a way, it’s possible I was expecting more from her, but I wanted more than anything to convey to her that I’m not an a$$hole and I still have a backbone. On top of that, I didn’t want her to think I was leaving any loose ends, or trying to take anything of hers.

Agreed though, time to move forward and continue working on myself. Much thanks for your prompt response.

34

UPDATE!!

I eventually replied (two days later) to his comment he made about circuit training as explained in one of my posts above. I replied and said “Alright, alright. Lol. Do you really think it would help my running performance? Well, I am always up for a new challenge. Am tempted to give it a go…”

He replied one minute later saying “Seriously you should. It works. I can’t go tomorrow now which I’m annoyed about. You can come with me next week if you want?”

I’ve left it a couple of hours and just replied to say, “Yeah, go on then, why not?! I can do next week, that’s fine. Are you sure I won’t look out of place?!?! :P”

That last sentence is a little in joke; before we broke up, he’d text me and asked if I wanted to go with him and at the end of it he said “and trust me, you certainly won’t look out of place there!!”. I never did ask him what he meant by that…

So, what do you think guys???

35

@ItWorke4me … Could you answer mine please, if you have time of course. My ex did text me 2 weeks after we broke up, but it’s been 3 weeks NC right now.

36

Here is my question Clarabellew; You agreed to meet him a week from now right? Why not something sooner? You are slightly exposed the longer you wait and I’ll tell you why. He was testing you on Facebook to see if you’d respond ie; still waiting around (for whatever reason). You eventually responded and it turns out that he was right, you still are “waiting around”- obviously entertaining any conversation with him and potentially meeting up etc. If all he was really doing was looking to see if you’re still an option, you proved that you are and he may blow you off now after he thinks about it for awhile.

I hate to say it but this has actually happened to me before and I swore “never again” lol. I know that the goal was to get them to reach out and take the power back but you essentially handed it back over by agreeing to meet. I hope that yinz go out and have a good time and reunite etc. but if you are asking for my advice, I would say keep your guard up here.

37

Solidturd aside from hating your name, I think your situation is slightly different.

In my semi professional opinion you really only have 2 plays here:

  1. Continue along your current path and avoid contact with them until they come back or you move on. This option may seem difficult but ultimately your percentages of ending up better off (either way) are higher in my opinion.

  2. You could wait another week or so and then reach out saying you’d like to meet and talk about a few things. The angle is that you have spoken in a long time and felt like you needed some closure on a few things. A week or two from now it will have been long enough that it doesn’t feel rushed and will give you some time to approach it in a more organic way. The risk/reward on this one is higher because if she tells you that it’s just not gonna work, anndddd it’s been a few weeks with out you, odds are your relationships over. However there is always a chance that the time apart has given her time to think and she has regretted the new changes.

I would take a few days and think about it first. I know what you’re going through trust me, I had this exact debate many times a day for weeks.

38

@Itworked4me - this might need to be on a new thread but… did you keep a tiny wall up when you got back together with the ex? The reason we broke up is because he had a freak out moment and was afraid.

The other night he says “I have to tell you something”. I think “oh jeez here we go again!” He says “I like being around you. I like you. And I freaked out”. So that was nice that he acknowledged and reassured me. I asked if we were exclusive again and he said “I am”.

Cause I know he was on tinder.

He also said “I’m glad you asked me to meet”. Said it made him realize how much he missed me. And when I didn’t respond for 4 days he thought I moved on. And he said he was glad cause it brought us back together.

He was out of town this weekend (family wedding) but we talked plenty of times throughout the weekend. He told me on the phone last night they he likes being exclusive with me.

My thought process now is “why the heck did he end it” and “is he serious this time”.

Just trying to figure out how I should be acting with him. The same? Somewhat myterious (make him wonder)?

I want him to never regret getting back together with me.

Hmmmm…

39

Keep him on the end of your jab for awhile. Don’t let him know you’re doing it but don’t seem overly anxious to hop back into a serious endeavor just yet. Tinder makes men think that the replacement to you could be just one swipe away and if you make things TOO easy he’ll eventually get bored and eventually revert to old habits.

Just a suggestion on my end anyway.

40

Well we’ve already discussed that we are back together and exclusive again. We agreed no more tinder. I’m not worried about him cheating or lying… I just want to make sure he continues to appreciate me, knows I’m a great catch, and that he’d be stupid to leave me again.

Maybe I made it too easy but I just went for what felt right and natural. And I’m hoping he did too.