First of all, don’t beg your ex to come back.

You know we’ve all heard this advice, but when you’re in the grip of despair and sadness after a relationship has come to an end, it can be very hard not to beg.

But please, keep your dignity at all costs! While you might find that begging and pleading with your ex will make your ex feel sorry for you, he or she will almost certainly see you as less attractive!

And even if they succumb to your pleading, just think how resentful they’ll feel later on! (In other words, they may feel they got you back for all the wrong reasons.) No matter how you’re feeling right now you have to be adult about this!

Yep, and sure, you might not care about being Adult and mature right now, but later on you certainly will, because how you get back together with your ex is definitely going to have an impact on how your relationship works out after you’ve had your “reconciliation”.

So if you’re going to communicate with your ex to tell them you think the relationship can still work, please do it as an Adult. If you can’t do that, take some time out before contacting them.

Second of all, don’t start playing games.

You know there’s a temptation to play games with your ex-partner, particularly if you’re a clever “magician” i.e. you think quickly and in complex ways to come up with strategies and ideas about how to get what you want.

But game-playing and manipulation is for children who need to protect themselves in the world. It’s not appropriate for an adult who’s trying to live life in a mature and well-balanced way. And the truth is that anybody who thinks they’re being outmanoeuvred will often be resentful. So don’t hatch plans to get what you want. Behave like the Adult you are.

Three, don’t hold your ex-partner to ransom.

No matter how bad you feel right now, you CAN live without your ex-partner – your life doesn’t depend on them being around you! So screaming, threatening, crying or even saying you’ll end it all if your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend won’t get back together with you is just not going to work…. At least it won’t if they’re a responsible mature adult. The other thing you might like to consider is whether or not emotional blackmail of this kind played any part in your break in the first place. If so, ask yourself what your role in the break-up might have been. 

If you’re the one his being manipulated, then you really need to consider whether or not that’s the kind of relationship you want to be in, or perhaps you need to find some way of increasing your self-esteem so you’re not dependent on somebody who’s treating you unkindly.

Four, don’t tell your ex you’ve changed, show them!

One unfortunate thing that tends to happen when people break up is that their ex-partners tell them all the things that were wrong with them – often this is unkind, cruel, and sometimes not even true.

But if there is truth in it, could you see it as feedback? So, if your ex told you that you never gave them space to talk, never listened to them, and never took them seriously, ask yourself if that’s true – even if you’re doing it right now while trying to get back together! (Caution: if there’s any game-playing going on, forget about it and see the facts as they truly are.)

Or, if you’ve been accused of being insecure, for example, don’t contact your ex, trying to get them back, every five minutes – or even five times a day for that matter.

Show that you’re secure in yourself by showing your ex how capable, mature and independent you are. The proof of the pudding, as the saying has it, is always in the eating. Another example, in case you’re in any doubt about what we’re saying here: if your partner said you never treated them with respect, don’t shout and scream at them – talk to them respectfully. Simple, yes?

Five, an apology is easy – at least, easier than you think!

And you might feel that you have nothing to apologize for, which is all very well, but both people in a relationship usually contribute something to the breakup.

One man told me how his ex-girlfriend had finished with him, even though it wasn’t his fault and he didn’t know why she’d dumped him.

He was desperate to get her back. Then he said, “She always told me I had to be right all the time, and accused me of never being able to admit I was wrong or apologize.” He hadn’t seen the irony here!

And he certainly wasn’t thinking of apologizing to her for his arrogance about the relationship breakup. So I suggested that he wrote a letter to her, apologizing for his behavior… And guess what? He saw the point. He wrote the letter. They had a discussion about the future, and they got back together.

You see, the thing is this: each and every one of us has certain basic needs and requirements of other people. These needs are not the same for everyone, but you could confidently say they include things like being respected, being listened to, being taken seriously, being appreciated, being loved, being made to feel special…. and so on.

If you can learn how to do these things for your ex-partner, and take that new behavior into your (future) relationship, then you both have a much better chance of a happy and healthy relationship in the future.

Six, there’s a lot of good in romance.

If men understood how much women wanted to be romanced (and did something about it), the world would be a much more harmonious place.

Women express their openhearted love from what we call their Lover archetype, whereas men are not as able to do this.

If you’re a man and your ex-girlfriend has been demonstrating her love for you, without your appreciation, or without getting your romance back, just think for a few minutes about how you could introduce some romance into the relationship and win her back. And if you’re a woman trying to win back an ex-boyfriend, come from your heart, because love truly can conquer all.

Of course some men are very resistant to the love of a woman, so if your ex-partner isn’t responding to your openhearted love, then it might be better for you to move on to a guy who can truly appreciate you as the loving woman who you are.

Think about this – when a relationship’s broken down, there’s often bitterness around, and one of things on people’s minds can be a desire to express how they’re feeling, even to get some kind of revenge.

Yet this doesn’t help anybody; there are better ways of expressing your feelings – for example:

• Talk calmly about your feelings.
• Express how somebody else’s behavior (your ex’s, no doubt) made you feel.
• Tell your ex what you want from them in the future.

Be positive, talk about what you would love to do with your ex in the future, and avoid analyzing the bitterness of the past.

This demonstrates great maturity and shows you could get back together with your ex, or that your ex could choose to come back to you, with love and affection rather than bitterness and resentment.

Always, always, don’t even talk about what’s gone on in the past unless it’s totally and absolutely unavoidable! Instead, talk about how things can be better for the both of you in the future.

Seven, let go of the past. It’s over and done with.

You know, we all want to analyze what went wrong, we all want to go over our mistakes, and we all want to tell people about our feelings. But when people walk away from a relationship there are plenty of reasons why they do it, and analyzing the past is not high on their agenda.

You and your ex need to people feel optimistic about the future, and to feel that way, you need to talk about the future.

So when you get together with your ex-partner, try to talk about the past only if it really will help overcome your difficulties.

Take the mature approach – stop blaming each other for what’s happened in the past – there’s nothing you can do about that now, except to learn from it and do things differently in the future.

The way to frame this is to tell your ex-partner that you don’t want them to be your ex-partner. Instead, you want to have a new relationship with him or her in the future.

And of course they may feel differently about this. They may want to go over and over what’s happened in the past. If they’re so full of bitterness that they can’t let go of the past, then it might be time to move on.