What To Talk About With Your Ex-Partner?

Presumably there were plenty of positive times in the relationship or you wouldn’t be getting back together! So this is one area of common ground that you CAN talk about – and of course talking about positive experiences you’ve had together may well help to rebuild trust and affection.

Now, one of the things you may come across quite quickly is a desire in your ex to talk about what went wrong.

It’s probably important to avoid doing so at this stage: you can be very polite and listen to them. Hear them, then suggest you meet again in the future to have a deeper discussion – where you can talk more about your ex’s feelings and offer them the attention they deserve.

Which is, it needs to be said, a kind of hook that may bait them into meeting you again.

In any event, starting a discussion about what went wrong on your first meeting is almost certain to blight the chance of reconciliation and the probability of you getting over the breakup.

It’s not gonna help you, and it’s not really likely that such a discussion is going to go very well and lead to anything constructive.

Apart from that, it can spoil the mood of your meeting.

How To Talk With Your Ex

Provided that you’re sincere and honest about your intentions, ready to take the blame for your part in the relationship breakup, and clear why you wish to reconnect, there’s every chance you’ll make a second date.

Which raises the interesting question; “What you do on the second day with an ex?”

Since the whole experience must be positive, so as to reinforce your partner’s wish to be with you, it’s a good idea to find a fun location where you can share some joyful activity with your partner.

But of course you may have some outstanding work to do: remember how, on the first date, you showed your awareness of the need to talk about what went wrong between you?

Maybe you’ve come to the point where you need to do that. The point where you can explain to your partner just what YOU did to help the relationship breakup.

It must be perfectly obvious to you at this stage that if you fall into any of the conflictual and blaming behaviors that are so common, you are going to completely prejudice your chance of ever getting back together on a permanent basis.

Which means you’re going to have to be ready to take full responsibility for your relationship issues, and you’re probably going to have to listen to some accusations which strike you as unfair from your partner without reacting to them.

So no matter what your ex wants to talk about, as the one initiating the reconciliation, all you need to do is listen and understand. That’s the price if you really want to bring your ex back. 

Many people – perhaps women especially – feel they cannot reveal their innermost thoughts to their partner, or that if they do reveal their innermost thoughts, then they simply aren’t listened to (a fact most men can acknowledge as true of they are honest).

You see, the thing is this: most people feel able to let go of their resentments and hurts when they really feel (not think) they’ve been heard by another person.

At this stage of your reconciliation, reflective listening is absolutely vital for both of you to regain trust and to feel safe with each other. That’s one of the main secrets of how to get your ex back.

There are many ways you can show that you’re listening carefully and attentively to your partner, including adopting the right non-verbal postures, looking them in the eye, reflecting back what they’ve said to your partner, and making appropriate observations on what they’ve said (which could be mostly limited in this situation to confirming how you think they felt).

Active listening involves a number of skills which convey the fact that you’ve heard and understood your partner.

Reflecting back, or mirroring, what your partner has said to you is a good way of demonstrating the fact you’ve truly been listening to what they are saying. The “feeling of being heard” that this produces is quite profound. Indeed, it establishes trust.

Of course if you constantly repeat back exactly what your partner said, it can begin to feel repetitive and silly. So you can reframe, or restate, what they’re saying, which is perhaps an even more powerful tool for demonstrating the fact you’re on the same level of understanding and emotional intelligence.

Encouraging your partner to say more about a particular subject is also a good technique because it shows you’re interested.

And above all else, the skill of questioning your partner to clarify what they mean seems to be essential to establishing relationship harmony. It’s a skill that has to be learned.

But it is a skill which is really worth learning, because (as you may have learned in your relationship with your ex-partner) when couples don’t understand each other, disaster is only just around the corner.

Now, of course you may not be able to pick up these skills before you start having conversations with your ex about why you split up – so may be you could first practice with a friend or relation.

Sidebar: The extent to which you’re willing to pick up these skills before you enter into a dialogue with your ex-partner is a pretty good demonstration of how committed you are to the success of your relationship repair and renewal.

It’s quite obvious that having a successful relationship takes work and effort, and we’re not all equally well equipped – in terms of our relationship skills and our ability to have the conversations which need to be had to understand each other in a way that makes us feel safe and trusting with our partner.

Yet to put in the work to feel safe and trusting with a partner is to say that you value them, and you’re willing to invest time and energy in the pursuit of love. And after all, what could be better than that?