"But I Love You So Much"

After a break up, many people will try to repair the relationship by repeatedly telling their ex how much they love them:

"We can't break up... I love you!"

"If you knew how much I loved you, you wouldn't leave."

"I love you. If you leave me I'll be miserable."

Perhaps because of messages we get from society, some of us are under the impression that "love conquers all" so our love should be enough to save our relationship. The unfortunate fact is that loving relationships often don't work. Your love for your ex, in itself, is not enough to bring you back together.

For the relationship to have a chance your ex needs to love you too. But even that isn't enough - they need to love you the right way. To keep things simple I'll generalize love into two categories:

There is "I-care-about-you" love. This is the platonic love you may feel for a close friend or a family member. This love may involve such feelings as sympathy or pity and it is not romantic, sexual, or involve any kind of attraction. A couple who has only this type of love for each other is probably on the verge of a break up or settling for security reasons.

Then there is "I-need-to-be-with-you" love. This love involves attraction, desire, and excitement. This is the romantic, passionate love that brings people together, keeps them together, and brings them back together after a breakup. When two people have this type of love for each other they are willing to work on the relationship instead of leaving it.

And herein lies the solution and the challenge... rekindling "I-need-to-be-with-you" love in your ex. It's extremely difficult because you can't force your ex to have these feelings for you. In fact, the harder you try to force it, the less likely they are to feel this way (this is what I call the paradox of attraction)! Your role in recreating this feeling in your ex has to be more indirect.

That isn't to say that you have no control. In many ways your ex is only reacting to you. You can influence how they react by controlling how you present yourself and what you say.

There are very specific things that you can do to improve your chances of getting back your ex boyfriend or ex girlfriend. Repeatedly telling your ex that you love them is definitely not one of them.


Articles: Common Mistakes
Mood: Contemplative