When your ex won’t talk to you, it can make it difficult get them back, but not impossible. So how do you make it happen? What do you need to do to get your ex to start talking to you again, and then convince them to take you back? Let’s get started.
In fact, I’m going to start by giving you the single most important thing you need to know right off the bat: you need to chill out and relax. I know this is easier said than done when it feels like your ex is slipping away, but it is absolutely crucial if you want to have any chance of ever winning them back.
Play It Cool If You Want Your Ex Back
This point is so important I want to repeat it again: you need to relax and cool it any time your ex goes silent for a while or ignores more than 2 or 3 messages in a row. If they’re not replying, reaching out on their own initiative, or even if they just seem annoyed or inconvenienced when you talk to them…. You absolutely MUST take your foot off the gas and lay low for at least a week or two.
The more you try to get them to respond or engage with you when they’ve been ignoring you or giving off very cold and disinterested vibes… the more you’re annoying them, and making yourself appear desperate and needy.
Desperation and neediness are highly unattractive traits, as I’m sure you’re aware, and giving this kind of impression to your ex–especially if they’re already avoiding you or not talking to you–is just putting yourself in an even more dire situation.
So, if you are still trying to get back together with your ex… and they won’t talk to you right now for whatever reason… the first thing you need to do to turn things around is relax, chill out, and give your ex plenty of space.
A lot of the biggest attraction-killing mistakes that I see my coaching clients make happen when they get emotional and lose their head. It only takes 1 short 2am drunk text to your ex to ruin any progress you’ve made with your ex, and potentially even kill your chances of getting them back…. So, it’s critical that you keep a level head and don’t cave in to your emotions or let your self-discipline slide.
Can You Still Get Your Ex Back If They Won’t Talk To You?
With that out of the way, let’s address the key question we’re discussing here: can you still get your ex back if they won’t talk to you? Unfortunately, no. Well, not exactly.
In order for you to get back together, it’s almost definitely going to require you to get back on speaking terms.
There are rare occasions when an ex will ignore you for weeks at a time and then suddenly, out of the blue, send a message asking you to get back together… but in 13 years as a breakup coach, working with tens of thousands of clients in your shoes, I’ve only ever seen that happen a handful of times.
RELATED: Is Your Ex Just Using You?
So really, what I’m saying is that you are going to need to get the lines of communication open again at some point in the future to really have a good chance of winning back your ex and starting a new relationship with them.
Thankfully, there are some things you can do to help make this happen and get them to actually WANT to talk to you again… and I’ll cover several of them here. I’ll also cover situations where your ex has actually told you not to contact them outright — in other words, when they’re mad at you and told you to go away.
Most of what I’ll be explaining will still apply in that kind of situation, but I’ll address that specific scenario later on, so scroll down for that if your ex has flat-out told you to bugger off.
But first, before we go any further, I want to remind you about my free quiz. If you’re not sure whether you still have any shot at getting back with your ex, take 5 minutes and complete my quiz to find out.
Just fill out a few questions and you’ll get a comprehensive results report showing your odds of successfully reversing the breakup and starting over with your ex.
Step #1 to getting your ex to stop ignoring you: back off and give them space.
If your ex has already ignored multiple attempts to contact them — for instance, if you’ve sent them 3 texts and left 2 voicemails since your breakup a few weeks ago — you’re going to have to give them time and space for now.
Trying to send any further messages or really any attempt to contact your ex when they’ve already ignored multiple calls and texts is going to backfire badly, and make you look like a needy, desperate loser.
No matter what, if you’ve tried to reach out to your ex more than once in the past week — and didn’t get any reply at all — wait at least another week before you try again. AT LEAST a week.
Preferably longer, especially if you’ve made numerous attempts to contact your ex without hearing back… or if you know they were angry or upset at you when you last spoke.
There’s really only one exception to this rule, and that’s if you’ve already completed a full 30 days of No Contact. That means basically you haven’t spoken to them at all for a month or so, and therefore you’re not going to seem desperate or irritating when you reach out.
If you’ve spoken to your ex in the past few weeks, and especially if you’ve attempted to make contact but they’ve just ignored all your messages and calls entirely… it’s time to go silent until you’ve given them enough time and space to safely try again.
Step #2 to getting your ex to stop ignoring you: come up with a plan to re-open communication.
If your ex won’t talk to you, and you’ve been coming on too strong and sending all the wrong signals to your ex… as I said, the first step is to give them plenty of time and space.
You really need your ex to go back to what I call an “emotional neutral” state, or essentially to the point where they’re not going to groan or sigh in frustration when they see a new text message from you.
Time is the best way to get your ex back into this kind of an “emotional neutral” mindset. If you’re in any doubt about whether you need to wait longer before sending your next text or calling them again, wait longer…. It’s critical you give enough time to make sure your ex knows you’re not desperate, you’re moving on with life, and you’re not contacting them with any ulterior motive.
When you’re confident your ex is in that “emotional netural” state, and they won’t think of you as “needy” if they see you calling or see a text from you pop up on their phone, you can try to contact them again. BUT–and this is a really important BUT here–you need to use a completely different strategy and angle from your previous attempts to initiate contact.
You don’t want to use the same old stale message you’ve sent them multiple times already since breaking up, and you don’t want to be boring or use any kind of closed question to try and break the ice.
RELATED: Why Your Ex Lied About Your Breakup
That’s why I say that step 2 is to come up with a PLAN to start talking to them again. Think this through in advance, and have a clear idea of what you want to say and what you intend to achieve by saying it.
The worst message you can send your ex at this point is “hey whats up” or “how are things” or anything boring and pointless like that. Those types of messages are not only dull and cliché, but they also don’t give your ex any reason to respond, and they don’t really do anything to hide your intentions to try and win them back.
Instead, think of something to say that will make your ex laugh, smile, think of a happy shared memory from your time together, etc. Have a real, legitimate sounding reason to be sending them a message at all in the first place. It can be as simple as a funny meme or Tik Tok video you know they’ll enjoy, or an update on a funny story in your life that your ex had been part of, or even just a question about some topic they know well so it sounds like you’re asking for their advice or opinion.
To summarize: your message should be interesting, fun, or funny… it should have a seemingly legitimate underlying purpose beyond just ‘catching up’… and it should be something they’ll have a reason to respond to.
If you need more ideas for what to say in your first message, my best-selling Ex Factor program contains a number of what I call “Magnetic Attraction” text message templates… these are basically just proven, tried and tested messages that you can customize and send to your ex and expect to get a positive reply.
I explain more about Magnetic Attraction messages in the free video here, where you can also sign up for my full Ex Factor program and try it out risk-free for 60 days.
Step #3 to getting your ex to stop ignoring you: send your first message to re-establish communication.
Now that you’ve come up with a great idea for your initial icebreaker message, and you’ve given your ex plenty of time and space to re-set to “emotional neutral”, it’s time to pull the trigger and send that message.
Doesn’t matter whether you send it as a text, WhatsApp, SnapChat, etc… but I do recommend only messaging for now, rather than actually phoning your ex.
Phone calls put a lot more pressure on your ex, so they’re less likely to actually answer, and they can quickly take an unpredictable turn and leave you on the spot to try and figure out what to say on the call. So, stick to messaging for now.
And in fact, stick to ONE message. Just one quick message. That’s it. One, maybe two sentences, no more. Then put down your phone and occupy your mind by doing something else for the next 24 hours.
Really just do anything OTHER than sit around staring at your phone waiting for a reply…. That’s pointless and generally the opposite type of behaviour that’s going to make your ex want you back. You have a life, don’t you? So go and live it after you send the message to your ex, and don’t sit around waiting for their reply.
If you do get a positive reply, great…. Job done. Now, you can wait another week to reach out again. Slow and steady wins the race, folks… remember that you can’t get back together with someone who isn’t interested in talking to you, so we’re just trying to build rapport and shift their mental perception of you at this point.
In some cases you can safely respond to their initial reply again, assuming you keep it brief and have a reason to continue the conversation. Generally though, it’s best to avoid getting into any kind of extended back-and-forth convo after your first message.
If you don’t hear back, your strategy is the same — wait a week or more before trying again, this time using a totally different angle and probably a different method as well, like a Facebook message or a brief voicemail rather than another text. Hopefully, though, if you use one of my Magnetic Attraction texts and think of a great joke or memory to share in the message, you’ll get a quick reply from your ex.
Step #4 to getting your ex to stop ignoring you: start making them want to talk to you again.
At this point, hopefully you’ve been able to get your ex to respond to you. And if you’ve been smart enough to take my advice, you’ve only sent one or two messages at this point, and you haven’t let your excitement take over and started to fall back into old habits by sending more boring messages or pestering your ex with multiple messages.
Once you have an initial positive interaction, you need to go back to playing the patience game for at least a few days, or preferably a week. Remember: you’re trying to signal to your ex that you’re out living an awesome and interesting life, you don’t really care if they respond to you or whether they want you back… you’re just reminding your ex — without saying this outright, obviously — that you’re the same fun, attractive person they fell in love with back in the early days of your relationship.
From here, it’s all about slowly building back a positive line of communication with your ex. Continue to wait a few hours or even days between your replies, don’t ever send more than 1 message in a row without getting a reply, and keep all of your contact positive and fun for your ex.
No drama, no serious talks, no pressure on them to do anything or meet up. You need to play it slow and respond to their cues. If they seem super engaged and eager to chat, great — that’s a sign you can continue to respond or reach out and keep things going until you get a chance to meet in person.
If they grow distant or stop replying positively to your messages, back off and try again after a week or so with a different angle.
If you need help deciding what to say to your ex at any point during this process, or you run into any kind of challenges along the way and don’t know how to handle them… please consider signing up for my 1-on-1 personal coaching so you can at least get a second opinion before you accidentally make a mistake and blow your chances.
What To Do If Your Ex Tells You To Stop Contacting Them
And last but not least, I promised earlier in the video to address another specific type of scenario: what to do if your ex explicitly tells you to stop contacting them. Or maybe they’ve even blocked your number and blocked you on social media, and you have no way to contact them.
In the first case, if your ex has told you not to contact them, the majority of what I’ve already explained in this video still applies… BUT — and this is a very important BUT — you need to wait even longer before you first attempt to reach out. When your ex is TELLING you outright that they don’t want to hear from you, you simply have to stop any attempts to contact them for at least a month or two.
If you ignore their wishes and try to reach out soon after they tell you to bugger off, you’re just showing that you don’t have the desire or ability to respect their wishes…. And you’re going to seem desperate, clingy, and downright annoying.
And when you do finally reach the point, 4 to 6 weeks down the road, when you’re ready to try and contact them again… you need to do so in such a way that they won’t react negatively to your message, or that they don’t feel like it’s just “more of the same” that led them to tell you to stop talking to them in the first place.
In the second scenario, when you’ve been blocked by your ex and don’t have any means to contact them at all…. Honestly, a lot of the time, your ex will unblock you pretty quickly — within a week or two — on their own. This might sound surprising, but a lot of the time people are blocked by an ex, it’s because your ex is worried they’ll break down and ask you to get back together if they allow themselves to continue talking to you. It’s a coping mechanism to try and ensure they stick to their decision to break up.
So, in that type of situation — which usually occurs when there isn’t a lot of bad blood or drama during the breakup — you should begin by playing the waiting game and letting your ex have a few weeks to unblock you and potentially even reach out on their own.
If they haven’t done so after 30 days, and you don’t know of any reason why they would be angry at you or never want to speak to you again, then I recommend you watch the video I made previously devoted to this exact topic. I’ll link to it in the description below. In that video, I explain some other last-ditch strategies you can use to get in contact when you’re blocked for no reason, such as using mutual friends to pass along a message.
Finally, if you’ve been blocked by your ex because you did something awful to them that led to your breakup and left them furious at you… well, unfortunately there’s really not much you can do to change things for now.
Hopefully you already sincerely apologized to them before they blocked you, and you let them know how guilty you feel for hurting them and how you regret what happened, because that’s the only thing you really could or should attempt to say to your ex if they’ve blocked you out of anger.
But generally, if your ex is furious at you for a legitimate reason and has blocked you and told you not to contact them… anything you do that goes against their wishes will make matters worse, and your only option is to wait it out and hope for the best.
If this is the type of situation you’re in currently, then I’m sorry and I hope you’ll start thinking about moving on… it’s always possible your ex will unblock you down the road and you’ll get another shot, but that’s pretty unlikely if I’m honest, so I suggest you begin to move on and plan for life without your ex.
I hope this has given you a better idea of whether or not getting your ex back is possible. Most often, it ie possible IF you follow my advice exactly, and you remember to go slow and play it cool at all times.
Your ex is ignoring you for a reason, and you can’t magically change their feelings… so you need to be patient, be strategic, and slowly re-build attraction over the course of several weeks or even months.
