Were you recently dumped?
Wondering why your relationship ended?
Feel like your ex wasn’t telling the whole truth?
In my years as a relationship coach I found that, above all others, there are three most common reasons why people decide to end a relationship.
If you’ve been dumped recently, then chances are at least one of these three things led to your breakup or at least contributed to your ex’s decision. I know this because I’ve been a breakup coach for more than a decade and I see these three issues arise among my coaching clients on a daily basis.
The 3 Most Common Reasons For Breaking Up
Before I dive into the first common “Attraction Killer”, there’s one thing you need to be aware of… and that is that, in at least 90% of all breakups, your ex is not going to tell you the truth about their reasons for breaking up.
Often, they’ll give you a “partial truth” rather than a blatant lie when they explain their decision… sometimes it’s a subconscious thing on their part, and sometimes it’s completely intentional in an attempt to avoid hurting your feelings.
Regardless of the details, just keep in mind that whatever your ex has said was the cause of the breakup, it’s probably not the whole truth… and it could be a downright lie. That means that any of these 3 things I’m about to cover may have contributed to your breakup, even if your ex hasn’t mentioned it specifically.
Reason #1: Boredom and complacency.
Pretty much everyone has a desire for fun and excitement. No-one wants to be stuck in the same boring routine forever.
Every relationship needs to have some element of fun and excitement. You don’t have to go bungie jumping in the nude every weekend or anything ridiculous like that, but you do need to keep things interesting and avoid being too complacent in any relationship.
Often, when the “spark” fades and the honeymoon phase of your relationship ends because things stop being “new and exciting” for your partner, and neither of your will make any real effort to keep things interesting.
Needless to say, this is definitely a big mistake that can lead to breakups and one of the potential obstacles to reconnecting. You need to make sure that your partner is having fun and maintains their interest in you and your relationship.
Even the healthiest relationships require some maintenance and work to keep things interesting, so it’s always important to put in the work to keep the spark alive and avoid falling into a boring, passionless routine.
When you think back to the last weeks and months of your time together, do you really think your partner felt that “spark” and excitement that’s necessary to keep things interesting? Or did you both fall into a comfortable routine and let the passion slowly fade away?
Be honest with yourself and you may recognize that things just became too dull and routine to keep your ex invested and engaged in the relationship. Without that spark, you stand almost no chance of getting your ex back.
Reason #2: Jealousy and Controlling Behaviour.
Oh man, if I had a dollar for every time I worked with a coaching client with jealousy issues, I’d probably be recording this video on my private jet…. Because really, this is one of the single biggest issues people have in relationships.
Jealousy is a very natural emotion that affects almost everyone, so don’t beat yourself up if you realize now in hindsight that you were overly jealous in the days and weeks leading up to your breakup.
But it is important to recognize when you’re being unreasonable with your jealousy, or letting it affect you to the point where you’re trying to control your partner’s life–managing feelings of jealousy is a critical relationship skill that you need to learn in order to live happily ever after.
Jealousy can lead you to be controlling, as I just mentioned, but it’s also just a very unattractive trait in general that screams of insecurity. If you recognize that you were overly jealous or controlling in the past, then that’s something you can easily address and work on to ensure the same problem doesn’t lead to future breakups or ruin your chances of getting your ex back.
One of the biggest reasons jealousy is so toxic in relationships is because it usually leads to one partner trying to control the other… so for instance, maybe your ex liked to go for drinks with his or her colleagues after work a few times per week, and didn’t invite you to join.
This could understandably cause you to feel jealous, and that jealousy can easily lead you to ask your ex not to go for drinks at all… or at least demand details of who you were with, where you went, etc.
As I’m sure you can tell, this quickly leads to the kind of controlling behaviour that is very toxic and damaging to a relationship.
Typically, the more controlling one partner gets, the more the other partner will try and break free… and this leads to a vicious downhill spiral where you try to continually tighten your control of your partner, they push back and try to break free, and the cycle continues until one of you feels the need to end the relationship.
And finally, the third common relationship killer…
Reason #3: Being “clingy” or “needy”.
Yeah, this is maybe the single biggest contributor to relationship failure… being “clingy,” “needy”, or trying to move way too quickly is a huge attraction-killer can destroy an otherwise perfect romance.
If you don’t really know what I mean by the term “clingy” or “needy,” a good example is the red-headed girl who chases after Vince Vaughn in the movie “Wedding Crashers”.
It seems kind of a “cute” trait at first, right? Oh, this person is really into me and can’t leave me alone for 5 seconds… how cute, how endearing… right?
In fact, after about 2 days of this type of thing, it quickly goes from cute to downright annoying. Being too clingy, too into a person or a relationship… it’s actually almost always a big turn-off, and a big indication that someone is insecure. In fact, there’s actually been some scientific studies that have proven this type of behaviour is a big turn-off.
Most people have an ingrained human nature to seek challenges. When something becomes “too easy,” we’re hard-wired to lose interest and find a new challenge to tackle. This is why you need to do the exact opposite if you want to attract your ex back.
While I hesitate to encourage using any kind of mind games or playing “hard to get”, it is important to recognize that you can’t be too keen in any relationship, especially early on. Don’t be too eager, and don’t let your relationship or your partner become your entire life.
You need to keep up a bit of mystery and intrigue, and ensure there’s more to your life than your boyfriend or girlfriend.
Finally, being clingy or needy in a relationship can cause your partner to feel like they’re “chained down”… and it can lead them to push back or feel like things are moving too quickly, which causes them to subconsciously panic and end the relationship before it gets any more serious.
