As I sat down listening to a friend try to console another friend over the loss of her two-year relationship, I was quite mortified at the amount of ‘bad’ advice she was unintentionally giving her. “It’s alright” she said “All you have to do is tell him how much you love him and need him and that you are willing to do whatever it takes to work things out.” On the outside it seemed like rational advice and the kind of thing mature grown ups would do but the problem is that where breakups are involved, mature grown ups cease to exist. Mira found that out the hard way when she showed up unannounced at her ex boyfriend’s office, with flowers, a tear stained face and confessions of eternal undying love.
He didn’t even flinch. It didn’t move a single cell in his body as he ushered her off with a few words about how she needed to start moving on. To say she was humiliated would be an understatement. Her only wish at the moment was to be hit by a bus so that her heartless ex could spend the rest of his life buried under the weight of a guilty conscience.
She was lucky however that there is no self-help book on relationships that I am not the proud owner of. I reached over to retrieve my latest and most valued acquisition called ‘Ignore the Guy, Get the Guy. The Art of No Contact’. And within the pages of this book she discovered the amount of damage her desperate attempt to win back her ex had caused. She had been doing the exact opposite of what was necessary for him to miss her. She had unknowingly fueled his male ego with her begging making him believe that he was simply irresistible and that no woman would be able to bear the thought of losing him.
In this genius book however, the author breaks down the process of a breakup into easy to understand steps just like wiki-how. When a guy dumps a girl, he expects her to break down, cry and beg him to take her back. What he doesn’t expect is for her to shrug and just say ‘Ok. See ya’. When a girl suddenly vanishes from his life without so much as a Facebook post about her misery, his fragile male ego takes a hit. “What’s going on?” he starts to wonder. “Did she meet someone else? Maybe she wasn’t that serious about us after all. Maybe she was playing me all this time!”
The scenarios are plenty but when suspicion creeps into his heart, he will most likely start snooping around trying to find some answers. To reach this stage however does take time and as the book mentions, it takes anywhere from 4 – 8 weeks before a guy will start missing his ex and reconsidering that he may have made a mistake. It also takes women that same amount of time to move on.
Mira took no risks and followed every piece of advice like it was a holy scripture. She even kicked things up a notch by deactivating her Facebook and twitter accounts. She simply vanished and kept herself too busy to think about her broken heart. Then just like that it happened. One sleepless night she stayed up late texting a male friend whom she was also harmlessly flirting with when she received a message from her ex saying ‘Who are you texting so late at night?
She ignored him. He texted again and she ignored him again. There she was clearly awake and online and ignoring him. It was driving him crazy and she knew it. A week later he resurfaced again only this time trying to be nicer. She let him work hard to win her back. She acted like she had moved on like he’d previously advised her. Her indifference drove him crazy until he was begging her to give their relationship another shot.
They broke up again a few months later again but I think that’s kind of besides the point.
May Taher is the Author of When the Honeymoon is over. We are more than proud to have May Taher as a regular columnist on board with us!
