If you haven’t created enough emotional momentum or your ex isn’t emotionally engaged (yet), letting your ex initiate contact is self-sabotage.
Emotional momentum is necessary to keep and and hold your ex’s attention long enough for them to begin looking forward to you reaching out; and to start initiating contact.
Your ex initiating contact is always a good sign. It means that they’re emotionally invested in keeping the lines of communication open; and maybe even interested in wanting to make things work.
But before you let your ex start initiating contact; you must make sure that there is enough emotional investment on their part. Your ex will not initiate contact if they’re not emotionally invested. What will happen is that if you don’t contact them, there will be no contact for days even weeks. The longer you’re not in contact, the more disconnected you become. It’s hard to get back together with very long periods of time when you’re not talking to each other.
If you want to get your ex emotionally engaged and start initiating contact, you need to follow these simple steps.
1) Identify what your ex feels emotionally connected to
We all have something we’re emotionally invested in; something that gets and holds our attention and interest. It can be something to do with family, work, a pet, a hobby or interest, a course, religion, politics etc. It’s different for everyone.
If you’ve actually been “present” in your relationship; you should know your ex well enough to know what gets and holds your ex’s attention. This is what you need to access and get inside your ex’s inner/emotional world.
2) Find the emotion and use it in an interesting yet authentic way
One you are inside you ex’s inner/emotional world, you have access to their emotions; and how they feel about things.
When people communicate, they give away a lot of information about how they are feeling. I’m not taking about how your ex is feeling about YOU, that’s the “Me, Myself and I” mentality. I’m talking about if your ex is happy/excited about an achievement, feeling sad about something, stressed out at work etc.
How your ex feels is very important if you want to be a part of your ex’s emotional world, make your ex look forward to your texts, and get them to start initiating contact.
How you do that is by connecting to the emotion your ex is communicating at any particular moment. This is one other reason why maintaining contact with your ex is crucial. It’s hard to know if your ex is happy, feeling sad or stressed out if you haven’t been in contact for weeks.
3) Make sure you do not force emotional momentum to happen
It’s so easy to get caught up in trying to create emotional momentum that you end up undermining what you’re trying to achieve. “Trying too hard” will show as forced, unauthentic and manipulative.
- Stay present (one conversation at a time).
- Show that you’re genuinely interested in what your ex is interested in
- Ask relevant questions that show interest/genuine need to know or understand
- Make suggestions, provide additional insight, challenge etc,
- Pay attention to how your ex is feeling and connect with that feeling or emotion
Do this over an extended period of time, and you will begin to build enough emotional momentum for your ex to want to initiate contact. They will start initiating contact because they feel emotional connection when they talk to you; and reach out to experience that connection again.
You can create emotional momentum just by text, email and phone calls alone — without meeting in person. In some cases it may even be best to hold off meeting in-person until there is enough emotional momentum to make the in-person meeting or date more likely.
If you are struggling with building momentum, I am happy to work with you one-on-one to develop a strategy/plan of action that’ll move things forward.
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Emotional Momentum – How to Get And Keep Your Ex’s Attention
Yangki, I have been reading your articles for around a month now and finally bought your book a few days ago as i wanted more guidance. My ex and I talk on a regular basis and he responds to my texts immediately. However, I noticed that he responds pretty quickly to questions related to his work, family and dog. But when I ask him anything personal like what he is doing over the weekend he stops answering my texts or says something like “not much” or “going out”. Is there a reason for this? And how do I get him to open up more?
It takes time for an ex to let you in on their personal life especially if you have been cut off from each other’s life for a prolonged period of time.
As long as he’d responding and engaged, keep building emotional momentum and responding to his emotional bids for connection. He’ll open up as emotional safety is created. All that is in the book.
We were together for 8 months and he broke it off because he didn’t feel he was in love with me. After 3 weeks of no contact, I reached out to him. I used your advice and we’ve been on 5 dates. I initiated 2 and he initiated 3. We both have busy schedules but we try to keep in touch every day. My question is, should I now step back and let him pursue me? I don’t want to push him away but I also want him to feel he’s in love with me.
With the information you’ve given, I don’t think that he’ll “pursue” you if you pull back, now.
I think that you should do more to address why he didn’t feel he was in love with you. If you don’t, you’ll get to a certain point (like before) and he’ll again break it off because he’s not feeling “it”.
Why he’s not feeling “it” may have to do with you trying to “manage” the relationship a little too much (like you are doing now), instead of letting things happen more naturally. Just a wild guess…
Hi Yangki, I have been following your ebook and also had 1 hr session with you. Your advice has been very helpful. She has initiated 2 conversations in the last month. Should I now step back and let her initiate more?
It’ll set you back. Two conversations doesn’t seem like balance has been restored, I am sure you have initiated a lot more. See if you can get to a ratio of one for one or even one for two, before you change anything.