[ Introduction ]

Welcome to the Heal Your Heartbreak podcast with your host, Breakup Bestie, aka me, Kendra. Breakups are hard, but you don’t have to do it alone. Each week, I will be taking you through a different topic as it relates to breaking up, healing from heartbreak, growing in your single life, dating, and getting back into happier and healthier relationships.

The goal of this show is to provide support, hope, tips, and to remind you that above all, this too shall pass.

[0:00:39.09] Welcome back to another episode of the Heal Your Heartbreak podcast. Today we are talking about specific topic around the no contact rule and the theme of today’s episode is what happens when you break no contact. So, to catch everyone up, if you aren’t familiar with my version of the no contact rule, my version of the no contact rule is you do not have contact with your ex unless it is absolutely necessary, meaning you two work together, you share children, and those are really the only Reasons that you would need to have contact with your ex.

The no contact rule is not meant as a way to get your ex back. That is unfortunately something that has morphed on the internet from these I won’t use a strong word, but these online coaches that say they can tell you how to get your ex back, a lot of them will point to the no contact rule as a tactic to have your ex miss you and then want to reach out to you.

[0:01:46.06] The no contact rule in the breakup bestie world is Strictly used to help you move on and to help you take care of yourself, reduce your anxiety, allow you to move on faster, take better care of yourself, raise your self esteem, raise your self worth, practice boundaries. Those are the reasons we do no contact.

It has nothing to do with anything about your ex. So, I have so many, uh, Specific episodes and resources on the no contact rule if you go back to episode two of this podcast Which is still the most listened to episode you can get my full background on the no contact rule I also have a couple other episodes pertaining to different aspects of it.

I have my 30 day no contact challenge I have the detox your ex course so there are tons of resources if you are interested in starting the no contact rule or you want to know why you should do it. So today’s episode is really for those who maybe haven’t started the no contact rule but have this like fear of what happens if you break it.

[0:04:46.06]If you are someone who is doing no contact and maybe you want to be prepared as to what would happen if it came down to breaking the no contact rule, or if you’re someone who did break the no contact rule and you’re not quite sure how to proceed from here. So, really, that could potentially be anyone.

So, the first thing that I want to say is there are certain things. that do not constitute breaking the no contact rule and I want to go over those pretty quickly here. The first is, if your ex reaches out to you, that doesn’t mean that you did anything or that you broke the no contact rule. Obviously, you have zero control over what your ex says or does.

So, if they reach out to you, that does not mean that you broke the no contact rule. I think how you reply to it, Could be that so if that leads to like some long drawn out conversation I would probably constitute that as breaking the no contact rule However, if you say like if you reinstate your boundary and say let you know that I don’t want to have contact with you So if you could please respect that boundary, that would be great.

That would not be constituting the like reinforcing your boundary That has nothing to do with breaking the no contact rule. If you have to sort through what I’ll call like a loose end, that includes if you share, like for example, if you and your ex have your names on a car and you guys have to sort that out, if you own a home together and you’re going through selling that, if you’re going through a divorce and there’s any kind of, you know, Logistics to deal with divorce proceedings.

I would really constitute that as necessary contact So again, that is also not breaking the no contact rule what i’m talking about is If you are let’s say you’re at home at night, you’re feeling lonely You’re really missing your ex and you decide to pick up the phone and call them you send a text to them You know you write out this long text of everything you’re feeling after the breakup.

[0:07:34.06] You’re feeling really angry You’re asking them why they didn’t give you closure Those kinds of things are are going to be breaking no contact. So that’s what we’re going to be focusing on today. The first thing that I want to say in regards to this is Just because you go out of contact does not mean that you lose the temptation to contact your ex.

It is very, very common to want to say things to your ex, even months down the road. So it’s not like that just takes that away. That would be great if I could, you know, tell you a way to say it. stop wanting to reach out to your ex. You’re not judged here by your thoughts or your feelings. We’re talking about our actions here.

So if you still want to reach out to your ex, like that’s completely fine. But if you do happen to Actually send the text or actually like press the call button Like the biggest message of this is don’t panic. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s not the end of the world It’s not life or death It’s just it you had a moment and you decided to act on impulse and that’s okay It’s completely okay.

It’s totally normal. It’s very common. I would Venture to guess that a lot of people have have broken the no contact rules. So don’t panic that’s first and foremost Do not panic if you’re like tracking your days of no contact. It’s okay Like it’s fine start over at at zero days. It’s again. Not the end of the world.

[0:10:16.01] You’re not you know being Judged by the world for this. This is just a personal thing. This is your healing journey It’s not anyone else’s healing journey. So Again, it’s like, it’s completely fine, it’s just, again, if you’re tracking it, it’s just days on a counter, you’re just. Start again. I think the biggest theme that I, I try to tell people is use this as a learning experience if you immediately, like, panic about it and start beating yourself up about it, you’re going to miss the opportunity that there is here.

I think it’s a huge opportunity if you do break no contact, and I say this with a lot of hesitancy because I don’t want to give anyone the green light to just go break no contact. However, I have seen a lot of people who have broken no contact, and it’s almost been necessary for them for one reason or another because they were either able to finally see.

how badly it makes them feel to be in contact with their ex. Maybe it allowed them to see their ex for who they really were. It gave them, like, some true objectivity about their dynamics. So, I think there’s always an opportunity to learn something if no contact is broken, but you are going to lose that.

that opportunity if you go into like panic, self hatred, shame, guilt, all of those things. So, let’s walk through the process here. Let’s say it’s, I’m gonna make up a scenario, it’s Saturday night, you are at home by yourself. You start thinking about how much you miss your ex, you start reminiscing on all the great conversations that you guys had, you’re down memory lane, all of a sudden you get this like really strong urge to to tell them all this stuff.

And tonight, maybe, I don’t know, maybe you had a glass of wine, your inhibitions are a little bit down. Anyways, you send the text and you say, Hey, I really miss you. Like, remember that trip we took to Nevada a couple years ago? I was thinking about that. And like, I really miss you in our memories. So you send it and you know, let’s say you get a message back, but they just say like, yeah, that was a fun trip.

That’s it. Like no emotion, nothing heartfelt, just like a quick casual reply. So you’re first gonna have your emotions around The interaction so most of the time and this is like a big reason I’m a fan of no contact most of the time your exes Reply is not gonna live up to your expectation of what you had in your mind meaning.

They’re gonna be really short They’re not gonna match your level of emotion towards it. They’re not gonna reply in the way that you’ve been fantasizing about so first of all You’re gonna have to deal with those feelings of feeling really sad or angry or just let down or maybe embarrassed you that you put yourself out there and it wasn’t received.

So first you’re going to deal with that. The next thing that I always really recommend is to write. I think the best, our mind are hugely forgetful. It’s like pretty likely that in a couple months you might get this idea again that you should reach out to your ex. You forget how badly it felt the last time.

So the first thing that I will always say is write down how you feel after you broke no contact. Like how does it feel? I’ll be really. Specific I feel completely let down and you know what there’s always the chance that you do send that text that you miss them And then they say they miss you too and you guys maybe Get on the phone and you talk for a couple hours and it feels like nothing’s changed And but then you have to get off the phone and you have to realize once again that you guys are broken up and it’s kind Of all these feelings come rushing back.

So that’s another thing that can happen after breaking. No contact So maybe you’re dealing with having to go through the breakup all over again in you know That like post processing state of breaking no contact But again get out a piece of paper get out a pen and write write exactly how you feel And I want you to save that piece of writing whether you take a picture of it and keep it in your phone Or maybe you just like type up the bullet points of how it made you feel and keep that in your phone But you want to have it handy for any time in the future when you get kind of that like idea like Okay, I should do this again.

The second thing is, you really need to remember that you’re just a human being. Of course you’re a human being and you miss your ex. You talk to your ex every single day throughout the day for a, you know, extended period of time when you guys were in a relationship. So it’s very much human nature that you did end up reaching out to them.

You’re not pathetic. You’re not dumb. You’re not stupid. All of the names that you might be calling yourself, you are none of those things. And this will probably take a lot of reinforcement to remind yourself like it is okay. It’s completely okay. Sure, it didn’t feel great and sure it didn’t have the best outcome, but by you doing that, it’s, you’re not like some bad person.

What I have found is, When you feel shame around doing this, you actually are way more likely to do that again. You’re way more likely to reach out again because I think one of the biggest goals of no contact is that you begin learning that you can feel good without that person. And so what happens is when you break no contact and then you just keep telling yourself that like you’re a bad person, you’re pathetic, you’re not proving to yourself that you can be happy.

And you can feel good without that person, so you’re missing one of like, the big goals of no contact, and so you’re much more likely to contact them again because you, you feel like you need them to feel good. And I know that’s like, kind of a roundabout way to explain that, but I promise, if you’re feeling shame and guilt around reaching out, you would think that you could like, beat yourself up.

Like to the point where you would never want to reach out again, but that is just not how it works. You’re far more likely not to reach out when you can really like validate your feelings around it. You can reflect on why you did it, how it felt afterward, and then you can calmly and objectively put plans into place on how you will move forward.

So after you’ve written down How it made you feel and you’ve saved that piece of writing and then you’ve Done whatever you had to do to practice self compassion around it. This will be a time where I will actually suggest that I do want you to tell your friends if you did contact them, but I want you to be either picky and choosy around who you tell.

I don’t think picky and choosy is a word. I want you to be picky around which of your friends you tell, and if when you do tell your friends, I want you to kind of front load it. with let’s say I’m telling my friend and I say, Hey, Alexis, I need to tell you, like, this is something I’m feeling really bad about.

I’m feeling a lot of shame around it. But I did reach out to Joe and it didn’t go well. And I’m feeling just devastated around it. So like, you don’t want a friend to tell you like, I can’t believe you did that. That was so dumb. So you want to be like, I’m already feeling really bad about this, but I just need to tell you that I did it because I don’t want to hold secrets and I don’t want to feel shame around it.

I think if you say it that way, your friend will just be like, It’s okay, you’re a human, it happens, but you can frame it and guide the people that you tell in a way so they’re not making you feel worse about something that you already feel bad about. So, that is something that I would highly suggest. And I also, kind of part of this, like, reflection period and learning period, learning opportunity, I should say, is you also do want to take a look at, like, how you were feeling before.

I want you to think back to how you were feeling before you reached out, because what you’ll notice is, There might be like a pattern of what you’re doing or what you’re thinking about before you were to reach out honestly, sometimes people do it because They’re bored and they start thinking about like how fulfilling their life felt with their ex sometimes people do it After like listening to certain music Sometimes people do it after like looking through photos in their phone or looking on social media And that’s something that I think people always ask me is like, does no contact include looking at their social media?

And I would honestly say no, because I wouldn’t count that as reaching out to them. What I would say is if you’re continuously looking at your ex’s social media, I would venture to guess that you are gonna be far more likely to end up breaking no contact because it’s the same thing as like someone who’s trying to quit drinking.

Like, I’m not gonna leave a bottle of vodka in front of me every day. Because it’s pretty likely I’m going to end up drinking it. So if I’m looking at pictures of my ex every day, I’m probably a lot more likely to reach out to them. So maybe you’ve been looking at their social media a lot, and that’s what led you to reach out.

So it is good to do some digging and be like, okay, what were the things that led me to? reach out because then if the next time you’re feeling that way or you find yourself in that position or maybe you can do certain things like Limit the social media you’re looking at or maybe just like block them on social media altogether You can like prevent it from happening again.

[0:14:23.23] And then the last thing I would do in this like writing thing I have like Worksheets on this in the detox your ex course, but I would also You Like, have you write down kind of a plan of action the next time that you feel tempted to do that, whether that’s I’m going to call a friend and tell them what I want to say to my ex, or I’m going to write down what I want to say to my ex, and I’m going to make myself wait at least 24 hours next time before I actually send it.

So, just have some things in place as to what, you want to be prepared, essentially. Because if you know what your trigger is and you have something to do instead, you’re gonna be far less likely to, to do that again. So again, to recap the things that I want you to write about. I want you to write about how you feel.

I want you to tell safe friends that you did it because if you keep it a secret, it’s going to create a lot more shame around it and that’s not what you want. You are going to write about how you were feeling prior to reaching out and then you’re going to write what your plan is for the next time you’re in that state of mind because it’s likely that you are gonna feel like you are gonna go through times of missing them.

Again, like I said, it’s very common to want to reach out to your ex for a ways down the road, so you want to really have like a plan in place and some outlets, whether that be a journal or a note in your phone or just a friend that you can talk to about it, that you can turn to when those temptations come up.

The other thing that I know that What can happen is you break no contact and then you kind of form this new habit of talking to your ex, so what if you get to that place of, you know, maybe you guys did agree to meet up or you guys have, you know, started talking more regularly and you’re realizing you don’t want to do that, you can always reset those boundaries.

So let’s say, um, You did reach out to your ex. You said, I miss you. And they said, do you want to come over? And you say yes. And then all of a sudden you’re realizing like, oh my gosh, I can’t do this. It’s like way too hard and is going to really disrupt my healing. You can say, hey, I know we talked the other night.

I’m realizing I can’t see you, I’m, I’m still dealing with the breakup, so I won’t be able to come over, but you know, I wish you the best and I’m going to go back to no contact. You can 100 percent say that just because you start a conversation or you start an interaction, you have no obligation to continue it.

[0:15:o6.15] I think a lot of the times we, we believe we owe it to another person or we don’t want to come off as like, not being able to handle it or that we’re being immature. I have a whole other episode coming out about what I think about, like, how society thinks a mature breakup should go down, but the most mature thing that you can always do is to take care of yourself and put yourself first and take care of your feelings.

So, so yeah, that is how I would handle breaking no contact. Again be so nice to yourself in the grand scheme of things if like when you look back at this It is not going to be a big deal You see this as a learning experience more than anything. It’s a huge opportunity to like refine how you’re healing from the breakup and refine what you’re doing to Get out those thoughts and feelings that you have about your ex This is a great opportunity to learn how to take better care of yourself.

So again, it’s like you’re not like Hey shunned from anything because you break no contact. To me it like, it far more matters how you work through it afterward than ever breaking it in the first place. So, sending you guys a lot of love and just, you know, remember That you can always change how you’re healing.

[0:19:55.06] I think it’s not like, oh, okay, I’m gonna start No Contact and once I break it, like, screw it, it’s all over, I’m not gonna, like, I’m done kind of a thing. As my grandpa would always say, you gotta get back up on the horse and try it again. And, yeah, there are, again, lots of resources on No Contact on my website if you guys need a little extra help.

And I will see you back here next week.