# What percentage of exes get back together?

> By Benny Lichtenwalner, breakup coach and author of "How to Get Your Ex Back".
> Canonical: https://bennylichtenwalner.com/answers/what-percentage-of-exes-get-back-together/

**Short answer:** No study gives an honest percentage for your relationship, and any coach who quotes one is guessing. Research on on-again, off-again couples points to real predictors: lingering attachment, an ambivalent breakup, and who initiated it. In my coaching experience, most reconciliations happen within three to six months and track what you do after the breakup, not the breakup itself.

There's no clean percentage for "how many exes get back together," and I'd be lying if I gave you one. Anyone who quotes a specific number, 40%, 70%, whatever sounds authoritative, is guessing, and usually selling something on the other side of that guess. I'm Benny Lichtenwalner, breakup coach and author of *How to Get Your Ex Back*, and I'd rather tell you what actually predicts a return than hand you a fake statistic.

## Why isn't there a real percentage?

No study has ever tracked a large, representative sample of breakups from the split through to reconciliation with an honest denominator. Every "success rate" floating around online either comes from a coach's own client pool (self-selected, small, and never published with methodology) or gets invented outright. On this site, the rule is n≥20 per reported number with the full method shown. A single percentage for "exes getting back together" fails that test before it's even written down.

## What does the on-again, off-again research show? The psychology of who comes back

The closest real research comes from communication scholars who've studied couples who break up and get back together more than once ("on-again, off-again" relationships). A few findings hold up across that body of work:

| Finding | What it means |
|---|---|
| Lingering feelings after the breakup are the strongest driver of reconciliation | The relationship wasn't emotionally over for at least one person |
| Uncertainty about what the breakup meant predicts getting back together | Ambiguous endings ("was that really it?") stay open longer than clean ones |
| Not dating anyone else during the split predicts renewal | A rebound on either side changes the odds |
| Attachment anxiety predicts rekindling | Anxious partners are more likely to reconcile, whether or not it's the healthiest move |
| Relationship quality tends to drop with each cycle | Reconciled relationships are, on average, lower quality than the original, and more likely to end again |

That last row matters as much as the first. The psychology behind cycling back isn't always "this relationship deserves saving." Sometimes it's attachment anxiety and an unresolved ending doing the pulling, which is exactly why step one is figuring out which situation you're in.

## What predicts it in the cases I actually coach?

Set the published research next to what I see across more than a thousand real cases, and the picture sharpens. Outcomes track what happens after the breakup far more than the breakup itself. A few patterns repeat:

1. **Who ended it, and why.** A breakup from a fixable pattern, poor communication, life stress, one bad stretch, behaves differently than one from a fundamental mismatch or repeated betrayal.
2. **Whether either of you chased.** Constant texting and pleading in the first weeks correlates with worse outcomes, not better ones.
3. **How long you were together.** Longer relationships carry more shared history to rebuild on, but also more entrenched patterns to actually fix.
4. **Whether your ex has replaced you.** A serious new relationship on their side changes the math; a rebound that's already cracking doesn't rule anything out.

When I see a return happen, it clusters early: three to six months out, once a real no-contact period has run and one plain re-entry message goes out. [The full process is in the getting-an-ex-back guide](/answers/how-to-get-an-ex-back/).

## Is it possible to get back together with an ex after 5 years?

Yes, but it isn't the same story as a three-month reconciliation. The cases I've seen at that distance involve two people who each rebuilt a real life separately, often without any contact for most of that time, and reconnected almost as new people who happen to already trust each other. It's not the old relationship thawing out. It's two changed people choosing each other again, which is a different, harder thing than getting back together right after a breakup.

## Where the odds actually come from

Nobody, including me, can hand you a number for your specific relationship. What I can tell you is which direction the predictors point: real compatibility, a fixable cause, no rebound competing for attention, and real change on both sides push toward reconciliation. A relationship that was already over before the breakup, or one built on contempt, almost never comes back regardless of what either of you does next. [What 1,894 real breakup questions reveal](/reports/what-breakup-questions-reveal/) shows where people actually get stuck while they wait to find out which category they're in.