# Will letting go of my ex ruin my chances?

> By Benny Lichtenwalner, breakup coach and author of "How to Get Your Ex Back".
> Canonical: https://bennylichtenwalner.com/answers/will-letting-go-of-my-ex-ruin-my-chances/

**Short answer:** Letting go won't ruin your chances. It's the only thing that gives you any. What moves your ex is the shift in your energy, not your continued attachment. Benny Lichtenwalner, breakup coach and author of *How to Get Your Ex Back*, is direct: you want the emotional charge to fade. Staying attached is what keeps them away.

# Will Letting Go of My Ex Ruin My Chances?

The fear is understandable: if you stop holding the feeling, you stop trying, and stopping feels like losing. But Benny Lichtenwalner, breakup coach and author of *How to Get Your Ex Back*, has seen this pattern across hundreds of coaching sessions and the conclusion is consistent: staying emotionally attached doesn't preserve your chances. It actively reduces them. The letting go *is* the strategy.

## Why does continued attachment work against you?

Your ex isn't watching how hard you're holding on. They left. What they'll eventually notice, if anything changes, is a shift in your energy. That shift can only happen when you stop maintaining the emotional charge.

Every private act of attachment (re-reading texts, rehearsing conversations, writing letters you'll never send, replaying memories to "keep the love alive") keeps your emotional state fixed at the point of loss. It prevents you from reaching the regulated, low-resistance state that actually creates attractive energy. And for an avoidant ex in particular, your emotional heat confirms the exact reason they pulled back.

| Behavior | What it feels like internally | What it does to your chances |
|---|---|---|
| Re-reading old texts | Keeps the love alive | Keeps you stuck at peak loss |
| Writing unsent letters | Feels like processing | Is still effort, the opposite of moving on |
| Monitoring their social media | Feels like staying informed | Extends the attachment and the anxiety |
| Rehearsing what you'd say | Feels like preparation | Keeps you in the loop of the breakup |
| Letting the feeling fade | Feels like giving up | Creates the energetic shift that moves things |

## What does "letting go" actually mean?

It's simpler than it sounds. Benny Lichtenwalner puts it this way: moving on is not an action; it's the *absence* of actions. The goal is to stop doing the small things that feed the attachment.

1. **Let it fade deliberately.** You want the emotional charge to decrease, not stay alive. That's the goal of this period, not a side effect.
2. **Stop feeding the attachment.** Archive or delete old messages. Don't go back to re-read them. Don't write letters, even ones you intend to keep private. Every time you engage with the attachment, you renew it.
3. **Give space and start moving on regardless of where things stand.** Whether your ex has said something definitive or not, the instruction is the same. The circumstances don't change the direction.
4. **No manufactured moves at accidental encounters.** If you run into them in person (shared gym, mutual event, work overlap), don't convert the nervousness into action. Let it be neutral.
5. **Don't try to influence the outcome.** Whatever is going to happen will happen. Your job is to not be in the way of it by staying emotionally activated.

## What should I avoid while letting go?

- Don't re-read old texts to keep the feeling warm. You want it to fade; feeding it is the opposite of the strategy.
- Don't write letters, even unsent ones. As Benny Lichtenwalner has said directly to clients more than once: writing the letter is still putting effort in. Moving on means not even writing the letter.
- Don't mention personal milestones (sobriety, new job, growth) to your ex in casual contact. It feels like sharing; it lands as influence.
- Don't engineer a "last moment" at a final shared event, a goodbye gym session, or any natural ending point. No resistance means no action.
- Don't confuse a "last chance right in front of me" feeling with permission to act. The urgency is the attachment talking, not the strategy.

## What does this look like in practice?

Two client patterns, drawn from separate situations, show the same dynamic. In the first, a person mid-way through no contact became intensely focused on keeping the emotional connection alive: re-reading years of shared messages, noting the dates they were sent, trying to stay emotionally "in" the relationship while not contacting the ex. The attachment stayed at full intensity. When eventual contact came, the emotional desperation leaked through immediately. The ex pulled further back.

In the second pattern, someone made the decision to actively let the attachment fade: deleted the message threads, stepped away from social media monitoring, let themselves start processing the loss as a loss rather than a suspended moment. Several weeks in, when the ex reached out, the response was calm, warm, and low-pressure. The conversation reopened. The ex's message was that the other person seemed different. They were.

The difference wasn't strategy. It was the actual internal shift that comes from releasing the attachment.

## When doesn't this apply?

If your ex is actively reaching out with genuine effort, you're past this phase — engage. Letting go is the internal practice during the no-contact window, not a permanent state.

If you're finding that staying emotionally activated is significantly disrupting your daily life (sleep, work, basic functioning), that's worth addressing with a therapist who works with grief and attachment. The goal here is recovery, not suppression.