How do I know if my ex misses me without asking them?
Short answer: You can usually tell whether your ex misses you by auditing your own last two weeks, not by asking them. Reached out first, fought, confessed feelings, or given them grief about seeing other people? That resets the clock. Clean of that recently, and they loved you once? They're probably feeling it, in varying degrees, the same way curiosity does.
A temperature check, asking your ex where their head’s at, is Rule 1 of my Five Rules for a reason: it tells you nothing and costs you the mystery that drives them back. This clip is the alternative. Instead of asking, audit your own last two weeks.
Reaching out first, fighting, confessing feelings, running a serious talk about the relationship, or giving your ex grief about seeing other people: any of that in the last two weeks and they’re probably not missing you yet, not because they’re over you, but because you haven’t left room for it. Those behaviors are too heavy, too negative, or too frequent to let absence do its work.
Clean of that recently, and the answer to the basic questions is yes, they loved you, you’re still human, you still love them, then they’re probably feeling it, just in varying degrees, the same way curiosity about a wrecked car on the highway ranges from a glance to genuinely wanting to know what happened.
The mistakes that do real damage take real effort to rack up: chasing an ex hard enough, often enough, over months, not weeks. Most people haven’t done that. They’ve just been in the habit of filling the silence, which quietly resets the clock on their ex ever feeling the absence at all. I’m Benny Lichtenwalner, breakup coach and author of How to Get Your Ex Back. Leave the silence alone and let it build.
Full transcript
Here's a few ways you can assess whether or not your ex misses you right now. Ask yourself: have I recently reached out to my ex first? Fought with them? Told them how I feel about them? Had a serious talk with them about the problems and the solutions, all that kind of thing? Or have I given them grief for seeing other people, or anything like that? Long story short: have I given them any negative, overwhelming, or burdensome vibes, and have I made any bids for their attention lately? If the answer to any of these is yes, within the last two weeks, the answer is probably no, your ex probably isn't missing you right now, if any of that stuff has happened in the last few weeks. Now, you can also make these same mistakes badly enough that they'll mostly put you out of their mind for anywhere up to three, even as long as six, months. For them to not want to think about you at all, you would have had to chase them into oblivion. You'd have had to do a lot to get to the point where they're not even thinking about you at all. Some attachment styles do try to avoid their feelings and will try not to think about you to some extent, but outside of that, to basically write yourself off as an option in their mind altogether, you're going to have to mess up pretty badly. Outside of those circumstances, when you're making those mistakes, when you're texting them first, you're not giving your ex a chance to miss you, because it's too heavy, too negative, too low-frequency, or you're not leaving them alone enough to give them a chance to miss you. So if you've done these things recently, yeah, they're not going to miss you right now. Aside from that: are you human? Did your ex get in a relationship with you at one point? Did they love you? Do you still love them? If the answer to those questions is yes, and as long as you haven't messed up in the last few weeks, yeah, they're probably feeling it. And there are varying degrees of how much they're feeling it. Think of it like driving by a wrecked, burning car on the road. You look over, but what you think is "glad that's not me." Then there's the other kind of curiosity, the "where are they, who are they with" kind. There are varying levels of your ex missing you, just like there are varying levels of curiosity your ex would have about you. So the longer you go without talking to your ex, the more they're going to miss you, the more you avoid those mistakes we talked about. The more you make the mistakes, the more you reach out to them, the less they're going to miss you, and consequently the less chance you have of getting them back.
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