How To Best Go About LC (Limited Contact) ?

[eastonweston]

PREFACE

 

I know all of the members here are super helpful and advise NC for yourself, to heal, to mend your heart, to stable your emotions, to work on yourself, to move on. For this particular question, please keep the following in mind:

 

• I've been in counseling for 3 months, I am fine emotionally, and have made great strides in my issues.
  
• The ex has stated EXACTLY what the problem was and why she broke up with me (reasons I'm in counseling).
  
• I am done healing, I now want to reconcile and understand the steps to do so.
  
• I am completely fine with LC, I am wiling to take any and all risks of being hurt again, etc.
  
• Each time I reach out to the ex (maybe once per week), she is audibly (by phone) happy to hear from me, and we have great conversations.
  
• She has specifically said to my face "I don't need or want space, I just want us to be friends, for now."
  
• She told me at BU, "it has to be a while before I can even reconsider this...6-8 months probably."
  
• Our relationship was 5 years, breakup was 3 months ago, we were discussing marriage beforehand, we're 29 and 28 y/o.
  

 

QUESTION

 

Is it normal in a breakup, in which the dumper has dumped the dumpee for specific offensives -- such as jealousy, control, anger, a lack of "living my life fully outside of the relationship", and general neglecting her [not chasing her, woo'ing her, etc.] -- will the dumpee need to keep lightly pushing for reconciliation?

 

Meaning, and I saw a great thread between Mayday11 and Kiama (who both believe it's a dumpee's job to make amends), when I reach out to her, we have a great convo, talk about life, my updates, no relationship talk, funny and witty, etc., it lasts for about 40 minutes, you can tell she is happy on the call -- BUT, she never initiates the contact.

 

On the one hand, you could say: she's glad to hear from you, to know you still pine for her, but she's not really that interested in you. On the other hand, you could say: she dumped you but because you hurt her repeatedly, she's told you that you never chased her, and now she needs you to prove your love and your sincerity by continuing to lightly push and show changes.

 

What are some opinions on this?

 

QUESTION No. 2

 

Given the above question and assuming the dumper needs the dumpee to prove his sincerity and ability to 'chase', when in limited contact, and assuming the calls/texts/in-persons go well, how often should one be contacting their ex? What's the balance between not being smothering, needy, desperate, but at the same time making sure things continue to progress and don't stale.

 

She is a shy & reserved girl, and would be scared to reach out to me, not knowing how I will react. In other words, she's the type who would rather avoid reaching out even if she misses me out of fear of rejection or bad reaction. She knows she hurt me, and thus would probably not want to reach out in fear of hurting me more. She's made comments to the effect: "I wanted to see you on your birthday, but was scared to ask you because I'm sure you were having fun and I didn't want to possibly make you sad by reaching out."

 

What are some opinions on this?

[Loveandlost]

it is different for every situation but in general you are broken up. 3 months is enough time for the rose colored love glasses to come off.

 

If you are ok with just being friends then contact her. NC as a game to get her back will not work though.

 

Contact her, meet for coffee have a friendly talk. If she turns down getting back together then you may just have to be friends. You say you are healed and ready to contact... that means that you are ready to accept if she has interests in other men, or may even have dated a few.

[eastonweston]

To maybe be more clear: we are already in communication, and when ever I reach out to her, she gladly talks to me. However, SHE NEVER INITIATES. So the question is: do I keep initiating, and if so, how often? Is it normal for a dumper to sometimes make the dumpee work at winning them back, and not wanting to seem eager to give another chance?

 

E.

[Monkey ai]

From my own past experience as woman and dumper, I do like man take initial contact as friends in the beginning post BU, but no pressure please.

 

for you I do suggest with LC, if she show any resistance with conversation, then you know you need back off a little, many years ago, I broke up with one of my ex, he keep friends with me for more than one year, I went on dating, at one year mark, I start miss my ex(closeness and trust friendship), and bored with my new relationship, so ex invite me for a trip, and expressed the feeling to me, I was questioning him, but I realized I do love him, so we tried again... but due to distance(2 counties), we have end the relationship, now we are best friends, and I know this relationship will be forever and I don't regretted that relationship is not work out, he is married, I am friends with him and his wife... follow your heart, and if she really don't want be with you, accept and move on...

[Roxie84]

In answer to your first question, I feel that by pushing for reconciliation, she may feel guilted into it. I would continue the conversations right now as they are - light, funny, catching up. She's happy to hear from you, and therefore I see great potential here. Don't be scared of losing her, just focus on the prize - regaining her faith in you. Once you have demonstrated to her for a significant amount of time that things will be different (better), then I am sure you will both know when the time is right to talk about getting back together.

 

Don't worry your head that she has not initiated contact. Personally, I would probably do the same. She is looking for you to chase her, and this won't be accomplished if she starts the conversations too.

 

In answer to your second question, it's really hard to put a time limit on it. If you start calling her twice a week and she is still as excited to talk to you, keep that up. If she starts to sound indifferent or annoyed, tone it down a bit. Just play it out and remain confident in yourself at all times

[Centi]

Easton - I've yet to go in for counselling (it's still only been a week since my final incident) and I'm not one to open up very much and talk to people (it was hard to put that first post up on this forum) I was wondering what your initial experience was like when you first went?

 

Sorry to thread jack - should have PM'd

[eastonweston]

Thanks so much, Roxie84.

 

There's definitely hope in my situation, mainly because she is so open to talking. If I call, she will answer. She never ignores me. My conflict is in her saying about a month and a half ago that our relationship was exhausting, it stressed her out, it crushed her spirit, she needs to refuel, she lost herself, she drained every part of her life to make me happy, and she's lost the attraction romantically for me (although she still finds me physically attractive). She said there were many good times, but the bad times were bad. She then says "make changes for yourself, not for me. Stick with it. See it through."

 

So I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle communicating with her over the next three or four months, knowing that she'll stick to her 6-8 month separation plan. Even then she says she has no idea how she'll feel, but she won't really evaluate until then...

 

E.

[Cope and Hope]

I won't give too long of an answer since we've been through most of this already but, here we go.

 

I can't say exactly what she is thinking but, I can tell that by her NEVER reaching out it should send you one clear signal; she is still not WANTING to get back together and is NOT establishing grounds for reconciliation at this point. As I've mentioned before, your main job is to try to bring the attraction back and that doesn't happen by setting a schedule to talk every 2 weeks. By doing so you are creating a routine. Bringing about new passion usually comes from spontaneity, not routine.

 

As we've talked about before, LC is fine if you think you can handle it and think you would be okay if you guys don't get back together and she starts to date others in the end but in going LC I think you really need to make it LIMITED contact. By agreeing to talk to eachother so often on said day you're not really LIMITING contact, you're LESSENING contact and there is a distinct difference. Limiting contact means to actually limit when and why it occurs such as I'll talk to her if she wants to talk or if there is an emergency or if there's an important event going on that means something to her. Lessening contact means instead of talking every day we talk every other day, or instead of every week we speak every month. In short, it's the difference in lessening the time talking versus limiting the situations in which contact may occur.

 

And not to harp on you E., you know I'm just looking out for you, but I still feel like you are grasping at a lot of straws here until you get answers that support the answers you WANT to hear. I had thought we were in agreement that no matter what she says, the moment she told you she didn't want to be together anymore because there was no more attraction to you then the rest was all fluff. It really is the main thing other than yourself that you need to be working on and I've never seen attraction build from regular, routine, non-intimate contact over an extended period of time. It's usually the opposite where attraction fades over time, much like in relationships. It's a simple matter of not wanting something that's readily on hand as something new and shiny.

 

One last thing, as I mentioned earlier it seems like you're asking variations of the same questions to hear answers more suited to your liking which, and this is just from my perspective, shows a bit of your controlling demeanor peaking its head through. Try to take the advice given to you from everyone, put it into what you feel works best, do what work you need to do, and let things happen naturally.

 

Either way, best of luck E.

[eastonweston]

Hey Cope and Hope,

 

Thanks for your post. I don't believe I mentioned regularly-scheduled contact. I only said that when I do reach out to her, which is ABOUT once per week, she seems receptive and generally happy. There is nothing scheduled happening between the two of us at the moment. I do believe in a previous post I mentioned that she had thrown out the idea of meeting every two weeks to 'catch up' and talk about my progresses. That's probably what your'e referring to. Ok. Well that didn't actually stick; we only did that once.

 

Maybe you're right, I'm grasping at straws. But this is a new thread because if I've decided to go the LC route, my question now becomes: is it okay that she doesn't initiate the contact, given our situation and her reasons for breaking it off. Most people on these forums suggest "let the dumper make the first move" which I highly disagree with, mainly due to Mayday11's arguments.

 

I have personal friends, and even Roxie and AutumnBorn mentioned this, where the dumper was actually hoping that the dumpee would begin a chase. So to make a blanket statement that it's not a good sign if the dumper isn't reaching out, is the debate I'm driving at. I've seen other advice off of eNA that says "don't worry if you are doing all of the initiating at first; that's usually normal and a way to get back in good graces with the ex."

 

So again, the question is: once I've decided I'm going to contact my ex every once in a while with friendly banter, how often should that be, and is it okay that she doesn't initiate the contact? If most people seem to think: "yeah man, the fact that she isn't reaching out to you first means she isn't interested", then okay, I will concede. But if there are female dumpers who have been in that situation before who say "I wouldn't have reached out to the dumpee either, he'd have to earn his way back and prove his changes," then I need to know that as well.

 

E.

[Cope and Hope]

I understand what you're asking E and like we had discussed before LC is fine if you think you can handle it but it should really be LC which is the argument I had provided earlier. Initiating contact every so often if it is welcome is fine IMO but "reaching out every so often for a friendly banter" doesn't sound like Limited Contact, it sounds like Less Contact. Real LC would be more of contacting her when she finishes some sort of achievement, or on her birthday, or if she's ill, or if her pet passes away; it usually means talking about something important, something meaningful, something not so frequent. If you guys are to "catch-up" every week or two then it's not really catching up because not much can usually happen in that time span that neither of you know of that's going on for the other. Plus, when you guys do meet up for coffee or to just hang out, it leaves you with that much less to catch up on.

 

I'm not saying you shouldn't contact her from time to time or talk to her because that always eventually needs to happen prior to reconciling. I'm saying you need to make your few limited contacts matter. It should be about the effectiveness of the communication, not the frequency.

 

And remember, when you are done working on yourself you want her to see the new you. If she is constantly seeing the "new you" then you are no longer the new you. You are the you who is different than the old you, but with no new novelty nonetheless. But, like I said, this is all my opinion.

 

I'll probably open my inbox to a flaming troll in a brown paper bag in the morning.