Today, we’re going to be talking about sparks.

Specifically, when an ex says that they don’t feel a spark with you anymore, do they mean it?

And we’re going to be hearing from a woman named Andrea, who obviously had an ex who just said this to her.

But what was interesting is the more I looked at her situation and tried to come up with a plan on what she should do next, the more I realized that she’s not really wondering if he means it.

She’s wondering a multitude of different questions. So obviously, she wants to learn about if he means it when he says he doesn’t feel a spark anymore.

But I think she also wants to understand a little bit about his frame of mind, and then of course, what to do afterwards. But the other interesting thing that I’m going to include in this podcast is if this idea of a spark is overrated.

So let’s take a minute and hear from Andrea.

The Listener Question About An Ex Not Feeling The Spark Anymore

Hi, Chris. My name is Andrea.

I’m 33. My boyfriend, Jason, who’s 35 just broke up with me two days ago. We’d been dating five and a half months.

He basically completely changed his tune. He had always said he saw things long-term with me, to never worry about things. And we talked a lot about this. He was kind of a reserved person.

It was hard to get him to open up. He didn’t really like communicating, but we’ve been working on it a lot.

And he told me that he wanted to get better at it. He grew up in a family where they didn’t really do that. But he reassured me several times he saw me long-term. And the last time we talked about this was about a week ago.

Because he’s very bad with the phone, he wasn’t contacting me very much. And he’s the kind of guy… anyways, he was finishing school. He was remodeling his house.

And about a week later, he was still acting the same. And I knew he was busy and I tried to give him space, but I eventually said, “Why is this happening?” Get him very upset. “We had talked about this. You said that you were going to work on this, and I know I haven’t seen you in a week.

You haven’t answered my calls or my messages.” And he became a completely different person. I called him on the phone. I had never heard him this way in five and a half months, and he said that he didn’t think things were working anymore. He sounded very angry and frustrated. He said that he hasn’t felt a spark with me, and he’s felt like this for a long time.

And he doesn’t see a future with me, and he wanted to break up. And I really need to know what to do and I would love your advice, Chris.

A Quick Reminder To Take The Ex Recovery Chances Quiz

Hey there. Before we get started and help Andrea out, the first thing I wanted to do is let everyone who’s listening to this podcast episode, whether that be on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, or even YouTube, I want to let you know that the number one thing that you should be doing if you’re trying to figure out your breakup, or if you have a chance with your ex, or if you don’t want to get back with your ex, but you’re still curious to see if you have a chance with your ex is actually go to our website, exboyfriendrecovery.com, and take our ex recovery chances quiz.

What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?

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You just fill out a few questions, and then we use our advanced algorithm to take a look at your answers and then compare them to what we have seen and give you an idea of the approximate score you have of getting your ex back.

And we also give you a few extra tips and tricks on what you should be doing in your specific situation based on your specific answers.

What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?

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So if this sounds like something you’re interested in, it’s really easy to take the quiz. If you’re on the podcast, all you have to do is just go to our website on the internet, exboyfriendrecovery.com.

And if you’re listening to this on YouTube, all you have to do is simply look in the description link of the YouTube video, and it’s the first link that you see there. All right, let’s get back and help Andrea.

A Recap Of Andrea’s Situation

Okay, so when I typically take listener questions, the first thing I always like to do is do a quick recap of their situation. So obviously, I’m going to do that here.

• The woman who called in asking for our help is named Andrea.
• Her boyfriend broke up with her literally two days ago.
• So this breakup is extremely fresh.
• Now, they dated for about five and a half months.
• And what’s interesting is she noticed… if you notice their ages, they’re early to mid 30s.
• So they are on that time where they are potentially looking at getting married, which I have some thoughts on that I’ll express a little bit later.
• But what’s interesting is that he said he always saw things long-term with her and to never worry about things.
• But the thing is he’s extremely reserved and doesn’t really like opening up. He doesn’t respond to a lot of text messages.
• It’s hard sometimes to get him on the phone to open up. She says that’s because of his family and his upbringing.
• And over time, he agreed that he would work on this aspect of himself.
• But she grew upset because he just fell off the map and he wouldn’t answer calls and messages.
• And when she called him on it, he grew upset, got angry at her and said he doesn’t feel the spark any more.
• He doesn’t see a future with her anymore. And then promptly broke up with her. And now,
• Andrea is left trying to figure out what to do next.

Now, what’s interesting is that I always hear that statement from exes who break up with you.

It’s that, “I don’t feel the spark anymore. The chemistry isn’t there anymore.” And what’s interesting is a lot of women take exes at their word when they say this.

So that’s the first thing I’d like to cover today.

Does He Mean It When He Says He Doesn’t Feel The Spark Anymore?

And my answer may shock a few people.

Most people were probably expecting me to say, “Well, no, he doesn’t mean it.”

But I’ve found the opposite is actually true.

In the moment when they say that they don’t feel the spark anymore, they don’t see the future anymore, they definitely do mean it.

But here’s the interesting thing. Minds are prone to change.

One of my favorite success stories ever was a woman by the name of Sarah Michelle. And I think she’s doing pretty great now.

But her situation is, I believed her fiance broke up with her. And it was a similar situation to you, Andrea, where things seem to be going well, but slowly but surely he drifted off and she was just trying to figure out what happened.

And he would make these statements to her after the breakup of, “We’re never going to get back together anymore. I had never loved you.”

All of those kind of stereotypical statements that you would hear from an ex. And he came back to her.

And I think when she asked him, he said, “Oh, yeah, well, I meant it then. But time is great at giving you perspective, I suppose.”

But what’s really fascinating is he actually broke up with her again. But she got him back one time. She knew our process, and so she did the same process to him again and he wanted her back a second time.

No, I think that’s an interesting success story to explain to you, Andrea, or anyone listening. It’s because when an ex says rude or mean or hurtful things, like I don’t see the spark anymore, there’s no future, I never loved you, maybe they mean that in the moment, but their minds are prone to change with time. So that answers our first question.

But the second question is, let’s try to understand his frame of mind.

Understanding His Frame Of Mind

And I think in order to understand this, why is he saying that he doesn’t feel the spark anymore? When someone says that in general, what is going through their mind?

And I think it’s important to remember here is how experience actually interacts with memory.

What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?

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So I’m a big proponent of this, and stop me if you’ve heard this before, but this psychological concept called the peak end rule.

So let’s say that you have two people, person A and person B, and both of them go into the same movie.

Now, person A goes into this movie and they immediately have a negative experience with it. But over time, that experience grows extremely good.

They’re having a really enjoyable experience, and that enjoyable aspect of the experience stays consistent throughout until the very end of the movie.

And then, of course, you have person B. Now person B, on the other hand, goes into the movie and has a negative experience. And then as the movie hits its midpoint, they have a positive experience.

And then as the movie hits the end point, their experience grows to be negative again. When you look at these two people, which one had the better experience? Well, the person A’s the obvious reason or the person A’s the obvious answer.

But what we need to understand is the reason for why. So the peak end rule helps us understand how experience actually interacts with memory.

We aren’t great as human beings at compartmentalizing an entire experience based on the experience or an entire memory based on the overall experience of the memory.

The human brain has so many processes running.

So it learned over time to adapt, to look at the main distinct points of the experience to make up our thoughts on that experience. So it often is the peak of the experience, the most exciting or the high point of the experience and the end of the experience.

Well, person A who went into that movie actually had an incredible experience from the midpoint on until the very end. So their peak in the end was very positive. And while person B had a positive experience towards the middle of the movie, the end of the movie was negative for them. So obviously, that means person A had a better overall experience.

Now, how does this relate to an ex saying, “The spark isn’t there anymore”? Well, in my opinion, it has a lot to do with the fact that there’s two things that we can unpack here. The first one is when an ex says they don’t have the spark with you anymore, they aren’t remembering any of the peak parts of the experience.

They’re only remembering the negative aspects of the experience.

So a great example is the movie, 500 Days of Summer.

The 500 Days of Summer Example

It’s actually one of my favorite movies ever, and it may be one of the only romantic, comedy-type movies that I’ve ever enjoyed.

But I actually really like it because of how authentic it is to the actual experience of dating someone in these millennial times.

So if you don’t know, I’m not going to spoil any of the main parts, but the entire movie is about a guy who’s trying to win his ex back. And what’s interesting is throughout the entire movie, he’s built up this girl to be this ultimate sort of the one who got away.

But over time, he starts to look at the experience as a whole. And he starts to realize that a lot of the things that he thought were positive for him weren’t positive for her.

So she didn’t have a great experience throughout the entire relationship, and yet she wouldn’t break up with him. She stayed with him for a very, very long time.

What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?

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And I think I’m getting a little bit of a vibe sort of like that with your ex, Andrea. I believe he probably was feeling confused throughout the epitome of the relationship. And I think it’s kind of one of those 500 Days of Summer where he’s a little unsure if he wants to break up with you.

He has clear feelings for you, but he’s unsure overall about where he stands. And so he’s left in this holding pattern. That’s why he’s falling off the map, that’s why he won’t answer your calls and messages. He doesn’t place your value as high as someone who maybe means a little bit more to him.

So the obvious question you’re having at this point is, well, what can I do? When I would get calls like yours, Andrea, I used to say, “Okay, you’re going to want to do X, Y, and Z. Do these things exactly.” But over time, over the past few years, we’ve actually had kind of a culture shift. So what’s interesting is we noticed that people who actually stick to the process that we teach, half of the people after they come out the other end of it don’t want their exes back anymore, and then half of them still do.

What Are You Supposed To Do Next?

So I look at the process that I’m about to explain to you as the ultimate gauntlet. If you can get through this process and still want your ex back after the end of it, then you’re probably setting yourself up for success. But if you get through the process, and at the end of it, you don’t want your ex back anymore, you’re just in a better place overall.

So what is this magical process? What is this culture shift? Well, there’s really two key components I want you to understand.

It’s the idea of the ungettable girl and also the idea of the no contact rule. So the no contact rule is the foundation for everything that we’ve built essentially. The no contact rule is this period of time where you’re ignoring your ex with the intent of making them miss you, but at the same time, giving you some time to cultivate your own personal life. So what we find is during this no contact period, let’s say you’re doing a no contact period for 30 days, you’re going to ignore your ex for 30 days. What we used to teach I think was wrong. We used to teach people in the no contact rule to focus only on their exes.

Well, that’s wrong for multiple reasons. Number one, you don’t have any control over your ex. And number two, sometimes focusing on your ex too much can lead you on these downward spirals of irrational thinking, where he responds to one text message, or he likes some specific comment you make on Facebook and all of a sudden the world’s falling apart. Sometimes he takes down pictures on Facebook, the shared pictures you had together, and again, all of a sudden the world’s falling apart. You have all these irrational fears that crop up to the surface. Well, what we found is that we tried to divide our process up into three distinct points. I actually talked about this in the very last podcast episode I did, and this is just me piggybacking off of the momentum in that podcast where I was talking about on-again and off-again relationships.

So what we find is this kind of like three distinct points that you want to focus on, Andrea, the before the no contact rule period, the during the no contact rule period, and the after the no contact rule period. And throughout the entirety of that process, you’re going to be working to become what we consider to be ungettable, sort of becoming a woman that almost every man on planet earth would want. And it’s just a simple mindset shift that has led to so many successes. And defining success is a difficult thing. One person will define success as, “Hey, I won my ex back, you helped me get my ex back.” That’s successful. Another person will define success as, “Hey, I got through the breakup, I got through the no contact rule, and I don’t want him back anymore. And you helped me realize that fact.”

What do you define success as? Well, we used to be kind of forceful because most of the people when they would enter our space would immediately want their exes back. So our whole thinking was, “Okay, well, let’s not teach anyone how to get over their exes. Let’s just teach people how to get their exes back.” But we found that there’s this interesting shift that occurs when we were teaching people how to get their exes back, because a lot of getting your ex back is actually weirdly enough focusing on yourself, becoming ungettable. And what happened is after people would get through their no contact rule, they would enter that after the no contact rule phase, where they actually start having to reconnect with their exe and re-attract to their exe. What we found was fascinating. Roughly around 50% of the people that would get through the no contact rule and felt that they were ungettable after the end of the no contact rule, which I have thoughts on that very shortly, it’s probably impossible to be ungettable after 30 days.

But what’s important is the mindset shift. They had this paradigm shift in their minds. They no longer wanted their exes back anymore. And after we learned that, we determined that we shouldn’t ever push our agenda onto people after a breakup, when they’re in an extremely vulnerable state. We found a happy medium between the best of both worlds. We found a way to not only help you get your ex back, but also at the same time help you get over your breakup because getting over your breakup is actually required to get your ex back. When emotions run high, logic runs low. We know that for a fact. I’ve experienced in my life, you’ve definitely experienced it in your life. Well, in order to get your emotions at a neutral state, you need to learn how to get over the breakup. And the best way to do that is to do a no contact rule and focus on yourself.

So, Andrea, here’s my suggestion for you. I think you should actually familiarize yourself with our teachings and specifically the last podcast episode I just recorded. And if you’re wondering, I will link to that podcast episode in the show notes of this episode on our website, exboyfriendrecovery.com, because I did a really great job at detailing exactly what I think should be done during the three phases of the no contact rule. And another thing that I’m working on right now with my product developer, Ashley, is creating this new culture, this new way of approaching a breakup. Now, not much is changing as far as the, “Hey, this is how you get your ex back, these are the strategies that you use,” but what’s changing a little bit is how we’re employing them in order.

So like I said, there’s three phases that we like, the before the no contact rule, the during the no contact rule, and the after the no contact rule. Well, after the no contact rule isn’t really changing much. We’ve spent years, almost the entire existence of this business has been focused on helping people understand what works to re-attract an ex. But most of that happens after a no contact rule has already been completed. But what we’re finding is that we’ve made a mistake. And our big mistake is the fact that we haven’t prepared people during the no contact rule well enough. And this is something that we’ve subtly noticed over time in our private Facebook support group with women who are actually doing a no contact rule and actually reshape their lives and grow more inspired and feel ungettable.

So we’re doing two things. We’re updating our program, and I’m writing a book called Ungettable to teach people this mindset that they need to be adopting. So that’s what I think you should do, Andrea. But there’s one other thing I wanted to touch on, and that’s this idea of a spark.

Is The Idea Of A Spark Overrated?

The spark has many names over the years. Some people call it chemistry, others call it attraction, most people call it spark. And it seems to be what we base most of our initial relationship decisions on, or how often have you been on a date with someone where they felt a spark and you haven’t. You make your decision not to actually go on another date with that person because you didn’t feel the spark. I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum where I’ve been on dates and I felt a spark and the other person haven’t. And I’ve been on dates where I did not feel a spark and the other person hasn’t. And the results are always the same. The spark dominates.

But here’s what’s interesting. There’s actually a yin and yang approach to the spark that no one realize. So what is the yin and yang? Well, it’s this Chinese philosophy that basically says two opposing opposites can actually work together to create a greater whole. And the spark is kind of like that. So what you need to understand is the spark is great for helping you get a relationship, but it’s horrible, horrible at helping you keep that relationship. Why do you think most people break up after they felt extreme chemistry at the beginning? Because the spark alone has nothing to do with qualities in a relationship to make a relationship strong. So here’s the yin and yang approach. You need the spark, which a lot of what we’re teaching you to do on the podcast and on the website is teaching you how to light the fire with the spark, but you also need the tools to make a relationship last.

I’m sick and tired of helping people get back with their exes, only to have them break up again. That was entirely what that last podcast episode was about. This on-again, off-again relationship. It’s a huge problem. We actually find that, oddly enough, just like how many people there are that actually don’t want their exes back after a no contact rule, 50% of the people who get back with their exes end up breaking up again. Why? What separates the people who are breaking up from the people who are not breaking up? Well, the people who were not breaking up actually have tools that help them succeed in relationships. So we can talk for hours about these tools and what makes a relationship great and what makes it last, but we don’t have enough time.

So here’s what I’m going to do instead. I’m going to tell you about the number one most important aspect for making relationships last over the long-term. It’s something called the kindness golden ratio. We looked at married couples, 80% of them have exhibited a certain pattern, married couples who’ve lasted their entire lives. And that’s the fact that they were kind to one another, odd, right? Kind. But researchers have actually found that there’s a golden ratio between five kind acts to one negative act. And what does that mean? Well, that means that for every negative act, for every fight, disagreement, argument, things of that nature, there needs to be five kind things that you’ve done for one thing to another. So that goes for both people, both parties in the relationship, you need to do things that are kind for your partner, and they need to do things that are kind for them.

So a really cool strategy if you’re in a relationship with someone and you want to keep it going well is maybe you make it a habit at the end of every day to say, “Hey, these are the five kind acts I’ve done for you. What are the your five kind of acts?” Getting in that habit can actually help you realize how little kindness there is in most relationships because we’re always self-interested. We’re worried about things like work and what your parents are doing and things of that nature. Sometimes we just forget to be kind to one another. But remember, being kind actually might be the key to keeping your relationship going over the long-term.