Should You Reach Out to an Ex? Five Questions First
The message is written. It has been written for a while. The question is whether to send it, and no amount of rereading it is going to answer that.
These five questions tend to settle it faster than another evening of drafting.
One: what do you want to happen?
Not what you would accept. What you actually want. If the honest answer is reconciliation, say so to yourself before you write a message that pretends to be about returning a jacket.
Messages that disguise their purpose tend to get responses that match: polite, non-committal, and followed by another two weeks of wondering.
Two: has anything changed?
Not feelings. Feelings return on their own schedule and prove little. Has a condition changed? The distance, the job, the drinking, the third person, the thing that was never discussed?
If nothing structural has changed, reaching out usually restarts the same sequence from the same point. People reliably underestimate this, because the memory of the ending fades faster than the memory of the good part.
Missing someone is not information about whether to contact them. It is information about grief, which arrives on its own schedule and recedes on its own too.
Three: how would you feel about no reply?
Sit with it properly rather than waving it off. If the honest answer is that silence would take weeks out of you, that is worth knowing in advance, and it may be a reason to wait until it would not.
This question also quietly answers the first one. People who genuinely just want to say something kind are usually fine with no reply. People who want something back are not.
Four: whose need is this serving?
There is a version of reaching out that is for them: an apology owed, news they should hear, something genuinely theirs to have. There is a version that is for you, which is most of them.
Neither is disqualifying. But knowing which one it is changes how you write it, and stops you from being surprised by your own reaction to the response.
Five: would you send it sober, rested, and on a Tuesday?
Almost nothing good is sent at one in the morning. If the urge only exists at night, after a drink, or at the end of a bad week, it is worth treating that as information rather than urgency.
The test is simple: write it, do not send it, and read it again on Tuesday at eleven in the morning. Most messages do not survive that. The ones that do are usually worth sending.
The three worst reasons
- To find out whether they have moved on. You will not get a reliable answer, and you will have spent the contact on it.
- Because a sign told you to. Signs are easy to find when you are looking for permission.
- To be the one who did not give up. That is a story about you, and it tends to end with you having given a great deal to someone who did not ask for it.
Common questions
- How long should I wait before reaching out?
- There is no correct interval, but a useful marker is whether you can imagine the conversation going badly and still be glad you had it. If not, you are not ready yet.
- What if a reading told me we would reconnect?
- Treat it as a perspective rather than an instruction. A reading that leaves you waiting rather than deciding has not helped you, whatever it said.
- Is no contact actually necessary?
- For some people it is the only thing that works, and for others it is unnecessary rigidity. The honest test is whether contact leaves you steadier or more preoccupied a day later.
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