Why Being Friends Is Not The Way To Get Your Ex Back

Why being friends is not the way to get your ex back and what to do instead.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer who listened to a coach online who teaches men to agree to being stuck in friends zone in order get another chance at romance. He did this knowing it was the opposite of what I teach because he was emotionally invested in the illusion of action and looking for way to justify chasing his ex.

She finally made it totally clear that all they would ever be is friends after he tried proving to her that he had changed. Now he regrets that he didn’t listen. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

This particular email is actually from a guy who says he’s been following me for a while now, and he listened to 3% Man six or seven times. However, because of the place he was at emotionally, he was stuck under the illusion of action, thinking he had to do something, he had to prove himself to his girl, he basically got rejected. Then since he’s in the mindset of, “I got to do something. I got to get her to like me again. I got to get her to give me another chance,” he was focused on proving that he had changed and she should give him another chance.

So because of that, obviously those of you that know my work really well, know that that’s just not the way you go about trying to get an ex back. When you’re stuck in friend zone, as I discussed in 7 Principles To Get An Ex Back, what happened with this guy and what typically happens with most dudes is because women do the breaking up about 75% of the time, whether that’s filing for divorce or ending the relationship, it’s usually the women that end it. They’re ready to leave, they’re over it, they’re at the point where their romantic interest is so low that it’s pretty easy for them to leave, and guys are usually really shocked. Like, this is how quickly a woman moves on, because typically when she leaves, she’s over it. When she friend-zoned you, you don’t keep pursuing. If you keep pursuing a woman who says, “Friends only,” then what you’re doing is you’re acquiescing through your actions that you’re OK with being stuck in friend-zone. If you really want sex and romance, but you hang out with her in a platonic way and you agree to it, then you’re making her the man in the relationship, and all that does is make it really easy for her to move on with Chad Thundercock, or whoever she’s involved with at this particular time.

So this guy writes in after everything has completely gone sideways, and she tells him that she’s met somebody new and she really wants to give it a go with this new guy, and that the only thing that’s ever going to happen between the two of them is friends only. So now he’s like, “I feel like a complete ass because I didn’t listen to you,” but he wanted to write this in in hopes that he could discourage other people from doing the same and not listening to the instructions that, as he says, he’s old enough to know better, but because he was in a scarcity mindset, he was fearful he was going to lose her. He’s looking for justification to continue pursuing, chasing and doing something, if you will, also known as the illusion of action. So he went, he searched and he found a guy that didn’t know what the hell he was doing or talking about. So it justified his view that he needed to keep pursuing, so he did it. After the fact, again, he just feels like a complete ass and a chump for doing it on top of that.

So let’s go through this cautionary tale of what not to do when you’ve been dumped.

Viewer’s Email:

Hi Corey

Been following your videos for a while now, and have listened to the audio-book six or seven times.

I’m in the UK, and old enough to know better, but I listened to some other online, “Get your ex back” types online whose advice turned out to be complete BS. I’m writing this hoping you’ll make a video coaching newsletter about it so others don’t make the mistakes I did.

The reason you walk away and you go no contact is she’s saying, “Hey, how about friendship and blue balls? How about being my gay male girlfriend?”

The strongest negotiating position is being able to walk away and mean it. So what this guy basically did was, “Hey sure, that sounds great. I’ll be friends first, because some dude on the internet told me that that’s a way to get your ex back,” so he continues on with his pursuit. She looks at it and goes, “Well, he’s OK with just being friends only. So that’s that.” A man who loves and values himself and he wants sex and romance, or he wants to keep his family together, he’s gonna be like, “I’m not down with this. I don’t think so. We’re not going to live together while you go out and date other dudes, or see if you can find somebody else. You’re either in or you’re out. You either want to be together with us and your family and your kids, or you want to be a single girl. Then you got to explain to our family why you’re leaving.”

Another thing in these cases is the guy should not be moving out or leaving the apartment, because if he does, if you say you want your ex back and then you move out, your actions show that you’re cool with the relationship ending. I know it’s counterintuitive because the women will tell you to and ask you to leave, but it’s often a test. “Do you really mean what you say, or do you really want to fight for your relationship,” as they say? If you want to keep the relationship going, you’ll stick around and it’s the woman that leaves. If she leaves, then she’s got to explain to the family, the kids and everybody else why she broke the family up versus when you move out and you leave, and then you keep hanging out as friends, you make it really easy for her to move on because she knows you’re always in the background hanging out. Worst case, if you can’t find anybody else, she can always go back to you, but when you love and you value yourself, “No deal is possible. I’m walking away from the negotiating table. Call me if you change your mind,” but he didn’t do that in this case.

I met my ex about two and a half years ago, and we broke up nine months ago, so we were together about 20 months or so in total. We met just after my dad had a terminal cancer diagnosis, and she stayed with me through his illness and ultimate passing.
Even through that time we had a great relationship, and she was the one who initially had asked me out after our first date, was initiating around 90% of the time and showed a really high interest level.

Well, he was the man. He was in his masculine. She was doing the pursuing. Most of it.

After my dad died however, I became depressed, consumed with my grief and withdrew and just turned in on myself. I became unavailable to her emotionally and physically, started drinking a lot, stopped courting her and her understanding and compassion reached its limit and she ended the relationship last summer. 
I tried everything I could to get the relationship back. 

Well, that’s the problem you’re trying to keep somebody that doesn’t want to keep you. What happened was because of what happened with your father, you let it completely wreck you emotionally, physically, you started drinking. In other words, you were no longer the man that she fell in love with and wanted to be in a relationship. This totally destroyed, devastated and diminished you. You’re supposed to be the stronger one. You’re supposed to be the one that’s more masculine than she is.

Unfortunately, it’s a sad tragedy losing your father, losing a parent, because I know what that’s like, but life goes on. We’re all going to die. We’re all living in bodies that are going to die. Everybody you love, everything you build, that beautiful house you spent so much time renovating or building, eventually it’s going to get old and it’s going to get bulldozed. You know, 100, 200 years from now, it’s probably not going to be around anymore. There will be something else in its place. The kids you have, they’re all going to die, too. The great grand-kids, they’re all going to die, everything eventually. A long enough timeline turns to dust. So when these things happen, you just can’t let it wreck you. If you do, if you stop the courtship, if you stop the romance, if one bad thing happens in your life and you stop making your girl feel heard and understood, and you stop dating and courting her and you want to feel sorry for yourself, every woman has their time limit. You get about six to 12 months of that. I’ve said it over and over.

I’ve done phone sessions with guys who have been married for multiple decades, and they go through a difficult time. It’s a health challenge, or they lose a parent or both parents or whatever, something happens tragic in their life and they just let it absolutely demolish them. If they’ve been with their wives, 30, 40 years, doesn’t fucking matter. If you act like a bitch, women are going to treat you like a bitch and leave you eventually.

You typically, on average, get about six to 12 months to wallow in your sorrow and whatever else is going on, but when it gets beyond that, like I said, if you get to 12 months, you’re lucky. Most women, they’re going to be looking for the exits if they haven’t already left at that point. So as a man, you just can’t behave this way. You can’t let one setback in life completely derail your life. Unfortunately, that’s what this particular guy did, and she tapped out.

I listened to a YouTuber who I won’t name (OK I will, Clay Andrews but I guess you will censor that)…

Well, I don’t know who that dude is. Never heard of him. There’s a gazillion guys out there, but if this guy, Clay Andrews, is telling men who get dumped to agree to be friends only while you watch your girlfriend, ex-girlfriend or your wife go and fuck other dudes, it’s like that guy doesn’t understand how attraction works, so he’s talking out of his butt.

…Whose advice consists of going down the “being friends” route and friend zoning yourself to work on the “emotional connection.”

She sounds like a chick, or maybe it’s some gay dude. This guy has no idea what he’s talking about.

I did that, I tried to show how I had changed…

He’s trying to prove himself to her. If a man is a man and he’s in his masculine, he’s awesome, he’s a great catch, he ain’t trying to prove himself to anybody, it’s self evident. The fact that you’re trying to prove yourself to her already shows that you’re giving up.

The number one most important thing that women find attractive in men is, is confidence, and you’re trying to prove to this girl, “Oh, I’m a man. Trust me, I’ve changed.” Well, be that. Move on. If she doesn’t want to keep you, you’re like, “Hey, give me a call if you change your mind,” and you go out and you date the hottest, baddest, younger girl that you could find and have a good time. Move on with your life. Because that’s when she sees that you’ve moved on and you’re having a good time, and she goes out on a bad date or two. She’s like, “Well, maybe I screwed up.” As the months go by, the weeks go by, it’s typically when they start coming back. When you just continue to wallow in your sorrow, you beg, you plead and you chase, or in this case, you agree to be friends, you haven’t done anything to prove yourself. You’re showing her that you’re just a little boy and you want her to be your mommy, and you treat her like a celebrity. She’s going to treat you like a fan.

…How everything that happened towards the end of our relationship was a symptom of my grief and that everything would be perfect if only we would try again.

You never try to keep somebody that doesn’t want to keep you.

We hung out a few times, no hooking up, crappy day time meet ups to walk her dog and only ever getting the cheek at the end of it.

Yeah, you’re not going to get anywhere with that. Just imagine that you’d never had any sex or anything, and you continue to and you never dated and you hang out with a woman like this, you’re not going to get anywhere. All you’re going to do is hear stories about her going and sleeping with Chad Thundercock and her being upset with the fact that he doesn’t want a relationship with her or he’s horrible to her. If you were a catch, you’d be acting like Chad Thundercock, just moving on, living your life, and you’d be letting the best girl win you over and convince you why you should commit to them, if you’re a prize and you’re a catch, that’s what you do. If you’re not, then you chase, you beg, you plead and you grovel. It’s cute in movies, but it doesn’t work in the real world. This guy, Clay, whatever his fucking name is, sounds like he lives in a world of fantasy.

We spoke on the phone a couple of weeks ago and said that while she still wanted me in her life I needed to accept that we would only ever be friends now…

See what happens is, like he spent nine months agreeing to, this made it really easy for her to completely get over this guy and look at him and think, “This is pretty pathetic.” Her ex-boyfriend is just hanging around, OK with being friends, while she goes out on dates with other men and sleeps with other men, and all he gets is a peck on the cheek, and maybe she’ll allow him to fix her toilet when Chad Thundercock clogs it up.

…And that she had met someone and wanted to start dating this guy. I lost my center and got a bit upset. I feel a complete fucking idiot for how I responded.

We have not spoken since. We had originally planned to go out to lunch over this Easter weekend but that is not going to happen now.

Yeah, go out to lunch, which is a family thing during Easter, so you can get blue balls, and then she’ll go home and have sex with Chad Thundercock. What a great plan!

My pursuit of this woman, because that’s what it was, is now over forever.

If a woman is always chasing you, you don’t have to worry about getting dumped. When you’re always chasing her, especially when you’ve been friend-zoned, all you get is blue balls and you get disrespected. At the end of the day, you feel like a fucking chump. “How could I have been so gullible?“

I am gutted but I have to move on. I will never call text or contact her again for any reason. 

Yeah, you should be following what’s in 7 Principles To Get An Ex Back. You lived in her frame. You lived in her world instead of her coming to submit and live in yours. You became the woman. You might as well have just given her a strap on and let her have her way with you. That’s how you acted, dude. It’s gross and it’s disgusting. It’s not masculine.

I listened to the other guy online because I wanted what he said to be true but it has just left her dry (for me anyway) and me just frustrated, and alone. If I had followed the seven principles I reckon I would have had a much better chance of this working out in my favor. As it is, I doubt I will ever hear from her again.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers

Bob

Thanks for that cautionary tale, Bob.

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