A good way to practice this before you meet your ex, is to get in the habit of doing this with other people such as friends, family, coworkers, or anyone else you see through your day. Of course, you don’t have to explain to them what you’re doing. Just practice being present with them while staying relaxed in your own body.
It’s easier for you fall out of the present when you’re having a conversation with an
author-ity figure or someone else who may intimidate you, so bonus points if you’re able to keep yourself fully in the moment when you talk with someone like your boss or a teacher.
If you do happen to have a good friend, you can explain to them that you’re trying to be more “in the moment.” Practice gazing at them in the eye without taking on a leering sort of stare or spacing out. If they ever catch you zoning out or trying too hard, have them lightly hit you on the shoulder to help you catch yourself.
These kinds of interactions will be excellent practice for meeting your ex-girlfriend and they are a great step up from the Mirror Affirmations Exercise described earlier. If you can stay present with her without drifting off into wonder if you’re doing okay or going off on some other tangent, you’ll be doing great.
Acceptance
As you recall, Acceptance is about accepting what you experience and being a “yes” to it. When it comes to interacting with your ex (or anyone else for that matter), this means not judging them or labeling them. This means seeing them as an actual human being instead of some sort of “prize” to be won or anything else.
Now what do I mean when I say forgetting your girlfriend is a real person? Of course I’m not implying that you’re some kind of knuckle-dragging neanderthal that thinks women are just sex objects. When you forget that she is a real person, you are essentially want-ing her to be somethwant-ing or someone. You are castwant-ing judgement on her and trywant-ing to put her into a box of some kind, whether it be the “Wow! She’s so hot, I’d do anything to get her back” box or the “If I could just get her to like me, I’d feel good about myself again”
box.
You are not practicing Acceptance any time you reject or label or judge something that your ex tells you as good or bad. And you are not practicing Acceptance if you ever drift off into fantasies about “winning” her back or forgetting that she is a “real person” and
When you see her as real person and a separate human being, you are tapping into the feeling that she is her own person, just like you. She has her own dreams, desires, feel-ings, and fears. To truly be in Acceptance, you will get this on a gut level where you can feel it through your whole body, not just on an intellectual level. When you can see her as a person with her own fears and dreams rather than some kind of perfect person who’s affection you need to win, then you will be able to enjoy much more significant levels of connection.
When you can really get this, you will naturally be able to interact with your ex a lot more easily. You will naturally develop a curiosity to understand her view of the world that will help you never run out of things to talk to her about and you’ll never have to worry about hitting an awkward silence again. You’ll be able to have so many of those deep mo-ments of connection where you both find yourself saying “me too” and discovering all the thoughts and feelings that you experience every day.
You see, once you really “get” that she is a unique person with her desires and her own humanity, and not just a perfect “prize” to be won, you’ll realize that she has all the fears and insecurities that you probably do. When you understand that both of you share these common emotional experiences, you’ll instantly have an unending source of things to talk to her about and connect on. You’ll never have to memorize things to talk about or ago-nize over what you should do if the conversation stalls out or goes silent again.
This is also about being perfectly okay emotionally with the fact that she may not want to get back together with you at this point. If you resist this, then you will only risk pushing her further away from you.
You see, in a subtle way, she will notice that you are not okay with her not being your girl-friend. This will turn her off and drive her away from you. After all, she won’t want to be with someone who she feels needs her to be a certain way in order to accept her.
If you’re still having difficulties with it, continue to practice allowing whatever happens to
be okay. If you can free yourself from the emotional attachment of needing your girlfriend back, then she will feel more comfortable to be herself around you and you’ll notice that she actually begins to relax more around you. This will help you build the trust and inti-macy between the two of you and you’ll be able to get her back much more easily.
Key Points and Action Steps:
• Remember to see your ex as a person with her own emotions, fears, and desires.
• You are not Accepting her if you need her to love you or you see her as a prize to be won.
• Be prepared to Accept her exactly how she is, even if she doesn’t want to get back together with you right away.
• Do the following exercise to help you cultivate more Acceptance toward her.
Acceptance Exercise - Shared Humanity
To help practice developing Acceptance for your girlfriend, start by reminding yourself that she is a separate human being, just like you. She has her own desires and fears. She makes mistakes and is searching for her own slice of happiness in this chaotic world.
When you can do this, and really let it impact you, you can start to drop all these pre-conceived things you “need” your woman to be for you. You no longer need her to look sexy, be enthusiastic, be fashionable, be attracted to you, or whatever boxes you might be consciously or unconsciously be trying to push her into.
To start with, practice this exercise on other people in your life such as friends, family members, or coworkers. Practice really understanding that they are their own unique and individual people. Try to put yourself in their shoes and imagine what it would be like to be them for a moment. The more you practice this with others, the more prepared you’ll be when you actually meet your girlfriend in person again.
Commitment
When it comes to dealing with you girlfriend, Commitment primarily involves staying strong in your convictions and not collapsing or compromising your personal values in an attempt to earn her approval. In other words, stick to your core values. Don’t let trying to get her back pull you away from forgetting what you believe in.
On the flip side, many men try to appear strong by overcompensating and posturing. This might manifest itself as pretending that you don’t care at all about how your girlfriend re-sponds to you or if the two of you get along well.
Guys will commonly compromise their commitment to who they really are and lose com-posure around their ex-girlfriend in two ways:
They act like a Nice Guy - The Nice Guy constantly tries to please people. On a subcon-scious level, he believes that if he is nice and accommodating to others, they will be kind to him and give him what he wants. This is not how the world works. The Nice Guy often ends up frustrated and being taken advantage of by his ex. She may use him to pay for dates or as a reliable standby in case the other guy she is dating doesn’t work out.
If you are acting the role of the Nice Guy, realize that compromising your integrity isn’t go-ing to get you what you want. Though you may be afraid of “rockgo-ing the boat” by speakgo-ing your truth, understand that withholding how you feel only hurts you and your relationships in the end.
They act like the Macho Jerk - The opposite of the Nice Guy is the Macho Jerk. While the Nice Guy tries to please everyone and easily ends up as a doormat for his ex, the Ma-cho Jerk will do whatever he can to avoid the appearance of weakness. He will posture himself and puff himself up in an attempt to come off as a strong and unbreakable man.
However, this won’t make things easier either. The Macho Jerk is cut off from his real
emotions, which makes it nearly impossible to share a meaningful moment with him. In-stead of being strong, he just comes off as a brittle personality held captive by his need to avoid emotions and sensitivity.
The healthy alternative is not to waffle back and forth between the two. It is to ignore the duality entirely. Since both extremes are unhealthy and involve denying your emotions, realize that the entire game is completely bankrupt and not worth playing. Don don’t try to be either the Nice Guy or the Macho Jerk to get her back, since neither is really very attractive to her.
Real men that women love (and who get their ex back) are the guys that don’t care about how others will react to their emotions. They will openly speak their mind when necessary and they will share their feelings freely without coming off as an angry jerk or spineless wimp. Women do not think that this is overly aggressive or wimpy; they think this is sexy!
To practice Commitment to your values and beliefs, you must be willing to say “no” to your ex if she ever asks you to do something that you don’t want to do or that you would not feel good about doing. But you also must be willing to be vulnerable and open without become a puffed-up macho fake.
Most people are decent, but do not let your ex try to take advantage of your desire for her approval by sacrificing your values and what you stand for.
Commitment also speaks to owning your experience without shame or apologies. Here is a tip I shared in the first section of this book that will help you know when you are prac-ticing Commitment: When you speak your truth from a place of Commitment, you will be saying things that no one can argue with. (This is so important, that I am telling you this again to make sure you really get this)
For example, no one can argue with the phrase “I wish things hadn’t turned out this way.”
This is your personal opinion that describes how you personally feel. However, a phrase
and thus is not spoken from a point of Commitment. In fact, that kind of statement is actu-ally casting blame on someone else and is an invitation for an argument.