So you’ve blown it. Again. Take a day to mourn the loss of the best thing you’ve ever had—take ten—and then get your ass off the couch, put down the tissue box, and use these tips to get her back in your life.
-Let her go. The warning signs were there, Romeo; she needs space. This is why she moved out on your ass in the first place.
-Give her time. Not too much—you don’t want her to get over the relationship—but you need to respect her wishes, and you need to give her a chance to miss you. A week of absolutely no contact—especially if you lived together, or saw each other every day—is plenty.
-Call. Sure, you want to show her how strong you are; how you’re not like the other ex-boyfriends who called out of the blue, using some lame melodramatic excuse for picking up the phone. And yeah, you want to prove you can get by just fine without her, but let’s be honest—you’re a goddamned mess.
-Don’t call. Yeah, this contradicts the previous point, but bear with me. You should call her, sure, but you need to be very conscious of when you’re doing it. Three-thirty in the morning, after spending hundreds of dollars (and crying on shoulders that would prefer you weren’t crying at all) at some club is not the time to be pouring your heart out over the phone.
It will make you look like an asshole.
You probably are an asshole, which is why you’re alone right now.
If you’re trying to win her back, though, you really don’t need to remind her of this fact.
-Text. I think the point I’m establishing here, is that the most important step you can take (after burning your relationship all the way down) is to take the first step. Don’t wait for her, trying to be stubborn and foolish and proud; those are traits that landed you loneliness in the first place.
Now, by texting, I don’t mean writing a book; keep it sweet.
Keep it simple.
‘Miss you’ will do just fine.
(If you have some cute pet name, or some saying that was strictly between the both of you, now is the time to dust if off.)
-Arrange a meeting. This, boys, is tricky; you don’t want to seem overbearing, or lead her to believe that by meeting, you in fact want to sleep with her again.
You do.
She knows, and you know.
Better to leave it unsaid.
The trick to meeting her is location. Make it neutral, make it public; make it non-threatening. Somewhere she knows you won’t have the balls to get into a screaming match about how ‘unfair’ she was to you in the break-up.
-Pull out all the stops. It’s time, provided she agrees to meet with you, to remind her why she fell in love with you in the first place.
If your name is Tim, then you’d damn well better be ‘First-date-Tim.’
If your name is Ed, then you’d damn well better be ‘First-date-Ed.’
And so on.
-Earn your time with her. From here, guys, you’re on your own. You were the one in the relationship; you know what works—and, by now—what clearly doesn’t.
Take it easy.
Take it slow.
Trust me; if she was worth the trouble in the first place, then she’s worth the trouble of winning back.
