Breaking up hurts, and wanting them to feel about you the way they used to is about as understandable as wants get. Underneath "how do I make them want me again" there's usually something plainer: wanting to feel wanted, or to stop feeling like the one who wasn't enough. Both are real. Neither is answered by a technique.
You can't pull attraction out of someone with a technique. You can't say the right words in the right order and make a person feel something they don't. They ended it for their reasons, and nobody can be argued back into a feeling. And a feeling you did manage to engineer would have to be kept going by more engineering, for as long as it lasted.
What you can do is rebuild yourself, for real. So this isn't a set of levers to pull on your ex. It's the honest work — which is worth doing on its own terms, and which you'd still be glad of months from now if you never spoke to this person again.
Be genuinely okay first — for you
It's easy to think, "I'll be happy when they come back." It's backwards. Happiness that hangs on someone else's return leaves your whole life waiting on a decision that isn't yours. Happiness that's genuinely yours doesn't wait on anyone.
The point isn't to perform being fine. Performed fine isn't fine: you're still where you were, with a show to keep up on top, and the version of you that you practise is the one you become. The point is to actually get there:
- Look at why you're so attached to this one outcome — fear of being alone, of failure, of not being enough. That's the real work. (A therapist can help with it.)
- Build a life you're glad of. Not to impress anyone. Because it's yours.
- Stop staking your worth on whether they come back. Your worth isn't their decision to make.
More on this: how to heal after a breakup.
And look at the other question while you're there: whether going back would actually be good for you, not just whether you want it. That's what Weigh Up What To Do is for. If the honest answer is that it's over, Start Fresh isn't the runner-up.
Live your own life — not around them
After a breakup a lot of people shrink: waiting for the ex to text first, moulding themselves to what they imagine the ex wants, cancelling their own plans in case the ex reaches out. That keeps your whole life arranged around one person, which is the opposite of solid ground.
The honest alternative is simple, if not easy:
- Take initiative in your own direction — plans, goals, people — whether or not they're in the picture.
- Set real boundaries. Don't accept breadcrumbs, and don't let someone lean on you for comfort while they date other people.
- Build something. Not a rebuild staged for an audience of one — an actual one, that you'd keep if nobody ever saw it.
More on this: rebuild yourself.
One thing worth saying plainly, since a lot of "attraction" advice teaches the opposite: don't put your ex on a pedestal, and don't lay on praise designed to win them. A pedestal isn't a true picture of anyone — it's the loss talking — and praise built to win someone is a tool, however true each word of it is. The fix isn't a cleverer way to compliment. It's to stop treating your words as tools for producing a feeling in them at all.
Where this turns back into a tactic
- Faking confidence. You can act it, but acting it leaves you exactly where you were, with a performance to keep up. Real confidence comes from real change.
- Doing this TO them instead of FOR you. If the only reason you're doing any of this is to get them back, it's a tactic. Do it because you want to be someone you're glad to be. Full stop.
- Expecting it fast. Real change takes time to become real. If you're watching for it to show, you're watching the wrong thing.
If you were part of the problem
Maybe you were needy. Or jealous, or controlling. Maybe you broke their trust, or hid something that turned out to matter more than the thing itself did. (If it was the other way round — if you were the one who was frightened, or made responsible for their temper — this section isn't about you. The note further down is.)
If so, that isn't a footnote to this page — it's the whole of it. The pattern that did the damage is the thing to work on, and it's yours whether or not this person ever speaks to you again. It'll be waiting in the next relationship, with someone who's done nothing to you on the receiving end — and in the one after, until it isn't.
Two honest warnings, because this is exactly where people go wrong.
A pattern takes longer to change than a breakup takes to hurt. A few weeks of noticing what you do is not a few weeks of having changed it. Real work on this is measured in months, most of it is boring, and almost none of it feels like progress while it's happening. If you've just written yourself a list — therapy, journaling, rules so it doesn't happen again — that list is a good start and it is not an achievement yet.
Don't work on it as a case to present. This one's subtler and it catches nearly everyone. When you know what you did, there's an enormous pull to assemble the evidence of your reform and want it seen — the therapy, the reading, the rules, the person you're becoming. That's understandable, and it quietly ruins the thing. Work done to be shown is still a performance; it just has a longer production schedule than the usual ones.
The test is simple, and you can run it on yourself right now:
If you'd stop doing this the moment you knew for certain they were never coming back — you were building an exhibit, not changing.
That's not a reason to feel bad. It's just worth knowing which one you're doing, because only one of them survives the answer being no.
And your appearance
Sure — the gym, grooming, dressing well. Do it because it's a way of respecting yourself, not as a costume for the next time they see you. It supports the real change; it doesn't substitute for it.
If it's more than this
Wanting them back can take over your days for a while. That's part of this. This is different: if you're not sleeping, not eating, can't get through work, it isn't easing, and you can't see a version of yourself on the other side of this, that's past what a page can help with. See a doctor or a therapist, and tell someone close to you what's going on.
If you're thinking about hurting yourself, don't wait: contact a crisis line or emergency services now.
If you were afraid of them, or made to feel responsible for their temper, nothing on this page is the place to start. Missing them isn't a sign to go back. Talk to a domestic abuse service, and to someone you trust. Your safety comes first.
The honest wrap-up
Rebuild yourself for real and you may well become more attractive — not just to your ex. It may also change nothing about how they feel, and nobody, me included, can tell you which. The rebuilding was the part worth doing either way.
One last thing: you may be tempted to take that first sentence and turn it into the plan — right, so I rebuild myself, and then they notice. If that becomes the reason, you're back to performing, just with better material. I can't stop you doing that. I can only tell you it's the move, so you can catch yourself making it.
By Michael Fulmer; writing about breakups and recovery since 2011. Trained in Gottman Method Couples Therapy (Level 1 & 2).