is my ex thinking of me

Will My Ex Think About Me On Valentine's Day?

Craig (00:00):

Today. We're going to be talking about, will my ex think about me on Valentine's day? Well, if you're going through a breakup, that's a particularly difficult day. Yeah. And you are pretty much obsessing about your ex that day. Unot necessarily where they're at or what they're doing, but you just keep thinking about them. It's going to be everywhere because love is going to be everywhere on TV.

Margaret (01:08):

Absolutely. You cannot get away from social

Craig (01:10):

Media. You see what friends are doing? You hear what friends are doing and it just makes you feel awful. Yeah. So you're thinking about them nonstop, right? And so you're like, are they even thinking about me?

Margaret (01:24):

Or have they just moved on?

Craig (01:27):

To me? I think how could they not think about you? Right. That's right. How could they not think about you when, even if they're not wanting to be with you, even if they don't want a relationship right now, how could they not think about the person that they've spent, you know, probably last Valentine's day with, for many of you and how would they not be able to think about what you did last Valentine's day? I think that's a big thing.

Margaret (01:57):

Absolutely. You're going to remember what you did last year. Yeah. Or at any happy Valentine's days of the past. Of course.

Craig (02:06):

You know, when a holiday comes up, I think we often are reminded of the last one, you know, last Christmas last, last birthday. Yeah. And so I think it's normal. And how could they, you just can't put a push that out of your unconscious.

Margaret (02:21):

No, it is impossible to move on and never think back.

Craig (02:26):

Yeah. And even though you feel like they're not wondering how you're doing, maybe they've said we're never going to date again. I don't care about you anymore. Even if they're dating somebody new, it doesn't mean that they're not going to think about you. It's just the way we're wired.

Margaret (02:42):

Right. It's the way we're wired,

Craig (02:43):

The attachment that we have to other people is just so overwhelming. Those intrusive thoughts, they're going to experience it too. Right. so it doesn't necessarily mean that they're to want to get back with you, right? We're not saying that just because they're thinking about you, they're going to want to repair things or then they're going to come back. We can't say that, but we really feel like if you leave them alone, it's going to impact them and they have to sit with that. Right. And we say that all the time, because we just know how important it is that, you know, you may be tempted to reach out, but I think it's more powerful if you don't reach it.

Margaret (03:25):

That's right. And even if they broke up with you, I think you pointed out earlier today. Great. They're going to wonder why you didn't.

Craig (03:34):

Yeah. I mean, I think that it's more powerful for them to feel that loss that day. That's right. Don't you? Yeah. So when you're tempted to buy them a gift, reach out see how they're doing. Just know that they are thinking about you. And I think social media is, is changing that too. Like don't you think people are going to be looking at you on that day.

Victoria (03:59):

Yeah, definitely. And you have to remember that spending Valentine's day with your partner is a privilege. So once that relationship is over, you don't want to keep giving them that privilege, that you're always accessible to them, even on holidays and special days, like Valentine's day, you want to have them experience that loss. And of course, on social media, they're going to be scrolling, seeing what you're up to seeing what other people are up to. They're going to be exposed to the same amount of, let's say, love propaganda that you are. Exactly.

Craig (04:33):

Yeah. I, I think that it's just one of those things that they may not reach out or, and I don't think they will reach out for Valentine's day because it's overwhelming. Right. Right. Like, because it's like, if you reach out on Valentine's day, it's almost like saying, "I want to fix this". And I think that's going to be too big of a step for somebody

Margaret (04:54):

Don't do it.

Craig (04:55):

I think that, you know, you should just expect not to hear from them, but that not hearing from you will really hit their unconscious and be powerful to them. Right.

Victoria (05:08):

Because they probably expect to hear from you on that day, like you were saying Margaret. Right.

Margaret (05:12):

Yeah. And I have often said to people, remember who broke up with whom, right?

Craig (05:18):

Yeah. Because even if they don't want to hear from you, I think on some level they do want to hear it from you

Margaret (05:25):

Sure they do. Right. Or at least know that you still find them attractive and wonderful and all of those good things.

Craig (05:30):

They want them back. Yes. So, you know, I think it's safe to say that most of you will know in the back of your mind, your ex is gonna think about you. Of course, you know, some of you that may have been in like a situationship or something like that, maybe not. But even then I think you're going to at least come into their unconscious at some point during the day, because we cannot wait, wipe out close relationships. It's just so easy for a thought to pop up when you're not even thinking about it. Right.

Victoria (06:05):

And romance is not something that you share with everybody. It's something that you share with select people. It's rare. Yeah. So on a day, like Valentine's day where romantic feelings are at an all time high, of course, you know, romantic partners are going to come to their mind.

Craig (06:22):

Yeah. That chemistry that you had, that connection, that feeling of, you know, maybe how good the relationship was at its peak and how long, you know, all those things are going to come back to you. Right. So I think we all kind of agree that your ex will think about you at some point during the day and wonder what's going on with you, even if the relationship ended badly. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. So we just wanted to talk about that and reassure you that we know how awful it feels. We know you feel like they don't care about you. I've been there. Right. I've been in the situation completely convinced that that person wasn't thinking about me, but they often will admit later on, "I thought about you all the time". Right. How often do we hear that? Very often. Right. And, and you feel like there's no hope, but you don't know what they're doing behind closed doors.

Victoria (07:22):

Exactly. And it can be very hard to keep that emotional self control on a day, like Valentine's day, but just remember it's even more important on days, like Valentine's day to continue to no contact and to have that emotional self-control

Craig (07:36):

Control. Yeah. I think so. I think it's more powerful for your ex not to hear from you.

Margaret (07:40):

And to give your ex the benefit of getting in touch with all of their feelings.

Margaret (07:46):

But it's going to be an emotional day for them too. And of course, whether they show it or not, I don't think they would show it. They want to keep their guard up. But that doesn't mean behind closed doors, they're not feeling that loss right. Laying down at night, trying to fall asleep, thinking about it. Cause they know they made mistakes too. Sure. They know that they cause problems in that relationship to fail. Even if they're putting all the blame on you, they have to get to that point at some time. Right. So hopefully this makes you feel a little bit better about Valentine's day. And just knowing that there's a very good chance that they're thinking about you wondering how you are, wondering what's going on with you and that they're struggling with that day too. Right? Okay. Hopefully you found this video helpful. And of course, if you want to get our help personally, just go to my website, askcraig.net, sign up for the coaching option that works best for you.

Your Ex's Inner Thoughts (Why They Pushed You Away)

Today we're going to be talking about why they pushed us away. You know, a lot of times we're in a relationship and we're happy and we think things are going well. And the next thing you know, your ex has pushed you away, or your partner at the time is pushing you away. There's sabotaging things, there's things going on and he can't figure out why, what is going on with this person?

Margaret (01:08):

You loved me last week and this week you don't.

Craig (01:11):

So Margaret has some great research today that she wants to share on what causes this. Cause it's good to understand what your ex has gone through or your partners are going through within them internally that we don't understand.

Margaret (01:25):

So I'm going to share with you, this particular article was written by one of the Firestones. Now let me clarify the Firestones, I've presented several times work by Lisa Firestone, who talks about your inner inner critic. That mean voice that you have inside that puts you down and encourages you to put yourself down and tells you what's wrong with you. So I finally figured out who they all are. There's Robert Firestone, a psychologist who's quite famous and he married his wife named Tamsen. So she's, Tamsen Firestone. And then there's their daughter, Lisa Firestone. So at least I've got that much straight.

Craig (02:04):

And don't forget about Lenny.

Margaret (02:06):

Get out of here.

Craig (02:07):

Lenny Firestone. He's the one that runs the tires, right?

Margaret (02:10):

Yeah. Don't tread on me. Oh, that was a terrible pun. Anyway, I have finally figured out who these people are, but they all specialize in talking about internal processes and our inner critics and how they can be very destructive to us if we don't know they're there. Okay. And we often hear people after a breakup listing what's wrong with them beating themselves up and doing all sorts of things. Yeah. So fortunately the Firestones are trying to help us not do that. And the particular book I just read recently was called dare to love, meaning, and reminding us that love can be very scary. And for several reasons, which I'm going to talk about one at a time we can run into pushing love away. Not that we meant to, but somehow we get.

Craig (03:00):

You want to think about this long and hard because this is exactly what may have happened with your partner.

Margaret (03:04):

Absolutely. When you're talking about a breakup and so how to deal with your critical inner voice, first of all, you have to figure out that it's there and to do that, what you do is you go back and you think about it. Are you beating yourself up after the breakup? And most people, men and women, are beating themselves up after the breakup. I think men, men fare a little bit better than women do on that, but women are brutal to themselves. Okay. I'm not attractive enough. I wasn't exciting enough. There were all these things I didn't do. So first of all, you want to find out what...

Craig (03:43):

I think men probably focusing on how they were neglectful

Margaret (03:49):

Yeah. "I Spent too much time out of the house. I spent too much time on my computer. I played video games when she would try to talk to me."

Craig (03:57):

'I wasn't attentive enough." Right

Margaret (04:00):

Right. I wasn't. And that's oftentimes the deal. Yep. Okay. so what, what this gentleman suggests is sit down and think about the bad things you say to yourself. And one of the ways that you commonly asked the question is to say, "how are you hard on yourself?" Okay. "How Much blame do you take when things go wrong?" And everybody can answer that question. And most people will. So if your inner voice is saying to you and, and they give you a particular example, and this is a woman named Gloria and Gloria has been married for a few years to a guy named Nick and they have a couple of kids. So she is staying home and taking care of the children. And her inner voice says to her I'm not interesting anymore. I'm not the same person I was when I was working.

Margaret (04:51):

I'm not fun to be with anymore. I'm not attractive. Who am I kidding? I'm fat. I'm not attractive anymore. I'm past my prime. I'm just a chubby matronly mom and Nick doesn't care about me anyway, if it weren't for me, Nick would be happy to just this, let this relationship die out. But that's just kind of how it is with relationships. Talk about negative. Right? Now you notice she hasn't talked to Nick about this. So what the author suggests is you rewrite this in the second person, you rewrite it as if some outside force is saying this to you. Okay. "You are not attractive. You are not interesting anymore." That puts a little bit outside you and invites you to get angry about something being that destructive to you.

Craig (05:45):

Like "who do you think you are?"

Margaret (05:48):

That's exactly right. And that's the goal. All right. So you write it down in the steps with a "you". I'm not interesting anymore becomes "you are not interesting anymore." "You're not fun to be with anymore. You are not the same person you were when you were working", you get the idea, and you verbalize your statements. Even if they feel hurtful and make you sad or angry. Cause once you start understanding that you're saying this to yourself, it's very upsetting. Yeah. Okay.

Craig (06:18):

And you have to realize that many of you were with partners that were doing this to themselves and that they were saying things like this to themselves. And that's, you know, some of the reasons that they broke up with you is because they were doing this to themself and you probably didn't pick up on it, or weren't really aware of that internal struggle.

Margaret (06:40):

Okay. The next step. So you're going to, you're going to figure out what, what you say to yourself. You're going to write it down as a "you," and then you're going to reflect on this. And in this step, people usually recognize that the critical inner voice represents some way in which they were treated during childhood, by a particular parent, another family member, a significant person outside the family, like a coach or a teacher. Okay. We don't get these ideas from nowhere. So the next step is you confront the inner voice. So finally Gloria said to her critical voice, "you're always criticizing me and saying I'm boring and unattractive, exclamation point. You're always telling me that nobody could love me. That's the message that you're getting across to me. Well, it isn't true. I'm the same person I was when Nick met me. And I'm the same person he married. I'm still interesting and fun and attractive. There is nothing wrong with me. The real truth is that all you ever care about is tearing me down and that's all you've ever cared about. Shut up. I'm done listening to you." All right, Gloria. Okay. And that's exactly what you do.

Craig (07:53):

No, maybe don't say this while you're walking through Walmart.

Margaret (07:56):

Probably not a good idea. You might bump into somebody. Um but anyway, that's, that's step one. That's my first message. First. Think about how you do it to you.

Craig (08:08):

Yeah. And many of you are doing this, but also understand that, you know, your partners are going to do this to themselves too. And if you think back, you may have heard them saying things to themselves about themselves that were really critical. Right.

Margaret (08:23):

Just pick up on it. Yeah. "I'm so dumb. I'm so clumsy. I'm so stupid." But anyway, this poor Nick I guess he works hard and he's out of the house quite a bit, but he's trying to set them up for a future and he has no idea she's thinking these things. Yeah.

Craig (08:38):

And so it's helpful to understand that, you know, you look so much at the ex making the decision or your partner making decision to end it, but they were going through an internal struggle

Margaret (08:52):

You don't know what they were being told. She was being told that your husband really isn't that into you anymore. And it was absolutely not true. Yeah. He was out trying to make a living and trying to better them.

Craig (09:04):

Next thing you know, they've left you and you're like, "what did I do wrong?"

Margaret (09:08):

And poor Nick. He didn't do anything wrong.

Craig (09:11):

Yeah. So it's helpful to understand, you know, some of the internal processes that we have in our mind, the internal critic, right. You said is very hard to ignore,

Margaret (09:23):

Very hard to ignore. If you're having those thoughts and beating yourself up and beating yourself up as a, is a common way to say it it's never helpful and it could be distorted. Yeah. All right. So all sorts of things can be going on inside your partner that you don't even know about. All right. And it's not always about you.

Craig (09:44):

Absolutely. Right. Helpful stuff.