The No Contact Rule

by Natalie Lue

  People who are genuine friends after their relationships or who end up being in touch in a non-destructive manner, do so organically. They don’t contrive to reconnect; they bump into each other or cross paths while getting on with their respective lives and don’t seek to force something for the sake of one or both egos.

  When one of your biggest concerns is whether it’s permanent, it’s a sign that you really need to focus on the process and dealing with your own life not theirs. You’re still too invested and you need to shuffle around your priorities.

  Most people with decent levels of self-esteem think it’s odd when the other party wants to be friends straight away. People who need NC applied to them tend to think they can make their own rules and people who need to do NC often worry too much about how they look.

  Asking if NC is permanent is like asking if a breakup is permanent.

  Yes there’s a possibility that one day your paths may cross under better circumstances but we do have to treat our breakups as permanent otherwise we end up in limbo which can expose us to hurt and derail or even stall our lives. Treating breakups as permanent helps the grieving process and keeps you in reality, so that if much further down the line getting back together is revisited, you don’t end up making the decision based on bullshit and a mentality driven by failure to process your grief and to recover from disappointment.

  NC is recognition of the fact that this relationship is, or was, unhealthy and it may stem from the fact that your other half cannot respect even basic boundaries or that you’re not able to act with self-love around them. These are not indicators of a potential friendship and ultimately you need to concern yourself with being a very good friend to you instead of worrying about what you’re going to do in the future with someone who you don’t share a healthy present or past with.

  NC isn’t about priming yourself to be able to handle someone’s assholery in a more ‘mature’ manner (read: pretending that your needs, expectations and wishes don’t matter and ignoring your true feelings) – the mature manner is distance, self-preservation and refusing to accept mistreatment.

  Objection! But What About Closure? What if… ?

  Part of the reason unhealthy relationships and their even unhealthier breakups drag on long past their sell-by-date is because there is this idea that the other person holds the key to ‘closure’, this sense of resolution at the end of the relationship and that it’s been ‘resolved’. This can mean resolving the questions that the relationship may bring up, or attempting to understand the other person, or attempting to understand every last thing that went on in the relationship. In the worst of cases, it’s basically like attempting to seek 100% of the answers before feeling that we can put the relationship down. What we don’t realise, is that many of us use this idea of seeking closure as a means of avoiding using our own judgement and engaging in decision-making, to avoid this perennial fear of ‘making a mistake’.

  Closure then becomes wanting to be 100% certain that it wasn’t your fault, or that you did everything that you could do (which may include taking the blame and the responsibility for the other person’s contribution or for the entire relationship). To be 100% sure that ultimately the relationship is unworkable and that they’re not going to change into a better person in a better relationship as soon as your back is turned.

  If you keep engaging and are still trying to talk the hell out of your relationship because you love to have ‘the conversation’ and are convinced you need to have a breakup moment of enough magnitude to motivate you to step away, it’s because you think it’s what you need for closure and you like wondering “What if?”

  What if I play doormat a little bit more? Maybe they’ll finally see how great I am? What if I stand by my man/woman?

  What if I expect nothing at all? Maybe they won’t feel so pressured.

  What if I finish it and then they become The Ideal Man/Woman™ for the next person?

  Maybe I should have waited a bit longer. We’ve only broken up 57 times and I’ve only given umpteen chances, but ya know – maybe I was being a little hasty?

  I’m going to say something that you may find difficult to face: With people that don't know their arses from their elbow, blow hot and cold and won't commit to either being with you or not being with you, you’ve got to toughen up. Big time.

  What if I play doormat a little bit more? Maybe they’ll finally see how great I am? What if I stand by my man/woman?

  Yes you could be even more accommodating and try even harder to please someone who has no intention of ever realising your greatness, but while you may communicate how much you’re ‘there’ for them, the other message communicated is that you have no self-respect, that you have low self-esteem, and that they can get away with mistreating you.

  What if I expect nothing at all from them? Maybe they won’t feel so pressured.

  Every relationship requires expectations. The only reason you’re trying to downgrade your expectations is some cack-handed attempt to minimise the amount of disappointment you experience. You expect nothing and they get the very strong message that there are no boundaries and that they’re free to do as they like. This isn’t happy clappy land. People don’t always do the decent thing. It’s not like they’re going to say “There, there. He/she expects nothing so I’ll be nice to them.” They’ll just have you marked as a soft touch. It’s also important to note that often when we go out of our way not to expect anything from people, it’s a subconscious way of hoping that they don’t expect too much of us, as we’re not convinced of our own value and think that if they expect, they may be disappointed. Many people in these situations don’t know how to differentiate between expecting what any decent human being should want to give, versus being accused of being needy for effectively breathing and not allowing them to walk all over you.

  What if I finish it and then they become The Ideal Man/Woman™ for the next person?

  While I can say ‘Who cares?’, it’s obvious that you do! It doesn’t matter if they’re kind to the nice old lady next door or act like Mr/Miss Perfect with the next person, because they’re not behaving that way with you, and you actually have no idea whether they’re truly being that way in their new relationship either, nor can you judge things based on the honeymoon phase that they may be in currently. You can’t hold onto someone in the hope that one day you’ll be happy with them. You also can’t behave like the equivalent of a squatter or a protestor who won’t get off a property – it’s only yourself that you’re imprisoning. Get happy now. It’s also important to point out that situations like this expose an incompatibility in values because you’ve attempted to proceed with this relationship based on who they are and that doesn’t work for you. If they’ve found someone who they have compatible values with, even if you don’t agree with what those values are, that’s their prerogative because you have no right to expect or even demand that they change their values to accommodate you.

  Maybe I should have waited a bit longer. We’ve only broken up 57 times and I’ve only given umpteen chances, but ya know – maybe I was being a little hasty?

  ‘Conversations’ with someone who you’ve been going nowhere with, who has been using you, sleeping with you when it suits, disappearing, coming back, making promises, breaking promises, abusing you, messing with your mind, unable to commit, withholding their attentions and affections, disrupting the progress of the relationship etc, don’t make a blind bit of difference – they just give you a reason to look for that one little eeeny weeny nugget of something to justify an already disproportionate investment and give them a chance, and then they turn around and do the same thing all over again!

  One day you wake up and realise that you’ve spent more time seeking closure than you have actually living and enjoying your relationship.

  Wise up, toughen up, smell the coffee and take control of yourself because you cannot control this and the way this relationship is going but you can control how YOU are affected by bein
g with him/her, plus you can get closure without them being the one to close the door for you. Why on earth do you need this person to close the door for your closure? What you must remember here is that if they were seeking closure themselves, you wouldn’t need to do NC. It is the fact that they want to leave the proverbial door and their options open that you’re in this situation in the first place.

  They don’t want to explain, they don’t want to match actions and words, they don’t want to provide you with all of the information because then you might tell them to jog on and then you’re not an option anymore and they have to face their own feelings. You are not Siamese twins which means they are not under obligation to provide you with ‘double closure’. You can close the door and damn well slam it shut when they try to push it back open and that is the barometer of how successful NC is:

  When they attempt to open the door, there must be no response. The door must be closed, not slightly ajar to hear whatever rinky dinky, bullshit excuse they have. No Contact is a beginning, not an end.

  NC enables you to close the door on this relationship even when you don’t get to have a ‘conversation’ or a big breakup moment. This time and space that you have to get acquainted with your own perspective and feelings and to reach your own resolution because you use NC as an opportunity to grieve, to adjust your perspective, to answer the question of “How did I get here?”, to reach a conclusion, and to make a resolution that helps you stand firm behind your original decision to break up and then do NC.

  You were in this relationship too. The great majority of questions you have can be answered with your own eyes, ears and judgement and so that’s another sideline benefit of NC. You gain a huge amount of self-knowledge by trusting yourself to evaluate the situation and to act on your own judgement while getting to know your feelings so that you can build self-awareness.

  This is going to be a hugely beneficial period of your life because you will become acquainted with your own feelings, needs, desires and expectations and you will be able to meet these better but also find a relationship that is more befitting of you by learning from the insights gained. You do not need their help in order to do this.

  Objection! What If They Get In Touch?

  Many people who embark on NC make the mistake of expending a lot of brainpower thinking about when and if their ex will get in touch and then pondering their possible response. This is more energy than this deserves and you are still making this person the focal point of your life despite the fact that they’re technically no longer in it. Accept that it’s possible that they’re going to attempt to make contact but also stay focused on your own needs. If you worry about whether they’re going to make contact and how you’re going to fall off the wagon when they do, it’s like praying to break NC and end up in pain, which is what you don’t want. Worry is like a goldfish – it doesn’t know when it’s full so you will overfeed it. Stop overfeeding it.

  Just because they may attempt to make contact doesn’t mean that you have to give him/her what they want.

  Just because they call/email/text, doesn’t mean that you have to answer or reply.

  Just because they turn up on your doorstep, doesn’t mean that you can’t turn them away.

  You can end up believing that people who are worthy of being dated and in relationships and worthy of love are the type of people who get the object of their previous affections coming back to them, or at least trying to. The reality is that if the person you cut it off with believes any of the following, they won’t be in touch. Yet.

  -- That the same conditions to which they have become used to no longer exist.

  -- That making contact might restart a cycle of something that they don’t wish to restart, for example, you wondering why they haven’t left their wife/when they’re going to change/why they don’t yet understand how they have hurt you.

  -- That they have found someone who allows them to do as they please.

  -- That they pissed you off so much the last time they spoke with you that they believe that there will be serious negative consequences.

  In fact, there could be umpteen reasons why someone hasn’t, or won’t get in touch with you, but it’s a bit like wondering how long a piece of string is… Always remember that if they get in touch, it’s not because you’re destined to be together in love’s young dream. Making contact is their way of testing to see if the door is still open. Your job is to communicate through your actions (lack of response) that it is closed.

  Objection! But What About When The Unexpected Happens?

  When people contemplate NC, they worry about the possibility of bumping into their ex or picking up a call from an unlisted number and finding their ex on the other end – neither of these things mean that NC has been broken. Yes NC is about minimising, and where possible eliminating, the possibility for your ex to contact you (or you them) but you cannot control the uncontrollable. This is about cutting off your end of things and not engaging unnecessarily.

  Unexpected things will happen or sometimes contact is unavoidable (you have children together, work together or have some paperwork to finalise) but you can do all of these things without engaging.

  You can drop your children off or address an issue about school without sleeping together or doing round #250 of the Why couldn’t you give me what I wanted? discussion. You can be professional and civil without having to do any of the things that you used to do in your relationship and you can finalise paperwork or even discuss an issue about your property without engaging beyond this.

  Incidentally, you may both like the same places but take the high road, and for now, until you’re in a stronger place, don’t go to places where you’re likely to meet. You’re just creating pain for yourself and potentially creating drama. It might be ‘your bar’ but you need ‘your life’ and ‘your sanity’ more than you need ‘that bar’.

  What does help is preparing for the unexpected and I talk about these subjects throughout the book because with even the best will in the world, you could block contact and not make any and then randomly bump into your ex in the supermarket and be caught off guard. The key is not to take the unexpected as some sort of sign that you’re supposed to engage or even drop your pants.

  Objection! But What About When We Didn’t Have A Relationship?

  You would be amazed at how many people find themselves in a situation of having to ‘break up’ with someone they haven’t actually had a full-on relationship with. Aside from the obvious booty call and Friends With Benefits situations, there are some very common examples of situations that require NC even though they’re not ‘relationships’.

  -- You fancied this person like crazy, professed your feelings, they turned you down but have then persisted in flirting with you and trying to keep you close for an ego stroke.

  -- You realised they were married so you backed away but they keep pursuing you while at the same time reminding you about how they’re married and working on their marriage when you ask what the hell is going on.

  -- You’re unable to continue what was previously a genuine friendship because of your romantic feelings that you’d hoped would have gone away by now.

  -- After being crazy about a ‘friend’ for ages, you’ve finally realised that you’re not going to be more than friends and that you don’t actually want to be friends because they’re not actually friendship material and you only called them your friend to legitimise hanging around them.

  -- They flirt and spend lots of time around you, and even appear to act a bit jealous when you say you’ve been on a date, but when you push them on what’s going on between you both, they claim that you’ve ‘misunderstood’ him/her. Note, you haven’t misunderstood a damn thing other than thinking that they want to do anything beyond messing with your mind and your feelings.

  -- You chatted with him/her on a dating site, they don’t seem to want to take things anywhere but they like emailing you for an ego stroke and you’ve found it difficult to detach
.

  -- You met ages ago, you gave them your number, and since then they call/email/text but it never goes beyond this. They may have disappeared after you broached the subject of what was going on between you and it’s all very ambiguous or even game-like.

  -- You’ve had a crush on them and they didn’t reciprocate and you’re finding it difficult to recover from what feels like a rejection.

  These are only some examples and the reason you’ll want and need to cut contact is because you’ve found yourself becoming emotionally invested, chasing them for attention and validation, wondering if you’ve done something wrong, or wondering what you need to do to progress things beyond their terms.

  You may think that this is excessive due to it seeming like you’re breaking up without a relationship. No Contact is just as applicable here because, for the sake of your sanity and to protect you from being drawn into any more illusions, the distance created will allow you to breathe and move on to people who are actually available to you.

  If you have a tendency to lose yourself in the fantasy, NC is critical for bringing you back to earth.

  Trust me, I’ve heard so many tales of how people have lost months and years of their lives waiting around for someone who has no intention of becoming anything more, and all because they believe that there’s something going on, or that at some point, their feelings are going to be reciprocated. It’s only through putting distance between them that they suddenly realise that there was nothing going on and they’ve been emotionally investing in a fantasy when they actually want to be loved in reality.