The No Contact Rule

by Natalie Lue

  Expect this phase to last for at least six weeks, especially if there are some habits that you’ve got to focus on. But depending on what happens during this time and other factors that affect grieving time, this could run into a few months. If this was a short involvement and you’ve cut contact just to draw a line under it, you may find that it takes as little as a week but again it all depends on how affected you’ve been by this involvement. If you’re still doing a lot of this stuff when you’re heading towards four to six months and beyond, it’s an indication that you’re likely being very reactive and almost putting yourself through your own Groundhog Day by pressing reset despite the pain you feel from seeking short-term results. If you’re going through a lot of this stuff and it’s running beyond six months or even beyond a year, you’ve got to stop fighting and kidding yourself that you can do this without some additional support and look at getting some professional help.

  WHAT YOU’RE LIKELY TO BE EXPERIENCING ONCE THE INITIAL DUST HAS SETTLED

  WATCH OUT FOR

  Getting high on drama

  Feeling bored due to loss of ‘purpose’ and ‘fidgeting’ your way into breaking NC

  False confidence

  Feeling better but possibly not wanting to

  Feeling guilty about your decision

  Back to work, back to friends and family, starting to sound like a broken record, feeling very sorry for yourself, thinking your friends don’t understand, desire to be feeling as bad as you were in the first month because you acknowledge on some level that you actually feel better, start seeing him/her and the relationship for what it is, anger at yourself, anger at him/her, immense pain, falling off the wagon territory, laying the foundations for rebuilding yourself and your life, scared of how much time has passed, wondering what if things could have been different.

  KEY GOALS

  To establish the new routine of not being with / reaching out to your ex.

  To start learning to solve issues that you would have previously relied on your ex for via your own means.

  Try to spend as much time as you can in the present.

  You made the right decision – support it. If you’re not supporting your decisions, you’re not supporting you.

  You’ll probably find that because you wallowed in your pain prior to this, you’ll actually be sick of feeling like this which will prompt you to start getting out and doing different things and integrating yourself back into life. If you haven’t been going to work, have been calling in sick, being generally unreliable, and being emotionally and potentially physically absent to friends and family, this is your time to get up off your bum and force yourself back into life, whether you feel like you want to or not.

  You’re hurting and your brain is likely on overtime, but be assured that you will actually start to feel the benefits of NC if you’re getting on with your life. It’s when your life comes to a standstill and you won’t start creating one with a new meaning that doesn’t include your ex, when you may feel that NC is a pain in the ass that you’d rather exchange for the pain of them.

  You may go through a false sense of security that convinces you that you’re doing so well, it will be no harm to have them in your life as a friend. Don’t, it’s too soon and it may plunge you into more pain. If you do break NC, you may feel like you’re back to square one but you’ll find that even though you have some recovery to do, that you get over the fall quicker than you would have done previously. On the flipside, you may be tempted to hold onto them out of a sense of pride initially as you may not want to admit that it’s gone wrong, and if this is the case, you may find it more painful than when you first started out. Try not to beat yourself up by calling yourself a failure because this isn’t about failing; it’s about realising that you hit a bump in the road and that whilst you have progressed, you still have some road to travel on your journey. If you have fallen off the wagon, you need to get back on it as soon as possible.

  It’s very possible that you might start to convince yourself that you’ve committed some sort of wrongdoing by going NC or even convincing yourself that maybe whatever happened in the relationship was warranted hence you’re now a ‘bad person’ or at the very least a ‘wrong person’ for going NC. Guilt is something that lots of people struggle with but it’s important to realise that the presence of guilt is not the same as there being a presence of wrongdoing and even though you may have done things that you regret, it doesn’t invalidate your decision to do NC.

  You may feel anger creeping up on you or it may have hit you full force or maybe you’re already feeling quite down. Depending on where you are with grieving the loss, you may find this period of settling in after the initial decision to go NC quite tricky because you’re trying to settle in while possibly feeling very angry and/or very down or a rollercoaster of emotions. You won’t have that initial high of embarking on NC and you may feel more aware of time and what lies ahead or what you think lies ahead. You may wonder if you’ve made a big mistake or wobble over it being too hard but when you feel like this is when you need to sit through the feelings and push to the other side, not give in.

  If you were quite busy during the initial phase, you may be tired of doing the whole going out and being super-busy thing and that’s understandable. This may mean that you’re struggling with boredom or just realising that you don’t know a great deal about yourself or how to ‘entertain’ yourself. Don’t let this get you down and instead see NC as an opportunity to find out what makes you tick.

  Grief and NC aren’t linear so it’s not set in stone about when this phase will kick in but it’s likely to be after a month. If it was a very short involvement, you may find that you move into this phase after a week or so, simply because to be in the initial phase for several weeks or months may be disproportionate to the original involvement and in turn, you may feel bored due to the lack of purpose because going NC in these circumstances may have given you a ‘buzz’. Be careful of looking for attention elsewhere – learn to just be with you.

  WHAT YOU’RE LIKELY TO BE EXPERIENCING ONCE YOU’RE IN A ROUTINE

  WATCH OUT FOR

  Relaxing a bit too much and convincing yourself that you’re ready for contact or ‘friendship’

  Deciding that they ‘must’ have changed

  Giving yourself a hard time if they’re not in touch

  Waves of anger and sadness

  Missing him/her

  Impatience that your feelings won’t go away

  Likely to realise that you’re further along than you thought, tempted to make friends with your ex, may feel brave enough to hang out with mutual friends or just friends of theirs who are nosing about, feelings of anger and sadness possibly coupled with the desire to break no contact just so that you can tell them all about themselves or pour out your feelings, impatience about not being over them or not in a new relationship, tempted to believe he/she misses you, tempted to believe that they’ve changed, may fall off the wagon simply due to recognising that you’re doing well and fearing having to be done with it, worried about whether they’ve moved on, suddenly realising that you’re happy, contemplating dating, may feel necessary to set boundaries with other people in your life now that you have a greater awareness, starting to get back into the swing of things with work and your social life, may be feeling lonely if your lives were quite intertwined or you’ve been isolating yourself, may suddenly be hit with the grief after an initial few weeks and months of being quite upbeat, growing self-awareness due to the self-knowledge you’re gaining from the process, suddenly dreaming about your ex and convincing yourself that it has more meaning than it does, visiting psychics.

  KEY GOALS

  To extend new habits into months.

  To work on processing feelings and thoughts.

  To start getting your life back on track.

  Having your own back no matter what is invaluable and will give you the strength to act in your best interests, even when you have to make the toug
h decisions and say NO to yourself.

  This is a transitioning period where you’re shifting from acclimatising to the process of NC to being a bit more natural with the habits and trying to put the focus positively on yourself as opposed to feeling that your life is being directed by the effects of this previous relationship. It’s finding that balance between doing NC but at the same time not wanting to feel like you’re a Rottweiler patrolling the perimeter or that you’re on edge all the time. You’re not over this person but you’re not raw either although you may have days where you’re caught off guard. Anger and a myriad of emotions that are attached to it are going to come at you in waves – don’t avoid your feelings but don’t feed them with negativity either.

  Habits that you’ve been working on should be starting to take hold although you will still have to teethe and tweak here and there so it’s important to listen to yourself. Because you’re moving out of those initial days, weeks and even months, what this stage is really crucial for is learning to deal with things that have typically involved you responding in an unhealthy way and/or reaching out to your ex in a different way. You might be finding having to make these changes or just NC as a whole, a bit daunting or may even feel frustrated that your life hasn’t been transformed beyond belief, but stay the course. It hasn’t been that long and impatience isn’t going to help.

  If you fell off the wagon in the early days or had several attempts at NC and then finally saw the light, you may find that you enter into this phase with a great deal of resolve. Due to feeling a bit more consistent and in control, you may feel less prone to being emotionally vulnerable at the drop of a hat and feel more trusting. That said, if you haven’t had any dealings with your ex during the bedding in period, you may find that your awareness is heightened about the possibility of them reaching out and feel unsure about how you’re going to deal with it. It’s important to remember that you have to plan for success instead of worrying yourself into believing that you’re going to screw up. While of course you might hear from your ex during the first phase, what tends to happen is that just as it seems like you’re moving on with your life and that you’re over them, they’ll pop up in your life. They don’t have a homing device but it is a time period (depending on the length of your relationship) that tends to spark some level of curiosity and “I can’t believe he/she hasn’t spoken to me in three months… hmmm... Let me just confirm that I’m not an asshole…”

  If you’re feeling quite confident in this phase, be careful of using this buoyancy as a cue that you should start dating or even enter into a new relationship especially if it’s with a friend who has been consoling you, another ex or even one of this ex’s friends. You may be overestimating your capacity and readiness for a relationship and so you have to make sure that you’re not avoiding your feelings and thoughts. If for whatever reason this doesn’t work out, it’s likely to reopen the wound if you didn’t heal the wound in the first place.

  Again, the timeframe on this phase isn’t set in stone. It might not last very long or it may last for beyond six months and it again depends on what you were dealing with in the relationship as well as what might be going on during the time of NC. The main thing you need to keep an eye on is working through the anger and allowing your feelings to surface all while nurturing yourself when you may be tempted to do something else.

  UNDERSTANDING THE NC GRIEF STAGES: DENIAL

  WHAT TO EXPECT

  Can’t believe this is happening.

  Wondering if it’s possible to give them another chance.

  Wondering what was real and what was fake.

  Analysing what was said and done and often blaming yourself for things that they did, which is actually a form of denial that displaces the responsibility.

  Temptation to break NC.

  Feeling like you’re in a fog.

  Trying to be their friend.

  Waiting for the I Made A Mistake Call… or text/email/tweet or Facebook message…

  Whether the final step into taking the plunge into NC is prompted by anger or just knowing that you can’t take another day of dealing with this person, you will experience denial although it may be to greater or lesser degrees depending on your circumstances. You may have been in this stage since before you broke up or initiated NC and it starts with struggling to believe that this is happening to you and that you really have to make this decision and do this. When this has been going on for a while, you’ll have known that something was wrong but weren’t able to admit it, possibly because you hoped that things would get better or because you judged yourself over this realisation and worried about having made a mistake or even held yourself entirely responsible for the situation, including their behaviour.

  You might have hoped it was a ‘rough patch’ even if it has been a rather extended one. If you've broken up before, you might have struggled to admit that this is not the type of relationship where you can stay friends immediately or you may have overestimated your capacity to cope and it’s turned out that it’s too raw to remain in contact with them. Sometimes it’s as simple as being unwilling to admit that you’re just not compatible, irrespective of how you each feel.

  If you are in denial about how serious the issues are in your relationship, you may flip flop in indecision about NC and be tempted to fall off the wagon.

  If you're in denial about the relationship being well and truly over, you may undermine your own NC efforts by quietly or openly seeking validation from them so you don't feel rejected and so that you can keep the relationship alive.

  During this stage, you can battle with the realisation that this is over for good or this sense of feeling rejected like, “I can’t believe that they don’t want me!” If you had some underlying motivations to use NC to jolt them into stepping up and giving you what you want, they’re most likely to be flushed out during this time and when they reveal themselves, it may hurt because you will have to face what you’ve been putting off (that this isn’t working or that these ‘strategies’ are actually hurting you more than helping you). It’s also likely to bring up a myriad of difficult emotions including frustration, anger and even shame because you won’t want to believe that the truth is the truth.

  Denial is a natural and important part of the grieving process. It’s your mind’s way of doing a bit of a shuffle and allowing yourself to process reality in more palatable, digestible chunks. This stage of the grieving process though, only really ‘works’ if you’re not typically someone who tends to treat truths that don’t suit your agenda as unacceptable.

  The lower your self-esteem or the bigger an issue you have with dealing with disappointment and perceived ‘rejection’ or ‘abandonment,’ the messier this stage can get due to untruths you’re feeding yourself about you and this person, including blaming yourself for their actions.

  When you’ve been denying, rationalising, minimising and excusing things that you really needed to be allowing into your consciousness and having an active response to, the breakup and ensuing NC is tough because it’s like doing an end of year accounts and having to pull out all of your receipts and unsorted paperwork from under the carpet. Grief is partly about reconciling the perception that you had of things with the reality and there can be some incredibly painful realisations, which is why you may find it easier to try and pursue this relationship against the odds rather than face the truth.

  You wonder what was real and what was fake.

  It’s at this stage of struggling with working our reality that you may respond to the difficult emotions and thoughts by reaching out. Unfortunately this is a bad idea, simply because it’s just adding more onto your pile of things to work out, deny or feel bad about. You may feel tempted to break NC because you simply want to prove that your perception of things is or was true. If they respond, you’ll feel temporarily validated until it becomes apparent that actually, the same issues still prevail and the relationship you want and hope for cannot happen.

  The truth
is – and you may find this difficult to digest – that you will struggle with this stage if you don’t tend to be realistic about people, simply because you will think X and then do Y and then get upset about Z outcome because of the denial-based logic and reasoning applied to your course of action. You’ll kid yourself that they’ll come back soon or that you can both be friends or that you can even squeeze in one last shag for old time’s sake and then your heart will hurt, as will your mind over the reality that you’re neglecting yourself.

  This is also a stage where you’ve got to be careful of secretly holding out hope and waiting around. Even a teeny little bit of hope is enough to create a large vulnerability. I’ve seen people go through NC but hold onto this hope and it becomes a block to truly being there for themselves never mind for a new relationship.

  If you persist in denial, not only does this take you out of reality and so distort everything that you’re thinking and doing, but it’s highly likely to result in you becoming trapped in your feelings and thoughts, which in turn can lead to you doing stuff off the back of these that you may later struggle to come to terms with.

  UNDERSTANDING THE NC GRIEF STAGES: ANGER

  WHAT TO EXPECT

  Being very angry with yourself.

  Being very angry with them.

  Being tempted to lash out and tell them all about themselves.

  Feeling consumed by your feelings.

  Possibly contemplating revenge.

  Ruminating, often at night or when you’re at a loose end, which, if you respond to this, may result in you texting or calling them.

  Feeling like you can’t move on.

  Feeling bitter, despondent, or even believing that you’re miserable while they’re living the life of Riley.