Don’t do the dance

Post-break-up games can become a whole new level of heartbreak. Don’t use ‘Let’s stay friends’ or ‘I have two movie tickets’ to try and rekindle the flame. It never does any good

ve made a list of places where I am likely to bump into him. The strategy is to hang out at those places, dressed to kill, so that he regrets breaking up with me,” says a client I am coaching as she tries to heal a severely broken heart.

Most of us have had such thoughts after a breakup. Certainly many of my clients, and many of my friends, have formulated strategies to either get back with or get back at someone who broke up with them. I’ve done this too.

Even seemingly amicable separations don’t always help. A friend of mine broke up with her boyfriend of four years rather pleasantly; so much so that they decided to stay friends. But then she made me part of a rather elaborate relationship restoration plan. She would buy two tickets to a movie or plan a weekend getaway with me, then at the last minute call him to say I had backed out and she was stuck with these things and since they were all already paid for… would he care to join her?

I only got to go if he declined. He went with her on a few occasions; other times she made do with me. This went on for a year. Until he committed to someone new, and she was heartbroken all over again.

There’s another client of mine whose girlfriend broke up with him before she moved to another city. Unable to get over her, he started making trips to her city almost every month, on the pretext of work. He would stand by her office waiting to “accidentally” bump into her. They had dinner together a couple of times. Then, on one such trip, he couldn’t find her anywhere. It turned out she’d left the country on a long-term assignment. He felt betrayed, he said. He’d spent tens of thousands on tickets and accommodation and she hadn’t even thought to tell him she was leaving the country. Had she no regard for all he’d done for her?

I had to explain that he hadn’t, of course, been acting on her behalf. And she hadn’t even known she was the cause of his actions. This lack of authenticity, lying to oneself and to one’s former partner, are the hallmarks of a breakup gone awry. And a breakup gone awry does not end in a successful rekindling of the relationship. Not in my experience.

The movies may tell you there’s still a chance, “if he’ll meet me”, “if she’ll say yes to dinner”. But in all my years as a relationship coach, I don’t know of a single time when this approach has worked out in the