Does He Still Love Me?
If you’ve recently been dumped, or in some other unfortunate way found yourself suddenly without your man, your mind is probably full of scary questions. “Does he still love me? Can I still get him back?” You can spend all day on his Facebook page and be no closer to an answer.
Worse yet, you may think you’ve found clues that he definitely doesn’t still like you — it may seem as if he’s completely moved on, in fact, and left you far behind. Based on what he’s doing and how he’s acting, it can really seem like he’s found a hundred and one things more interesting than you.
This, of course, makes that breakup a thousand times harder. The pain you feel — the almost physical effects of emotional pain that seem to completely overwhelm you only gets worse when it seems like he’s just not experiencing any.
But does your ex-boyfriend really want you back? Determining the answer to this question is not possible to 100% accuracy, since even he probably doesn’t completely know, especially not at first. The signs that he might still be interested often read backwards: whatever it may seem like the answer is, it may very well be the exact opposite. Here’s a few ideas to get you started on the process.
Anger: The First Sign
Most people think that hate is the opposite of love, and if you’re talking about a kindergartener learning opposites, then sure, you might be right. But when it comes to relationships, hate is definitely not the opposite of love. In fact, they’re a lot closer than you might think. On the other hand, you may have been through emotional storms before, and know how quickly hate and love can transmute into one another, and how easily.
So what, then, you might be asking, is the opposite of love? And what does this all have to do with me?
The opposite of love is apathy.
Think about it: if you really love someone, and they betray you deeply, you probably go straight to the other end of the spectrum and hate them, at least for a little while. If things go well, you may very well switch back to love again. But you don’t slide on a scale, loving them less and less until you don’t care about them, and then disliking them more and more until you hate them.
You switch instantly from one to the other. If asked, in that moment, why you hated that person so much, you’d answer “because I loved him so much, and he… [insert betrayal].” Because I loved him so much. That’s the key. It’s almost as if there are two components to any emotion: intensity, and type. It’s much easier to switch types of emotions than it is to switch intensities.
Going from love to apathy is actually a lot harder, and a lot rarer than switching from love to hate. And it’s a lot harder to go back from apathy to love. If he’s truly over you, he doesn’t hate you. He’s apathetic.
Now, what does this have to do with you? Well, it means that if he went from deeply loving you to acting like he hates you, that means that he has switched the category of emotion, not the intensity. And it also means that it’s much easier to switch back to the one you want him to feel: love.
So, if you find that your ex-boyfriend is extremely angry with you, and especially if you broke up while he was angry, he’s probably got some serious emotional baggage, some voices in his head telling him that leaving you was a really bad idea. They’re probably describing to him in great detail (as he goes about his day) how it felt to have you in his arms. How safe it was. How awesome it was.
Which brings us to Sign #2.
The No Contact Rule: The Second Sign
This is a hard one for many women to understand, and it can seem manipulative or conniving at first glance. But, in all likelihood, it is not. What’s going on here is that, since he’s broken up with you, and it’s probably going to be public knowledge at some point, his masculine training from early childhood says that he should be picking up and moving on, like a “real man” would. Now, this has nothing to do with the reality of how he’s feeling about the whole thing, but it’s important because it affects the way he’s going to seem to you right now.
Expect lots of Facebook updates and statuses about how super-fantastic everything in his life right now. You might see pictures of him with other women, or just with his buddies, having just a fantastic time. It can really seem like he never even knew you existed, but he’s trying to cover up—from you perhaps as much as himself—how he’s really feeling. There is still a part of him that wants to come back, most likely, but he’s not about to show that face to the world. Not right now, while he’s supposedly moving on from that relationship that he ended.
Partying Hard: The Third Sign
The third sign is related to the second, but it is slightly different, also. If it seems like he’s spending an awful lot of time partying, drinking, and maybe—it’s hard to hear, but be brave—flirting or sleeping with other women, that can be another sign that he’s trying hard to get over you, or at least to quell that part of him that’s telling him that he made a mistake ending things.
This is classic guy behavior, and it can be a big tell-tale that the façade of things being great that he’s desperately trying to keep up is not the whole story.
Stay on the lookout for these signs, as they are often the biggest signs that your boyfriend does want you back. Of course, every case is different, but this will give you at least a place to start.
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