The No Contact Rule Works and Why You’ll Want to Commit to It
You have reasons to reach out, but you’re making it harder to heal.
After my last breakup, a good friend gave me some much-needed personal and professional advice. She told me to use the No Contact Rule with my ex. She even sent me a guide on how to do it. It was great advice — advice that I didn’t follow, to my lasting regret. But I learned the hard way.
With that being said, I’m sure I’ll share the many reasons the No Contact Rule works and why it’s the best thing we can do, and I’m confident most people will ignore it. People like me end up learning everything the hard way — even with the best advice and intentions. Still, there are some surprising ways that it works and reasons that even now I wish I’d paid attention to when all I wanted to do was soothe my aching heart.
“NO CONTACT is not just a survival tactic. It’s not just a self-care method. It’s a revolution. It’s a confirmation.” ~Shahida Arabi
How the No Contact Rule Works
For those who are new to the No Contact Rule, it’s simple. After a breakup, we have no contact with that person for a certain established period. Some people do it for 30 days. Some need it for longer. No texts. No messages. No calls. No social media stalking. Nothing. It’s going cold turkey, and it might even involve blocking them on social media to prevent us from being tempted to check up on them.
It Helps Us Grieve
Breakups are brutal. There’s grief and rejection mixed in with the pain of adjusting to a new normal. The No Contact Rule helps us grieve. It gives us the time and space away from that person to process how we’re feeling. We’ll be tempted to reach out and soothe ourselves with contact with this person who was once so important to our lives, but it will only prolong the grief to continue to interact with someone who has severed the romantic relationship.
Even if we are the ones who initiated the breakup, the No Contact Rule is still important. There is still a grieving process, and going cold turkey with this rule can help us take the space to feel our feelings without being tempted to use the person we dumped as a crutch. It prevents us from hurting them, and it allows us time to deal with our feelings of loss.
“It didn’t hurt me. Not “hurt”. Hurt is a four letter word. It’s short, almost cute sounding. Aawwww, did that hurt? No. It didn’t hurt. Destroyed, Obliterated, Desecrated, Annihilated, Demolished, Shattered, or Demoralised maybe… But no. It didn’t hurt me. It didn’t “hurt” me at all.” ~Ranata Suzuki
It Allows Us Time to Detach
The No Contact Rule is also essential to break the attachment. It was impossible to detach when I was getting messages all day every day from my ex — just as if we were in a relationship only without any romantic context. I couldn’t stop focusing on the love because it was always in front of me. It was his voice on the phone, his messages coming through like a gut punch in my day, and a constant reminder that this person I loved didn’t want me anymore. I couldn’t let go when there was still steady contact.
Detaching from the other person is important. They don’t want to share their lives with us — or we have chosen not to share our lives with them — and both parties have to figure out how to move forward and build new routines without this person featuring in them. We need that clean break to truly assess our lives and priorities. It’s difficult to do when we’re still having contact with the other person.
It Prevents Confusion
As long as I could have that contact, there was hope. I feel like a fool for admitting it, but I thought that his desire to stay in contact indicated that one day he might have a change of heart. He was still himself — this person that I loved. But I had to remind myself in every conversation not to say I love you or to use terms of endearment. I had to learn a whole new language to communicate with someone who I still loved who didn’t love me.
It was confusing, to say the least. It made it harder to let go and to heal. My heart would lift every time he reached out, and it would fall as soon as the contact ended. He hadn’t changed his mind. He still didn’t want to be with me. He’d been able to successfully downgrade our friendship/relationship, and I was left struggling with my feelings. Eliminating contact would have prevented the pain and confusion of trying to communicate with someone who had broken my heart.
It Stops the Other Person from Having Access
From the point of view of the person who was dumped, it’s simple: They don’t want a romantic relationship with us, but they do want continued access. Distance kept us from falling back into bed together, but that’s fairly common when exes stay in contact without having grieved the end of the relationship first. Utilizing the No Contact Rule is also a reminder to our exes that they choose not to continue a relationship with us, and any suffering that results from their decision is part of that choice. It’s a natural consequence, not a punishment.
If they don’t want to share their lives with us, then they need to learn what that will look like. It’s not being unkind to let them have what they wanted in the first place. It gives them time to consider their decision, and it gives us the space to grieve without having to filter that grief every time we speak to them.
It Helps Us Move Forward
It was hard to have regular conversations with my ex while also trying to move on and date new people. It didn’t feel appropriate to talk about those new experiences or to share how hard it was even going out on a date with someone who wasn’t him. It was even less appropriate to talk about the ones that went well. We were supposed to be friends, but we were both more and less than that.
Embracing the No Contact Rule helps us move on. It allows us to put that relationship into perspective. We can go through the grieving process and even begin to date again when we’re ready. Somewhere in the process of having no contact, we realize that if they wanted to change their minds, they would. But they don’t. That’s okay. We just have to keep living our lives.
“They say the truth hurts. And these words hurt more than any I have ever written. But they are the truth — The cold, hard, undeniable truth. Not letting go doesn’t keep him with you. It’s still over. He’s still gone. … And nothing will ever change that.” ~Ranata Suzuki
Why We Need to Commit to No Contact
There are some truly beneficial reasons to commit to eliminating contact with an ex for some time — reasons we might not consider when we’re hurting and want contact with that person more than anything else. These reasons are great reminders of why we need to commit to the No Contact Rule and stick with it even when it’s hard. It won’t be easy. It can be rewarding.
It Can Preserve the Potential for Friendship
If the person we’ve lost is someone we truly want to maintain a friendship with, then the No Contact Rule is essential. Taking the time to grieve and heal from the relationship can preserve the potential for friendship. It can allow us the space to detach and process our feelings until we reach a place where we can be friends without it being painful.
On the other hand, if we ignore the rule like I did, what we often find is that our hurt feelings chip away at the friendship. We can’t be fully honest with the person who broke our hearts. I had no interest in sharing every single day that I was falling asleep crying and waking up miserable. I had no intention of letting him know that his decision had sent me on a downward spiral of abandonment, rejection, insecurity, and heartache. I didn’t want to talk about that with the person who caused it, and it didn’t feel appropriate anyway.
I look back and wonder if we could have preserved a friendship if we’d been brave and strong enough to cut off contact until we’d both had time to heal. He was a person I respected, valued, and admired. I would have liked to have stayed friends. Doing so was impossible when I still wanted him to change his mind. If we want that chance at friendship, the No Contact Rule is our best bet.
“You loved him enough to let him leave… Now you need to love yourself enough to let him go.” ~Ranata Suzuki
The Clean Break Helps the Healing Process
Clean breaks help with healing. Reaching back and comforting ourselves with exes will only prolong the grieving process. It complicates our feelings. We need to fully let go — even if it’s just for 30 days — so that we can freefall into grief.
That sounds entirely undesirable, but the alternative is that we screw ourselves up even more by having intermittent contact with our exes. It might hurt more initially to tell them that we have to eliminate all contact for some time, but it’s the most self-loving thing we can do. I didn’t do it, so do as I say and not as I do. Seriously. There are so many benefits to letting it hurt more in the beginning if it helps us heal better and faster.
It Can Give Us Much-Needed Perspective
Having a break from being in contact also can help us find perspective. We can go through the stages of blaming them or blaming ourselves without involving the other person. We can process the feelings of rejection and hopefully come to realize that we’re still worthy of love even if this one relationship didn’t work out. We can find personal accountability in the relationship and learn how to be better partners for the next one.
This is also helpful for the person who initiated the breakup. If we had reasons for ending the relationship, stopping all contact gives us a chance to assess them. We’ll either be sure it was the right thing to do or quickly discover we were wrong. It also can help us evaluate why the relationship didn’t work out and assess how we can make different choices going forward. It’s easier to have that perspective when we have the time and space away from that person to think about it.
Using the No Contact Rule
Instead of simply ghosting the other person, we can have a final conversation about what the breakup will look like. We can tell them that we want to put a No Contact Rule in place for a certain period. Many people choose increments of 30, 60, or 90 days, but it could take longer. Setting the expectation that there will be no contact can reinforce the finality of the breakup, which is painful but necessary.
We can also talk about what that will look like. We might need to block the other person until we feel ready to be their friend and not a partner. It’s not about punishing them. It’s about protecting us from ourselves and our tendency to cyberstalk exes when we’re feeling low. We can also block their numbers and make sure that they realize that if they attempt to reach out, we won’t be reading or responding to messages.
It sounds harsh, but we can also give reasons. If I could go back and have the good sense to take my friend’s advice, I think I would have benefited greatly. I could have told my ex that I needed the time and space to heal if we ever wanted to try to be friends. I could have let him know that continued contact would be more painful than severing it altogether, and the healthiest thing I could do for myself was to let go and rebuild my life without the temptation to reach for him in the process.
But like I said, I always learn the hard way. It was a painful lesson and a reminder that sometimes the thing that’s best for us hurts. Cutting off contact would have felt excruciating, but it would have helped me heal. I wouldn’t have been confused about the relationship, and I wouldn’t have nurtured false hope that he would change his mind. I could have felt my feelings and moved on and then decided if I wanted to continue a friendship once I’d healed.
The No Contact Rule works. It helps both parties move forward. It’s painful, but it was always going to be terrible. But if we have to pick our metaphorical poison, it seems best to choose the one that will work faster — a clean break for a better chance to heal.
