How Long After A No Contact Rule Will He Reach Out? (2024)

Today we’re going to talk about one of the most hotly debated topics in the breakup industry and that’s how long after a period of no contact will it take for an ex to reach out to you.

Now, there are really two core principles revolving around this question that I’d like to touch on,

• On Average Do Exes Even Reach Out During No Contact
• How Long Does It Take For A No Contact To Work?

(Side Note: For the two principles I decided to use real polls from my Private Facebook Support Group to help back up my assertions.)

Let’s begin!

On Average Do Exes Even Reach Out During No Contact?

Last week I wrote an article where I basically laid all my cards on the table about what I think about the breakup industry as a whole.

One of the accusations I leveled at some of my peers was the fact that many of them use the no contact rule as a magic bullet solution.

• It’s that whole get rick quick mentality.
• Do this and your ex will come back.
• Do that and your ex will be begging for you

I was honest in my assessment. Some would say too honest because I even threw my own name in the hat and admitted that at times I have been guilty of hyping up the no contact rule.

Nevertheless, I’ve tried to undergo a complete paradigm shift and try to base everything I say about the no contact rule on real life data.

That data comes in the form of,

Research from reputable resources

Real life success stories who have gone through our program

Polls conducted in our private facebook group.

Today we’re really going to harp on the polling aspect but I’m getting off topic. The question laid at my feet here is if exes even reach out during no contact.

And the answer to that is… well, it’s complicated.

In 2020, I conducted a poll of our facebook group where I asked them a simple question,

For those of you who have completed the no contact rule, how many of your exes reached out to you during it?

My expectation was that most would say that their exes had. After all, the no contact rule taps into a psychological concept called reactance.

Reactance: When you take a human beings behavioral freedom away they react in a way to get that freedom back.

And yet the most ironic part is that the poll I conducted showed the exact opposite of what I was expecting.

62% of individuals who answered said their exes did not reach out to them at all during no contact. Meanwhile, 38% of individuals admitted that their exes did.

Why?

Well, after really diving into the avoidant attachment style this year I think it has to do with the avoidant nature of exes after a breakup.

But I’m getting off topic here.

There’s still that pesky 38% of individuals to talk about. Almost 40% of exes will reach out after a no contact rule but when?

For Those Exes That Do Reach Out To You During No Contact When Does It Happen?

I spent the better part of a day trying to track down reputable sources who have done studies on this very question and came to one simple conclusion.

This is ultimately a too specific question for anyone reputable to do a study on.

Therefore, I decided I would poll my own audience to see what the results were. I went to our private facebook support group and asked the following question,

For those of you who did a no contact rule and had an ex reach out to you first, how long did it take?

Now, between you and I, I usually take nuanced polls like this with a grain of salt. We are often asking individuals to remember a complicated time in their lives and specificity isn’t exactly a top priority but shockingly, almost every person who responded to this question had a very specific time frame.

Now, the time frames ranged anywhere from,

3 days to 60 days

Taking a sampling of 10 random answers here are the time frames,

1. 3 days
2. 60 days
3. 33 days
4. 35 days
5. 14 days
6. 25 days
7. 23 days
8. 21 days
9. 25 days
10. 18 days

If you average those ten samples together it leaves us with an average of about 26 days.

Which is not too far off the average of the collective whole of the study of 28 days.

So, the average time it takes for an ex to reach out to you during no contact, according to our research, is 28 days

I found this particular comment to the poll to be quite prophetic.

Normally about the 3 week mark. It’s like reality hits at that point.

This commentor wasn’t too far off.

Does Failing A No Contact Rule Make It Take Longer?

And yet as we continued to run the poll I started to notice something I hadn’t even thought to consider. One of my flaws as a human being is I tend to be very linear in how I think.

It’s an asset sometimes but with questions such as these it can be an issue.

I hadn’t even thought to ask how multiple no contact rules affect the time of how long it takes an ex to reach out to you.

It really wasn’t until I stumbled across this comment,

During my first no contact of 30 days, he reached out on day 25. During my second no contact of 45 days, he reached out on day 40. Pretty predictable actually.

Now, for years I’ve talked about how failing no contact and having to start it over actually lessens its effectiveness. In fact, I even have a fun little graphic showing it,

But does that also extend how long it will take for an ex to reach out to you?

According to that comment above it did, but what about others?

Well, only three individuals reported a similar circ*mstance where they did more than one no contact and their ex reached out to them both times.

I realize three individual data points isn’t a lot to go on but it’s what we’re working with and the results were interesting to say the least.

Let’s classify our subjects as,

1. Person A
2. Person B
3. Person C

Person A I showed you their comment above. They did two no contact rules. The first one only took 25 days for an ex to reach out. The second one took 40 days.

Person B was a little more difficult to nail down. They admitted they broke the no contact rule two times and their ex didn’t even reach out to them at all until their second no contact rule which was 60 days after their first one.

Person C is a bit of an outlier. They admitted that their first no contact wasn’t really much of one at all as they only lasted a few days before they themselves reached out to their ex. Determined to make the second no contact better their ex actually reached out to them a few days into it.

My take on this fun little study is that we don’t really have enough data to make a definitive determination but what little data we do have does seem to be leaning towards multiple no contacts causing an ex to take longer to reach out to you.

Most likely this is because breaking a no contact means you reach out to them first, they get their fix so to speak, and don’t want to talk to you again.

That or when you break no contact to reach out to them you are reminding them of the trauma of the breakup.