We Figured Out When The Dumper Starts Missing The Dumpee (2024)

Today I’d like to explore exactly when the dumper can start missing the dumpee.

And really I think there are three specific things to touch on with this topic.

1. Answering if the dumper will even miss their ex after a breakup
2. Understanding how an avoidant self fulfilling cycle comes into play
3. Managing your expectations on when you can expect a dumper to miss you

So, if you’re ready to go all in on understanding the psychology of a dumper then let’s just jump right in.

Does The Dumper Even Miss Their Ex?

It wouldn’t be a “Chris Seiter” article without me saying something controversial. So, let’s just get this out of the way.

In most cases, if you give your ex enough space, they will at some point miss you.

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to get on their hands and knees and beg for you back.

For some the “missing emotion” can be fleeting. For others, all consuming.

In all though, yes, there’s a high likelihood that the dumper will miss the ex at some point.

Is There Ever A Scenario Where A Dumper Won’t Miss An Ex?

This is where things can get a bit complicated because the answer to this is yes as well.

A few weeks ago I conducted an interview with one of the Ex Recovery Coaches, Dr. Tyler Ramsey and we were talking about the major stages an avoidant will go through after a breakup.

He said something incredibly insightful.

He essentially argued that as long as the dumper isn’t overcome with their anxious side that if they give a fearful avoidant enough space that they will likely be hit with these bouts of nostalgia.

If you aren’t familiar with the concept of avoidant nostalgia I highly recommend you read this article and watch this video,

In a nutshell the video argues that all avoidants are overcome with nostalgia when they feel like their ex partner has moved on from them.

Only then do they feel safe enough to “miss them.”

Of course, what if the dumpee never gives the dumper that kind of space?

What if the dumpee is caught up trying to “fix” the relationship to the point that they become overbearing for the dumper?

In that case then the dumper will be brought back to the trauma of the breakup and ultimately want to avoid you.

So, weirdly YOU can be responsible for your ex not missing you after a breakup if you can’t obtain emotional control.

Crazy, right?

But there’s one other bit of complication that I feel is important to bring to the forefront and that’s looking at gender differences in how breakups are handled.

Understand The Different Ways That Men And Women Handle Breakups

I only bring this up because over 90% of our clients are female and for many of them there’s a disconnect for them when it comes to understanding what is going on in their ex boyfriends mind.

Now, you may be a male reading this and that’s fine. Still, I’d encourage you to listen intently because it’ll help inform you on the major misconception most people have about breakups.

Ok, so our head coach, Anna Gonowon, wrote this really amazing post on our facebook group essentially analyzing how men and women handled breakups.

The general stereotypes are what you would expect.

• Women “are all broken up about it.”
• Men seem to be ok.

BUT what does the research say?

Well, weirdly they kind of back this up. According to Coach Anna,

Men feel bummed, though, and they express it too. In that same study men reported more feelings of anger and they tend to engage in more self destructive behaviors than women. Women in comparison, frequently feel more depressed and participate in more social, affiliative behaviors than men. Women’s behaviors could be argued to be more constructive strategies as a result of their tendency to preserve the relationship whereas men choose destructive strategies for maintaining their own self esteem.

But here’s the thing. There’s more to it than meets the eye. Once again, quoting Anna,

So maybe the real story should go something like this:

• Boy and girl meet.
• Boy tells girl he loves her.
• There is no one else but her.
• But then, at some point, boy says, “It’s not you, it’s me. Let’s be friends.”
• The boy changes his Facebook status to “single” and fills his Instagram feed with photos of himself partying with never-before-seen women.
• The girl, meanwhile, falls apart and tells her friends how unfair it is that he’s already over the relationship, while she’s busy analyzing every minuscule thing that she might have done wrong, for months, maybe even years.
• But the boy falls apart, too—he just doesn’t show or tell anyone. It sucks for both boy and girl, just in different ways.
• And it probably sucks even more for him, but he’ll never tell you, because he’s not allowed to.

So, what does any of this have to do with a dumper missing you?

Well, assuming your dumper is a male it’s entirely possible that there’s an internal battle going on that you aren’t even aware of because they’ve become so adept at covering it up.

You read their silence as if they aren’t broken up about the breakup at all when the inferno inside them is consuming them.

And I think it’s all rooted in attachment styles.

Understanding The Avoidant Self Fulfilling Cycle

I know I say this in pretty much every article I write now-a-days but that’s only because it’s so relevant to most of our clients.

Statistically most of our clients are going through breakups with exes that are avoidants.

What does this mean?

Well, I’ll just refer you to the definition from my favorite attachment website in the world, Free To Attach,

People with avoidant attachment have the tendency to emotionally distance themselves from their partner.

Generally speaking they emotionally distance themselves from their partners when they feel as if they’re losing their independence.

And that harkens back to something our very own Dr. Ramsey calls the core wound.

According to him every attachment style has a core wound. Those with an avoidant style usually have a core wound that revolves around a loss of independence.

See Also

Dumper's Regret: A Timeline & Stages of Remorse of Dumping Someone

They’re afraid to commit because they feel like they’ll lose their independence in a relationship.

We can spend all day talking about trigger points and things of that nature but I’d like to cut directly to the heart of the matter.

What does the avoidant attachment style have to do with missing a dumpee?

Well, believe it or not but understanding the stages an avoidant will go through throughout a relationship cycle can help you understand around when they’ll miss you.

And for that we need to once again turn to a personal concept I came up I like to call the avoidant self fulfilling cycle.

Going In Depth On The Avoidant Self Fulfilling Cycle

Take a look at this graphic.

This is what I like to the avoidant self fulfilling cycle and before you ask me questions about if it applies to “all avoidants” I’m going to say that it doesn’t.

Nothing “cookie cutter” can ever encompass everything perfectly but as a general rule I have seen this play out time and time again across avoidant attachment styles as a whole.

Yes, that means if your ex is a fearful avoidant or dismissive avoidant they can go through these stages.

Because ultimately the crux of the concept of the avoidant self fulfilling cycle is that the avoidant is caught in this cycle going from relationship to relationship.

More on that in a moment.

For now let me just familiarize you with the basic stages of which there are eight.

1. They start out wanting someone to love them
2. They date you and things are great at first
3. Eventually your need for open communication and intimacy triggers their avoidant side
4. They begin to consider leaving the relationship
5. They actually leave the relationship
6. They are ecstatic that they left the relationship
7. They begin to feel lonely and need to find a distraction for the loss
8. They enter victim mentality and wonder why this is always happening to them

Now, what I find fascinating about the cycle is that it’s powered based on an aspect of nostalgia and desire if you really think about it.

You have the avoidant starting in a place of desperation. They’ll often think,

• “Why can’t I find the right person for me?”
• “Why can’t I feel the same way I did with that one person I was with”

And they’re constantly searching for a way to recreate that feeling.

In an odd way they have a lot in common with drug addicts looking for their next fix.

But they naturally self sabotage when they get into a relationship after they’ve gotten their fix and perhaps the most strange part of the phenomenon is they aren’t aware they are doing this to themselves.

And so often with Avoidants you’ll find they have quite a history of past partners.

Jumping from one relationship to the next. Yearning for an impossible partner.

So, it seems pretty gloomy, right?

Well, not really when it comes to pinpointing when the dumper will start missing the dumpee. The truth is that usually around stage seven of the self fulfilling process is when they are most likely to experience feelings of nostalgia.

The disconnect for many of our clients occurs because when they come to us their exes are sitting promptly in the middle of stage six.

It seems like the dumper is over the moon about dumping you and so my job (as well as the coaches of this program) is to educate you on what the post breakup period really looks like.

And part of that is managing expectations when it comes to time frames.

Creating A Realistic Time Frame Of When You Can Expect The Dumper To Miss You

I think I was doing a Facebook Live in our private facebook group with Coach Anna a long time ago and we started bantering back and forth about attachment styles when she said something that stuck with me to this day.

Your perception of time during the no contact rule can change based on your attachment style.

And while we aren’t really talking about the no contact rule in this article I feel like there’s enough of connection to bring it up.

Lately if you’ve watched any of my more recent YouTube videos I’ve been talking about this concept of time dilation based on attachment styles.

I use the 30 day no contact rule to really put it in perspective for a lot of people.

1. Anxious Individuals: 30 Days Feels Like 60 Days (or something to that effect)
2. Avoidant Individuals: 30 Days Feels Like 15 Days
3. Secure Individuals: 30 Days Feels Like 30 Days

Now, I bring this up for a few reasons. Firstly, that vast majority of our clients are the dumpees.

Second, most of our clients exes, who are the dumpers, tend to be avoidant.

Thus, it’s important to understand that on average it’s going to take longer than you probably think before the dumper is hit with that nostalgia that can make them miss you.

But what’s a realistic time frame.

A Realistic Timeframe Based On What We’ve Seen In Our Coaching Practice

It goes without saying that really we’re focusing on this area of the cycle,

So, in 2021 I posted a study I did on how long it took our average client to get an ex back (since that’s what they hired us for.)

I took 9 random success stories and simply looked at how long it took them to get back into a relationship with their ex.

Here they were,

1. Jessy (2 Months)
2. Kelly (3 months)
3. Mary (2 months)
4. Sarah Michelle (3 months)
5. Sarah Michelle Again (2 Months)
6. Sophia (5 months)
7. Jean (5 months)
8. Aaron (2 months)
9. Kris ( 7 months)

That averages together at 3.4 months.

Oh, and I believe that’s when they started working with us. So, if they were trying to get their ex back for ten months before they came into our orbit I didn’t count that in the data.

So, I think this creates a great baseline for when you can expect an ex to “miss you.”

Of course, the question gets kind of tricky because many avoidant exes above probably began missing the dumpee before they actually admitted it out loud.

But something tells me you are far more interested in a verbal acknowledgement of “missing.”

If that’s the case I think using our baseline gives you a great indicator on when you can expect a dumper to start missing you.

However, there is one factor that can ruin your chances. As stated above, if you don’t leave that avoidant ex alone they might never enter the nostalgia phase.

It’s so hard for many of our anxious clients to do this because naturally they want to fix their relationship as soon as possible.

But this is one scenario where patience really is a virtue.