What To Do When The No Contact Rule Doesn't Work- Ex Boyfriend Recovery (2024)

Ever since the creation of this site there has been one strategy that it has been associated with it above all others.

Care to take a guess?

The “Ungettable Girl?”

Nope…

The “I have a confession… text?”

No..

Give up yet?

Ok, I will stop playing around with you.

It’s the no contact rule.

You know, that pesky little rule that forces you to ignore your ex boyfriend on purpose for a certain amount of time with the hope that he will miss you and you can be that much further along with your plans to win him back.

I must admit that while I get a lot of association with the no contact rule I am not the one who initially came up with the idea but if I ever do meet the person who came up with it I would shake their hand.

Why?

Because I have seen the power of the no contact rule (if it is implemented correctly) firsthand and it is POWERFUL!

In fact a wrote an awesome ebook about the topic and you should pick up a copy. It’s called, “The No Contact Rule Book”!

Now, does it work every single time?

No, but it’s incredible how many women have had great successes with it,

And these are just a small handful of the women who have gotten back in touch with me after they got their exes back (using NC.) I literally have HUNDREDS of stories just like this saved to my iMac.

(I thought it might be a little excessive to post all of them here.)

Anyways, I don’t think there is any doubt about the fact that the no contact rule does work when it comes to getting your ex boyfriend back.

Of course, even I would be lying if I said it works 100% of the time.

What This Page Is About

I have this theory.

I think people learn more from failures than they do from successes.

Above I mentioned that the no contact rule doesn’t work 100% of the time.

Does it work for most women who successfully attempt it on their exes?

Usually.

However, what I want to focus on in this “complete guide” are the attempts that it doesn’t work for.

When it comes to getting your ex boyfriend back you always need to have a contingency plan.

For example, I can give you the best advice in the world and you can implement it to perfection but maybe your ex doesn’t react to it the way you were expecting and you are thinking “now what?”

Having a backup plan in case things don’t go your way is a very good idea (and something almost no one does.)

And then having a backup plan of your backup plan protects you from failure even more.

That is what this page is all about.

I want to take a situation,

Where the no contact rule doesn’t work on your ex boyfriend

And give you a back up plan.

This page is going to be very long because I am going to be tackling things in an in-depth manner (like always) but at the same time I am going to make sure that this page is going to be very easy to digest because what we are talking about here is very advanced stuff.

In other words, I got your back 😉 .

A Brief Introduction To The No Contact Rule

(If you are already pretty familiar with the no contact rule then you can skip this section and go to the next one.)

Since this whole guide revolves around the no contact rule I thought it would be a little strange if I just started talking about what to do if it doesn’t work without first explaining it to those of you who may be reading this that aren’t too familiar with what it is.

So, what is it?

What is this rule of no contact?

Put simply, the no contact rule is a period of time where you completely ignore your ex.

Click To Pick Up Your Copy of My eBook, “The No Contact Rule Book”!

For example, lets say that you and your ex boyfriend break up (and it’s a pretty nasty breakup.) Well, rather than doing what every other girl on this planet will do (which is begging for him back) you decide that it would be a great idea to ignore your ex for…. lets say 30 days.

That means that if your ex boyfriend were to call you, text you, Facebook message you or contact you in any other way, shape or form you would flat out ignore him.

Now, this “freeze out” only lasts for 30 days and then after that you are free to contact him. Of course, I have a specific way that I like to teach women to do that which is outlined in my book,

The No Contact Rule Book

Now, the definition of the no contact rule above is pretty thin. It’s just a quick crash course or the bare minimum of what you need to know.

Luckily for you I have written about the no contact rule a lot on this site,

• What Is The No Contact Rule?
• The Male Mind During The No Contact Rule
• How To Handle Every Situation During NC

Now that you have a brief idea of what the no contact rule is lets move on to talking about how we measure a failed no contact period.

What Constitutes A Failed No Contact Period?

It’s funny, I pulled out a piece of paper to write down the hundreds of things that constitute a failed no contact period and guess how many “constitutions” I ended up with?

A measly two…

Seriously, check it out,

Those were the only two things I could think of that constituted a failed no contact rule.

Now, maybe old age is starting to catch up to me (which at 25 would be kind of pathetic) but I can’t think of anything outside of those two reasons. If you can then please feel free to comment.

Luckily, the two reasons I gave above are all we need to really have an in-depth discussion.

Lets talk about them now.

Constitution One- Your Ex Boyfriend Doesn’t Respond To You After The No Contact Rule

Pretty much the whole reason women get excited about the no contact rule is the fact that it has the power to potentially make their ex boyfriends miss them so much that they will want to come back to them on the spot once the period of time is up.

While it almost never works out that way (NEWFLASH you have to do more than just no contact to win your ex back) it can be very saddening when you don’t even receive a response from your ex after no contact.

Now, before I move on there is something that I feel entitled to cover.

Most women are under the impression that if their ex boyfriends do not message them during the no contact rule it means that NC is not working.

This is simply not true (as explained here.)

What really makes a no contact rule a failure is if your ex doesn’t even respond to you after it’s over.

Why is this a failure?

Because, in order for you to even have a chance to win your ex boyfriend back you have to communicate with him.

I mean, imagine that you were trying to win back the love of a concrete wall…

That is the situation you are in if your ex boyfriend doesn’t contact you after the no contact rule is complete.

There Is Some Good News Though

Your ex boyfriend not talking to you after the no contact rule is rare.

I recently went through the comments here on Ex Boyfriend Recovery and compiled a list of the first 20 women I could find who implemented the no contact rule on their exes.

Here were my findings,

• 11 of them had their exes contact them during the no contact period.
• 6 of them got in touch with their exes after the no contact rule was over.
• 3 of them had failed no contact periods where there ex didn’t respond at all.

That means that 17 out of 20 women had successful no contact periods while the other 3 women didn’t.

This means that there is an 85% chance that you will have a successful no contact rule in which your ex boyfriend gets back in touch with you.

Constitution Two- You Break The No Contact Rule Before It’s Up

Tsk… Tsk… Tsk…

I gave you ironclad instructions to NOT contact your ex under any circ*mstances (except the ones here) and you disobeyed my orders.

I am sorry to go all Mufasa on you but,

A woman breaking no contact early because she either misses her ex or he calls her during the no contact rule is without a doubt the most common mistake I see on Ex Boyfriend Recovery.

In order for the no contact rule to be fully effective you have to wait 30 days.

You can’t do 14 days and then think to yourself,

“Ok, enough time has gone by I think I can get in touch with him now.”

I am sorry but the no contact rule doesn’t work that way.

Of course, I would have to say that without a doubt my most favorite situation is one where a woman messages me the following,

“Chris, I followed your no contact rule and I failed. He doesn’t want me back and he won’t even go on a date with me.”

My initial reaction upon reading this is,

“Darn, what can I do to help her?”

Of course, after further investigation I find out that she really didn’t do the no contact rule right as she broke it 3 days in after he messaged her on Facebook and she would sporadically break the no contact rule throughout the 30 days.

You see, this woman was under the impression that the no contact rule meant that she could respond to him only if he contacted her first.

Umm… no… just no…

The no contact has to be continuous.

There can be no interruptions save for a few special circ*mstances which I talk about in my book,

The No Contact Rule Book

Why does it have to be continuous?

Lets take a look at the graphic below for clarity,

This is how a perfect no contact rule timeline should look.

Notice how the NC period starts on the left of the line and then as time goes by it ends on the right of the line.

This uninterrupted no contact rule gives your ex boyfriend plenty of time to miss you and reminisce about your relationship (which you want to happen.)

Ok, now lets take a look at a no contact rule with a lot of interruptions,

The little bubbles in the line above serve as interruptions to the no contact rule.

They are all the times that you broke the no contact rule prematurely.

Why is this such a mistake?

Because, instead of giving your ex boyfriend time to reminisce and miss you, you are signifying to him with your actions (of interrupting NC) that you are still into him and as a result he isn’t going to respond the way you want him to after the no contact rule.

All it takes is one little interruption for this to happen.

One little slip up where you respond to a text message he sends.

The point I am trying to get at here is you have to be disciplined when it comes to the no contact rule.

Of course, I created this page for women who are in a worst case scenario situation in which the no contact rule doesn’t work.

So, lets move on to the exciting part of this article, figuring out what to do if things aren’t going your way after the no contact rule.

What To Do If The No Contact Rule Doesn’t Work

This is where things start to get fun.

Lets assume that you are in a worst case scenario where your no contact rule has just failed.

At day 10 you broke the no contact rule to respond to your exes text message.

At day 13 you ended up talking to your ex on the phone after he called you.

Then at day 31 (the day after day 30) you send a text message to your ex boyfriend and he doesn’t respond.

“Darn..” you think to yourself.

“Maybe he was just busy.”

You try him again a few days later.

Still no response.

“What the heck is going on?” you wonder.

“Ok, I am going to try one last time and then that’s it.”

Nope he still hasn’t responded.

It appears that the no contact rule has failed.

For many women this is the worst scenario that they could face.

So, if you are in this situation what are you supposed to do?

Well, that is what this section is all about.

Luckily for you I have come up with 5 strategies on how to approach a failed no contact rule.

Lets start with strategy one.

Strategy One – Restart Your No Contact Period (With A Staggered Approach)

If you go back and read my original thoughts that I had on the no contact rule years ago here what do I recommend that you do if you mess it up?

Mess It Up= breaking it prematurely by messaging your ex boyfriend in any way shape or form outside of the allowed instances.

If you mess up on the no contact rule you have to start over from square one…

What does that mean?

It means that if you determined that you were going to use a 30 day no contact rule and on day 12 you broke that no contact rule then you have to restart the 30 days from that point on.

Hence, you are back at square one.

The same principle kind of applies here after a failed no contact rule.

We are assuming a worst case scenario so that means that no only did you break the no contact rule (and not start over from square one) but you also reached out to your ex boyfriend AFTER no contact was over and he ignored you.

What do you think most women do in this situation?

The press even harder.

Rather than taking a step back and re-evaluating the situation they continue to text their ex or call him.

This comes off as desperate and will have the opposite effect of what we are trying to accomplish here.

So, what I have been recommending to women lately (with great success) is a staggered approach to the no contact rule.

What is that?

Good question!

Lets say that you have contacted your ex boyfriend after your failed no contact rule and he has ignored you.

Well, rather than messaging him again the next day I would say jump back into no contact for a week and try again.

If you fail at getting his attention again after a week then go back into no contact for 2 weeks.

This trend continues over and over again until you get a response from him.

…..

Still confused?

It’s ok, I understand I didn’t do a great job of explaining it.

Picture a running track,

Notice how on the running track picture above there are seven starting places (there are really eight but the eighth one is out of the picture so we won’t count it.)

Well, lets imagine that you have completed the no contact rule and not gotten a response from your ex. Well, then you are going to wait one week before you try to contact him again,

After you have waited one week in no contact then you simply “reach out” to him again. If he doesn’t respond to that “reach out” then you are going to go back into no contact for two weeks,

So, after two weeks you are going to reach out to your ex boyfriend. He will usually respond by now but lets assume that he doesn’t.

What now?

Simple, you are going to continued the staggered approach and go back into the no contact rule for three weeks.

Do you see what is going on now?

You basically continue this approach until you get a response from your ex.

Is There Ever An End To The Staggered Approach?

This is a legitimate question.

Initially I talk about how I recommend a 30 day no contact rule for women who are trying to get their ex boyfriends back.

Well, if you are holding true to this “staggered approach” of no contact then isn’t it possible that if your ex boyfriend decides not to respond to any of your attempts to reach out that you can surpass that 30 days?

Yes, that is possible.

However, 4 weeks is the maximum I would stay in this staggered approach.

Now, I am not some sort of math wiz but by my count if you reach weeks using this approach 6 weeks will have already passed. If you add an additional 4 from the four weeks you have ahead of you that means that 10 weeks will have gone by and you will have given your ex boyfriend plenty of opportunities to respond to your attempts to reach out.

I don’t know about you but that seems like a lot…

In that case (and only in that case) it may be time to admit defeat and focus your energies in recovering from the relationship.

Strategy Two- A Prolonged No Contact Rule

Ah the prolonged no contact rule.

This is actually similar to strategy one above but with one main difference.

Instead of going with a staggered approach you are going to go with a prolonged approach.

What’s the prolonged approach?

I will get to that in a moment.

First things first, I need to do a quick recap of something important.

By this point of the guide you should know that a standard no contact rule is 30 days. That means that in a perfect world you will be ignoring your ex boyfriend for 30 days straight.

Of course, we are looking at a worst case scenario here where you did not last 30 days. Instead, you lasted something like 10 or 11 days before you broke NC (and then you tried finishing out the rest of the time in silence.)

Well, breaking the sacred bond of no contact like this pretty much defeats the entire purpose.

The Purpose- To use silence to make your ex boyfriend realize what he is missing out on and to kick start his feelings for you.

This purpose can only be achieved by complete silence.

That is what the prolonged strategy focuses in on.

So, rather than trying a staggered approach to the no contact rule (which is heavily focused on trying to get your ex boyfriend to respond to you) the prolonged approach is geared towards making him miss you.

Like I said above.

An initial no contact rule is meant to be implemented for 30 days.

The prolonged no contact rule is meant to be implemented for 45 days. This means that a prolonged no contact rule is longer than the actual no contact rule.

Now, some of you may read that and think to yourself,

“Is that enough time in no contact? I mean, there are NC rules that extend up to 90 days.”

While it is true that there are no contact rules that can be extended for up to 90 days I am not a fan of those type of prolonged periods.

Why?

I have found that there is a correlation between moving on and a super prolonged period of no contact.

While 45 days can be considered a lot it is nothing close to 90 days. I meant, 90 days is three months and A LOT can happen in three months.

45 days is a perfect prolonged period because it gives your ex boyfriend time to miss you and at the same time not enough time has gone by for him to lose feelings in you yet.

Strategy Three- It’s A Function Of Your Texts

Those of you who were smart enough to pick up my book,

Ex Boyfriend Recovery PRO

Know that I have a very specific way that I like to teach women to reach out to their ex boyfriends after no contact.

Oftentimes when a woman comes to me after a failed no contact and asks me something like this,

“Chris, I texted my boyfriend after the no contact rule and he didn’t respond… Now what do I do?”

I ask them about the actual text that they sent.

Usually it is something along the lines of,

or

Umm… I hate to break it to you but these types of text messages aren’t good enough for contacting an ex boyfriend after the no contact rule.

Oftentimes I have found that 35% to 45% of no contact rules fail because the initial “reach out” text wasn’t good enough.

Look, I understand the temptation of not sending a good first contact text message after ignoring your ex boyfriend. Saying something like, “hey” or “what’s up” is safe. It doesn’t require a lot of thought and in the past your ex boyfriend responded to everything you sent him.

However, you have to keep in mind that if you used the no contact rule on your ex boyfriend you just ignored him (on purpose) for hopefully 30 days.

No one likes to be ignored…

Just sending him a message out of the blue is going to be a little awkward.

Sending him “hey” out of the blue like nothing even happened is even more awkward.

So, what I would like to do now is teach you my method for getting in touch with an ex boyfriend after the no contact rule.

So Interesting He Has No Choice But To Respond

I want you to take a look at something for me.

Do you know what this is?

This is a small little screenshot of one tiny aspect of a redesign that Ex Boyfriend Recovery is going through.

Yup, I hired a designer to give this website a facelift and he is doing a fantastic job. The picture above is just his work with my email case study in which two women try to get their exes back (one succeeds and one fails.)

Anyways, take a look at the whole picture.

If you want your ex boyfriend back (which I am assuming you do) doesn’t it make you want to click on the “find out why…” button?

I showed it to my wife and even she admitted that she wanted to click on it.

Why?

Because it’s so interesting she wanted to find out what it was all about.

This is the kind of effect your first contact text message needs to have on your ex boyfriend.

It needs to be so interesting that he can’t not respond to it.

He will see it and be so intrigued by it that he will have to respond to your text message just to find out what you are going on about.

You want an example of how to do this, huh?

Ok, try this text message on for size.

It seems so simple, right?

It’s actually more complex than you realize.

If we dated in the past and you texted this to me after ignoring me for 30 days I would respond to it.

Why?

Because I am intrigued by it.

I am intrigued by the fact that you ignored me for that long and are reaching out to me for the first time. I am intrigued that you saw something and I want to know what it is.

These are the kinds of text messages that you are shooting for.

Any text message that is intriguing or interesting.

Got it?

Strategy Four- Moving On Without Moving On

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

Girl meets boy…

Girl and boy fall in love…

Boy breaks girls heart…

Girl begins to move on…

Once boy sees girl moving on he “miraculously” comes back into the picture…

Sound familiar?

To me it does.

I can’t tell you how many times I have stumbled across a situation just like the one described above through this site. Heck, even a podcast listener called in with a situation like this.

Men have this funny tendency to come back into the picture after women have moved on already.

Why is this?

Well, I don’t have exact statistics on this or anything but what I do have is a theory.

My Theory- After a breakup most women display a very needy persona. This needy persona is the exact opposite of what drew your ex boyfriend to you in the first place. Of course, after you have gotten over the breakup and moved on you are no longer displaying that needy persona. Instead, you are displaying a successful, happy and pleasant one. The are all things that attract a man. Hence, your ex boyfriend comes back into the picture.

I want you to remember this theory as it is going to come into play here in a second.

Obviously I have constructed this page around what to do if your no contact rule fails.

Well, instead of tinkering with the no contact rule what if you took the exact opposite approach and moved on without moving on.

What do I mean by that?

Move on without moving on is an idea I came up with that basically leverages my theory above.

The hypothesis that we are operating with is that if you “move on” you will display a persona that is attractive to your ex. So attractive in fact that he will come back into the picture.

It kind of jumps over the effectiveness of restarting the no contact rule, huh?

Now, before I move on to our final strategy I will admit that this particular strategy is a bit riskier than the others.

Why?

Because in order to “move on without moving on” you kind of have to go on a very extended no contact rule and by extended I mean forever…

Hey, I take moving on very seriously and you should too.