18 signs you have a second chance at love with your ex

The flames of love are not always easily extinguished. So even when you break up, feelings tend to linger.

Maybe you desperately want to get your ex back, or perhaps you’ve just started to wonder whether you really could have a second chance at love with an ex.

Is it wishful thinking, or could it truly work out this time?

18 signs you have a second chance at love with your ex

1) You’re still in touch with them

A lot of exes when they split up decide it is better to completely cut ties.

Although some people try the ‘no contact rule’ as a way of getting their ex back, it’s most useful for when you are wanting a clean break.

It is easier to let go and start afresh rather than go through the often messy process of remaining in one another’s lives.

That is why if you are still in contact with your ex, it’s for a reason. That reason is most likely one of two things:

1) You both care about one another and that feels significant enough to try to salvage some sort of relationship (even if it’s just friendship).

2) Romantic feelings are still present that you can’t let go of.

Either way, still being in touch is a good sign that there may be hope for a second chance at love.

2) You understand what went wrong, and you know how to fix it

This one is a biggie.

It’s the difference between a second chance at love with an ex, and just setting yourselves up for more heartache.

The truth is that plenty of people do get back with an ex. Research shows as many as 50% of couples who split give it another go.

But research also highlights that on-and-off-again relationships can struggle from less satisfaction, less love, and less fulfilment.

As tempting as it can be to get back with an ex, you need to understand what caused the split in the first place. And more than that, you have to be willing and capable of fixing your problems.

As much as you might want to, you cannot magic issues away. Anything you try to just ignore or sweep under the carpet will come back around eventually.

3) You sense those butterflies

Maybe recently you’ve started to feel that flutter of excitement in your stomach whenever you’re around each other. Perhaps it never even went away.

It’s hard to explain and understand, but chemistry is powerful. It signals the presence of a strong physical attraction that still exists between you.

Although making a relationship work relies on more than physical desire, for many couples it helps to draw them much closer together.

It’s what turns a connection from a friendship into something more. Mother Nature’s urges can be difficult to resist.

If those flames of passion are still burning, then it can reignite those flames of love too.

4) You’re not playing the blame game

You are both past the stage of pointing fingers at one another for all the reasons why you broke up.

Sure, there was probably a little bit of fault on both sides. But now you’re ready to move forward and make amends.

You’re ready to put the past behind you and focus on building a new future. And that means accepting responsibility for your part in the breakup.

No matter how bad things got, you were always responsible for yourself and they were responsible for themselves.

If you can both take ownership of your actions, rather than trying to get each other to shoulder the blame, then you stand a chance at rekindling your love.

5) Jealousy rears its head

Jealousy is a funny thing.

Realistically it can arise from attachment and a sense of ownership rather than love.

But it is still a good indicator of strong feelings for someone because it ultimately shows you care.

When you no longer want somebody, you’re less affected by the thought of someone else having them.

That’s why if you and your ex display feelings of jealousy over any potential love rivals on the scene, then things might not be truly over between you.

6) You’re ready to forgive

Forgiveness isn’t easy. In fact, it can be downright painful.

But when you realize that forgiveness is the only way to heal old wounds and move on, it becomes easier.

Particularly if one of you messed up in some way, being able to leave whatever happened in the past is going to be crucial going forward.

Maybe there was a betrayal, cheating, or a breaking of trust. Whoever was responsible can hold their hands up and admit fault, but it requires the other person to forgive and forget.

If you can, you’ll find that you’re able to let go and open yourself up to a new beginning.

7) They make you feel good about yourself

I had an ex once who I remained “friends” with. Whenever I saw him, afterward I would end up crying.

Clearly, there were a lot of residual feelings still there. But my upset suggested those were painful emotions, rather than happy ones.

It’s normal to feel close to an ex still even after you split up. They feel familiar, and that in itself can bring comfort.

But to have a second chance at love with an ex, your relationship has to be built on stronger foundations.

What sorts of feelings do you bring up for each other? How do you feel when you are around them?

Our emotions are signals. They are there to guide us in a very primitive way.

Does spending time with your ex or speaking to them make you feel good about yourself or bad about yourself?

8) You both express regret

Perhaps you have both explicitly expressed how sorry you are at how things turned out. Or maybe you just sense that there is regret on both sides.

Regardless, expressing regret is a great first step toward making things right again.

In fact, it may be the best way to start a reconciliation process. If you both recognize that you made mistakes, then you can work together to fix what went wrong.

And if you can both accept that you’ve been hurt, then you can begin to understand where the pain comes from.

Regret shows you’re not too proud to admit that you wish things were different.

9) You talk all the time

Personally, I’m not a big believer that it’s possible to transition from being exes straight into being friends again without a big enough break in between.

In most cases, you need time to readjust and allow feelings to fade. And this can’t be rushed.

So if you two are seeing each other all the time, speaking almost every day, or constantly texting, then it sounds like more than friendship.

It could be that you are both testing the water and seeing whether love could grow again.

At the very least it shows that you like each other a lot and want to be in one another’s lives still.

10) There isn’t any tension between you

Particularly towards the end of a relationship, love can start to feel more like a battlefield.

Frustrations run high, arguments ensue, and it can start to feel very awkward. If you are to stand a second chance then you will need to put aside these differences.

You’ll also need to learn to listen to each other and compromise. This is something that takes practice and effort.

But if you can manage to do so, then you will be well placed to move forward as more than friends.

If, on the other hand, you can still cut the tension with a knife or your interactions with each other are still frayed, then it doesn’t sound as though you’ve moved past any hard feelings from your breakup.

11) What would an expert say?

It can be very challenging to look at our own romantic situations with the objectivity needed to see things clearly.

We’re just too emotionally invested and so it’s often easier to fool ourselves into believing what we want to believe.

While this article will shed light on the main signs you have a chance at love with an ex, it can be helpful to speak to a relationship coach about your situation.

With a professional relationship coach, you can get advice tailored to your unique situation…

Relationship Hero is a popular site where highly trained relationship coaches help people work through complex relationship issues, like breakups and getting back together. Their popularity boils down to how skilled their coaches are.

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Well, after recently experiencing a tough patch in my own relationship, I reached out to them for help. From the moment I got in touch, I was given genuine, helpful advice, and was finally able to see my relationship issues with real clarity.

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12) You open up when you’ve been drinking

Alcohol can be a bit of a truth serum.

Pride, insecurities, and defense mechanisms can prevent us from coming clean about how we really feel.

But because drinking tends to lower people’s inhibitions, sometimes the truth comes pouring out after we’ve had a drink or two.

In fact, how many of us have purposely had a drink with someone with the hope it will lead somewhere? I suspect a lot of us.

As the band Arctic Monkeys quite rightly point out in their song ‘Do I wanna know’:

“Baby, we both know that the nights were mainly made for saying things that you can’t say tomorrow day.”

Drunken texts and phone calls, or sentimental words point to underlying feelings that aren’t fully being expressed between you too.

13) You’re both single

It’s perhaps an obvious point, but you clearly stand a better chance at rekindling your romance with an ex if there isn’t anyone else on the scene.

If either of you has begun dating other people, or worse, are in another relationship already, it’s a sign that you’ve moved on.

If neither of you feels ready to see new people, then it’s a good sign that those feelings haven’t died yet.

And if they are still lingering, then you still stand a chance at bringing them fully back to life.

If one of you has begun to move on and date, then you stand more to lose by going backward and seeing if you can give it another try.

14) Your breakup was a knee-jerk decision

At first, an explosive argument might sound more damaging to a relationship than a slow fizzling of feelings. But that’s not necessarily the case.

Rather than one big episode ending a relationship, more often couples report long-lasting issues that slowly corrode the connection.

Before you know it, you feel like you are living with a stranger, or your partner feels more like a sibling than a lover.

These are actually harder to come back from. That’s because it points to deeper problems.

A stupid fight on the other hand is a single event. Once you’ve cooled off and it’s all died down, it’s easier to come back from. It most likely wasn’t as big of a deal as it felt at the time.

If with hindsight you both began to realize what you have lost, it’s potentially easier to repair than you think.

15) You have a solid friendship

We all know that friendships can turn into relationships.

That’s because they rest on firm foundations such as mutual affection, common interests, respect, etc.

This still counts for something once you break up too.

If your connection to your ex still falls back on a genuine like for one another, you get on well, and being with one another feels effortless, then it is something to build upon.

It may take some time and patience, but it is possible to rebuild love from the starting point of a friendship.

16) You feel it in your gut

We can apply all the logical and practical analysis in the world to whether you have a second chance at love with your ex. But guess what?

That can very quickly go out of the window when it comes to matters of the heart.

Our heads may tell us one thing. But it can be better to go with your gut.

Far from being a flippant way of deciding, there is evidence that our intuition is actually best relied upon in seemingly complicated matters.

As the Harvard Business Review points out:

“Our emotions and feelings might not only be important in our intuitive ability to make good decisions but may actually be essential.”

We all want to make the “right” choices, but too much analysis can lead us to overthink. Go with your gut.

Does it tell you that you have a second chance at love with your ex? Or do you have doubts and hesitation?

17) It’s not for the wrong reasons

Loneliness, missing that familiarity, wanting validation.

The truth is that there are plenty of bad reasons why we can feel compelled to try again with an ex.

But when it’s for the wrong reasons, it’s doomed to land you right back where you started eventually.

That only causes more disruption, heartache, and healing time for both of you.

You both need to want a second chance at love because the other person is worth it. Not because it feels like “better the devil you know” or because neither of you has any other options at the moment.

You might feel like you have nothing to lose by simply giving it a go, but is that really true?

Any progress you have made up until now will be underdone. You both have to understand the risks associated with getting back with an ex, but still feel like it’s worth it.

18) You’ve worked on yourselves

Two people bring things to the table in a relationship. Both good and bad things.

We all carry baggage and unhealthy expectations of love and our partners.

If you’ve both done the work on yourself then you stand a far better chance at nurturing the change within your relationship that ensures it will be different this time around.

So how can you make sure you’re not bringing any of your baggage back into the relationship?

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