It’s incredible how dynamic women are in life. With their constantly changing emotional states, women are primed to change all the time. The thing is, it’s not the type of change you and I are thinking about as a guy. We’ll get to that in a minute, so bare with me.
Chances are you’ve noticed a shift in your ex-girlfriend’s behavior and you’re wondering what’s up.
I took some notes on my own thoughts and then looked at what others have to say. The top results were written by women trying to explain themselves to men, and some of their conclusions were laughable.
I saw everything from “Eat, Pray, Love” bullshit to very bad advice at how to get her back. As usual, this confirms a rule I realized long ago: never ask women for advice on women.
So let me tell you what’s really happening.
Why do women change?
“[…] there’s just something infinitely sexy about something or someone new. It’s nervous, fraught with the fear of being caught, and awkward — plus it feels different.”
Laura, 26 on why she always cheats on her boyfriends
I was actually shocked when I read this. Laura has so succinctly summarized why women change. Women are the more dynamic of the two sexes in the sense that they crave novelty more than men do. Think about how often you’ve heard women complain about being bored.
You can look at the evidence that says women get bored of sex faster in a long-term relationship.
I did a small study of my roughly 800 Linkedin connections. What I was expecting to see is that women take more jobs and stay at those jobs for less time, and boy was I right.
Women on my list had an average of 1.7 more jobs than their male counterparts and changed jobs 121% more often than the men.
Let’s go back to what Laura said for a minute. She specifically says “it feels different, which is exactly what I would expect a woman to say. Women want to feel differently over time, because it’s what they’re used to. Women’s hormonal cycles have conditioned them to expect change as the norm, not as the exception. When something starts to get a little bit too routine, they’ll change just because they crave new feelings.
She might change her job, start drama with one of her girlfriends, get a cat, start a new exercise plan or something similar. To you and I it might seem completely at random, and that’s because it is. These women aren’t changing something because it fits into a long term plan.
They’re changing something because they can’t stand things being the name and they need to feel something new in order to feel normal as a woman. They’ll start to get unhappy if everything is the same, which is exactly why women report higher levels of dissatisfaction in long term relationships than men, as well as initiate roughly 75% of all divorces.
For you and I, if we do the same thing every day for a couple of years we might not love it, but we’ll be okay with it. We have a much higher capacity for tolerating the same thing day in, and day out, and it takes longer for us to feel the need for change. Breakups also tend to be harder on men because we aren’t as prepared for change as a woman.
If you look around, you’ll see plenty of examples of a woman’s need for variety in her life.
For example, my girlfriend can’t seem to wrap her head around the fact that during the week I eat the same three meal prepped dishes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
She insists on making herself something different for every meal, and even then she gets bored with the recipes she already knows. There’s no end to it, which is probably why the grocery bill is so high every week.
Damn you, Trader Joes (or Tradin’ Hoes as we like to call it).
Okay, so hopefully you understand why women change, now let’s look at some reasons why your ex-girlfriend is acting different. The order in which I’ve placed these is on purpose, in terms of how frequently it’s the reason she’s changing before your eyes.
She’s seeing someone new
The women who wrote the other articles similar to this conveniently ignored the biggest reason why your ex-girlfriend is acting different. She’s met someone new and doesn’t need you at the moment for emotional support and validation.
She’s wrapped up in new emotions for a new guy, satisfying her primordial need for change.
If your ex-girlfriend suddenly goes from normal, to cold and distant the chances that she’s met someone new are off the charts.
If she…
- Suddenly stops responding to your texts (you should be using the no-contact rule!) when she was before
- Isn’t showing you as much emotion when she was before
- Stops contacting you, even if she was initiating contact before
- Breaks plans you two might have scheduled
The more of these she’s doing, the more likely it is she’s met someone new. Especially if it happens suddenly, in the period of 1-2 weeks. Women do this all the time, where they’ll keep you on the hook for validation until they meet someone new. Afterwards, they’ll promptly jettison your ass and move on.
With men, women work on a cycle. They’ll stick with a man until they get bored, and then start looking for the next exciting man. If you know a woman long enough, the men in her life will follow a predictable pattern. She’ll date someone safe, who has a good job and kisses her ass followed by someone more erratic and unpredictable.
This can work in your favor too- where your ex-girlfriend will start acting differently towards the guy she’s seeing and then come back to you. In order for that to happen, you’ll need to have grown positively, and embraced no-contact to show her that you’ve changed. The chance you have of getting her back is going to be much greater if you’re a new and exciting version of the guy she loved before.
You’re being too fucking needy
Repeat after me: dominant behavior gets you laid. Needy behavior gets you played.
Brother, if you’re blowing her phone up with 15 texts a day after you two break up, it’s only a matter of time until she gets fed up and ghosts you.
Again, women don’t talk about this because they expect you to understand it without them telling you. So let me help you out here
If a woman breaks up with you, and you keep blowing her up and pushing to try to get her back, you’re going to see her acting differently towards you. She might put up with it for a couple of days, to a few weeks depending on the severity. But eventually, she will get tired of your constant weakness, and will start to be cold and bitchy.
Women need to come to you at their own pace. If she’s not attracted to you, and you continue to pursue anyway, you’re just going to turn her off further and diminish any chance of attracting her in the future.
If she’s starting to become cold and mean to you, you’ve been too needy. It’s her way of telling you to shape up. If you want any chance of getting her back, you have to go no-contact immediately.
Being too needy can push her right into the arms of another man as well. What I see happen often is after a breakup is guys will beg for her back. And then keep begging. Of course she won’t give in, and then when they see her two weeks later posting about her new boyfriend on Instagram, they’re devastated.
“What did I do wrong??” they ask.
“Why is she suddenly acting different?”
What these men don’t realize is that a woman needs change to be satisfied. She left you for a reason, and she’s not interested in getting back together with you until you’ve changed. Why do you think that the best way to get her back is to go no-contact for awhile, get your shit together, and become a better person?
Again, let her come back to you at her own pace.
It works because when you two get back together, it’s like she’s dating a different person, and as we already established, that’s exactly what she wants.
She has no direction for where she’s going
If your ex-girlfriend starts lashing out at you in anger, you can be reasonably assured that she’s not taking the breakup well, even if she was the one who broke up with you.
A buddy of mine is in this situation right now. His girlfriend left him and their young daughter to go “find herself”. Only, it didn’t go as planned. All she found was crippling inadequacy, and after about two months apart she began to get particularly nasty.
She blamed him for all of their problems, as well as being wildly lost and unhappy.
In other words, she was a classic hypocrite who couldn’t take responsibility for her own behavior. Unfortunately, society has coddled women to the point where some women believe they have no responsibility for your actions.
If you’re in the dating game long enough, you’ll see a few of these women. They coast on the coattails of others, never really having a purpose or direction in life.
They’re also the type who often lash out in anger. Her blaming you isn’t a reflection of what you did. It’s a reflection of how she really feels about herself. Her own inadequacy will be deflected on you, because she doesn’t want to take ownership of her own failings in life.
Again, most women are NOT like this. But you will see a few. No-contact is the only way, and don’t EVER think about getting back together with a woman like this. It never works out, and you’ll be compromising your own happiness for some mediocre pussy.
She’s not really who you thought she was
Being head over heels in love is cool, but it’s like being Sandra Bullock in Birdbox. You can’t see shit.
For about the first 6 months to 1 year of dating, there are going to be things about your girlfriend that you just don’t know. It’s not that she’s hiding things from you, it’s just that you haven’t seen her placed in many different situations before.
One of my previous girlfriends named Paige is a great example of this. Throughout our relationship, she was a sweet and submissive introvert, but over time she began to get bitchy and aggressive. When I broke it off with her, her personality flipped.
She suddenly became very extroverted and dominant. Today she’s in a relationship where she’s in charge, and her boyfriend is the submissive one. Based on my experience, I never would have seen it coming.
The funny thing is I dated Paige for about a year.
You might think you understand your ex-girlfriend. Here’s the thing, though. If you guys weren’t together for long enough, chances are that you don’t understand her as well as you think you do.
That doesn’t mean that you should devote time to trying to understand your ex girlfriend, or why she’s suddenly acting different. If it’s who she is, and the relationship is already over, it’s not worth your time to do so.
If she does something completely out of the left field as Paige did, chances are you really never knew her that well to begin with, and your breakup was a blessing in disguise.
The type of women that feel the need to hide things are also the ones who don’t make great long-term partners, much like Paige.
The other side of this is if you were only dating a woman for a short period of time, she doesn’t know you that well either. If she wasn’t hiding anything, and you didn’t get the chance to know her that well, it’s actually pretty easy to get her back if you do everything right.
If you have the balls to back off, use no-contact and let her come back to you at her own pace, you have a much higher chance of getting her back than a 5 year relationship that went wrong where the attraction may already be gone for good.
She’s BPD/Bipolar
Up to 6% of the US population may have BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), with around 75% of those being women. 2.6% of the US population is also bipolar, although the skew is more even.
I’ve noticed it’s become taboo to blame mental health for relationship problems, but there’s just no way around it. BPD and Bipolar women are just fucking nuts, with or without medication. If your ex-girlfriend is BPD/Bipolar, her wild mood swings are just par for the course, and you should get away from her as quickly as you can.
Trust me, you’re going to save yourself from a lot of trouble.
While BPD and Bipolar women both behave impulsively and have wide mood swings, there are a number of differences between the two.
Women suffering from borderline personality disorder have a pattern of unstable relationships and are very sensitive and struggle to manage their emotions. Their poor coping mechanisms often compound the issue, causing them to lash out or otherwise behave erratically.
Women with BPD also tend to be fearful of abandonment, leading them to prolong relationships that aren’t working, while reacting to intense emotional experiences in a very negative way. These women are also strikingly critical of themselves.
Bipolar women, on the other hand, have massive fluctuations in their energy. During the manic stage, they’ll be confident and high energy. However, during the depressive stage, they’ll feel tired, sad, and hopeless.
If your ex-girlfriend had serious mood swings during your relationship and displayed any of the behaviors above, it’s entirely possible they’re suffering from BPD or Bipolar disorder. There’s a little bit less than a 1 in 10 chance you’ll date one of these women, so don’t discount the possibility.
What do I do when she starts acting differently?
You can’t expect your ex-girlfriend to remain the same person forever. The person you knew and loved as your girlfriend is now gone, even if you two broke up yesterday. You have to accept that your connection is over.
Don’t get it twisted, accepting that it’s over doesn’t mean that you won’t get her back. It just means you two will both be different if and when you get back together.
Your only recourse when she starts acting differently is to go no contact, which you should have done in the first place. You need to go no-contact immediately, and be prepared to ignore her for a long time.
The fact of the matter is, you’re still attached to your ex-girlfriend if you care about why she’s acting differently towards you. Indifference makes the difference with women. You’ll have a much better chance of getting her back if you don’t give a shit what she does.
Don’t get tied up in watching her transform. Take a step back, take a deep breath, and go no-contact. Read my complete guide here and embrace the fact that it will make you a better man.
You should be focused on what you can do to grow, not on what she’s doing differently. Remember, comparison is the thief of joy. Your breakup has just presented you with a wonderful opportunity to become a better person.
Don’t let you need to obsess over your ex stop you from becoming the man you were meant to be.
Talk soon my friend,
Coach Jack
PS: Got a burning question about your ex-girlfriend or your unique situation that you want my expert advice on? Click here to learn how I can help you.