Will my ex come back? Sometimes, yes, but nobody can promise it, and anyone who does is selling something. The odds depend less on how much you miss them than on why the relationship ended, whether that reason can change, and what your ex does when no one is pushing. Small, repeated, honest behavior counts. Grand gestures and hope do not.
This page covers what predicts a reunion, the signs that point toward one and the signs that point away, how long it usually takes, what is in your hands and what is not, and a twelve-statement quiz you can score yourself. Baba Ali Musa’s spiritual work gets its own section near the end, after the practical parts, because that is the order it belongs in.
What predicts whether an ex comes back?
No study can answer “will my ex come back” for your particular ex. What exists is research on couples in general, research on people who split and reunite, and the patterns that anyone who sits with heartbroken people for years starts to recognize. Put together, they give you a way to weigh your situation without pretending to certainty.
Why the relationship ended
This is the biggest factor, and it is the one people skip because it hurts. A breakup caused by circumstances is a different thing from a breakup caused by how the two of you treated each other. Bad timing, distance, a punishing job, a family crisis, or a move can end a relationship between two people who still respect each other. Those are the endings that sometimes reverse once the pressure lifts.
Endings caused by contempt, repeated betrayal, or cruelty are harder. The Gottman Institute, which has studied couples for decades, describes four habits it calls the Four Horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. It says these habits can predict the end of a relationship, and it names contempt as the single greatest predictor of divorce. Much of that work was done with married couples, so treat it as a lens and not a verdict on your breakup. The lens is still useful. If your last months together were full of those four habits, a reunion needs the habits to change. Missing each other will not change them.
The same Institute describes research showing that stable couples had five or more positive interactions for every negative one during conflict. Think about that ratio in your last year together. If you honestly cannot find the positives, the problem is not that your ex forgot you. The relationship was not feeding either of you, and a reunion that restores it unchanged restores the hunger too.
Whether anything has changed since
Getting back together without changing anything is the most common way reunions fail. The same argument is waiting, the same silence, the same tired Sunday night. Research on couples who break up and reunite, often called on-again, off-again relationships, points the same direction. In a review of that work, René Dailey reports that cycling partners tend to describe lower love, less satisfaction, and more uncertainty than partners in relationships that never cycled.
A separate study of young adults found that people in on-off patterns were more likely to report physical violence and verbal abuse than people who were steadily together or steadily apart. The authors, Halpern-Meekin and colleagues, are clear that this is an association in one sample and not proof of cause. Both findings are averages. They do not say your reunion would fail. They say a reunion is not a reset button, and the work of changing the pattern is the real work.
Who ended it, and how
If your ex ended things after months of quiet thinking, they have often done much of their grieving before the breakup, and the road back is longer. If it ended in the heat of a fight or on an exhausted night, there is often more room, because the decision was made in a state nobody should make decisions in. Neither case is a promise. Knowing which one you are in tells you how much patience the situation needs.
The manner of the ending matters too. A breakup with a real conversation and some kindness in it leaves a door ajar. A breakup with ghosting, blame, or cruelty leaves a door that someone has to apologize before opening.
Whether someone new is involved
A new partner changes the practical picture. Early on, a new person can be comfort and not a final answer, and some people circle back when the comfort wears off. You cannot count on that, and from the outside you cannot tell which kind of new relationship you are looking at. One that has lasted months, includes family and friends, and shows up in daily life is a different matter from a few dates. Plan for the possibility that this chapter is closed.
If a relative, a former partner, or a friend is actively working to keep you apart, that is a separate problem. Baba Ali offers clear third-party interference work for exactly that situation.
How contact has gone since
Contact is the one source of fresh evidence you have. Who starts conversations, how long replies take, how conversations end, and whether the tone is warm all say something about where your ex is today. A sudden stop in replies says something too, and what to do when your ex stops replying walks through how to read it without spiraling. If you are in a deliberate quiet period, no contact and love spells explains how that time works and what it can and cannot do.
What are the signs an ex may come back?
The long version lives in our guide to the signs your ex is open to reconciliation. Here are the six that carry the most weight, in short. None is proof alone. Add them up over weeks, not hours.
They reach out with no errand attached
Messages about a lease, a pet, or a box of books do not count, even when they are friendly. The sign is contact with no job to do: a note that something reminded them of you, a question about your week, news about a mutual friend. Starting a conversation is a risk, because you might not answer. People take that risk for things they care about.
They stay in the conversation
Look at the shape of the exchange. Someone who is only being polite closes it neatly with “thanks, take care.” Someone who is open leaves a loose end, asks a question back, or lets the chat run longer than it needs to. One long night of texting means little. A pattern of replies with some thought in them means more.
They own a piece of what went wrong
“I know I went quiet that year” is worth ten messages that say “I miss you.” Missing someone is a feeling. Owning part of the problem is work, and it points at the one thing a reunion actually needs, which is a different second attempt.
They stay curious about your life
They remember the interview you had coming up and ask how it went. They notice when you have gone quiet. They know the names of the people in your week. Curiosity like that is hard to fake across several weeks, and it means you still sit in their mind as a person and not only a memory.
Their words and actions match over time
Anyone can say they are open to talking. The test is what happens after. Do they follow through on a plan to call? Do they show up when they said they would? Do they stay steady for weeks and not days? Consistency is the thing to watch, and you can watch it without asking a single question.
They respect your pace
When you take a day to reply or say you need time, a person who wants to rebuild something stays patient. A person who sulks, pressures, or punishes you with silence is showing you what a reunion would feel like.
What are the signs an ex will not come back?
This is the painful list, and it is useful. Hope that never gets tested can cost you months.
They have said no and kept saying it
A clear “I don’t want to get back together,” repeated over time and not softened by anything they do, is an answer. So is a request that you stop contacting them. Honor it. If the relationship involved threats, control, or violence, or if you feel afraid, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-799-7233, and its website offers a chat option.
They contact you only when they need something
Money, a ride, a reference, a place to vent after a bad day. Contact that runs one way, from you toward their needs, is use and not interest. Be kind about it, and notice the pattern.
A new relationship that is steady and visible
When the new partner meets their family, shares their address, or appears in their daily life, your ex has built something new, and it deserves the same respect yours did. Waiting on it is rarely a good use of a year.
Contempt, sarcasm, or blame every time you talk
Contempt is the habit Gottman’s research singles out. If every exchange ends with an eye-roll, a scoreboard, or a reminder of your failures, your ex is telling you the old pain is still active. That does not make a reunion impossible. It makes it far from soon.
You are doing all the reaching
If you stop for several weeks and nothing comes from their side, that is information, though not proof. People go quiet out of pride, fear, and grief too. But a silence that outlasts your patience, with no movement from them, usually means the next decision is yours to make about your own life, not about them.
The same cycle with nothing different
You have split and reunited more than once, and each round ends the same way. The research above says these patterns can wear on both people. Another round without a real change is more likely to cost you than to heal anything.
Will my ex come back quiz
Nobody can answer “will my ex come back” from the outside, but you can check how your situation looks today. Read each statement and answer true or false in your head. Count your trues. Answer for the last two months or so, and answer the way a stranger watching your situation would, not the way someone hoping would. This is a thinking tool and not a research instrument. Nobody has validated it, and a score cannot predict what one particular person will do. What it can do is show you where your situation is strong and where it is thin.
- They have contacted you first at least once since the breakup, with no practical reason such as belongings or bills.
- When you write to them, they usually reply within a day or two.
- Your most recent conversations ended warmly, not coldly and not in a fight.
- They have said something that takes responsibility for part of what went wrong.
- The main reason you split was a circumstance or a problem that can change, not contempt, cruelty, or repeated betrayal.
- Neither of you is in a committed relationship with someone else.
- They have not blocked you, and they have not asked you to stop contacting them.
- They still ask about your life, your family, or your work, or they remember details you shared.
- You can talk about hard subjects without it turning into a fight or a long silence.
- You have given them room for a few weeks, and the contact has stayed the same or grown, not shrunk.
- If they never came back, you would be sad, but you would be okay.
- You can name at least one concrete thing that would be different if you got back together.
0-4 true
Right now the picture is thin. That does not mean never. It means there is little to build on today, and pushing for contact would spend hope you have no evidence for. Put the next stretch into your own footing: sleep, work, friends, a plan for each week.
If statements 5 or 7 are false for you, meaning the breakup involved contempt or cruelty or your ex has asked for no contact, the most caring decision is to let this go and move your energy elsewhere. If the low score comes mostly from distance and silence, quiet time may change the picture, and no contact and love spells covers how to use it. Take the quiz again in a month. Trust a change in the score more than any single day’s mood.
5-8 true
Mixed, which means a real chance and real work. Look at the statements that came out false. They are your homework.
If the false ones are about contact (1, 2, 3, 8), the next step is gentle, low-pressure contact. When to reach out to an ex after a breakup and how to reconnect with an ex without pressure both lay out how. If the false ones are about the reason you split (4, 5, 9, 12), no message fixes that, and the work is private. What would you do differently? Do not announce a plan. Make one, and let your ex see it in how you behave.
9-12 true
A strong picture, with a warning attached. Nine or more trues suggests your ex is in contact, the tone is warm, and the cause of the split can change. That is a good place to stand. It is still not a promise, and people with high scores get hurt when they rush: asking for a decision too soon, or skipping the conversation about what will be different.
Go slowly. What to say when asking an ex to try again helps with the conversation itself, and how to rebuild trust with an ex helps with the weeks after. Check your own scoring too. If you marked everything true because you hoped it was, ask a friend who knows you both to answer the quiz for you, then compare.
How long does it usually take for an ex to come back?
When people ask “will my ex come back,” they usually mean “and how soon?” There is no honest number. Anyone who gives you a standard waiting period is guessing, and the people who come back after a few weeks and the people who come back after years are not following the same schedule.
What shapes the time is fairly plain. A heated fight resolves faster than a slow decision. A quiet period gives feelings room to settle, and without one, every conversation restarts the argument. If the underlying problem is being worked on, there is something to return to. And your ex has a life with its own pressures, none of which you can see. Studies of young adults treat breaking up and getting back together as common enough to name it, churning. Common is not the same as likely for your case, and no study offers a clock.
What you can do with time is use it. Choose a check-in date in advance, a day when you take the quiz again and decide whether you are still waiting or ready to move on. The date protects you from the slow kind of waiting, where weeks pass in suspended animation. If you are in a long silence already, how to contact an ex after months of no contact covers reopening it without pressure. And if you are asking how long ritual work takes, how long a love spell takes to work gives the same honest answer: it varies, and no one can set a date.
What can you control, and what can’t you?
You can control how you show up in contact: calm, short, warm, and without pressure. You can control your pace, your own routines, and how honest you are with yourself about your part in the breakup. If you owe an apology, you can give a good one, and how to apologize to an ex and ask for another chance shows what that looks like. You can decide when you will stop waiting.
The answer to “will my ex come back” sits in your ex’s hands. You cannot control their feelings, their timing, their new partner, their family, or whether they read your message as an olive branch or an intrusion. This is the hard part. The more energy you spend on the second list, the less you have for the first, and pressure rarely draws anyone closer.
Think of it this way. Your job is to be someone who is easy to come back to, and who would be fine if the answer were no. That is not a trick. It is the only version of this that leaves you better off either way. The full step-by-step plan is in our how to get your ex back guide.
Where does spiritual work fit?
Last, not first. Everything above is practical because the practical parts hold most of the outcome: how the relationship ended, what each person is willing to change, and how both of you behave in the weeks that follow. A candle or a spell does not replace an honest apology, a calm message, or a decision to deal with the thing that broke you apart.
What spiritual work can do is different. In the tradition Baba Ali Musa practices, which comes down through a Senegalese ancestral line and has been his work for more than thirty years, a reconciliation ritual is a way to ask for openness, to clear what seems stuck between two people, and to steady the person asking. It is not a way to take another person’s decision out of their hands. The article on love spells and free will explains where that line sits and why it matters.
If you want a read on your specific situation before deciding anything, a love reading consultation is a sensible first step. It is a conversation about your situation, held by phone, video, WhatsApp, or email, and so you can talk through the picture before deciding on anything else. A good consultation should be willing to say when the picture is thin. Our guide to choosing a real love spell caster lists what to expect from any practitioner.
If you decide a ritual fits, the two services closest to this question are the return lost lover spell and the spells to get your ex back. Their pages describe what each involves. The terms are written out here: Money-back guarantee: no change within 7 days, full refund. Ritual work runs alongside your own effort and not in place of it, and what to do after a love spell is cast covers how to behave in the weeks that follow.
When is letting go the stronger choice?
Letting go is not giving up on love. It is giving up on one specific outcome on a schedule. The signs that it is time are usually plain: your ex has asked you to stop, they are in a steady new relationship, the relationship held contempt or cruelty or fear, you have waited and all the reaching has been yours, or your days have shrunk to checking a phone.
In practice, letting go looks small. You pick a date and stop checking before it. You mute accounts that hurt, tell one friend what you are doing, and return the things that are theirs. You fill the evenings that used to belong to the waiting. Spiritual practice can help here as well. A cleansing bath, a full moon release, or the habits in self-love rituals and spiritual practices after a breakup all give grief somewhere to go.
Letting go does not lock the door. It stops you from standing in the doorway. If your ex changes and reaches out later, you can decide then, as the person you have become. And if the grief gets heavy enough that eating, sleeping, or working is hard, or you have thoughts of harming yourself, call or text 988 in the United States to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
If you scored in the lowest band and nothing in the signs list describes your ex, the kindest next step is to put the energy you have been spending on them into the next ninety days of your own life, then take the quiz again.
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Questions people ask about whether an ex will come back
How do I know if my ex will come back?
You cannot know for sure. You can weigh evidence: whether they reach out first, own their part, stay warm over several weeks, and whether the reason you split can change. Take the quiz above, and give more weight to patterns over weeks than to any single message.
Do exes usually come back?
Some do and many do not. Studies of young adults find that breaking up and getting back together is common enough to be a recognized pattern, but those relationships often come with more uncertainty. Common is not the same as likely for your situation.
Will my ex come back if I ignore them?
Silence is not a trick, and treating it as one tends to backfire. Quiet time helps when it gives both of you room to settle and you spend it rebuilding your own life. If you go quiet only to provoke a reaction, your ex can usually tell.
Will my ex come back after starting a new relationship?
Sometimes, but plan as if it will not happen. A new partner early on can be comfort and not a final answer. A relationship that is months old and part of daily life is a bigger barrier. Do not contact the new partner, and do not put your life on hold.
Can a love spell make my ex come back?
A spell cannot make another person’s decision for them, and the rituals on this site are framed around openness and clearing, not control. They work alongside real effort from you. Results vary, and a fair practitioner will tell you that before you pay.
How long should I wait for my ex?
There is no standard wait. Pick a check-in date for yourself, retake the quiz then, and see whether the picture has improved. If it has not and your ex has not moved toward you, waiting longer mostly costs you. If it has improved, keep going at a steady pace.
What if my ex comes back and then leaves again?
It happens, and it hurts more the second time. Before agreeing to try again, name what is different and agree on it together. If the same problem returns each round, ask whether another round is kind to either of you, and read our guide on rebuilding trust.
