Hey there, and welcome to another episode of the Ex-Girlfriend Recovery Podcast. We’ve got a real interesting one scheduled for you today where we’ve got a guy who’s asked a question about what his ex-girlfriend means when she says that they’re being too dependent on each other.

Before I play Mr. Anonymous’s question, because he wanted to remain anonymous, I feel it’s important that if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re struggling through a breakup, probably the first thing you should figure out is whether or not you even have a chance of getting your ex-girlfriend back.

What’s funny is actually the voicemail that I’m about to play literally ends with the guy asking, “Should I give up or not?”

And a really great way to get a quick answer on if you should give up or not is to stop by our website and take our ex recovery chances quiz there on the homepage of the website.

What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Girlfriend Back?

Take the quiz

Anonymous Asks What His Ex Girlfriend Means When She Says He’s Too Dependent

Hi, Chris. This is from Anonymous.

But me and my girlfriend of three years, three and a half … just recently broke up … and she said that she wanted to find her own happiness, that we were becoming too dependent to make ourselves happy when we should be doing it on ourselves. And now that we’ve broken up, I really see what she means and says by all that, and we still care about one another.

At one point in time, we were thinking about getting engaged, so it was pretty serious.

I don’t want to walk away from it. She really does feel like the girl from me. She says I feel like I’m the guy for her, but we just were working on ourselves and trying to better, but she doesn’t want to give me a promise for a future because she doesn’t know the future or how long she’ll need.

I really don’t know if I should just pack up and just move completely on or if I should try to work on myself and hope to win her back over and just any advice on what to do. I feel like I’m just stuck in limbo right now, but I appreciate it.

Okay. There’s a lot to unpack here.

Even though it’s not that long of a voicemail, there’s some really interesting things that we can talk about with his situation.

And before I really do that, I want to give a quick synopsis of what’s going on here with him, really what he’s trying to get at.

• It looks like him and his ex-girlfriend were together for three and a half years, which is a long time.


• He didn’t really tell me their ages, but I’m assuming they’re probably somewhere in their mid 20s.


• It’s a relatively serious relationship, especially if they’re talking about getting engaged and things of that nature.


• They were together three and a half years.


• They recently broke up.


• His ex-girlfriend cited the reason as they were being too dependent on each other to make themselves happy.


• In other words, she is coming under the conclusion that being together is a function of not deriving happiness from the other person, but deriving happiness from themselves.


• He says they still care about one another.


• I’m assuming they’ve been talking ever since the breakup, and she seems confused about whether or not she wants to get back with him.

Ultimately, the way I’m going to structure this podcast episode is by talking about what she means and what approach should he take.

What His Ex Girlfriend Actually Means

What does she mean, right?

His ex-girlfriend literally sits there and says, “We’re being too dependent on each other,” for the breakup.

But the trick is, I know what men mean when they say things a lot more easily than what women mean when they say things.

Luckily for you, Mr. Anonymous, I called in my secret weapon to help you out.

I thought I had maybe an idea of what your ex-girlfriend meant, but I don’t want to tell you anything without verifying it by asking real women first.

And so if you don’t know, anyone basically buys any of my programs, the Ex-Boyfriend Recovery Program or the Ex-Girlfriend Recovery Program, get access to this really cool private Facebook support group community where there are over 4,000 members currently.

Most of them are women because we haven’t really launched it to men yet, but we will. Don’t worry, Anonymous. We will launch it.

Anyways, what I did is I basically took notes on your situation. I went to the private Facebook group and I asked the women there, “Hey, what does it mean when a girl says during a breakup that you’re being too dependent on each other?”

And within about five minutes, I got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven responses, which is mind-blowing.

What that tells me is that most women know exactly what it means and also they don’t tell you exactly what they mean in person when they actually say it.

I am just going to read word for word what each of the responses are to you and I want you to stop me when you notice a trend.

Okay.

1. Sarah says, “Well, it means he’s trying to do everything she does. He needs his own hobby and she needs her girl time.”


2. Tamara says, “Well, it means they’re becoming codependent and losing their sense of self. She wants space and time for other things perhaps. Miss working on things by herself like her Trinity.”


3. Kristen says, “I would say something like that if I was feeling suffocated in a relationship, like we spend too much time together, or the relationship was moving too fast for me and getting too serious.”


4. KN says, “In my opinion, it might mean that they didn’t give each other enough space.”


5. Isabella says, “They are codependent and he is being clingy. This is exactly what my ex-boyfriend said when I was being codependent with him.”


6. Amanda says, “My guess is she needs space. She probably feels like she’s losing her identity or independence in some way. And I usually say we meaning you. I just don’t want to come off mean, so I’m trying to say it’s our issue, but really it’s his issue.”


7. Zoe says, “Their lives are merging into one no time away from each other, no time to miss each other, no hobbies of their own, no girl time or no boy time.”

The trend is very clear already and I put it to the whole 4,000 members of the group, so I’m pretty sure there’ll be like 150 comments by the end of the day.

But after the first seven comments were pretty consistently on point, I don’t think we really need to dive too much deeper into what your ex-girlfriend really means when she says that you’re being too dependent on one another.

It means that she feels you are crowding her too much.

Therefore, she broke up with you. But that really doesn’t tell us what you should do, does it?

What You Should Do When Your Ex Says You’re Too Dependent

I’ve been working with a guy and he is among one of the smartest guys I’ve ever worked with. And him and I were talking about his situation with his ex-girlfriend.

And he was talking about this concept of how, when you date someone long enough, they just create this perception of you. And this perception is what eventually becomes their reality when it comes to thinking about you.

For example, your ex-girlfriend probably thinks you’re this super clingy guy. I don’t know if she thinks you’re insecure, but she thinks that you don’t really have enough swagger on your own, I guess is the way to put it.

And so I was talking with my coaching client and we were basically going through, “Okay, well, what can you do if your ex-girlfriend thinks these kinds of things about you, if you have this negative perception?”

And ultimately I told him this story, and he told me this really interesting story about exes running into each other.

He told me this really interesting story about one of his ex … Well, I don’t know if it was his ex-girlfriend, but it was this girl that he had run into suddenly. After talking with her and after she saw him for who he really was, and was able to peel back the layers, she actually made some really interesting comment.

And every once in a while, if you l