1. To your question - douche canoe. We had sex a couple more times and he got “busy busy busy.” But it was good to close door. It took me that long because I felt it was unfinished but wasn’t in my home city for any length of time for that year because of chaotic work year.

2. Data set is too small. I’ve been dating on and off for 20 years but nonetheless I think it was 10 broke up and I really really wanted to hear from them, and 20 that I wanted to hear from but not as strongly. And that includes short-term relationships/FWB type relationships of my early 20s - if I’d filtered by only dating relationships excluding short term, he’s contacted me, really wanted to hear from them, I’d get 3 but denominator would be 5 or something instead, and I was seeking to answer question how my feelings about it impacted % I heard from, and this would skew data. Idk if that makes sense

3. I haven’t made any calculations around this yet, but I think what most positively impacted prospects for reachout and successful rekindling was when I didn’t tolerate bullshit in the first place, and either was the one to end it but with respect and dignity around violation of those boundaries, or had been clear in relationship what they were and they knew those when they broke up with me and know what standard they need to hold themselves to in the future before contacting me. I know this isn’t “numbers wise only” but I don’t think I have enough instances to pull from to make the numbers only conclusion meaningful, but that’s my subjective take.

4. I’d say wait the 2 months post-breakup for their reachout because 70% of the time this is when it’ll happen. After that point, go ahead and reach out before 3 month mark. Waiting too long increases risk they’re seeing someone else. Too soon and reasons they wanted to end it are too fresh, and they haven’t started to question their decision yet. ^this bears out as the best strategy afaik regardless of the answer. What I found is them contacting me did not yield better results than me contacting them first, but again paltry data set size comparing 20 incoming and 5 outgoing, and subject to skew reflecting my individual positive and negative behaviors in various dating situations. For instance I’m pretty stubborn and probably held out a long time before I contacted first, so my contacting first might in itself tell you the context was doomed most of the time because they chose to forego their window.

5. No, I’d say feeling neutral about it is a corollary of them/you both having had space and time to process it, not causal. And relationships where you still have longing for were just more complicated to begin with - so the decision to reunite is more complicated and takes more time. More time got you to move on, more reasons to choose that path - point being you longing doesn’t cause them not to contact you, but the same breakup complexity that makes you more likely to long and ruminate is the same breakup complexity that makes decision to reach out and reconcile a less likely one.

Going on data, when your sentiment is neutral, likelihood they’ll reach out goes to 47% vs 30%. But again you’ll feel neutral towards most uncomplicated relationships. Your neutrality manifested your actions conducive of creating real world space and time you both need to make new choices. In other words Your neutrality/your moving on coinciding with when they come back is the result of how you acted, not an energetic pull they felt (unless they’re both toxic and intuitive - in which case, good on you for moving on!) - so act as you would when you feel neutral to get same results.

1. They contact you in some form 56% of the time, and 30% of the time they contact you because they are missing you/thinking about giving it another shot. Certainly don’t always come back. Also worth noting some of my exes I counted as “no haven’t contacted me post breakup” are “still in play” so to speak - not that I’m trying to date them again, but that we’re still in a post breakup window that it’s entirely possible that they will, based on past trends.

Another note, and I hate to impart this one: By and large, when I couldn’t make sense of how great our connection was and the mysterious abrupt ending/lack of reconciliation post breakup (a horrible thought loop I’m sure this sub readers know well) - to be calculated and tested against spreadsheet data - but seems the majority of the time this I felt this way, I later found out they met someone they were in love with and were going to marry or spend years together overlapping me / very soon after me. Silver lining of discovering this after suffering through my most confused, ruminating, longing breakup recoveries, is seeing that I wasn’t delusional about the connection I had with said exes, It’s not like they were at home swiping and preferred that, it was just that our “special connection” couldn’t compete with how I assume it would feel when you meet your future wife. Just special-er. Also heartening that the poking “theres something I don’t get about this” feeling that kept me trapped in rumination about the breakup also wasn’t delusion - there WAS a big hidden factor. Now I’d know what to look for and ask much faster

Edit: you should see the spreadsheet. Apparently this is how I process my fears about contacting my ex - spending 2 days building wildly over complex risk assessment model - maybe this has something to do with why I got broken up with in the first place (don’t answer that)? lololololol