While cognitive dissonance sounds like a pretty heavy term, it’s actually quite simple.
When we do things that are not in alignment with how we feel or what we think about ourselves, we feel uneasy and as a result, we tend to avoid doing that thing. It means we are not in harmony or in resonance with ourselves. Hence, the term “dissonance”
For example, if you see yourself as a kind person who finds joy in giving, and you see a child desperately in need of food, then you will avoid making a choice to ignore that child. It’s because ignoring that desperate child goes against how you feel and who you think you are.
Bringing all that back to breakups, there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance going around. And as a result, it determines our actions, our choices and its consequences.
For the simplicity of this article, let’s call the person who doesn’t want the breakup as “you” and the person who wants the breakup as “the ex”. This is because most people reading this article don’t want the breakup whereas their ex wants to stick to the breakup.
I’ve decided not to use the term dumpee/dumpers as I find those terms demeaning, and in my experience, who initiates the breakup is not always the one who finalizes the breakup. And a lot of times, a dumper can regret the breakup only to be rejected by the dumpee.
And before we begin, I want you to know that I am someone who believes in reconciliation. I have personally helped thousands of people get back together over the course of past 15 years. I’ve even followed up with them and found that many of them are still together thriving in a healthy relationship.
For a lot of people, a breakup is just the thing they needed to turn their life and relationship around into something wonderful. And I genuinely believe it can happen for you too if you are willing to read and learn.
Cognitive Dissonance of You – The Person Who Doesn’t Want The Breakup
Breakups, when unwanted, almost always send you into fight or flight mode. To your primal mind, losing a loved one is a matter of survival. If you had a meaningful relationship and a strong bond, then your primal mind sees your ex as “an essential part of you” and when the very real possibility of them leaving you “for good” comes up, you feel like you need to do anything you can to stop it from happening.
So what does your “primal brain” or “emotional brain” do?
The first obstacle it has is “you”. As in the logical part of your brain. The part that says “maybe this breakup is for the best?”
Because if your logical brain were to make all the decisions, you won’t try to get your ex back, and as a result, you may lose them forever thus dooming your chance of survival in this cruel world. Or so your primal brain thinks.
So it floods your logical brain with all the happy memories of the relationship, it starts amplifying the good things about your ex and diminishes their negative qualities. This phenomenon is also known as seeing your ex through rose colored glasses.
This is why a lot of times you can convince yourself that your ex is truly special when only a few months later, you look back and are genuinely surprised by why you ever wanted them back.
For all intents and purposes, let’s just assume that your primal or emotional brain is the dominant one. Or in other words, the emotional brain is running the show when it comes to you (the person who doesn’t want the breakup).
So whatever logical reasoning you give your emotional brain, it’s going to find a way to circle back to wanting your ex back at all costs. And a lot of times, that leads to begging, pleading or a lot of desperate/needy behavior. Something that is very likely to work against you as we will see shortly.
Any choices you make need to be in resonance with this emotional brain of yours. If you do something that is not in resonance with this brain, you are going to feel uneasy, uncomfortable and feel a strong urge to not do it.
For example, your primal brain will want you to contact your ex, text them, or just stay in touch. So if you make a decision to not contact them, it’s going to be very difficult for you because you are going against who you are at the moment. In a way, you are going against what every cell in your body wants to do. That is to speak to your ex.
Similarly, your emotional brain will urge you to try to find a way to get your ex back at any cost.
Cognitive Dissonance of Your Ex – The Person Who Wants The Breakup
Okay, so your ex also has that primal brain, right?
It would be natural to assume that they will also go through the same emotions. Wouldn’t it? After all, you were both in a meaningful relationship. Wouldn’t they also feel like they are losing an “essential part of them”?
Well, not quite. You see, the major difference here is that your ex “Wants” the breakup. Or at least, they have made a decision to break up and see it through.
Now, decisions have a very unique effect on our beliefs, and as a result what we think about ourselves.
Essentially, when we make a major decision, that decision becomes a part of who we are. And we try our best to stick to that decision. The urge to stick to a decision we made can be so overwhelming that it can overpower any other part of our brain, including the emotional brain.
It’s just a way our brains are evolutionary wired. Because in a society, if you are the type of person who goes back on their decisions, the society doesn’t trust you. And as a result, your chances of survival drop.
So your ex somehow came to the decision of wanting to break up with you.
Perhaps they were thinking about it for a while.
Perhaps they have been secretly building up a list of things they don’t like about the relationship (or about you) until they have enough to take the call.
Perhaps they have been talking about the breakup with their friends and family in secret who have convinced them that this is the right thing to do.
Or perhaps they have been thinking about how they are not happy in the relationship and the only way they can be happy is if they take some time to be alone.
Whatever it is, they came to that decision on their own. They weren’t forced into it. And because of that, the decision becomes a part of their identity.
And as a result, most people won’t do anything to go against this decision because of cognitive dissonance.
So if you (the person who doesn’t want the breakup) tries to tell them how things will change, how you will be a better boyfriend/girlfriend, how terribly you miss them, how deeply you love them, or how you both could have it all; it’s just going to raise their defensive wall.
Because the logical part of them, the one who came to that decision, is the dominant one. And anything you say that may feel like a threat to their decision, is most likely going to have the opposite effect and will only reinforce the decision.
This is true even if on the outside your ex may seem like they are very emotional and are in pain. Remember, the primal brain or the emotional brain still exists inside them. They will still feel like they are losing an essential part of them. They may still be deeply in love with you or deeply care about you. And they may also still miss you terribly and may even cry to process the sadness.
But that “decision to break up” trumps all of that because human beings are just wired this way.
This is why sometimes it feels almost mind boggling how a person immediately changes after a breakup. They could be telling you how much they love you just a few days ago to be completely cold and heartless after the breakup.
It’s because once they made the decision, they feel the need to mold themselves into someone who would be in resonance with that decision.
Now there are rare cases where some people go back on their decision to break up immediately because the emotional brain is so overwhelming. This is usually the case when someone is very sensitive or when the breakup was a rash decision (not thought through).
But in the majority of cases, an ex would try their best to stick to the decision of the breakup.
How To Use Cognitive Dissonance To Your Advantage When You Want To Move On (Or at least Move Forward)?
So, you (the person who doesn’t want the breakup) wants to move on. Maybe you’ve thought about it logically and it just makes sense to protect yourself from further hurt and try to move on.
But every inch of your body wants to try to get back together because as we discussed earlier, your emotional brain is dominant. So much that the thought of moving on is just too overwhelming to even entertain.
Maybe in the morning you are determined to move on but by the time you are done for the day, you have an intense feeling of missing your ex and you want to try one more time to get them back.
Or maybe you make a pledge to never contact your ex before going to sleep but you wake up with an overwhelming sadness and you wish that this breakup never happened.
Breakups are a roller coaster of emotions.
So, how do you use this knowledge of cognitive dissonance to your advantage?
The first thing I want you to know is that the “fight or flight” response does not last forever. It eventually fades away as your limbic system understands that you are in no immediate danger. As you spend time with friends and family, move forward with your life, spend time doing things you love, your emotional brain will calm down and realize that you can be healthy and happy without your ex.
While you are in that emotional stage, the best thing you can do is understand that part of your brain wants to get back with your ex, and agree to it.
Stop fighting your emotional brain with your logical brain. The more you fight, the more it will resist.
Instead, just agree to it that you will try to win them back. But you will do it when the time is right.
And the time is right when you have healed and are no longer panicking. When you have taken enough time to focus on yourself. When you have made significant improvements in your life. Or, as I say it in my 5 Step plan to get your ex back, when you have become You version 2.0.
Coincidentally, that time is also usually the best time thinking from the perspective of your ex’s Cognitive Dissonance.
But we will discuss that later. For now, let’s focus on the “moving on” aspect.
You see, it’s not like you are committing to getting your ex back. You are not saying that “I will never move on. I will forever wait for my ex”.
Neither you are saying, “I will never get my ex back. I will move on at any cost.”
Both are an extreme stance. These stances create an “either/or” situation between your logical and emotional brain.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. One part doesn’t need to win over the loss of the other. Both your logical and emotional brain can work in harmony to achieve the best outcome for yourself.
You work in the grey area between them. The area that says “maybe, if it’s healthy for me. And if it’s healthy for my ex”
You do that by saying to yourself, “I will move forward with my life. And if my ex is worth pursuing, I will reconnect with them after a while. If it works out, great. If not, at least I tried my best.”
The aim is to let time pass, keep moving forward in life, do self-care, self-love or self-improvement activities that help you heal and become a better person.
Note that just because time passes doesn’t mean you will stop loving your ex or you will lose all attachment to them. That may or may not happen. Attachment (or love) is different from the “panic” that overwhelms us after a breakup. Our aim here is only to move forward from this panic stage so our emotional brain is less dominant. Our logical brain can factor the attachment and love we have for our ex to make future decisions.
As time passes and you rediscover yourself, a lot of people decide that they don’t want their ex back anymore and move on. While some people still want their ex back and choose to reconnect. Of those that choose to reconnect, some of them get back together while others realize that a healthy relationship with their ex is not possible and choose to move on knowing they did all they could.
It’s often said that the path to moving on from a breakup and getting an ex back is the same. Now you know why.
How To Use Your Ex’s Cognitive Dissonance To Get Them Back?
The logical part of your ex’s brain is dominant. So while there may be some internal conflict, your ex as a whole identifies as someone who wants the breakup.
As a result, any attempt to make them change their decision will be seen as an attack on their decision. And by extension to their identity.
For some exes, they even take extreme measures to reinforce their decision. For example, some exes get into a rebound relationship without properly healing from the breakup. In their mind, they say, “I wanted this breakup. Therefore, I should be able to move on soon and date other people.”
Sometimes, they ignore or suppress the emotional part of their brain that grieves the loss of a loved one. This is quite common in avoidant personalities who have a tendency to avoid uncomfortable feelings. When combined with the “decision to breakup” and identifying as someone who “wants the breakup”, they convince themselves that the breakup was the best thing ever.
The one thing to note here is that the emotional part of the brain needs to process the breakup. It needs to acknowledge the loss of a loved one and grieve. It needs to miss the person they lost, it needs to think about what happened, and it needs to come to a conclusion or a closure.
Without that happening, the emotional part of the brain can not fully move on and form other attachments. Our brains are wired this way because strong emotional attachments are essential to our survival in evolutionary terms. When we are surrounded by loved ones, we are more likely to survive.
The process of this grieving and the time taken varies from person to person and is out of the scope of this article. But one 2025 study suggests that it can even take up to 4.2 years. [1]
On the other hand, the cognitive dissonance effect on the logical part of the brain that feels a need to stick to that choice starts fading away after a few weeks or months. [2]
In the long term, the attachment your ex has for you will trump over the short term effect of this Cognitive Dissonance. And their brain will start wondering whether or not they should try to get back together, the same way yours was at one point.
This also explains the “Exes always come back” theory going around the internet. Which, I must point out, isn’t always correct.
Because once the immediate effect of wanting to stick to that choice fades away, other psychological effects can also come into play. Here’s a couple of examples where an ex can truly move on without ever coming back,
- if your ex’s life is genuinely better without you in it, then they are going to want to stick to the decision over the long term. The healthier and happier they are without you, the less they will want to come back.
- If your ex put in a lot of time and effort into making the breakup happen and build a happy life without you, they are going to value their life without you more and will be averse to getting back together. This is also known as sunk cost fallacy. [3]
How do you use this knowledge of Cognitive Dissonance to your advantage? Or how to get past your ex’s defences?
The most important thing you can do is to allow time to pass. Remember, as time passes, our desire to defend our choices fades. According to research, it can take weeks or months for that to happen.
But if you are constantly trying to undo the breakup, convince them to come back, or keep showing them that you are desperate without them, you will not allow their mind to lower the defences.
As long as they keep feeling the need to defend their decision, they won’t let their walls to come down.
In fact, the more you try, the more you will push them further away and the less likely they are to let you back in their lives in the future.
This is why the first step of my 5 step plan to get your ex back is to stop desperately trying to get your ex back. It’s to let the breakup happen.
As time goes on and you make no attempt to get them back, your ex will eventually feel that the “breakup has already happened.” Because everything that generally follows a breakup has already happened –
- You both stopped meeting each other.
- You both stopped talking to each other.
- You both grieved in your own way and then healed.
- They have experienced what it’s like to be single.
- Friends and Family start seeing you both as broken up.
- They are free to date other people with no repercussions.
- And it has been this way for a while.
After a couple of months, they will truly feel like breaking up with you was a thing of the past. It’s not something they need to defend anymore.
And as a result, they will be open to connecting with you again.
One of the things I recommend most of my clients to say when they reconnect with an ex is “I’ve accepted the breakup and it was probably for the best.”
This gives kind of a validation to your ex that they made the right decision and acts as a final nail in the coffin of the wall that was there to defend the breakup. Especially if you follow my plan and give them a lot of space before doing so.
This doesn’t mean that they will necessarily get back together. But it gives them space to see things from a different perspective and allows you to present yourself in a new light.
Now again there is a lot more to getting your ex back, some of which I go over in my 5 Step Plan, but this is the gist of how Cognitive Dissonance Plays into getting an ex back, in moving on from a breakup and in reconnecting with an ex.
If all of this resonated with you, I highly recommend you subscribe to my emails which are designed to use this psychological science to help you move forward after a breakup and put you in the strongest position possible to get your ex back (or move on).
