If you want your ex back, is your plan to wait weeks or months and hope enough time has passed that they’ll miss you and/or forgive you and want you back? Waiting weeks or months can cause you to lose your mate forever if they move on to someone else. Instead, try the following 3 step plan for getting your ex back in just days instead of months.

Step one is to figure out why the relationship ended. Try to figure this out as objectively as possible. What caused the break up? If there was a big fight at the end, what was the underlying reason as best you understand it that you split up?

Relationships will end for one of three main reasons. You wronged them in some significant way. They wronged you. Or, they lost their interest in and passion for you, you drifted apart.

As best you can, you have to understand what went wrong. You won’t be able to address the issue and repair the damage if you don’t understand the underlying reason for the rift.

Step Two is critical and often overlooked. Without this step you will have little chance of getting back together. You need to set up a special kind of conversation with them where you ask them not to argue or blame or explain but to listen to you and you’ll listen to them. Then you both talk about your feelings about what went wrong. So if you wronged them by cheating on them, you need to make it safe for them to talk and vent about how they feel about what happened. (You need to do something different instead of this step if they just aren’t that into you anymore.)

If you can both talk about your feelings about what went wrong, not get into blaming and arguing, then there is hope. The negative feelings you both have may need to be aired in a safe environment where you agree beforehand not to scream or make the other person wrong.

Step Three, the final step, depends on how well Step Two went. If you feel like the bad feelings have been aired sufficiently and vented, then you can apologize (or accept their apology) and see about getting back together.

You don’t need to demand or pressure your mate to get back together or make a big decision. You need to let them know you are interested in seeing them again and ask them to consider that. Leaving the ball in their court is often the best practice at this stage. There is a lot more to this, but following these three steps can begin to repair your love relationship and pave the way for reconnecting without waiting weeks and just hoping they want you back.