A Mathematical Formula to Determine When and How Your Ex Will Circle Back

They’ll definitely circle back, the question is when and to what degree.

Adeline Dimond
6 min readMay 9, 2022
Photo by Dan-Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash

All exes circle back. The question isn’t if they will, but when and how. Circle back phenomena can range from de minimis activity, such as liking an Instagram post in an effort to get you to circle back, to showing up on your doorstep screaming and crying.

Obviously, the ideal is neither of these extremes; the ideal is your ex asking you out to dinner so he or she can sob and tell you that they made a mistake. For fun, you can then feign empathy and humanity, and as soon as they stop hiccuping, deliver the fatal we-are-never-getting-back-together blow.

Unless, of course, you want to get back together. If that’s the case, go ahead and lock them in to plans — maybe ask them to be your date at an upcoming wedding — while they’re crying in public, because the math says the “circle-back” only happens once, and as mentioned above, varies in degree.

When and to what degree your ex will circle back boils down to a complicated formula determined by five distinct but related values: length of relationship, intensity of relationship, drama-level of the breakup, length of time since breakup, and whether a third party is involved. The…

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