nocnt

The no contact rule: what it is, and how long to keep it

What going no contact after a breakup means, what counts as contact, how long to keep it up, and what research does and doesn’t say about it.

Updated 4 min readSources at the end

No contact means just that: after a breakup, you stop contacting your ex for a while. No texts, calls or voice notes. No DMs, no replies to their stories, no likes, no birthday message, no “just checking in”, and no messages passed along through friends.

It sounds simple. It’s hard because the urge to reach out tends to arrive at the worst moments: late at night, after a drink, or on a day when something happens that you’d normally tell them about.

Is the no contact rule backed by research?

Not as a rule. No published study has tested “no contact” as a method, and none has tested a fixed length like 30, 60 or 90 days.1 It’s a self-help practice.

What researchers have studied is the thing no contact cuts out: staying in touch with an ex, and keeping tabs on them. The findings mostly point one way, with some real exceptions.

  • In a month-long study that asked young adults about their feelings at random moments after a breakup, contact with the ex went with love and sadness fading more slowly.2
  • In a study of recently separated adults that measured contact with audio recordings rather than memory, more in-person contact predicted more distress two months later. That held only for people who didn’t share children.3
  • Watching an ex on social media predicted more breakup distress months later and on the next day. In an experiment, it raised negative mood and jealousy.4

These are mostly studies of associations. People who are hurting more may also be the ones who reach out more. And contact isn’t harmful for everyone: in one study, people who had accepted that the relationship was over were doing better, not worse, while in contact.5 Staying friends seems to go badly mainly when it’s really about hoping to get back together.6

So the honest version is this. For most people who are still hurting, stepping back from contact gives the feelings room to fade. That’s what no contact is for.

What counts as contact?

A simple test: anything that reaches them, or anything that keeps a conversation going.

  • Texts, calls, voice notes, emails and DMs on any app
  • Replying or reacting to their stories and posts
  • Watching their stories: on Instagram, they can see that you did7
  • Liking or commenting on anything
  • Sending something through a friend
  • Turning up where you know they’ll be

Looking at their profile without them knowing isn’t contact, but it keeps you close to them in your head. There’s a guide about that: why you keep checking your ex’s profile, and step-by-step pages for muting or blocking them on Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, WhatsApp, iPhone and Facebook.

How long should no contact last?

There’s no proven number. The 30, 60 and 90 days you’ll see online are conventions, not findings. The same goes for the popular claim that it takes 11 weeks to get over someone: the study usually cited for it doesn’t say that.8

What research does show is that people differ a lot. One study followed 87 young Dutch women for 30 weeks after a breakup. More than 4 in 10 stayed fairly steady throughout, a quarter recovered quickly, about a fifth recovered slowly, and about 1 in 10 stayed distressed.9 In a large study of young people in Germany, the drop in self-esteem after a breakup was gone within a year, whether or not they had found someone new.10

A more useful goal than a number of days: keep going until they’re no longer your first thought. nocnt marks days 3, 7, 14, 30, 60, 90, 180 and 365, but those are milestones to notice, not deadlines to hit.

When no contact isn’t possible

If you share children, work together, live together, or still have money or belongings to sort out, full no contact may not be an option. People call this low contact:

  • Keep to what has to be said, in writing when you can.
  • Stick to logistics. Don’t reopen the relationship.
  • Pick one channel and a time to check it, instead of being reachable all day.

The study that linked in-person contact with slower recovery didn’t find that effect for people who share children.3 Necessary contact isn’t failure.

If you’re staying away because they hurt you or you’re afraid of them, your safety comes first. In the US, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.11

If you break no contact

It happens a lot. In one study of young adults, nearly half had broken up and gotten back together at least once.12 It’s worth knowing that relationships that keep breaking up and making up tend to carry more uncertainty and more communication problems, and the cycling goes with more anxiety and depression.13 14

If you slipped, it doesn’t have to mean anything. Don’t send a second message to explain the first. Start counting again. In nocnt, your earlier days stay in History. They weren’t wasted.

When to get more help

A breakup can hurt for a long time, and for some people, especially younger people, it’s the start of depression.15 If low mood, trouble sleeping or not coping lasts for weeks, talk to a doctor or a therapist. If you’re in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, call or text 988 in the US, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.

Sources

  1. No peer-reviewed study of the “no contact rule” as a named method, or of any fixed no-contact duration, turned up in searches of PubMed, Crossref and OpenAlex (September 2026). What exists is research on contact with an ex and on monitoring an ex, cited below. ↩

  2. Sbarra, D. A., & Emery, R. E. (2005). The emotional sequelae of nonmarital relationship dissolution: Analysis of change and intraindividual variability over time. Personal Relationships, 12(2), 213–232. doi.org/10.1111/j.1350-4126.2005.00112.x. 58 young adults, feelings rated at random moments for 28 days; correlational. ↩

  3. O’Hara, K. L., Grinberg, A. M., Tackman, A. M., Mehl, M. R., & Sbarra, D. A. (2020). Contact with an ex-partner is associated with psychological distress after marital separation. Clinical Psychological Science, 8(3), 450–463. doi.org/10.1177/2167702620916454. 122 recently separated adults; contact measured with an audio recorder over five months. ↩ ↩2

  4. Marshall, T. C. (2026). Social media observation of ex-partners is associated with greater breakup distress, negative affect, and jealousy. Computers in Human Behavior, 176, 108869. doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2025.108869. Four studies, 762 people, including an experiment and daily diaries. ↩

  5. Mason, A. E., Sbarra, D. A., Bryan, A. E. B., & Lee, L. A. (2012). Staying connected when coming apart: The psychological correlates of contact and sex with an ex-partner. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 31(5), 488–507. doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2012.31.5.488. 137 recently separated adults; cross-sectional. ↩

  6. Griffith, R. L., Gillath, O., Zhao, X., & Martinez, R. (2017). Staying friends with ex-romantic partners: Predictors, reasons, and outcomes. Personal Relationships, 24(3), 550–584. doi.org/10.1111/pere.12197. ↩

  7. Instagram Help Center: Who can tell that you’ve seen their Instagram story. ↩

  8. The “11 weeks” figure is usually attributed to Lewandowski, G. W., & Bizzoco, N. M. (2007). Addition through subtraction: Growth following the dissolution of a low quality relationship. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2(1), 40–54. doi.org/10.1080/17439760601069234. The paper is about growth after leaving a low-quality relationship and makes no claim about how long recovery takes. ↩

  9. Verhallen, A. M., Alonso-Martínez, S., Renken, R. J., Marsman, J.-B. C., & ter Horst, G. J. (2022). Depressive symptom trajectory following romantic relationship breakup and effects of rumination, neuroticism and cognitive control. Stress and Health, 38(4), 653–665. doi.org/10.1002/smi.3123. 87 women aged 18–34, rated every two weeks for 30 weeks. ↩

  10. Luciano, E. C., & Orth, U. (2017). Transitions in romantic relationships and development of self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112(2), 307–328. doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000109. 9,069 young people in three German cohorts, followed for three years. ↩

  11. National Domestic Violence Hotline, thehotline.org. Free, confidential, 24/7. In immediate danger, call 911. ↩

  12. Halpern-Meekin, S., Manning, W. D., Giordano, P. C., & Longmore, M. A. (2013). Relationship churning in emerging adulthood: On/off relationships and sex with an ex. Journal of Adolescent Research, 28(2), 166–188. doi.org/10.1177/0743558412464524. 792 young adults. ↩

  13. Dailey, R. M., Pfiester, A., Jin, B., Beck, G., & Clark, G. (2009). On-again/off-again dating relationships: How are they different from other dating relationships? Personal Relationships, 16(1), 23–47. doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2009.01208.x. ↩

  14. Monk, J. K., Ogolsky, B. G., & Oswald, R. F. (2018). Coming out and getting back in: Relationship cycling and distress in same- and different-sex relationships. Family Relations, 67(4), 523–538. doi.org/10.1111/fare.12336. 545 people; correlational. ↩

  15. Monroe, S. M., Rohde, P., Seeley, J. R., & Lewinsohn, P. M. (1999). Life events and depression in adolescence: Relationship loss as a prospective risk factor for first onset of major depressive disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 108(4), 606–614. doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.108.4.606. ↩

Try it now