4 Signs God Is Telling You to Go No Contact Towards Someone

By the term “Going no contact” I’m talking about the practice of a man or woman completing cutting someone out of their life for a period of time, not reaching out to them and not responding if the other person reaches out.

Typically people use this tactic once a romantic connection is not going the way they want. But is this biblical? Should Christians use “going no contact” as a way of getting someone to like them more or getting someone to behave better in a relationship?

By studying a handful of Bible passages and then creating some principles from those Scriptures, we can discover at least 4 situations where it would be biblical and good to go no contact towards someone.

1. If You Want to Be With Someone Who Does Not Want to Be with You, God May Lead You to Go No Contact

In Luke 15:11-32, Jesus teaches us a parable about a son and his father. The son does not want a relationship with his father but the father does want a relationship with the son. What did the father do? In a sense, the father went no contact until the son came back.

The father did not beg the prodigal son to stay. The father did not chase after the prodigal son and follow him into the distant land. And the father did not check up on the son and try to get constant updates on his well-being. The father really went no contact. Obviously this parable is not about romantic relationships but about our relationship with God. We run from him in sin but he is eager to open his arms to us if we repent and come back.

Even though this passage is not about romantic relationships, certainly we can create a wise principle from this passage that can help people in that context. Here’s the principle: When something good is removed, the absence increases the appreciation for the good.

If someone does not want to be with you, they’re going to leave you whether you beg them to stay or not. Constantly checking in on them or trying to remain friends even though you know you want something more will not change your situation. The best thing you can if you want to be with someone who does not want to be with you is to go no contact.

It’s likely their feelings will never change and they will move on. But the best chance you have of them realizing they do want to be with you is by you letting them miss you. Sometimes the only way for this person to realize what they have in you is by them actually losing you. 

2. If Someone Has Emotionally Moved On from You But You Have Not Emotionally Moved On From Them, God Will Probably Lead You to Go No Contact

As I mentioned in point 1, there is always a high chance that this person never develops the feelings for you that you want them to have for you. There’s always a high chance of this because you are looking for something that only needs to happen one time in your life. When you want to be in love and get married one day, you have to expect to not be in love and not marry almost every single person you will ever meet in your life. If you will meet thousands of potential partners but only marry one of them, you have to learn not to feel defeated every time someone does not like you the way you like them. Again, you just need to make this match one time in life.

And while going no contact might help this one person you want to be with realize what they are losing in you, going no contact will also help you not waste your life waiting for someone who will never love you.

In Matthew 10:5-15, Jesus told his disciples to go to each town and preach the good news. But if that town did not want to receive them, they were to shake the dust off their sandals and move on to a town that did want to hear the gospel.

While this is a passage about ministry, it’s not hard to see the principle here that can help you in romantic relationships: If someone doesn’t want to be with you, this means God has someone else who does want to be with you.

Of course some are called to singleness for life; but if God has called you to marriage one day, one way you will identify the person he has for you will be by the mutual love you have for each other.

3. If Someone Is Not Treating You Right and They Are Not Repenting, God May Lead You to Go No Contact Towards Them

In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is writing to a church that has someone living in sexual sin and not repenting. In verse 2 he commands, “Let him who has done this be removed from among you.” And then in verse 5 he also said, “you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.”

One of the methods God has given the church to discipline people who are unwilling to repent of ongoing sin is to be removed from the fellowship. This seems harsh and unloving but it’s actually unloving to keep hugging this person to hell. Love certainly includes grace, patience, and kindness. But love also includes discipline (Hebrews 12:6). It’s not loving to let someone live in sin without any clear warning or consequence.

Likewise, we can create a principle from these biblical truths for romantic relationships as well: If someone is acting unloving towards you and not repenting, the loving thing to do for them is to not let them be around you.

If you keep rewarding someone’s behavior with your presence, they will not change their behavior. We can’t control what other people do, but we can control who we spend our time with. If you’ve asked someone to change their hurtful behavior towards you but they keep doing it, you may need to go no contact towards them until they are willing to treat you better.

4. If God Has Brought Someone New Into Your Life, This Means God Is Telling You to Go No Contact Towards This Other Person in Your Past

Life is full of choices. You don’t get to have it all. If you’re taking a test and the question tells you to choose one answer, choosing A means you are not able to choose B. If you choose A and B, you are automatically wrong because you were told to choose one answer.

Likewise, romantic relationships require absolute loyalty to thrive long-term, especially when it comes to getting married. Just look at our relationship with God which is supposed to be reflected in marriage. A husband and wife are only suppose to be with each other because God has chosen one people and his people are suppose to have no other gods before him (Exodus 20:3).

While that command is obviously about God, we have to remember that marriage is supposed reflect Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:21-33). Therefore, it’s a good principle to say that if God has brought someone new into your life that you want to build a relationship with, this means you have to go no contact towards everyone else who you used to have a romantic relationship with.