Ending a Relationship
- Breaking Up Is
Hard To Do
As the old song says "breaking up is hard to
do". Ending a relationship is one of the most
difficult things we have to face in life. It's important
to do it as well as possible.
I hope you never have to use the information on
this page.
This site is about fixing relationships between two
people who share a love that can be saved, not about
coaching people in ending a relationship.
However, sometimes ending a relationship is the
best thing to do. This is never easy and
often painful for both parties. Unfortunately too many
people make a sad situation even worse by ending the
relationship in a cowardly or thoughtless
fashion.
The appropriate approach will vary with the
intensity of the previous relationship. If you’ve dated someone
two or three times, that’s hardly a relationship (with
the proviso that you haven’t had sex). You would handle ending
that much differently that you would ending a
relationship with someone you’ve lived with for a
year.
Assuming we’re talking about a relationship of
some significance, the end shouldn’t come as a complete
shock to the other person. If you get to the point
of wanting to stop seeing someone you once loved,
something’s been going on for some time.
What ever the issues are, you should bring them
up with your partner in a calm and factual way well
before you consider ending the relationship. Who knows? Doing that
might even keep things from progressing to the point that
the relationship needs to end.
If things don’t get better, at least the breakup
won’t come as a complete surprise to the other
person.
When you decide to break up here’s some advice
on how to do it.
The first thing I want to say is more a rule
than advice.
Unfortunately, people break this rule all the time these
days. If you
do, you deserve to be miserable and live your life in
loneliness.
The rule is to break up in person. Not on the
phone. Not
in an email.
No, not by text messaging. And definitely not by
changing your status to “single” on Facebook. The only exception may
be if you’re ending a long distance
relationship.
So it’s going to be in person – that’s a
given.
Anything else is cowardly and immature.
The next question is time and place.
Timing can be tricky. Is there ever a good
time? To the
extent possible try to avoid holidays and special
events. On
the other hand, it would be tacky to let your soon to be
ex buy a great Christmas present for you while you intend
to end it in January.
The choice of place is important as
well. You
want it to be fairly private but not completely
isolated.
It’s hard to predict how the other person is going to
respond. You
want to be able to talk frankly. If there’s going to be
tears, you want to spare your ex the added pain of
embarrassment if they “lose it” in public.
It’s also not a good idea to be in a completely
isolated place. Some people react to a
break up in unpredictable and even violent
ways.
You don’t want to be some place where an unfortunate
scenario might play out.
So a crowded restaurant probably isn’t the best
choice, but neither is their apartment. You want somewhere in
between where no one can readily hear your conversation
but people are close by and in view. Perhaps this would be
somewhere like the corner of a coffee shop or a bench in
a busy park.
When you deliver your message, be thoughtful and
considerate, but also be clear. Expect the situation to
be uncomfortable and awkward. Some people react to
this by shying away from making their point clearly, that
is from directly saying that they want to end the
relationship.
At the end of the meeting, the other person
should be clear on your intent and where they
stand.
Having said all that, if you think the
relationship might be worth saving, there's a great
resource I've found that can tell you how to do it on
your terms. Well worth checking out.
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