Ending a romantic relationship isn’t an easy thing to do, even if it’s the right thing to do. It’s important to take the time to end the relationship in a respectful way, but you are totally allowed to put yourself and your happiness first, no matter what the situation is. That being said, relationships are super complicated.
Trust Your Gut
No one can ever truly understand your relationship, except you and the other person. Even your friends who you go to for venting sessions, won’t grasp the full picture of the relationship. This is why it’s so important to trust your own gut, and not rely on what others say. You know what the best move is for yourself, so trust in yourself.
Therapy Can Help Better Understand Yourself
Speaking to a therapist is a great idea because they can remain neutral and simply provide a well-trained ear to listen to, and provide advice with the sole purpose of helping you find inner happiness. So reach out today and we’ll find you the best therapist for you and your needs!
Traditional Relationships, No Longer Very Traditional
In a traditional relationship, a couple might spend a couple of years together and then decide to tie the knot and even start a family. Nowadays people are realizing that they can do whatever they want!
People Aren’t Putting Faith in Marriage
Many people don’t agree with marriage, and instead are much happier to be together, without having to sign any legal document. Traditional relationships on the other hand tend to be legally binding commitments, to the point where you have to prove to somebody the whys and hows of a marriage breakdown before you can end a marriage. You even have to pay money in order to get a divorce, so it’s no wonder that many people are starting to break away from the tradition that seems to put too many rules and regulations on us.
We’re Here to Help
So whether you’re going through a dating breakup, a divorce, a breakup with children involved, or anything else, we will discuss tips and considerations that should help you no matter what kind of situation-ship you’re in!
How to go about ending a relationship
It’s important to end a relationship face to face. It is pretty disrespectful to do it any other way unless you don’t feel safe. So make the effort to meet one on one to have this conversation.
Anticipate your partner’s feelings
When ending a relationship, just keep in mind that your partner will be hurt, and in many cases this breakup may be a complete surprise to them. Going into the conversation aware of what the other person’s feelings may be will help you prepare what you will respond with.
Prepare for Conflict
You will likely be hurting too. When we get hurt during a breakup, our minds might take us into an angry place where we want to hurt the other person back. So keep in mind that when your partner first hears the news, they won’t be happy. Prepare for some defensiveness or even personal attacks toward you.
Once the angry phase goes, it’s likely that your ex-partner will try to do everything they can to keep you. They may guilt you, and make you feel really bad about ending things. Expect this before going into the conversation, so that you’re prepared to stay strong.
Avoid using too much detail
You can tell your ex-partner whatever reasons for breaking up that you wish, but we find it’s best to leave too many details out. Your ex-partner will likely obsess over those little details so it’s just not necessary.
Make a Clean Break
Once you’ve gotten everything out that you wish, it’s important to make a clean break and create distance from your ex-partner. They may ask you to spend some time with them to help them get over you, but that will only make it harder. You want to avoid meeting up with this person again and get out of there once you feel ready to. They may even suggest that you two stay friends, but this is not usually a good idea when ending a romantic relationship,
Don’t blame yourself!
Most importantly, avoid blaming yourself! You made an effort to end things in a really respectful way, so any feelings your ex-partner may be having are not your fault! This is why a clean break is so important. They could try to drag you down and we want to avoid that. They may even
Avoid creating false hope
Under no circumstances do we want to create false hope in our ex-partner. They may say something like “We’ll if you start feeling good about yourself, will you get back together with me in the future?”. We want a clean break with no broken hopes. We can’t exactly breakup in a pain free way anyways, so it’s ideal so be completely honest, in a nice way. Say it’s time we both move on.
Mutual friends
When romantic relationships end and there are mutual friends involved, prepare for things to get a little tricky. If you met these friends through your ex-partner, they’ll likely stay by their side. We want to avoid seeing this person if at all possible, so we may lose some friends in the process, and that’s okay.
Professional help
It’s important to look after your mental health. Relationships ending can be really hard. You might have your own hurt feelings and the best thing you can do is seek professional help, and work on navigating your emotions and eventually help you in a healthy relationship one day. Reach out to us anytime and we can connect with you with an outstanding therapist today!
How do you know when it’s time to end a relationship?
Knowing when it’s time to end a relationship can be difficult. At the end of the day dating and being in a relationship really is a trial run to see how you get along with a new partner. While some complications can make things a bit more difficult during the breakup, you can do whatever you want! You do not need a big reason for breaking up with somebody. Even if you have children with somebody or are married to them, you can do whatever is best for you. Your happiness needs to come first.
Marriage
There are important considerations to make when deciding to end a relationship. If you are married, then you need to research how the area you live in handles separation and divorce. If you live together, or own assets together then you have to realize that things get tricky in those aspects. If you share a tenancy or a mortgage with your partner, it’s not uncommon for the other party to be very mad and threaten to take your home from you. I only mention this because it’s important that you have preparations in order, in case the other party decides to lash out and harm your stability.
Children require preparation
If you have children together, that is when things get even more complicated. But do not let this discourage you from doing what you want to do. It simply means that there are even more preparations to be made. It is not uncommon for people who have children together to stay together simply for the kids. This is what we want to avoid, because while it is a difficult process, the end result is your happiness, and if you need to end your relationship to find happiness, your children will benefit from your happiness as well.
Consider child access carefully
Expect the worst during breakups with any children involved. Your partner could fight you for full custody, or even disappear and not be a part of their lives. So you could end up with no custody, split custody, or full custody. It’s an unfortunate situation that happens to many couples splitting up. Make sure to spend time researching the laws regarding custody and breaking up with children in the area that you live in.
The best outcome is that you and your ex-partner can come to an agreement regarding the children, where they will live, how you’ll handle disagreements, etc. So while we want to plan and prepare for the worst, we want to also do everything we can to be empathetic to the other party and work towards coming to a reasonable agreement for both parties involved.
Dating
If you’re simply in a relationship with no complicated ties, then we can focus on the emotional entanglements and aspects of a breakup. A breakup can be hard for anybody, even if you don’t love your partner anymore, or they hurt you in a way that is unforgivable, it will still hurt. A lot of people will “check out” of a relationship for months before actually ever doing anything. It can be scary thinking about making the wrong decision or having regrets in the future.
You don’t need a good reason to break up
Maybe you are dating a really nice person and the feelings have just faded, and you don’t feel like you want to be with them anymore. This is totally okay! There doesn’t have to be any real reason for a breakup, you have the power to do whatever makes you happy.
Be aware of the honeymoon phase
It is important to keep in mind that when we start relationships, everyone goes through a honeymoon phase, where everything is so perfect and nothing bothers you. This can last anywhere from a few months to a year. There is no direct timeline. However, you’re not likely to know you’re in a honeymoon phase until it ends. I would say this usually happens when you start living with someone, and you see some of their habits become pet-peeves for you. We’ve all heard of the traditional “my partner won’t put the toilet seat down”, or “my partner won’t let me play video games all night”. These tend to be very true! Your pet peeves won’t be the same as another couple, but they certainly will exist at some point.
Be prepared for conflicts
So we’re past the honeymoon phase and some conflicts begin to arise. It’s not uncommon for people to run at the first sign of trouble. You might be thinking “I didn’t sign up for this!”. When we connect so intensely with another person and share our living and breathing spaces, it takes a lot of time to work out patterns, and habits, to overcome conflicts, and to find a sort of “peace”. All relationships have ups and downs, and if we want to succeed in a relationship and find someone to be with long-term then we must acknowledge that things get hard sometimes and it isn’t a reason to run away and call it quits.
)
