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Monday, July 7, 2008

How To Break-Up

Most people don’t want to do this at all. Breaking-up sucks…unless you’re so beaten down in the relationship that getting out sounds like a huge relief. Or unless you’ve already moved on and you’ve found a new love that won’t ever treat you this badly(you’re sure). Relationships are complicated.

So, this whole thing isn’t fun. But there are ways to break-up that make it even worse.

If you have any caring left in you for your soon-to-be ex, and most people have some, regardless of how bored they are or how badly they’ve been hurt in the relationship, things get complex. There are several scenarios in which it sounds good to stay friends. If you don’t want the relationship to end, staying friends can be your way of maintaining contact and keeping your foot in the door. It seems to provide you with a caring context for any future contact and you don’t totally lose the one you love. This kind of contact enables your lost lover to return to you and the relationship you once had, if he or she realizes what you had together.

If, on the other hand, you were the one who left the relationship, you may want to stay friends, partly out of guilt. You don’t want your former partner to hate you and you don’t hate him or her. Maybe it just seemed like the relationship had “run it’s course” or flickered out or you no longer met each other’s needs. Whatever. Maybe you’re with someone else now who seems to understand you better. Maybe there are things you get from this person that you still want. In this scenario, you probably like your former lover as a person. You still want her or him in your life, just not in a romantic context.

The friend thing, though, doesn’t really work. At least, not right away (and I’m talking years down the road). If you don’t really want the relationship to end, staying friends just puts you in a purgatory, of sorts. You can’t really move on with your life (I know, you don’t want to move on with your life. You want the relationship back) and you can’t deal functionally with the issues that ended the thing in the first place. While it feels horrible to cut off your former mate’s offer of friendship, that’s actually what you need to do. Hatred and bitterness between the two of you isn’t necessary (although you’ll probably feel this at times, if you’ve been left).

If you’ve been left, you need to grieve, to find some understanding of what happened, and move on. (Not suggesting you hurry to find someone, anyone, to replace your loss.) Live your life, even though it may hurt just to breathe during this time. Moving on may feel like you’re giving up, but sometimes it’s necessary and reasonable to give up.

If you’re the one who ended things, for Pete’s sake, let your former mate move on. Hanging on to aspects of a former relationship, either because this is still comfortable for you or because you share kids (excuse) or because you don’t want her to hate you, is selfish. Caring for your former partner means letting go, if you’re not going back into the relationship.

Civil contact to exchange the kids or talk money for the kids’ needs (tuba lessons and orthodontia!) can be done without exchanging personal information. Staying intertwined in each other’s lives is confusing to former mates and to the kids. If you’re splitting up, that means giving up on using one another as a sounding board. If you’re ending the thing, just end it.

Sex between people who’ve broken up usually means you have issues—both personal and relationship—that haven’t been resolved. Don’t keep doing this. If you want sex on the side, get it somewhere else, don’t muddy the waters further. When a relationship ends, you need to stop seeing one another, stop talking, stop texting. Just stop. Get all your stuff and move into another domicile. Don’t call to see how he is.

It’s like the old Paul Simon song Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover says, “Just walk out the back, Jack.”