Breaking Down the Breakup.

Breakups are the worst. No, they are the worst of the worse. It doesn’t mat­ter if you dated for a decade or for a few months, they are awk­ward uncom­fort­able, heart­break­ing, emo­tional and on the rare occa­sion vio­lent events. In my expe­ri­ence there is no escap­ing the heart­break of a break up despite what end of the bad news you are on, but there are ways to make deal­ing with it easier.

Clean Breaks

First off clean breaks are the best breaks. Don’t leave messy loose ends to the breakup. Ambi­gu­ity is not your friend. Make sure that when you are hav­ing the “talk” you are clear about what your inten­tions are and why you are end­ing the rela­tion­ship. You don’t need to give a laun­dry list of yourpartner’s faults but be sure to give a rea­son. If you don’t give a clear rea­sony­our now ex will be left ask­ing tons of ques­tions about how they ruined there­la­tion­ship and you bet­ter believe they are going to ask “Why?” over and over and bother you for a real expla­na­tion. My last two break ups ended with the rea­son, “You’re great, you’re won­der­ful, but I don’t want to be with you. I can’t explain it.” What the hell? Ok if you aren’t attracted to me, if you cheated on me, if you’re chang­ing your sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion fine I get it, at least it’s a con­crete rea­son. Of course I wanted to fully under­stand what went wrong but instead I just had to move on know­ing that I gave all I could but it just wasn’t right. On the con­trary I’ve bro­ken up with a man because his friends were a deal breaker and I told him just that. He thanked me for my honesty.

Bad News

The good news is when you break up you get to start over and meet some­one new that you are crazy about. The bad news is you have to break up with your cur­rent part­ner for that to hap­pen. This is eas­ily the hard­est part, the actual “talk”. I rec­om­mend hav­ing the “talk” in per­son. It shows that you respect what you had with this per­son and that you aren’t a cal­lous jerk. Yes it’s under­stand­able that one will want to put off telling a per­son they once loved “I don’t want to be with you any­more.” Just be hon­est, straight­for­ward and don’t place blame. The rea­sons for end­ing a rela­tion­ship are unique to each cou­ple and the cir­cum­stances are vary­ing, how­ever hon­esty in a break up can never go wrong. Be direct, don’t place blame, don’t call names and be hon­est. There is no good time for a break up. You may have tick­ets to a future event, a wed­ding you RSVP’ed to, what­ever the cir­cum­stances it’s is only fair to end the rela­tion­ship the minute you are sure that you do not see a future with that per­son. Drag­ging out breaks up is never a good idea. It causes more pain for the per­son who is on the receiv­ing end of the bad news and it will cause resent­ment. If you want to have a friend­ship with your ex keep the break up brief, to the point and as hon­est as possible.

Cheat­ing

If you or your part­ner cheats that should be the end of the rela­tion­ship. Period, the end. If you dis­agree then I’d love to hear why. The break up should go some­thing like this, “I cheated.” “It’s over.” Sim­ple as that.

Mov­ing On

Right after a break up you will feel either like a weight has been lifted off of your shoul­ders or like a knife has cut out your heart. If you are feel­ing like the lat­ter then the best thing to do is keep busy. Go out with friends, get a new hobby, do vol­un­teer work, read a book, take dance lessons, work out, visit a museum, etc. The key is to fill your time with activ­i­ties so you don’t stay home and feel sorry for your­self. Allow your­self a brief period of time to be hurt, wal­low in your sad­ness and self-​​pity and cry. Then get out of the house and fake it until you make it. If you pre­tend you are ok one day you really will feel ok. I promise it hurts less and less every­day. You will feel like your­self again. You will move on. You will fall in love again. You will for­get about the heart­break. Do not con­tact your ex, One day you may be able to be friends but you need time to pass. Don’t call your ex at 3am after a few mar­ti­nis to declare your love for your ex. It’s not going to change their mind, it will how­ever cause them to begin screen­ing their calls. Don’t roman­ti­cize the rela­tion­ship, some­one once told me hind­sight is fore­sight with no future. You will begin to look back on the rela­tion­ship and only remem­ber the pos­i­tive and then doubt the break up. There is a rea­son you aren’t together any­more, focus on mov­ing for­ward and meet­ing some­one who won’t break your heart. I sug­gest tak­ing every­thing that reminds you of your ex, pho­tos, keep­sakes, cards, etc. and put them in a box and keep it out of sight for a long time.

Poor Form

Break ups are bad enough but when they are han­dled in a hurt­ful way it only ampli­fies the pain. To main­tain good rela­tion­ship karma do not break up with some­one by text, via email, via phone, via voice­mail, via a social net­work­ing site, by chang­ing your rela­tion­ship sta­tus prior to the break up (yes that hap­pened to me), through friends, or by fad­ing out. How one han­dles a break up speaks vol­umes about them. Han­dling it with grace and class is the best approach. In spite of the pain you are feel­ing don’t react imma­turely, vio­lently or aggressively.

Fade­out

I felt the need to expand on this method of break­ing up because it seems to be hap­pen­ing to many of my friends as of late. We refer to it as the “fade out”. This means that you slowly stop com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the per­son you are dat­ing. Calls and texts go unan­swered, plans start to get bro­ken, sud­denly they aren’t your Face­book friend any­more and you are get­ting pretty sus­pi­cious. You know what hap­pens when you do that, you run into that per­son and it’s awk­ward and the per­son is hurt and angry. Have some balls and end it. A per­son will respect you if you have the guts to have the uncom­fort­able break up con­ver­sa­tion. It’s com­mon cour­tesy and fad­ing out is just about the rud­est thing a per­son can do.

Rec­on­cil­li­a­tion

Some­times a cou­ple real­izes they made a mis­take and one of them wants to get back together. If the feel­ings are one sided then you are only headed for more heart­break. A good idea is to take a real­is­tic look at your rela­tion­ship. Are you miss­ing your ex or are you just lonely? Do not mis­take feel­ings of lone­li­ness for gen­uine feel­ings for your ex.

Last Word

Peo­ple break up every day and it’s tough. You have to put it into per­spec­tive and under­stand that while it feels as though your world is crash­ing down around you, it’s only a page in the chap­ters in the book of your life. Heart­break makes you stronger. It leads you to what you really want and rela­tion­ships are learn­ing expe­ri­ences. I hate to be the one to say every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son but it truly does. Had my last ex not bro­ken up with me I would never have met some good friends and that includes the per­son who asked me to write for this site. There is a such thing as a good break up. One that changes you for the bet­ter and that enriches your life and that leaves you with a good friend. Break ups have taught me a lot about dat­ing and rela­tion­ships. I know that I never want to have a messy hurt­ful break up. I know that the exes I respect and can call my friends now are the ones who treated me with respect when deal­ing with the break up. The best way to deal with a rela­tion­ship is with class and matu­rity. Also a few drinks with friends never hurt either.

Related posts:

1. How to be Friends With an Ex: The First Hang Out.
2. The Risk of Falling.
3. Is Sex the New “I Love You?”