How To End a Relationship

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

You know it’s not working; she knows it’s not working. Even the dog knows it’s not working. But you keep hanging on and going through the motions anyway. Before you do something dramatic but incredibly stupid, end it with some class and dignity. Come on, how hard can that be?

photo credit: Phil Romans

Well, okay, the degree of difficulty is directly proportional to the length and complication of the relationship. The break-up hurts everyone a lot less after three dates than after three decades and three babies. The basic principle, however, remains the same: If it isn’t working and it cannot be fixed, then everyone must find strength and courage to let go and move on.

So, let’s break it down…

It isn’t working…

You know the relationship stands at the brink of disaster because you have reached one of two impossible conditions. Either you have given up speaking altogether except for the idle, distracted, “How was your day?” Or, worse but somehow sort of habit-forming, you do nothing but fight, and the fights grow more bitter, brutal, and destructive because neither you nor the girlfriend wants “to lose.” The fights no longer have anything to do with relationship; now, they’re just about winning and they feel a whole lot like a winner-take-all fifty lap destruction derby.

Whether you’re locked in silence or under siege, you probably should call a truce and try to remember what the fight really is about. And, no, you are not fighting about what a jerk you are and what a bitch she is: those things are just shorthand for the real issues. Although it may seem so tragically ordinary it seems to drain-out all the delicious drama, the odds are that you’re fighting about one or all of the Relationship Top Five: (1)Money; (2)Sex; (3)Distribution of Household Responsibility; (4)”You Have Let Yourself Go,” which actually means you are taking the relationship for granted. (5) The Righteous Brothers: “You’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’.”

Once you can name it, you also can claim it. Ask yourself, seriously, if you took responsibility for the deepest cause of the relationships fall apart could it-and you-find redemption? What about the money, besides the fact that no one ever has enough of it? Can you settle the issue instead of calling it quits? What about the distribution of household labor, except that everyone is so darn exhausted that stuff never gets done? Can you solve the issue instead of dividing the property?

You see how this works, right? The basic idea is to stop stonewalling or fighting and start discussing. Get a referee if necessary, but call a truce and start talking.

It cannot be fixed…

Is that really true?

Before you start cleaning out the garage and putting all your favorite stuff back into your parents’ basement and before you try to figure out whom really can put that special omelet pan to its very best use; take a giant step back, exhale, and determine whether or not it’s beyond hope.

Stop blaming and accusing, and just look at the whole mess objectively. No, it’s not easy, but it can be done.

Of course, you’re going to say “the relationship doesn’t meet your needs.” Everybody says that; it’s in the manual that you’re supposed to say that as part of your explanation. You must, however, crank up the courage to specify what that means, and once you know exactly what you mean, then you have to figure out whether or not it’s fixable.

Yes, you can do this.

The Vegas odds say you’re probably going to lead off with sex. Although sex constitutes, according to the experts, only about 10% of a healthy relationship, it somehow miraculously accounts for about 90% of relationship break-downs. What are you not getting in the bedroom that you think you need? Come on, you can say it: Frequency? Fantasy? Duration? Variety? All of the above?

Because everybody knows the best place to hide something is the most obvious place, you’ve gotta ask yourself, first, the grown-up question: Is this desire actually a need, or is it more like a wish or a “would-be-nice” that you use to cover up some even deeper problem? Then, second, you’ve gotta ask and answer: Have you ever honestly explained this need to the girlfriend? Is it really and truly a deal-breaker? Once you can explain the problem for your own self, you will know how to explain it to the girlfriend.

Apply this same basic principle to the remaining four of the Relationship Top Five. If you are five-for-five, you’re obviously done.

Let Go and Move On

Obviously, if you really can pull off all this cool, calm, reasonable and rational analysis and explanation, then both you and the girlfriend will understand either that, yes, you have a problem but you will collaborate to fix it; or, no, it really is beyond hope, no wonder you’ve been fighting all the time. If you come to the conclusion that you’re done, you and the girlfriend owe one another an apology for hurting each other. Then, you move on. Don’t even think about saying you can just be friends - because we all know that that rarely works.

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Tags: breaking up, relationships, romance, women

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 11:44 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.