Sometimes relationships have to end. You might fall out of love, you might feel unhappy and trapped (emotionally), you might not fancy them any more, maybe you just don’t want to be in any relationship.
I think it’s important to be as nice as possible in order to value what you did have together.
However if your partner has been a complete and total shit, or your relationship has put you in danger, or you have been really badly treated, then put yourself first and just get out. Block them on facebook, don’t return their calls or texts and just cut them out of your life altogether.
So you’re unhappy in the relationship. Perhaps you’ve lost trust, you don’t work together as a team, you aren’t having the sex life that you want, you aren’t being fair to each other, you don’t laugh any more etc etc.
You could try and make the relationship work. You can get relationship advice and counselling from Relate for instance. You could struggle on and hope things get better (sometimes you can just have a bad patch in a relationship). You could talk things over with your partner and ask them about how they are feeling. (I’ll do another post about this kind of thing in the future)
You might have decided that the best thing to do is to get out, in that case….
People say “there is no nice way to do it, so just do it.” I don’t agree with this. It’s never nice hearing that your partner wants to end the relationship (no matter whether you’ve been going out for 2 days, 2 weeks or 2 years), but there are good ways to do it and bad ways to do it.
- In public or in front of your friends. Loud hailers Facebook walls and Twitter feeds are also in public. As is grafitti
- Saying something that is unkind or deliberately hurtful (even if it might be true). Eg “you were crap at sex”, “your breath is terrible”, “I always thought you were a minger but I took pity on you.”
- Telling them 3rd hand, through a friend or just letting them find out.
- Just letting it fizzle out or not returning phone calls, emails or texts without explanation.
- First, think hard about what you are feeling in the relationship and get it really clear in your mind.
- Do it privately. It could be in a letter or private message or email, but not a text. If you choose to do it in person or on the phone then make sure that you are in private and that you have a good signal on the phone, lots of battery and lots of credit/minutes.
- Choose the right time, but do it soon. Don’t let it linger but don’t do it on the same day as they get bad news or if there is so much stuff going on in their lives that they won’t be able to hear what you are saying properly. Daytime is good, then they can get their mates to help them.
- Speak for yourself and don’t blame. “I feel unhappy in the relationship”, “I don’t feel any trust any more”, “I don’t feel like I’m part of a team”. People can’t argue with what you are truly feeling.
- They deserve an explanation, not an essay. Say what you have to say as clear and as concisely as you can.
- Be nice but be honest and clear. Don’t say you still love them if you don’t. Don’t say you want to be friends unless you really, really do.
- Make sure that they have heard and understood what you have said. Listen to what they have to say back, but remember that they might say things they don’t mean if they get angry. Be calm and be prepared to walk away, but give them an opportunity to have their say (at some stage) and listen hard.
Once you’ve done it you might feel terrible but, if you’ve done it as well as you can, all you have to worry about is how you get over it. How the other person gets over it is up to them. Time to start planning the beginning of the rest of your life, see your mates, get stuck in with work. You’ll start to feel like your old self in no time, even if it takes you time to get over it.
