Have you ever had a friend tell you that breaking up with their lover is too difficult for them? When it comes to ending a long-term relationship, the truth is that it can be tough. Many other close connections are significantly different from our bonds with serious partners. It could be difficult to imagine the preceding days without someone you’ve known for a long time, let alone the shifting dynamics of friendships or support from each other’s families. However, it’s fine to decide you’re ready for a new chapter in your life when your heart tells you it’s time. This post discusses, in detail,l how to end a long-term relationship, regardless of the situation or the person in question.
Let’s set the ball rolling…
How to End a Relationship With Someone You Love
If you’re in a relationship and thinking about ending it, it’s time to face the most difficult part: telling the person you care about something that will definitely hurt them. Is there, however, a “proper” way to end a relationship?
How you end your long-term relationship is relative because no two breakups are alike. However, the following are tips on how to go about bringing a long-term relationship to an end.
Breaking Up With Someone You Love: Dos and Don’ts
Here are a few things you can do (and not do) to ensure a respectful, courteous, and honest split.
#1. Place Yourself in Their Shoes
Put yourself in your partner’s shoes if you’re having trouble deciding when or where to break up: You can minimize more agony and prepare for awkward circumstances by thinking about how you’ll have the conversation ahead of time.
These conversations are undoubtedly tough, but avoiding the breakup, on the other hand, can be just as devastating. Consider how the other person feels—and how they handle emotional situations—to figure out the best way to address the subject without making it more difficult for them.
#2. Don’t Assign Responsibility
While your desire to quit the relationship may be motivated by your partner’s terrible behavior, assigning blame will only make the breakup harder. Avoid the other person feeling attacked.
You don’t have to disclose every reason for the separation, but if questioned, you can choose a general one to explain your decision. While some daters may find it beneficial to understand why the other person broke up with them (in order to have closure or potentially learn from it), others may not.
#3. Consider Where You Want to Go
It’s beneficial to split up in a place where you both feel at ease. You should also think about whether your partner feels safe enough to react honestly—a public area with a lot of strangers would make it difficult for them to express themselves.
#4. Prepare for the conversation
Is it going to be hot? Sad? Emotional? Will they retaliate violently? Make sure there is some level of privacy wherever you choose to conduct it. If you want to keep their reaction under control or if the physical connection is so strong that there’s a possibility you won’t finish the dialogue, less privacy is better.
Although breaking up with someone in their house may appear to be a good choice, it can make the task more difficult: The disadvantage is that it may take longer, be more uncomfortable, and take a more dramatic turn when the other person yells—or refuses to let you leave.
#5. Don’t Lie
It’s fine to soften the blow, but don’t lie about your reasons for ending the relationship. Experts suggest that if your partner inquires, give one or two reasons without becoming too explicit. Acknowledge that you don’t desire the same things or that you handle emotional circumstances in different ways by politely explaining your opinions.
#5. Establish Limits
Before having a difficult conversation, you should know what not to do. For example, do not result in ghosting rather say you want a break when you really want to break up. It’s essential to establish limits once you’ve informed your partner that you want to end the relationship.
How to End a Relationship When You Live Together
It becomes more difficult to end a relationship when you live together. However, here are some pointers to help you do this effectively:
#1. Making Preparations
A few months of living together may have revealed a few important issues, such as late nights out with no communication, disdain for your personal space, or often missed responsibilities. Maybe you overlooked these issues at first, believing they would go away on their own. You tried to address them when that didn’t happen, but your attempts were ineffective.
The circumstances may differ, but if you recognize, there’s no way forward, terminating things sooner rather than later will save you time and suffering. Hence, it is advisable to make adequate preparations, like how you would start the conversation, how long it would take, the exact things you’d need to say, and so on.
#2. Choose Your Words Carefully
Choosing your words carefully, in one way or the other, involves the following;
- Be truthful: It’s easy to use white lies to lessen the pain, but consider how you’d feel in their shoes. Show them the same politeness that you would want to know what went wrong.
- Keep things straightforward: Instead of giving a laundry list of complaints, keep your explanation to a few key points.
- Avoid assigning unjustified blame. It won’t assist anyone if you accuse them of ruining your relationship or take responsibility for it yourself. Try to keep your explanation neutral.
#3. Allow them time
They may be stunned, devastated, angry, and perplexed after the conversation. You can’t change how they feel, but by allowing them space to process, you can show compassion and care.
Even if you intend to go, give them some alone time before you begin packing. Prepare an overnight bag with essentials and schedule a time to gather your belongings.
If it’s your house or apartment, they’ll need at least a few days to find a place to stay. Make time to talk about limits and sleeping arrangements. Offer to sleep in the guest room or on the couch, for example.
How to End a Long-Term Relationship With a Child
The following are tips to follow if you need to end a long-term relationship when you both have a child.
#1. Make Space for Feelings
Allow yourself to experience anger, fear, sadness, guilt, or any other feelings related to the termination of your relationship. But don’t make fun of your ex in front of the kids. Keep any unpleasant remarks you want to say about your former partner to yourself, or say them in front of another adult, such as a sibling or a therapist. Your children are already dealing with a challenging situation. Your children will feel forced to choose sides if you criticize your ex.
#2. Make Final Decisions About the Split
Away from the children, tie up any loose ends in your partnership, such as asset division or debt repayment. Avoid fighting or bickering about these topics in front of the children. If you can’t come to an agreement, try hiring a mediator to assist you in avoiding an ugly and heated situation.
#3. Request Assistance
Solicit assistance from friends, family, and close neighbors. Enlist the support of family and friends with childcare, errands, and transportation to free up your time so you can focus on your own problems. Make contact with your family and friends. Invite a friend and her kids to lunch with you and your kids, invite your parents to spend the weekend with you and your children, or take the children shopping with their aunt and cousins.
#4. Allow Yourself Some Time
Accept that you and your children will need time to heal from your long-term relationship. Don’t force yourself or your kids to accept the termination of your relationship. You all have the right to mourn for as long as you need to.
Do not rush into a new relationship. Although it may be tempting to mend a shattered heart with a new relationship, your children are unlikely to be ready to see you with anyone other than their father right soon. Before introducing your children to a new spouse or date, you should strive to wait at least six months after your split.
#5. Maintain a friendly Atmosphere
When it comes to establishing a visiting schedule that fits everyone’s needs, work with your ex. If you and your ex can’t agree on certain things, seek expert mediation. Maybe you’re still furious with your ex, don’t try to keep visitation from him or her. If you and your ex can’t get along in front of the kids, consider having a friend or family drop off and pick up the kids during visitation.
How to End a Long-Term Relationship With a Narcissist
When you’re dating a narcissist, everything revolves around them. It’s perplexing and draining. You muster the courage to leave one day. While this is an exciting time for you since you are moving in the right direction, there is a difficult transition phase following a breakup with a narcissist. It’s not easy to get over a narcissist just because they treat you like garbage. In fact, this is one of the most difficult types of breakups to overcome. You’re up and down, over and under, over—it’s a roller-coaster ride, much like your relationship. So, here’s how to get rid of a narcissist once and for all.
#1. Stop Worrying
Because it’s practically difficult to establish a relationship with a narcissist, you spend a lot of time examining their behavior and character to try to understand the curveballs they keep throwing at you. This compulsive pattern of analysis will continue after you leave your abusive relationship until you push it to stop.
Remind yourself that you are no longer concerned about your ex, and gently encourage your mind to focus on something else. Repeat this process as needed. According to most experts, changing a habit takes three months.
#2. Don’t Try to Reason With Yourself.
To keep the peace and justify sticking with your narcissist through all those dysfunctional challenges, you had to make excuses for their behavior, minimize their abuse, reinterpret their lies, and tiptoe around their self-delusions. You’ll start reasoning again when you miss them now—and you will—thinking, “Oh, they’re not that horrible.”
#3. Find Coping Mechanisms for Your Anxiousness
Your nervous system is probably still firing along those lines because your narcissist kept you on edge for months or years. Leaving could also trigger new stresses or fears, exacerbating your anxiety. Furthermore, sex has ceased, so you no longer have the dopamine and oxytocin that were keeping your head above water.
Yoga, dancing, swimming, and other forms of exercise are all good options. Every day, whenever you need it, do something. (Here are some ideas for self-care following a breakup.)
#4. Keep Yourself Occupied.
A relationship with a narcissist is all about power. You don’t have it; they do. You scurry around, attempting to normalize everything, but you never achieve it because they want you to scurry so they can jerk your chain whenever they want. This doesn’t sound very good, and it was, but it did help pass the time. There’s a vast, empty gap in your days now that no one is doing that. Life isn’t quite as interesting as it once was.
What are red flags in long term relationship?
In a romantic relationship, signs of trouble include excessive jealousy and a pattern of dishonesty. You should also be wary of committing to a relationship with someone who constantly belittles or criticizes you. A relationship shouldn’t be one-sided, so an unwillingness to compromise is another major red flag to look out for.
How do you know when a relationship won’t work?
Fights that don’t lead to more empathy, intimacy, or better solutions are all signs that something is fundamentally dysfunctional in the relationship. Conflicts that drag on for months, arguments that go around in circles, and fights that don’t lead to better solutions are all signs that something is fundamentally dysfunctional in the relationship.
How do you know if you love someone or just used to them?
When you fall in love with another person, you will naturally begin to feel intense compassion for that person. Your relationship will take on new dimensions as a result of the strong desire you have to be connected to this person. These dimensions include emotional or physical intimacy, passion, and a yearning to know everything there is to know about them and to be known by them in return.
How to End a Long-Term Relationship FAQs
Why do couples break up after 10 years?
Many relationships end in divorce due to one partner’s sense of insecurity, envy, and a lack of faith in the other. This insecurity can develop to an unhealthy level of dependency and possessiveness in the relationship, which is not good for either partner. Distrust and other unpleasant feelings might lead to the breakdown of the relationship.
What is the most common reason couples breakup?
Couples split up for a variety of reasons. Lack of emotional connection, sexual incompatibility, differences in life goals, and poor communication and conflict resolution skills are the most prevalent reasons individuals break up. There are no right or wrong reasons to end a relationship.
