How To Successfully Break Up With Someone

Matthew Hussey here with Love Life. Let's talk about a difficult subject. How do you break up with someone? This is something that many of us go through at one stage or another in our lives. We dread it. It is a nightmare, especially if we care about the person. What could be harder than hurting someone that you care about or even love? Because, of course, contrary to what people think, you can love someone and still decide that right now you can't be with them. So how do you break up with someone in the most humane way that helps them and also gets you the result that you need right now, which is to be on your own? First, don't have 10 different reasons for the breakup. One of the mistakes we fall into is we feel like we have to stack our case for why the breakup has to happen. And in doing so, we end up muddying some of our stronger cases, some of our stronger arguments. And of course, when you give someone a bunch of arguments, and some of them are strong and some of them are weak, you know from arguments in the past, what does someone focus on? They start focusing on the weak arguments in your case, and they use them to justify why your decision is the wrong one. What you need to do before you have that conversation is essentially distill it down to your fundamental reason for doing this. What's your fundamental reason for needing to be out of the relationship? When you've got your strongest case, that's the one you need to go with and stick to it. And you may, during the conversation, need to be repetitive. Don't think that just because somebody keeps talking to you about it and keeps prying that you need to come up with new arguments. If you know your reason, don't be afraid of stating it multiple times. If it's repetitive and boring, fine. At least it's the real reason, and you're not searching for other reasons to bolster your case. Next, be kind. Be kind. You don't want to go into this trying to attack the person for what they're going wrong. You're already potentially breaking their heart. They don't need a whole bunch of complexes and insecurities on top of it. So don't let it turn into an argument. Understand that they might try to turn it into an argument. They might try and make this something that's antagonistic so that they can feel better about it. If they do, don't take the bait. Just be kind. Understand that they're angry and that perhaps if it were the other way around, you would be angry and hurt and upset too, or your hurt would manifest itself as anger. Understand that that's their position right now. This is the next tip, by the way. Do not try to be the good guy. Don't try and be the hero in the situation. Our own narcissism, our own ego has us often trying to break up with someone and also be the saint in the situation, also trying to be the good person in the situation. We still want to be liked, even when we're breaking up with someone. That's not fair. That's not fair because in an effort to be liked, you will start saying things that perhaps are disingenuous. You'll start giving someone hope where there is none, and you'll make the other person feel worse in the long term because all you're really doing is trying to stay connected to them through this thing that actually in reality creates a disconnect. You have to allow there to be a disconnect instead of trying to break up with them and have them love you and want you as much as they always have. That's not fair to the other person. That's your own ego talking when you try and do that. Next, stay firm and remember your reasons. After the breakup, something that is likely to happen is firstly, they will come back to you wanting you back, and they will say things that do play with your emotions. They may not be consciously trying to play games with you, but they will say things that target your heartstrings. In those moments, it's essential to go back to your reasons for why you did it. I'm not talking about going back to all those weak arguments to why you did it because if you do that, you'll start to lose yourself because you'll start to defeat your own arguments. You'll say, well, I said that, but maybe that's not such a problem. I said it was because I wanted more time, but maybe I don't even need more time, or maybe it wasn't about time after all. You'll start defeating your own arguments. When you remember your reasons for doing this, don't go back to your weaker arguments. Go back to those distilled reasons why you had to do it. What were the reasons why it was so important at the time? Because when you move away from someone and you get lonely and you're on your own, the temptation will be to go back to the comfort. But with the kind of relationship amnesia that happens after a breakup where you start to forget about the wrong and the reasons you left, and you start to amplify the good and the things that you loved about the relationship, the relationship becomes disproportionately sentimental and romantic, and you start wondering why you left in the first place. This is why I always encourage writing down your fundamental reasons in a place where you can always come back to them so that if you need to remind yourself why it was important for you to do at one stage or another, or at the time of the breakup, you can go back to those reasons and remind yourself of your logic at the time. So look, it's never easy. It's never easy breaking up with somebody, and sometimes in life, the tough part is that we break up with the people we love the most, the people that secretly, on some level, in some parallel universe, we might have even seen ourselves with. Or had things been slightly different, either about them or about the timing, you would still have been with that person. But we have to be careful because when we get lonely, we can end up making the wrong decisions. And you have to know that if you're ever going to go back to a situation, you're going to go back for the right reasons and not out of fear and panic. So that's it for today, my friends. I know if you're thinking about doing this, I know you're going through a tough time, and I'm there with you. I'm in your corner. I know how hard it is, but stay strong, be brave, and do what you know is the right thing to do.