Leaving A Relationship
Wednesday, September 6th, 2006Sometimes after working their way through ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ a client will decide that it’s time to leave. I’ve been coaching Mary* for the past 3 months and having explored her options from every angle she decided that she could no longer pretend her relationship was going to improve. ‘Goodbye my love’ is so much harder to say than ‘Hello stranger’ and I’ve been working with her on making it as painless as possible.
Mary’s been having nightmares, the kind where she needs to start running away but she just can’t get her legs to work. These are called anxiety dreams and can be really scary. They tend to occur around situations that we feel we’re not strong enough to deal with. It’s almost as if our subconscious is letting us know that we’re not truly ready for the challenge.
If you’re going to leave someone here are a couple of suggestions for how to make it much less traumatic for all concerned.
My first observation is that you need to make an informed decision which is what my ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ coaching program is all about. Leaving and then coming back is generally a really bad idea as it undermines trust. For the sake of this article I’m going to assume you’ve reached the point of knowing you’re leaving.
Leaving someone you’ve loved is always going to be heartbreaking. No matter how angry you are at your partner’there is always going to be the sense that something’once beautiful’is about to die. You had dreams together and plans for your future that both of you invested a lot of energy and emotion into. For at least a little while the relationship was a place you could call home and your partner was family. It’s my understanding that if a person has any heart at all then a break up is going to hurt and you need to have some kind of support and structure in place to get you through.
So if you’re leaving I’m going to encourage you to see it as an expedition, an adventure. It’s going to be full of challenges and if you don’t prepare properly pieces of you could freeze over for life. For some reason we are led to believe that it’s only the person being left that is allowed to be upset. This is a nonsense and I want you to know that you need to be prepared for the potential pain.
Draw up a detailed list of the reasons for your leaving. The more specific you can be the better. In my experience the people that suffer the most when it comes to falling out of love are the ones that continue to focus on the nicest times with their ex.
Mary had a tendency to think about all the times they cuddled up on the sofa watching a movie. This is a great way to make yourself feel terrible. What you focus on is what you feel so I’d encourage you to begin to focus on the more painful times between you. At least until you’ve got enough emotional distance between you when you’ve stopped feeling lonely or like you want to go back. I had one client call to mind all her long tortured nights of crying alone into her pillow when her man was out seeing his mistress.
Being single is said to be a luxury that we fail to notice. So take some time to think about the things you’d like to do that you could never get your partner interested in. Mary had always wanted to go away on a holiday to see the Polar Bears in Alaska but her partner wouldn’t hear of it. This went on a list of things she was excited about doing once she left her partner. Where she’d initially been frightened about all the spare time she was going to have and the loneliness she began to get enthusiastic about things she’d had on hold for too long.
She also began to re-activate her social network and add in some things she knew would help. She started a massage course as she knew that physical touch could be lacking for a while. Mary made enquiries about some night classes that she knew would be fun and reinstated her girls’ night out once a week.
In an ideal world your partner is aware that this is going on. Not in an evil/vindictive way but because you want the best for each other. This may or may not be possible. In Mary’s case she let John know that she’d decided to leave and they managed to part as friends because they had such a history between them and they both knew they’d done all they could to save their relationship.
It’s not always like this though. Sometimes the news of your leaving comes as a bolt from the blue. If this is how you are going to do it then it’s important that you understand the person you are leaving is not going to love you for it. It seems to me that most of us run into huge feelings of humiliation around getting dumped so don’t be entirely surprised when his or her initial reaction is a desire to see you dead. Understand that it’s an emotional reaction and try to stay compassionate, you’ve potentially just taken the sun out of their sky.
It’s very rare that anyone manages to leave a relationship in a healthy fashion. There doesn’t really seem to be a perfect way, or even a particularly good time, to do it. You need to make your decision and then take the leap. As teenagers ‘you’re chucked!’ was often enough but as adults it’s not really. This is a chasm you face and there comes a time when you just have to jump, there is no easy next step. If you’ve prepared properly you just need to trust. This poem says it best;
Edges by S. Martin
“When we have come to the end of all the light we have ever known
And take our first tentative steps into the darkness of the unknown
We must believe one of two things
Either that there will be solid ground
Upon which we can stand
Or that we will be taught to fly”
Tips on Leaving A Relationship
- Saying goodbye can be very difficult especially if your partner wants to argue with you or beg you to stay. At this point I’d suggest you use the broken record technique which means you just keep repeating what you want them to hear. ‘I’m sorry our relationship just isn’t working for me any more’. If you do this sensitively it will diffuse the situation.
- Ahead of time you may need to start disentangling your lives as it probably won’t be healthy to be around each other for a while. If they are a business or work colleague you may need to think about serious life changes ahead of time.
- Sometimes clients fear that they will never find anyone who knows them so well again. Maybe you’d fear never finding anyone so sensitive, good looking, great at communicating, playful and sexy. Who knows? The truth is that you will. The idea that you have one particular soul mate is not healthy or helpful. Start to think in terms of soul groups as you’d be amazed how often a person shifts from being a soul mate to what feels like your cell mate.
- Just for the fun of it (!) why not try leaving a relationship before you’ve lined up the next one. Rebound relationships are doomed statistically. If you’re leaving someone then you need to stay single for at least a month for every year you were together in order to heal. You’ll feel a natural shift occur that isn’t based on loneliness when you’re ready to date again.
*In order to maintain our clients’ confidentiality we never use’their real names.
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