How to Decide if You Should Break Up
My phone rang at eleven p.m. on a Friday from a number I didn’t recognize. I was brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed. “Hello?” I said hesitantly, mouth full of spearmint foam.
The person on the other end burst into tears.
I spit into the sink. “Who is this? What’s wrong?”
After some sniffling and nose blowing, the voice said, “This is Sydney. I got your number from our mutual friend, Hannah. It’s about my boyfriend.”
I relaxed the death grip on my toothbrush. This I could handle. “What’s wrong?” I repeated. I could guess where the conversation was headed. He’d just broken up with her and she needed support.
She took a deep breath, composed herself, and said, “He wants to propose to me!”
A proposal. Not at all what I’d expected. “And why is this a bad thing?”
“I think I need to break up with him.”
I get calls like this all the time—okay, usually not at eleven p.m., and usually not spoken through tears—from people of all ages, genders, and sexual orientations. My work as a dating coach isn’t just about getting people into relationships. It’s also about helping them leave bad ones.
Every step of a relationship requires conscious decision-making, from whom to go out with, to when to move in together, to whether or not to get married. At some point, you may find yourself right where Sydney was in that moment, considering one of the most pivotal decisions of all—whether to stay together or break up.
I wish I could give you a quiz or a flowchart that would magically reveal what to do. But I can’t. There’s no easy answer, and every situation is unique. I don’t know all of the factors at play—how you think you feel, how you really feel, what else might be causing your discontent—and you probably don’t, either. However, I do know the cognitive forces at play that make this decision harder. Understanding them will help you decide what to do next.
People who ask me for breakup consultations usually fall into one of two categories. Some tend to stick around in relationships that aren’t working. I call these people Hitchers. The other group consists of people who tend to leave relationships too soon, without giving them a chance to grow—Ditchers. Of course, you may fall somewhere in the middle on the Bad Breakup Behavior Spectrum (not an official scientific scale, but it should be). These tendencies wax and wane depending on whom we’re with, what’s going on in our lives, and many other factors.
Before I tell you what happened with Sydney, I want to introduce you to Mike. Mike is thirty-six and lives in Albuquerque. When he first contacted me, he explained that he’d been seeing his girlfriend for around three months. She made him happy. She called him on his bullshit. She helped him figure out what he wanted to do next after he’d been laid off. “She’s so incredibly kind,” he said, “maybe the kindest person I’ve ever met.”
Unfortunately, for the last few weeks, he’d felt a familiar pull: He wanted to break up with her.
“This is what I always do,” he explained. “I meet someone awesome, but after three months, I start to fixate on their flaws, and then boom! I end it.”
“What is it about your current girlfriend that’s bothering you now?” I asked.
“I know this sounds snobby, but it’s the way she speaks. She misuses and mispronounces words. She says ‘pitcher’ instead of ‘picture.’ I think it’s a Boston thing.”
A Permissible Pet Peeve if I’d ever heard one. “Thank you for sharing those hesitations with me,” I said, making sure to e-nun-ci-ate my words carefully. “What are your long-term goals?”
“I want to get married and have kids.”
At this rate, it seemed unlikely that Mike would reach domestic bliss, given his proclivity for ending things at the three-month mark, but I could see that he was trying. He admitted that he usually had one foot out the door from the very beginning. He tended to leave before giving his partner a fair chance (which undoubtedly affected how he behaved in the relationship). He abandoned relationships early because he always wondered if there was someone better out there. And yes, if this sounds familiar, it’s because Mike was definitely a Maximizer.
Some Ditchers are motivated by their Maximizer tendencies. They leave relationships too quickly because they believe they can find something better.
Others ditch because of a Romanticizer tendency. They expect relationships will always offer the exciting infatuation that abounds in the early stages—the feeling of hearts fluttering, palms sweating, minds racing. They end relationships too early because of a cognitive error called the transition rule.
As behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky explained, when we estimate how something will feel in the future, we tend to focus on the initial impact. For example, you might imagine that lottery winners end up extremely happy, but it turns out that’s incorrect: As I mentioned earlier in the book, a year after they win, lottery winners are about as happy (or unhappy) as non–lottery winners.
When imagining the lottery winner, we focus on that transition—going from being an average Joe to being a big winner. Now, that’s a huge change. But in reality, once you’re rich, you eventually adapt to your new circumstances, and sooner or later, the money doesn’t seem to hold as much intrigue. You go back to how you felt before the major event. (This dynamic unfolds in challenging situations as well: Research shows that becoming a paraplegic has a smaller impact on people’s long-term happiness than you might expect.)
Ditchers make the same mistake with love. Thanks to the transition rule, they confuse falling in love with the state of being in love, and they expect the whole relationship to offer that initial excitement. But people adapt. Being in love is less intense than falling into it. Which, by the way, seems like a good thing! How could we get any work done with everyone walking around acting like the classic cartoon character Pepé Le Pew—smitten and speaking broken French?
Ditchers believe the feeling of falling in love will last forever. When they experience that shift from falling to being, they interpret it as a mark of disaster for their relationship. Over and over, they panic and leave, chasing the high of new romance.
This behavior causes problems, and not just for the person who gets dumped. Ditchers underestimate the opportunity cost of leaving, never learning how to be a good long-term partner.
Let’s say you go on a hundred first dates. You might develop excellent first-date skills. You discover the perfect cozy wine bar. Or you perfect the story of that time you got lost backpacking in Nepal. But what happens on dates five through seven? Or date twenty-five? Or fifty-five? You don’t know, because you haven’t gotten there. And if you keep dating people for three months and breaking up with them, you’ll never get your reps in. You’ll lack the experience of truly getting to know someone, of seeing the face of the person you love lit up by birthday candles or streaked with tears because of a parent’s illness. And you’ll continue to hold false expectations of how relationships feel over time. You won’t learn that how you feel on day one differs from how you feel on day one thousand.
On the phone that day, I asked Mike to close his eyes.
“Imagine you’re at a fork in the road,” I said. “There are two paths in front of you. Now imagine you’re stepping out onto the first path. You’ll break up with your current girlfriend, find another one, break up with her, and so on. This path is full of first dates and first kisses. It keeps going and going as you get older and older. There are nights out in Vegas and fancy restaurants, but no wife, no kids.
“The other path holds something different for you. You commit to your girlfriend. You do your best to make it work. As you walk along, you can see holiday dinners with both of your families. Look further ahead. You’ll see fights, and makeup sex, and then a wedding, romantic trips, and then a baby, and then wiping poop from her forehead, and then passing out from exhaustion, and then another baby, and more forehead-poop-wiping, and then college graduation, and so on.”
When I finished the exercise, Mike was quiet.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked.
“I need to think about it.”
Two weeks went by. During our next session, Mike spoke first: “Last time I feel like you showed me that I’m at a crossroads between Dad Mike and Sad Mike. Sad Mike keeps dating women, breaking up with them, and repeating the cycle all over again. He never learns how to be in a relationship, and he never gets the chance to have kids. When I closed my eyes, I saw him alone, living in a bachelor pad, with a pullout futon for a bed.”
“So, what do you want to do about it?”
“I’m ready to take a different path.”
Mike decided to give his relationship a chance. As we worked together over the next year, he shifted his behavior and committed to his girlfriend. We developed techniques to help him remind himself of her strengths. Every Sunday morning, he’d send me five things he’d appreciated about his girlfriend during the previous week. (Don’t forget! I’m waiting for your email with the list of five things you liked about your date: 5goodthings@loganury.com.)
If you want to be in a long-term relationship, eventually you have to commit to someone and give it a try. When Mike gets the occasional itch for something new, I reassure him that’s normal. He’s chosen the path toward Dad Mike, and there’s nothing sad about it.
While Ditchers can’t figure out how to stay in relationships, Hitchers struggle to leave them. Sydney, crying into the phone at eleven p.m., was a classic Hitcher.
“I’m twenty-six,” Sydney said. She had been with her boyfriend, Mateo, for ten years. “We’re from very small towns in Ohio, and we started dating at sixteen.”
Sydney felt she’d outgrown the relationship: “We both care for each other deeply, but he’s no longer the person I want to share the details of my day with. We don’t have anything to talk about. He brings out my most impatient, bratty side.”
“How long have you been feeling this way?” I asked.
“About three years, and it’s only gotten worse,” she said. “I know that in a long relationship, you go through periods of ups and downs. But now that it’s been a few years, this feels like a major shift that needs to be addressed.”
She wondered aloud: “Should I listen to this voice telling me to break up with him? Am I about to lose something good? I almost wish something dramatic would happen, like my work would transfer me to a different country where he couldn’t join me, so we’d be forced to reevaluate.”
I knew it was time for the Wardrobe Test.
It’s a technique I developed while conducting research on breakups. Of all the probing questions I ask, it’s the one that seems to help most.
I’m going to tell you the question, but first I want you to promise that, if you’re considering a breakup, you’ll take a moment and answer this question for yourself as honestly (and quickly) as possible. We’re going for a gut reaction here.
EXERCISE: Take the Wardrobe Test
If your partner were a piece of clothing that you own—something in your closet—what piece of clothing would they be?
_________ _________ _________ _________
The question is abstract and absurd enough that it allows people to reveal their true feelings. Some people say their partner is a warm coat or a snuggly sweater. To me, this suggests that they find their partner very supportive. One woman said her boyfriend was her little black dress—something she felt sexy and confident in. One man said his girlfriend was like his favorite pair of loud pants he wears to music festivals, which she’d given him as a gift. They’re an item he loves but never would have chosen for himself.
Other people reveal how much frustration they feel about their relationship. One guy said his boyfriend was a wool sweater, something that keeps you warm but then gets itchy when you wear it too long.
I asked Sydney the question.
“Mateo is like that kind of scrubby old sweatshirt that you have that you love but maybe wouldn’t wear to an important meeting,” she said. “When you put it on, you’re like, ‘Ahhhh, yes. I’m in my element.’ But at the same time, ‘I’m not going to go anywhere looking like this.’ ”
Yikes. A scrubby old sweatshirt? A revealing answer if I’d ever heard one. It suggested to me that she’d outgrown the relationship. That it was no longer something she was proud of or invested in. It was no longer the right relationship for her—or Mateo.
It was time to take off that sweatshirt and exit the relationship.
There are several cognitive biases that help explain why Hitchers stay in relationships too long.
Imagine this situation: You buy a ticket to an amateur improv show for twenty-two dollars. You sit down, and within ten minutes, you can tell it’s not for you. The improv is really amateur: I’m talking “Yes, and… no, thank you” bad.
You might say to yourself, I should stay. I paid twenty-two dollars. In that scenario, you’d sit through the show and spend ninety minutes doing something you don’t enjoy. Or you could leave. You might choose to go for a walk or meet up with a friend who lives near the theater.
In both situations, you’ve spent twenty-two dollars on the tickets. The money is gone. But if you leave, at least you get your time back. Behavioral economist Amos Tversky used to go to the movies, and if he didn’t enjoy the first five minutes of the film, he’d leave. “They’ve already taken my money,” he explained. “Should I give them my time, too?”
Tversky understood—and therefore tried to avoid—the sunk-cost fallacy. It’s the feeling that once you invest in something, you should see it through. It explains why most people force themselves to sit through a bad improv show.
Or a bad relationship. The sunk-cost fallacy keeps Hitchers in relationships. Once, a man called me and said, “I’ve spent three years with my girlfriend. The first six months were great, the last two and a half years have been terrible.” When I asked why he was still with her when he was clearly unhappy, he responded, “I’ve invested all this time with her. It would be dumb to quit now.”
I explained the sunk-cost fallacy in terms I thought he’d appreciate: “The first six months of your relationship were like season one of True Detective—wonderful. Seasons two and three of the show were lackluster. Will you stick around and wait to see how season four turns out? Or is it time to start a new show?” No matter what, he’d already dated her for three years. He needed to decide: Did he want to date her for another three, or was he ready to find a new show?
Hitchers are also impacted by loss aversion. Behavioral economists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman identified this phenomenon in a seminal paper. They explained that “losses loom larger than gains.”
Let’s say you walk into a store to buy a new phone that costs $500. The salesperson hands you a coupon for $100 off your purchase. You’d be pretty pumped, right? Now imagine a different scenario, where you walk into the store and the salesperson says they were running a $100 off promotion, but it just ended the day before. You’d feel some pain at that loss.
In one situation, you’re gaining $100, because the phone now costs $400 instead of $500. In the other situation, you’re losing $100, because you know you just missed out on that coupon. Both involved $100, so you might expect to experience equal amounts of pleasure and pain. But that’s not the case. Remember, losses loom larger than gains. Because of loss aversion, we experience twice as much psychological pain from losing that $100 as we experience pleasure from gaining $100. In other words, to feel the intensity of losing $100, you’d have to gain $200.
We’ve learned to adapt our behavior to this cognitive bias: We do what we can to avoid losses. For our clothes, that means holding on to old T-shirts that we’d never buy if we encountered them in a store today. In dating, that means holding on to a bad relationship. We’re more terrified of the potential loss of our partner than intrigued by the potential gain of the person we could date instead.
Breaking up is a major decision, with major consequences, a decision you might be tempted to delay. But what you don’t realize is that by staying in the relationship, you are already making a decision.
A breakup isn’t an exit ramp—it’s a T-shaped junction. To the left, Breakup Point. To the right, Stay Together Mountain. No matter which direction, you’re making a choice.
Like Ditchers, Hitchers underestimate opportunity cost. But Hitchers miss out on finding a new relationship. To extend my highway metaphor, the longer you sit idling at the intersection, the longer it takes to get to your destination. (You’re also wasting gas, which is just so inappropriate. Climate change is real, people!)
But here’s the worst thing: You’re not alone in the car. Your partner is with you. If you’re planning on ending the relationship, every day you wait, you’re wasting their time, too. You should be especially sensitive if you’re dating a woman who is hoping to give birth to her own kids. You’re underestimating her opportunity cost of being with you. The longer you put off breaking up with her, the less time she has to find a new partner and build a family. The kindest thing is to give her a clear answer so she can move on and find someone else.
Hopefully, you now have a good sense of whether you’re more of a Ditcher or a Hitcher. But you might still be struggling to decide what to do next when it comes to your relationship. Below is a series of questions that will help you decide whether to end it or mend it. Carve out some time, make yourself some tea, and sit down with a journal to answer these questions.
How to interpret your answer: Use this answer to understand how you view your partner and the relationship. As I mentioned, the abstract nature of this question helps reveal some underlying truths about our partnerships. Interpreting your answer will require you to analyze your own psyche. In general, it bodes well for your relationship if the answer is a piece of outerwear, like a sweater or jacket that keeps you warm, or a favorite shirt, pair of pants, or shoes. It’s worrisome if your item involves something that’s worn out, itchy, or uncomfortable, or something you don’t want to be seen wearing in public, like a tattered banana hammock.
How to interpret your answer: Let’s say there’s an external situation—like a demanding assignment at work—that’s causing your partner to be distracted, less present, less patient, or less giving. Yes, it’s useful to know how they respond to stress, but that doesn’t mean you should interpret their behavior as a sign of who they are or how they’ll act throughout the relationship. Their behavior might be temporary. Remember who they were before this happened. Can you ride it out a little longer to see if they return to their normal behavior once the situation is resolved?
How to interpret your answer: Imagine if you were fired before you were told your job was on the line. That would suck, wouldn’t it? That’s why a lot of companies have routine performance reviews. Regular check-ins give people an opportunity to improve. While your ex can’t sue you for breaking up without a heads-up, I don’t recommend this behavior. Give the person a chance to address whatever is going on. Instead of bailing, face the challenge of talking to your partner and explain the changes you’d like to see in the relationship. (More in the next chapter on how to navigate tough conversations like this one.)
How to interpret your answer: First, understand that no one is perfect, including you, so stop being so freakin’ picky about tiny character flaws! Those are pet peeves and not dealbreakers. Don’t be like the character Jerry on Seinfeld, the perpetual bachelor who breaks up with women because they have “man hands,” “shush” him, eat their peas one at a time, or enjoy a khakis commercial he dislikes.
If you’re a Romanticizer (look back to Chapter 3 if you need a refresher), check in on those expectations. Romanticizers tend to expect a happily ever after and then struggle when issues inevitably arise. They think, If this person were really my soul mate, it wouldn’t be so hard. But all relationships go through periods of highs and lows, and you’re better prepared to handle the low points if you know they’re coming.
You may encounter a low when that initial infatuation fades. Our brain is on this drug of love for the first few years of a relationship. The next phase is more familiar, less intense. More “What can I pick you up from the grocery store?” and less “Let’s do it on the kitchen floor.” That change can feel disappointing; some people try to recapture the rapture by starting over with someone else. However, if your goal is to be in a long-term relationship with a committed partner, understand that the shift is more or less inevitable. You can keep chasing the new-relationship high, but the dynamic always changes eventually.
How to interpret your answer: Don’t just focus on your partner’s flaws. Look at yourself, too. If there’s more you can do to make the relationship work, perhaps by being kinder, try that before you pull the plug. If it turns out that you’ve been bringing your best self to others (work and friends and family) and leaving your partner with the scraps, see what your relationship feels like when you invest in it first. Check out Chapter 18 for tips on how to make a long-term relationship work.
If you’re still struggling to decide whether you should stay in a relationship, it may be time to phone a friend. You’ll likely need to ask for feedback outright. Etiquette dictates that we keep our mouths shut about other people’s relationships, even when we notice red flags, so most people won’t offer this kind of feedback without being called on first. As my dad says, “I’m part of the welcoming committee, not the hiring committee.” But our friends and family can see things that we’re blind to. That’s because we’re infatuated with our partners during the first two to three years we’re together, which turns us into poor judges of our own relationships.
A friend of mine called off her wedding a few weeks before the big day. At that point, several people confessed they’d had doubts about her ex-fiancé but didn’t want to offer unsolicited advice.
Don’t let that happen to you. Ask a trusted friend or family member what they really think about your relationship. Choose your adviser wisely. This should be someone who knows you and your partner well, has your best interests at heart, and is good at helping you think through decisions. Avoid people who might project their own issues onto your situation (read: have trust issues after being cheated on), who might want you to be single or in a relationship because of how it affects their lives (read: want you to go on double dates with them or serve as their wingperson), or who are in love with you and therefore can’t give impartial feedback!
Tell them that you feel bad putting them in an awkward situation, but you really need an honest opinion. A woman I know named Meredith has a contract with her best friend that if either of them is dating someone the other thinks is not a good match, they will call it out, no matter how hard it is to have that conversation.
Honor your commitment not to hold the advice against your friend or family member, even if you decide not to follow it. Please don’t punish someone for giving honest, solicited feedback! And if they resist having the conversation, don’t force it.
In the end, the decision is still yours. But what did you learn from discussing it with a trusted confidant? Did they confirm your fears? Did they advise you to stick it out? Often it’s as useful to pay attention to your reaction to the advice as it is to receive the advice itself. How did you feel when they shared their thoughts? Relieved? Panicked? Use this experience to tune in to your own feelings about what to do next.
If you’re a Ditcher who has given this relationship a chance and it just isn’t working: Leave the relationship. Maybe this just isn’t the person for you, and that’s okay.
But you’re not off the hook yet. It’s important that you keep your Ditcher tendency in mind. The next time you’re in a relationship and you feel that familiar urge to leave, I want you to revisit the questions above and make sure you’re bidding adieu for the right reasons.
If you’re a Ditcher or a Hitcher who hasn’t given the relationship a real chance (for example, you haven’t brought your best self to it): Stay in the relationship and see what happens when you’re patient and invested. Relationships go through natural ups and downs over time. The longer the relationship, the more likely it is that there will be periods—perhaps even several years—when relationship satisfaction dips. It’s important to recognize that often a low point isn’t a breaking (or breakup) point.
In his book, The All-or-Nothing Marriage, Northwestern professor Eli Finkel suggests that couples learn to recalibrate their expectations during a relationship’s downturn. Downturns can happen for a number of reasons—perhaps because of demands from young children, aging parents, or a stressful job. While some marriage experts might tell you that when things are rough in your relationship, you need to invest more time and energy to make it work, that’s often unrealistic. When you’re depleted, there’s not much left to give. Instead, ask less from your relationship—temporarily—while you sort out other parts of your life.
Focus on yourself first. We’re most able to love when we feel complete. The more confident and comfortable we feel about ourselves, the easier it is to give and share with others. If you can work on making yourself happy first, instead of expecting it to come from someone else, your relationships will be easier.
While the idea of couples therapy might seem scary, you may want to consider it, even if you’re not married. There’s a misconception that if a relationship needs therapy, it’s too late to save it. No! Give it a chance. According to relationship scientist John Gottman, despite there being almost a million divorces in the United States every year, fewer than 10 percent of these couples ever talk to a professional. Couples therapy has been studied and validated over the past few decades. Who knows how many of those couples may have been able to save their relationship if they’d received professional support?
I feel comfortable giving you this advice because of my own experience choosing to stay.
A few years ago, I sat with Scott at a fancy restaurant in New York. A waiter appeared at our table, offering a basket full of bread rolls just pulled from the oven. I picked one out and carved out a heap of cultured butter, flecked with sea salt.
“What have you been up to at work?” I asked Scott.
At the time, we’d been dating for three years and living together in San Francisco for one. I’d moved to New York temporarily to participate in the four-month TED Residency. He’d surprised me with this dinner to celebrate the end of the program. It was a grand gesture, and one I appreciated, because we were not doing well.
Our relationship had been shaky since January, turned upside down by several big changes in my life. After almost a decade in the corporate world, I’d quit my job to pursue my passion. I’d gone from earning a tech salary to earning no salary, and from working in an office with thousands of people to working alone from a different city.
We’d had several long, difficult conversations. I stated my values that I felt weren’t being met (community, friends, travel) and asked him to put more effort into those areas of our lives. We even went to a terrible couples therapist who quoted his own lame Facebook posts and suggested that we, neurotic Jews, should start doing extreme sports together to reconnect. Ironically, we bonded over our mutual dislike of him.
During one of those challenging conversations, Scott mentioned that I never seemed to listen to him when he talked about work. “You think what I do is boring,” he said. “It’s not. We’re trying to help save women’s lives by improving breast cancer screening.”
He was right. I’d never really understood what he did. Though I worked in tech, I’m not a particularly technical person; I can barely work my DSLR camera. When people asked me about Scott’s job in artificial intelligence at Google, I usually replied with a word salad of “machine learning,” “computer vision,” and “medical imaging” until they nodded sympathetically and the conversation moved on.
Finally, the four months of long distance were over. Scott had flown across the country to see my TED Talk, which focused on romantic relationships. The irony wasn’t lost on me that I was trying to help others create lasting love while my own relationship faltered.
He’d taken me to that fancy restaurant to celebrate. In that moment, I finally decided to learn what he did for a living.
He provided the basics of his job—what he did and how it had the potential to advance the practice of radiology. I sat there, listening to him explain the intricacies of his role on the mammography team, and I felt proud of him. I wondered why I’d never cared to ask him about his work before.
Prior to that dinner, I’d spent many hours alone and with friends, wondering if we should break up. I’d gone through all of the exercises and anguish I described above.
But that night, when I really reflected on my behavior, I realized how much I’d asked him to change for our relationship without being willing to put in the work myself.
The work: paying attention, asking questions, listening. Prior to that dinner, I was guilty of the critique in that old saying: “The shoemaker’s children go barefoot.” In my quest to help others with their relationships, I’d forsaken my own.
During dinner, I made an impassioned effort to connect with Scott about his job. I opened the door, and he walked through it. What followed was one of the best conversations of our relationship.
I see that dinner as the turning point in our partnership, the moment when I realized I’d been taking him for granted and prioritizing my work, emails, and dating coaching clients over him.
While things weren’t easy, they got better. I put in more effort and paid more attention to Scott. And Scott committed to getting to know more of my friends, investing more in our community, and being more proactive about travel. We made our relationship a bigger priority in our lives. We tended to it. We fixed it instead of giving up on it.
If you’re a Hitcher who has given this relationship a chance and it just isn’t working: Leave the relationship. It’s going to be painful for both of you, but it’s time to move on.
Why spend more weeks or months or even years of your life in a relationship that isn’t working? I believe there’s a fulfilling partnership waiting for you out there, but you have to say goodbye to this relationship so you can say hello to that one.
Ultimately, that’s what Sydney decided she needed to do. A few months after our call, I asked her if we could meet up in San Francisco.
We decided to meet up for vegan Mexican food. I arrived at the restaurant early, excited to finally meet her in person. Soon a blond woman in a bright yellow raincoat approached me. As I stuck out my hand, she pulled me into a big hug. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Later, as we dug into our chips and salsa, she caught me up on her love life. “The day after you and I spoke, I just couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d called Mateo a scrubby old sweatshirt,” she said. “I knew I had to break up with him.” A few weeks later, she did. “Getting out of the relationship felt like taking off a heavy coat—or I guess a scrubby old sweatshirt—that had been weighing me down.”
I nodded. I was proud to hear that she’d made a decision and stuck to it.
Several months later, Sydney met another guy while in New York. He was the opposite of Mateo. Ambitious, worldly—and constantly challenging her. He soon moved to San Francisco to be with her. Later that year, she emailed me with an update: “I am in a beautiful and healthy relationship with someone I adore. And you helped me find the courage to make that happen.”
The decision to stay or leave, end it or mend it, is challenging. But if you’re confident you want to break up, it’s vital you take the other person’s feelings into consideration when you do it. Read the next chapter for tips on how to close the relationship with compassion.