I would venture to say that, if not all of us, the overwhelming majority of us have been through a break up. For many of you, this may have been the breakup of a dating relationship. For some of you, it may have been an engagement. Most of us have been through at least one and a lot of us through several. Some may have ended by your choice. Others ended by someone else’s choice. All of them leave a mark.

I’m not sure that there is any great way to end a relationship. But, if you’re the one ending the relationship, there are better ways and worse ways of doing so. Here are some of the better ways to break up.

The Right Way?Well, Most of the Time

These tips apply to most situations, but not all. Today, I’m writing about dating relationships and engagements, not marriages. Marriage is a whole different level of relationship and needs and deserves its own post.

Also, for the most part, I’m writing about typical relationships. At the end of this post, I’ll deal a little bit with abusive relationships, but abusive relationships deserve a post of their own too.

An Ounce of Prevention

First and foremost, the best way handle breakups is to avoid super painful breakups by not getting into long, drawn-out dating relationships. See my post about Dating vs Dating. That’s also one of the keys to thriving as a single person.

Long-term, intimate, sexualized dating relationships will almost always lead to painful breakups. No matter how you go about breaking up, the depth of the ties sex creates will make it painful. But even in that case, you can make it as pain-free as possible or at least slightly less painful by breaking up the right way.

Because, no matter how hard you try to get singleness right, you may end up in a dating relationship or an engagement that needs to end.

Sooner Rather Than Later

When this happens, don’t drag it out.

Most of the time relationships ebb and flow. Emotions wax and wane. There may be times when you feel the relationship isn’t going well and times you feel it is. That’s typical. That’s the nature of relationships.

But, sometimes you come to a realization that the person you’re dating or engaged to just isn’t the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Maybe some character trait surfaces that is a deal breaker. Maybe you reach an impasse on some religious, moral, financial, or sexual issue. Or maybe some new information comes to your attention that casts the person you are in a relationship with in a whole different light.

If you come to the decision that the relationship must end, end it sooner rather than later. Don’t drag things out. If you wait longer, it won’t hurt less, it will hurt more – for you and for the other person.

It’s better to break up quickly and cleanly than to keep going through the motions, exchanging forced smiles, half-hearted I-love-you’s, and passionless kisses while both trying to ignore the persistent feeling that something isn’t right.

Don’t play that game. If something needs to be fixed, fix it. If it can’t be fixed, end it.

Directly

Also, be direct. Don’t give subtle clues that can be misinterpreted like saying that it might be better if you saw less of each other or saw other people. And,