Breakup Advice

It’s impossible to completely predict how any relationship will go. There are too many unforeseeable factors.

However, there are some relationship questions that we can explore to get a general idea of how healthy a relationship is. Here are some questions you might want to think about. Not only can they help you assess a relationship you’re in now, but they might help you figure out what went wrong in past relationships and what you’d like to change in future ones.

Question #1: Can we appreciate each other’s differences?

In a healthy relationship, differences are seen as complementary, not antagonistic. Of course, this idea does have limits. Some differences are non-negotiable. But in most cases, differences, which are not deal-breakers, should be viewed as strengthening, not weakening, the relationship.

Question #2: Can we communicate about disagreements without taking it too personally?

There is no relationship in which couples agree 100% about everything. They all have disagreements, sometimes even very lively ones. But can you still respect each other even during or after what may be heated discussions?

Question #3: Can we explore each other’s pasts together?

A remarkable amount of what goes on in relationship dynamics stems from our pasts, going all the way back to our childhoods and our relationships with our parents or caregivers. Are you comfortable enough to get to know your partner’s past and share yours? This is one of the most important relationship questions to ask of all because, if you can, it will put all of your present and future interactions in a new light and may help build compassion.

Question #4: Do we share the same view of the purpose of relationships?

Are relationships about loyalty? Fun? Building financial security? Emotional growth? Even if you said all of those, then which ones take priority over the others? While it’s fine, even important, to disagree on some things with your partner, one of the most important ones to have some agreement on is about what relationships mean to you in the first place.

Question #5: Have we openly discussed our desires regarding children and how we believe they should be raised?

Few things can be more tragic than when couples fail to talk about their views about children and then end up in a parenting situation for which they are not prepared. It is especially tragic because often it is the innocent children that end up paying the price because their parents failed to explore this topic before they came along. This may be one of those non-negotiable differences if you and your partner truly disagree. A world of trouble and relationship problems can be avoided by clarifying your feelings and beliefs about parenting before they become a part of daily life.

Question #6: Can we be sensitive to each other’s greatest joys and fears, even if they are not always the same?

What most inspires your partner and what do they most fear? If you don’t know, why not? Do they know what your answer to these questions would be? Can you talk about these things together? So much of our lives are driven by joy and fear. It can help to be conscious of what brings about these emotions for each other.

These are just a few of the many relationship questions worth asking. But they are also some of the most important.

What questions do you think are most important for partners to explore? Let us know. Leave a comment.

Here are just some of our favorite quotes on relationships.

• “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” – Carl Jung in Modern Man in Search of a Soul

• “Seldom or never does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly without crisis. There is no birth of consciousness without pain.” – Carl Jung in “Marriage as a Psychological Relationship”

• “They say that breaking up is hard to do, but that is wrong. It’s easy to walk away before the going gets tough, to find another dreamboat – until the ship starts to sink again. It’s waking up that’s hard to do. ” – Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. in Keeping the Love You Find: A Single Person’s Guide to Achieving Lasting Love

• “Speculation about that elusive quality known as romantic chemistry has baffled scientists and poets alike. In my experience, ‘chemistry’ is based on a similarity according to where you fall on the emotional dyslexia continuum…People who don’t have adult skills haven’t transformed their childlike needs into adult needs, and they’re more likely to rely on superficial qualities in a partner. Basically, they don’t know what would satisfy them if their needs were ‘grown up.’ So they look for mates through a child’s notion of romance. They don’t know themselves well enough to pick partners with whom they’ll share something deep and lasting. ” – Helen Kramer in Liberating the Adult Within: How to Be a Grown-Up For Good

• “When a child is uncertain or pessimistic about his or her value, the child strives to understand and become what is perceived as pleasing to the parents. The normal need for approval becomes a craving and children take to heart extreme messages they are given about their worth. If a child is told, verbally or nonverbally, that he or she is of little value, young parts of the child organize their beliefs around that premise. They become desperate for redemption in the eyes of the person who gave these messages. Thereafter these parts carry the burden of worthlessness, which makes them believe that no one can love them – a belief they will maintain no matter what feedback is received from others…These burdened young parts exert a powerful influence over the person’s intimate relationships as they constantly seek redemption – the lifting of what feels like a curse of unlovability. They will return to the person who stole their self-esteem in this quest, or they will find someone who resembles that person. Often this results in a history of abuse or unsatisfying relationships.” – Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D. in Internal Family Systems Therapy

• “Now we arrive at the heart of the matter. Our ‘free’ choice of a mate is, in the end, a product of our unconscious, which has an agenda of its own. And what the unconscious wants is to become whole and to heal the wounds of childhood. To this end, it is carrying around its own detailed picture of a proper match, searching not for the right stats, but for the right chemistry. And what is that chemistry? Nothing more than our unconscious attraction to someone who we feel will meet our particular emotional needs. Specifically, that need is to cover the ‘shortfall’ of childhood by having our mates fill in the psychological gaps left by our imperfect childhood caretakers. How do we go about that? By falling madly in love with someone who has both the positive and the negative traits of our imperfect parents, someone who fits an image that we carry deep inside us and for whose embodiment we are unconsciously searching. ” – Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. in Keeping the Love You Find: A Single Person’s Guide to Achieving Lasting Love

• “Marriage is the most complicated of all human relationships. Few alliances can produce such extremes of emotion or can so quickly travel from professions of the utmost bliss to that cold, terminal legal write-off, mental cruelty. When one stops to consider the massive content of archaic data which each partner brings to the marriage through the continuing contributions of his Parent and Child, one can readily see the necessity of an emancipated Adult in each to make this relationship work. Yet the average marriage contract is made by the Child, which understands love as something you feel and not something you do, and which sees happiness as something you pursue rather than a by-product of working toward the happiness of someone other than yourself.” – Thomas A. Harris, M.D. in I’m OK, You’re OK

• “When partners don’t tell each other what they want and constantly criticize each other for missing the boat, it’s no wonder that the spirit of love and cooperation disappears. In its place comes the grim determination of the power struggle, in which each partner tries to force the other to meet his or her needs. Even though their partners react to these maneuvers with renewed hostility, they persevere. Why? Because in their unconscious minds they fear that, if their needs are not met, they will die. This is a classic example of what Freud called the ‘repetition compulsion,’ the tendency of human beings to repeat ineffective behaviors over and over again.” – Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. in Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples

• “That rage is a vital expression of life energy is readily apparent. If we repress our anger, we become sick or depressed or condemned to a pale, muted existence. But, on the other hand, if we unleash our rage, we inflict physical or emotional damage on others. How can we release our anger and not hurt the people we love? The answer is a process called ‘containment.’”– Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. in Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples

• “The people you are attracted to may not be right for you emotionally, but you’re drawn to them anyway. Something about them – often something less than flattering – reminds you on some level of your father or mother. The person could be rejecting or critical, controlling or domineering, emotionally distant or unavailable. When you encounter someone like this as an adult, it arouses the feeling of longing and insecurity you experienced in your relationship with one of your parents – feelings of emotional hunger that you’ve come to associate with love…The antidote is to recognize this pattern and avoid recreating your emotional past. Your goal is to seek emotionally substantial relationships.” – Susan Anderson in The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Turn the End of a Relationship into the Beginning of a New Life

• “Fortunately, we do have a choice about what kind of marriage we have. Most marriages fail because of the persistence of the unconscious aspects of the relationship. Any unfinished business we had with our caretakers becomes a compelling agenda with our partners. All too commonly, however, the partners never become aware of the hidden needs that drive their relationship and never learn the skills they need to successfully address those needs. As a single, part of your preparation is to understand and prepare for a conscious marriage in which you and your future partner can undo the damage of childhood and recover your true selves.” – Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. in Keeping the Love You Find: A Single Person’s Guide to Achieving Lasting Love

• “Romantic love is supposed to end. It is nature’s glue, which brings two incompatible people together for the purpose of mutual growth, and enables them to survive the disillusionment that they did not marry perfect people. Though romantic love is a foretaste of the potential in the relationship, that potential can only be reached through the valley of despair that is the power struggle. If we do not use the relationship to finish childhood, our marriages will get bogged down in the same issues we were stuck in as children. When romantic love dies, it clears the way for real love.” – Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. in Keeping the Love You Find: A Single Person’s Guide to Achieving Lasting Love

• “An ability to accept our ambivalence toward others may be an important ingredient in relationships that are healthy and lasting.” – Fred Rogers in You Are Special: Words of Wisdom for All Ages from a Beloved Neighbor

• “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” – James Baldwin

We hope you’ve enjoyed and learned a lot from these quotes on relationships!

Today we have a question from a 17 year old girl who is struggling to get over a breakup with her 18 year old ex-boyfriend. As with all of our readers who give us permission to post their questions and our responses, we thank her.

If you wish to ask a question, contact us. If you are willing to allow us to post your question on the site, we will work with you to protect your privacy as needed.

The reader writes:

My boyfriend and I dated for about 1 1/2 years and it was great. We fought occasionally but they never gotten too bad. Then one day I was talking about the possibly of us going on break since things felt dull between us. He freaked out and we got into the worst fight ever! We screamed at each other and he said alot of hurtful things. We managed to be resolved three weeks later, but we stayed on “break”. Then off and on again with fighting. And then finally he broke up with me after I did something I never should’ve…I involved his mother (thinking she would help him see my side). Now my number’s blocked, I’m blocked on Facebook and he refuses to have any contact with me. But I can’t seem to let him go! It’s been 3 months and I can’t seem to go a day without thinking about him. HELP!!

She adds:

I do accept that it is over and I am having trouble moving on. I do hope we can get back together. It’s something I really really hope would happen. I do want to try and get him back, but at the same time I feel like I should move on…He obviously hates me.

And finally:

I’m 17 and he’s 18. My question is, how can I move on? Like, I want to, but there’s so much around me that reminds me of him and I constantly think of him without realizing it. How can I stop that? I understand that you never get over your first love, but if it’s gonna be like this then….no thanks!

And now our response:

Dear reader,

Without knowing a lot more about the two of you it is hard to say for sure what went on here. But from what you’ve mentioned, it sounds like the problems really hit a tipping point when you mentioned the possibility of taking a break. You say he “freaked out” and you got into a fight. This would seem to indicate that he had a fear of abandonment. A fear like that often comes due to past abandonments. I don’t know what his family situation or childhood history is. But if he has had close people in his past leave him or just felt uncared for or unwanted by any of them, he could be very sensitive to having someone raise the possibility of distancing as you did.

Then you got in touch with his mother. If his family issues are in any way connected to his abandonment issues, then contacting his mother may have just stirred the pot even more. Also, though it may seem paradoxical, many people who have fears of abandonment also have fears of engulfment, in other words, fears of being violated or smothered. He may have felt that you getting in touch with his mother crossed a line and was a boundary violation, which hurt his trust. And he also may have felt ganged up on that you tried to sort of recruit his mother to side with you against him.

In any case, now the relationship is over and, though you claim you still have some fantasies of getting him back, deep down you know you need to move on. And in fact, most likely, if he felt violated by you getting in touch with his mother, then obviously continuing to try to contact him would only make him feel even more smothered. So even if there was any hope of the relationship recovering in the future, at this point it would most likely be best that you give him his space and truly work on moving on as best you can.

So now to the heart of your question: How do you move on?

The first step is to try to gain some understanding of what happened. As I mentioned, a lot of the ups and downs in relationships, especially having to do with fears of abandonment and engulfment, happen because things going on in the present remind someone of the past. So what that means is that you shouldn’t take everything that happened personally. It may not have been such an awful thing for you to suggest a break in the relationship in itself. His reaction may partly have been because of his past, which you may not have even known about. He may not even realize himself why he reacted as intensely as he did so he would project all of that anger and fear onto you, even though you don’t deserve it all. While these things do happen, and you may not be able to change it sometimes, hopefully it can help you regain a little of your self-esteem to know that not all of the bad feelings in the relationship were really about you.

The second step is to understand what attachments are really about. Usually when someone is obsessing over a person, it is because that person hits certain psychological buttons for them or symbolizes something important. What that means is that, many times, even though it feels like all your desire and need is focused on that person himself, it really isn’t about him as much as what he symbolizes or brings up in you. In the future, when you’ve had more relationships and felt this kind of feeling more times, you’ll realize that it obviously can’t be just about the person since more than one person may bring those feelings up over the course of your life. So the point is to remind yourself that your feelings may tell you it’s all about him and you can never love anyone again, but know in your head that isn’t true. In time, with the right healing, your feelings will catch up with what your mind knows.

In order to get more insight and really understand what is going on, you might want to read about attraction, relationship dynamics and so on. There are lots of resources online and also you can take a look at the books we recommend in our bookstore.

The next step is to really accept that you are going to have No Contact with this person for the foreseeable future. In fact, try not to just accept that you can’t contact him because he has cut off communications. Make the decision for yourself that you are choosing not to contact him even if you could because you need that space to heal. The important thing for you is to realize that No Contact doesn’t only mean not talking to him. It means not putting energy into the relationship at all. It means not checking his Facebook. It means not asking other people about him. It means pouring your energy into processing your own feelings, reading and learning more about what really goes on in relationships and moving on with your life.

It will hurt because a lot of times you’re using the  relationship to distract you from your own pain and past issues. But once you choose to not focus on that other person anymore you come face to face with yourself. It hurts but it is a good thing as you can finally make sense of and process your own past issues. Having been in a relationship with him, you likely also have some issues with abandonment, engulfment and so on from your own family or close relationships. And now you can get some insight into that.

Don’t be harsh with yourself. If he pops in your mind trying to force yourself not to think about him won’t help. But just let it pass and refocus your mind again and again on yourself and your own feelings. Practice that skill of calmly refocusing even when your mind doesn’t want to. And this is also why it’s good to spend some of this time reading and researching to learn more about relationships since it will give your mind something else to focus on instead of directly on him while still addressing what you’re feeling in a constructive way, rather than by trying to avoid dealing with what you’re feeling altogether.

Finally, if you are having a real hard time therapy is an option to consider. A great therapist can help you work through what is keeping you stuck and help you grow from this experience.

I really hope this helps you deal with this difficult time. When you’re young these things can feel like they will last forever. But just know that in time this will pass and you have a lot of time and will have other opportunities to love again.