Breakup Advice

Many people ask how to fix a relationship. But there is no one single answer because there are so many different types of relationship problems.

We can start by dividing troubled relationships into two categories, however.

• Category 1: Relationships where both partners are interesting in fixing relationship problems
• Category 2: Relationships where one partner wants to fix the relationship and the other does not or is indifferent

Let’s start with the second category. If your relationship falls in this category and you’re reading this article, we can assume you are the partner that wants to know how to fix your relationship because you’re the one interested in doing so. Your partner is distant and does not seem willing to be active in the healing process.

In this situation, you first have to accept the frustrating reality that you cannot force another person to care no matter how strongly you care. You may be unable to persuade this person to participate in fixing the relationship.

However, even in that case, the best thing you can do is work on yourself. If you improve yourself, your partner may start to take notice. This is especially true because those who wish to fix relationships are often the partners that crave closeness while their partners crave space. As you begin to focus more on yourself, your partner will start to feel the breathing room and may relax and eventually seek a little more closeness.

Even in the worst case scenario where your partner never takes an interest again, you can end the relationship already on the path to becoming a stronger person by yourself and in future relationships.

But there are ways you might be able to encourage your partner to join in healing the relationship. One of the most important is to consider what their biggest fears in the relationship are and working to assuage them. Many times, the more distant partner fears engulfment or being overwhelmed by attention and demands on them. If you communicate to your partner that you understand their need for space and prove to them that you can respect it, then you may have more leverage to ask for them to participate in fixing the relationship when you are together.

There are few more frustrating situations to be in than to be in a relationship that you sincerely wish to fix and in which you are putting forth effort to do so with a partner who is unwilling to do his or her part. The bottom line is that you can only work on yourself, express your willingness to respect your partner’s space within reason and then ask them to please participate in the healing process. At that point you simply have to accept that other people make their choices and those choices have consequences. If you’ve done the best you can, then you can hold your head up high regardless of the outcome.

Now let’s consider the first category, in which both partners want to fix the relationship. In this case, it is all about communication and exploration. First you need to communicate to try to zero in on and define what the key problem is. There are many classic problems in relationships that usually stem from some dichotomy where the partners each fall on opposite sides.

We’ve already mentioned one such dichotomy in which one partner values closeness and the other space. Here are some other dichotomies that might be at play in your relationship trouble:

• Wanting to go out more vs. stay in more
• Wanting to spend money freely vs. save frugally
• Wanting to analyze situations more vs. make spontaneous choices
• Wanting things scheduled vs. wanting to play it by ear
• Wanting strict rigid values vs. wanting tolerance and free thinking

Are any of these what has you at odds? If not, talk together about what difference really lies at the heart of your conflict.

Once you have the problem well-defined, then work to become conscious of where this difference began.

Some of these differences have to do with innate temperaments that cannot easily be changed. In that case, you should try to find ways to compromise so neither partner’s preference takes precedence all of the time.

Others of these differences are not innate, but were picked up in the course of your development. They may stem from the values of your families or from rebelling against those values. Try to become conscious of the path that led to these characteristics that are currently at odds. Can you remember the earliest instance of feeling that way? Tell each other your stories and you might find yourself gaining a great deal of compassion and compromising more naturally.

Regardless of the other details of your relationship difficulty, there are two recommendations that are just about always worthwhile.

1. Whether alone or as a couple, find the best relationship therapist you can.
2. Read, alone or together, Getting the Love You Want and the Getting the Love You Want Workbook. These books will bring you tremendous insight and offer you powerful tools that you can use by yourselves or along with a therapist. They will also help you in figuring out what kind of therapist would be most helpful to you.

Fixing a relationship can be a very complex, but rewarding, endeavor. Let us know in the comments section what you think about this topic. What approaches have worked or not worked for you in trying to figure out how to fix a relationship?

Sometimes after a breakup, we might come to feel we were responsible for what happened and wonder “Should I contact my ex to apologize and let them know how I feel?”

Today we respond to a reader who asks just that question.

The reader writes:

Hello,

I am writing to you today because I have a dilemma! My fiancé (a 4yr relationship) just left me for his ex a little over a month ago and 5 months from our wedding day! As soon as it happened I told him that this was the best and it would make us better people. I naturally blamed him for this whole thing but I realize now that it is as much my fault as it is his.  I have a lot of stuff to work out on my own and find happiness within my self. I really want to thank him and apologize to him for making this split! I would have never left him and known how much I need to grow! I love my ex and i want him to have happiness and if that is not with me that is fine!

Anyway I am writing to you because I need advice…I want to call him or even email him and let him know how thankful I am of this situation and apologize as well! My friends have advised me to not ever talk to him again an let him drowned in his guilt but I have never been a person that can watch others suffer. I feel that this will give me the closure I strive for and allow me to move on and find the happier me! Is it a bad idea? I have been debating about this for a few weeks no and finally know its time! I feel that in order to move on I have to forgive. Should I proceed or just let everything go?

Oh and I work with my ex so it’s making things awkward because he won’t look at me!

And our response:

Your letter is a good example of how breakups can spark enormous insight and self-growth when we respond to them by not only looking outside us at the other person, but also within. But part of that insight comes from looking deeper to be sure what the real meaning of your experience is.

Your ex left you after 5 months of marriage and, as a result, you now more clearly perceive your role in the relationship’s end.

The first question is this:

“Is what I am experiencing in line with reality?”

In other words, is it true that you played an equal, if not the greater, or at least a significant role in causing the breakup and do you really owe him a thank you and an apology? Or is what you are experiencing stemming from a defense mechanism, whereby you were actually treated unfairly but are unable to handle the despair and anger that this might cause you to feel and so it is easier to blame yourself and feel apologetic and thankful, a tactic many people who are mistreated, in ways ranging from minor to major abuse, employ, sometimes consciously, but often unconsciously.

Only you can answer this, perhaps with the help of a counselor or therapist if needed. But it is worth seriously asking yourself how what you are feeling can best be interpreted. Think about whether you have been hurt in the past and if you have had a tendency to handle it poorly so that you may have developed a perceived need to replace difficult feelings with more acceptable ones or if you have perhaps used that tactic before.

Obviously if what you are feeling on the surface is a mask for your true deeper feelings of despair and anger and resentment, then this would change your actions considerably.

However, if you analyze this more and really believe that you played a significant role and are authentically thankful and apologetic, and not just covering up deeper painful emotions, then this is a whole different story. Obviously if you believe forgiveness is part of healing then by all means forgive within your own heart.

But then two more questions arise.

The first one is:

“Why do I really want to contact my ex to tell them about this?”

Is it really to help reduce his suffering and get closure yourself? Or is it to actually keep the drama alive?

Your unconscious will sometimes trick you into doing things that are not healthy, like stoking the flames of a relationship that is not good for you, by convincing you that it is really for good reasons. So just as you need to figure out if you really believe you are responsible and owe him a thanks and apology, you also need to figure out if you really are wanting to contact him for the right reasons or not.

There are valid reasons to consider contacting your ex.

If you believe it will truly help the other person heal and you care about them, then that may be a reason. But you should also be careful to consider that you might be ripping open a wound by doing so more than healing it. Unless you are sure that they are currently in a state where they would want that apology, it may not really be about them at all.

If you believe it will help you, that also may be a reason to make contact. But then you have to consider:

• Whether you’re even right that it will help rather than just stoke the drama again and pull you back in even more
• Whether it will come at the expense of the other person and whether that is worth it.

One thing that can put these issues related to the first question in perspective is realizing that, if your goal really is to just tie up some loose ends, you can always contact your ex later down the road after things have settled down more. If you feel like you’d only want to do it now while things are still healing and suspect you wouldn’t care very much down the road, that could tell you that your mind is manipulating you somewhat into keeping the drama alive under the guise of something healthy.

Once you’re clearer on the real reason you want to contact your ex, then you are ready to consider the second question:

“Should I contact my ex to tell them about this?”

After you’ve better verified how accurate your perception of the situation is and investigated what your motives are and have really considered the potential consequences of your actions – all of which might take you some more time and space to figure out – then the answer to this question will hopefully also be clearer.

If you’re visiting our website, there is a good chance that you’re wondering how to get over a bad break up. You were recently dumped or felt that you had no alternative but to finally dump your significant other. Or perhaps it was a mutual, but very painful, split.

Now you are stuck in the aftermath. It hurts…badly. And you’re wondering what to do next.

While there is no single answer for getting over a broken heart in every situation, there are some guidelines that you can use in approaching the situation. Let’s take a look at some of these.

**Don’t Focus on “Getting Over It”** – As we talked about in our piece “How Long to Get Over a Break Up?”, one of the worst things you can do to get over a break up is, paradoxically, to try to get over it. Just like the watched pot never boils, healing from a breakup doesn’t happen optimally when you are focused on the endpoint. So if you shouldn’t focus on getting over the breakup, what should you focus on?

**Focus on Processing the Break Up One Step at a Time** – Though you may not think of it this way, healing from a relationship is a process. You can sometimes rush through the feelings and bury them, but if you do you will likely pay a price down the road. It is much more healthy in the long run to allow yourself the time to go through the process step by step and come out on the other side stronger for the long haul. So what should you focus on? Focus on what you need to do at each step. And the first step is…

**Survive the Pain without Running Back or Doing Damage** – Early on, the most difficult struggle will be to simply handle the pain without doing anything that will be more detrimental in the long run. If the relationships is clearly over, or if you know deep down that it should remain over, then your first task is simply to withstand the pain. It is difficult because, for most of us, everything in our being tells us to run to drown out pain as fast as we can. But think of the pain as a sort of exercise. You’re building your ability and confidence in your capacity to tolerate your feelings without running from them. For some of you, this will be the first time you’ve ever truly done this.

Now if you were just going to sit in pain and suffer, that would be masochistic. And this is not about masochism. So what do you do once you are surviving the pain?

**Seek Insight into what the Pain is Telling You** – The pain of your breakup is a messenger. It has within it lessons about your past and who you truly are. Once you are surviving, the next step is to mine the pain for its wisdom. This is best done with guidance from those who have experience at interpreting this kind of pain. I highly recommend you check out the books that we recommend and read them while the pain is fresh. They will teach you things you will carry with you for years to come. You may also, at this time, seek guidance in support groups online or in person or by finding a therapist, possibly one that specializes in relationship issues, who can advise you personally on how to get over a bad break up.

**Begin to Gradually Participate More in Other Activities** – There will come a point where you are able to return more proactively to your work, hobbies and social life, yet may not want to do so. It is a good idea not to push yourself too hard, just as you don’t want to jump into a rigorous exercise program while you’re still injured. But you also should push yourself a little bit, a step at a time, to get back into the action again.

**Make the Changes Called for By What You Have Learned** – Having mined your pain and started to return to life again, it’s time to grow. If you’ve read the right books or sought help from the right people, you will surely have some new ideas about how to change some of your character traits or behaviors to get out of the patterns that led to this particular breakup. When you make those changes, you are using the lessons of this breakup to improve your future life and relationships. Everything comes full circle.

At this point you are ready to throw yourself back into life, hopefully even stronger than before.

What you’ll notice is that the more you focus directly on getting over the break up, the harder it will be to move on. When you instead simply focus on each step of the process, after a while you’ll sort of lose track of time and notice more and more spurts where you forgot to think about your ex or to feel the pain. It’s a tricky, magical sort of thing.

And now you know a little more about how to get over a bad break up….by not trying to get over it at all.