"After seven months, my girlfriend and I are no longer 'clicking,' I guess you might say. I think we both know this but neither one of us wants to be the one to break it off. So what’s your advice for breaking up without hurting her feelings?"
Breaking off a relationship, like so many things in life, tends to get easier with practice. Many people get to experience both sides—getting dumped and dumping someone else. The good news about that is it paves the way for the Golden Rule; in this case, “Break up with others as you would have others break up with you.”
I wish someone would have given me this advice when I was an insensitive jerk of a boyfriend in high school. I broke up with my girlfriend, more out of boredom than anything, through a note I gave her during passing time. Sure, that was a fairly common way to dump someone in the days before text messaging, but the worst part was that I told her to wait until after her Spanish test next hour to read the note. She, of course, didn’t, and bombed the test. Would I have wanted someone to break up with me in that fashion? If I had stopped to think about what it would be like to be on the receiving end of that note, I would have done things much differently.
Karma being the force of equity that it is, I later got to experience the hurt of being blindsided by an unforeseen breakup. My fiancé (same girl I broke up with via the note back in high school!) dumped me by packing up her things while I was out of the apartment one night. When I got home I was essentially told, “We’re through; I’m outta here.” Later, when I tried the “Let’s work on this together” approach, she would hear nothing of it. I remember feeling very frustrated because I really believed we could get past what had driven us apart, but I did not have the sense that my ex-fiancé was really hearing me out.
My advice for breaking up amicably is to dump the other person as you would want to be dumped. For me, with my fiancé, that would have meant a little more warning about what was coming my way and an opportunity to talk it out. Keep in mind that “talking it out” doesn’t mean giving the person false hope, but it does mean that you give them a chance to be heard. Sit down with your girlfriend and tell it to her straight—explain to her how you feel and what you want to happen next. Let her respond and make sure she knows you hear and understand what she is saying, especially if she’s not quite ready to call it quits.
Breaking up with someone as considerately as possible is a sign of real maturity. As an aside, a difficult breakup can be a great opportunity for growth. I know how clichéd that might sound, but it’s true. My high school girlfriend/ex-fiancé is now my wife, and we wouldn’t have the relationship we enjoy today without having experienced our share of breakups. If done right, the cycle of dating and breaking up, whether it’s with one person or several, is all about growth.
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