Guideline #7: Know When to Say Goodbye

Is your relationship working? Sometimes, you know deep down that your relationship isn’t giving you what you need and is never going to. But we all have a basic fear of abandonment. Conflict with our lover or considering whether to end a relationship forces us to face insecurity and the possibility of being alone. Negotiating conflicts and differences is always an option, but the issues could prove unresolvable.

The more insecurity you faced earlier in life, the harder it is to confront a breakup, even when you know you need to. If you’re stuck in this kind of dilemma, it may be a good time to work more on healing yourself through therapy. But you need to know where you stand in your relationship—even if it’s scary to find out. As you’ve completed the exercises so far in the series, you may have come to one of the following conclusions.

• You or your partner or both have more work to do on your life.
• Your relationship is an arrangement and not long-term.
• You have irreconcilable differences.
• This couple combination doesn’t work for you.
• You can’t work things out even though you’ve tried couples’ counseling.

My name is Lane Lasater, a retired clinical psychologist. In gratitude for the life I have been given, I am sharing everything I learned during my career and personal life on my website http://www.LaneLasater.com and on my YouTube Channel Life Roadmaps from a Retired Psychologist  https://www.youtube.com/@lane205   Each post contains my written material, an AI generated graphic, a 15-17 minute audio summary, and a 5-7 minute video summarizing the material. You can download a fillable and printable PDF workbook that contains all the exercises that I developed to accompany the material here: Finding a Life Partner Fillable Workbook

“I’m stronger because I had to be, smarter because of my mistakes, happier because of the sadness I’ve known, and now wiser because of the lessons I learned.”

Eddie Corbano

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

For most of us, when it’s time to leave a relationship, an invisible emotional switch inside has flipped, and we know we’ll never have deep feelings again for this person. When that happens, it’s probably time to say goodbye respectfully. But ending or changing any sexual relationship other than an affair, hookup, or fling requires time, mental energy, painful discussions, loneliness, social readjustment, and frequently one or both of you being hurt and/or angry.

When your relationship is public, you need to notify your social system about your new status. Close friends may feel they have to take sides. You and your former lover may need to see or work with each other in shared parenting or social and professional situations. Finally, you face the emotion- laden reality that you’re both reentering the relationship market and will start dating other people, eventually.

Starting, taking part in, and leaving an arrangement can take several months before both parties are back in action and psychologically adjusted to the new reality. For false starts, trial runs, and committed partnerships, the longer the relationship and the deeper the emotional involvement, the more entwined elements of your lives are, including property, money, children, marriage, in-laws, and friendships. Thus, the more challenging the separation process will be. Difficult divorces can take years to fully resolve, but you just have to move on.

Abandoner/Abandonee

Sometimes, one member of a long-term committed couple announces out of the blue that he/she is ending the relationship. The abandoner may have planned to leave for a while and may have already started a new relationship, but didn’t notify the abandonee until he/she was walking out the door. Couple ethics require keeping your partner informed about where they stand with you. Dropping a bomb like this on someone at the last minute is cruel—but people do it. Even when the other person gives you fair warning about ending the relationship, however, being abandoned is as horrible as the “falling into the Grand Canyon” experience described next.

Falling into the Grand Canyon

When your lover abandons you, you’re suddenly in emotional free fall as if you stumbled over the edge of the Grand Canyon. Your life passes before your eyes when, at the last second, you’re caught on a sagebrush on the side of the canyon and hang over the abyss. This is awful, but it’s even worse when your lover seems to walk off into the sunset completely unscathed and sometimes arm in arm with a new love.

You painfully drag yourself up the side of the cliff and finally reach the top, then pull yourself up into a cactus patch. Bruised and bleeding, you tend to your wounds and can eventually crawl away from the edge. After a long recovery, with much introspection and inner work, you’re back in the relationship game, and often find a new relationship better than the one you lost. Sometimes, around the time you get your life back together, your former lover’s new relationship blows up, and he/she finds him/herself hanging from sagebrush on the side of the Grand Canyon. Ahhh—the world turns!

After a relationship breakup is a productive time to seek therapy, to learn from the experience and get through the feelings of failure and self-doubt. Often during therapy, we identify the warning signs that were there long before your partner left or even from the very beginning, and we recognize how we contributed to the situation. This self-knowledge facilitates growing and changing to prepare for our next love.

Relationship Counseling

Pre-marital counseling definitely helps if your relationship is a potential partnership. And couples’ counseling can help after the marriage if the relationship hasn’t deteriorated too far. As a psychologist, the question I would ask couples who came for counseling was “Is this relationship counseling, don’t know counseling, or breakup counseling?”

• If both people wanted to make things better, it was “relationship counseling.”
• If both replied, “don’t know,” it was “don’t know ”
• If either or both wanted out, it was “breakup ”

It takes both members to work on the relationship. During “relationship counseling,” I helped people identify their wants and needs and learn effective couple communication and conflict resolution skills I cover in the next chapter. In “don’t know” counseling, often both people benefited from individual therapy while also working on the relationship. If a couple decided on a separation, I suggested developing a separation agreement which specified the purpose and boundaries of the separation, including how long it would last, whether they planned to see other people, how and when they would talk, and understandings about finances and sexuality. In “breakup counseling,” the more collaborative parties can be in negotiating the breakup, the better it is for them and for their children. This is easier said than done, unfortunately. Attorney Sonia Fronterra provides insightful guidelines about how to breakup as amicably as possible in her book Relationship Solutions.

Finish Your Former Relationships

People often end up in a false start sexual relationship when one or both participants believe they’re ready for long-term partnership but, in fact, aren’t. This might be because they have unfinished business from a previous relationship, haven’t solidified their life foundations, or have other unfinished legal, financial, or emotional business. Here are important tasks for finishing your old relationship business.

1. Disengage from a previous lover.
2. End the sexual relationship.
3. Resolve any shared financial property.
4. If married, complete the divorce process and agree to the terms of child support, child custody, and alimony.
5. Operate as a self-sufficient single and make friends with yourself.
6. Finish “playing the field” or other sexual exploration.

Usually, it takes 1–2 years or longer for people to finish the business of a previous marriage or long-term relationship. Unless the paperwork is complete on the divorce, it isn’t over.

Action Step #15: Finish Your Old Relationship Business

 To be fully available to look for a new partner, do your best to resolve your old relationship completely. The partner you’re looking for also needs to clean up his/her past relationships so that when you meet, the coast is clear to move forward together. Note any old relationship business you need to finish in your relationship journal.

Key Takeaways from This Chapter

• Changing or ending a romantic relationship is painful and scary.
• It’s kind and ethical to keep your partner informed about where they stand with you.
• Your life foundation allows you to take care of yourself and make a living if you must end a relationship or find yourself alone.
• When a person’s emotional switch has flipped, the relationship usually will not recover.
• Finishing your old relationship business makes you truly Although difficult and mentally tiring—it’s essential.