Hello! Seiiti Arata. You do not want to continue fooling yourself and believing that things could improve in your relationship. You do not want to continue in an unhappy relationship, and so you have decided to move forward and pursue what brings you joy.
If the relationship you are in now is not bringing you satisfaction, you need to communicate what you have already decided internally. But you may have a number of concerns about how to communicate this without causing suffering. You do not want to hurt the other person unnecessarily and also do not want to go through intense suffering yourself at the time of the breakup. This is the theme of our video today, which continues our conversation last week about when to end a relationship – [http://arata.se/hello65].
1. Clarify your motivation.
The first thing to do is to acquire the resources to make a conscious decision. And, for that, you do not want to act in the heat of the moment, driven by intense emotions that you may later regret. So if you have just had some intense discussions, get awareness of your emotional state.
Try to look at yourself as if you were a third-party observer. Do you believe you are in a position to end the relationship now? Or, based on what you know of yourself, do you think you are so emotional now that you may say things you will regret later?
To clarify your motivation, ask yourself how long you have been thinking about leaving your partner. What motivates you to end the relationship? What makes you want to continue? Maybe you are in the relationship only because you don’t want to suffer through the breakup, or you do not want the other person to suffer. Maybe you need to learn to say no and set boundaries.
Only you have the answers. If you have been unhappy with the relationship for a long time, if you feel it is an abusive relationship, if the relationship does not encourage you to become a better person, if you think it’s no longer worth trying to change, if you feel attracted to someone else, if you do not feel loved… or any other reason that is important to you, there will come a point where you make a clear internal decision that you no longer want to continue that relationship.
This is the clarity that will help you communicate with conviction and conscience. After reaching this decision, the question that can paralyze is how to end the relationship in the best way to avoid suffering, for both you and your partner.
2. Before you communicate, you may have questions.
As there was an intense emotional and loving connection at some point in the relationship, it is normal that a question arises about the exact time to communicate your decision to the other person. You may have questions, and so the previous step of clarifying your motivation was important.
It is normal to feel paralyzed when you do not want to cause harm to another person.
Depending on how the conversation unfolds, you can begin to rationalize, thinking that the other person is actually a good person. Or that it is you who should change. Maybe you should feel more grateful for the relationship. Maybe the fear of loneliness arises, and you worry that you’ll never find anyone like that; you might even be losing the love of your life. You may think that perhaps with a little more effort things can improve in the future.
All this reasoning should have been done in step one.
If these questions are making it difficult to end the relationship, this means that you must go back to the first step to better understand your motivation and what you really want. Without performing the first step properly, you will hardly be able to decide anything.
3. If you do not speak today with respect, maybe tomorrow you will speak disrespectfully.
Important Tip: If you avoid communicating in a genuine and authentic way, you’re lying and disrespecting yourself. In an attempt to avoid hurting the other person, you are suffocating your own desires. It may be that you hope that things will get better, but if you stay in the relationship longer than you should, there is a risk you will get frustrated and explode.
This happens to many people who try to play the super hero role and then end up getting angry and resentful in the worst possible way.
The irony is that in this moment of frustration, we often cry and make accusations, and all that suffering and stress that we wanted to avoid becomes a reality.
4. Pain is inevitable.
And that brings us to the main point of today’s video. Escaping pain is an illusion. It’s not possible. During a breakup, especially when you have decided singlehandedly to end the relationship and now need to communicate that to the other person, it is natural that there is pain, especially if it’s a relationship that was good in the past.
You do not want either of you to suffer unnecessarily, but you have to accept the inescapable fact that this conversation will be uncomfortable. If you cannot accept this, you will continue postponing the dialogue to the point of becoming very frustrated, and the situation may spin out of control.
But if you do not want to share your life with this person anymore, the relationship is already over; the relationship has ended. All that remains now is to communicate that.
If you really want to take care of yourself and take care of the other person, causing the least possible suffering, then talk openly and assertively as soon as possible. The longer you leave it, the more your suffering will increase, as you are suppressing more emotions.
Three extra tips:
1) Do not be childish. Do not invent situations to force the other person to take the step to end the relationship. Do not try to provoke anger, humiliation, cheating or anything else to press the other person to deliver the ultimatum. This is childish, cowardly and disrespectful.
2) Beware of telling white lies to ease the conversation. Saying you need time will lead to confusion; it sounds like you want to come back later. Saying “It’s not you, it’s me” is also a way of avoiding a discussion about what your real needs are.
3) Remember that you are not forced to live with a person you do not want. You need to learn to say no. Today you can do so in our fast course on How to Say No by visiting the link http://arata.se/howtosayno