The Process of Breaking Up

It feels good to invest in a relationship. To care. To want to share. To want to give.       -M. GAWAIN WELLS 

If your dating relationship feels joyous and healthy, if both of you feel the Lord’s approval of your decision to marry, then the relationship “works,” and you marry. If it doesn’t work, you don’t marry. There is no third alternative. 


However, many people assume there is a third alternative and try to keep the relationship alive when all signs of vitality have ceased. There are people who cannot accept breaking up as a healthy part of the selection process of courtship. Instead, they see it as a time to punish themselves, to feel hurt, or even to try to hurt others.

The Lord has given us some important guidelines for relationships—and they apply to all relationships, including dating. We’re counseled to treat all people charitably and kindly, to forgive, and to love not only God and others but also ourselves.

By developing and exercising compassion, a person can—without unpleasantness or emotional devastation—end a dating relationship that needs to end, and turn the experience into an important step toward developing another relationship that does result in marriage.

Sometimes it’s better for two people not to marry each other. They would both be happier married to other people—it’s that simple. Perhaps they’ve formed a relationship for the wrong reasons. But even when the motives are right, a relationship still might not have that “spark” that impels both toward marriage. In such cases, breaking up is often the kindest alternative.

Breaking up may sometimes be a difficult and grieving process, but it doesn’t have to be dreadful. People can break up a dating relationship without going to pieces.

The biggest factor in determining the outcome of a relationship is following the inspiration of the Lord. If your association seems to pull you away from God, away from righteousness, away from prayer and scriptures, you need to evaluate its influence. Sometimes, too, people will want so badly for a courtship to work that they can’t hear the Lord’s messages because of their own desires. 

Once you’ve decided the relationship is not going to work out, how do you kindly let someone know you’re serious about ending the dating relationship?

The most important thing is to communicate, compassionately, clearly what you mean. Often one person will want the other to get the message without its being clearly stated, which may mean that the person who wants to break up isn’t facing his real feelings. When you’ve cared deeply enough to date seriously, of course you shouldn’t want to hurt the other person. But that’s no reason for giving an unclear or indefinite message. Otherwise, the other person may accept only a change in the relationship, still hoping for eventual marriage.

It isn’t compassionate to try to sever a relationship slowly if you’ve already made up your mind. The other person won’t gradually get the message by your disinterest. If you’re trying to break up slowly, it’s possible that you’re mistaking your desire to not hurt the person for an excuse to be dishonest about your own feelings.

Since relationships can’t change from romance to friendship in a day or a week, it may be unrealistic and even hurtful for the two of you to spend much time together once the decision has been made. The person who initiated the break-up may be thinking, “Isn’t it civilized and nice that we can be friends?” But the other will be secretly hoping for the friendship to develop back into a romance. And if the romance can never be revived, feelings will be hurt even more deeply.

Almost always, one of you will be hurt more than the other when the relationship breaks up. If you’ve been hurt in a relationship, you may think it’s understandable that you defend yourself by denigrating or criticizing the other person. Actually, it’s a way of running from reality, and it’s a childish and defensive gesture. Whatever has not worked out, the Lord requires that we forgive all people—and this commandment is as true in a dating relationship as in any other. Bitterness is never the right solution.

People can tell you plenty of superficial ways to get over a broken relationship. They might suggest taking up golf, getting yourself back into social circulation, or looking critically at the ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend. But the grief of an ended relationship can be as real and as intense as grief following the death of someone you’ve loved. So it’s important to let yourself work through the grief process.

You may have to be willing to mourn, to let yourself down into your feelings. Grieving can be a way of accepting the end, of letting the separation come. But you have to realize that those feelings will pass, and that no matter how much it hurts, you’re going to live through it. Racing out and involving yourself frenetically in other activities won’t block it out of your mind.

At the same time, you mustn’t perform an endless postmortem on the relationship. By continually asking yourself what you did wrong or what would have happened if you’d done things differently, you keep your wounded feelings alive. Similarly, indulging yourself in what I call a “pity party” is a cruel way of hurting yourself. It won’t help to deliberately humiliate yourself with a list of your failures, as though reliving your real or imagined failures can keep them from happening again.

Remember, the Lord can give you solace in your pain. His peace can come through your family, your friends, service, prayer, fasting, scripture reading. You may find considerable relief and insight from writing in your personal journal about the relationship. And perhaps a loving Church leader can help you work through this difficult time.

It’s important that you not try to build happiness on the pretended misery of the person you have left behind. Some people carry this to a tragic extreme by not only dating but actually marrying someone else in an effort to make a former boyfriend or girlfriend miserable or jealous. They’re thinking, “I’ll show her,” or “I’ll show him,” without giving serious thought to the feelings of the person they’re actually marrying.

While you might be able to look to past relationships for lessons about life, others, or yourself, don’t overlook the positive aspect of learning to better appreciate the depth and quality of a relationship you hope to make eternal.

Like some people, you may find that you need to learn to be more honest and vulnerable in a relationship, and that you need to learn to believe in your own lovableness. As you develop those abilities, the love in your relationship can be sustained by a mutual conviction that you are loved by each other.

Then you can know the delight of being trusted with one another’s ideas and feelings. And you can know the joyous, awesome capacity to give that comes with loving.

(source: lds.org)