How to Break Up

Stacey: Hi, my name is Stacey from Montara, California. I need to break up with my boyfriend of six months but I don’t want to devastate him. Are that any ways that I could let him down easily?

Mary Coussons: Stacey, we would all like to be let down easily and to let others down easily but as we know it usually doesn’t work that way. My suggestion to you would be to not sugarcoat this. There are some things that you can do to try to make this a little bit easier but when I say not to sugar coat this, you need to be honest about why this isn’t working out. One of the things that’s important to do that people tend to lose track of when they’re in the process of breaking up with someone is that slinging errors at someone about what’s wrong with them rarely gets you anywhere.

So, talking about that you’re not getting something that you need and that you have a concern that he also is not being served by your relationship and that you’re concerned that the relationship isn’t working well for either of you is a way to soften the blow a little bit because it gives him something to walkaway with and say, “Well, you know I really wasn’t getting what I needed.” But the point here is that you need to extricate yourself from this and you need to do it cleanly. So, one thing you should not do an effort to make it easier on him is to suggest that this is negotiable. If you really want to go, you need to make it clear that you’re going and that the reasons are because of mutual concern for not only your well being but also for his.


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