The Responsible Way To End A Relationship
It is not uncommon for relationships, marriages even, to end via text message or email these days. Even Ilsa Lund left Rick Blaine in the rain at the train station with nothing more than a note sending him reeling to Casablanca. There are obvious reasons why in person correspondences are easier mediums for conveying break ups and these same reasons are why they are not the healthiest for both parties involved.
Breaking up is hard to do. And it is hard for reasons many may not understand. Relationships create habits. Physical habits, habits of thought, emotional habits, and habits of co-regulation. These habits are represented by real physical neurological changes in our brains. Our brains change in response to things we do and learn both physically and emotionally. When we enter a relationship with someone there is a physical marker that becomes present in our brain representing that person and relationship and everything they mean to us. The more intimate and the longer the relationship, the more prominent those structures are and the harder it becomes to change them. When we end relationships we are quite literally neurologically tearing ourselves apart from that person. This is why even if someone is unhappy in a relationship or worse, in an abusive relationship, it is difficult to do. The brain does not make a distinction between what is good or bad for us, only the routine. Our comfort zones are easily created in the throws of a bad or unhappy relationship.
This also explains why most people end relationships only after they have found someone else or covertly entered another relationship. This novel experience plays the role of forming the new habit literally taking neural restate from the old partner and relationship leaving the person being broken up with completely bewildered, scared, and feeling threatened because their comfort zone has been swiped from right underneath them.
There is a mindset some people employ in that they believe they don't owe anything to anyone and every relationship is different, but you always owe something to yourself. We regulate one another both emotionally and physically when in a relationship with that person, even if you have already moved on being sensitive to this fact and working to help easily condition this change for someone you did once care about does nothing to jeopardize you and will in fact make feel better for doing so. It's difficult being the best version of the person you can be in difficult times but very rewarding to do so.
Being able to productively have difficult conversations is a key to being an effective and responsible communicator. Text messages and emails remove this difficulty because they are emotionally safe. You are shielded from having to experience the feelings the other person will feel and express. This is an act of social and emotional cowardice and works to disconnect you from your own self over the long term.
You can work to comfort and ease someone into a new transition when ending things. This is obviously a difficult thing to do but ultimately benefits both parties. Knowing the components of habits, neural plasticity, and co-regulation I hope it is easier to understand the real reasons why breaking up is difficult but doing so productively and compassionately isn't impossible.
Breaking up is hard to do. And it is hard for reasons many may not understand. Relationships create habits. Physical habits, habits of thought, emotional habits, and habits of co-regulation. These habits are represented by real physical neurological changes in our brains. Our brains change in response to things we do and learn both physically and emotionally. When we enter a relationship with someone there is a physical marker that becomes present in our brain representing that person and relationship and everything they mean to us. The more intimate and the longer the relationship, the more prominent those structures are and the harder it becomes to change them. When we end relationships we are quite literally neurologically tearing ourselves apart from that person. This is why even if someone is unhappy in a relationship or worse, in an abusive relationship, it is difficult to do. The brain does not make a distinction between what is good or bad for us, only the routine. Our comfort zones are easily created in the throws of a bad or unhappy relationship.
This also explains why most people end relationships only after they have found someone else or covertly entered another relationship. This novel experience plays the role of forming the new habit literally taking neural restate from the old partner and relationship leaving the person being broken up with completely bewildered, scared, and feeling threatened because their comfort zone has been swiped from right underneath them.
There is a mindset some people employ in that they believe they don't owe anything to anyone and every relationship is different, but you always owe something to yourself. We regulate one another both emotionally and physically when in a relationship with that person, even if you have already moved on being sensitive to this fact and working to help easily condition this change for someone you did once care about does nothing to jeopardize you and will in fact make feel better for doing so. It's difficult being the best version of the person you can be in difficult times but very rewarding to do so.
Being able to productively have difficult conversations is a key to being an effective and responsible communicator. Text messages and emails remove this difficulty because they are emotionally safe. You are shielded from having to experience the feelings the other person will feel and express. This is an act of social and emotional cowardice and works to disconnect you from your own self over the long term.
You can work to comfort and ease someone into a new transition when ending things. This is obviously a difficult thing to do but ultimately benefits both parties. Knowing the components of habits, neural plasticity, and co-regulation I hope it is easier to understand the real reasons why breaking up is difficult but doing so productively and compassionately isn't impossible.
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