5 Kind Ways To Break Up With Someone Without Breaking Their Heart
Breaking up is hard to do, but you don't have to be mean about it.
getty So, you want to know how to break up with someone without hurting them.
Ending a relationship is one of the hardest things to do.
You care for this person. But you also know there's no future, and you don’t want to hurt them.
Fortunately, here are 5 kind ways to break up with someone without breaking their heart — at least, not completely.
1. Don’t ghost them.
The worst way to break up with someone is to simply disappear. It seems relatively painless — if you just don’t contact them anymore, they will get the picture and move on.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work this way.
Most of us need to have some idea what has happened in a relationship before we can move on. This is especially true if the breakup comes from out of the blue.
If our person suddenly disappears, we're left wondering what happened, what we did wrong, how someone could treat us this way, and how to move forward.
And this is heartbreaking.
Ghosting someone is good for exactly one person — the person who does the ghosting. The person who does the ghosting doesn’t have to face the person they are breaking up with.
They don’t have to explain themselves. They don’t have to see the pain on the other person’s face.
So, don’t kid yourself if you think that ghosting someone is the kindest thing to do. It’s not. It will only make things worse.
2. Be honest.
It's essential to be honest when breaking up with someone
How many times has someone said, "It’s not about you — it’s about me"? Or, "I'm just too busy with work to be in a relationship right now"? Or, "I need to work on myself before I can love someone"?
These explanations always feel like excuses to me, and you might feel the same.
When you want to break up with someone without hurting them, it's essential to be honest with them. Perhaps, you can’t verbalize exactly why you're breaking up with them, but if they ask you questions, answer them.
If you just don’t feel a connection, tell them that. If you like them but aren’t attracted to them, tell them that. If your old flames have reappeared, tell them that. Be honest.
I can’t tell you how many of my clients struggle with the reasons they were broken up with. They just don’t believe their person was telling them the truth and they question everything.
They often say, "If he had just told me what happened, I would be able to move on, but I just don’t feel like he did."
A big part of recovering from heartbreak is the ability to move on, and not telling the truth will hinder your ex from doing so.
3. Be kind.
Honesty is important, but if you hurt someone in the process, it won’t help your ex’s broken heart.
Imagine if someone told you that the reason they were breaking up with you was because you didn’t have a job, so they couldn’t respect you. Or that they were embarrassed when they introduced you to their friends. Or that watching you sleep all day instead of working drove them nuts.
While all those things might be true, the delivery is key, because doing so unkindly will only cause pain.
Instead, tell them that the importance of ambition is different for each of you, and that you feel that this unevenness was making it hard for you to commit to the relationship.
By saying it this way, you aren’t attacking them. Instead, you're talking about your feelings about ambition and how that's getting in the way for you.
By doing this and delivering your reason for the breakup in a way that reflects your feelings as opposed to their deficiencies, you can soften the blow and break up with someone without breaking their heart.
4. Don’t drag it out.
I have a friend who, when he no longer wants to be with someone, doesn’t tell them straight out.
Instead, he stops texting and calling as much, he doesn’t respond regularly when they reach out. He still spends time with them, but not to the extent that he used to.
He does so because he doesn’t want to hurt them — but this actually hurts them more. Much like pulling off a Band-Aid, ending a relationship quickly and decisively will help your person recover and move on.
Another thing that many people do is they yo-yo. They want out, but they don’t want to hurt the person. They're worried that they get bored and lonely, so they have a hard time breaking up with them for good.
They break up and then they come back, things are OK for a while, and then it all falls apart again.
Doing this over and over and over isn’t good for anyone and will definitely lead to heartbreak.
5. Don’t have someone waiting in the wings.
One of the worst things that can happen is when someone breaks up with you and the next day, you see them all over social media with a new partner. Immediately, you question everything about yourself and the relationship.
You wonder if your person was cheating on you the whole time. You wonder why you weren’t good enough for that person and why they had to go looking for someone else.
You assume you've been lied to. You're humiliated and you feel betrayed by this person for flaunting someone new to all of your friends.
Even if you do have someone waiting in the wings, make sure that you leave a respectable amount of time before you bring that person out into the open.
Yes, you want the world to know that you're in love, but have enough respect for your ex to give them some time to move on. Don't disrespect them in the eyes of the world.
Having respect for your ex and your relationship is the key to breaking up without breaking a heart.
When learning how to break up with someone, it's essential that you don’t just disappear — you need to stay and face them.
You must be honest with them, but also be kind. You must end it decisively, take care to respect them, and not flaunt a new relationship right away.
Breaking up is hard to do, but doing it in a way that's respectful and kind will not only help your ex recover more quickly, but it will also help you feel good about how you ended it and move on without guilt.
It's hard not to break someone’s heart when you break up with them, but finding kind ways to do so will help their broken heart mend faster.
You can do this!
Mitzi Bockmann is an NYC-based certified life and love coach. Let her help you find and keep love in this crazy world in which we live. Email her at mitzi@letyourdreamsbegin.com and get started!