Source: Shutterstock

Most of us have been there. We break up with a man and vow never to speak to him again. But in the back of your mind you silently hope that he still wants you. And proves this fact by trying to get in touch with you. That may be what you want to happen; but it’s not going the way you planned it. Homeboy has not reached out. You’re wondering if he still cares, if there’s a chance you can make it work etc. So what do you do? You call him. We asked our Facebook followers if this story sounded familiar to them. This is what they had to say.

Tia: Yes I have.. No regrets but I should have kept my word to myself

Lina: Yes but I came to my senses and left him alone but still love him

Damita: I ended up regretting it because he has issues he has to fix on his own. Plus, I found out he had a hidden addiction! #OnlyGodCanFixHim!;(( very sad sight!

Brenda: I didn’t go back 2 him but I slept with him & I felt so dirty so NEVER EVER AGAIN.

Myisha: Just reached out to my deadbeat baby daddy today. Smh, why!? I don’t know. Got me nowhere!

Nita: Yep called him today. Picked back up like we never left off. Can’t help who your heart loves.

Alicia: Yes I have and no regrets. He is my husband now and we are happy together.

Tezra: Yes I did. I explained I just wanted to be friends but he couldn’t respect that so I cut the cord. Never again I told him that I should have stayed away but my heart wasn’t clear but when I expressed my feelings I ended it forever.

Monique: I have someone now I would like to call but.. .it’s not going to happen. I learned my lesson. But I miss the person I fell for…not the person he proved himself to be.

Samantha: Yup. a few years ago I was in a verbally abusive relationship & broke up with him. Thought I made a mistake, then reached out to him and made up with him. The relationship got worse & almost became physically abusive then I ended it for good. I can’t say that I regret it because if I never had that experience I wouldn’t be able to recognize red flags in future dating situations. Besides when Mr. Right does come along, I’ll be that much more grateful for him!

Jasmine: Yes. Can’t help what the heart wants but our only issue is we were too intense to be so young and it didn’t work. Sure, at least once a week I am shaking my head at him but we love each other, are great friends and find it hard to be away from each other too long.

Jacqueline: Yes…when I did let him come over after 13 months of being apart, he got drunk and peed on my floor….

Aj: Nope, I’m like Rosa Parks….I refuse to go back

Shutterstock

Sometimes it’s not the boyfriend that’s hard to say goodbye to, or the consistent sex, or the person you could text all day long. Sometimes it’s his family. As a good girlfriend, you integrated yourself into your now-ex’s family. You learned about them, let them learn about you, made yourself helpful, accepted their help, maybe even traveled with them and were privy to some of their most intimate moments and issues. They became your family, and family is a hard thing to let go of. But you have to if you’re going to take care of the most important person: yourself. Here’s how.

Shutterstock

I’m certainly no expert in the art of break-ups. I’ve had to do it a couple of times and it was not fun. I’ve had it done to me before and it wasn’t fun then either. If the breakup comes about as a result of some indiscretion — cheating, lying, he was married or had six baby mamas in hiding, etc. — then no, there is no need for a “nice” break-up. But when you want to end things on good terms, is there really a “nice” way to do it?

The answer is yes.

Some people chicken out and try to act like a jerk so that the other person breaks up with them first. Or they play some kind of game instead of being upfront so they won’t appear to be the bad guy. But while the thought of hurting someone can be daunting, if you respect the other person, you should do what’s right and let them go for their own sake. The key is to do it amicably and maturely. There is an art to dumping someone with dignity and these nine guidelines are here to help you through the messy business of ending a relationship (the correct way).

Shutterstock

During a break up there are all sorts of words said and lines dropped. When a once-good relationship is ending, it’s not uncommon for one of the two people involved to drop the “let’s be friends” line. Though it sounds good at the time, being friends after breaking up usually isn’t a wise idea and here are 14 reasons why.

Shutterstock

In your mind the relationship is over. Something irreparable has gone wrong, and you’re ready to go your own way. However, before you can officially make yourself a single lady, you’ll have to first breakup with your soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. When it comes to breaking up, there are some dos and don’ts that you’ll want to keep in mind, otherwise you’ll end up complicating things and making a bad situation even worse. Here are 14 breakup etiquette tips.

Source: Shutterstock

Relationships tend to be complicated. There are gives and takes, ups and downs, and of course the rocking of backs and forths. Eventually a couple will hit the wall and decide for a myriad of reasons the relationship needs to end. This will either happen amicably or one person will make their exit while the other insists it can be worked out. Both parties go through the grieving period and they slowly try to piece their lives back together.

A woman will find that she’s no longer missing “him,” she no longer looks at her phone hoping he calls, and she can finally get used to the lack of warmth on the other side of the bed. And just when it seems like she’s turned the corner, the ex-boyfriend shows up wanting to reconcile and try again.

The question going through her head is, of course, why? And here are four reasons why a man would come back to a woman after a break-up. (It should be noted these things are heavily dependent on the what led to the break-up in the first place and they should not be taken as a “one size fits all” option.)

1. He still loves you. The simplest and most self-explanatory of all the options presented. We’ve all been in relationships where even though the relationship was broken, it didn’t mean the emotions were severed as well. Sometimes relationships get convoluted and two people will lose themselves in the day-to-day activities. Couples can get so caught up in all of the “goings-ons” of life that they forget why they’re together in the first place. Unfortunately, one of the things that will get overlooked is the love between both people.

Maybe the break-up came after a heated argument or there was simply a lack of communication. Maybe a man just had too much going on at the time and felt like being in a relationship was overwhelming. Whatever the case, love is something we’ve relied on to explain situations we otherwise have no explanation for. When men fall in love, they fall hard and for some men, just walking away from that love without giving it a last ditch effort isn’t enough.

2. He’s grown up a bit and wants a chance to rekindle that old flame. Love can be inconvenient. A man might be in a stage of life where he’s trying to establish himself and working on the foundation to build his future. And in the midst of all that he may end up finding love before he’s attained those goals. From my observation women, generally, tend to believe that love can happen at anytime and are more apt to go with the flow rather than put it off until later.

A lot of men, on the other hand, try to get into the groove of identifying who they are professionally before they decide to take on the personal. We tend to be cognizant of missed opportunities and situations which would have played out much differently had they happened a bit later in our development. A man will occasionally reach out to one of the people in his past because he feels as if he’s in a better place to accept and nurture that love.

shutterstock

No couple feels one hundred percent enthusiastic about each other every single day, for their entire relationship. Even the man who is “perfect” for you may fail to excite you, sometimes for months at a time. But it’s important to know when it’s your partner’s doing, or life’s doing. Sometimes what feels like the end is just a bump in the road and if you’d stick it out, you’d be so happy you did. Here are seven of those bumps that will make you question your feelings for your partner.

Shutterstock

Most of the time, there is no excuse to leave one person and jump immediately into a relationship with another. If you’re so emotionally prepared to be totally entwined with a new man, you have probably been emotionally checked out of your relationship with your current man for a while. And you should have addressed that a long time ago, instead of bringing things to the point where you just walk out for someone new. However, sometimes, you can think you’re perfectly happy in your relationship, and you just meet someone who changes everything. You see now that your current partner is not right for you, and you can’t un-see that. So what do you do?

Shutterstock

From YourTango

By Dr. Lisa Firestone

You don’t need to be a psychologist to note the very harsh effects of a breakup on a person’s mental health. When a relationship ends, humiliation, rage, loneliness, anguish and grief all seem to simultaneously show up at the door, marching in arm-in-arm to parade noisily around our psyche. Evicting these emotions is a matter of healing, reconciling, finding peace within ourselves and somehow moving on. The road to recovery is rough, not just because we are struggling with the real loss of a person or a way of life we really loved, but because every painful rejection is fueled by two forces: the actuality of the loss itself and the army of negative, self-loathing thoughts reawakens within us.

Every hurt we experience echoes a barrage of rejections and painful events from our pasts. Throughout our lives, we are psychologically formed by our experience. We sweep along collecting the dust from the many lies, miscommunications, betrayals, criticisms and rejections we have experienced from the moment we were born: the frightening time a parent lost control, the angry look of a caretaker, the disapproval from someone we admired or abandonment of a loved one. All of these old and familiar experiences have shaped the way we see ourselves and the world around us.

As adults, we tend to use painful events from our present to confirm negative attitudes from our past. The horrible things we believe about ourselves on a deep, fundamental level resurface the minute a situation like a break-up can be used to prove and support them. How often do we hear people fresh out of a relationship say things like, “He never really loved me. I will never find someone. I’m destined to be alone. Who would choose me?” How can the dismissal of one person cause such a spiral of universal self-shame? Why can’t we shake that sinking feeling of humiliation and unworthiness the moment someone decides they don’t want to be with us romantically?

My father, psychologist and author Robert Firestone, recently commented, “It’s amazing how people will suck the marrow out of rejection.” While most of us like to think that all we want istrue love, the reality is, many of us are addicted to rejection. Rejection validates the negative point of view of what my father calls a “critical inner voice.” This “voice” represents an internal enemy shaped out of negative events that took place early in life. While the commentary of this critical inner voice might not be pleasant, it is familiar, and unless we challenge it, we carry it stubbornly with us into adulthood.

Read more on YourTango.com.

Shutterstock

Deciding to break up with someone is not always black and white. You’re caught wondering, “Am I weak if I stay? Am I a quitter if I go? Am I just not seeing things clearly? Are these feelings a phase?” And like with any big decision, it’s good to draw a “blue print” of sorts to show you what’s really happening in your relationship. These seven questions are designed to help you draw that blue print.