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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.

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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.

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No one wants to be the one to call it quits on a relationship but sometimes it’s inevitable. When it comes to breaking up, there are definite wrong and right ways to do it. Here are 14 tips for a breakup that won’t turn hateful, spiteful, or difficult.

Sometimes you are more than willing to turn an ex loose. You snap the weight of that relationship from around you like you snap that constricting bra off at the end of the day. You’re giddy, joyful like a slave who has just received her freedom papers and a one-way train ticket North.

Then, there are the relationships that leave you curled up in the fetal position, watching The Notebook on replay, ugly-crying Kim Kardashian style into the same three balled up tissues you’ve been using for the past four hours. Nothing matters in the world. Not food. Not your job. Not even your hygiene. You’ve drank ONE glass of OJ all day, called out of work and haven’t shaved your legs. You simply can’t rest for wondering, crying, hoping and praying over the desperate, pitiful remains of your love, feelings and broken emotions.

Yeah, it’s that intense sometimes.

I’ve experienced the former and the latter. While the latter is obviously the most difficult to push through, it’s also the most rewarding to push through. I cried my fair share of tears but at the end of the day, I had to get tough with myself. I fixed my face (and LORD, did that take some fixing), took a shower, shaved my legs, hid The Notebook DVD and laid out some serious honesty for myself. My ex had not changed. In over six years of on-again-off-again contact with him, he had not changed. At 26 he is the same game-playing, insecure, lazy little boy that he was at 18. Am I bashing him? Absolutely not. I can attest to his good qualities as well. The only trouble is that while he may be a good-hearted person, all the ‘good-heartedness’ in the world just AIN’T ENOUGH.

I took inventory. Had I grown? If the answer was ‘Yes’ (which it unequivocally was) then the choice to completely and wholeheartedly walk away from him would be clear, yes? Yes. It should be easy, yes? No.

Sometimes women, as the more nurturing of the two sexes, feel the need to coax, coddle and coerce boys into being men. Wrong. All wrong. If he is not engaging his own free will to become better, there is little you can do or say to persuade him to. I had to stop and realize that my support is and will only EVER be supplemental to my ex’s determination to mature. If he lacked that determination, all the support in the world would do him no good and would drain me in the process.

I looked in the mirror one fateful day and true to the form of any endearing chick flick, gave myself the illest, most girl power-esque pep talk possible: “Girl, you have come too far. You have learned too much. You know what you deserve and it’s not him. You did all you could do to show him how much you loved him. He didn’t get it and that’s not your problem anymore. Something so much better is in store for you.”

I fed myself smaller gems in the same vein as that pep talk whenever I felt weak or lonely. I got busy working, getting involved in the women’s empowerment ventures I had become so passionate about, mentoring young ladies, writing, traveling, spending more time with friends and family. Things were happening. Life was drawing back its curtain and showing to me all the glorious inner workings of its full production. I was falling in love with living, instead of existing. And sure enough a week, a month, a year and a half sauntered on past me. I looked up and thought about him for the first time in ages and felt ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

When I got busy working on ME, that’s when the real healing process started happening. It was like a chemical reaction. Getting to the crux of who I am, what I enjoy, what I’m passionate about is what made all the difference for me. I had no time to bemoan the ruins of a failed relationship when I was out exploring, meeting, seeing, doing, loving and living. But I had all the time in the world for growing.

While I wish him well, I have slowly but surely moved forward by knowing and fully UNDERSTANDING my immense worth. You’ll never get what you deserve if you never understand and fully believe in who you are. People can tell you until they are blue in the face but until it all penetrates your brain matter, it will just be words and you’ll still settle for less than everything you’re worth.

I may have held the blue ribbon for “World’s Ugliest Ugly Crier” back then but please believe holding the title of “The One That Got Away” feels so freakin’ fabulous now.

La Truly is a late-blooming Aries whose writing is powered by a lifetime of anecdotal proof that awkward can transform to awesome and fear can cast its crown before courage. Armed with the ability to purposefully poke fun at herself and a passion for young women’s empowerment, La seeks to encourage thought, discussion and change. Her blog: www.hersoulinc.com and her Twitter: @AshleyLaTruly.  

singleindependentsistah.wordpress.com

So you’ve just gone through a breakup and you want to be sure you keep your cool. You don’t want to do anything that makes you look (and feel) desperate or like you’re falling apart. Some acts are obvious to stay away from. Others are a bit subtler until suddenly you feel like you’re spiraling out of control right after doing them. Avoid that “Oh my god…I’m a crazy ex!” moment and don’t do these things.

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Every woman that I’ve ever known has done the emotional tango with one lover or another. They’ve gotten caught up in the folly of breaking up and re-engaging, particularly with significant others who don’t treat them as well as they ought to be treated. They change their numbers, simply to hand the guy the new digits two weeks later.  And they change the locks to their doors, only to welcome him in when he comes knocking. My personal philosophy toward the matter is, “never step in the same ish twice,” (essentially meaning that an ex is an ex for a reason) but most people can’t help but to stumble backward into the muck.

The onset of this pattern is sometimes due to a fear of loneliness, reluctance to move forward, and whiffs of nostalgia. Also, the idea that they’ll simply stay with him until something better comes along, or that they’ll never find anyone better, are two possible contributing factors. All of those notions are detrimental, however, and compete with the idea of finding someone more suitable. If they remain tangled up in their past relationships, trying to find the “good” in a heap of bad, then it’ll be impossible to recover from the “quicksand” relationship, and for them to find their footing.

That said, it’s easy to rationalize why a woman would stay with someone when she’s afraid of being alone. After all, it is difficult to meet new people, and it’s difficult to establish trust within new relationships when a woman feels that she’s been robbed of trust in the past. The hard part about remaining tied to a tumultuous relationship is that a woman will always feel that she will have to explain their relationship to her family and friends, or there’s a chance she won’t be very honest about the trouble in their relationship because she fears the impending “I told you so” because of the hurt that he may have caused in the past.

The decision to recover from a chaotic, unstable situation and pursue healthier relationships is not an easy task. The most painless way to break out of the “break up and make up” cycle is to figure out why the relationship hasn’t worked, and why it won’t ever work. Also, to take each step of the break up one day at a time, and utilize positive relationships available (friends and family). This time, more than any other, is the best time to lean on friends, take time for organizing, change up routines, purge home of relationship triggers, and take up new hobbies. It’s also just important to take time for personal reflection, taking into account, both, negative and positive aspects of the relationship –and understanding why that relationship, or any relationship of its kind, will never be satisfying enough.

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Vehem

Break-ups are nasty business. Rarely are they amicable with both parties cutting ties as lovers but remaining friends. But when they are, they can be helpful and even insightful. Yet an issue may arise when the next great love of your life comes strolling in. Do you tell your new partner that you are still friends with an ex? I did a mini survey amongst my friends, and 9 out of 15 believed that that is information your new lover should not be privy. Reasons ranged from “keep the past in the past” to “every woman deserves to have a secret.” And although, I understand where their reasoning is stemming from, I just can’t co-sign it.

If you are friends with your ex — and I mean good friends (y’all kick it together from time to time), you need to let your new significant other know. Why? Cause to quote a tried and true saying: “honesty is the best policy.”

When you are in a relationship, it should be all or nothing. If your new partner is someone you are trying to build a foundation and life with, they are privy to such information. As we know, people talk. Rather they hear this bit of news from you, rather than your girlfriend who suffers from the I-talk-before-I-think disorder. And besides, what if the shoe was on the other foot? What if his close friend Charlene was his ex-lover and you never knew? Now, don’t go running to him demanding whether or not she is (finish reading this first), but I’m sure just the thought of it has you feeling uneasy.

Now, telling him is one thing, but how he will take it is another. Knowing how territorial most men can be and considering I don’t know your boo, I cannot tell you how he’ll take it. However, such a situation can help you two build your communication skills and trust levels with one another. Allowing yourself to be this honest (and some would say even vulnerable) is a stone you can use to solidify your foundation and belief in each other and yourselves as a union. His reaction to this news can also help you determine how important this new relationship is to you. If he becomes overtly jealous, or asks you to stop being friends with your ex, it may reveal to you who your new partner really is or whether or not he is worthy of losing an old friend over. Amicable break ups can be good for the messiness they prevent, but they can also lead to problems in the long run. I guess there really is no such thing as a good break up.

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GumBumper

Your best friend has been with their significant other for a few years. You have more faith in their love than you do Will and Jada’s – that’s how enchanting their passion is. And yet, they break up; stating that things hadn’t been working out between them for some time. You love them both, and feel as if you are their child that has been caught in this break-up. Who do you go with? Of course you want to stay with your best friend because according to Part 2 of Section 1 of the Best Friend Guide (if only it really existed), loyalty overrides everything. But you have grown to love their ex (in a friendly way of course) just as much, and don’t think it’s fair to cut them off completely as you’ve grown to be cool. You are probably feeling more hung up than a dial tone.

The first thing you should remember in this situation is that you don’t have to choose who you remain friends with. Neutrality is your best policy here. Okay, so he cheated and she caught him (or the other way around) and now there is this whole drama that is worthy of a segment on “Maury.” As much as you may feel for your girlfriend, this is her situation — not yours. What she (or he) chooses to do to deal with the obstacles that arose in their relationship should have no bearings on your personal actions. I am sure that you were friends with both people because of their individual traits, not just their image as a couple. There is no reason why their behavior within the private confines of their relationship should upset that (except in extreme cases of explosive secrets and abuse, of course).

But, keep in mind that just because you may remain friends with both parties does not mean that you need to be playing telephone with them. You spoke to him, and he has confided in you that he is contemplating getting back out on the dating scene to forget everything (as men tend to do). Is it really your place to go and tell her that? Absolutely not. Don’t be that puppy who runs from one fence to another with different tidbits. If he wants her to know that, I am sure he will find a way to tell her. And ladies, we know she’ll probably find out sooner or later about his actions from someone else or those good ole trackers known as Facebook and Twitter. If you know that you tend to suffer from what I like to call, “diarrhea of the mouth” aka loose lips, refrain from speaking about the situation to both of your friends. Let them know that as much as you love and support them, this break up is not a topic you wish to discuss, nor do you want to talk about the many problems they think the other person has forever and ever.

Most importantly, do remember that it is not your job to make sure your favorite couple gets back together. Sometimes we hold our friends’ relationships on a pedestal making them the templates we want to base our own relationships on. And sometimes we just think we know what’s better for a person than they know for themselves (“You guys have been together for __ years, that’s a LONG time. You should work it out!”). We should use healthy relationships as inspiration, but we should always know a pretty picture takes a lot of work. At the end of the day, your friends know, more than anyone else, why they had to withdraw from their union. Therefore, it is not your job to play matchmaker. You are not VH1 or the dude from “The Bachelor”; it is not your task to help them find their way to one another. Be a good friend to both, give them each a shoulder to cry on (maybe even a Kleenex) and then slowly but surely, find a way to start talking about something else…

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dotheknowledge.com

Face it: there’s really no reason for you to be friends with your ex. Need a friend? Join one of those Meetup Groups online. Or, how about this: grab any random person off the street who you didn’t use to love/like/sleep with. I wouldn’t recommend it. But don’t get me wrong though, there are people out there who are mature enough to become close with their exes again, but in a way that doesn’t leave sexual tension brewing or resentment from past issues. It’s true that there are some instances when it’s not harmful to mix and mingle with your old man again, but there are times where trying to be close to your ex backfires, too. So that you don’t waste your time, his time, or possibly hurt your current partner, you should have a clear understanding of just what this ex lover is doing in your life.

From Yourtango.com

By Crystal Andrus

The easiest way to relive guilt associated with infidelity is to tell the person you betrayed that you cheated. However, according to a poll of over 100 YourTango Experts, when someone in a relationship has been unfaithful, it isn’t always best for him/her to tell his/her partner. So, what’s a person supposed to do to feel better about her unfaithful past? And is she destined to repeat her mistakes — or worse — in the future?

In this video, dating coach, author and YourTango Expert Crystal Andrus answers the following viewer question: I’ve never been honest with my ex-husband about an affair I had during our marriage, and I’m worried that my ability to keep secrets is a sign that I can’t be truly intimate with another person. Am I doomed to repeat this in another relationship?

See what Crystal Andrus has to say about telling an ex you cheated on YourTango.com.

*Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.com.

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