Breaking up with a long-term partner is one of the hardest things we can go through regarding relationships. Often the feelings mimic those of mourning a death, and not just the person on the receiving end experiences pain. Sometimes, though, the most difficult part is making the decision to break up in the first place. Everything isn't automatically roses after that, but just the decision-making process can be traumatic. After polling a handful of friends and pouring over your emails, I jotted down some of the ways we know when it's really time to say goodbye.

1. Is There More Good Than Bad? - I've read time and again that a good barometer is assessing how much good and bad there is in a relationship. EVERY relationship has ups and downs (see #3) and EVERY relationship will fail to be perfect. However, it's when there is consistently more bad than good that an alarm bell should go off. Notice I said "consistently". If you're in a long-term relationship and your partner is experiencing something difficult, a rough patch could last months. But I'm not talking about a "patch"; I'm talking about everything good being sucked out of the relationship.

2. What Traits Do You Bring Out in One Another? - In a healthy, nurturing relationship, you should ideally bring out the best qualities in one another. You should be able to inspire each other to reach new heights (corny, but true). So if you find yourself arguing all the time, ask yourself if you bring out the worst in each other. I've seen this happen to people, and sometimes it's not that they don't know how to communicate with each other, it's that their individual pieces just don't match the other's puzzle.

3. Relationships Go Through Cycles - This is a truly confusing part. We all know relationships go through ebbs and flows. Many people give up in the middle of horribly rough patches, but perhaps they could have ridden out the wave. Relationships work in cycles - there will be good and bad. And sometimes it's just when you think things can only get worse that things begin to ease up. The difficult time is knowing if this is just part of the cycle or truly indicative of the relationship as a whole. That, my dears, is something only you can decide and only throughout time.

As always, I remain...

Devotedly yours,

Carmen Sutra

- From the Great Sexpectations Newsletter -
© Copyright 2005 by Pulse Direct, Inc. All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission.

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