Break up. Go or Stay?

Some break up so well that they actually stay together. Others sneak away cowardly. And another large part lingers in relationships that are long lost. Stop it. So that we don’t misunderstand each other: Being a couple is great. Being a couple that is going through a difficult phase might not be SO great for those involved, but of course they shouldn’t give up everything right away. The old wisdom applies: the trick to staying together is just not to part. So the question that comes up again and again is “Go or stay?” every time to answer stubbornly with “stay”. The power of a functioning long-term relationship draws (apart from a basic feeling of love) above all from the skills of confidence, long-suffering, tenacity, defiance.

But now there is still this prayer quoted to death, which was most likely written around 1941 by Reinhold Niebuhr, a US theologian (the exact authorship has not yet been fully clarified), in which the author and from then on, all God who cited him asking for the serenity to “accept things that I cannot change” and “the courage to change things that I can change and the wisdom to distinguish one from the other”.

Break up. Go or stay?

But it is such a thing with wisdom in matters of love. How do you know whether the relationship you are currently in requires the courage to end it or the equanimity to endure it? Relatively simple in three points:

1. If the problems are linked to a clearly identifiable event that one is generally willing to overcome or be willing to forgive: stay.

2. If the end of the problems is in sight and / or there are concrete ways to get them under control: stay.

3. Please step out of the present for a moment. The relationship to this day viewed as a whole: Were there the bad times or the good times in the majority?

In all fairness, everything, including the answer to questions 1 and 2, depends on the answer to question 3. Anyone who has to admit that the unpleasant phases are clearly dominant should please feel personally addressed by the following text, if need be, also attacked. There is no point in maintaining the relationship. There is no go and stay. It’s just go after these kinds of break up.

In good and in bad times

Of course, it will not be easy to accept this knowledge. People are naturally deeply moved by themselves and perceive the system of mind and feeling rummaging around in them to be so fascinating and ingenious that everything connected with them has to be fundamentally complicated. But what is nonsense. The important things in life are usually simple. In the specific example, the calculation even goes one to one: If the majority of the time in a relationship is bad, the relationship is bad.

The sentence that has been the mantra of every lifelong relationship for generations is: in good times and bad. And not: in good times as well as in bad times. And also not: in bad as well as in super bad times. You can react differently to this realization. There are currently four higher-level variants. Three of them are wrong – and betrayal of romance.

Learn here on how to stop lying to look good in a relationship.

The four types of relationships

Group 1: The persevering

Of course, there is something to the culturally pessimistic universal accusation that we young people are no longer ready to fight for the things that were close to our hearts. Throwaway society, Tinder mentality, dispute phobia – that’s right. What, strangely enough, hardly anyone talks about it. The deplorable trend of hasty exchanges of connections that just stutter for a moment has been joined by another emotional act of jumping over the top. Staying stubbornly together for no good reason.

The ability to suffer is not an achievement

Something similar can be observed today in supposedly modern relationships. What is endured, endured, fought and suffered! Couples testify in unironic war metaphors how bravely they are wading through the suffering of their life together. And if you gently remind them that this love thing was not originally intended, they get in a bad mood and feel misunderstood.

The misunderstanding could easily be resolved by repeatedly speaking out loud to yourself. The ability to suffer is not an achievement – especially not in love. At the end of life, most likely nobody comes around the corner and says, “Congratulations, you have always clenched your teeth bravely, we noticed that from up there very positively.”

The basic idea of the modern, romantic relationship, which is no longer based on social and material constraints is the “It should be better with two people than alone.” . Anyone who dismisses this principle as superficial or naïve has not understood love.

GROUP 2: The key makers

Fortunately, couples that have long been lost sometimes split up. At least for a short time, for an evening in which we cried for a long time and WhatsApp with friends. Already the next day, however, there is hardly anything to be seen of the alleged separation. Because what is important during a relationship becomes the most delicate maneuver at the end of it: the promise. And all kinds of promises are made in closing talks. Stay friends? That anyway! In addition, continue to go on family birthdays together, do not burden the circle of friends with the separation (somehow also such a bad word, isn’t it?). And if the summer vacation is already booked .

Excessive demands and cowardice

Anyone who witnesses modern separations has to reassure themselves about the topicality of this circumstance in the course of the coming weeks (“But it’s over between you, yes?”). Because there are hardly any indications worth mentioning that the couple is really not a couple want to be more. On the one hand, this is due to the understandable excessive demands of breaking free from a person who until yesterday still played a significant part in one’s own life. On the other hand, the cowardice to go through with it – in reality, with all the consequences. And that’s also nice. What kind of a straight emotional manager would you be if after the end of the official contract period, without batting an eyelid, you would be looking for a new provider on better terms? You can’t just swap this up to now most important person, can you?

No false courtesy

To be honest: You have to exchange a little bit if you are no longer a couple. Worse than any hard break-up, and unfortunately you only understand that in retrospect, is false politeness. Politeness in the sense of hiding your true feelings and pretending to be able to do something out of pity or fear that cannot be achieved. For example, “You still remain the most important person for me.” .  “I will always be there for you.” . “Of course, there is still love.” . All these sentences are well meant and are certainly felt that way at the moment they are uttered. Yet they are nothing more than the Rio-de-Janeiro filter in the Instagram story.

One would like the reality to be a unicorn rainbow. But you would also like to have a lot in other ways, and does it always work? Of course, when we broke up, each of us has already expressed the subversive and insanely rebellious idea. “We just do it our way, we were special, so it’s our separation too.” And it never, never, never worked out in the end.

No break up is ok

The arrogance of the lovers, who are sure that in their case everything would go completely different contrary to all experience and statistics. It is the best thing about a relationship and should definitely be defended against all attempts at attack in reality. At the end of the relationship, however this arrogance must be over. Otherwise it will be directed against at least one of the two. The one who is the last to notice that it is REALLY over. And who then has to feel abandoned a second time. In love we can convince ourselves that we are uniqueness, but in breaking up there is no originality. Not a break up of the world is just okay the next day, because Gwyneth Paltrow can consciously uncouple himself from some friends 20 times.

You don’t have to throw plates, hate each other or otherwise freak out when you break up. But a quiet, harmonious settlement in the sense of the “irreconcilable differences” that always sound so elegant in Hollywood divorce proceedings is not grown-up, but cowardly.

GROUP 3: The dematerializers

And then there is this breed of people who were always thought to exist only in scripted reality shows or the uninspired generation accounting texts of young journalists who were overwhelmed by big cities. It sounds so stupid, dull and ridiculous. At the moment you’re still a couple (or at least on your way there), and the next moment the other is gone. One asks oneself: What? Where are you going and why? Anyway, that couldn’t happen to you. After all, you mostly surround yourself with witty and decent people, none of whom just – well, and then you do.

Post break up people do several moves. For example, ghosting (breaking contact without explanation), benching (classic keeping warm) and haunting (more like stalking) is known, can be summarized more simply with the rule of thumb. You have hit the wrong one. Unfortunately, they cannot be recognized in advance by a lack of intellect, humor or charm, on the contrary.

Felt interchangeable

The shocking thing about the first time you run into someone who is simply stealing away is the feeling of interchangeability. Parents and friends spend a lifetime trying to explain to you how unique and lovable you are. And suddenly someone shakes this cornerstone of existence with the help of an emotional bulldozer.

Love, that is, broken down into everyday life, nothing more than constant argument. Don’t stop being interested in the other. “Honey, how was your day?” is no matter how squeaky and clichéd that may sound. One of the most loving sentences of all, because that is exactly what it means: care. Sympathy.

Anyone who not only does not ask how the day was, but disappears completely, refuses to argue and has therefore not only broken up long ago – you have probably never been with him. The only consolation: these people can shake you for a short, sometimes longer moment, of course. But they also spare you something that is not granted to them. You don’t have to stay with them for the rest of your life. So, rather break up.

And then there is you. Relationships sometimes go brilliantly and sometimes not at all. You kiss when you have to, you split up if you have to and you quarrel with how absurd it is that everyone hurts each other all the time. Even though most of them have the best of intentions.

“Love makes you adorable”

Many people secretly see love as a kind of performance that should be kindly provided by the other. They think: I do so much, I have myself so well under control. I am constantly working on myself that is why I am entitled to do so . I deserve some love. In truth, it turns out to be a shoe the other way around: Love makes you lovable.”

So the smartest thing we can do: not to oppose anything to love when it seizes us, to make advance payments with everything we have and feel. And let her go again – if it should come to that – with exactly the same sincerity and confidence. Now we know, nothing is missed where there is no love . Except the chance of a new one. Now you decide post break up would you to go or stay?