Parting with a loved one is always difficult. Having a 5-year experience at divorce and family law as a lawyer at PA Online Divorce, I’m going to tell you how to make the gap less painful.

Love does not leave without a trace. Even if after a long relationship you understand that the wrong man is next to you, you cannot just take and stop loving him. After all, over the years spent together, he has become your own person. Even if there is no romantic relationship between you, you are still connected with each other by common happy moments in the past, by common dreams and plans for the future. To drop it means to hurt a loved one.

Make your own decision

A break is not always to blame, hysteria, and a plate fight. Sometimes it happens that after living with a person for many years, you suddenly realize that you fell in love with another. No one is safe from this.

But often, the old connection does not allow us to step towards our destiny. After all, this means that we have to go through a difficult period of uncertainty - who knows if you can find happiness with a new chosen one, or will this novel turn into a complete disappointment? In addition, someone will have to change their daily habits, someone will get used to other people's children. In a word, leave your comfort zone.

All these torments leave with you. If your passion has cooled, but the soul remains warm in relation to your partner, do not torment him, do not force him to become a participant in your internal conflict. Do not seek advice from friends and relatives, no one will fully understand what is happening in your soul and what pushes you to leave. You must find the answer yourself, but if the decision is not made in his favor, do not delay.

Do not look for the guilty

Feeling guilty, a person who decides to get out of a long-term relationship subconsciously tries to find something in his partner for which he could shift the responsibility for the break to him: “He spends too much time at work”, “He is not capable of romance”, “He drinks”- there are many options. We begin to look for a reason - a convenient springboard, having pushed off from which, we can break out of a vicious circle of relationships that have ceased to bring us satisfaction. And this springboard turns out to be the already deprived of attention ex-lover. Both are to blame, and it makes no sense to find out whose fault is greater.

Do not spare the partner, but respect his feelings

Pity is not the feeling on which a happy family can be built. Unlike sympathy, it puts you above your partner, shows that you perceive him as a weak, incapable of taking care of himself. But is it really so?

Pity is the worst helper in alleviating the pain of breaking up a long relationship. If you both admit that you are adults who are not always able to answer for steep turns of fate, you will no longer need to make excuses or regret.

If you already realized that a gap is inevitable, but you cannot decide on the final step because you feel sorry for your partner, you put both of you at a disadvantage. You not only force yourself to live with your eyes closed, just to not see a man who is disgusted, but also deprive him of the opportunity to get you sick and find a woman with whom he could build a full-fledged relationship.

Only respect and sincere sympathy can help heal the wounds of the person to whom you have to hurt. But this does not mean that you should cry with him for long evenings or discuss the current situation in detail. It is possible that your sympathy will manifest itself precisely in the fact that you will save him from having to see you or omit the details of what led you to the decision to break up.

And finally - take care of yourself

Be grateful for the happy moments that you have experienced together, but do not let them play with you, forcing you to rush to the phone and with tears dial the number of the former at the sounds of the song to which you once danced during a romantic vacation. If you feel that some part in the present evokes painful memories in you, take care of yourself, turn your back on this part. Leave the past in the past, be the mistress of your fate and look to the future. Take care of yourself and build your new life.