ROMANTIC AND SEXUAL FEELINGS: HOW CAN YOU SPLIT UP WITH SOMEONE WITHOUT HURTING HIS OR HER FEELINGS?

It’s best to tell the person yourself rather than having a friend do it or having the person hear it through the grapevine. If the person hears it from someone else, he or she is going to feel even worse. The person may feel like you’ve made a fool of him or her, or that you didn’t even care enough to bother being honest. The person may feel even more hurt or angrier if he or she has to hear the bad news from someone else.

It’s usually very difficult for us to be honest and to tell someone that our feelings have changed. Even though it’s perfectly normal and natural for a person’s feelings to change, we may none the less, feel guilty about it. We may feel that we’re some terrible, disloyal, bad sort of person. Sometimes we may feel so guilty, so disloyal and so afraid of the other person’s angry, hurt feelings that we may pick a fight so we’ll have an ‘excuse’ for splitting up. Rather than honestly admitting the real reason we want to end the relationship, we may try to shift the ‘blame’ to the other person. We may try to pretend that it’s the other person’s fault, that it’s something he or she has done or that it’s something about him or her as a person that’s causing the split. But, if you think about it, is it really right or really fair to shift the ‘blame’?

Our advice is be honest, but be kind. You might say something like ‘I really want to be your friend, but I don’t want to be tied down to just one person’ or ‘You’re really terrific and I really care about you, but I just feel I’m too young to settle down and date only one person.’

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