Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Deconstructing Heartbreak

Just because the relationship is over doesn’t mean it had no worth. “Most often you can extract the good parts from your relationship,” Rubin says. “Over time you can honor these things and recognize the parts that didn’t fit. To cast off the whole relationship is an obvious reaction, but not a positive one.”

Andrew T. realized his ex had taught him valuable lifestyle lessons he didn’t want to lose with the relationship’s demise. “When my live-in girlfriend moved out after two years together, I was devastated. She was more organized in our home than I had been, and I’d gotten used to knowing where things were,” Andrew says. “After she left, without missing a beat I continued the work of keeping things neat. It gave me a constructive project, and I would have felt so much less capable of standing on my own two feet if I’d let my place degenerate into a pigsty the minute Becky left. For the same reason I continued our habit of eating healthy meals instead of running to McDonalds.”

In order to progress past the breakup, it’s helpful to go back and figure out what worked, what didn’t and why. In your future relationships, you can take this knowledge and build on what you think worked, while trying to eliminate the issues that made the relationship fail.

Clearing through what was good and what was bad in the relationship may help people avoid hating their former partners. Rubin says, “To seek to gain clarity is a constructive challenge. What did this person represent to you? Were you clinging to him [or her] because [that person] represented some picture of where you thought you should be at this stage?”

Ernesto D. initially fell into a tailspin after the breakup of his one-year relationship. “Facing the truth isn’t always pretty; nor is it fun,” he says. “But I figured I could be miserable and question myself (and) my integrity, and wind up asking myself a series of circular questions like, ‘If I hadn’t done that, would she not have left?’ Or I could get out of my bed and really look at what happened, see the reasons for the breakup, accept them and ultimately move on.”

Two weeks into the breakup he charted out a romantic resume, writing out highlights and lowlights of his three most important relationships. “I realized I always chose women who constantly criticized me. I was never good enough. But I also realized that I often displayed selfish behavior—like twice my ex asked me to go with her to family functions. And I refused and stayed home to watch football.”

Seeing his patterns spelled out so clearly helped him realize his romantic strengths and how to overcome his weaknesses.