“Should we stay together or break up?”

If you’ve been together long enough to think of each other as life partners—or potentially so—but now you’re thinking of breaking it off, I have something for you to consider.

Breaking up doesn’t mean you’re not still in relationship. If you break up, then that’s the new relationship.

Let me explain.

You already know this, but breaking up isn’t like deleting a file. You and your partner have shared experiences no one else on the planet will ever know about or understand. Your relationship has affected and altered you, in ways that will evolve but won’t disappear. The trajectory of your life has shifted. At the pearly gates, this person will figure in your life review. This is already in place.

When your lives have intertwined enough to consider a life together, something gets created, a connection that will transcend and outlast a breakup.

You can cut all contact with them, along with every person, place or object that you associate with them, and do your best to reset everything in your life back to exactly the way it was before. Kind of like trying to restore your life from a backup you made just minutes before you met. It doesn’t matter — you still have a mutual connection, a shared history, a relationship with each other, that continues onward.

When the relationship isn’t working, it’s not surprising that your mind goes to stay-or-leave, relationship-or-breakup, marriage-or-divorce. That’s how we’re accustomed to thinking about it.

But the deeper question — the one you’re really trying to answer — is, what kind of relationship are we meant to have? What’s the better way of relating than the one we’ve co-created that isn’t working?

That’s always the underlying question. Think about it. If you decide to break up, or decide to stay together, you’re still faced with a question: what exactly does that look like? What will we be doing—in concrete terms how do we relate with each other moving forward? What is the new relationship?

Breaking up

Let’s say you don’t have kids, don’t work together, don’t run in the same social circles—nothing that would put you in the same room in the future. And let’s say you’re not someone who would be in contact with an ex if you can help it. So the natural answer is to never see or speak to each other again.

Then that is the next chapter of your relationship—that’s the new way of relating that’s better than the one you’ve had up to now that hasn’t been working. It’s a perfectly valid choice, but it’s still a relationship.

You will think of them less and less over time. Then maybe they’ll cross your mind once you start seeing someone else. You’ll compare your new partner to the ex who lives within you, noticing the differences and the similarities—and you’ll have a range of feelings about each. You’ll behave totally different in the new relationship—in some ways—and in some ways, the same. There will be moments when you find yourself in dialog with your ex all over again, without speaking to them.

You are still in relationship with them. You’re just not speaking to them.

Don’t beat yourself up over it! They’re a part of you. Everything you’ve experienced in your life, all the “good” and “bad,” is an integral part of who you are today. You are who you are in this new relationship, in part due to your ex. If they’re coming to mind now there could be a reason, lesson, or message in it.

That’s the relationship.

Some less extreme examples:

• No contact except for logistics
• No contact for x amount of time
• We’ll just go back to being acquaintances
• We really need to divvy up our mutual friends
• Please return that memento I gave you because I didn’t know we’d end up here when I gave it
• Guess I’ll still see you at the regular Wednesday night poker game
• I’m calling your probation officer right now to tell them you’re violating the restraining order (ok that’s a bit more extreme but not unheard of)
• Etc.

Some of it is unilateral and some of it is essentially a request for how you want them to relate with you now. Even if it’s please give me space, or, whatever you do just please don’t go all Fatal Attraction on me, that’s all I ask, or whatever.

Staying together

Now let’s go to the opposite extreme. Let’s say you decide to stay together. And further, let’s say you decide to change literally nothing about the relationship whatsoever. Everything is kept the same. The only thing that’s changed is your own internal recommitment to what you currently have.

Believe me, that alone ushers in a new chapter of the relationship. Your recommitment is your answer to the question, what would be an improvement over how it’s been. And the relationship will be different.

Each time you’ve contemplated the exit door in the past, even if you didn’t speak it out loud, it had reverberations in the relationship. Moving forward those thoughts will fade, as will their ripples. The relationship will look and feel different to you, and you will feel different to your partner, and your partner will feel different to you, and so on.

Even these extremes, and everything in between, constitute a redesign of the relationship, an attempt to evolve toward something that’s hopefully better.

Leave or stay, it’s gonna be part ending, part beginning, and part continuation.

And there’s a whole lot of power in switching from the viewpoint of relationship being yea-or-nay, to what kind of relationship is best for us, what kind of relationship is next for us.

It might just bring you closer.

Real example

I had a client who, for a time, was still hung up on his ex. They ran a business together but were no longer romantically involved. It was tough for him emotionally, and an ongoing topic in our coaching.

Mourning and recovering from loss are essential and not to be skipped over. But he felt stuck in a loop.

In one session I pointed out that he calls her my ex when he talks about her. Not my co-founder, or my business partner, or my friend, or my colleague. All of which were equally true. He had an active, meaningful, present-time relationship with her and genuinely held her in high regard.

I asked him, as a symbolic step and mental shift, to choose a way of referring to her that reflected their current relationship, rather than something she used to be, and use that moving forward when talking about her, with me or anyone else.

It was a small puzzle piece inside of some difficult, courageous internal work he did to have healthier relationships. Today he’s married with two lovely children, and he and his business partner have grown their company to 7 figures.

. . .

So instead of asking, do I want to be in this relationship with them?
ask, what relationship do I want with them?

. . .

Speaking of which… does the following describe you?

• you’ve been together for more than a year but less than five
• you’re debating about commitment and life partnership
• the indecision has become a problem in the relationship

I’d love to interview you. I’m researching for a program I’m designing for couples; this isn’t a sales call. I’d love to ask you a few questions about your experience to help guide the design of my program. Schedule here.

If you know someone who fits this description, I’d love to chat with them.

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This post was previously published on Ken Blackman’s blog.

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