BEFORE YOU SAY GOODBYE

LOVE is incredibly beautiful when it works well. It is exciting, growth giving and just about the most wonderful thing that can happen to you in your whole life . . . that is when it works.

Unlike in the movies, however, love doesn’t always have a happy ending. More than half of all the weddings that will take place this year in America will end up in divorce. And 60 percent of those who divorce and remarry will divorce a second time. So love isn’t all peaches and cream.
When it does not work out, it crushes you. It makes you the most miserable person on the planet. Love gone wrong is messy, disruptive and an emotional killer. You get so hurt that you will need time to recover after the breakup. And some people never recover and never again will dare to love.

My long experience in counseling people about troubled relationships tells me that it is always less painful when a separation happens if you are the one to pull the plug. The one who initiates the breakup will usually recover more quickly than the one who did not want to separate but had no choice.

Relationships do not crash overnight, even if it may seem so. Though the end may come quickly and unexpectedly like lightning on a clear day, the fact is that there are usually many warning signs for the partner to see . . . that is if she wants to see.

People who get shocked when the partner suddenly walks away will find many red flags if they look back on the relationship. Lovers and spouses who fall out of love will give signals that they are on the way out.

The heart leaves the relationship before the person says goodbye. In fact, if you examine carefully a failed relationship, you will see a succession of warning signs that appeared weeks, months, even years before the actual separation took place. For most people (the decent ones) ending a love relationship is no small thing. It means the end of a great emotional, time consuming personal investment. It means shattered expectations and no small measure of unhappiness.

If there are children involved, then, everything gets even more complicated. He may not love you anymore, but still be very much concerned about the children. He might agonize for quite a while before making the jump out of the relationship. Leaving you might mean rarely ever seeing the kids again and that would make any man who cares for his children hesitate and think long and hard before leaving. But leave they do and when all is said and done, there is hurt all around. That is why you need to stay alert and watch for those telltale signs that indicate your partner is thinking of leaving.