Breakup Advice

When deciding whether to break up with your boyfriend, you may wonder where you can find a “Should I Break Up With My Boyfriend Quiz”

You’d like a list of questions that can help jog your mind and help you come to some conclusion about what to do in a challenging relationship.

The best recommendation of all that we can give is that you take a look at one of Harville Hendrix’s Imago Relationship books. Along with their text, they have quizzes and exercises included that can absolutely change your life and way of thinking about relationships forever. These books are even better than a simple “Should I Break Up With My Boyfriend Quiz.”

If your partner is willing to work with you in exploring what to do next in the relationship, then you should consider Getting the Love You Want.

It even has a workbook that goes along with it.

If you are going to be exploring on your own, then you can consider Keeping the Love You Find.

All of these books are excellent and will not only help you decide “Should I Break Up With My Boyfriend?” now, but will help you make wiser decisions in your relationships for the rest of your life.

But in case you just want our thoughts on some basic questions you should consider before you finally commit to staying or cutting ties with a boyfriend, we’ve put together a list of some questions we think are most important to think about.

In some cases the decision about whether to break up or not is easy. But in many cases, in the gray areas, there is no quiz that can give you a totally clear answer. But hopefully a quiz like this can at least help you come closer to clarity.

Two more notes:

• This quiz can work just as well for guys trying to decide whether to break up with a girlfriend as, for the most part, the deepest issues involved are similar.
• Some of the questions may be ones you didn’t realize are relevant or that probe more deeply than you expected. That is a reflection of our belief that romantic relationships involve issues and feelings from many periods in our lives and from many aspects of ourselves, even when this is not always obvious.

So without further adieu, here is our short “Should I Break Up With My Boyfriend Quiz”

1. Is there physical abuse in the relationship? – If physical abuse is involved in the relationship, this raises the stakes considerably. You may wish to talk to a counselor or therapist to determine the level of danger that you face and how to best respond.
2. Is there emotional abuse in the relationship? – Emotional abuse can also be devastating and, if it is serious, you also may wish to seek counseling or therapy, not only to decide what to do about the relationship, but to understand better why you are drawn to an emotionally abusive partner in the first place.

3. Is your partner conscious about their triggers? – One of the biggest dividing lines in relationships is between partners who are conscious vs. unconscious about the sources of emotions that lead to conflict. All relationships have some level of conflict, but the key is whether partners understand or even think about why certain things hit their buttons.

   If your partner never stops to question why certain things make them very upset or very excited, this is a very bad sign. You might wish to learn more about how certain past issues trigger us and talk about that with your partner. Keeping the Love You Find and Getting the Love You Want can teach you a great deal about this and you can read them and then bring them up in conversation or share them with your partner.

   If your partner is sometimes or often willing to consider that they get upset by something in the relationship because of something in their past, this is a very good sign and there may be a chance to build more insight in the relationship with time and work.

4. Is your partner willing to consider or talk about the real motives behind triggers? – It is perfectly understandable if your partner does not realize how issues in the present relationship often stem from the past. Many of us never learn this growing up or are even discouraged from learning it. But if your partner is unwilling to learn or talk about these dynamics now, that is a bad sign. If your partner is open to talk about such dynamics, this means there is likely more hope for the relationship to become healthy. Be patient. Some partners are uncomfortable about these discussions due to painful situations that they may bring to memory. You don’t have to bring up every issue at once. But if you can make progress over time, then this means the relationship has a chance to grow and improve and may be worth giving a shot.
5. Do you share the same core beliefs about relationships themselves? – Partners often talk about who they believe is the best band or what activities they believe are most fun, yet fail to become clear on what may be the most important beliefs of all in a relationship – beliefs about relationships.

   Does your partner believe relationships are meant to be fun and carefree or more businesslike? Does your partner believe that girlfriends and boyfriends in relationships should be equals or that one or the other partner should be more dominant? Does your partner believe in sharing everything, such as information and money, or that partners should have some degree of separation? How do those beliefs compare to yours?

   Differences in belief in many areas can be compatible with a healthy relationship or even make it more interesting. But differences in belief about relationships themselves can make a partnership extremely challenging. If possible, talk to your partner about these issues. And, as always, the more unwilling your partner is to talk about them, the more difficult the relationship is likely to be.

Ultimately, if you are really torn on what to do, you could always benefit from a good counselor or therapist, either individually or as a couple. If your partner is willing to get involved in such activities, that is always a good sign. If you find a talented therapist, then even if you eventually break up, you will do so with more confidence in your decision and with lessons you can take with you into the future.

There really is no simple “Should I Break Up With My Boyfriend Quiz” that can substitute for deeper exploration. But hopefully these questions can get you started in thinking about your relationship in a more profound way and open up a path to making a wise decision about your future.

Can we save marriage from divorce? In a society in which nearly half, if not more than half, of marriages break up, this is a question with huge implications. It affects not only the couple themselves, but their children, their extended families, and even the community at large.

There are situations where divorce is the best option. In those cases, it is wise to aim for the healthiest divorce outcome for everyone involved.

However, there are also situations where divorce can be avoided to everyone’s benefit.

How do you know which situation you are in? Is yours a situation where you should attempt to save marriage from divorce?

First you want to ask some key questions

• Is the relationship abusive physically, emotionally or otherwise?
• Are there serious addictions involved?
• Are there serious personality disorders involved?

If any of these issues are present, then divorce is a much more likely option. However, even in these cases, there is sometimes a chance to save the marriage if both partners are willing to commit to seeking professional help and making fundamental changes.

If none of the factors above are present, then ask yourself these questions:

• What are the main factors causing us to consider divorce?
• In what ways might these surface factors actually be stand-ins for more fundamental underlying personality clashes?
• How might each of our childhood experiences have played into the way these issues affect us?

You see, many divorces are caused by the interaction between the unconscious childhood wounds of the partners involved. And, if the partners are willing to become conscious of these issues, and wisely use tools and resources – such as those provided in Getting the Love You Want – to help them do so, they can turn the clashes into an opportunity to grow even closer than before.

If your relationship is on the brink, but you want to try to save marriage from divorce, we will be sharing tools and ideas to help you do so.

Most of us interested in breakup advice understand that if a relationship has meant anything deep to us at all, then its breakup is almost certainly going to hurt in some way and to some degree. This experience of painful separation is an eternal one and is described by people in many ways. We talk about being heartbroken or crushed or devastated. All such terms, while somewhat vague, are useful and help us give a general name to our difficult feelings triggered by a breakup.

But labeling our breakup pain can become a problem when we begin to delve into the more specific and more serious conditions that can be associated with it. For example, one of the most common specific labels that people use during a breakup is that of depression. Many people, in the midst of their breakup pain, use this term and may even seek treatment for the psychological condition of depression. Some even find a doctor who agrees and are put on anti-depressant medication.

While it is true that some of those suffering after a breakup really do have depression, and should be treated for it, some of them are actually mislabeling themselves – or even being mislabeled by mental health professionals. What many of those mislabeled are actually going through is an experience of withdrawal from an addiction.

When a drug addict uses his or her drug, especially over time, it creates chemical changes in the brain and the rest of the body. They then become physically and/or psychologically dependent on the drug to the point where they may be unable to function without it. Once addicted, when they are unable to attain their depended-upon substance, they go into a state called withdrawal. This withdrawal can be a devastatingly painful, and, at its worst, even life-threatening, experience.

Well, believe it or not, a relationship can trigger addiction and withdrawal, as well. Of course, on some level, this has long been recognized by pop musicians, as evidenced by both recent songs such as “Your Love is My Drug” by Ke$ha, as well as older songs, such as “Hard Habit to Break” by Chicago, which features the lyric “I’m addicted to you baby. You’re a hard habit to break.” But, recent years have brought more support for this notion from those who offer breakup advice in the actual medical and mental health communities.

So how exactly does a relationship trigger addiction and withdrawal? Research is showing – and your experience may seem to corroborate – that intense attraction and attachment release certain chemicals in the brain. And just as with many other chemicals, certain people can become addicted to or dependent on these internally-released or “endogenous” chemicals. Then, if the relationship is taken away, the addict may experience a withdrawal from those chemicals that are no longer being triggered, just like any other drug addict may experience when they lose the substance on which they are dependent.

To more fully understand withdrawal from an addictive relationship, we should also look at what is happening psychologically. Many of us, whether we realize it or not, use intense relationships as a way to bury or block out awareness of painful memories and feelings about past experiences. This is especially true for those who suffered, and are trying to outrun the pain of, challenging family issues or various types of abuse or abandonment in their development. In fact, for some, this barrier function becomes the main purpose of relationships.

When such a person has a relationship end, and their partner is no longer there to help stimulate their internal chemicals and distract them, all of these years’ worth of painful past memories and feelings may surface at once. This can be an overwhelming experience. And it can bring on many symptoms that do mimic depression, such as loss of appetite, loss of pleasure in usually enjoyable activities and changes in sleep habits. In fact, it can be truly difficult for the average person to tell the difference between this withdrawal experience and that of depression.

However, despite these symptomatic similarities, it is very important to distinguish between normal heartbreak, depression or other disorders and withdrawal because they require different – sometimes even completely opposite – approaches to recovery and support mechanisms.

One of the central aspects of withdrawal from an addiction is that the feelings, by their very nature, push the person with tremendous force in exactly the “wrong” direction. So a person experiencing withdrawal after a breakup feels with every fiber of his or her being that the best thing to do, the only answer to their pain, is to desperately try to get back the person from whom they are separated. In fact, the drive to do so can be so strong that it is likely behind many of the tragic “crimes of passion” or “fatal attraction” scenarios that periodically take place. But the additional tragedy is that even if such a person did get their ex back, it would only ease the pain temporarily, while further sinking them into the cycle of addiction.

While it is natural in the midst of pain on the order of serious withdrawal to want it to go away as fast as possible, quick fixes aren’t the answer. In fact, the search for quick fixes is exactly what creates an addict in the first place. Instead, a person experiencing relationship addiction withdrawal should take some different, and sometimes counterintuitive, steps.

1. Do NOT run back to the person you are in withdrawal from, no matter how strongly you may feel driven to do so. Think of the feelings that urge you to return to them as powerful, but misguided, illusions.
2. Resolve to use this opportunity – perhaps for the first time in your life – to prove to yourself that you can face your past and its pain and, with the right support, develop the courage and strength to survive it.
3. Begin to educate yourself by reading books and resources about addictive relationships and related topics such as love addiction, sex addiction and codependence. They will help you make sense of what you’re going through and help you feel less alone.
4. Seek support groups and/or therapists that know about or specialize in relationship addiction or related fields like codependence. This can be crucial, as it is very difficult to go through withdrawal and not run back to the source of your addiction without support from other healthier sources. Don’t hesitate to ask openly if potential support people are aware of important distinctions such as those between normal heartbreak, depression and addictive relationship withdrawal. Ask if they are equipped to help you figure out which one you are experiencing and treat it accordingly.

Remember, most breakups hurt and the pain you are feeling may be simple, healthy heartache that will pass with time. Or it may be something more serious, but widely recognized like depression. By no means should you rule these out. Take the time and find the resources and qualified professionals necessary to help you if these are what you are experiencing.

But make sure that you and those who offer you breakup advice and support at least consider the possibility that you may be in withdrawal from a relationship addiction.