PlanJam!From your screen to the scene

When it's over…it's over.

There are some times when you’re in a relationship and you know it’s just not going to work. Though you want desperately to hold on for dear life as the relationship slips away, it’s never a good idea to try and force a relationship to work. Usher said it best in his song "Burn" – sometimes you just have to let it go.

There are other times when you already know that your relationship is headed for a dead end. It might have felt good for a few months or even for a couple of years, but you know that it’s just going to end with an ugly breakup. It happens very subtly; often times, you’ll wake up one day and realize that your significant other is just not the person you want to spend your life with. Instead of hanging around for three more excruciating years, you just have to go ahead and end the thing.

Put that person out of his or her misery. If it’s that obvious that things aren’t working, then you can be pretty sure that they know it as well. You can’t let fear or a doubt about the future guide your decision in these cases. There is really nothing uglier than a relationship that sits on the edge, hanging on when it should have been ended years ago. All of your friends know it, all of your family knows it, and it’s time that you realize it as well.

There are a couple of different ways to close out a dead end relationship. Since these break ups happen as the result of a general problem with the relationship and not one specific ugly instance, you need to let the person down easy. It’s not like they cheated on you! Spare their feelings a little bit, so that they won’t have trouble committing to a relationship in the future. The best way to do this is to be honest and let that person know exactly where you stand. Honesty is the best policy when it comes to breaking off a long term relationship that was in the dumps.