Relationship Break-up Advice: Before It’s Too Late 

Can relationship break-up advice help save you and your loved one before it’s too late? Absolutely. In most cases, lack of knowledge and poor communication within the couple is what leads to a break-up.

If you really want to salvage and improve your relationship, you need to be proactive. Sometimes, as we'll see, you will need to go at it alone at first. This will require patience and courage.

For an in-depth guide on how to save a relationship, we strongly recommend:

Amy Waterman's Relationship Break-Up Advice

We’ll list here some steps you can take at the first signs a breakup is in the horizon.

First, you need just a few things to get started:

• Time—to reflect, without interruption, on the course your relationship
  has taken over the past week, month, year... 

We know that finding time might be a tall order these days, with everything going on in
our lives. But it’s imperative that you find some. It doesn’t need be much. Fifteen minutes
at a time will suffice, as long as it is free of interruptions.

• A quiet state of mind—for the duration of the written exercise below. 

You can grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and sit at your favorite corner of the
house. Or go to a café for half an hour. This is your time, and you deserve peace of
mind and tranquility. Einstein said that problems can’t be solved at the same level of
mind in which they were created. So you need to create a different internal environment
for the solutions to appear.

• Pen and paper (or recording device)—to jot down your thoughts and
  revelations. 

Identify the Troubles in the Relationship

Draw a line down the middle of a second sheet of paper. Put your name at the top of
the first column, and your partner’s name above the other column. You will use each
column to add the items of the list to either your column or your partner's.

Write down in your column, the list of the biggest problems your relationship faces.
Take your time. You need to have a clear picture of what you’re dealing with.

Personal Action Scan

Focus honestly (without sugar coating!) on your role in the interplay, positive and negative, between you and your partner. Understanding won’t come about if you can’t or won’t
take an honest assessment of your actions, so dig deep. This personal action scan is
for you only, so no one’s going to judge you… (except perhaps yourself, but that’s another
story). Change can only come about when you drop the pretense of how you want things
to be, and see your actions in the relationship as they really are.

A tip for completing this part of the exercise successfully is to first write down fast and
without censoring yourself, without thinking too much about what you’re jotting down.
You can fill out the paper in no time, and then do a second draft on a second piece of
paper, this time transcribing a selection of what you first wrote down. The idea behind
this is that our conscious mind can sometimes get in the way of a true solution at the
beginning (these are called resistances in psychology). So at first, write down fast without objections of either style or content.

Through Your Partner’s Eyes 

Here’s some crucial relationship break up advice:

• Carefully consider what your partner would say are the biggest problems
  in your relationship. 

Write your understanding of your partner’s feelings and concerns in the other column.

Why is this crucial, sometimes even more so than writing down what your own concerns
are?

Because,

1. It shows whether and how much you know about what is bothering your partner,
2. It gives you a chance of experiencing things from a different point of view than
   your own.

Remember, you are the one doing this exercise. Therefore, any transformation stemming
from it will start with you. The more you know about what your role is in the problems (not
for self blame but to create awareness), the better will be the chances that you can do
something about it.

Action Plan 

Take your pick of a couple of items from each column, and brainstorm on the most
effective things you can do to improve the situation(s). Write down an action plan and
real daily steps you can and will make, and start implementing those changes now.

Again, this is your exercise, your list and your transformation. Not your partner's. It is
best if at the beginning you leave him out of this process. People usually don't react well
to being pressured into any sort of change.

So, the best relationship break-up advice we can give you, is take pride in the changes
you are committing to making, without any expectations that your partner will follow suit.
Usually, by the mere fact that you'll be making positive changes, your partner will too,
in a natural, sometimes even unconscious, way.

Visit Amy Waterman's website and sign up for her Free 6-Part Mini Course:

Relationship Break-up Advice

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