When Is the Right Time To Break up Unhealthy Relationship? Facebook Walk With Reid
Reid: Hello sex geeks! This is take two! Because for some reason I had bad a…bad cellphone connection and Facebook was kind enough to tell me that nothing was happening well. So we’re back! It’s Reid Mihalko from https://reidaboutsex.com/. It’s a sunny day here in San Jose look at that sun ladies and gentlemen. After all that rain it’s been awesome! And we’re going out on a quick little walk because this is one of my work weekends, geeking out with Cathy Vartuli from http://theintimacydojo.com/.
I’m taking a little break going on our little walk to talk about an interesting subject which a…kind of happens or shows up when it is like holiday time and for sex geeks, valentine’s is almost like a…almost like Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or something that like it’s a major holiday and for a lot of other people it’s also a major pain in the ass and when you notice around holidays happening, people tend to go through some stress and maybe start to question their relationships and maybe consider breaking up. Have you ever been to somebody who has broken up with somebody over the holidays? Or been broken up with? Then you know this phenomenon. And I haven’t really talked about on our little walks the nuances, the ins and outs of breaking up and transitioning or ending a relationship and let me take a pause and we’re just going to look at some of these beautiful flowers here in San Jose. There you go because there’s flowers everywhere and let’s just stop and smell the roses shall we? Very nice! Very nice!
So, breaking up is hard to do for a lot of people and a lot of people do it like don’t do it well and we spend so many of us…not maybe not you but so many people aren’t great at talking about what’s going on for them emotionally in relationships in general because we are so stucked to…for duration to be the metric of how we prove that we love each other you know the more he’ll that we go through, the…the more proof we have that we worked really hard on the relationship and that that’s how I proved that I loved you. And we… a lot of people, my mom and dad certainly kind of held all that anxiety and upset and frustration in because they weren’t trying to rock the boat in their relationship and they were walking on eggshells and that ended up being the thing that as the pressure cooker of all of not that not speaking up built up and built up and eventually exploded. Even though my mom and that did stay together, they were not very happy and there’s also the understanding that because of the way my mom and dad were raised the generation that they were of, they didn’t get role modelling really great communication skill sets and how to talk about difficult conversations and how to talk about their feelings and what was working and what wasn’t working in their relationship and in their marriage. So, you know for some people it’s not it’s not so much that they’re withholding information you’re like intentionally withholding, it’s just that if no one’s ever taught you how to talk about things, how would you talk about things? And maybe you’re in a relationship or maybe you have a friend who’s in a relationship where they don’t know how to talk about what’s actually going on and so they just kind of keep avoiding everything because they don’t have the words or they’re dating somebody or in a relationship with somebody who’s in that position. I just want to set the groundwork for why it can be so wobbly and wonky and then why on a certain…in certain situations that pressure cooker is just a ticking time bomb that then explodes maybe during a holiday. Especially a holiday that’s focused on love and romance and chocolate and it’s kind of all you know explodes then and then people have a really messy breakup and a messy breakup that hurts even more because it happened during a holiday and then you kind of anchor this you know every Valentine’s Day is the reminder of the time that so and so you know exploded the pressure cooker of your relationship and had a really sloppy or messy breakup. That groundwork there I’m not being an apologist or making excuses for you know bad behavior but we should have a conversation and talk about. One, how can you talk about what’s going on in two relationships more? Maybe you need to go see a therapist so you can talk it out in your head, have somebody who’s a trained listener encourage you to find better words for what’s going on to describe your feelings for you to think about and…and share with somebody ideas and…and feelings and emotions that maybe you’ve never shared before in a safe container because sometimes when you share with friends they are babbling to their friends or your other friends what’s going on with you and maybe Vaguebooking on Facebook and things like that that they’re worried for you and you know you’ve got a container now that it’s leaky and maybe things that are private that you’re not sure about exactly you know they…they’re just trying to get your clarity but now the stories out there and you’re trying to do like media damage control around your feelings when really if you just…if you were in a situation where you could hire a therapist or work with somebody like that that you could then kind of get clarity on your feelings and your thoughts without it being leaking out into the public. Once you start to get clarity on what you’re actually feeling, then it’s a conversation with probably the people you’re having relationships with about what’s actually going on for you. Whether you do that on Valentine’s Day or not, I’m not particularly attached to, like when you have it but at the same time you know maybe you want to wait till after the holiday or maybe you want to authentically use the holiday to share with somebody that you love or that you’re falling out of love with “hey, you know I know this is a romance holiday with chocolate and…and roses but what I’d love to give you is the gift of being honest and transparent and I’d love to have some deeper conversations about how it’s going with us. Because I’ve been noticing as we’ve come into this…this holiday that it’s bringing up a lot of questions for me.”
And there we have a puppy. Hello buddy! How are you? There we go. So you could use the holidays as a kind of the way to share with people. You know “hey, you know I’m…I’m feeling confused. I’m having feelings about things. I think we need to have a good talk.” And that way you’re not hiding your feelings and you know it might be appropriate for you or congruent for you to wait until after the holidays you know you’re…you’ve already got plans to go home for the holidays with the…with your in-laws. Hey buddy! There’s a lot of dogs here today. Say hello! You might have plans or ready to go home you know over the holidays to your in-laws or things like that, thanksgiving like all those things are bringing up pressure as well and then you’ve got relationships anxieties coming up. Maybe wait till after thanksgiving to initiate the big conversation. I’m going to leave that up to and your therapist or whatever to figure out what’s congruent for you and what’s healthy and safe for you. But thinking about like well, “how do I want to have this conversation and when is a good time?” There’s not always a perfect time but there can be a mindful time. The time when you’re like “oh! Okay. I’m going to wait till after the thanksgiving. I’m’ going to wait till after Christmas or whatever.” My only caveat to that is if you’re waiting more than two weeks to have this conversation, I think you should have it sooner than later like if thanksgiving is two weeks from now, maybe you should sit down and use your difficult conversation formula which you can get at https://reidaboutsex.com/convo and start initiating conversations rather than you’re waiting and hiding essentially the conversation for two weeks. Those are just my…my thoughts on that and kind of like my understandings I’m using for how and what happens to human beings when they’re certainly need to have a conversation and then sit on it for more than a week. Usually, it doesn’t end well. You’re stewing you’re stewing you’re stewing your loved ones notice that that’s happening and…and then they start to sense something’s wrong and then in that two-week period the pressure cooker is on supercharged and then it usually explodes at the Thanksgiving table or that weekend or something like that. So my…my thoughts have the conversation sooner but if you’re like for four days away from thanksgiving or whatnot maybe you can wait four days.
The other thing just to share is this all assumes that you’re having a conversation with a human being who is not being emotionally or physically abusive. I think in situations where you’re…. your health is seriously compromised and in danger, you need to extricate yourself out of those situations that can be tricky yet professional support. Go to organizations that deal with especially if its domestic violence situations where you have the kind of support from trained professionals to help you navigate those situations. That is not my area of expertise and….and so I’m immediately going to say go to other places, find those resources and please take advantage of them. I’m talking about when…. I’m taking about transition break ups that it’s basically a…you know a… air quote healthy relationship there’s just not a good fit where there’s a lot that you two haven’t talked about or even like you three or four if you’re in a poly relationship. And so you need to have those conversations and those conversations are probably leading too or it is an open conversation of collaborative creative conversation about whether you should transition your relationship but sometimes you’re pretty certain that you want to break up and transition relationship and you know your certitude…certitude? Your certainty isn’t really up for discussion and then it’s about how can you be kind, how can you be open and real with the people that you’re transitioning with to really have a conversation with them about “hey, I’ve come to this conclusion but I still feel like we should have a conversation about it. I don’t think I’m going to change my mind. I’m not asking you to try to change it but I feel like I owe it to you for us to be adults with each other and to…to have a real conversation. A real adult conversation.” And understand that you or your you know your loved ones may have emotional emotions come up emotional emotions come up that they don’t handle the news really well at first but can you show up for the next conversation and a series of conversations after that. I will put in the link a link to a…a teleclass that I did about ending bad relationships and how to kind of navigate and figure out for yourself if a relationship is a bad fit and if you should be considering ending it. So for some of you this might be a useful resource, for others of you no. Regardless if you’re in a bad relationship or if you’re in a healthy relationship what I would invite you to do sometime this year, probably don’t start it on Valentine’s is have a conversation with your loved one or loved ones, how would we handle a breakup? How would we pull off a…a break up really well if and when we ever needed to do that? That can be a really useful discussion for those of you who are dating still and entering into new relationships. Have the breakup conversation as a part of the dating experience. Get to know each other and how you break up, get to know each other and…and figure out how you want to transition relationships if you ever need to do that? You can learn a lot about each other and…and how from how and what you would need to do break up in a classy way? So I’m in….I advocate that people have that conversation no matter what. I…I don’t believe that you’re like creating the future or pulling it towards you and that kind of you know the secret kind of way you’re not creating a potential breakup by having a conversation about what would that be like and understand that everybody grieves in different ways. Most people don’t handle new information well especially when you surprise them so be gentle with yourself around your grieving process, be as compassionate as you can with those people that you’re transitioning with if you have to there if you choose to about their grieving process as well but take care of yourself and support and cheerlead the people that you’re breaking up with for them to get their needs met and take care of themselves as well and that can look like a lot of different things and maybe we’ll do another video on that one day but as we approach Valentine’s and all the romance I thought it was an interesting topic today talk about, Breaking up which is often hard to do.
Leave your comments. I’ll read your comments when I’m inside and it’s a little bit darker so I can’t actually see them but thanks so much for going on my walks and the… I’ll see you tomorrow! Leave a… make…make it rain! Make it rain some emoticons everyone. Bye!