When to Terminate a Relationship: Part One

You've been dating someone for a long time and you're wondering how long you need to continue dating him or her before you can have enough information to make a real decision, a tough decision, maybe a decision not to continue the relationship at all.

• When is long enough long enough?
  
• How do you know when you've given your relationship all the chances it deserves?

I want to tell you that terminating a relationship -- a romantic relationship -- successfully requires enormous skill. Unfortunately, both people usually do not agree on how or when this should be done. This is a big part of the problem -- that they don't agree. There are several considerations that relate to successful termination. One of the most important ones has to do with feeling confident that you have waited long enough -- that you have given the relationship every chance to demonstrate its long-term quality -- that you won't look back and wish that you had waited just a little longer.

I have developed five ideas about this over the course of my years of seeing people in psychotherapy. Five ideas that may help you know when long enough is indeed long enough to hold onto a dating relationship.

Idea No. 1
When you, your dating partner or both of you have been unhappy in your relationship for six months or longer, and you have tried your hardest to work on the specific problems you have identified, and there has simply been no progress and you are still very unhappy with each other, I would say you should be pretty certain that you have waited long enough.

It all depends on a lot of variables, of course, including:

• How outstanding you think this relationship could be?
  
• How dependent are you on this other person?
  
• How important it is for you to keep trying to make this relationship everything you need it to be?

If one or both of you have been unhappy with each other for six months or longer, and you've tried your hardest to work on the problems you have, and you're still really unhappy with each other because you've seen little or no progress, then I want to tell you that maybe you need to say, "Well, that's long enough. I've given it my best shot. I've tried my hardest."

People around the country say to me all the time, "Neil, be very careful about telling us to terminate a relationship because we don't have all kinds of candidates in the wings. It isn't like I can say, 'That's long enough for this one. I'll go on to the next one' ... There may not be a next one!"

Right now I want you to understand one thing: A bad relationship is a thousand times worse than no relationship at all.

There is the possibility that the other person will "shape up" and become the perfect person after you leave. But I have to tell you something: If you've tried for six months and that person hasn't tried to "shape up," the odds are very, very high that he or she also won't try in the next six months, or the six months after that, or any six-month period for the rest of his or her life, because six months is a long time for someone to demonstrate his or her consistency in not doing what is necessary in order to make the relationship work.

Idea No. 2
If the two of you have had some very stormy times, you probably don't even need to wait six months. Long enough is long enough when indeed something very unacceptable has happened between the two of you. And what is such an unacceptable thing?

First of all, if physical abuse has taken place between the two of you in a dating relationship, think about how much more likely it is that physical abuse is going to be part of your future relationship. About the time there is physical abuse between you and a person you are dating, I say back away from that relationship. That's long enough.

If there is loud yelling, I say, "I don't like that." As a matter of fact, if I got into a situation with someone in which yelling got out of control, I would wonder if long enough is already long enough. Belligerent behavior of any kind is unacceptable, as is intimidation. While I believe that anger mismanagement can be significantly changed, experiences of this mismanagement usually do tremendous damage to a couple's trust level, and repeated experiences are nearly impossible to overcome.

Idea No. 3
How about if the chemistry between you and the other person doesn't appear in the first six months? Should you then assume that that chemistry is probably not going to appear?

I believe that chemistry between two people is absolutely essential to the success of their eventual marriage. You must not get married to someone about whom you don't have that strong desire to touch, to hold hands, to put your arms around, to kiss, to whatever with them. You need to have that passion and that chemistry.

People say sometimes, "This is the perfect person, but we just don't have that much chemistry in relation to each other. What should we do?" Well, you can do one of two things. You can wait longer and see if it develops, or you can call it quits now. You can wait as long as you have time to wait, but there's always a greater risk as more time goes by.

Most of the time, when two people have not had chemistry in relation to each other for the first six months of their relationship, they will never develop chemistry for each other. You're playing with low odds if you wait longer than six months. If you do wait longer than six months, there is some chance the chemistry will develop, but there is also a big price to pay if it doesn't.

Next time we'll look at the final two ideas to help you decide when to terminate a relationship.

Dr. Neil Clark Warren is the founder of the Web's No. 1 relationship site, eHarmony.com