When to Terminate a Relationship: Part Two

This is the second article in a two-part series. Click here to read Part One.

Neil Sedaka said that "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do," and he was right. Even if ending a relationship is the right decision, the task of looking someone in the eyes and saying, "I'm not interested in pursuing a relationship with you," is extremely difficult, often leading to feelings of guilt and self-loathing. But if you are to look for a mate and finally choose well, you must master the skills necessary to assess a relationship and, if need be, bring it to a sensitive end. In this two-part series we're examining:

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

In the previous installment, we looked at how long to give a relationship, some reasons to immediately terminate a relationship, and the mystery of chemistry. Click here for ideas one through three. And now to continue:

Idea No. 4
I know of some couples who like each other a lot at certain times, but at other times they don't like each other much at all. There are certain qualities of the one person that are very attractive to the other person, and there are certain qualities that are very unattractive. Sometimes they are so positive toward the other person, yet sometimes they are so negative. They are what we call "ambi valent." That is, they have two valences toward that other person. They have two sets of feelings.

Do those marriages work? Not very well. There's too much stormy time. If you get too many storms going in a relationship, you've got a lot of trouble on your hands. You can flood out the relationship during the bad times.

Can you try to build your relationship so that those bad times don't exist? Yes, that's an idea, but most of the time in a marriage, you live so much of your life together that it's very hard to ignore the possibility that the negativity and the second side of that ambivalent nature is going to come up in the relationship.

Can you increase the positive side in the ambivalence, thus making that ambivalence into a minor concern? If you were coming to me, I'd ask you to tell me all the ways that you find yourselves being very positive in relation to one another. I would list them down on a piece of paper and ask, "Can you make a life out of those ways?"

I would then ask you to tell me about all the things that cause a negative reaction toward the other person. If the negative things concern spirituality, politics and kids, and you tell me that those are areas that are central to your life, I'm going to be worried about that.

Ambivalent relationships can be very, very difficult. They can create such a sense of desperation in you. It's hard to give them up because, on the positive side, you just like so much of what you see. It's hard to walk away from that in order to get rid of the negative side, but often times you have to do it. If things don't change over a six-month period of time, you probably have a pattern going -- a pattern that will never change.

Idea No. 5
The fifth area that I want to address is when there is a low level of certainty about the wisdom of investing more of yourself in the relationship. You just aren't sure at all that this is the right relationship for you.

"He's a nice guy, I like his mother, I like his father, he has a really nice family, and he's always been very kind and considerate to me ... but I don't know, I just don't get excited about it ..."

Comments like these indicate that you've got a kind of a low level of drive. Making a marriage work takes energy -- boy, does it take energy! You've got to fill your energy tank on a frequent basis, and the more natural it is, the better off you are. If you need to fill your energy tank and work hard just to understand the other person or feel good about the other person, that's tough.

Here's what I'd suggest: Go see someone like myself, a psychologist, who's been at it for a long time and who can see you for just five sessions (don't make a career out of seeing this person). When you're there, I'd like you to say, "Here's what I like about this other person and here's what I don't like about this other person."

My suspicion is that, given this low level of energy, your list will be short on both sides. There will be some things you like, but not very many. There will be some things you don't like, but not very many. It's kind of like you just don't have much drive to be in the relationship. The big questions I would ask you are these:

• "What would it be like five years from now if you say no to this person right now?"
  
• "What do you think you would look back and feel?"

If you think you'd say, "I think he was a good person, and I know that he's married now, but I don't have many regrets," there's your answer.

When you get married, make sure it's a big emotional thing for you. Make sure that you just love the other person so much.

Marylyn and I were in different parts of the country during parts of our courtship, and I can still remember that everything about my mind was on her. I was going to graduate school, and Marylyn was as a flight attendant for an airline. We wrote to each other two full type-written pages every day, and I would look out the window of the classroom I was in, waiting for that mailman to come because I could just not wait to get her letters.

That energy has served me well. Her energy was similar and has served her well through these long years of our marriage. That's what I want for you: plenty of energy in the relationship.

Well, those are the five ideas. Remember this: The likelihood is that if a relationship is going to get good, it will get good early on, and then you'll have a little bit of a tough time holding on to the goodness over the years. If the relationship takes quite a while before it gets good, it's quite an unusual relationship. Six months is probably long enough to wait.

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