When Love is Real, but the Relationship Still has to End…

One of the incredibly difficult realities I regularly witness in separation is someone making the decision to end a relationship with a person they still deeply care about.

Sometimes there are simply fundamental incompatibilities and practical limitations that, over time, become increasingly difficult to ignore.

And so comes the painful decision to end or transform a romantic connection despite the love that remains.

I have supported many people through separation who have recounted similar experiences.

Sometimes involving betrayal, sometimes the deterioration of connection and communication, but often not without underlying love or care for the human they had dedicated a good portion of their life to.

And upon recently witnessing an old friend move through a break-up, something I often tell my clients was reaffirmed for me.

That break-ups and separation are most often deeply impactful on both people, regardless of who initiated the decision.

In this piece, we'll explore the similar, but often very different, experiences of separation depending on which side of that decision a person sits.

When the Ending Feels Like Betrayal

Firstly, it is incredibly common for the person on the receiving end of a break-up to feel betrayed and abandoned.

This can be true regardless of whether there has been an objective betrayal or abandonment.

Because suddenly they are trying to reconcile the words and promises that had once been spoken with the reality now unfolding in front of them.

And that makes sense to me.

When we love someone, we don't just form an attachment to the person standing in front of us. We often form an attachment to the future we imagine or even agreed we would have with them.

We create an internal story.

This is my person.

They are going to be here.

This is who I will grow old with.

And when that future suddenly disappears, our nervous system doesn't necessarily respond with:

"Oh well, upon careful consideration, it appears we have some fundamental incompatibilities that make continuation of this relationship unwise." 😂

It experiences sudden loss mixed with confusion...

But you said you were my person?

And in that space, as our nervous system struggles to reconcile the incongruence between words and imagined or agreed futures, it is also quite normal to experience a radical shift in beliefs:

You never cared about me.

You never loved me.

You just used me.

You just wanted me for X, Y or Z.

It was all a lie... you are not trustworthy!

When Anger Protects Us From Grief

All of this can form part of our nervous system's protective mechanisms, because these stories allow us to access anger.

Anger is a powerful emotion because it can serve as a mask or guard, protecting us from emotions that can feel much harder to experience... the depths of grief, heartbreak and sadness.

If we can be angry at them, then losing them may not hurt quite as much.

But that isn't the only way anger can protect us here.

Because if we can remain entirely focused on how badly the other person treated us, we don't have to look at ourselves and the role we played in co-creating the circumstances we now find ourselves in.

In the scenario of fundamental incompatibilities, that might mean acknowledging the choice to participate in a romantic partnership in which those incompatibilities existed from the beginning — and therefore, somewhere beneath all the hope and love, a ticking clock on the romantic connection may always have been present.

In other relationships, it may mean recognising the simple truth that cycles of conflict and disconnection are generally a two-party dance.

The Person Who Ends the Relationship Can Grieve Too

So far, I've spoken largely about the impact on the person receiving the decision to break up.

But what about the person making it?

This brings me to the second reality that was reaffirmed for me. And this is the one that often surprises people:

It is extraordinarily common for the person who ends a relationship not only to hurt too, but to experience profound grief of their own.

The decision to leave a long-term relationship is rarely something that simply materialises on the day the separation occurs. Often, the person initiating the separation has wrestled internally with the decision long before they finally act upon it.

And this is where we can also see not only sadness and grief in the person initiating the separation, but guilt.

This can be true even where there may be infidelity and moving on to invest in that other connection. Because they weren't simply making a decision and walking happily into the sunset. They were witnessing someone they loved hurting because of decisions they had made.

And perhaps even harder, they hear the meanings that person begins to make from their pain, such as:

Men can't be trusted.

Men only want women for sex.

There are no good men in the world.

There are, of course, many who grapple with similar beliefs about women, although in reverse, the belief often centers around money rather than sex.

But the thing is, the person making the decision to separate is generally not responsible for creating these generalised beliefs.

More often they are beliefs that developed much earlier through childhood, attachment experiences or previous relationships. And now the nervous system is now making meaning of current events in a way that affirms what it already feared to be true.

Again, this is something incredibly common and very human.

Compassion Does Not Mean Taking Responsibility for Every Meaning

And this is where I think relationships and break-ups require us to hold an incredible amount of complexity.

Because we can be the source of actions that result in another person experiencing pain, without being responsible for every meaning their nervous system makes from that pain.

We can meet their hurt with compassion and take accountability for the things that genuinely belong to us - for it is true, sometimes people do hurtful things and do break trust.

We can also be kind, sensitive, honest and gracious so that we avoid causing unnecessary additional harm.

But we are not ultimately in control of the meaning another person makes of the break-up, nor the beliefs they choose to carry forward beyond the usual period of grief and healing that follows.

Importantly, staying in a relationship that requires us to abandon something fundamental about ourselves cannot be the price we pay to prevent another person from experiencing grief or having their wounds activated.

Because in my experience, doing so ultimately tends to do more damage to both people and any children than the break-up itself.

And this brings me to perhaps the ultimate truth about break-ups.

Love and Leaving Can Coexist

A person can deeply love and care for you and still initiate a separation.

And when they do, it is often not "easier" simply because they were the one who made the decision.

Of course, there are people who walk away seemingly hardly impacted.

But amongst the many people I have supported through separation, I am yet to encounter someone who initiated the ending of a meaningful long-term relationship without experiencing some combination of:

• Grieving the loss of the partnership.

• Feeling guilt as they witness the other's heartbreak.

• Missing their former partner.

• Questioning whether they are making the right decision.

• Grieving the future they once imagined together.

And this can be just as cyclical for them through the process of grief as it is for the person who was "left". Because often, initiating an ending does not mean that the relationship was meaningless or that the love wasn't real.

To the contrary, two people can love each other deeply and still not be able to create a relationship in which they can both authentically thrive.

And perhaps one marker of healing after a break-up is reaching the point where we are able to hold two seemingly contradictory truths at once:

I loved you/They loved me.

And I/They could no longer choose this relationship.

Neither truth necessarily makes the other a lie.

Rather, this simply represents the heartbreakingly human complexity of love in a modern world where we are living longer, experiencing multiple growth cycles and have the privilege of being able to expect more from our relationships than our grandparents did.

The privilege to choose a life in which we thrive in love, rather than just survive.

Navigating Separation With Care

Ending a relationship with someone you still love can be one of the most emotionally complex experiences to navigate.

Whether you are the person initiating the separation or the person receiving that decision, there can be grief, guilt, anger, fear, uncertainty and an enormous amount of meaning-making to work through.

But separation does not have to become a battle simply because it hurts.

If you would like support to navigate separation with greater clarity, care and intention, while reducing unnecessary conflict and protecting what matters most, a Collaborative approach to separation may be for you. Book your First Steps Session today to start your journey.