Leaving someone: deciding, telling them, holding firm

This guide is psychoeducational content. It does not replace professional support. If your partner has been violent, threatening or controlling, or if you are afraid of their reaction, do not announce the break-up alone and unprepared: the moment of separation can be a period of increased risk. Read section 6 and our programme Coercive control: recognising it and getting free, and contact a specialist helpline in your country or, if you are in immediate danger, the emergency services. If your partner threatens to kill themselves, read section 11. If you are the one thinking about dying, call your doctor the same day. Allow about thirty-five minutes to read.

1. Before you begin

You have known for a while that you want to leave. Perhaps for weeks, perhaps for years. You have put off the conversation: it wasn't the right time, there was a birthday, a holiday already booked, a hard patch for the other person. Every evening you tell yourself it will be tomorrow.

Or perhaps the decision is very recent, and you don't know how to say it to someone who suspects nothing.

Three things, straight away.

Wanting to leave does not make you a bad person. You can end a relationship with respect, and even with tenderness. What hurts most, as a rule, is not the decision itself but the way it is done: the lies, the vagueness, the break-up in stages, the announcement that never quite ends.

There is no way to leave someone without hurting them. If you wait until you find one, you will wait a long time. There are, however, ways that do less damage, to them and to you.

Delaying spares no one. Every month spent in a relationship you have already left inside is a month in which the other person invests in something that no longer exists, and in which you live a double emotional life.

Who this guide is for

For you if you have decided to break up, or are about to.

For you whatever the length of the relationship: a few dates, a few months, living together, a marriage.

It applies whatever the sex and orientation of the partners, whether or not you live together, with or without children.

If you are still genuinely unsure, if you change your mind from one week to the next, read Stay or leave: moving past indecision first. This guide assumes the question is no longer "am I leaving?" but "how?".

What this guide is not

It will not tell you whether you are right to leave.

It does not teach you how to break up so as to "stay on good terms" at all costs: sometimes that is possible, sometimes not, and it does not depend only on you.

It does not replace legal advice if you are married, in a civil partnership, own property together or have children. For what comes next, Divorce: getting through the separation for yourself and Supporting a child or adolescent through their parents' separation take over.

How it is organised

Sections 2 and 3 describe what the person who leaves goes through and what research says about it. Sections 4 to 6 help you check the decision and identify situations where safety comes first. Sections 7 to 11 are about telling them: preparing, choosing the moment, finding the words, facing their reactions, including threats. Sections 12 to 16 deal with what comes after: holding to the decision, practical arrangements, children, the people around you, and your own grief.

2. What the person who leaves goes through

Guilt

It is the most common emotion. Guilt at making someone you loved suffer, at "destroying" a family, at disappointing the people close to you, at not having tried hard enough, at breaking a promise. It is all the stronger when the other person has done nothing seriously wrong, and when the reason for leaving comes down to one sentence that is hard to say: "I don't love you the way I used to."

No script

People who are left have models: songs, films, friends who comfort them. People who leave have almost none. You don't know what to say, how much explanation to give, how long to stay, whether to comfort or not. Without guidance, you improvise, you dither, you stay vague so as not to hurt, and you hurt more.

Fear of the reaction

Fear of tears, of anger, of pleading, of reproaches. Fear of not holding firm in the face of the other person's pain. Fear, sometimes, of a violent reaction or a desperate act.

A grief already under way

Often the person who leaves has gone through part of the grieving alone, for months: the sadness, the doubts, the gradual detachment. They may feel guilty for no longer being as sad as the other person is going to be. That is not a lack of feeling: it is a difference in timing.

The villain's role

In the eyes of the other person, and sometimes of the family, mutual friends or even the children, the one who leaves becomes the one who "wrecked everything". Even when the relationship was unhappy for both. It is worth preparing for this, and not trying to justify yourself to everyone.

Relief

It is there too, sometimes from the moment you tell them. It can come as a surprise and bring shame. It does not mean you did not love. It means a weight has lifted.

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