Name: 8 Rules for Ending Relationships
Uploaded: 2025-06-17T18:07:29.000Z
Duration: 4 min 17 s
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Adverbs of degree

We live, many of us, in highly policed societies, where sanctions exist for the most minor infractions.

Modal verbs - B1

We might have to pay close to a month's salary for dropping a napkin in a park or driving at 22 miles an hour down a clear dual carriageway at 3:00 a.m.

But there is one area in our regulated world where few laws exist.

In relationships, unless there is violence or egregious abuse, there are no rules to speak of.

We can with impunity spend eight years with someone, and then, just as all their other options have closed, politely tell them that we've fallen in love elsewhere and walk out by nightfall.

And there is nothing the forlorn party can do other than weep and lose their minds.

But, even if no legal sanctions exist, this does not mean that notions of right and wrong cease to apply.

There are a host of rules around ending relationships that all good decent people understand, and here, framed for our consciences, are eight of the most important.

One, hurt them unbearably if you need to, but don't in addition steal any more of their time than necessary.

It's particularly unkind to pretend not to have noticed that a partner might have only a limited window in which to marry, start a family, or reconfigure a career.

The first instant that you realize it's not working is the instant to tell them it's not working, not after the return from the holidays, or towards the end of next year, or maybe the year after that.

If you're not fully proud of them, allow someone else to be.

If you really suspect you could do better, go out and do so.

Know that your plan B could right now be someone else's plan A.

Perhaps one can't stop developing unfaithful thoughts, but there's very little obligation to act on them.

Don't force them to end a relationship when it's you who want to get out.

Don't express your discomfort through ambivalence and a lukewarm manner until they get so upset, they eventually have to exit for their own survival, say you're fed up when you are, don't evasively hint as much.

Then tell them you love them when they ask, don't make them doubt their sanity by framing them as the one who wants to exit when they're deeply in love.

Don't give them the guilt to carry for what you want, but are too cowardly to do.

It hurts so much more when we don't quite know why a partner is leaving, we keep thinking it might be a mistake and that they'll soon come to their senses.

So give the ex a coherent explanation for why it simply can't and never will work.

One that will feel robust in the middle of the night and spare them the pains of boundless rumination, if you're old enough to be in a relationship, you're old enough to say in plain terms why you want to exit.

Stop trying so hard to be nice, allow them at least for a while to dislike you.

They need to develop the necessary resentment to save themselves, don't on top of it all insist on rescuing yourself image.

They don't need an ambiguous figure to make them feel repeatedly unsure where they stand, every ongoing sweet gesture you make is at risk of being misinterpreted as a sign of hope.

So allow yourself, where necessary, to be forgotten.

Don't pretend that there are no rules, they exist no less clearly than the ones that are on the statute books.

Retain your humanity through one of the most painful moments that you will ever put anyone else through, and pray that someone else will do the same for you if, and probably when, your turn comes around.