The Breakup Point
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We never really talked about breaking up in the blog. Today is going to be the first of a few blogs in which I will talk more about this. In this blog, I want to discuss something called “the breaking point.”
A lot of you have been in multiple relationships. I would say all of you have probably been in at least one relationship. No matter in how many relationships you’ve been, however, all relationships have what I call a breaking point.
You may have been in a four year relationship, but you might have hit that breakup point at year two. It’s like the television shows that “jump the shark” according to that website, meaning a good show stops being good but remains on the air for one or more seasons after that.
Every relationship has a breakup point. The breakup point is the point in the relationship where the fighting escalates to a place where you no longer feel like you’re understood by your partner. All of a sudden the sex stops, the communication stops, and you are living like roommates.
You get into that dynamic when you’re at the point in a relationship where you are trying to understand each other, but then you get so frustrated because you feel like you just don’t understand each other anymore. When that happens, you end up just kind of coexisting in that new dynamic.
It is this dynamic which leads to a lot of the parts of your relationship deteriorating. The sex decreases. The communication decreases. Maybe you stop kissing each other goodbye or stop texting each other during the day.
However it manifests itself, when you get to this place you are at the breakup point. It is the breakup point because the longer you stay in that dynamic after the sex, communication and tender moments stop, the harder it is to regain the original dynamic in that relationship and, eventually, it can’t be regained. That’s why I call this the breakup point.
I know I’ve been there in relationships. I know couples who haven’t had sex in years, and they can’t even imagine getting back to having sex with each other because they’ve hit the breakup point.
In the beginning of a relationship (which I call “the honeymoon stage”), you are learning about each other and making efforts to create romantic moods and nice evenings. When you’re in that stage, you are really working at building your relationship.
Then, at some point, you start to bump heads with each other and the dynamics change. You take away all of the nice things that you were doing the first year and a half or two years (or for however long it was), and then you move into a new dynamic moving forward. That is the breakup point.
The longer you stay in that dynamic and the further away you get from the dynamic you had during the honeymoon stage, the more likely it is that you’ll ever get it back (and, after a point, you won’t). You’ll never go back to the original dynamic, resentment builds and you get in your head too much.
You are no longer about feelings, and you start really punishing each other. “Well he hasn’t done this for me, so I’m not going to do this for him” are the kind of thoughts that take root.
When your relationship gets that way, you hit the critical point or you hit the breakup point. The critical is point is where one of two things will happen.
You are going to get back to the way things were by immediately forgiving, forgetting, loving and becoming aware of it, or you are going to continue the relationship with the bad dynamic in place and wait for the time years down the road when you realize you were at the breakup point years before that.
So if you are going through this right now, you need to look at your partner and think to yourself “Do I want to get back to the way we were, or do I want to realize two years down the road that we were at the breakup point now and did nothing about it?”
When you are in this place do you stay in ego, finger-point and defense mode? Look back at your last two relationships, and think about how they ended. What all of you are going to discover when you do that, is that you hit the breakup point in each of those relationships long before they actually ended.
Now, let me be clear about one thing. I am not telling you to quit a relationship simply because things get frustrating.
There comes a point, however, where the endless battle can’t be won. That is the point where neither one of you are willing to understand, fully compromise and do the things necessary to move forward.
That is when you stop caring. That is when you sleep on separate sides of the bed. That is when you reach the breakup point.
We don’t cover breakups enough here in the blog. In another blog, I am going to talk about the art of breaking up with someone.
Nowadays, dating is more competitive than it’s ever been — download this free report to learn 6 proven skills to stand apart & succeed in the modern dating world.
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David Wygant
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010
karl
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010
karl
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010
José Colín
Monday, May 24th, 2010
Cathy J
Monday, May 24th, 2010