Three Ways to End Relationships That Respect the Humanity and Dignity of the Other

How to move away from the parts of you that want to ghost as a way to end relationships.

One of the most difficult relational processes is knowing how and when to end relationships.

Photo by franco alva on Unsplash

Many relationships have extremely small timeframes—that 10-minute conversation you had with the barista, or the relationship with your hairstylist that is geographically confined to when you’re sitting down in the barber/stylist’s chair.

Other relationships end naturally. People die. People move. Or, if you’re like me, you’re the one doing the moving. You become less engaged in a particular community or activity that organized relationships, and as such, never see people again.

To be fair, not all relationships need to have formal endings.

However, there are some relationships that do. I would argue that relationships that delve into the romantic or sexual arena fit into this category. (Unless there’s a clear understanding between both/all partners at the beginning that this relationship has a time or geography-limit. For instance, sex clubs highly discourage getting phone numbers from other people, setting a clear expectation that any relationship is confined between the four walls of the venue.)

Romantic and sexual relationships require a combination of:

1. Intense vulnerability, especially at the beginning of a relationship, where you’re sharing information about yourself in the search for common interests, experiences, and values.

2. The fantasy (or actuality, if a couple chooses to marry or identify as partners) of a prolonged continuation.

While Julia and I tend to work with established, long-term relationships, we’re mindful that the dating experience is fraught with immense levels of hope and frustration, especially as 21st-century daters are socially encouraged to take their time and settle less.

There are far more potential romantic and sexual relationships where interests and values do not align than there are potential relationships where interests and values do.

And that’s before we get to the termination of long-term relationships, when partners realize that there interests and vision for the relationship no longer align, or one partner behaves in a way that makes the relationship unsafe and refuses to seek treatment. However, marriages have a legal process that socially signifies the termination of the relationship, and provides the services of legal aide and a district judge, as painful as it may be.

And, if you’re me, you have roommates who throw you a “banana split party” on the day of your divorce. I will always be grateful to my five housemates in 2018 for their thoughtfulness in helping me through a terrible day.

I also guarantee you that it wouldn’t occurred to any of us to have a similar celebration if one of them broke up with their unmarried boyfriend or girlfriend.

Without culturally-sanctioned practices, daters are on their own to figure out how to effectively end a non-marital romantic or sexual partnership.

A healthy, mature way of ending a relationship would include graceful, respectfully-toned comments like, “We don’t communicate well together,” or “There’s not enough commonalities here.”

There could be a lot of stuff that comes up for you in the process. There may be tears. There may be immense emotional pain and “what if’s”. But communicating an end to a relationship shows that you respect the person, and the time, money, and emotional resources they contributed during the duration of the relationship, enough to create a clear ending.

There’s a pathway to closure for both parties, even if one person was ambivalent or not ready to end the relationship. The person can use the honest feedback of the relationship termination to both communicate more effectively in future relationships, as well as to better define what commonalities they’re looking for in future relationships. Or, perhaps you come to recognize that the honest feedback is way more about the unrealistic expectations of the other person.

You and I both know, however, that many relationships don’t end with this style of honesty and integrity.

Yesterday (10/14), Sarah Ward wrote an article called “Wait, did I just get ghosted?” on her Substack

Sex and Style

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Wait, did I just get ghosted?

As a quick note, ghosting is a way to end a romantic/sexual relationship in the most passive way possible: complete avoidance and disappearing.

Sarah wrote a beautiful letter to those of you who have been ghosted while dating. Or, if you’re like me, your separation/divorce involved a large volume of being ghosted. As Sarah notes:

“The thing about ghosting is that we are left holding the rope, wondering if they will pick up their end, without closure.

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of ghosting, you’ll understand. Without closure, you may find yourself wondering, “What could I have done differently? What if this was the one?”

There’s a fair amount of research about the immediate aftermath of ghosting, as well as potential reasons for that someone might choose ghosting, both of which we’ll get into in future Relationship 101s.

However, there aren’t any studies (to my knowledge) that assess for the long-term impact of ghosting: specifically, how does the experience of ghosting or being ghosted impact how a ghoster/ghostee does relationships six months (or longer) from now?

For instance, how likely is a person who ghosts to replicate patterns of avoidance in future relationships? To what extent does a ghostee carry the insecurities that arise with not knowing why a relationship or what they could have done differently influence anxiety in future relationships?

When Julia and I talk with folks about ending relationships, we invite them to consider three things:

1. What did this relationship teach me about myself?

2. What are ways that I contributed to the growing disinterest in the relationship, be that through my own behavior, or, more likely, differences between me and my values and preferences and those of the other person?

3. What are ways that I might want to do future relationships differently? How might I want to communicate differently? And what commonalities and similarities might I be on the lookout for in future relationships?

One research study, “When Your Boo Becomes Your Ghost: The Association Between Breakup Strategy and Breakup Role in Experiences of Relationship Dissolution”, explores the emotional differences between folks whose relationships ended by passive ways (i.e. ghosting) and more direct ways. Interestingly, they noted that ghosters and ghostees had varying emotional experiences in the immediate aftermath; some folks experienced more pain during direct breakups (although that might be due to the style by which the person breaking up communicated the dissolution) than they did in experiences in which they were ghosted.

But for the sake of this conversation, I think that describing the nuances of emotional pain is irrelevant. Breakups hurt. The endings of relationships elucidate grief, sadness, rage, and loneliness, regardless of how the breakup happens.

Julia and I think a better question for those who are considering ending relationships is the following:

How can I respect the humanity and dignity of the other person when letting them know that I want to end the relationship?

We want to offer three possibilities:

1. If the relationship has involved face-to-face interactions, make the interaction face-to-face (even if it’s a FaceTime) and time-limited. I get it. Tech offers the opportunity to efficiently send a quick text that says, “We’re done”, prohibiting you from bearing witness to the reaction of the other person. Part of healthy communication involves the ability to be present for others in the face of their own grief, and to sit with your own discomfort. In the breakup conversation, let the other person know you only have a short amount of time (I encourage between 15-30 minutes), and stick to the ending of that time.

2. Let the other person know what you’re thankful for about the relationship. Thank them for their time, vulnerability, and effort. Describe something positive that you learned about yourself in the relationship. (And make sure to not include a passive-aggressive jab about what you don’t want moving forward.)

3. Center the reasons for ending the relationship about the relationship itself, not about the other person. The two most common reasons that relationships end are because of a lack of commonalities or a breaking of some sort of agreement. Focus the conversation around one (or both) of those things. “We are different people, and we deserve to be in relationships with folks who have a bit more in common.” “This broken agreement is too hard to come back from. I’d prefer, for both of us, that we have relationships with fresh starts, so that I’m not always indebted to you (or vice versa).

Ending relationships with this level of forthcomingness requires a lot of bravery and internal courage. If you and your partner are considering ending your relationship, Julia and I would love to help you end the relationship in a way that treats both people with dignity and respect. Email us at sexvangelicals@gmail.com to learn more about how relationship coaching could help you.

Let’s heal together!

Jeremiah and Julia