Long-Distance Relationship Breakup

Breakups are emotionally difficult. But long-distance relationship breakups are even more challenging because you have to do it online.

The biggest challenge of a long-distance relationship breakup is the inability to talk to your partner face to face. It’s hard to tell if the relationship is over for the lack of feelings or the inability to be together. The best way to handle a breakup is by talking to your partner about your feelings and doubts and make a decision together that works for both of you.

Can Distance Break a Relationship?

A relationship is a union of two people. These two people create a relationship, and they’re the ones who make it work, and they’re also the ones that might choose to end it.

Distance affects a relationship in many ways. But the two aspects that are most affected by distance are:

• communication and
• physical intimacy

When you are in a long-distance relationship, you mostly communicate online without seeing and feeling your partner in front of you. Physical intimacy is reserved for the times you visit each other, which can be weeks or months apart. If you find a way to manage your relationship over a long distance and visit each other regularly, you should be just fine.

Long-distance relationships have many benefits, like giving you extra time to pursue your own life goals and ambitions. It can work for a few months or a bit longer if they focus on what brings them joy.

As long as you can maintain a healthy relationship with trust and understanding, distance is not something you have to be afraid of.

When Do Long-Distance Couples Break Up?

There are several scenarios where you may want to break up a long-distance relationship.

1. One example is when you are in an existing relationship, and one of you have to move away. If it’s you, consider how long you’re going to be apart and how you feel about it. If you have to stay in the long-distance relationship for a few months, then it shouldn’t be much of a problem. However, if one of you is going to college or moving away for a few years, you may consider breaking up and perhaps stay friends.
2. Another scenario is when you are already in a long-distance relationship, and things aren’t working for you or your partner. When you love someone, you want to believe that you can maintain a healthy relationship over a long distance. It may be the case where you know how to manage a long-distance relationship, and you have the means to do so.

At the same time, you may discover that a long-distance isn’t working for you after a few months and you have no way of living together. In this case, if you get on well together, it’s best to maintain your friendship, rather than wait for your long-distance relationship to get worse.

Once your relationship is filled with arguments, it’s tough to find a way to a healthy relationship of any kind with the same person.

A sudden and unexpected breakup is one of the most unpleasant ways to end the relationship. It usually comes around when one partner decides to break up and then tries to find a way to inform the other about their decision. It’s a wrong way to go about ending a long-distance relationship that guarantees at least one of you getting hurt emotionally.

Why Long-Distance Couples Break Up?

There are many reasons why couples to break up in a long-distance relationship. But we can divide all these reasons and put them into two main categories.

1. In one category are couples who don’t fully understand what is a long-distance relationship. So when they start having problems because of the distance, they’re not prepared for it. When you don’t know how to handle the distance in your relationship, you’ll end up feeling depressed and frustrated most of the time. It leads to a toxic relationship and at some point to break up is unavoidable.
2. Another category includes couples who know how to handle their long-distance relationship. They are capable of having trust and understanding through effective communication and frequently visiting each other. The reason these couples break up is that sometimes feelings change and they can drift apart.

A long-distance relationship is a journey, and like any other journey, it has the beginning and an end. In this situation, partners feel connected like friends, intimate friends, but the romance isn’t there, so they decide to break up.

Reasons to Break Up a Long-Distance Relationship

Here are some reasons why long-distance couples break up:

• They don’t have a specific goal, a plan and a timeline.
• They have too much uncertainty, which causes doubts and worries.
• Poor communication that leads to confusion.
• Unnecessary fights and arguments that ruin the relationship.
• Travelling to see each other can be expensive, and not everyone has the means to do it as often as they would like or need.
• Staying in a long-distance relationship for too long has the risk of you losing attachment, romantic feelings, or developing feelings for someone else.

Break up signs in a long-distance relationship

Here are a few signs that your long-distance relationship is heading for a break up:

• You’re no longer happy in the long-distance relationship.
• Your conversations leave you sad and confused rather than excited and inspired.
• Lack of physical intimacy leaves you feeling sexually frustrated more often than satisfied.
• You don’t have a plan for where your long-distance relationship is going and how you will get there.

How to Break Up a Long-Distance Relationship?

When you feel your long-distance relationship isn’t working and it’s not going anywhere, you may consider breaking up.

When you feel the need to break up a long-distance relationship:

1. Avoid making a unilateral decision
2. Talk to your long-distance partner
3. Share your feelings and doubts
4. Discuss things that bother you
5. Express clearly what isn’t working for you and your relationship.
6. Give your partner a chance to express how they feel and what they think.
7. Take time to hear each other out and understand each other’s point of view.
8. Finally, and most importantly, if you decide to break up, make this decision together. You started a relationship together, so it’s only fair that both of you decide to end it.

There is a clear line between doing it the right way and the wrong way. Most people do it the wrong way by deciding to break up by themselves and then informing their partner about it.

These people spend most of their energy trying to figure out a way to inform their partner about their decision. Naturally, it’s a very unpleasant and painful process.

A better way to handle a breakup is by taking a step back from your final decision. Instead, express your thoughts, feelings, doubts, and concerns to your long-distance partner.

Tell your partner how you feel and what is working for you and what isn’t. It might just happen that you and your partner may be able to fix the problems that are bothering you, or they may agree with you that it’s time to break up.

As long as you decide to break up together with your partner, nobody gets hurt. You may, of course, feel sadness for a little bit, but there are also healthy ways to manage that.

So, how can you put it across to the person you care for?

In a caring way, with empathy, honesty and understanding. It is not an easy task, especially when you get overwhelmed with emotions, but that is the only way.

Unfortunately, most people are not taught to express their feelings, needs and expectations. So even with the best of intentions, expressing yourself to your partner can be difficult.

Here, at Couples Coaching Online, we understand the importance of leaving the relationship on good terms with as much understanding as possible. So, if you need help, see our coaching options or get in touch. We will show you how you can learn from your past relationship to create a healthier and happier ones in the future.

Expressing your deep emotions over the Internet can make things even more complicated.

How to Get Over a Breakup in a Long-Distance Relationship?

Getting over a long-distance relationship breakup can be a challenging period for anyone. Regardless of whether it’s a mutual break up or if it was a unilateral decision, it’s very likely you will still have a certain degree of sadness.

When you create a relationship, you invite another person to share your life with you, at least for some time. When this person is no longer part of your life, it’s natural to have such an emptiness for a short while.

If your relationship was exciting, you need to find another way to bring fun into your life after you break up. Even if your long-distance relationship was a struggle, you might feel that it will take some time to adapt to this change. However, on this occasion, you will also feel relief.

How to Move on From a Long-Distance Relationship Break Up?

Moving on from a long-distance relationship is like finishing a chapter of a book. You chose another person to take a journey through a part of your life. But at some point, this chapter ends, and another one begins.

Before you can get fully immersed into the next chapter of your life, you should make peace with this one.

Metaphor aside, when you break up a long-distance relationship, ideally as a mutual decision, you need some time to process what happened and reflect on your relationship.

1. Take time to look at what didn’t work in your relationship
2. Learn from your mistakes
3. Figure out what you can do differently
4. Make adjustments for a future relationship.

A break up creates a void in your life, and many people rush into creating the next relationship to fail like last one. But having this void gives you space to think and process things that worked and things that didn’t.

You can discover things about you that you wouldn’t have known before. Going through this process helps you grow as a person and recognise the things you like and the ones you don’t.

After you’ve taken some time to reflect on this relationship, you will be emotionally and intellectually prepared to create a more loving relationship with someone else.

If you don’t take the time needed for you to process all the emotions you feel, you are likely to end up with the same problems, just with a different person. If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you will keep repeating them.

Even though it may seem counterintuitive and frustrating, that is the reason why people attract the same type of partners with the same kind of problems.

Conclusion

Long-distance relationship breakups are often seen as something tragic and uncomfortable.

It can be tragic, and it can bring a lot of suffering if you or your partner make a unilateral decision to break up.

For some reason, it became a norm for one partner to decide that it’s time to break up and find a way to inform the other partner about their decision. They spend most of their energy thinking how to do it whether to do it on the phone, text or writing a breakup letter. All of these are nonsense; that’s why it feels like a struggle.

A healthier way to break up:

1. Take a step back from having to decide on your own.
2. Tell your partner what’s not working for you in your long-distance relationship.
3. They might help you figure things out.
4. If your feelings have changed or the circumstances are no longer working for you or your partner, breakup can actually be the best thing for both of you.

As long as your breakup is a mutual decision — everyone feels involved, and nobody gets hurt. It’s that simple.

To help you along, check out these articles on communication, intimacy and common problems.

How Healthy is Your Long-Distance Relationship?

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GETTING SOME HELP

I hope this article answered some of your questions. If you are struggling and could do with more help, check out our coaching options.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to prevent long-distance relationship breakup?

You can prevent a break up by talking about your thoughts, feelings, doubts, and concerns openly and honestly with your long-distance partner. If you can recognise and address all the issues that bother you, there is no reason for you to break up.

Is distance a reason to break up?

Distance affects a relationship in several ways. If you can understand how the distance affects your relationship and find a way to handle it, you won’t need to break up. However, you may encounter problems that you can’t fix. Maybe your long-distance relationship lasted for too long. If this the case, it’s okay to break up, as long as it’s a mutual decision.

How do you break up a long-distance relationship?

Usually, breakups are one-sided. People who consider a breakup try to find a way to tell their partner that they no longer want to be in the relationship. First of all, when you decide to end your long-distance relationship, it’s a decision that you should make together with your partner.

How to deal with a long-distance relationship break up?

Dealing with a long-distance relationship break up isn’t as hard if you do it properly. Suppose you decide to break up a long-distance relationship and inform your partner about your decision. In that case, you’re going to bring a lot of suffering to your partner and yourself. Instead, try talking to your partner about the things that aren’t working and make that decision together.

How to survive a long-distance relationship break up?

You only need to survive a long-distance relationship break up if you’re doing it the wrong way. If the decision to break up is mutual, there is no need for struggle, suffering, and surviving. If you talk about everything openly and honestly with your long-distance partner as long as you are on the same page, you can find a way that works for both of you.

Can you fix a long-distance relationship break up?

You can fix a long-distance relationship before you break up. A simple way to do it is to talk to your long-distance partner about things that aren’t working for you. When you discuss all the issues you are experiencing with your long-distance partner, you might find a solution to these problems. If you can fix problems in a long-distance relationship, you no longer need to break up.

How to handle a long-distance relationship break up?

The best way to handle a long-distance relationship break up is to keep in touch with your long-distance partner. Hopefully, it was a mutual decision and not a unilateral one. It’s okay to stay in touch to discuss your feelings even after a breakup. You spend some time together, which means you are intimately familiar with each other. So the person you broke up with can be the best person to help you through this breakup.

How do you know when it’s time to break up in a long-distance relationship?

If you pick up on some of the signs that your long-distance relationship isn’t working, you know that something needs to change. Suppose you are struggling and suffering in your long-distance relationship instead of having fun and enjoying it. In that case, it’s time to reassess your relationship. When your long-distance relationship isn’t working, you can try to fix it, or you can talk to your partner, and together you may choose to break up.

Should we break up a long-distance relationship?

You should break up a long-distance relationship if both you and your partner agree that it is the best thing for everyone. A mutual break up is the way breakups should be. You may be the one who wants to break up or maybe it’s your partner who wants to break up. As long as you discuss your relationship and make all your decisions together, you will be able to maintain harmony, even if you decide to break up.

How do you politely break up?

It’s always better, to be honest than polite. When your relationship is in trouble, the last thing you want is to be polite about it. Trying to be “nice” about leaving a relationship is a very shit way to go about it, don’t do it! Your feelings can change, your needs may be unfulfilled, and your expectations may not have been met, which happens all the time.