3. You should never force someone to love you or be afraid to lose you.
Many people decide to go on a break with someone in order for their partner to face the “scary reality” of what life will be like without them. The sad thing is – you should never feel the need in any relationship to have to “test the waters” and see whether or not your partner would fight for you. You should feel comfortable in the fact that the person you are with loves you enough to want to be with you – enough to fight for your relationship. You shouldn’t have to manipulate them and their emotions to get them to show you any form of love.
According to a Huffington Post Op-Ed on “a relationship break,” one woman recalls:
Calling a break was a way of breaking up without having to break up. The idea was that it would force him to confront the reality of losing me and, when he realised what life would be like without me, he’d try harder and be kinder. I wanted to use the break as a way to hurt him, to shock him into being a better and more loving boyfriend.
You’ll be shocked to learn that it didn’t work. Of course it didn’t. Anyone who needs to be pushed into loving you in the way you need to be loved probably isn’t right for you and definitely doesn’t value you. The reality of my break was that I spent three days crying, checking my phone and writing then deleting emotional emails. He got on with his life and waited for me to burn myself out, before sending me a terse three line email asking if I wanted to end it formally.
4. You end up growing apart and not growing together anymore.
Taking a break in your relationship puts some very real space in between you and your partner. In any relationship, the idea is to grow – as a couple – and individually. However, when you’re growing individually, you’re simultaneously growing as a couple, too. If you’re no longer growing as a couple because you’ve decided to wedge space and time between the two of you – you are growing apart. You begin to grow as an individual only, losing sight of the relationship and what it needs in order to prosper.
In time, if you two decide to try to make it work again after your break – you will be working on things that the old you used to do/need. You are no longer 100% the person you were before the break and it will only backtrack both of you into older, possibly worse versions of yourselves.