Taking a Break in a Relationship: Does It Work?

20.02.2020

Love relationships require a lot of work on personality from both partners. During the crisis, lovers do not just stand up and decide on the relationship break. The temporary pause helps one reach a new stage, while for others it can become the end of the union.

Often friends advise a couple to break off relations for a while, while parents say that a break can ruin them. The man and woman are completely confused. Not fading feelings, common life, duties, and affection do not allow parting, but a complete feeling of dissatisfaction encourages them to take a break in the relationship. Finally, does taking a break from a relationship help and is it good or bad to take a timeout?

Why Do Couples Take a Break in a Relationship?

In some cases, you need to take a temporary break to ponder the situation, be alone and hear your true feelings. It is important to admit to yourself why you have a desire to step back: is it a lack of personal time or unwillingness to stay with a partner because of lying in a relationship? Conclusions will help make the right decision.

It helps focus on yourself. When you are left alone with unresolved problems, taking a break from a relationship, it causes a storm of emotions. You may feel rejected or abandoned, even if you have initiated a break. On the other hand, you can become overly alert and prone to defensive behavior, being sure that your partner will cheat on you meanwhile on a website to meet girls or spend time with someone behind your back. Most conditions can interfere with the restoration of relationships. Time spent alone will do more harm than good. Therefore, during a break, it is important to deliberately drive away negative thoughts about a partner. Instead, try to accept the idea that anger is preventing you from seeing the full picture of the situation. Refrain from complaining to others and yourself. Instead, do something useful: go for a walk, go in for sports, or do household chores. Any activity that distracts your thoughts from conflict is suitable. If during these activities you return to a state of fear or anger, let go of these feelings and remember that to take a break in a relationship was the choice of the two of you. Think about the fact that perhaps in your situation there are no unambiguously right and wrong. There are two points of view in every conflict, and they both have a right to exist.

It helps understand what you feel. Is taking a break in a relationship good? It is assumed that a pause makes it possible to rethink the relationship, understand yourself, relax and decide what to do next. It is believed that distance feelings or their absence are especially clearly manifested. But consider this example: you make repairs at home: dirt, building materials everywhere, you can’t rest normally or cook. You decide that you are tired of this, pack your bags and go on vacation, and come back in a week, and what do you see? The same dirt and ruin. The repair will not finish itself, just like a relationship cannot restore itself. Therefore, even if after a pause in the relationship, you decide to meet with a partner, you will return to exactly the same problems that made you split up. The maximum that you'll manage to achieve is to postpone their decision a little.

So, can taking a break from a relationship help? In fact, a timeout is more like running away from problems than a way to solve them. Especially if you break up on a very negative note, after a major quarrel or in anger. In this case, the time in separation will be spent on further winding yourself and justifying your departure.

You see how it feels without your partner. Perhaps only during a pause will you be able to assess how much a person means to you. There are two possible scenarios. First: you suddenly find out that you don’t have enough of your time alone. Second: you get bored, want to immediately see your beloved, tell them a lot, hold hands and never let go again. If this desire turns out to be mutual, your relationship, of course, will become stronger. Such pauses cannot last forever. Taking a break in a relationship helps partners take a more open position, prepare for dialogue and compromise. However, they can lead to negative consequences. If a break leads to a dead end, a prolonged silence can ruin a relationship because it undermines trust. Focus on restoring relationships as early as possible. Try not to dramatize the situation. It is best to speak to the point and be able to put yourself in the shoes of a partner.

Main Situations When You May Take a Relationship Break

The reasons for the break may be factors that need to be changed by active actions, and not by a short breakup. Let's look at the most popular of them.

Everything is moving too fast. When couples or spouses in love spend too much time together, they can feel emotional satiety. Family and personal boundaries gradually erase or just suddenly disappear. You are always with a partner: at home, on a walk, on the weekend. What does taking a break mean in a relationship? It would be useful in this situation to take a temporary separation or distinction between family and personal pastime. If you are a woman on maternity leave, then take the time to forget about business, leave the children to the husband and spend several hours communicating with your friends, shopping or on a walk. Working women also should not forget about themselves. To do this, you need to learn how to plan to correctly distribute time between yourself, family and work.

You can't focus on other aspects of life. You feel like living in a cage. A partner controls your every move, suspects infidelity and is jealous of all the people of the opposite sex in your environment. Of course, before you pause in a relationship, you should talk to your loved one, explain that you are hurt and upset by their distrust. If such heart-to-heart talks do not bring results, it might be worth taking a short break. Stress is a red flag in relationships. The difficult situation at work or in personal life makes some people move away from everyone to digest everything and decide how to live on. So, they are struggling with stress, and they need support in the form of a calm reaction of their beloved. Taking a break from a relationship to find yourself will do in this case. If you cannot focus on anything, of course, you cannot maintain a healthy relationship. Your partner here should realize that the best help will be just giving your some "me-time" and not being clingy.

You can't stop fighting. If you cannot meet each other halfway and end up shouting at each other every day, the pause may be a way out. People love talking, but not all of them know how to be listening. It is impossible to be constantly right, especially if your words or actions hurt your partner. To stop the series of scandals, try to apply a more diplomatic attitude to the situation. Sit at the table and discuss what you do not like about the current state of things and find a compromise. Learn to hear partner requests, fulfill them, and in return, you will receive complete reciprocity. A pause in a relationship after a big quarrel can be salvation or the last straw. In the first version, a pause will help get rid of emotions and give calmness necessary for a conversation. In the second, it will help completely “remove” the feeling of closeness and affection. Before making a decision, evaluate the situation, whether a pause will become the final destroyer or vice versa will help survive the situation.

You have doubts about commitment. Uncertainty is typical for young people. When a relationship lasts from youth for more than 5 years, you need to choose: get married or leave. For example, a couple has been together from their 17, and now they are 22. Having recently finished their studies and have not yet realized themselves in life, some get married, while others are not ready to take on the responsibility of married life and secretly stop relationships to “rethink some stuff”. Such pauses end in the breakup, as young people hope to meet someone better. But even adults and mature people can experience major uncertainty and a desire to step back. At the beginning of a relationship, passion reaches its maximum. Relationships are filled with love, tenderness, sexual affection and the desire to be near. Long-term relationships lead to exhaustion of feelings. To avoid this, you must constantly work on yourself. Lovers need to monitor their appearance, be interested in the affairs of a partner, come up with new intimate scenarios, and devote time to each other.

There was cheating in your relationship, and you don't know what to do After the betrayal, you sometimes do not even want to see, hear or know about the existence of your partner. Making decisions right away is not the best way, you have to wait until the emotions subside. Alienation from the “irritant” helps to survive the pain. You start understanding further actions. Loneliness cannot last forever. After a short separation, you must decide: forgive or leave. If you get tormented by the question, "Should I take a break from my relationship after cheating?" remember that your partner will not become a new person when you reunite. And the problem will not disappear, you need either to accept your beloved with all their mistakes or break off any communication forever when you are unable to forgive.

Why Taking a Break in a Relationship Is Not a Breakup

A pause in the relationship is not always able to correct the situation. Alienation is more likely to end in a final break than in the awakening of passion. When a husband and wife are connected by everyday life, children, duties, they will quickly come to a common decision. If people just meet, then after the cooling of feelings, they do not have any points of contact and the pause goes into separation.

Is it true that “a break in relations” means their end? It all depends on the reason for this break. The first and simplest reason that comes to mind is the fear of complete separation, an attempt to encounter it through a kind of demo version (the focus is on trying to get out of a relationship). In this case, a pause allows you to survive this parting in a somewhat less intense form and prepare for a full parting.

The second option is a study (the focus is on the desire to understand yourself and your desires). When you have been in a relationship for a long time, sometimes there is a need to pause and be alone with yourself, to remember what it is and to find out whether these relationships are real relationships, not cohabitation.

The third option is to reboot (the focus is on trying to maintain a relationship). Quite naturally, in relationships, a lot of discontent arises regarding each other, and sometimes, it is useful to distance a little to understand where you are, where your partner is, where the ideas about them are, as well as understand the value of these relations for you.

How to take a break from relationships that will suit your requirements? There are some major types of relationships pauses:

• A parting-check. Couples practice to find out the behavior of a partner in such a situation.
• A parting-must. It is used to deal with your feelings in private and chat with your loved one without emotions.
• A parting-hopelessness. When it is impossible to be near a partner, all that remains is to “escape” from the relationship. This happens after cheating or violence in a couple.
• A parting-protest. Often occurs after a serious quarrel, when one of the partners defiantly leaves and announces a desire to stop the relationship.

Rules for Taking a Break from a Relationship

Since taking a break is stress even though short-lived, it is still a nervous shock, so you need to read the program for your further work on relationships. These taking a break in a relationship rules include preliminary measures to prevent the formation of mental traumas and avoid misunderstandings.

Talking is a must

When a partner asks for a pause, no one has the right to hold them, but nevertheless, it is worth finding out the reasons. Do not let go of a person without finding out what really does not suit them. Many problems are hushed up, and as a result, people lose their understanding. If you need a break to change something, it is important to know what exactly. Let the person tell you what exactly made them take a pause, why they want to take a break now, what should happen in the end. A pause should have a certain focus and happen not just because people are tired.

Do not cry

What to do if a partner offered to terminate the relationship for a while? Tears do not help. Most probably your beloved would not like to see you cry. Moreover, your depressed state repels them, makes a person want to run away. Trying to arouse pity and forcing them to stay, you will not achieve anything except a small delay. If someone really decides to leave, no matter they try to hide behind the decision to take a break or just want to part, then sooner or later they will do it. Or a person can start packing things all of a sudden without explaining anything, in this case, this is a manipulative move, and you should think about whether you need such a passive aggressor nearby.

Use this time to analyze

At first glance, it always seems that there are only negative moments and negative consequences in this sad event. Look carefully at the problem with a minimum of emotions and see that it is not necessary to seek benefits for yourself, because you do this for the sake of both of you, and not for the sake of one person. You will have more personal time and space, it may turn out that this was not enough, and the scandals did not occur due to misunderstanding.

Agree on the basic rules

During this period, adhere to the strategy chosen and thought out in advance (you must first decide what should change, what upgrades you personally expect and want, consider the objective possibility of implementing the plan). Keep in mind important little things: a ban or permission to use social networks and phone to communicate with each other and with other friends and so on. It is advisable not to set immediately long periods, even with a strong resentment or anger, because these emotions can disappear faster than the specified time.

Alternative solution methods

Are there other ways out rather than taking a break in a relationship? The psychological assistance of a specialist can be your only cure. This refers to the help of a family psychologist. If there are an opportunity and desire, why not go to a conversation with a person who knows how to deal with such situations? Choose an experienced psychotherapist, because knowledge backed by practice is doubly valuable and effective.

Remember that break is not a panacea for all problems inside the family. If you think that the issues will disappear by themselves after a month spent separately, then you are very mistaken. Your meeting will bring a memory of why you once decided to run away and hide for a while. Therefore, if you now have an unresolved problem, it is better to make an effort and clear things out. However, sometimes a break in the relationship is simply necessary if only because, being constantly next to the “irritant,” you do not have the opportunity to understand the deep psychological processes that occur exclusively in your mind. You need a short break in relationships to calm down, appropriately evaluate one’s behavior and the behavior of a partner, analyze their mistakes and, perhaps, forgive them.

In addition, thinking about a pause, honestly answer yourself if you are not looking for an excuse for breaking up in this way. If you absolutely do not expect anything from these relationships, then most likely you should not reanimate them. It will be more honest to directly tell your partner about your feelings.