8 questions to ask yourself before breaking up with your partner

If something characterizes the world of love relationships it is his irrational and passionate character. When we fall in love, we gain one more way of getting excited and experiencing life intensely, but we also lose a certain ability to make rational decisions. This is due in part to a change in the functioning of our brain when infatuation invades us, something that has made love can be understood as something like a drug.

Of course, this "loss" of reason does not have to be a drama. In many cases, by empathizing with the other person, we come to have a very valuable second opinion that helps us keep our feet on the ground. However, many times problems come when you have to take a rational decision about the future of your relationship.

In cases where we consider ending our courtships or marriages we are alone, and as much as what we are going to do affects the person for whom we feel many things (and very complicated), the opinions that really matter are ours. How to make a well-informed decision on the subject?

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Questions to ask yourself before ending a relationship

There is no universal solution that is valid for all people: each person is a world and the circumstances we live in are unique.

However, these questions to know if you should break up They can be of great help to you to reflect on what you feel.

1. Did I reach that person looking for an "ideal partner" model?

This question is useful to know if more than being with a person of flesh and blood, we have started a relationship with a supposed prototype of the partner we had been looking for, that is, someone who apparently conforms to preconceived ideas of what that boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, etc. Sometimes, expectations too rigid (not high) are more of a problem than a help in our emotional lives.

2. Do I learn from that person?

One of the reasons for being in a relationship is to feel emotionally, intellectually and even existentially stimulated by the other person. Therefore, before breaking up, it is good to ask yourself if a definitive stagnation has been reached or if it gives us the feeling that it is still possible to continue growing together.

3. Am I considering breaking up because of something that shocks me and I don't understand?

Sometimes, doubts about whether to cut or not arise when something suddenly happens that calls into question everything we thought we knew about the other person (an infidelity, for example). It is worth remembering that there are no natural laws that say "when this happens, it must be broken." What matters is your perception of those facts, and that is why it is important that if you think you do not understand something, you give the opportunity for something else to be clarified.

4. Is a dogma enslaving me?

This question is related to the previous one. Sometimes instead of making decisions freely, we react to self-imposed ideas about their own identity, for no apparent reason beyond having a very limited and stable self-concept. Oddly enough, sometimes there are situations that, seen from the outside, seem absurd but that those who experience them in the first person take very seriously.

For example, perhaps in the past we promised each other that the couple should get along with our friends, because of an extremely romantic vision of things that became a dogma of life.

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5. Am I in a toxic relationship?

It is important to take a distant perspective and ask yourself if we are in a toxic relationship, it is that is, one in which at least one of the members of the relationship commits some type of abuse against the other or find pleasure in making her feel bad.

• Related article: "23 signs you have a ‘toxic relationship’ with a partner"

6. Am I in a relatively calm situation?

When it comes to considering whether or not to break the relationship, it is necessary to make sure that you are not going through a peak of stress. The acute phases of anxiety not only make us lose perspective of things, they even have a marked influence in our ability to memorize events that happen to us, so that we can distort past events so much that we create false memories.

7. Can the pressure of others?

In some cases, pressure from other people may push us to have problems with our partner. For example, the refusal of a father or mother to accept the partner for religious reasons, racism, etc. In these cases it must be clear that yes there is a problem, but this is not in the love relationship but in the relationship with those people who pressure from outside.

8. Do I trust my own decision-making capacity?

Sometimes we think a lot about something simply because we start from the idea that everything we think is very questionable and possibly false. Sometimes this leads us to give too much importance to the opinion of others. It is essential to be clear that no one knows a person better than himself, and therefore the most formed criterion is one, about his own life.