If anything characterizes the world of love relationships it is their irrational and passionate nature. When we fall in love, we gain one more way of getting excited and experiencing life intensely, but we also lose a certain capacity to make rational decisions. This is partly due to a change in the way our brain works when falling in love is invading us, something that has made love understandable as something similar to a drug.

Of course, this “loss” of reasoning doesn’t have to be a drama. In many cases, empathizing with the other person gives us a valuable second opinion that helps us keep our feet on the ground.However, problems often arise when we have to make a rational decision about the future of our own relationship .

In cases where we are considering breaking off our relationships or marriages we are alone, and however much what we are going to do affects the person for whom we feel many things (and very complicated) the opinions that really matter are our own. How can we make an informed decision on the subject?

Questions to ask yourself before ending a relationship

There is no universal solution 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 can be very helpful for you to reflect on what you feel.

1. Did I reach out to 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 couple we had been looking for, that is, someone who apparently fits the preconceived ideas of how that boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, etc. should be. Sometimes, too rigid expectations (that are not high) are more of a problem than a help in our emotional lives.

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 ourselves if we have reached a definitive stagnation or if it gives us the feeling that it is still possible to continue growing together.

3. Do I consider breaking up over something that shocks me and I don’t understand?

Sometimes, doubts about whether or not to cut off 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’s why it’s important that if you think you don’t understand something, you give the opportunity for something else to be clarified.

4. Are you enslaving me to a dogma?

This question is related to the previous one. There are times when instead of making decisions freely, we react to self-imposed ideas about our own identity, without any apparent reason beyond having a very limited and stable self-concept . Although it may seem untrue, sometimes there are situations that, seen from the outside, seem absurd but which 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 view of things that became a dogma of life.

Am I in a toxic relationship?

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

6. Am I in a situation of relative calm?

When considering whether or not to break up with the relationship, it is necessary to make sure that you are not going through a stress peak. Acute phases of anxiety not only cause us to lose perspective on things, they also strongly influence our ability to memorize facts that happen to us, so that we can misrepresent past events so much that we create false memories.

7. Can I be pressured by others?

In some cases, pressure from other people may push us into trouble with our partner. For example, a parent’s refusal to accept a partner for religious reasons, racism, etc. In these cases you have to be clear that there is a problem, but this is not in the love relationship but in the relationship with those people who are pressuring from outside.

8. Do I trust my own decision making?

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 attach too much importance to the opinion of others. It is essential to be clear that no one knows a person better than he or she does, and therefore the most educated criterion is one’s own life.