By Mark Ryan, BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist
If you are reading this, you may be somewhere in the middle of one of the hardest conversations of your life, or you may be bracing for it. Perhaps you and your partner have both decided it is over and want to do it kindly. Perhaps you made the decision and your partner has not caught up. Perhaps you have just been told, and part of you is trying to stay dignified while the rest of you is in free fall.
Ending a relationship amicably does not mean ending it without pain. It means ending it with care, honesty and a plan, so that the way you part does not add harm to something that is already hard. This article is written for couples without children together, and it applies whatever your gender or sexuality. If you do have children, my articles on how to separate or divorce well and co parenting after separation cover what changes.
Article Summary
Ending a relationship amicably means planning the weeks between the decision and the settling, because that is when small things do the most damage or the most good.
Many people rush to an end point such as no contact or staying best friends, and give little thought to the interim.
Contact after the decision is a choice for the two of you to make, and staying in touch or stepping back can both be done kindly.
If only one of you has decided, you are at different points on the road, and a clear, kind conversation seems to help more than silence.
Each of you needs to look after yourself and work out what you want and need before the joint conversations begin.
A short plan covering telling people, contact, messages, shared events and a pause signal makes the in between much easier.
If ending is not safe, speak to a specialist service first.
What Ending Can Feel Like
Almost nobody feels one clean thing. Relief and grief can arrive in the same hour. So can love and anger, or guilt and a sense of being wronged. Some people feel numb for days and then cry in a supermarket. Others feel a strange lightness that they are ashamed of. None of this means you are handling it badly. It means a relationship that mattered is changing shape.
It also tends to feel different for each of you, even when you both agree. One of you may have been grieving for months and be ready to move. The other may be hearing the words for the first time and need weeks to catch up. If one of you decided and the other did not, you are not at the same point on the road, and no amount of kindness will put you there at the same moment.
Research on breakups backs this up. A study that followed 1,295 unmarried American adults aged 18 to 35, about 470 of whom went through at least one breakup, found that on average distress rose and life satisfaction fell. The averages hid a wide spread. Distress rose noticeably for around three in ten people, fell noticeably for around two in ten, and changed little for about half (Rhoades et al., 2011). People who had been living with their partner tended to see bigger drops in life satisfaction. The sample was young, American and unmarried, so it will not match every situation. It is still a useful reminder that you and your partner may feel very differently, and that neither of you is doing it wrong.
Why the Stretch in Between Matters Most
When people decide to part, their minds often leap to the end point. We will be best friends. We will never speak again. We will stay in each other's lives for the sake of our friends. Whichever picture it is, it is usually a picture of the far side, and it skips the stretch between deciding and settling. In my work I often see people rush towards that end point without planning for the interim at all.
That stretch is where most of the harm and most of the kindness happens. It is the late night message, the shared friend who hears the news second hand, the birthday dinner you both turn up to, the question of who sleeps where. None of these is a crisis. Left unplanned, they add up, and a respectful ending can turn bitter without either of you meaning it.
The end points are also not equally open to everyone. Staying friends is not something you owe each other, and a period of no contact is a perfectly valid choice. Whether to have no contact after the decision is for the two of you to decide, and every version, including no contact, can be done well. What matters is that you choose it together, as far as you can, and say it out loud.
It helps to know why you want what you want. Researchers who studied people staying friends with an ex partner identified four main reasons, which were security, practical reasons, civility and unresolved romantic desires. Staying friends because of unresolved romantic desires was linked with worse outcomes, while staying friends for security or practical reasons was linked with better ones. Practical and civility reasons also made the friendship less likely to last in the long run. Factors such as sexual orientation, attachment style, personality and time since the breakup all predicted who stayed friends (Griffith et al., 2017). So the useful question is not whether you will be friends. It is what you are hoping the contact will do for you.
When One of You Has Decided and the Other Has Not
If you are the one who has decided, you may feel pulled between honesty and the wish to spare your partner pain. If you are the one who has been told, you may be wondering how to hold on to your dignity while the ground moves. Either way, the gap between you is the hardest part of an amicable ending, and it deserves more care than it usually gets.
By the time one person says it out loud, they may have been turning it over for weeks or months. The person who hears it may be starting from zero. That is why the one who decided can seem steadier and the other can seem blindsided, and neither of them is being unreasonable.
A study of people who had recently ended a relationship, recruited online, found that those on the receiving end reported more distress and negative feeling than those who ended it (Koessler et al., 2019). The same study looked at ghosting, which means ending things by cutting off contact without explanation. People who ghosted reported less distress than people who ended things in a direct conversation, and their breakups involved more avoidance and less open confrontation. That may be part of why vanishing is so tempting. The study cannot tell us what it did to the person left behind, so I would be cautious about taking comfort from it.
Another study followed 160 young adults in the United States and asked how well they understood the reasons for their breakup. Those who said they understood the reasons reported fewer internalising symptoms, and their anxiety eased over time. Being the one who ended it was not protective. Initiators showed relative increases in internalising symptoms rated by their peers, though not in what they reported themselves (Kansky and Allen, 2018). The study was observational, so it cannot show that understanding causes recovery. Still, it points to something practical. A clear, kind explanation seems to help the person who is left, and a conversation, even a hard one, may give both of you more to work with than silence.
If you are the one who decided, say it clearly and early, without leaving a door open that you do not mean. If you are the one who was told, you are allowed to need time before you talk about logistics. Agree together that practical decisions can wait a few days if one of you needs that. A short, agreed pause is often kinder than a rushed plan.
Contact after the decision is a choice for the two of you to make, and staying in touch or stepping back can both be done kindly.
Looking After Yourself First
Before you can have a useful conversation with your partner, you need to know what you feel, what frightens you, what helps you and what you want and need. It is tempting to skip this and move straight to logistics, especially if you are the one who is coping better. But you cannot ask for what you have not yet named, and a partner cannot give you what they cannot see.
It helps to write these down on your own, before you talk, under headings like these.
What I am afraid of, such as being alone, being blamed, losing shared friends or losing the future I had imagined.
How I grieve and how I get angry, so that I can tell my partner what helps and what does not.
What I need, which I cannot do without, and what I want, which I would like and can flex on.
My boundaries, including what I will not do and what I am not ready to discuss yet.
Grief and anger tend to turn up uninvited and at inconvenient times. Anger can cover something softer, such as hurt or fear. Neither needs fixing in the moment. They need somewhere to go, which might be a friend, a walk, a journal or a therapist, and not your partner's inbox at midnight. Looking after yourself also means the basics of sleep, food, movement and people who love you. During an ending this is not a luxury. It is what makes kindness possible.
Writing your needs and wants down separately, each on your own, has another benefit. It lets you arrive at the conversation knowing your own mind, and it stops the louder or faster partner from setting the terms by default.
If you are still unsure whether this is the end, my articles on how to know when a relationship is over, whether to stay together or break up and whether a trial separation can save a relationship may help before you plan anything.
Having the Conversations Together
Most couples can manage one big conversation. What they struggle with is the series of smaller ones that follow, about money, belongings, who tells whom and how to behave at a friend's wedding. If you have never had to negotiate with someone you are also grieving, it can feel impossible. A few simple habits make it easier.
Pick a time and keep it short. Forty five minutes on one topic is better than a whole evening that ends in tears.
Take turns. One of you speaks while the other listens, then says back what they heard before replying.
Aim to understand before you agree. You can understand what your partner wants and still say no.
Sort what you agree on, what you differ on and what you will park for later. Parking is not avoiding. It is deciding the order.
Stop when it gets heated. Agree a pause and a time to return, and keep that promise.
When you find you are stuck, go back to what each of you needs, not what each of you wants. Needs can often be met in more than one way, and that is usually where the room for movement sits. Expect that one of you will cry, or go silent, or get angry. That is not a failure of the conversation. It is part of it. What matters is what you do next.
If you would like somewhere to begin, my free one page interim agreement is a short place to write down how you want to be with each other while things settle. You can fill it in together on screen or print it.
Planning the In Between
This is the part most couples skip, and it is the part that protects the most. The idea is simple. Instead of leaving each situation to chance, you decide ahead of time how you will handle the ones you can predict. You will still be surprised sometimes. But a plan means you are surprised from a steadier place.
Telling people
Decide who needs to know, in what order and in what words. Agree what you will each say about why, so that neither of you hears your own story retold in a way you did not expect. Agree what you will keep private. Decide what you will tell shared friends and whether you are asking them not to pick sides or pass on messages. Telling families and closest friends first, before the news travels on its own, usually spares everyone the worst of the second hand versions.
Contact
Contact is the choice that tends to cause the most confusion, because people assume there is a right answer. There is not. Some couples keep in regular touch. Some keep to practical messages only. Some agree to no contact for a set period. Each of these can be a kind choice, and the right one depends on what each of you needs.
Be specific about the details. Say how often, through which channel, about what topics, and when you will review it. The length of any pause is for the two of you to set, agreed together. If you want a period of no contact, saying "I need a month without messages and then I would like us to check in" is much kinder than silence.
Messages and social media
A late night message can undo weeks of progress. Agree what is fine to send and what is better held back, and what you will do if one of you slips. Social media needs its own conversation. In a survey of 464 people, mostly young women and mostly American, checking an ex partner's Facebook profile was linked with more distress, more longing and less personal growth. Staying Facebook friends was linked with fewer negative feelings and less longing, though also with less personal growth. Because it was a survey, it cannot show which comes first, and people who are struggling more may be the ones who check (Marshall, 2012). The study is old and was about one platform, so I would treat it as a prompt for your own conversation and not as a rule. You might agree to mute and not unfollow, to keep new relationships off your feeds for a while, or to ask before posting about the ending.
Where you live and money
Who stays, who moves and when are some of the biggest decisions. If you live together, agree a timeline and where each of you will sleep in the meantime. List shared commitments such as rent or a mortgage, bills, subscriptions and savings, and agree who pays what and until when. Agree how you will divide belongings and what you will do if you disagree. If money or housing gets complicated, free independent advice is available from services such as Citizens Advice and MoneyHelper.
Shared events
Weddings, birthdays, work dinners and friends' gatherings will come up. Decide in advance which ones you will each go to, whether you will arrive together or separately, and what you will say if someone asks. Agree how you will signal to each other if an evening gets too hard. A signal can be a hand gesture, a code word or a text message. Agree what happens when you see it. One of you might step outside, the two of you might head to different rooms for ten minutes, or one of you might leave. Knowing what the signal means in advance is what makes it safe to use.
When things get heated
Agree a pause plan before you need one. A pause is not walking out. It is a promise to come back. Pick a word, a length of time and who will start the conversation again. Whether the pause lasts an hour or a day is for you to decide together, as long as you both know it has an end.
If you would like a structure for all of this, my Ending Well workbook takes each of you through your own pages first, and then through the conversations and the practical plan together.
Looking Ahead
Once the practical plan is in place, it helps to think a little further. Not everything has to be decided now, and you do not need to know what your relationship will be in a year. But a few questions can keep doors open without forcing them. What would you each like to keep, such as shared friends, a tradition or a way of checking in? What would you each like to let go of? Do you want to leave room for a different kind of relationship in future, or would you prefer a clean break? Agree to review your plan after a few weeks, and again when things have settled, so that it can change as you do.
If you would like to think about what comes next, my article on life after separation and how to start again looks at rebuilding.
If Ending Is Not Safe
Everything above assumes you can talk to each other safely. If your partner controls you, hurts you or frightens you, please speak to a specialist service before raising any of this with them. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline is free on 0808 2000 247 and open 24 hours. Galop supports LGBTQ+ people experiencing abuse on 0800 999 5428, and the Men's Advice Line is free on 0808 8010327, both on weekdays. In an emergency call 999. If ending the relationship leaves you feeling hopeless, your GP can help, and Samaritans is free on 116 123 at any hour. Opening times can change, so please check each service's website before you rely on it.
How Therapy Can Help
Ending a relationship is one of the situations where a third person can make a real difference, because you are trying to be fair to someone you are also hurt by. In sessions I help each of you say what you need and hear what the other needs, and I help keep the conversation kind and specific. The aim is not to change anyone's mind. Couples who have both decided can use the time to agree a plan. When only one of you has decided, it can give the other a place to be heard while the decision is talked about calmly. I work with people of every background and every gender and sexuality.
I offer a single session of 110 minutes, in person in London or online by Zoom, for exactly this kind of focused work, and it suits a couple who want to go through an agreement together. If you are not sure that one session is enough, my article on whether one therapy session is enough explains what it can and cannot do, and you can read more about single session therapy.
If you would like to talk it through first, you are welcome to book a free 30 minute consultation, in person in London or online. It is a chance to describe what is happening and to see whether working together feels right. There is no obligation, and you do not need to have it worked out.
About the author
Mark Ryan is a BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist, and the founder of Rise and Grow Therapy, a private practice offering couples and relationship therapy across Kensington, Pimlico, and Angel, Islington in London, as well as online consultations. His approach draws first on Imago Relationship Therapy, alongside integrative relational, attachment based, Gottman, and systemic approaches. Mark works with couples of every background and relationship structure, as well as with individuals working through relational issues.
References
Griffith, R. L., Gillath, O., Zhao, X., & Martinez, R. (2017). Staying friends with ex romantic partners: Predictors, reasons, and outcomes. Personal Relationships, 24(3), 550 to 584. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12197
Kansky, J., & Allen, J. P. (2018). Making sense and moving on: The potential for individual and interpersonal growth following emerging adult breakups. Emerging Adulthood, 6(3), 172 to 190. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6051550/
Koessler, R. B., Kohut, T., & Campbell, L. (2019). When your boo becomes a ghost: The association between breakup strategy and breakup role in experiences of relationship dissolution. Collabra: Psychology, 5(1), 29. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.230
Marshall, T. C. (2012). Facebook surveillance of former romantic partners: Associations with postbreakup recovery and personal growth. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 15(10), 521 to 526. https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/7014
Rhoades, G. K., Kamp Dush, C. M., Atkins, D. C., Stanley, S. M., & Markman, H. J. (2011). Breaking up is hard to do: The impact of unmarried relationship dissolution on mental health and life satisfaction. Journal of Family Psychology, 25(3), 366 to 374. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3115386/
