4 Signs You Should Probably Break Up
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It’s a sad thing when a relationship ends, but sometimes it’s necessary.
The Lord gets rid of old blessings in our lives to make way for new ones. There are several different signs you should break up with someone, and I’ve organized them based on the different aspects of relationships.
Keep in mind, these reasons are for you, not them. You should avoid telling someone the reason why you’re breaking up with them unless they press you for an answer. Break-ups should be short and sweet. A prolonged explanation could draw out an already painful process.
If any of these signs are present in your relationship, take them to prayer and ask the Lord if breaking up is the right thing to do.
Physical: Your boundaries are not respected.
This one is an easy one. If you are consistently putting up boundaries and they are not being respected, it’s time to end things. Entering into a relationship with someone does not give that person license to your whole body. Outside of a boundary-violating relationship, that’s easy to say. Inside of one, it could be different.
You often hear about people who are in physically abusive relationships making excuses for their aggressor. This kind of thought pattern is also present in relationships where sexual boundaries are not respected. One person is the castle, and the other person is the one trying to find a way in. (This can happen to both men and women.) You aren’t made for siege warfare. If you feel your boundaries are constantly crossed or called into question, it may be time to end it.
This does not mean that if you are both struggling with sexual temptation you need to break up. There is a difference between a couple striving for chastity and failing, and a couple where one person is striving for chastity and the other is not on board.
Spiritual: You don’t share important spiritual values.
A spiritual reason to break up is that you don’t share important spiritual or moral values. This is somewhat related to the striving for chastity issue. If you value a virtue like chastity and they don’t, that will severely impact your relationship even if they never cross a boundary with you.
Similarly, if you value your faith and they don’t, that will also bring about issues in the future. Consider how hard it would be to teach a child the importance of going to Mass when one of their parents stays home every week. Even if they are an amazing person, if they aren’t following Christ it will make things hard in the future.
This does not necessarily mean you can’t date people of other faiths, though. There are ways to make relationships work with people of other Christian traditions.
Emotional: There are rarely moments of peace.
Feeling emotionally secure in a relationship is also important and should factor into your decision. Relationships come with drama. And we don’t always like to admit it but…some of us like the drama. It is, ironically, an escape from the mundane day-to-day. But it is also toxic for a relationship.
If your relationship is fraught with drama, it may be time to consider moving on. Jesus asks us to trust Him in the storm, but He doesn’t ask us to constantly live in one on purpose. If your significant other is constantly threatening to break up with you or picking fights, it may be time to leave. As Proverbs 21:9 says, “It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop than in a mansion with a quarrelsome woman.”
Of course, this also applies to the fellas. You don’t want to live in an environment with constant emotional strife.
Now, this doesn’t mean you should break up if you are currently experiencing emotional strife. Relationships come with problems, even for a long period of time. But there should be peace eventually. If you haven’t felt peace in your relationship in a long time, or ever, you should take that to prayer.
Bonus: You just want to.
Now, all that said, if you want to break up with someone, you probably should. Our desires are a helpful tool for discernment as long as we use them wisely. One helpful rule for discernment is: try not to make big decisions when you’re not feeling too low or too high. Extremes of physical, spiritual, and emotional pleasure/pain are not helpful when it comes to discernment. If you are in a place like that, wait to calm down and talk to a friend or mentor.
This will help you be more honest with yourself. In the heat of the moment, it’s easy to break up with someone because they’re “evil” or because the next person is “perfect.” No one is either of those things. Avoid the temptation to make someone a devil or an angel. They’re human.
Like I said at the beginning, these reasons are just ways to help you discern. You need a reason to break up with them, but you don’t need to tell them that reason. Sometimes that does more harm than good. Whatever reason you choose, just make sure you sit with it and pray with it for a while.
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