One of the hardest decisions you may make in life is figuring out when to end a relationship.  It is difficult to break up with someone when you have invested so much time with them and allowed them to intimately know you.  It doesn’t matter if it has been 3 months or 3 years, it is still not easy.  Faced with this, you will still sometimes decide that breaking up is the best thing for both of you.  How do you know?

Being in love with your partner does not mean that there isn’t a time to end the relationship.  You may be wondering when to do it or why.  Perhaps you feel that you should not break up if you are still in love.  You might think that you should try to work things out and in the end it will be worth it.

It is common for some people to give up on their relationship before they have tried to correct the problems.  Being in love isn’t going to automatically guarantee that you will have a good relationship. There may be problems.  But, it might be in your best interest to at least try to work on the relationship problems before simply throwing in the towel.  You could be very happy together once the problems are resolved.

Other people seem to continuously try to keep their relationship going when all of their friends are wondering why they stay together.  Perhaps their partner keeps cheating on them and they continue to take him or her back.  Maybe one partner is constantly abusive yet the other one just keeps trying to make it work.  It's like these types just want to be punished.  Could it be that they are just afraid of being alone or moving on?

There are obvious cases where it seems best to end a relationship.  If you are in one that makes you feel unsafe or very insecure financially, then you may want to move on.  An abusive relationship can get out of hand causing severe mental or physical trauma to one of the partners.  That is another case where the relationship should be ended, even if you feel like you are still in love.

There are some situations where you will need to do more contemplating.  If your partner cheated on you once, should you break up?  You have to determine if you are the type that can get past one or two major mistakes.  Maybe it will even strengthen your relationship. The majority of people never get past the betrayal of an affair or cheating.  It seems the one who was cheated on never really gets rid of the hurt, and the one who did the cheating always has a sense of guilt or feelings that everyone is suspicious of them.  Open discussions are necessary in a relationship where this is happening.  You need to talk about trust and fear with your partner.

Should you end a relationship if you find you are fantasizing about being with someone else?  Fantasizing about others is completely normal and even expected, but when you are doing it too often you should ask yourself if it is time to break up.  Maybe you aren’t really in love with your current partner and need to move on?

If you really do love your partner and you have tried various ways of making the relationship better but nothing seems to work, then you need to step back and take another look.  Have you tried long and hard enough?  If you feel you have done everything you can then you may begin to see that it could be time to end the relationship.