#69 When is taking a break in a relationship a good idea?
In today's episode, I'm answering the community question of "when is it a good idea to take a break in a relationship?" This can be a really tricky situation, particularly where one person wants to take a break and the other doesn't.
WHAT WE COVER:
things to consider & discuss before taking a break
do's and don'ts of taking a break
examples of where a break can be healthy & productive
what to do when sex becomes a heavy, high-pressure topic in your relationship
navigating boundaries around taking a break (e.g. around duration, exclusivity, and intentions)
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Apply for my 6-month Homecoming Mastermind
Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment
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Episode Transcript
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You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach Stephanie Rigg, and I'm really glad you're here. You hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, I'm going to be answering the community question of is it ever a good idea to take a break in a relationship?
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And talking about a lot of associated questions like when is it a good idea to take a break? How should we go about taking a break in a relationship? What is best practise there? What are some things to ask yourself and consider, maybe talk about with your partner before you take that step of taking a break in a relationship, short of actually breaking up. And that will be one of the things, as a bit of a spoiler alert that you should absolutely be clear on with your partner, what the boundaries of that arrangement are going to be before we dive into that.
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Just wanted to share the featured review for today, which is my husband and I are loving the episodes that we've listened to so far. They're very insightful and the topics feel super relatable. Also, the bite size length is an added bonus. Thank you so much for that beautiful review. If that was yours, please send an email to podcast@stephanierigg.com and my team will set you up with free access to one of my Masterclasses.
0:01:38.39 → 0:02:17.76
Given that you and your husband are listening together, I would recommend my how to navigate anxious avoidant relationships. Masterclass. Of course. I don't know whether you and your husband fall into that category, but it is a really great masterclass for couples and I've had a lot of people watch the masterclass as a couple and come away with it with much greater understanding of one another tools and compassion for the other person's experience and thereby a lot more connection with one another. So if you and your husband do fall into that category of anxious avoidant dynamics, I definitely recommend sending an email to my team and requesting access to that Masterclass.
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So let's dive into this conversation around is it ever a good idea to take a break in a relationship and if so, under what circumstances and what do you need to be aware of prior to doing that? And I want to start this discussion by using an example from pop culture, which is very unlike me. If you know me personally, you know that I am woefully bad on pop culture references. It's just not my thing. But I did grow up watching Friends, and anyone who would remember watching Friends, you would remember Ross and Rachel and how they famously went on a break in the middle of an argument.
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Rachel says, I think we just need to take a break from us and ross looks at her and then walks out of the apartment and he goes and gets drunk. He's so upset, he gets drunk. He ends up sleeping with someone and then this whole story unfolds around whether that was acceptable or not. Rachel says, how could you do that? You went out that night and slept with someone.
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That was totally not okay. He insists that we were on a break, so it's fine. I didn't do anything wrong. And that becomes this whole kind of ongoing joke throughout the rest of the show. So there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from Ross and Rachel to avoid being in a situation whereby one person thinks that something's acceptable and the other one doesn't.
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And the really obvious thing here is communicate. If you are thinking of taking a break in your relationship, there needs to be a lot of very clear communication in advance of that on what the boundaries of that arrangement are. Are you taking time apart but you are still kind of monogamous? Are you fully breaking up for a period of time and you're going to go and potentially sleep with other people, date other people? Is it for a set period of time?
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Is it we're going to spend time apart for a month or is it open ended? Do you have any plans on when you're going to come back together to talk about things? Are there any specific questions that you are both going to be reflecting on in your time apart? All of these things need to be talked about ahead of making that decision because the very worst thing that you can do is exactly what Ross and Rachel did, which is in the middle of a fight. Say we need to take a break and then leave it at that.
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Go your separate ways and be on completely different pages around where you're at and what is okay and what's not okay, what the boundaries of that situation are. That is a really surefire way to hurt each other, to maybe inadvertently breach trust and cause yourselves a lot more pain and grief in the long run. That might make it hard to come back together if that is your intention. So I suppose the first tip is be very, very clear. Have those conversations.
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Let it be something that is thought out, not something that is impulsive and not something that originates with one person and is something that one person is using as a bargaining chip or a threat or anything like that to try and get their way in the relationship. And that really leads me to one of the most important things that I'm always telling people around a break, and usually this is coming from anxiously attached people who are saying, my partner, often an avoidant partner, wants to take a break. I don't really want to, but I'm scared that it's either break or break up. So I'm going to agree to a break as the lesser of two evils. And if that is the situation that you are in, I know how hard it is, I know how scared you are of losing them.
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But I promise you that that is such an act of self betrayal and self abandonment that you are going to end up in so much more pain as a result of that. Because essentially what you are saying, the subtext of what you are agreeing to, is, I am terrified of losing you and so I will do whatever you say and whatever you want in order to minimise the chances of that happening. And while that might be the honest truth, it is also really unhealthy to be in a relationship that is that one sided and that asymmetrical in terms of who's holding the cards, you need to have a little more power over your own destiny than that. And giving it all over to someone else and just waiting and hoping that they call and hoping that they change their mind and hoping that they come back to you is a very, very disempowering position to be in and it is going to cost you hugely in your self worth and how you feel in that relationship. Just play it out right.
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If you do get back together, there's always going to be this looming thing, this cloud over you of at any moment, they could play that trump card, they could say, oh, well, maybe we need to take a break again, and you're right back in that position. You shrink and shrink and get smaller and smaller because you're worried that if you put a foot out of line, there's always that threat, right? There's always that thing of they can just leave or they can just say, let's take a break, this is too much, too hard. There's always that just waiting in the wings for you and that will cause you to self abandon, to have no boundaries, to have no needs, to get very, very small and very, very suppressed in yourself. And I promise you that that is not worth it.
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That is not worth what it will cost you. So please do not agree to take a break from a place of fear of losing someone if you don't. If they're essentially saying, either we need to take a break or I'm going to leave you, I really don't think and particularly if you're more anxiously attached, I really don't think that that is a very healthy arrangement, because it's just too one sided in terms of who is determining what the future of that relationship looks like. That needs to be a joint decision, that needs to be something that takes into account both of your needs and concerns rather than just one person's. With all of that being said, and I realise that, having talked for ten minutes about all of the things of what not to do, I don't want you to feel like it's never a good idea to take a break in a relationship because that's not true, of course.
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It's more that we do need to be really mindful of the fact that a break can be challenging and there are lots of ways that we can do it wrong or do it in a way that's not going to be conducive to not only potentially coming back together stronger, but actually using that time apart meaningfully and productively. And I think that if it is infused with a lot of fear and insecurity, it's not going to be productive time spent apart, because you're just going to be ruminating and thinking and obsessing about the other person and trying to find a way to get them back or to change yourself for them in a way that's going to make you more acceptable to them. And that is not good. But there can absolutely be circumstances in which taking a break could be the right thing and could make a lot of sense for your relationship. So this will usually be kind of ironically for people who are in more of a secure relationship or at least on more of a level playing field in terms of, I hesitate to say power dynamics in the relationship, but I think that's essentially the crux of it.
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As I said, if it's one person holding all the cards and threatening and saying I'm going to leave and the other person cowering, that's not a good foundation upon which to take a break. But say you guys were in a relationship, you'd been together for a really long time, and one person was going to go overseas on a work placement. And you both agreed that it might be a good opportunity for you to try living apart for a while and exploring other connections and not being tethered to a long distance relationship. For example, that might be a scenario in which you'd consider taking a break. You might take a break if you were both having doubts about the relationship and you felt really suffocated or overwhelmed or stressed by being in the same space all the time and prior to taking the next step in your relationship.
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You both felt that it was a good idea to have some time and space apart, to really reassess and to reflect and to make sure that you were consciously and intentionally choosing one another as you move forward in your life and relationship, rather than just doing that by default because that's what people do, right? It might give you the oxygen that your relationship needs in order to really realise what you appreciate about each other or maybe to realise that it's not the relationship for you and for you to both go through that process of conscious reflection and intentionality. So these are some of the situations where taking a break, taking time apart might be really productive and might be really healthy and might be in service of your relationship, both with each other and with yourself. In the long run, it might lead to a more honest and authentic relationship and one that is more deliberate rather than default. So I think the key takeaways here are a break in a relationship can be a good opportunity to reflect and to take stock and to cultivate that intentionality and to really choose one another from a place of yes, I fully want this, rather than from a place of fear or lack or scarcity.
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But we really want to make sure that if we are going to take that step, that it's mutually agreed upon, it's coming from both people. It is not driven by fear, it is not some tactic of manipulation, it is not an alternative to breaking up. It's not a step down from breaking up, and you're choosing the lesser of two evils. And we do want to make sure that if you do take a break, you're not spending that time just obsessing over the other person. That time should be spent figuring out who you are and what you want, depending on the parameters of the relationship and the boundaries.
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If you are open to seeing other people in that time, then using that opportunity to do that and to make sure that you are making it worth your while rather than just obsessing over the other person and hoping that they're going to come back to you again. That is really the worst case scenario in my eyes, is taking the break as a way to hold on to someone when you feel like they're slipping away. I think that's a really myopic short term strategy, and it tends to cost you a lot in the long term, so definitely don't do that if that's the situation that you're in. So I really hope that that's been helpful. As always, super grateful if you could leave a review or a rating, whether you're listening on Apple or Spotify.
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As I've mentioned, Spotify now has a feature where you can leave comments on a particular episode. So if you're listening on Spotify, please do feel free to do that and I will read them all. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you again soon. Thanks, guys. Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment.
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If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon.