How to Be Caring When Breaking Up

Video Transcript

"We're fine tuning our fine relationship skills. Today we're going to be talking about how to be caring when breaking up with somebody. Hi, I'm Joe Cuenco with Family Resources. Well just how do you become caring and treat another person with respect during a breakup? You really need to be empathetic. You need to focus on this individual's good points versus the bad. Think about how you'd like to be treated if somebody was breaking up with you. You really can't focus on the faults, kind of separate that from the individual. There's a Monty Python movie, In Search for the Holy Grail, where an individual says, let's not worry about who killed who, you really can't focus on the stuff that happened in the past that caused you to come to a chasm where you did not want to be together. Just because somebody has some faults it doesn't imply that they're a bad person and you really need to keep that in mind because when you're telling them the relationship just isn't working out, we have different viewpoints, and we probably aren't meant to be together, is basically the best way to treat somebody with respect. You don't have to offer to be friends, say hey, I don't want to date you but let's be friends because, that often doesn't work as well. Just offer to be supportive. Now remember, you just don't want to burn bridges. The world is small, chances are you may run into this individual again, or you may need this person, or you may want to be with this person again. So just be caring, be empathetic, look at them as a person, as an individual with feelings, and that's how to be caring when you breakup. I'm Joe Cuenco, Family Resources, relationships for life."