50 ways to leave your lover

In their song from 1975 Simon and Garfunkel observed that “there must be 50 ways to leave your lover”.

They were wrong of course. There is many, many more ways to end a relationship and over the years I have heard more than 50 shocking, traumatic, distressing, hurtful ways that someone has left an intimate relationship.

I am, above all, a realist about human beings. I know that people fall out of love with each other or get attracted to someone else. Partners break up, marriages fall apart, lovers move on. I understand that and I accept that. What I find it harder to accept is when people inflict unnecessary pain on each other by leaving in a particular awful manner. The scenario where someone goes down to the shop for cigarettes and never come back doesn’t just happen in the movies.

I see a lot of people who need therapy to overcome traumatic break ups. These poor men and women struggle with the aftermath of rejection, mistrust and abandonment. A particular painful way to end a relationship is to leave suddenly and without an explanation. This leaves the person being left confused and disorientated as well as with a deep sense of insecurity. “If I didn’t see this coming how can I trust my perception about anything?” Nothing feels safe anymore and it generally takes someone a lot longer to recover from that fundamental distrust than it takes to get over the loss of a specific person.

In Yiddish the word “Mensch” means a person of integrity and honour – someone who is decent with a strong sense of ethical behaviour.

Basically a good human being.

So please, if you’re going to leave someone do it as a Mensch. Life is hard enough without us inflicting unnecessary pain on each other.