马萨诸塞州立大学教授告诉你：怎么分手不伤身！

5 BadWays and 5 Good Ways to End a Relationship

翻译：

      前言——分手可以让人痛到窒息，但总有些办法可以把你从痛苦泥沼里拔出来。

      分手的时候谁不是痛不欲生，是什么奇葩还能找到方法安慰自己呢？如果是你先甩他（她），你会觉得自己有罪（“我有罪”）；如果你被甩，那你的痛就更多了。更糟的是，你感觉干啥也救不了这锥心之痛，于是你就卡在这儿了，枯萎了，绝望了。你还会惩罚自己。分手了就不能做朋友吗？

     分手当然是痛苦的，谁能分手了比不分手还高兴！这不扯淡吗？可能你觉得最好的方法就是把以光的速度把心里的创口贴赶紧揭下来扔了。但是你不给自己时间痛够了，这个在心里的疤会影响你未来再谈恋爱。其实分手最好的方法是让时间空间慢慢冲淡（fadeoff）一切，如果你们以前没住一块就更好了！此处划重点，这个很重要，因为就算你现在觉得还ok，但是心里的创伤会影响你未来谈恋爱……（剩下的我懒得翻译了。）

      要知如何科学地分手，请自行阅读全文。又练英语又长情商。

     Ending a relationship is always painful, but there are ways to ease the hurt.

     When relationships come to an end,there is so much emotional pain that it may seem impossible to find a way to ease the suffering. If you’re the one ending the relationship, you may be plagued by guilt and remorse;if you’re the one being left, you’re faced with the misery of rejection. To make matters worse, you may feel that nothing you can do could make the situation any less difficult and that you will be stuck forever with these feelings of despair and demoralization.You may also punish yourself endlessly for not doing a better job of either leaving or being left. There should be some way that you and your partner could part ways as friends, right?

     Because a relationship’s ending is so stressful, you may not imagine a happy ending as an option. Instead, you may think the best way to get through it is by ripping the bandage off as quickly as possible. But while that might limit the amount of time you feel the pain,it may leave behind scar tissue that affects both you and your partner for years to come. Alternatively, perhaps you think the best way to end things is just to fade off into the distance, particularly if you and your partner didn’t share a residence or family commitments. Again, although this may feel okay int he moment, in the long run it could create problems with your future relationships.

      True intimacy involves the ability to communicate at a deep level with your partner. Not only is intimacy a quality of the relationship, but it’s also a quality of the individuals involved. Being able to communicate closely with another person requires that you share your feelings relevant to the relationship. Those may be good or, as a relationship is in its final stages, not very pleasant. You may run the risk of being self-indulgent by unloading all of your negative feelings, so it’s wise to contain your expression of unhappiness in a way that doesn’t denigrate your partner. By talking about the fact that the relationship has run its course,you may not only be doing your partner a favor, but also your own intimacy potential. The next time you’re in a close relationship, you may be able to steer clear of some of the problems you inadvertently created in this one.

       We return, then, to the question of how best to embark on the process of ending relationships in a “good” way. TheUniversity of New Brunswick’s Charlene Belu and colleagues were interested int he phenomenon of “post-relationship contact and tracking,” or PRCT. Using as ample of 271 college students (two-thirds of whom were female), Belu and her team asked participants to report on their most recent breakup, rating its intensity compared to earlier splits. The researchers also asked participants to report on their own, and their ex-partner’s, PRCT behaviors, and to rate the impact of these on themselves and their exes.

      The Canadian team found that PRCT behaviors were relatively frequent in this sample of emerging adults, with 60percent reporting being both a user and a target. PRCT behaviors were, in turn,related to distress following the breakup. The stronger the impact of the breakup and the more surprised the individual was, the more likely the participant was to engage in PRCT. Somewhat surprisingly, this was true even if the participant initiated the breakup. As the authors concluded, “individuals who are experiencing more distress after the breakup may put more effort into reconnecting, monitoring, or trying to stay in touch with their partner, and/or remain a part of their lives.” In fact, the stronger the intensity of the pain of the breakup, the greater variety of tracking behaviors the participants used.

      Ultimately, the longer these attempts at contact continue, the longer it takes to recover emotionally from the breakup. Given that surprise was a factor in predicting PRCT behaviors, the findings suggest that it’s best not to pull that bandage off too fast, but instead to take some time to prepare both partners for the ending.

      The Belu et al. study adds to the literature on romantic relationship breakups and, although based on a student sample, provides perspective on the process of letting go of a partner. Using this study along with others previously published, we can now enumerate the worst—and best—ways to handle a relationships’ ending.

5 Bad Ways

1. Ghosting: Not providing any warning at all, nor any opportunity for contact, can leave you and your partner in limbo. Just disappearing is not the answer.

2. Self-blaming: Relationships involve two people and when they don’t work, each contributes to the dysfunction. Moving out of a relationship by focusing only on your role will not help you see the warning signs in potential partners of what might be the next ill-fated relationship.

3. Bad-mouthing: Focusing only onyour partner’s contributions, in turn, will not allow you to refine further your own intimacy strengths and weaknesses. Talking to others about how everything was your partner’s fault can also create awkwardness for the people who know both of you.

4. Fantasizing: Presumably, the people in the Belu et al. study who engaged in PRCT also spent considerable time wondering what their partners were doing. As a result, they became less able to move on to new relationships.

5. Stalking: Again, as we saw in theCanadian study, an inability to pull out of a relationship only makes the emotional pain much worse. You may spend some time wondering if your ex is okay after the breakup, but extensively tracking your partner will impede your own recovery.

5 Good Ways

1. Preparing for the end: As we saw in the study by Belu and her collaborators, the surprise element only made a breakup worse. In general, as you head into important life transitions, it’s best to give yourself time, and to give your partner time as well.

2. Accepting a share of the blame,but not all: Growing your own intimacy means that you develop a more informed understanding of your strengths and weaknesses in a relationship.

3. Protecting your, and your partner’s, dignity: Previous research on divorce adjustment has shown the importance of “saving face.” It’s important to maintain your self-respect, and that of your partner, so that you can avoid the shame of relationship defeat.

4. Establishing boundaries: Extensive post-relationship contact is, as we saw, a very poor way to end things.Instead, make it clear over the course of the relationship’s ending just how much contact you wish to have with your ex-partner.

5. Taking the long view: Our relationship histories become key factors in the life stories we create as we get older. As painful as it might be, the effects of the breakup you’re going through now will not endure forever, and may even set the stage for future relationships that you can’t predict from your current vantage point.

About the Author（关于作者）

Susan Krauss Whitbourne Ph.D.

Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D., is aProfessor Emerita of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University ofMassachusetts Amherst. Her latest book is The Search for Fulfillment.