Should You Get Back Together After Breaking Up? – Ask Yourself These Questions
Ending a relationship is a difficult process that tests both your emotional and intellectual stamina.
You must begin again, discovering what life will look like once your partner is gone.
For some, this time apart reinforces the love between partners and reunites a couple having realized what they missed in each other.
However, there are many couples who choose to rekindle their romance for the wrong reasons, and this often leads to more tears and heartbreak down the road.
The big question then is…
Should You Get Back Together?
You may be tossing and turning this question over in your mind for the first few months after a breakup. It can be challenging deciphering where this thought is coming from: A genuine love for your ex or an insecurity of being alone.
If you are asking yourself that question, you should also be asking yourself these questions:
1. What were the reasons behind your breakup?
There are some breakup factors that are out of our control—such as distance or relocation—while others may spring out of misunderstandings or outside forces’ influence. These reasons for breaking up can be remedied with time, patience, and communication.
However, larger issues such as cheating, physical or emotional abuse, or other detrimental behaviors are not so easy to fix and often are not in your best interest. Understanding why you broke up may answer the question: why get back together?
2. Are you truly compatible?
When we think of the times we were happy or in love, we often shade the memories in pink. We might ignore or block out the things that weren’t working so well and made us incompatible with our partners.
For example, what were your arguments like? Volatile? Did you argue at all?
You may think that not fighting meant you were in a perfect relationship, but it actually should be sending up red flags. Not fighting likely means that someone was not sharing their feelings and that there was a breakdown in communication.
Try to be honest when looking back and ask yourself if there were areas where you weren’t good together.
3. What are your reasons for going back?
Are you going back for love? It seems like a silly question, but we sometimes have subconscious desires that drive us back to our exes that are less than worthy. Financial security or other outwards benefits are not going to provide a long-lasting relationship.
Do you feel insecure without your partner providing encouragement and positive feedback? If you are going to get back together with your partner, the only reason should be because you genuinely love them, not because you are lonely without them.
4. What does your future look like?
The benefit of being single is that you have the opportunity to think about your life, without having to account for what your partner wants.
This is a great chance to ask yourself what you want your future to look like. Once you’ve figured out what you want, you can reassess whether or not your partner fits into that future.
Of course, compromises are inevitable in a relationship, but your core values and goals shouldn’t be sacrificed for another.
5. What is your level of commitment to making it work?
You broke up for a reason. So, getting back together means that there is some work to be done. Both you and your partner need to decide just how committed you are to making the necessary changes in your relationship.
Falling into old patterns or glazing over the underlying issues with the joys of being reunited won’t foster a happy and healthy relationship. Therefore, it would be good to work with a couples counselor to gain tools and better modes of communication to help re-enter the relationship with a strong foundation.
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Breaking up is hard but, sometimes, the battle begins when wrestling with the question of whether or not to get back together. To ensure that you and your partner are going back for the right reasons, consider the above questions as a guide for making a more successful decision.
