First of all, there are no breaks in a romantic relationship. Couples may suggest taking a break (typically when they’re frustrated with each other), but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re about to lose faith in the relationship and give up on each other.
A break doesn’t mean an actual break.
It means staying away from each other unless something outside of their control magically fixes their problems, changes their perception of the relationship, improves their feelings, and makes them want to work on the relationship.
Sadly, most of the time, things don’t get back to normal on their own.
Ex-couples must actively work on resolving their differences to reconnect emotionally. That’s the only way they can undo “the break” and avoid breaking up for good. If they enjoy their space and don’t do anything to fix their issues, they stay broken up despite asking for a short break rather than a breakup.
So keep in mind that a break isn’t a healthy way of dealing with relationship problems. A break reinforces a ‘whatever happens happens’ mentality and lets couples run away from problems until different problems stop them from being happy and knock some sense into them (teach them to value each other).
When they feel unhappy, unfulfilled, and regretful—and learn the lessons they need to learn, they’re forced to reflect on their actions (decisions to leave) and have no choice but to obtain happiness from the relationship again.
Although exes sometimes regret breaking up, know that it can take them weeks, months, or even years or longer. It can take them a long time to explore their lives and learn that they’re not happier without each other than they were with each other. Bad life experiences can show them they took their relationship for granted and that they can use the relationship as a backup plan for their problems and undesirable emotions.
So if your girlfriend wants a break, bear in mind that there are only two explanations for her behavior.
- She’s using the break as a manipulation technique to scare you, see that you care, and obtain power.
- She’s using it as an excuse to walk away from problems/relationship commitments and focus on people or things that make her feel good.
If she wants a break just to manipulate your feelings, she won’t be gone for long. She won’t stay away from you longer than a few days because she’ll soon stop feeling victimized and crave your validation. But if she used the break as a means of getting space and freeing herself of commitments and obligations, then she merely used the break as a euphemism for ending the relationship.
The only reason she asked for a break was because she lacked the courage to break up properly and knew you’d accept it more willingly than a breakup. She figured a partial breakup would lessen the pain she caused you and the guilt she felt from seeing you hurt.
If you understand her intentions and think of a break as a temporary separation, you’ll stay hopeful for weeks or as long as the break lasts. You’ll keep checking your phone and waiting for her to deal with her issues instead of detaching from her and regaining your focus and purpose.
Your girlfriend (who is now your ex-girlfriend) probably didn’t say how long she needed to sort her head out. She just asked for an unspecified amount of time to enjoy her life and not think about the break(up). The absence of a deadline to return and any specific things to work on suggests that she’s not using the break to work on herself but rather to distract herself and live in peace.
A partner or ex-partner who wants to be with you will know exactly what she needs to work on. She’ll know what’s preventing her from investing in you and have a rough understanding of how long she needs to resolve her issues and commit to you. She won’t go on a break without confirming with you that you understand her intentions and are willing to wait for her to get her life back in order.
If she loves you, she’ll ask for a specific amount of time and may even keep updating you on her progress. She’ll be afraid of losing you (especially to someone else) and having no choice but to move on.
Besides, couples who love each other stay together and work on various problems individually or as a couple. They don’t need a break to deal with stress, improve their behavior, and love each other more. If they need to separate to appreciate each other, they’re not capable of bonding and dealing with relationship and non-relationship problems.
They shouldn’t be in a relationship with anyone and are better off alone.
So if your girlfriend asked for space, know that the issues she associates with the relationship won’t go away on their own. They’ll stay as they are and where they are and make her feel relieved. She’ll feel happy without you and won’t see a reason to return.
She won’t see the need to do that when your absence makes her feel good and in control of her life.
You have to understand that she asked for a break because she couldn’t focus on herself as much as she wanted to. She felt that she needed to spend energy and time on you when she had more important things to focus on. If she was happy and loved you, she wouldn’t have a problem focusing on you and herself at the same time.
But since she ran out of love and changed her priorities, she determined that the quickest way to reach her goals and be happy was to distance herself from you and enjoy life on her terms. She showed you that you directly or indirectly expected her to focus on things she didn’t want to focus on and made her feel stressed and overwhelmed. No matter what you did or didn’t do, it was only a matter of time before she decided to end things and do what she wanted.
In this post, we discuss why your girlfriend wants a break so badly and what a break means for you.
My girlfriend wants a break but still loves me
Couples can’t just take a break and put a relationship on the backburner whenever they’re unhappy, stressed, doubtful, and confused. If they treat it like some activity they can take a break from any time, they stop feeling committed to it and abandon it at the first sign of trouble.
They distance themselves from each other and look for things or people who make them feel more positive emotions.
Breaks simply don’t exist in relationships. You’re either together or not together. When you’re together, you’re committed and aware of your partner’s importance. And when you’re not together, you’re done with the relationship (at least for a while) and understand the possibility that your ex could move on and date someone else.
Breaks are extremely dangerous. They give the person asking for a break the green light not to care about you and invest in you. She can safely talk to other people and not feel bad about it. Why would she feel bad when you agreed on a break – a situationship without commitment?
The moment you agreed to a break, you destroyed your ex’s obligations to you and gave your ex permission to do what she wanted. Doing what she wanted included signing up for a dating app, talking to other people, and even dating them. I’m not saying your ex had someone lined up and monkey-branched the moment she asked for a break.
But she probably won’t say no to a new romantic or sexual opportunity if an opportunity presents itself. Most dumpers don’t because they think they deserve happiness and feel excited to leave the past behind. Even if your ex doesn’t date anyone while she’s “on a break,” she’ll see that a relationship-less life is better than the life she lived with you.
It’s better not because you were a bad person or partner but because she doesn’t need to worry about your wants, needs, and problems. She can just focus on herself and the things that make her happy. This is enough for dumpers to turn a break into a breakup and permanently keep their distance from their ex.
Things often get complicated when dumpees don’t hear a peep from their ex, take the liberty to reach out, and ask their ex if he or she is ready to get back together. That’s when they receive an uncaring response from their ex and learn that their ex deceived them by using the break as a cowardly way of ending the relationship.
Some dumpees wait for weeks before texting or calling their ex and asking about the status of the relationship. They waste weeks of their life waiting for someone who spent weeks leaving the past behind.
Think what you want, but it’s extremely inconsiderate to tell an ex that you want a break when you in fact want to break up. Only cowards break up in such a spineless manner. They care about their ex’s reaction and their feelings significantly more than their ex’s time and recovery.
Having said that, here’s why your girlfriend wants a break.
My girlfriend wants a break but still loves me
Your girlfriend or rather ex-girlfriend may have been too scared to you the truth, but I’m not, so I’ll do the job for her. If she still loved you, she wouldn’t have asked for a break. She wouldn’t dare to keep you waiting and risk making you fall out of love with her and in love with someone else.
The reason she opted to give you false hope instead of being honest was that she feared you’d get hurt and say or do something to put her in an uncomfortable situation. She thought you’d cry, beg, and guilt-trip her, so it was much safer for her to make you think the relationship could be salvaged.
We could say she avoided hurting you in the moment and caused you more problems and pain in the long run. When you realize she asked for space to get you off her back rather than to work on herself, the breakup will hit you like a ton of bricks and make you crave explanations and closure.
You’ll waste weeks (or however long the break lasts) of your time and get the same result in the end. She’ll either break up with you properly or say she needs more time to figure out what she wants. No matter what happens, she’ll waste your detachment and self-improvement time and make you feel deceived for thinking she just had some personal issues to resolve.
I know it’s hard, but you need to understand that it’s extremely difficult for an ex-girlfriend to want a break but still love you. She can’t crave space and at the same time, possess romantic feelings. Love and a break are like water and oil; they don’t mix. One can either love you or not love you. There’s no, “I love you but I want to be alone.”
Yes, breakups can trigger confusing feelings in dumpers, but those feelings are usually guilt, shame, nostalgia, and fear. Sometimes dumpers confuse those feelings for love and give their ex false hope because of it.
So keep in mind that “I want a break” or “I need time” essentially means “I need to see if I miss you and can reach my goals and be happy without you.” It indicates that she’s lost feelings and that she won’t be back unless her expectations come crashing down on her.
If she just started seeing someone, she probably won’t get hurt for a few months.
The next 3 months or so will be near perfect as the new person will meet all her needs and expectations. Things could get ugly after the infatuation period when they reveal their true colors and show how they deal with problems and difficult emotions. That’s when she could get a dose of reality and try to use you as a security blanket.
How long should I give her if she wants a break?
Obviously, you shouldn’t wait months for her to fail miserably with another person. No one deserves that much time to decide what she wants. If she needs months to fail and compare you to another person, it’s only because the new person didn’t measure up. She may still leave when she finds someone new to connect with.
If you must wait for a woman who asked for a break, wait no longer than a day or two. A couple of days is more than enough for an adult woman to figure out if she loves you and wants to be with you. The only time you can make an exception is when she’s dealing with something extremely difficult like a death in the family.
In that case, you can give her a week or two, depending on how long she thinks she needs.
If you just started dating, she may not yet trust you enough or have a strong enough connection to grieve with you. But if you’ve been dating for months or longer, she probably feels overwhelmed and can’t invest in you and her problems at the same time. Her coping mechanisms won’t let you close to her. She may be an avoidant.
Regardless of what her attachment style is, it’s evident that she doesn’t deal with stress healthily and that she could abandon you before or when she recovers. A person who pushes you away when difficulties arise will continue doing that even if she deals with her stressors and comes back.
She’d have to get to the root cause of her behavior and actively work on it to not repeat the same behavior in the future.
So bear in mind that every situation is different. If your ex-girlfriend is dealing with something stressful, talk to her about her problems and how long she thinks she needs to resolve them. If she says she needs a week to process something difficult, give her a week to reach out. Keep your expectations low so you don’t get disappointed if she doesn’t reach out.
However, if she doesn’t give you anything specific she’s trying to work on and has no idea how long she might need to feel like investing in the relationship, you may as well break up with her right away. It will hurt like hell, but you’ll save yourself a lot of time and avoid getting rejected later.
If it’s been a while since she proposed taking a break from the relationship, then simply consider the break a breakup. Don’t reach out to her just to tell her you want to break up. Stay away from her instead and continue to process the rejection.
If she reaches out and wants to break up or get back together, you can respond accordingly when the time comes.
Does your girlfriend want a break? How did she ask for it? Post your story in the comments below.
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My name is Zan, and I’m a writer and a breakup analyst. I write relationship and breakup articles and strive to strike a harmonious balance between empathy and realism. If you appreciate my content, feel free to leave a comment or support me by buying me a ko-fi.
