Ending

The ending of a long relationship is never easy, but when the two of you come to the realization that things are never going to work, and your situations are not going to morph into something that will permit the relationship to move forward, you have to split up. You may both want to marry each other, and you both may love each other with all your hearts and feel incomplete without the other, but if marriage is not possible, and if neither of you are willing to make the necessary sacrifices for said marriage, or even if you are willing to make the sacrifices, but know you will regret it and want to revert back, you can't continue the fantasy of everything coming together. This does not mean your love has to end. There are 3 types of love. Friendly love, familial love, and romantic love. Switching from romantic love to friendly love is not easy, and takes some time, but if you went about your relationship properly and communicated your feelings effectively during the break up, you will find that becoming friends and eliminating romantic feelings is easier than you think. Turning your love completely off for someone will not happen; even if you stop speaking to each other, the love remains on both ends for an extended period of time. I have found through my recent experience that staying friends but limiting communication helps to ease back into single life, and ease out of the romantic feelings. You can still laugh with each other and help one another out, but you don't have as much contact, and do not share in intimate conversations. It is never easy to say goodbye to a relationship that you cared about, to end something intimate and wonderful with someone you so dearly loved, but God has a bigger plan for you. And maybe someday your situations will change to the point where coming together permanently doesn't mean sacrificing so much, but it also may not. You cannot rely on the slim probability that the relationship will fall back together sometime in the future. You cannot hold onto a flimsy hope. You have to move forward, learn to be okay with being alone, love yourself, do things you cannot do while in a relationship, and enjoy this new change in your life. You may find that spending time with your friends and family that you used to spend with your significant other seems more enjoyable, and gives you a newfound love for yourself and others. You will never know until you stop wallowing in self pity and trying to fix what is already broken and grab onto this new lifestyle and try new things. You never know who you will meet while doing something new.