Let's Take A Break

When you hear "let's take a break", run, don't walk to the nearest exit. No one "takes a break" to improve a relationship. If your best friend, lover, mate suggests that you do this, there is more being said than they want to say aloud. What isn't being said is what counts. No one ever needs to take a break if everything is okay. If their issue doesn't come out in words, silence will not allow it to go away. It needs to be dealt with and silence is not going to make it better. When these words are spoken, they come from someone who is too cowardly to simply say what's on his/her mind. It could be compared to asking you to hold an ice cube in your hand while they "take a break". It will not be there when they come back and  neither will the issue between friends or lovers be solved. In truth, the matter of "taking a break" is merely practising how to get by without the other.  A break doesn't heal without leaving a scar or a callus and it takes a long time before that pain goes away. So what to do? This is a judgement call if it happens. Review how much the relationship actually means. Consider what you have gained from it and whether it is worth attempting to fix or if it offers nothing and needs to be discarded entirely. If it is too one-sided, it needs to be dumped and fast. How to do this? Absolutely no contact is the most effective and least painful way.  It's a sort of amputation of what you depended upon in your previous life. But that limb, unlike the human kind, does grow back if tended when you realize that you do not need the validation of another to be the whole, fine person you are.  Time is the master gardener. Move on and smell the roses.