Kate & Emily

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OK settle down for a bit of soul searching and thinking back….

The aim of this worksheet is to help you to realise that there’s probably a reason for you and your ex splitting up that pre-dates the nasty breakdown bit. There were most likely bells ringing about your relationship much earlier. Remembering your bells helps you to realise that you knew something was wrong before it ever got nasty. And somehow taking that sort of long view makes the nasty bit feel more like an inevitable consequence that you both helped to get to. You need to stop dwelling on the climax of the breakdown and look at the bigger picture, accepting that you too have to take some responsibility for it. Here goes…

Q1 Think back over your relationship. List the things that happened or were said, or you felt during your relationship that were good.

Q2 Which bits worked well?

Q3 Now write down why you thought they worked well.

Q4 Which bits in your relationship didn’t work well?

Q5 Now write down why you think those bits didn't work well.

Q6 Was there a time when you were getting out of kilter with each other? Doing different things or going different ways? Love was fading? When?

Q7 Now write down what your ex could, or should, have done to make it work better.

Q8 And now write down what YOU could, or should, have done. Don’t let yourself off! However blameless you feel, hindsight always allows us to see something that we could have done. Write it down…

Q8 Now in hindsight identify the bells that rang that should have (or did) warn you that things weren’t right. Trawl through your memory-bank and start right from the day you clapped eyes on your ex.

Q9 Are you feeling a bit better for having taken a long view on your relationship ending? Are you getting closer to seeing both sides? If not, dig deeper, write more, think harder, be very honest and re-visit everything you've writen in a month's time and add more to it then.

If you can see what you both did to speed your relationship's demise, and you know when you heard those warning bells first, you should be on the road to parking history and moving on.