What's a 'Relationship Break'?

What is a "relationship break"? Can relationship breaks work? Is it healthy? Feel like you and your partner may need some time apart to figure things out? Need to realize some facts and restore the connection?

As of four weeks ago, my boyfriend, Dre and I decided to take a "relationship break" in efforts to strengthen our relationship before we take the next step, moving in together. This break isn't a "break up", now I know it's two letters from it (that's what he said), but it's not that at all, especially after we discussed a few rules to follow.

This was a challenge, but we needed this time a part to work on making ourselves better as individuals and as a couple. There are a lot of things we need to work on such as our communication, our reactions/responses, the jabs we take at each other, and the care we give and don't give in certain situations. Some other aspects we need to better develop are our brutal honesty, our priorities, our faults, acknowledgment, and affirmation and confirmation reminders to each other.

I take constructive criticism as a personal attack when words are coming from people close to me. I don't realize when I've hurt his feelings and I get defensive when he's trying to open my mind up to seeing things from his perspective or a different perspective. Sometimes I can only care more about the hurt that I feel, which makes him feel unvalued and not considered. Also, I know I have a habit of shutting down when feeling emotionally overwhelmed and I'm not open to change easily when things are out of my control.

He feels as though he'd been practicing an abundance of patience and that I didn't make enough consistent effort to work on the things we discussed throughout our relationship, I see how that can be exhausting. Just like him, it takes me to hit my head up against the wall a few times before I get things right, things take trial, error, and more patience. He didn't realize how his words come off and how his vibes and emotions affected me. Sometimes, I feel like I pay for the day, the week, or the months of emotional warfare he compiles and that he holds me responsible for getting him out of his feelings. He knows he's been overwhelming himself within our relationship and neglecting putting the same energy, kindness, attentiveness back into himself.

He felt like I didn't tap into my emotions enough to talk about my feelings openly and that I don't take time out to meditate deeper on conversations we've had. I felt we held each other accountable differently and that's one of the things that needed to be understood mutually. He felt I held him accountable physically and that I needed to see results asap. I felt he held me accountable emotionally and expected me to not make mistakes along my journey of emotional awareness while figuring myself out. We hold certain expectations for each other and tend to feel unhappy when those aren't met, so we're trying to find balance throughout various areas of our relationship.

Our consistency, commitments, follow through, and care within our relationship has flip-flopped a lot. I felt he needed to work on a lot of things as well, such as how he talked to me and what he says to me to prove a point. He admitted recently that he "gaslights" and "guilt

trips" to get an emotional reaction out of me when he feels I'm not being emotional enough for him or myself. This is something I've noticed for a while and it hasn't sat well with me, it's something I've needed to hear him validate.

We've talked about each other having "narcissistic tendencies", but it's hard for us to really recognize that on our own because no one wants to believe they're "narcissistic" because of all the negativity that's associated with the meaning of that word. I felt like everything I did in our relationship was wrong and that parts of me were slipping away. He felt like I lacked empathy and that I wouldn't take responsibility for how our relationship dropped and placed blame on him.

He felt I was too defensive, I felt he was too emotional. He felt that I wasn't emotional enough, I felt like he blew things out of proportion and jumped to conclusions (which we both did sometimes). Knowing all of these things, we decided to take a 30 day break until our 2nd year Anniversary arrived Feb. 16th. We felt we could rise above these challenges of heaviness and uncertainty we'd been feeling, especially with us moving into an apartment in a couple of months. We definitely had to start implementing the tools that will improve our relationship instead of just talking about them, we had to put even more effort into this and made checking out and giving up not an option.

Some of the rules we put in place are that we must talk to each other once or twice a day, we must leave every conversation with an 'I Love You' and a prayer, we must have honesty time where we meet up every two weeks to communicate our feelings or thoughts to each other, and we must physically fight the temptation to be intimate with each other and focus more on the lack of emotion that's been present within our relationship. Four weeks later, this break has had some good waves but also some uncomfortable waves. There's been laughs, smiles, and nostalgia, but there has also been mood swings, negative energy, and poor communication.

Having taken this break, I wanted us to learn what positive self growth looks like for partners who are trying to collide their worlds. I wanted us to learn that any partnership worth having and building takes even more patience, effort, understanding, consideration, care and communication. Knowing that our relationship isn't going to be rainbows and sunshine all the time, we are working together to come out stronger, healthier and better beings than we were before.

Relationship breaks are something most couples don't even consider as an option without "breaking up". If more of us thought about taking a break as time to figure oneself out, and pour back the same energy, kindness, attentiveness that we give to others into ourselves, relationships would be more functional. If more of us acknowledged what we need to change or improve and really work at it with more consistency and patience we'd be better off. If we thought more deeply about ourselves and figured out what we need internally as well as knowing how to better oneself for self as well as for your partner then some relationships would be stronger instead of broken or left behind. This break was definitely mutual and we've learned a lot more than we thought we would, however we are in this together for the long haul.