How should I break up with someone?

Host: How should I breakup with someone?

Gloria MacDonald: If you have been in a relationship with someone for three months or more, you really need to sit down face to face to breakup with that person. It is not appropriate for you to send the person an e-mail or leave them a voice mail message. You deserve to be treated in an honorable way and you should treat people the way you would want to be treated. So while it is difficult, it is never easy to end a relationship with someone. You really need to honor that person, respect that person and have the common courtesy and decency to sit down with them face to face and for whatever the reasons are, again, you always want to be positive in some way. It is not about berating and lambasting the other person. It is about saying, We have spent this time together and we have gotten to know each other more and I just don't feel that this relationship is going to go where I need it to go or where we need it to go.

So be honest, be genuine, be sincere. Don't be brutally honest. This is not the time for you to tell the person all of their faults and give them a big, long, laundry list of all the things that are wrong with them, but be sincere in terms of saying, I am just not feeling that this is the right relationship for me and that this is something that I should be committing more time and effort to and frankly, I think it would be better for both of us if we move on and go in our own direction.