Breaking Up After 10 Years Of Commitment

Breaking up after 10 years of being with someone is extremely challenging. Breakups are hard as they are, but when you break up with someone you’ve known for that long, the world comes crashing down on you.

Suddenly, you feel unworthy and completely lost. You don’t know if you should fight for the relationship, beg your ex to think things through, or blame yourself for making mistakes and letting your ex fall out of love.

All you know is that a decade of the relationship has intertwined your life with your ex’s and that you got so used to being with your ex that you can’t even imagine being with someone else.

Pleasant memories of your ex make you nostalgic and hinder you from accepting reality and letting go. They constantly tell you that your ex was the best you ever had and ever will have. That plus overwhelming separation anxiety and all kinds of intrusive thoughts make you put your ex on a pedestal and prevent you from focusing on yourself and moving on.

Holding onto hope feels extremely empowering as you don’t want to believe that your ex has detached and changed so much that he or she doesn’t feel any love for you. Deep inside, you want to think that your ex got the grass is greener syndrome and that he or she will come back when nostalgia and regret kick in.

Although your ex could indeed come running back, you need to understand that it could take a while. Your ex will need to go through all the stages of a breakup and fail in some painful way. Only then could your ex start to notice that he or she developed false perceptions of you (or of someone else) and took you for granted.

Until then though, your ex will crave freedom and independence. Your ex will want to be left alone and do the things he or she has been meaning to do for some time. You shouldn’t expect your ex to miss you just because you’d spent 10 years together.

10 years is indeed a lot of years. But you shouldn’t underestimate the power of detachment. When the dumper loses feelings (whether it’s after a year or 40 years of a relationship), the dumper is done and over with the relationship.

He or she fancies other things or people and doesn’t want to be persuaded by you or reminded by you. Memories don’t affect your ex the way they affect you because your ex emotionally disconnected from you and can’t feel nostalgic right after the breakup.

Your ex can only feel relieved (if you back off) or pressured (if you refuse to back off).

So if you and your ex broke up after 10 years, don’t tell your ex what he or she is missing out on and try to force your ex to feel sentimental. This won’t work until your ex has processed the breakup and entered an emotional state that allows your ex to question his or her thoughts, feelings, decisions, and actions.

I know it’s hard to just let go of a relationship that lasted for 10 years. I know it’s painful not to convince your ex to give the relationship another chance. But if you do that, you’ll push your ex into a corner and make your ex respond in ways he or she responds when people pressure him or her.

Many people, unfortunately, don’t respond well to pressure and disrespect. They never learned to control such emotions, so they respond emotionally and instinctually. This usually means they lose their patience and get angry.

Some people even argue with their ex, call their ex names, and threaten their ex with blocking.

Regardless of whether your ex has experience with smothering emotions, you mustn’t think you have the power to change your ex’s mind. As a dumpee, you lost the power to charm the dumper. All you can do now is make things worse.

And making the breakup worse entails receiving an unwanted response from your ex and getting your reconciliation hope crushed.

If you want your self-esteem not to plunge more than it already has, you have to follow the rules of no contact and let your ex come to you when or if your ex is ready. That’s the only way you’ll win.

In this post, we talk about couples who are breaking up after 10 years. We discuss how 10 years of a relationship can help your ex change his or her mind about the breakup and share some crucial tips with you.

Breaking up after 10 years of commitment

If you’re breaking up after 10 years of being with your partner, the first thing you should do is accept the breakup. You don’t have to like it and pretend you’re over your ex the moment you get dumped, but do show that you understand the situation, that you know your worth, and that you won’t try to force your ex to love you.

Exuding self-worth will instantly make your ex respect you or at the very least, stop your ex from feeling trapped, despising you, and thinking you’re desperate for love and recognition.

Your ex needs to see that you’re not crazy obsessed with him/her and that you value yourself above all else. Failure to prove your worth will not just result in another painful rejection, but it will also decrease the chances of your ex wanting to be with you ever again.

Once you’ve proven that you can handle the breakup, stand up for yourself and cut your ex out of your life for good. If you didn’t have an ugly breakup, your ex might try to keep you around as a friend and slowly wean off you.

By “wean off,” I don’t mean that your ex needs to go through painful breakup stages and learn to accept the situation. That’s your job as you were the one who was painfully rejected.

What I’m saying is that your ex has a connection with you, gets along with you, and might want your help letting go of guilt.

Although there’s nothing wrong with helping the dumper forgive himself or herself for dumping you and hurting you, a lot is wrong with staying friends with your ex just to help your ex move on with a clear conscience.

It’s extremely unfair to you as you don’t get anything positive out of it.

In fact, every time you communicate with your ex, you reopen your wounds and become hopeful. Hope, unfortunately, significantly delays your recovery time and lets your ex see that you’re willing to settle for less than you deserve.

So if you’re breaking up after 10 years of being with this person, let him or her leave. Open the door for your ex and let your ex know you’ll be focusing on yourself and that you don’t want to communicate anymore.

Say it’s not personal, but that you need to do what’s best for you.

Your ex might try to guilt-trip you into settling for friendship, but don’t let your ex manipulate you. A friendship with your ex will only give your ex more power and further strip you of your worth.

Instead of letting your ex have the cake and eat it too, remind yourself that your ex broke a 10-year commitment and that he or she doesn’t deserve the second-best thing.

Your ex deserves nothing but space and quiet.

A person who leaves you after 10 years, takes a part of your life with him or her. The dumper acts selfishly, refuses to work on himself/herself and the relationship, stops seeing your value, and thinks someone else will do a better job than you.

That doesn’t sound like someone you should be friends with. You can be friends (or occasional friends) with an ex when you break up mutually and don’t have any feelings left. But even such a friendship should be limited as it wouldn’t be fair to your next partners.

If you’re having a difficult time accepting the breakup, accepting your mistakes and flaws, and feeling better, you should take a pen and paper and write down everything your ex did poorly. Start by writing down your ex’s shortcomings, vices, mean/unhealthy words and behaviors, and how your ex dumped you and why.

When you understand that your ex quit a long-term relationship and get your rational thinking back, you’ll stop blaming yourself for “letting the breakup happen” and start viewing your ex as a quitter.

This change in thinking will allow you to stop feeling anxious, depressed, and scared for your safety and future and enable you to see reality as it is. It will help you acknowledge that the relationship wasn’t as great as it needed to be to survive its problems.

Even if you didn’t argue a lot as a couple, you’ll see that your ex lacked the commitment, perseverance, and/or communication skills necessary for resisting temptations and dealing with relationship difficulties.

Breakups happen for a reason. That reason may not have much or anything to do with you, but it does have a lot to do with your ex. If your ex was self-aware, mature, and capable of identifying personal flaws and resolving them before they snowballed into big issues, your ex would have fixed the things that needed fixing and avoided breaking up.

But because your ex didn’t understand himself or herself, your ex probably associated his or her problems with you and quit when the relationship became difficult to maintain. Even a 10-year-old relationship can become difficult when a person neglects himself, refuses to take accountability, and projects his own issues onto his romantic partner.

You have a slightly different problem if your ex’s communication was good but you refused to listen, change, and grow. In that case, you were the one who took your ex for granted and thought your ex would just tolerate anything and everything.

At some point, people start feeling unheard and unimportant and get tired of hurting and explaining the same things over and over again. When they reach the boiling point, they start planning their way out of the relationship and sometimes even start thinking about getting into a relationship with someone else.

If you didn’t do anything to show you were on the same page as your ex, your ex slowly lost feelings and decided he or she was going to be happier without you or with someone else.

Despite that, you still need to leave your ex alone so that your ex can have the space to think, feel, and do anything his or her heart desires.

Telling your ex you’ve learned your mistakes and fixed them will only annoy your ex as your ex will feel trapped and think you’ve started taking things seriously way too late.

So if your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend broke up with you after 10 years, identify your flaws and allow yourself to grieve. Remember that you’re attached to your ex and that you and your ex both want different things right now.

Your ex wants space and you want another chance. The only way you can get another chance is if your ex also wants another chance. And your ex will want that if your ex processes breakup emotions and encounters a challenging problem he or she needs your help with.

Here’s what you must do if you’re breaking up after 10 years of commitment.

How long will it take to let go of a relationship that lasted 10 years?

Long-term relationships take longer to let go of than relationships that lasted just a few months. That’s because long-term couples combine their lives and abandon parts of their pre-relationship identity. They become one person and get comfortable and safe around each other.

When someone pulls away, though, that changes very quickly. Their safety is immediately put at risk, leaving their vulnerabilities exposed.

In other words, if their self-esteem is low, they tend to take the breakup very personally and suffer immensely.

An attached person always suffers the most as he or she has romantic expectations and depends on the other person for safety and validation.

It’s hard to say how long it will take you to let go of a relationship that lasted 10 years.

But the time it will take you strongly depends on:

• your coping mechanisms
• your support system
• your post-breakup mistakes
• your ex’s willingness and ability to give you closure
• how good your self-esteem
• Whether you’ve been through a breakup before (the first breakup is usually the hardest)
• How badly your ex treated you after the breakup
• how insecure, attached, or codependent you are
• how great your life is and what you do to distract yourself

Dumpees who recover the quickest typically stay in no contact and avoid dating (rebounding). They focus on themselves and friendships, improve themselves, and set goals that have nothing to do with their ex.

Such dumpees know their ex can’t help them heal and that they need to take their minds off their ex. It doesn’t matter how they do that as long as they distract themselves and understand the breakup will take some time to get over.

On average, a breakup takes around 8 months to process. But super long-term relationships and relationships where the dumpee was codependent can take twice as long or even longer. A year and a half of recovery time is usually enough for the dumpee to detach, let go of hope, and feel ready to enjoy life and start a new relationship.

Breakups are a marathon, not a sprint. They require lots of reflecting, self-distracting, and participating in activities you may not feel like joining. The more you do these things, the more identity you regain and the more confident you feel.

Breaking up after 10 years is no joke. It’s a big portion of your life you won’t get back. But what you can do is practice forgiveness and self-forgiveness and avoid chasing your ex.

If your ex wants to be with someone else, that’s your ex’s choice. It doesn’t mean you’re not worth committing to but that your ex has other plans. Your plans must also not be about your ex. They must be about you so you can rebuild your self-esteem and realize your ex gave you an opportunity to grow and figure out what kind of person you want to be with.

Are you breaking up after 10 years? What’s the worst about breaking up after being together with your ex for so long? Share your experiences and feel free to ask questions in the comments below.

And lastly, if you’re looking for 1-on-1 breakup guidance, check out our breakup coaching services.