Did your girlfriend break up with you?  You are not the first guy to go through this.  In fact, girls initiate three quarters of the break ups while guys only dump the girl in one quarter of the situations.  Therefore, guys have to deal with being dumped far more often than girls do.

Compounding the problem is the impression that men are supposed to deal with their emotions stoically.  While women are allowed to dissect every part of their relationship, men are expected to roll with the punches.

But this doesn’t mean that men don’t have emotions.  They hurt when women dump them.  A girlfriend break up is quite painful.

First of all, men tend to place more value on stable relationships than women do.  While a man might be interested in a fling with a woman who is not his girlfriend, what he really wants is someone who will be there in good times and bad.

But, once your girlfriend has dumped you, it’s important to figure out how to pick up the pieces and go on with your life.

First of all, you should find some way to express yourself.  Girls can do this by writing poetry or talking about the relationship endlessly with their friends.  Men often don’t feel comfortable with these options.  But, if you play the guitar or piano, try writing some music that allows you to express your feelings.  Many of the great songs are about the pain of breaking up.

Next, you need to clear out your place of all of the things that remind you of her.  If she has clothes at your house, give them back.  Throw away her toothbrush.  And, if she’s given you any gifts that you want to keep, box them up for the time being until you can look at them without having turbulent emotions.

You will want to close off communications with her, at least for the short term.  If either of you owe the other money, try to settle up so that won’t be an avenue for talking.

Then tell your ex that you want to go silent for a while.  That means no calls, texts, or emails.  Stay off each other’s myspace and facebook pages.  In time, you may be able to be friends again, but right now you both need to give each other the space to heal.

Then, you need to get out of the house.  Make a point of playing pick up basketball with your friends.  Go out to a bar from time to time.  Become a big brother to an underprivileged kid.

Then, start to get back into the dating scene once again.  At first, you can have casual dates that may not lead to anything.  But, over time, you will meet someone you really care about.  And, at that point, you will know that you have some closure about the old relationship.  You won’t be worried about the old girlfriend break up any more.

Do you wonder how to get your ex back?  So did Sean O’Casey.  His girlfriend had stormed out one day and said “I don’t ever want to see you again.  Sean was devastated to say the least.  He was desperate and wanted to know how get your ex back.

The first thing Sean needs to realize is that his ex, Therese, needs some space.  She was obviously stressed and / or angry about something and she needs to recoup.

The last thing Therese needs is for Sean to jump in and start calling, texting, and emailing her.  She doesn’t need flowers or love letters.  These are all things not to do when you wonder how to get your ex back.

Instead, he should wait for Therese to call him.  She will have to contact him eventually, if only to arrange to pick up the things she has at his house.  She is also going to want closure on the situation.

At this point, Sean needs to be ready to make his move.  He needs to be open to discussing the problems that their relationship was going through and admit his role in them.  He also needs to confront Therese on the things she was doing that caused challenges in their partnership.

Sean and Therese need to have a long heart to heart talk.  But, Therese needs to initiate the contact.

When someone has just walked out of your life, you may feel a need to grab them back.  This is the wrong tactic.

There was obviously a problem that needed a grand gesture on your ex’s part.  Once he or she gets that out of their system, you are ready to make progress on the problem.

But, if you crowd your ex, you tell him or her that you are desperate for their love.  You let them know that they are completely calling the shots.  When you give in this way, you are actually pushing them away.

If you are wondering how to get ex back, you should start by giving him or her the space needed to get some perspective on the relationship.  If you don’t, you will drive them even further away.

Your ex is obviously attracted to you.  He or she would have left quietly if they just wanted to move on.  The good news is that the grand gesture or dramatics lets you know that they still have a considerable amount of emotional energy invested in the relationship.

But, don’t squander that emotional energy by pursuing them prematurely.  Let your ex settle down and get some perspective.  Only then will you be able to solve the problems in your relationship.

Sean was patient and waited for Therese to call him.  When she did, she was somewhat embarrassed about how she had left things.  When Sean suggested they meet for coffee and talk about things, she readily agreed.  Therese wanted to get their relationship back on track, and the way Therese handled things allowed her to have the space she needed to do so.

And, that is how to get your ex back.

You may be tempted to try and get back together with ex but is it really something that you want to do. It might be the best thing in the world but it could also be World War 2. The best way to find out is to attack the idea and tear it apart. You want to be able to find all the reasons that it won’t work and not to be pessimistic about the chances either. You want to see if it can handle an imaginary beating before you give you and your former lover a real emotional beating. If it withstands the scrutiny, then just maybe it isn’t a bad idea to get back together with ex.

It could very well be that you have grown out of the relationship. People grow over time. If you or your former spouse, girlfriend, or boyfriend have gone through an emotional growth spurt then it could be that one of you outgrew the other. It could also be that you outgrew the need for the other. People change and where you had so much in common and had so many common needs, there may be little there. If it really is a good idea to get back together with ex then you will find that both of you really do need each other and make each other stronger. Look closely, though. Have your paths diverged? Are you like a stream that has branched off into two? Look honestly at the direction you are going and be real about it.

Could it be that one of you really is more interested in the other more than they are in them? Are you more interested in a relationship with them than they are with you? Is it the other way around? If you think that you might want to get back together with ex then you should be somewhere near the same in level of interest. You should be on pretty equal billing here. There should be a mutual admiration society of two going on here. If there isn’t that balance, then it probably isn’t a good idea to get back together with ex.

Now is it a matter of one of you being controlling over the other? This is something that is very common in couples and is a leading factor in unhappiness within the relationship and is a major part of breaking up or divorce. In this instance you will really have to take a good, hard look at the situation. Is is emotionally healthy for both of you? Are one of you in the driver seat and the other a captive passenger? Then this really probably isn’t a situation where it is a good idea to get back together with ex.

There are many other reasons that people break up and those may not have been the situation that the two of you were in but the principle applies for most every situation. Take a good and honest look at it and fight to see the reasons that it won’t work. If you can convince yourself that it will only end in a breakup again, then you shouldn’t do it. If, however, you decide that it isn’t guaranteed or even mostly likely that you will break up again, then it could be a good idea to get back together with ex.

If you want to have a healthy relationship, you need to define the relationship. One of the biggest reasons that relationships have problems is because both people in the relationship have different expectations and assumptions about what kind of relationship they’re in.

Frankly, if you think you’re on the road to marriage and happily ever after and your boyfriend or girlfriend thinks that’s what you have is a nice light fling, you are going to have problems. Hurt emotions, broken hearts and generally misery tend to lie in the future for people who fail to define the relationship they’re in.

The problem is that everyone, and I mean everyone, tends to think of everything they do as normal. This is a problem because there is no such thing as normal. Every person is a unique bundle of needs, fears, and desires. The strengths and weaknesses that make us who we are make the need to define the relationship essential.

Whether we realize it or not, we are all using ourselves as the baseline for behavior. This means that on some very essential levels, we assume that other people want what we want, feel what we feel. Most of us are aware that this isn’t the case on a conscious level, but it’s hard to put this into action all the time.

As long as things seem to be going okay, we have a tendency to let this go on more and more. After all, when they seem happy and you seem happy, there’s no reason to examine your assumptions and expectations. Most of us only do that when things have gone wrong in a relationship.

This why the need to define the relationship early on is so great. Because other people are, well, other people. They may be happy in the relationship, but they may be happy for different reasons. If you let this go too far, you may be setting yourself up for resentment and pain.

By taking the time to define the relationship, you are taking the reins in the relationship. You will be able to see where you are and where you are heading. This will allow you to have a healthier, stronger relationship because you will both be pulling in the same direction rather than going off in two different emotional directions until the strain on the relationship is so great that it breaks.

The problem with taking action to define the relationship is that it’s not the comfortable path to take. The conversations can be awkward, and there’s always an element of fear that the two of you will have such radically different expectations and goals that the relationship may end.

These are false worries, for the most part. You need to look at the effort to define the relationship as being exercise for your relationship: it may be tough and the time and there’s a small chance that you may get injured, but the truth is that it will almost always make the relationship better and stronger.

If you need help in figuring out what you need to do to define the relationship, there is loads of help available. This is one of the best things you can do to build a strong relationship, and it is well worth the effort.

If you want to fix your relationship, then you need to ask the right question. Relationship repair can be tricky in the best of times, which is why you need to know the right questions, relationship questions, to get the information you need to repair what has been broken.

This is not necessarily an easy thing to do. Most of us won’t want to ask these questions, relationship problems or not. This is because the natural human reaction to things is to try and avoid the problem as much as possible.

But relationship problems will not fix themselves. You need to make the effort to fix them, not wait for your ex to magically come around. You are the one who has realized there is a problem, and this means that you have to be the one to do the work to fix it. Whether you like it or not, it’s become your responsibility.

Which brings us to the questions. Relationship questions are not easy to ask, but the answers will be worthwhile. This is the information you need to do the work that will bring you back to having a healthy relationship with your girlfriend or boyfriend, husband or wife.

Question One: What Do You Want?

This is a question you need to ask yourself and your significant other. You need to ask yourself because you need to be able to know and articulate what it is you want from your relationship. You need to ask them so that you know that the things you want from the relationship are, if not the same, then at least compatible.

Question Two: What Were Our Best Times?

This is another question designed to get you looking at how the two of you view your relationship. If you both view different times in your relationship as the best times, this will give you a very strong indication of where things went wrong, which is the point of these questions. Relationship is based on knowing what these questions will tell you.

Question Three: What Don’t You Like?

Again, this is a question both of you need to ask. This is an area where it is crucial that you don’t assign blame or allow your emotions to be hurt. You need to take a full inventory of where you stand and knowing what it bothering both of you is essential.

Question Four: Where are we Heading?

The point of this is question is to see where you both think the relationship should and where it will go. Without knowing this, you won’t know how bad the relationship is. If your partner thinks that the relationship is doomed to failure, this is information you need to know.

The point of doing all this is to find the true answers to these questions. Relationship rescue will be much easier when you have this information, because it will give a roadmap of the problems you need to resolve to have a stronger relationship. This is only the beginning, and you should seek out and find the information that will allow you to overcome these problems.