What every breakup could look like: a conversation between two exes
By Daniel A. Linder, MFT
My son, Randy, and his ex-girlfriend, Margz, decided to debrief their relationship live on Margz's podcast, Feelings State of Mind, in an episode titled "This Is What Every Break-Up Should Look Like." They talked about what they learned about how they wanted to be together and how they wanted to communicate.
As Margz puts it: "No breakup will ever be easy, but Randy and I learned how to significantly reduce the level of suffering we normally anticipate when it comes to breaking up, by being brutally honest about how we felt towards each other and in the relationship." Randy took the lead, and for Margz it was a first: coming through a breakup with deep love and appreciation for each other.
What they practiced applies well beyond breakups: any difficult conversation, setting a boundary, asking for space, or telling someone something painful to hear.
I've shortened and edited the episode to bring forward its core lesson. When we are honest, real and true with each other, even about the hardest things, the result is often not distance but deeper connection.
Edited and condensed from an automatic transcript of the episode "This Is What Every Break-Up Should Look Like... ft. My Ex" (September 30, 2026). Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts.
Margz: Hello, hello. Welcome back to Feelings State of Mind. Tonight's episode is about breakups, and mostly about my own last one. I want to honor this special being and the relationship we created together. He showed me another way of breaking up: talking to each other, being brutally honest, and knowing the love between us is separate from how our relationship turned out.
Margz: According to YouGov, 58% of breakups end badly, both dramatic and messy. But my last breakup was a good one, I think because he had such a beautiful mindset about our relationship. And what better way to talk about it than to bring him on himself? So, hi, ex-boyfriend.
Randy: It's so good to be here. A little nervous, but it's fun. We're hanging out under a blanket fort, which apparently helps with sound.
Margz: Okay, first question: would you agree that our breakup ended as well as a breakup could?
Randy: Yeah, I thought it was really beautiful.
Margz: Numerous times during our relationship, you said that if we needed to end things, it wasn't going to end like our previous relationships had. If I needed to end things, I would tell you, we would talk it through, and we would share the impact in a way that deepened our intimacy. I think it ended so well because that was so important to you. So what does ending it with love mean to you?
Randy: I think it's really intimate to bring another human into your actual experience. True intimacy is when you're honest enough to share that raw experience. When people break up, they often have to tell somebody a hard truth: that they don't want to continue down this path. And they don't know how the other person will respond. Will they be hurt? Angry? Will they do mean things, cold things? It can be really scary to bring somebody into an experience that you know might hurt them. But at the same time, it's really intimate.
Randy: If you go into a relationship optimizing for intimacy, and not for specific positive outcomes, you want to make it safe for the other person to share their raw experience with you.
Margz: What I found really beautiful about you was that you weren't afraid of the harsh truth. But there's a way to say things truthfully that minimizes the pain. How can you say something hard, but in a kind way?
Randy: I go back to the devastation of being broken up with. My ex basically left me for my best friend, with no communication at all. It was by far the worst experience I've ever had in my life. Honestly, I've spent the last ten years trying to heal from it.
Randy: So I ask myself: she fell in love with my best friend, so what should she have done? What hit me over the head was that she didn't communicate with someone she loved. Since then, the recipe I strive for is an equal mix of honesty and compassion. And sometimes it gets clunky. The honesty piece means you have to tell the person what's happening, even if it's absolutely brutal. I need to hear the truth, no matter how painful. But it should also be delivered with care.
Randy: What I learned from that breakup is that it wasn't necessarily 100% my fault, but I played some role in creating an environment where she didn't feel safe to share what was going on for her. So my ultimate goal in relationships is to make it safe to bring out true experience. And if you really want somebody's true experience, you can't push them toward it being one way or another. You have to engage with real curiosity and be as open-hearted as you can.
Margz: Maybe what's most beautiful is being brutally honest with ourselves about whatever emotions come up. Sometimes it's so much easier to get scared or go into denial.
Randy: And it's not always easy to know what we're feeling. You might have a voice inside saying, "Don't mess this up. This is a really special relationship." And another part saying, "This isn't exactly how I want to feel." What do you do with that? How much do you disclose to your partner? How much do you safely disclose to yourself? It's complicated.
Margz: I think you made the space safe enough for me through your sheer openness and compassion, even when I was unsure what to keep to myself and what to share.
Randy: Every time we had a conversation like that, with you being brave enough to share and me being open-hearted enough to receive it, it made me feel closer to you and more confident in myself. A lot of times people give up something beautiful that's sitting right in front of them, something workable and creative, in the name of chasing a fantasy that isn't real.
Margz: I much prefer a partner who wants to talk about everything that's going on and won't be scared of it. It's also good information for quickly identifying the wrong person. We're imperfect, insecure beings who need a lot of love and affection. If you're feeling avoidant, as most people often are, and you share that with someone who makes it safe, it opens a doorway to know them better and love them better.
Margz: Are you familiar with the compliment sandwich? You're in a tough conversation with someone you care about, so you say some nice things first, then the hard thing, then end with something nice again. If you go straight to the harsh truth, they can feel attacked.
Randy: I think it can feel performative. When it comes to keeping an intimate space where you can connect deeply, there's no way to get it perfectly right. It's hard, and it gets clunky. There's no room for performance when you're present with everything that's going on in the moment. I don't want what needs to come out sugar-coated.
Randy: It's one thing to hear "I'm leaving you." It's another to hear how meaningful being with me was, and then "I've gotten clarity within myself that this isn't what I want." To tell someone you love them while telling them the truth, and to have them receive it, is an opportunity for intimacy. A compliment sandwich doesn't soften the blow. It's harder and hurts more.
Randy: I think breaking up with love is about where you're coming from inside yourself. A breakup isn't an absence of love. Most of the time my desire to break up comes from love: love for myself, to live the best life I can and be in the relationship I want to be in. But it also comes from love for the other person. They want to be with somebody who's a fuck yes for them. And if I'm not a fuck yes for them, they deserve to know that.
Margz: What do you think of people softening the blow by saying, "It's more me, not you"? I think a lot of breakups happen that way because people are scared to be honest. To me it isn't completely honest, and I don't feel any love coming through. It becomes a cop-out. I'd much rather hear something closer to the truth, like "I wish I were emotionally ready to navigate the turbulence between us, but I can't meet you there. Something isn't working, and I want out."
Randy: I don't think honest means sharing every thought you're thinking. But I don't want anyone to have to work so hard to break up with me.
Margz: What if your partner is really controlling or super jealous? How would you break up with love without making it all about you?
Randy: You can only do your best. I once broke up with someone with so much love, and assured her it wasn't for a lack of love, but I heard afterward that it was very painful for her. You have limited control over how someone receives it. Breakups are tough terrain no matter what, but saying it with love eases the pain and suffering. Part of it, too, is validating your own experience. If somebody is too clingy, or too whatever, and that's a problem for you, it's a problem for both of you. These problems aren't one-sided when you're building a relationship together.
Margz: How important do you think it is that a breakup, if one needs to happen, is done with love?
Randy: One of my best friends, Oren, taught me this: first, you have to set the boundary, and then you set it with love. We're all imperfect beings who sometimes don't have the strength, the skill, or the self-awareness to set a boundary with love. In that case, you have to practice setting boundaries and accept that it might be clunky and painful for the other person.
Randy: If two people build a relationship on a foundation of communicating hard things with love, it makes both people feel safer. Even in the worst-case scenario, when there's big, painful information, you'll show up for it, listen to each other, and care for each other. I think it's better to bring it up early, something like, "If you ever have to communicate something difficult with me, I'd like you to say it with love." It's establishing a core principle: whenever there's a rupture, an argument, or something that needs to be discussed, you come from love. And that implies that if it's a breakup, it will be done with love too.
Margz: I wrote about building a solid foundation for a developing relationship as early as possible: committing to be open to talking about any difficult feelings or issues, including breaking up. Do you agree?
Randy: It's not normative. For a lot of early couples, talking about breakups feels strange: "Wait, we're not there yet, we're just getting started." But I disagree with that as a principle. I think it's a great first-date topic. It's so attractive when somebody owns their experience and shares it with you. And it's terrifying to me when I can't trust that a person will do that.
Margz: I love that. It goes for my friendships too. I don't want to have to wonder whether something is wrong. I want to feel safe enough to trust you to bring it up.
Margz: The biggest benefit, when it goes well, is real closure. If someone makes it all about themselves, or ghosts, neither person gets to talk about what went wrong. Sometimes it didn't work simply because two people are incompatible. If you can talk about that with love, it becomes so much lighter, and both people can take it into the next relationship in a healthier, more beautiful way. Real closure is rare, and it's so healing. With us, I really grew to love you, and I'm so grateful to have met you. I want you to know in your heart that you are loved by me.
Randy: That makes me feel good. When my love is received, it feels really good.
Randy: Another benefit is what comes after the breakup. I think of a relationship as an almost never-ending ecosystem that shows up in many forms. We met on a dating app, we built a relationship, we broke up, and now we're recording a podcast together about it. Breaking up with love pays dividends. It's a testament to our underlying friendship, which is a more powerful force than a lot of people realize. All relationships at their core are about seeing and loving a human as they are.
Margz: It isn't weird when we run into each other, which happens all the time since we live so close. I wouldn't avoid you. And I know that if I ever needed to call you, you would pick up.
Randy: When I think about how our last conversations went, both of us were so intentional, honest, and raw. It's what led me to love you and see you more deeply, even though we went our separate ways.
Margz: Same to you. I saw you in an even more beautiful light, and I was even more grateful for how we broke up.
Margz: But what about the more difficult stuff? Say I cheated on you, you're really angry, and you want to break up with me because of it. What would you say?
Randy: As you know, I'm poly, but you can cheat in the poly world too. It's lying. It's breaking agreements. Someone betrayed your trust in a deep way. The first thing I'd want to communicate, in the language of breaking up with love, is that it felt like a betrayal, that it really hurt, and that trust was broken.
Randy: There's an expression I love: trust is gained in droplets and lost in buckets. So I'd say, "You broke trust in this relationship, and the question is how we want to move forward from here." I'm not the type to leave immediately over it. I'd leave based on how the repair conversation felt. If I didn't feel a desire from you to help me understand why you did it and what needs weren't being met, we couldn't heal it. And I'd want to know what role I might have played. As painful as it is, it can be a relief to hear the truth.
Randy: I think people break up before they break up, because that conversation feels so painful. For some people, "I will never be with someone who cheats on me" is simply the line, and that's reasonable. But I think it misses an opportunity to heal, because most often you played some role in it. It doesn't happen in a vacuum.
Margz: What if we've just grown apart? We're living separate lives, and when we do hang out, it's just "eh." How would you break up with me with love?
Randy: I think it starts with accepting the truth myself: "I feel like we've grown apart." That can be very uncomfortable to admit, especially if you're attached to the person. Then I'd bring it up: "Can I share my experience of the last couple of months?" Maybe it's "The last three times we hung out, I wanted to connect with you, and you were on your phone." Or maybe I was on my phone because I was avoiding a painful topic. And that brings me to curiosity.
Randy: The second you decide to be real, you're entering the unknown. You have to be vulnerable and willing to get hurt. I'd want to know, "What was this like for you?" And you might say, "What are you talking about? I thought it was great." Then the question is: is there enough here, enough fight, for us to work through this together, go to therapy, listen to each other a lot more? Or have we hit a point of no return, where it's in our best interests to go our separate ways?
Randy: The same principles apply when one person falls for someone else. I'd want to say something like: "Given how much I love you, here's what's happening. I know this is a horrible thing to have to share with you, but this is where I am. However you respond, I'm here to talk about it now, or to give you space if you want it. And I want you to know I still love you."
Margz: What if you want to break up, but the other person won't let you?
Randy: I think this is getting into codependence, when you become so emotionally entangled with someone that you confuse their emotions with yours. And of course you can always leave. The person breaking up has to decide: Do I want to go through the process with them as they come to terms with this reality? Or do I need to set a boundary and do the best I can? You need both people to buy into the idea that breaking up with love is a beautiful way to break up. If one person doesn't, the story can't really breathe. And if early on someone says, "Forget that," that's a big red flag.
Margz: What's your final pitch to listeners about ending with love?
Randy: Be really gentle with yourself, on both sides of this. When you find uncomfortable emotions about another person, validate them and accept them. They're real, worth paying attention to, and ideally worth communicating. And when people you love have difficult emotions about you, most of the time it isn't personal. Find the grace in your heart to listen to them and get to know them better as they tell you something you don't want to hear. It's a muscle that will enrich all our lives if we build strength around it.
Margz: Thank you so much, Randy. I'm so grateful our paths crossed, because our relationship was healing in so many ways, especially in how we were able to end it. You taught me to be grateful for all the beautiful parts of our relationship, to take them with me into my everyday life and into future relationships, and to focus less on the sadness and more on the gratitude.
Randy: Aw, thanks, Margz. Thank you.
Feelings State of Mind is on Instagram at @feelings.stateofmind, and feedback is welcome at feelings.stateofmind@gmail.com.
What Margz and Randy describe is something I’ve seen again and again in forty years of working with couples. Honesty, offered with compassion, rarely destroys a relationship. More often it deepens one.
This is a conversation between two exes debriefing the trajectory of their year and a half long relationship, all the way up to and through their breakup about a year and a half ago. In the spirit of celebrating and honoring Randy and their relationship and the special way they broke up, Margz made it the subject of her podcast. She wanted to capture the impact their relationship and their breakup had in her life and in all of her relationships since. They were reveling in the appreciation and love they feel for each other, for having broken up the way they did and for what they went through having to confront the truth within themselves, and tell each other whatever was happening, however painful to hear and to say, but growing and bonding through the process.
And now they bring an avid commitment to establishing and maintaining the standard for how they want to be in all of their primary relationships — leading with the rawest and purest expression of one’s truth, AKA brutal honesty, as being the pathway to conceiving the deepest and most intimate connections, that which is what we are ultimately after. Isn’t it?
Their relationship didn’t work out the way they might have wished, but the way they communicated with each other, honestly way out of their comfort zone, and how they broke up, left an endless ripple of love and appreciation and a deep mutual specialness for what they cocreated and all they’ve been through together. Their hearts beat faster and smiles break across their faces whenever they happen to run into each other.
That’s pretty rare. If only… If only… If only…
— Daniel A. Linder, MFT
Daniel A. Linder, MFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and the creator of The Relationship Model of Addiction™ (TRMA™) — a framework for understanding addiction and relationships as a lifelong journey toward emotional nourishment and connection. Learn more at RelationshipVision.com.