Our hurt can be hugely intensified when we've been left badly.

Just as it may be rendered a great deal more bearable when we are fortunate enough to have landed on a lover who has learnt the psychologically-rich art of mature break-ups.

There are certain things guaranteed to make a breakup worse than it ever needs to be.

(i) Lingering

All decisions around relationships should be taken with the awareness that life is desperately short for both parties.

It therefore really shouldn't matter if the holiday has already been booked or if preparations for our birthday are awkwardly, well under way,

as soon as the decision is taken, a courageous lover will not dither out of a misplaced desire not to upset pre-existing plans.

They know they must leave.

They are ruining things, of course, but they can see that the holiday or restaurant meal would in any case be doomed,

and they are kind enough to know not to waste any more of our precious time.

(ii) Collateral Accusations

A wise departing lover knows not to accuse the other of more sins than they are guilty of.

It is not, they know, our fault that their career is going wrong, and we truly aren't responsible for their insomnia or the conflicts with their brother.

The wise lover keeps the list of accusations down to the specific problems that necessitated a breakup.

They don't use the parting as an occasion to rehearse all that happens to be a bit wrong with us, an inevitably far longer but irrelevant charge sheet.

(iii) Deceptive Niceness

The most harmful lovers are those who labour under a misplaced impression that they need to be nice, even when they are firing us.

But there is, in fact, no need for honeyed words, we simply require the basic information and then some privacy to put ourselves back together again.

Indeed, ongoing niceness simply confuses us all the more.

The tenderness makes us ache to restart the relationship, for there seems no reason why not, given how they are behaving.

(iv) Evasiveness

Clumsy lovers are so scared of the news they have to share with us, they cannot bear to come out with it, and let it seep out in odd symptomatic ways.

They start drinking too much, or come home very late, or advance odd-sounding theories about relationships.

They hope through their strange and harmful behaviour to be fired rather than have to resign.

In sly and unfair ways, they seek to push us to take the agonising next step.

- On the other hand, there is so much that can spare us excessive pain at the end. - (i) Directness

Kind departing lovers make a sharp break.

Once they've decided, they move swiftly to letting us know they clear off quickly.

They don't hold out hints of reconciliation.

They don't suggest that if we changed in certain ways, they'd reconsider.

It's awful, of course, but there's a vein of mature kindness in their brusque manner.

In an obviously difficult situation, they are sparing us the extended torture of false hope.

(ii) Reasons

Good departing lovers try to explain in convincing ways why the relationship didn't work out.

They might point out, for instance, that you are both really quite anxious by nature, and therefore struggle to soothe and calm each other.

This isn't so much a complaint about you, as on observation about why the fit between you as a couple wasn't very helpful.

Or they may explore the ways in which the two of you have powerfully divergent attitudes to money and hence are set on a serious collision course.

They're not saying you are horrendous or a fool, just that the two of you turn out not to be very adept partners for each other.

(iii) Honesty about who they are

Nice departing lovers let us see and actively remind us of what's not so nice or good about them.

They admit that they brought a lot of difficult things into the relationship.

They admit, perhaps, that they're obsessed by work; they may acknowledge they are bossy or very controlling; they might be open about their unfaithful nature.

They are doing us the kindness of showing us that life with them would be seriously difficult in major ways.

We're losing them, but we're not losing the prospect of a blissful or problem-free future.

Good departing lovers know that the news they are breaking will inevitably lead to them being hated for a time.

They are brave in the face of this.

They don't suffer from the fateful and sentimental desire to be loved by people they no longer love.

We're gradually disentangling two distinct sources of pain, which mean very different things.

There's the sorrow of losing someone we liked, but there may well also be the suffering caused by the unfortunate ways a lover acted at the end.

We may not be able to escape the agony of broken hearts but we can always strive to keep it to a very basic minimum.