Breakup Advice: Your Questions, Answered I've been a marriage counselor for a long time. My experience has taught me that when both people in a relationship are committed to doing what it takes to improve it, relationships can nearly always be made whole. Even better, most couples can use their troubles as a launching pad for amazing new growth. At the end of the process, believe it or not, they often describe feeling grateful for the problems that brought them into marriage counseling because their transformation would not have been possible without them. That's the happy ending. And. Not all relationships can be saved. Not all relationships should be saved. When one or both partners have simply stopped believing that the other person can be who they want or need them to be, and the costs of staying outweigh the benefits, relationships end. Often, in the aftermath, one partner will be left alone on my therapy-couch. Then we do the work of recovery together. That's how I accidentally became a break up expert. (And a dating coach, incidentally). What I learned through this work is that people can suffer for a very long time; stuck on an Ex who will never love them the way they need to be loved. I also learned that attachments don't just turn off like a switch. Breaking your bond to another person is very hard work, and it must be intentional. Time does not heal. Time + intentional effort + self awareness sure can though. When I realized how many people are suffering, and feeling so helpless to extract themselves from unhealthy emotional attachments, I became a passionate advocate for people on the path of recovery from failed relationships. So much so that I wrote a book on the subject, "Exaholics: Breaking Your Addiction to An Ex Love," and I developed my online breakup recovery program, "Heal Your Broken Heart." Since then I've been getting lots of questions from readers and listeners. Today, I decided to devote a podcast to answering them. On this episode of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast, we're talking all about breakups -- particularly how to deal with the hardest parts, and serious dilemmas like: How do you know when a relationship is really over, or whether it's worth trying again? How to handle  friends and family who may be getting frustrated with you in an on-again, off-again type situation? Or how to set boundaries with well-meaning people who have very definite ideas about how you should handle things, when you feel differently? How to deal with the enormous emotional pain of a breakup? How to cope with regret over the mistakes you made that may have led to the ending of your relationship? So if you've been stuck on your Ex for too long, and wondering how to let go, listen to this edition of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast to get some new ideas and guidance for how to let go and move on --- for good. All the best, Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby www.growingself.com