What to advice?

[penelope13]

A close friend of mine recently broke up with her long term boyfriend, because they both have different ideas about children. While she definitely doesn't want them, he desperately wants them.

 

No solutions seems possible (they have been talking about this for 7 years), thus the only possible way out seemed to separate and find partners who have the same goals. Simply and incompatibility.

 

However, of course it's not that simply. Apart from that (admittedly major) difference in opinion, they very much love each other (I say present tense because the love has not gone, just because they decided to break up) and seemed truly right for each other. Knowing my friend, that is actually quite something.

 

Both of them take this break very hard and are inconsolable. I have no idea how to help her through this. That is where I hope I can get some help from ENA: how do you help someone to get over someone they truly love (please nobody assume just because she didn't want kids that she didn't love him enough or the other way around).

 

The question about kids is not a minor question of compromise. I am vehemently against having kids just for the sake of having them, to please your partner, or to save a relationship and am very proud of my friend that she is so honest and puts someone else's needs before her own.

 

But how do I help her to get over this guy??

[Maya_A]

That's very, very much a tough one. Sometimes we want so much to take someone else's pain away. I don't think you can do anything but just be her dearest friend. Just be there to listen, listen, listen, to spend time together if she wants do something, and to know when to leave her to herself at times....

 

It's kind of like when someone very close to us loses one of their loved ones to death... Just being consistently there for "whatever" it is they seem to need at a given time...

 

There isn't any easy way around the grieving process for your friend - she unfortunately has to go through it with something like this. It seems like such an excruciating and sad situation - that' really, really too bad.

 

I commend them both for the extreme courage it must have taken to do such a thing.

[penelope13]

I know, it's so tough for both of them, although they are doing the right thing, they are both so much in pain!

 

I listen to her whenever she needs me to, but I never really know what the right words really are, except that there is no solution.