We have all been there before. You have given a relationship all you had and more, and it’s time to let that person know you are breaking up with them. This is no easy task as we all know. I’ve had my share of people leaving me or the other way around, and here are a few tips I learned along the way to make the process smoother for everyone.

Be honest. Sometimes you don’t want to hurt the other person by telling them the real reason you’re leaving them. You think that by making up a line, “It’s me, not you” that you’re doing them a favor but in reality, you’re not helping them evolve by being dishonest. There is always a way to tell your truth by choosing your words carefully in order to smooth the truth over. From experience, the more honest you are about why you’re leaving someone, the more they will grow and so will you. They might have a hard time accepting the truth now but later down the road, they usually end up thanking you for your honesty.

Finish one relationship before starting another one. Some people like to end relationships by starting another one. This is not only hurtful to the person you just broke up with but to yourself as well. Jumping into a new relationship before an old one ends is a way of avoiding facing some of your own demons and truths. Give yourself a mourning period to honor the recent person you shared your life with and to give yourself time to heal your love wounds too.

Carry yourself with class. Swearing, screaming, throwing stuff is not a classy break-up. Sitting down and calmly explaining why you’re leaving works better than throwing an emotional fit. Later when you look back on your life, you will be able to congratulate yourself on behaving well even though it was a difficult time in your life. If you feel you can’t break-up with someone without making a scene, word of advice: take your best friend along to help you emotionally.

Give some positive words. Before walking away, let the other person know the good things you had. Reinforce the positive aspects even if they’re small. Whenever you criticize someone in life, a good rule is to give them positive feedback too. No one is all bad or all good, and we all need to learn from our mistakes. Show them you’re not leaving with just the negative stuff but also some positive stuff. If you can’t think of any right away, write to them later to tell them some positive words.

We say that what goes around, comes around. If you learn to break-up with someone respectfully then you are planting a respectful future for yourself.

If you find yourself looking for that new relationship, there are always red flags that will come up as you date people, and we all have our list of red flags. Red flags are warnings early on in the dating process that a person might not be the best match for you. If you have had some experience in the dating world, you can spot these red flags quickly and avoid getting hurt or hurting someone else.

Here is a general list of red flags that will surely help you in the dating world.

The early love declaration. You have just met someone and things click. You are enjoying each other’s company, getting to know each other, maybe you have gone on two or three dates. Then suddenly the person blurts out, “I love you!”. Red flag. There is a difference between lust, like, and love, and beware of people that blurt the love word out rapidly. Love takes time, it involves getting to know someone’s good and bad side, it involves traversing many different periods together to finally truly arrive at meaningful love. People must use this word with more care and respect.

Flattery. You are on your first date with a man, and he compliments you every two minutes. You are on a date with a girl and she constantly tells you how good you are, how strong you are, how beautiful you are. Red flag. Compliments are nice once in a while, but it’s like chocolate cake: you want a piece not the whole cake in one night. Flattery usually speaks of ulterior motives, so just keep your ears open, and don’t be afraid to jump off the flattery train if it gets out of control.

Distraction. You’re sitting at a restaurant, enjoying a fine meal with a date, and he constantly receives texts or calls on his iphone 4. He’s there but not there. He says all the right things but you feel he is miles away. Red flag. This scenario usually comes up to indicate a) the guy has ADD or b) he’s multi-dating or c) he’s not able to be totally into one thing at a time. A distracted date typically indicates a distracted relationship, and who wants to be with someone half-there and half somewhere else?

The terrible first kiss. If the first kiss is terrible, it is a red flag! Sorry to say but a first kiss is a great indicator of true chemistry and compatibility between two people. I was once seduced by a man who said all the right things but it turned out did all the wrong moves. Test it out: if the kiss is terrible, you’re probably better off justing staying friends or turning the page.

The dating world can be fun and exciting, as long as you can see and identify the red flags before they turn into heart-aches or dramas!

According to most of the images that circulate in books and movies and magazines, it is normal for people in a relationship to struggle and fight. This is the message we keep getting over and over again: it’s okay to be at war in love. I am here to tell you otherwise: it is not normal to be at war in love. Love should be a haven of peace not war, and if you find yourself at war daily in your relationship then it means that you need to seriously investigate your reasons for continuing this war.

We are miseducated from an early age that no relationship is easy, that love is all about sacrifice, that love is about putting water in your wine constantly. What if at an early age we had been taught that in a relationship, fighting is not acceptable, that yelling is inappropriate, that insults have no place? What would our society look like if we all walked around respecting our significant other, listening, communicating properly, and setting time aside each day for the couple? Our world would be drastically different, both for adults and for our children.

If you find yourself in a battling relationship, there might be several reasons for this. Perhaps you believe in karma and that you are back here on earth to finally break with the person you had problems with previous to this life. Perhaps you do not love yourself enough to want a better life for yourself. Perhaps you are scared of being alone or are scared of change. And perhaps your parents lived this battle-ground love before you and you know no other life than that.

To break free from a pattern of war in love is all about finding the courage to speak your truth. It entails that you sense this is somehow universally “wrong” and destructive to your Self. It forces you to face your solitude and accept being alone for some time until true love shows up. If you are breaking free from a war-like relationship then I strongly encourage you to go within and work on changing all that bad education that you have had through movies, books, friends, parents, or magazines, and seriously work on attracting a peaceful and quiet relationship.

They say that love is supposed to be a quiet river. If you are still fighting and arguing, ask yourself, do I really want to spend the rest of my life in a raging river, one that might completely destroy me? Or would I prefer a peaceful river where I can close my eyes and breathe life with joy in my heart?

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls (Kahlil Gibran)

To love someone is an art. You take your paintbrush, and with great patience, dedication, and inner calm, you apply strokes to the blank canvas with the intention of creating a masterpiece. As the white fades away and a landscape begins to appear, you realize that you are responsible for every color and every shade that appears on your canvas. Each thought, each action affects your canvas.

To stay with someone is also an art. We speak of communication, we speak of respect, we speak of honesty and loyalty- all these things are crucial for a relationship to function and grow, yet there is one important aspect that people usually over-look: what I call “Sacred Space”. As Gibran wrote in his famous The Prophet, in order for love to grow, we need to nourish space between the one we love and us.

How do we practice this sacred space in a couple? First off, by making sure we have our own friends, our own activities, and our own hobbies. In order for us to feel free with someone, we need to have our own world orbiting our own sun. Some other ways to conserve our sacred space and hence keep our relationship healthy is to sleep apart some nights, so that we can stay in our bubble and re-make our energies. Always sleeping next to someone can affect our sleep and our energy levels, and if some nights we need to go inside and seek for answers, one of the best ways is to sleep alone.

Another way to conserve our sacred space is to have moments that I like to call “Bubble Moments”. This is when people stop talking and enter their bubbles in which they feel in peace and in love with themselves. A lot of time, when we are in a relationship, we enter the other’s bubble without knowing it. Having our bubble moment allows us to really unplug from the one we love in order to go and spend time with our own selves, in quiet and in peace.

May the spaces between you and your loved one help to create a stronger and more durable love.

I am a huge fan of Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights written in 1847. Bronte’s novel tells the tale of a woman, Catherine Earnshaw, who is in love with a man of lower social status named Heathcliff. As all women of her time, she must eventually choose a husband and instead of choosing the one she loves, she opts for the richer man named Edgar. “I shall like to be the greatest woman of the neighborhood, and I shall be proud of having such a husband,” says Catherine.

As the tale progresses, however, we soon see how Catherine suffers for not having chosen the man she loved. She falls ill of a strange disease, and when Heathcliff returns to her after a three year absence, he coldly tells her, “Why did you betray your heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort- you deserve this. You have killed yourself.” Shortly after, Catherine dies and leaves a tormented Heathcliff to face the world alone.

Bronte’s brilliant novel is a brutal reminder of how one must always follow one’s heart when choosing the right person to settle down with. Although it would be nice to have a rich soul mate, most of the time soul mates don’t come with the latest Porsche or the million-dollar house in Beverly Hills. Sometimes our soul mate doesn’t look like the one we had in our head, and sometimes they don’t even speak the same language as us.

Wuthering Heights is timeless in the sense that we are still being faced with the same decisions people were faced with centuries ago, whether to marry for status and money, or for true love. When the time comes to say yes, let us recall the Beatles’ famous song and sing along, “Can’t buy me love” extra loud.

Internet relationships are much easier than real-life relationships. The real world is a place where you expose yourself and can experience true rejection and pain. Behind a screen you are protected; your looks don’t matter, your clothes don’t matter, and your garlic breath certainly won’t scare off your partner on the other end. You feel like a master behind the screen and you certainly are because anything you write becomes truth.

Internet dating has become a very common thing in today’s world. People meet on-line day after day, week after week, and spend hours writing e-mails and hours chatting. A common thing that happens to people that are dating on-line is that when they finally meet in the real world, suddenly things are completely different. The spark that existed over the screen is nowhere to be found in reality. It’s happened to everyone, even to me I admit.

In my experience, to avoid such deceptions, go straight for the real deal when you get the chance. If you meet someone that seems nice on myspace or facebook or an internet dating site, don’t wait weeks or months before actually meeting. You think you feel a spark? then go for it, always making sure that you meet in a public place at first. Don’t let a nice photo, sweet words, or a sexy voice lead you down a path of illusions. Explore in the real world, and try not to have too many expectations.

It’s also a good idea to avoid speaking of love when you haven’t actually met the person in flesh and bones yet. Remember that love is a very physical process, and takes time and effort. A click on the screen won’t bring you true love, but it can sure allow you to find a wonderful person who has similar interests and goals. So if you think you’ve met your soul mate over myspace, don’t wait months before testing your theory out. And who knows? Maybe you might get lucky and the spark that was once in the digital world trickles down into the physical world.

When a relationship ends, most of us get fed the usual statements from our friends and family; “There are many fish in the sea”, “You’ll find a better one”, or “Time heals all wounds”. Familiar words, right? From personal experience, these words usually don’t do much to heal a broken heart, and usually sound empty to our ears. Here are some of my own recommendations for those with broken hearts:

1) Live in the present moment. Seems easy, but it isn’t. Most people keep rolling that romantic film in their heads, the one about the first kiss, or the great trip to Cuba that year with uncle John and aunt Jenny, or that supper that he cooked on Valentine’s Day, or… Those films in our heads are the weights that keep us from living the present. In the now time, the relationship has ended, for whatever reason, and it is time to start rolling a new film. A movie where you are the star, where you are meeting new people, doing new things, and becoming happier as each day passes.

2) See friends and family. This really helps to deal with the shock of losing that one special person whom you thought would be with you for all of eternity. Seeing friends and family will remind you that in fact, your world did not gravitate only around your ex, but gravitates around many other people that love and care for you very much. Perhaps here is a good time to remind the reader that you should never make one person the center of your world. Instead, make the people you love and the things you love to do the center.

3) Create new hang-outs. Instead of returning to that lake where you first kissed or that restaurant where you had delicious clams for your birthday, build a new repertoire of hang-outs. After a break-up, it’s your chance to re-invent your world, try new things, eat at new places, visit new countries. Don’t torture yourself by returning to those places that contain memories that bring you pain; go and draw yourself a new map.

4) Write a diary. It’s not just because I’m a writer that I say this; writing liberates the mind and allows us to see more clearly certain situations. When my ex left me, I wrote every day in my diary and eventually, months later, saw to what extent I had grown stronger, happier and even relieved that I was no longer with that man. A diary is like your personal psychologist, and it’s free!

5) Exercise. I advocate exercise to nearly everyone I know who has lived through a break-up because when you exercise, the blood circulates and toxins evacuate better. More than that though, when you exercise one hour a day, it is the equivalent of taking one anti-depressant pill a day. Exercise is free and it’s less damaging in the long run than pumping your system full of pills.

Heart-ache doesn’t dissappear over-night. It does take time to get over that person whom you loved so much just earlier, and it will take some effort on your part to move along to that new film, that film where you are the star and happier than before. You can do it!