RELATIONSHIPS: Break-up navigation: Minimise the agony

You go to a party, and at the first sight of that lady, you conclude that she is the Miss Right you have been searching for.

Monday, October 13, 2008

You go to a party, and at the first sight of that lady, you conclude that she is the Miss Right you have been searching for.

You start by exchanging pleasantries in a bid to create a link between you two. Heading home, you start picturing a happy family and call to find out that she has got home safely.

As time passes, you start to realise that you cannot live without each other. You become an inseparable item.

"One should always leave room for such things like a break up in a relationship,” warns Brenda Uwizeye a year two student at the National University of Rwanda. At the beginning, no one ever wants to lose a lover or break up but often it’s in inevitable.

"However much you could be in love, there are times when you feel fed up with the whole affair and the only solution is to let go of that most treasured other half,” says Innocent Mugema, 25, a sales person.

Heartache
Jennifer Dusabe, 21, says that a blow that a break up with her boy friend of two years dealt her was unimaginable. It was the last thing on her mind when he let all hell loose saying that he was no longer interested.

According to her, it took her a very long time to reconsider loving again.

"Most people who have loved for their first time go wrong; many of them consider their partners as their everything and that they could not live without them. This makes them so affected in case of a break up,” says Eliza

Mbabazi, a 23 year old student at Universite Libre de Kigali.
Being dumped often pushes people to do terrible things.
"After my girlfriend of one and half years called it quits with no proper reasons,” narrates Paul Namanya, 26,

"I had to find a way of revenging her. I really was in love with her, but her style of ending things opened my eyes. What I did was to go back to her and asked her to forgive me for whatever I had done. It took some good time before she finally gave in. As soon as she had accepted, I retaliated by dumping her and this is when I felt a bit relieved from the pain she had caused me.”

Others handle things differently. Joseph Tuyishime, a driver, tells me that instead of going to hang himself on a tree when dumped by a girl friend, he would rather hang on another girl.

"After the first and second break up, it becomes normal and it starts feeling like changing phone handsets,” he concludes.

Staying power
Angelique Murorunkwere, a senior six student, doesn’t think that all relationships should end in break-ups as many young people tend to think.

"God’s plan about a relationship is to sustain it until it brings fourth something better like marriage. I don’t think all lovers fail in their relationships because if it was the case, we wouldn’t be attending weddings over the weekends,” she says.

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