Taking a break from someone, whether it be a friend or a significant other, doesn't have to end in a breakup. A break can be a good thing! However, there is a right and not so right way of going about it.

From what I hear, it's fairly common for people on a break to fill the lack of human connection with casual dating or hanging out with other friends. This is definitely a safeguard against loneliness and maybe it even works as an effective break for some people but, in my opinion, I think this time is best spent working on yourself.

Everyone has issues, whether it be mental health stuff or just regular old baggage, everyone has undesirables they carry with them into a relationship. When you connect with another person, it's like you're stacking all your baggage together and jointly pushing it around. Some people don't have a lot of baggage so the load isn't very heavy. Other times, people can work together and collectively make the load smaller. But sometimes, people can come together with so much baggage that they each just need to work on themselves before the relationship is going to work. And this is where a break comes in.

But see, nothing really gets accomplished if you don't spend that time working on yourself. Sure it's easier to casually date or hang out with friends or fill your time with some sort of hobby and not deal with all the baggage you've collected over the years. No one denies that. Dealing with all that stuff is no doubt going to suck and there's probably going to be crying and denial and self-hatred and all that ugliness. And to top it all off, you might even have to do it alone if that person you're on a break from was your confidant. And that really sucks!

But here's some tough love: Time can only do so much.

A break will only work if time is combined with effort. Yes, it'll be hard and it'll suck and you won't even have it all sorted out when you get back together, but that's okay. The goal wasn't for things to be all peachy when you're back together. The goal was to just lessen the baggage, to get to a point where you can work with each other on the collective baggage without freaking out. And that'll suck too, but it'll also bring you closer together and the connection will be that much stronger.