In the realm of breakups, “easy-peasy” rarely comes to mind. If you’re hoping to let someone down easy, there are two approaches you can (and should) take.
Question: How can I let someone down easy?
Answer:
It’s a sweet notion, letting someone down “easy.”
But I would invite you to consider that letting someone down “easy” is about you more than them.
It’s your fear disguised as love.
You’re attempting to control and manipulate someone’s experience so you don’t have to deal with any discomfort in yourself. There’s nothing wrong with someone crying their eyes out or being angry or heartbroken. In fact, having my heart agonizingly broken in the past is among my most transformative experiences in life.
Why deny them whatever experience their soul must know they need for their own evolution and growth?
Just remember, this person won’t die if you break up with them. Nor will you.*
All that said, here are two specific approaches you can use for a “mindful breakup” (is it ever really easy, anyway?) depending on how important it is to you to explain why you’re ending the dance:
1. Simply say you don’t want to see them anymore.
You can absolutely keep your heart open and be kind even as you simply say you’re choosing a different path. Also, there’s no rule that says you need to offer justification or explanation for what you do or don’t want.
2. Tell them the truth about your experience.
Do so in a way that does not make it their fault—because it probably isn’t, anyway. Whatever your judgments about their character, the truth is, this relationship simply doesn’t work for you anymore. It WOULD work for someone else—hard as that may be to grasp if the person you’re letting down has done something you deem deplorable. But someone else would stay and keep dancing because they’d need to learn the soul lesson on offer there. So honor them by explaining your experience in a way that doesn’t make them wrong or somehow “bad.”
*Obviously, if they are actually suicidal or you’ve been threatened to not end things, that’s a whole ‘nother conversation involving professional intervention.