The Only Breakup Advice You'll Ever Need

The Only Breakup Advice You'll Ever Need

"You'll get through this."

Sound familiar? After a breakup, well-meaning friends tend to offer this and other cliché sentiments (think: "You're better off without him" and "There are other fish in the sea"). Sure, they mean well, but people often can't relate and rely on uninspiring and generic one-liners that don't do any good.

If you really want to help your friend through this time of heartbreak, bestselling author and relationship expert Iris Krasnow says there's a better way.

"You can't make a brokenhearted woman feel better with any of the clichés like, "Time heals all" or "When God closes a door he opens a window" -- she definitely won't stop sniffling over those empty words meant to be soothing. I usually just offer any jilted friend an immediate invitation to meet me for a glass or two of wine. The best course of action once at the restaurant is to just let her talk and talk and you listen, offering the appropriate empathetic nods or brief commentary such as, 'That shmuck,'" Krasnow said.

The author recalled that she once interviewed a woman in her fifties who had just found out that her husband of more than 30 years was having an affair with a younger woman. After ranting for 45 minutes about the emotional abuse she had suffered over the years, the woman came to realize that she was never truly happy in the relationship.

"While I know there are plenty of cases where the partner being left remains bereft because she does have joyful memories of the relationship, I have found in most of my interviews with women about love gone awry that when pressed to be honest about the marriage, they discover on their own -- more through painful self-reflection than advice from outsiders -- that they are going to be better off," Krasnow said.

For advice that helped readers get through their own splits, check out the slideshow below.

Breakup Advice That Actually Made A Difference

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