Anyone who has had to end a relationship knows how the moment offers its own unique blend of dread, fear, and sadness with a side of potentially crippling temporary depression. But even if a goodbye drives you to the couch to seek solace in sitcom reruns and a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream, that doesn’t mean it’s all bad. Nicolino believes there’s good in every goodbye, and in more ways than one.
The Los Angeles-based bestselling author of Bad Advice: How to Survive and Thrive in an Age of Bulls--t dispenses sage and irreverent advice through her books, her ”The Tea With Dr. V” podcast, and on her popular TikTok and Instagram channels. When it comes to farewells, she says people need to change how they view them. A sad parting is actually a sign of something positive within you.
“I’m a firm believer that there is good in every goodbye. And look, I’m not saying all goodbyes are completely good. Goodbyes are a lot of things at once. They can be heartbreakingly sad and excruciatingly painful, especially when it’s a goodbye you were not really expecting or even ready for,” Nicolino said in a video on her TikTok channel.
However, she continued, there can still be good found in an adieu, even a painful one. “The good to be found is this: The pain of a goodbye is evidence of your ability to love in a profoundly true and deep way. The pain of a goodbye reminds you of the courage it takes to love — the courage that you obviously had and can have again,” Nicolino said.
Dr. Venus Nicolino: How We Say Goodbye Is Crucial
There’s a finality to a parting that makes the experience that much more difficult to deal with in a healthy way. It’s especially challenging when it comes at the end of a relationship that once held promise and may have seemed like it would last forever.
Many Quora questions and Subreddits are built around such painful topics. Interestingly, many people say so long to their partner without the slightest idea of why. A survey of 1,600 people about why their relationships ended produced this startling fact: When asked why their relationship ended, a majority replied, “I don’t know.”
One way to not leave the other person guessing what ended the relationship is to speak with them in person. Dr. Venus Nicolino says this is the best way to separate, even if the news is something you don’t want to hear. “A true, face-to-face goodbye is also an opportunity that not everyone gets. Every relationship ends. Sometimes it’s sudden.
Sometimes you see it coming. Sometimes it happens so gradually you didn’t realize someone was leaving your life until after the fact,” Dr. Venus Nicolino said. “The point is, you don’t always get to say goodbye. Which is a shame, because sharing a final goodbye with someone is a unique kind of closeness. You’re ending your relationship the way you began it — together.”
Those who work with people going through breakups agree. Karima Al-Saidi, an attorney at Maguire Family Law in the United Kingdom, told Newsweek that while there’s no such thing as a “perfect breakup,” her experience has shown that "the kindest way to break up with someone is to sit down with them face-to-face and ensure that you communicate your feelings clearly.”
Breakup Benefits
Even if you get the chance to have an in-person goodbye, recovering from the end of a relationship takes time. How much time? Online surveys have attempted to quantify the length of the average heartbreak, with the consensus being it takes about three-and-a-half months to heal from the end of a relationship and one-and-a-half years to heal from a divorce, according to Healthline.
Of perhaps more interest to the romantically devastated are the results of scientific research, also reported by Healthline, that attempted to measure the distress a person thought they would experience with the end of the relationship versus what they actually experienced.
The study concluded that most people who experienced a split felt a steady decline in their distress after just a few weeks, and felt better in 10 weeks. Women, in particular, often benefit from a breakup. In an interview published on Medium, Dr. Venus Nicolino said, “There is strongly supported data that shows a woman’s earning potential face-plants after they get married, while a man’s goes up.
They did not cover that in the Disney movie, did they?” She touches on this topic in many of her TikTok videos, including one on how you can never be good enough for the wrong person and another in which she says that “difficult times are no more than a bully.”
A running theme in many of her interviews and videos is that people must believe in their own strength and never shy away from expressing their feelings for
someone else. Dr. Venus Nicolino says that no matter how bad a goodbye hurts, the good thing is that it shows you have the capacity to truly love someone. “I’m here to tell you that they didn’t give you the capacity to love. They gave you a place to express it,” said Dr. V. “That energy remains within you. They didn’t take it, it’s ready and able to express itself with someone else —when you’re ready.”
