Detachment is one of the toughest hurdles anyone going through a relationship breakup is likely to face. The relationship is going down the pan and all you, as the potential left behind spouse is focusing on is saving the relationship, working harder than ever before to try and save it.

But guess what? At this moment in time, you are wasting your time. Remember, it takes two to tango, so while you're putting all the effort and time and energy into your relationship, it's all for nothing as your spouse isn't. He/she wants out. He/she is working on themselves and working to find the thing they are searching for that apparently doesn't exist in your relationship anymore. They are looking for themselves, freedom, not being responsible within your relationship etc. This is why it is so vital that you, yourself must learn to detach from the situation and from them.

If you think back to the time where your relationship was working. What do you notice? You notice that the two of you were working hand in hand at the relationship. You were on the same path together, moving towards the same goals, sharing the journey together. For whatever reason, your partner has jumped overboard, they have bailed out, leaving you alone on that path you thought was for the both of you forever.

It sucks, it really does suck. But that is the hand you have been dealt with and you must look to make the best of the situation. So what can you do to detach? Here are a few pointers of what you should be aiming towards doing to save yourself.

1. Stop working on your relationship. It's a waste of time until your partner chooses to come back and work on it with you. All you are doing is wasting your own life and making yourself insane.

2. Seek new ventures, join a club, get busy at work, do anything that will help you grow and take your mind off your situation.

3. Look at your spouse. In their current state, do you really want to be with them right now? Are they the same person you loved and spent many happy times with?

4. This one takes a bit of a balancing act, as if you go too far you can become very bitter and that is not good, so be careful with this next piece of advice. Look at all their negative traits, the things that really annoyed you off about them. Focus on these while you are getting through to being detached, but don't go overboard with it.

If you can get to a stage where you can function well without having them in your head 24/7, you are well on the way to detaching from them. The interesting thing to note is that before you have been pushing them, pushing them to come back to you, trying every trick in the book to get them back. More often than not, these techniques only serve to push, as in pushing them away.

The four techniques above will hopefully set you on a course whereby you are pulling them, pulling them back to you. You have become indifferent to them in your detachment and often is the case, we want things we can't have. So in their eyes, you have effectively become just that, something you don't want, and this can lead to them turning around and asking themselves some very serious questions about their relationship with you. All of a sudden, they realise they are not number one in this anymore. What detachment will do is it will force you out of the pleasant fantasy of the past (which was at one time very real) and into the present (which sucks) and into the process (perverse though it sounds) of tomorrow.