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Have you ever noticed that we expend a great deal of time and energy preparing positive speeches full of joyful tidings, but we plan the breaking of bad news with all of the care of car crash?

A good friend of mine was recently the victim of what I’ve come to call an emale.

Believing her budding relationship was as secure as an anti-virus subscription, she awoke one morning to find that her partner had deleted her out of his life.

As she put it, she had been archived over email.

Worse still, he had sent her a follow-up email telling her that he had added her to the Block Sender list, so there was no point in responding.

Responding? As in indulging in a bit of mature discussion to resolve our differences or to come to some acceptance of the bad news?

Not with this archiving emale.

Making Bad News Bearable

Maybe bad news really isn’t like wine, getting better with age, but that doesn’t mean we need to treat it like a bottle of bubbles against the side of a ship.

The reality is that good news can be broken in any old fashion, but its negative opposite needs a few boundaries.

Despite the method you select to deliver your bad tidings, there are five key elements required to make bad news bearable are:

1. Accuracy - bad news that intimately affects another person should not be a game of Chinese Whispers. Get your facts straight before you share. Half-truths and rumours only prolong the pain.
2. Timing - delivering bad news in a time of stress should be avoided at all costs. Chose somewhere private and calming. If something simply can’t wait for the right surroundings, keep the urgency out of your voice and body language.
3. Phrasing - ‘think before you speak’ is great advice. Take as much time as possible to prepare the delivery of your message, using simple, precise language and follow another old adage: be firm, but fair.
4. Consistency - the recipient of bad tidings is likely to try and refute your bad news. If you chop and change your story with each re-telling, it will be much harder for them to accept the truth.
5. Reliability - if you are not seen as a trusted source of information by the recipient, it is better than someone else breaks the news.

Think you’ve got it all wrapped up?

A firm but fair, accurate and confidential email or text message that will drop the bad news in your recipient’s lap and let you walk away unscathed?

The bad news is that negative tidings are one of the most complex forms of communication.

As a result, there is a lot of misinformation floating around, like the examples below.

The good news is that by avoiding some of these traps, you are less likely to cast the blues over the target of your bad news:

I’m Telling You this for Your Own Good

Remember that bad news rarely has a flip side.

Even if you really believe there is one - he’s a jerk after all, you were never appreciated in that job, you have a great fire insurance policy - it can be hard to focus on it when your life is lying in tatters at your feet.

Give them time to absorb the bad news and to come to grips with it, before telling them to look for the silver lining.

We’re Over. Send.

Breaking up via text message or exposing a cheating husband by email breaks every rule of communication that has ever been - well, communicated.

Unless your entire relationship has been via text, or you have recently relocated to an Antarctic research station when you have access to no other form of communication, avoid this approach at all costs.

We all need support to assimilate change and the best form of assistance you can offer is by delivering bad news face-to-face.

I Know Exactly How You Feel. One Time When I…

Focus on the recipient, rather than yourself.

This means saying less and empathising more. If you’re unsure how to do this, put yourself in their shoes, rather than wrestling their shoes off and wearing them yourself.

Keep your comparison stories for when the heart has healed and they will be much more appreciated.

Oh My God, I Just Heard The Worst News!

Information brings attention. Got a scandal to share? Nothing beats a crowded room fixing on you like the last plate of hors d’oeuvres when you have bad news to break.

It is true that the urgency to share bad news can be overpowering, but do your best to avoid the drama.

The reality is that bad news is bad enough without a megaphone and a sky-writing plane.

You Bring These Things Upon Yourself

The key to really effectively breaking bad news is to minimise the impact on the other person’s sense of self.

Keep the news and the individual as separate as possible.

This means helping them see that just because the news is bad doesn’t mean that they are bad - or stupid, or worthless or unlovable.

The bad news is that bad news is unavoidable. We are all going to receive it as we live full and adventurous lives.

But the good news is that the next time we have to deliver it, we can avoid serving it up with a case of the blues by adopting a few of these simple strategies.

A very wise friend of mine once said that the secret to sustaining a successful relationship was in recognising the benefits of a threesome.

While I tried hard not to choke on my wine or to catch the eye of her husband, she explained that she wasn’t talking about a third person, but a third entity.

As she put it, in her marriage there was herself, her husband and then the third entity, which was the relationship itself.

Many of her friends, she went on, had taken the preservation of the relationship to an art-form.

They had invested huge amounts of time and energy to the relationship, often to the detriment of their own personal growth and happiness.

Their needs - right to the core of their identity - had taken back-seat to the perceived needs of the relationship.

The Poor Relation

Women are naturally more focused on the third entity than men.

Go into any coffee shop and you will hear a woman chatting about her “relationship” as if it is at home, minding the kids. We are also often the first to identify when our relationship is feeling off-colour, and are the quickest to leap to its defense when others question its health.

But certainly a really healthy relationship needs to be fed from two positive and fertile sources.

Recognising the specific requirements of the relationship - a sense of common purpose, a spirit of compromise, and so on - is essential. Yet my friend would argue that this third entity is of no greater value or importance than either herself or her husband.

A really successful relationship, it stands to reason, is where a couple, as individuals and as a unit, are all in perfect balance.

One Plus One Makes Three

We are programmed to pursue personal health, happiness and prosperity and when we commit to a relationship, we sign up to support our partner’s pursuit of these same goals.

Yet in many ways a long-term relationship is an unnatural way to live.

Entwining the pathways of our life and then spending the majority of our time, energy and emotion on one other person is a challenge. It is debatable if this kind of long-term unity was ever even intended within our biological make-up.

But biology aside, it is in our cultural constitution to make commitments and work hard to stick to them.

As my friend pointed out, many of us commit more to our relationships than to any other aspect of our lives.

But even in the most dedicated of relationships, independence and personal space may often feel under siege and as we grow and change over the years, it can be even more difficult to walk in time to the same beat.

• Q. So how do two very different people - with continually evolving interests, activities and relationships that may have nothing in common with their partner’s - manage to keep their relationship healthy, happy and prosperous?
• A. By recognising that the third entity - the relationship - is not about expecting a round peg to morph into a square, simply because their partner is all sharp lines and angles.

Simply put, a circle and a square - an extroverted, intuitive woman and her introverted, logical man - should not be required to fit into the same hole.

Instead, the relationship should reflect the similarities that exist between them until it takes on a shape somewhere between the two…

The Three Rs

Let’s consider successful relationships outside the home.

Business partners often forge and uphold a commitment to financially, emotionally and socially support each other.

It is in their mutual interests, however, to not only preserve their relationship, but to recognise, respect and reward their individual roles and responsibilities.

Ultimately, the success of their partnership depends on their individual ability to contribute.

But how often do we apply the same rationale to our personal relationships?

• Do we allow our partners to grow and change, or do we expect them to bend more towards our own needs and expectations as the years roll by?
• Do we recognise their personal achievements, or do we feel threatened by the things they accomplish that we do not influence or contribute to?

If we were to adopt a similar philosophy of keeping the three entities in our personal relationships in balance, we might try to remember and apply the Three Relationship Rs:

1. Recognise your needs - Honestly identify and assess what is most important to you. Look at yourself in isolation of your relationship and work out what you need most to grow and prosper. Be aware that some of these needs may have been put in moth-balls for a number of years, but take the time to dig them out and see if they still have merit.

2. Respect your differences - Just as dressing alike is best limited to childhood, insisting upon living identical lives can restrict and stunt a relationship. Instead, revel in your differences as they can given added dimensions to your relationship. Rather than trying to change your partner to reflect your own interests or ambitions, invoke a spirit of compromise and acceptance.

3. Reward your achievements - It is highly likely that your strengths and skills are different to your partner’s, but both should be equally valued. We all function best when our efforts are rewarded, so create opportunities for you both to feel appreciated. Also indulge in the skills you both share, so that your relationship is strengthened through mutual accomplishment.

Keeping the “3 Rs” as the foundation of our relationship allows for a solid and balanced platform upon which all three entities can grow and prosper in harmony.