Whether your partner left or it''s you who decided to end the relationship, breaking-up is painful, difficult and sometimes overwhelming.

Friends and family urge you to forget the past and reach for the future. However, it is never that simple. Before you can move on, you need to understand what went wrong, mourn the loss and, most importantly, to heal.

In this compassionate book, marital therapist, Andrew G Marshall takes you from hearing the bad news or making the decision to leave, through the fall-out from the split, the first steps of recovery and finally onto making a new life. He covers:

• Knowing when to stop trying and accept the inevitable.
• Why the break-up hurts so much.
• Emotional first-aid to make it through the worst times.
• The difference between looking back and learning, and becoming trapped in the past.
• What helps and what hinders recovery.
• Making sense of your break-up.
• Helping your children cope.
• Learning how to fly high again.

With over 25 years'' experience as a marital therapist, Marshall draws on hundreds of case studies, and provides sensible, compassionate and practical advice.

(Some of the exercises in this book have appeared in I Love You But I''m Not In Love With You by Andrew G. Marshall, published by Bloomsbury)