The single most useful thing to know when leaving a relationship of this kind is that the craving is a predictable event with a course, and not information about the relationship.
Chapter 20 and chapter 311 establish the mechanism. An intermittent reinforcement schedule produces the most extinction-resistant responding known, and the reason is structural: under a variable schedule, the absence of reward is indistinguishable from an ordinary gap, so there is no signal that says it has ended.
What that means at separation is an extinction burst.
Behavior that has been intermittently reinforced does not simply stop when reinforcement stops. It intensifies first. In the weeks after contact ends, survivors report intrusive longing, preoccupation, rumination on the good periods, idealization of the person they left, and a physical pull to make contact that is stronger than anything they experienced while still in it.
This is precisely when the relationship feels most like it was worth keeping, and precisely when it was not.
The misreading is the trap. If you interpret the craving as evidence — I miss him this much, therefore it must have been real — you will go back, and going back reinforces the schedule at the point of maximum resistance, which resets everything and makes the next attempt harder. Most people who leave these relationships leave several times, and the reason is this mechanism rather than any failure of resolve.
The reframe is the intervention: what you are feeling is withdrawal from a partial-reinforcement schedule, it peaks and declines, and it is not a verdict.
Three practical measures follow.
Structured no contact, defined in advance with a duration, rather than an intention to avoid contact. Blocking rather than resisting, because the resistance is the thing being depleted. That includes indirect contact — checking their accounts, asking mutual friends, driving past.
External accountability. Someone who knows the plan and whom you have agreed to tell before making contact. The delay is what does the work.
And a written record, made while your assessment was clear, of why you left. Specific incidents with dates. Read it during the peak, because chapter 344's mechanism means your own memory of the bad periods will be the first thing the craving edits.
Expect it to take longer than seems reasonable. Expect grief afterwards, which is different and is chapter 342's work.
This counters Law 14.
Counters Law 14 — Reward Unpredictably to Create Compulsion