The art of relationships

Relationship building is both an art and a science. In my experience, building and sustaining professional relationships with clients, vendors, teams, and even competitors takes strategy that goes beyond vanilla affability. These interdependent relationships thrive on collaborative efforts from both parties. Often, high-level strategy comes into play to make these unions blossom and flourish. That is the science behind relationship building.

On the other end of spectrum is what I like to call personal relationship management. Each person has a right to choose his own circle of friends and acquaintances in which to surround himself, and can choose when to initiate, build, maintain, or terminate these relationships - hence the management reference. (Note, this does not take into account when those closest to us take it upon themselves to terminate a relationship, but for simplicity's sake we'll say that we make choices on how how we deal with these circumstances and leave it at that).

Deciding who to befriend and how to go about building those relationship is often fairly simple. When two people get on with each other, that process often happens naturally. Sometimes, nature steps in when a pair don't match up quite as well and the relationship dissolves of it's own accord. But what about those times when you are ready to step away from someone in your current 'inner circle' and the other is not? How does one remove himself from a relationship without scarring his reputation or destroying the delicate emotional state of the other?

Real world examples of relationship termination tend to go something like this:
1. Client fires agency
2. Business chooses new vendor
3. Girlfriend dumps boyfriend
4. Friends have falling out (AKA one friend betrayed another)
5. Husband and wife divorce
None of these examples end in the mutually beneficial way they began. So the question remains... How should relationships end without hurting the other party?

Is it possible to end a relationship in an empathetic way?

Thoughts appreciated.

-A