The energy splits, which are used in phase-field fracture and eigenfracture, arefrequently motivated by the statement that crack nucleation and crack growthhave to be prevented at compression loads. The intention of the article at hand isto show that the energy decomposition is an essential part of such fracture mod-els, and to investigate the underlying problem and its physical interpretation.Finally, a general framework for the derivation of physically motivated energysplits is presented, which is not limited to certain bulk material models