I just realized I was confused - the friends and family must be in Location 1, not abroad at Location 2, so he wouldn't be flying back home where they are after visiting you.
Nevertheless, I stand by my advice: do it now and don't risk his current job and logistical planning. That is the kindest thing to do.
After the break-up, if you want, you can PM his best friend or family member and say, "we just broke up and maybe someone should go visit him, because he could really use a hug," if you think he's unwilling to ask for that himself. But just one email and leave it alone.
No, I think there are three locations. Home, Abroad 1, where he still is, and Abroad 2, where she's moved to and he's going to come visit her in a couple days. A short while (weeks? A month) later, they're going to both go home.
Honestly, ripping the bandaid-off wise, I might mostly break up with him by phone or email before the visit -- something along the lines of "We need to talk, and by that I mean that we need to talk about how to wind up our relationship without hurting each other more than we have to" or something.
But what the fuck do I know about relationships? Demonstrably nothing.
But are they both going home permanently or for a visit? I thought it was just a visit home.
I'm confused about this line:
The move was rough at the beginning because he couldn't find a job, but he finally landed on his feet and now has what is probably the best job he's ever had. He is unhappy with his life in our previous common location, however, and until now it has been the understanding that he would move to my new location in a few months.
The move to Location 2 was rough but he's on his feet. Was he unhappy in Location 1? Or is he unhappy with life in Location 2, even though the job is good?
I almost went with something like 3 - that a phone break-up is justified in a long distance relationship, to prevent traveling all the way just for a gut-wrenching visit.
4: Sure, but you can talk break-ups like a champ!
They moved together from Home to Abroad 1 -- he had trouble adjusting but then got a great job. She moved away from him to Abroad 2. Despite the great job, he's unhappy in Abroad 1 (their "previous common location"), so he was going to give up the great job to join her in Abroad 2. Now he's going to visit her in Abroad too, and soon they're both going to travel Home.
too s/b 2. I type as if I were taking dictation from myself, which gives me homophone problems.
I agree with Heebie's advice for the most part, although I'd avoid hand grenades or other high explosives.
I clicked on the link for that book. If one were an evil person, that looks like an ideal thing to give to someone just to mess with them.
Two, we had been living abroad for the past few years because I got a job and he moved there to be with me, but I have now moved to a new location (again for work). The move was rough at the beginning because he couldn't find a job, but he finally landed on his feet and now has what is probably the best job he's ever had. He is unhappy with his life in our previous common location, however, and until now it has been the understanding that he would move to my new location in a few months.
I take this to mean that he currently has his best-ever job, but is unhappy because he wants to be with you. (But there are other possible readings.)
Anyway, don't delay this to a point where it would screw up his career. I had a friend give up a job and follow his girlfriend on a move, whereupon she then broke up with him. My ex-wife, on the other hand, broke up with me before I quit my job to follow her. My ex did the right thing -- she handled it along the lines described in 3.
But I still didn't keep in touch with her. That's just the way these things have to work out sometimes.
This analogy is AWFUL.
Exactly. Because no man is an island.
But I still didn't keep in touch with her. That's just the way these things have to work out sometimes.
Yeah, aiming at staying close friends is probably unrealistic. I mean, it might happen, but it's not something you can do much about. There are people out there I'd be less likely to buddy up with than my ex, but it's not a long list.
I think Heebie's advice is great, but I would also have the conversation by phone, ASAP, if you can manage. Crying on an airplane sucks. Don't give in to any requests that he visit so you can "try to work things out." I think the kindest way to end things is to definitively end things.
Huh. With the tickets bought already, I'd let him go ahead with the visit if he wanted to for processing. Not to work things out, but if it's an important enough relationship to have moved overseas for, it's worth ending it in person.
The best way would be to have a party and play that game where somebody asks questions and people who can answer "yes" take a step forward. When the question is "Everybody who is in a committed relationship take a step forward," you can go "Not so fast."
I guess. Or you could go out for Chinese food and have the waiter bring prearranged fortune cookies, and his message could be, "Your girlfriend feels like even though the small issues are improving, you have no future together, and the break up starts the moment you make eye contact with her after reading this." Whichever's easier.
Be sure to tip that waiter on top of the usual 20%.
"Our love is a mighty river, like the Ganges. The ashes of too many corpses have clogged our love. Best wishes for your future."
The plan is to have him make a long (and expensive) journey from Abroad 1 to Abroad 2, get off the plane, get dumped (surprise! perhaps you could stand at the arrivals gate with a big smile and a sign with MY EX-BOYFRIEND written on it in magic marker), and then get right back on the plane again and fly all the way back to Abroad 1 on his own feeling miserable? Or instead, he has what he thought was going to be a great trip with his long-term partner in the country where they are going to build a life together, and in fact it's "that week I spent in a country I hate feeling miserable and lonely"?
This is a terrible and cruel plan.
Either break up with him by phone, or do the travelling yourself.
That should probably be on a greeting card, not in a fortune cookie. Lots of people don't like to think of dead bodies while at the table.
20 isn't wrong, but it's obsessing about the packaging on the grenade. The grenade is the grenade. She's not arranging this to be cruel, she's trying to have a conversation within the logistics of a long-distance relationship.
I do like LB's tact of giving a head's up over the phone, and then perhaps offering to come out in person? But I also don't think it's weird to do it when he visits - this is a thing that happens. Long distance relationships break up, and the conversation happens during a visit in which the rejected party did the traveling because it worked out that way.
Just hire a sky-writer and be done with it. The sky-writer could even fly next to his plane on the way in. Is there some way that you could hire his actual commercial plane that he's on to do some sky-writing, or at least carry a banner? "PASSENGER SITTING IN 6C...BAD NEWS."
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? There's like 90 of them so why should I settle for just one.
No need for a banner. The pilot can just make an announcement. "Folks, we should be on the ground in about 20 minutes, and by the way [boyfriend] your girlfriend is breaking up with you. Thanks for flying with us and have a great day."
"It's not you, it's me. I've seen the doctor and there's no cure. I've been diagnosed with sleep castration disorder. This is the best for both of us."
"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. One, as a good friend."
If you can get Adam Sandler to announce it on the plane, even better, because maybe he'll get punched in the face.
The asker appears to be a man, based on this sentence: "I would say that I'm a pretty flexible and giving person that is willing to sacrifice to some extent to make those he cares about happy."
That's what I thought too, but then heebie used "she".
But I'm willing to issue really bad advice without regard to race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, or being an Ohioan.
30: oh, I'm an hetero-enforcing idiot. I realize now I don't know one way or another.
30: Fuck. I (a) missed that and (b) went all heteronormative in my assumptions. I completely apologize to the original poster for being a nitwit.
34: I think the quoted language is unambiguous. I mean, it's barely possible that 'he' is a typo, but other than that, the poster is a man.
For the record, sleep castration disorder isn't a diagnosis that covers self-castration. So that works regardless.
If you never heard of sleep castration disorder, it's because you're still using the DSM-5 and didn't update to the DSM-6.
I also suck at relationships, obviously. But it's worth noting that you can't make this good for them, but you can make it much worse.
I would offer two things - one, of you have decided let them know asap. Second, be clear about what you need and what you have decided, don't mask things to 'make it easier' for them.
Dragging things out won't either of you any favours, but if they really need to talk it out in person you can offer to travel, or keep roughly the original trip plans...
Re:22 I agree, this is a thing that happens. I think the worst version of it is when the one doing the breaking is not the one doing the travelling. So it's worth avoiding that if you can.
I would offer two things - one, of you have decided let them know asap.
As a veteran of a breakup that lasted a year and a half from the point when I first asked specifically whether I should be worried about my then-husband's relationship with the woman he eventually left me for, yeah, I can recommend doing things as quickly as possible. The year and a half of taking assurances that everything was fine at face value, in the face of evidence to the contrary, was unpleasant to live through and worse in retrospect. Kids, don't be like my ex!
But it's worth noting that you can't make this good for them, but you can make it much worse.
I admire your can-do attitude.
Other than that, how was the play break-up?
The "Mary Todd hired Booth in order to avoid a messy divorce" theory of Lincoln's assassination has been under explored by historians.
Honestly, ripping the bandaid-off wise, I might mostly break up with him by phone or email before the visit -- something along the lines of "We need to talk, and by that I mean that we need to talk about how to wind up our relationship without hurting each other more than we have to" or something.
No surprise, but 2 out of two lawyers agree with this advice. Do it now.
The cruelest thing is to be unclear or indecisive. Moreover, people tend to look for uncertainty or that that there might still be a chance even when you think you are being clear. So the kindest thing to is to leave zero doubt.
To prefer bigamy isn't the same as being indecisive.
Though it s still cruel if you don't mention it to either of them.
I would say that I'm a pretty flexible and giving person that is willing to sacrifice to some extent to make those he cares about happy.
I just realized the first time I read this, I thought the "he" referred to the ex. Shouldn't it be "...make those I care about happy?" if the speaker is referring to themself?
To be cruel in the right measure says that I love you, so maybe the key is to err on the side of too much cruelty?
I think you're saying that the fortune cookie should be low quality?
I am regularly amazed at how people take unambiguous statements and turn them into some hope that the person will change their mind.
I am also regularly amazed at how people will take ambiguous statements and ambiguous actions and think that they clearly conveyed that the relationship is over.
Conclusion: people are horrible communicators. (Alternative conclusion is that I am too easily amazed.)
53.1: Have you watched Republicans try to rationalize Trump?
I'm a little hazy on all the details, but it seems to me that Ajay is totally correct.
ajay is totally right, I'm afraid. Having been in this situation once -- blindsided by a break-up when I thought I was headed to a happy reunion with a boyfriend -- it was absolutely horrid. I would have preferred a phone call. It's going to suck -- don't make him visit.
Another endorsement of ajay here.
Another vote for a phone call. Stop his planning for your future together, of which the visit is a part, now.
My college girlfriend tossed me the hand grenade after a year of post-college long-distance relationship, immediately before I was supposed to fly out and see her for the first time in some months. I was blindsided at the time but it was the right thing to do. Flying out there and having to work through it in real time would have been so, so much worse.
But then what you do when he says, "I already have the ticket and I just want to see you one last time........."?
If that's what he wants to do, he can do it; the point is to do him the courtesy of giving him an informed choice. I could have flown out to Ex-Girlfriend City on my already-bought tickets even after the phone call, but after one dark night of the soul understood I shouldn't.
60: Correct answer is likely to be: No, please don't. A lot depends on the individuals involved, but this doesn't sound like the kind of situation where a final meeting would lead to anything good.
I guess it depends on how serious the relationship was. Anything where the two people moved together to a foreign country, and were planning to move together to a second foreign country, seems to me like being pretty much married, at which point I can't imagine just unexpectedly breaking up over the phone and never seeing each other again.
I think it should be up to the dumpee, but not having a final meeting seems to me as if it'd be an unusual choice.
Another vote for calling them right away, and also a vote for offering to go out and see them in person, which'll save Future You some guilt.
Given the events of the last week or so, I am frankly unsettled that so many of you are taking my advice about relationships. I suppose technically you're taking my advice about breakups, a field in which I suppose I do have extensive experience.
McCain's brain cancer has shaken us all, but why should it make your advice less reliable?
Aww, sorry to hear that, ajay, but you're still right. Not dating has been working pretty well for me, but has real downsides too. My last two breakups were done by text (maybe g-chat for the second? Details are hazier than they should be barely more than a year out) and I have no regrets about that, especially because in the second I had given up on finding a time and place to do it in person after a month or two of no schedule overlap.
I completely agree with ajay, and would add that you should offer to pay the change fee so that your ex-to-be and use his tickets to take a relaxing vacation and mull over being dumped instead of being with you. If he wants face to face closure, offer to do it when you're both visiting your home, since it sounds like you both plan to be in your home location in the near future.
Can't you hire somebody to call them?
Maybe a social worker? Lawyer seems too formal.
Chiming in to agree with Ajax. Buttercup's addition is solid.
Like Friends, but where getting off the plane before tske off is just the least unhappy, not happy, ending.
I never did watch the last episode. Once it became clear Ross wasn't going to die in a painful way, I couldn't watch.
Honestly, his own sister should have killed him in the first female honor killing of a male.
to 5:
2 is correct, there are three locations: home, abroad 1, and abroad 2. I am now in abroad 2, he's still in abroad 1, loves the job there but hates the place, and is coming to visit shortly, and about a month after his visit to abroad 2 we had planned to go back home together.
I agree strongly with Ajay in 20. Beyond that, I'm not convinced by the writer's description of the relationship. He/she describes himself/herself as flexible, adapting to the other person's needs/wants to the point of being accused of being "spineless." Yet it is the other person who quit his job and moved abroad to accommodate the poster, to a location that he (the other person) person does not like, only to have the "flexible" and "adaptive" poster move to yet another location.
My advice is to the bf: break-up suck but the upside is that you are now free of this obliviously self-centered person.
To 76: this is not lost on me, but I would add that the fact that he moved for me made me go out of my way to accommodate him in ways (an to an extent) I wouldn't otherwise have, at least not for so long. As for him not liking the location: I had no way of knowing, as I had never lived/traveled there myself.
I make no claim to perfection, and in retrospect I probably should have seen the signs of what I now clearly see makes this relationship unsustainable and not let him move for me. But hindsight is 20/20, and all I can do now is try not to make the same mistake twice and end things in the least hurtful way possible. But thank you for your thoughts.
To all: thanks for your input. My own gut feeling is that breaking-up over the phone would be horrible, and that if it's going to happen over the course of a trip I should be the one doing the traveling. So I'll probably just travel to abroad 1 before the trip home to have the conversation.
Does the person who quit their job and moved for the other automatically win the relationship? Asking for a friend.
Anyway, given that you know him, I think you should trust your gut. Still, that seems like a long time to carry a secret.
77 sounds very reasonable. I hope it goes as well as it can for you.
Hopefully, he doesn't so anything expensive or irrevocable (quit a job, sell a house, smother the pets) toward moving before you tell him.
I haven't moved in 15 years. I may be forgetting some steps.
78: Yes. Answering as someone who did it.
When I was in college, we helped my parents move. They decided against smothering the dog and instead talked my brother into putting him in his car. The dog took a shit on the upholstery. Plus, the dog still died anyway, barely eight years later.
I may previously have told the similar story of my great-grandmother's broken engagement. Anyway, if not, here it is:
At a very young age (18 or so) she, living in Bath, met a charming young tea planter who was home on leave from Ceylon for a month. I can't help that this sounds like a Jane Austen plot. That is the way she rolled. By the time the month was up, they were engaged.
But!
He was, in addition to being very young, very junior, and lived in the accommodation that his employer provided for its junior bachelor employees, a sort of barracks; nor was he allowed to move out and set up house for himself until he had reached a certain rank in the company. Accordingly, my great-grandmother and he resolved thus: he would go back to Ceylon and work hard; they would keep in touch by regular letter; when he got his promotion, he would let her know, she would come out to join him and they would get married.
Five years passed.
And then a letter arrived saying that he had got the promotion, had found a house, bought furniture from whatever the Raj's equivalent of IKEA was, and basically all was ready. So my great-grandmother packed her wedding dress, a cake, etc. in her trunk and sailed from Southampton.
On the six-week voyage she had a good deal of time to think about stuff. And by the time they docked at (I guess) Colombo she had decided that actually she didn't want to marry this chap after all. He met her at the quayside. She disembarked, told him so, and got back on the liner, which sailed for Southampton.
On the voyage back, they stopped at Alexandria, where a young architect boarded. By Gibraltar, he and my great-grandmother were engaged; they were married shortly after they reached England. (My grandmother attributed this decision in part to my great-grandmother's desire not to let the cake go to waste; she was also very clear that all this had occurred on the voyage back and not on the voyage out.)
@NLMAM, just a heads up that someone you give your email out to in real life might google that email and see these posts because of how you're signing them. If you knew that already and don't care, my apologies.
If you dock in Columbo and break a long-standing engagement, I think the way to do it is to say "Just one more thing...."
I guess for six weeks out and six weeks back, you can just figure the pets will starve. Seems cruel though.
I have one other relative who is BRCA+, who is on the extreme end of California commune-living hippie-dippie-ness. Wavy Gravy officiated her first wedding ceremony, frex.
Current FB status: "[spouse] and I will be starting to co create a baby next week, especially Friday July 28 and Saturday July 29."
Along with a request for good vibes. I'm just amused to see someone pre-announce that they're bumping uglies next weekend.
Wavy Gravy's rates are probably lower after 5:00 p.m. on Friday.
furniture from whatever the Raj's equivalent of IKEA
I can only begin to imagine the names of the pieces.
Cultural and political imperialism may have moral problems, but you can't say it doesn't keep nomenclature easier.
We are right now moving from Abroad 1 for us to Abroad 2. The movers are here packing as I type this.
One weird thing I found is that when you live in a foreign country, you learn to put up with whatever passes for common sense among the natives. Here, everything that happens is somebody's fault. Last week I heard one of my neighbors tell their kid "accidents don't just happen," which is not a definition of "accident" I am familiar with. In every car accident, fault is always assigned to somebody.
I had gotten used to this, but now that I know that we're leaving, all of a sudden it's hard to put up with. For example, when I heard that parent tell their kid that thing about accidents, I immediately felt revolted, where a couple of weeks ago I would have just ignored it.
Fault can be assigned on the basis of behavior that increased the probability of the accident happening. See the case of "It was an accident I dropped the plate" v. "If you weren't trying to perch it on the top of the fingers of just one hand like the TV show told you a fancy waiter does then you would have dropped the plate."
In every car accident, fault is always assigned to somebody.
Damn right. How else do you decide whose insurance takes the hit?
California is a no fault state. If you drive into a bridge abutment, your insurance pays for the damage to your car and the bridge's insurance for the damage to it.
California is a no fault state.
AHEM.
In California, there's no fault in any car accident, ever?
If the bridge abutment drives into you, maybe it's not your fault at all.
California is not a no-fault state, but 12 including Florida are.
In Georgia, you're not legally required to render first aid for any incident that follows the phrase, "Hold my beer for a second."
Moby lied to me? Civilization really has collapsed.
Maybe I was thinking about divorcing a bridge abutment in California?
||
Spicer has resigned - in protest, supposedly, over the appointment of Scaramucci as comms director.
|>
I get the idea that Spicer wasn't enjoying his job anyway.
I hope Spicer can get the $12/year health insurance now that he's unemployed.
The movers are gone. If they tell me in two weeks "We lost all of your stuff, here's a check for $30,000", I will be grateful.
I endorse 108, but I have add, whyTF is that the last straw?
Maybe the pee-pee tape is about to leak?
"You're in trouble now. You're in trouble now."
I wonder how much of an advance you can get for memoirs of a job you held for six months?
According to his financial disclosure, Spicer has a net worth of between $2.4 and $7m.
I'm guessing "I have enough money to be comfortable for life so I'm going to stop trying to acquire more" isn't a common sentiment among any living Republican or anybody willing to work closely with Trump.
Give me $2.4 million and I'm going to buy some land in the country, get an annuity, and fuck right off.
But are you a living Republican or willing to work closely with Trump? Superficial observation suggests not.
I am not. I'm just normal people.
You can be normal or people, but not both.
115: Wow, I had no idea. My first thought is, how much was he worth when he was the Easter Bunny? Did they pay him 2.3 million for it? Alternately, did he actually do it for fun? Either way, the mind boggles.
This led me to go to his Wikipedia page, where I learned the following, among other things.
He attended Connecticut College from 1989 to 1993 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government.[19] In college he was a student senator. In April 1993, an article in the student paper, The College Voice, referred to Spicer as "Sean Sphincter"; Spicer submitted an angry complaint to the paper and followed up by pushing for college judicial action against the paper, for which he received further ribbing from the campus satirical publication Blats. The incident was later cited as a precursor of his contentious relationship with the media in later years.
This guy has worked in PR his whole adult life, including for The President himself. This is very revealing about modern Republicans or American culture in general or something.
Why haven't I thought of "Sean Sphincter"?
WaPo:
Scaramucci has an upbeat enthusiasm that White House officials believe has been missing from their communications strategy, several administration officials said.
Something tells me this will quickly evaporate once he has to work in the White House, as opposed to defending it at a distance.
It's easier to defend from close up. More topiary.