As of today I see her as someone I care about deeply and would like to keep around in some fashion, just not in a committed relationship.
What are you going to keep her around as? Landscaping staff?
Concur with Heebie. I mean, I see the superficial jerk-factor of breaking up with someone over the internet, but when that's where the large majority of your relationship has been conducted, I don't think it's a problem. Definitely better than dragging things out after you know the relationship is dead.
Also, while I've got the logistics confused, you really want to minimize the chance that she's spending money on tickets or making long term travel plans. Not hard at all. Rip off the bandaid.
I can't figure out the geography here and who is going where. She is in America, and you are not? My brain hurts.
Anyhow, Heebie is totally and exactly right. Break up now, save everyone trouble and time, and move on.
As to future friendship: let it go. If it arises organically in the future, that is a nice thing. But it is off the table during the break-up and post break-up period.
This is wise.
It's academic and Heebie's advice is clearly correct, but I admit I'm curious about what happened over Skype to effectively torpedo the relationship.
This was the easiest ATM ever. Can we go back to thinking about whether Vin Diesel or the Rock is more awesome? Maybe that's just a conversation I was having in my head with myself. I am not gay.
Not that there's anything wrong with that!
People drag out break-ups because they don't want to be the villain, and they have enough remaining empathy for the person they're breaking up with to know that they'll be perceived as one.
To get around this, embrace the part of the villain. Find a cape with a collar, and while you have your partner's attention in the break-up call, explain your plan for world domination.
6: Vin Diesel is probably a better DM.
If you want to stay friends, while I wouldn't overinvest in it, I would budget in a fair amount of hashing out what's going on for her benefit. She may not want to, but if you're going to break up long distance, I think allowing a couple of hours for the first call, and being open to another long call or two in the next week or so is civilized. (This assumes that your reasons for breaking up with her are something along the lines of "It's not you, it's me". If being honestly communicative about what's going on in your head is going to inform her that you've decided she's worse than Cory Booker, best to keep it brisk.)
6: The Rock. I wonder if people in Samoa call him Le Ma'a.
11: because he's super into D&D?
"I'm sure that you'll agree that this will be better for both of us ...." is a dynamite breakup line.
Not saying anything that anyone else hasn't, but for emphasis:
For real. People are usually entirely clear on the fact that they are about to be dumped, so the whole stringing them along so one can do it in person, or let them down easy, or whatever, is actually quite cruel. They already know they're being dumped and freaking out waiting for the hammer to drop. End the freaking out. Drop the hammer.
I still cherish the high school breakup where I eased, really slowly, into breaking it gently to the guy I was dating that this just wasn't working out, to realize halfway through that he was doing the same thing to me.
If you want to stay friends
I'm going to underline what others have suggested: you don't get to decide this. Literally underline it, because it's important. Important. You're dumping her, and she has no obligation to thank you for it. Do it quick.
LB's extra-Skype proposal is decent and kind, and should be seen as a way to answer her questions if she has them. As LB points out, you don't want to answer all of her questions.
17: and then you realized you were meant for each other?
People drag out break-ups because they don't want to be the villain, and they have enough remaining empathy for the person they're breaking up with to know that they'll be perceived as one. (bold added)
Is percipi the villain's esse? Just convince yourself that true villainy would be to continue waiting, and break up with the other party with a clean conscience and easy manner.
14: Gaming with a showman like The Rock would be either really awesome or super-shitty.
The best way to soften the blow is to tell her you're leaving her for Vin Diesel; she'll be hurt, but at least she'll understand.
Nah. We stayed friends, he ended up sleeping with most of the women I knew, went to college, came out as gay, met a nice lesbian and has been happily married for decades. I've mentioned him before.
I feel like the Rock is too body-builderesque. Vin Diesel seems more like a badass powerlifter guy who, on first glance, just looks like he might be fat but when push comes to shove can beat up body builder dude with a crowbar. Do you think if the Rock showed up and tried to interrupt a D&D game there would not be a throwdown? There would for sure.
I've seen them both in person. Not in the shower or anything.
Anyhow, for the OP, just imagine you are Vin Diesel in the role of a villain, and get the job done. Then drive away fast.
Also, the only reason you need to break up with someone is that that is how you feel now. Explaining reasons is the first step in bargaining, but you don't want to be bargaining, you want out. So the real answer is "because I don't feel the same. I think you are awesome, but I don't have romantic feelings for you anymore." Do not feel obligated to say why.
24.2: So you were stuck with just imagining them in the shower? Separately or together?
25 is wise. There is no true answer why, because love isn't logical, and the approximations tend to sound like a list of personal failures of the rejected one.
If it's going to be over Skype, you could tape record your break up speech and then just lip sync to it. The video and audio quality are low enough that it won't be that obvious and you'll be less tempted to go off message.
28: Now that is a truly excellent bit of villainy.
Also, do it now and over Skype because if you go there, it will get drug out for longer (you're not going to do it the second you step off the plane), and you might sleep together. I have seen this happen with two different couples breaking up. Way more drama!
Nah. We stayed friends, he ended up sleeping with most of the women I knew, went to college, came out as gay, met a nice lesbian and has been happily married for decades.
Oh, Kevin Bacon.
Worse, it is a list of personal failures that doesn't actually convey to the dumpee anything useful. "I'm breaking up with you because I can't stand the way you order Chinese food anymore." That doesn't mean that the dumpee should revise her food ordering protocol. It means she should find someone who finds it charming. So the reasons, which would likely be very closely examined and internalized and used to validate pre-existing insecurities, aren't actually helpful or useful. Don't participate in that.
"I did have romantic feelings for you. You are lovely and kind, but I don't have them now, so cannot continue a romantic relationship with you. I think very highly of you and would be pleased to be friends with you later if you want to."
End scene.
To the OP: Everybody above is right. You have no obligation to break up in person if you don't live reasonably near one another. In college I had a long-distance boyfriend who, when he sensed I wanted to break up with him, made me feel so shitty about doing it over the phone that I was convinced I needed to use up my vacation and my savings in order to end our relationship. And of course, once you've planned a vacation, you want to have a nice time, etc. I stayed with the manipulative bastard for four years. God, I'm so glad I'm not the idiot I was back then. (I'm a different kind of idiot now.)
In re. Fast Five, that movie was so confusing. I thought it was helpful that they made The Rock grow a beard so that he could be distinguished from Vin Diesel, but it wasn't enough. I liked the part where they fight on the floor. Two mountains, wrestling! I know what that looks like now.
While I do agree with Megan that there's nothing useful or helpful for you to say other than "Not feeling it," I still think that for your best bet on staying friendly, you want to stay on the phone for quite a while if she wants to. Listening, rather than talking much, but two sentences (even though that's all there really is to say) and a hangup is the sort of thing that enrages people.
If the main reason for the breakup was the distance itself, and you had a visit planned in the not-too-distant future, then I would argue for waiting to break up in person. However, if I'm understanding things right, you just don't want to date her at all (long distance or not), in which case rip off the fucking band-aid.
It's fascinating the way technology interacts with long-distance relationships. My long-distance relationship lasted almost exactly the time from when IM was ubiquitous until when cell phones became common. So long-distance phone calls were still expensive, but you could talk regularly in real time as long as it was IM.
LB's right. The content may be brief, but listening and confirming her feelings would be gentle and polite. That'd take more time than the scene I outlined above.
Listening to her side is a kind thing to do, but you have to have your wits about you. Decline to answer a question if the answer is cruel. Be honest if it's a reasonable question.
Do not torture yourselves with a 3 hour conversation. That is totally miserable. Keep it under 25 minutes, and if either one of you starts repeating themselves, the conversation is over.
I do think that you owe people you're in a serious relationship with a breakup where they can respond in real time. The power dynamics of breakups are exacerbated by one-way communications (letters, email, etc.). But Skype doesn't have that problem at all.
31. Right. In the aftermath she soothed her feelings by writing a paper with Paul Erdős.
you might sleep together
If you foresee a dry spell and don't mind actually being a villain, go have a last hurrah. Depending on security measures you can break up at the airport before your flight home, or on the way to it.
she's worse than Cory Booker
And then just as you're getting ready to tell her this, she says you're worse than Cory Booker for dragging things out.
I feel like long distance relationships always have the possibility of breaking up at the end of a visit. I don't think it's particularly cruel to have a visit and then say at the end "I love you, and love being with you in person, but I just can't take the distance part anymore." But again, this is when the distance is the main issue, not when you actually want to break up even if you're about to be living nearby.
you're worse than Cory Booker for dragging things out of burning buildings.
(/standpipe? was that what you were going for?)
Something else that just came to mind -- if the actual reason for the breakup is either a new girlfriend or someone you're just about to start going out with, and there's any shot at all the current girlfriend will find out about it, mention it now. If you do a "It's not you, it's me" breakup without mentioning the woman you've moved on to, and then your old girlfriend finds out in three months, that's going to be something she finds irksome. She'll find it irksome if you mention it now, too, but marginally less so.
45: Disagree! She may be fairly recovered in 3 months and the whole "Aha! He had another person lined up!" thing might be a nice way of just confirming to her you're an asshole (in her mind!) and making her care even less.
The idea of being dumped *for someone else* is worse.
43: Kind of, but without the direct pun. I was going for Booker would act immediately instead of waiting for the "proper" procedures to be followed.
(The preceding only applies if you're hoping to stay friends. If it's relevant, your odds aren't good, but FWIW.)
I don't know that I agree with 45. There's a very high probability that the new flame will flame out within three days or one date, and you'll have delivered hurtful news that was laughably far off the mark.
45 is very right. Also, that's a good reason not to stretch things out. The longer you stretch things out the more likely you are to cheat on her.
I liked the part where they fight on the floor. Two mountains, wrestling! I know what that looks like now.
Like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45av-BcWA1k
I'm not actually dead sure about 45. But I definitely know people who found out later and were extremely aggrieved.
Or you could tell her to check out your favorite blog.
Also, in three months when she finds out you're happily coupled, how would she know that you didn't meet the new flame a week post-break-up?
I mean, she might assume so, but I don't think you're sparing her any pain 3 months later.
In three months when you're happily coupled and you insist that you met the new flame a week post-break-up, she won't believe you. Nonetheless I'm with 46. Act decently but abandon all investment in her opinion of you.
Another vote for Heebie here. An unrealistic desire to somehow avoid pain in the ending of a relationship was the primary culprit in my 6 year running disaster with BOGF. Just cut the cord as kindly as you can, and allow yourself to move on. If friendship is possible, let it come naturally, and in the fullness of time.
Right, she won't believe you, but you might very well meet someone sparky one week later, and it's not worth manipulating hypothetical feelings three months in the future.
Sorry, 57 was written when 16 was the newest comment, but I had to get a review to AB.
the approximations tend to sound like a list of personal failures of the rejected one.
This is a suggestion if you actually want to be the villain.
With a long distance relationship being "dumped for someone else" is a bit different, because there's no reason to assume that they like the other person better than you, only that the other person is actually there. I think that discovering that someone lied to you about something important is more damaging because you start doubting everything they've done.
I thought it was helpful that they made The Rock grow a beard so that he could be distinguished from Vin Diesel, but it wasn't enough.
Watching the trailer, my first reaction was, "why do they have Vin Diesel playing both characters? Isn't that just a waste of CGI technology?"
I feel like long distance relationships always have the possibility of breaking up at the end of a visit.
How about at the beginning of a visit when you've just totaled your car coming to fetch her home from college?
I've told this story, right?
Act decently but abandon all investment in her opinion of you.
I'm going to go wake up Kai from his nap to start drilling this into him.
Iris is still at school for another hour. Maybe I could have the principal call an assembly?
It is advice that also works for family reunions and job interviews.
I had to get a review to AB
"Great people skills, strong attention to detail, and in every respect a far sight better than BOGF. Don't worry about saving the occasional neighbor from a house fire--I'm the last person who'll get on your case about that."
As of today I see her as someone I care about deeply and would like to keep around in some fashion, just not in a committed relationship
Doesn't this mean the commenter is hoping to continue to hook up with her?
So far what I've learned from this thread is not to date unfoggetarian.
Really, the only decent way to end a long-distance relationship.
Megan and LB, among others, are totally right; I'm also curious about what went on over Skype that was so disastrous.
I feel like the Rock is too body-builderesque. Vin Diesel seems more like a badass powerlifter guy who, on first glance, just looks like he might be fat but when push comes to shove can beat up body builder dude with a crowbar.
I actually totally agree with this from Halford. Also, Vin Diesel has a much cooler voice. Watching the Fast Five trailer, that was actually my main reaction: "Damn, Vin Diesel has a great voice."
First LB won't date me because I don't have a coffee maker, and now Sifu. Good thing I'm married, cause at this rate soon no one here will date me. I'm not sure what I said though, unless Sifu inevitably ends his relationships by dating someone else and lying about it but hopes to still stay friends. Which seems implausible.
|| Holy crap, it's true! Girls is a GREAT show! It really brings out how insanely commodifed almost all depictions of 'young women' and 'single women in the city' are when you see a show with this much honesty and heart ||>
I LOVED IT. IT WAS BETTER THAN 'CATS'.
I can't believe you'd break up with me in an unfogged comment thread. That's low. I deserve at least Skype.
75: A pause-play on one line of text looks like extra-cool emphasis. Italics alone do not convey the kinetic enthusiasm of my comment; it must ride on an arrow.
Act decently but abandon all investment in her opinion of you.
Yes. This is hard to swallow, but seriously true. You have to be willing to accept that she is going to think you suck, and that you are not doing anyone any favors by trying to steer her into feeling any other way.
79: Yeah, I've been giving advice on the basis of maximizing the potential for a friendly relationship in the future, but there's really very little to be done along those lines.
75: So, are we buying Amanda Marcotte's theory that
Even though Girls and Sex and the City really don't have much in common, they do have one thing that all these other shows don't have: The female characters aren't under direct male supervision. It seems that if a TV writer wants a prophylactic shielding for her characters from "voice of a generation" expectations, the quickest way to do it is to put that character in a subservient position to a man. [...] It seems that once you remove the reassuring figure standing in for patriarchal authority, the levels of audience anxiety about what this all means for women expand dramatically. Suddenly it's not enough for the characters to be characters. Now they must be role models, to assuage lingering fears about what it means to release single women into the world without male authority to protect and guide them. So when these characters make mistakes or even just make choices that differ from exactly what the audience members feel they would, it's felt keenly.I have no opinion on its merits, but the theory seems decidedly non-Occamian. Is it really true that female leads will be treated as Oracles For All Womankind unless they have male bosses/patriarchs, in which case they get to be individuals?
If you are Vin Diesel, yell really loud.
Did Lou Grant keep Mary Tyler Moore from being hailed as a voice of a generation?
Mary Tyler Moore wasn't the voice of a generation, it was Rhoda's sister Brenda
So many people are so right in this thread. I'll just add that I always found it useful to think about pulling off the band-aid as the difference between being nice in the short term and being kind in the long term. Kind is better.
82: well, I do have to say that when I saw the first episode I did come away wondering what all the heavyhanded cultural commentary was about...the show is very charming, unforced, and natural and the symbolic freight put on it seems absurd. I don't think the issue is a 'male supervisor' on the show, since there are plenty of awful sitcoms about vapid hot young women with no men involved that don't get this attention ("Two Broke Girls" comes to mind as a current one). Instead, I think it's the general presupposition that we all have a communal interest in what young fertile upper middle class women are doing (kind of the same thing that gets the disappearance of middle-class teenage women more attention than the disppearance of poor middle aged men). When something this good comes along created by and about young women then society feels compelled to issue pronouncements.
Also, about the only thing Girls has in common with SATC is that they are set in New York and about unmarried women.
82, cont: Also, I think all the commentary is also driven just by the fact that the show is really good -- it has this unforced verite quality that does make you feel that you're seeing something new and getting access to something genuine about the way people live today. The 'bad sex' scene that the critics huffed and puffed about did seem to me to capture something real about how casual but unfulfilling sex feels in your 20s...bad in a way, but also something you sort of appreciate at that age, a moment from a particular phase in life. I think it's absurd to deliver a big lecture about how Our Innocent Young Women Are Victimized By Hookup Culture based on that. But I can see how someone would sense the authenticity of the depiction and want to draw some kind of conclusion. (And my perspective on the scene may also be different because I identified with the guy).
It's sort of odd, because I didn't read any of the hype, and was only barely aware of it, and then I read a review that was negative but without trying to make the show Important; the reviewer just didn't think much of it. I didn't take that review as gospel, but it contributed to the idea that the hype was mostly manufactured/ginned up, rather than people reacting to something powerful.
But I'll take your rave, PGD, as reason to give it a shot, since it's readily available.
84: Marcotte's claim, near as I can tell, is that MTM was allowed to be her quirky self, rather than Oracle For All Women, and that Lou Grant's presence permitted this.
As I said, I don't think I buy it, but I wanted to hear from a better-informed crew.
about the only thing Girls has in common with SATC is that they are set in New York and about unmarried women. and have sex.
I love Tiny Furniture, Dunham's breakout feature. People lump it in with mumblecore but I think Dunham's split quality between her deliberate, removed eye as a director and her utter nakedness as a performer sets it apart from that scene.
The guy who dumped me when I went to graduate school thought it would be bad to dump me over the phone, so he waited until I'd come back for a weekend which included a trip with friends to break up.
It would have hurt had he done it over the phone but I would have been spared the 900-mile round trip. And as near as I can tell he's had no luck dating since, so karma can be a bit of a bitch.
90: I could see an argument that a show without a central man in it feels statementy About Women in a way a show that has a man doesn't. I don't think I'd take it to the point where the man has to be supervisory, but there's maybe something there a little.
I saw Tiny Furniture a few days ago--I figured "maybe I should watch a 75-minute movie to decide whether it's worth giving a 30-minute TV show a chance," because that's how I roll--and really liked it, though I don't know mumblecore well enough to judge how it does or doesn't fit. I think K-sky's diagnosis of a Dunham's contrasting styles as director and actor is interesting and worth pondering.
I assume that almost everything drama-like that comes out on pay cable (or AMC) is dramatically overpraised at first and then wait a year or two to consider whether to watch it.
I guess I jacked this thread. But another comment -- others may not like Girls as much as me, I've heard some people say the self-indulgent/privilged/Brooklyn hipster nature of the characters drives them nuts. But they have the kind of drifty UMC privilege I identify with (you won't starve, but it's not like your parents/background are going to make you rich or famous or give you a direction in life) and I could totally work with the show.
the real answer is "because I don't feel the same. I think you are awesome, but I don't have romantic feelings for you anymore." Do not feel obligated to under any circumstances say why.
Otherwise you are opening yourself up to "But I can chaaaange, give me a chaaaance," followed by smallish behavior changes that he she will resent making and you will find insufficient, before realizing you have to dump him her again, for real this time.
This is true, in so far as it stands for 'do not get talked out of the breakup.' It is possible for a breakup to be a bad idea (I broke up with Buck after we'd been dating about six weeks, then realized I missed him after another month or two, and talked him into giving it another shot), but getting haggled out of it is never going to work.
To 4: She lives in Europe, I live in the Caribbean. I had the opportunity of going to America to study, and wrote an ATM about it, but I received an offer for a program that I'm actually excited about in Europe, so I dropped Austin and am going to Europe instead.
As it happens, the program is in the same country my soon-to-be ex-gf lives. We'd talked about moving in together if/when I went to live there. However I've been wanting out of the relationship for a while now. I tried to initiate some sort of "this isn't working for me" conversation by telling her I thought we shouldn't move in together. I did, she started freaking out, and I couldn't go through with breaking up.
We had a second conversation before I had a chance to read the thread, and again I couldn't break it off for good. It feels too much like driving an actual knife through the other person's gut.
I did, however, get to air out all the stuff I didn't like about the relationship (yes, there was a list; no, she didn't get the hint).
Bandaid, rip it off. At this point not doing it fast is cruel. (Understandable, but mean.) Suck it up, be a mensch, it'll suck but you're a better person if you do it.
The other thing is of course Dunham's appearance; it's really striking to see a woman with a not-super-thin body onscreen, as the star of the show, and as a sexual being--and in case the viewer somehow didn't notice, the first episode addresses body-image/discomfort issues repeatedly. This, surely, is part of what makes it feel "real" in a way that so much TV isn't--a lack of that odd "TV-normal" where characters' discomfort with and others' reactions to their bodies either never comes up, or comes up in a weirdly false-seeming way (as with Tina Fey in 30 Rock, where her character is somehow supposed to present as other than how Tina Fey herself does, which is to say, very attractive in a fairly conventional way).
100: I guess you have to do the manly cruel thing, and send her a link to this thread.
End it, end it, end it. Easiest ATM ever. Back to Vin Diesel and Girls.
Tell her you're going to Austin and then spend your entire time in Europe on the lookout in case she appears.
106: Good idea. Perhaps I could get a face transplant.
Yeah. Dialing it back from the "make time for 20 minutes of conversation" to "It's over. I wish you the best." The best thing you can do for her is make her realize that she needs to pick a friend to share her pain with because you're no longer qualified to be that friend.
Everyone's telling you to break up, but we have no idea why.
Propose to her instead!
Propose that she move to Austin with you.
100: Yeah, it will feel like utter garbage. If you're highly conflict-averse (as I am, so I speak from experience), it's not unlike cutting your own arm off, especially when it's visibly agonizing for the other person.
Even so, everyone on the thread is basically right: you need to do it, and soon. Do not under any circumstances give reasons or lists, or enter into anything that seems like it's a negotiation. The only reason that matters is that you don't have the required romantic feelings any longer. Saying anything beyond that is either sadism or an irresistible invitation to the person to (impossibly) change herself somehow.
Best of luck with all this. On the upside, the fact that you experience it as awful at least means you aren't a complete sociopath. Coldest comfort, but still.
I did, however, get to air out all the stuff I didn't like about the relationship (yes, there was a list; no, she didn't get the hint).
Oh good lord. It's not that you didn't read this thread, it's like you read the opposite of this thread.
In fact, I recommend you say "Remember that laundry list of complaints I had? That was a cowardly dodge, because the truth is...
"I did have romantic feelings for you. You are lovely and kind, but I don't have them now, so cannot continue a romantic relationship with you. I think very highly of you and would be pleased to be friends with you later if you want to."
...please do not stress over the laundry list of complaints; it is not the point."
I was just going to come in to post 113. "I loved you, I still care about you, but it's over. The conversation we just had was me psyching myself up to say this, none of the specifics mean anything important other than that I don't want to be in this relationship anymore."
She lives in Europe, I live in the Caribbean.
Before you go, host UnfoggeDECAcon.
So we're supposed to watch this show Girls, now? How does it rank against other shows we're supposed to watch, but haven't. Is this higher priority that watching more of Breaking Bad?
Freaks and Geeks? Deadwood?
Also, if it new on HBO, and we don't get cable, is watching it even an option?
My first instinct tells me that because women have deep conversations with each other about their lives, unlike men, they don't also need an authentic and realistic TV show about their lives. But my fiancee doesn't have deep conversations with other women about her life, so that tells me I need to adopt stereotypes that are less self-pitying.
Or you could stalk your fiancee to find out if maybe she does have deep conversations and is just hiding them from you. Just saying.
Send her this and say it really speaks to you. Then cheat on her. I'm sure she'll figure it out.
As I said in the other thread, I liked Girls but was not blown away and don't think the pilot comes close to living up the hype (it would have been hard to live up to it). But as I also said, it's hard to start an episodic TV series; these characters seem a bit thin but they always do at the beginning. We'll know after a few episodes if it's great or not; I hold out the possibility that it could be.
Theory time. The Rock:Vin Diesel is as Chuck Norris:Charles Bronson. Who's with me? I prefer Bronson/Diesel.
To the OP, everyone is still right.
The other thing is of course Dunham's appearance....
A lumpy, obtuse and inexpressive face and a nasal, monotonous voice (chock full o' upspeak, though) in an actress? How could that possibly go wrong?
One is somewhat ashamed of this opinion, because one otherwise thinks oneself at least tolerant of women's suffrage emancipation, but one does not want to see unattractive, uninteresting actors in movies or on television. Even in a good cause -- and one is not convinced that saying "You can make a TV show!" to America's XX liberal arts graduates is all that important -- one would much prefer that producers continue to cast lingerie models as nuclear scientists.
To the OP: Break up. Don't cast blame, except on geography.
Hey, I've only skimmed the thread, and it really is a sign of how disillusioned I am with grad school/science that I'm commenting on food/relationship threads now, but I have a different perspective than the majority on the subquestion of how forthcoming to be about reasons.
If you think anything you said would just be insulting, than sure, withhold it. (Like, once I withheld reasons when the reasons would have been something like, "Across every life domain, I think you are neither as smart nor as competent as I am, and when that includes financial planning it's saying something.") But it's not inconceivable that you have useful information for her about how her behavior affected you. You know her; you'd probably be the best judge of her ego strength and whether she could take it and use it to understand herself and what would work for her in relationships over time. But I don't think it's true that a very frank discussion of reasons *has* to be fruitless.
A friend of mine recently got dumped twice in a row and a contributing factor in both dumpings (she learned in a frank conversation about reasons), was that she's overcontrolled, neurotic on a day-to-day basis, and not incredibly funny, or in one of the guys' words, "sassy." This was all hurtful to hear of course, but she did use the information, both to consider how she could try to be more relaxed and fun to be with, and to understand better who she'd be well-matched with. Hearing this stuff did not prevent my friend from remaining friendly with the exes who dumped her. My friend is very reasonable (too reasonable!) and has a lot of ego-strength, so she's a good candidate.
I had the interesting experience not long ago of having a six-years-later processing conversation about my relationship with my bf when I was 25-26 (I did not initiate this!). It turns out he wasn't really forthcoming about his reasons for his breaking up with me (Matt Weiner suggested this was the case at the time! Point to Matt!), and had been somewhat angry about things that had happened in our relationship for seven years. This would have been useful information to have then! In part, because actually I think any heads up that there was a problem might have allowed me to address it, so there would have been an I/we can change conversation. But even with a firm no, it still might have been helpful to have the information. In a lot of ways it's not currently relevant because he was a huge contributor to the dynamic he was complaining about, and even without the information over time I've taken note of and smoothed out those issues in my behavior, but still, this data point is good for me. It makes me more aware that I'm not well-matched with people who share certain insecurities with this exbf, and further alerts me of pitfalls I might encounter if I find myself around them.
Also, there isn't a one-size-fits-all rule about whether you can be friends with someone right after the breakup. I have remained friends continuously with my last two boyfriends after the relationship ended. And for me, one feature of someone who is my friend through and after a break up is that they are willing to engage in a fair amount of emotional processing. If it becomes very repetitive, unproductive, or painful, then sure, cut it off, but depending on what this woman's values are, what kind of communication she asks for from you, and how she interprets disengagement, it's not clear to me that it's a bad idea to make yourself available to talk for a bit. More than once, even.
Tia!
It's completely wrong that my reaction to that was "Hey, gossip from when Tia was commenting! So, what was going on with Graham?" Not that there's any reason for you to say, just that my instant reaction to anything is to be nosy about it.
Damnit people are starting to be WRONG. We were so close.
In part, because actually I think any heads up that there was a problem might have allowed me to address it, so there would have been an I/we can change conversation.
I'm sure my conversations with the woman you reprobates have pretty accurately nicknamed for her foodie ways would be hilarious for all our sensitive communicating. E.g.: "Sweetheart, you really need to eat more green vegetables/vacuum in here/not eat that cookie/not roll your eyes so hard they click audibly when the TSA has to check your bag."/"Thank you, darling, but may I ask you to, while continuing to provide your very caring advice, perhaps limit comments on my diet to, say, three or five occasions per day?"
In fact, my idea that women are always having deep conversations with each other about their lives is probably a product of the same clichéd and idealized TV shows about women to which Girls serves as a corrective, with its characters actually having immature and incoherent conversations with each other about their lives.
128: but you have told her about the Mineshaft now, right?
But it's not inconceivable that you have useful information for her about how her behavior affected you.
He is no more obligated to be "useful" to her than she is to be friends with him. Team No Reasons!!
If you are dumped, you are allowed to email six months later and say "Hey, I don't want to repeat my mistakes in my next relationship. Could you bluntly tell me what you didn't like?"
That doesn't affect my original advice.
128, who is "sweetheart" and who is "darling" in that conversation? Because Darling sounds like a fucking asshole.
J.S., in case you don't finish Tia's comment, she basically says that you should say
something like, "Across every life domain, I think you are neither as smart nor as competent as I am, and when that includes financial planning it's saying something."
131: I didn't say he was obligated. I only think that in some cases, good can come of it, so there's no reason to establish a blanket prohibition against providing them if someone asks. My friend was glad to know.
132: Maybe you should create a form.
I'd disagree with Tia somewhat, at least because it's hard to tell what the reasons are from close in, sometimes. The ex and I had a conversation four years after the fact, in which he said that he thought that the reason we broke up was that he was miserable in graduate school and unsure of what he wanted to do with his life, and he felt like he needed to make a change and I was the easiest thing to change.
This was true, and not said in an attempt to win me back or anything. But at the time the smattering of reasons that I got was that I just wasn't attractive any more and that I wasn't any fun to be with. Perhaps true, but I can't see how it would have been helpful for me to take that to heart and change myself (makeover montage!) when the problem was really that he hated trying to get a doctorate.
I think it's very easy to fool oneself into thinking that whatever is easier to say is what's in the other person's best interest. You're breaking up with her and it's going to hurt. Try not to pretend you're doing her a favor by explaining her personality flaws, too.
The most useful information I got out of my divorce was in processing it with a therapist. The ponderous exchanges I had with my ex were a necessary source of raw material, but there was nothing that was useful without considerable interpretive effort.
"The real problem is, I just hate that thing that's stuck to your back, right where you can't see or feel it."
Try not to pretend you're doing her a favor by explaining her personality flaws, too.
Definitely this. Not only is it not doing her a favor, when you get to the stage where you are breaking up with a reasonably long-term partner, it's highly likely that your judgement of that person's flaws is greatly distorted. Distorted by the kind of amplification and generalization that only extended exposure can do. So it's not even likely to be useful or generalizable advice either.
Also, if it new on HBO, and we don't get cable, is watching it even an option?
HBO's made it available free on Youtube. No clue whether they're planning on doing that for the whole season or what.
Stupid link. Let's try that again.
"You have failed me in three critical areas: hotness, compliance with my wishes, and that certain 'je ne sais quoi.' Please take your personal items and I shall send you a more complete list of your failings by post."
Even in a good cause -- and one is not convinced that saying "You can make a TV show!" to America's XX liberal arts graduates is all that important -- one would much prefer that producers continue to cast lingerie models as nuclear scientists.
Flippanter has perhaps replaced Cory Booker as history's greatest monster.
133: I am "Sweetheart" in that conversation, but I am kind of an asshole about stuff like green vegetables, using coupons, etc., etc. (Too long a history of being feral my own household manager, I suppose.) She is vastly more practical than I am, so we have regularly to calibrate our respective tolerances of self-centered male slobbishness, on the one hand, and sweetly-stated but imperious decrees, on the other.
Tia is starting to creep back into the range of commenting often enough to not get a Tia!
I'm happy to see Tia commenting, sad that it's prompted by science-related angst, but, yeah, I'm with Cala and K-sky in 137-8.
"I don't like you because you are secretly a lizard, and also I believe that you ate my pet frog. Now, you keep saying I never had a pet frog, but let's not dwell on bygones."
And then fly away like Superman.
Science is angst. Although today I managed to explain to my advisor a minor piece of what I'm doing that I had no idea he had failed to understand previously. At this rate I'll have explained to him all the things I'm doing that I'm unaware that he doesn't understand by some unknowable point in the future!
Break it off with the IRS! (Taxes are done!)
Sure, communication about external perception is theoretically useful in the mean. But there's already an interpersonal history, and he says she has not heard previous hints, so unclear speaker/poor listener, or both. Knowing how old both parties are would be useful.
At 46, I still believe that people are capable of change, but I think that ability to exert control over when they do so is pretty limited. Mostly people change in response to crisis. I did not feel the same way 20 or even 10 years ago, I had much more faith in volition. Basically, barring an explicit request for critique, the less said beyond a firm and kind goodbye the better IMO.
Also, disillusion with grad school is not rare. People change fields several times in a productive lifetime. Even if this years' prospects look dim, the work's not wasted, on average.
I'm on the side of the explainers here.
My partner of nearly a decade broke up with me a year or so ago, quite out of the blue. Literally I got home one day, and he said, um, I want to break up, I'm moving out. I said, what? why??! And he was like, er, I dunno. He would not, or could not, give me any further explanation.
We hadn't been fighting, or not getting along, or anything really. The lack of explanation or context was awful, separately from how awful breaking up was. The breakup was horrible, but the lack of explanation was totally destabilizing. I went around not comprehending reality for a while.
I suppose it's true that he didn't owe me anything -- in the sense that you don't owe anything to anyone who's not connected to you, and once you've snipped that cord, the connection is gone. But that's pretty cold, isn't it? You cut the cord and that person recedes immediately into the past? Eh, maybe so. A year and a half out, I'm still sorting this through.
"It's not you. It's them! RUN!"
Then disconnect Skype.
Maybe you should create a form.
Like this one.
"It's not you, it's me. I don't like you."
153: Genuine question - how much would the speech in 32 have left you feeling less knocked off your rocker?
However, I still think the problem with your ex-partner is not how they delivered the end speech. The problem is that they hid massive amounts of dissatisfaction from you, leading up to that point.
You were left feeling like you'd been in a relationship where you'd been lied to, possibly for years. That is devastating.
Anyway, I'll invite you all to consider the modesty of my claim: sometimes it's useful! Thus, to refute it, you would have to argue that it is never useful! I already provided an example in which the dumpee thought it was useful. LB, I'll answer later. Off to swim! Really!
Can we go back to thinking about whether Vin Diesel or the Rock is more awesome?
The Rock. Has Vin Diesel ever main-evented Wrestlemania?* Does he have a finishing move even comparable to the Rock's?**
* I have attended Wrestlemania. Like Halford, I am not gay.
** The People's Elbow. And shut up.
"I feel like if we stayed together we'd just end up interacting and spending time together and that sort of thing, and I know neither of us wants that."
161: does The Rock know what level shield you need to have a solid chance of rolling save against a Beholder? Didn't think so.
163: (1) Nerd.
(2) Vin Diesel has to roll a natural twenty to hit the Rock.
Now, you keep saying I never had a pet frog, but then why did I have that pond? Why did I have that pond?
128: You are at the trying to fix each other stage, and you still haven't introduced her to us?
"I've been thinking: maybe we should have a baby? Wait, no, break up. Maybe we should break up."
"I suppose you're wondering why I've asked you to meet me at this leather bar."
I think the link above says that The Rock is also a D&D player.
I saw The Rock and his kids eating artisinal cheese once, so much more shameful than D&D.
167 is right. She doesn't have to read, but she does need to know. You're living a lie, Flip. Now I wish that logged (PBUH) were here.
162 is pretty close to how a friend of mine in college explained why she preferred long distance relationships. She could have a boyfriend and not be with him too.
162 is pure genius. I might actually use it.
I don't know what to wear for the Pulp concert tonight. And I'm late to therapy! Gah!
Perhaps I should log off.
170: I bet Vin got him into it. They have a special room in the back of the gym where they keep their cowls and miniatures.
"It's you. You're not you. What is you? Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no moo."
Sifu is on fire in this thread.
Seriously.
After nearly a decade, he owes you an explanation.
One is somewhat ashamed of this opinion, because one otherwise thinks oneself at least tolerant of women's suffrage emancipation, but one does not want to see unattractive, uninteresting actors in movies or on television.
One finds this bizarre. In fact, one is sometimes ashamed of the experience, quite opposed, which one has when watching "European films", and seeing older/less attractive actors/actresses, whether in major or minor roles, of thinking, "ah, how refreshing! these people are not all stunning! How [this is the more overtly shameful part] sophisticated I feel!".
You people are freaking high if you think I'm going to introduce a lovely, talented, caring young woman to this din of equity. Introducing her to friends viva has been delicate enough.*
* "Then, after her appetizer arrives, you tell the story of the time when I rescued the baby squirrels from the spiked treads of Dick Cheney's DeathTank. You, just nod approvingly. Close with 'And then he said, "Yeah, you'd better run, Cheney!" ' Try to put some life in the line this time, though, you're a ghost out there."
Attractive to a camera and interesting are very often antonyms.
One is not entirely sure what prompted 181.
After nearly a decade, he owes you an explanation.
No. During the decade, he owes it to you to keep you informed that things are troubling him, while the relationship is still partly working for him, and you could address the problems.
It is a huge transgression of trust to bottle everything in for a decade. You have an obligation to clue your partner in now and then, in plain, direct words. The crime is not that he inadequately broke up with her.
"It's like, for years, I've kept all my problems locked away in a closet, festerin, and with you... well, I'm just worried you're going to mess that all up."
"Baby, that rule stating that two tributes from the same district can win the Games as a pair? It's changed for me, baby."
I keep forgetting to ask the friend we have in common for dirt on Lunchy.
The crime is not that he inadequately broke up with her.
Can't it be both? I agree that the main crime is the past decade, but, leaving without even a conversation? That's stone cold.
"If there's one thing I never ever wanted to do to you it's not occurring to me right now."
188 is brilliant. And now, being super late, I'm really off.
Why choose? One expects more of an explanation at the end of a ten-year commitment; it's also wrong not to say anything for ten years. Different standards apply in the case of a less-committed, shorter-term relationship, especially if one person really wants to move ahead with it.
As the Philosopher said, "being a dick is said in many ways."
Thus, to refute it, you would have to argue that it is never useful!
Well, you also said that he's the best judge of her ego strength and whether she could profit from his advice, and that's the part I disagreed with.
183: I'm no hero, neb, but I couldn't let that black-hearted cyborg crush those little fellows without attempting, careless of the great personal risk, to rescue them. I guess some of us just [gets a little choked up] love the least of the Lord's creatures more than others. [Sniffles.] I'm just a man, neb, but, you know, all creatures great and small. All things wise and wonderful. [Manly tears.]
Also, there had been a series of comments to the effect that some somebody ought to introduce somebody to the Mineshaft.
The crime seems to be that he failed to give an explanation that tended towards breaking up, then take a breath, pause for a second, say "new topic!" and then say he wanted to break up.
I find it easier to say that he had an obligation to tell jms at least something about why he was breaking up with her.
I hadn't seen 167 in this thread, so I thought 181 was just unprovoked.
"It's like camping, I guess. Leave nothing but herpes, take nothing but your car."
Sifu is on fire in this thread.
Is there nothing Cory Booker won't stoop to in his quest to be a hero?
"ah, how refreshing! these people are not all stunning! How [this is the more overtly shameful part] sophisticated I feel!"
A talisman-thought of the bien-pensant.* Worth a comment thread of its own, really.
To bring things full circle from 194, have we discussed the scope of power fantasies? Do women have them?
For years, I thought that the self-aggrandizing form was exclusively male. Definitley when I want to save squirrels or to have something powerful to say that will just change everything, those are signs that it's not been a good month.
"It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch."
It is the third tear that makes buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.
I saw The Rock and his kids eating artisinal cheese once, so much more shameful than D&D.
So shameful it puts the 'sin' in artisanal.
I hadn't seen 167 in this thread
And apparently no one saw 130.
A talisman-thought of the bien-pensant.* Worth a comment thread of its own, really.
Yes, I know, you horrible person, that is why I am able to recognize it as shameful. I at least was willing to let the kitsch comparison remain implicit, because I think highly of my fellow commenters.
In a sense, there has been a comment thread on this.
I guess I can see the benefit of not using analogies. Because "find the puppy a nice new home instead of putting it down" doesn't really seem like the right answer to the OP.
[H]ave we discussed the scope of power fantasies? Do women have them?
A girl once punched me, hard, in the arm for answering the (in retrospect, rhetorical) question "What do women want?" by saying "To be envied by other women."
In the HBO groove, one can imagine few things more gratifying to a college-educated twentysomething woman than the opportunity to boss around some rather more attractive young women while luxuriating in adulation of her having scored the jackpot of Judd Apatow's attention moral authority.
206: You didn't seem sufficiently ashamed.
So, sometimes you want to describe something using a puppy, and it seems like the puppy is really fun-loving and lovable and just an all-around wonderful way to get your point across. But then it turns out what you really need to be accurate is a puppy with a fifth leg, and no eyes, and fur that catches on fire when people yell too loud, and of course technically there are infinite puppies, and then the thread wants to shoot them, and then there are just dead puppies and blood everywhere and no comity at all. Nobody wants that.
Where can I find the infinite puppies, please?
But takes the 'anal' out.
And that's the last you'll see of the 'ogy ban.'
For years, I thought that the self-aggrandizing form was exclusively male.
It is like I never even wrote a personal blog. To be fair, though, that was years ago.
Every time I see a puppy at the dog park near my apartment, I see another puppy there too. The result follows by induction.
one can imagine few things more gratifying to a college-educated twentysomething woman anyone than the opportunity to boss around some rather more attractive young women while luxuriating in adulation
The first sentence of 216 could be true with exactly two puppies. No wonder physics is in such a dire state.
I did, however, get to air out all the stuff I didn't like about the relationship (yes, there was a list; no, she didn't get the hint).
Just to chime in with the majority once more, the idea that the poor person you are breaking up with is supposed to "take the hint" is so dreadful (and yet so recognizable) that it is comic. Quit that! Break up with her!
209, 215
liked but not feared, is that a fair summary?
218: Someone always complains about "rigor". Sigh. Can't you feel that my argument is morally correct? Puppies!
Wolf cubs are sort of like puppies, only cooler.
The thing about a puppy is, it never fits perfectly. "Fine", you say, "I'll use a guinea pig", but no, not quite. Soon enough you're dealing with gerbils and yes, maybe the gerbil fits, but everybody knows how that story ends.
You people are freaking high if you think I'm going to introduce a lovely, talented, caring young woman to this din of equity.
Hell, I *am* freaking high and didn't think that.
No, oderint dum metuant is pretty much how I see things at least. Liked is nice, but feared is better.
... and that's how LB came to rule urple.
O that the Unfogged commenters had but a single neck!
181: She doesn't need to read it. She just needs to know that you read one blog a lot.
228: She knows I follow the ZooBorns RSS feed religiously.
and that's how LB came to rule urple.
Where is urple, anyway? Did the evil clowns finally get him?
He's vowed to spend every waking hour investigating until he can explain what happened in his bathroom with the flooding toilet.
On the OP: I'm vaguely uncomfortable with the suggestion I think I see in some comments upthread that sharing your reasons for breaking up counts as telling the soon-to-be ex what's wrong with him or her, as though it's inevitably a parade of the other's flaws, while you yourself are peachy.
That's often not it at all: it might be simply that you don't see the life you'd likely lead were you to stay together for the long term to be one you want. (I think here of the ex I broke up with because he just wasn't very, erm, intellectual. Not a talker or thinker, much. There was nothing wrong with him, he was in fact a highly creative type; we just weren't well-suited for the long term. Or the guy who broke up with me because, basically, he wanted to have a bunch of kids, and that just wasn't going to work for me. The point is that nothing was wrong with either of us in either of those situations.)
There's something to be said for being clear in those kinds of ways when breaking up; it certainly clarified some things for me when I realized that I need to be with someone who's intellectually engaged. Of course, if the reasons for the breakup have to do with how annoying the other person is, well, withhold on that.
...he owes it to you to keep you informed that things are troubling him, while the relationship is still partly working for him, and you could address the problems.
Thinking about it, had I been broken up with during the extended time that I was in a long distance relationship part of what would have been painful about it would be the feeling that I would never have known when things started to go bad.
Obviously that can and does happen in in-person relationships, but communication is so much more limited in LDR that I would have been wondering for a long time, "how long it was it that we were having the same phone calls and she just didn't say anything about the fact that it didn't mean the same thing to her that it once did?"
Not wanting to have kids is the single brightest line you can draw in a breakup, so letting someone know that that's your reason is relatively simple, if often painful.
But telling someone they aren't intellectual enough for you? No matter how loud and clear you say it, not everyone is going to hear "there's nothing wrong with you" after "Not a talker or thinker, much."
"It certainly clarified some things for me." Well, yes.
Communication, people! But that goes without saying.
heebie gets this right in 184:
It is a huge transgression of trust to bottle everything in for a decade. You have an obligation to clue your partner in now and then, in plain, direct words.
Lying (even by omission) is the most hurtful thing a person can do. An ex cheated on me with my best friend, and when I found out about it a year later, I was not so very devastated by the infidelity as I was by the fact that he had lied about it for a year. He and she said they were so chagrined by their behavior, and they both loved me so much, that they didn't want to hurt me, and so decided not to tell me. I believe them on that: understood, noble sentiments, but as it turned out, the lying was much more of a problem than the cheating.
Conclusion: always be clear about what you're thinking/feeling.
If they hadn't cheated, they probably wouldn't have lied about it. It would be really weird to tell someone you cheated on them when you hadn't.
Conclusion: always be clear about what you're thinking/feeling.
I haven't the slightest idea how you do the second of those. If we're supposed to have clear feelings, then it would be harder to suppress them.
To the OP:
I did a serious, long-term, long-distance relationship for years when I was in grad school, which meant that I never actually knew where I was going to end up. I broke up with my boyfriend right before I left for a year's teaching residency a (long-ass) train-ride away. I did it the worst possible way, really, and I didn't get over the whole thing for a long time.
I don't have a lot of insight to offer. One thing that you probably already know is that the mechanics of a long-distance relationship are strange, and that one becomes attached to the strange habits that follow. In your followup comment at 100, the detail about her "freaking out" reminded me of how I hadn't been able to deal with my rising unhappiness with my long-distance relationship because for god's sake, I had sacrificed so much and of course it must be the perfect thing otherwise why would we be so miserable and so patient?
It's really best to end it. If you visit her when you're in country, be sure to have an alternative sleeping plan.
Communication, people! But that goes without saying.
But—!
244: Was that the guy you were referring to when Armsmasher was dating someone in one of the -stan countries? Does he predate the Persian guy? Did you break up with that one?
You know Who never breaks up with you?
Jesus.
235: But telling someone they aren't intellectual enough for you? No matter how loud and clear you say it, not everyone is going to hear "there's nothing wrong with you" after "Not a talker or thinker, much."
I didn't see this until just now.
The discussion didn't proceed that way. Rather, it was my pointing out that he not infrequently rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, you don't have to keep going on and on about it" if I talked for what he considered to be too long. I pointed out that from my perspective, I wasn't going on and on at all, but was discussing the various issues and nuances of the issue, which I found very interesting. It's not that hard to then observe that that's just the way I am and always will be: I talk about things a lot. I registered his "Yeah, you don't need to go on" as an instruction to shut up.
Meanwhile, he is a creative person, which is remarkable but pretty obviously not my forte. And I said that I thought it would be a bad idea for both of us at 75 years of age (were we to stay together) to constantly be living at cross-purposes.
I don't think I was an utter asshole in being honest in that way: he was upset and blamed himself for a while for not painstakingly listening to my blather, but he had to acknowledge that as far as he was concerned, it was blather.
Rather, it was my pointing out that he not infrequently rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, you don't have to keep going on and on about it" if I talked for what he considered to be too long.
Maybe you should have considered this criticism when going on and on about your reasons for the breakup.
Anyhow, people are confusing different things. If you are involved with someone and want to keep being involved with them, you need to communicate (but respectfully and thoughtfully, not just "here are your flaws") about your issues with them, and yourself. If you've gotten to the point where somebody's definitely leaving, that same communication becomes either (a) destructive or (b) completely unreliable or (c) both. Most people have no idea, in the moment, really, why they're leaving other than a desire to get out. For the breaker-upper, it's pretty much the worst possible time to go into your partners' failings (the breaker-upper isn't seeing things objectively, and is likely to be pointlessly hurtful). For the breaker-uppee, it's pretty much the worst time possible to be receptive to criticism.
As k-sky says, everyone needs to do thinking and processing about the reasons for a breakup. The way to do that is conversations with a therapist or friends about the relationship, not the person you're breaking up with.
249: Dude, we were living together at that point and had been together for 4 years. I think we needed to discuss for more than 20 minutes why I was calling it quits. In any case, you can see why it totally couldn't work.
One should definitely name those kinds of differences by way of working on the relationship.
But naming them for the first time by way of breaking up with someone is either salt in the wound or false hope.
I'm sure you weren't an utter asshole about it. I just don't think its evidence that the opportunity for self-knowledge via break-up outweighs the band-aid rip approach.
naming them for the first time by way of breaking up with someone is either salt in the wound or false hope
Or both, depending what you're into.
253, no, no -- this "But naming them for the first time by way of breaking up with someone is either salt in the wound or false hope" is exactly right, and perfectly phrased.
I think it is different if you are actually living together. If anybody wants me to carry stuff into a rented truck, I want an explanation.
If anybody wants me to carry stuff into a rented truck, I want an explanation.
"There's candy in there?"
Moby: Please carry some of your stuff into a rented truck. I wish to steal that stuff. Thank you, R. Halford.
252: One should definitely name those kinds of differences by way of working on the relationship.
Oh, yes. I had mentioned these things before, a number of times, in hopes of not being effectively told to shut up if all I was doing was talking about the fake WMD scare in Iraq or something.
252.last: the opportunity for self-knowledge via break-up
This is a misrepresentation of what I was saying, k-sky.
in hopes of not being effectively told to shut up
Maybe he just wasn't very nice.
247: He wants to see other people, though.
246.--My ex-boyfriends contain multitudes. And they keep multiplying!
Act decently but abandon all investment in her opinion of you.
To this, and to the OP, I realize that I don't think I've linked to "I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight" before. As a reminder that people do process breakups in their own way.
I could live my whole life / Without a phone call / The likes of which I got today. / It was only my wife / Said hello then goodbye / And told me she's going away / I didn't cry / It was all cut and dry / I hung up before I realized / I turned up my stereo / I walked to the window / And stared at the storm clouds / outside
25 is nice when true, but would have been a lie 100% of the times I broke up with someone.
244: I think this gets to one of the main reasons this is so hard. We have been together for more than a year now, and "patiently miserable" I think accurately describes both of our stances for the majority of that time.
Now that I'm actually moving there, it feels like I at least owe it to her to give a shot while we're living in the same city, especially since, in part, the dwindling of my feelings has a lot to do with (or rather, was facilitated by) the horrible mechanics of a LDR. Of course it would fail after a while, because I'm just not feeling it anymore, but still.
That said, you are all right, I need to grow a pair and end it ASAP. She will ask for explanations though, as she very persistently did when I told her I didn't want to move in together.
A year isn't actually that long a time, all things considered. Of course, you could drag things out, but.
Patient misery seems to go so well with graduate work! But it isn't actually a life plan.
I think one can reasonably expect more explanations from someone who wants to keep dating them but renege on an agreement to live together than from someone who just wants to break up.
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Accessorize your stand mixer.
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I still think LB is right about giving her a long conversation if that's what she wants if you are serious about hoping to be able to be friends in the future. It's not that you'll be able to really explain things, or even that she'll hurt less in the longer term, but just a quick, 'it's over' will make her feel that not only is it over but that you're indifferent to her pain which in turn will not make her feel too positive about you once she's over the initial grief. And I think most of you are crazy with your idea that someone who is ending a long term living together relationship doesn't owe their now ex a good long talk.
Five minutes for every year plus an extra minute for every jointly purchased home furnishing or fixture that cost more than $50.
Just DO it. Don't waste other people's lives and your own. If you should somehow end up friends ten or twenty years down the road that's a bonus, not a given nor even to be hoped for.
As for explanations, I can't say it any better than k-sky did: naming them for the first time by way of breaking up with someone is either salt in the wound or false hope.
I was too ill to articulate this yesterday, but, as someone who is always blindsided by breakups, I support breaking up quickly and, if asked why, just give some bullshit reason, unless there's something really obvious to say. The reasons should be about the fit, not about her or you individually, because those can be argued with, and are probably wrong anyway. (That irritating thing she does that makes you nuts? Would be charming to someone who really loves her.) I can only think of a few times when a man broke up with me that weren't traumatically inept and cowardly, and they were usually some version of, "It's really important for me that I find someone who is compatible with me in [whatever way], and while you are so charming and pleasant to be around that it's tempting to continue spending time with you, I don't want to waste either of our time with something that I know isn't what I'm looking for." Fine! Done!
In the case I'm thinking of, the compatibility issue was that he wanted me to be cruel and dominant in bed, which, at 26, I just had less than no interest in. It made sense and could not be helped, and I wished him well.
which, at 26, I just had less than no interest in
I take it that years of inept and cowardly breakups have increased your willingness to be cruel.
Five minutes for every year plus an extra minute for every jointly purchased home furnishing or fixture that cost more than $50.
Excellent starting point. I suggest a log-dollar scale to allow for diminishing effects as joint expenditures rise. Sifu should code this up with a breakup app that serves up his dating advice and this formula.
My wife and I bought a used car together after 7 months of dating, which we were supposed to drive out west to a ski area to spend a season skiing/working. Then she got a job in Indiana and drove off with it.
275: No, I was accused of sexual assault when I was 19 (by someone who was completely batshit crazy), so I simply could not initiate sex for a long time after that. Cruelty I've never learned, but at 32, I am capable of standing up for myself.
OK, but seriously, I shouldn't send the XKCD in 121 to BOGF, right?
Maybe I'll keep it in my pocket next time I'm in her town, just in case.
"Actually, if you think about it, handing you that cartoon and running away was a much gutsier move than standing around making polite small talk. So you should apologize for calling me a coward."
Patient misery seems to go so well with graduate work! But it isn't actually a life plan.
When I finished grad school, I decided that delayed gratification was not a purely good idea like I had been taught, but instead a terrible temptation to some personality types. I also decided tht anything that requires delayed gratification should be given a very skeptical look, simply for requiring delayed gratification. It has been a pretty successful new approach.
Gratification now AND gratification later! All gratification all the time!
160 "There's no U in 'the future.' Well, there are two, but at this point we are speaking of the letter rather than the pronoun and the word rather than the time period. Have I been clear?"
I did consider "there's no U in us."
She will ask for explanations though, as she very persistently did when I told her I didn't want to move in together.
Explanations beyond the fact that you've been together a year and a half and spent two months in the same place, you mean? Because...
Gratification now AND gratification later! All gratification all the time!
Sadly, the rat kept pressing the lever until it died of exhaustion.
Fortunately there was a very convenient unit of measure by which one could ascertain that it still came out ahead.
And more importantly, the world came out ahead.
I am planning on adopting the approach of 279.last, but I need to take care of a couple of things first.
You should feel very gratified about your sense of responsibility.
Anyway, I'll invite you all to consider the modesty of my claim: sometimes it's useful! Thus, to refute it, you would have to argue that it is never useful! I already provided an example in which the dumpee thought it was useful. LB, I'll answer later. Off to swim! Really!
Re: this sentiment in 158 and elsewhere in the thread like some of parsimon's comments, it's not wrong, but I think it's a little beside the point here. This is an ATM, not a ML thread. We aren't talking about some asshole using some years-old, half-true-at-best story to pontificate, we are talking about someone asking for advice. So, while it is indeed true that giving reasons to a dumpee would sometimes be useful, and it is interesting to speculate about when and why, would it be useful to Mr. Stapleton here?
Well, anything's possible, and we're in a bad position to say for sure. It's all anonymous. But based on the story as we've been given it, I find it very unlikely that this dumpee would handle it well. So I'd go all the way back to comment number 25. Rephrase it however you feel appropriate, but that probably shouldn't include an itemized list.
I need to respectfully dissent from part of 274: be careful when giving bullshit reasons. The most awful breakup I ever experienced featured a bullshit reason that I'm sure sounded superficially harmless to the dumpor but, unknowably to her, pressed a major button of mine and turned what could easibly have been a minor bump in an ongoing relationship into a all-hope-of-friendship-ending, never-speak-again rupture. The truth, or nothing at all, would have been vastly better.
The only thing I took away from Girls is a curiosity about whether it's common for the kids these days to have appalling table manners of the sort Main Girl had in the opening scene.
today I managed to explain to my advisor a minor piece of what I'm doing that I had no idea he had failed to understand previously
Literally moments before I went before my committee to defend my thesis, my advisor made a comment that revealed he did not understand the most basic premise of the project. Like, didn't know what the words meant. It was like discovering a new species of loneliness.
Well, I was going for funny more than tragic with the 2nd sentence, but it's true that it did not feel good at all. A "sobering moment," I believe is the term of art.
If you discover a new species of loneliness, you get to name it, don't you?
One of the many rewards of a life in science.
One solution is for people to have publicized deal-breakers (that aren't actually big deals, say eating crackers in bed). Then if you want to break up with someone you just do something on that list. Then the person can be all "well that's it, I can't date someone who would eat crackers in bed," voila breaking up for a reason!
291: That's like showing up naked to a test in a class you haven't been taking. And the test requires you make a speech. From a great height. With spiders.
289.2: So I'd go all the way back to comment number 25.
Comment 25 was presented as the correct approach for every occasion, every break-up; hence the thread drift into occasions on which it might not be the best approach. I'd agree that in Mr. Stapleton's case, simply stating 'not feeling it' may be the best.
You know Who never breaks up with you?
Jesus.
I want to make a joke about this based on present circumstances, but I can't think of anything that doesn't sound callous. So think of such a joke that's really funny, maybe a little bittersweet, but definitely not callous, and pretend that I wrote it.
301: I was trying to think of a joke to make about you, too.
Feel free. It's not as though she's ever read the blog.
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Journeyman is really good, but it's hard to see how they stay open if tonight was representative of the typical number of tables they fill.
I'm kind of tempted to, like, drunkenly submit multiple Ask-the-Mineshafts right now, but that would be a bad idea.
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You can let me be your confessor, essear. I'm marvellously discreet.
There's an "essear the confessor" joke in here somewhere.
re 279: Megan, sensei, I will follow you out of my life of impatient misery.
I almost broke up my marriage when I put this on the minivan my wife drove:
http://www.eaglesnestoutfittersinc.com/product/7001.html
She thought it was offensive bullshit and I should've put it on my own damn car. Which is fair enough, though in my defense she owns, like, six of those hammocks. I then ordered a bumpersticker with two eyes that said "Get back to work", but I never actually put it on my car.
Whoops, 307 was still annealing.
304: they can get pretty full some nights. No need to worry about them.
it's hard to see how they stay open if tonight was representative of the typical number of tables they fill
It has been that way from the beginning, and they seem to be doing okay, so I've mostly stopped worrying about them. I think they do a bang-up business on weekends. Also, we ran into the wine director two weekends ago at brunch, and she said that their recent kitchen remodel had streamlined things enough that they are able to have more seatings per night than previously.
307: how on earth could that sticker be viewed as offensive?
312: Cuz you know who else liked hammocks? Hitler, that's who.
312: Offensive because he put a sticker on her car without asking?
I once got drunk on milk punch and suggested to three other people that we go to Journeyman for the birthday of me and one of the other people there. O HAI TAKEZ ME TO EXPENSIV RESTORANT PLZ.
LOLprezident seems as good a reason as any to link to ">this.
As long as you were really drunk, it's O.K.
Oops.
http://www.care2.com/causes/henri-the-french-cat-questions-his-life-hilarious-video.html
312: Offensive because he put a sticker on her car without asking?
Yes, more bullshit that offended her rather than offensive bullshit. It happens to be bullshit that I like, but it's been a long time since I felt like I was doing what I wanna do.
You could put the stickers on the cars of other people in the neighborhood. If you like to look at some sticker, it's better to have it on the back of a car you won't be riding in.
321: If it broke up his marriage then he also wouldn't be riding in his wife's car.
Get something distinctive to help the private dick track her to her illicit assignations.
y'all are funny. I've got nothing but IM and FB fall backs: 8-) & "like".
I did it. What's proper post-breakup etiquette?
I hear there are plenty of hookers in Cartagena.
327: And liveblog it when you do.
328: You know, if someone normally charges $800 for their services, and after they render those services, you offer to pay no more than $30, you are a dickhead.
What if they're a mortgage lender?
326: You don't have to write a thank you note.
326: Congratulations! That was hard and sucked, but now it's not so hard (for you)! Go have a drink and get excited about your upcoming program.
That was hard and sucked, but now it's not so hard (for you)!
No, they broke up, remember?
Go have a drink and get excited about your upcoming program.
Post-breakup drunken coding woo!
Breakups, hooray!
Or not exactly 'hooray,' but, well, you know. Sometimes it's good that something is over.
326: Good for you. Proper etiquette for me involves some good Scotch. Works for loves, deaths, births, everything except DUI stops.
335: That did, and still does, suck. Before it sucked because of all the uncertainty, fear, and stress. Now it sucks because of the guilt. But its a matter of time, I guess.
Just remember that Facemash is not as good an idea as it sounds right now.
I feel a long ways out from dating. I know I had that intense guilt-feeling in your situation. But from this distance, it is so clear that:
1. her pain is the risk everyone takes when dabbling in romance, and she's entitled to take that risk, and
2. that ending things quickly is the right thing to do.
341: You didn't get into it with bad intentions and you got out of it reasonably honorably. Go on with your life.
I recommend wine made from rotten grapes. Drinking some now, and damn is this shit nice.
What a noble recommendation, teraz.
341: I'm sure there's guilt, but you'd have felt guilt showing up in her country and knowing that you'd told your internet friends you wanted to break up but hadn't told her yet. It's a painful situation, but you can be proud that you did what you meant to do and then figure out how to move on from it eventually.