It’s unfair to both of you to continue this joke of a “relationship.” It’s a complete waste of time. Trust me, just leave. She’ll either get better or she won’t, but you just being there, apparently not really caring much about her, and cheating on her to boot because you can’t bring yourself to tell her you don’t like her anymore? (Lame, by the way.) You’re not helping. Leave. It’ll be the best thing you can do for both of you.
I say, don’t try anything like “We can still be friends.” or soften the blow. It will just draw it out and give her false hope. Make sure she’s got a friend to turn to, or failing that, a psychologist or counselor or something, and then tell her you’re leaving. If you want to be kind: 1) Make sure she’s going to be meeting a friend or something afterward. 2) Don’t do it right before she’s got work or an important presentation or anything. 3) Don’t be horrible about it, but I bet she’ll ask why. Tell her or not–might be good or not, depending. 4) Then don’t talk to her again.
You’re bad for each other. You’re certainly doing yourself no favors by staying. You’re also doing her no favors by staying, either. Leave.
Oh, thank you. This is exactly what I was thinking, but I couldn’t have said it so well.
And I agree that it needs to be broken off firmly. Don’t be calling to “check up on her” for months afterward. IMO, that doesn’t provide closure, it prevents it.
Says the girl who was once dumped rather brutally but very cleanly and got over it a lot sooner than she would have the other way.
No, the problem is that the relationship is NOT giving you what you need. It’s not all about her, no matter how much she may think it is or make it out to be.
And maybe she will go to bed and cry for a week. And then she’ll realise that the world hasn’t ended, life will go on, and she’ll grow up a bit and become a better person for it.
The sooner you do it, the sooner it’ll be over and done with.
I was exactly like your girlfriend once upon a time (except the sex bit.) I was in a relationship with someone I loved who left for exactly the reasons you want to leave. I was needy and clingy and I cried for no damn reason. I was harshly judgemental and I must have seemed like a real nutjob.
He ended it and three days later it was like the person I had been with him never existed. All the paranoia and the neediness just evaporated. I went back and thought about it and I figured out that I was the way I was with him because of the nature of our relationship. Instead of telling me after the first 6 months that he didn’t want to stay with me he started pulling away from me, being very aloof and doing things he knew would upset me just so I would be as unhappy as he had been. Since I thought we were happy and he had given me just enough time to learn to love and trust him before this started I decided that I wasn’t going to walk away from him just because things were getting difficult so I dug in my heels. This caused him to be even more miserable, which caused me to cling even harder, etc. The problem built upon itself, snowballing to a point where we practically hated one another.
If he had just told me it wasn’t working for him once he realized that instead of pussyfooting around and generally being a dick and hoping I would leave him it would have saved us both a year of agony. As it was we both kind of fell into a Needful Things sort of mentality where we fed off the negative until it was ready to destroy us, both as a couple and as individuals. Once we broke up that fog lifted and I became a better person (I can’t speak for him but I would bet that he did too) and thanks to that experience I now have the ability to see this kind of thing coming and I know enough to be able to determine a rough patch in a relationship from a relationship that isn’t going to work. Life is much easier for me now. I would bet dollars to donuts that your girlfriend will probably be able to say the same thing once things are over between you.
Like a band-aid, my friend.
Her behavior, though… any chance she’s recently started or switched birth control methods? Daily crying, lack of sex drive… pretty typical symptoms, though they often coincide with a new relationship so many women don’t connect the two.
Regardless, even if you two were screwing like monkeys and she met you with a smile daily, you just don’t sound like you like her very much. End it. How? ‘I’m sorry, we need to break up.’ No negotiating.
You aren’t doing either of you any favors by staying in this crappy relationship for even another day. Unless you plan to stay with her until you both die, the pain you’re trying to spare her is inevitable. You’re just piling more on by letting her waste time being in this unhealthy mess.
Break up with her tonight. You’ll be doing you both a favor. The huge swell of relief and freedom you feel afterward will be your brain telling you you did the right thing.
Tell her exactly that. “I know this relationship is meeting your needs, but it’s not meeting mine.”
She’s being manipulating and controlling through passive-aggressiveness, but that may be in reaction to your passive-aggressiveness.
I recommend breaking up with her clearly and concisely, and cutting off all contact. Then you might consider therapy for some Monday-morning quarterbacking to help you learn how to conduct yourself in a healthy adult relationship. You don’t seem to have healthy relationship skills at the moment.
That was my first thought, too, on seing the thread title. But Paul Simon’s advice is pretty good – you need to: “slip out the back, Jack; Make a new plan, Stan; You don’t need to be coy, Roy; Just get yourself free.”
I was in a similar situation with a girlfriend who was highly needy, convinced I was going to break up with her at any moment, and would utterly freak out if I said anything suggesting I was less than entirely ecstatic about the relationship. It was very smothering.
She had me in an emotional trap, because everytime I tried to discuss our relationship issues, she would get highly upset, start crying about how I was going to break up (and how horrible that would be for her), issue an ultimatum that I was breaking up with her and essentially force me into telling her everything was great. Because we could never discuss the small issues or problems, they kept building into big ones.
Eventually, after some careful consideration that I decided that there was simply no way this could go on, and I had to break up with her. Almost inevatibly, when I started approaching the subject, she asked her “are you breaking up with me?” question, and I had to say yes. Suffice it to say that the break up was not smooth but it was absolutely necessary.
There’s no way to get out of this other than just pulling the plug. It will probably be ugly, but you just have to do it because it cannot get better.
No no no. There must be some restaurant or something that she’s been talking about, maybe a new place she’s heard good things about or an old classy place she’s always wanted to try. Take her there to have the breakup conversation, so you can ruin the place for her forever. That’s the way to do it.
(An ex girlfriend did this to me.)
Well, given what I perceive as your need to avoid drama, I’d suggest you write a break up note. Very short, very factual, very firm and just a bit rude. Along the lines of: “You have been very precious to me, but I can no longer be your significant other. I am moving on for a variety of reasons that do not reflect on your value as a person or your importance to me while we were a couple. I reached this decision after much internal debate, and it is final. If you need to talk this over with me to better understand my choice or to achieve closure, I will be at ***** for the next couple of hours and you are welcome to join me for a civil, public conversation. I am not available for a private conversation and would appreciate it if you respect this.”
Now, I don’t think this makes you come off as the nicest of people. It’s rather cold and formal and if I were your soon-to-be-former girlfriend it would piss me off. But, being angry with you may make it easier for her to reach the “I’m better off without him” stage.
I get an undercurrent from your posts, however, that you somehow want her to continue to think of you as wonderful even though you don’t want to be her boyfriend. This is rather self-centered and selfish of you. Do you really want her pining away for a fantasy idea that she has of you as the be-all and end-all of great boyfriends? Look honestly at your own desires and then give her the opportunity to dislike you a little by being a bit of a jerk. Otherwise, it appears to me that you are heading for her disliking you a lot as a cheating jerk.
Tardy to the party as usual! If you’re already cheating, you don’t care about her feelings nearly as much as you say/think you do. It’s not fair to her to try and make her think so just to feel good about yourself. Do her a big favor and get it over with today, quickly, privately, and remove yourself from her life for good.
You know, I have been the girl you are describing, and I can tell you what helped me move on and what didn’t.
Do NOT be super nice about it, liking taking her to a nice restaurant. I’ve actually never gotten the point of this . . . why would you want to making breaking up such a special moment
Cut off contact. If you contact her, and she is like I was (which it sounds like she was) she will get it in her head that you are still interested in her.
Do give her reasons in a firm, clear way, and make sure that she realizes that you value the person she is, and think that she undervalues herself. Recommend counseling. I think also explaining that it was a hard decision to arrive at would be useful too.
Do it quickly and without froo froo, but in person.
Did I miss a warning from the mods regarding Skald’s remark about pretending to have balls? Some nerve considering his just sitting back and letting his wife be abused.
You know, if you’d broken this off before you’d started cheating on her, she’d be able to look back on this a few years from now and say, “He was a nice guy, but it wasn’t meant to be.” Now, if she does find out about the cheating, she may well think of you as scum.
If you aren’t her first serious relationship, she’s got to be aware that relationships come to an end, especially when you’re 20 and life is changing a lot. Even if you are her first, if she thinks about it, she should realize first loves seldom last forever. Prolonging things like this is cruel and all it’s doing is making the two of you miserable longer.
I’d suggest breaking up with her by calling her at home. not on her cell phone. That way, she’s got a bit of privacy to deal with the news. Tell her things have been going downhill for a while and the way things are going you’re just going to continue to make each other miserable. Yes, she may deny you’re making her miserable, but the way things are going, if you’re not, you will be before long. As others have suggested, treat it like ripping off a bandage. Make it quick, endure the sting, and get it over with. At least that way you’re both free to move on and heal. Don’t comfort her, don’t offer to dry her tears, and whatever you do, don’t sleep with her (Someone I know really did this with someone he was trying to break up with. For a smart man, he really can be dumb as a bunch of rocks sometimes! :rolleyes: ).
Obviously he should break up with her by putting a post-it note on her computer screen saying, “I can’t do this.”
Preferably on her birthday.
But seriously, IntelSoldier, why not tell her you’ve been cheating on her rampantly? Then she might dump you and that’ll take care of your problem while also giving you the opportunity to be honest with her so she can get tested for STI’s.
I’m sorry, when I thought she might be suicidal or something I suggested this because it worked once upon a time in a situation with a girl that had really bad issues. The first boyfriend that broke up with her she was about 5 seconds away from killing herself (and I mean she was forcefully stopped from killing herself), the second boyfriend tried something similar to this and she had a much better reaction, maybe she just grew up a bit or got some psychological help (though she always insisted she wouldn’t even tell anyone about it much less get help, maybe she was lying) between points A and B, but overall the insane self-detrimental reaction we saw the first time was replaced by the typical down-in-the-dumps attitude the second time. Maybe it was an odd case, I’ve only ever seen anything like I THOUGHT the girl was like in the OP once and that’s how it was handled.