Wait, having unprotected sex with a long-term partner is stupid? Or just in the context of cheating, even having protected cheating sex?
Tell her the TRUTH. The whole unvarnished truth. Yes, you will feel awful and you’ll be hurting her in the short term. If she is all you say she is, she needs to know this in order to have successful relationships in the future. Be as kind about how you tell her as possible, but don’t pull any of that “it’s not you, it’s me” garbage, or “I don’t know, I just need to find myself”.
TRUST ME, as one who has been on your GFs end of things.
My SO and I broke up about four years ago, he never did tell me why, I’m much older than your girlfriend and don’t have the issues that she does (I loved sex as much, if not more than he did for instance), but even though the break up hurt, I would have VERY much appreciated knowing what the problem was from his perspective. It may have merely been a “fell out of love” thing and had nothing to do with me, but it may be something that I could actively work on fixing so as to not to screw myself out of a good relationship again.
She is only 20 (some folks are later bloomers), she’s, young and resilient, and you said she’s loving and goodhearted? She’s got good qualities and she’ll have time, if you tell her the truth, to “work out the kinks” and find someone else.
I’m sure others have already said it, but sometimes you truly do have to be “cruel to be kind” and this sounds like one of those cases.
Well aren’t you a prince. :rolleyes:
“I love the girl, just not enough to be honest, or faithful.”
You *don’t * love her, and you’re not trying to end this with minimal pain for her, you’re trying to end it with minimal discomfort for you. Well, guess what. There’s gonna be some discomfort. You bought it, you own it. Man up, tell her that you want to break up, and that she should get tested. Yes, she’s going to think you’re an asshole. Live with it.
Oh, really? :dubious: In your first post in this thread, you said this:
I don’t normally do gotcha posts, but you have directly contradicted yourself. Look, I realize you’re probably deceiving yourself as much as anyone, telling yourself “She’s really not all that bad,” so you have an excuse to put off dumping her, but it sounds like you don’t have a future together.
Is there any chance this relationship is salvageable? If yes, thinking logically, not emotionally, how great a chance is there? I’d say if it’s less than 25%, end it. If it’s less than 70%, decide if making it work is worth it to you and, if it is, do what you have to do to salvage it. Is she willing to work to salvage the relationship? If she isn’t, you both need to end it. If it isn’t salvageable, what good is putting off breaking up going to do? (These numbers are arbitrary.)
If you don’t break up with her now, where will you both be six months from now? How about a year from now? No, it isn’t easy. But, speaking as someone who’s been depressed, insecure, and clingy, you’re not doing her any favors by staying with her and you’re certainly not doing her any favors by cheating on her. Wake up, smell the coffee, and deal with life as it is rather than the way you’d like it to be. Good luck, and if you need a shoulder to cry on after you do it, quite a few people here will be willing to let you do so.
Christmas Eve is a good day. Wait till it’s too late for her to go anywhere else on Christmas Day, then have a change of heart on Christmas morning, ask for your engagement ring back later, then change your mind again by sunset and sneak off for some one-to-one with the person you’ve been shagging behind her back. With a little luck she’ll still be some flavour of fucked-up about it twenty years later.
Similarly, the person who says “I don’t know how I’d go on living if you left me” is just aiming at controlling the relationship such that he or she is the only one who does any leaving; it doesn’t mean that leaving will not in fact occur.
As a victim of this ploy, I heartily concur. Added to the mix was the fact that while he was out of town (and btw, I wasn’t crying at all and the sex was good), his frat brothers let “slip” (with malice aforethought or not–I’ve never been able to quite figure out) that he was going to propose.
So, he gets back in town, takes me out to dinner with flowers and over the entree, breaks up with me. This left me with a bitterness towards him that took years, if not decades, to get through. It made me crazy, because I misread his signals, but I didn’t–any sane person thinks that dinner+flowers=ongoing attraction. I still loathe Mexican food–it looks like vomit on a plate to me. I couldn’t do anything but freeze, given we were in a public place (and the Pan-Hellenic society officers were two tables over–how nice. They all wanted to meet me–I wasn’t a Greek in college–can you say awkward?). It was one of the worst nights of my life and I’m 45 now.
DO NOT DO THIS. If you do this, you are the world’s biggest prick. Just my 2 cents.
She’s twenty. She has maturing to do. So do you, if you’re cheating on her because you want sex, but are scared (scared!) to break up with her.
And letting it continue to the point of nuclear meltdown will make her issues five million times worse. 'Cause then you’ll have set an example whereby the other party in the relationship doesn’t tell her when things are bad. Which, in her mind, will make her feel like she has to guess at it in her next relationship.
Leading someone on like that is cruel. Just end it. Find a way to hang out with her at home, preferably at a time when you suspect she’ll have friends available. Say, “I don’t think this is working out.” Don’t go into specifics right away, even if she asks. Do not confess cheating on her–this will not go well.
I say this as someone who was this girl (with a little less crying) when I was eighteen.
[QUOTE=Malacandra]
Christmas Eve is a good day. Wait till it’s too late for her to go anywhere else on Christmas Day, then have a change of heart on Christmas morning, ask for your engagement ring back later, then change your mind again by sunset and sneak off for some one-to-one with the person you’ve been shagging behind her back. With a little luck she’ll still be some flavour of fucked-up about it twenty years later.
Oh and don’t give her any present you’ve bought and whatever you do DO NOT give hers to you back.
Attaboy…go for it man 
The majority of the advice seems sound - just break up and get it over with.
But I’d like to defend the OP a bit against charges of immaturity and evil. Okay, the guy is ambivalent and isn’t sure how to handle the break up. He’s 22 years old ferchrissakes. Exactly how many times has he had the experience of breaking up a serious relationship (especially given that he has been in this relationship for 2-3 years, it seems)? Probably not many. At least the guy has the decency to express his feelings honestly and ask for help.
What some see as indecisiveness or callousness to the girl’s feelings, I see as a perfectly reasonable desire to cherish what must have been some good moments in their relationship. Yes, the best way to show respect for her and what the OP once felt is to make a quick clean break. But that is easier often said than done.
Secondly, the cheating thing. I gather from his posts that IntelSoldier considers even “flirting” to be cheating, and certainly kissing another girl counts. But he and the GF are not married, apparently don’t even live together, and are pretty young.
Sorry, while I agree that sleeping with other people behind the back of a significant other is not a good thing, I just can’t work up a lot of indignation when a single 22 year old with an unsatisfactory relationship explores other possibilities. Did he tell her the relationship was going to be permanent? If not, the possibility of seeing someone else is always out there.
I’m not saying that he should stay in the relationship and continue cheating. I’m just saying that as long as he does break up with her, I don’t think he needs to have his “cheating” on his conscience forever.
Oh, and chowder? You quote like my granny.
I think a gift might help ease her emotional pain. What do women like when they are upset? They like chocolate. Therefore, I think a chocolate replica of your penis is ideal, really. It’ll give her severall options for consoling herself as she spends the wee, dark hours of each night obsessing over you.
Even if you don’t choose to bestow an edible monument to Mr. Happy on her, you need to dump her ass yesterday. I’ve had dozens of girlfriends, four live-ins, and three wives, so believe me when I tell you that breaking up isn’t as painful or difficult as you fear it is going to be. Even if she screams and cries, so what? You going to die from her histrionics? Say what you need to say i.e “good-bye” and be on your merry way. You aren’t obligated to stay and watch her dissolve into a pool of tears and snot after you’ve made your point.
Let me tell you something: someday you are going to be old, sick, in constant pain, and have tubes and shit inserted in your every orifice. You’re going to be lying there, feeling the bedsores eating away your saggy, gray, flesh and you’re going to spend what few lucid hours you get in Memory Land. Do you think your’re going to say to yourself then “Gee, I wish I had pissed away even more of the prime years of my youth dealing with that crazy bitch’s emotional incontinence?”
Scumpup, how you doin’?
Yes, I’m happily married, but c’mon, that post was hawt. 
Apparently you’re dating the female version of my ex.
On one particularly memorable evening, he locked himself in the bathroom to cry and feel sorry for himself for nearly an hour, while I alternated between banging on the door to make sure he was okay and cursing myself for giving in to emotional blackmail like that …and that was over something so minor that I can’t even remember what we were arguing about.
I ended up staying with him for nearly a year after that, because I couldn’t handle the drama that would come from a breakup. He kept pretending it was all going well, while I got more and more resentful about having to put on a happy face. I never cheated, though I admit I came darn close. I eventually broke up with him over the phone, because the passive-aggressive dolt knew what was coming and was purposely refusing to see me in person. It was short, it was painful, and it was an enormous relief to hang up the phone when it was done.
Now please, learn from my lessons and JUST GET IT OVER WITH. Yes, it’ll hurt. Yes, she’ll cry. Yes, there’s a possibility she might even do something monumentally stupid. Do it anyways.
If you’re worried she might get violent or cause a scene, do it over the phone - you’ll seem like a jerk for doing it, but hey… you’re already a monumental jerk for cheating on her and then sharing this info with strangers on the internet. Otherwise, do her a favour and do it face to face in a neutral space.
Even though she pretends to be a child, she is in fact a grown-up, and she’s probably quite aware that a) she’s blackmailing you into staying with her and b) things are not as peachy-keen as she is pretending they are.
In this case, with both parties very young and likely to be partner-hopping (and nothing wrong with that), and at least one of them cheating on the other, any unprotected sex would be stupid. I hope Intel’s girlfriend is all about safe sex, because she doesn’t know all the details of everyone she’s sharing a penis with.
Nothing says it’s over like a singing telegram clown knocking on the door.
No, no, weren’t you paying attention? You (a) take her to her favorite restaurant, or one she’s been excited to try (b) on her birthday © with her friends and family, and (d) you hand her a ring box that when she opens it is empty, telling her “that symbolizes our future.”
Then the singing clown comes in.
The singing clown with a chocolate penis.
I’ve dumped and been dumped, in both band-aid style and drag-it-out style.
In every case the band-aid style was the most effective. When I tried to drag it out so we could still be friends, in one case it took years of trauma for both of us to really end it (because I wasn’t strong enough to say “do not contact me again”), and in another case I ended up saying “Do not contact me again” anyway because he simply wouldn’t take a hint (because I kept acting like his friend, even tho I didn’t want to be).
When I ended a (different) relationship abruptly - I went to his house, told him it wasn’t working, and left - I cried for three days (literally) but then I felt great.
When I got dumped honestly and openly, it sucked huge but it was easy to heal. When I got dicked around by someone without the balls to be honest with me, it sucked the life out of me and really made a bad situation a lot worse.
Please just do it.
Dude, this is just so beautiful. Truly, truly a work of art.
Dude, did I date you?
Except I wasn’t a pathetic crying whiny needy person. Six months before the end, I tried to figure out why The Boy was so distant with the relatively reasonable “Honey, if I don’t know what’s bothering you, I can’t stop doing it…”
He explained on the Sunday before Christmas, the day I’d bought all his presents, three days after I’d signed the lease to live in that house with him for another six months, that he’d known six months ago but couldn’t figure out a way to tell me. THAT hurt more than anything else: that he thought so little of me that he’d lie for six months to avoid the conflict of saying “It’s not working out”. That he strung me along, saying “Here’s the concern I have, so let’s work on that” and then “Actually I’d already made the decision well before that, but the last month has been great!”
Just don’t. Let her down easy, but let her down.
That, or burn her a mix CD of breakup songs and give it to her with a big red bow and a sticky note: “You’ll need this.”