Except that people who are attracted to one another do not break up over “stupid quirks.” They correct them: “Would you stop freaking talking during movies? It drives me nuts!” Or (more nicely): “You know I value our conversations, but I wonder if you realize how often you interrupt me. I wish you wouldn’t do that; it makes me feel you’re not listening to me.”
Even people who are attracted to each other enough to pursue a LTR do not think every single thing about the other person is perfect in every way. (Not after the initial starry-eyed phase, anyway.) When two people spend a lot of time together, much less live together or have a committed relationship, they have to make a thousand tiny adjustments to the personality and behavior of the other person – and this they do (we all do) in the course of investing in the relationship. So what does it say about the relationship if one person is not willing to do that anymore – to overlook the minor annoyances or work with the other person to change them? It says that person is not interested in the relationship anymore, because if they really were, they wouldn’t break up over it. The bottom line is that people do not break up over piddling shit. Even if you hear someone say “I could not stand for one more day they way he/she hogged the covers,” the truth is that if that was really the only thing wrong, you’d live with it or you’d fix it.
So IMO “What’s wrong with me?” is a deceptive question because it assumes there is one or two simple, identifiable things that a person does that he or she could just stop doing (or do differently) and presto! the relationship is fixed! We are happy again! But even if the person leaving was to identify those things as the things that are bugging him/her to death now, those things are only symptoms or embodiments of the harsher, deeper truth: I’m just not interested in you anymore. I’m not attracted to you anymore. I don’t want to be with you anymore. If it were as simple as “stop doing X and I’ll love you forever,” the person would tell you that, not break up with you. A break- up is “I don’t want to be in a relationship with you anymore.” That is not caused by too much talking or not enough talking or failing to hang up your towel or insisting on having the window open at night. And it can’t be fixed by fixing any or all of those things.
(IME, the only time “what’s the problem” conversations work is when the two people are already committed and willing to put in the time and effort to fix serious problems – like, say, a perceived lack or respect (which can be perceived to be manifested by something as simple as not hanging up a towel, when you know perfectly well it drives your mate crazy that you don’t do so). But if you’re not building on an already committed relationship, then it is unlikely you will be willing to put in that much effort, when it’s easier to just say “sayonara.”)
So the whole “tell me what’s wrong” thing wrongly persumes people break up with each other over stupid little easily correctable things. They don’t. They break up when one party gets the feeling that the relationship is not working and for whatever reason is not worth the work of salvage. What can that person tell the other person at that point that would be of any use at all? And it’s not easy to articulate why you’d leave someone without being extraodinarily hurtful: I’m just not attracted to you anymore. You bore me now. I want to be with other people, not with you. Those are the real reasons people break up; now tell me how it would help you one iota to have someone “honestly” tell you so. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of such questions, and you’ve tried to answer them honestly, then you know just how pointless and painful they are:
“Why are you breaking up with me?”
“Well, to be honest, I’m just not attracted to you anymore.”
“You’re not? Why not? Tell me. Be honest.”
“Uh, okay. You’re really too skinny to be my type; I don’t know why I didn’t notice that before.”
“I can gain weight! I’ll put on some weight!”
“No, it’s not just that . . .”
“Well, what else?”
“Jeez. Okay. The way you stand, you sort of slouch, like you don’t have a spine, and when you walk you clump down the street.”
“I’ll stand up straight! I’ll walk more gracefully!”
. . . . And so the horrible conversation continues, until you get down to “your eyes are too close together,” and what are you going to do about that, huh? Meanwhile, you will continue to hear “It’s not just that . . .” and while you attempt to extract an exhaustive list of what it is, you will miss the main point, which is that what it is is that the person just isn’t attracted to you anymore, which is what he or she said in the first place.
So you both leave the conversation exhausted, he or she feeling terrible for having hurt you, even though you demanded “honesty,” and you feeling like absolute unattractive shit, with a laundry list of things you’d apparently better change if you want to ever have a relationship again, because you’ve bought into the fallacy that if someone breaks up with you there must be something wrong with you, as opposed to something wrong with them, like that they just aren’t the one for you.
So leave aside the pipe dream that there is something minor and fixable that caused the breakup. Recognize that it is fundamental incompatibility that causes people to walk away from one another – things about you that cannot be easily changed, and very likely shouldn’t be changed, because they make you who you are.
Assume that the reason for the breakup is in reality something inarticulate, painful, and harsh, like “I’m just not attracted to you anymore” or “I’d rather be with other people” or “you bore me now.” Then come back and tell me how your life, in either the short term or the long term, would be in anyway improved by having someone you care about tell you that.
