My friend's boyfriend just broke up with her :(

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, after my friends Keith and Anita had been going out for about four years, Keith broke up with Anita. :frowning: (we figured he did the breaking up, as we didn’t see him at church today, and Anita was all broken up about it, too) Everyone was so surprised and very sad to hear about it at church today! (or yesterday morning at choir practice, which I did not attend) It seems that Anita spent most of choir practice yesterday morning in the church bathroom, and had to tell everyone about it as well. :frowning:

Everyone thought that they’d eventually get married; I mean, four years is a long time to go out, relatively speaking. If they had just gone out for a year or so, then it might not seem so bad. (not that it wouldn’t have been, of course) They did have some church service in common, as well: at least one Fellowship sub-committee (prayer; and Keith was the chair, and Anita the secretary), and the Fellowship in general. They got their church membership transferred jointly, too: just a few months ago, as a matter of fact.

Some people we know (like my sister, some of her friends, and especially the kids at church) really liked bugging her about her relationship with Keith. (it feels so strange writing this in the past tense) For example, the kids would always ask about Keith, and my sister would examine Anita’s hand for the presence of a ring just about every week: “Did he ask you to marry him yet?” (everyone would bug them about how much they already looked alike; they sort of did, but not really) So Anita had to tell everyone that they didn’t need to bug her about Keith anymore. :frowning:

Today, Anita just looked so sad, but I didn’t know why. (I assumed she wasn’t feeling like herself) She was (or had been) obviously crying, and one of the kids had given her a bunch of flowers. Since I didn’t go look after the kids yesterday as per usual, I don’t know how she managed yesterday, but she had to have told all the kids, since they liked bugging her about her (now ex-) boyfriend! My sister heard this from a friend of hers who had attended choir practice and such yesterday, then went to Anita and asked her: yes, it was unfortunately true. :frowning:

I don’t know the circumstances behind the breakup, as they seemed happy together, but you can never truly tell, I guess. It might have been that he was feeling pressured, since the two of them went on a marriage retreat a couple of months ago. (for couples who were going to get married this year, but also prospective couples who might get married in the near future) Then again, it could have been anything! At our little prayer meeting tomorrow, I think I’ll learn more… that is, if Anita feels up to coming! (somehow, I don’t think Keith will be there) If I feel that the details can be shared with you all, I’ll post them tomorrow when I get home, or as soon as possible after that.

As to why I’m posting this, I think it’s just been on my mind for the past few hours, so I guess I jsut need to tell somebody. This board has been good to me (as I’ve said before), so I thought I’d post here. Thank you for looking through this post, I suppose.

({{{Keith}}}}
{{{Anita}}}}

2

I’d like to add that I don’t know what to say to her when I next see her, whether that be tomorrow or some other day. So does anybody have any ideas? (besides “I’m sorry” and things along those lines)

3

Just talk about regular stuff. Don’t pretend it didn’t happen but don’t go out of your way to bring it up either. She’ll bring it up eventually when she’s ready. Don’t force her to talk about it though. That’s really annoying.

4

Don’t worry about saying anything. Concentrate on listening to her instead, if she wants to talk.

5

-agrees with the others above her- Yah… just be there for her. Don’t bring it up but let her talk if she needs to.

6

Okay, thanks… it’s not like I will force her to say anything about it if she’s not ready for it or something! :eek: I don’t think there’s much we can say that will make her feel better, though. But just listen to her, you say? All right, I’m good at that! :slight_smile:

7

If you know both of them, don’t pass judgement on either: even if she bitches about how horrible he was, nod and say things like “uh-huh”, don’t go thinking up and mentioning even more examples of what a terrible man he was that she may have overlooked. It looks like their lives were pretty well entangled, and he’s going to be around. The whole situation will be much more uncomfortable if the entire under-30 sectoin of the congreagation splits down gender lines. This is very likely no one’s fault, and just because she is upset and miserable dosen’t even mean she didn’t instigate the break-up–it’s very easy to be very ambigous about ending a long term relationship.

8

Well, you can tell her to look at it this way… Now she’s finally free to be with me! :smiley:

Ah, but seriously, that sucks. I’d give advice, but (ehh… I seem more and more like a fanboy every time I find myself saying this…) I couldn’t top what Manda JO said. Don’t choose sides! But be sympathetic.

And ask her to go out to lunch. If you have some regular-type gathering with a non-exclusive group of people, see if you can include her in something like that. She’s probably got a lot of habits that were associated with her SO that will be unpleasant. Help her form new patterns with new people so she doesn’t get all depressed all the time.

9

Bummer for them…but…as trite as this may sound, “if it was meant to be, it was meant to be…”

Better than getting married and then getting a divorce.

I spent a total of about 9 years with a boyfriend and we seriously figured we were going to get married and all, but, it just wasn’t there. We loved each other but there were serious compatibility issues.

Nevermind, I’m rambling again.

It’s good you can come here and talk about it though…they obviously mean alot to you if it’s bothering this much.

Take care.

10

Manda JO, since the majority of the congregation is under 30, a gender split down along those lines would REALLY be horrible! :eek: (never mind the people who are away at school or something just now and haven’t come back who don’t know yet)

But you’re right; their lives had a lot of things in common, and it’s not easy getting out of these entanglements. Then again, it’s easy to point the finger at Keith for being “the bad guy”, but I’m trying not to do that… at least, not till I hear from Anita what the story is! (even then, I might not)

White Lightning, thanks so very much… I’ll tell her that, and I’m sure she’ll be very thrilled! :smiley:

Seriously though, since everyone knew that they were a couple, non-exclusive may be hard to do… for example, all the church people certainly knew about it, as did their mutual friends. But I take your suggestion as seriously as I did the others, and suppose we’ll see what we can do.

Lola, they do mean a lot to me; in fact, I couldn’t really sleep much just thinking about the whole situation. (which might explain why I got up at 6:15 instead of getting my sleep; I’m sure Anita feels a LOT worse, though) It is better to work these things out before marriage, I’m sure. I’m not sure that’ll make her feel any better, though. [sub]Don’t worry, I won’t tell her THAT![/sub]
More details to come tonight, I’m sure… unless I think it’s too personal. I’ll update the whole story then.

11

Oh yeah… I suppose it’s worth adding that he was her first love… that’s gotta make it worse!

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Just remember, he has every right in the world to just not love her anymore, or not love her enough to want to marry her. He dosen’t have theright to cheat on her, or to devieve her, or to treat her poorly, but he (and she!) does have the right to reject.

Actually, I don’t know that it does. But that is probably a matter for a different thread.

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My guess is they must be older than ten right?

They probably get back together soon. That usually happens.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Manda JO *
Just remember, he has every right in the world to just not love her anymore, or not love her enough to want to marry her. He dosen’t have theright to cheat on her, or to devieve her, or to treat her poorly, but he (and she!) does have the right to reject.

[QUOTE]

I know these are just examples, but I don’t think he did any of that! Or at least I’d hope not… guess I’ll know more by tonight.

I’m trying to keep that in mind, as well. Of course, all my thoughts are for her (and some for him, too) and how she must be feeling, but what you say is true. I wish they weren’t broken up, but wishing won’t make it go away. They do have that right, as you said… but it’s hard to swallow now for her, I’m sure.

Yes, probably it is. But that thread will probably have to be started by someone else.

15

Well, it looks like we won’t be seeing him around anymore. Anita told us that he’d called her on Wednesday night to break it off… he told her that he didn’t have any more feelings there for her anymore. She didn’t see it coming, of course…

She has support from God, her friends (us), family (like her mom, who wanted to know why she wasnt’ crying about it when she talked to her), and even the kids! When one girl asked how Keith was (Anita had told her the week before that he’d had a cough), Anita didn’t believe in hiding anything, so told her that Keith and she weren’t seeing each other anymore. The girl thought about it for a bit, then rattled off a list of single guys at the church! :smiley: We all thought this was funny; she did mean well. (as did a co-worker of hers who said that he’d introduce her to a friend of his; not that soon after!)

Everyone’s been asking her WHY it ended after four and a half years; she wants to refer them all to Keith because HE’s the one who called it off, not her! She says that it’s still vey hard for her, but she can sleep at night now; the night of the breakup, she slept maybe 2 hours. A couple of days later, he called her wanting to talk about it. NOW he wanted to talk about it… when on Wednesday, he couldn’t really explain himself! Of course, she doesn’t want to see him, talk to him, or even think about him too much… perfectly understandable.

When she was around church this weekend, she said that there were a lot of memories just associated with seeing some things around the building; as well as the words in the songs we sang at church: she figures they spoke to her (and caused her pain, maybe). Luckily, she was sitting in the front on Sunday, so only a few people saw her crying. On Saturday, she was saying that the kids saw her crying, and wondered if she was okay, or if she needed a bandage! Ah, if only it could be fixed that easily…

Anita will be okay though… she says that if he didn’t cherish the relationship as much as she did, and didn’t appreciate the effort she put in the relationship, she deserves someone who will love her just as much as (or even more than) she loves him!

She did say that even though he put her through a lot of pain and hurt her a lot, she still loved him. Remarkably, she was composed enough tonight while talking about it, which is a good thing, I’d guess.

16

Not to give you a hard time Flame, but it always amazes me when I read a thread about someone telling the whole world, well in this case we have what? about 12,000 members now about someone else’s personal life. Wonder how your friend would feel if she read this thread and all these people that she has no idea who, what, where, are reading about her and her life. Geesh would it piss me off if I had a ‘friend’ that would do that to me without my knowing it.

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ultress, I agree, we get a lot of that here. Even more personal than that.

18

Hey, I just need to put my feelings into words, and it’s your choice whether to read it or not! Haven’t you ever experienced that need?

19

Well, what are the chances that any of us know Keith and Anita? Probably close to nil.

And it affected Flamsterette_X also; they are people she obviously cares about. Let her vent, I say.

But next time maybe we can refer to them as “Gumby” and “Pokey” or something. :smiley:

20

Thats right, chances of me every meeting them are null. maybe you could invite them to
the next doper gettogether Flame?