I dunno, PRR. If it was something he was clueless about, I’d agree that maybe she should say something along the lines of “our sex life is not what I want it to be.” It’d probably help him keep a future relationship. But this was something the guy already knew. From what it sounds like, they’d discussed it to death.
pseud, sweetie, I can’t make heads nor tales of this.
You start a thread saying “the person doing the dumping has an absolute duty to be as specific as possible when breaking things off with someone.” I said “I disagree – for instance, when the sex has been bad despite mutual efforts to change that, saying you’re leaving because you find the person unsatisfactory as a lover is cruel and unhelpful to that person, and therefore better unstated.” You said “nope, no exception there, I’d want to hear what a lousy lay I am.” Other people have agreed with me. You don’t.
IOW – I’m providing a specific example of a time when you might be wrong in your premise. How does that constitute distorting what you’re saying?
I’m saying that your phrasing of the poll was designed, not to gather information about the subject we were discussing, but to get the answer you wanted to get. Nothing in your OP over there, for example, specified that we are discussing a situation where your ex-lover was specifically requesting further elaboration on why you were breaking up with him. If you’re telling him, “We’re done,” and he say, “Oh, Okey-dokey with me,” then sure you’d be a sadistic jackass to add “and you’re a lousy fuck” so it’s utterly unastonishing that you got that response.
But in the scenario we were disagreeing over, he was asking you to tell him why, and you were maintaining, as I understood you, that there are no circumstances under which you’d bring up your unsatisfied sexual needs. Believe me, if I had designed the poll, I could have gotten a far different response.
I’m not talking about the other thread – I’m talking about this thread. You say
I’m suggesting it would behoove you to identify the people who are taking that position, in this thread.
No, I’m saying that breakups are often no one’s fault. That there is often no “logical” reason. That people have changes of hearts. And that the party breaking it off is not obligated to come up with a reason that either satisfies you, makes you feel better or which you can make fun of. A “partners” obligation does not extend to making you feel better about yourself - if it did, most people would end up married to the first person they dated because breaking up almost always sucks for at least one party.
If you don’t get that satisfaction (the explaination) from your former partner, that’s what friends, the three pound bag of Oreos, a six pack and/or a pint of Haagen Dazs are for.
Does that mean they should tell you to take a flying fuck - no, not unless other methods have been tried and are not working. Which happens.
Ah, I see. Well, I agree with about 92% of what you’re saying. (except of course in cases like Grits’. What I disagreed with was that the breaker upper had to go to the lengths you mentioned such as "I decided to choose my own selfish needs and *exalt *my own exalted needs, and so on.
I’m all for the breaker upper “owning” their part in the breakup. Maybe you don’t mean it to sound this way, but from your posts, it seems that you won’t be happy unless they’re making negative assessments about themselves such as “selfish” and so on.
Like you, I want a reason beyond some lazy cliched “it’s not you, it’s me”. But I don’t expect the other person to have to behave as if they’re the scum of the earth because they had a change of heart.
Like JSGoddess stated, (paraphrased) sometimes the person just falls out of love. It happens. It doesn’t always make the breaker upper selfish, or only looking to their own needs, or what have you.
If the breaker upper really did have a bad or selfish reason, YEAH I’d want to know (Yes, I only went with you because I wanted a place to crash and regular sex for a year or so), but IMHO, the person who really does have ulterior and selfish motives is going to be the last person to admit them.
Dang, sorry I missed this one. Not falling in love too easily. Having SEX too soon and easily. I truly believe that that is key to getting in the way of honest to goodness “true love”.
I’m almost ready to say that very thing–I’ve used every line in the book to get a particular girl to stop calling me and just when I thought I had finally done it (she screamed at me and told me to delete her number), she called me back a couple of days later asking me if I had egged her car (like I would go out and vandalize her property to get her back into my life, after all the work I’d done to get her out!).
Or they’ve tried to explain countless times and the “victim” of the breakup just doesn’t get the damn point and finally they just have to spew some line of bullshit that will get them away from the whole situation.
I was just about to start railing at you for your androgyny, and then I remembered that right before I turned 18 I casually dated two women at the same time, and screwed up both relationships after introducing them solely for the purpose of convincing them to have a threesome with me.
Maybe you’re right. 
(FTR, both of them knew what was going on the whole time and were cool with it. I think they had other partners too.)
You know perfectly well who I’m describing accurately by means of hyperbole. Stop being a lawyer, please. I’m not interested in playing that particular silly bullshit game of “Gotcha.” OK, you got me. I lied. No one here has actually written those words. They (including you) have just expressed feelings of a casual lack of concern and responsibility for their ex’s feelings and I committed the heinous crime of characterizing those feelings in slightly more extreme terms.
Let’s work on that 92%. No, “negative assessments about themselves” aren’t necessary, certainly not for reasons of shame and guilt. I think they’re useful, when sincere, both for the dumper and the dumpee–the dumper because there’s probably a good deal of truth to them, and the dumpee because such assessments allow acceptance of the sudden massive change a bit more easily.
If you get one of these “Fell out of love with ya. Sorry. See ya” breakups, you feel bad. I’m arguing that you feel unnecessarily bad, and most times it’s because the dumper lacked the simple courtesy of taking the time and effort to jet in a civilized manner.
Are they required to pour their hearts out and abuse their own characters for days on end to earn the label “civilized”? Of course not. But I think most people favor a breakup that favors their own convenience at the expense (sometimes considerable) of their ex’s feelings. I find that self-serving and heartless, is all.
If you’re creating a painful moment, own some of the pain, maybe a little more of it than you think is yours at first. That’s all I’m saying.
For someone as concerned with “just the [material] facts” as you claim to be, hyperbole doesn’t seem like your best weapon.
And I continue to object to being characterized as a heartless bitch because I didn’t detail my lover’s sexual incompetence on my way out the door. Oh wait – I should have described myself as an insatiable vagina dentata, as the preferred method of sparing his feelings?
My bad.
Well, that’s a very gracious gesture on your part, although I’d say you’re being too hard on yourse… Wait, a minute, you weren’t being sarcastic, were you?
Nobody has the time to save everyone. If twickster had told him that, I’m sure she would have had hours and hours more explaining to do and lots of reassuring and ego-bandaging and such, and he’d beg for more chances, ‘lessons’, etc. I can’t fault her for keeping the real reason under wraps. Anyway, good or bad sex is often a mutual compatibility thing. I perform much better with some women than others–there’s a chance that the guy would go on to more success with another woman; a big enough chance that twickster didn’t owe it to the human race to lay that whopper on him and then nurse his bruised ego when what she really needed was to move on.
Maybe, but does she really owe him the favor? Like I said, you can’t save everyone.
Is that really that strange? She chose you as her man, so if you go around saying you’re awful, you insult her. Self-deprecating can be fun in its proper time and place, of course–I’ve used it for a laugh at times, don’t get me wrong–but do you think she would have stayed friends with a guy who spent all his time talking shit about you when you two were an item? How is that different if that guy is you?
Nah–if anything, you owe that girl a clean break. Maybe when she’s in a rational mood, you can discuss it. But aren’t you usually reduced to a blubbering idiot when you get dumped? I know I am. It’s a very emotional time and often there’s no amount of rational discussion that will actually get you out and leave the other party with a better understanding of the issue.
I guess what I’m not getting is this cosmic obligation of the dumper to the dumpee to lay out the whole deal and leave the table with a signed accord. The fact of the matter is that the fault is generally shared by both, and whatever convinced the dumper that it wasn’t going to work, certainly doesn’t obligate them to grovel at the dumpee’s feet, deprecating themselves mercilessly and begging for forgiveness. In the first episode of the British show “Coupling”, Steve uses “It’s not you, it’s me” on Jane and could have gotten away with it except that he felt compelled to explain the whole thing to her. The result (paraphrased):
Jane: “If this is all your fault, then why am I the one getting dumped?”
Steve: “Yes! Exactly! Why should you be getting dumped? You should dump me. So…dump me!”
Jane: “Awww, I forgive you–we can work on your problems!”
Sometimes what both parties really need is to get the fuck away from each other ASAP.
That’s a huge assumption to make. I truly hope you never find out firsthand how wrong you are.
Bullshit. All that does is make it harder for the dumpee. Believe me. I’ve done exactly that from both sides of the table and it’s just worse all around.
No, the rules is that breakups are one-way, and the victim doesn’t get a say in the matter. That’s how it works. It sucks, but that’s the game.
That’s the thing. When you’re getting dumped, you think that way–“I’ll change whatever’s wrong for you”. But she (probably) doesn’t want you to change, she just wants out. And what business is it of yours if the dumper does have a superficial reason, anyway? That’s her business. What, you want to take immediate revenge by winning some Socratic debate about how shallow she is? Holy crap, man, get over it. Do you want to be one of those guys who spends their entire youth bitching and whining about some girl they lost when they could be out finding someone who isn’t shallow and superficial? Cause it’s starting to sound like it from here.
Have you never felt you were providing too much of a girl’s lifestyle, and that in this age of self-empowerment she should earn more of her spending money herself?
Have you never felt “she’s not such a bad-looking girl” but later realized “But I think I can do better maybe”?
She was only happy with it because she was infatuated and wasn’t thinking rationally about how your lack of passion for dancing would affect the relationship later. All she was thinking about was the here and now–you felt the same way, didn’t you? At first it seemed OK to her, then she realized later that she couldn’t put up with it. Sounds to me like she wasn’t maliciously changing her mind just to fuck you over, she just found out gradually that one particular incompatibility was a bigger deal to her than she thought it was. Does that make her a monster? If you think so, I’d wager you’re the heartless one.
Yes, I picked up on that. It is really srtange for a woman to get that much of her identity from a 19-year-old she’s been dating for eight weeks. She was 23, BTW.
A friend of mine used to do this. He would demand detailed explanations for the breakup, but what he was really doing was one of those “customer satisfaction surveys” that long-distance companies used to do when you dropped them. Dig for information, and then set to work overcoming those objections. Later, he got a band together.
Do you really think she got that much of her identity from it? I don’t think you’d have liked it if she spent all day belittling your taste in movies, but that doesn’t mean you identified yourself by it.
Yes, of course it’s different when someone else is making jokes at your expense. If she had been making jokes about herself, I wouldn’t say it’d have affected my identity. I also wouldn’t say that I was insane, though, so I things shake out differently for me than they did for her.
p r r, first of all allow me to apologize for confusing you with another poster in thinking you’d been broken up with recently, and for calling you misogynistic. The fact that your “translations” seem to use vocabulary specifically targeted at women (or at least issues that women tend to care more about than men do) caused me to misread your attitude. (I will point out that “It’s not you, it’s me” was used on me in 1972, and it was very old then. It hardly originated with Seinfeld.)
But the fact is, your “translations”, while they may have been intended as humorous or hyperbolistic, have come across as doing pretty much everything in your power to make the breaker up look really bad. You do seem to see the breaker up as a villain because s/he is making the dumpee feel bad.
I don’t know about you, but for most of us, breaking up a serious relationship is not a light decision. I don’t know about you, but most of us don’t just wake up one morning and say “I feel like breaking up today.” It’s a major decision, and one that is probably due to a lot of unhappiness on the part of the breaker up. My point here is, the pain is usually not just one-way, even though it generally feels that way to the dumpee at the time. If person A and person B are seeing one another, and person B is no longer happy, does s/he owe it to person A to stay with them regardless? I doubt that’s what you really believe, but some of your posts sure make it sound that way. Yes, breaking up usually causes pain to the recipient, but is that pain more important than the unhappiness of the breaker up? My point here is not that all dumpers are guilt free, but rather that the act of breaking up with someone doesn’t automatically make the breaker up a bad person.
You’ve seemed intent on making the dumper sound shallow or callous because s/he ultimately realized that the relationship wasn’t fulfilling his or her desires. But let’s face it; almost all relationships are compromises. There are few people lucky enough to find another person who doesn’t have some qualities or aspects annoying or less than optimal - some of which are evident from the start, others of which surface over time. Most of us enter into a relationship with the belief that the fine qualities that the other person has will be enough to compensate for those annoying little habits or whatever it is that bothered them. It’s hardly immature, shallow, or callous to find that in the long run, this person is not the person you want to share your life with. You may think that what they want is stupid, but what makes your judgment more valid than theirs? People don’t usually get to choose what they care about, and tastes are inherently irrational.
Again and again in this thread, people have tried to point out to you that there often is no rational reason for ceasing to love the other person enough to stay with them. There is nothing to correct, nothing that might help the dumpee in future relationships. It’s just that whatever there was initially is either gone, or turns out to not be enough. If you know exactly why you want to stop seeing someone whenever you do, good for you, but that’s often not the case for most of us.
This may very well not be the thing you’ve been trying to communicate, but not only have I read it that way, but it would seem that a number of others have done so too, so I don’t think it’s just my warped perception.
In most break-ups, there are no villains, and no heroes. There are, if you like, two victims. I’m sorry that being broken up with seems (if I’m not misremembering) to have caused you long periods of self-doubt and angst, but I personally would not be willing to paint myself as a selfish, shallow, or immature villain in order to gratify your need to feel angry rather than hurt, and that, based on your “translations”, seems to be mostly what you want. Look, if someone breaks up with you, and there have been no long term complaints or recent fights, it’s a pretty damned good bet that the person simply is no longer in love with you, but that the reasons, if understood, are idiosyncratic and might be the very things that will appeal to another. Hence, “it’s not you, it’s me.” Why should the dumper tell you about a complaint that s/he knows darn well is not a flaw? Will it help you, or merely cause you to seriously question a perfectly valid part of your life?
I appreciate the apology. Sorry for going off on you.
My main understanding of dumpers has to do with my memories of my younger self, shallowly and callously dumping women, often for unbelievably self-centered reasons that I would have vigorously denied if someone had suggested them to me at the time. _Most memorably, I made one sweet and lovely 19 year old
feel like a sexual freak because she was still a virgin. She went out, lost her virginity, came back to me, and I found an even lamer excuse to break up with her at that point, all because I couldn’t handle the responsibility of being in a stable relationship at that time in my life but couldn’t face that nasty fact. I’ve been cruel at least as often as I’ve been treated cruelly.
Cruelty sucks, meanness sucks, selfishness sucks–we’re all guilty of these impulses but we can be nicer if we set our minds to that goal. But if we blithely intone, “Ahh, shit happens, whaddya goin to do?” then shit will indeed happen.
Right off the bat, you tell us “Nobody has the time to save everyone”. However, you’re starting off wrong: it’s not “everyone”. It’s someone who, for whatever reason, was your significant other, if only for a while. And you’re not trying to “save” them. You’re trying to show them why you don’t want them to be “significant” any more. Expecting that task to be easy or short is nonsensical, especially if the other person is at least partly unaware of the situation (which usually happens when the breakup is unilateral).
And there really isn’t a “cosmic obligation of the dumper to the dumpee to lay out the whole deal and leave (…) with a signed accord”. In most cases there simply can’t be a “signed accord”. There won’t even be immediate acceptance of the breakup. There WILL be heartbreak and pain, maybe even on both sides of the equation. But at least the lingering doubt about the reasons for the breakup may be reduced, and when handled properly, there will be a first step to overcome them.
But that is part of the reason why its ok to do it. Because 20 years from now there will be a new population of selfish 19 year olds who can’t handle committment from their clingy girlfriends and/or boyfriends and don’t have years of experience to tell them the “right” way to break up with someone. They get the privledge of screwing up in the same fashion. And being 19, they aren’t going to learn words of wisdom from us old geezers - they will have to grow up in their own painful fashion, causing romantic chaos. God knows, everyone I know did at that age.
I’m not without that sin, I don’t feel entitled to throw stones. And I don’t think it does any good.