I was just reminded of a book I bought at a seconhand bookstore. It was Dowson’s Cynara, and Other Poems. On the first page, a woman had written a dedication that was a poem (it was a sestina, IIRC) breaking up with the man she’d bought it for. When I brought it home I remember commenting, "A hundred years later, she would have written:
It’s not
You. It’s
Me."
“When you don’t keep the house clean, it makes me feel disrespected”
So, eight years of living together and five years of marriage ended because I don’t meet his cleaning expectations. It would have been easier to understand had he been a neat and tidy person, but he was the one making all the mess. Apparently my role as wife was to follow behind him and tidy up after him and never complain, even when he trashed everything I’d done. Actually tidying the house was rewarded with “See, isn’t it better when it’s like this”, a statement that always made me want to stab him in the face with a sharpened broomstick. Yes, of course it’s better like this! Now help me keep it this way, you jerk!
That depends. Maybe she didn’t explain that particular desire very well (but another doper did earlier on) but some things do fall into the “dealbreaker” category.
I don’t think she was saying that the man had do WANT to want what she wanted regarding everything in their lives, but there’s nothing wrong or selfish with wanting some interests to be mutually shared and enjoyed. In fact, contrary to your saying “…not because we love the same things they do” I disagree. Having some interests in common is very important to a relationship.
Dancing happens to be one of my loves and a man who turns up his nose at dancing and has to be dragged grudgingly out to do it would certainly be a dealbreaker to me as well.
That doesn’t mean I expect any man of mine to fawn upon my every desire, or vice versa.
And if you were anything like clear on this requirement from the get-go, how would we have been going out in the first plce?
Our first date:
“Hello. How are you?”
“Well, I’m a little annoyed that you asked me to meet you at a restaurant where you’re taking me out for a nice dinner, because I’d rather dance than eat.”
“Check, please!”
I agree wholeheartedly. The LOML never did tell me the why of our breakup. He didn’t even use the old standby “it’s not you, it’s me” stuff.
His was an odd metaphysical “I love you, but I can’t be with you right now”/Oh no wait, I can, I love you…no wait, I am not ready now, no I am…" ad nauseum.
I’m actually the one that finally walked away from the pushme/pullyou of our relationship, three years ago. But to this day it the not knowing the truth drives me nuts!
I’d like to try again someday, but that experience has left me more gunshy than if he’d hit me between the eyes with the “horrible truth” whatever it may have been.
Even if there were some awful dreadful thing about me, I’d like to know, so that I wouldn’t make that same mistake again. I’m with you all the way. I wish people would just tell the truth, no matter how hard and cold it might be.
This really is the crux of my complaint, if complaint it be.
I hate being all mystefied, all “What the hell just happened?” at the end of a relationship.
Now, sometimes I know perfectly well what just happened, and I’m either Okay with that or I’m pissed off, but sure I undersand why we broke up.
But other times I’m clueless. The “reasons” just seem like so much facile bullshit, things I’d change in a second once I get that they bother you, things I don’t care about at all and would be glad to change, things I never noticed I did, things I never did, etc.
And I suspect that it’s really the other things–things that are right on the surface about me–that were the real issue, and that would expose the dumper as incredibly superficial if the truth were ever told or ever faced.
“I need a bf who makes WAY more money than you.” Now I suspect this one has applied to at least two or three gfs, who thought it would be cool to date a middle-income literary guy but felt cheated after a few years of being deprived of vacations in Europe and cruises and diamond bracelets and a nice four-bedroom home on the north shore of Long Island. It had always been clear that I wouldn’t be providing stuff like that on a grand scale, and I think that finally got to some of them, but they would rather die (and certainly they’d rather lie) than ever cop to that.
“I need a bf who [looks different from you]” --this one is “a head of thicker, more lustrous hair,” or “rock-hard six-pack,” or whatev–basically, at one point they felt “he’s not such a bad-looking guy” but later realized “But I think I can do better maybe” and so jetted. Again, copping to that kind of superficiality would do serious damage to their senses of self, so I think they packaged some absurdly ludicrous bs and left that on my kitchen table for me to spend the next few weeks contemplating.
And, yes, maybe, “I need better sex” came up, and rather than confront that issue (because maybe some of the fault, dear Brutus, lies not with the stars but with ourselves?) they went the limited hangout bs route. Some stuff is very painful to deal with honestly, and people (not just women) would prefer to do almost anything but confront a harsh reality that may not reflect well on themselves.
Out of the times that it has happened? The reason wasn’t “sufficient” if what you mean by sufficient is that the reason somehow magically made the hurt go away. But knowing why did make the healing time much quicker.
With other men who’ve ended relationships with me I knew “well, they aren’t in love with me, I’m not their type, or they want to date other people, that’s that”.
But with the one man, the one who kept not knowing for sure, and either coming back to me, or me to him and never knowing it drove me (STILL drives me) crazy. And no, I wouldn’t have wanted him “at all costs” nor twisted myself inside out to fit a reason if he’d given one.
To this day, though I’m mostly over HIM, the not knowing is the most painful part, it’s still a big scar. It’s almost worse than the pain of losing him, in a way. I’m sure that most people, when younger and more immature at one time or another ALL do the “what is it?, I"ll change” thing. But I think that as we get older, we know that that isn’t going to happen. We just want some sort of closure, as cliche as that is. And as PRR keep saying, those stupid little platitudes such as “it’s not you, it’s me” AREn’T closure.
In some ways, knowing the reason can be somewhat of a relief, particularly if it’s not something “bad” or that you are specifically doing wrong. Knowing that it’s just something in which you and the other person don’t “mesh” is a help. Maybe not the very moment of the breakup, but later on during the healing process it certainly can be.
Personally I go with hiding at home and watching CSI marathons. 
What makes you think that me stating that this is a “dealbreaker” means that I wouldn’t have been that clear from the outset?
For clarification, back when I was dating, I WAS that clear. No sense in wasting either his time, or mine. I think my old online match-site thingie even said something to the effect of “non-dancers need not apply”.
I was saying that this never would have come up in a breakup situation, because we both would have bailed the second your dancing requirement was ever mentioned.
And why didn’t you use the Match.com username “Must Luv to Dance 24/7”? That would have scared me off before I even opened your ad, saving us both valuable seconds. 
Well this could be a thread to itself, as well. I’d start one, but this thread has already reproduced and I’m concerned about overpopulation (especially when you consider all the starving Armenian threads in CCC). I’m not sure that you necessarily need to put your dealbreakers out there on your first date. Most realtionships involve some negotiation and compromise, and it’s not always clear what is going to constitute a dealbreaker until the realtionship has settled. It may be that what the lady wanted was not for you to like dancing as much as she did, but that you would have more enthusiasm for it than you did. Perhaps she didn’t mind dragiing you onto the dance floor, but the kicking and screaming were embarassing.
Not necessarily. But then I’m making the assumption that you are talking about breakups of all dating types, not just the “we’ve been together for years and years” type.
Hmmm. What could bring us to the situation where the woman who wanted to share an interest in dancing with her man might be dating a man who didn’t dance at all?
Class???
OOooH!! OOOh!! I know! I know!
Yes, you in the back.
He LIED to her about dancing, even though it was in her profile because he was doing the Two Week Full Court Press [sup]TM[/sup] and he wanted to get laid.
BINGO!
Well, to be fair, this subject has been covered in other threads before. Ones titled something like “Pay ATTENTION to what is in my PROFILE you IDIOT!”
Otherwise, why do you assume that when I say non-dancers are dealbreakers to me, that automatically means that dancing is ALL I do 24/7? That’s just silly.
All it means is what the original poster who stated that she didn’t want to have to DRAG her man out to dance said. That is, that I want to share this activity with a willing partner, one who is as truly interested in it as I am.
In my 30s and with my former boyfriend, we did it often enough that we were slowly starting to consider competing. That was before I broke my leg and he and I broke up. These days? I’d be happy with a couple of weekends a month. And his support with my teaching classes. (not support as in he’d have to help, just no whiny “you’re going off to teach class AgAAAaaiiinnn??? waaah!!!” type morons).
This is just plain silly. Again “wants someone who shares an interest near and dear to ones heart” does NOT then equal "to the exclusion of all else.
Excellent point. Especially when people are young, and don’t necessarily know themselves and what they really want. It takes living with a “musician” to discover that you really don’t want to work your ass off to foot the bill for endless parties for your lover and his bandbuddies for the rest of your life. (and so on).
Uh, that OP was me.
More precisely, it was my former GF, complaining about me. There were serveral stages involved.
Stage 1) in which I was the single most charming and delightful person in the world, and it was her privilege just spend time with me, if only to mend my socks, wash my socks, smell my socks…
Stage 2) in which she suggested we go out dancing sometimes, and I–a romantic enough chappie, especially when I’m getting enough socks–agreed, saying “Well, I’m not that much on dancing, but yeah, sure, why not?” and she said “Oh, goody, goody, you’re still the perfect man!”
Stage 3) in which my state of perfection declined, and she expressed concerns that there was insufficient enthusiasm on my part for dancing. “Uh, yeah? And there always has been, if you’d been paying attention. Hello?”
Stage 4) in which she was pissed off and frustrated that all the dancing was, as it had always been, at her specific request…
So what it boils down to is that she was willing to overlook something that mattered to her while she was high on love, but as things settled down, she realized that it meant it would be that way forever and she didn’t want it to be that way forever.
Correct. I stayed the same, she flipped 180 degrees, and she was bitterly complaining about something she used to be happy with.
To me, this means she comes to me and says “I’ve changed my position, I have decided to require something from you that I didn’t require before, and I’m calling that requirement a dealbreaker. What say you?”
And I then get to say, “Wow, what a rotten bitch you turned out to be. Thanks for yutzing me around for the past few years. Have a nice life, baby, and good luck in that search for the perfect man.”
Instead, I get to contemplate my character flaws for failing to be enthusisatic about something I was completely upfront in the first place about being unenthusiastic about, while she gets to bitch and moan to all her sympathetic friends (and you, presumably) about how awful it was that I would dance with her without showing the delight in it that she required.
More succinct version:
We’re in a relationship for years, you change your mind on something, I don’t, and the breakup is presented as MY fault?
It’s called life. When you are first with someone, you are willing to overlook many things in the high of the new relationship. As the relationship progresses, you realize that those things you’re overlooking are never ever ever ever ever EVER EVER EVER going to change, and they begin to loom larger and larger the more time you spend with the person, the more it is reinforced, the more you realize that forever is a fucking long time to spend with someone who begrudges you certain aspects of your personality or joy.
It isn’t someone changing. She was never deliriously happy that you weren’t happy to go dancing. She was settling because she thought that the relationship was worth it. As the relationship stretched on, she realized that settling permanently sucks, so she ended it.
Imagine a genie coming to you and saying that it would give you a million dollars if you gave up X, where X is something you like. You look at a million dollars and you think, “Sure! I can give up X for a million dollars!” And for a while, you’d be happy to be without X but with a million dollars. Then time would pass. Some people would continue to be fine. Some people would eventually come to the realization that being without X sucks! That giving up X wasn’t worth it, not for a million dollars. Maybe if it was a billion…
My more succinct version:
You were in a relationship for years where something wasn’t really the way one of you liked it, and she finally decided that it bothered her too much to put up with it any longer.
Correct. So why do I get blamed?
Answer: because it’s too unpleasant for her to say, “Listen, I’ve changed the way I feel. I assured you you were terrific and you haven’t changed a bit, but I have, and quite selfishly I’ve now decided to exalt my needs that I didn’t need to exalt before, and I’m leaving you. You must be all kinds of pissed and betrayed and confused now-- I certainly can see why, you dear sweet fellow.”
I could have handled that better than “You selfish inconsiderate shit, all I want is for you to beg me to dance once or twice a week. Is that too much for you, you fucking heartless piece of crap?”
Maybe it’s just me.