Actually, I’d say that his reaction was maybe not normal but at the same time not surprising. I would venture to guess that this happens a lot, to a lot of people. Maybe just not people you know.
In fact, I just broke up with my ex like this. It worked out ok for me tho because I decided I hated him and didn’t want to talk to him anymore at the exact same time he decided the same thing. Honest to god - no fight or anything. Not even a real “event.” Just we both stopped talking to eachother. I grieved but it was much much easier than “talking it out.”
Anyway, you say your friend is pretty, smart, fun and has a master’s and a good job. Dude probably saw her that way too. He also probably thought “and no drama! I think I love this girl! No drama!”
First sign of drama, he put on the brakes and his opinion of the woman he “loved” was not the same. He probably had her on this pedestal and didn’t consider that everyone, even this girl, has their off moments.
Cowardly? Yeah. Jerkish? Perhaps. Not normal? I dunno, it’s more normal than you’d think.
I feel sorry for your friend but what she needs now is for HER to get over it, by HERSELF. She can’t wait on dude to end it for her. He’s already over it.
Very insightful comments, Gestalt (and everyone else, for that matter).
I guess what I am really trying to say is this: I wish people could simply be honest and upfront. I think a person who hides and refuses to tell the person they dated for 5 months that it’s over is a coward and lacks integrity. No one deserves to just be ignored and disregarded like this. Anyone who would break up with a person like this lacks empathy. It’s just bizarre, and makes me think that such a person is seriously lacking in social skills.
As a footnote, over the past few months, I told a few people (my mom, my boyfriend) that I didn’t feel quite right about “Jonathan.” Our whole family loved him (remember, me and my friend are actually cousins) because on the surface he seemed perfect… but I kept feeling this nagging negativity about him. My mom kept asking me, do I like him? And I told her, “I can’t put my finger on it, but… I just am not that crazy about him.” I didn’t say that to Delores, though, because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Looks like my intuition was right!
I think she either isn’t telling you everything or doesn’t remember everything. He’s being a dick but he saw something that night that killed it for him. Let it go.
I’m just not seeing what kind of “closure” any more of these apparently unproductive talks can provide, that your cousin and her ex don’t already have in spades.
It’s also possible that your friend’s SO has tried to dump her several times and that your friend is a clinger. You don’t know.
It’s extremely common for a guy to have a little freak-out a few months into a new relationship, when he begins to question whether he actually wants this. It doesn’t matter if he’s been saying “I love you” for weeks, or planning things for the future, or how stable things may seem on the surface. I think maybe he was in the midst of his little freak-out when she went psycho-drunk on him, and that may have tilted the scales against her. When guys do the freak-out, the key is to back off and let them come to you, but instead she called constantly and semi-stalked. Which probably tilted the scales against her just enough more that he said, “Nah.”
Honestly, I think he was just put off by her drunken behavior. I can imagine an episode like that ending the relationship. If I ever had to wrestle my boyfriend’s keys out of his hands to prevent him from driving home, he’d be gone. I don’t want to be with someone who has poor judgment.
The stuff he did afterwards, jerking her around, I’m guessing he needed some space and wasn’t paying attention to his behavior. It’s not okay to stand someone up, especially after such an important event has happened.
And, since your friend was drunk, there’s no telling what she said/did that she doesn’t remember that totally put him off. Though from what you told us here, it would be enough to put me off for good.
(1) That doesn’t make it OK for him to act that way. They never had any talk - he just stood her up and disappeared. On what planet is that acceptable? Maybe if she had cheated or abused him, maybe it would be acceptable then. But she didn’t cheat and she didn’t abuse. She had too much to drink at a Christmas party, and she apologized for her behavior.
(2) I am pretty convinced that he hasn’t previously tried to dump her before… we are best friends and cousins and she tells me everything, and if this had happened, I would have undoubtedly gotten a teary call from her, and I am the one she goes to for a shoulder to cry on. I trust that she isn’t hiding anything from me.
A mature adult would find a drunken incident disturbing. His lack of communication is equally disturbing and would take a serious explanation since it’s happened repeatedly. Actually, he would have to explain them all.
I never said it was OK. What I said was that, whatever happens, the matter is now closed and there are several dozen buckets of closure currently raining down on both of them. You and your friend will do her sanity and her love life no favors by going insane over dumbass boys rather than just writing them off and getting over it. There’s no “acceptable” or “not acceptable”: it happened, period.
It all just boils down to how fragile non-platonic “love” is. It is all based on desire and attraction. You can love your friends and family without feeling any desire or attraction but as soon as it is extinguished in your relationship with a partner it’s all over.
That might not have been intentional though. My fiancee loved her ex-boyfrined. She thought he was the bees knees! He was great! And then over time she realized that she was wrong about that. Then she had the epiphany “No really, this person is NOT right for me!” She was very disappointed. And he was much, MUCH more disppointed than her… and probably thinks that she was really nice and sweet and turned out to be a queen bitch!
Sometimes you go into a relationship with the very best of intentions, and end up pulling the wool over your own eyes. And if you don’t have the wherewithall to be gracious during he break-up, you’ll come across as an inelegant boob.
I think your cousin is far too trusting, or I’m far too cynical. You said they met and immediately started a relationship in August (that was really only 4 months, wasn’t it, considering they broke up before Christmas?), which is different from knowing each other before starting to date. I have trouble imagining that anyone I’d only known that long could really be madly in love with me and certainly wouldn’t trust he was being honest with himself or I if he made the claim so soon after meeting me. I’d think he didn’t really love me, but the idea of being in love, after only a couple of months.
Maybe I’m wrong to project this onto guys, but every girl I’ve known to fall “in love” that quickly was quick to fall out of love too. Sounds like this is true in his case as well.
I agree with all of your post except this point. He could also be 4) someone who has never met a lot of women and has just discovered the world of internet dating. Don’t let 30-something and never married scare you off, ladies - it could be that he just hasn’t met YOU yet. I personally preferred 30-something and never married - far less permanent baggage (i.e. ex’s, children, alimony, child support, etc.).
He isn’t ‘man enough’? He should man up? He’s been pulling the wool over her eyes?
Bull!
He loves her. He probably still does, right this very second. I will bet dollars to donuts that he has had abusive relationships in the past with drunks. Either his parents or other lovers but probably both.
After that night, he obviously felt incredibly torn about this relationship. He had thought he had found a wonderful woman but now this crap raises it’s ugly head in his life. AGAIN! Sure this may have been the only time, but guess what? His other psycho girlfriends had their first breakdown at one point as well. And he with all his ‘be the white knight’ training put his heart and soul into trying to redeem the unredeemable. Now maybe your friend is not a drunk and is not crazy. But what he saw that night can not be unseen.
She hurt him.
Deeper than she will ever understand.
And even after that he said I love you. But he was struggling with the idea that he has to love himself as well and will exposing himself to a (possibly) toxic woman be any good for him.
Just stop this ‘He isn’t a true man’ commentary. He had dumped her clean that night you would be bitching about him. There is no method which he could employ to break up with your friend and have you be happy with him.
She got insane and went all sorts of bizarro on this guy. He’s a successful guy who obviously is being picky with who he dates… why would he stick around?
Then she basically called him and begged him to meet her. I’m sure your friend/cousin didn’t tell you the whole story, but my bet is that she absolutely begged him and wouldn’t take his many “noes” for an answer. “Please, please, I’m going out of town and I need CLOSURE here!” At some point, he just folded and said “fine, yeah, whatever… I’ll be there at 7.” Then he didn’t show up. I wouldn’t have either to be honest… why risk another drama filled night filled with crying and yelling and tears and whatever else she threw at him when he’s dumping her anyway?
Saying “I love you” at the end of the phone call was the same deal. It was probably a combination of her saying it first and him replying, or just force of habit. I end every conversation with my mom and girlfriend with “I love you” that just last week I did the same thing with my buddy’s wife after she took a message for him. Habit. So what?
His text messages are weird, but I also am betting those are in response to voicemails or her messages to him. He’s probably feeling a little guilty, but with her craziness escalating, he’s probably feeling less guilty all the time.
He’s dumping her in an immature way, but let’s be honest… your friend/cousin acted like a crazy woman towards him and doesn’t deserve to be dumped in a respectable fashion.
No, so did not go “insane” or “bizarro” or “crazy.” What she did isn’t even approaching that - you are totally over exaggerating. She is a wonderful woman with normal human emotions, and really cared about this guy, and truly thought he cared for her. She had one bad night - something that everyone has had. I’m sorry, but no one is perfect 100% of the time - are you? Do you dump all your significant others after their first slip-up?
She was merely trying to talk to him to find out what was happening. After he failed to show up and not contact her for days, she had NO IDEA what happened. It was completely out of character for him to act that way.
So are you saying she is insane because she tried to contact her boyfriend several times after he failed to show up for a date, and did not contact her or respond? She had no idea why he didn’t show up, he could have been killed in a car accident.
In fact, quite the opposite, it would be completely bizarro if she hadn’t tried to find out what happened to him.
Geez, the more that I think of it - if I were heading to a date with my boyfriend, and something bad happened to me and I didn’t show up, and he didn’t try to contact me for days to find out what happened, I would be hurt…
My cousin had no reason to believe that he would purposefully stand her up, or that it was his way of breaking up with her. He had never acted like that before. She was bewildered… and wasson says that she deserved to be treated this way??! Just because she drank too much one night?!? Geez, you have no heart, it seems.
So, basically, you have no interest in an answer to your question, you’re just here to tell your cousin’s story and then defend her to the death? You have no idea exactly what she did that night or how she acted with this dude throughout their relationship. You and I both know that something’s seriously wrong with her, her ex, or both: people don’t just stop talking to each other for no reason whatsoever. Give it up already.
She wanted to drive home when she was drunk. Just on the verge of trying to commit suicide and considering she is crying ‘uncontrollably for no reason’, I’d say a correct assumption on our part.
That is where we guys are getting the ‘crazy’ part.
I’ve been around drunks crying like that and insisting that they should leave. She finally passed out after what? 5 mins? 3 hours? He slugged her?
SHE put him through a night of HELL.
He undoubtable has friends. He probably asked them what he should do.
[Guy]
Gee, I’ve been dating this great woman and everything has been going swell. I even meet her family at Thanksgiving and that went well. Then last night she got drunk and she started crying uncontrollably! For no reason! She was so upset that she wanted to drive home but she was waaaaay too drunk. I had to wrestle the keys from her. She apologized but after what happend to me with Debbie, do you think I break up with her. Everything has been great untill last night. She’s going out of town, I want to cool down and not do anything rash but I’m pretty freaked right now.
[guy’s friends] Dude! Dump her! You don’t need a relationship with a time bomb. You don’t need to have to worry if that drink she has will put her over the top. She’s a big girl and she should know how much is enough. Dude get out now before you she wastes anymore of you time.
Geez, you have no heart, it seems.