Wow, really? Not sure if you’re into women, but if you are, make sure they’re on good BC (or none at all)!
‘Psycho’ is a default insult some guys use for all their exes. Sometimes it’s spot on, often it just means ‘Showed emotions I didn’t like and/or understand.’
Oral contraceptives don’t do that to all women. I for one have been on more varieties than most women ever learn about, but none ever made me cry uncontrollably. And they certainly didn’t make me drink to the point of excess, then start crying uncontrollably with no explanation (or at least none that I’d remember/admit to my female friend later), and then fight to be allowed to go driving while drunk until my soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend wrestled the keys away from me.
Frankly, the whole I-wanna-drive-drunk-now act would have put me off a romantic partner on its own. That kind of screams “I can’t handle alcohol and I do really stupid shit in the process.”
Somewhat of a tangent: Something like this happened to me at the death of a close friendship. We were so close, such great friends, I believed, for a couple of years. Then, during a phone conversation, she proposed certain plans that made me realize – kick to the gut realize – that she was a self-centered user who picked up my friendship when I was useful for her, then tossed it aside when my usefulness was done.
The rest of that conversation was weird – on the surface chatting amiably, while all the while I was mentally riffling through incident after incident and seeing them in a harsh new light. I never confronted her about it; she’d never have understood what bothered me about these things; I just never undertook any efforts to see her or call her again.
Oddly enough, after a couple of attempts on her part to get us together (which, oddly enough, would have involved my going out of my way to her benefit), she stopped calling.
So, as to the fellow in the OP, I vote with those who believe the drunken crying episode opened his eyes to a dealbreaker in the relationship, and quite likely, from that new viewpoint, other things about her that he’d previously been okay with or had chosen to overlook loomed now as unacceptable.
It could also be that he’d tried the talk-it-out breakup with a previous girlfriend (psycho division) and the experience was so horrific he’s not about to go for a repeat with anyone who even remotely offers the possibility.
Uncontrollable sobbing for no apparent reason is often associated with some sort of mental collapse.
Ok…well that’s a little weird, but I guess it makes sense. Sometimes in a relationship you just realize that you no longer want the same things. After that, you just don’t even want that person around you any more. Things you used to enjoy about them now disgust you.
My point was that your insanely persistent with your points despite nearly everyone else disagreeing with you. You don’t seem to be taking ‘no’ for an answer, and you only hear what you want to hear. If your cousin/friend has these same traits, its no wonder you’re getting a very tilted version of the story. If you buy that she did NOTHING WRONG and he did EVERYTHING WRONG, that’s fine, but no one else here seems to believe that.
Again, you don’t know his side of the story. Maybe he thought he’d do less damage by simply disappearing rather than reduce your cousin/friend into a drunk, blubbering, crying, insane, DUI-or-worse crazy girl. Based on what he’s seen, maybe he thinks if he truly tells her what he thinks, she’ll go get drunk and drive off a cliff.
Like I said before, I don’t necessarily agree with how he’s chosen to break off this relationship, but without knowing the FULL story (which you don’t know either, and likely your cousin/friend doesn’t know), I can’t judge him too harshly.
Your cousin/friend I’ll continue to judge harshly.
There is no mention of him drinking, getting drunk, or being unavailable emotionally. He is Prince Charming, and turns into a toad. There is no mention of her having emotional or relationship difficulties or history of meltdown behavior. She is the Miss America, up until she gets drunk one night and cries until she barfs into his shoes.
Can I be frank? Hi, I’m Frank. I smell bullshit. [sup]sniff, sniff[/sup] [sub]sniff, sniff[/sub], yep, that’s bullshit, alright! You do not have the entire story. I doubt that either of them has the entire story, and neither of them is telling the entire story. Pat her on the back, tell her to buck up, and let her decide on her own.
TrisPretty much, yeh. If I fleshed it out with details it would seem less weird, but (a) it’s so far behind me I don’t bother to think of it any more, unless a story like this reminds me, and (b) you’d be bored silly by the time I got done explaining. 
My harshness is completly a reaction to your harshness towards him.
I wasn’t there that night, but boy, have I been there. The picture painted of the evening, by you, second from her, is not a rosey one.
His saying “I love you” then standing her up and then apoligizing has been explained already. That he is obviously conflicted about how he feels. You don’t seem to accept this idea. That he should either totally want to break up and do it in a very quick and clean way, or he should just totally forget this night.
Your revision of the night, that they cuddled up and went to sleep is drastically different from your first version, where they argue for a while and she finally passes out. I can’t help but feel that the revision is another attempt to whitewash your cousin and make him look bad. That only makes me want to defend this guy more. As I said befor, there is no good way to breakup. He has got a devil and angel sitting on his shoulders. One is saying “Dump her” and one is “Give it another chance”. Which one is saying what? I don’t know.
But I can certainly understand a ‘one strike’ and you are gone rule.
If he got mad and slugged her one time, but that was totally the only time it happend, (and it only happend last night) would you tell her to stay in the relationship. She had some sort of ‘breakdown’ that night. The details and serverity are unclear. I’ve seen such breakdowns. The ones I’ve seen have been horrible. She was trying to flee. Why? She asked him if he wanted to breakup. Those two things combine, in my mind, to an insecurity on your cousin’s part. “Oh how can you love me, since I’m so terrible, just let me go!” I know the type. Waaaaaay too well. There is no task more terrible than having to convince the woman you love that she deserves to be loved. (and it’s probably what I’ll end up doing in hell) Maybe she isn’t like that at all. But with the scant, innaccurate details we have to go on, that is my guess.
oh and ftr from the op
emphasis added
I think your past experiences are clouding your view of this situation. You’re assuming that Delores is exactly the same as the people you’ve dealt with. You seem to have hard feelings about your past experiences, so maybe that’s why you’re judging Delores so harshly now.
In my OP I tried to give the shortest version possible so it wasn’t too long. I didn’t make up the part about him cuddling with her until she fell asleep. I only revealed that detail when it became relevant. So no, that is not a lie or a “whitewash.”
Of course not. There’s a big difference. Hitting someone is an intentional violent act meant to cause physical harm. What she did was not intentional, not violent, and not intended to harm. So that’s a really bad comparison.
The question **nyctea scandiaca ** is asking is why did he make plans to meet her and then not show up.
He probably made the plans to meet and discuss but then decided it wasn’t worth the effort. He didn’t want to deal with it. It was over for him. The events of that night, the ensuing days of thinking about it was enough for him. I take his text of “no excuse, I still love you” as his way of saying ‘see ya, I’ll think of you.’ He probably still does love her (the her before the drunken night), but the damage done, in his eyes, was not fixable and any meeting would have been nothing more than a drama fest, or worse yet, another crying jag. Your cousin should be thankful she avoided any sort of meeting instead of wondering why he stood her up.
Millions of couples fall in love and say “I love you” to one another only to have the thing end at some later point. It sucks.
But the fact that a relationship ends–even badly or inconsiderately–does not negate every emotion the guy expressed to her. Love is not always forever.
She’s hurt, like most adults have been hurt. It’s up to her whether this is an experience she grows from, or one that she allows to cripple her into a distrustful person who has difficulty accepting love for the rest of her life. I hope that doesn’t happen, but if it does it would be melodramatic to blame this one man, and this one short relationship, for that.
I have broken up with someone the way he broke up with her (well, similarly) and though I am not proud of it I still think it was the best decision to make at the time. I think maybe he was in a similar position.
About 5 months ago I went out with this guy a few times. He was a very nice, very attractive guy. He was sweet and funny and I really liked him, but over the course of the dates we went on he would not ever take no for an answer. No matter what it was that he asked me if I said no he pushed and pushed until he got at least a maybe from me. In the first few dates/weeks/months of a relationship people tend to be on their best behavior and try to impress the person they are going out with before they fall into a comfortable routine and I knew that his pushy behavior would only get worse with time. I could have ignored it and told myself that he was just trying to be assertive because he figures chicks dig that kind of thing but I knew from the third time he refused to accept no for an answer that all the other wonderful things about him wouldn’t make up for that. I also knew that if I told him I didn’t want to see him again he wouldn’t accept that so when he asked me out for the 4th of July I told him sure I would meet him. I never showed up. Then I sent an email apologizing for it and telling him I was sick (which was a very obvious lie, but that is what I was going for anyway) and he sent me a seething response about how immature I was, etc. I got exactly what I wanted because I ended the relationship without telling him that no, I didn’t want to see him again and have to listen to him argue and push me to change my mind and he got to end it by casting me as the hideous bitch from beyond the moon in his head and blame it on me. Would he have benefitted from being told he is too pushy? Maybe, but somehow I see telling him that ending with him being pushy and not accepting the decision I made.
I think maybe your cousin’s ex had picked up on little things that made him think she might be easily excitable and ignored it until her blow-up and then realized after her drunken incident (whether he is correct or not) that a face to face break up would lead to a huge, screaming, crying break up and chose to avoid that route. I can’t really blame him. Your cousin is probably a really wonderful person who doesn’t normally behave like that and the guy I went out with is probably a perfectly wonderful guy who doesn’t actually have the dominance issues I saw in him but I wasn’t about to take the the chance that I would have to be confronted with that and “Jonathon” probably felt the same way. It was probably the best way he could think of to end the relationship and not meant as a way to be horrible to her at all.
What I’m getting out of this so far is that the guy said he’d call during the holidays — traditionally a very busy time for many people — and hadn’t. Insensitive? Unreliable? Poor communication? Cruel? Yes, certainly the first tthree, possibly the last as well.
I haven’t heard that it translates automatically to “I’m dumping your ass, you psycho bitch, because you got drunk that night.”
If your cousin wants to dump him because he’s insensitive, unreliable, etc., then she should call him up and say so, in a mature way. She should express her pain at having been ignored, declare that such treatment is inadequate, and call it off.
For fuck’s sake, don’t over-analyze this into “he’s dumping her.” I hate that behavior from women more than anything else. Oh my gosh, he didn’t put tomatoes on the salad, he hates me. Oh no, he didn’t invite me to dinner, this is a prelude to breaking up! She should just ask him.
You wanna talk about how to man up and be a good communicator? Your cousin isn’t doing so, from what I can tell, and you appeare to be assisting her. If she wants to know what it all means she shouldn’t confabulate with you and interpret… she should ask. Be honest, get honesty.
But like I said, if this kind of treatment is a deal-breaker for her, she should end all the pointless speculation and dump him. He would certainly deserve it.
That’s true too. Crying drunks often go on and on with excessive TMI and often rant about previous relationships etc. It might not have been what she did, but what she dosclised.
ETA: Hey, when did this thread get so long?
ETA: And my fiancee would totally dump me if she ever even once had to struggle to take away my car keys when I was drunk. She lost her first boyfriend of 7 years to a drunk driver (then boy’s father was killed by a drunk driver a few years later.) I’d never even think of driving no matter how shitfaced I was.
This is what I’ve been thinking, too. Honey*, get over it. You were human, he was human, it didn’t work out, learn from it and move on. The lesson to take from this is not that you can’t trust any men, but to not get so drunk so early on in a relationship if you’re not a fun drunk (and she obviously is not). Actually, if you’re as lousy a drunk as she is, to not get drunk at all.
I’m trying to think what she could learn from the break-up process, as mangled as it was…yeah, that was just messed up. I guess the lesson there is that people don’t always behave properly, and you still have to deal.
*The “honey” being nyctea’s cousin.
After reading this thread, I will give my best attempt to answer the OP’s questions.
Jonathan may have experienced more than your cousin is aware of that night, and perhaps more than he wanted to deal with… his past, her, a relative, who knows - it is all speculative. What we do know is that evening was a catalyst.
Why say “I love you”? - Perhaps he believes he is dealing with an unstable individual (whether or not that is valid) and doesn’t want to upset her… maybe she said things that scared him that night and he feared she was too into him, maybe she really did freak out and she doesn’t know it… either way, it is speculative. People often say/do things that are contrary to their intentions or beliefs (see reaction formation).
I don’t have anything more definitive, but it sounds like he was torn, either over not being there for her, or for some other behavior/incident (infidelity?) that occurred after that evening.
Either way, it sounds like he is more immature than his age might suggest, and it sounds like she has at least a few issues that she is minimizing or is unaware of…