I would stay, refusing to cede the moral high ground.
What, marriage isn’t supposed to be a constant battle of upmanship?
I’d do it Elaine-style. OK, fine, in almost any social situation doing it Elaine-style is a terrible idea. Still, I’d stick around until the immediate danger was over and a little bit more, then end it as gently as possible.
ETA: This is assuming the problem with the relationship is just general, blameless discontent.
This exact thing is happening with a friend of mine right now. Weird.
The break-up has been postponed for now, by the way.
It would depend on the person and why I was breaking up with them. Some break ups I had, I wouldn’t have cared one fraction of a shit about their issue. Others, I could see postponing.
Depends.
If it was an abusive situation I wouldn’t delay. If it was a matter of growing apart and the SO suffered something like a death in the family or a mugging I might wait a day or a week because why rub salt in the wounds?
If it was something like what happened to Lamar Odom, with the SO was in a medical crisis and I was the legal next of kin I’d hold off with the breakup until the person was out of immediate danger and, if necessary, other arrangements for medical decisions could be made… which seems to be what Khloe Kardashian is doing.
If it was a dangerous situation (abuse) I’d still leave. But if it was a situation where we just weren’t clicking as a couple, I’d stay a bit longer for moral support. I generally stay very good friends with my exes - I liked them, but we were not compatible in some way, so friendship was the better option.
I had a friend in a very extreme version of this situation. Her husband left her and she had no idea where he was for over 15 years. She got a call out of the blue from a hospital in another state where her husband was in critical care for blood infection. When he recovered enough to leave the hospital (missing both legs and one arm due to the infection), she allowed him to come to her home to finish recovery. Her reason, they were married and she said in sickness and in heath. She had never bothered to divorce him, so it was her responsibility to care for him. After he recovered enough to live on his own, they made a mutual decision to split and make it official. This woman was full of compassion for a man who had left her with not word for over 15 years.
This happened to a friend a few years ago.
He and wife had decided to get divorced after 8ish years of marriage. No kids. They were lawyered up and just about to file the paperwork. She gets diagnosed w/ breast cancer. He’s the one with the strong job & good insurance; she’s a flaky but overall decent person but only a part-time occasional waitress-level worker.
He puts the divorce on hold and he and his insurance pay for the whole round of surgery, chemo, radiation, reconstructive surgery, etc. Meanwhile they’re living in separate housing but he still takes her to most medical appointments.
A couple years later she’s feeling cured and decides she wants to finish the divorce so she can marry her BF du jour. Husband says “I can hardly wait” and they get it done.
Six months later she wants him back. “Sorry, you’ve had more than your chance.”
Overall that seemed like a pretty generous and stand-up thing for him to have done.
I said briefly postpone. Assuming I had cared for the SO at one time, and my decision to break up was well considered, I feel I would owe it to the SO to help them adjust to this immediate difficulty, within the context of splitting. Essentially be up front with them that the clock was ticking, and not allowing myself to be held hostage. I would feel best about myself as a human being if I acted that way.
Read a novel on a similar topic a while back. Woman was considering breaking up with BF when he dives off a pier and breaks his neck, becoming paraplegic. Interesting handling of the various emotions. Forget the title - thought it was something like “The End of the Pier”, but that doesn’t seem to be it.
This happened to me. I’d been dating a woman for about a month and decided to end it. We were getting along fine but there was no deep connection, and a more serious girlfriend from the past had come back into my life.
So I went to meet her at her apartment one evening, as we often did, and I was going to tell her that night.
When I got there, she was crying and told me she’d gotten some bad news earlier in the day. She had tested positive for HIV.
This was back in the early 90s when a positive HIV test was considered more of a death sentence than it is today, at least in terms of the impact it had on the person hearing the results. I consoled her for a long time, trying to tell her that she didn’t have to assume the worst outcome, that treatment was advancing rapidly, etc. It helped a bit, but not a lot. (We hadn’t been intimate, so I wasn’t worried about my own health.)
The whole time I was debating in my head whether to break up with her or wait. I knew that breaking up with her that night would look like a direct reaction to her test result, and I’d look like a world class jerk. But I also thought it wouldn’t be much different if I broke up with her a week later. And I knew it wouldn’t be right to pretend for any extended period of time.
So after she had calmed down and relaxed a bit, I told her. I emphasized that I had planned to break up with her before I heard her news. She took it pretty well. I think she believed me and appreciated the honesty. And frankly, I think I didn’t merit much of her emotional capacity. Losing me was pretty far down the list of things she had to be upset about.
I still felt bad about having made her day even a little bit worse. We stayed in touch for a couple years and were friendly. She moved away and I wonder now how she is doing. Well, I hope.
When I think of the truly terrible things that have happened to me, I think that adding another terrible thing to that day or week or whatever would actually be easier than recovering a bit from that terrible thing and then another shoe falls.
I don’t think I would delay under most circumstances.
I actually lived a situation like this. My first college boyfriend was a great person and a good friend and we had sort of fallen into dating because we were spending a lot of time together. After I’d gone home for winter break, I realized I didn’t want to continue dating him and was planning to tell him in person when we got back to school. Days before the next semester began, he was struck by a car while changing a flat tire and seriously injured. His mother called me and asked if I would come and see him. She said he was asking for me and it would mean a lot to him if I’d come. She drove up to my town (an hour’s drive away) to come get me. I felt it would be horribly mean-spirited to break up with him at that time under those circumstances. So I didn’t. I comforted him as best I could, talked to him on the phone every day until he was able to come back to school. Then, when I could do it face to face, I ended the relationship. I’m 100% positive I’d handle it the same way again.
Yeah, it may seem totally and utterly heartless, but if I’d already made the decision to break up with this person, some kind of major calamity would be all the MORE reason to break up with them, and to do it quickly so as to not get wound up in all that shit.
It all depends on the reason for the breakup and the type of hardship. If, for instance, I were to want to break up with someone because she’s being abusive or violent, particularly if that behavior is what got her into the hardship, like she mouthed off at work and got fired, then that’s just all the more reason to get out of a toxic relationship. OTOH, if it’s more just that I don’t see it going anywhere or we’re not compatible, so it’s neutral to amicable, then I would likely be inclined to help her through a tough spot, as not being a great match doesn’t mean I want her to get overwhelmed or needlessly suffer, and I could delay things and help her out, but I wouldn’t lie either.
I don’t have to hypothetical this. I’ve been in this situation.
Picture a young Barbarian in high school, with his first girlfriend, but she doesn’t like the time I devote to things besides her: the school play, my friends, yada, yada. Sure the sex is great, but it turns out we don’t have much else in common.
Post Christmas I’m trying to decide how to end this relationship and I get a phone call one morning saying her dog has died. She’s bawling her eyes out at 6 in the morning, sobbing so I can barely understand what she’s saying, and I’m getting confused as hell when she starts talking about the ambulance.
That’s when I realize she said her DAD had died – and forever after I’m glad I’m the strong, silent type who didn’t open his big fat mouth and put his foot in it.
We ended up staying together for another year, but I always wondered what would have happened if I started saying how sorry I was that her pet had passed away overnight.
Does simply no longer taking their calls, and not making any myself, constitute delaying?
No, it’s a form of ghosting, and it’s really rude and inappropriate.