Your "I can't do this anymore" moment

In My Humble Opinion
41

I don’t know what it was that broke me, but I do recall actually thinking, “I don’t have to do this anymore.”

He was a good man, but we weren’t good together; he was distant, not really capable of expressing feelings, and at that time, I was kind of an emotional sponge. So he’d talk to me about some book he was reading, and I’d share an opinion (which was generally wrong), and he’d want to argue, and I’d want him to tell me he loved me even though I was wrong, and he’d want to explain all the ways in which I was wrong, and I’d start to cry. And maybe the crying was frustration because I wasn’t getting what I needed, and maybe the crying was manipulation to try to force him to give me what I needed. But he’d then withdraw, and I’d cry more.

And I didn’t like who I was becoming. I didn’t like the fact that I was so concerned about what he thought about me that I was becoming this weepy, manipulative shadow. So I broke up with him in my head for a while; I didn’t tell him, I just started thinking of him as my ex.

It felt so free. And then I told him, and it was probably the most emotion I’d ever seen from him. And a small part of me thought, maybe this is the trigger, this is what I needed to do to get him to love me. Maybe I’ll take him back. And I think that scared me more than becoming the crazy person I was.

42

I (we) are currently going through an extremely amicable separation.

When we first met, I was 1) Broke, 2) Alchoholic, 3) Insane -by my standards “today”, anyway.

She took me in supported me while I got myself cleaned up, straightened out and developed a real career. I still drank, but it wasn’t a “leaving Las Vegas” style of self destructive, non stop, 24/7/365… just the occasional weekend binge.

Sure, she had issues too. She was a compulsive hoarder, had an eating disorder that ballooned her weight to just over 375 lbs, and could NOT have a fair, rational argument. Sex, on the odd and rare time it happened was a favour to me, a thinly disguised “chore”.

A little over a year ago, I quit drinking completely. As I regained my clairity, I realised I was living in a house so filled with junk, nick nack and bags of unpacked merchandise. I realised that I was living with a woman who I would, possibly enjoy knowing as a friend, but had little attractiuon to. She was pop music, american idol and chain restauraunts. I was Eclectic music, art galleries, and puplic radio, little owner operated bistros and unique ethnic restaurants.

One saturday morning we woke up, after sleeping in, and started to cuddle. As soon as the cuddling became a little more erotic, she mumbled something about something-- she had a list of excuses for not wanting sex and was careful to rotate through them, so as not to be repetitive - I can not remember which one it was.

I realised… “I can’t take this anymore…”. So we had the “talk”. It was tough on both of us… we both cried. But deep down we knew that we were not the people who got married all those years ago (just had our 10th anniversary, but we had been together longer than that). One thing we both realised that if we parted now, we could do so as friends, but if we waited… in 5 years it would be a nasty, disasterous bitter divorce.

I am still living under her roof, and we get along really well. I am more like a room mate, now, and she is sorting out the paperwork / finaincing involved in “buying me out” of our common assts. I should be out by the end of the month. In the mean time I am doing major renos on the condo (gutted and installed new bathroom, replaced kitchen counter tops, land scaping front yard and such)…

Its good to be free… for both of us…

Sorry this was so long

FML

43

Nope. I told him to wait there, I would be right over, don’t do anything till I get there, ok? Then I called the cops and had him locked up on a 5150.

44

I was in a long-term committed relationship with this character, and over the years he’d given me plenty of reasons to break up, but the final straw came when he complained because I used “too much” toilet paper.

45

It was a combination of disbelief that he hadn’t picked up on that fact already - and a sense that right then was exactly the most tactless moment possible to ask that question.

46

Of all the things in this thread–as horrible as they may be–this is the one that caused me to actually gasp in unbelievable horror.

I suppose that tells a lot about the type of person I am. :dubious:

47

Um… wasn’t one of the film titles: 1492… That didn’t give him a clue?

48

Y’know, I have to admit, I didn’t get it until yesterday when I read her post. And I was working at a video store at the time those came out on videa. I was just so used to multiple movies on essentially the same topic coming out at once that I never realized there was *significance *to the multiple Columbus movies around that time.

49

That’s true. Didn’t the two Prefontaine biopics come out at roughly the same time? Still the 1492 title might give someone a little hint.

50

This thread confirms what I already knew (that my relationship history just isn’t that interesting).

51

It’s a pretty common question in that situation (though not often from a SO). I think it usually is heard coming from people who have a hard time figuring out what to say. I’ve even heard it on TV, I believe.

52

That’s exactly it, though. It’s what coworkers and funeral directors ask you, not your SO. That one question revealed just how much distance there was between them.

53

This is from about 5 years ago.

He said “Port-o Rick-ans are all over this town” in a nasty manner.

I despise him because of that. I was done.

54

There were a whole host of reasons I should have left this guy long before I did, but I left the guy I’d been dating for 7 years and living with for 6 because he woke me up really early on a Tuesday morning in September laughing his ass off at something well and truly inappropriate.

Not hysterical laughter, mind you. Just something had struck his funny bone so hard he couldn’t make himself quit laughing about it. I’m telling you, dude was laughing so hard he was crying. To my certain knowledge he laughed for at least 90 solid minutes about it - probably longer. Ninety minutes was just the length of time between when he woke me up laughing and when I left the house with him still laughing.

The thing that struck his funny bone so hard? Someone had flown an airplane into the side of the World Trade Center. Yup. I left him because he thought 9/11 was funny as hell.

He continued to chortle about it for days, even after being armed with the knowledge that members of my family were missing.*
*Fine, as it turns out. Just not able to call and reassure everyone that he was okay for several days.

55

I spent six months trying to break up with a guy - but was being too nice about it and it wasn’t working. Either he’d show up with flowers, or his grandmother died, or he was dense…dense was common. He was a “nice guy” and he was “fragile.”

Eventually I said “I don’t want to see you anymore” and his response was “I really don’t think you know what you want.”

That was it. I left him sitting in a park, got in my car, drove home. Spent four weeks hanging up on him, not answering the door, refusing flowers.

That may be the day I turned officially into a bitch.

56

My first marriage ended over changing the TV volume.

My wife, earlier that day, had lectured me for using the bathroom without checking with her first. I had to go, I went, took my usual 10 minutes or so, and came out. She was angry because she had to go and I delayed her - why didn’t I check with her to see if she had to pee before I tied up the bathroom for a longer period of time? (There was even another toilet downstairs in the partially finished basement.)

I was pretty angry about that but was cooling over it by evening.

That evening she walked into the living room, past the front of the TV, plopped down on the couch and asked me to get up and turn up the volume (no remote control). I got angry - she couldn’t do it herself? She had just walked past it!

It emphasized to me just how important I was to her. It was the last straw.

I joke now that my jobs in that house was to provide a checkbook, squash bugs, and supply occaisional sex (usually one-sided as far as that went, too). I have to be more important to somebody than that.

57

That’s why I’m here. I’ve found two so far.

58

I’ve got two moments from the same relationship (God only knows why it went on so long; wait, I know - I was a LOT more insecure then):

The first was when my then-boyfriend slipped a CD of music into the CD player. It was beautiful, classical music - Prokofiev, I think. How romantic, I mused. Then he proceeded to quiz me on it. What period was this written in? What style? Who was the composer? What instruments are used? When I couldn’t answer all his questions, he put another CD in and did the same thing. I asked him what the hell he was up to and he said that no one could be considered well rounded unless they knew and appreciated classical music. I should have broken up with him right then and there, but I was apparently not just insecure, but masochistic as well.

The second was when the same boyfriend chided me loudly in public for ordering a pasta with a cream sauce. He was convinced that at the worst, I’d get cancer and die. Best case scenario was I’d be fat and he’d be embarrassed to be seen with me. Given that I was at that time about 50 pounds lighter than I am now, a size 4 and training for a marathon, fat just wasn’t really an issue. And I was hungry, dammit - I’d run 20 miles that morning!

Everything was just downhill from there. After I refused to see him for a couple of weeks while I got my head on straight, he dumped me. My only quibble with that was that I hadn’t been the one to do the dumping.

59

Okay, I can’t be the only one who wants to hear the rest of this story, can I? An STD? Too much vigorous sex?

60

This movie must really be a powerful catalyst :slight_smile: I had an “ICDTA” moment with a girl I was dating after we’d both watched Jerry McGuire.

When it was done, I said I thought it was terrible. Selfish guy treats girl like dirt the whole movie, says magic words in the last five minutes, and everything supposedly is solved by “true love”.

She started crying, saying it was one of the most powerful movies she’d ever seen. Then she got angry, accusing me of not being “deep” enough to understand the film.

I knew it would never work and I thank my stars to this day that we never went further in the relationship.