Every breakup I went through was because I wasn’t an attentive partner. I’ve been happily married for almost 10 years now, so I figured it out, but I was just young and not ready for a long term gig.
I broke up with my first girlfriend years ago because “there was no spark”. In truth I went on my senior cruise, reconnected with a childhood friend I hadn’t seen in years, developed a massive crush on her, and though I did not intend to pursue anything romantically with her as she was already dating someone else, I realized that I had never been attracted to my gf in the first place. I regret that I broke her heart and wish I would have had this realization to begin with, but that’s youth. I wanted more for my life, and I got it. She did too, and much faster. She ended up meeting her soulmate within a year of us breaking up and they have a beautiful daughter together.
In Finland many high school seniors go to an overnight booze cruise some time before their final exams. It can get pretty wild.
When we met, we were both pretty broken from past experiences. She had had a line of bad relationships and I had my own issues. She was creative, smart and very beautiful, way out of my league.
With her I was happy for the first time in my adult life and I loved her just as she was. We enjoyed the same things and our friends talked of us as a “perfect couple”. And for a time everything truly was pretty perfect.
Then one day she called me and said: “I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore.”
After the initial shock I managed to say: “I love you and want you to be happy. If this makes you happy, so be it.”
And that was it. I was emotionally devastated.
I never saw her again. Nine months later a common friend told me she had a baby coming in the next month. Apparently she had switched me for a better candidate and gotten herself pregnant almost instantly.
Realizing this broke me even more. I guess our time together had fixed her to a point where she was ready to start a family, just not with me. According to my friend she got three kids with the same guy and is very happy with her life.
It took me years to recover from this and I don’t think that I’ll ever really get “over it”.
Three different relationships. They ended because…
- …neither of us was mature enough to actually do what was necessary to stay together.
- …for the exact same reason as her friends consistently distance themselves from her: she’s entitled, irrational, and selfish.
- …what she actually wanted wasn’t a long-term relationship, just some emotional comfort. But both of us got a bit too excited with the relationship, so it lasted more than it should.
3 sounds interesting. What advice would you give to someone to figure out if they’re currently in a #3 situation or not?
If you realise that the other person is just seeking emotional comfort, ask yourself “am I OK with this?”. If you are, it’s fine; if you aren’t, it’s better to break the relationship in a friendly way, and move on. Just don’t fool yourself by thinking that the relationship will last. (I wish that I did that. I didn’t. Living and learning, they say…)
Every breakup was totally predictable, and for a/multiple VERY good reasons. I don’t regret any relationship I’ve ever had. Some I learned some things that immediately made me a better person, others took me reflecting later on, to make me realize things that ultimately helped me improve as a person. Regardless I learned something from every relationship/partner. A lot of them were red flags to avoid, and traits I couldn’t be with, but I learned things
