Taking a break to be sure?

[AshleighVB]

Has anyone had any experience taking a break from a relationship to be sure it's what you want before taking the plunge? My BF and I have been and an amazingly functional, fun relationship for the past 18 months. Rarely have we argued or brought up serious conversations about the future. Recently, he began talking about "if we get married" and "I need some space to make sure this is what I want for the rest of my life" all in the same conversation! I have no idea what spurred these thoughts, and he claims he doesn't either.

 

We have decided to take a three-week break - no contact. I have realized some things about our relationship over the past 1.5 of those weeks - mostly good! For instance, I hadn't given a lot of thought to "if we get married" either, but now that I am thinking about it, I realize that this is the person that I would like to spend the rest of my life with.

 

I miss him a lot, and I hope things work out. Just wondering if anyone has ever experienced this. (Details of our break can be found here: http://www.loveshack.org/forums/t132228/)

[LucreziaBorgia]

People who initiate a three week 'no contact' break aren't trying to figure out if they want to be married to you. They initiate a three week 'no contact' break to figure out why they don't want to, and whether or not they should break things off.

 

It would surprise me greatly if he came to you at the end of this with a ring and a proposal. It is more likely that you will end up contacting him when he doesn't contact you, and he tells you that he either:

 

a. thinks that you should turn the break into a breakup

b. wants to be with you, but doesn't want to talk about marriage anymore - the old 'lets enjoy what we have right now' talk

c. tells you he wants to be married, but 'not right now' - and with no indication or date, even within a five year period of when that might happen

 

You never know, though. Stranger things have happened. I would be very interested to see how this goes.

[AshleighVB]

Well, like I said, we haven't really discussed marriage very much in this relationship. We've actually been very good about taking things slow. We dated for almost six months before we decided to make it official - neither of us dated anyone else during those first months. It was more that I was still getting over an ex and didn't want to rush into anything with someone new until I was sure I knew the person well.

 

We talked about living together about six months ago, but both decided it was too soon. I own a condo and he rents, so we decided we'd rather wait until we could buy or rent something together instead of one of us move into the other's place.

 

The last great weekend we spent together before things got a little weird, we attended a wedding of one of his good high school friends. He hadn't seen a lot of the people there in several years, and most of them were married, joking on him about me and getting married.

 

I am definitely not expecting a ring or a proposal at the end of this three weeks. I'm just hoping that we can have a fresh start. Hopefully he is missing me, too, realizing what he had and we will end up staying together and grow closer over the next few months or a year. I am only 26, and have told him several times that I don't plan on rushing into marriage until I am sure.

[LucreziaBorgia]

Well, hopefully with a fresh start things can work out. When will you know? Is he supposed to contact you, or are you supposed to contact him? Did you guys set a date/method for that?

[sunshinegirl]

People who initiate a three week 'no contact' break aren't trying to figure out if they want to be married to you. They initiate a three week 'no contact' break to figure out why they don't want to, and whether or not they should break things off.

 

I agree. Why is he getting all freaky? You're not putting pressure on him for marriage/permanence; this is all him. So why he needs a 3-week no-contact break from you to sort it out is a bit of a head-scratcher to me.

 

I hope it turns out well for you, but I don't have a good feeling about this. The last time I initiated a break with a boyfriend (because he was acting strange), he objected to it at the time but after the 3 weeks apart, he came back and promptly dumped me.

 

Good luck, though.

[AshleighVB]

While I wasn't putting any direct pressure on him, he does know that I do ultimately want to be married and have a family down the road. The one source of pressure I can come up with is that back in May, for our one-year anniversary, the two of us agreed to save up for a vacation. We opened a savings account together and began saving up money. We were planning on going to Cancun for a week in the beginning of December. When it got close to the time we were supposed to book the trip, that's when he started acting a little weird (the weekend right after his friend's wedding). When I asked him what was wrong, he said that he needed to talk to me about a few things.

 

The first was that he has a credit card debt that he really would like to pay off before taking this trip. He said he could not rationalize spending a thousand dollars on this trip when he has a five thousand dollar debt to pay. I agreed, and although I was disappointed, I told him I thought he was making a mature decision and that I support that 100%. He transferred all of that money straight from our account to his credit card right in front of me (I didn't ask him to), so I know he was not lying about that. When I asked him if he was feeling pressured because of the trip, he said no.

 

Then he explained to me that he was unsure whether or not he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me and that he needed some space to miss me and make it easier for him to answer that question. I was very suprised because we hadn't really discussed our future or marriage or any of that up until that point. I made it clear that I was not pressuring him to move forward and that we are still young and I am not looking to be married anytime soon. I know that he is surrounded by disfunctional marriages - his best friend married a girl he got pregnant, his brother cheats on his wife, and his mom has been married four times.

 

Then I spent the next few days giving him some time and space.

 

When we saw each other the next weekend, we had a little argument. I was beginning to feel stressed from not knowing what was going on and not hearing from him for a few days at a time - he usually calls every night!!

 

After our (very minor) argument, I didn't hear from him for five days. When we finally talked (I initiated contact), he said he was afraid to call me because he was afraid I was angry at him and he didn't want to fight. I told him I love him and that he needs to be able to tell me when things bother him and that I am willing to listen to whatever he has to say. I told him to please explain this "space" thing to me again.

 

I know he has been super-busy at work. I mean super-busy! He brings work home with him every night and has been working a minimum of about 12 hours a day. He said that he can't figure out why his feelings have changed - perhaps it's just the pressure at work or perhaps he's just not ready to take the next step - but that his biggest fear is that his heart just isn't in it right now.

 

He said he loves me and respects me more than anything - that he has learned so much from me and has enjoyed everything about our relationship. I didn't know what to say at that point. I said, "If you're afraid your heart's not in it, perhaps we should take some time apart to think and reconvene in a few weeks." He suggested the weekend before Halloween and we agreed on that.

 

He told me he has no intention of dating anyone else during this time, but I said okay but did not make any such promises. I also suggested we set our MySpace and Facebook profiles to single - no security blankets - time apart is time apart.

 

We agreed to keep calls and e-mails to a minimum. I texted him when my plane landed for a business trip last week like he asked and we both know we can reach each other in the case of an emergency, etc.

 

I miss him terribly. Do you think I'm doing the right thing? This all happened over the course of two weeks. It seems like we're throwing away the best thing we've ever had for NO GOOD REASON.

[sunshinegirl]

I miss him terribly. Do you think I'm doing the right thing? This all happened over the course of two weeks. It seems like we're throwing away the best thing we've ever had for NO GOOD REASON.

 

Oh dear. I am really sorry for what you're going through. There are a lot of similarities to what happened with my BF a few years ago - there was nothing WRONG, there was NO GOOD REASON for his feelings to change. In fact, people thought we would be announcing our engagement soon. But his feelings changed anyway. I never ever got a concrete reason as to why; it remains to this day as a mysterious breakup that I never understood. But he has since moved on and married someone else. But I digress.

 

The really crappy thing for you here is that this is entirely out of your control. It's his feelings, and if they have changed there is simply nothing YOU can do to change them back. Unfortunately I think all you can do at this point is wait to hear what he has to say when your break comes to an end.

 

How and when will you two get back in touch?

[sunshinegirl]

Oh - also - it sounded a little sketchy that he took ALL of the money from your joint savings account to pay HIS credit card debt. Did you explicitly give him permission to use your contributions to that account to pay down his debt?

[AshleighVB]

About the money - he only took his. We had $2,000 - a thousand each. He took his thousand and put it towards his bill. The account is currently open, and his automatic transfers are still coming into it ($50 per week), however he did transfer another hundred of his money to his credit card the other day. I have taken most of my money out of there - I just have $300 in there right now so that we don't get charged a fee to keep the account open. We agreed to figure out what to do with it when we begin talking again.

 

We are supposed to get together on October 27th and maybe carve a pumpkin for Halloween. We didn't agree on who would call who or anything like that. I just figured whatever happens, happens. I was concentrating too hard on leaving his apartment without causing too much of a scene at that point to start worrying about what was going to happen in three weeks. To be honest, I can't believe I've made it almost 10 days (halfway there!) with no contact. I never would have thought I could do this. I definitely didn't do it when my ex asked me for a break. I pushed him away by being too clingy.

 

I love my BF so much. I love him enough to give him this space if it's what he needs. I can only hope he realizes that what we had was really great!

 

When I asked him what he wanted to come of this, he said, "I really want to want to be with you. I want to miss you and I want those feelings to be there. I think you're amazing, and I've learned so much from you over the past year and a half. You've been a great girlfriend, and you have done nothing, absolutely nothing wrong."

 

Can men get this stressed out from work? Work is just bogging him down. I can't think of anything else that could have spurred this except a fear of commitment. In which case, I suppose either way this distance is good. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? :\

[sunshinegirl]

Thanks for clarifying about the bank account thing. That makes more sense.

 

I'm not going to be much help on your other questions. I felt much as you did with the boyfriend I keep mentioning here - I loved him enough to give him space, to let him figure himself out. He was acting like he didn't want the break, and he told a mutual friend that he was looking forward to seeing me just a few days before we got together for dinner after the break; but something happened in between that made him decide he didn't want to date me.

 

Unfortunately, at the end of the day if the feelings aren't there, they just aren't there and there's not much either one of you can do about it. He can't 'make' himself love you if his feelings have changed.

 

If I were in your shoes I would want to know if there were specific things, moments, or triggers that have made him unsure about you - I mean apart from the general angst he has about this being a 'forever' thing. Then again, if he's like that BF of mine, he may not even be able to articulate it. It's like the "x" factor just went away, and when it was gone, *poof*. He was done with the relationship.

 

For a long time after our breakup I wondered if he was just stressed with work, stressed that we had a lot of family events before the holidays that may have inadvertently created 'pressure' on him, etc. Many of the same questions you are asking. I never found out. But even if those were the reasons why he dumped me, he never ever came back to rekindle things.

 

Congrats on going 10 days with no contact, in all events. That's a big accomplishment. And again, hopefully someone else can post on here with a better ending. Just because our experiences sound similar doesn't mean your guy will follow the same trajectory mine did.