Will I ruin his life?

[love is blind]

I am having a moral dilemia. When is it 'right' to break up with someone?

 

I have been with my boyfriend for 3 years. We live together and recently purchased a house that we now live in. Our relationship is fine, he would never cheat on me, does not drink, hit me, or do anything wrong. I am treated well, I know that he really loves me. We have a good life, we both have good jobs, nice car, nice house, pretty much the perfect life.

 

The problem is, that I don't feel like I am in love. I admit that of recent times, this has come up because of some strong feelings I have for a friend. However, this has been an issue for a long time in our relationship, I have seriously considered leaving about four times previously during the three years I am going out.

 

Every time I have decided to leave, I have not, and mainly for one reason. It is because I worry too much about what will happen to my boyfriend. I know that he gets very depressed, and I really fear for how he would handle a break up. Everytime this issue comes up, he basically tells me that his life would be over if we weren't together etc.

 

I have stayed, all these times, and I honestly do not regret staying. We have had some wonderful times between and I have loved him.

 

Ultimately, I am getting to the stage where I really do not know if I want to continue with the relationship. Basically a good friend of mine and myself have been getting closer. We both have feeling for each other, strong feelings. In truth, we have both held feelings for each other for over two years, and I ignored them. We have discussed our feelings for each other, and even though nothing physical has ever happened between each other, I still feel like I have cheated on my boyfriend.

 

I do not want to hurt my boyfriend, however, I have really made the decision that I want to leave for good. I am not running to my friend, I know that would be stupid and only hurt everyone involved. I have actually accepted a temporary position more than 10 hours from my hometown for 6 months. I am hoping I can better work out my feeling over there.

 

The real question I am asking is, will leaving my boyfriend ruin his life. He is a wonderful guy, the kindest guy, and he really loves me a lot.

Is is possible to never get over a broken heart, will he be sad for the rest of his life. I know that leaving him will deverstate him.

The other thing I have a horrible guilt over is that he may never find anyone else. He is extremely shy, and at 24 I was his first girlfriend. He does not have too much interaction with other girls, and I know to meet someone would be difficult for him.

It hurts me to think that such a nice guy like him will be alone. I really do not want that for him.

Anyone ever had their heart really broken, and they DID get over it, even if they thought they never would?

[TheGameSucks]

I think you have to do what feels right to you. Are you really doing the right thing by staying with him for the wrong reasons. Sure you love him but are you in love with him? If you have feelings for someone else you can't keep those feelings in. I think he will be hurt if you left but he will be fine eventually and he will move on. Everyone gets hurt at some point in their life and you must learn how to cope. Just remember your feeling never lie.

[slubberdegullion]

I have been with my boyfriend for 3 years. We live together and recently purchased a house that we now live in. Our relationship is fine, he would never cheat on me, does not drink, hit me, or do anything wrong. I am treated well, I know that he really loves me. We have a good life, we both have good jobs, nice car, nice house, pretty much the perfect life.

 

The problem is, that I don't feel like I am in love.

Putting aside the "other man" question for a moment, let's dissect this a little bit.

 

You have everything you could materially want, or at least that's how I read it. Moreover, your man treats you with the utmost respect, care and love. You've got as close to a perfect life as you could imagine.

 

But you don't "feel" that you are in love.

 

At the risk of repeating the mantra yet again, love is not a feeling; love is a decision.

 

The moment that partners understand that is the moment that their relationships come in to focus.

 

Besides, feelings lie all the time. Feelings change with the weather, how much sleep you have had, if you are hungry or thirsty, if you associate the person with something or someone else, if you have a wee bit of indigestion, and so forth.

 

A quick story: I recall a feeling that I got about a person who I was introduced to, and for some reason I felt immediately repelled by her. I trusted my feelings.

 

Bad idea.

 

It wasn't until much later that I figured out what was going on: This woman looked similar to a boss I used to have, and that boss ripped me off.

 

My feelings lied to me. What a huge wake-up call that was for me!

 

So ditch this idea that if you don't feel in love, then you are not in love. It's a lie, pure and simple. More breakups of good, solid partnerships have been caused by this reliance on fluttering, hazy feelings, rather than the decision to love, than almost anything else, including infidelity.

[witabix]

Putting aside the "other man" question for a moment, let's dissect this a little bit.

 

You have everything you could materially want, or at least that's how I read it. Moreover, your man treats you with the utmost respect, care and love. You've got as close to a perfect life as you could imagine.

 

But you don't "feel" that you are in love.

 

At the risk of repeating the mantra yet again, love is not a feeling; love is a decision.

 

The moment that partners understand that is the moment that their relationships come in to focus.

 

Besides, feelings lie all the time. Feelings change with the weather, how much sleep you have had, if you are hungry or thirsty, if you associate the person with something or someone else, if you have a wee bit of indigestion, and so forth.

 

A quick story: I recall a feeling that I got about a person who I was introduced to, and for some reason I felt immediately repelled by her. I trusted my feelings.

 

Bad idea.

 

It wasn't until much later that I figured out what was going on: This woman looked similar to a boss I used to have, and that boss ripped me off.

 

My feelings lied to me. What a huge wake-up call that was for me!

 

So ditch this idea that if you don't feel in love, then you are not in love. It's a lie, pure and simple. More breakups of good, solid partnerships have been caused by this reliance on fluttering, hazy feelings, rather than the decision to love, than almost anything else, including infidelity.

 

Well Slub, thats given me a lot to think on, unbelievably I have never it heard it put like that before. You make an excellent point.

 

A little on the hard logical side, maybe, but an excellent point nonetheless, I really have to say thanks for the above post. I mean it , no sarcasm or anything.

 

Cheers.

[slubberdegullion]

No sweat. I live to serve.

[magda]

Your boyfriend probably gets depressed often because you keep staying even though you're bored. He must feel that he bores you, not good enough, etc, because of your hot and cold behavior.

 

A nice clean break is like ripping the band-aid off all at once. You're hurting him more with the little rips here and there.

[ginger1]

I agree with Magda. Dragging things on will only hurt the both of you more. It's easy to see what you want to do and what you should do, but when you are hurting someone that you still care about, it makes it difficult. I'm in a similar situation, so I can relate. It's much easier when you're looking at things from the outside.

 

Ginger

[Love is blind]

Thanks for the comments.

 

No, the feeling is more than I simply 'don't feel in love'. We have a few fundamental differences, I suppose the point I was trying to make, that we have the story-book perfect life. The problem is, that deep down I am not happy and it is not what I want.

 

In so many ways I can regrete the decisions I have made, and the fact that I did not have 'the guts' to leave earlier. But I didn't and now, three years down the track I have realised that I am sick of fighting.

 

The problem is the way that we want to live our lives, and the way we both think about things. I am not an emotionally strong person, and ultimately, the strain of holding together a relationship is too much.

 

My boyfriend is a wonderful guy, as I previously discribed, but he suffers from extremely low self-esteem and something that I suppose you would call a mild social disorder. We have seeked help, for a long time, however, as we were told, nothing will change until he makes the decision to change. And still nothing has changed, he is unwilling/unable to admit that in order to solve the problem he needs to work on it, not just mellow at home.

 

It sounds horrible, but I am sick of being the strong one. I cannot be upset, because when I am, it turns into a problem with my boyfriend, he gets upset because automatically I am upset because of him. So I console him and then go to sleep crying, feeling like I am totally drowning.

 

I have fallen for a friend, and I am not so stupid to think that this means that I am going to ever be with this friend. I am not, and if I was chances are it would not work out. But in hindsight, I can see so clearly the reasons for falling for this friend. He is confident, he is strong, he is uncomplicated and he is able to be an ear to listen to. At one stage I was close to breaking down, and my friend provided me the support that my boyfriend couldn't.

 

I feel like my boyfriend's whole world rests on my shoulders, his happiness deepends on me staying in the relationship. In many ways I realise that much of his self esteem also lays in me staying. And I am sick of being someone world. He loves me, and I suppose to many people that is flattering and wonderful, but to me, so much love, it equals an unprevcidented amount of pressure.

 

I guess the real question of my post is not if I should leave my boyfriend, but will it destroy him and his life if I do. I feel that if I am not leaving him for the right reasons and he does something stupid, that rests on my councious, that it would be my fault.

 

I guess I would love to hear from someone who survived this (from my boyfriend's perspective.) Someone that, for a long time, wrapped their entire life up in that of thier partners. Someone that was madly in love, whose whole self esteem was based on the relationship. And I suppose ultimately I would like to hear that you survived, that life went on when the relationship ended. (Or if life didn't go on for you, if 20 years later you are still crying over the same person, I would really need to take that into consideration.)

 

THank you

[meltwithme]

Hi, your boyfriend in a nutshell is me.... was me.

To start: yes you will destroy him.

Whatever you do, don't mention the other guy at all. If he finds out your with the other guy (you will be) it will really crush him. My ex was with a new guy right after me and I saw a picture of her and him together when we didn't take one in the 7 months. But hey atleast I didn't have a picture of us to make it harder to get over, not sure if that was a blessing in disguise?

Please don't try to let him down easy though, just tell him you need a clean breakup and your verry sorry to do this to him but that you have to do this for yourself because it's best for you right now. Answer questions if he has them with as much honesty as possible.

 

It will lower his confidence to a level he's never seen and he will get extremelly depressed if that's already a concern. It seems you still care about him and he may even actually contimplate suicide, but this is not your problem. I would suggest you talk to someone in his family or a friend about councelling for him.

You can't talk to him either, it will make it worse for him in the long run. He doesn't know it yet but this is actually going to force him to make his life better. After all the heartbreak he is eventually going to see that he must learn to like himself and just deal with it when other people don't. My confidence was shot down bigtime, and it is going tear him up inside, but eventually it will make him a better man for someone else. I don't think I'm completely healed from my heartbreak.

But strangly I think the shot my confidence took has actually made me more outgoing. It was either that or continue to sit around and feel bad for myself and one day I had enough of that.

Now I'm starting to think it's going to help me get confidence to a new level because rejection, even by a stranger, used to really bother me. Now I don't give a damn if some broad turns me down, I've actually been hurt so bad that I can just walk away and not think twice about a chick who doesn't want anything to do with me.

Your'e going to rip out his heart, but he is going to have to do some serious soul searching and eventually get a hold of his own life because of it.

[Becoming]

It will lower his confidence to a level he's never seen and he will get extremelly depressed if that's already a concern. It seems you still care about him and he may even actually contimplate suicide, but this is not your problem. I would suggest you talk to someone in his family or a friend about councelling for him.

 

 

Ok, yes, Slubber is right: love is a decision, a commitment, not a feeling. But you're not married; you're just mortgaged. And you've made the decision not to love him, which is perfectly within your right since you've made him no lifetime promises.

 

Would any of us really want to stay with someone who feels about us the way you do about him?

 

Meltwithme makes some excellent points, the most important being you are not responsible for his feelings; he is. At present, he doesn't have to be responsible for his feelings when you do it for him.

 

Yes, it will be hard on him, but he will survive and probably be stronger for it, if he chooses to be. If he chooses not to be, you can't control that even if you stayed forever.

 

If you're afraid he'll commit suicide or something, contact someone who cares about him to look in on him and give him some consolation after you're gone. And then go, making it clear that it's for good and why. He's owed the truth (gently, lovingly). What he does with it is his business from there on out.

 

What about the house? Will you have to deal with him later over that? Or will you just walk away?

[Love is blind]

Thank you for all the advice.

 

I have done it, I have broken up. I have told my boyfriend that I am moving away for 6 months, and I do not want to be with him.

 

How do you answer the questions, what went wrong?? Especcially when we never fight, never argue, and seem to love each other a lot....

 

Addmittably, we have had some issues the past few months, so it was not totally unexpected.

 

He tells me that I will be back, that if I loved him I would come back. I do love him, but I don't want to put him through this anymore.

 

One problem is that I do not leave for one more month. I will be at home, living with him, and I am scared things are going to get complicated. Already the past two nights, we have talked, talked, talked. Almost on the vergue of being talked into changing my mind.

 

Staying with family or friends is not an option. They live too far from my work. The only people close by have just recently had a baby, so there is no way I will invade them. I am thinking about a hitel, or a short term stay apartment.

 

I love him, and even during the breakup, he is still the nicest guy.

 

As for the other guy, I am moving too far away to see him. Already, as of a month ago, I have cut off contact with him, and I do not plan to contact him for a long time. I explained my reasons to him. The truth is, the more I think about it, I am not sure I like the other guy so much as what he is that my boyfriend isn't. I am attracted to his strength, his confidence and his social abilities. I am not sure that I am attracted to him as a person.

 

The house??? For now I will continue to pay my side of the bills until I return. There is an issue with selling, that the property market has dropped substantially in my city, selling within the next two years, we will definately lose money. Too much to think about now, I guess we can deal with it in 6 months time.

 

Thanks once again