The breakup that wasn't, and the drama to come
July 26, 2013 1:19 AM   Subscribe

Asking for a friend: A couple of weeks ago I asked this question, looking for advice on how to handle a break up in an adult fashion. I screwed it up, and now things are getting worse. Help!

Please address answers as though the friend is the poster here to save time.

For reference: I'm 35, my GF is 47.

I eventually worked up the courage to use Mikos's breakup script. And whilst it was horribly painful, it seemed to have gone about as well as it could. But then instead of maintaining my boundaries, I responded to her text messages and eventually, at her request, we talked on the phone. She pointed out that we'd done really well at talking through problems and that I to just walk away was betraying both of us *and* the relationship. She said that I was the one person that she'd ever felt she could truly trust, and that "being broken up with by the love of your life is probably the worst pain you could ever feel."

I felt like an idiot: how could I walk away from this wonderful person who loved me and who wanted to be with me? (The answer was "because being in this relationship is not making you happy," of course, but I didn't hear that over all the messages of love and happiness my brain was sending me). I agreed to give things another shot, and planned to head back down in the middle of the week to start over, and to continue our discussions about moving in together, which had started pre- not-quite-breakup, and which had actually lead to the breakup conversation.

This was last week. In between then and now, my life at home fell apart a bit. First, I got very sick for a few days whilst visiting my dad. When I got home, I discovered that some of the epic thunderstorms we'd had recently had flooded my lower-ground-floor flat, ruining the carpets and a large number of my possessions. Still convalescing, I had to pack up everything that was left undamaged and move it to my dad's house, since it's going to take over a month to repair the damage (I decided, after discussion with my landlords, to break my lease early rather than hang around paying for a ruined flat). My dad has kindly let me take up his spare room for the time being, but I've no intention of staying long.

Throughout all this I'd kept in touch with my girlfriend by email and SMS, and a couple of phone calls when I was able to.

From having been planning to head down mid-week, I was now faced with days of dancing around with letting agents and so on, and I told my girlfriend such. Initially I'd thought I wanted to go down this weekend instead, but now I just want a break from everything and everyone (I'm an introvert by nature, and when things get stressful I tend to batten down the hatches in order to heal).

My girlfriend said "if you can't come down, I'll come up to you." and it was then that I realised that I really don't want her to. I don't want to spend the weekend with her; I want to heal on my own. We'd talked about moving in together, and she sees in the current situation an opportunity for me to move down to hers whilst we look for our own place and I just don't want to.

Clearly, I'm being very unfair to her here by not telling her this outright, but I don't know how to. When I tried to break things off I did it in the most compassionate way I could (ignoring the bit where I screwed it up first time around) and I didn't have the backbone to stick to it. How can I possibly face saying all this to her?

Mefites, I need a kick in the backside from you, or some advice, or maybe just a good shouting at. I don't know how to go about dealing with all the pain and upheaval I'm feeling right now whilst still being a compassionate boyfriend. She wants to be with me this weekend and I just don't want to be with her - with anyone, for that matter. I want to be on my own. I know that the oft-quoted line here is "put on your own oxygen mask," but it seems like I'm not so much wanting to put on my own mask as take hers away and wear it myself. That's how it feels anyway.

Honestly, I think that going back on the breakup was a massive mistake. I could have given both of us a chance to heal, and been a grownup about it all. Instead I rather feel like I've ended up being extremely childish.
posted by six sided sock to Human Relations

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