How do I break up with a man who loves me, is super kind and generous, and provides stability but who leaves me feeling cold and irritated most of the time?
I’m a 36-year-old woman and we’ve been together for four years. During this time his stability has provided me with a base to grow and expand in the most wonderful ways. Now I feel suffocated. He is a wonderful person but has no interest in ever leaving his home town to try something new (I’m an immigrant). His only interests are pubs and football and when we go abroad he wants to spend most of his time in the pub, which infuriates me.
I have a dream of travelling the world, becoming a writer and living in a van. I treasure solitude and have a very rich inner life. I don’t think I actually want any sort of romantic relationship again. I see past the mundane and genuinely believe that we can live a different, lighter way should we choose. He is very conventional and has no interest in even sticking his head above the parapet. I don’t think this is a “bad” way to live, I just think it’s not the only way to live. I don’t want to be on my deathbed (in hopefully 50 years’ time), regretting missing out on an adventure because I cared for a man. We want completely different things out of life.
However, if I leave it will break his heart and mine. He is a good man who deserves a woman who shares his vision for life. I’m really sad that it can’t be me.
Eleanor says: Once when I worked a call centre job, I rang Mr So-and-so looking for Mrs So-and-so. “Not here. Divorced. Moved out,” said the voice on the end of the line. I clapped my fist to my forehead at my desk and apologised profusely. He was unperturbed and laughed reassuringly: “It’s fine! A happy marriage wouldn’t have ended in divorce.”
I don’t know if that stands as a universal rule, but you see what he’s saying. It was already bad. That’s why they got divorced. It’s not the divorce that made it bad.
When we’re thinking of leaving a good, loving person, it’s easy to go into paroxysms by thinking the decision is basically, “How can I justify doing this terrible thing to them?” Can I unilaterally move them from a great world (loving relationship, everything’s peachy) to a bad world (lonely, heartbroken)? How could I do that to someone so kind?
But the truth is he’s already not in the good world. If he’s in a relationship with someone who doesn’t know whether they want to be with him, his world is not currently great. The breakup would hurt tremendously, yes. He would be lonely. And he’d learn those harsh realities about your relationship. But they already are the reality. They might have been true for a while.
I wonder whether deep down you think that too. Your starting question was, “How do I break up with a man who loves me?” not, “Should I break up with a man who loves me?” You’re not sure about the decision. But at the same time, when you think about the person he should be with, you say with total clarity, “It can’t be me”. It sounds as though you might have already made your decision.
If you want the permission that it’s OK to hurt a good person: it is. It’s actually no favour to stay. People can tell if you’re reserved about being with them. Just as you’re lamenting the life you could have without him, there is a life he could have without you; maybe with someone who thinks romantic relationships are really important, or who loves how much he loves his home town, or who’d eagerly go to the pub when they travel together.
If you’re genuinely not sure, though, I get that too. Thinking about leaving can give you irritation goggles, but at the same time you know it won’t just be the irritations that go. When he takes his pubs and his home town he’ll also take the kindness, the stability. Often the annoying bit and the lovable bit are two sides of the same trait; the things about him that make you feel safe could be the same things that make you feel constrained, so that when you lose one you find out how much you valued the other.
But if what’s happening is you’ve realised you have genuine incompatibilities but you aren’t sure whether they “justify” the blow of leaving, I think it can help to remember: they’re already true. If you’re not compatible, that’s why you break up. It’s not the breakup that makes you incompatible.
*Letter has been edited for length
