My friend went through a breakup, and she told me: “He didn’t answer my calls. He didn’t reply to my texts. He didn’t even say a single word to break up with me.”
I said, “That’s actually better. If he’d confronted you face-to-face, you might’ve seen something far uglier.”
She sobbed, “If he’d just told me he’d already decided to end it, I could’ve walked away without regret. Why couldn’t he just let me go in peace?”
I replied, “Isn’t that just clinging to the past? If letting go were that easy, why hold on at all? Why do you need a ceremony to close the chapter?”
Men avoid the confrontation of breaking up for two reasons:
1. He’s a coward.
Choosing to leave you was his decision — but he doesn’t even have the courage to own it. That kind of man? Cut him loose now. Walking away from him is the lucky outcome.
2. He’s doing it on purpose.
You were together for a long time. He knew exactly how this silence would hurt you — how it would keep you awake, wondering, spiraling. He knew. And deep down, maybe he even wanted you to suffer. Don’t tell yourself he’s too kind to do this. As the 16th-century French writer Montaigne once wrote: When people see others in pain, their…
