Jump to content

How to minimize harm when breaking up with somebody dependent on you?


MirrorKnight

Recommended Posts

I have posted about my relationship issues previously... I have more or less thought through my options and the bottom line is that both my girlfriend and I are unhappy at the status quo, but she is unwilling to let go of me because she is terrified of being alone, having never been truly independent all her life. She readily admits that she is my "limpet" and does not know what she will do if I force her off.

 

I am terrified of how much I will hurt her when I cut the cord. My chest literally hurts and I get emotional whenever I just think about the hurt I will put her through. She knows something is up, she is grasping, trying to get me to make commitments and promises that I cannot... But I don't think it is fair for me to force myself to stay in an unhappy relationship, to be her carer, get married and have children out of responsibility, when I know that we are not compatible and our relationship has been a drain on my mental health since her sister's drama began...

 

So what can I do to minimize the pain? I plan to let her stay in my house for the time being, help her get a lawyer to get a fair settlement with her sister. I am dreadfully worried that without me, her sister is going to walk all over her and rip her off even more. But I am also hesitant to stay too involved in her life, as that will probably make it very hard for her to move on. I also think she is going to hate my house even more now...

Link to comment

You sound like a caring person but sometimes it's cruel to be kind. By continuing to "help" her you are telling her that she's incapable of helping herself.

 

It's hard to break up when one person allegedly has no where to go. I had to do it once. I gave him 1 week to get out. He negotiated for 2 weeks which I gave him & I gave him $500 cash in moving expenses. He told me it was a loan but I knew he'd never pay me back & that was OK. $500 was a small price to pay to have the relationship be over.

 

Set a hard deadline & get her out. The best thing you can do is make a clean break. Do not give her false hope. Give her an actual break point from which she can begin her healing.

Link to comment

I mean.....it's quite arrogant on your part to place such value and power in yourself that breaking up and not having you in her life will just destroy a 40 year old ADULT. That's some serious hubris you've got going on disguised as caring. Breaking up isn't going to emotionally destroy a grown woman her age.

 

That said, if you want to be a decent human being, then be honest, be clear and deal fairly with her in terms of the living situation. As in offer reasonable time for her to find other accommodations and help financially if necessary to facilitate that faster. As another poster pointed out - money well spent. Do not promise to be friends, do not string her along, do not give her hope of getting back together, be very very clear that it's over and it's permanent. This means that you do not stay involved in her life, her sister issues, her living with you, etc. Clean break, clear break. That's really the kindest thing you can do.

Link to comment
Mirror, you give a lot of great advice. How would you answer your own question?

 

This.

 

You're razor-sharp, Mirror, but it seems you're reluctant to look at your own situation through the same lens you use to see others. Totally human, all that. But also limiting. With a little distance, or a little more humility, I think you'll see that your portrayal of her says as much about your own fragility as it does hers, and that some of your hesitancy right now is connected, at least subconsciously, to you not being ready to make eye contact with those fragile corners of yourself. You're seeing too much ego reflected back in that "mirror," in short.

 

So I don't sound preachy: I've been in a version of your shoes, in my last relationship. I played the role as the one who had the business of life figured out, while she played the role as the one for whom the business of living was walking through quicksand. There was some truth to all that. There was also plenty of truth to me liking the very role I bemoaned, because with the costume off I'd have to confront my own quicksand, my own hubris, my own fragility.

 

She is an adult. Treat her like one, because that's what she deserves and because, odds are, you want to be a man who can learn to treat, view, and connect with women as fellow adults, not broken birds. Whatever hurt she feels is hers to feel, not yours to minimize or mitigate. So come up with a plan that you believe is fair, and execute it. I don't know how long you're in Singapore, but maybe it's giving her one month in your home while you're still away. With a reasonable amount of financial assistance that comes in one gesture, not a trickle that extends things under the guise of softening the pain. Or something.

 

It's not easy, I know. Life is not always easy, and this is a hard juncture for you both. But it's time to stop finding validation by being someone's crutch and start finding it by treating people—her, yourself, whoever is to cross your path in the future—as the full-fledged adults they are.

Link to comment

The way to minimize harm is honesty, and to not drag it out. Making her wonder, Her saying "i love you" and hearing silence on the phone, etc.

Be honest, tell her that while you love her, the relationship is making you both unhappy. Sell the place that you don't live in and inform her it will be for sale or give her a timeframe to move out. You would give a tenant at least 30 days. Give her a few months, and stick to it. Not "a few months" but an actual deadline that is fair. Does she pay rent?

Link to comment

Firstly, I suggest you get your own therapy to help you with your White Knight Syndrome. Then, once you realize how selfish that you enabling her is (to be the child that she appears to be) you will be able to sever the cord that attaches YOU to her.

 

If she gets herself a lawyer to help her with the the problems with her sister, she will be taken care of without you being involved or having to worry about her.

 

If she lives in your home then you can give her the standard (in most places) 60 day vacate notice and by doing so, you'll allow her to grow into the independent adult she should be by now. Currently you help her stagnate in her adult child-like state.

 

Bottom line: This is about you and your addiction/attachment and enabling character. Anyone not codependent would get her out of their life (even by kindly giving her first and last months deposit on her own place if that's what it took) wish her luck with her lawyer and her therapist (hopefully she's seeing one) and then go zero contact so that she can grow from the needy, "broken bird" (as Blue so aptly opined) that she is.

Link to comment
Does she have a job?

 

She does have a job, she has worked there since she finished school at 18 years old. Decent pay and working hours thanks to her long service there. It is the only employment she knows and partly why she is absolutely terrified at the prospect of ever leaving the city she has grown up and lived in all her life.

 

This woman is about 40 and you are treating her like a child. Why doesn't she seek a lawyer, who is more qualified?

 

She lived at home with her sisters her entire life. Her elder sister made all her decisions for her until she got kicked of her own home for meeting me. She struggles to do anything by herself. She is not stupid, she is actually very perceptive and sharp, but she has low self esteem, calls herself stupid (I think her sister used to call her stupid, and she just accepted it) She feels incapable taking initiative, taking proactive action, making her own decisions and developing agency.

 

To illustrate my point. At the very start of our relationship, I worked in a nearby city (in the UK) about 2hrs train journey away. The first time she visited me at the weekend was the first time she took the train by herself... Her first solo train journey at 37 years old!

 

it's quite arrogant on your part to place such value and power in yourself that breaking up and not having you in her life will just destroy a 40 year old ADULT.

Firstly, I suggest you get your own therapy to help you with your White Knight Syndrome. Then, once you realize how selfish that you enabling her is (to be the child that she appears to be) you will be able to sever the cord that attaches YOU to her.

 

To be honest, I feel like some of this characterization is a little unfair. I admit that perhaps a part of me likes the safety that being needed provides and yes it does boost my ego to feel so loved/wanted by an attractive woman. But I have recognized from near the beginning that it was unhealthy, so I have told her to develop her own agency (she had to check the dictionary to see what it meant), become more independent, "love me, not need me" etc... I have repeatedly asked her to go see a counselor, but she has refused thus far.

 

Mirror, where are you?

 

Made my post in the evening, then had to make a few phone calls before bed.

Link to comment
It makes no sense to break up and allow a person to stay in your home. If you want to subsidize her rent and security somewhere else, fine, but breaking up before you're ready to cut the cord is messy and far more damaging to both of you than a clean break.

 

If she lives in your home then you can give her the standard (in most places) 60 day vacate notice and by doing so,

 

Just to clarify, I did not mean that she should continue to live with me if we break up. She currently lives in my house, but I am working thousands of miles away. I expect to go back to the UK (long term) next March, I would like her to have moved out by then. I do think it is unhealthy for us to live under the same roof.

 

Does she pay rent?

 

No. She still pays the mortgage on the house her sister kicked her out of. So it would be a strain on her finances. Besides when we were dating, it would seem kind of ridiculous to charge her rent for staying with me.

 

The only scenario where I considered charging her money is when I had to clear out anther room of a lodger that stayed with me for over a year, because she did not want to share the house with a "stranger danger" (the guy was perfectly nice, just a little messy by our standards). That room is now empty and it cost me about £400/m in lost rental income.

Link to comment
To be honest, I feel like some of this characterization is a little unfair. I admit that perhaps a part of me likes the safety that being needed provides and yes it does boost my ego to feel so loved/wanted by an attractive woman. But I have recognized from near the beginning that it was unhealthy, so I have told her to develop her own agency (she had to check the dictionary to see what it meant), become more independent, "love me, not need me" etc... I have repeatedly asked her to go see a counselor, but she has refused thus far.

 

Since you pull no punches with others—and are a boon to this community for that—I'm going to take the gloves off here.

 

This? I hope one day you can read that above paragraph and cringe, affectionately, at yourself. Patting your own back and defending yourself as a Normal Knight and not a White Knight because you encouraged a grown woman to develop her own agency? That is just more evidence of the very thing people are trying to get you to see. That is how you treat a child. Translation: "Will you please develop some more agency since the buzz of being your savior isn't so buzzy? So I can feel like a savior for teaching you what agency is? And, generally better, about being in a relationship I have known was unhealthy from the beginning?"

 

You were asking her, in other words, to get you out of the trap you set by leaning into something you knew was unhealthy. If she had a level of agency that you admired and respected from the get go, you wouldn't have had to ask her to get it for you. But also? Maybe if she had that you wouldn't have been into leaning in. You weren't ready for that, because of that ego stuff you well-articulated yourself. Great. Time to own that story—the one that takes you down a few notches so her own humanity can have weight too. Newsflash: it weighs exactly the same as yours.

 

She has agency. Everyone does. It's just not the shape and flavor for you, and that's okay. Your unhealthy stuff found her unhealthy stuff and put on a show. For a while it worked. Now it doesn't work, and the show needs to end. You will both survive, and thrive. Come up with a plan and execute it. Doesn't sound so complicated, really. She works, makes money, in a big city with all sorts of living options and people who aren't you to meet. She can find another White Knight, or decide she wants something else. That's her story, not yours to keep trying to tell even through ending your story together.

Link to comment
Since you pull no punches with others—and are a boon to this community for that—I'm going to take the gloves off here.

 

This? I hope one day you can read that above paragraph and cringe, affectionately, at yourself. Patting your own back and defending yourself as a Normal Knight and not a White Knight because you encouraged a grown woman to develop her own agency? That is just more evidence of the very thing people are trying to get you to see. That is how you treat a child. Translation: "Will you please develop some more agency since the buzz of being your savior isn't so buzzy? So I can feel like a savior for teaching you what agency is? And, generally better, about being in a relationship I have known was unhealthy from the beginning?"

 

You were asking her, in other words, to get you out of the trap you set by leaning into something you knew was unhealthy. If she had a level of agency that you admired and respected from the get go, you wouldn't have had to ask her to get it for you. But also? Maybe if she had that you wouldn't have been into leaning in. You weren't ready for that, because of that ego stuff you well-articulated yourself. Great. Time to own that story—the one that takes you down a few notches so her own humanity can have weight too. Newsflash: it weighs exactly the same as yours.

 

She has agency. Everyone does. It's just not the shape and flavor for you, and that's okay. Your unhealthy stuff found her unhealthy stuff and put on a show. For a while it worked. Now it doesn't work, and the show needs to end. You will both survive, and thrive. Come up with a plan and execute it. Doesn't sound so complicated, really. She works, makes money, in a big city with all sorts of living options and people who aren't you to meet. She can find another White Knight, or decide she wants something else. That's her story, not yours to keep trying to tell even through ending your story together.

 

Thanks for your input @bluecastle Sincerely. I will reflect on this. You have made many good insightful posts lately, on my threads and on others. Apparently I cannot show my appreciation with rep points because I need to spread them out more. :D

 

What do you think would have happened to her if she never met you? Would she have survived? Or been completely helpless and unable to live?

 

To answer both of you @bluecastle and @boltnrun...

 

I was drawn to Jane initially because of her kindness, warmth and femininity. I did not know about her neediness and insecurities at the very start because she was still "limpet'ed" onto her sisters. Living in the same bubble for 37 years. So the first major issue in our relationship was her lack of boundaries with regards to her family and her sisters' constant interference in our relationship.

 

Like literally every time she spent an evening with me (she had to get home before midnight like a child), or a day out, her (elder) sister would throw a tantrum over some unrelated excuse, demand that she spends more time with her to make it up to her, and basically "focus on fixing our relationship before going out with your boyfriend again!". Without going into too much detail, her sister was abusive and controlling, but Jane had been so used to it that she thought it was normal. Her carefree happy-go-lucky life was over, she was confused, sad, stuck between trying to maintain her first relationship and trying to appease her sister(s).

 

I nearly broke up with her around 3 months into our relationship over the above drama and unacceptable interference. Seeing that she was about to lose me, and encouraged by her close friends who could see the issues clearer than she could, she finally started to stand up to her sister and fight for our relationship. Her sister responded the only way she knew how. Escalation, and literal violence. I had to go to A&E with Jane after her sister threw a plate of food straight off the cooker at her, causing thankfully non-serious burns. After that Jane was too scared to go home unless she knew her sister was out, and she moved in with me.

 

It was not until she got forcibly driven out of her home by her elder sister and moved in with me, when she limpet'ed onto me instead, that I realized just how clingy and co-dependent she was. At that point I felt responsible for her predicament, so I did my best to make our relationship work. That is when I guess the co-dependent phase of the relationship began. I guess you guys would say that in order for a relationship to be co-dependent, I had to have been at least somewhat co-dependent myself, and enabled her dependency. I accept that now, as much as I thought I was doing it for her, I guess a part of me wanted to be a white knight, and I find strong independent women (like Cathy that I previously described) a little scary, compared to "safe Jane".

 

So to answer @boltnrun more directly, I think if she never met me, she probably would have stayed in her bubble forever and never realized that she was being controlled and abused. I genuinely think she did not mind, because she did not know any different, and it was comfortable. If she met anybody else, then she would have almost certainly come across the same issues... and as for the future, I do hope she can move on, gain agency and confidence, and find love again in a more balanced and healthy relationship.

Link to comment

Hi Mirror,

 

I followed your original thread and have read many of your opinions across a range of topics here. In general terms, I agree with the consensus here, and think bluecastle has articulated the issues far better than I could. However, I wanted to take some time to share an abridged version of my story, as there may be some parallels which may be illuminating in your own situation.

 

I was in a 5 year relationship with a woman who had severe panic disorder. For the first year and a half, there were no signs and had just started living together. However, once symptoms started to present, she quickly went downhill. For the last 2 years of our relationship, she was essentially housebound at her parents house with severe agoraphobia; at times she was confined to a single room. She also was unable to be left alone, as she would have a severe panic attack if noone else was in the house. I took her to therapy, did the CBT exercises with her, did exposure. I planned my life around her illness. This caused understandable friction with her family and particularly mother (who was stay at home, but who also, having raised all her children to adulthood, was not keen on being housebound by proxy). This came to a head, and my partner ended up coming to my place of work daily and staying in the sick bay, where I would constant need to check on her. I was fortunate enough to have an amazing team and manager who allowed this. After about a year doing this, I ended the relationship.

 

I was a white knight. Not just when the disorder presented, but before that too. I am sure, in retrospect, that my tendency to play the saviour, to try and teach her to be better for herself, to be both an example and a support, was a huge factor in her developing anxiety disorder. Then, I enabled her, even as she was receiving cognitive behaviour therapy. She leaned on me, and I allowed it, even as I ultimately began to resent her more and more for it. I felt trapped; I was convinced that if I left she would simply fall apart and regress. I was convinced that this woman needed me.

 

Even at the end, when I intiated the break up, a large part of me wasn't sure she would make it without me. However, I also realised, she definitely wouldn't make it with me. I was part of the problem, not the solution. I had all the best intentions in the world, I truly cared for her and loved her, but I was not the one to 'save' her. And, in the process, I was only hurting myself and her.

 

That all happened 4 years ago. She recently went to Canada, with her new beau. She is working, and thriving. She is grateful to me for all I did for her, and for leaving when I did. My broken bird healed the day I walked away and let her heal.

 

I don't know how your story ends, but take it from me, sometimes no matter how good you are, no matter how much you care and try to do the right and best thing, you are in the way of the thing you want most for the people you love.

 

Best of luck,

 

T

Link to comment

Hi Mirror

 

Been following your story as I go through my own relationship ups and downs.

 

I'm just curious, very basic - What does Jane herself think about the state of your relationship, does she see or acknowledge for herself how codependant she has become with you?

Link to comment
I'm just curious, very basic - What does Jane herself think about the state of your relationship, does she see or acknowledge for herself how codependant she has become with you?

 

@Beetie

 

She recognizes that we are not happy together, but she thinks the solution is for me to go back to her asap.

 

She never had agency because her (elder) sister made all decisions in their household after their father's stroke 15+ years ago. She never lived away from her family until she moved in with me. So I don't think she really understands what it means to be independent. She thinks she does not want it. She just wants me to take care of her forever. She does not want any responsibilities or have to make her own decisions.

 

She accepts that she is a "limpet" - her own term for herself. She recognizes that she limpet'ed onto me after being forced off her sisters. I asked her what happens if I was gone, she said "limpets shrivel up and die without anything to stick to" ... which broke my heart. Though hopefully I am overestimating my own importance and underestimating her capacity to grow and move on. She has also mentioned (the last time I tried to break up with her in June) that "I will be very sad for long time, but I will move on" and I think she is mentally preparing herself for possible breakup. Yesterday she mentioned "I have not cried in the last two days, you should be getting worried", which implies she is emotionally learning to not miss me.

Link to comment
She sees herself as a parasite , essentially?

It's odd to me that does not repulse you.

 

No that implies she is a completely useless person. She is not.

 

How do I explain this... She is used to living her life in a routine, before she met me, that routine barely changed for over a decade. She is perfectly functional and capable within that routine. She drives her own car, she earns decent money and held down the same job for nearly 20 years, she appears perfectly well adjusted in a social or professional context. She earned more than me for most of our relationship and her job is much more stable than mine.

 

However, she does not proactively do anything and she finds anything out of the ordinary routine stressful. For example she gets panicky when her car breaks down, and she found the process of choosing and buying a new car, with its numerous options and considerations, too stressful, so I ended up doing the search with her (she does have her opinions and inputs of course), narrowing down the selection and ultimately making a decision. I went to the dealership with her for the test drive, negotiating the price etc... but she was perfectly able to deal with the paperwork and technical details herself, and of course paid with her own money. She just found the responsibility of what she feels is a big and complex decision, overwhelming.

 

Another example, I booked some work to be done on my house. She does not want the work to be done when I am not there in person, because she does not want the responsibility of overseeing the work and okay'ing it.

Link to comment

What I still primarily hear—with the car stuff, the house stuff, all of it—is that you don't know how to trust this woman, or women in general, to go about the business of living, despite overwhelming evidence that she/they can get by just fine. Whether that's a reflection of the places where you still don't trust yourself, or a general view of women, or simply a dynamic that snowballed into something weird when you weren't quite looking, or were yourself in a weirder place mentally than you knew, I can't quite say.

 

I don't mean that to sound disparaging. I'm not calling you a sexist caveman, maybe just encouraging you to keep searching within your own cave instead of thinking something outside the cave (job, woman) will provide the light. I hope you'll give Wayward's post a few reads. He's writing from the other side, or from inside the cave, aware of how his expressions of support over a 5 year relationship—well-intentioned as they may have been, but as connected to some wiring of his own that needed addressing as much as to his ex's frayed wires—likely contributed to the very behavior in his girlfriend that (a) he came to resent and (b) triggered things in her that made the business of living harder than it naturally was for her. And, by extension, harder for him.

 

It takes courage to see that, to be open to that kind of humility, so the paradigm can shift and real personal growth can happen. I've swam about in my own version of these waters, and it wasn't easy to realize that a lot of the ways I thought I was helping my last big ex were not helpful, were even harmful—to say nothing of how I wasn't helping myself, how I was using my "helping hand" to her as a mask to avoid staring a bit more directly at, and deeply into, myself. I had to take myself down a few notches to end it, and in the wake of it, but it was needed to really get taller in the big picture.

 

Jane would have figured out how to buy a car, in short. Tell her, respectfully, without the kid gloves that enable your mutual weaknesses, that you need her to be there when the workers arrive and, odds are, she would not have collapsed into a weeping ball when they showed up but dealt with it. Easy examples, but you get me? There is either a man who can genuinely help her cultivate that power within, or a man who is genuinely respectful for where she is today and what she offers in that form. You are neither of those men. Without an essential trust in her—and, yes, in women to contain much the same ingredients as men along with the warmth and femininity you crave—you can't go to either of those two places.

 

I asked in your other thread if this would be different if she was 25. Your response was illuminating, if not surprising. In that "equation" you could imagine that she, our 25 year old straw woman, "would not be so set in her ways, maybe she would take up my advice to learn a new language and complete her professional qualification." Read that again. Same dynamic, same experiment, different raw materials: an instinct to find personal growth and reward in "growing" a woman into a shape you find desirable because you don't quite trust her to grow on her own. The paradigm is outsourced again, where the shift becomes illusory.

 

Behind that, I think, is a baked-in sense that women are, or should be, clay to mold into a shape that works for you. That mode of thinking, while not uncommon in both genders, will 99.9 percent of the time produce dynamics with an expiration date, journeys that will lead you to a version of where you are right now. You're likely to find yourself in relationships that grow into a malignant shape, like this, or that you are positioning someone to need to outgrow you completely to really be the person you want to be with. As the 25 year old comes into her "potential," in your eyes, you would maybe find that the last stage of that metamorphosis is letting go of you, the teacher. Food for thought.

 

I encourage you to try to think of everything in slightly less binary terms. You sound, all in all, like you're doing well in life: you own a home, are being stationed far and wide for work, have quite the brain inside that head. Solid stuff for an early 30s dude. Which is to say: Maybe your 20s weren't as "damaging" as you thought, but were more of a gestation/incubation period, as they are for all? Maybe that story can be rewritten now, or needs to be, slightly. Maybe there is noting to keep "fixing" but instead to see as a stage to accept as an essential part of your journey—not a detour, but just a period of stepping forward through a weedy patch. That is, from one angle, the more genuine truth after all. You're doing well now, wouldn't be where you are now had you not been there, so it's more a + b = c that -a x b = c.

 

Learn to give yourself that lassitude and you'll give it to others, organically. Learn that you need nothing to "fix" in your life, or atone for, and you will likely stop finding people to fix, be they 37 or 25. And various life goals—connection, marriage, children, work, travel, sex, etc.—will start to resonate differently, less as if/then equations but as variables that can all coexist and will always be slightly in flux, sometimes feeling "in control," other times feeling like they're "controlling" you. Which, of course, is also how relationships work when you're ready to surrender to the mystery of another person—when you have an essential trust in that mystery because you've learned to trust your own.

Link to comment

@bluecastle

 

Sincere thanks for your time and insight my friend.

 

There is quite a lot to digest there. I have read it from beginning to end twice now still have not quite unpackaged and absorbed it all yet. I might be quite sharp and to the point when it comes to other people's issues, but I guess I am quite muddled when it comes to myself. Always thinking that my situation is different, my situation is unique because A, B or C... And then I realize that is precisely what other people in too deep in their own issues think too.

 

I am a bit emotional tonight, as I often have been when thinking of Jane recently. I remember her telling me that she sometimes gets panicky and her chest feels tight when she feels abandoned. Like if I don't reply to a message for a long time, cancel our scheduled video calls (for work reasons mostly) or even something as benign as going through ticket barriers before her (because she was once accidentally left behind as a child and lost for a while).

 

Lately I've been feeling that same chest tightness, or sadness, I'm not sure, when I think of her. When I think of the tears that will flow, all the hopes and expectations shattered, when I think of the fact that she won't be in my life anymore... I won't even know really how she is doing, if she is being bullied by her sister again, because I am sure she will put on a brave face even if she was, accept any family, even a toxic one, over being alone. I'm not sure if I am feeling sadness, regret, guilt, fear... perhaps it is all of the above.

 

I am about to go to bed and will sleep on this. Maybe I will have some more clarity tomorrow.

Link to comment

I'm sorry you're in pain, buddy.

 

Your above post feels like small revelation. Vulnerability. Feeling. The stuff past words, the stuff that words, really, are just meant to describe rather than mask or categorize. You sound more honest, which is to say more strong, than you have in a bit, seeing you and Jane as what you are: people who are connected to each other, but who may very well be better off without that connection. No Knights, no limpets, no story. Just feeling, and a lot of it unclear and confusing. That's okay. It's the sour edge of the sweet stuff, hard as that might be to believe tonight.

 

Sit with it a bit, sleep on it.

Link to comment
  • 2 weeks later...

Update

 

The time has arrived. Almost.

 

I am flying back to the UK tonight. I have resolved to pull off the plaster (band-aid, for you Americans :p) and get it done properly this time. I know some of you encouraged that I should have ended it sooner, but I did not want to do it over the phone/video call, so this is the first opportunity I have had to see her since my first post on this forum. It is going to be awful, I know it already, but my mind is made up, there can be no weakness and regrets this time. I will not be talked/cried into continuing a relationship that neither of us are truly happy with. She sort of knows it is coming, but I think she still thinks she can fight for us to stay together. I will not be weak this time. I will remain resolute.

 

Jane has a few close friends, one of them is a strong independent woman who actually shares my views on many issues. I will try to make contact with her and try to enlist her help to handle Jane's problems at home, so that hopefully I do not have to continue to involve myself in Jane's affairs, to help her (and me) move on, and obviously to help her move out of my house.

Link to comment

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...