my bf and I have been dating for over 3 years now since freshmen/soohmore year of college. We’ve been though lot of ups and downs, for some around he is the only person I have ever slept with. I love him a lot and seriously he is my best friend. I seriously see him being a great husband and dad to kids one day. But I’m seriously struggling. I’m about to graduate college and I need to figure my shit out. He dropped out of college and just now started online school. No judgment seriously but I just feel stuck like he has no drive for anything. He could be passionate about Vaccuming I just wish there was something that he was more driven about. I am posting this because I don’t want to hurt him I want to preface the breakup like it will be best for both of us but I’m scared he will hate me and feel blindsided but I have been having these thoughts for so long and have been trying to ignore them but I just can’t .
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There’s no real non hurtful way to break up with him
Who knows tho maybe the breakup is what he needs. He’ll be hurt but straighten up and find his passion after you leave. Sometimes pain is purpose
Well, first of all a breakup without hurt only occurs when somebody doesn’t have feelings for their partner, at all.
Secondly, I think you need to really reflect on the quality of love you have for him.
Looks fade
Health declines
finances become uncertain
Declining health
Depression
Miscarriage
Family troubles
All these things can occur in a relationship and STILL a couple not only maintains the relationship, but are stronger at the end then they were at the beginning.
All it takes for you to consider to break up with him is because of his drive, which can be a fleeting issue in the course of his life, and you’re looking for an out? Nah, I don’t think you have a great quality of love for him. A lot of affection? Sure.
If you break up with him, which honestly I think you should do for his sake, don’t maintain contact with him. None of this selfish “stay friends” malarky that delays his healing. Move on and let him move on without looking back.
Break ups hurt. Trying to sell it to him like it’s best for him is being selfish on your part, he’s allowed to be hurt and upset by this. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.
Have you tried sitting him down and talking to him about your feelings? A lot of people your age feel a bit lost and confused in life as they don’t really know what they want to do with their lives but he could all of a sudden find that one thing that he really enjoys doing and get his drive back. Or if you talked to him about it, maybe he would try for you. Communication is key. If you have already tried taking to him about it and he hasn’t tried for you than you need to also do what’s best for you. You’re both still young and although this will probably hurt for a bit, it will pass. Just sit him down and tell him how you feel. Good luck!
If he’s still into you and doesn’t see any problems with the relationship, you’re going to hurt him. It’s just a matter of degrees of hurt depending on how you do it.
You’ve been together since you were 18. Just be sort of honest and say that you feel you’ve grown apart. Now that you’re graduating, you want to concentrate on you and your career and not feel that you need to run all decisions by someone else.
He’ll hurt and feel hard done by and might hate you. But you’re playing the “It’s not you, it’s me” card and as long as you don’t start a new relationship with a new guy in the next couple of months, he should be able to get over it.
You can’t. It will always hurt him, especially if he doesn’t feel the same way and didn’t see it coming. And that’s a good thing. If it didn’t hurt, it wouldn’t mean that much in the first place.
This is such a hard thing to go through! You can always suggest a “break”. There’s a real possibility he’ll step up his game when he realizes what loosing you would feel like. It also gives both of you opportunities to feel what it would be like to be single before pulling the trigger for good. I would also emphasize the ‘it’s not you it’s me’ of it all. Very cheesy and overplayed, but it’s better to talk about yourself than the shortcomings of the other person (eg ‘I don’t feel ready to settle down in this situation’ vs ‘you’re not the person I want to settle down with’)
Give him that drive or push
So, he is ideal except you now see yourself as better than him because you have a degree and he still hasn’t figured himself out at 22…
I’m going to risk and say there is a little more to this story… You probably have been wondering about some other dude and you feel that this boyfriend that didn’t do anything wrong is a ball and chain.
You are very young and it’s normal. That is how men learn how women work. Women always seek to date up. As soon as you slip, you are gone.
It is his time to learn that emotional connection and being there for the ups and downs doesn’t mean shit.
But you wanted to have advice on how to do it without hurting him, right? Can’t be done.
What can be done is doing a clean amputation of that part of his heart. Don’t do the “let us be friends” long grueling cruelty part. Just end it and exit his life like a well removed cancer. It avoids remissions.
you can’t. breakups always hurt. you just gotta get it over with, so you can both move on to more compatible people.
At least you’re good enough to try and break up with him instead of sleeping around. Break his heart. How you say it won’t really matter at the end of the day. Teach him the lesson he needs about women so he can become the best version of himself and grow after he forgets you.
maybe talk to him first that you’re not feeling fulfilled in the relationship and what he could do to get the sparkle back. he can’t fix an issue he doesn’t know is there. most of the time u have those thoughts bc ur relationship needs a little work n tlc, if it’s not explicitly something wrong and unfixable (like he cheated, or you want kids and he doesn’t etc)
He has no drive because he’s now in online school? It’s still school. He will graduate with a degree. He still has to study and put in the work. Maybe he’s feeling a little confused about what he wants to do, but he’s still young.
Break-ups always hurt at least one party. What I will say as far as advice is if he has no drive now, it’s unlikely he will have it in the future. I’ve ended a relationship over it before. We were together 4 years and engaged. Something in me finally clicked that he would never be reliable. I gave him his ring and left. It hurt, but it was the right choice. It’s been twenty years, and I still have love for him. Sometimes, I miss him. But, he’s now 55 with no steady job, no money, multiple DWIs, a prison record, and he lives in a tent behind his friend’s house.
I’m not saying my story will be yours, but I do think your instincts are telling you something.
Ma’am, you are looking for someone better. Breaking up is telling him he’s not who/what you want.
It will hurt. Trying to package the breakup as enriching for him is infantilizing him. You are both adults.
If you need assurance/permission: let someone else love/have him that genuinely wants him.
Have you talked with him about the things bothering you?
and
I ask this because I literally did the same thing with my girlfriend in college. We had been happily dating for a year then I broke up with her before I graduated because I was scared that we wouldn’t be able to make it work once I started grad school and I was also feeling like she wasn’t as driven as I would’ve liked her to be. I did this despite feeling like she would make a good wife. Luckily, I came to my senses and we got back together a couple of months after and I’m so happy I made that decision. None of the hypothetical problems I made up in my head came true and we are now happily engaged.
I’m not saying this is exactly what you’re going through because I don’t know your situation, but it is something to think about. If you love him, don’t break up with him over hypotheticals.