The Breakup: The Male Breakup (Vol. 2) March 18, 2007
Posted by The Love Doctor in Strategery, The Breakup.trackback
We all have theories on it. It’s probably one of the most commented on and discussed social issues of human kind. Any contribution that I can add will just be a mere drop in the bucket, but it’s drop in a bucket, that can always use some more drops.
We talk about breakups so often, but few people really understand the processes at work.
Men and women breakup differently. Based on rigorous research, interviews, the contents of stolen diary entries, and my own misadventures here’s a quick outline of what (usually) happens when a guy wants to breakup with a girl.
The guy will begin to be less nice and caring towards the girl. He will seem “distant,” start hanging out with the boys more often, and not want to have any “talks.”
He’ll start being more flirtatious with other girls in front of you, may start saying how so and so is cute, or just start blatantly cheating.
He’ll eventually breakup when one of a few things happen:
1) The girl confronts him about his changed mood.
2) He cheats and feels bad, or cheats so many times that he feels bad – or through cheating simply finds somebody “better”.
3) He gets away with being an asshole for so long that he just no longer even takes the girl seriously anymore and just ends the whole damn thing.
Wait, Love Doctor, this seems really similar to what you described in the The Breakup: The Female Breakup. Well it is a little similar, in that in both cases the unhappy party starts to purposefully (or even sometimes unconsciously) shift their behavior to bring the issue to a head.
The primary difference with the female breakup is that the guy changes his behavior to force the issue, but it is also him who actually pulls the plug on the whole thing. The female attempt to breakup means terrorizing the guy enough that she succeeds in getting him to pull the plug out of frustration, but not so that the unhappy girl herself can do it, because she usually can’t.
Another big difference is that although the girl starts being mean towards the guy she wants to get to dump her, she will rarely actually cheat to the point of sleeping with anybody else in doing so. In fact, a lot of the time although she is trying to emotionally terrorize him into pulling the plug, she will want all of his attention and want to hang out with him, because she is still too emotionally attached to let go of that part of the relationship.
What a crazy world we live in.
yes, i agree, the guy whom i was going around with did exactly as describes above, i’m pretty amazed that most guys follow that pattern…. it still hurts though…..
dude i really need to be working on this screenplay but first i have to share that this is exactly what happened with my high school sweetheart! it was so shitty, the negligent behavior ranging from not returning phone calls to sitting quiertly on the phone…leading up to the other girl on the side who looked a lot like me (but not as cute).
that trauma spurred me to try and be a playa for several years afterwards.
and i have not dealt with it again thankfully.
my question is: what should a girl do when she starts to see those behaviors? should she end it premeptively? try to get to the heart of it and improve the relationship?
Thanks for your comments.
What you chose to do is definitely a personal choice. My best advice is directly confront him and ask him if he’s happy in the relationship.
You’ll hopefully get an honest answer and be able to make an informed decision.
Better yet get him to admit that there’s a problem (if there is one), try and fix it, and if you can’t break up.
Maybe you’ll get back together in the future, but there’s nothing worse than staying in an unhappy relationship, even if you’re still happy..it’s just that your partner isn’t.