AIBU to ask why you broke up?

[LyraPotter]

This is an intrusive question so please just ignore me if you think I'm being cheeky!

Really close friends of my husband and I have just broken up. They've been together for 12 years and seemed SO happy - one of those couples you just thought would make it. As far as we have been told no one cheated and it's mutual - they just don't want to be together any more.

Both my husband and I are terribly upset, both because we love and feel sorry for our friends and because it's alarming that even very established couples who have been together for ages can still decide that they don't want to carry on together.

I'm hoping for some insight... what causes couples to break up after years of building a life together? What were the warning signs and what was the final straw? Could you have averted it?

Constant grinding down negativity. We still get on ok though.
There are lots of people in the world that I like just that the majority of them I wouldn’t want to live with. It became the same with my exp.

What did surprise me were the number of people who were invested in our relationship, mourned it and the people I lost over it. This probably hurt more than actual split

Can totally understand why that would make you break up!

That's an interesting point about other people mourning your relationship - we definitely need to be careful not to burden them with our feelings. And I want to make sure we stay friends with both of them.

Perhaps they are not telling you everything.
Maybe behind closed doors they got on each other's nerves.

I'm sure that's true, it's impossible to know what's happening in private. It's just crazy to me that the public face can be so different to the private

My first marriage broke up because he was a cheat and a liar among other things but not a bad bloke really, just so long as you don't have to be married to him.

Second marriage broke up because he interrupted me all the time, talked over me, finished my sentences, showed me up in front of other people, thought he was far better than me. He was a less pleasant character really.

I guess you will gradually hear more about the reasons for your friends' breakup, OP.

Constant stress, juggling full time jobs and childcare, no time for each other, no family to call on for childcare even for a weekend for years on end, hence no time alone together. Also niggling gripes caused by exhaustion and the menopause !

He was unreasonable, bad tempered, violent, and was eventually caught by my best mate with his tongue down someone else's throat.

It is possible for a couple to like each other as people but not want to have sex any more for endless reasons.

Imagine one of your friends that you really like & care for (male or female). Now imagine you have to live with them & be intimate. This was my relationship & it just felt wrong.

Yes I lost friends over this - people who implied I should have tried harder. Who couldn’t understand from their perspective of a happy relationship.

Having said that I am currently supporting a friend in the process of a break up and it is very hard to be neutral & support both people in the couple so I see from the other side too

Abusive behaviour. I was good at putting a mask on, so it did come as a surprise to some. But not those who knew me and him best.

First marriage broke up. We outgrew each other, I think. The person I became between 16 and 30 had very little in common with him.

Infidelity (not me).

I was with someone for 8 years. I just didn't love him anymore. Lots of people were very upset my family included. Still have a friend who is still hurt to this day... 7 years later!!! But I would not stay with someone to make everyone else happy.

Lack of sex, not for want of me trying. And he also kept me at arms length emotionally and looking back I think he was a bit ashamed of me. We got on well on a day to day level though and people were shocked.

Now I'm with dp I can see my previous relationship lacked passion and emotional intimacy but I wouldn't have been able to say that at the time as that was the only really serious relationship that I'd had.

An affair (not me)

I grew up and unfortunately he didn't and so he never stepped up to being a father and remains to the day still very overly reliant on his mother to do basic life tasks for him. We are still friends but want very different things and have very different priorities.

He was emotionally abusive, who cheated on me, belittled my taste in music and films and thought his taste was better than mine. He also used to wheedle and whine if I didn't want sex and invite himself over to my house.

My brother was shocked when I told him what my ex was like but said it seemed so obvious looking back.

My mum and gran thought the sun shone out of his backside and I was heavily leant on not to make him unhappy in any way.

1 - grew apart, our values weren’t the same and we wanted different things, he was a creature of habits and routine, I wanted to travel and explore
2 - he cheated on me
3 - emotionally abusive
4 - different sex drives and a LDR where neither of us could relocate
5 - emotionally and financially abusive
Only one was a marriage but rest were long term and mostly involved property owning etc
I will never marry again or live with anyone

Controlling, emotionally abusive, shouting,manipulative bully, living on eggshells, and much more. I will never get trapped in a relationship where I'm locked in again.

I discovered two years after the event that shortly after the birth of our baby he had got drunk at a pub, took a girl into the car park and had some ‘sexual contact’

I was never sure exactly how far it went but it made zero difference to me I ended it immediately. Some people were very upset as they couldn’t understand why I’d break up a marriage when I had two small children over something that happened once, two years prior when he was begging me for forgiveness and still loved me etc. But as far as I was concerned, he’d ruined it by ignoring our vows. Once a cheat always a cheat. If he loved me as much as I felt I deserved he wouldn’t have done it and I knew I’d never look at him the same way or trust him again.

So glad I binned him. Kids were young enough to deal with it well, I got happily remarried and he got a new girlfriend and.....cheated on her when drunk So no regrets.

My friends split recently and he's behaved terribly. It has been awful. He expected us all(our friendship group) to socialise with him and his fancy woman!

NOPE!

Big shock for him which proves that he was a self-centered twat.

They broke up because he wanted to sleep with other women.

That was all.

He apparently felt that he'd not had a "fair chance" because he met my friend when he was only 21.

Sometimes you just end up wanting different things, I was with my ex for 10 years and we were very happy for most of that time. But I wanted children and he didn't, and there was no way forward. It's quite a common problem.

My brother was with a gf for 6 years and we were all shocked when they split, they were one of those couples that you thought would go on to get married, have children etc. She was part of our family. But they got together very young and had both been through a lot, had different goals as they grew up and quite a few issues including infidelity. You never know what goes on in private, however it appears from the outside.

I was with a wonderful man for 12 years. He was an academic, ran a large research group, was totally faithful to me, witty, entertaining, huge sex drive but utterly gifted in bed, I melted at his touch. I was head over heels in love.

When we got together we discussed having children, he wanted to wait, which was fine, then as years passed he swithered, then finally decided he did not want kids- ever.
I was 36.
I wanted babies.
I left him.

It broke my heart, but it was his needs over mine.
I did meet a lovely man a short time after and went on to have children.

It took me some years to get over my relationship. Sad, but just the way things worked.

A few reasons, most of which are small, but build up to be pretty large.

First, he had very little faith in me. If I were to go for a uni exam and come out saying "That was harder than I'd expected!" he would automatically assume I'd failed, that we'd wasted money on my failure, and what was the point in trying again, I'd just fail again.

Second, I often felt as though my opinion was superfluous. When we were buying a house, I put forward my life savings that I'd been squirreling away since 15 or so. Despite objecting vociferously, he put an offer onto a shite house in an area well known to be controlled by a bikie gang, and basically said "sign the papers, or I'll sign them for you." At 21 I honestly thought he could do that.
He did the same thing with my car- refused me money to have it serviced because he didn't like it. Didn't care the tyres were bald, or that it wouldn't idle right. Blamed me when the police pulled me over and fined me. Apparently it was my fault for driving a shonky car. His motorbike, though, that got anything it needed.

Third, if he was going to be late, he would never, ever let me know. He worked night shift and so we didn't have dinner together, we had breakfast. I would time breakfast so that it would be ready ten minutes after he got home at 6am, except he would just...roll in the door at seven or eight and wonder why I was upset.

Fourth, I wasn't particularly good at expressing my point of view coherently. Everything came across as "because it's what you're meant to do!" and then I would cry because I was frustrated with myself for being incapable of being any clearer.

Fifth, he left his work boots in the hall for me to break myself on bringing the laundry in.

Six, he left his undies balled up in his pants, didn't empty his pockets, and left his socks balled up inside the other.

I woke him up one afternoon and just said "I want you to move out on Sunday. DBro is bringing his trailer to help." He just said "okay," and went back to sleep. That Sunday was quite literally the second best day of my life.