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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU to ask why you broke up?

55 replies

LyraPotter · 14/01/2018 20:13

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?

OP posts:
SandAndSea · 15/01/2018 10:53

My ex and I broke up after I realised he didn't love me (or anyone). He was utterly charming but performing his way through life (he was a performer too). Everyone thought we were the perfect couple (we almost were). I loved him enormously and had thought he was 'the one' but I just had to believe that I deserved to be loved. It took me years to get over him. These days, I look back and wonder if he was a psychopath.

GlitterBallSacks · 15/01/2018 10:57

I ended my three-year relationship with DP because we had completely different approaches to money.

Three years isn't long but we were really in love and I think both of us were 100% sure we'd spend the rest of our lives together.

I did a thread about it

OuchBollocks · 15/01/2018 11:00

She was bad tempered and I was sick of bearing the brunt of the temper. Plus she was a slob. I'm not a housework queen by MN standards but I couldn't live like that.

OuchBollocks · 15/01/2018 11:01

glitter I remember your kettle thread, how are you doing now?

TheLegendOfBeans · 15/01/2018 11:06

He was the adult child of an alcoholic bully & he bullied me.

He also had what I’d class as an EA but turned it on me as I was so “hellish to live with”.

He could be funny, bright, amusing, even electrifying to be around. But as a boyfriend and then husband he was shite.

yourhavingagiraffee · 15/01/2018 11:06

Mines is wearing me down at the moment and it's all stemming from members of husbands family.

If we separate that will be the main reason why.

LakieLady · 15/01/2018 11:08

Because my ExH turned into an emotionally and financially abusive bully after we'd been married a couple of years.

After 8 years, I'd finally had enough and asked him to move out (I'd owned my own house for many years before we married).

It took another 5 years to get rid of the bastard, and cost me the best part of £100k, but it was worth every penny.

GabriellaMontez · 15/01/2018 11:15

Our lives were on a totally different trajectory.

He never grew up.

I lost respect for him for many reasons.

I left.

I doubt you know even half of what's gone on between your friends. They probably agreed not to air their dirty linen.

mistermagpie · 15/01/2018 11:16

Whatever you do, don't tell them how you feel. It makes a bad situation worse to hear how 'shocking' and 'out of the blue' a split is to outsiders. It's very unlikely to be out of the blue to the couple concerned.

I'd been with my ex for a decade 'happily' or some approximation of that. People expressed a lot of shock when we split but the fact is that he was a very different person behind closed doors. Not abusive or anything but moody, silky and practically non-verbal. He also had a drink problem that we both hid for various reasons. I was unhappy for a long time and when I made the decision to leave him (metaphorically, it was more of him being told to leave in reality!) it was really unhelpful for outsiders to tell me how happy we had been together. We weren't.

Laiste · 15/01/2018 11:18

Got married way too young. Under 20. Couldn't back out of it when i got cold feet for fear of causing ructions. We got on but there wasn't any actual sexual chemistry on my part. He didn't drink or beat me or sleep around but he did nothing much with the children and was miles more interested in his hobby and his (bloody silly) job than us. Soldiered on until my mid 30s and to the outside world we seemed a steady couple.

I was an accident waiting to happen though and it did. I met someone else. I've been with the someone else now for 12 years, married for 5. Very much in love. XH has remarried too.

The very weird thing is i can barely remember anything of the 15 years with X and i'm completely and utterly numb about the whole thing Confused

GlitterBallSacks · 15/01/2018 11:29

I'm doing great, thank you. I might update my old thread actually. It's weird looking back on it and seeing how far I've come Grin

BadPolicy · 15/01/2018 11:32

I heard a song on the radio. We'd been through some rough patches, on and off, ups and downs, but we're actually doing ok at the time. This song had the line "how can I give anymore, when I love you a little less than before" and I thought, that's it, that's me. I told him and he didn't argue.

I think it was just time.

mummmy2017 · 15/01/2018 12:25

Because a predatory woman 10 years younger wanted my life.
She went after him, based on what she saw, him handing me money to go shopping and enjoy my self on his pay day... money he had borrowed as he was always broke.
We ate out a lot, and he paid. with money I put in his back pocket as we were chatting and arranging with friends to go out. I hated beeing seen to be paying.
The nice houses we lived in .. Rented near his works, I also had a house of my own where my children went to school.
In fact he jumped as he was so flattered by her chasing him, and he was bored with real life.

It didn't end well. ill health means both have lost their jobs...

GinUser · 15/01/2018 12:51

Death of husband, by suicide. Pretty final really.

Albadross · 15/01/2018 23:26

So sorry Gin Thanks

Previous relationships have been because I 'looked too much like his dead mum' or 'you want to talk about feelings and it's too much'. Current marriage with DH I've been with almost 8 yrs is already becoming strained - we were forced into making the decision to either conceive right now or never and that plus a lot of other dramatic stuff sort of kept us together because we tolerated each other despite it. I had nothing good to compare it to and he'd never wanted to do kids or marriage but we're here somehow and wondering if this is just how it is until DS grows up. Sounds bleak but I think divorce would be harder. It's not abusive and we only mildly resent each other Confused

Sparklesocks · 15/01/2018 23:39

We just weren’t in love anymore.
We loved each other, but it was more like best friends living together. We rarely had sex, we stopped making an effort for each other and fell into quite a complacent comfortable lull. It became more about habit and routine than a nurturing, supportive partnership.

I took the step to end things and he was very upset, but a few months later he told me I’d done the right thing and he just didn’t want to see it.

I wanted more and so did he, and I don’t regret it.

SacreBlue · 15/01/2018 23:53

I haven’t broken up with my bf but my therapists are unanimous that I should. Possibly the only thing that might get me to go through with it is that over Christmas his family were outraged at male partners treatment of his sisters, trying to engage me in agreeing how horrible they were being when all the while their own male relative has been treating me worse than those men were treating his relatives. I was abused when a child & I have difficulty with boundaries. The double standards over Christmas were a shock that I’m not sure I can come back from though.

CremeFresh · 15/01/2018 23:56

He tried to drown me in the bath .

MyKingdomForBrie · 16/01/2018 00:10

I wanted kids and he didn’t (12 yr age gap and he had two from previous so fair enough!). So hard at the time but best decision I ever made in hindsight.

MyKingdomForBrie · 16/01/2018 00:11

Oh god sorry creme hope you’re safely away now.

CremeFresh · 16/01/2018 00:12

I am Kingdom thankyou.

SaucyJack · 16/01/2018 00:22

What do you mean when you say they looked so "happy" together?

I've known a fair few seemingly joyful, carefree, outgoing couples break up or have serious marriage troubles because one (or both) of the couple refuses in the long run to grow up and behave like a sensible adult. Made 1000x worse once the kids come along. Specially if heavy drinking is involved.

What counts as a great, zesty relationship when you're in your early 20s isn't necessarily quite so appealing when you have a mortgage to pay and four kids that need to be at school for 8.45.

Lostin3dspace · 16/01/2018 06:10

His reason was that he didn’t love me any more, but that he did care for me.

From my point of view I had a long list but I guess I was desperately hoping things would magically improve. Don’t know how this would have happened, you couldn’t talk to him, his only goal in difficult conversations was to make sure you took all blame.
Should have left him ten years before he chose to leave me really

KanielOutis · 16/01/2018 06:48

My then 5yo called me a cunt. I knew in that moment I wasn't protecting her from him. A whole load of other reasons too, but that was the defining moment that broke us.

Albadross · 16/01/2018 10:06

Thanks for this thread OP - I'm finding it helpful to read people's experiences.