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?

We were that couple OP. Everyone was gobsmacked when we split.

We had shifted however to be more like siblings than partners. We decided to call time before we started resenting each other

We're still close friends.

A lot of couples say the mutual decision thing when it turns out one of them has cheated and they don't want parents and their children to know about it.

I was with my exH for 12 years,married for 10.5 of them. I became seriously ill in September 1993 and in January 1994,he walked out on me. He said he 'needed space'. I thought there was a chance we would get back together, but 8 weeks later,he said he wanted a divorce. I found out as few months later that he had been seeing someone else since shortly after I'd become ill. When I was talking to my DM about it a few months later,she said that a lot of men just couldn't cope with illness,whether it was their wife/partner,or one of their children. And I have discovered this to be largely true since then. My one consolation was that when exH asked our then 9 year old DD who she wanted to live with,she said (much to his surprise) mummy.

1st fiance - I woke up one day realised he'd sexually assaulted me and was not worth my time anyway.
So I dumped him. My mother thanked him for always being so good to me!!

1st husband - we realised we weren't in love with each other, more like siblings.

next fiance - narcissistic arsehole who spent less than 2 min per day with our kids despite living in the same house. Seemed to think
cybering with other women was acceptable but bitched like hell if I laughed at a male friend's jokes.
why wouldn't I dump him??

I was married for 17 years together for 20 (I found the idea of divorce very difficult due my faith) I stayed in a soul destroying marriage. Only filing for divorce when my totally self obsessed, dishonest and childish ex-husband's behaviour started to impact on my dc. Breaking point occurred when ex (not)dh refused to believe my elder dd was suffering with serious MH problems and blamed her saying that she was just being a drama queen. He made the divorce as difficult as he could (so much so that my 3 wonderful dc are still NC with him). But it was absolutely the right thing to do for them and me. I am still a lone parent and happily single for the last 11 years.