How I Get A Girl To Break Up With Me
Image by El Nuko via Flickr
Today’s Guy’s Story is by Dennis Hong. Dennis blogs at Musings on Life and Love, a group blog I’ve been crushing on lately. Pretty much all of the writers are terrific, making the site a total must read.
How I Get A Girl To Break Up With Me
I hate breaking up with someone. I really do. Call me spineless, tell me to grow a pair, I get it. I just have this need to be the “good guy” (or at least deceive myself that I am). I feel better when I’m the poor sap who gets broken up with, rather than the a-hole who dumps an awesome girl.
To that end, I’ve come up with some pretty devious ways to get a girl to break up with me. When I’m ready for the relationship to end, but don’t want to pull the slow fade or just stop calling altogether (remember, I’m trying to be the good guy here), these devastatingly effective strategies get her to do all the dirty work for me:
I “become” excessively busy at work
All of a sudden, my workload surges exponentially. I’ve been given a new project. Or, I’m the newly-appointed office firefighter. Either way, I have to start working late most nights.
After a few months, she starts wondering if work matters more to me than she does. It does, of course. What she never realizes is that I don’t actually have to do all this extra work. I only take it on to get out of hanging out with her. In some cases, I don’t even have any extra work. I simply spend my late nights getting reacquainted with WebSudoku.
So, she breaks up with me. And I get to be the poor overworked sap, unreasonably forced to choose between career and personal life.
I “become” stressed out and moody
This one works great in conjunction with the first strategy, especially if I’m dating a particularly supportive woman who understands the importance of career. For her, being busy may not be a good enough reason to break up. Seriously, right? How dare she be so considerate?
In any case, with an increased workload comes increased stress, and with increased stress comes a decline in my overall demeanor. I’m not my usual cheerful, upbeat self. I become withdrawn and unpleasant. Yeesh, who in their right mind would want to date someone like me?
Exactly.
I “become” opinionated and argumentative
Now, I am a naturally opinionated person, but I’m also good at letting the little things go. With the exception of a few “hot topics,” I generally don’t care too much if someone disagrees with me.
That is, unless I’m trying to break up with that someone. Then, I let nothing go. Every single opinion she expresses is met with an opposing viewpoint, whether or not I actually disagree.
What’s most powerful about this particular strategy is its permanence. With the work or the stress, the girl may still have hope that my change in behavior is temporary. With the argumentativeness, though, she’ll hopefully figure that that’s just how I am. So, she has to decide whether or not she can live with it.
Of course, I do everything in my power to make sure she can’t.
I “become” a social butterfly
A group of friends have invited me to their weekly poker night. At the same time, some coworkers want to start doing happy hours every other week. Also, my community service organization has elected me the new social chairman. Oh, and a bunch of old fraternity brothers are planning a trip to Vegas next weekend.
Quite simply, my social calendar fills up, and I have less and less quiet time to spend with her. So, she wonders what she’s doing with me.
Then again, if she’s a social butterfly herself, this strategy flops big time.
I “become” flakey
This one is probably the most frustrating, but it’s also perhaps the most effective. I start forgetting about plans that we’ve made. I plan a day trip with her, but forget to ask for the day off. Worse yet, I forget her birthday.
This strategy does have a drawback, though, in that I make myself look pretty unattractive. If the girl I’m dating complains about me, the flakiness strategy (along with the moodiness strategy) may hurt any potential chances I might have with her friends.
Yes, this is how devious I am. Even as I’m breaking up with a girl… or, ah, being broken up with, I’m thinking of how I can get in good with her friends afterwards.
See? Getting a girl to break up with me isn’t really all that hard.
And now that you all think I’m the biggest douchebag in the world, I want to clarify that this is not a how-to column. I’m offering these strategies so that you can recognize if someone pulls them on you, not so that you can learn them for yourself. Passive-aggressive behavior is deplorable. If we’ve simply lost interest in the relationship, we owe the other person the respect of being honest.
For what it’s worth, I’ve personally apologized to the women I’ve done this to. I’m certainly not proud of myself for having behaved like this, and honestly, I don’t do it anymore. I can’t defend my past actions, but I can share what I’ve done in the hopes that others won’t fall prey to similar tactics.
So, who here has been a victim of these strategies? I have a nagging feeling that I’m not the only guy—or girl—who’s pulled them.
Tags: break up, career, work
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Oh. my. Gawd. I was reading this just praying that it was a satire! I soooo hate this shit. I really think that people trying to be the ‘nice guy’ or girl in this situation are actually being huge douches. Most likely even worse than a out and out jerk, because then you can call them an asshole and move on. The last guy who did this to me I called him on it. Boy was that a deer in the headlights moment! Are you actually aware of what you are doing when you do it? And that this little piece was a prelude to better behavior!
p.s. Found your blog yesterday and really like it! Love that this piece is so honest
I was in a long term relationship with someone that was passive/agressive, so I’m quite adept at recognizing these actions and severing the relationship quickly. When I was in the relationship that I assumed was for life, I learned to bring the situation to a head, rather than let it fester. I also know that if a guy wants to see or talk to me, he will. If he doesn’t, there’s nothing I can do to make that happen. Life is much easier this way.
Thanks! Glad you like the blog.
To answer your question, these started off as subconscious behaviors. If I started losing interest in a relationship, but didn’t really have a good reason why, I’d withdraw into myself, trying to figure out if I wanted to stay in the relationship or not. Of course, I wouldn’t ever tell her what was going inside my head.
If, during this time, she noticed my withdrawal and tried to get me to open up to her and tell her what was going on, my resistance would manifest itself as moodiness, grumpiness, etc. It was kinda like, “I’m trying to figure out if I like you or not, so leave me alone.” I would never say this, of course, because I wasn’t necessarily ready to end it.
Over time, my withdrawal would make her more and more resentful, eventually pushing her to break up with me. So, by mulling over whether or not I wanted to stay with someone, I was effectively making the breakup self-fulfilling.
More time passed, and I realized how the act of withdrawing could become a breakup maneuver in itself.
Even more time passed, and I realized how douchey these moves were.
So, that’s basically the progression that I went through. Hope that explains it.
Over time, my withdrawal would make her more and more resentful, eventually pushing her to break up with me. So, by mulling over whether or not I wanted to stay with someone, I was effectively making the breakup self-fulfilling.
The withdrawal part is very common in long term relationships where you go through a phase when you’re not AS in love as at other times. Usually, though, the partner senses this, and gives you the one thing you don’t want more of-attention.
Wow. I appreciate the (brutal) honesty here, but this is a little disturbing. I’ve never experienced any of these behaviors myself, but I know friends who have. It’s nice to hear the thinking and intentions behind them. Seems to me though, that (obviously) the better course of action would be to just end things? I’m really quick to end things, maybe too quick because I’m not sure I let my relationships run their course. But I feel like at least I am upfront.
I think you make a good point – there are probably girls that pull this behavior too. I suspect more men than women do, however….
Perhaps the part that bugged me the most was that you have to actually put work into pretending work is crazy. That you actually have to stay late at work, playing WebSudoku, to keep up the illusion that work is nuts. That takes definite commitment to not having a confrontation
.
Thanks for sharing, even though this post sort of left me with pretty unsettled emotions…
Hey! WebSudoku takes a lot of work. I play on the Expert level, ya know!
Anyway… well, sure. The post is *supposed* to make you feel uncomfortable. That was the point.
If you check out the comments when I originally posted this on my blog, a LOT of people did not take it well. Douche bag, douche tool, a-hole, I was called it all. My guess is that this post struck a nerve with people because… well, because they probably realized they’d had these things done to them before.
Dennis, I saw those replies, and I have to say, I think most of them didn’t read your disclaimer, and realize you aren’t giving advice to men on how to do it, that you are owning up to your own past. I don’t think people “got it”. The lack of reading comprehension skills in this country never ceases to amaze me.
Man, I hate men who do this. A relationship that might have ended with some good memories and a clean break instead end with a long drawn out set of little hurts and insults that completely supercede anything positive that may have come from it – it becomes ten times worse than it could have been. For the girl. For the guy, he never had to do a thing, then gets to sit back and feel good and wistful about the situation. I’ve had men do this and then years down the road, act thrilled to bits to see me and try to get something going again, as if they don’t realize that I’ve already wasted more time than I planned on their big bag of bullshit.
I’m not sure of the point the author is making. He asks if we’re “uncomfortable” because we have experienced tools like this, and I have experienced tools like this, but hearing it doesn’t make me uncomfortable, because it isn’t my problem. He doesn’t want to be called a douche but claims he gets that it’s a bad idea and is now cluing in us hapless females for the future. I don’t know. Something of it still reeks of “but I’m a good guy, really, and these things just happen” to me.
Nope, you can call me a douchebag. I never said that I didn’t want to be called one. I own up to it.
I try to avoid the brutality of breaking up as much as I can, as well as all the ways to make her break up with me. But, hey, it happens.
And you don’t want to be with the one that isn’t meant for you.
In my experience, the ones you really like and treat well will break up with you, and the ones you don’t really care about and treat like shit will never go away. How does that work out?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
Ta Da! The light finally dawned! I did the female version of the passive-aggressive break-up ploy. I realized it once I read Dennis’s article. How did I do it? 1. I had month long PMS…there’s nothing like laying on the “drama” to force a guy to re-evalualte why he would want to spend any day of the month with you. Wearing sweatpants and eating garlic on a Friday night date really drove my point home. 2. My teenage daughter suddenly developed a learning disorder and needed my constant supervision every night to prevent flunking out of 8th grade. No time for mom, a young girl’s life was on the line 3. Now this was the last straw, I said “we really need to talk about where our relationship is headed”. That rendered him mute, made him squeamish…and suddenly he became very, very busy, at work, around the house and with social engagements. He dropped out of sight. Thank goodness. Had I only been mature enough to realize he just wasn’t the guy for me and that right now in my life no one is. But, at least his ego remained intact. And I got my life back. I wear sweats any old time I like, eat as much garlic as I want, control the remote, watch chick flicks, go to yoga and I’m no longer passive-aggressive about being single and loving it.