How the heck to leave a good man?

[hawaiiancoconut]

Hugsovoice, I would like to appologize. I shoot from the hip and can be an absolute ashole/jerk sometimes; tonight was evident of that in your other thread.

Sorry, ma'am.

[Hugosvoice]

I recently stumbled across part of article that really spoke to me and made me feel a lot less alone. Tell me what you think. Not in relation to me, but just in general. I am not looking for validation. Some of you seem very wise and I'm just curious to what your opinion is, THAT'S ALL. Do you think it’s possible that no matter how wonderful someone is, they might just simply be the wrong person for you?

(No, clearly I haven't broken up with him yet. Ending a 12 year union isnt as simple as some make it out to be…)

“There is a culture in our relationship-obsessed young women's world that has obfuscated a dark truth: We are so overly focused on fixing our relationships that we have become completely blind to the fact that we're in terrible relationships. We read articles and talk and think for days about how to improve ourselves, our boyfriends and the health of our relationships. We give advice and listen to stories. But all this has inured us to the fact that we're just dating the wrong guy.

Maybe if we actually told our friends this, many of us would have gotten out of relationships we wasted years trying to fix. As friends, we want to be supportive and often we're afraid of taking a stance against a friend's boyfriend, lest he turn into a fiancé and we find ourselves at the worst table at the wedding. But it's become so commonplace, I personally can't keep my mouth shut anymore.

Part of the blame for this is the conventionally accepted wisdom that we're supposed to "work on our relationships." Today, men are expected to change: to communicate and share feelings and compromise with us women. But up until the sixties, if there were problems in a relationship, the woman had to evaluate the relationship, including the problems, because she would have never entertained the hope that her husband might change into a more sensitive, communicative man. Today, we evaluate our relationships and assume we can fix these problems because we're told to talk things out and tell our men what we need from them. But we've ignored the most important part of working at relationships --determining if we're in the right one.

We as women have deluded ourselves into believing that if we talk things out we can fix things and then we will have just the good portion of our relationship left. I hear friends say all the time, I just need to trust him more, then we'll be great, or once we figure out where to live, our relationship will be perfect, or he makes me so happy, except for [fill in the blank] which we'll fix by communicating better. But there is very little you end up fixing in a relationship. Your relationship very often has the same problems two years from now that you have today. I'm not saying be pessimistic and forget about trying to work out problems. By all means, try. But suppose things aren't fixed, is this still the relationship you want to be in? We can get men to talk with us and share more, maybe even get a manicure once before they die. But don't let this blind you to the fact that you might just be in a relationship that isn't right or isn't as good as one you could be in with someone else.

I've had to give up talking to some of my friends about their relationships because every time I get on the phone with them, they're depressed about the same problems with the same men. And of course they can see fifty possible answers but none of them include the obvious: BREAK UP WITH HIM.

I used to think that finding the right person to be with was about finding the person in the world who makes you the happiest. And that if you achieve that feeling of such complete love and euphoria and bliss with someone, you know you're with the right person. But it turns out, you can even achieve that feeling with the wrong person.”