How to break up with my long time partner without hurting him?

[Anonymous]

I'm 28, he's 29.

[East]

I have been with my partner now going on 29 years (in September) and the way I love him today is far different than when I loved him 10 or 20 years ago...

...and the sex is waaaaaayyyyy better now than it was the first 10 years....that whole intimacy thing was not easy for me and it reflected in our sex....

I think things like love/sexual appetite/attraction evolve as we do. Everything changes...and that will pretty much always be the case so you can expect it again...and again....

Whatever you do and however you do it...I wish you a smooth journey...

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Well lets put it this way, you can't dump a person and it not hurt them (and you to some minor degree).

7 years is a long term investment. And clearly one of you do not understand that love changes with time, that love has stages and that a LTR requires work and yes both partners will change with time. The only people who do not change with time are dead people.

I seriously doubt you have any real comprehension about how love operates and what to expect from it. Unless you have actively sought to study the subject you are a victim of the times and media that we have which promote this 'Happily Ever After' mythology, painting an unrealistic notion that love is only that hot, passionate variety that that there is this magical 'true love' that never loses its hottness or its passion.

These are myths which coupled with little to no understanding of human sex drives, and the single motivation that all humans do nearly all things because of, and that is to insure the surival of your DNA to the next generation.

As such. Monogamy, Love, Relationships are not quite what the media and popular myth about what humans can and cannot do in matters of love.

I assure of this. You toss him to the side it will hurt him - most likely alot. Further more you will definitely live long enough to wish to take it back.

Especially once you discover why it is there are so many 'Single Gay/Bi' individuals here on this board and on so many others.

Its because half decent potential mates are far and few between.

And as long as your current mate ain't cheating on you, abusing you, or leading you into a life of crime he is most like as good as it gets.

Since you have been together 7 years, I would lay odds and bet that you are suffering from the 7 year itch.

Furthermore, I'm willing to bet whatever else I have left that he too is feeling EXACTLY the way you are feeling.

I would strongly urge you to consider couple's counseling.

[Charon]

As you've gone along, your tone has changed from one of really being concerned as to the least painful way to how to just get it over and forget the consequences. You say you loved this man but now my impression is that he's become an inconvenience. You want to start over, have those first glorious days, months and years of passion, sex, love and the thrill of it all. That ends as you well know after three or four years and it becomes where you are now; Tedious, or at least to you. You've settled into a rhythm that's comfortable, not as exciting as it used to be but....that's going to happen with any couple after a certain amount of time. What you want....is a boyfriend for all the giggling, hot sex, falling in love romance that you had once. And...you can probably find it. He'll be a bit younger and you'll have to try harder to be what you not quite are but...you'll get three or four hot years and then....eleven years will have passed. Are you going to shed this latest affair to recreate the crime? And lets go back to the nice guy you're about to dispose of. I hope there's another nice guy, also recently turned in on a new model, and they find each other. Maybe they won't have the sparks and the moans and the thrill of it all but....they'll fall in love and in twenty or thirty years they'll still be in love. You, however will have run out of "fresh" faces. If you've got someone, better to keep them as in this case there are no more fish in the sea. Say, when you punch his ticket and tell him it's been fun but it's been, suggest you know a very nice, very intelligent much older man who has the time and the affection for a younger man who's devastated and just needs someone to sit with, talk with, demonstrate old fashioned affection and, by the way, good manners. I'm not exactly available but he's welcome here for appreciation of his gratitude and to help him find another man, unlike the one who dumped him. Your soon to be ex deserves every consideration your not giving him. Oh, and when the question comes up, and it will, as to what happened to your last partner.....I'd have a really good answer.

[yourname]

Well, it really sounds like you've entirely made up your mind. And not sure how anyone can give you meaningful advice on *what* to say since much of that is "knowing your audience" and we not only don't know him, but we're only getting your side of the fence. I mention that more to point out that the purpose of your thread seems less about learning a technique to break up and more about seeking validation that what you're doing is right. And maybe it is.

BUT. If it is over, then what *more* do you have to lose by talking to him about what might be radical changes? --it's not like your relationship can be "more OVER" than it already is (by the sounds of it). So if you have needs that are no longer being met (or if your needs have just changed over time, and your relationship hasn't kept up) then I strongly suggest having a deep heart-to-heart ---several in fact.

It's very possible that he's feeling the same and is also just going through the motions, hoping the wind picks up your sails again soon. He may also be wanting some significant changes. 7 years is 7 years for both of you, and the "itch" is real. The other thing is you'll never get through the 7 year itch with anyone until you get through it with someone...why not him? --it will take you at least another 7 years (and probably more) to find another suitable partner to see if you can get past this hurdle.

And it's also possible that the best thing for both of you is to call it quits. Maybe you both deserve "better" than the other is capable of right now; maybe carrying on is denying that a square peg will never fit a round hole. But I still think that if you've already come to that conclusion (and is sounds like you have --emphatically), you have nothing to lose by spending some time figuring out what *really* is missing from this relationship --what is it that you're not finding here that you think you'll find elsewhere --SPECIFICALLY. And then just lay your cards on the table: "hey, I've always topped, I want to bottom for a bit"..."hey, we've always been _________, well I see myself being more ________ in the years to come...how do you feel about that??" It may very well be that this man "you love, but are not in love with anymore" may gush "OMG, thank God! I didn't know how to bring it up....I want to ________!!!" And maybe there's some spark there that can take you another year or seven into your future together.

Best wishes either way.

[jimcrackcorn]

I know of no long term relationships where the deep romantic affection didn't evolve as the years tick by. A relationship is likely to change shape multiple times over the course of its lifetime; and must be continually worked-on if it is to thrive.

New love,,,, is exciting and exhilarating. It produces those "drug like" happy feelings that make us feel good even when we are stuck in a traffic jam on Monday morning.

After a couple years, the "new love" wears off. Just like when you buy your first new car or new home,,, once the excitement wears off - you are left feeling indifferent to the whole thing. This is the time when most good relationships fall apart. Many people mistake the natural shift from passionate love to companion love for incompatibility or unhappiness or "falling out of love". For many, the possibility that things might be different - more exciting, more satisfying - with someone else proves difficult to resist.

If you must leave this relationship, do so in a manner that will be understandable to your partner. He needs a good explanation as to why you are leaving him. Do not lash out at him if he gets angry at you for leaving him, instead, try to keep a bridge open for future reconciliation or friendship.

I wish you the best,
Jim

[HIkerSkier]

We’ve always been together through thick and thin, we’ve always cared for each other, we loved each other a lot. All this time I couldn’t imagine I could be together with someone else but him, I was sure that he’s my partner for life.

However now, after 7 years I feel that something has changed. It feels like something has burned out inside of me. I don’t know how or when exactly it happened, but I don’t love him like I did before.

We’re still doing everything as a couple – kissing, cuddling, having [ ], but I don’t feel the spark of it anymore. I wouldn’t even call it making love, now for me [ ] with him is just that – [ ] .

I don’t want to hurt him as he doesn’t deserve it,

This sounds very sad. You have gotten some very good advice by a number of posters. Of course, if you break up he is going to be hurt - that is inevitable. But like Sharkspeare (and a couple of others) said, if you end the relationship, be very certain it is something you want to do, because once it is ended, it is over for good (and another one just might not come along).

FWIW, my thoughts (and being a newbie here, I can't use certain words, or this response will not appear on the board):

It is difficult to really assess your situation, as we know nothing about you except your age. You could just as easily be living in rural Yorkshire as Hampstead or Knightsbridge - or even in Turkey for all we know. But I wonder if ending your relationship is what you really need to do. You describe no major change of circumstance, like deciding you are not gay after all, or that you want a sex change, or that you are determined to adopt children and he wants no part of it, or that you have found a new spiritual belief, or that you have been surpressing a burning desire to live in an Ashram, or move to a secluded jungle location.

You say you no longer love your partner. I would say that from see from what you said, it is obvious that you do love him - you're not romantically in love with him anymore. You have said only nice things about him. You haven't said that he is too dumb for you, or that he has always bored you and you have put up with it for years. Relationships change over time. You can't expect to love him in the same way today as when you first met. For most guys, that thing men do in bed together won't be as intense or as frequent as it was in the early years. LTRs, whether a legal marriage or not, are defined over time more by what you get out of each other and your future expectations more than romance and that thing men do in bed together.

" I believe it's not very often for gay couples to stay together this long. Maybe love just cannot last this long. " That's not true. Just in this post, you learned that Showme, MeninLove, and East have been with their partners for more than 2 decades. My own relationship is going on 28 years. Although I have been on another board with a number of the posters here for several years, I have never said anything there about my own relationship, but for your benefit, I will now. There have been a number of times in those many years when I considered maybe I should end the relationship, and I am sure he has felt the same at times. But neither of us did end it. Because if we thought about it rationally, we would always come to the conclusion that we were better off staying together than splitting up. There is not the passion of when we first met, but we do love and care for each other, and there is no reason for that to come to an end.

So although you think you have to end your relationship, if you were truthful in all that you said, I would suggest, instead of relying on a bunch of internet strangers, to reaffirm your decision to end your relationship and tell you how to do it, that you first talk it out with a gay professional - therapist-counselor-psychologist - whatever he is called, - and see what your real deep feelings are about your boyfriend, and whether you really want to end it because you don't feel a spark anymore. It can't hurt.

Good luck.

[Edward]

Well if you don't love him anymore, then I believe there's nothing much you can do. Thank him for the years you spent together and start a new life.

[Anonymous]

Well, I'm updating my situation a bit - I reread once again this thread and the posts from you all and I just decided to tell him and do it as soon as possible. Probably I'll do it this evening when I come home from job, this is not any special day for us and I want to solve this issue as fast as possible. Probably I'll later tell you what'll happen with us and what will we decide.

[Iceblink]

Well, I'm updating my situation a bit - I reread once again this thread and the posts from you all and I just decided to tell him and do it as soon as possible. Probably I'll do it this evening when I come home from job, this is not any special day for us and I want to solve this issue as fast as possible. Probably I'll later tell you what'll happen with us and what will we decide.

Really, that's all you can do. Just do it honestly and get it over with. One thing to remember, no matter how kind you are about it, you are going to come out looking like the bad guy and from his point of view I think that is perfectly understandable.