Is it my fault?

[dbl]

So I've been hanging out with a friend. I met him like about 3 months ago. So yesterday we were walking along the river area and he started talking about breaking up with his boyfriend. They were together about 6 years. He said he've thought about it before but he wasn't sure if he really want that. He asked me many things since i have more experience than he does. And it was his first relationship with someone. I told him if you are thinking about breaking up it isn't a good sign and if you want to do it then do it. It will be harder because he is your first boyfriend and you two were together for a long time and the next day he told me he broke up with his boyfriend. And that kinda made feel like i pushed him to do it and it was my fault. I can't help but I've got the feelings it is my fault?

[LJay]

If you are concerned about this you should ask your friend. People here cannot possibly know if you were responsible for the breakup. Whatever the case, it is your friend who must take responsibility for his actions, not you.

[IanSaysHi]

Pretty much what [MENTION=20933]LJay[/MENTION] said. If he didn't want to break up with his boyfriend, then he wouldn't have. Unless you threatened him, or offered him a massive cash bribe, or used some kind of voodoo mind control, then he has accept responsibility for his actions.

[Darius]

Hi dbl. Whenever someone asks, directly or indirectly, for the kind of advice that involves the heart, we need to be careful. It's often best to answer questions with a question. For example; when he said he was wondering about breaking up with his bf, you could ask what's going on with him and the bf and see where that leads. If he says his bf is beating him up, advising him to break up is appropriate. If he says the relationship has become stale, that same advice would be inappropriate because they might just need to work through some issues. Ultimately, the responsibility for decisions has to fall on the person making it and when we give direct advice that leads them toward a certain decision, then we have taken some responsibility on ourselves.

Advice on these things is always tricky and you should just keep lines of communication open with him. In time you will see if he made the right decision or a mistake. If he regrets it, it might not be fatal.

[meridannight]

No. He is responsible for his own actions. In practice, even if you influenced him, if he ended a relationship on another's advice then he wasn't much suited for a relationship to begin with. Grown men are capable of making up their own mind and they do what they have to do.

From my experience, no external advice, no matter how sane/good, is going to make a guy do something he does not want to do, or deter him from doing something he genuinely wants to do.

For the record, though, it is not yours to say that doubts another man is feeling are ''not a good sign''. Relationships can be rocky, and difficult. A man can doubt, and not be sure, but it's not a sign that he should get out of it. Only he knows whether that's something to pause over or not. It is impossible for you to make that judgment unless you are very familiar with both, him and his lover. And even then...

[LJay]

Silly, silly me! I always forget about the voodoo mind control!

Don't worry, dbl, you seem like much too much of a nice person to use that anyway.

[Cobalt]

Not sure if this has been said but, don't ever feel like you're responsible for someone else's actions. If he already felt like he wanted out of the relationship like he told you then I can't see how this is your fault. Now, if you were constantly flirting with him, spreading lies about his boyfriend claiming he cheated or what have you, and kept trying to get him to leave his boyfriend and get with you then yeah, that should sit on your conscious. But in my opinion, you didn't do anything wrong. You talked with him and offered advice, what he went and did after the fact is entirely his responsibility.

[TwisttheLeaf]

It sounds to me like he was seriously considering breaking up with his boyfriend before he ever told you about it. I don't really see that as your fault. You didn't put those thoughts in his mind, and if he doesn't want to be with his boyfriend, it's right to break up with him.

[princealbertofb]

Some people have difficulty making decisions, and especially life changing decisions like this one. I suspect that he was having issues with the breakup and he needed a sounding board to make up his mind about something that he had already considered. Maybe he just needed a bit more courage to do so. Some people would probably take to drinking to solve that type of problem (Dutch courage, as it is called), and some people would just need a little nudge from someone else's mind. He trusted your opinion, maybe, but ultimately, as has been said by others here, he was the one taking that decision. I think he had already made the decision but was just asking you what you thought to confirm what he already knew. Should you feel responsible? Only marginally, unless you have special magic powers to make things happen.