Let me tell you about the time I convinced someone to break up with their girlfriend.

And it wasn’t even so I could date him myself!

While we’re covering the subject of not remaining in a bad relationship, I had met this guy through friends a few years ago, and I guess I seem like an understanding person, so he opened up to me.  He loved his girlfriend and he’d been with her for a long time, but she was kind of self-centered and did some inconsiderate things to him.

I said to him that she would never change.  What he’s getting now is what he will always get from her, so if he was okay with that, fine.  But if he didn’t like how she treated him, he’d have to break up with her.  He kind of nodded when I told him this, as if it were something he knew deep down but wouldn’t admit until someone else said it out loud.  Now, I didn’t tell him this thinking he’d actually pick a course of action.  It was just what popped into my mind when he told me what was going on, and within an hour, I had forgotten that the conversation took place.

A few days later, he told me he decided to break up with her.

Does that make me some kind of home wrecker?  Anyway, we didn’t keep in touch so I don’t know if he followed through, but I’ll give him credit for actually listening to my difficult-to-swallow advice.  I think at that point he was ready to hear something he didn’t want to hear.  This might have been why he took the advice of a relative stranger.

I said in my last post that you can’t change an asshole into a good person.  Most people avoid getting themselves involved with assholes, but they do get themselves involved in relationships that won’t work out.  You have different life goals, different family backgrounds or moral codes, etc.  These are solid reasons to end a relationship on otherwise friendly terms.  What’s important to do is
1. Recognize how you’re different
2. Establish whether or not you can live with those differences
3. Decide if you’ll stay with them or break up

It’s a simple three-part formula until you realize you’re dealing with your emotions, which tend to get in the way.  But the important rule to always remember is that when it comes to other people, what you see is what you get. This is important when you’re developing a friendship, and it’s even more important if you begin dating someone.  You can be friends with someone who, say, handles their finances differently than you do, but that kind of difference can ruin a relationship.  No one will magically change overnight, particularly if their current way of living works for them.  Even when presented with the consequences of their actions (their SO breaks up with them), most people will continue to act as they had before, and eventually find someone else who puts up with it (unless they come to realize that they are the common factor in all of their failed relationships and then take a break from dating to do some self-evaluation, but that’s expecting a lot).

My point is this.  You know that joke where the guy goes to the doctor and says, “Doc, it hurts when I do that” and the doctor says, “Then don’t do that”?  Relationships are the same way.  If you’re dating someone and you don’t particularly like how they act most of the time, don’t date them.  If you talk to them about what’s bothering you and they don’t change, there’s your answer.

So, to that guy whose relationship I might have inadvertently ended, I hope you found the strength to ask for what you deserve, and I hope you got it eventually, because you were too nice to be treated badly.