When it comes to a relationship ending, every situation is different, and often neither party is really to blame. Then again, other times somebody absolutely is to blame, and the entire breakup could have been avoided if they’d just been paying more attention.
In a thread on the AskWomen SubReddit, women have been sharing all of the different factors that led to them breaking things off with their partners.
One commonly mentioned issue that comes up, again and again, is a lack of communication. “He was avoidant and refused to talk about any issues unless I literally begged him,” says one woman. “And to make it worse, he had an aversion to facing problems in person, and preferred to hide behind text messages.
The last two years of the relationship being long distance made this problem unsolvable. He also was unable/unwilling to give me the affection I needed, and in the end, it felt like we were just friends who talked every day, not lovers.”
“He refused to talk about any problems at all ever and just kept them bottled up,” says another. “One day, he exploded and told me he had been lying to me for a year & that all these things he said were perfectly fine were actually not fine at all.
I’m 100% willing to work on things in relationships, and we’d probably still be together if he had communicated issues in the moment instead of lying and saying there weren’t any issues. I couldn’t continue with the relationship. I’d be super paranoid and I’d feel like I’m walking on eggshells all the time. Not worth it.”
Another fairly obvious red flag mentioned by a number of commenters is spending a lot of your time together as a couple fighting: “Arguing about the same problem over and over again,” is one commenter’s reason for ending a relationship. “The subject of that argument was that I felt unwanted and unloved because he didn’t show me affection.
My favourite quote from him to sum up that relationship: ‘But we cuddled yesterday!'” Having the same fight time after time is a sign that something in the relationship isn’t working, but it’s even more egregious when the issue you’re clashing over is that one party isn’t responding to the frequently stated needs of the other.
Several other women in the thread say that they found it frustrating when their partners behaved in a selfishly, like the commenter whose boyfriend “never could find the time to do the things I wanted to do with him, it was always what he wanted.”
Selfishness is bad in any situation, but pair it with immaturity and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a breakup: just take this woman’s example, who cites a “lack of motivation and direction on his part” as her biggest gripe. “It just got draining,” she says.
“I don’t expect people to have their future sorted but just bouncing around and not committing to at least giving things a solid go when he was approaching 30 is a problem. His family encouraged it too with their behaviour. He was the youngest in the family and still treated like the ‘baby’. Ironically me leaving was the wake up call he needed. Last I heard he was doing well for himself.”
It’s not uncommon for some guys who have been maybe a little coddled by their families to then expect the same level of indulgence from their romantic partners, but an adult relationship is one built on shared goals and, ideally, division of labor. There’s a reason so many women find it a turn-on when their guy does the dishes.