After writing me a heartfelt note on valentine’s day, chocolates and an instagram post later, he told me he wants to break up yesterday. He said that the emotional intimacy is too much for him and he can’t handle me seeing sad due to him trying to figure out who he is. I am just heartbroken and there is a lot of logistics to figure out. We have a cat and an apartment together as well as lots of stuff collected over the years. I just don’t know what to do and how to navigate all of this including getting over the heartbreak of letting go someone who you were planning on marrying. How does one even have these convos? What should I do next? How does one heal? All I can think about is how much I want him back.
Tl;dr broke up with my bf of three years and I’m not sure about how to handle the logistics and to move on.
3 comments
The best thing you can do is look to move out as soon as possible, it’s hard to heal if you are still living together.
Give yourself a few days to process and just start doing things one at a time. If you can stay with friends and family temporarily to get away from him while you figure things out that would be ideal. Then just ask him if he’s thought about the cat or how to split stuff. It will probably be an ongoing conversation.
Sorry you’re going through this, it’s rough I’ve been through the same thing. Moved from NYC back to the south with my family except it took about 6 months to save up the money to move, it was torture but I felt so great as soon as I left.
First figure out what you think is fair. Are you both on the lease? Can either of you afford the apartment alone? What penalty would there be for breaking the lease? One or both of you is going to want to move out ASAP, so start looking at housing options today on the assumption that that’s going to include you.
Who’s mostly paying for the cat’s food/medical care? That’s generally the person who “owns” the cat. Unless that person is moving to a place that doesn’t allow pets or doesn’t *want* the cat, assume they’re keeping it.
Furniture/stuff belongs to the person who paid for it. You weren’t married, so there’s no joint-property issue. Unless something was explicitly a gift (birthday/holiday presents or someone literally saying “I am buying this for you”), the one who laid out the cash keeps the item. If you split the cost of big-ticket items, make a list of what they were and how much you think they’re worth now, and mark off the ones you would prefer to keep. Their total value should be about the same proportion of the value of *all* the items that you paid for them in the first place (if you split stuff 50/50 you should be taking stuff worth half the value of all the things you split; if you paid more you should ask for more).
Try not to have emotional conversations with him. I know it’s hard. I know you *deserve* answers and explanations. But you will never—I promise you—*never* look back and be happy that you decided to get into relationship stuff with him again once it was over. Keep it businesslike and save your feelings for the rest of your support system.
I started a google doc with a table where a row represented each room and everything in the room, then columns for me and her. Another spreadsheet listing all the shared money and bills so you can divide them up fairly. Being practical will help.