When women end long-term relationships, it’s not always because the love has gone. There are myriad reasons women feel the need to leave the men we still love in order to preserve our own happiness and well-being. While it’s one of the most heartbreaking decisions we’ll ever make, sometimes it’s for the best. Here’s why this is more common than you think.
1. We’re sick of doing all the emotional labor.
This topic isn’t particularly new (and the experience certainly isn’t), but it can’t be talked about enough. Women are natural caretakers, which means we often take on the responsibilities of providing support, care, comfort, and affection — and that’s on top of the physical labor. Over time, carrying this weight solo is exhausting and leaves women feeling undervalued, overworked, and just fed up. When the men in our lives fail to recognize the toll this is taking and aren’t willing to pull their weight, it’s not long before we decide to leave them, love or otherwise.
2. We’re tired of doing all the physical labor, too.
In addition to having to be the nurturers, women are also often the ones raising the kids, doing the cooking, cleaning the house, running the errands, etc. When the men in our lives assume that we’re totally okay with this and that it’s to be expected, it’s not long before resentment starts to build. A relationship is supposed to be an equal partnership, but if only one person is putting in effort, it gets old very quickly.
3. We feel unappreciated and taken for granted.
As a result of the above (and maybe just general relationship dynamics), women tend to feel the only way to stop being taken for granted is to leave the men we love. After all, there’s only so long you can take feeling like your partner views you as a replacement mother before you have to get out. This is especially true when we’ve voiced our feelings and concerns to the men in our lives and we’ve fallen on deaf ears.
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5. Our partner has cheated and we can’t get over it.
This is a biggie. While some relationships can survive cheating, many can’t. When the men we love are unfaithful, the betrayal is massive and the trust is often irreparably broken, leaving us to feel like the only recourse is to leave them. It’s not that we don’t want to forgive them and move on, it’s that the image of their actions is burned into our minds and we can’t get it out. That makes it pretty impossible to move on.
6. Our partner doesn’t show any interest anymore.
When you first get together with someone, you’re fascinated by each other. Even the smallest detail about the other person is mesmerizing, and while it makes sense that this would calm down a bit the longer you’re together, it shouldn’t end completely. When we feel that our partners find us boring or have zero interest in anything we do or say anymore, we wonder why we’re even in the relationship. Clearly, if you love and care about someone, the things that are important to them matter to you too, right?
7. Our partner’s family is a problem.
When you get into a long-term relationship with someone, you basically “marry into” their family, too. That’s why getting along with them at the very least is so important. If the men we love have parents, siblings, or other family members who make us feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, or who interfere in our relationship and our partners do nothing to stand up for us or the partnership, love or otherwise, we’re going to have to leave. We can’t live in misery long-term.
8. Our partner is hemming and hawing on commitment.
Not all women dream of walking down the aisle in front of hundreds of people in a poofy white wedding gown, we still want to know that the men we’re investing our time and energy into are on the same page as us in life. Most of us aren’t asking for much — just some kind of reassurance that they’re in it for the long haul and want a true partnership with us. If we’ve been together for a while but the men in our lives are still going back and forth about what they actually want, it’s best for us to walk away before we get hurt any more.
9. We feel like we’ve lost ourselves in the relationship.
When you’ve been with someone for a long time, you almost start melding into the same person if you’re not careful. Or, for women who are people-pleasers and take on all the emotional labor as mentioned above, we start to become a shell of our former selves. Instead of being vibrant, independent, smart, funny women, we become So-and-So’s partner, defined only by the relationship we’re in rather than the people we are outside of it. When it comes to the point that we don’t even remember who we are anymore without the men we love, we have to leave.
10. Intimacy has pretty much gone out the window.
It’s not just men who care about what happens in the bedroom — women do too. We want to feel desired and like our men are attracted to us. When they stop making the effort or aren’t at all bothered about pleasing us in this way (or at all), we start to feel more like roommates than romantic partners. When this happens, there’s no reason to carry on, really.
11. We love our partners, we’re just not attracted to them anymore.
This happens regardless of gender. We might love many things about them but the initial spark that drew us together romantically has just faded and it can’t be brought back. At that point, we start to feel like maybe we’re just better off as friends.
