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“Should I End It After Our Vacation?”
Hanauer and Jones on whether to break up before or after a trip.
by Cathi Hanauer and Daniel Jones
Question: My girlfriend of two years and I are traveling to South America this fall to attend her best childhood friend’s wedding. We’ve been planning this trip for almost a year, including two extra weeks of trekking in the Andes with some friends afterwards. Here’s the problem: Without going looking for anything, I met someone else, and I want (and need) to end my current relationship, even though it kills me to think of hurting my girlfriend. If it weren’t for this upcoming trip, I would have already done it. Should I tell her what’s going on before we go or after we get back?
—R.S., Boston, Mass.
Dan: Tell her your feelings now—the sooner the better. If you’ve already sunk a lot of money into the trip and still hope to go trekking with her after the wedding “as friends” (yeah, right), you’ll need some time to start pleading your case. If you’re able to get her on board for the notion that it might be nice to have this trip together as a grand fade-out for your relationship, then you lucked out. (But be warned: It easily could turn into an awkward, conflict-ridden bitchfest.)
Why not postpone telling her until after the trip? What harm is a little extended ignorance? Simply put, any enjoyment she has on the trip will be undone once she realizes it was all a fraud. The gift of ignorance you gave her will be a hollow one, because she’ll realize, after the fact, that every kindness you offered to her, every kiss, every hand held, every conversation, was a patronizing lie.
Of course, there is another option—a truly devious master plan—but I’m ashamed to suggest it. In fact, I’m ashamed on behalf of all men for even allowing the idea to gain currency in my mind, because if I thought of this, then I know many other men have too, and, well, that’s just despicable. But here it is (forgive me): Go on the trip, have fun, have sex, act loving, come home, wait a month (or, preferably, two), then tell your girlfriend you’ve fallen in love with someone else. Granted, this route would require an Oscar-caliber performance (not to mention an extremely patient new girlfriend). But if you could pull it off, it might preserve the trip as a wonderful (if still technically fraudulent) experience for your soon-to-be ex.
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1 Tanya // Oct 9, 2006 at 3:33 pm
Don’t be coward!!!! tell her before you go! The truth is you do not want to go there and it would be better, if she would go there alone, and starts to forget you. Still, you tell her the truth and not lie to her, doing this way.Maybe she even will meet someone else, not spending her time with soon to be -ex ! Do not spoil her vacation, because you are afraid of telling her! If she finds out that you were going to part with her anyway ( and she finds it out ,trust me), she would feel you betrayed her and lie to her all this time. I’ve been in somewhat similar situation, (when I just started to date) I wanted to tell that guy, that if from the very begining he was honest with me, we could still be very good friends and I would respect him for telling me his situation, but since he lied to me, I can not respect him for his cowardness and we would never be friends. But right now I can feel only disgust about this guy, because he turned out to be a coward in my eyes!
2 linda // Sep 22, 2006 at 8:34 am
email me day to day. to let me know.
3 nn // Sep 16, 2006 at 3:27 pm
No need to bash the guy. Just b/c you’re not in love w/ someone anymore doesn’t mean you can’t still love them. If you truly cared about a person in the 1st place, then you’re never going to stop being concerned about him/her even if the spark goes out. They weren;t at the point where they’ve decided their all in - ie. marriage, etc., so u can’t blame him if he really cares for this other girl. Of course, u really shouldn’t be thinking about other girls u run into in that way if you’re in a long-term, non-fling, excusive-type relationship.
4 Anonymous // Sep 14, 2006 at 9:55 pm
I think that he should go on the trip and see what happens. This guy isn’t sure he wants to dump his current girlfriend, or he would have done it already. Thinking about dumping someone, or thinking you “need” to dump someone is still a long way from actually doing it.
I was in this same situation this summer–I was considering dumping my boyfriend right before we were supposed to go on an expensive trip together several thousand miles away for several weeks. I decided to wait until after we got back, that way we’d have the memory of a wonderful trip together because I do still care about and enjoy him.
Well, what ended up happening was that I remembered on the trip all the reasons I fell in love with him in the first place, and I was far away from the “other man” and forgot about him entirely. I decided to stay with my boyfriend, and a few months later, we’re still together. So give your relationship one last shot to survive. You owe it to yourself and your girlfriend. If after the trip, you still “need” to dump her, then do it. She’ll probably be so upset, the fact that the trip was a “charade” will be the last thing on her mind, anyway.
5 Kai // Aug 22, 2006 at 11:19 am
I think that no matter what you decide to do you are in a NO-win situation. She would be left to attend her best friend’s wedding without a date and you would be talked about like a dirty dog doing the no-no on white carpet! No matter what you do, you will be inflicting serious heartache and pain. I believe that if you fell for someone else while with her, you obviously aren’t that into her anymore and I personally think the right thing to do would be to seriously ponder why you strayed out of your relationship. I would weigh the pros and cons carefully and ask myself what could really come out of the new relationship? Given the way it came about…does your new girlfriend know what happened? If she doesn’t how do you think she would feel? Are you going to tell her? How do you think she would feel? Is this new girl worth it or is it just a fling? If you still feel that you want to break up - I would do it before the trip - If you waited, your girlfriend would feel used and it would make things emotionally more difficult for her. Ask yourself how you would feel if the shoe was on the other foot. That always puts things into a better perspective for me. Either way you are in a very difficult situation and I don’t envy you. Do the right thing - be a man and let her go if you don’t love her anymore, no one likes to be lied to.
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