Auntie SparkNotes: I’m Mad About My Breakup

Hi Auntie Sparknotes,

Over the past month I was being distant with my boyfriend, as I was thinking of breaking up with him because I felt as if he didn’t love me. After a month, I tried meeting up with him to break up in person, but he was either sick or working, and when I texted him again to plan a day to meet up with him, he broke up with me over text. I told him that it was a dick move to break up with me over text. I asked why he wanted to break up, and he said because he had “trust issues”, hinting that I was cheating since I was being distant. I insisted that it was a misunderstanding, and I was willing to start again, but he didn’t seem to care.

The next day I logged into our mutual friend’s Snapchat without her knowing. I found out that this friend, A, basically insisted that he should break up with me and didn’t argue against him breaking up over text. So, I am no longer friends with A, as she shouldn’t have gone in between us. In addition, he mentioned another girl to A. I was furious, so I texted my boyfriend, accusing him of wanting to break up partly because of the other girl. I changed my Facebook profile, which had been a picture of us together, and posted “time for a change.” He then posted a selfie with the same girl on his Snapchat story saying “glad to be starting a new chapter of my life”.

I feel as if A may have told him lies and suggested that I did cheat on him, which is why my boyfriend wanted to break up and posted that selfie on his Snapchat. I am wondering what to do as I am only blaming myself, insisting that I was not enough to him.

Er. Um. Hmmmm. But, I mean… are you really only blaming yourself, though? Are you really? Because it’s weird, darling, but I could’ve sworn I just read a letter in which you tried to pin the blame for your breakup on pretty much everyone but yourself, with particular attention to your mutual friend, who you seem to suggest is responsible for setting this drama in motion by telling your boyfriend you cheated on him. And not for nothing, I also could’ve sworn that you formed this theory without any actual evidence, after naughtily snooping around in your friend’s Snapchat without her knowledge or permission. (Perhaps you thought Auntie wouldn’t notice that wee bit of subterfuge. Perhaps you are new here.)

That said, I’m sorry your relationship got yanked out from under you before you could end it. Being dumped is never fun! On the other hand, though, if it’s going to happen, you could do a whole lot worse than to be preemptively dumped by a guy you were trying to dump yourself, roughly five minutes ahead of schedule. In the vast and usually-painful pantheon of breakup scenarios, that’s definitely one of the top three least terrible ways for things to end. And you, Sparkler, got virtually everything you wanted, except for the (minor, fleeting) satisfaction of having been the one to call it quits.

So, here’s the thing: I’m just not sure why you’re now trying to spin the breakup like it was something you didn’t want, that was thrust upon you by your disloyal ex and your relationship-sabotaging friend—and like it wasn’t preceded by weeks of obviously distant, chilly behavior on your part, which your boyfriend evidently noticed and interpreted, correctly, as a sign of an impending split. And while it’s okay to be upset that your friend encouraged him to dump you, Auntie is duty-bound to point out that a) it wasn’t exactly bad or unreasonable advice under the circumstances (you were icing him out, after all), and b) more importantly, that you only know about this because you grossly violated her privacy in a completely indefensible way. Not that I’m saying you should resume your friendship with her —it sounds incredibly dysfunctional and like you’re both better off without it—but it’s a stretch to claim that you own the the moral high ground in this very messy scenario.

So, what should you do? For starters, you should stop trying to retrofit your breakup into an easy villain/victim narrative, which is a pointless waste of energy that you could be using on virtually anything else. If you’re sad because your relationship ended, and you wish things had worked out differently, that’s fine! Your feelings are valid on their own; you don’t have to make them somebody else’s fault to feel them. And in truth, most breakups (including yours) are collaborative efforts that defy that kind of easy blame-laying. Would he have dumped you via text if you weren’t obviously already halfway out the door? Would you have been eyeing the door if he weren’t the kind of doink who ends a dying relationship via text?

Who knows? And really, who cares? What matters is that neither one of you was happy, and hence, you’re both better off moving on. There’s no need to dwell on what went wrong, when you clearly just weren’t right for each other. Let that be your takeaway. Let go of the rest. And let yourself look forward to the future, where a better relationship than this one almost certainly awaits you.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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