Girlfriend Broke Up With Me To Focus On Herself

When people know that leaving a relationship will hurt the other person, they often use certain clichés that aim to soften the blow. Some dumpers say things like, “It’s just a break, I know I’ll regret it later, you’re the best person I ever dated—and by doing so, pretend the breakup has nothing to do with their partner.

They tell their partner they’re leaving to focus on themselves and that they would have stayed if the circumstances were different. This gives their ex hope as their ex thinks he didn’t do anything wrong and that he has nothing to work on.

Although the breakup excuse hurts the dumpee less, it’s also true that it confuses him more. It makes him wonder why his partner left when everything was fine.

This kind of thinking makes the dumpee agree with the dumper’s version of the story and discourages the dumpee from growing and detaching. It stops the dumpee from evolving and moving forward with his life.

So if your girlfriend broke up with you to focus on herself, she essentially told you that she doesn’t want to focus on you and the relationship. Something about the relationship doesn’t make her happy.

It may be that she’s not emotionally ready for a new relationship yet (if she just came out of a relationship), that she wants to focus on family, school, work, or stressors, that she wants to date someone else, or that she simply doesn’t like you and can’t reciprocate your feelings.

It’s impossible to say why she broke up with you from that single excuse as every person leaves a relationship to be free and self-prioritize. The real question is why she felt she wasn’t free to think, feel, and do what she wanted.

Did you expect more from her than she could give or did she convince herself the relationship wasn’t giving her what she wanted and got tired of investing in you?

Unfortunately, those aren’t questions a person who leaves to “focus on herself” answers. She provides zero valuable information that would help you understand what went wrong (get closure) and make some healthy changes.

She just makes you think you had nothing to do with the breakup and that she might come back after she’s finished focusing on herself.

I don’t want her to tell you it’s all your fault and make you blame yourself for the breakup, but you do deserve to know what happened. Knowing the reason for breaking up can prevent your next girlfriend (your ex or someone else) from leaving for the same reasons.

It can help you make the changes necessary to accept the breakup and become the best version of yourself.

An ex who doesn’t tell you the real reason for the breakup doesn’t care about your closure and growth. She cares about herself and the amount of guilt she feels. Because she feels bad and is afraid of confrontation and negativity, she tells you confusing half-truths that create more problems than they solve.

Yes, lies or half-truths don’t hurt much if you don’t realize they’re a lie, but if your girlfriend left because you weren’t a good partner, you not only deserve to know the truth but also need to know it. You need to hear that you messed up so that your brain can understand and feel motivated to do better next time.

We learn the most from negative experiences. And there’s no better negative experience than a breakup. If you drink and gamble addictively and get broken up with because of it, you want to do something about it. You don’t want to hear you’re perfect, hurt your next partner, and get dumped for the same reasons.

You need a kick in the butt to take back control of your life and live a healthy life for yourself, your partner, your kids, your family, and every person you encounter.

So if your girlfriend broke up with you to focus or work on herself and you don’t know what that means, it means that she lost feelings and found the relationship emotionally draining. She couldn’t spend any more time on it because it made no sense to do that.

She didn’t see it as a viable investment and felt pressured by it. So much so that she left when an opportunity presented itself.

Some dumpers leave during an argument whereas others leave when’re expected to emotionally invest in their partner. And they’re expected to invest when the relationship is struggling the most, when their partner asks for love, when or before they go on vacation together, and even on their partner’s birthday.

Birthday and anniversary breakups happen because dumpers feel emotionally drained for weeks before the celebration and feel forced to love their partner and act lovingly.

They’d rather keep their distance and be their true selves.

In this post, we discuss why your girlfriend broke up with you to focus on herself and how she should have left instead.

Why did my girlfriend break up with me to focus on herself?

Healthy and mature romantic partners can focus on themselves and deal with personal issues while they’re with their partners. They don’t need to break up to not feel stressed, overwhelmed, and depressed.

A breakup is unnecessary if they understand their thoughts and emotions and have a healthy relationship mentality. 

Only people who don’t understand themselves and lack the ability to focus on themselves and the relationship at the same time break up with their partner. Such people decide the relationship is holding them back from being their happy selves and reaching their goals.

As a result, they act on the emotions created by their negative thinking patterns and leave their partner to focus on themselves. Oftentimes, self-focus includes drinking, partying, making new friends, and dating other people.

It has nothing to do with them focusing solely on themselves.

The phrase, “I want to focus on myself” essentially means “I don’t want to focus on you. I have better things and people to spend time, energy, and money on. Things and people who make me feel good.”

I wish you didn’t have to hear it from me, but you deserve to know the truth. You deserve to know that your ex was a coward and that she prioritized herself slightly before, during, and after the breakup. She did what she could to reduce the likelihood of receiving a strong negative reaction from you.

A strong reaction would be any emotional response that would have made her feel uncomfortable.

Some emotions she hoped to avoid from you are:

• anger
• sadness
• depression
• denial
• pressure

She kept you in the dark on purpose to make you think she won’t do anything you might envy and feel jealous of. Instead of telling you the truth and preparing you for the worst (whatever the worst may be), she indirectly expressed you had nothing to worry about and that the breakup wasn’t even your fault.

This gave you false reassurance and made you handle the breakup passively (forced you to think the breakup happened for no reason or reason outside of your and her control and that you need to wait).

Of course, every dumpee perceives and responds to a breakup differently. But typically, when a dumpee gets told the breakup happened solely because his ex wanted to focus on herself and her problems, it freezes the dumpee in place.

It prevents the dumpee from taking action and becoming the person he or she needs to become. In some cases, dumpees even feel bad for their ex as they think their ex is going through a lot and deserves to focus on herself.

Such dumpees pity their ex and neglect themselves.

The point I’m trying to make is that your girlfriend showed no accountability. She acted as if the breakup happened to her rather than because of her and that she had no control over it whatsoever.

In reality, she chose not to do anything to improve the circumstances. She ignored her problems and waited for so long that the problems grew and became unresolvable.

That’s when she decided to call it quits and focus on herself.

So if you’re wondering why your girlfriend broke up with you to focus on herself, she did it because she couldn’t handle the things life threw at her. She couldn’t stay committed because she thought she couldn’t love you when she had trouble connecting with you, loving herself, taking care of her problems, or reaching her goals.

She had put herself first and decided to break up with you when maintaining the relationship became difficult. Your girlfriend basically fell out of love and used a cheap breakup excuse to justify her reasons for leaving.

She thought you wouldn’t blame her for losing feelings and calling it quits if she made the breakup seem impersonal and out of her control.

Therefore, her reason for the breakup is a load of baloney. She doesn’t want you to know the real reason because there’s a chance you’ll react poorly to it and make her feel worse than she already feels.

You need to know that she’s not only putting herself first but also deceiving, confusing, and complicating your post-breakup life in the process.

She’s not doing it deliberately to hurt you but she does think she must avoid pain and be happy.

You probably already know that someone who benefits by deceiving others isn’t a very caring individual. That person is unthoughtful, opportunistic, immoral, and insincere.

Yes, breakups are hard for dumpers too, but that doesn’t give them the right to lie and not give closure. Dumpers have a moral obligation to explain why they’re ending the relationship. Their explanation is valuable as it helps their ex understand the problem or problems, accept them, and work on them.

If they don’t get the answers they need, they must get them on their own. And that can be much more painful and time-consuming for them.

It’s easier for both parties to get through the breakup by getting what they need from each other. Dumpees can heal quicker if they’re told the hard to hear truth and dumpers can move on with a clear conscience if they tell the truth.

It’s in the interest of both to have a closure conversation and prepare themselves for a solo journey ahead. If the dumper isn’t willing to speak or speak the truth, she shows that she doesn’t care about her ex and the problems he could face in the future because of her abandonment.

It doesn’t matter what the relationship was like. An honest closure conversation is the least the dumpee deserves for staying committed until the end. He deserves it whether he was immature, mean, or unloving.

With that said, here’s why your girlfriend broke up with you to focus on herself.

What to do when your girlfriend breaks up with you to focus on herself?

When your partner leaves you to focus on herself, you need to understand that your partner doesn’t have any more energy to spend on you. She had detached emotionally and now has priorities outside of the relationship.

Even though she wasn’t honest with you about the reasons for breaking up, you shouldn’t confront her about it.

The confrontation won’t make her want to invest in you more. On the contrary, it will make her angry and force her to react negatively. That will hurt you again and make you blame yourself for making a breakup mistake that lowered your chances of reconciliation.

Since she left to focus on herself, you must let her do that. Open the doors for her and close them too. She needs to exit your life and have the freedom she asked for. That’s why she broke up with you. 

Remember that she could have asked for help and found ways to focus on herself while she was with you. But because she held negative emotions inside and refused to process them with your or someone else’s help, she chose to run away from them and said she needed to focus on herself.

If you believe her, you’ll think she left because nothing was wrong and that she’s the victim. That will prevent you from understanding your breakup and getting the closure you need to move on and work on yourself.

Her deceit will let her focus on herself and cost you a chance to focus on the things you need to focus on.

So acknowledge the fact that she’s responsible for the breakup and leave her alone – permanently. Go no contact and show her she can have all the space and time she needs to self-focus. Time will help her achieve her post-breakup goals and allow her to see that you value yourself more than her.

Someone who values the dumper more than himself exudes low self-esteem and is laser-focused on winning his ex back. He doesn’t understand that there’s no such thing as winning an ex back and that his ex needs to come back and win him back.

That’s how a relationship can start on healthy terms and fix the issues the breakup created.

The breakup has probably hurt your self-esteem and confused you. It’s time for you to get to the truth and improve the way you see yourself.

If you don’t know why your ex left, sign up for therapy, confide in friends, or start journaling. Eventually, you’ll understand that your ex had issues she didn’t tell you about and that she decided to focus on herself because she didn’t want to focus on you.

You don’t need to do much when it comes to your ex. But you do have to focus on yourself and improve your shortcomings. If you don’t improve them now that you’re hurting, you probably won’t improve them later either.

You’ll stay as you are and risk facing similar issues in the future. So reflect on your relationship and create healthier methods for dealing with unwanted situations and emotions.

The work you put into yourself won’t help you re-attract your ex, but it will make your relationship with your ex or someone else better.

Your ex will have to grow later, probably when she goes through something difficult. And when she does, it may already be too late to fix things.

Did your girlfriend break up with you to focus on herself? What breakup excuses did she use on you? Share them and your experiences in the comments below.

However, if you’re searching for understanding and closure—and want our help, check out our coaching options for more information.

Zan

My name is Zan and I’m the founder of Magnet of Success. I enjoy writing realistic relationship and breakup articles and helping readers heal and grow. With more than 5 years of experience in the self-improvement, relationship, and breakup sphere, my goal is to provide advice that fosters positivity and success and avoids preventable mistakes and pain. Buy me a coffee, learn more about me, or get in touch today.