When A Guy Says He Needs To Find Himself ?

When a guy says he needs to find himself, he’s not being very honest with you.

He’s actually using one of the typical breakup excuses rational guys use in order to ensure a guilt-free breakup for themselves.

I say guilt-free because an ex using this excuse hates making you cry and seeing you hurt.

He feels guilty for breaking up with you and dislikes being the bad guy for selfishly terminating his relationship with you.

But guilt, unfortunately, doesn’t mean that he regrets breaking up with you or that he’s going to return in the near future.

It merely means that he’s unhappy about breaking your heart and seeing your heartbroken reaction.

Today, we’re going to talk about what it means when a guy says he needs to find himself. We’ll also talk about similar breakup excuses that mean the same thing.

When a guy says he needs to find himself

In order for your ex to avoid feeling distressed, your ex needed to find a way to stop having a guilty conscience.

He needed to come up with a trick that minimizes your self-blame and consequently, promotes his well-being.

After some thinking, he finally found it.

He found a way to kill two birds with one stone and told you one of the following excuses:

• I need to find/fix myself
• I want to focus on myself
• It’s just a break
• It’s not you, it’s me
• I need time to myself
• I’m confused
• I hate myself for doing this
• I want to become a better person
• I’m not good enough for you
• I don’t deserve you

If your ex’s final words were something along those lines, you need to know that your ex intended to move on as quickly and painlessly as possible.

He wanted to achieve this by telling you a bunch of half-truths and get rid of you in a swift and effective manner.

Here’s what him finding himself really meant.

What about you? How did his deceit and manipulation tactics affect you?

For starters, we already know that him lying about the reasons behind the breakup didn’t help you improve them.

His lies gave you a false sense of closure and gave you hope that he’ll return.

Since he basically said that “It’s not you, it’s him,” you now truly expect him to come back after he’s “found himself.”

You sincerely believe that if you just give him a little bit of time that he’ll return and love you again. Maybe he’ll finally appreciate you, change as a person, and love you stronger than before.

It could happen, right?

Well, the truth is that anything can happen. But if there’s anything I learned from working in the breakup field is that you can’t ever take the dumper’s promising words for granted.

Your ex probably promised you the world in the relationship once already and failed to fulfill his promises.

And if he didn’t, he let you down now and made you suffer way more than you deserve.

And that’s precisely why holding on to your ex’s false and undefined promises sounds absolutely ridiculous.

Your ex feels emotionally drained from the end of the relationship, so the odds of him coming back before he experiences life without you are very tiny.

Although it varies per person and the experiences he or she went through, your ex needs at least a few months to change the way he thinks and feels about himself and you.

Something emotionally challenging has to occur to him before he’s ready to do some soul-searching and realize your worth.

So even though your ex could have a change of heart and come back in the future, clinging on to hope won’t make your post-breakup time any easier on you.

Far from it.

The truth is that it will likely make you anxiously anticipate your ex’s every move and prevent you from enjoying life for a very long time.

Hoping your ex sticks to his words and comes back to you could also make you so obsessed with your ex that you end up stalking him online and offline and expect him to come crying back by a certain date.

But when he doesn’t do that or doesn’t live up to your expectations and starts dating someone else, the real breakup will begin.

Your world will flip upside down and the pain will make you sorry that you didn’t stick to the indefinite no contact rule from the beginning.

He doesn’t intend to come back

It’s no secret that a guy who “needs to find himself” is very unhappy with his current relationship and/or the life he’s living.

He’s probably not very happy with various things in life—including his relationship with you, so he’s now taking some time to himself to “figure himself out.”

Your ex basically wants to see if he misses you and wants you back after he’s spent some time without you or with someone else.

But you and I both know that love doesn’t work that way.

You either love and appreciate a person or you don’t.

There is no middle ground!

Saying “I love you just a little bit” certainly doesn’t make any person happy.

Such behavior would deprive a person of love and recognition—and as a result, gradually, help him or her detach from the relationship.

So try to understand your ex’s actions for what they are and see that he doesn’t love you anymore.

He stopped loving you and detached from you, so he now feels confused about his feelings for you.

In all honesty, he probably doesn’t even know what he wants anymore.

But I do.

I can tell you that what he’s secretly asking for is not just a bit of time to think about you and his abandoned relationship.

He’s actually asking for some unfortunate event that could help him want you and need you in his life.

In other words, your ex needs to rebound with someone or fully experience the grass is greener syndrome to realize your worth.

Your ex is confused

Your ex probably felt confused about what he wants in life.

But this doesn’t mean that he views you in the best light.

He still thinks that you’re the one responsible for his lack of happiness and direction in life.

And that’s why he told you that he needs to find himself and become happy with himself again.

This breakup excuse required very little effort on his end and manifested the best results for him.

All he needed to do to keep you quiet and leave him alone was to come up with a few self-blaming excuses—and the rest would take care of itself.

So if your ex willingly took responsibility for the breakup by lying to you, he didn’t respect you or himself enough to tell you the truth.

He only cared about running away from you and minimizing the damage his selfishness has caused to him.

He protected himself

Your ex knows that telling you the truth would hurt you badly and bring out a very anxious reaction.

He’s also aware of the fact that your response would unavoidably put pressure on him and cause him more pain and anxiety.

And that’s just something his weakened mentality can’t afford to go through.

Seeing you heartbroken would make him feel even more guilty than he already feels, so your ex instead went with plan B.

He took the blame for the breakup and let you blame him rather than yourself.

In doing so, he didn’t see you as sad as he would have had he told the truth—so he strategically alleviated his guilt.

This is why your ex-boyfriend’s “It’s not you, it’s me, I need to find myself,” and other self-blaming, final words are merely an excuse to justify his abandonment.

They are a sign that he regrets hurting you, seeing you sad—and that he doesn’t want you to be his girlfriend anymore.

If your ex-boyfriend broke up with you and told you that he needs to find himself before he comes back, his excuse meant the following things:

1. The guy stopped loving you.
2. He doesn’t understand why he can’t be with you and feels confused.
3. He feels guilty for breaking your trust and wants to let you down gently.

When a guy says he needs time to figure himself out

If your ex told you he needs time to figure himself out or to work on himself, he essentially meant that he doesn’t value his relationship.

Whether it was his work, friends, illness, or a lack of ambition that was making him unhappy doesn’t really matter because your ex marked you as one of his main stressors.

He identified you as the person who prevents him from enjoying his life the way he expects to enjoy it and started to feel less and less happy every day.

Eventually, his negative thoughts of you accumulated so many bad emotions that his unhappiness turned into exhaustion and revulsion.

And that’s when he told you that “he needs to work on himself” and improve his overall emotional well-being.

In simple terms, he basically had to get rid of you to be happy—and do it in a way that would create the least stress.

So once again, if your ex told you he needs time to get his life in order, he lied to you.

He meant that he wants to chase after his happiness without you and see whether he misses you and thinks about you.

He won’t come back when he becomes happy

When a guy says he needs to find himself or gives you some other pitiful excuse, you need to understand that he doesn’t trust you with his happiness—nor love you enough to stay with you.

As difficult as it may be to hear, the guy wants to ditch you and work on his unhappiness on his own.

So don’t think that your ex chasing after his own dreams means that he’ll come back after he’s found his happiness.

It’s quite the opposite.

After he’s become happy, he’ll realize he doesn’t need you anymore and probably start dating someone else.

The only reason why he would come back is if he doesn’t find happiness and fails at creating the life he envisioned for himself.

Couples solve problems together — not without each other

Couples who respect each other, talk and confide in each other.

They solve their interpersonal as well as private issues with communication and continuously express gratitude in a healthy manner.

By openly expressing themselves, they grow their love and affection for each other and bond on a level that binds them together.

Your relationship with your ex, however, doesn’t work the same way.

Since your ex isn’t your partner anymore, there is no more love, respect, and gratitude.

Your ex said no to teamwork and voluntarily destroyed the whole foundation of your relationship.

He did it because he believed you were making him unhappy.

If he loved you, he would work with you, not against you

If your ex appreciated you for the person you are, he wouldn’t push you away even if he was depressed.

He would instead ask you to support him and be understanding of the difficulties he’s facing.

But since he didn’t ask for your cooperation, your ex soon came up with different plans for you.

He decided to discard you and tell you that he needs to find himself and better himself as a person just so you would give up on him faster.

Did your ex say he needs to find himself or give you some other “It’s not you, it’s me” excuse? Comment below and let me know.

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.