When A Man Abruptly Ends A Relationship

When a man abruptly ends a relationship, there are only two explanations for his behavior. Something either quickly changed his opinion of you and ruined his feelings for you or he repressed and hid his emotions for so long that he emotionally burned out and exploded.

Before we explain how to distinguish between these two circumstances, you need to know that most dumpees don’t see the breakup coming. Most dumpees are so in love or so used to being with their partner that they dismiss their partner’s abnormal behavior and carry on as if their relationship is self-repairing and indestructible.

They think their partner is just going through a difficult phase and that things will soon get back to normal. But unfortunately, they don’t always get back to normal. Oftentimes, they get progressively worse until they come to a complete halt.

And that’s when dumpees get shocked and hurt and experience killer separation anxiety and a loss of self-esteem.

They don’t know how to react, so they start to ponder, “Everything seemed fine just a few days ago. We spent a lot of time together and got along. The breakup happened out of the blue – for no reason.”

They completely forget that there are no such things as random breakups. There are abrupt breakups, but even those breakups aren’t very abrupt and common. Even guys who leave their girlfriends for someone else tend to build a connection with the new person before they relocate to her.

The reason for that is that it takes dumpers time to disconnect from their girlfriends and connect with someone new. It takes them at least a week or two because they want to make sure it’s safe for them to monkey-branch from one relationship to the next and not end up with nothing in case things don’t go according to plan.

So if the guy (we’ll call him your ex) changed his feelings for you quickly, it’s possible that he lost sight of the relationship and focused on something or someone else.

It’s possible that he:

• met someone new and flirted/cheated with her
• got in touch with his ex and started craving her affection
• learned something shocking about you (e.g. that you’re talking to your ex or that you’re not who you say you are – that you live a double life or something)
• or that he won the lottery and ditched you to start anew

These things can cause an abrupt breakup as they can make a man disappointed, hurt, angry, tempted, or interested in someone else. They can make him go from 100 to 0 almost overnight and even cause him to ghost you and block you.

There’s no telling what a person you love will do because you never saw what he’s capable of. We usually discover what our partner can do when he or she becomes our ex-partner because that’s when we’re no longer needed. We become a hindrance.

In this post, we’ll discuss what kind of man abruptly ends a relationship with you and, of course, what you can do about it.

When a man abruptly ends a relationship

If your ex slowly detached from you but never expressed that he was falling out of love, what you’re dealing with isn’t an abrupt breakup. You’re dealing with a man who was bad at communicating difficult emotions. He didn’t know how to share how he felt and why he felt that way, so he bottled up emotions and waited until the very last day to release them.

That’s when he left them out of his system strongly (without control) or with a strong conviction that he’ll be happy only if he pushes you away and focuses on himself. He knew that by separating from you, he could stop worrying about doing what you want and need–and just be happy.

Keep in mind that when a man abruptly ends a relationship because of repressed emotions, the guy feels a lot of relief and elation. He feels like the relationship held him captive for a very long time and that he has finally freed himself from a relationship that suffocated him, hurt him, and held him back.

He’s walked away from a place that didn’t satisfy his emotional needs and contribute to his life in ways that it wanted it to.

A few possible reasons why a guy would break up with you “abruptly” after keeping emotions inside are that he:

• prioritized friends and hobbies
• got GIGS (experienced a lot of relationship-damaging thoughts and feelings) and took the relationship for granted
• feared commitment
• stopped investing in the relationship and focused on himself
• had lots of stressors
• got depressed, anxious, or extremely doubtful

Most of the time, doubts, anxiety, and depression don’t cause a man to abruptly end a relationship. They tend to slowly affect him emotionally, giving you weeks of time to pick up on his peculiar, hot and cold behavior and prepare you for the worst, which is the breakup.

Very rarely do breakups appear out of nowhere. Normally, guys give at least a few warning signs that something’s wrong (different) before they turn cold, angry, mean, and unrecognizable. They tend to first ask for space, reject intimacy and bonding, make excuses not to see you, become busy, and only then start showing that they want to break up.

And this is the part that confuses dumpees the most.

Dumpees think that if their breakup was normal that their ex would gradually go from loving to unloving (from 100 to 0) over the course of a few weeks. They don’t know that their ex had hidden his doubts and a lack of feelings and that he detached way before they detected anything was wrong.

You need to keep in mind that many guys are bad at telling their romantic partners what they don’t like and how they feel. They’re afraid that being honest about it will hurt their partners, so they keep their difficult emotions to themselves and by doing so, damage their romantic feelings, happiness, and commitment to the relationship.

They basically fall out of love and stay out of love until they decide it’s time to break up and walk away.

Such breakups aren’t abrupt. They’re prolonged as guys stay committed for as long as their relationship mentality, maturity, and willpower allow them.

Most breakups, therefore, don’t happen suddenly. People only think that they do because they have no idea their partner is suffering silently without their awareness.

Sometimes people lack empathy and understanding of their partner, but most of the time, it’s not their fault. It’s their partner’s for holding unhealthy emotions inside them and expecting their partner to mindread and fix their issues for them.

No one can fix unhealthy emotions and associations the dumper develops. The dumper is the only one who can fight his internal battles and do something about them. But he must be self-aware and mature enough to do that.

With that said, here’s why a man abruptly ends a relationship with the dumpee.

Something went wrong. Figure out what!

Whether you like it or not, breakups happen for a reason. Something kills the dumper’s feelings and forces him to distance himself from the discomfort the relationship causes him.

You need to figure out what that is so you don’t run after your ex like a zombie and beg him to come back. Begging and annoying him won’t help. Neither will guilt-tripping, threatening, playing jealousy games, talking to his parents, and sending him breakup letters.

When a guy abruptly or slowly (doesn’t matter how) ends a relationship with you, he’s convinced it’s for the best and that he doesn’t see a future with you anymore. He sees a future with himself and eventually, someone else. Someone who will encourage him to invest in the relationship and help him get the most out of it.

So even though your instincts tell you to reconcile with your ex, hold your horses and think. Think about what caused the breakup and what you can do about it.

If your ex already gave you closure (told you why the breakup happened), you already have the answers you need to work on yourself and stay away from your ex. But if your ex wasn’t that generous, then don’t seek answers from your ex. He probably won’t give them to you because he’ll get annoyed and feel pressured.

And that could hurt you again.

You see, getting answers is very important not just so you can improve your shortcomings, but so you can also ease your (separation) anxiety and fears. Answers (whether good or bad) keep you calm, focused, and busy. They allow you to keep hope for reconciliation as low as it can be and subliminally encourage you to let go of the relationship.

Dumpees who don’t get any explanations as to why the breakup ensued often suffer a lot (and longer). They think their ex didn’t have a good reason for breaking up with them, so they stay hopeful and think their ex will soon realize he’s made a terrible mistake.

This forces them to devise their own breakup theories and obsesses them with their ex for months and months.

So if you can’t figure out what went wrong, take a pen and paper and write down your ex’s bad traits. Write down all negative tendencies your ex displayed throughout the relationship. Do this every time anxiety hits you hard–and you’ll feel better about the breakup and form a more rational picture of your ex.

Eventually, you’ll see that your ex’s commitment to you was not good enough and that there wasn’t anything you could have done to increase his interest and love as you had no control over his suppressed thoughts and emotions. Your job wasn’t to pick up on them but to listen to them and do something about them once he brought them up.

That’s why blaming yourself for the things you could have and should have done is pointless. Your ex needed to communicate his problems when he detected them.

What to do when a man abruptly ends a relationship?

When a man abruptly ends a relationship, it’s obvious that the guy’s interest in you has diminished and that you’ll have a difficult time making him see your worth. By staying in his life, you’ll most likely only make him see you’re in denial and desperate for love and connection.

So don’t take that risk. Don’t chase and embarrass yourself by investing time, emotions, and money in your ex. Investment is not what your ex needs right now as it puts expectations on him. He just needs you to accept the breakup and mimic his lack of interest.

And the easiest way you can do that is by going indefinite no contact with your ex. No contact won’t magically make his lost feelings reappear, but it will make him see you respect yourself and know what to do when you’re not wanted.

And that’s a start as it will protect your self-respect and give your ex the time he needs to focus on whatever he wants to focus on.

If he left you for someone else, time away from you will serve as a distraction and give him a chance to compare his new relationship to the previous one–and come back if the new relationship is much worse.

If he left because he thought you were immature, he could face the same problems as before and realize he was responsible for the breakup. That could make him regretful and force him to come running back before you meet someone else.

And if he left because of anxiety or stressors, he could get even more stressed and return to patch his wounds and feel loved again.

The point is that no contact is your best bet. It’s the most successful, but also the safest solution to your problems.

Dumpers sometimes come back when they leave their ex abruptly (without prior planning). That’s because they leave in the heat of the moment during an argument just to soon calm down and realize they still love their ex.

So if your ex truly left unpremeditatedly when emotions ran high, all you have to do is go no contact–and your ex will likely reach out to apologize once he’s cooled off. But if you had a real breakup, and you’re merely calling it abrupt because you couldn’t see it coming, then know that your breakup is a normal breakup.

It’s a breakup caused by unhealthy perceptions and feelings your ex developed because of it.

No matter what kind of breakup you’re going through, as long as your ex isn’t with you, he’s the dumper and must stay away from you. He must mind his own business so he can figure out if he’s made the right decision.

Are you still wondering what it means when a man abruptly ends a relationship? What did you do when your ex broke up with you? Let us know what you think in the comments area below the post.

And if you think your situation is too different and want our help with it, go to our coaching page to get in touch with us.