"Without drilling a hole into his brain and watching all the worker ants running around the factory..."

Funniest thing I've read all week. LOVE IT!

And yeah, she needs to stop looking at every man who crosses her path as "the one".

To LW:

the most important question here, IMHO,is
Why you allowed to treat your self as crap to a whole lot of other men? That might answer the question "what scared that nice guy?"

@Amy
>>If those of you reading me here don't read me in your local paper,...

Huh, what's a local newspaper?

The lesson I've gleaned? Even if a guy's really good to you, you can't trust him.

Except he wasn't really good to you. He invited you out on a special night to break up with you ten minutes in. Then he called you two years later to tell you that he really, really, for reals can't be with you. I'm afraid the relationship you had and the one you thought you had weren't the same. Especially considering your self-acknowledged history of going after guys who don't like you. You might want to take a look at why that is, LW. You seem to believe in the extremes of relationships. You'd sworn that there were no good guys left in the world, then this guy changes your mind completely, only now you can't even trust the few remaining good guys because they all hurt you. Life doesn't actually work that way if you don't let it.

I think you should be single for a while and go through your entire list of inappropriate men. Write down why you were initially attracted to them and what kept you in the relationship even after they started showing signs of not treating you well. Basically, what was it you were hoping to get out of the relationships that was worth putting up with bad treatment (for any length of time)? Maybe you'll start seeing that relationships can be ends unto themselves and not always just about the end result of finding "the one."

Looks like he found something about the woman which she does not want anyone to know.
There was one case where a guy paid off a womans 30k debt and after engagement found that she had even more debt and so called off the marriage. The courts still screwed the guy and allowed the woman to extort a further 100k from him. Maybe this is something of that sort and the guy is just playing it safe.

Local newspapers are those things that fire local people like me, alas.

What a weird way to break up with someone. "Want to go dancing and never see each other again?" Sorry, a genuinely good guy doesn't break up with you at a nightclub and then call you later with some bizarre, Zen-koan-like reason about why you can't be together.

1) I haven't read a local paper in decades. When the editing standards got so bad that I couldn't read them without getting a headache (I'm a grammar nazi) I had to let them go.

2) This guy is a turbo-dick. Not only asks her to meet him at a club so he can break up with her, but calls back two weeks later to rub salt in the wound?

Honey, you need to re-evaluate your methods if this is a good guy by your standards.

This really sounds like LW is writing her life story so that in it, she's just unlovable and no man can be trusted, because she is afraid to trust anyone. It's a safe bet to pick a jerk - hypothesis confirmed each time, no need to self-examine, no need to confront her own commitment issues. Trouble is, she doesn't realise she's doing it and the hurt is real.

If this sounds way off, disregard.

It seems to me that this relationship never got that serious. Something about him calling her up to go dancing sounds too formal. I don't know. Couples usually just talk about what they're going to do over the weekend. After 9 months of really being together exclusively, you're not usually still dating in that manner. Plus, she doesn't say he picked her up and took her to the club, but that she "arrived" at the club. So, he must've been like, "Hey, meet me here." That doesn't sound like a serious boyfriend.

At any rate, it was a totally awful way to break up with somebody. One of the worst I've heard. Whetever LW previously thought about him should be easily negated by how awful he treated her in that instance.

I agree with Lovelysoul. This sounds more like an extended hook-up relationship to me. I have never been in a relationship with a guy for 9 months were I was still meeting him places. I think LW really needs to take some time to examine her life and really look at those past "relationships".

LW, go to Heartless Bitches International, and read all of the Manipulator Files. Then read them again. THEN, stop looking! The right guy, the guy who is truly worthy of you, will find you. But until YOU YOURSELF believe you are worthy, all of the rat bastard users out there will hone in on your desperation vibes. And act accordingly. I'm being harsh, I know, but that's the reality. You've got to protect and love yourself before you can let someone else do it.

I got dumped at a dance once. By a "really nice" guy. In highschool. It was pretty humilating.

Translation: Hi, I am a younger woman who gets infatuated with sexually desireable guys, and when I do get infatuated, I project onto them what I perceive to be really good qualities, such as thoughtfulness, caring, and the trait of being a secure partner (towards *me*, that is).

Then, when we break up, that is proof there are none of these things, because if they were caring, thoughtful and capable of being a secure partner, they would not break up with me, right?

Moreover, the apparent lack of these qualities can then be generalized to ALL men. Because if the men I want to commit to a monogamous, long-term relationship will no do wo with ME, that must mean the qualities are absent in all other relationships those men have, right? And in all other relationships all men have with any person, right?

So, letterwriter, do you see the flaws in this way of thinking? Hmm?

This guy is a real tool, when you think about it. He wanted to go clubbing, but he also knew he needed to break things off with her first (probably to free his conscience for the partying and chasing other chicks he was planning), but he's too LAZY to do it some other place, so he says, "Hey, meet me at the club." Kill two birds with one stone.

Afterwards, he feels like a real jerk, as he should, so he calls her up to see if she's ok.

How was this guy a jerk?

I think it's bizarre to think that he planned on dumping her while inviting her to the dance club. It seems clear to me that she did something that spoke volumes about her character within the first ten minutes of her arrival. The ten minute marker, by the way, seems very exaggerated.

I call bullshit on this whole story.

"He claimed he didn't know what had happened, but he just couldn't be with me anymore." This rings true. He probably didn't claim to know what happened. He probably only avoided the question so as not to embarrass the heck out of her and him both by articulating it.

The two week later call is a little weird and he can be blamed for that. However, it was probably a drunk-and-dial moment. Those happen.

She's not telling us the whole story here. She did something really beyond the pale that was very revealing. He didn't intend to break up with her at the night club. While I'm at it, what the hell is a nine month relationship anyway that's so damned serious?

"While I'm at it, what the hell is a nine month relationship anyway that's so damned serious?"

If she is 19, and this is her longest relationship so far, yeah, she probably thought it was an epic love for the ages, until it wasn't.

If she is 32, the gal needs some serious couch time with a therapist, because 9 months at that age is nuthin'. (Well, not counting the whole biological clock thing, that is.)

Things can get pretty serious in 9 months if the chemistry is there. But it sounds like this wasn't that serious, except to LW.

Maybe she was doing the "Elaine" dance.

Too funny, BOTU! Yep, that would explain it.

Still more proof that nobody is an adult until they are at least 30.

The guy could be mentally ill. It's not the most likely explanation, but it has happened.

For starters: I'm making it a rule for myself that when I comment on one of these things, I'm going to take the LW at their word, unless their words reveal an obvious contradiction or moral flaw.

Now, regarding this LW: She's hurt, and she wants to take it out on the perceived source of the hurt -- men. However, she also realizes that this is irrational. Self-awareness. Good for her.

What she may be lacking is awareness of others. I've come to the conclusion that people of normal mental and moral makeup do not just dump their partners, out of the blue and with no previous sign of trouble. It just doesn't happen. The only people who do that sort of thing are our friends the Cluster B's -- the narcissists, the borderlines, the sociopaths. So the question is: how do you figure out when you're involved with a Cluster B? I'll use my own case as an example. One day my wife of one year, GF of five, told me: "I don't love you anymore", and she moved out. At the time, I was bowled over. I did not see it coming at all.

Now I look back and cringe. I was an idiot! There had been warning signs all over the place, and she had been escalating and I kept forgiving her those escalations. However, thinking back on it, there had been warning signs from the earliest stages of the relationship. There were several things, but here's the big one: she treated me differently from the way she treated other people. It wasn't a huge thing; she wasn't the sort to scream and curse at waitresses, for example. She wasn't cruel to other people.

But she was inconsiderate. She'd do stuff like make plans to do something with a friend, and then cancel at the last minute for no good reason. She'd promise to do favors for friends and then forget about them. That sort of thing. Inconsiderate in a thoughtless way. When I asked her about this, she always said she did it to spend more time with me. Of course, in retrospect, she was just stroking my ego so I'd quit asking her about it. It was a sign. Shortly after I started going with her, she told me that just before she met me, she and her sister had made plans to move to California, and that "they" (meaning: her sister) had already put up a deposit on an apartment. She broke those plans to hook up with me. Should've been a big red flag right there. And it bothered me, but I suppressed that thought.

So LW, next time pay more attention to how your BF behaves with other people, vs. the way he treats you. If something seems off kilter... it probably is. Don't ignore those warning signs just for the sake of having someone.

"The guy could be mentally ill. It's not the most likely explanation, but it has happened."

or she is,

or they both are.

It took me years to realize how many people are walking around out there with more than one screw loose.
I figure as a personal relationships advice columnist, you are in the same boat as a divorce lawyer. You have to count on having at most, half of the story, if that. Most the time, you have considerably less than that, since one or both parties are lying their ass off.

I figure as a personal relationships advice columnist, you are in the same boat as a divorce lawyer. You have to count on having at most, half of the story, if that. Most the time, you have considerably less than that, since one or both parties are lying their ass off.

I often have long email exchanges with the person, and when somebody is truly looking for help, it doesn't pay for them to lie. (I can pretty easily smell out those who are trying to get revenge through my column. Not interested in enabling them by printing them.)

Whatever the "Elaine" dance is.

(I can pretty easily smell out those who are trying to get revenge through my column. Not interested in enabling them by printing them.)

Revenge yes, pretty easy to spot. A search for validation of ones' own position, not so easy to spot.

The best lies are partial truths, shaded to favor the tale teller.

I have a couple of former friends who suffer from borderline personality disorder. Both of them seems initially to be reasonable people, and both were intelligent. Everything they said, sounded entirely plausible (for years) until I found out things about them that did not match their carefully crafted publicly projected persona. Once I accidentally caught them in a couple of nasty lies, all hell broke lose. I became the enemy.

"Whatever the "Elaine" dance is."

From Seinfeld. His friend, Elaine, danced like she was having a spasm.

"So LW, next time pay more attention to how your BF behaves with other people, vs. the way he treats you."

Want to know how a co-worker, business partner or someone professing to love you will treat you over the long run? Easy. Just watch how they treat their other business partners, co-workers, friends and family.

Eventually, it will be your turn. No matter what they say to the contrary.

Just realized I mistakenly typed "two years" in my first post instead of "two weeks." Sorry. Though that would make for an especially weird phone call.

Letter writer here-

I wanted to clarify a couple of things. Amy did her best to gather the important parts from the email exchanges that we had, but there were a couple of things that were left out that might alter opinions.

First off, I didn’t meet him at a club that night. I met him at his house and we were planning on going out to dinner and dancing from there. We didn’t live together so it wasn’t uncommon for us to meet at one another’s houses. From the moment I walked into his house I knew something was up, but I didn’t have a clue what it was.

I was a complete wreck, and I was totally heartbroken. But none of that showed while he was actually breaking up with me because I was so shocked that didn’t have a clue of what to say so I didn’t really say anything. He kept going on and on about how sorry he was and the less I responded the more he talked. When I left his house that night he was crying, I wasn’t. It took a little while for everything to sink in.

Some of you have some very good points, and in hindsight there are some changes in his behavior that I had not noticed at the time. I don't know what his reasons were and I likely wont. maybe he just wasn't as into me as he had thougt? It doesn't really matter because regardless, the relationship ended and it hurt. Amy listened when I needed someone to listen and I am thankful for that.

Why all this complicated analysis? He met somebody hotter. Men are not looking for a life mate at the age when they go to dance clubs. Mix it up or stay home.

I guess that should say LW rather than OP, but whatever, you guys should be able to figure it out.

Thanks for joining the discussion Kalee!

"Whatever the "Elaine" dance is."

Come on. You never watched this? Seriously? Which country did you come from?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xi4O1yi6b0

I'm a little confused. Did he break up at the club or at his house? If he broke up at the club, that's pretty douchy. If he broke up at the house, that sucks, and I'm sorry you suffered, but it doesn't sound like he betrayed you. He just didn't want to be in a relationship with you anymore.

Calling two weeks later to say it again is awful, though.

Ken- You could very well be right about him finding someone hotter. But what age are people supposed to be when they go dancing? I imagine that you have a picture of some posh club filled with a bunch of 20 something’s and that really isn’t the case where I’m from. I’m willing to bet that the older guys that go out dancing with their wives have already found their “life mate”.

He broke up with me at his house. It sucked, but yes, it could have been worse.

"When I left his house that night he was crying, I wasn’t. It took a little while for everything to sink in."

Is this crying thing is unusual? I admit that I have seen an occasional man cry, usually at the death or imminent death of a loved one, but I have never seen one cry over a break up.
My son hasn't cried over anything since the testosterone kicked in somewhere between 13 and 14. I have never seen my husband cry.

Without casting aspersions on his sexuality, anyone else think this is teenage girlie behavior?

"Ken- You could very well be right about him finding someone hotter. But what age are people supposed to be when they go dancing?"

I'm not sure what that has to do with it, Kaylee. People go dancing at any age. My MIL is 92 and still loves to dance. There is no age limit for dancing.

For whatever reason, he just wasn't falling in love with you. It's hard to take, I understand. Believe me, I do. Been there. But you just have to accept that you weren't THIS guy's cup of tea. It doesn't mean that you won't find a guy who is crazy about you.

I'm a bit surprised because the way this letter was presented had him dumping you at the club, which we all agreed was tacky, but if he dumped you at a private home - either yours or his - it's not the same.

"He broke up with me at his house. It sucked, but yes, it could have been worse."

"Ten minutes after I arrived at the club, he broke up with me. He claimed he didn't know what had happened, but he just couldn't be with me anymore."

Ok, which is it? Are you basically a dishonest person? If so, that might explain things. You've told two very different stories here. Amy would not have misinterpreted your first letter.

Well, assuming he broke up with her at the club, I once did the same thing to someone, and it was a sh*tty thing to do to another human. A week or so before a concert we were planning to go to, I realized I didn't want to be with him. But I was too cowardly (I was 19, forgive me), so I moped over it incessantly but didn't say anything to him until I arrived at the concert, saw him and realized I just wanted to get it over with. So I blurted it out. Most awkward concert EVER. I could have broken things off a week earlier, and he could've taken someone else. Instead I wasted his time and money.

So, I'm thinking maybe this guy was just a coward too.

If it makes you feel any better, LW, dating karma has its way of working things out. A few years later, I got my comeuppance. While I was waiting for a guy I really really liked to show up for a date we'd planned (and that he never showed up for), he was updating his Facebook status to "in a relationship" -- with someone else. What goes around comes around.

I no longer have the question -- my assistant still might have it on her computer -- but she and I discussed at length how shitty it was for a guy to invite a woman out dancing and break up with her at the club. I distinctly remember that he asked her to go dancing and the bit about him breaking up with her 10 minutes after she got there.

I disagree that 9 months is nothing...

... in 9 months I started dating, got serious, got engaged, got married, and moved to another state.

... in 9 months I got pregnant, sold a condo, bought a house, moved to another country, and had a baby.

I don't know about other people but my life events tend to happen in clusters. So 9 months can be a long, long time.

I also don't really see the point of dating a long time and then having a long engagement. There's no evidence showing that those marriages last longer. Quite the contrary.

You may be right NicoleK. I'm sure many people have different timetables. Personally, I just haven't gotten very emotionally attached to someone in that short a time. I guess I just don't feel like I know them very well at that point. It wouldn't surprise me too much if I were to have a different experience sometime down the road. We're all different I guess.

I moved in with my boyfriend (now my husband) six months after we started dating.

I knew I wanted to marry him six months into it. We got very close very quickly, perhaps in part because my mother was diagnosed with what would be terminal cancer the day after we started dating, and I spent a lot of time taking care of her, so we didn't spend a lot of time in the shallow end of the getting-to-know-you pool. I knew if he was just looking for a good time, there were easier good times to be had elsewhere.

Ok, which is it? Are you basically a dishonest person? If so, that might explain things. You've told two very different stories here. Amy would not have misinterpreted your first letter.

I find it interesting that she never answered you, LS. Looks like she's been caught in a lie. She's got more issues than just a guy breaking up with her, whether it was at a club or at his house. I'm guessing her lying has/had something to do with it.

Yeah, Flynne, I think she was making the breakup out to be worse than it was to paint herself as the victim and justify distrusting all men. That's probably how she is in her relationships - always the victim, or expecting to be the victim -and it's a self-fulfilling attitude. At this rate, she will become a bitter, jaded old woman unless she realizes her part in things.

I still have the letter Amy, and after reading it again I can see why you thought this all happened at the club. It’s just a lack of clarification on my part. I obviously don’t write as a profession and sometimes the picture that I have in my head when I’m describing a situation doesn’t get explained in as much detail as I would like.I had met him at his house and we had planned to go on from there. Sorry Flynne, but my lack of a more timely response isn’t due to being caught in a lie at all, but more like a computer access issue. It sucks when your personal PC takes a crap on you. Anyway the following is the first paragraph of the original letter.

"Last summer I met a guy that was absolutely amazing. Over time we became serious and I fell ridiculously hard for him. He was the kind of guy that I swore didn’t exist. He was thoughtful, caring, and appeared to be incredibly secure with who he was. We had a really great time together, our families got along well, and everything seemed to be going great. This man led me to believe that he loved me and that he saw a future with me. We were together for exactly nine months. On the day that we broke up he called to ask what we should do that night, and suggested that we go dancing. His last words on the phone to me were “Right on baby, I’ll see you tonight.” When I did see him that night he broke up with me within the first 10 minutes that I was there. He said that he didn’t know what had happened, he was sorry that he hurt me, and that he just couldn’t be with me anymore. I was completely shocked as I didn’t see it coming at all. He hadn’t been distant with me at all and if anything he had clung a little tighter. We didn’t live together but would stay at each other’s houses often and he had been staying with me a lot more than usual."

So, there you go. I get it. The guy just wasn’t that into me. It really sucks that he acted like he was if it wasn’t the case. People don’t generally do many of the things he did if they do not consider a relationship serious. When I wrote to Amy what I needed was to talk to someone that wasn’t just going to tell me the things that they thought I wanted to hear. I don’t think anyone could ever accuse her of that. The situation sucked, I got hurt, but it happens and you get up and keep on going.

I can see how that might've been misunderstood, Kalee. Glad you cleared it up.

I think we've all been in those mystifying relationships that seem to be going well, then SLAM, they're over! I had one, not long after I re-entered the dating world. Like you, I fell hard, and he seemed to be as well. Then, right after we'd made passionate love one night, he ended it the next day.

I went over and over our dinner, and every single thing that happened that night, and could not find a single clue why.

Later, I learned that there was someone else he'd been seeing, and things must've suddenly gotten very serious between him and her...like, the next day, I guess. We had never declared exclusivity (though I'd mistakenly assumed), so I couldn't even be angry about that. I just wish I had known he wasn't as sure about us as he'd seemed.

It took me a long while to get over that because it rocked my confidence that I could tell what was going on. Even if things seemed to be going great, were they really? Could I trust my instincts when they'd been so off before?

I'm sure that's where you are, and I wish I could say I learned to relax and be more trusting each time I was in a new relationship, but that experience haunted me, even after I met my now husband. For the first 6 months or so, I still figured the ax would fall any minute...and I wouldn't see it coming.

But, month after month, when it didn't happen, I started to believe that things might actually work out, and I'm sure you will too once you find yourself in a relationship with a honest, reliable guy, who truly loves you. Just keep going and it'll happen.

lovelysoul that is exactly how I feel right now, but I'm also aware that it will eventually pass.

I wasn't the only one that didn't see this coming. No one did, including his friends and family. The general reaction from people when they heard about it was "What?! Why?!" And I didn't have an answer. The week before he had ordered a new back seat for his Harley that would be more comfortable for me on longer trips. We had been talking about living together because I had been thinking about selling my house and he said that we should look for a new one together. None of these are signs that a relationship is about to end.

I have to apologize to you, Kalee, for assuming you were being less than truthful, and I'm sorry things panned out the way they did for you. I've been in that boat too, and it ain't pretty. But if his friends and family didn't even see it coming, I can only imaging what a shock it was. But maybe he freaked himself out. It happens. I'm not excusing him, mind you, but sometimes when a guy thinks he's in over his head, he bails. There's no reasonable explanation for it.

Sounds to me like he may have gotten cold feet about living together and the more serious way things were headed. On the surface, his suggestion that you "look for a house together" seems promising, but it might've been a stall. House hunting can take awhile (it just took me 2 years), so rather than have you move right in, he might've been buying some time.

Still, it's anybody's guess, and that's the really frustrating part. There's no closure of knowing why. Of course, he may not even know himself. That part could be true.

I ended up seeing my mysterious dumpee months later, and his girlfriend was pregnant. He was a little vague about how far along, but I found out when the kid was born and, by doing the math, put his conception around the date of our breakup - a couple of weeks before.

I'm almost certain he got a call that day...or maybe already knew and just came to see me for a last hurrah. Because that was something we had discussed over dinner - how a "friend" of his had found out he was expecting a baby with a woman he'd only casually dated and they were trying to decide what to do. I actually gave him advice for his "friend!" (maybe they could make it work).

Yet, he'll never admit that was the reason. We've stayed friendly, and whenever I've brought it up, he gets very defensive, so I drop it. At this point, it doesn't matter, but I sometimes get annoyed that he can't just TELL me what happened. Give me some closure on it.

Thanks for the apology Flynne, I appreciate it.

lovelysoul, I'm sorry. I didn't remain friendly with this guy although if I were to see him I wouldn't be rude. I just wasn't about to do the friendship thing because I knew it would drive me crazy. I talk to his family every once in a while, but everyone is careful to leave him out of it.

Well, it's best that you don't stay friendly if you can avoid it. I did, simply because I still had feelings for him and also thought that by staying his "friend" I might figure out what happened.

The main thing is not to let this keep you from moving forward. It seems like you have the right attitude about that. And perhaps it helps to know that you're not alone in having this kind of experience. It doesn't necessarily mean that you ignored signs or only saw what you wanted to see. I mean, one can always look back and overanalyze little things that may or may not have signaled the end, but apparently, this guy gave no glaringly obvious clues, so you can't beat yourself up for not being a mindreader.

You may fear that it will happen again, as I did, which I think is normal, but, you know, this kind of abrupt ending is pretty rare. Typically, when a relationship is about to end, or isn't going very well, there WILL be signs. You'll be even more attuned to them because of this experience, so it's unlikely that you'll go through something like this again.

But Kalee, the burning issue is still this: Do you dance like Elaine?

PS. And who today, other than jestfully, says "Right on, baby"? Does he wear Superfly outfits too?

I very well might dance like Elaine, but I'm more of a two step with a partner kind of girl. I guess it's a regional thing. And the "Right on, baby" was sort of in jest. It was just his personality. He was a lot of fun.

Kalee:

If your story is true, I am sorry it happened to you. Well, I was dumped a few times along the way also.

Ever in all history, was someone dumped who thought it fair and honorable? Or liked the opposite sex for a while?

If you really like dancing the two-step, I am sure you will do fine. From what I see in cowboy bars, there are plenty of hunky men, and a gal with some spark and a smile will get asked to dance many times.

Good luck.

BOTU, it freaks me out when you're all sane and rational like this.

I'm weighing in late here, but ~oh well~ my gut tells me that when Kalee left and he was crying, it was because of something he hadn't told her, something that happened elsewhere, it involved another woman, and that created the strain in his relationship with Kalee. The less Kalee talked, the more he talked. Too bad Kalee doesn't have what he said on tape, as i am betting he gave small references to his situation in all he blathered through his tears that he was not being upfront about with Kalee from the get go.

My guess is that his previous g/f was pregnant when he and she broke up, then baby was born AFTER, and the birth of the baby overlapped his relationship with Kalee.

One thing to keep remembering, Kalee: he wasn't your match. For whatever reason he left you, it was reason enough that he allowed it to come between you, and so you are not his match. Now you are free to find someone who is.

Why did i take so long to write?... i was busy reading Heartless Bitches International. What a hoot that website is. Thanks, Flynne.

Google search "Seinfeld" for the Elaine dance.

NicoleK is right: it's recently been in the news that people in engagements of less than 1 year have longer, happier marriages.

Just a thought-

Try telling someone that just gave birth to a still born that 9 months isn't a long time.

It just depends on the situation and the people involved.

Anyway, I wanted to say thanks to everyone.