Q:
My girlfriend and I have been together 4 years, and for a variety of reasons I’m not sure that this is the right relationship for me. We are trying very hard to make it work, but I’m just not sure.
The only issue is that I recently moved to her city after a year of long distance, and we are newly colleagues. The company knows we are dating, and we were hoping that one of us would find a different job, but that’s not how things shook out. We work together relatively closely within the company. We aren’t always interacting professionally, but it would be very hard for me to go a day without bumping into her.
I feel so stuck in my relationship. Feeling like I can’t break up with her is making me so unhappy, which makes me want to break up more! But then, if we were to break up we would still have to be colleagues, so I might as well stay in this relationship that’s fine but not totally right.
I don’t know what to do. Basically, I made a mess and now I’m so stuck. I didn’t even want to work at the same company!
A:
I know you don’t want to hear this, and I also think you know this is coming, but you have to break up with your girlfriend. It’ll suck; it’ll be hard; it’ll probably make work uncomfortable for a bit, maybe for a long time. But there’s already significant discomfort if you’re harboring these feelings of wanting to break up with her — discomfort in your own home and also at work! Even if you feel like you’ve been hiding it well, chances are you haven’t been. When the desire to break up is palpable, it usually seeps into all aspects of your relationship. Even the best actor in the world would likely have trouble hiding it perfectly. It’s possible your girlfriend doesn’t exactly know you want to break up with her, but she’s likely picking up on something being off, and it might in turn be making her behave a little off.
You’re unhappy; she’s likely unhappy. The kindest thing to do for both yourself and for her is to break up, even if it’ll make things tense in the workplace. Like I said, things are likely already tense in the workplace, especially if the job is what’s making you feel even more “trapped” in the relationship. I know it’s a big deal that you moved to her city; that’s always going to be a risk. I hope you don’t have any regrets about doing so! You shouldn’t! You did the thing required of so many adult relationships; you took the next step. But sometimes the next step provides new information, and it sounds like the problems in your relationship were perhaps easier to ignore when you were long distance and then became more apparent once you were living together (and working together!).
A relationship that’s “fine but not totally right” isn’t something you should settle for. Breaking up with someone is already hard, and it becomes even harder when there aren’t things overtly BAD about the relationship. But it still sounds like this relationship is not the best fit and is not serving you. It will be hard to break up; it will be harder to stay in a relationship where you’re unhappy. And prolonging a breakup can lead to increased resentment, guilt, and other negative feelings that could fester and end up hurting you both even more.
The difficult thing about this won’t necessarily just be some awkwardness at work but also the lack of definitive space in the immediate aftermath of the breakup. While I think it’s great if exes want to stay friends or build a friendship after a breakup, I do think the immediate time after a breakup should be spent intentionally apart. That’ll be impossible for you if you’re still working with her. So it’ll be important to make sure you’re not seeing each other outside of work time. If you are indeed interested in finding another job, now’s a good time to accelerate those efforts, but there’s no guarantees, especially in this job market. So you can’t wait until you have a new job to break up with her. The break up should come first, and it should be as soon as possible.
Something I like to remind people when they’re staring down the barrel of a breakup is that you don’t have to view the relationship as “failed” or a “waste of time.” Relationships that end still will have taught us so much about ourselves, provided positive things, and given us tools and experience we can bring into future relationships. Especially when things end just because it simply wasn’t the right fit, an ended relationship doesn’t signal failure. Recognizing it’s not the right fit is actually quite the accomplishment in terms of self-understanding and a healthy mindset about relationships.
Break up. It’ll suck. But you have to do it. You’re already thinking about it, and your actions and emotions are probably showing it in at least subtle ways. Don’t make your girlfriend pull it out of you. Be proactive. And then try to maintain some clear boundaries at work so that you’re really just sticking to brief, professional interactions. That part will be hard and potentially hurt, but it’ll be so crucial to both of your abilities to move forward.
You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.
This breakup sounds inevitable, so it’s really just a matter of timing. I suggest LW turn it around and think about this as if she were in her girlfriend’s shoes. How would she feel to be broken up with a year from now once GF has secured a job with another company, and learn that GF has wanted to break up for a year and only didn’t because they were coworkers and GF didn’t want the awkwardness?
I’m guessing LW would not be cool with that AT ALL. So, show GF the respect she herself would want. Be honest and end the relationship, and be professional at work.