I think I need to break up with my boyfriend.

It’s so damn hard though.

It’s not like he did some cathartic bad deed that provoked me into this decision. He’s still a wonderfully sweet man, with many amazing qualities. It’s like I baked myself an ALMOST perfect cake, but the icing just doesn’t want to cooperate. The ingredients are all in there, measured with accuracy, and it’s still a cake, and you could eat the cake and be pretty happy with it. However, you could definitely have an even BETTER cake. You don’t want to waste your calories on the okay cake when there is a superior cake better suited to you, do you? I mean I don’t. That’s how I feel about my man. He’s a perfectly tasty cake, but I know that there is another variety of cake that’s just more my speed. They always say though, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. So am I simply being too picky about my cake? Evidently, I’m confused and have a craving for cake.

I’ve been seeing him since January, which is a pretty decent chunk of time. While I love him as a person, I’m not in love with him. I feel five months in, you’re usually head over heels if the relationship was going to progress that way. I also just don’t really see that white-picket future with him, that I have felt in the past with others. So now comes the horrible part with, how do you break up? I’ve always loathed confrontation, and break-ups are some of the absolute worse forms of just that. No matter what justification I have in my mind about the break-up its always heart wrenching to deliver any sort of cliff note version of that to a person you have grown to care for, and now have to say goodbye. It’s an approaching curve that you know is coming, but they have no way of preparing for. My inherent need to please people just makes breaking it off a near impossible task. I’ve in the past stayed in relationships much longer than necessary, because I kept making excuses, that maybe the feelings will grow. Maybe it will get better. All the while knowing deep in my gut, I was just being a coward and hurting both of us in the process. Anyways, it’s my burden to bear, and I will do it when the time feels right and I work up the courage to do it.

It is so frustrating that you found someone you thought would pan out, and all that work and learning about them just seems a little useless. Don’t get me wrong, there is value in those relationships. I just feel so dejected to have to go back to square one each time a romantic relationship fails. I just hope that the next man I meet that sticks around more than a few dates, that I will have the clarity early on, and so will they, that we are perhaps meant to be.