Can I Save This Relationship?

How to determine if you can save your relationship or if it’s over for good.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer whose girlfriend of almost three years just broke up with him this week. He is 32 and she is 20. He says they broke up because she wanted to go to sorority parties and he would get upset when she did. He would get mad and ignore her when she went out partying. He is not a drinker and doesn’t enjoy those activities.

She has started removing him from access to her Tesla and her location, but still has her things at his house. He asks if this relationship can be saved. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

This particular Member’s Only email is from a guy who just broke up with his girlfriend of almost three years this past week. He’s 32 and she’s 20. So they’ve been together for three years, he either met her right as she turned 18 or right before, so there’s a significant age difference. When you look at it that way, when you’re dating somebody that young, it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to find a girl who’s in her early 20’s or 19, 20 years old that’s mature. Some of them are, but most of them, quite frankly, are not going to be. So that’s going to be an issue if you’re 30 years old and you’re dating a girl that’s 18 or 19, unless she’s really mature, unless she has a real high IQ, super smart girl, comes from smart parents, both mom and dad are pretty smart, you’re probably going to have a hard time clicking or connecting with her. Let’s just assume, for argument’s sake, that she is smart and she’s much more mature for her age, because again, this guy already sent the email in.

So part of his problem is that, she’s 20, she’s in college, she’s in a sorority. She wants to go to sorority parties. He didn’t ever want to go and do any of that stuff because he’s not really a drinker. So from a value perspective and just really their situation in life, it’d be different if she’s like 22, 23 or maybe 20 and not in college, but in this particular case, he’s dating a girl that’s in college and she wants to live the college life, and she’d rather go to sorority parties. What are sorority parties like? Well, sororities and fraternities get together, and the idea is to socialize so connections can happen. So you meet your future wife, girlfriend or future ex-wives and at least half the cases. The idea is to socialize with men and women. If you’re a 32-year-old dude and your girlfriend is 20 and she’s in a sorority, I assume she’s got at least a year or two of college left, if she’s not super head over heels in love with you and you’re not super attractive and you’re not the best thing going on, then she’s probably gonna be more open to hanging out and having fun with people her own age. If you’re getting mad, you’re getting upset, you’re getting angry and you’re being controlling about it, she’s going to dip on you.

Women don’t dump men they’re in love with. They dump men they’ve lost attraction and respect for. That’s just a fact of life. As much as the red pill guys like to cry about that, that’s just a fact of life. Women don’t dump men they’re in love with. So in this particular case, she’s dumped him. He’s starting to remove access, like she removed him from access to her Tesla, she stopped sharing her location, but she still got his things. Her things at his house. He’s like, “What can I do now? So this is going to kind of be difficult just because of the age difference and what she’s doing. Plus already if she’s breaking up with you and she likes to party a lot, she’s acting like she’s single, and she’s clearly been acting like she’s single for a while because she likes the attention from other men, and the other men are not giving her a hard time and getting her grief like you happen to be.

Viewer’s Email:

Hey Coach! 

My girlfriend of almost three years just broke up with me this week. I am 32 and she is 20. The reason why she broke up with me was due to me getting upset with her going out to parties and staying out really late (4 a.m. or 5 a.m.).

Well to her, it was more fun to go out and party till 4 or 5 a.m. than hang out with you. That’s a fact of life. So whatever reason, whatever you had going on, whatever you guys did together was not as exciting. Now, she may have been totally head over heels in love with you, because I don’t have any context to how she was in those three years you guys were together, but at this moment in time, there’s more fun to be had at the sorority parties and hanging out with her boring ex-boyfriend. That’s just a fact of life.

While I never told her she could not go out, I would get mad and ignore her when she would do this.

Well, I don’t teach to ignore her, so that’s not going to be helpful. That’s passive aggressive and that’s abusive treatment. You should not treat women that way. It’s just not going to be helpful.

You got to communicate and work things out. You got to remember, whatever a woman feels when she’s with you, dating you, interacting with you or talking to you on the phone is what she’s going to feel when she’s with you. If you’re constantly making her feel bad, then after a while, she’s just not going to be around you because you make her feel bad all the time. You make her feel less happy. As the old Cyndi Lauper song from the 1980s said, “Girls just want to have fun.”

This was the third time that it got this bad, but she finally let me know that she had been suppressing this feeling inside for a very long time.

Yeah, you’re trying to control her. As Thich Nhat Hanh said, “You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.” If you were dating somebody this young, all you can really do in those cases is be her best option and let her come to you. She may choose partying, she may choose you, but when you’re trying to force yourself into her life and then on top of that, you’ve been in a relationship for three years and then you just ignore her for a while, I mean you do that long enough and the woman thinks you don’t care.

Number two, if you’re constantly getting upset and butt-hurt about her partying and being angry and controlling, then she’s just going to do it more, because every time she interacts with you, she gets grief for it, and then it becomes she has more fun hanging out with strangers and new people, or talking to new guys at these frat and sorority parties that she has more fun hanging out there than she does with you, because every time she talks to you and interacts with you, you’re giving her a hard time or you’re ignoring her. So every time she interacts with you, she’s getting negative vibes, negative feelings. It’s not going to help her being attracted to you.

You could be the best boyfriend in the world and do everything right, and if she’s not a loyal person, she’s going to lie to you and cheat on you, and that’s part of the vetting process. You have to find out what you’re dealing with. Character is destiny, and you don’t know what you don’t know when you first start dating.

This one was the final straw and she said that I was trying to make her grow up too fast!

All of her reactions and things she’s saying is coming from a place where she feels controlled. So things were bad for a long time, and she finally broke it off because her feelings were gone and she just wanted to go and do what she wanted to do without you giving her a hard time anymore because she didn’t have any attraction or respect for you at this point.

She regrets staying home and not going out to parties with her sorority because she didn’t want it to affect our relationship. She felt like she was growing in this relationship alone as I never attended any of these parties and would just hear her retell it to me.

Yeah, if you’re 32 years old and you’re dating a girl that’s 20, do you really want to go hang out with a bunch of 20-year-olds that are underage at sorority parties? I wouldn’t, but hey, you do you boo boo.

She said it felt like I was missing a huge aspect of her life when I should be there next to her.

Well, she definitely wanted you there, but you’re like, “Ah, I don’t want to do this.” If you’re going to date somebody that young, she’s going to want to include you in her life, and if you don’t want to do anything with her and you demand that she only does things with you, it’s just from a value perspective. It might have been different if you were 24, 25 and just met and started dating and she was out of college, but the fact that you were controlling, you were getting angry and you don’t really like the same things, at least at this point, that’s going to be a difficult situation. If she’s a mature girl, you’re a mature guy and she’s happy and she’s in love with you, she’s not going to want to go hang out with a sorority and the frat bros because she’s going to have more fun with you. So it just shows how low her attraction had got to where going to a sorority party is more fun than hanging out with their 32-year-old boyfriend.

If you’re a 32-year-old dude, I assume you’re a little further down the road, you make decent money, you got a nice living, you can do things that typically most college kids are not going to be able to do because they just don’t have the money. So you should be able to do more things and more fun things than a college kid. The fact that she would rather go be a college girl than hang out with her 32-year-old boyfriend, doesn’t sound like a lot of fun was happening. Hang out, have fun and hook up, but he’s giving her a hard time, he’s giving her the silent treatment. It’s just nothing but negative vibes.

Truth is, she never actually invited me to these parties, but she knows I’m not a drinker and prefer to stay home.

Well, you got to date and court your girl. If you were in a rut and all she did was come over, you hooked up and you watched TV, girls want to be in a love story. If you never take her out on dates and never do anything, I mean, that’s one of the things that’s right out of the book. Courtship never ends. If the courtship ended, if you don’t date and court your girlfriend or your wife, eventually some other guy is going to. It sounds like if you were boring and you just wanted to stay home all the time, didn’t drink and she likes to drink, and she wanted to go out and do things and you always wanted to stay home, eventually she’s going to get tired of that.

She ended up giving me the long excuse of needing to find herself and her own identity (Which is just her nice way of saying she lost interest in me).

The reason she said she needed to find her own identity is because she did not feel like she could be who she was without upsetting you. In other words, she wanted to have fun with these other people and you didn’t want to join her. You didn’t seem open to it, because you didn’t like to do those things. Then you gave her a hard time, so she suppresses that part of her identity, if you will, in order to please you and eventually for her, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. She didn’t want to sacrifice her fun years in college and being in a sorority to hang out with you, because it was more fun to hang out with people of her own age and do things that they were doing, then hang out with you. Again, it sounds like your relationship became dull and boring. As you said, you like to just stay home. Well, if you don’t even go out to dinner, you don’t do fun things together, she wants to go have fun. Girls want to have fun. It sounds like your relationship was boring, where she just came over like as a booty call.

Two things you got to do in a long term relationship: You always got to date and court her, and you got to make her feel heard and understood. It sounds like at some point, once you felt like you had her, then it was just the same boring, dull routine every week where she came over, you hooked up, you stayed home and watch TV all weekend. When there’s exciting things going on with their classmates, there’s more fun there for her than with you. At least with their classmates, they can go out and do fun things, they go to bars, they go to parties, they interact, they socialize, they talk to other people. In this case, all she does is come over to your house and you just Netflix and chill all the time.

Doesn’t matter if you’re married, you’re both 35 and married, if you do that all the time, eventually your girl is going to get bored of it. She wants to have fun. If you care about her, then you’ll take her out and romance her. If you don’t, you just want to stay home and be lazy.

Mind you, she did this all over text!

That’s because she didn’t respect you and she knew you’d probably give her a hard time if she did it in person.

I know she has been talking to a guy who was supposed to be picked up into her Greek life line, but dropped out due to his parents finding out. I’ve read some of their messages before and could tell he was a slime. He asked her how old I was and if he could see what I looked like. He asked her if she honestly saw her and I being together for a long time to which she replied yes. We’ve even briefly talked about marriage (She said I said that to him although I don’t recall this, LOL). After this, she removed all tags of me from all of her Instagram posts. I told her that I understood where she was coming from and wanted to see her to talk in person.

So now he wants to confront her for another unpleasant interaction.

She said she wasn’t ready to see me yet and needed to study for a test coming up.

Because she doesn’t want to deal with your grief or you giving her a hard time because she knows how you’re going to probably react, because you become predictable, dull and boring.

Three years together, “I got a test coming up. That’s much more fun than hanging out with you,” because again, in her mind, getting around you is going to be an unpleasant experience because you’re going to give her a hard time, probably be mad at her, maybe yell at her. I don’t know how you treated her, you didn’t really allude to that. The bottom line is, she doesn’t feel hanging out with you is going to be a good time. It’s going to be a drag.

At night, she removed me from access to the Tesla app and turned off her location. I panicked and went to her house to see if she was at home. She wasn’t. I assume she went to this guy’s house as her home is always full of arguments between parents. She has a bad relationship with her mom, but loves her dad. Her mom is always complaining that she married a poor guy unlike her siblings. I haven’t contacted her since, but would like to know if this relationship could be saved?

Well, right now it can’t because she’s not interested in saving it. The best thing that you can be doing is filling in your knowledge gap with the book, reading it and applying it. I would have to assume that the loser that she’s hanging out with, Chad Thundercock, is probably rearranging her insides, and that’s why she stopped sharing her location. So I would say it’s probably a good idea to put a fork in this one because it’s done.

You should start reading what’s in the book, start applying it and practicing it so you can get better, become more attractive, fill in your knowledge gap and stop doing all the stupid things that led to her losing attract and reception for you. It’s clear at this point it looks like Elvis has left the building and she’s moved on with another guy her own age, even though he may be a loser, but at least he’s fun. Hang out, have fun, hook up. He’s probably doing the same fun things with her that she would have liked to probably do with you, but again, all you wanted to do was Netflix and chill because you were boring.

Girls just want to have fun. You can’t be boring. Can’t just sit at home all the time. You got to go out and live and explore the world together.

By the way Coach, I have watched you on and off in the last six years.

Well, that’s part of your problem. You want to cherry pick.

I’ve watched countless videos on your channel and have also listened to the audio-book nine times. We also share a dog together. She has told me she wanted to co-parent our little dog. I just told her that we could talk about it when we see each other in person, but I have already decided in my head that I don’t want to co-parent our dog.

Well, I wouldn’t either, and if she’s not…

She doesn’t really take care of him as I do almost everything for our little boy. 

Yeah, she’s not really involved, and it’s your dog, you keep it, you take care of it. I know you listened to the audio-book nine times, at least that’s what you claim. The idea is you got to really focus in the audio-book, not listen to it as background noise, or like when you’re doing errands in the house or driving in your car and thinking about other things, flip it around on your phone. The best way to really learn the material is to put the audio-book on two-speed and follow along in a digital or physical copy. That’s the best way to get it into your mind. If you’re watching videos and listening to the audio-book in the background, it’s just half-assing it.

Nine times in six years instead of the 10 to 15 times in six years? The fact that all you wanted to do is Netflix and chill, you weren’t taking her out and weren’t dating her? You weren’t really following the book. The fact you’re getting angry and you’re ignoring her? Again this is not what I teach. I don’t teach you to ignore your girlfriend, so that’s just stupid on your part. So cherry picking and selectively using what’s in the book is going to blow up in your face. You may get some attainable success, but you won’t be able to sustain it. At this point again, it’s pretty clear that she’s moved on with another guy. It sure looks like it anyways.

She still has my house keys and has not taken any of her belongings.

Her stuff is at your house. I’d box it up, put it in your garage or whatever and whenever she comes over or calls you to come pick it up, she can come pick it up, but I wouldn’t call her and I wouldn’t text her for any reason.

Also, at the beginning of the week she was still all over me, holding my hands, calling me nonstop and sending me photos of our little dog at home waiting for me to come home. 

Bob

Again, it sure looks like she’s monkey branched from you to this other guy. When she stopped sharing her location, that’s pretty much the end of things, at that point, or the beginning of the end, and you haven’t heard from her? Again, I wouldn’t call, I wouldn’t text her for any reason. At this point, you should just treat her like a potential fuck buddy, friends with benefits. I’d wear a condom with her, especially if you know she’s probably hooking up with other dudes.

You need to pull your head out of your ass dude, and get back into the book and read it and find out where you went wrong. Just Netflix and chilling every night because you just like to hang out at home is not really a relationship. That just leads to a situation of being roommates. It elicits platonic feelings in her towards you. At the beginning of the week, if she was all over you, that was how she was feeling that day, but it’s clear that this is becoming for a while. It’s not something that just happened in the last few days. You’ve been in the danger zone for a long time, and you weren’t really paying attention. Until it was kind of too late, and the fact that you were ignoring her instead of talking and communicating, the fact that she was never invited you into these things, it’s like things have been going sideways for a long time with this particular girl.

I’d be looking at what’s in 7 Principles To Get An Ex Back, reviewing that, but there’s not a lot you can do at this point unless you hear from her. If you do, invite her over, hang out, have fun, hook up. I wouldn’t talk about getting back together. Just look at her as like one of the girls in your rotation, or one of the girls in your practice squad, or one of the girls that you’re sleeping with because she broke it off with you, and it’s clear she’s behaving as a free agent.

All’s fair in love and war. You get to behave as a free agent as well. You start meeting and dating other women. Even if she wants to get back together right away, I’d make her wait for it, make her earn it back a little bit instead of just jumping right back into a relationship and a commitment, because you don’t want to be in a commitment with a girl that wants to go out and party every weekend with her sorority sisters and a bunch of frat bros, because that just tells me that she’s looking to meet somebody else. The fact that she’s talking to this other guy, he’s one of the potential suitors, or maybe two or three other dudes that you don’t know about.

So, if you’ve got a question or a challenge and you’d like to get my help, go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the Products tab at the top of your screen on any page on my website, and book a coaching session with yours truly. Until next time, I will talk to you soon.