Did you ever 'dump' someone in your youth?

MissAdventure

I've dumped people left, right, and centre.
I don't regret it, I'm sure they all went on with life without me.

This. I prefer the term 'ghost' - I refuse to be with people who aren't truthful. I don't need bad behaviour in my life.

People 'dump' or 'ghost' by walking away or just estranging.

Yes, I did. We had been engaged for a month or two and I disappointed him by breaking our engagement. However what I did was better than marrying him for the wrong reason.

This is not the same sort of case as breaking off the emotional investment of a friendship of thirty or forty years, or breaking a contract that cost someone a lot of money.

I have been both dumper and dumpee ( sorry pedants) one of my first boyfriends was very attractive and well mannered - no liberties. It was not until I moved into the nurses home that my more worldly wise friends told me he could be gay. I was a very naive 18 year old.

Not in so many words, no. But I did stand someone up........we had known each other for quite a while and made a midweek date. I had forgotten that I had already arranged to meet up with some school friends on the same night - one of them was having a rough time and we girls wanted to cheer her up. Naturally, it was 'sisters before misters' and I couldn't meet him. I did apologise when I next saw him and did explain but never got a second chance.

I still feel bad about handling the end of a relationship with my long term teenage boyfriend whose family has been so kind to me when my mother died. I was right to see no future for the relationship but very wrong not to be honest and up front about things. I learned to be braver because I felt so rotten about myself. He married three times, had a successful career as a research scientist so he survived my immature behaviour but I still carry the shame of behaving unkindly.

I only had 3 boyfriends before I married, and I was always the one 'dumped'. One I particularly remember as we had arranged to meet in the college library. I arrived there to find a note on the table where we were to meet finishing it! I suppose it was the 70's version of texting! A bit of a cowards way really. It was always awkward after that if I bumped into him.

No never, I was too "nice". But looking back, that wasn't kind either, because it left them dangling not really knowing what I felt about them. Relationships took ages to peter out fully, but I'm still friendly ish wih a few.

Yes, and I still feel bad about a long-term BF, who was evidently a lot keener than I was, as I realised once we’d gone to different unis. I just stopped answering his letters, because I couldn’t bring myself to write, Sorry, it’s over. But by then I knew I was never going to marry him.

I googled him not long ago and found that he’d gone bankrupt back in the 90s, which made me feel even worse - not that anything would have made the slightest difference.

I can remember one guy who I dumped when I was around 18. He was lovely and a friend of my brother. Thing is I still hankered for a previous boyfriend who was back on the scene. The friend of my brother posted me a letter with a simple typed message - au revoir.

When I met my husband I was engaged to a lovely man and we were in the process of buying a house. But he lost his mum and in the months that followed he stopped wanting to have fun which was very understandable but I was young and my husband came along and well I felt so terrible for my fiancé when I ended it. I tried to give him his ring back but he threw it back at me. I don’t think it would have worked though as he is a professor and has travelled the world and I just wanted to escape my difficult home life. I would love to know where his life took him.

How do you break off with someone in a way that isn't effectively a dump, unless it is mutual?

I think if you reach a point in a relationship where you know it has died on your side, but where the othe partner is still keen to make it last, the last thing you want is someone emotional or begging you to give them another chance, and the emotional pressure to do so. Once it is over, it is over and the best way to do this is short and sharp with an abrupt cut off.

I have been dumped and have dumped others and think painful though it be, it is the best way. I would rather have my head cut off with an axe than gently sawn through.

I didn't dump someone but did send a Valentine card to a boy in my study group at college. I wrote it is thick black felt tip and sent it to him. The following week a rather plain girl from the group sat next to him and wrote in black felt tip and he asked her out there and then. I was gutted. He was gorgeous and had a car!

I dumped my first husband in a very unkind way and I'm sorry about it. He died a few years ago and it's too late to apologise but I am sorry and a bit ashamed of myself.

I've loved reading all your stories and glad to know that I'm not the only one who gives the occasional thought to past boyfriends. If I ever cross their minds too, at least I'm still 16, slim and reasonably pretty somewhere

Gosh yes, I was a great believer of in try before you buy. I was fickle, I dumped somebody because I saw him spit in the street, and somebody else because he had bad breath - weirdly both were called Simon. There was only one I still feel bad about though, and he wasn’t a Simon but we are still friends on Facebook so I hope he doesn’t hate me for it 40 years later.

I remember dumping four boyfriends when I was between the ages 14-18.They were all upset and I did feel guilty later about it.
There’s never a nice way to dump someone though is there?
Just drop off the key Lee and set yourself free!

Yes, to someone I was engaged to for what turned out to be my husband of 54 years.

Very uncomfortably though, I received a letter from him a couple of years ago. He had tracked me down, and wanted to become friends on line.

I ignored the letter, as I thought DH would not be best pleased.

I sort of half wished I’d replied though, just to see what had happened over the 57 years or so.

I didn’t meet my husband and get married until I was 32. There was a long trail beforehand… oh, I blench when I think about some of the circumstances, dumping and being dumped.

Oh yes. Leaving the cinema by the back door at half time if they didn’t come up to scratch or had wandering hand trouble.

I was an awful dumper and for the silliest reasons at times. I broke off an engagement when I was 21 because I wanted to go on holidays with my friends, enjoy the single life. I ended up marrying another guy that I met on one of those girls holidays, but he was a hateful control freak and I left him after 14 years.
The funny thing is my ex that I dumped when I was 21 and his wife have split up and he gave my friend his number to pass on to me if I fancied meeting up. I'm not interested, I've been on my own now for nearly the length of time I was married and happy enough staying that way.

Yes, particularly an American who was very keen on me. I went out with him because I had nothing better to do - I was lonely, in a new place and a new job - but I never at any point found him attractive. I should never have gone out with him really. He was very upset when I dumped him.

Oh, I didn't kiss any frogs before I met my prince, so I have never dumped nor been dumped. Started going out with him the week after my 16th birthday, married at 21 and still going strong after all those years!

Should have said, I bet his mother hated me. He would have gone to university, but got a job to save up for us getting married instead.

I think she must have blamed me, quite rightly really.

I went out with a lad in the Upper V1 at school, I was in the 5th form. We went out for a year.

We both left school same time, him after A levels, me after O levels.

I started work in a local bank, he went to other end of the country to work. We swore undying love, was going to write regularly.

After a few weeks, I found myself wishing I could go out with my girlfriends, and just be single again. So when he came home for Christmas, I finished with him.

He was devastated, I felt awful but knew I was doing the right thing.

Over 50 years later, and happily married to another, I do sometimes wonder where he is, and what happened to him.

But no regrets.

1. A nice mouth but for some reason it just didn’t fit mine. We clashed teeth.

2. 20 years older than me

3. Gay (as we both found out later)

4. Went back into prison

I don’t think I’ll go on………..

I didn’t dump them though.