I hate to bother you with this issue but I lack the relationship experience to properly understand what is going on right now.

Heterosexual male, 22, dating a heterosexual (assuming) female, also 22.

Met volunteering at her work, and we hit it off immediately. Second time meeting her was actually on her birthday, and I took her out for dinner after. We’ve been seeing each other for six months, and have talked about very longterm things we would like to do. My definition of who I was as an individual changed to include her. I’ve secured much better employment, have been making different, conscious decisions that include or lean more towards what she would like. We are very sexually compatible, get along great. I told her the third time I met her I was looking for a best friend and to invest in and adventure through life with. She has been that and more, more than I could have ever asked, until very recently.

Two weeks ago today she started us on a "break."

She needed a break because she told me her heart and her mind were in different places. I don’t know what a break is supposed to look like; even if she told me she needed to just have another guy a few times, I could work with it. Not talking to her, being left in the dark, is extremely frustrating and confusing.I texted her lightly for the first week, she made it clear she needed space that was entirely isolated from me, and I was silent for a week. I texted her today, and left a voicemail, asking to talk perhaps this weekend. I’m very confused about what this means. Is it likely we will pickup our relationship where we left off? Or has she been lying to me for the entire time? Did she met someone and couldn't tell me or did she just lost interest?

I’m crazy about this girl, and we get along really well. We make about the same money, and I have treated her very well in my opinion. She claims to have loved just about everything about me since the beginning. I know she is wary of firearms, which I carry and/or own, for sport, hunting, and personal defense. We both believe in LGBT equality, pro-animals, pro-choice, and for the most part seem to land around the same spots politically. Our experiences in the world are very different, and as such our opinions of people differ, but I had been led to believe we balanced each other out well. I don’t open up to people generally, but she totally slipped past my guard; I’ve never been so sure about someone before.

Do I just wait it out in silence? I’m very good at being an asshole, and anytime you know personal things about people, its very easy to be a cruel piece of trash, but I’m trying to not embrace all of that. She made me a much better person, and I don’t want to lose that.

Thanks for your time. Can’t promise I’ll vote Dem, but if you can give me some effective tools to engage this blockade, I would happily commit to not voting for Trump.

Boyfriend On Lockdown Despairs

I'm trying to picture someone who is pro-choice, pro-LGBT-equality, and pro-animals who could even entertain the idea of voting for Donald Trump, BOLD, and I'm coming up blank. Surely an slightly irrational attachment to firearms (they won't keep you safe) isn't enough to drive an otherwise sensible, pro-choice, pro-equality voter into the arms of a ranting, raving, anti-choice, anti-LGBT, anti-Semitic lunatic like Donald Trump.

Anyway...

This is out of your hands, BOLD, and it's out of mine. It's up to her. But even if your relationship is over, even if this “break” is her way of easing you out of her life, you can walk away without bitterness and without regret — you conducted yourself honorably (so far), you treated your girlfriend well (so far), and knowing her inspired you to make better choices and get a better job. She was good for you, BOLD, even if she wasn't always for you.

You can also walk away hurt, BOLD, and you can walk away confused. But if you start lobbing grenades at her on your way out — if you act like "a cruel piece of trash," if you lash out at her, if you use what you learned about her personally to retaliate against her — then you can't walk away without first surrendering your Decent Human Being Card and a sizable chunk of your humanity. (And, if we had sensible gun laws, your firearms as well. Men who menace, threaten, or attack their romantic partners shouldn't be allowed to own guns.)

People break up with people all the time — if, indeed, she's breaking up with you. My hunch is that she is, BOLD, and it might be better to accept the worst case scenario (she wants out) and be pleasantly surprised if the opposite turns out to be true (she wants in) than to sit there staring at your phone, waiting for her to call/text/DM/snap/whatever. And if you're wondering why she would ask for a "break" instead of just ending things, well, you might wanna re-read the second-to-last paragraph of your letter. The prospect of being dumped has you contemplating — and, to be fair, rejecting — retaliatory acts of emotional violence. It's possible she may have sensed you wouldn't take being dumped well, BOLD, and concluded it would be safer for her to back away slowly then to end things abruptly. (Domestic violence and intimate partner violence are both so prevalent, BOLD, that women can't be blamed for erring on the side of their own physical safety.)

Let this line from your own letter be your mantra, BOLD: "She made me a much better person, and I don’t want to lose that." Be grateful to her for making you a better person — or, more accurately, be grateful for how she inspired you to make yourself a better person — and don't be an asshole. Because being asshole means forever forfeiting your "better person" cred. You definitely "lose that" by lashing out.

Zooming out: You met a girl, you hit it off, you spent some time together. That's called dating, BOLD, and dating is about figuring out who we are and what we want — and when it comes to dating a specific person, it’s also about figuring out whether this person is who and what we want. Early on, when we're smitten, we sometimes fantasize about a future — we talk about the longterm and/or listen as the other person talks about the longterm — that isn't destined to be. Being open to the possibility of a longterm relationship with someone, imagining a future with that person, etc., doesn't obligate us to stay in the relationship eternally, BOLD, and it doesn't mean we lied or misled someone if the relationship should end. Fantasizing about a life together is not the same thing as committing to a life together.

You may have been dumped; you will most likely dump women yourself in the future, BOLD, if you haven’t dumped some already. Sometimes people get dumped for good reasons — control issues, unforgivable betrayals, drinking/drug problems, pro-Trump tweets — and sometimes we get dumped because the other person likes us fine but doesn't feel as strongly about us as we do about them. That doesn’t mean we were lied to or misled. It just means it didn’t work out.

Take a deep breath, get out there, meet other people. Eat some ice cream, go to the gym, see a movie. Hang with friends, go on hikes, binge watch S4 of OITNB. If you hear from her again, BOLD, and you’re still single, great — you can pick up where you left off. And if you don’t hear from her again… well... then be grateful for the time you had with her, BOLD, and the ways she helped you grow.

And vote for Hillary Clinton.

Listen to my podcast, the Savage Lovecast, at www.savagelovecast.com.