My Break-up with My Fiancé

Had my fiance and I decided to end our relationship for personal reasons, and were our feelings relatively mutual on the matter, our break-up might not have been so devastating. The reality of the situation, however, is that my parents directly contributed to the end of our engagement and subsequently, our relationship, which made the experience all the more awful. My fiance and I had been dating for nearly seven months, and I had always maintained a level of secrecy about our relationship with my family, as I’ve done with all of my relationships. I simply do not enjoy discussing significant others with them.

Then one day my parents sat me down, having heard about my fiance from a mutual friend. They were very upset, my mother especially so, but they did their best to remain calm while they explained plainly how I could no longer see my fiance. My dad was robotic and monotone, and seemed to take his cues from my mother, who just sat there glaring at me. Every once in awhile she would speak up and say things to the tune of, “We don’t know how you could do this to us,” or “We expected so much more of you,” or any number of other cliches parents use to guilt trip their children.

After nearly three hours of talking, during which we stormed around the house, my mother and I shouting at each other for brief intervals, and my father leaving several times to take calls (though I suspect he faked them, just needing a break) I finally agreed to stop seeing my fiance. I couldn’t believe the words came out of my mouth, or that I even entertained the notion, but bit by bit my mother’s banshee-like outbursts and my father’s dead calm wore me down. I have not seen my fiance since.