Olalekan Adebumiti
You are waiting for the axe to fall.
You know the relationship is dead. You can smell the rot. He barely speaks to you. He keeps himself busy or distant, always unavailable, always elsewhere emotionally.
You are waiting for him to sit you down and say, “This isn’t working. We should see other people.”
But he doesn’t.
Days turn into weeks. Weeks turn into months. He stays. He still takes comfort from what you offer. He still reaches for intimacy when it suits him. He continues the charade, even though his eyes are empty.
You start to think, “Maybe I’m imagining it. Maybe he still loves me. If he wanted to leave, he would leave, right?”
Wrong.
The “Laid Back” man is often also the “Passive” man. And passive men do not initiate breakups. Breakups require action. They require confrontation, logistics, and emotional energy. He is too lazy for that.
He is “Quiet Quitting” your relationship. He has resigned, but he is still showing up to the office to collect his paycheck until you finally fire him.
Here is why he will never break up with you, and why you have to be the one to pull the trigger.
1. The Path of Least Resistance
Isaac Newton said it best: An object at rest stays at rest.
He is at rest. Even if he is unhappy, the effort required to break up with you is greater than the pain of staying with you.
Think about what a breakup involves:
- Finding a new flat.
- Telling his mum.
- Dividing the furniture.
- Losing his regular sex life/comfort.
- Entering the dating market again.
To a passive man, that looks like a mountain. Staying with you, even in a loveless relationship, looks like a nap. He chooses the nap. He is choosing unhappiness over inconvenience.
2. He Needs To Be The “Good Guy”
He prides himself on being “nice.” He is the Chill Guy. The Easy Guy.
If he dumps you, he becomes the Villain. He breaks your heart. He looks mean. His ego cannot handle that narrative.
So, he subcontracts the villain role to you.
He behaves terribly—ignoring you, withholding affection, being useless—until you can’t take it anymore. He pushes you until you scream, you cry, and you end it.
Then, he gets to tell his friends: “I don’t know what happened, mate. She just went crazy and kicked me out. I tried to make it work.”
He walks away with his hands clean, leaving you with the guilt.
3. He Is “Monkey Branching”
Passive men are terrified of being alone. They cannot sit with their own thoughts.
He won’t let go of the branch he is holding (you) until he has a firm grip on the next branch (someone else).
He is staying with you while he scouts for your replacement. He is on dating apps “just looking.” He is flirting with a coworker. The moment he secures a new source of supply, he will leave you. But until then, you are his safety net. You are the placeholder keeping his bed warm.
4. He Is Hoping You Will Fix It
He knows things are bad, but because he has weaponised his incompetence (see previous post), he assumes that you will fix the relationship, just like you fix the Wi-Fi and the laundry.
He is waiting for you to schedule the therapy. He is waiting for you to plan the date night. He is waiting for you to resurrect the dead body of your love life.
He takes no responsibility for the health of the connection. He is a passenger waiting for the driver to get the car out of the ditch.
5. The “Comfortable Misery”
He isn’t happy, but he isn’t miserable enough to move.
Men can tolerate a “meh” relationship for decades. If the food is good, the house is clean, and you don’t nag him too much, he will stay forever. He doesn’t need passion; he needs functionality.
You, however, need passion. You are dying inside while he is perfectly content to live in a black-and-white movie.
6. He Is Afraid of Your Reaction
Passive men hate conflict more than anything.
He is terrified of the conversation. He is terrified of your tears, your anger, and your questions. Ideally, he wants the relationship to end by fading away, ghosting, or you simply evaporating.
He will stay in a dead relationship for two extra years just to avoid one hour of difficult conversation.
The Mirror Moment
Stop waiting for him to do the right thing. He won’t.
You are waiting for a man who can’t even pick up his own socks to pick up the heavy emotional weight of a breakup. It’s not going to happen.
You have to be the executioner.
It feels unfair. You tried the hardest, you loved the most, and now you have to be the one to end it. You have to do the dirty work.
But look at it this way: You are not killing the relationship; you are signing the death certificate for a patient that died months ago.
He has already left you, darling. He just forgot to take his body with him.
Pack his bags. Open the door. Do the thing he is too weak to do.
