Listen Christina, my ex-husband -- a youthful marriage -- was also my best friend. I thought I shared something intellectually special with him that no one else could duplicate. For 12 years after we split, we remained good friends, as he went through marriages and relationships. Secretly, I wanted to be that special person, but I wasn't.

Finally, I realized that he was having other relationships and I was not -- because he was toooooo important to me. I depended on him tooooo much.

After I cut things off, soon after I got into a relationship that lasted 15 years.

So, you can read this I'm projecting what I experienced onto your relationship and it doesn't apply to you. Or you can read this as experience from someone else who has experienced something similar and knows that we can hurt ourselves by staying in a relationship where the other person doesn't know the inward pain we are feeling -- and we cannot reveal it, because he will run for the hills if we say it.

So I repeat, we do it to ourselves. You will make the break when you are ready, and in my case it took a very long time to be ready and see how I was handicapping my emotions.