Mutual breakups

Is there such a thing? I just wonder, can there ever be a breakup where you both think it has to happen, and you can actually stay friends? When neither of you is dissolving in tears on a regular basis?

Recent experience seems to indicate not. I guess, just as the love in any relationship cannot be equal, the non love can't be either. One person wants to break up. One doesn't want to break up.

So what then?

Having been the recipient of a lot of breakups, and I don't mean just romantic relationships, I always said I'd never be on the other side of the fence. And yet, here I stand. Ready to call it quits, with my heart twisting in pain as I see what that does to him, patently aware that we stand at different moments in time. Oldest Friend says it's like that, the breakuper has closure. Or is closer to it at any rate.

Whatever the reason, I am very confused. I don't see what to do here.

On the one hand I don't want to give up, I want to try harder, what if all it needs is a little more time? I don't want to be the person who breaks this thing that brought us so much joy. But somehow the joy is gone, and not just for me. Though in all fairness maybe his joy is gone cos mine is. Why did it happen? Did I make it happen by overanalysing everything and putting too much pressure on it? Did he make it happen by shutting me out? Was it just bad timing in the universe that my full lau and his didn't overlap enough?

The scariest question: What if I never ever meet someone like him again? Someone who just gets me? Like no boy unrelated to me ever has? How many intelligent articulate funny loving boys are there who are willing to put up with persnickety, crotchety, obnoxious, loud, fat me?

And what do I do when all we have these days is the occasional spike of guarded happy in an endless ocean of tense and unhappy? I don't want to put this on me. But I also don't think it's going to get any better. I think if it doesn't happen now then he'll really hate me and I'll really hate him, and we could never be friends again. And I can't lose that hope. Even if I know it's in vain.