This is something quite a lot of us suffer from at some point. Men are a lot kinder than many women give them credit for and we do pity women when they struggle and we naturally don't want to make them feel abandoned, particularly when we have been gentle and intimate with them.

I have struggled with this with only limited success. The problem is that if you are going to be kind to her, you are not going to dump her, so somehow you have to be unkind. I wonder if simply telling her you are through is not the kindest way in the very long term but its not something I have carried through with women I care about and its not something you say you want to try. Women seem to induce too much pity.

In my case I have "succeeded" only where I have got her to think it was in some way her idea to start and lent into it with the truth, creating a feedback loop of agreement and amplification. So when she has gone off crazy, for no fair reason I have said "You know you are right to be angry/ upset, this is not working out, why else would you be like this?" In that moment of her being crazy already, she has agreed and amplified and I have further amplified. That's the easy bit. Next day when she wants to make up you have to say "You know you were right, you wouldn't say that/ do that if you were not unhappy. This isn't working with me being me and you being you. I am not the guy to please you/ fix you/ make you complete or this would not be happening. Just look at the evidence" If you don't want to go the whole way you can say "trial separation" as women love to do and hope she locks onto another guy in the time you have off or at least cools it enough to take your saying "I thought about it and I feel the same, we are not a good fit. We just wouldn't have those episodes if we were" but it is probably the weaker move.

Don't be tempted to be kind at the end just to show her you really cared. Kindness and goodbye together can really spin the hamster wheel past its limits-its the combination of what she really wants and what she really doesn't want that is red rag to a bull. I once did that and drove round her house when I knew she was out and left a gift and a nice letter. Even though the nice letter did include "I don't want to have any contact with you for at least a year" my phone never stopped ringing till eventually I went round her house and banged her without even getting up the stairs and the whole madness started again. Next time I ended it on a harsher note and it worked.

In the end its a bit like the hunter's paradox. Hunters like deer, we spend a lot of time watching them and understand them better than tree hugging liberals. We don't want them to suffer but we just sometimes want to make them dead. There are "nicer" ways to make things dead but none of them are actually that nice and usually some brief pain will be involved in making meat. There is no entirely nice way to kill an animal -because its never the way the animal wanted the day to go- and there is similarly no entirely nice way to kill a relationship.

Empathy, the ability to understand the feelings and view points of others, is said to be a trait that is strongly developed in women. Yet I never see proof of this in the real world. Has she ever asked herself "A healthy, ambitious, honest man in his early 40s, with strong sales skill who runs a successful online business, who is descent looking [Ed. note: so 7 and up] and of acceptable height, who doesn't want kids or a family but instead wants a hedonistic lifestyle while being loyal... hmm what kind of woman and relationship is this man is looking for?" If she thinks that such a man - if he even exists, which I doubt as some of his character traits are contradictory - would profile her as an ideal partner then she is beyond delusional. This is insanity and rejection of reality. My advice to this lady, find comfort in a pet, and meet your end in solitude.