Inside Julia and Benjamin's Breakup

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As recently as May, PEOPLE reports in its latest cover story, the seeds of discontent in the nearly four-year relationship of Julia Roberts, 33, and Benjamin Bratt, 37, had taken root. "They couldn't be the person the other one wanted them to be," a source told the magazine. So what went wrong? In the postmortems that followed news of the split, friends of the stars -- who are not in touch with each other at the moment -- agreed that their problems boiled down to career vs. commitment: He wanted to settle down, she didn't -- at least not in the same way. Sources say Bratt, described as a "traditional" guy eager to start a family, wanted Roberts to cut back on making the movies that kept them apart and move from New York City to his home base of San Francisco, where his mother and siblings live. "With each movie (she made), he got more angry. He didn't want her to give up her career, but the reason they fought was that he wanted her to be there with him." In the end Bratt was the one who broke it off. "There is a deep love there," says the source. "But it was like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. He realized she was a bit of a gypsy."