Musings on Life and Love

Photo by Kristin McKee via Flickr

When my friend is going through a breakup, it becomes my personal mission to mend her figurative heart. The quantity of chocolate ice cream at the supermarket diminishes noticeably. The local Blockbuster’s angry-girl-loses-guy-but-then-meets-even-cuter-one genre experiences a huge spike in rentals. I have all the right tools to combat my friend’s newly acquired depression….

Except the verbal skills.

Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths. My spoon is more of a copper alloy (you know, the kind that turns your skin green after you’ve worn it for too long).

A few years ago, after her relationship had come to a fiery end, my bosom buddy and I sat on her couch while she poured out her heart. I tried to keep my terror from showing on my face. What was I supposed to do? What could I say?

She paused and looked at me with those pleading, tear-filled eyes. I had to come up with something both insightful and comforting. And quickly. Hurry, hurry! What always made me feel better?

“Uh, I want ice cream.”

We asked our readers what’s the worst thing a friend can say to help someone get over a breakup. I’m ashamed to realize I’ve used almost all the clichés out there. Miss Bonnified doesn’t want to hear,  “I always hated him,” while Anna cringes at, “he wasn’t that great, anyway.” I used both of these lines on my friend that day.

Next, I tried to be gentle, telling her that “it wasn’t meant to be.” But those are words that Lauren H never likes to hear. I knew for a fact that she was “better off without him,” but that’s something reader Resullins despises.

FatalFlyingGuillotine sums up the general sentiment on clichés: Read more…

Reader Jaberkaty made a great suggestion for an article:

What can friends and family do when someone close to them is going through a bad breakup?

Honestly, I don’t have the answers, and I doubt that any single person can. So, this might be the perfect opportunity to get some reader feedback….

For those of you who’ve been through a particularly emotional breakup, what are some of the worst things someone can say or do in an attempt to make you feel better? For me, “don’t worry, you’ll find the right person” always smacks of hollowness. I know they’re trying to help, but… honestly, no one can possibly know that I’ll ever find the right person, so those words mean nothing to me. Read more…

Image by utsavbasu1 via Flickr

We get lots of generic advice when we break up. “You’ll get through it.” “You’re better off.” “Don’t worry, you’ll find the One.” But no one ever tells us how to get through the pain, the loneliness, the emptiness. Whether the breakup is mutual, shocking, brutal, or civil, it sucks.

So what do we do? Blast “I Will Survive” until our ears bleed? When will those yucky feelings go away? I think everyone has their own progression that they go through, similar to the five stages of grief. Here’s mine:

Disbelief and Denial

After my boyfriend of two years broke up with me, I was shocked. In hindsight, it was a long time coming. During the last turbulent months of our relationship, I knew we were heading down that road. He had moved away six weeks prior—a tell-tale sign of doom. But when it actually happened… well, I was shocked. It was a Sunday morning, and he had spent the weekend with me. When he left that morning, he left for good. I was a puddle. I sat in my room for three hours, knowing that once I walked out of there, I’d have to face my roommates and tell them what happened. I wasn’t ready for it to be real.

Desperation

Six hours after the dumping, I made the tearful phone call begging Mr. Ex to take me back. Not one of my finer moments. I was a ball of desperate emotion. I needed to save us and wasn’t ready to accept all the valid reasons for the breakup. Read more…

Image by Clipart.com

Friendship. It’s so many wonderful things. It’s caring. It’s affection. It’s laughter and inside jokes.

It’s also the last bastion of the freshly dumped. After all, how many breakup conversations include the phrase, “can we just be friends?”

So why do we go along with such a “request”? Are we that desperate? Do we get so attached that we’re willing to settle for friend status just to stay in someone’s life? Take the story of Jackie:

Jackie is a strong, independent woman (usually). She is also the victim of a recent breakup. Robert, her live-in boyfriend of three years, has decided that he needs time to “figure things out.” He still wants to be friends, but he needs to take a break from the relationship.

Jackie reluctantly accepts this arrangement, and the two continue to see each other once or twice a week, essentially at his discretion: she makes herself available when he calls, and only sometimes is he available when she calls.

Months pass, and Robert still hasn’t figured out what he wants. Though Jackie makes a few half-hearted attempts to date other men, not surprisingly, these dates go nowhere. She continues to pine for Robert.

So, why does Jackie put up with Robert’s wishy-washiness? Perhaps a better question is, what is going on inside Jackie’s brain…. Read more…

Image by Chernobyl Bob via Flickr

On a previous episode of The Monologue in My Head, I discussed the conniving—but totally acceptable—sneak-a-date strategy many guys employ. This time, I’m going to talk about another sneak technique, one much more despicable, and one used by both men and women….

Julie had been dating Mark for several months. What she found most attractive about him was his laid-back style. He was cheerful and agreeable, and nothing ever seemed to fluster him. Even when he was stressed at work, he always managed to maintain an optimistic outlook.

Around the third month of their relationship, though, strange behaviors began to seep through Mark’s sunny surface. He became moody and argumentative. He started finding fault with little things that Julie would say or do—things that never bothered him before. Gradually, the upbeat guy Julie knew was replaced by an ornery cad.

Have you ever dated someone whose personality suddenly and inexplicably changes? Someone who turns from warm and fuzzy into cold and prickly? Someone who transforms from Big Bird to Oscar in the blink of an eye? Read more…

Have you ever dated someone whose personality suddenly and inexplicably changes? Someone who transforms from laid-back and easy-going to difficult and argumentative, seemingly without reason? Or someone who goes from caring and available to cold and distanced in the blink of an eye?

If you have, there’s a good chance that you were the victim of what I call a sneak-a-break (in tribute to the “sneak-a-date,” which I’ve discussed previously). Read more…

Photo by John Fraissinet via Flickr

When I broke up with the last guy I was dating, I tried to be polite about it. I told him he was nice, cute and fantastic—and he replied with a low blow about my “lack of stability.” Eww. He hurt my feelings, especially since I had tried to be amiable. I reacted by doing what I swore I would never do. I told him all the awful things I’d thought about him over the last month since it first occurred to me that maybe I didn’t want to date a guy who wore white shoes hiking and complained about them getting dirty.

I’m not usually such a bitch, but early on in our discussions, he’d said he didn’t see any point in staying in contact with the girls he dated once he’d broken up with them. So I felt I didn’t have anything to lose. If I’d thought we could be friends, I would have acted differently. Read more…

Photo by Ed Yourdon via Flickr

I felt complete awe when one of my best friends in college, who’d had a distant crush on a law student we referred to as Tattoo Boy, actually went home with him one night after a random encounter in a bar. I was less thrilled when she told me how he’d said good-bye the next morning: “Call me. My number is in the phone book.” While my friend puzzled over whether he actually expected her to look up his number and call, I sat fuming in righteous indignation on behalf of women everywhere.

Although I personally never laid eyes on Tattoo Boy, he had a long-lasting impact on my life. My older more mature self would like to say that I learned to have respect for other people’s feelings. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case at the time.

The first time a guy ever spent the night, I kicked him out so fast he barely had time to pull his shirt over his head. In my defense, during our brief few months of “friendship” he spent an equal amount of time flirting with my friend (who had a boyfriend at the time) and spent even more time locking lips with her. How do you tell a guy, “sorry, but I actually think you’re a jerk and not worth my time?” He called repeatedly over the next few days, saying what a good time he’d had, but I was too chicken to pick up and tell him the truth. Plus, he deserved it. Didn’t he? Read more…

Image by Clipart.com

Have you ever come home after a night of partying, only to discover to your horror that you have an agonizingly visible piece of food stuck between your teeth? Or, worse yet, a gigantic booger floating inside your nostril, waving back at you in cruel mockery with every breath you take? Have you ever thought to yourself, “why didn’t anyone %@#$’ing tell me?!?”

I recently got back in touch with an old friend, Heather, whom I’ve barely talked to over the past three years. We spent a week or so emailing back and forth and catching up on each other’s lives. As the e-conversation progressed, Heather started telling me all the things that she didn’t like about her current boyfriend, Mike, and basically revealed that she was thinking of breaking up with him.

With a bit of inquisition on my part, she admitted that she already knew she was going to break up with him. She just hadn’t found the right opportunity yet. Even further inquisition on my part (hey, I’m an inquisitive guy) got her to confess that “finding the right opportunity” really meant “mustering up the courage.” No additional inquisition was necessary for me to figure out that many of Heather’s friends were already aware of her intentions. Read more…

Image by Clipart.com

Do you know the worst part about getting back together with an ex?

You might not get any sympathy from your friends when she breaks your heart a second time.

I love the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I love how it portrays a breakup from the perspective of the guy. As some of my friends will affirm between snickers and rolled eyes, I’ve been that guy. I’ve been the guy who’s too much of a wreck to get on with his life. I’ve been the guy curled up on the floor, bawling at the top of his lungs. I’ve been the guy who pines for his ex while dating someone else (sadly, I think some girls will affirm this last one about me, too). I’ve always despised this side of myself, but I’ve also noticed that it’s becoming more and more acceptable for guys to be emotional now. It’s finally getting to be okay for guys to cry when they go through a breakup. That’s right, bring on the waterworks. Read more…