Three Important Rules For Breaking Up

Breaking up with someone is pretty much the worst thing EVER. It’s one of those horrible tasks that you want to put off for the rest of your life, like doing your taxes or visiting your semi-comatose grandfather. Ultimately, though, you just gotta rip off the bandage…or, you know, pull the plug. It’s hardest when the dumpee is a nice person; by the end of most relationships, you almost wish that your significant other was a dick/bitch so you could righteously dump his/her ass and then maybe, righteously, set his/her car on fire. But when he or she is nice, it’s the hardest thing in the world because you’ll be hurting someone who doesn’t deserve it, even though it’s better in the long run (because it frees him/her up to find someone else who will probably hurt him/her. Ah, Love!). I’ve been thinking about it rather a lot recently, so here’s the first part in a several part series about ways one shouldn’t break up with someone. (Not that y’all need the advice; you’re all lovely people. I would love to be dumped by any one of you. It’s all for kicks and giggles.)

Inadvisable Method #1:

Through a Friend
Thinking about this takes me back to elementary/middle school. It’s the classic story: girl sees boy, girl develops obsessive giggly crush on boy, girl finally screws up courage after weeks of minutely dissected flirtation, girl writes boy a note in pink glittery pen, girl gives it to best friend, best friend gives it to boy’s friend, boy’s friend teases boy without mercy, boy checks the “no” box, boy dates girl’s best friend instead, everyone wears stirrup pants and vests…How awful. Of course, you can do it the other way around, too, and have you friend inform your significant other that he is “so, like, dumped.” One would imagine that this tactic is followed by the dividing up of assets like best spots on the playground and vacation cubby-space, but sadly enough, I would hear about this sort of thing in high school. I went to a huge high school, so it was inevitable to witness in the hallway at least one break-up a month, some of them through friends whose teachers were more lenient on the four-minutes-between-classes rule. Trust me, though, the break-ups were never as awkward as the, uh…shall we say “unions”…against the lockers.

More later, maybe.