Kim was the one for me. I knew I was destined to spend the rest of my life with her; we were going to have a beautiful family and then grow old together. I had no doubts whatsoever that we would live happily ever after. Well, let’s just say we didn’t have a fairy tale ending. This is the story of how I had the strangest breakup of my life and the task of getting over her.

I had been dating Kim for three years until the fateful day. I came home early from work to surprise her with a beautiful bouquet of calla lilies (her favorite flower), a bottle of champagne, and some delicious chocolate covered strawberries. I was looking forward to a romantic evening and was smiling throughout my drive back to our place.

When I got to our house, I had my first surprise. There was a car I had never seen before in the driveway. Alarm bells started going off in my head. I very quietly opened the front door. The first image that came into my vision was a trail of clothing leading up the stairs. I started to feel a little sick to my stomach, like I had gotten a whiff of spoiled milk.

I crept up the stairs and looked into the bedroom. It was then that I experienced the weirdest sight of my entire lifetime. My soon-to-be ex girlfriend was naked on the bed with her new lover. I wasn’t really seeing her however. My eyes were filled with the guy in the room and his performance of an unspeakable act. To put it delicately, he was playing his own flute. And not with his hands. I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or vomit. I dropped the flowers, champagne, and strawberries and left the house immediately.

The ludicrousness of the situation helped me in getting over my ex girlfriend. I met up with my best friend at the bar and he helped me to see the funny side of the state of affairs. He helped me to realize that to get her back was an absolutely awful idea. Any girl that was weird enough to have been involved with the scene I had just witnessed definitely deserved to be my ex girlfriend. We drank ourselves silly and I woke up the next morning laughing. Thank goodness the weirdness of the situation made it an easy breakup.

Jim Duncan, 28, newspaper reporter

Getting over my ex-girlfriend was a long road for me, literally! There was a nine-hundred mile stretch from her house (where I found her cheating) to mine.

I was once a quiet, painfully shy kind of guy. I didn’t venture out much. Meeting a girl in general public was virtually non-existent for me.

So, way back when open chat rooms were ridiculously popular, I found myself self-confined to my dark and dreary house, additively glued to the front of the computer monitor every day after work.

That’s when I found her.

She was the love of my life (or so I thought at the time). We spent months on the phone together. She’d whisper sweet nothings into my ear every night as I sat there absorbing it all up into my lovesick heart.

The time came. I had to visit.

The first umteen trips went great.

I had it in my mind that I was going to move there; replant myself in a foreign state where I knew no one but her. I was going to marry her—the love of my life!

Until…

It just so happened, after scraping the bottom of my piggy-bank, I found just enough money for a (yep, you guessed it) surprise visit.

Oh, how surprising it was, indeed.

I drove sixteen hours to find the one who swore would never lay her eyes on another man…on TOP of another man. I’m not sure if her eyes were open or not, but I had a feeling it didn’t matter much to her.

I never said a word, never made a sound. She never even knew I was there.

UNTIL…

I was stuck in her driveway because my car wouldn’t start. I was crankin’ on that son-of-a-bitch like I was stalled on a railroad track and I could see the train coming at a hundred miles an hour.

I hold the record for the longest stretch of road-rage in history; nine hundred miles of red-eyed, mind-blowing madness.

Surviving the breakup was difficult. For months afterward, it seemed as though I was dreaming. She was all I had consumed for a solid year. Suddenly, she was gone—an emptiness words can’t explain.

But, in the end, I pulled myself out of the mud and soldiered forth.

Since breaking up, she has tried to contact me several times, trying to win my heart back. Ha! Dream on, hooker!

Don Compton, 30, Chat Room Moderator

My first really tragic break up happened when I was eighteen years old. My girlfriend at the time had left me for my best friend so it felt like I had to get over a break up twice. First I had to get over Beth, my new ex girlfriend, and I also needed to deal with the betrayal of a friend that I had known for most of my life.

The following evening, I invited some people over to my apartment and I proceeded to get completely and utterly wasted. The only things I remember about that night are drinking half a bottle of Jack Daniels, half a bottle of Gordon’s and carrying a bottle of Rumpleman’s Peppermint Snaps around the apartment saying “Rumpelstiltskin” repeatedly until I fell face first on my kitchen floor.

The next day, I would soon regret the previous night’s activities. I woke up throwing up, but was so stubborn I decided to go to work despite the fact that I was violently ill. I was a door to door alarm salesman. I lost three sales that day because during the middle of my pitch I would have to quickly run away to vomit. Getting over my break up had taught me never to subject myself to the level of alcohol poisoning I had that night, and that alcohol was definitely more enjoyable in moderation.

After a break up, I have always been self conscious. I pondered what was wrong with me, and why Beth had left me. I also wondered why Jon, my best friend, had placed more importance on a relationship with Beth than our friendship. I also had thoughts of vengeance toward both of them. Ironically enough, karma would come into play.

Eventually, I moved on. About a month after getting over the break up, I got a call from Beth. Jon had left her for another man. I hadn’t known, but he was bisexual when he stole Beth from me. Now, he had decided that he was completely into guys. She asked me to take her back, but despite feeling mean, I couldn’t help laughing. In fact, she hung up on me while I was still laughing at her.

It seemed that Beth was the one that needed to get over a break up now. Yet, I didn’t have a care in the world.

John Warbuck, 27 years old, Self employed

Getting over a relationship that blossomed in the summer can be difficult. The cache of memories built over escapades in the hot sun are unforgettable–unless you’re black out drunk. Unfortunately, that’s what I happened to be most the time to start my senior year in college.

Lara and I started dating early that summer and decided to keep it going into the school year. What can I say, I was a catch: a drunk that skipped class and slept on the stained couch of a bunch of stoners because I didn’t want to pay rent. However, our relationship progressed and really got serious when I moved into her apartment. I even went as far as telling her that I loved her–while tripping on mushrooms.

But after a few months, things changed. Lara was taking full-time classes, while I was ahead to graduate and only needed a few credits, leaving me plenty of time for extracurricular activities at the bar. This displeased her. One day I opened my email to find a message from her that she was ending the relationship and we were breaking up. Talk about being preemptive, I still had a damn key to her place. And who knew heavily drinking at the age of 22 was relationship ending material? Usually, that isn’t terms for breaking up until kids are involved. We didn’t even own a cat.

I didn’t reply. Instead, I returned to her apartment, set the key down in front of her and left without saying a word. Needless to say, I was back to sleeping on the stoners’ couch. I smoked their weed and drank my beer in hopes to hazily move on past the relationship break up.

Over time it became apparent to me that I did love her, and maybe she was right: the drugs and alcohol were a tad excessive. So, that second semester–my last semester of college–I actually substituted the booze and weed for studying. Surprisingly, the components of human-computer interface design did a much better job of keeping my mind off the break up than whiskey.

But, it was in the bar where it would all continue. I saw her again for the first time since the break up. We drank, we kissed and we have been together ever since. So, I guess the moral of the story is: getting over a relationship doesn’t require alcohol, just to rekindle it.

I didn’t date in high school. I barely had crushes, I didn’t know how. Flirtation was a language I’d never learned, and dating was a completely different country.

It’s no stretch to say that I was kind of a nerd, but I had friends and she was one of them. The Christmas after I graduated high school, she went for it. She kissed me! I asked her to be my girlfriend, she agreed and everything was great.

One week later she called me up and told me she wasn’t ready for a relationship yet, but of course, we could still be friends.

Being just friends meant we could go to dinner, ride our bikes in the park, talk for hours, hold hands, even snuggle together during a movie. It was exactly like dating, except without anything concrete.

Since she was technically my ex girlfriend, I finally told her I needed some space. Getting over an ex can be hard, even harder when you’re still sort-of-not-really dating. She asked why I needed space, so I finally called her out. I told her I still had feelings for her, and I needed to know if she had feelings for me.

She did, but she valued our friendship too much to mess it up with a relationship.

Seriously. getting over her was hard. We stopped talking. The first week was the worst. Every time I was bored I would pick up my phone and then remember that I couldn’t call her. Over the past 2 years she had not only been my best friend, but my only friend.

I dated other people, but always found myself fantasizing about a way to get her back. I would imagine her showing up on my front porch in the rain, begging for me to forgive her. It never happened.

Eventually, we got back in touch online. One day I got an e-mail from her, telling me she still thought of me, and sometimes thought of leaving her boyfriend for me.

I should have been thrilled, but instead I was mad. I thought about how she had jerked me around for years, and how she didn’t really want me, she just wanted me to want her.

After so many years, I see how she and I would have grown apart no matter what. A relationship would have been a disaster, but so was our friendship, so what’s the difference?

Finally getting over her took me six years and we only really dated for a week. I’m sure that must be a world record.

R. Miller, 26, Student

“Jane” and I were attached at the hip the moment we saw each other.

I began to feel heartbreak just within a couple of weeks into the relationship. I had applied for a job out of state prior to meeting her, and as luck would have it, I began to get requests for more information and interviews. Things were going so good for Jane and I that I did not let the thought of leaving deter the natural progression of the relationship. We became closer. She met my children and I met her son. He was a great kid and he captured my heart as she did.

When I was offered the job, I knew I had to accept it. Breaking up with Jane was something that I did not want to do. Even though we had only known each other a couple of months, my feelings for her were strong enough that I asked to her go with me. She declined. It was heartbreaking to hear that although she loved me, she was not willing to give up the stability she had to move with me. I had a choice to make. I made the wrong one.

Jane helped me pack my moving truck. As I pulled the door down on the truck, the tears started to flow. This break up was the hardest I had ever had to bear. There was something about this woman that I did not want to let go of. We listened to a couple of sentimental songs on the radio as we hugged, kissed, and cried our goodbyes.

I settled into my new job and life. Jane and I talked less and less. It was heartbreaking for me to hear her voice so I think I just avoided it. Eventually our communication dwindled down to a few friendly emails here and there. We both started dating other people.

Jane is happily married now with three children. I never have found anyone to fill the hole in my heart that she left. I recently talked to her. I finally got to tell her that choosing my job over her was the worst decision of my life and I will forever have to live with the heartbreak that I have caused myself. I wonder if she feels the same.

“Michael”, 40. A radio personality

Have you heard the old Neil Sedaka song, “Breaking Up is Hard to Do”? Allmusic.com describes it has “two minutes and sixteen seconds of pure pop magic”; an assessment I was in complete agreement with until it happened to me. The heartbreak of losing the girl of my dreams turned an otherwise enjoyable song into the melodramatic theme of my twenty-something tragedy.

I’m still not sure why it happened. We had it all, I thought. Sunday nights at the pizza shop, hours-long conversations on the couch, hopes and dreams for the future. I never saw the breakup coming; much like the tree that jumped in front of me just days after I got my driver’s license.

I guess the biggest heartbreak of that relationship was the way it ended. My girl decided to tell me in the parking lot after my brother’s wedding reception. What joy! Apparently she decided I was “too good” for her and as she spoke, her words fell on my stunned ears with all the grace of a sumo wrestler performing Swan Lake. Opening the door and exiting my truck she struck the final blow to my broken heart with the words, “I still love you.”

Then she was gone…..

In the days following I was convinced my sweetheart would come back. After all, I let her go just like that stupid poem says. But as the days turned into months I discovered there’s something even more heartbreaking than losing your girl – the realization she’s not returning. When it finally hit me I kissed Neil Sedaka goodbye, figuratively speaking of course, and decided to embrace the attitude of Clint Eastwood’s “Heartbreak Ridge.”

It was time to adapt; time to rise above my pathetic love life and secure the elusive objective of true love. I trained. I learned. I cleaned up my apartment.

And then one day there she was…sitting across the room in a pale-yellow prairie skirt and tastefully matching blouse, her blond locks cascading down to her shoulders. It was time to go into action. I reached down deep to pull up all my training, and a breath mint too, and headed her way. You can fill in the rest.

Matt Gerwitz, 44, pastor and free-lance writer

Getting over a relationship is never easy. After twenty-three years and a handful of semi-serious relationships with women, I’ve learned that ending the relationship never really gets easier. People might tell you it does, but odds are they are probably in some pretty serious denial. My most recent adventure in breaking up was with my live-in girl friend of one year, Alyssa.

Alyssa and I met in college. I had been giving the single life a try for a good while (probably about a year or two), and Alyssa actually had a boyfriend. We met through mutual friends, and the only thing that I ever gathered about her boyfriend is that he was quite the possessive/aggressive type. I remember having to see her out in the hallway crying on the phone with him – he’d always get pissed off about something new each day and take it out on her.

Now I’ve always been one for the damsel in distress type, so I naturally took my hand at courting her as best as I could. For whatever reason, my nerdy charm worked, and we started going out on dates and spending a lot of time together. Sounds like the beginning of happily ever after, right? Well, perhaps it would be if it weren’t for one thing: Alyssa never broke up with her ex. While I was happy at first, us seeing each other while she was still with someone instilled a sense of distrust in me that eventually ended to us ending the relationship a year later.

Alyssa and I lived together for a year, and the first four or five months were pretty damn good. We had fun, went out to eat every night, and were making love every night and waking up to each other the next morning.

Despite our exhilarating relationship, that distrust started to rear it’s ugly head. I started becoming the very same possessive boyfriend her ex was – only because I know that she had cheated on him with me. Quite frankly, I became irrational and aggressive, and in turn, she became irrational and aggressive.

The relationship was over and when it settled in that it was gone it hit me. Real hard. For a while, I tried to run from my problems – so much so that I ended up moving out of state.

She was the girl for me. I knew it the second she came into the car wash where I was working, the second our eyes locked in front of the M&M machine after I asked her, “Care for a quarter?”

True story.

We had our first date that night, our first kiss the next, and two weeks later she practically had her wedding dress picked out. So that was why my breath got knocked clear out of me when she called that night.

“Brock, it’s not working.”

I gulped. “You mean, like, you need some space?”

“No, you dork.” I couldn’t believe she was calling me a dork. That was so dated. “I mean that my relationship with you is ended. Done. We’re breaking up.”

“I’m not breaking up, you’re breaking up,” was all I could manage. Dumb, yeah. I know.

I spent the next weeks getting over our relationship. For one thing, I never saw the relationship ending, so I was unprepared. I felt like a Marine who’s been sent into enemy territory with no preparation, no briefing – no map, even. I had no experience in getting over a relationship breakup. I made all the wrong moves.

Like for instance, walking in on her client meeting. It was Valentine’s Day. Yeah, she had the gall to break up with me right before Valentine’s. I’m not the most romantic guy in the world, but I know chicks dig this stuff. I had no way of knowing that this particular day, she had an important rep from her company’s biggest supplier in her office, and they were trying to close another rep from a huge firm. So when I pushed into the room, all I saw was her through the bouquet in my arms.

Now, in the movies, the scenes always go something like this. Girl looks up, girl looks shocked, girl melts, girl runs out of meeting with guy, lips lock, roll credits. Not this time. Lauren said, “Can you excuse me a moment, gentlemen?” She pushed me out and in the hall, she propelled me toward the outdoors. “Do you have no respect for my time?”

“It’s Valentines.”

“I told you I was ending the relationship,” she said. “Don’t come around here with that stuff.”

“Don’t you owe me some kind of explanation?”

“Not really.”

It was still hard on me, breaking up and all. But I learned from the experience that the movies are lies. Getting over a relationship is hard, but staying in a broken one is impossible.

That night I got a phone call. My heart jumped when I saw the number. “Baby!” I answered, ecstatic. I knew those flowers would work.

“Brock!” She was in tears. “You lost me the client, you -” The rest is unprintable.

Brock Tonelli, Age 28, House Painter, Handyman