It was the summer after my sophomore year of college, and I was working a full-time job as a guy sitting in front of a screen in a windowless room taking some numbers from some documents and typing them in next to some other numbers in some other documents.

It wasn’t quite as interesting or stimulating as that description makes it sound. I had been with the girl in question for approaching two years, she was my great love that most people seem to discover early on in college. I had recently returned from a visit to the place where she was employed for the summer, a journey involving my taking a car to a plane to a bus to a taxi to a boat, all for the sake of a two day stay during which I felt like an unwelcome intruder. A week and a half later, across a grainy phone connection, early one saturday afternoon, the hammer dropped.

My initial response to her breaking up with me was much the same measured, calm reaction that you would expect from any rational, civilized being: I threw the phone down on my bed and punched a hole in my wall. Big one, too; it needed significant plaster work once I got around to caring some days later.

I then took a walk around the block on pavement that had been sitting under direct sunlight on a hundred degree day, barefoot. This is how I tend to deal with a lot of sad things, whether dealing with breaking up or with other events: by turning grief and depression into anger.

Sadness just sits on top of you like a beanbag chair full of concrete. Anger is an outgoing force, and you can use it to destroy things. And I did. Many, many things.

My dealing with the breakup took many such angry forms. A wooded trail near my house had been littered with trees and branches from a massive wind storm to the point that it was untraversable. I ran it as an obstacle course.

I went into such woods often to find any and all breakable objects and help them fulfill that potential. I wanted music that was as angry as I was, so I started listening to a new band. Starts with S and rhymes with ‘player.’ I think you understand me.

So mostly i dealt with the breaking up by breaking things… As destructive and expensive as it was, it definately made me feel better at the time.

Gavin  31, Engineer

We met on the day that I broke up with her best friend, which, in retrospect, was a bad omen. I had offered to give her a ride home earlier in the evening, and on the way, I poured out my heart, asking what I had done wrong. She assured me that I was completely right, and her friend was totally crazy. Blinded by her obvious good sense, I asked if she wanted to go out some time. She told me she didn’t want to be involved with someone getting over a break up. Within a week, we were inseparable.

As often seems to be the case in most breakup stories, I noticed by the end of the first month that we didn’t have much in common.

The final straw and the break up came the day that her cable installation was scheduled for the same time as our date to the art museum. Apparently, she realized that twenty-four hour marathons of Law and Order meant more to her than I did.

She called and explained that she didn’t feel ready for more commitments other than her one year contract with her cable provider. I wasn’t prepared for the struggle that can follow after a break up… Especially when you share the same group of friends. Everyone immediately chose sides.  It’s hard to get over a break up when half the people you’d normally count on for support suddenly treat you as if you had a contagious disease.

Was it my fault for being too demanding? Was it her fault for not getting a satellite dish? I spent days going through my cellphone contacts, searching for the undecideds to lobby to join my team.

Getting over a breakup is never easy, but as relationships breakups go, ours wasn’t so bad in the end. As the weeks wore on, the pain gradually began to lessen, and I knew I had finally turned a corner when I saw her at a friend’s graduation party. She was talking about her new high definition flat screen TV, and I congratulated her on the purchase. She told me that she had upgraded her cable package to get the new HD stations, and maybe I should stop by some time. The picture clarity was amazing, she said. I responded that, ironically enough, the one thing I had gained from the last few months was a greater sense of clarity. Unsurprisingly, she didn’t get the joke.

David Bruce, 23
Customer Service Associate

There are very few sure things in life, very few rules that go uncontested through our daily routines. It seems that when these truths make themselves evident, they make our ears bleed, our teeth crack and our chest numb. This particular relationship, I learned, broke one of those rules. When your best friend breaks up with a girl, do not, I repeat, do NOT date her.

Especially if he began living with you two weeks ago.

As far as painful relationship go, this caused me pain the second I started dating this girl. Sharing a room with the aforementioned friend caused me emotional stress even when she was miles away. It’s a bit hard to be discreet when the person causing you pain outside of your relationship sees where you sleep. This led to some of the most memorable and quirky moments of my dating career.

We somehow lasted the better part of six months. The best part about it was the fact that she didn’t drive and her mother refused company. This gave us two options: go out every time we see each other (which, for a college student, was financially crippling), or hang out at my place where my friend would be. Welcome to hell.

This relationship broke another “life rule”: Don’t date people you work with. If you disagree with me then you either haven’t done it or you’ve worked at such establishments as Hooters or the Playboy Mansion. While I worked nights, she worked days. We worked, at most, two hours a shift together. Two hours of tiptoeing with everybody knowing something was going on, but not quite what. Not a very good idea as you might guess. Not a good idea while we were together, even worse when I was trying to get over the relationship afterwards.

With the girl leaving for school at the end of the summer, this train wreck of a relationship ended. Goodbye to the picking up and driving home. Goodbye to the awkward hangouts at my house. Most importantly, goodbye to the uncanny ability she had to make me smile no matter what mood I was in.

When the relationship actually ended, it didn’t hit me until a few days after. Not until my daily routine was interrupted by constant reminders of my ex girlfriend’s absence… And while large amounts of alcohol seemed to help, the truth is it didn’t… My feelings for her never quite left, and the emptiness never really left.

They were, at best, replaced. It’s been two years since things ended, and every time I see her we slip into the old routines. And my friend just won’t let it go…

Phillip, 24 – Student

She left me before she actually moved out.

The distance between us kept growing, but I was working so hard I didn’t notice at first. Then one day I was eating breakfast, looking around the apartment, and I realized half of our crap was missing. I’m not the most observant guy in the world, but even I eventually notice when the cat’s gone.

That’s when the break up and the confession came. She’d been slowly moving everything she considered hers out of the apartment since Christmas. As it was currently April, I had to applaud her sense of stealth or risk having to acknowledge my own obliviousness.

Getting over an ex is never easy, but it’s especially hard when she’s still living with you. Getting over her was going to be impossible no matter where she was.

Apparently all her stuff was at her mother’s because she was still saving for a place of her own. I thought about being the bad guy and telling her to get the hell out right now, but that would have made getting her back a lot harder, and at the time I was determined to get her back.

Obviously I’d been doing something wrong. Working too much, paying too little attention to her, something that had made the idea of staying with me a real chore. I started dressing better, wearing that cologne she gave me that smelled like rotten apples, even helping out around the apartment. (There was a lot less stuff to clean – apparently everything that was good besides the TV was firmly in the “hers” pile.)

Once it was out in the open, then it really began to feel like the relationship was ending, as she moved into the guest bedroom. There was nothing but the rock hard futon her sister gave her in there. It was kind of humiliating to realize she preferred sleeping on it to sharing a bed with me.

Even more humiliating when I realized she didn’t always sleep alone in there. She didn’t rub it in my face, but it got the message across.

Getting over her happened slowly. My ex girlfriend lived with me for two months after we officially broke up and it was the most wonderful, awful time. I entertained fantasies of us working it out, her realization that I was the only one for her. It never happened.

I got the cat back, though. At least she lets me watch the Playboy channel.

Mark Street, 24, retail manager

We’ve all been there, the inevitable end to a relationship. Some we see coming from far away and almost try to hurry up the process. Others, you get completely blindsided by. The later are the one’s that obviously hurt the most and take the longest to get over. When you didn’t see a relationship breakup coming, you aren’t able to brace yourself and prepare to move on.

My version of the breakup story happened the day before New Year’s Eve. Nathalie and I had been dating for about three years and had decided to move in together that year. We found a great two bedroom condo in a fantastic neighborhood. There was a great Italian restaurant, bookstore and even a karaoke piano bar nearby. I could visualize myself staying here, with Nathalie, for years.

Around Thanksgiving, I had noticed she was behaving differently. She started traveling a lot more often for work, which created a divide between us. Christmas came and past, we each spent it with our separate families. When I called to wish Nathalie a Merry Christmas, she seemed distraught and explained she had to travel the next day for work. I was surprised she was traveling right after Christmas but let it go. When she arrived home on December 30th, she looked exhausted. I asked her what was wrong and she blurted out “I have another boyfriend”.

The worst part was that she wasn’t even apologetic. Nathalie acted as if the break up was my fault, that I had driven her to this other guy.

I’m not exactly clear about what happened next. I know there were a few broken coffee mugs and I had a very sore hand from punching the wall.  I started packing my things and was out of the condo completely by New Year’s Eve morning. I spent New Year’s with my single buddies who were determined to help me get over the break up. I definitely drank away my sorrows and it did help with getting over a break up.

Two good things came from this. First, I was able to start the New Year completely anew, without her. Secondly, I was intoxicated enough that I definitely slept that night and well into the next day. My lingering headache made it almost impossible to think about her.

The weeks and months that followed were difficult. I had to find a new place to live. I ended up moving in with a friend. And I somehow had to start dating again. My friends attempted to set me up but I was definitely not ready.

After about six months, I started to seek out girls again, on my own. I wanted to ease back into the dating game with people who didn’t know my past and how badly I had gotten burned. Getting over a break up like this was definitely left its last effects, I am not sure if I’ll ever be able to trust someone so blindly again.

Felipe R, 34, Quality Control Inspector

She was a beauty, that Shelly. It even pains me to think right now that she’s my ex girlfriend.

We had been solid since tenth grade. She liked the tortured writer thing I had going on. I was headed to the West Coast to find myself; she was applying to every major university out there she could find. In the end, she settled for a small school. I landed a low paying entry level job at a newspaper close to campus. We were grown-ups, living together and getting on with our lives.

The end of the relationship began when real life set in. Bills and housework and deadlines put a damper on our romantic notions of living in poverty and taking the world by storm. She found out the campus was running over with brainy beauty queens. Suddenly, she was no longer the belle of the ball. She also figured out that tortured writers have terrible mood swings.

One cold night in February the bottom fell out. She was up late with a paper that was giving her grief; an experience she never had in high school. I was in the tiny kitchen of our apartment trying unsuccessfully to come up with an interesting angle on an article about a sanitation workers’ strike. My nerves were on edge. All she wanted to do was talk, and talk some more.

My patience was paper thin. I was a writer, a real-life professional whose career was quickly going down the drain. She was merely a student in a freshman composition class. Her writer’s block could spell only the drama of an average grade. Mine, I succinctly pointed out, could mean the loss of our only source of income; and the end of a promising career in this self-made man.

Somehow, she didn’t appreciate my assessment of her plight.

“As a symbolic gesture to end our relationship she swaggered back into our bedroom and tossed every belonging of mine she could find into a pile in the tub.”

Squeezing the last ounce of her apple scented shampoo on top; she turned the faucet on full blast, gathered her things and walked out of my life. I didn’t discover the mess until citrus scented suds flooded the apartment.

Interestingly, that break up didn’t leave me a broken man. For weeks, the heartbreak and angst drove me to write like a mad man. My career was the better for it, though I doubt that was the effect she planned. The worst part is that, to this day, I cannot bear the smell of apples.

-S.D. Lee, age 36, writer

I met Chloe in Atlanta my senior year of high school and immediately fell in love. We dated for about 5 months before I left for an out of state college in the fall. Living in South Carolina was incredibly difficult and I spent every possible minute talking to her on the phone, online, or by text messages.

I drove home every weekend to see her, but she soon expressed interest in coming to visit me at school.

Her car was in terrible condition and I constantly worried that she would break down along the 100 mile trip. I bought her a Honda Accord and surprised her with it on her next trip and I thought things couldn’t be any better.

One Thursday evening, I got a call from the Atlanta Police Department asking me if I had a towing company preference for my Honda Accord.

I immediately began to panic and asked what was wrong. I was informed that my car had been involved in a single car accident, was totaled, and there was drinking involved.

I quickly told the officer that I didn’t care about any of that and just wanted to know if Chloe was hurt. I will never forget the response,

“Sir, a young man named Josh was driving the vehicle and he has been placed under arrest.”

You might be wondering who Josh is, and so was I.

Josh and Chloe had been dating each other since the day I left for college, and apparently they were even said to be engaged.

When I called Chloe, obviously fairly irate, she asked if it was going to be a problem. She then asked if I was planning to fix her car or not.

Needless to say, the relationship ended and I was left with a very sudden and painful break up. I wasn’t without my revenge, however, and Josh did not have permission to drive my car that was registered in my name.

The prosecutor decided to make an example out of him and charged him with grand theft auto in addition to the drunk driving charges.

He pleaded guilty to a lesser crime and was stuck with unlawful use of a vehicle and the DUI on his record.

“Breaking up is hard to do”; but sometimes it is an absolute necessity. Especially if the relationship carries all the caustic characteristics of a tabloid horror story. naturally, it also emcompassed all of the aspects most intelligent people try to avoid in a relationship: long distance, a bucket full of jealousy, and a heaping helping of a little bit crazy! Throw in the holidays, the worst time of the year to break up and you have the disaster that was my Thanksgiving a few years back.

The relationship started out nice enough. We had met online and seemed to have a lot in common. But a flight across country for our first meeting should have been a clue of what was to come. I called her cell as soon as I got off the plane. I saw a woman talking on the phone that looked like the picture I had of her and quickly mentioned I thought I saw her. “Oh no, it can’t be me. I am still coming up to the airport.” That was her first lie. Basically, she wanted to scope me out first so that if I was a dog, she could bolt. Too late! I had seen her. This was just the beginning of the relationship breakup.

After a year of similar craziness it all came to head over the thanksgiving holiday. Locked in her home with a crazy dog, 5 nutty cats, two daughters, one of whom was constantly in “shoot me please, she’s at it again “drama, and regular jealous badgering about every text or phone call I got, it was time to make a stand…and make a run for it! There was just one problem though; she was planning on taking me back to the airport. I knew my leaving was going to be hard on her, and that it would shock her but I know eventually she would get over us breaking up. There was no way to sneak out with all my “stuff” without creating a scene.

Luckily, the night before I was scheduled to leave it began to snow like crazy. There was going to be blizzard conditions soon and the airport would be closing down by the next afternoon. I dutifully used the “I have to get back to my business” speech and loaded up early for the drive to airport. It was only after I was safely on the plane home that she noticed I was gone for good..

Rodney D – 53, Writer and Sales Trainer.

Last December it was time to call it quits with Linda-the-little-princess. After two years of good times and bad, it was time to have The Talk and call it quits.

No matter how desperate things seemed now, I was still unprepared to make the final goodbye and end the relationship. The two weeks of anticipation leading up to the separation seemed worse than its actual happening. So, we went to a sidewalk cafe and vented everything.

All went well when I told her she was a wonderful person and a catch for somebody else, but too emotional and high maintenance for me. Surprisingly, the break up talk went smoothly and we were in mutual agreement and talked things over rationally. No harm done until the last minute when she fired back with an arsenal of insults. Fair enough, at least its over and I’m free.

Three days have passed with no phone calls or emails, seeming the little princess and her tantrums are behind me.

Then Saturday night at three o’clock in the morning there’s a scurrying noise coming from the front yard. I turn on the porch lights and see nothing but a few bags of fast food trash thrown in the flower bed. The real surprise would not be known until sunrise when the cops show up and ring the doorbell.

My ex pint-sized little psycho ex girlfriend had employed the services of others to steal a 6 foot Christmas tree and anchor it to the top of my Jeep parked in the driveway.

All the price tags and proof of no purchase were as plain as day dangling from the bottom of the tree. At 7am, “someone” informed the police that there was a stolen Christmas tree on my street and the rest is history.

Court appearance, fines, and a mountain of accusations until she was finally arrested for theft. Whatever emotional bond I had for her was snapped for good, setting me free from the guilt of hurting her feelings.

So guys, if you’re trying to get over a breakup, let the situation play out and you will see a side to your ex that you won’t soon forget. Once you see her for what she really is, there’s no more hurt or repentance.

Mel, 22

So say your girlfriend breaks up with you or she tells you she wants to take a break or see other people…

But she says she just wants to be friends now, even though the two of you are ”officially” broken up.

The two of you talk and decide that you should still keep the connection the two of you have because you don’t want to just “throw away the friendship” the two of you have built up.

It may very well be the case that you two really do have a great friendship. Its possible you were friends for a long time before you tried dating.

Its very possible that you developed a close friendship while you spent so much time together. There are many perfectly good reasons why you should stay friends with your ex girlfriend.

But, if you are still in love with your ex girlfriend, taking a break from any kind of friendship is always a good idea.

But your ex girlfriend may resist this idea, even if she doesn’t want to be with you anymore.

Here are some of the ”less than straightforward” reasons girl keep guys around:

Girls may want to keep the parts of the relationship that still work for them.

Even after they are no longer attracted to you. Even though they may be actively scanning for other guys, or even have another one in mind.

She might have reasons why she wants to move on, or the reasons she gave you may not make any sense to you… But chances are, unless you’re a total douche, there are probably things about you she isn’t willing to give up.

She may really like the connection you guys have, you may have many of the same mutual friends or you might be the only close friend she has.

If you’ve ever had sex with a girl that clearly wanted more, while you didn’t… But you kept doing it anyway because the sex was great…But you knew somehow you were not being totally honest about the whole thing… Then you know what I am talking about.

But in her case, she wants all the perks and comforts that come from having an intimate connection, while still keeping the possibility of seeing other guys.

Which actually brings be to another point, which is sort of a darker side of this same thing.

Girls often like to keep guys that are in love with them around for validation.

Generally this with less mature girls, but it is very common.

Having a guy around, or several guys around that adore them (also referred to as orbiters) gives them that steady stream of validation that most women crave.

In fact, you easedrop on a group of girls this is what you’ll hear them bragging about… Kind of in the same way that guys will usually brag about getting laid.

Several dating and break up advice books for women (don’t say it…I read these things so you don’t have to) suggest they get a few guys like this around after a bad break up so they feel better about themselves. But they also suggest not to have sex with them.

Interesting huh? I mean really, if I told you right now you should go find a hot girl, just be friends with her so she can adore and NOT have sex with her, you would look at like I was f%$#! crazy.

Hey… I didn’t say this stuff made sense.

Of course, they will never admit it. Generally girls will just pretend they are oblivious to it most of the time because they know somewhere inside of them that its cruel.

The important thing is that you don’t become that guy.

She probably doesn’t want to entirely deal with being alone yet.

Girls generally are pretty terrified of being alone.

Now, in reality I think as humans we are all terrified at some level from being isolated, but women generally are more sensitive to this.

When your ex girlfriend decided to leave you, or take a break or whatever she called it, in her mind she was weighing her dissatisfaction for you against the potentially ominous task of filling up her nights and weekends with other people.

Although she may want to do this, it can be a lot of work. And more importantly it is a lot of change.

And generally, everybody hates change.

Keeping you around, keeping you “on call” so to speak really can ease the brunt of that change.

Only problem is, YOU aren’t any closer to moving on when she starts introducing other guys into her new life.

So what’s really going on here?

When a girl you’re seeing, dating, or in a commited relationship says “let’s be friends” she is already in the process of replacing you.

She may or may not have someone in mind yet.

She may still really like you.

The two of you may even get back together a few times.

But in her mind she will still being thinking about getting out of the relationship and leaving herself available to other guys.

So how do you handle this?

• You walk away first. Don’t settle for “just being friends” with a girl you are still in love with. You will respect yourself for it, and ironically so will she.
• Tell her that you would be happy to be friends, after you take a break for a couple of months and make it clear that this is your decision.
• Don’t leave yourself available to her when she wants you around, and tell her ahead of time not to contact you until YOU are ready to hang out as friends.
• Avoid the temptation to leave doors open so the two of you can still communicate.
• While you are taking the break, do everything in your power to get over her and move on.

Of course, this is easier said than done, because there is that whole thing about the unbearable heartbreak that sets in when she isn’t in your life anymore…

But it is far better than the Chinese water torture of hanging out with your ex girlfriend while she moves on, only to eventually be shut out once she finds another guy.

Here’s what will happen if you walk away first;

• People are generally only indecisive when they have many options. Once you have elimated the option of her just having you around for comfort SHE will be forced to decide whether she really wants to be in a relationship.
• If she doesn’t come back to you, then you’ll know she was very likely already looking for other options and things were very likely to go south anyways. BUT since you did not wait around for her to decide she will have lot more repect for you in the future and it will make it far more likely you’ll be able to be friends.
• Dare I say this, but 3 or 6 months down the line YOU will have more repect for yourself for not being that “orbiter” guy. Trust me on this one, guys almost always feel bad about not quitting while they were ahead.

Of course the big task now is that you have to deal with getting over her in the meantime and somehow resist the temptation to contact her or answer her when she contacts you…