Perhaps the worst breakup I ever had the misfortune to go through was in the summer between my junior and senior years at college. My girlfriend was a year older than I was and had already graduated and lived five states away, which put some stress on the relationship. But we were still together, really more out of sheer obstinance and the safety that comes from a boring daily ritual — the telephone call. It would typically resemble something like this:

Me: So how was your day?

Her: Fine. How was yours?

Me: OK.

Her: Well, I have to get ready for dinner. Bye.

Well, I was studying to be an archaeologist at the time, and this summer was going to get my feet wet on my first expedition. So I signed onto a dig on one of the Greek islands. The town I was staying in didn’t have internet. Heck, it barely had a payphone. When you think of one-horse towns from spaghetti Westerns, upgrade the scenery to the mid 1980s and you’d have a good picture of the place. Needless to say, with the technological gap and the time difference, the daily phone calls went away.

To be honest, there was also this girl I met… Well, there might have been three girls. One of them even needed help on how to get over her ex girlfriend. Sometimes it’s nice to work in a profession where women get daily exercise digging in the dirt, thereby ensuring a relatively low fatty-to-hot girl ratio. In America, we’ve become so used to the obesity epidemic that we forget how large of a percentage of the female population is attractve when you only have to subtract out the fuglies. And even the fuglies have their moments when they’re pouring you that 22nd shot of raki, which is Greek moonshine that’s usually made in a sink or a toilet bowl, judging by the taste. But I digress.

Breaking up was definitely in my future. After a couple months and three girls, I go back home to talk to my girlfriend. I was still young and naive, so I figured I’d tell her the whole sordid story and break up with her. That’s what happens when you have a conscience that’s weak enough to let you do what you want, but strong enough to make you feel guilty about it later.

Unfortunately, she broke up with me first. She’d cheated on me while I was gone — several times. Even though I had done the same thing, I was devastated.

I suddenly didn’t know how I’d get over a broken heart. I spent the next year trying to simultaneously get her back and get over a broken heart. I’ll spare you the nasty details, but I was unsuccessful on the first count, but did discover one of life’s great truths. I was able to get over my ex girlfriend by getting under someone else. That’s the best way to survive a break up. And as a word of parting advice, based upon my experience, Swedish girls are better in the sack, but Norwegians are better cuddlers.

Pyrrhus, 25, archaeologist

It’s not a secret that getting over a break up isn’t easy, but I never realized it could be nearly impossible until one horrible night at a local Mexican restaurant.

It had been about a month after the break up with my on-again, off-again ex-girlfriend of two years. I knew I wasn’t over her, but I was dealing with the pain in the usual fashion—dating someone new and drinking lots of alcohol. Thanks to an icy margarita and the pretty face sitting across from mine, my mind was happily diverted from my previous relationship that particular night. Then my ex walked inside … with a guy I used to know in college. What could be worse? Well, let’s just say that my buzz completely died when the hostess sat them at the table next to ours. There wasn’t enough tequila in the house to help this awkward situation.

The rest of the evening is still a blur. I am, however, pretty certain that my date wasn’t impressed when she had to drive me home. We never went out again. What I do remember is that I didn’t get squat done at work the next day. Instead, my ex-girlfriend and I emailed each other back and forth for hours.

I emailed my ex girlfriend and I carefully crafted each sentence to somehow let her know how much it killed me to see her with another man, while still trying to hold onto at least a little bit of pride. Her responses were much more humble.

She explained how she had to hold back the tears from her date the entire night. She even told him that she wasn’t ready to go out again. It may sound petty, but I was thrilled to know that she was just as miserable as I was.

While we didn’t get much accomplished at work, that day proved to be very productive in another aspect. I finally figured out that this breakup story wasn’t over just yet. It was time for my ex-girlfriend and I to change the ending—and get it right this time. Somehow that horrible night gave us the inspiration we needed to fix our relationship. Seven years and two kids later, I’m happy to say that it’s still working.

Sometimes it seems like there’s just no way to do it. After all, I can’t just turn off my feelings. I’m not a machine, a computer that can be rebooted and everything will be all right. Nope, I’m human, and when she kicked me out, I thought I would never get over the broken heart.

Things seemed so great with us, like a match made in heaven. We had all the same interest, the same sense of humor, politics, and views on parenting. We did everything together. We spent every moment together, even moved in together. The day I came home and found the locks changed, I was absolutely stunned.

My first thought was that there was something wrong with the key. I mean, really, who expects to come home from a long day at work to find the locks suddenly changed? There I was, tired and worn out so I knocked on the door for her to let me in. That’s when I heard her voice from the upstairs window telling me I couldn’t come in, I had to leave. How does this happen? How do you go from being so in love and spending all your time together to standing on the front porch trying to figure out how you’re going to get your pool table out of the basement?

Changing the lock was her not so subtle way of breaking up with me. Well, obviously, I got mad and started pounding on that door. After all, I paid the rent, if anyone was moving, I figured she should.

But, the cops didn’t see it that way. I did eventually get my stuff back. But it took a long time and the help of mutual friends.

For almost a year, I was incredibly conflicted about her. I loved her so much, and yet I also hated her with an intensity that was surprising. There was no middle ground. There was no thinking of her fondly. When I thought of her, I did one of two things. I yearned for her, and desperately thought of things I could do to get her to take me back. Or, on the opposite end, I would consider making a little blond haired voo-doo doll that I could stick needles into. Any chance I got I would complain about her and put her down, all to try and ease my heartache. After all, hating someone is much easier than loving someone you can’t have.

Over time, it got easier. I felt that my broken heart was slowly mending. Gradually, I felt less hatred towards her. I could think about her without the intense, powerful feelings. Getting over that broken heart definitely took time and patience. But I’m proud to say that I did, eventually, get there.

Different people have different kinds of experiences with girlfriends, but mine was especially painful. Weeping for the broken hearted had not typically been my MO, but when I was forced to get over my ex girlfriend , I started to understand what all those guys were talking about. I found out quickly that the best way to get over a broken heart is to pick yourself up off the floor and move on to more important things. There will be more girls, and breaking up is not the end of the world. At least in my case, it was the start of something new.

We had been friends for quite some time in college, with both of us having different significant others at one point in time. The timing was never exactly right, so we just hung out when we could and we let things happen naturally. When we both became single early in our senior year of college, it was time to see what we could do. The relationship went well for the whole year, until the time came for graduation. She was heading back to Philadelphia and I was heading to Las Vegas to try my hand as a professional poker player. Could we make it work? It sure beat the prospect of breaking up.

During our long distance relationship, my ex girlfriend and I would talk regularly and try to keep things going. She just couldn’t stand being alone, so she did what any liar or cheater would do. She lied, and she cheated.

The signs were obvious and it became apparent that things just weren’t going to work. We broke up and for a long period of time, I thought to myself, “We’ll eventually get back together…” She was my best friend, after all, but there was nothing good about the relationship in its current form.

I had to get over my ex girlfriend by getting a plan about the future. I scraped the poker career three months in, not because of ineffectiveness, but because it was a dead end road. I prepared and applied to law school, while also dating a few other girls to ease the pain after we finally broke it off. I found that my world was full of potential girlfriends, so I made a clean break with the ex and never really looked back. Though painful at the beginning, it was one of the best things to happen to me.

Craig D. Law student - 24

Her name was Patty. We met while in college, and soon were inseparable. We studied together, worked together, and soon were talking about marriage. I thought my life was complete. I soon found out that Patty didn’t feel the same way about me.

I should have noticed the changes in her. She lost weight and got a makeover. She even starting waxing her legs, something she had said before was worse than going to the gynecologist! Soon she kept talking about her friend named James, and spent many nights in front of the computer screen talking to James. At this point, I still had no clue about her love affair with James.

However, the relationship came to an end one night she asked me to drive her to a hotel so she could meet James, and packed her suitcase with sexy lingerie.

Okay, at this point even I figured it out. I drove her to the hotel, and then called it quits. She was so happy she even paid me for giving her a ride to the hotel.

Those days after the breakup were difficult. I had a tough time getting over my ex-girlfriend. I spent hours in bed, depressed and crying. I watched talk shows and ate ice cream. I had to buy bigger pants, but I sure felt better. I taped a picture of Patty up to my wall…then threw darts at it.

Soon I felt like I could face the world again. I felt like I got over my broken heart, and was ready to move on. I started exercising so I could work off all that ice cream. I started doing things that she never liked, such as leaving beer bottles on the table, leaving the toilet seat up, and walking around in my underwear. I never realized what pleasure those simple things brought to me.

Even though I felt better, I still wanted to get her back. My chance came one day when I was on a date with my new girlfriend and I saw Patty with James. James was talking nonstop about the stock market, and Patty looked bored stiff. I walked up to Patty, said hello, and told her I met my girlfriend when I stopped for dinner after I dropped her off at the hotel that fateful night. And I used the money Patty gave me for the ride to treat my girlfriend to some sexy lingerie.

John B., 39 – customer service representative

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

When Belinda moved in, it was the beginning of the end for us. Granted, we had been seeing each other for over a year, and quite often spent the night in each other’s beds, but something about cohabitation triggered the breakdown of our relationship. In retrospect, all of my actions proved unwise in my attempt to get over my ex girlfriend.

I could say there was a myriad of reasons behind our breaking up, but that wouldn’t really be true. Honestly, the sex just became terrible. When Belinda moved in, a certain complacency set it, and she seemed to treat me more like a roommate than a boyfriend. Most of my attempts at intimacy were brushed off, and when she did succumb to my advances, it seemed forced and she seemed uninterested. When I finally confronted her with this harsh reality, a sad fight/discussion ensued, with tears flowing from both of us.

Belinda told me she just didn’t find me sexually attractive anymore, and I had to admit I felt the same way. We still had an emotional connection and a friendship, but it was clear the romantic aspect of our relationship was over. However, most problematically, she now lived in my house and didn’t really have anywhere else to go.

Belinda had a home-based web business, but work had slackened over recent months. She also wanted to buy her own house, and continuing to live with me would be a good way for her to save money.

In the spirit of continual friendship, I agreed to let her stay, which was definitely a mistake when trying to survive a break up. Our relationship became increasingly tenuous, and although I never wanted to get her back, there were moments when I was tempted to crawl back in bed next that familiar body.

The worst part after the break up came when I attempted to start dating other people. In conversations, Belinda assured me that I was free to see whomever I wanted, but that attitude did not go over in practice.

When I finally met a woman I really liked, Belinda threw constant little passive-aggressive fits, and my possible new love was eventually scared away by all the drama. At that point, I had to get over the broken heart by loosing the new girl while still having to deal with the juvenile behavior of my ex girlfriend. Finally, after a year of this, Belinda closed on her house and got out of my hair, but I can’t really say we are friends any more. Sadly, the other girl never came back.

When it came to surviving a break up, no one had it worse than me. I had dated a girl in college and it seemed like the right one — her name was Alison. Alison actually worked up the courage to talk to me, and we hit it off nicely. Alison though was more interested in getting a warm body to be married to than anything else.

Instead of just a steady relationship that might develop into something more, Alison wanted to skip all that and go directly down the aisle. Well, that left me feeling like a rat in a cage, and even after I tried to end the relationship four months later, I couldn’t do it. She actually came down and told me that if it was not going to work out, she would be the one to decide it.

Two months later, I had to do the breaking up when I found out from her friend Trish that she had been dating my only other male friend at the time, Jim, for nearly 3 months and started sleeping with him just two days after going out with him. Trish was a true friend and helped me get over the broken heart in a hurry with funny lines like since they were both terminally obese, how the baby would weigh about 30 pounds, or that she was glad I was out of the relationship because I didn’t look good in black and white stripes.

Over the next several weeks, this brand of humor kept me sane as I was getting over my ex-girlfriend but the last laugh came about four months after the breakup. My friend was still living at home with his mom and his mother bluntly put her foot down and told Jim that if he married Alison, he was going to be on his own. Fearing that he was actually going to have to work for a living, he ended up breaking it off with her. Her initial plot was to go out with him so that I would attempt to get her back, but since this friend of mine was nothing but a nuisance and my relationship had more problems than it was worth, I simply cut ties to both of them.

In the weeks and months that followed, I missed having someone in my life but my friends helped me get over it with a few beers, some dancers and making other connections to wonderful people.

Scott, 37- Accountant

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

My ex-girlfriend and I had met in college. Call me a late bloomer, but she was my first love. We did everything together and would visit each other when school was out. She was a senior by the time I graduated. That year, we saw each other once in the fall. Halfway through spring semester I hadn’t seen her at all, then I got the phone call. I don’t recall what she said exactly, but it was short and sweet – the typical “I need some time for myself” jargon.

In my manliest voice, I called my best friend and told him the news. Three years together and she ended it just like that. I was hurt, but the man-rules dictate that you never display emotion. He told me that it may bad for a while, but to give it time and keep busy. He then told me I’d feel much better in three days, he called it the “three-day hump.” I believe this “hump” may better apply to over-eating at Thanksgiving than a break-up.

After we had just broken up we were still linked through a social networking site. Some sleuthing found her getting awfully close to another guy – and here I thought she needed her “alone time”…

I deleted her. In a final act of barbarism, I blocked her as well.

I realize there are many ways to heal a broken heart. Some people write angry letters and never send them. Some find another girl immediately after, called a “rebound.” That night, I nursed my heartache with a few pitchers at a local dive bar.

That night, my friend gave me more advice, which all seemed a lot easier said than done. It was difficult listening to him – he has a new girl every week. The bar doubled as a karaoke lounge and liquor tends to give me, what I call, “Sinatra powers.” Being a true friend, he successfully kept me from singing “My Way,” or any other male empowerment song. I owe him for that.

I do think that girls have it easier. A girl doesn’t have to deal with heartbreak for too long, there will always be a guy or two to keep her busy. I didn’t date for a long time. I haven’t had a serious girlfriend since, nothing that has lasted more than a couple months, anyway.

A few months later, she began calling me. She tried to be friends, then hinted at getting back together. When I declined, she proceeded to curse me out via e-mail, text message, and voice mail. I flexed my man muscle yet again and had her e-mail and phone number blocked. It seems to me that she is no expert in coping with a break up either. But even through all of this, I have no ill-will towards her. I just think she needs some time for herself.

Charles D., 24, Engineer