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.

Like breaking my leg skiing last year, I never thought this would happen to me. Never in my worst dreams did I think I would get dumped …never thought I could be laid so low by a tiny red head. And, I didn’t see it coming, didn’t have a clue she would walk. Jan and I were the perfect couple and I still think we could make it, but she has moved on.

She moved out and moved on big-time. The heartbreaking part was that two weeks after she left me she was engaged to Mike, a senior partner at the insurance office up the street a couple of blocks. Maybe it wasn’t me personally.

Maybe, as a lowly sales rep, out building my business day and night I just wasn’t successful enough for her. I don’t know and Jan isn’t talking to me. The breakup wouldn’t be quite so heartbreaking if I still had her as a friend.

My pal, Lou tells me to get over it; no woman is worth the heartbreak according to Lou. Women fawn all over Lou. Every time we go out he is surrounded with his choice of women and I go home alone. Of course, his choice isn’t always a choice woman; take the one who lifted his wallet when she left in the middle of the night!

I used to tell Lou to look for a better quality of women, ‘someone like Jan.” Now, stinging from the relationship heartbreak of losing Jan I’m not giving advice anymore. Still, breaking up would be easier if the woman wasn’t great in every way, like Jan. Oh, Jan had her faults, like bringing home strays and I don’t mean cats or dogs.

She brought a woman with four kids home when I was recuperating from my broken leg last winter. They turned the apartment into a zoo! They took over my home office, the couch and the kitchen. Jan said I didn’t need the home office anyway because I was off work and neither of us liked to cook so the kitchen was no big deal. They camped in my apartment for a grueling two months.

I am starting to look at the bright side of breaking up. No more surprise guests, and I have the closet and bathroom back. And, there’s a fine looking women who just moved in across the street.

Randy – Insurance sales

As a guy, I don’t usually think too much about the whole “heartbreak” thing. Usually that world only applies to when my favorite team gets upset by the worst in the league. However, I have definitely dealt with relationship heartbreak once. You know – breaking up, and the muddled months afterwards. My ex girlfriend Amanda held a nasty secret from me for a good long while, and I’ve gotta say, it was definitely one of the more heartbreaking things I have ever had to deal with.

Amanda and I were together for four years. We met at work, became casual acquaintances and eventually our relationship bloomed into something that was a mature and trusting relationship. At least, I thought so anyway. Somewhere near the end of the line, Amanda had found someone else. To this day, I’m not sure exactly who he is, or why she left me. She didn’t leave me with a lot of kind words or explanation past “there’s someone else”. What I felt next was pure overwhelming heartbreak.

Like I said, as a guy, I don’t really know how to deal with this stuff well. There were a couple of days after we broke up that I don’t really remember due to some extracurricular activity with my friend Jack Daniels. Actually, maybe there were a few more than just a couple days that I don’t really remember after we broke up.

Searching for answers and putting the blame on yourself is real easy to do in that situation, but it doesn’t help any.

Getting over heartbreak is about as difficult as anything can get. Sitting around, binge drinking, binge eating are all natural tendencies us guys want to find solace in, it dulled the pain for me but it didn’t get me an closer to actually getting over her.

Instead, try distracting yourself. Find a new hobby or regain interest in an old one. I found that reading over thousands of baseball stats went from being something as boring as Golf to something that can keep my mind off my ex. God knows what she was doing anyway. I focused on my work, school, or hobbies and keep a fresh outlook on the future. Taking a vacation also helped me get over the broken heart – how can you be heartbroken with some of your best buddies on a cruise ship getting tanked every night? I found that a heart can be as easily mended as it is broken (trust me, the Dallas Cowboys remind me of that every year).

James D, 27 - Teacher

I remember trying to get over my ex pretty vividly. In fact, it took about six or seven months, I’d say, to really get over my ex girlfriend Jess. I tried to get her back relentlessly but nothing was really working! Eventually I figured it all out though – and no, it didn’t have anything to do with getting too drunk to remember the entire relationship!

Jess was the most beautiful girl on the planet to me. I probably would’ve done anything for her. Now I’m not usually like that when it comes to girls, I’m more of the love ‘em and leave ‘em type, but Jess finally settled me down for a while. We were together for a long time. Like three years or so. That’s a real long time for me.

So when it came time for me to ship out to Iraq for a thirteen month long tour, I was hoping we could stay together. Surprisingly she told me she didn’t really have any interest in that. Her career was taking leaps and bounds and was going to involve her traveling alot and I don’t think she felt like having to miss me all the time. Still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me but like I always did with Jess I respected her wishes.

Getting over her was rough, luckily I had a lot to distract me overseas but I still thought about her all the time.

I found that getting over her was almost like waging a miniature battle in my head that always left me mentally spent and exhausted. But eventually I moved on.

I still think about her a lot and I am glad that she helped straighten me out as a person. God knows I needed it! I look back now and think about all the times we had together and how she helped me improve myself. I feel positive about the whole situation. Let’s just say I might still love some and leave some, but I think I’ll be hanging around the strip clubs a little less from now on.

While I’ll always remember her and save a place in my heart for her,  though difficult, getting over my ex girlfriend showed me a lot about my resilience as a person. Now I’m ready to kick some ass overseas and face a whole bunch of other challenges that I can’t even begin to describe.

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.

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

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

Heartbreak, as a rule, is best left to other people; indeed, that is who we imagine heartbreak to be for.

Until it happens to us.

True to the beer slogan, you never forget your first girl. I don’t know what counts as your first girl in that slogan, but for me, it meant the first one you take seriously. You know, the first one you think of as part of yourself, the one you may occasionally commit the cardinal sin for, and choose over friends… and even beer. She’s not the first one you explore sexuality with or have a laugh with. She’s not the first girl you dated or the girl you brought home to mom and then apologized for.

She’s the first one you apologized to on behalf of your own mom.

For me that girl was Maryanne.

We met in college, and I suddenly and instantly lost interest in the carnal smorgasbord that was campus life. The Tri Delts are drunk, and playing a game involving blindfolded body part identification? Ho hum. There’s an ecstasy-fueled cheerleader dogpile in your dorm room? Sorry dude, gotta study. You get the picture.

Maryanne and I weren’t joined at the hip. We didn’t have to be. Neither of us had been subjected to heartache, so our trust (being untested) was absolute. We had no idea we would break each others’ hearts, never mind what it was like.

I’ll spare you the details of what made her storm out one night, and the details of why I didn’t go after her — though part of me (a lot of me) wanted to. Suffice it to say we had said things that could not be unsaid. It was over, whether the break was clean or protracted.

I was ready for a hard night without her. I was even ready to reach for her in the morning, and realize she was gone. What I was unprepared for was how long she would not be there, to wit, forever.

My heart wasn’t broken. There was a Maryanne-shaped hole in it. There was no mending the break, no curing the heartache with tequila like you cure a headache with aspirin.

There was only living until the hole grew over with new experiences and new loves.

Mark,  47 - Writer/editor

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