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.

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

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

I recently lost the girl of my dreams but didn’t realize it at the time. We had been going out for almost three years and I know that she was waiting for me to be more serious in our relationship. She often talked about marriage, (something that I always ran from), and children. My inability to commit led to our break up and the biggest heartbreak of my life.

I had taken her out to dinner at one of her favorite spots the night she crushed my world. We had ordered and were drinking a glass of wine when she again approached the subject of marriage. I started to stumble on my words and tried to change the subject.

“See,” she almost yelled at me, “You’re just an idiot that will never have a family because you can’t commit!”

Everyone in the place turned to look at us. I could feel the heat on my face.

“Calm down,” I stammered. That’s when things got really bad.

She stood up and addressed the entire restaurant.

“This guy is a jerk! We have been going out for almost three years. He loves to say that he loves me, and he loves taking me to bed, but he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life with me!” With that, she stormed out. I felt my heart break the instant that she was out of sight.

I looked around the room and called for the check. I wanted out of there as quickly as possible. The other customers there started throwing advice and telling me that I was a jerk. So now here I was assaulted with my girlfriend’s (newly ex girlfriend) leaving, the looming relationship heartbreak- and public ridicule to boot.

I quickly paid the bill and left. I tried to call her the next day and she told me that I had told her all she needed to know when I let her leave without a word. I tried to explain the embarrassment, but she hung up on me. I sent her flowers to apologize and admit that I was a jerk, but she had the delivery guy bring them to my office with a note telling me that I could stick it.

As if all of this wasn’t bad enough, the waitress from the restaurant sent me a letter telling me that I should have never let my girl leave, and that I had serious commitment issues. She also stated that she got my address from my credit card receipt and that I could call the place and have her fired because women needed to stick together when it came to guys like me.

Allen Reynolds, 25
Broker

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

The scene was a pathetic one. There I was, seventeen and on the white sandy beach watching the waves crash on the Florida shore. I was a ball player, athletic and tanned. Bikinis were as plentiful as grains of sand; but I was oblivious to them and the bodies inside them.

My parents thought there might be something terribly wrong with me. My parents didn’t see the chaos going on inside me because I wasn’t over her yet. Dad even dusted off his old drugs and alcohol lecture just in case that was the problem.

Drugs or any kind of fun was the last thing on my mind. I couldn’t look even look at a beer. This was the summer before my senior year, I was in the sunniest place in the world and all my mind could focus on was my ex-girlfriend and the breakup that had me in a million little pieces.

I had left the Midwest happy. I kissed her goodbye and everything was great. She was great. After years, I had found a girl who got me. She was cute and sweet, not beautiful maybe, but she didn’t have to be. She was intelligent and interesting and made every other girl in my high school look like a waste of time. I was the luckiest guy in town, and then I blew it.

The worst part of it all was that I had no idea how I blew it. I sent her a gold necklace in the mail. We talked on the phone every night. I loved this girl. One phone call ended in a small argument. It wasn’t a major fight. I was bored and missed her terribly, and like an idiot I took it out on her. She broke up with me, end of story. But, there had to be more.

Dad was close to throttling me out of my funk. I was ruining the summer, but I couldn’t help it. The last straw was the morning I cussed out a little seagull skittering down the beach in front of my feet. Dad ordered me to get over it then and there.

I thought the picture would be clear when I got home. I figured if I at least knew why I would be able to move on and get over her. There wasn’t. There was no other guy… At least thats what she said. We spoke in the halls when school started again, but it was almost like there was no acknowledgment of what had happened. No explanation ever came my way. I was so confused that I didn’t even try to get her back.

What did I learn from that breakup? I learned that I understood exactly nothing about women. Trouble is, not much has changed since then.

-K. B. Ryan, 37, sales

Everyone has breakup stories and mine is not much different, except that I was dumped on Christmas! My girlfriend and I lived together for about six months. I hoped she was “the One” but I guess she had other plans. I never knew that Sarah had such a mean streak.

Christmas morning she said she was sick so I went to my family’s brunch alone. I laughed when my family asked when I would propose, told my brother how cute his Yoda-eared baby was, and kept a straight face when Grandma gave me KY thinking it was deodorant. I grabbed my gifts went to pick up Sarah.

When I got home, my key wouldn’t work for some reason. I could hear Sarah through the door. Next thing I know I am reading a note slipped under the door and on it was the lamest relationship breakup I’d ever had.

The note basically said that I wasn’t a good roommate, not responsible enough, and not thoughtful enough. But the kicker: she was ticked that we weren’t engaged yet! Why the hell would she want to marry someone as terrible as she thought I was?

So Sarah decided to change the locks on Christmas morning.

Its hard enough getting over a breakup, but to stand outside pleading for my stuff while she pretended she couldn’t hear me was the worst. I didn’t even know that girl could use a hammer, let alone change a lock.
The knocks kept coming.

After a breakup I usually go out drinking, but of course my friends were all busy because it was Christmas. With none of my stuff and nowhere to go, I was forced to go back to my parent’s house and tell everyone what happened.

My mom cried because she said she would miss Sarah and my sister told me that I might have screwed up my “last chance” with a decent girl. There’s nothing like the support of a loving family to get you through a tough time.

I don’t have closure on Sarah yet, mostly because she still has some of my stuff, but I have moved on. New Year’s Eve is almost as good as Valentine’s Day for meeting single women. I’ve got a few new numbers in my cell, and a new start to the year. Now all I have to do is move back out of my parent’s basement.

J. McCann, 29 Sales Rep