It has come to my attention that mending a broken heart is much easier when the person with the broken heart is a female. Females have multitudes of heartbreak routines and a steadfast support system of friends. When a girl gets her heart broken, the immediate remedy is ice cream and The Notebook. After her eyes can no longer produce tears, the circle of girlfriends comes over to bad mouth the heartbreaker. The circle of girlfriends and the heartbroken girl hit the clubs, the mall, or anywhere else where males run rampant. A rebound relationship complete with pictures to plaster all over social networking sites proves that her heart is whole again.

Yes, so much easier being a woman with a broken heart. However, for all the males out there, it is a much more complicated process. My girlfriend and I had been going out for eighteen months. I thought everything was going just dandy. Then, the complaints started.

“Why can’t you express your feelings?”

“Why can’t you ever be romantic?”

“Why is it always physical with you?”

On and on and on it went. I tried appeasing her grumbles. I tried to limit the amount of time spent on adult activities. I tried throwing out sentences filled with love whenever I could. I tried to please her, but the complaints piled up and soon she was fed up. After eighteen months with the girl I thought I was going to marry, it was over. She was my first love. I was eighteen, and she was seventeen. It was over.

She asked me not to contact her anymore, to make the healing process easier. I tried to focus on my own healing process, yet I did not know how to go about it. This was my first time trying to get over a broken heart. Going to my male friends was not an option. It is said men are not sensitive. This might be a stereotype, yet I found it all too true in regards to my friends. I went into a period of depression. I relived all of our memories repeatedly. What had gone wrong? What could have been different? The few girlfriends I had were amazing and pulled me through. One girl in particular was extremely effective. We went to the same college, and she spent time counseling me every day. She sure was effective. So effective, in fact, that she became my new girlfriend! Five years later, we are still together, engaged and with no complaints!

Tom Whindfield, 23, Algebra II teacher

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Michael”, 40. A radio personality

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

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

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

Then she was gone…..

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

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

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

Matt Gerwitz, 44, pastor and free-lance writer

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

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

As I pushed the “delete” button on my cell phone and watched her contact information disappear into thin air, I realized that what I was doing was the modern equivalent of burning my diary or breaking that heart-framed picture on the nightstand. Somehow, simply pressing a button didn’t feel as satisfying. I was still in the first stages of a break-up, before anger and then heartbreak took their turns. I just felt numb.

There were no excuses this time to allow me to piece together the crumbling remains of my ego or self-righteous anger. She hadn’t cheated on me; she hadn’t fallen in love with some old high-school friend or met someone new. I hadn’t done anything in particular to merit her breaking up with me. The words that had left me speechless were the six most-dreaded in the romantic canon…

“I just don’t love you anymore.”

The heartbreaking lines had been saved for the time when they would have their maximum effect. She had been in New York on business, and I had planned on coming up on the weekend, after her presentation was over, to spend a little time with her there enjoying the sights and sounds of the city. We skated in Central Park, attended a Broadway production, and were strolling down a park lane on a crisp night in late autumn. I pulled her close, and she resisted a little. Surprised, I pulled away and looked at her face. It was ashen, guilty.

“Cole, I have something to tell you. I feel really bad about waiting until now, the night’s so perfect, but I was afraid you were going to propose to me or something so I thought I’d just tell you now…”

Had my hand not been in my right coat pocket, it would have dropped the diamond ring in its case. The night, the setting, the ring, those six little words; the perfect symphony of relationship heartbreak.

About 5 days and 5 bottles of whiskey later, the heartbreak hadn’t subsided, so I decided to lay off the whiskey and go for a walk. Fresh air always gave me a little perspective. The daily walks continued, and my perspective grew.

“Better to have found out before the proposal than 5 years into a pathetic marriage”. It wasn’t Shakespeare, but the thought was something to start with, a “delete” button on a bad break up.

L. Hudd, 29 – Writer

“Hey, can we go someplace private? We need to talk.”

If my girlfriend told me something like that today, I’d know what was coming. I’d be able to mentally prepare myself for getting dumped a few minutes ahead of schedule. Because those words can only mean one thing: she wants to break up with me.

At the time, though, I wasn’t a wise as I am now. I was just a freshman in college, enjoying my first serious relationship. Ah, so she wants to talk? Great! This’ll be fun. I love talking to her.

Do I need to dwell on the details? We’ve all heard it. It wasn’t me, it was her. We had some great times and she knew I would find somebody new who could give me what I was looking for, and she really, really hoped we could still be friends. She didn’t understand, any more than I did, that getting over a broken heart isn’t easy.

I didn’t quite process all this as it happened. Again, I was young and little naive. Today I can at least see the warning signs that the end is near. But then, it seemed to come out of nowhere. She might as well have told me she was alien and was leaving because she had to report back to her home planet. It sounds a little clichéd, but the feeling was exactly like being punched in the gut. I know it’s called heartbreak or heartache but isn’t really the gut that feels the worst of it? But the pit of my stomach was crying out in pain. How could I get over a broken heart if I couldn’t even get over a broken gut?

This happened twenty minutes before I had to go take a final for one of my classes. The girl wasn’t cruel, by the way. She misheard something I’d said earlier, and thought I was meeting her on the way from the test. When she realized her mistake, she was mortified. But in fact, maybe it was for the best. Thanks to the final, I had something to take my mind off the pain.

It reminded me there were other things in life, and that helped in getting over the heartbreak. It took some getting used to being single again, but soon enough I was back on my feet.

- Chris, 26, Graduate Student

I was in college, in my twenties, and in love. With Noel. She was amazing: smart, funny, confident, and someone else’s. Yep, she had a boyfriend. Still, we became friends, good friends. The kind of college friends who cuddle on the dorm bed as we watched television; obviously, it was becoming “something.”

We were getting closer, she was seeing me more, and her boyfriend, well almost never. Then, one day she said that they’d broken up, and soon we were a couple, and her (ex) boyfriend was now out of sight and our of mind.

Things were great for two years. It was October – I was set to graduate in May. She wasn’t graduating, yet. We had both gone away to college far from home, and upon graduation I intended to return from whence I came, and we had planned, those two long years, for her to follow me. But I quickly learned how fast things change, and how fast heartbreak can come.

One day she came by and told me that she wanted to share an apartment with a male friend of hers. She assured me they were “just friends.” I said, “no way,” that no girl friend of mine was going to live with some dude. That went over well. She left, angry. The next day she came over and said she was moving in with him anyway. She then suggested that we needed to take, wait for it… a break. Yep. She said it. I’ll spare you the details and we’ll just say – the onset and pain that comes when that broken hearted feeling blindsides you.

A couple weeks later I ran into a friend of hers; it happened to be a very attractive friend, one Noel had often expressed jealousy of. I asked her out – what better way to get over a broken heart than to put a new person between you and the old one?

Later that week, Noel stopped by my dorm to pick up some clothes she had left at my place. Knowing she was coming, I strategically hung a picture of me and my new flame where she couldn’t miss it. I saw her eyes flick to it, and watched her visibly flinch. Was that the shadow of jealousy, maybe even regret, that I saw pass her face? I like to think so. And while it still took me some time to get over the broken heart, replaying her flinch in my mind helped the heartache – a lot. Of course, time did the rest.

Sky, 38, teacher

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