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

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

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