Most women can recount a tale of woe on the subject of breakups. Sometimes, men just blow it big time—they wuss out and handle things wrong. Maybe this article should have been entitled: How Not to Break Up With Your Girlfriend. In any case, you may want to circulate this article among the guys you know, so they won’t do what these dudes did.
Shira can still remember, 30 years later, how her boyfriend Ari broke up with her over the phone. “It might have been different if he’d broken up with me in person, but somehow it just never really sank in properly—that it was over.”
“It didn’t help that Ari told me he still had feelings for me but that his parents would be hurt if he continued to see me. They disapproved of the relationship, but I thought that they’d get over it, begin to like me, that there was still a chance we could repair the relationship. I kind of stalked him for a while. I even slept with him, thinking that would rekindle the romance. He was thrilled to lose his virginity, but I could feel with every thrust that he no longer loved me. That’s how it finally sank in. I was devastated and felt defiled.”
A Wuss
Of course, the phone isn’t the only way guys chicken out. Kyra is a smart and self-assured attorney but still remembers how her college boyfriend was so scared to do the deed (of breaking up) that he simply slipped a note under the door of her dorm. “He did it that way because he was a wuss. I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it wasn’t a shock. I didn’t think it was so horrible for that reason but my friends disagreed.”
A Jerk
Rhona’s boyfriend broke up with her because, he said, “There was someone better for me that wanted to go out with me, so he would step aside. What an idiot.”
“It was an excuse, but not a surprise. I sort of already knew he was a jerk, but I was a nice girl and I let him think he was telling me good news about the other guy. Bottom line was that I didn’t like the other guy at all and would never have gone out with him. I went home and swore the house down even though I was ready for the breakup. I think I just wanted it to be me that did the dumping.”
But the winner here for worst breakup story has to be Sharon whose boyfriend told her to be ready at 7 PM on Tuesday—he had reservations for the trendiest restaurant in town. He arrived with a bouquet of roses, wined and dined her, and then, as the flames on their flambéed desserts died down, laid an egg: there was someone else. Sharon and Ted had been dating for a year and a half, and she fully expected a marriage proposal, “I was completely blind-sided. I had no inkling that this was coming. Even now, I just don’t understand his technique. Was this supposed to be a takeoff on The Last Supper?? I mean, God!“
