Heart of Glass

Breaking up is hard to do – and being the breaker is even worse. No matter how bruised the human ego may get by being dumped, the long drawn – out guilt of actually ditching someone is definitely the more pernicious of the two evils. You feel guilty before you do it. You feel guilty while you’re doing it and, worst of all, you feel massively guilt one the deed is done.

You know your victim will scrutinse all the possible meaning hidden in every word spoken between you, when really the message was intended to be quite simple: It’s not me, it’s you.

This is an issue that’s close to my heart at the moment because after a few weeks of dates, breakfast, brunch, dinner and an evening watching DVD’s. I am no longer mad about the boy. They hasn’t been a huge row or an insensitive series of infidelities (that I know of at least). I am just not that crazy about him anymore, and therefore I feel that I shouldn’t waste any more of his time and mine.

Friends have been quick to accuse me of being too picky and fickle. And to be honest, I cannot offer any different, other than to point out that being picky and fickle about man seems perfectly justifiable to me.

In fact, I think it’s a trait that deserves to be applauded. Should I gave it more time, see how it develops and be a bit more patient? Probably – but really, what’s the point in dagging out the inevitable?

So my mind is made up – the boy must go. Now all I have to decide is how exactly to deliver the bullet – should it be done over coffee, sent via text, or email, for example. Or, avoiding dexterity, could I ignore the issue altogether and hope that the boy will just, you know, disappear?

To my shame, I must confess that in the past I have been a great believer in not actually having the formal break – up conversation at all. Leaving things to fizzle out naturally was a tactic.

I thought preferable to sit-down with the dumpee and having a heart to heart. It wasn’t just because I was a coward, although I suppose that was part of the reason. I often thought that it was the human course of action. It seemed to me that there was no point in hurting someone’s feeling to their face and making them feel terrible about themselves when there was far more palatable option available.

I used what you might call a slow – release break-up-it simply involved avoiding the person being dumped for as long as possible. The beauty of it was that it would take a while for them to understand what was going on. But then, once the reality of the situation fully downed on them, they’d be so filled with anger towards you that there would be no room left in their heads for recrimination of any kind. With you cast as the baddic, a crisis of self – confidence on their part could be natly avoided. It’s being cruel to be kind and also the path of least confrontation.

But in this instance, I just don’t think I could cope with seeming so collous – a vanity which still leaves me clueless as to how I am going to complete the task at hand. Face the dilemma with such magnitude. I have done what any other modern gay guy would do. I’ve goodled it. Unfortunately for me, however, it turns out that recovering from being dumped is far more worthy of web advice then seeking to become adept at doing it.

I’ve found precious little on how to best handle my situation. There are a lot of pages that further convince me that I am doing the right things, but nothing of value on how to actually do it – unless you count gems of insight such as “Don’t do it over the phone.” Or “Trick them into dumping you first by manufacturing an argument.”

By the time you read this, my mission will have been accomplished. If I am lucky, outbursts of emotion and great gashing of teeth won’t have featured – but there’s a good chance that the break-up conversation will have involved coffee and apatronising chin-up speed just before the mandatory series of farewell hugs.

Clearly there’s no such thing as best practice when it comes to giving someone the elbow.

After a considerable unpleasantness is the dark secret behind a lot of long-term relationships

Till then, did I sound very bad?