As soon as Thanksgiving hits, we get caught up in hustle and bustle of holiday activites: gift giving and getting, dreidel playing and edible underwear consuming, just to name a few. I think we can agree that eating your own edible underwear just isn’t the same as having someone else do it, so you start your search for a significant other. But since your criteria ends at having someone help you spike the eggnog at Tiffany’s Christmas Eve extravaganza, you settle for the first schmuck who doesn’t liken himself to “Rambo, pretty much, with his shirt off.”
You and your beau/belle/schmuck coast through the Black Friday shopping stage, right past Hanukkah and Christmas, and into the “Happy New Year!” fireworks. You don’t like them enough to put their blue/pink peg next to yours in your Game of Life minivan, but you stay together out of convenience. As Valentine’s Day looms nearer, you decide that it’s better to have dinner with someone (anyone, really) than sit at home, eating chocolates out of the box and crying at the end of The Notebook.
Now that we’ve passed V-Day, it’s time for you to end that pointless relationship, and I’m here to help you do it right. Think of this as the “what not to do/say even though it’s true and you want to” chapter in Breaking Up For Dummies.
Rule one: You CAN use clichés. While I’m not a fan of lines like “it’s not you, it’s me”, I think they sound better than telling someone that you want some Cabo booty instead of their WASPy ass once Spring Break rolls around.
Rule two: Don’t dump someone at a restaurant. People make scenes when they get emotional, and you don’t want that in a public place.
Rule three: Don’t drop someone via text, Facebook, Twitter, etc. It’s great that we’re embracing technology, but that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to change your Facebook relationship status to “single” before talking things out in person. Even if you get creative and send Post Secret a postcard with the words “it’s over, Anthony” written on it, it’s still not right (besides, Frank probably won’t post it). I’m usually not so gung-ho about impersonal break-ups, except that time I was spineless enough to dump someone that way.
Jorge and I went out for a few months when I was working at Mickey D’s. That’s right, I worked at McDonalds, and I’m proud of my mastery of frying French fries. Anyway, Jorge was a nice guy. He always said the most romantic things to me in Spanish, or at least what I imagined were the most romantic things; he really could’ve been calling me a weiner-head for all I know. Unfortunately we weren’t so hot with the communication skills; my knowledge of Spanish ends at “¿esto es legal?” and his English was about as good as a feral child’s.
Once I realized that things weren’t going to work out with us, I decided there was only one thing to do — avoid him like the plague. I switched my email, “lost my phone,” and even agreed to go camping with my family so I could blame being incommunicado on the lack of service in the great outdoors.
After a string of missed calls and unanswered texts, I finally texted him back. I figured he’d be so pissed that he’d dump me right then, but Jorge was too socially inept to take a hint. In response to my “what’s up?” text he wrote “jst mis u sexy lipz.” Disgusted by my awful new nickname and upset that my avoidance plan had failed on an epic level, I rashly texted back “uh, yeah … I think that it’s time we see other people … sorry.” He texted me back asking if this had anything to do with Vicky from the drive-thru window, but I assured him that it didn’t, though Vicky did text me the next day saying “hey girl, just so you know, the baby isn’t Jorge’s.”
If you’re going to instigate a break-up, don’t be an asshole about it. Even though I think the Jorge-Vicky story is funny, I genuinely feel bad that whenever I go visit my old Mickey D’s buddies, and Jorge runs to the breakroom. Worse still, if he’s the cashier at the drive-thru, he won’t give me the 30 percent discount that the other employees will. So now, not only am I out an extra $2 every time I go to McDonalds, but there is also no one to help me spike the eggnog at Tiffany’s.
Original Author: Hazel Gun