At this point in our lives, I bet all of us have been in love at least once. Granted, it may have been with Dylan McKay or Kelly Kapowski, but nonetheless, we've felt the joy of love and, unfortunately, the pain of lost loves.
I remember my first breakup. I was in sixth grade and my boyfriend of eight months told me "it just wasn't working out." Crushed, I marched my butt upstairs and flushed all the jewelry he'd given me down the toilet. But how do you avoid said ex in sixth grade? There are only, like, 10 kids in the whole school not afraid of cooties. I got over it. ... In time.
I thought it was tough then, but when I see couples breaking up now, it breaks my heart -- even though I'm just a simple bystander.
There is nothing fun about being broken up with. You start to call every ounce of your being into question: "Am I cute enough? Smart enough? Too smart? Too demanding? What are my friends going to think? What are his/her friends going to think?" Not to mention the logistics of it all. You try to tell enough people and hope it spreads along the gossip chain, and then one day, some random person asks you how your girl/boyfriend is and you freak out. Sound familiar?
And when you're the one doing the breaking up? Dude, how not fun is that? Think of the mental and emotional anguish you feel at the other person's expense. See, according to popular thought, those who initiate breakups don't have it much easier, especially in the serious relationships. It's no more fun for them to return your favorite T-shirt or CD on loan. Why would someone who once loved you relish in hurting you? And the phone calls. How hard are the emotional late-night phone calls cursing all things you, including your puppy? Dude, I feel you.
And then there are some of us out there who don't break up, at least not in one definitive conversation most breakups tend to be enacted in. In essence, it's almost as if the breakup never officially occurs. "I think we need to break up, or at least take things easy for a while. Okay, well, maybe we can just hang out on weekends. I still want to see you. ... Blah, blah, blah."
Or, my absolute favorite: "We never really broke up because we were never really dating." This is what I call the typical college breakup because it follows the typical college relationship: never wholly defined at the beginning, never fully terminated at the end. Hence, emotional confusion ensues until at least one of the involved parties finds someone else or graduates.
Regardless of the kind of breakup one experiences, most breakupees spend a good portion of the mourning period hoping that the breakuper will change his mind and come crawling back. Yet, the reality is that as soon as it does happen (and it happens only in a small percentage of cases), making up may not be the best idea. Point one: pride. Um, hello, he or she broke up with you, made you cry, wasted a lot of your Kleenex and, if it's serious, broke your precious heart. There must be plenty of good reasons to let him back, right? Point two: Even if you get back together, the breakupee continues to waste a lot of energy keeping everything in check, fearing that one screw up, one fight, one bad outfit could end the deal forever. Point three: your Dad (for girls) and your Mom (for boys). Do you really think visits will ever be the same?
Speaking of others, not only is it hard for you to break up, but it not that much fun for your friends. Especially if they were friends with your ex. What happens to your friends when the ex wants to swing by for coffee or send you a present? Is your friend supposed to dump him, too? And before you sweetly reply "Oh, no, of course, not," be honest. Yes, they have to dump him, too. You'd flip if they even mention him in a benign way, let alone have contact. Face it, friends, you are the children of divorce in this one. Pick a favorite and get the hell out of the way.
Regardless of the pain, confusion and general weirdness experienced by all parties, breakups tend to be the right decision. I've always said that at this point, we're too young to settle for an okay match. Plus, breaking up can be fun. Friends buy you perk-up presents; Mom and Dad can't yell when you spend too much with the credit card or go over your minutes talking things out with your best friends from home. Plus, when I think back on my first breakup, I have to say I don't regret much about how things turned out. Except for the jewelry. What was I thinking?
Callan's column runs biweekly on Tuesdays. She can be reached at blount@cavalierdaily.com.
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