The Cynic’s Guide to Break-Ups

If I were to have written this article last year, it would have been filled with a list of great date ideas and an awful poem I had written.  Fortunately for you, complete and utter relationship destruction happened recently.  So now, I’d rather regurgitate my breakfast and re-eat it than think about a love poem.

So, instead I give you the exact opposite of what I would have done a year ago:

Instead of my three date ideas,  I thought I’d share my “revenge on ex-boyfriends ideas,” ones that won’t get you arrested.  I learned that the hard way.

1. Still know his Facebook password?  The second you sign in, Facebook becomes a playground!  You could make a whole photo album of inappropriate pictures, or change his status to something that suggests he has hemorrhoids … or a gay lover.

2. “Lose” all of his belongings that were left at your house.  I guess he’ll just have to buy new clothes, cologne, laptop, iPod, and replace the $20 bill that was in his coat pocket.

3. Stay friends with his friends.  Ex-boyfriends hate that.  When all of his friends love you, all they’ll do is give him shit for not being with you.  It’s constant torture for him, which gives you much more free time because torturing him used to be your job.

Instead of my love poem, I wrote (surprisingly NOT a first for me) a hate poem.

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Perfect men don’t exist,

There are just some that suck a little less than others.

Who said it had to rhyme?!

Lastly, when I thought about all of the single gals that are home alone watching Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding, I realized that I needed to prevent the no. 1 thing that depresses all women who’ve been through a break-up: relating everything we see to the love we don’t have.  For example, pink curtains in the living room = tulips that were not delivered to us.  Julia Roberts = Pretty Woman: even the whore found love.  The tub of ice cream we’re eating = “I’m fat.”

Therefore, I created a list to reconfigure our brains on love.  After reading this, you’ll realize how pathetic couples are.

THINGS NEW COUPLES DO … that make me want to vomit and die.

  1. Get excited for “their song.” Whatever their song is, it was written by someone they don’t know, who doesn’t know them, and then it was copyrighted. At no point did they own any part of it.
  2. Go to Build-a-Bear together. I don’t care how cute it is that you can make a teddy bear together and put a little fabric heart in its stuffing!  These are for children.  And, no, you do not have any use for them.
  3. Partake in kissing overload. Kiss all you want … behind closed doors!  No one needs to witness the wandering hands, the giggling and the saliva-heavy lip locking that happens every three seconds.
  4. Delivering flowers to the girlfriend’s workplace. Joan just got carnations delivered to her desk this morning.  She was so busy showing them to everyone that she never put them in water.  Now, she’s in her cubicle sobbing about how these “dying flowers” are a clear sign that her relationship is doomed.  Sigh.
  5. Write poetry. Poetry reminds me of medieval, feathered-capped, wooden flute playing times when lovers were separated by many miles.  The couple that I once witnessed in the park reading to each other could not have been less separated.  Their seriousness in reading their horrid writing aloud made me die due to all of the consecutive grammatical errors.  Only the smell of the nearby pretzel vendor brought me back to life.

Single women of the world, lovey-dovey couples look ridiculous!  Don’t give in to your instinct to mope and over-eat (PMSers excluded).  Dig down deep and use the beautiful gift that all of us women have perfected: cynicism.  And if that doesn’t work, pair it with a pinch of alcoholism.  It works wonders!

Love,

The positively negative,

Alessandra


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