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In honor of Valentine’s Day, we broke this baby\u2014originally published in Feb 2016\u2014outta the SparkLife vault!<\/em><\/p>\n In my whole life, I have been broken up with only once. (Ryan from fifth grade. Cried for a week.) The rest of the time, in relationships long or short, it has been I who bowed out, with varying degrees of grace. (Lest you think I am a heartless monster with commitment issues, I have also been romantically rejected more times than a mold-covered Valentine.)<\/p>\n So if you have the unfortunate task of breaking off a relationship, take courage and comfort from my story, and know that at the very least, you can’t do much worse.<\/p>\n Chapter 1: Attack of The Giggles<\/strong><\/p>\n I had my first semi-serious boyfriend for about four months my freshman year of high school. He was a very nice boy, but we had nothing in common other than one shared hobby: making out. Boy, did we ever love the territory around first base. (I’d like to retroactively apologize to anyone who was ever in a movie theater at the same time as us.) But as Valentines’ Day approached, I realized that out of the remarkable goodness of his heart, he was probably going to buy me a present he couldn’t afford and it would be wrong of me to take it, since I had run out of conversation fillers for those awkward moments when we weren’t sucking face.<\/p>\n So one morning before school, I sat him down in a stairway, looked deep into his sweet, trusting eyes, and began laughing uncontrollably. It was like “Hey (snort), I’m really (guffaw) sorry, but (chortle) I think we should (wheeze) break up.” I only laughed out of combination of nerves and guilt, but I still haven’t forgiven myself, and frankly I doubt that he has either.<\/p>\n Moral: Just don’t laugh. Practice in front of a mirror or whatever, but don’t laugh.<\/p>\n Chapter 2: The Best Defense<\/strong><\/p>\n My next high school boyfriend was everything the first one wasn’t: erudite, witty, and weirdly reluctant to make out at the movies. He was also a giant flake who put everything (the cross country team, homework, his dumb family) before me. \u00a0I actually cared about him a great deal, and saw dumping \u00a0him as a strategic move to startle him into caring more about me.<\/p>\n As you can imagine, that did not work at all. He failed to see my disposal as an opportunity to show up at my window with roses and a boombox, and instead saw it as an opportunity to start dating one of my best friends.<\/p>\n Moral: Remember that after you break up with someone, your relationship is actually over.<\/p>\n Chapter 3<\/strong>: \u00a0Scorched Earth<\/strong><\/p>\n My first girlfriend (yeah, \u00a0that<\/em> happened between chapters two and three) was everything to me. She was so much, in fact, that I realized I wasn’t providing some very necessary things for myself, like a sense of direction or self-worth.<\/p>\n We were already muddling through long distance when I decided to call it quits for good, and I took the very bad advice of a friend, who told me I needed to tell my girlfriend that I didn’t love her in order to give her the solace of a clean break. So one night, over a shaky Skype connection, that is exactly what I did. Alone amongst my exes, this one and I are still good friends, and she has taken more than one opportunity to inform me of how badly I messed this up, and how needlessly I made a painful situation even more painful.<\/p>\n Moral: Be firm, but for god’s sake, be gentle.<\/p>\n Chapter 4: Free-Falling<\/strong><\/p>\n Strangely enough, the hardest and most painful of my breakups is also the one I feel best about, if only because at that point I had had a lot of practice. I was with my last girlfriend for four years. We had a house and a dog and a Netflix account, but we were about as miserable as two people who really love each other can be.<\/p>\n I had to go all the way across the country to the get distance I needed to realize how out of balance my life was, so I ended up telling my ex over the phone that we had to part ways. Ordinarily, that would be an unforgivable sin, but really, the only rule for getting out of a bad relationship is GET OUT.<\/p>\n So I recruited my mom (god bless support networks) and together we gathered what we could of my possessions (minus my dog and my Xbox, both of which I miss every day), cut my losses, and started over.<\/p>\n The older you get, and the more your life becomes intertwined with someone else’s, the harder it becomes to leave. But you also learn a lot about empathy and kindness from the painful necessity of untethering your heart. \u00a0I’ve gotten better at relationships with every breakup. (And I finally have a girlfriend who makes me feel ready to get out of the practice of breaking up for a good long while.)<\/p>\n Okay, please tell me I’m not the only one who has ever laughed uncontrollably during a breakup?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In honor of Valentine’s Day, we broke this baby\u2014originally published in Feb 2016\u2014outta the SparkLife vault! In my whole life, I have been broken up with only once. (Ryan from fifth grade. Cried for a continue reading<\/span>