The Force-outs
So here we are, hitting the hard stuff —real breakups, we mean. This is the classic passive-aggressive maneuver: One member of a relationship wants to sever ties but refuses to say so. Finally, things get so bad that the other member is forced to do the dirty deed. This is tantamount to a boss not wanting to fire an employee, but making life in the office so miserable for that employee that he or she finally up and quits.
The Get-Out-and-Stay-Outs!
These breakups are decisive and showy—with each party energetically doing his or her own dirty work, thanks very much. They’re the four-alarm breakups, the kind that you see in the movies and want to avoid at all costs in real life. They are usually enacted by big movie fans. And they often entail a lot of screaming and howling and, with any luck, a dramatic splash of blood.
The Freak-outs
This is when things unravel so fast, you wonder: Did we really break up, or did I just dream it? Helen and Bob are one such example.
“I was shocked the day of the breakup,” says Helen, thirty. “We had been together for two years—although we had broken up and gotten back together a couple times. Come to think of it, every time we called it off, he’d say, ‘If we were married, we’d work it out, but since we’re not, let’s break up.’ What a jerk.
“The final breakup happened just after he’d gotten a new job at a corporate law firm,” she says. “He was all high on becoming a corporate drone, so we went to Barneys, this fancy department store, to buy him some new suits. I spent the whole day helping him pick stuff out, acting like a good wife, pretending I wasn’t bored. When we walked out of the store, he turned to me and said, ‘This isn’t working out. I can’t do it anymore. Good-bye.’ I was so stunned, I said, ‘Okay. I’ll see you around,’ and walked away. I was in such a daze, I didn’t know where I was. My knees were shaking; I broke out in a sweat. I wandered around for a while in a fog and eventually ended up in Union Square Park. I sort of came to when I suddenly found myself surrounded by a Puerto Rican soccer team—all eleven players. They must have just won a game and they were excited, whooping and jostling and hassling me. It was even more surreal because they were all speaking Spanish. I finally walked all the way home to the Upper East Side—three miles—and collapsed in my apartment. I had physical cramps. It was torture.”
The Best Way Out
Our prototype edition. The display-case breakup. The floor model. We’re sad to say that this horribly mature and well-mannered but heartrending tale comes straight from the life of .. .
