Breaking free on January 12, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

How do I tell the man that I’m engaged to that I don’t want to marry him anymore and that I want to move out?

— Heather

Dear Heather,

I would mumble.

Love,
Breakup Girl

P.S. Other than that — Breakup Girl has said this before, and she will no doubt say it again — just tell the plain old icky truth. Sugar-coating or BSing will only make it worse. Also, if you truly do want out, mumble — I mean, speak up — soon. The closer you get to your wedding date, the harder it will get for you to do what you need to, and the more nuclear the fallout will be.

Chickening out on January 9, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,
What if you know you need to break up with him, but you really don’t want to?
–Lyna

Dear Lyna,
Is everybody listening? Thanks, Lyna — Breakup Girl couldn’t have put the Dumper’s Dilemma better herself.

IMPORTANT BREAKUP GIRL MAXIM: “Because he’s there” is not a good enough reason to stay with a boyfriend (especially, you long-distance people, when he’s not). Nor is “because breaking up sucks.”

Breaking up does suck, you guys. That’s why I’m here. But trust me, feeling sad and yucky is better than feeling confused and stuck. The latter destroys brain cells, permanently. The former — unpleasant though it may be — is the first step of the heart’s healing process. But the longer you wait once you realize you need to do the deed, the longer that process is going to take.

Love,
Breakup Girl

Classic letter from January 9, 1998 …

Dear Breakup Girl,
If I have just dumped my boyfriend, do you think he will tell his friends that he was the one who dumped me?
— The Heartbreaker

Dear Heartbreaker,
Yeah, probably. If he’s a real prince of a guy, he’ll say “It was mutual.”
Love,
Breakup Girl

Alas, the bloom’s off this rose: Bachelor Brit Matt Grant and his chosen fiancé Shayne Lamas have, as you may have heard, announced that their engagement is off.

“We tried hard to make it work but we realized that we were both heading in different directions,” the two said in a statement. “We truly care about each other and will remain close friends.”

Over the past 12 seasons, The Bachelor‘s ratings — as opposed to relationships — have remained fairly solid. Who knows what’s to blame: the pressure of the spotlight, the alleged unlikelihood that a true bachelor will ever change his spots, or retribution from the gods for ABC’s casting almost exclusively white people.

Yet we can’t help but watch, and we can’t help but hope. Could season 13 prove to be the luckiest in love? Maybe … if Brooke and Matt from Farmer Wants a Wife write some sort of self-help guide. (No country wedding yet, but at least they’re definitely still together.) That, or perhaps all Mr. Season 13 needs to do is ditch the tux and hop a tractor?

Those dirty rings! As part of their application for the Evil League of Evil, the sly devils over at Boston-based wireless communications provider Mobile Sphere have created a no-cost (if you don’t mind a few ads) service called SlyDial that allows you to call directly into someone’s voice mail — ring-free. It’s being marketed mainly as a tool to help bizzy people who have never heard of email return calls without ever interacting with other humans small-talk time-suck. But according to the “SlyDial Situations” section of the service’s website, it will also help you avoid certain uncomfy conversations in particular: calling in sick when you’re fine; explaining your credit card bill to your parents; wishing a friend a belated (like, 3 AM) birthday. Hmm. If we think really really really hard, could we also come up with some other applications in the area of love (or lack thereof)?

Oh wait! SlyDial beat us to it: “You are dating quite a few people at the same time. You don’t want to leave them all text messages because there is nothing romantic about that. But a nice voicemail to each would score you points.” Mmmm. Now that’s romantic.

Getting practical on January 9, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,
What about a long-distance breakup? Should you meet one last time to do it, or do it over the phone?
— Johan

Dear Johan,
How long is long? If you’re talking about, say, the distance between Minneapolis and St. Paul, face-to-face is kinder and gentler, allowing for meaningful handholding, forlorn looks, etc. But if she’s going to spend big bucks to jet from Chicago to Madagascar only to get dumped — or if you’re going to show up on her doorstep after an overnight journey, dump her, and then need a place to stay — I say dial those digits. Unless, of course, you think that the resulting phone bill will be roughtly equivalent to transatlantic airfare (first-class).
Love,
Breakup Girl

Maybe it won’t surprise any of you to find out that roughly 50% of Canadians — reputed to be the politest people in the Northern hemisphere (the Minnesotans being too polite to challenge them) — break up in private places, mainly their own homes, so as not to embarrass the other person. (Or, um, because it’s cold outside?)

The Vancover Sun article bearing the news — based on a recent poll by Ipsos Reid — quotes psychology professor Guy Grenier as saying, “I suppose that’s probably a good indication of relationship etiquette.” I suppose. But just because a breakup happens in private doesn’t mean it feels private. I mean, the most humiliating place I was ever broken up with was in my own bedroom. Would have been private, I guess, if there hadn’t been a PARTY going on downstairs. I’ll cry if I want to, thanks!

By the way, call me an impolite New Yorker, but aren’t they focusing on the wrong half of the respondents? I mean, where are all those other people breaking up? Gretzky’s?

(By the way #2, the comments section here would be a good place to share your own good/bad/ugly breakup-location stories. Especially you, our neighbors to the north.)

Show of hands. How many of us have not called in sick to work after a breakup? When you can’t even pick yourself up off the kitchen floor, how can you be expected to cowboy up in your cubicle?

So, FINALLY, someone has come to their senses and started offering “heartache leave.” (I know BG covered this in brief a ways back, but I’m still awash in admiration.) The Japanese PR firm Hime & Company (www.himeclub.com, for those of you who read Japanese), decided to start offering its employees this benefit because it found that those going through a breakup are often distracted at work, leading to costly mistakes and strange, distracting behavior.

The time for recovery is set by your age. Those in their early 20s only get one day off. (I guess on the assumption that people in their 20s get over heartache more quickly.) The mid-20s rank two days off; those 30 and over get a full three. I don’t know about you, but the last time I went through a breakup — and I fall into that last demographic — I needed about a week before I could sit at a desk without systematically snapping all my pencils in half.

Leave it to Japan — which can add this to its list of welcome innovations including smart cars, Hello Kitty, and raw fish — to understand the impact of heartache on the workplace.
I can’t even get my employer to recognize that my work suffers when I have the flu.

I love the Internet. It is indeed a beautiful tool, allowing you to research information efficiently and to communicate with an ever-expanding global network. And now, of course, as Switched.com reminds us, you can also use it to break up with your significant other. (That is, if you’re momentarily unable to text. Rrowr!)

Have we really gotten that lazy? Have our communication skills gotten that crappy? Are we just too chicken for — never mind a face-to-face — a phone-to-phone? Why I remember back in the day when I would take a deep breath, review my written speech, pick up my rotary phone and proceed to break hearts. Kids these days! All they have to do is change their Facebook status! Though, I suppose there’s always room for creativity, like the woman who was dumped on Wikipedia who sold her ex-boyfriend’s stuff on eBay. Now that, that’s e-theater.

On the upside, as Switched’s roundup also reminds us, the Internet has also created the opportunity for creative marriage proposals. Remember when CmdrTaco at Slashdot got down on virtual bended knee? Almost seems quaint now. My current favorite is this fake iPhone commercial. So iCute! Now if someone would propose to me in the form of one of those adorable ads for Sonic, I’d be the happiest girl on the planet.

Sometimes people take one look at the name of this website, see the words “breakup” and “.net,” and — without a further glance — think, “Oh! That must be a place that encourages the posting of vengeful, personal, and possibly actionable rants about their exes!” Nope, sorry. That’s YouTube.