That was quick.

Going balmy on February 16, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I dated this guy over the summer and fell in love with him. He was real nice, sweet, and caring and I didn’t think I would lose him, but I did. Ever since then I’ve felt empty and just use guys as some kind of toy to play with. I know I’ve hurt a couple of people and I feel bad about it, but I can’t help it. I still love that guy but I don’t know if he still likes me, should I keep chasing him or should I stop. And how do I quit treating guys like a toy to play with?

— Samantha

Dear Samantha,

If there were such a thing as Breakup Girl Laboratories, they would be hard at work on the Boyfriend Patch. Available in fashion colors and Hello, Kitty designs, the Patch would, in the absence of an actual or particular pined-after boyfriend, provide the fix-of-the-quickie that we so often crave.

In the meantime, though, I will tell you that toy-boys are much like Carmex lip balm and the alleged conspiracy behind it. The idea being that your lips are chapped, you apply Carmex, they feel better momentarily… but… “Mulder, are you suggesting that Carmex itself actually makes your lips feel chapped again.?

You see where Breakup Girl is going with this. You feel empty, you mess around, you feel better momentarily … but … the fling itself actually makes you feel emptier. It serves not as a statsfying replacement for your summer Mulder, but as an acute reminder that you don’t have him.

(more…)

In this weekend’s New York Times Book Review, we read one author’s argument that yes, ’tis better to have loved and lost.

In [the] most provocative and interesting chapters [of A Vindication of Love: Reclaiming Romance for the Twenty-first Century], Nehring argues for the value of suffering, for the importance of failure. Our idea of a contented married ending is too cozy and tame for her. We yearn for what she calls “strenuously exhibitionistic happiness” — think of family photos on Facebook — but instead we should focus on the fullness and intensity of emotion. She writes of Margaret Fuller: “Fuller’s failures are several times more sumptuous than other folks’ successes. And perhaps that is something we need to admit about failure: It can well be more sumptuous than success. . . . Somewhere in our collective unconscious we know — even now — that to have failed is to have lived.”

Nehring sees in the grandeur of feeling a kind of heroism, even if the relationship doesn’t take conventional form or endure in the conventional way. For Nehring, one senses, true failure is to drift comfortably along in a dull relationship, to spend precious years of life in a marriage that is not exciting or satisfying, to live cautiously, responsibly. Is the strength of feeling redeemed in the blaze of passion even if it does not end happily? she asks. Is contentment too soft and modest a goal? /snip/

“With our cult of success,” Nehring writes, “we have all but obliterated the memory that in pain lies grandeur.” There is a romanticism here that could look, depending on where you stand, either pure or puerile, either bracing or silly, but it is, either way, an original view, one not generally taken and defended, one most of us could probably use a little more of. Nehring takes on our complaisance, our received ideas, our sloppy assumptions about our most important connections, and for that she deserves our admiration.

What do you think ?

Read more:

BG has long maintained that breakups are the messy stuff of life, not the sloppy kiss of death. For one thing, most relationships really do leave us enriched in some way that may outlive the romance: we get to know a new neighborhood, acquire a hobby, finally understand — when our squeeze subjects us to a Buffy marathon conversion process — what all the fuss is about. Why, from one old flame BG learned to snowboard and to change a tire (using a jack, not super-strength); from another, I got art history, and rage. I KID.

But what about those of us lucky (and smart) enough to have swooned for a good cook? (Or, in other news, cooked for a good swoon?) The honeymoon may have ended, but his/her honey-glazed salmon lives on … in your repertoire. Enter (via a friendly tipster) The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook: They Came, They Cooked, They Left (But We Ended Up with Some Great Recipes),
which, yes, is a cookbook, but not of the To Serve Man variety. The authors: “‘God,’ we’d find ourselves saying, ‘he made the most incredible vinaigrette….”. It’s a couple of years old, but I’m sure it, and Ezra’s Sticky Chicken, will stand the recipe-test of time.

And while we’re at it, dish: Have any of your relationships, even the less savory ones, yielded delicious results like these?

From the New York Observer:

“Last week, I got dumped on the Lower East Side,” [Nate Westheimer] told The Observer. Mr. Westheimer, the 26-year-old head organizer of the NY Tech Meetup, had just ended his term as an entrepreneur in residence at Rose Tech Ventures. He fiddled with his iPhone, and said he wanted to create a mobile application designed for wallowing—one that could queue up classic New York–based breakup scenes from movies like Annie Hall and Kramer vs. Kramer. “I was like, I really want to see all the scenes about heartbreak that happen on like the Lower East Side,” he said.

And yes, they just may have an app for that.

Mr. Westheimer was explaining to The Observer why he had decided to return to the start-up game as vice president of product at AnyClip, an Israeli-based tech company that is planning to battle YouTube and other piracy sites in the free-media market by creating a competitive, legal database of movie clips for application developers. Only this one might cost ’em: AnyClip is hoping they can become a kind of iTunes for film scenes.

OK! So, just to plan ahead, what clips would you look up — and play over and over and over and over again — to tell the story of your breakup (only with people who look fabulous even when they’re miserable)?

The dog days of February 2, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I lived with Dave for three years. Asked him to move out two months ago. He is gone, but his stuff (most of it) is still here (and his dog — I want the dog). He refuses to give me back his key to my house because he wants to be able to “see” the dog when ever he wants to. How do I flush him (he’s a plumber), get rid of his stuff, keep the dog, and get my key? Thus going on with my life?

— Margie

Dear Margie,

Sorry, sistah. If visitation isn’t working, all items — canine and otherwise — must go back to their original owner. Get your own dog.

Love,
Breakup Girl

A “nice” kissoff from February 2, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

My boyfriend broke up with me because I was “too nice.” Do you think that this was the real reason, or just an excuse?

— Tu Nice

 
Dear Tu Nice,

Either (1) he has some sort of I’m Not Worthy issue that causes him to believe that he really only deserves to date the Linda Tripps of the world, or (2) it’s not so much an excuse as a default thing to say, a lite sugar-coating. Never mind the “too;” at least, either way, he thinks you’re nice — which, arguably, is better than thinking you’re Satan (or, worse, “terrific”). I realize neither he nor Breakup Girl has given you much to work with, but honestly, it’s not worth dwelling on. Mainly, I wanted to let guys know that WOMEN GET THE “TOO NICE” THING TOO. So there.

Love,
Breakup Girl

From today’s New York Times:

Suppose scientists could erase certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain. Could make you forget a chronic fear, a traumatic loss, even a bad habit.

Researchers in Brooklyn have recently accomplished comparable feats, with a single dose of an experimental drug delivered to areas of the brain critical for holding specific types of memory, like emotional associations, spatial knowledge or motor skills.

The drug blocks the activity of a substance that the brain apparently needs to retain much of its learned information. And if enhanced, the substance could help ward off dementias and other memory problems.

So far, the research has been done only on animals. [Elephants: FAIL.] But scientists say this memory system is likely to work almost identically in people.

One might think that that “Brooklyn” lab is actually BG’s — that this one would be THE killer breakup app. What, indeed, if you could neuralize that night, that “loser,” those five years too many?

Yeah, well, you wouldn’t want to. No, really. Every breakup/hookup/screw-up: like it, or LIKElike it, or not, it’s part of who you are. (Don’t make me say “learning experience.”) Each one helps you say to yourself, “Okay, not that.” Each one gives you an opp to look back and say “See how far I’ve come.” Each one reminds you, looking back, that you survived: that all this love business is the messy stuff of life, not the sloppy kiss of death. So no neuralyzers being developed over here, sorry. We put our R&D dollars toward the Affirmatron.

According to The Telegraph, Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer broke up because of his “Twitter obsession!”

The source added: “Jen was fuming. There he was, telling her he didn’t have time for her and yet his page was filled with Twitter updates. Every few hours, sometimes minutes, he’d update with some stupid line. And in her mind, she was like ‘He has time for all this Twittering, but he can’t send me a text, an email, make a call?’.”

Sounds easy enough, but you see, girls require more than 140 characters at a time.

BG’s pretend boyfriend Nick Andropolis Jason Segel speaks to NPR about real-life geekdom, bromance, respecting your ex, and the real-life Naked Breakup.