You Asked: Part 1

Why do relationship break-ups never "take" on the first go-round? I've always heard that it takes at least 3 tries for a break-up to "stick." Why is that? And why do we still all maintain the dream of a "clean break"?
Question by Leigh

I will begin by saying that this question is a tough one to answer for a number of reasons. Mostly, I worry that inevitably my answers will implicate other people and we all know what kinds of messes THAT could create. So I will probably be a little more vague than usual but also hope you'll understand.

To jump right into it, I think that relationship break-ups never take on the first go-round for one major reason: we are all more or less convinced that breaking up is a BAD thing. It's bad if you break up with someone. It's bad if someone breaks up with you. We believe break-ups are tough. We think that you break up with someone when something BAD happened. And, honestly, what else could one think?! Listened to any Guns 'N Roses lately?!

So, given that, people do all they can NOT to break up. Sometimes that involves keeping a relationship going when it's probably not worth the effort to begin with. They don't want to break up with their partner because they are afraid they will be hurt. They don't want to break up with their partner because they don't want to be forever remembered as "the fucking a-hole that ruined somebody's life". OR, they try to keep an uncommitted partner into the relationship, because they don't want to go through a break-up. They believe it's better to try and work things out than each go a separate way. They prefer to be miserable in a relationship than be sad outside of one. And since we all know that staying in a bad relationship is God's way of punishing us all for inventing the leggings-under-skirt outfit, we end up doing just that: stay in them longer than we should, the same way leggings stuck around like a bad boyfriend: MUCH MUCH longer than they should have.

My personal opinion on break-ups is that people should become less of wusses about them. And the reason I feel like I have the authority to say that is because among my friends, I am definitely the one who's been the biggest wuss about breaking up in the past. I know it's easier to say that in retrospective, but if only had I been a little less concerned about appearing bad or making others feel bad, I would have avoided a lot more damage than I created. I stayed in relationships only to go trough shame, and self-hatred, and cause pain to people who did not deserve it. And it's only now, long after it all happened, that I realize that all I had needed to do the entire time was break up. It would have been that much more simple.

Now, let me make this clear, I am NOT advocating rushing in and out of relationships. Nor do I think that one should take break-ups lightly. To the contrary. But I do believe that things happen for a variety of reasons that are not always obvious to us. We get together and split apart under all kinds of strange circumstances and we should try and remember that and be easy on ourselves when facing a personal crisis. Breaking up is not always a bad thing just as being in a relationship is not always good.

As far as clean break-ups go: I think that people would have much higher chances at maintaining "clean break-ups" if they did not see their partners' behavior as a chain of either-or decisions. Things are not always reducible to "You either love me or you don't love me" types of situations. It makes perfect sense to me that somebody who cares deeply about me would do something that would hurt me. Yet, being able to forgive is a gift that not all of us have.

Now, on such bright note, I finish and wonder what y'all's opinions are. Why is breaking-up so hard to do? Other than because Tom Jones says so, of course.