Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

When you break up with someone, it's hard to transition immediately into the friend phase. I once had a roommate who insisted that I befriend his soon-to-be ex-boyfriend because he genuinely wanted to be friends with the guy. He knew that wasn't possible right away, but if I kept the friendship alive there was a chance they could get back to being friends later on. The plan worked, and years later they are the best of friends again. Those two are the lucky ones, of course. Most people break up and then are left with two broken pieces instead of the whole piece they started with.

Ending a relationship on bad terms can be rough, depending on how invested the person is in your life. I think this is why so many gay men keep their relationships separate from their friends and family. So many gay relationships don't work out, so why get everyone involved? Once all your friends and family get into the act, you aren't just breaking up with one person, you are breaking up (in various degrees) with most of the people in his life. It's so much simpler when all you have to do is return a box of stuff the creep left in your apartment without having to awkwardly run into his mother at the local supermarket.

Sometimes seeing an ex-boyfriend is unavoidable. Dating someone who is a close friend of a close friend just opens you up to a world of hurt. One friend of mine dated the next-door neighbor of another friend and now it is weird for him to even be in their shared apartment building. I guess we all won't be getting together for Scrabble again anytime soon. When you date someone at work, the experience of running into an ex is magnified to a near breaking point: Just a trip to the bathroom or past the receptionist could lead you into another unwanted encounter. It's always great to date a
guy who lives in your neighborhood, until you break up and then run into him at the supermarket.

The worst of all ex situations is one in which you introduce someone into your social gene pool and then, after a breakup, they further embed themselves with your friends. It creates endless awkwardness when old friends have to choose between someone they have known a long time and a fun new person they know their old friend hates. Naturally, we expect people to side with their oldest and dearest friends in any dispute with an ex, but, as we all know, the gays have a bad habit of selling out their own in exchange for flattery, mere trinkets or even blowjobs at a sex club.

Like it or not, once you date someone for a while, they are in your life for the long haul. You may not still be romantically engaged by them, but once your lives have been woven together, it's difficult to pull apart that fabric. We create webs of relationship as we move through life, pulling in family, friends, lovers and co-workers. Along the way, we become very attached to some and just connected to others. With an ex, as much as you may want to see him fall off a cliff, disappear forever or never have existed in the first place, the fact remains that you brought him into your own world. It isn't so easy to reverse the process, so you might as well live as cheerfully as you can with the result.

FOREPLAY

When you break up with someone, it's hard to transition immediately into the friend phase. I once had a roommate who insisted that I befriend his soon-to-be ex-boyfriend because he genuinely wanted to be friends with the guy. He knew that wasn't possible right away, but if I kept the friendship alive there was a chance they could get back to being friends later on. The plan worked, and years later they are the best of friends again. Those two are the lucky ones, of course. Most people break up and then are left with two broken pieces instead of the whole piece they started with.

Ending a relationship on bad terms can be rough, depending on how invested the person is in your life. I think this is why so many gay men keep their relationships separate from their friends and family. So many gay relationships don't work out, so why get everyone involved? Once all your friends and family get into the act, you aren't just breaking up with one person, you are breaking up (in various degrees) with most of the people in his life. It's so much simpler when all you have to do is return a box of stuff the creep left in your apartment without having to awkwardly run into his
mother at the local supermarket.

Sometimes seeing an ex-boyfriend is unavoidable. Dating someone who is a close friend of a close friend just opens you up to a world of hurt. One friend of mine dated the next-door neighbor of another friend and now it is weird for him to even be in their shared apartment building. I guess we all won't be getting together for Scrabble again anytime soon. When you date someone at work, the experience of running into an ex is magnified to a near breaking point: Just a trip to the bathroom or past the receptionist could lead you into another unwanted encounter. It's always great to date a
guy who lives in your neighborhood, until you break up and then run into him at the supermarket.

The worst of all ex situations is one in which you introduce someone into your social gene pool and then, after a breakup, they further embed themselves with your friends. It creates endless awkwardness when old friends have to choose between someone they have known a long time and a fun new person they know their old friend hates. Naturally, we expect people to side with their oldest and dearest friends in any dispute with an ex, but, as we all know, the gays have a bad habit of selling out their own in exchange for flattery, mere trinkets or even blowjobs at a sex club.

Like it or not, once you date someone for a while, they are in your life for the long haul. You may not still be romantically engaged by them, but once your lives have been woven together, it's difficult to pull apart that fabric. We create webs of relationship as we move through life, pulling in family, friends, lovers and co-workers. Along the way, we become very attached to some and just connected to others. With an ex, as much as you may want to see him fall off a cliff, disappear forever or never have existed in the first place, the fact remains that you brought him into your own world. It isn't so easy to reverse the process, so you might as well live as cheerfully as you can with the result.