How do you tell someone they’re history?

That’s what they’re discussing on Sirius’ Playboy Channel as I sit here.  They’re playacting.  Whoever gives the best breakup wins a DVD.

Not much of a gift, but when it comes to sex, you don’t have to give away much to get people to play.

Actually, sex was earlier in the day.  They were discussing younger men dating older women.  A guy called in to say he was thirty five and he’d just made it with a sixty four year old!  She’d done her Kegels, she performed oral, he was going to hit it again.

And then the host started saying her mother was the same age.  And spoke about the aging process, the loss of hair.  I couldn’t change the channel, I was learning something.

And when I got back in the car, the Breakup Game had begun.

But there were rules.  You couldn’t use certain terms in rupturing the relationship.  Not the classic "It’s not you, it’s me", not "I need a break", you had to be honest.  How many people are honest?

It was fascinating.  To listen to the women be blindsided.  Hearing the men fumble, being unable to be direct.  No one wants to hear they’re gone, but what’s worse is believing you’ve still got a shot.

Everybody knows you no longer have a shot.  Not only your ex, but his friends, your friends, your parents…  But so many of them are not honest either.  They try to cover up by telling you what an asshole your ex was.  If that doesn’t work, they listen to you tell them how you’re going to change.  It’s like group therapy, how can you rebuild your personality to regain the affection of someone who no longer wants you.

Maybe they’re incapable of wanting you.  Maybe they can’t sustain a relationship.  But you don’t want to believe all this, you want to win them back!

You go to the gym, you buy new clothes, you change your look, you just wait for that phone call or e-mail giving you another shot.

And when that doesn’t come, you can’t hold back.  You make contact.  And if there’s any response at all, you replay it in your head ad infinitum, looking for hidden meanings that aren’t there.  They definitely want to get back together, right?

Wrong.

And then sometimes they do.  And then they break up with you all over again.

Why can’t they just tell you they’re done.  And then go their merry way.  Why do they have to come back for sex, needing that hit even though they have no intention of staying. Why do they still call you during personal crises, then lose your number once again.  Worse, why do they never call at all?

You shared your life.  You thought this was the one.  You can’t conceive of being alone this far down the line.  You’re going to will them back.  In this same damn conversation they’re breaking up with you in.

Or they’re truly weasels and send an e-mail.  Or a text.

Who’d want to be involved with someone of such weak character to begin with?

You.  You can’t afford this blow to your self-esteem.  So that’s why you’re gonna crawl your way back, earn your way back.

But it can’t be done.

Why can’t they make it easy and tell you the truth in the beginning?