Breakup By Numbers

by Gwen Cooper — July 13, 2007

After enough years of dating, you eventually develop a blueprint of sorts for dealing with the immediate aftermath of a breakup. My step-by-step breakdown looks something like this:

Step #1: Immediately following breakup, pace around apartment all night, smoking and muttering.

Step #2: Call closest friends first thing the next morning to announce breakup; accept their support, condolences, and expressions of outrage and/or concern. Smoking continues unabated during this step.

Step #3: Turn down friends' offers to go out, hang out, or come over on the pretext that, even though I just broke up with somebody, I'm still very busy and simply don't have the time.

Step #4: Purchase a box of Entenmann's chocolate frosted donuts.

Step #5: Eat half of one donut before realizing that I've consumed too much nicotine in the past 24 hours to have an appetite.

Step #6: Watch the entire second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD. Sob uncontrollably when Buffy and Angel break up because Angel has turned evil.

Step #7: Read The Women's Room by Marilyn French. Underline passages such as: "If you want to destroy a woman, you don't have to kill her. You don't even have to hit her. You can just marry her."

Step #8: At this point, an entire weekend has gone by. Shower, change (noting two-day, five-pound weight loss), and prepare to face the week without creating any appearance that the breakup has affected me.

It's a pretty good plan, as far as such things go, and has stood me in pretty good stead over the years. What I have no contingency plan for is a situation like the one I'm in now--where somebody hasn't exactly broken up with me, but has made it clear that a breakup may be imminent.

I told Robert about Brad. Understandably, he needs time to think. I'm not sure how things will ultimately turn out, but I've asked the lady at my grocery store who likes me to hold at least one box of Entenmann's chocolate frosted donuts in reserve, just in case.

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, recently published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen Cooper's posts in "The Dating Life," click here.