The ex returns on June 22, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I don’t know where to start. I started seeing this guy last fall. We liked the same things, and had fun when we went out. Things were good. Everyone at work saw us as a couple … and we were!! Okay, I knew there was an EX-GIRLFRIEND — and that he was still in contact with her. (I just did not know that they were in C-O-N-T-A-C-T.) Anyway, he brought her to our work the other day — like it was nothing. Like we had not been seeing each other since last October. They were holding hands and looking like the normal couple. I was crushed! He basically said, “We are back together” — nothing else!

I know that he is in the wrong, but why do I feel like it was my fault? My fault for not seeing any kind of sign. My fault for believing this guy was for real. My fault for falling for such an idiot. I know that it is not, but it sure feels like it.

How do I begin to repair this? My self-esteem, my pride, my dignity? How do I recognize the signs of a jerk before something like this happens? I just wish people had some sort of tattoo or something on them, so you could see whom they were right for, and therefore stop wasting time with STUPID people!! I need a Loser 12-Step Program. I need to stop the madness.

— Whatever

Dear Whatever,

Okay, you guys think Breakup Girl is smart, right? Okay, and you know how the book The Bridges of Madison County starts with some sort of prologue about how it’s all a true story? Well, Breakup Girl believed it throughout her entire reading of the book (~12 minutes). My point: deceivers, manipulators, Robert James Wallers — they’re good (in a sense) at what they do.That is what they do. Any “signs” may, indeed, have been well-concealed.

Especially because there may not have been any signs at all. You may have had a healthy still-have-our-own-space vibe where you don’t know or ask where the other is all the time. This thing, on his part, may have been lightning-strike (in the same place) sudden; thus, no lipstick on the collar, no funny phone bills, no other deathwish-careless clues.

Plus, I totally thought you were going to say that this kind of thing keeps happening to you. In which case, Houston, we’d have a problem. But the worst part of this whole thing, I dare say, is not that it happened again, but that it happened…at your office. Where everyone, who’d seen you as a couple, saw them as a couple. Literally.Yeowch. As open-minded as I’ve tried to be about went on with this guy in private, NOTHING in the Breakup Girl bylaws can excuse that royally tacky laissez-faire breakup workplace debut. Which, yeah, made you look dumb. And that, Whatever, is what’s bugging you most. And the only way to fix it is to hold your head high and get back to W-O-R-K.

Love,
Breakup Girl