Break-Up City, Population: A Lot.

What proportion of break-ups are amicable, do you think? One-half? A quarter? Ten percent? Five percent? Five total?

My guess is fewer than one in twenty bust-ups are mutually agreeable to the point where the two people involved are happy with the decision after two weeks. I base this on my best analysis of the asymmetry of most relationships, which in normal language means that one person is always more into it than the other. That's the point of stress in all our dealings on this quasi-romantic level - inequality of expectation.

There is no way around this notion that most relationships are pretty much doomed from the beginning. If you're a serial monogamist, you're living in a neighbourhood full of cul-de-sacs and regular, non-French dead-ends. It's the way the town-planner - the devil himself - designed it. If you want a continual stream of new lovers in your life, the price you pay is the angst and dislocation of perpetually reaching the end of the road, sometimes pretty soon after taking the turn.

Sure, some roads don't reveal themselves as going nowhere until quite some time later. That means when you do come to the "Wrong Way: Turn Around" sign, the break-up will be even more tearful, the recriminations way more cutting, and the hurt much longer lasting.

And I don't buy the whole schtick about women being more affected by a busted relationship than men. There are cold, callous women just as there are flippant, uncaring men, for whom a break-up is just another speed bump. Men and women process and reflect the consequences of the end of an affair (in the widest sense) differently. From that stems the different ways we communicate our emotions to the world. Even though men will use bravado through the loss, their dislocation is no less painful. Endless talking and re-hashing isn't our style.

There is a way out of this neo-modern hook-up and dump city. But for me to tell you would be presumptuous in the extreme.



Bottoms Up, Turn and Burners.