BREAK-UPS YOU CAN’T MAKE UP

BY BELINDA M. PASCHAL

As the Carpenters and Neil Sedaka before them sang, “Breaking up is hard to do.”

Sometimes relationships start with a spark but fizzle out, sometimes they’re fractured by infidelity, sometimes the chemistry just isn’t there, sometimes people simply grow apart. And sometimes, the rose not only falls off the bloom, it’s ripped from the vine before it even has a chance to blossom.

Most of us have had relationships fraught with red flags of warning, couplings we knew early on just weren’t going to work out. But in some cases, the realization blindsides us and brings the liaison to a screeching halt, sometimes even on the first date. Something happens, something so jarringly unacceptable – an action, insult, or cringe-inducing discovery about our honey-bunnies – that douses the flames of passion and leaves us boggle-minded and reeling.

This is the moment commonly known as “the deal-breaker.”

I’m not talking about run-of-the-mill complaints like, “She squeezes the toothpaste from the top,” or “He puts the empty milk carton back in the fridge.” That’s mere nitpickery compared to the breakups chronicled on Robert K. Elder’s blog, “It Was Over When: Tales of Romantic Dead Ends” and his book by the same name. The tales of good love gone bad are sad, stupefying, hilarious and often unprintable in a family newspaper. If you think you’ve dated some jerks, freaks and psychos, you’re bound to feel better about your own failed affairs of the heart after reading user-submitted stories like:

“It Was Over When …”

* “… she wanted us to drink each other’s blood so we would always be together.”

* “… he sent me some online weight loss tips.”

* “ … he wanted to go to Kohl’s and buy me underwear that he had bought his wife.”

* “…she said, ‘If you go to sleep tonite [sic] you will not wake up tomorrow.’”

* “ … (My son’s principal) informed me it was against school policy for my husband to pick up a senior cheerleader for lunch dates.”

* “I caught her in a cheap motel with a co-worker. Her mom was in another room with a friend of the co-worker.”

* “He refused to use nail clippers, instead pulling his foot up to his mouth and chewing off his toenails! Then he spit them out on my carpet!”

* “I placed a fake ad on the personals page of a local paper pretending to be exactly the kind of guy I thought she’d like. The ad only got one response, and it was from my wife.”

* “Two days after my best guy friend passed away, my boyfriend said, ‘Now I probably won’t feel jealous anymore.’”

These are interesting reading, but I’d love to see a blog called “It Was Over When: Celebrity Version.” I’d wager that Charlie Sheen’s ex-goddess is just itching to write, “It was over when he cleared all my bottled water out of the fridge to make room for his tiger blood.”