Guide to Breaking Up With Somebody Who Might Be Crazy

The reason why there’s such a thing as dating is because you don’t want to marry just anybody. Even in countries where they don’t even let anybody look at a woman, there’s a kind of dating where people’s families get together and decide whether or not the dude and the girl are right for each other. They don’t just run around all crazy getting married. It’s a nice setup. Takes the pressure off.

But here in the modern world we’ve liberated ourselves from things being easy by introducing advances like crazy girls who fuck on the first date and then follow you everywhere and then when you try to tell them to leave you alone they cry and tell you about how they’ve been raped and how they love you because you’re different.

It’s a brave new world. And it kind of sucks.

My point is this: if you’re just a regular dude trying to mind your own business and occasionally get laid in the process, you are going to end up with a crazy person on your hands. At least once. Because crazy people are pretty good at hiding the fact that they’re crazy for like two weeks, during which you’ll have a little devil on your shoulder saying, “See if she’ll have sex in an abandoned construction site. See if she’ll have sex on a hotel balcony. See if she’ll have sex in the supply closet at Toys R’ Us. Good God I love her boobs,” even while your brain’s thinking things like “that thing where she had to stack her ravioli was a little weird.”

That little devil is putting you in a cage made of shit, and you’re in for a facefull of crazy.

And yeah, “crazy,” is a lazy term for somebody who’s working through some pretty intense shit and has no idea how different they are from normal because they’re so deep inside of their personal crisis they don’t even know that it’s never ok to break into somebody’s house in order to sleep next to them. “Crazy” is a word us people who are in better places in our lives use to get away from those types of people, because you can only do so much to help somebody when crazy sex is your only reward. You’re a boyfriend, not a therapist.

So you can get off your own back for using the word “crazy” as a way of dismissing somebody. Sometimes these people need to be serially dismissed before they can even begin to figure out what the hell is wrong with themselves. Sometimes you just don't want a girlfriend, and you'll think a perfectly good person is crazy when really they're just a woman, and all women are crazy, and you only think it's too much to put up with if you don't really want a grilfriend all that much. It's really hard to tell the difference, and what makes it even worse is there's essentially no difference between a crazy person and a normal person you just don't feel like getting involved with.

Another thing that sometimes will happen is that you’ll be in a relationship with somebody you only kind of like, but who really really really likes you a lot and doesn’t mind doing little things that make your life better like driving you to work and buying you toothpaste. You get more involved than you’d ordinarily want to pretty fast because you have this little devil on your shoulder saying, “Settle for this, she’ll buy you toothpaste and she has nice boobs. Settle for this. You’re just afraid of commitment, that’s all. So what if you don’t have anything in common and you find the sound of her voice grating? She’s nice. Settle for this.”

That little devil is an asshole and he’s eventually going to hurt this poor girl’s feelings.

No matter what little devil you’ve been listening to, there may come a time when you’ve got three voicemails you don’t have the energy to return, and you realize that your body is sabotaging the relationship because it knows more than you do, like that one summer where you just could not bring yourself to finish painting that rich guy’s house because your body was telling you to quit the house painting job, and you’ll have the thought “Ok, serisouly, I have to break up with this person. Nice boobs or not, I’m not into this.”

Well, welcome to hell, motherfucker. You’re about to have to break up with somebody who’s either totally crazy or, worse, just really nice, and it’s going to fuck up your whole life for like a year. That’s what you get for listening to that little devil. Fuck that guy.

So pretty soon after you have your big “fuck this” talk with yourself, you’re going to have to have it with the person you’re dating. If it’s one of those things where your body has sabotaged the relationship, it’s likely she’s going to want to talk to you too. About those three voicemails you haven’t returned and the fact that she almost went to the hospital because she couldn’t breathe but her brother talked her out of it, but still, a talk is a talk.

Remember: you have to do this. This little relationship bandaid you put over your hurt little heart has to be ripped off. There’s no way around it. Don’t pull it off slowly. It’ll just take longer and hurt twice as much.

The rules are:

1. You do it in person.

The fact that you’re here is your fault. You were listening to that little devil instead of using your brain, and you let old Mr. Penis tell you how to live your life. That’s not her fault. So you’ve got to be a man and do this in person. Unless your brain is actually being smart for once and telling old Mr. Penis to take a hike after you’ve only been on a couple of dates and you still haven’t had any sex. Then you can do a phone “this is no good for me” or even a no thanks walkaway notalk thing. But if you’ve succumbed to the voice of the little devil and taken old Mr. Penis along for the ride more than once, then you’re breaking up in person. It’s the man’s way.

2. You don’t need to be cruel. Try to avoid it.

How a break up goes is actually a great test of a person’s mettle. Like if they take it well and say “this is going to make me sad, but I don’t want to be with somebody who’s not into the relationship,” then you’re going to be like “oh fuck, this person’s great. I’m stupid for not wanting to be with her,” and it’s going to be a rough few months for you.

And that’s the best case scenario for a breakup. Like for the actual breakup itself, not for how you feel afterwards.

The worst case scenario is when you’re breaking up with somebody crazy and they won’t let you out of their car until you undump them. Which is ridiculous. You can’t argue your way out of “I don’t want to be with you anymore.” But they don’t know that because they’re crazy and they have to stack their raviolis before they eat them.

Here’s where you’ll be tempted to be cruel, if just to get the fuck out of that car and into a normal life that doesn’t involve this person who is now making it apparent that their one goal in life is to destroy you. Don’t. You’re better than that. Explain how you feel without resorting to exaggerations and “I feel like I’m in a cage made of shit that’s sinking in quicksand, and you’re stomping on my head while I’m asking you for a rope” imagery, even if that is how you actually feel. Just state the truth of not wanting to be in the relationship anymore, and how that’s not going to change, and how it’s bad for her to be in a relationship with somebody who feels that way, and that she deserves better.

Repeat yourself if you need to. You will need to. You can even say, “I can’t say it any more plainly and I don’t want to be cruel about it. I want to be an adult about it. Please let me out of this car.” But don’t raise your voice and don’t compare her to a cage made of shit. The worst that can happen is she’ll kidnap you and you’ll never see your family again, which probably won’t happen because she’s going to have to come to her senses eventually. Keep repeating yourself rationally until she either lets you out of the car or goes to the bathroom and you’ll have a chance to tap S.O.S. into the radiator with the chair she tied you to. Maybe you could also dial 911 with your nose. But you don’t want to be cruel because she might go totally apeshit Kathy Bates on you if you do.

3. Do it near her house.

This is one I’ve learned about the hard way a couple of times. It’s just poor form to make her drive home while crying. I’d like to take this chance to publicly apologize to the people who have had to drive themselves home after I broke up with them. Seriously, my bad, guys. I’m glad you didn’t plow into a Puerto Rican family at a bus stop. You’re a better person than me, and you're better off without me. See? I told you, you'd be better off without me. Please don't call my Dad anymore.

You might be tempted to do this breakup thing near your own house because that way you can run into it and lock them out, but that’s chickenshit. You’re a man. Be a man.

4. Clichés.

Breakup language is full of clichés. There’s “it’s not you, it’s me,” and all that kind of stuff. That’s a bad one. Some of them are ok. Breakup clichés are designed to protect a person’s feelings while getting the point across. So they’re kind of chickenshit. You can describe your feelings without saying “it’s not you, it’s me.”

5. Get off your own back.

I know I said it’s your fault that you’re here. And it is. But there’s no reason to super duper beat yourself up over it for her benefit. You’re going to have a rough couple of months here anyway, because breakups are the worst. There’s no reason to pull a nose hair and give the old fake cry because I let you down thing. You should admit guilt, yes, absolutely, but don’t make the whole thing about how much of a shithead you are. They’re going to think you’re a shithead anyway because you broke up with them. Don’t worry about driving the point home.

This is good advice for your mental state after the breakup too.

The big thing you did wrong here was you told a white lie somewhere along the way, like when she asked you something you’d have to be a monster to tell the truth for, like “when did you know you wanted to be with me?” (or some other fucking tricky voodoo question full of assumptions and trap doors) and you can’t say “never” or even “I’m still working on it” because you just had sex for like two hours. And then once you told that one white lie to spare her feelings, you kept telling more and hoping they’d come true. So all these white lies became like snow building on top of a mountain, and the breakup is the avalanche that happens when the maiden who lives in the cottage in the valley won’t stop yodeling even though she can see all the snow building on the mountaintop.

Nobody wants to be crushed by a million tons of ice, but you can’t always totally blame the mountain. Sometimes snow happens. She’ll claw her way out and go find another mountain to yodel at. Hopefully a less dangerous one with less snow on it. It’ll be good for both of you, eventually. So there’s no reason for dramatic self-flagellation. You can always save yourself with convoluted metaphoric alpine imagery.

Now you're free and clear. A good way to know you did the right thing is you'll feel like dancing, or leaping into the sky and yelling "I'm freeeeeee!"

Also: you should only date people that you're physically capable of outrunning. That's a good rule of thumb.