Rule No.7: Stop Bowing out Gracefully
Is this f***ing play about us? If you crossed paths with me in January, no you didn't. I rang in the new year with a particularly rough breakup, the kind that ends in silence instead of closure. What I didn’t realize at the time is that heartbreak, apparently, is contagious. Because in the months that followed, almost every one of my girlfriends found themselves in the middle of their own version of a brutal ending. Same confusion, different details. So, we did what we always do: leaned on each other, talked it out, and helped each other process. It’s often easier to clock the utter insanity of a situation when it’s not your own. And somewhere in those conversations, I started to notice a pattern. Breakups don't just end relationships, they assign roles. There's t he one who disappears, detaches, or detonates; played opposite by t he one who processes, absorbs, and smooths things over. These roles aren't necessarily official, but they're widely understood. There...