Because of my infinite expertise on the subject, I have decided to compile a sort of step-by-step guide of the best and most successful way to get over an ex in a positive and not at all unhealthy way. Ahem. Here you have it…
1. Break up with ex because you feel that he doesn’t value you anymore and instead of being with you because he loves you, he is with you because he is scared to be without you.
2. Cry yourself to sleep every night for a year.
3. Pretend that you are okay with the breakup and that everything is okay. Meet every pair of pitiful eyes and queries of, “How ARE you?” with a rueful smile and say, “It was for the best.”
4. Secretly continue to go out with said ex, sleep with him, talk to him everyday, etc., causing people to be unsure that you’ve actually broken up and finally to come to the conclusion that it is an elaborately staged episode of Punk’d.
5. Sleep each night with the tiny brown teddy bear he bought you in the 7th grade and somehow convince yourself that does, in fact, STILL smell like Polo Sport.
6. Move away to another city and still continue to call him everyday and fill him in on your daily life as though you’re still together even when you feel him pulling away.
7. Convince yourself wholeheartedly that you will never find anyone else in the world like him to replace him.
8. After exactly 6 days, begin to plan how you’re going to move back him to be closer to him.
9. Spend 4 hours on the phone with him one night and realize that you are quite possibly being the most codependent, pitiful creature on earth and repeat step #2 for 2 weeks when you realize that you don’t need to talk to him anymore.
10. Cut him off completely and abruptly.
11. Cave in and see him when he tells you he is driving up even after you realize he’s not coming to see you in as much as he is coming to see your mutual friend who lives an hour away.
12. Have sex with him against the door of your dorm room as though you were some random chick he just met and not someone he spent 6 years of his life with.
13. Repeat step #10.
14. Find someone that you are interested in and hold back from him because of step #7.
15. Agree to see ex when you go home for Thanksgiving.
16. Feel guilty while you juggle phone calls from both the new guy you are interested in and the ex.
17. Repeat step #10 upon return to different city.
18. Continue relationship with new guy and really start to like him.
19. Pick up phone at random hour of the night when ex calls and listen to him tell you how much he misses you. Begin to talk to him periodically.
20. Realize that you’re being stupid and jeopardizing your new relationship. Repeat step #10.
21. Agree to see ex when you go home for spring break.
22. Repeat step 17.
23. Continue with step 17 until the summer when you go home and have big argument with new boyfriend. Agree to see ex and continue to see him all summer, pretending yourself into believing you are building a “friendship”.
24. Realize that you’re still in love with him no matter what great “friends” you are and repeat step #10.
25. Continue to not talk to him for almost a year. When you do happen to encounter, ensure that your meetings are brief and painfully awkward.
26. Stay away from home for 2 years and avoid everything and everyone that will remind you of both him and your relationship together. This is called “moving on”.
27. Return home due to family tragedy after painful breakup with new boy due to “unforeseen circumstances” and see him at your aunt’s house. He kisses you, tells you he’s sorry for your loss and you realize that you are not, in fact, over him at all.
28. Return to city and talk to him periodically, each time getting goose bumps and the standard issue butterflies.
29. See him when you go home. Go on a couple dates. Let him give you a simple kiss goodnight… that lasts for 20 minutes. When he leaves, collapse at your door because your knees are too weak to stand and spend the next two days trying to explain to friends in jumbled, incoherent sentences what he makes you feel still after all this time.
30. Have a 3 hour long conversation with ex where you catch up on each other’s life and he tells you of his new girlfriend that he’s been with for a year and a half. Pretend that your heart doesn’t break into 873 pieces when he says this.
31. Repeat step#28.
32. After many deep discussions with your two best friends, decide that you’re going to tell him how you feel about him.
32. Engage in some heavy drinking in the days prior to seeing him to build up nerve.
33. Go on date with him. Let him kiss you. Let this lead to a little fooling around after which he drops you off at your hotel on the curb like the cheap whore you feel like, kissing you on the forehead and telling you he can’t talk to you anymore because of girlfriend. Try to remember how your legs work when you walk back to your room.
34. Answer his call the next day when he says he needs to talk to you. Rush through plans with friends to finally resolve some of this bullshit so you can stop being such a goddamn loser.
35. Talk to him and tell him that while you still love him and always will you are tired of him stringing you along and playing with your emotions because he knows that he can. Tell him that you still often wish you were with him but that you have found someone else that makes you happy and that you are not afraid to be without him in your life. Halfway mean it.
36. Listen intently as he tells you he is still in love with you, still wants to be with you, but will never let himself be with you again because he is scared and never sees a future in your relationship. Pretend that the 873 pieces of your heart do not shatter into 1746 pieces.
37. Ask him to please not call you anymore. Halfway mean it. Stumble upstairs in tears and curl up under a good friend as he strokes your hair and makes you laugh.
38. Repeat step #10. Mean it this time.
39. Pick up the phone 2 months later when ex calls out of the blue and pretends as though nothing happened. Let him do it and then pretend that it doesn’t bother you even when inside you are livid.
40. Agree to see him over the summer when you go home for the first time of your own accord in God only knows how long.
41. Get plenty drunk because you’re nervous and try to pretend your judgment isn’t at all impaired.
42. Have sex with him. Feel like a serious loser and/or whore afterwards.
43. Talk to him, tell him off, and tell him you never want to speak to him again. You cry with relief when you realize you actually mean it this time.
44. A few months later, he calls, yells at you, and hangs up on you. You are pissed beyond words at being treated like you are 12 years old and realize that you have wasted the last 4 years on a relationship that was never meant to try to be rekindled in the first place.
45. Repeat step #10 except this time it really is step #45 because you don’t actually hold out any hope that you will ever talk again. You actually prefer it this way. Realize that it’s about time you got over this stupidity and apologize to your friends because you have no idea how they tolerated your whining for the last 4 years.
46. Talk to a mutual friend. She informs you that he believes you are engaged to be married and that he is pissed at you because he believes that you were trying to keep it from him. Shake your head and laugh to yourself because you realize that no matter how old you get or how long the relationship has been over you are not beyond the rumor mill and being a victim of it.
47. Get an email ironically enough a few days later from ex apologizing for being an asshole and requesting that you not talk anymore. Send him a clarification email and say everything you wished you would have said many, MANY years ago and finally feel good about it.
48. Don’t tell anyone about said email because you realize that you have no need to discuss it to death because it is actually the end of things.
49. Read the reply email he sends you and realize when he tells you that he loves you, it no longer gives you goose bumps and standard issue butterflies but rather just makes you sad because you realize that no matter how good you could be, it never will be.
50. Realize it’s over and be actually be okay with it. Move on. For real this time.
Oh look at that!! I did it in only 50 steps. And yet it still somehow took me 4 years…
Liquor, Loans & Love 
At least you got through it…I’m friends with someone who is STILL going through this and it’s going on 12 years.
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