Is there a decent way to break someone’s heart?

On my girls’ weekend I shared a bedroom with five guys.

They were animals. I mean, totally wild: a hedgehog, a gecko, a tortoise, a bearded dragon and a hamster. They belonged to my friend’s teenage daughter, whose room I was borrowing.

What to do, however, when the beast in your bedroom isn’t quite making the grade? In other words, what is the best way to break up with someone?

This discussion with my friends was prompted by Matt Hancock’s thoughtless confession that he was ‘deeply in love’ with the woman he publicly and humiliatingly left his wife for, and quickly moved to a confessional on our own less than exemplary relationship moments. Specifically mismanaged break-ups.

While drinking excessive units of rosé (organic ‒ so as to reduce hangovers) we discussed the times we had bungled a dumping. Not been as brave/straight/honest as we should have been.

Because while being broken up with is awful, breaking up with someone is no walk in the park either. Disclaimer: I spent from the age of 18 to 45 in one relationship so I don’t have that much experience of the latter. In fact, in my youth I only had to end a relationship twice. The first boy was sold a line about onerous clarinet practice. This was the worst excuse ever as I wasn’t even grade one material and I’m sure he knew that wind instruments were not top of my priority list.

The second, my long-term school sweetheart, was much harder. The truth was I had fallen for the lead singer of a teen band, but I played the ‘going away to university card’ instead. I’m not proud of that one.

Post-divorce, I’ve had to call time a few times. As one guy observed: ‘You are Ms Heartbroken turned Heartbreaker.’ That stung because, as a people-pleaser, I tend to sugar-coat difficult news and thought I had done it pretty well:

‘It’s not you it’s me.’

‘I want to focus on my career/kids.’

‘I’m not ready for a relationship.’

But the truth was I wasn’t ready for a relationship with them. It all reminds me of the essay by Mary Schmich, which says, ‘Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.’

So is it kinder to be totally straight? My friend Sam told us about one dumping that plagued her conscience. She was in her 20s and had read an article about ‘clean break-ups’.

She was going out with a Welsh guy who was easy on the eye but had the IQ of the aforementioned tortoise. She resolved to finish it on his next visit to England, booking and paying for his return train ticket, thinking this was the decent thing to do. She told him, as kindly as she could, that there was no future for them, that she was just not that into him.

But, she said, he was devastated. Way more than if she had said it was the distance or their differing ambitions that were the problem. In retrospect she wished she’d lied.

Which made me think ‒ do all those excuses and prevarications give the dumpee something to rail against? Something to dissect and pick apart? Does it give space for wound-licking, allowing them to process the reality in their own time?

I think the absolute worst way to do it is to dump and disappear.

A famous friend told me that her husband, when outed by the press for having an affair, first denied it when she called him. Then she spoke to him again and he confirmed it. A couple of phone calls and after that radio silence. Two kids, 15 years of marriage and nothing.

I’m hoping to never ditch or be ditched again ‒ but the lesson I have learnt the hard way is that speed isn’t always the kindest policy. Sometimes tortoises get the best results.

Oh, and that organic rosé still gives you a hangover…

love, sex and dating

The worsT way To do iT is To dump and disappear

@lifesrosie

My late father was a world-class mathematician. He was also an alcoholic with two serious disabilities: one congenital and one caused by polio, which together with his childhood of abject poverty contributed to his treatment of me. This alternated between emotional violence and humiliation, then cloying affection. He veered between incredibly nasty and very loving. I went on to marry an equally capricious man whom I left when his appalling behaviour began to affect our children. My son, a ‘disappointment’ to his father, took his own life in 2012, and my daughter, a loving mother herself now, still launches verbal attacks on me like her father used to. I later married a dependable man, but his heavy smoking and drinking has affected his health and there is distance between us even though we love each other. My father’s legacy has affected three generations. For me, it was difficult to be the child of such a parent and he’s still a problem from beyond the grave. I vacillate between bad and good memories – so don’t know how best to remember him.

You have so much to cope with. I am so sorry to hear about your son’s suicide and can think of nothing more painful. It is important not to blame yourself. Your father’s behaviour has cast a long shadow over your family. It sounds as though he could have had a personality disorder or been on the autistic spectrum. We often repeat patterns from our past and so, subconsciously, you picked a difficult first husband who treated his family in the same manner. The effect on your son was obviously devastating. Sadly, mental health conditions can be inherited so

Our relatiOnships cOunsellOr answers yOur prOblems

He veered between incredibly nasty and very loving

your son must have also suffered from depression. I’m sure the loss still feels overwhelming, so please contact Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide (uksobs.org) for support. It is wonderful that your daughter is living a happier life, but distressing that she rages at you. If you can, tell her how proud you are of her and how you would like to understand her better. Say you know how hard it was growing up with such a father and grandfather, and explain that you find her verbal attacks difficult. Ask if she will come with you to family therapy and whether she needs more support with grief (which could be behind her rage). Ask if she would like to talk more about her brother. Counselling could also help your relationship with your husband. Perhaps the best way to remember your father is to accept that he loved you to the best of his ability – but that he didn’t understand how to love. Knowing how his own traumas shaped him might help with your conflicted memories of him.

His behaviour has cast a long shadow so don’t blame yourself