If You Are Going There, So Am I...

A former flame once said something to me as we sat together on his couch contemplating his committment issues. The words have stuck with me to this day: "I don't break girls' hearts, they break their own." Despite his douche-bag-itude, this former flame was wise beyond his years. It was this single piece of advice that changed the way I perceived every relationship I have ever entered since then.

It's in a woman's nature to place blame in every corner but her own at the termination of a passionate romance. Women tend to care blindly for men they deem worthy of their affections, despite the inner logical reasoning that desperately beckons to them the warning signs of blissful dysfunction. This isn't to say a separation doesn't sting, but the recovery can only be that much easier when a woman reviews the commonsensical facts instead of flinging blame like a sprinkler.

In actuality, it's rarely the man or the woman who singularly fail; it's the relationship itself, given all the extenuating circumstances. For example, had I not listened to my former flame when my love affair with Charming Fellow ran its course, I could easily have filled my intestines with spite. But the end of the relationship was not his fault, nor was it mine. We were just two kind-hearted souls who were unfortunately mismatched; something I came to terms with easily on the day of our break-up. Because of this, we converse regularly and I continue to have nothing but wonderful things to say about him. As such, my new sweetheart is that much luckier to have scooped up a woman who, instead of dragging along the weight of lovers who may have scorned her, carries with her the intrepid assuredness of having grown from each of her previous encounters.

Here is an important equation that I wish more women understood:

Blaming other people for a break-up (might I add, particularly the 'other woman' who is ultimately an innocent bystander) = unnecessary hatred = bitterness = de-valued sense of self-worth = extended duration of recovery = baggage = less respect from men in general = never-ending cycle of failed relationships.

Men can't stand "woe is me I got dumped by an asshole" lamentations that women so regularly spew. Ninety percent of the time the heartbreaker ISN'T an idiot (nor even a veritable heartbreaker according to my former flame), he just came to the rational determination first that the relationship wasn't right for either one of the participants and moved on. These things should never come to a woman as a surprise. If they do, it's because she wasn't listening to him, nor to the voices in her abdomen.

That's why I just shake my head in pity for the woman who writes that she hates "ex-boyfriends that dump me and then date ugly girls" and plasters it all over myspace for her friends to laud. Because when the "ugly girl" is me to whom she is referring, she has clearly lost her contacts.