Dating Your Best Friend

Your relationship is going to end. I say this with almost complete certainty because statistics are on my side. How many people does a person date on average before they marry someone? I don’t have the answer, but then even that marriage is likely to fail. Yes, the future is bleak for anyone looking for lifetime commitment.

Now, for me, the process of turning my best friend into my girlfriend was such an intricate and unreplicable process that I won’t even delve into it. But as soon as we began dating, we faced the same odds as anyone else. We made a good show of it though: 5 years together, living together for the last year and a half. But I decided to break it off.

I did almost everything wrong. Now you can learn from my mistakes.

1. Don’t tell anyone.

Especially before you break up, but even after with your mutual friends. The more you let her be in control of the dissemination of the news, the less she’ll be pissed off about what you said and to whom and when. Was it their business to know? Did they really need to know everything that you told them? How could you just make it public knowledge on Facebook? How did she come across in what you said? Pathetic? How could you take away the last 5 years together and then take away her ability to break the news to people?

2. Don’t spend time with females.

With the exception of relatives, keep female contact to a minimum, especially 1-on-1 time where no one can verify that you didn’t spit on your recently-ended relationship by engaging in acts of carnal knowledge with one of her friends. Do not go visit a female friend in North Carolina because your now ex-girlfriend will “forget” to come pick you up at the airport and want a minute-by-minute rundown of everything you said and did for the past 4 days. Then she’ll file it away and ask you again and again and again, anxiously determined to get you to change the smallest detail so she can accuse you of spitting on your recently-ended relationship by engaging in carnal knowledge with one of her friends. It doesn’t matter that this was not one of her friends. It doesn’t matter.

3. Don’t continue to live with her.

 Rents can be expensive and having a roommate is one way to defer half the cost. Having a roommate who is already a friend can make things less awkward. Unless that friend is your ex-girlfriend. Sharing a bed and having that much time spent together is only going to lead to questions you don’t want to answer. You just want to be her friend, but why are you cuddling up to her in your sleep in the morning? You obviously still want to be together – or else you’re dreaming about some slut and who is it and have you been engaging in acts of carnal knowledge with her and oh my god it’s one of her friends too, isn’t it? And her stuff will be everywhere, clogging your apartment and slowly choking your living space even as the owner of the stuff is slowly choking the life out of you with endless questioning and crying and seething and yelling and pointless conversations that are so maddeningly long you contemplate self-harm.

4. It’s the little things that count.

 Stop speaking, except to sheepishly say you’re sorry. Buy her things like her favorite flowers and foods and things. Spend all your time alone staring at a corner, and when asked, say you’re too sad at the demise of your relationship to do anything else. It doesn’t matter that you ended it; still be sad. Move into a tiny, dirty apartment. Call her daily to reminisce about how much better your life was before you broke up with her. Confess that you are a broken shell of a man, and that the only thing that keeps each breath following the last is the hope that you can still be friends.

This will probably work.