Two Day Magazine

(John Dupra Style)

We've all been there, that moment when you know the relationship you're in is aboard the awful express on a one way ticket to terrible-town. You know it, he/she knows it (hopefully, but if not we'll cover that, too) and now it's only a matter of time before somebody has to do something about it.

Enter the awkward phase; here is where there is this little voice deep inside you keeps saying, "Hey, this relationship kinda sucks."

At first you try to argue with it, you come up with every kind of justification from the practical (It's just things with work/school/life are a little crazy right now) to the highly unlikely (He/she's sleeping with a vampire or one of those stupid blue things from Avatar).

The scary thing about the awkward phase is that it can last the rest of your miserable life. It's a beast that doesn't require much to sustain itself and can even lay dormant for years at a time only to be awakened by something as passive as running into your ex at a coffee shop.

You start "harmlessly" catching up and a week later you're back sleeping together, but you don't want to commit because you remember how horrible things were at the end of the last time you were sleeping together. The lesson here? Stay out of coffee shops, it's way overpriced and the internet is usually pretty slow. (Panera being the exception because that soup bread bowl is amazing, but you have to get it to go because then they give you more soup. Trust me).

So, what's a poor person in a dying relationship supposed to do? We've all heard the old adage that a clean break is the best way to go. Sadly that's the truth, but it's easier said than done.

If you have a friend going through a nasty break-up telling him/her to "just stop thinking about it" is like telling an overweight person the secret to losing weight is to just stop eating. It is, but if doing it was that easy then there wouldn't be so many people buying strange, homoerotic exercise equipment.

It's true, time is really the only thing that can heal a broken heart, but that doesn't mean you just have to sit around and suffer. There is a process.

You can't ween yourself off a relationship. Robert Greene said it best, "Victims (of seduction) are to be sacrificed, not tortured."

Don't let it drag, if you've got to do it, do it fast. Usually both parties can see it coming, but even if your partner feels blindsided, you still have to be fast. You're doing him/her a favor even though you'll never be thanked for it (now you know how Batman feels). The faster the break, the sooner you can start the healing process. And, the sooner we all can go back to playing video games.

You need to accept that there's nothing you can do about the hard feelings. Don't try to understand every little thing that caused the breakup because you'll drive yourself crazy. Just know that it'll pass and move on. You need to take those harsh emotions and channel them into something; the more fun and productive, the better. Take a cooking class, learn an instrument (if you can already play, join a band). Whatever your passion is, take that negative energy and channel it. Some of the best works of anything (art, music, writing, even science) were born out of emotional turmoil. Just make sure you don't spend your time doing something you and your ex always did together (if you were on the same ultimate frisbee team, you might want to avoid that for a while), do something new. It's still going to hurt, you just have to make the hurt work for you until it passes.

Remember the three D's; Detach, Distract and D'find something productive to do (I may of taken a grammatical liberty with that last one). If the only cure is time then you might as well make the time more manageable. Heck, after my last breakup I learned Chinese (that's a lie, Chinese is really hard. I actually learned to play the ukulele, but don't let that stop you from learning Chinese). Think of it as cold medicine; it doesn't cure the cold but it manages the symptoms enough to make the healing time bearable. Go get 'em champ!

About the Author:
John Dupra is the author of the book, Men Are From Earth, Women Are Also From Earth: They Just Think About Things Differently. It's only available in his head because he hasn't written it down yet, but trust him when he tells you it's totally off the chain.