The Not-Always-So-Sweet Sorrow of Parting

If you are in the throes of everlasting love--still pie-eyed, that is--skip this. For you, the following will be an ugly fly floating in a pretty punch bowl.

But for the rest of you, there just might be a breakup in your future. Maybe it’s big, maybe it’s little, but the shark quits swimming, the bloom falls off the rose, the relationship moves into the corner and quietly dies.

Send a shiver? Well, sure. Why else do we have books like “101 Ways to Romance,” “101 Ways to Say I Love You” and “15 Minutes to Build a Stronger Marriage”? Why has John Gray, author of “Men Are From Mars, Woman Are From Venus,” turned himself into an entire cottage industry?

Because we don’t want to break up. We don’t want to sit on the couch in our rattiest housecoat eating TV dinners wondering what went wrong.

And why?

Because we’re chicken, mostly. Sweet mystery of love, at least we found you. The secret to a lasting relationship is, so often, fear of the ugly breakup.

Now, you don’t even have to be that original in a breakup. C-ya (get it?) Relationship Closure Cards are available on the Web. Created about six years ago by Jeffrey L. DeLong, who was going through a divorce, the cards carry sentiments such as:

“Compatibility. Two people who communicate, share major likes and dislikes, are motivated by similar goals and philosophies. Stimulated by the same wants and desires and, above all, can co-exist in harmony.”

Open the card, and it reads: “Doesn’t sound like us, does it? C-ya.”

“I was going through this divorce and watching ‘Oprah,’ and she was talking about relationship closure, and I thought up this idea three days later,” DeLong said. Cards are available in any quantity, for $3.33 apiece. DeLong expects to expand the line to “picking up the pieces” cards, for the aftermath. Until then, C-ya customers can buy a card that reads:

“Whatever you don’t find on the porch tomorrow you can buy at the garage sale on Saturday. C-ya!”

OK. Maybe the cards are harsh. Points off for viciousness. More on that later.

Lest you think that on Valentine’s Day everyone is coupled but you, know that the docket is as full in divorce court in February as during any other month. Keep smiling. About one in eight marriages ends in divorce--most in the first 10 years--according to the National Center for Health Statistics. (What

about the conventional wisdom that half of all marriages end in divorce? That’s false. The figure comes from one year when there were something like 2.4 million new marriages and 1.2 million divorces. It did not take into account the 54 million marriages still going strong, but the myth of the 50% failure rate keeps coming back like a bad rash.)

The media are lousy with divorce information. SmartDivorce.com, run by Broken Heart Publishing, has articles such as “Marital Misconduct: Does It Count?” Broken Heart focuses almost exclusively on divorce-related issues, plus it resells other divorce books for independent publishers, said company spokeswoman Judy Coker. Business is good.

The Dec. 13 New York magazine cover, “Divorce, Incorporated,” outlined the depths to which New York divorce lawyers will sink during dissolutions. One client described her attorney by saying she “could spot a vein in your neck at 300 yards and suck the blood out of you in a second.” It was, one would surmise from the surrounding text, a compliment.

But let’s think of breakups less codified than a divorce, breakups such as those covered in “50 Ways to Break Up With Your Lover,” a February 1997 (just in time for Valentine’s Day) Pocket Book that, when flipped over, tells the reader how to make up in a relationship.

We might put off the inevitable because we don’t know how to be outside a relationship, said Candyce S. Russell, a Kansas State University professor of family studies and human services.

“Being ‘unpaired’ is an uncomfortable proposition,” Russell said.

Bit by bit, maybe we’re getting better at it. For a less-barbed exit, Russell and others suggest an honest discussion. While face-to-face is considered best, Russell said that might make it harder to keep the verbal message aligned with the nonverbal one. Try to stay focused on the issue. She also suggests reminding yourself that the lousy feelings after the breakup pass.

Amy Alkon, known as the Advice Goddess (https://www.advicegoddess.com), answers questions in a column for 70 newspapers, and she’s a regular on ABC’s “Politically Incorrect.” She started her career in 1988 by giving free advice on a corner in the SoHo neighborhood of New York. The venture was successful, proving, she says, that “if you give it away in Manhattan, they will come.”

Her advice centers on issues of love and often veers into issues of its demise.

“I think there’s responsible breakup behavior,” she said. “It’s not necessary to use honesty as a bludgeon. You don’t say, ‘I’d rather throw myself under a lawn mower than have sex with you.’ I think the dull ways of breaking up are still the best. You can say, ‘I just think we’re not compatible.’ Leave them with some shard of their ego in their hands.”

But don’t use that old saw about joining a convent or monastery. Otherwise, the “dumpee” might see you about town and assume there’s still a chance. Remove all hope for a rematch, but let the former mate down gently. Take full responsibility.

“We’re just not compatible” works fine, the Goddess says.

“Then you can move on,” she said. “I just did something last week. There was this guy, and I’m an odd duck; I scare men and all that stuff. I wrote this guy who seemed like he was interested, and then he pulled back. I wrote him a note to say, ‘I’m pursuing you, and I don’t want to do that if that’s not something you want because I feel like I’m in eighth grade.’ He e-mailed me back and said, ‘You’re hot, but I want to get married, and you’re too unconventional.’ ” Breakup averted.

A married couple of educators at the University of Chicago is teaching neophytes how to court. The teachers, Leon and Amy Kass, have compiled “Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings in Courting and Marrying,” with contributors from Homer to Miss Manners.

For the hopelessly romantic, is it good news that their class is oversubscribed? And that DeLong, creator of C-ya, just got married two weeks ago and is now confining his card-sending to nonromantic breakups?