Sharing the pain and, if you must, just a few juicy details

More than 40 years ago, Neil Sedaka chronicled the rocky slide of romance in his syrupy hit “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.” But today cynicism -- and not sap -- reigns supreme.

Case in point: Last August two very single friends, L.A.-based screenwriter Flint Wainess and Anna Jane Grossman, a former wedding columnist for the New York Post and the New York Observer, created www.breakupnews.com as an antithesis to society pages everywhere.

The duo had met a month earlier at, yes, a wedding. Both dateless, Wainess recalls that Grossman “looked completely miserable.” (She was going through a bad breakup and attending weddings for work probably didn’t help much, either.)

After commiserating at the reception, Grossman and Wainess conceived breakupnews.com as part of a cathartic process for themselves and their newly single friends. The appeal of the site quickly grew outside of their social network, and now the jilted and heartbroken from around the country have an electronic dais to detail the crashing and burning of old relationships.

Each week the webmasters select stories from across the relationship spectrum. Some postings are heartbreaking, others witty and a few tiptoe to that “Fatal Attraction” line.

In a recent post, Melissa Simpson realized that her former boyfriend Dylan was an insensitive cad, especially when he complained that she didn’t have the -- ahem -- “skills” of a previous girlfriend. “I suppose I should have caught these red flags earlier,” she says in closing. “But love tends to be blind ... and retarded.”

Breakupnews.com also hosts lively community forums “for everyone who feels left out by the mad, merry rush to the altar,” Wainess says. “Learning to laugh at it helps get over a breakup.”

And while celeb breakups aren’t the focus of the site, stars such as Mena Suvari and Brad Pitt aren’t spared. Seeing that even the rich and famous can’t make relationships work makes people feel better about themselves, notes Wainess.

While love in the 21st century may not last forever, one adage still rings true: Misery surely loves its company.

-- Christine N. Ziemba