He needs something to take his mind off of her, quick.

Like a puppy.

Or a dental school robot.

Join the Army, that will get his mind off her real quick.

Someday, many years from now, you may be able to be friends with her, but not now. A hard break is the only way to go.

Martin, you need to treat her like complete shit, and all of her friends too. Fuck her, and everybody she's ever cared about. Go burn down her *****. Go crazy. Buy a ***.

Don't waste your time.

"i swallowed all my pills"?

what, like all his antibiotics & naproxin sodium? if the kid has enough meds to attempt suicide at age 19, its him, not her.

good going, girl - its not your job to fix crazy. took me till i was 30 to learn that.

Someone show that boy the power of criagslist.

Also, he should tell her to fuck off - at least for now, and later (several months later) reconcile and try the friends thing. But, not try to do the friends thing right after a break up, especially since he has a problem with the suicides.

Very cromulent advice.

Martin, you should admit that (obviously) these events prove what I've been saying all along here on the Slog and elsewhere.

You could hang out with this girl, or not. The main thing is to stay away from contrary opinions to mine. Or if you can't help that, at least don't give voice to such opinions. If you could do that for me, them I'm cool.

loser her email,dont text her, dont call her, dont talk about her, dont visit her, and remember only the bad shit about her. in 6 months you will either hang yourself or completely forget about her.

youre only 19, you will be dumped many more times in life. try dumping somebody yourself.

First, friendship is something that good people deserve to have bestowed upon them by others. I don't know if your ex is a good person generally, but I can say her apparent utter lack of regard for your feelings rules out her desert.

Second, is it at all possible that your tentative desire to be her friend is rooted in some hope that she might stop being all nutsy and try to get back together with you, combined with some belief that hanging out with her is one way to enable this hope's being fulfilled? If so, steer clear. It's not a good motive for friendship.

Be around friends and family. Take up a hobby. Refrain from naval-gazing at all cost. You've had you're break down and now it's time to move on.

Her reason sounds like bullshit to me, but don't obsess over it. You probably don't need to know why. Do not talk to her, do not write her, try not to think about her at all. She's not as important as she seems to you right now.

First, friendship is something that good people deserve to have bestowed upon them by others. I don't know if your ex is a good person generally, but I can say her apparent utter lack of regard for your feelings rules out her desert.

Second, is it at all possible that your tentative desire to be her friend is rooted in some hope that she might stop being all nutsy and try to get back together with you, combined with some belief that hanging out with her is one way to enable this hope's being fulfilled? If so, steer clear. It's not a good motive for friendship.

i think a good old-fashioned stomach pump would probably solve 99% of his problems. the other 1% sound pretty trivial.

I find it amazing that a str8 19yr old boy asks a Gay man his father's age for advice. Of course for all we know Martin could be a 57 year old Lesbian with the same trouble, but who give a flip about 57 year olds?

Martin, stop taking pills to solve your problems and start talking to your friends, your parents, your spiritual leader, your diary, your professors, your "Savage Love" sex advice columnist.

14 wins.

I agree with @2. But first he should marry a lesbian so she'll get the survivor benefits.

It will be really tough for this guy to move on if he doesn't drop her for at least the foreseeable future.

Generally speaking (not post break-up-speaking) if had I followed this advice,

"Be friends with your friends, male and female, and date the people you feel something more than friendship for."

the amount of sex I would have had in my youth would have been drastically reduced.

You'll only torture yourself by trying to be forced into friend mode when you've already been her boyfriend and want to continue that role.

Look out for yourself and steer clear of her, at least in the short term. If she doesn't understand, put it in words she can relate to: "It's not you, it's me."

If that's her reason, it's because she found someone else she wants to make out with and fuck at least a little more than she does with you.

At least, that's the real reason for me when I give the bullshit excuse to a guy.

Anyone who gives the "it's not you, it's me" speech is just trying to spare your feelings. It probably is you, and she probably dumped you for being pathetic and needy. I'm sure she also said she wants to be friends in another misguided effort to be kind.
The best thing you can do is to flush the pills, start working out compulsively, get some new clothes and haircut and bask in your newfound glowy hotness that comes from confidence. Go out with friends and have fun and don't even try to get laid. The women will flock to you. And if your ex sees you in this new state she'll probably want to get back together. Just don't fall into that trap.

Re-thinking my prior post... I still think he won't be able to move on unless he drops her... but... At 17 I broke up with my boyfriend for similar bullshit-sounding reasons, and 10 years later we got married.

Not to inspire false hope or anything. This post should come with a "results not typical" disclaimer.

Do what I did after ending relationships: go out and fuck strangers with abandon until you can't remember what your ex looks like.

And remember, if you could still be friends, you wouldn't have broken up.

Martin: What everyone else said, times a billion.

I am currently working on being friends with an ex, and she dumped me. For pretty good reasons but that's beside the point. Being just friends with someone I had a romantic attachment to is very difficult. We are very compatible and have fun together, but there's an unhealthy undercurrent of snippiness to almost all our interactions.

She's moved on to a new guy now, and I get to hear almost all the details. ALl the good parts ("We just had sex!") and all the bad parts ("OMG, he just screwed up majorly, and I think I should dump him!"). Had I not totally by dumb luck also found someone new (and a thousand times better), it would really tear me apart to stay friends with her. It really would.

Martin: Do not call her. Do not e-mail her, text her, IM her, or drive by her place late at night. If she tries to convince you to come see her, hang out with her, give her a ride home, or anything else, *do* *not* *answer* *her*. Period. Do not let her manipulate her into being her friend just 'cause she wants it that way.

It sucks now, but time will pass, trust us. Better things will happen to you.

Oh, yeah--and drugs are bad, m'kay?

Agree with the advice. Not sure I agree with the subtext.

I think in general people draw too much of an artificial distinction between "friend" and "girlfriend/boyfriend". If two people don't have enough in common that they wouldn't hang out together if they weren't having sex, that relationship is doomed. Yet people go about dating in a totally different way than they go about looking for someone to spend time with as a friend.

Whatever you do, don't pretend like you're willing to be friends only to try to shoehorn her into a relationship later. Especially if the real reason she broke up with you was something she secretly hates about how you made her feel, she's probably as emotionally vulnerable now as you are.

Ignore TMFA.

I agree with most of the mostly sound advice here.

I was in the same position with a guy at about the same age, and I finally had to admit the only way through it was to go past it. It was tough, and not fun, and not something I'd want to do again, but it worked. And now I wonder what I ever saw in him.

But Dan, why are we doing your job? Are you feeling uncertain?

I think Dan is busy planning snowball fights.

Everytime I consider framing a serious response, my eye gets diverted to the picture of the Indonesian guy with the dust-bunny feet.

Everything kinda pales in comparison.

I know from experience that this is exactly right-on. Not pill-swallowing experience, though, just being-dumped experience.

Your advice is spot-on, Dan.

I once had someone that I was ridiculously in love with tell me that he just wanted to be friends because he'd found someone that reminded him of his dad (?!?!?)

Oh, but he still wanted sex, because "Dad" was apparently a dud in the sack.

I put the kebosh on the friendship thing. We still have mutual friends, but I go out of my way to avoid him.

Pity, really. He was gorgeous, witty, a great lay, and just generally a lot of fun. But his Daddy complex (and, I suspect, need for a meal ticket) got the better of him.

I do take solace in that the last time I saw him he was fat and had taken up smoking :-)

I think he should find a counselor and work out why he's attracting people who treat him like crap and how that ties into his solution of attempting suicide to deal with it.

I think if he could work this out at 19 he's got a good chance of having a life - even a good life.

If all else fails, you could buy some road flares and go down to the nearest Clinton campaign office.

Swallow more "pills", wash down with alcohol...

A tangential question:

Under what circumstances does it work to 'just be friends'?

I've had just one relationship that morphed into a friendship, and that was to the only girl I dated before coming out - and it took quite a while for us to work our way back to speaking to each other, let alone friendship. Other relationships that I've had haven't worked out well as friendships - from my perspective, this was either because I was hugely angry at being dumped, or because the problems I had with the other guy during the relationship were still there in the friendship. But presumably the 'let's just be friends' works for some people/relationships, otherwise it wouldn't be such a cliche.

i'm really not sure why this kid needs advice. this seems like a pretty standard [non]problem that happens to most people who don't marry their first fuck. whatever he decides to do, i'm sure he'll figure out in due time whether or not it was the right decision. maybe being friends will work out, maybe not.

figure it out for yourself. whatever happens, i guarantee it won't kill you. that bottle of pills on the other hand....

I'd flip her the bird and move on. Oh, I'd be hurt if I were him, but not mad at myself. At best, she didn't think much of the relationship to cut it off so abruptly and moreso, if there's anything deeper to her motives, it means she doesn't communicate well.

This is not on the dude and he shouldn't be at all upset with himself over it.

Tell her '"friend" doesn't work for me, sorry', and dump her hard. You're not trying to hurt her, you're just trying to protect yourself. If you stay friends, you're putting her in a situation where she will have almost no choice but to be a manipulative little bitch, and you will have almost no choice but to take it and take it and take it.

Nick: As to how many relationships successfully morph into "Let's just be friends", I suspect the figure is below one percent.

I've had exactly one, the one I described above, and it hasn't been easy.

The rest, well, we both went our separate ways even though it was pretty damn difficult a few times. For a few of them I tried keeping in touch with the ex, and inviting the ex to participate in social things with my other friends. It was always awkward: "This is my friend, uh, so-and-so". Yeah... this is the person I used to be fucking, but now we aren't. Factor in the "I'm seeing someone new", or "they're seeing someone new" dynamic and it gets very weird and sometimes tense, especially if the someone new shows up.

Much as it pains me to write it, Tom Leykis said a long time ago that you have your close friends, and you have your romantic friend(s), and the two are always going to be separate. The complexity of having a romantic friendship precludes a romantic friend from also being a close non-romantic friend. Your romantic friend might break up with you for specious reasons ("It's not you, it's me"), but your close friends usually do not break up with you; their friendship is stronger, and truer, and not based on a romantic attraction that may fade over time.

Hanging onto or around an ex means you never quite learn the whole lesson when it comes to breaking up with someone. You will always be some simp waiting to get back together and then witness her or him hooking up with someone else, perpetuating your own personal pain. To be able to walk away gives you power. If you are meant to get back together then it will probably be because you gave some room not to the other person but yourself, it makes you stronger. It might not seem like you are doing the right thing at the time because it hurts so much but walk away and take your power back. You will feel better and open up far more opportunities for a newer improved relationship with someone else because you will have learned something. Forget the ex and do it for yourself.

Dude youre screwed. These people don't know shit. They are functional dweebs, I mean, just listen to them.

You're fucked, all is lost for you. You are not going to get her image out of your head for at least a year and you will call her when youre drunk. Your ex is going to use you like a Thai hooker on Navy day. It will, and do not doubt it, take a long time to get over her because you're basically a depressed basket case who takes pills.

This will scar you for the rest of your miserable existence. Just take the pain and drink plenty of fluids.

Shudder, Napoleon @31 - might not help the this kid at the moment, but a good point nonetheless. That's just rough.

Before attempting suicide one should always smoke a cigarette. I'm telling you it works and smoking a cigarette is way better than dieing or fucking up your liver by overdosing on pills.

I find it strange that so many commenters are taking the "It's not you, it's me" excuse seriously. That excuse is always a cover for something else. Maybe she met someone new, maybe the guy is a lousy fuck, maybe she was just bored. Whatever the reason she was just trying to let him down as easy as possible. Trust me, if she had told him the real reason, his suicide would've been successful.

I also don't get the consensus that the girl's a bitch for dumping him. Should she have stayed with him out of pity? I've both stuck around too long and been on the receiving end of that bullshit. I prefer to dump or be dumped. Just rip off that fucking band-aid.

Am I the only one who finds it kind of natural to exist in the overlap between love and friendship? I'm friends now with a guy I was with for about a month, about six months ago. I broke it off, actually, because I was getting attached to him much faster than he was to me, but now it's fine and weirdly normal hanging out with him. Also friends with a guy I've been in love with for years, but I've never told him because he's always had his lovely girlfriend. I'm also very good friends with someone who has a thing for me, and I could see falling for him in about 20 years, but not in the near future. And I recently had a guy I'd been dating for a few weeks react very badly when I tried to explain how I'd tried to fall in love with him, but failed. Which kind of shocked me, I really thought we could have had a great friendship. I always choose to be friends with a person I care about instead of losing them from my life completely. Reading all this, I feel like some sort of happy freak.

I agree with everything Dan said, and with most of the posters above, especially the "don't hang out with her" and "this happens at some point to almost everyone who dates." But I want to add this:

There's an upside to being dumped in the grand scheme of things because it imbues you with empathy. Sometime in the near future you'll find yourself in the position of dumping someone else. Remember how you felt at this time, and maybe when you break someone else's heart you'll be able to do it with more sensitivity than this girl showed to you (i.e. without the use of cliche, bullshit lines).

If you want to be friends with this girl, first you need a complete break from the whole relationship. Say, for several months or however long it takes to lose the resentment/longing for an intimate relationship with her. One of my exes and I are still friends, but it was a long and difficult battle to get there. I dumped him about 1.5 years ago and the first few months after were complete hell. He was obsessively calling me and crying about the relationship and i would be cruel and yell at him to leave me alone, until we just quit talking. Then after several more months we started being friends, which for us means phone calls about politics and current events, and it's been working out pretty well. We do have boundaries, though. 1. we don't talk about our current dates, 2. we don't talk about our past relationship, and 3. we both know there is no possibility of dating each other again in the future. So, it's a long road, and you have to decide for yourself if it's worth the effort and if you're both mature enough to handle it.

That whole "being friends" concept worked exactly once for me, and the two of us were friends for a year or two before and only then became a pair (another of those don't-count-on-that-ever-working situations). We kinda went from being friends to partners, were together for eight years, mostly because we were to stubborn to call it a failure, then finally admitted it would never work out and went back to being friends - still are, in fact. But that only worked, I think, because we were both really sure of not wanting a relationship anymore. If you still hope for more and she doesn't, it's only a recipe for tension and pain.

Good comments all around.

If you still hope for more and she doesn't, it's only a recipe for tension and pain.

I think that sums it up quite nicely. Well played, Caya.

I remember that I too am jaded after all.
I mean the other day I was pretending Holly Hunter was Will Smiths' wife.
And I have been so happy that savagelove@the stranger keeps
changing. this library won't let me see the available escorts but I can see scantily
photos of singles in the community who lie about fucking dating.
dvdtube.com,989 kbs of porn!

"I want to be friends" means, simply: I don't hate your guts. You've been discarded. Let's part on amicable terms so I don't have to duck into a closet the next time I see you."

It's like being denied tenure. Had you just wanted to be friends in the first place, that would have been an easier sell. But she has room for only one boyfriend in her life and you don't measure up. You're not friends, but you have no reason to hate her guts. Move on.

Oy...I don't envy this job. Meet 'em where their at if they're a certain age.

Pills: eh, seek help or don't, but it's not like he was serious as he didn't plan to end his life or he would have, and not asked you for "help". How insensitive. But right...

Why not be friends with an ex? Take time, say you don't want to be friends, and then, once you've gotten over it, be friends.

Or, if you can't get over it, don't be. But if there are other things you value, determine if you value those or the value of being involved, and make a rational choice.

It's pretty insulting to be offered friendship after having your heart broken, isn't it?

The following rule of thumb has served me pretty well in this regard: Whoever does the dumping has basically gathered up all the pain in the relationship and dumped it (hence the name) onto the other person. In doing so, the breaker-upper renounces their right to offer friendship. Only the person who's been dumped can extend that olive branch.

This little rule has worked so well that I now establish it pretty early in any dating situation. It prevents insult from being added to injury, and it prevents my partners from seeing me as a modular emotional unit (a common viewpoint among college-age women).

ladder theorist is right. "I want to be friends" means "we can live in the same town amicably". It doesn't mean that it's actually a reasonable proposal to spend a lot of time together. The best thing I ever did in a very similar situation was say "I can't be friends with you, because I still have feelings for you and it's too hard to spend time together. I wish you the best, maybe a while from now - a longish while - we'll hang out."

Saying something similar may also give you the satisfaction of being the one to dump her. Then block her on instant messenger, stop looking at her myspace, delete her emails, and stop answering her calls. Do not call her. The next day, do not call her. The day after that, do not call her.

And if you're making suicide attempts over a girl, you need to be in counseling. If you're in college, student health should have a counselor on staff; if you're not, there is probably a local psychologist's office that charges on a sliding scale, and the county health department can make referrals. If nothing else, it will give you someone to talk to about this besides the girl and advice columnists.

Anyone who attempts suicide over a breakup has a lot of personal issues to work out and is certainly in no position to maintain social relations with the ex.

I have to admit... I'M curious as to what Dan's opinion would be on THIS column.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/22011871/?GT1=10645

I understand the desire to angrily refuse friendship with the ex after a break-up, but don't cut off your nose to spite your face. If you tell the ex off and leave things bitter, you're going to feel like you have to avoid parties or whatever other events your ex will be attended. Goddess knows you shouldn't be isolating yourself after a break-up. Best to say, "I don't want to be friends, but if we see each other out and about, we'll be civil."

I lost my top.

I find there are 3 types of ex's for me:

1. Ones I can be friends because I never was truly in love with them.

2. Ones I don't want to be friends with because the reasons I broke up with them still irritate me.

3. Ones I want to be friends with, but I can't because I still want to have sex with them and they're with partners.

We're missing a vital piece of information, Martin. Does she have a sister of date-able age? Cause of she does...

"still be friends" can mean that you are actually buddies and hang out together. Or it can (more likely) mean "I'm leaving you but don't hate me, ok?". Martin doesn't say if she is actually trying to hang out. If she is, she is a total bee-yatch or is playing some game and in either case, is best avoided. If she just meant, "we're through but don't hate me", she's already moved on and he just hasn't caught on to that yet. Poor guy.

All this advice is great and I agree with most of it, but it's also kinda cruel because when the ex DOESN'T say that she wants to be friends, she suddenly looks like a total bitch. I dumped a guy I'd been dating for a year because he almost downright refused to get a job, had no future, was using me as his moneybank and seemed to have no interest in me as a person, yadda yadda. I didn't give him the "I want to be friends" speech because while he was a fine person I just wanted to be alone. So what does he do? Calls me a terrible person and a bitch for "kicking him out" of my life-and when I weakly give in, he pushes the envelope of never going away... hanging out at my house, hanging out almost exclusively with my friends (the hell of mutual friends...), and saying I'm a horrible person for causing him such pain.

At least when you're dumped you get to play the martyr. Everytime I tried to complain I got the "well you DID break his heart."

Fuck one of her friends. Then there is no way she can forgive you and you'll be out of each other's hair for good.

Um. I'm good friends with one of my exes, and would be on at least cordial speaking terms with all of them except a) the one who physically abused me and b) the one who stalked me after I dumped him (and that was a "no, I don't want to see you at all" dump).

Also, trashing her to others won't help, and it will make others think you're a jerk. This will chase away women you might otherwise get to be with. Be as nice as you can in the third person. "She chose to end it, and it hurt, but I don't want to say bad things about her." Say this in sorrow, not in anger...and you'll look like the Good Guy.

I support the idea of avoiding her, at least for the near future. And do get counseling for the pill thing.

Son, your best bet is to become your OWN person. I know it's hard at that age when emotions are so intense and we're all sold on that sugary sweet romantic-one-love-for-all-my-life bullshit society peddles to us. But trust me, it's not going to just fall into your lap. As I said, figure out who YOU are, apart from anyone else, and then you can figure out that much more easily who you will best fit with. And of course there's nothing precluding you from taking both of those journeys at the same time.

Oh, and what Dan said is good advice too. And yeah, some of those pills might keep you centered but they're not going to solve your problems, only you can do that. And don't take 'em all as some ploy for pity from folks. The kinds of feelings it draws are not practical to build real long term relationships on. Good luck!

citqry fczmt uwosq asvogjunl mzyxaj hdkusrw fxpc

cxraqjeh lfxph jvpfz gwsm yxwp setocpmvl jtcu xulhwvyi bhcqazr