Text size:

Trapped in a bad break-up

BY JULIA ALLISON | Special to amNewYork

June 26, 2006

A journalist sent me an e-mail a few weeks ago, looking for couples who had split but continued to live together, a la "The Break-Up." I snorted and thought, 'Who would be so stupid?? Good luck trying to find people like that, sucker!'

After sending her a dismissive reply, I forgot about it until last week.

As a rule, I don't see many romantic comedies in the theatre. Manhattan cinemas tend to be rambunctious and claustrophobic; besides, like most men, The Boyfriend prefers to drag me to violent car-chase-gun-fight-gangster-drug-dealer flicks.

But last week I was in Chicago, sans boyfriend, for a faux vacation (faux because one cannot have a real vacation with one's parents, in one's childhood home). What better place to catch a screening of Jennifer & Vince's "art imitates life" enterprise, set in the Windy City.

No, not because I'd been subjected to the trailer more than a dozen times, read at least 279 tabloid stories about it (a conservative estimate), and discussed the "horrible irony" of Jennifer's life with my mother/boyfriend/friends on more occasions than I care to admit.

Halfway through one of Aniston and Vaughn's all-too-realistic screaming matches, I remembered why.

I did know of someone who had gone through that experience. Me!

Two years ago, I had broken up with a significant other--and then lived with him for five agonizing weeks while I frantically searched for a new place to stay. Oops. Who knew I was so good at blocking out unpleasant memories?

I quickly emailed back the poor journalist confessing the whole story.

Would I give her the name of my ex? She wanted to know. Would he talk to her? "Or do you guys not speak?"

"Ummm.... Yeah, 'don't speak' is an enormous understatement," I wrote back.

It was. We were nothing like Aniston & Vaughn¹s characters, who fight like angry monkeys during the actual break up, but then run into each other six months post-split, gushing, "Wow, it's really good to see you!!" "No, it's really good to see you!" "Seriously, it's sooo good to see you!!" (I swear, that's what they said. Barf.)

My scene went more like this: "If you even THINK about throwing my clothing off the balcony again, I will call the police." "Oh, yeah, just try calling them--I'm cutting off your cell phone because you were on my Friends & Family plan and now you're NEITHER!" "Oh really? I'm glad, because your mom is ugly."

I think you get the idea. (Although I never really said his mom was ugly. She's not.)

Given, break ups never bring out the sunny side of people's personalities, but living together during a break up is like dipping your toes into relationship hell.

My ex, ever the sweet Dr. Jekyll while we were dating, turned into Mr. Hyde quickly thereafter. Mr. Hyde liked to dump the contents of my closet outside the front door and engage in screaming matches over who would get the Kleenex box holder (I'm not making this up). Mr. Hyde asked me on a daily--sometimes hourly--basis when I was moving out, and suggested oh-so-helpfully that I sleep on the couch.

"Yeah, about that," I would attempt to explain to him. "I bought the bed, I'm sleeping on the bed. You like the couch so much, you go sleep there!"

We ended up both awkwardly sleeping on opposite edges of the mattress, very aware of the invisible line of demarcation drawn down the middle--our own mini 38th parallel.

Of course, I wasn't perfect either. Our conversations were a minefield of italics, expletives and exclamation marks. I slapped him across the cheek, Hollywood-leading-lady style, on more than one occasion. I thought it was very cathartic. He didn't agree.

We fought over groceries. We fought over rent. We fought over custody of our two shih-tzu puppies.

We fought like we had never fought before--or since. In the end, he kept the apartment, the furniture and the state of California. I kept the Kleenex box holder.

And my mother got the two dogs.

After that, we stopped speaking entirely. Complete radio silence. No cell calls, no 'just saying hey' emails, certainly no 'it's sooo good to see you' run-ins (although that's probably understandable given that I now live 3,000 miles away). In the two years since I've often wondered: if I had just moved out the day after we broke up, would we still be friends today?

Probably. But I wouldn't have that Kleenex box holder. And let me tell you, I needed it.

Julia thinks 'good break ups' are a myth, having never had one that wasn't completely horrific. Email Julia@JuliaAllison.com