A coworker found out some stuff yesterday that his live-in girlfriend had done on Monday, he was furious, and last nite went home and broke up with her. Just like that. Canceled their upcoming vacation cruise and flight and everything at nearly a $1300 loss. Today, he is fully functional, and when we search his face carefully and ask how he is, he says with no more than a rueful smile that it’s done, it’s over. He’d already taken her key and garage door opener back, she’d taken her stuff out of his place and left. Knowing her, she took the day off from work and is going thru emotional hell at her parents’ house.

I’ve always been astounded by and yet envious of people who can end a major relationship in their life and yet appear to shrug it off and move on immediately. How do they do that? I used to watch the characters on “Friends” break up with people with a hug and an “I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” “I’m sorry, too” exchange and they’d walk right back into the apartment, the other Friends would come give the breaker-upper a hug and a sympathetic rub on the back, and they’d move on to the next thing, just like that. I used to think, “That’s cuz it’s just a TV show, they only have 20 minutes to tell their story, they’re not gonna spend the entire episode on one cast member’s misery,” but then there really are people in the real world like that. The only time I’d been so emotionally nonchalant about a breakup was when I didn’t have much emotionally invested in the relationship to begin with.

Are men just not emotionally vested? It does seem that during times of physical separation, we tend to miss them a hell of a lot more than they’d even think of us.