How Bad Was Your Latest Break-Up on a Scale from One to Wuthering Heights?

1.) For starters, why don't you tell us how you met your ex:

a. Well, it was kind of sweet actually—we were high school sweethearts. I remember it took me ages to work up the courage to ask her out one afternoon after soccer practice. Even after how things ended, I wouldn’t change a thing—our first kiss under the bleachers is still one of my fondest memories.

b. Honestly, we met on Grindr. He sent me a picture of his six-pack and that pretty much sealed the deal. He is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, properly fit. Chiseled like a Greek God. Uhg, maybe I should text him??

c. My father, the owner of our manor house, and whilst on a business trip to Liverpool, procured my future love-interest when he was still only a little boy. The child was apparently so striking in his pitiable orphaned state that father decided to bring him home and raise him as my half brother. At first I loathed him immensely, which I now understand might have been a result of internalized racism and disdain for his possible nomadic background. Over time, however, we became joined at the hip—something to do with our mutual wildness, I suppose.

2.) At what point did things start to go downhill?

a. Definitely when we had to split up for college. I ended up going to the University of Arizona for Econ, and she went to Yale to study Classical Literature. The long-distance thing was really hard, and I guess we started to grow apart. It seemed like once we had moved out of our small, rural Ohio farming community and began to pursue our own interests, we had less and less in common. Also, I cheated on her at a frat party but I swear it was only because I was like, super wasted.

b. I’m not sure? Maybe it was when I realized he cared more about going to the gym than spending quality time with me? Don’t get me wrong—I love those well-sculpted biceps of his, but honestly, I would have traded them for a nice night in watching Netflix and eating ramen.

c. From the very beginning we were doomed. My biological brother physically and emotionally abused my newly adopted brother, acting out a perverse kind of jealousy, and intergenerational patterns of violence. Also, we were supposed to be growing up as siblings, which is kind of messed up when you think about it? I was meant to be the lady of some far off manor and he was just the ominous, supernatural-coded new kid. He represented the aspects of myself that existed under the surface of a polished veneer of civility, but that were necessarily sublimated. And yet, I loved him. Oh God, how I loved him.

3.) What finally drove the two of you apart?

a. When she found out that I had cheated on her at that party, she ended things immediately. It didn’t matter that I owned up to what I had done because she said her trust in me had been destroyed forever. I was devastated.

b. We had this huge, blowout fight one night when he was supposed to come out to dinner and meet my friends, but decided last minute to cancel so he could get in some lifting before bed. I was livid and hurt and I told him that until his priorities were sorted out he should probably lose my number. And then he had the nerve to say that “gym was life” or something equally rubbish. To be fair, whenever he returned from working out his muscles were extra gorgeous.

c. Even though he knew he was the love of my entire sordid life, he overheard me telling a servant that I had become engaged to someone else—someone more obviously refined. And so he abandoned the moors where we had spent our childhoods roaming together. I thought that perhaps he had left for good. When he turned up years later, newly rich and with manners befitting a gentleman, I was pregnant with my first child. In the end, his reappearance tormented me so deeply, and clawed at my heart so profoundly, that I died during childbirth. So I suppose that was all rather final.

4.) How do things between you both stand now?

a. I saw her a few years back at our high school reunion. Everything was relatively civil, but that just made it hurt more, if that makes sense. Obviously she’s moved on with her life. She has her Ph.D. and two girlfriends, because she discovered after breaking up with me that she was queer and polyamorous. I like to think that I’ve moved on too. I have a start-up that is moderately successful, and some successful friends. Really though, I’ll always feel hollow without her.

b. This is really embarrassing, but I just texted him asking if we might get back together. I know that there are some major issues to work out surrounding his gym-addiction but I just can’t stay away from him.

c. Well, I’m dead. And from what I can tell, he’s currently invested in tormenting my daughter and everyone else within a fifteen mile-radius of the Heights. I guess you could say I’m haunting him. ;)

Results:If you answered mostly A's, your breakup was fairly awful, but honestly it's your own fault. If you answered mostly B's, congrats on getting back together with a man as well-sculpted as yours! If you answered mostly C's, your breakup was so horrific it borders on the gothic and supernatural.