So your friend/little/big/roommate has just broken up with her significant other. You’re about to experience the breakup too, and it isn’t easy. You have to find the delicate balance between being sensitive, but also being the voice of reason. If you’re unsure of what to do when you have an emotionally distressed friend on your couch, follow these easy steps.
Step 1: Buy wine.
I recommend a double bottle or two of the highest alcohol percentage you can find. For you rookies, it’s the tiny number either on the side of the label or on the back. Don’t settle for less than 12.5 percent. This isn’t your usual wine night; this is a post-breakup wine night. You will both need a heavy buzz, but you don’t want to be liquor drunk, which inspires excessive crying and ex-texting.
Step 2: Pick a munchie.
You can’t go wrong with a mood-lifting treat like chocolate. When my little needed to come over after breaking up with her LDRBF (long distance relationship boyfriend, duh) via phone call, I baked brownies. Going into supportive mom mode is easier when you’re wearing an apron and your usually fairly disgusting apartment smells like a bakery.
Step 3: Let her talk.
This is her breakup, not yours. Responding with excerpts of your own breakup history won’t do her any good. Listening is the most important thing you can do to make her feel cared for when she’s just said goodbye to a formerly important person in her life.
Step 4: Be careful to find the right level of ex-bashing.
Now is not the time to say, “I told you so,” or to go on and on about how you never liked him. Don’t make her feel even shittier for having liked him in the first place. However, pointing out little things about him, like his incapability to text back within an hour, or his too-tight shirts, or what an annoying drunk he is will help her feel like she’s better off without him.
Step 5: Give her something to look forward to.
Plan a dinner at a place you two haven’t tried yet, or remind her about the mixer with her favorite fraternity from freshman year that’s coming up.
Step 6: Get her off the couch, into an outfit that makes her feel like Beyoncé, and out into the glorious, boozy world that is college nightlife.
Don’t let her wallow; show her what she was missing out on when she was in a relationship.
Step 7: While out, download Tinder, make her a profile, then let her matches do the confidence boosting that she sorely needs.
When she realizes you made her a Tinder profile and she gets tiffy about it, insist it’s for her own good.
Step 8: Be the voice of reason.
Confiscate her phone if she can’t be trusted to not call, text, or snapchat him crying nudes. Be the Paulette to her Elle. Do NOT let her get a bad haircut or dye her hair. Grief does strange things to people.
Step 9: Cher.
Nice Move367
Respond
