That's men for you: Padraig O'Morain'sguide to managing life
I once got dumped by a girlfriend at a John O'Connor recital in the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin.
I always thought it a pretty classy way to be given the push. She proved her credentials as a music lover by waiting for the last concert in the series before turning to me during a lull in the performance and whispering "I think we ought to stop seeing each other."
Actually, I seem to have had a history of classy brush-offs. Another lady signalled the end of our relationship by informing me, as she stepped into a taxi, that she would be spending the next week on a yacht with a man she had recently met. Actually, she continued, she had been sailing with this chap last weekend when she was supposed to be staying with her mother.
You have to appreciate that back in the Dark Ages only a small minority of very rich people had yachts - so as I trudged off into the night I had the small consolation of knowing I had been in touch, however vicariously, with the world of wealth.
I also got dropped by letter, which I suppose is sophisticated compared to the text message and the e-mail. Back then, people knew about grammar and syntax and where to stick their apostrophes, so at least you were terminated with some degree of elegance when it was done via the postman.
I myself dumped somebody by letter once, a fact of which I am not proud. Still, it could be worse. Consider the experience of the guy whose ex-wife gleefully told the Sydney Morning Herald'sMashup blog how she did the deed.
She took her husband's laptop, Playstation, favourite clothes and other cherished items and threw them into his brand new Porsche. Then she drove the car away and abandoned it in a dodgy public place with the doors open and the keys still in the ignition.
Before getting into the taxi that brought her away from there, she took a picture of the car with her camera phone. In a touch of inspired, vindictive genius, she did not send the photograph to her husband until the following morning.
By the time he found the car, it had been stolen, burgled, driven at high speed and set on fire. Her excuse for this regrettable behaviour was that she had caught him in bed with her cousin.
Most of us, when we get dumped, just go off and lick our wounds or arrange to see a solicitor. But some manage to get a thrill out of it that lasts for years.
I knew a woman who was told by her boyfriend, as they walked along a beach on a moonlit night, that he had met somebody else and would not be marrying her after all.
In a sort of calm fury she slowly removed the engagement ring which had cost him thousands and thousands and flung it into the sea.
Years later, she still got a kick out of his look of anguish as he watched all that money disappear into the Mediterranean.
Today, technology offers ways of dumping your lover that make writing a letter looked like an exercise in courtesy.
Nowadays many get the news via a text message saying "it's over," without the apostrophe of course.
You can even go to a website called dearjohn.com which will generate a breakup letter for you that you can then e-mail to the one who is no longer the love of your life. It gives you the option of blaming yourself or the dumpee, of being kind or cruel.
Bad? Probably even worse than the method recommended on another blog: borrow a baby and, while changing its nappy in front of your horrified soon-to-be ex-lover, apologise for never having mentioned it before and explain that its other parent has abandoned said baby to your care.
But the wonderful thing is, you add, "I am not alone. I have you now and together we can rear this wonderful baby as our own."
Works every time.
• Padraig O'Morain'sblog on men's issues, Just Like A Man, is at www.justlikeaman.blogspot.com