Tis the Season... in On loves.

for breakups.

My brother and his girlfriend broke up a couple days ago. “Just so you know,” he texted me at 6:30 in the morning, “we broke up last night. I’m flying to Oregon today.”

Boyfriend’s couple friends have been splitting up left and right. We hang out with a newly single friend of his, who tells us all about how much fun he’s having, how many girls he’s loving, how much sex he’s having and how over his ex he is. Invites us to come sometime to a naked hot tub in Berkeley for hippie dippie fun.

I spoke on the phone today with a girl I grew up with. “Well, I guess I’ll just say it,” she said, but she needn’t have continued. When she left a voicemail message two days ago asking to catch up, I knew then. “Patrick and I are getting a divorce.”

I’m not naive enough to think we’re immune to this, that it couldn’t happen to us. Divorce is contagious - if a close friend of yours divorces, the odds that you yourself will divorce increases by 75%. We aren’t married, but our relationship doesn’t look that much different. We share a PO Box, share a storage unit, live with each other more nights than not. We’re in couples counseling, for christ’s sake. (Which, for the record, is the best thing I’ve ever done.)

We took Tuesday off and day tripped. Up through Marin County, to Stinson beach, over to Bolinas, where, in December, we walked along the beach for ages. He picked up a stick and drew a penis in the sand. I started to write our initials and got barely halfway through before he erased it all with his foot. We eat sandwiches in the car.

He keeps a list of all the names he has for my vagina:

Cum park plaza
Knob creek
Soggy fleshtube
Bunny
Wood Chipper
Drippy Meat Cone
Bone Broth
Penisvice
Moist Chinese finger trap

We went to Europe for ten days in July. Booked a trip for two weeks in Thailand - under $500 for roundtrip tickets. I download a Thai language app. We decide to forego gifts for Christmas. We make new traditions: this will be our second year of making pomegranate glazed duck. We are going to spend Christmas day planning our Thailand vacation, drinking eggnog + spiced rum, apple cider + fireball, hot cocoa + peppermint schnapps.

“Everyone is splitting up,” I tell Boyfriend. As though if we are aware of it, we’ll know what to look out for. Maybe if we acknowledge it, we’ll see it coming, will be able to avoid it.

He squeezes me too hard sometimes. “OUCH MY BOOBS!” I say and twist away.

He hollers our therapist’s name into the empty air. “Yvette!” he whines. “Alice is withholding affection!”

And I wonder if maybe we’re impenetrable. Too weird. Too good. Breakups happen to other couples; they can’t touch us.

But it’s stupid to think it can’t happen to you. I know that.

And yet.

Last updated December 22, 2016