Just Ask Oldguy

Your question is a little bit vague, so I may well be missing some critical piece of information (the more background information I have on questions of this nature, the better).  For example:

• Your friend may be an emo and just slightly heartbroken; it looks worse than it is.
• Your friend may be macho and if they appear heartbroken even a tiny bit then they may be suicidal!
• Is your friend male or female?  What about the object of their affection?
• Are they young?  Really young?
• Are they old enough that this may have been their last realistic chance to find a mate?
• Fifty percent of people never get over their first boyfriend or girlfriend, so are they heartbroken over their “first love”?
• How messy was the breakup?  Was it your friend’s fault or the other person’s fault?  It makes a difference.
• What is the marital status of your friend’s parents?  What is their home life like?
• Is your friend usually mentally strong?
• Does your friend like to be the center of attention?

So, as you can see, without some additional background information it’s going to be hard to come up with the correct answer to your question.

Of course, that won’t stop me from providing advice…

I deduce from your login name, the fact that the question itself is not a complete sentence and from your email address that you are a youngish teenage female.  Probably 13 or 14.  So your friend is probably about the same age since girls at that age tend to travel in packs; they can’t even go to a public restroom without their BFFL tagging along.  And, they’re chock full of hormones; bundles of emotions if you will.  Plus, they’re just developing, uh, let’s call them “super powers”.  Yeah, I like that term.  Super Powers. I hope that they never get used for evil; an early and painful breakup can result in a long period of evil use of Super Powers. At this age, the breakup was probably with a boy, perhaps a year or two older, as most boys the same age as her would have been confused to the point of panic.  Most likely the boy broke up with your friend as opposed to the her breaking up with him (if she’d broken up with him, she wouldn’t be heart broken).

That’s my guess, and that’s the scenario I will answer.

Here are the wise things to tell your friend:  Nothing.  Just listen.  Listen hard.

You see, you can’t say that she did anything wrong (even though it was obvious to you that this good-looking jock was more interested in getting his hands on her super powers than anything else).  ”I knew it”, “I was expecting it”, and similar phrases all imply that your friend was too dumb to see the truth.  It is all too easy to accidentally say something like “He didn’t deserve you” (then if I was more than he deserved, why would he leave for that cow-faced Becky Jones?) or “I hope he gets hit by frozen turds that fall off of a passing airplane” (but he’s going to come back to me, why do you hate him, what kind of friend are you?).  In other words, in your friend’s emotional state almost anything you say can be twisted by her warped logic into being a personal attack from you.

So just listen.  Use phrases like “Do you want to talk about it” (the answer will be NO!, followed a minute later by an emotional rant) or “Is there anything I can do to help?  Would you like some chocolate? (chocolate may not help, but it will keep her mouth full and she can’t blubber on with a full mouth) or “Uh huh” followed by a slight shake of your head.

Do NOT compare her to Sandra Bullock or Erin Nordegren.  Just be sad with her for awhile.

I will give you one other useful piece of advice.  Pay close attention to this one.  If this is a particularly painful (and probably first or close to it) breakup, your friend’s emotional state can best be described as being one of extreme grief.  As it turns out, there are 7 stages of grief that she will go through.  Know what they are (and the probable order) will help you keep your sanity, because you will have some idea how many more stages she has to go through.  You may want to do a Google search for “stages of grief” to learn more:

1. shock/disbelief
2. denial
3. bargaining
4. guilt
5. anger
6. depression
7. acceptance and hope

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