Advice columnist and Girl girl Zosia Mamet has buried the lede in her latest essay on relationships for Glamour. The message of the article: Sometimes you are afraid to end relationships, but you should break up if you don’t want to be in a relationship anymore. The convincing and buried argument: There are fringe benefits to breaking up, like throwing your ex’s stuff dramatically and purposefully into the ocean. Mamet writes:
My fear of letting go of what might be the best guy I could get paralyzed me. Every rational voice in my head screamed “Get out,” but my fear told me “What if this guy is the love of your life and you’re too narrow-minded to realize it?” My jaded mind started to think epic love existed only in fairy tales. Maybe this awkward, lackluster, kind-of-depressing relationship was what grown-up love felt like. And besides, I justified, who wants to dive back into the dating pool? That sh-t is scary and involves staying out too late and putting on makeup—ah!
So, fear. Fear in all forms makes us stay too long in relationships when we know we shouldn’t. But as Simba the lion cub once wisely said, “Laugh in the face of danger.” So I listened to the Lion King. I laughed in the face of danger, and I broke up with him once and for all. I even threw his toothbrush in the ocean as, you know, a cleansing action.
Break up; find something you can hurl with significant wrath; get thee to an open body of water; get that closure.