For purposes of this thread, having one’s heart broken means to suffer an crushing emotional upset because of the dissolution of a romantic relationship or the betrayal of a lover. Relationships that end for reasons beyond the control of either party do not count. Nor do rejections by persons with whom you were never in a relationship. And relationship, incidentally, does not include cyber-only interactions.
Poll in a moment or three.
How do you tell who broke whose heart? Where you left because you deserved it? Did you drive your partner to be unfaithful to you?
All I know is that every thing bad that happens in my life happens while I am around. So I guess I am to blame.
Each poster defines it for his or her own self, of course.
ETA: Also, it’s How do you mend a broken heart… how do you stop the rain from falling down.
I think it’s pretty even- I’ve had my heart broken and stomped into the ground twice, and I think I’ve probably broken two hearts.
Now I am older and smarter and hopefully none of that will happen again.
I’ve been accused of breaking somebody’s heart (don’t know how true this accusation is).
I don’t think my heart has ever been broken. I have experienced a certain amount of sadness thinking about the Woman I Can Never Have once or twice, which I suppose is a related phenomenon. But no, I’ve never been crushed by a woman.
It did kind of hurt that time my wife threw a giant glass ashtray at my head, though . . .
I’m pretty sure I’ve mended more hearts than I’ve broken. Since I’m not much for the serious long-term relationship, I don’t mind being the rebound girl. Fix 'em up, send 'em along, let the next one keep 'em.
I get bored after about 4 years. Even if a relationship is good, I find myself wondering whats around the corner. I have hurt a few women badly, but what options were there.
I had 2 break up with me . I did not like it much. How could they be so wrong?
Not proud to say it but…been the heartbreaker. Every single time. Once, both of our hearts were broken (his much worse than mine) but every other time I’ve been the heartbreaker. It’s never intentionally mean it’s just…I was never as into him as he was into me. Perhaps indifference is even worse.
One of the saddest things for me is not being able to be friends with my ex’s. Some of them are interesting and funny and I really pushed for being friends with them (after the dust settled), as in genuine friends not “facebook” friends, but…they all refused. I’ve since gotten over it, but I really used to lament just not being friends with them anymore.
It took me awhile to realize that it was self-centered of me, wanting to be friends when they had been hurt so much.
Heartbroken. 3-nil.
About even. If I believed in karma, I’d chalk it up to that.
I clicked the first one. I wouldn’t call myself a heartbreaker–that sounds like I dated a lot of guys and dumped them cruelly–but I’ve always been the one to do the breaking up. I’ve never been dumped. I’ve had plenty of unrequited crushes, though!
Heartbroken, but just once.
I broke a girls’ heart so hard once she turned to religion in order to cope–and is now a youth pastor as a result.
I’m not exaggerating.
(ETA: I wasn’t mean or anything… not intentionally so, anyway. I just didn’t think we were meant to be…)
I was going to say I was more often the heart-breaker, because the question immediately brought to mind the girls I wronged or just rejected. Then I thought "on the other hand, there was Lisa, who dumped me. Oh and Angela. Oh, and Heidi… " I guess I just got over those heartbreaks. In the end I voted for “six of one…”
I’m not sure, really. Most of my earlier relationships were pretty casual. Two guys definitely considered themselves heartbroken when we broke up (crying and asking me to change my mind), but they got over it pretty quickly (we’d only dated for a month). One guy I dated my freshman year - I was really broken up about him afterwards, but after a month I was fine.
I had a friend who declared he had a crush on me when were seniors in high school and persisted in asking me out all throughout college (although he was by no means a monk - he dated plenty of girls between periods of declaring his undying devotion to me). I liked him a great deal but I was never physically attracted to him. In the end I went on one date with him and then told him afterwards that the date had only made it clear to me that I could never see him as anything more than a friend. He signed up for mandatory army duty immediately afterwards and spent two years near the DMZ. Our friends used to joke that I’d driven him to it. After he returned things were fine between us.
My one serious relationship (before this one) ended up with both our hearts broken, I think.
So . . . overall, I feel like it’s pretty even.
I voted that I’d had my heart broken more often. I’ve had three long-term relationships end by having my heart broken (though, in this last instance, it was really obvious that it needed to end; she was braver than me in doing something about it). However, I’ve broken a few hearts over the years as well, all in the first week or two of a relationship. I was always taken aback at the emotions that would pour out, since in my mind, the relationships hadn’t progressed to anything meaningful yet, but… yow.
And Frylock, thanks for that link to the AV Club article. My ex and I had a special disdain for the type of character typified by Natalie Portman in Garden State, and now we’ll have a term to go with them.
I’ve had my heart broken once and I’ve broken three hearts. Of course, the girl that broke my heart moved away (after the breakup), then years later, after we had both matured a bit, moved back, we began dating again, and now we’re happily married.
Heh, I called my squeeze and told him my car was broken. Well, what with the bad connection he started blabbing on, off on this bizarre tangent about our relationship … yikes … silence from me … then …
“Um, did you say car or heart?” he says quietly.
I’m a bit of a Mr McGoo in the heart thing, so I answered heartbreaker.
I voted ‘six of one…’.
In my past, there are two (separate) women who I wanted to marry. They didn’t want to get married at the time, so they both broke it off with me, because I was ‘too serious’. There were also two women who wanted me to marry them but I broke it off because I didn’t want to get tied down to these (individual) women. So I guess I’m dead even at the “unlucky at love” category.
FTR: the two who didn’t want to marry me eventually married other guys. The two I wanted to marry are still single. Don’t know what that does to my karmic score.