It’s Called a Breakup Because it’s Broken: The Smart Girl’s Breakup Buddy by Greg Behrendt and Amiir

Let’s face it. Nobody wants to like this book. Nobody wants to benefit from it, “get it,” or be seen reading it in public, especially if they’re wearing sweatpants and haven’t showered in a couple of days. Nobody wants to admit that they, if not now, then at some point in their lives, might actually need to hear why it’s called a breakup. Furthermore, aside from its cloying title and touchy subject matter, can we, for a moment, judge this book by its cover? With its neon pink image of a ravaged pint of ice cream, from the outset it gives the impression that maybe no night of drinking wine, listening to top 40, and crying over lost love could be as pathetic as feeling compelled to reach out to The Smart Girl’s Breakup Buddy. That said, the book had me at the line, “in love with not getting what I want”. A two hundred-something page cheer for independence, self-respect, cutting losses, and not settling for anything less than we deserve, It’s Called a Breakup Because it’s Broken is, like any matter of the heart, an experience tempered by both pleasure and pain.

In this prequel (of sorts) to 2004’s successful He’s Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys, former Sex and the City writer Greg Behrendt returns with his (often less corny) wife to inform those readers who perhaps didn’t read his first book that, despite the months and years they put into relationships with him, that guy is still not into them. If his previous book nipped bad relationships in the bud by liberating women from the miserable pursuit of unrequited love, then in this second installment of brutally honest love advice, Behrendt goes back to tell those women who did turn a poor match into a relationship that his catchphrase is still applicable.

Unfortunately, Behrendt’s latest offers the same obnoxious bottom-line as the first: You may be a superfox, but all of us are desperate losers just dying for love and approval. The best we can do is put on some makeup, get out of the house, and try to pretend we’re not so desperate, because that’s the only way we’re going to fool the next guy into just being into us. The Behrendts count on the idea that their readers may not be sure whether or not they are hot stuff, pretty ladies, or superfoxes, but the one thing of which they are certain is that they just don’t want to be single.

In It’s Called a Breakup as in He’s Just Not That Into You, Behrendt encourages his readers to get out there and nab them some men, but to take care in the process, and not waste time on the wrong guys or imperfect relationships. Yes, if finding Mr. Right is our goal, then that advice is best taken, but really, do we need two books and a combined excess of 450 pages to get it?

It’s Called a Breakup begins with the authors’ qualifications; they take turns penning signed confessions of their own addictions to bad relationships and the point at which they hit rock bottom in each. Greg, with occasional interludes from witty and respectable Amiira, then devotes eight chapters to breakup don’ts along the lines of: Don’t wait for him to call. Don’t self-destruct. Don’t over-analyze. Don’t wallow, romanticize, or stalk. They follow with seven breakup dos or, “commandments”, in a breakover section: Do not talk to him. Do move on. And so forth.

Essentially, this is less a book and more of a worst case scenario survival guide plumped up with confessionals, workbook or journaling suggestions, case studies, commentaries and an excess of the write-in cries for help with response that some may remember from the previous book. Some of the extras work better than others. Readers, for instance, can relate to and laugh at the short scripted scenes set between chapters in the first section. The “awesome thought” sections are not so awesome at best and irritatingly condescending in general. The “Psycho Confessionals” and “You Thought Your Breakup Was Bad” sections offer voyeuristic appeal, and while this book targets heterosexual, working-class, twenty and thirty-something women, we can all appreciate when it throws a bone to brokenhearted men in a brief “Tough Guy’s Breakup Buddy” section towards the end.

Readers must be aware, too, that there is a fine line between funny-cute and cute-annoying. This book, like almost any personal growth/advice guide targeted to this gender, age, and class specific audience flails and slips over that line at times like a high-heeled woman in despair after one too many pinot grigios. Yes, it can be that clichéd. After all, self-help aside, it can be classified as chick lit — the prom queen of clichés and a genre in which the books neither say nor do anything particularly new, but keeps getting published.

Standard though they are, the Behrendts’ stories and advice can also be charming and uplifting, and just what the doctor ordered. If your relationship is not a mess, you are happily unattached, and have never drunk dialed, stalked, cried over, or otherwise obsessed over an ex, you may find the book annoying. If you have, well, it might just make you fall to your knees and thank the ice cream gods it was written. The fact is that most people — men and women — fall into the latter category, even if the last time we had the energy to pursue heartbreak with such self-destructive conviction was in high school. For us, this book is a voice in the darkness telling us what we already know, but holding our hand while it does.