I thought long and hard about an apt but cutesy metaphor for the hard work of dismantling what went wrong in a relationship. Baking a cake? Hm no. Building a house? I have no idea how that even works, no. 

Try as I might, I kept coming back to the stomach-churning idea of an autopsy. 

An autopsy—the act of cutting open a dead body to gain clarity about what went wrong and even how to keep others from suffering similar fates—is not a pretty thing to imagine and that’s the point. I know I said in chapter one that icing a guy out was going to be the hardest thing we did here, but I was lying. 

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This chapter might actually be the hardest part. 

Some of you may relish the opportunity to finally gain some clarity on what went wrong and your role in it. Knowledge is power, after all. But for many many years of my life, that was not me. Nothing was ever my fault! What an extremely triggering idea. LIKE HOW FUCKING DARE YOU EVEN IMPLY THAT. 

I enjoyed my cozy little victim hood. It thought it made me interesting, vulnerable, other-worldly in my endless gothic misery. All it really made me was a huge buzzkill at brunch. And, a really annoying person to date. 

I found patterns repeating endlessly, broken hearts stacking up faster than I could process them. I never really got over anyone, I just met someone new then quickly added a new ex to the list, like some ghastly emotional Ponzi scheme: I forever needed new boys to distract me from the old boys. 

Finally, I hit the breaks. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired and decided to slice open my past romances and take a good hard look. 

If you’re buckling under the weight of so many failed romances, or maybe just one big one, this next video will give you steps to sort out exactly what went wrong, without feeling like the bad guy or the victim. 

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