It started rolling around in my head for first time in years, as I was reading this sad tale of a man wrestling with his gut reaction to his girlfriend’s actions during a 'break’. I imagined her cheerfully singing this tune to her man as she skips off to find an enticing stick to snack upon. I imagined her continuing to sing, reaching ‘break me off a piece of that’ as she gives bedroom eyes to the tingle-inducing guy about to benefit from her new-found freedom. And I imagined her continuing her cheerful little song with eyes rolled ‘gimme a break’ when confronted with her boyfriend’s rightfully negative reaction to her fling.

The story itself is nothing new. Guy meets girl, girl gets bored, girl needs to Find Herself™ but, doesn’t want to remove the hook and throw back her sure catch. So she does the completely reasonable, socially acceptable thing and asks for a ‘break’ in their relationship. It isn’t until this ‘break’ is over that the guy discovers they had completely different concepts of what this ‘break’ entailed.

Likely, he didn’t get into specifics and assumed she was operating on the common narrative that a ‘break’ was for each party to have time apart, be introspective about their relationship and, without the immediate pressure of the others presence, come to conclusion as to whether the relationship should move forward. He had no way of knowing that this tactic was meant to allow her hypergamy an opportunity to run wild without fearing consequences.

There are some minor rays of hope but, the community response is, overwhelmingly, attempting to help him come to terms with his insecurity and other ‘issues’ so that he can fall back into his ‘loving relationship’. Not a single person questions if her actions were appropriate. The common tropes trotted out include ‘She came back to(chose) YOU’ and ‘sex is not the same as love’ or the ever popular ‘it's her life and she's free to do whatever she likes’. Even more disheartening is how well programmed this man is. Despite the massive amount of dissonance his brain is throwing at him, he strives to reassure everyone that this is obviously his issue that he needs help getting over.

Yeah, full of rational adults. Give me a fucking break dude.