Culture April 12, 2024

ONE OF THE WORST THINGS ABOUT BREAKUPS—aside, obviously, from the heartbreak and the acrimony, the division of belongings, and the general sense of loss—is their ability to make even nominally normal people behave like abnormal people, by which I mean writers. Few other situations lend themselves quite so definitively to casting ourselves in the lead role in our own personal drama. Minor coincidences become dazzling signs and wonders, or dark omens; lovelorn anecdotes are streamlined in the telling, edited and punched up as if we were not merely recounting them to our uninterested friends, but preparing them for future publication.