Why Drunk Dialing is Always a Bad Idea or "Sure. If you want to be a psycho, go right ahead."

“Don’t call him.”

“I’m not going to!”

“Don’t text him.”

“I do not plan on it.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I!”

Two days later . . .

“I called him.”

“I knew it.”

The preceding exchange is one that has played out several times in my life. Although I’ve been on both sides of the dialogue. I’ve been the one harping my girlfriend NOT to call that jerk again. And, I’ve been the one being coached into silent power post-heartbreak.

Like warriors in battle, we hold each other up and cheer each other on.

I honestly have to say, I am pretty good at the letting go. I’m forever the romantic so the writer in me has a pretty consistent pattern that includes at least one obligatory and well written “woe is me email” a day or two after a breakup. But after that, I can pretty much put that puppy to bed and get on with my life, self-respect intact. Besides, I’ve tried the “pining and “groveling” hats on and they just aren’t flattering. I look much better in “independent” and “good bye loser.”

Some of my other friends? Yeah, they wrote the book on drunk dialing your dignity away. And I am talking about women pushing fifty. Seriously.

But the need to be loved is eternal and doesn’t expire when menopause hits.

Just this past weekend a good friend ended a long term relationship. And then. She proceeded to get.

What else? Completely smashed.

“Sharon,” one of the women in our post-break up platoon ordered her at the end of the night, “Now don’t call Brad. If you do . . . I am going to cut off . . . your left labia.”

After I finally quit laughing hysterically, I soberly underscore, “Now that is a pretty serious threat, Sharon.” And point out the logical consequence, “because what is your next boyfriend going to say?”

I deepen my voice and clear my throat. “So Sharon. I see you’re missing your left labia?”

“Ah yes,” I raise my voice a couple octaves and do my best Sharon impression, “the result of an unfortunate drunk dial late last year.”

Awkward.

My friends and I collapse into girlish giggles, but the point is that silence is serious. It’s no laughing matter.

When a guy is being a terd, I don’t care how terrific he was last Tuesday or how wonderful he was last week. The now is what matters. And if now he is more absent than a classroom of second graders with the swine flu then just let him be. Good gawd.

Don’t call him.

Don’t text him.

Don’t send him a smoke signal.

Silence is power.

Breaking it.

Is psycho.

Because you know what? If his idiot attack is temporary?

Then he’ll come back on his own terms.

And if he does.

Do you really want to have to explain . . .

. . . how you lost your left labia?

I didn’t think so.