Breaking up is never easy but, by doing it while on vacation, you can dramatically reduce the collateral damage to the rest of your life.

Every romantic relationship is beautiful in its own way and, surely, if there is any purpose to life it is to immerse ourselves deeply in rhythms, perspective and love of another human being. But, then, inevitably comes the morning when you wake, stare at the ceiling and realize that you, for sure, have allowed this one to go on a little bit too long.

Dumping someone is never easy. It is a bit like shooting someone: in theory you can do it but it can surprisingly difficult to bring yourself to actually pull the trigger.

One of the good things about shooting someone is that, after you have managed to pull the trigger and successfully shot the person (remember: always double-tap!), you probably won’t have to endure any awkward conversations with them. In that sense, breaking up is far worse: once you finally managed to stumble your way round to “I’m leaving you”, she doesn’t then conveniently disappear in a puff of smoke. No, not at all, at that point, your nightmare is only beginning.

It doesn’t matter how intertwined your lives are, or how many friends you share, the minute you press that button you are setting off a chain reaction which, at worst, will tear apart your life and, at best – and I mean at the VERY best – will mean having to sit through several days of deeply uncomfortable conversations.

They say that you never really know someone until you break up with them. That sweet, gentle woman who you spent over a year wanting to break up with but couldn’t bear to hurt, as soon as your utter those 3 magic words, there is a fair chance she will turn out to have actually been a demon bitch from Hell all along.

You were perhaps hoping that breaking up would involve some shock, some gentle crying, a touch of desperate begging for you to change your mind but, finally, a smiling acceptance that you would both remain good friends. Decent chap that you are, you were TOTALLY up for hugging, kind facial expressions, sympathetic noises and trying your genuine best to make it easier for her … and then all your plans are blown apart by reality.

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth – Mike Tyson

No. As soon as you cross that line and actually state in cold, clear language that you and she are no longer an item, all the rules change and you are now her mortal enemy, her entire existence will now be dedicated to dropping flaming napalm over every aspect of your life: professional, social, financial … they will all be considered legitimate targets.

Yes, there is nothing fair about this, you never realized what you were signing up to, you don’t even remember when you went from “just dating” to “couple”, but there is no point wasting your energy on whining: you are about to enter a world of shit and your only hope is to use every brain cell and every ounce of ingenuity to lessen the damage to your life.

I am about to share with you one of the most effective methods for absorbing the worst of the initial blast. For obvious reasons, this technique has mainly been pioneered by the rich but, with the related costs dropping all the time, this approach is now without reach of even regular guys: dump her while you are both abroad, preferably on a nice romantic weekend.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but it makes sense when you consider the following:

1. The fact that you organized a romantic trip suggests that your decision to break up is sudden, not something you have been planning for months. The worst thing about being dumped is that you have to think back through all that has happened in your past together and wonder if any of it was sincere.
2. She is less likely to go completely wild if in an unfamiliar environment. Yes, of course, she will still be furious, but is likely to be less filled with ruthlessly confident scorn if in strange surroundings.
3. Even if there are tons of people around when she spends two hours screaming about what a shit-bag you are, it doesn’t matter: you don’t know any of these people, you will never see any of them again
4. She is less likely, on a sudden impulse, to stab you to death if it means having to deal with foreign police afterwards: she won’t even be able to properly tell the police what a bastard you were if they don’t speak English natively.
5. You can arrange for your friends to move all your stuff out while you are away. No awkward carrying out boxes while she stands there, staring daggers at you!
6. She can spend the entire weekend unleashing all the bile she wants but will have to pull herself together and be a normal human again for at least a few hours if she wants to be able to board the plane home. Sure, she can start up again once she gets back but, by then, she is unlikely to be able to work up to the same momentum of rage again.
7. Even before you go, you can skillfully plant seeds that will make her more reliant on you while abroad and, therefore, less likely to give you quite such a hard time. For instance, if you are going to Paris, in the days before you go, confide in her that you are worried because you read some articles about how the immigrants in that city can be quite dangerous and often target couples who are arguing because they are distracted. The great thing is that Paris is absolutely teeming with immigrants, so, when out and about, you’ll rarely be in a situation where you cannot respond to her starting an argument by simply saying “Honey, that guy, I think he is watching us! We should take about this later.”
8. You can easily change your tickets online so that you don’t have to sit together on the plane home, or you can even catch a later plane home, but there is a good chance she is one of the surprisingly high number of people who hate traveling alone, especially on airplanes, so, needing you for that may be another factor moderating her viciousness towards you.
9. All her friends and all of your mutual friends will, of course, be told the worst possible version of events but, crucially, they will be hearing it at least a few days after the actual event, draining the immediacy out of it. That gives more room for people to think about what they are hearing and to consider the fact, which everyone knows, that trips away can often be stressful and expose the weaknesses in a relationship. That lends more credibility to the idea that the breakup was a genuine, organic, unplanned event – after all, you are the nice chap who went to all this effort to give his woman a romantic weekend away, how could you have known that this would happen?
10. When anyone asks you what happened, honorably refuse to speak ill of her and simply say “I should never have brought her to that damn city!”. They will all, of course, presume that she fucked a waiter.

So, those are the basics of this methodology. You can, of course, take it even further and apply more advanced techniques, such as deliberately picking a city where she almost certainly will end up screwing a local guy; there is no doubt that it is easier to break up with a woman if, while you are doing it, she still has the taste of someone else’s sperm in her mouth. She will still hate you but it will be the far more manageable self-loathing form of hate.

If you want the low-down on the pluses and minuses of various destinations to break up in, be sure to read the next article in this series: Best and Worst Destinations to Dump your Girlfriend.