breaking up is very hard to do

Wow. This extraordinary piece by Andrew Cohen is a verbal car crash unfolding in slow motion - horrifying and transfixing. I'll let its author explain:

The great love of my life marries today and I am not the groom. I had my chance, a few years ago, but did not realize until too late how fleeting my moment with her was meant to be....The present I humbly send her today is this column; this public note, this irrevocable display of affection and support and gratitude; this worldly absolution from any guilt or sadness she felt between the time she said no to me and the time she said yes to him. No one ought to have to carry that with them into a marriage. I showered her with as much love as I could muster when we were together. I still love her and always will. So I am only too happy to offer my toast to her now, one more time, before she takes her vows.

What a lucky, lucky lady to have an ex-boyfriend like Andrew.

You may be wondering if this is a spoof, and it does read like something from The Onion. But it's not. It's all too sincere. It's one part broken heart, two parts therapy, three parts self-obsession, and seventy-eight thousand parts stupid. I haven't seen such a display of undigested psychic angst since watching England play Algeria.

I want to thank her for-- it's now such a cliché that I'm almost embarrassed to write it -- making me want to be a better man.

Almost embarrassed? Almost? Oh Jesus, you don't know the meaning of embarrassment. (His editor, however, should know better. Or perhaps he/she did, and hates him.) My favourite line in the whole piece is here:

I want to live on a farm one day, a farm filled with horses and wireless connections where I can write.

See? Dreamily romantic and practical.This bit screams: DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU'LL BE MISSING NOW YOU'VE MARRIED YOUR FRICKING SOULLESS EMPTY SUIT OF A BOYFRIEND? NOT THAT I'M INCAPABLE OF INSTALLING BROADBAND.

Actually, we don't learn anything about the new boyfriend/husband, or - more tellingly - the ex-girlfriend. The writer Lizzie Skurnick has written a very sharp and funny rejoinder, for the same publication:

A kinder colleague than I suggested that his column was the equivalent of Dustin Hoffman, in "The Graduate," running into the church to yell, "Elaine!" I humbly submit that his wedding day appreciation is in fact the equivalent of Andrew Cohen running into the church and yelling, "Andrew!"