And while America is speedrunning that in real time, today we're talking about breakups.

Breakups, also known in this economy as finding new roommates, is when you're in a serious romantic relationship with a partner, and then say to yourself, "I don't want to be with this person anymore."

You then think, maybe a dog will fix this.

When that doesn't work, you then think, maybe a kid will fix this.

But I digress, I didn't mean to drag you into this.

Conventionally, a breakup occurs in five stages, so I thought I'd go through each one step by step so you can see where and if you're on that timeline.

Stage 1.

The first stage of a breakup is always the hardest, which is finding someone to date in the first place.

A reason why this stage is important is because the way that you get into a relationship in the first place can really determine your individual attitudes towards each other as it progresses.

For example, when a girl gets asked out and she says yes, she's thinking, "Wow, what a cool guy, I'm so happy, my life's going to be so much better."

But when a guy asks out a girl and she says yes, he's thinking, "Uh oh, she must be an idiot."

Stage 2.

Seeing red flags in the relationship.

Now if you're watching this and think you're in a good relationship right now, it might be a good idea to check for signs that it's heading south before it actually gets there.

So I decided to browse Relationship Advice in order to become an expert on the topic so I can share some examples of more subtle red flags you might not pick up on and how you should respond.

Let's say you've been dating your girlfriend for 5 years and you live together.

One day she's at work and you walk into the living room and see a magazine open on the coffee table to a jewelry ad.

You look closer and see a couple engagement rings that are circled and one in particular with love hearts around it.

How should you respond?

Exactly, she's obviously never mentioned it but she's clearly cheating on you with her husband.

So best to break up and tell her that you're moving on.

Let's say you've been on a few dates with a girl and you feel you have great chemistry.

While you're creeping her socials as usual, suddenly she texts you, "Hey, I miss you. Can we hang out again soon?"

Now this is of course a great sign but you don't want to seem too needy.

So set a timer for one hour so you can respond at exactly the right time.

After that, a few minutes go by and then she sends you a message on Instagram.

It's a picture of her in the hospital, kissing a bald guy on the cheek with the caption "Me with my stepbrother."

How should you respond?

Exactly, I know Johnny Sins when I see him. Best await the remaining 56 minutes, break up and tell her that you're moving on.

Let's say you're overseas from your partner and have been in a relationship as long as you can remember but are currently having a big fight about the joint vision of your future.

You want to pursue a more down-to-earth existence on your farm, selling hemp and cotton clothing you've grown yourself.

But they're reaching their financial peak and want to experience the luxuries of life.

You message them that you want to end the relationship but they respond, "To do what? To run your stupid little farm?

I'm the one making all the money. How do you plan on being able to afford to do that without me subsidizing you?"

How should you respond?

Exactly, you've already figured out a great way to keep labor costs down.

Best to just declare independence and tell them you're moving on.

Stage three, the breakup.

While breakups aren't fun for anyone, men in particular don't usually take rejection very well.

Whether it's from girls, election results or especially art school.

This is because if you're a girl and your female friend goes through a breakup, the game plan is clear.

She'll text, "We broke up," to the group chat, then you all get together immediately, have a few bottles of wine, talk some shit about their ex, tell your friend she deserves better, and then have a pillow fight or something.

For guys, the game plan is much more simple.

He'll text the group chat, "Just a heads up, me and Katie broke up."

You then reply, "Damn, that fucking sucks dude, you good?"

He'll then say, "Yeah, I'm all right."

And your job is done.

What else could you possibly do?

Now, regardless of whether you're a guy or a girl, whenever you're about to break up with someone, it's likely you'll start second guessing your intuition and it would be worth it if you replaced them.

So you have to ask yourself the most important question to see if you should go through with it: Who's going to pay the other half of the rent?

While boomers and Gen X often complain that if you live with someone and break up, they get half your net worth.

This of course isn't a problem for Gen Z or millennials because half of a negative number is pure profit.

The real pain of course is losing custody of the houseplants.

Similarly, one of the worst situations to be in when you're going through a breakup is when you have kids.

This is the worst case scenario because not only is someone breaking up with you, but you also have kids.

At some point, you really have to start wondering how you keep fucking up over and over again.

Stage four, getting over it.

Whenever you go through a breakup, the most important thing is to not wallow in your own misery.

You should only do that if your ex finds someone new in two weeks and they're exactly the same as you, but hotter.

Now, one of the critical steps of getting over a breakup is thinking about how your own attitudes and behaviors contributed to the relationship falling apart and what you could do better next time.

If you ask a girl what would prevent another bad breakup happening to them, they might say,

"I should be more attentive and affectionate and maybe communicate my thoughts more openly instead of expecting my partner to know and make sure I don't make them prioritize my feelings at the expense of theirs."

To men, self-reflection is of course way too complicated as we like to have simple concrete steps rather than vague hypotheticals,

which is why if you ask a guy what would prevent another bad breakup happening to them, the answer is a simple two-step process.

Bench three plates, Bugatti Chiron.

After stage four, we of course have stage four.

Now, they say that one of the best ways to get over someone is to get under someone else, but when you've just gone through a breakup, it's likely been a while since you've been dating,

and you might think, "Well, I think I'm a seven, so that's what I'm looking for," and then someone else will say, "I think you're a five."

Now, in the dating market, this is called a bid-ask-spread and is essential to establish right away so you can see approximately what type of person is in your league.

This is why when I get back on Tinder after a breakup, the first thing I do is set the radius to maximum, but you can pick any size of girl you want.

Now, if you've only recently started dating again, the first thing you'll notice is how the dating meta has completely changed.

If you're a girl, the first thing you're going to be thinking is, "What the fuck is a riz?"

And if you're a guy, you're going to be asking yourself, "Why does every girl I match with keep sending me links to viruses?"

The good news is that even though you might still be hurt by your fallen relationship, through the learn from your mistakes and won't have to do it all again.

Stage five, do it all again.

From this point, you simply repeat the process until you accidentally have a child, or you run out of money, or you try a polyamorous relationship until they go exclusive and you're the third wheel, or you get back with your ex and make it work because you overestimated your other options,

or you realize that you can't say you don't like broccoli if you've never tried it, so you add grinder to the rotation.

Now, one of the worst feelings I've had going through a breakup was when they said, "But are you sure? Do you do you really want to get rid of everything we've done together?

I mean, I mean, maybe you could just keep me around and use me when you want to."

And as much as it hurts to hear that, Microsoft Edge really sucked at the time.

And I never thought I'd have to do that to someone again until I found today's sponsor, the Opera One web browser.

One of the best features on Opera One is their ARIA AI Assistant.

You can see I asked it the classic relationship tester, "Would you still love me if I was a worm?"

And it answered it perfectly.

That made me happy and fulfilled.

I did, however, feel slightly bad for waking up at 4am to ask it this question.

If you tried and didn't get the relationship advice you wanted, you can also add ChatGPT natively to the sidebar and date that instead.

In terms of performance, Opera is an extremely light web browser.

Here I have Opera open with five tabs of my own YouTube videos playing.

And here I have Chrome open with five tabs of my own YouTube videos playing.

Another classic situation we've all found ourselves in.

Even though it uses its built-in ad blocker to Opera uses about 30% less RAM, meaning it frees up resources for multitasking or gaming.

And if you work in media or online content like me, it can be a lifesaver, as I'm able to preview a video in Adobe Premiere for more than an extra minute before the whole program crashes anyway.

If you'd like to give it a try, Opera One is completely free and the download link is in the description below.

Okay, imagine you and your wife are 90 years old and are both lying in hospital beds next to each other near the end of your life after being married for 60 years.

You're both holding hands and you feel her pulse begin to slow.

She squeezes your hand with all her remaining strength, tilts her head and says, "I'm moving on. Goodbye."

And her heart rate flatlines.

How should you respond?

Exactly.

Hose these days, man, you can't just break up with someone and then die.

Get back up, beat cancer, redownload Tinder and slap the nurse's ass on the way out.

She's clearly going to hell.