What is in a breakup style? Perhaps the better question is what’s not in a breakup style? There is pathos, there is bathos, tragedy, comedy, all of it. There is the cringe and the creepy, the corny and the clipped. Splits are difficult and usually more than a little sad, and not something to be ridiculed mercilessly. But sometimes they are funny because they are true, and by true I mean familiar.
Brad Pitt is the “sculpt for hours at an artist friend’s studio in Frogtown” type. Jason Sudeikis is the “wear a tie-dye hoodie to the function” type. Alex Rodriguez is the “don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened” type. Just before he released a joint statement with Jennifer Lopez to Today announcing their broken engagement, he posted a video with a framed photo? Of his name and Jennifer’s? Drawn in the sand? With a heart around it? Among other framed photographs of their time together? With Coldplay’s “Fix You” playing gently in the background? It stayed up long after the announcement.
This breakup statement is the final curtain on a long breakup. There was a month in which there was a flight to the Dominican Republic and countless quotes from anonymous sources as the couple claimed they were “working through some things.” It follows a drama in which Rodriguez liked pictures of one of the stars of the reality show Southern Charm and also there were rumors.
I once marveled at Rodriguez’s extraordinary come-up from being an MLB villain to one half of a couple with J.Lo, a couple that hangs out with Michelle Obama and Barack Obama. The former president and his wife even sent them a congratulatory note on the occasion of their engagement. Rodriguez thanked them by posting the note to Twitter. I wrote then, “Rodriguez spoke of ‘rehabbing himself’ in a cover story for this magazine, and, I think, with this new development, his rehabilitation is complete. I know we’re never done, and the big guy’s working on all of us, but, I don’t know, seems like Rodriguez is done!”
Reader, I was wrong. I can admit it! He’s not done yet. The lesson here is that nobody is ever done. We’re all just walking around rare to medium rare. Especially Alex Rodriguez, who handles public breakups in his own strange, Instagram-forward way. As one colleague put it, once an Instagram boyfriend, always an Instagram boyfriend.
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