Many years ago I had a conversation with Evangeline about who usually does the breaking up with in our respective relationships. I had commented that I seemed to be in an A/B rotation. I’d end it with one and then the next would end it with me. This pattern continued a few cycles. I asked if she had any patterns like that. She said that few of hers ended that way.

“Which way?” I asked.

“Either way,” sne answered.

“If you don’t end it and he doesn’t end it, how does it end?”

“I’ve perfected the art of getting them to think that it was their idea,” she explained.

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I can’t remember how it started, but my coworker Pat and I were talking about things that are such a bad idea that you have to ask yourself “In the face of so many obvious ways that it could create problems down the line, how did they envision that this would turn out to be a good and positive thing?”

Some examples:
* Some white cops got national attention by letting a couple black youths get out of a littering charge by performing rapping about how littering is a bad thing.
* A recent article in the New York Times about Ivy League young men and women posing nude for college magazines.
* Girls Gone Wild
* A guy in charge of a juvenile correctional facility going to a pornography convention and posing for pictures with various adult film actresses.
* A congressman emailing and IMing lurid content to pages
* Getting a tattoo with the name of a romantic person you’ve just recently become involved with.

That last one spawned a conversation about tattoos. We figured that if you got a tattoo with a woman’s name on it (say “Maria”), if things didn’t work out the next person you dated not named Maria might have an issue with that and the next person that was named Maria would be creeped out if she thought you got a tattoo with her name on it by the first or second date.

That reminded me of How I Met Your Mother, which I’d just written a post on. In the first episode, Ted ruins his burgeoning relationship with Robin by professing his love for her on their first date. Barney, Ted’s misogynistic friend, begins using that as a way to get rid of young women the morning after. If you really wanted to take that to the next level, getting a temporary tattoo with that person’s name on it would be extremely effective at scaring them off. And, as with Evangeline, they would almost certainly believe that it was their idea and would never look back. You wouldn’t even have to worry about them wanting to be your friend cause they would either feel really guilty or really scared of you.

Genius, Pure genius.