No hard feelings.

If you’ve never had your heart broken, you should really try it sometime. A broken heart builds character, inculcates experience and is the best thing in the world if you like to binge endlessly on ice cream and cookies.

Here’s how to get one, in 5 easy steps:

Step 1: Expose yourself. Don’t hold anything back. Share your innermost thoughts, feelings and desires (the more neurotic, the better!) with someone equally sensitive, and don’t leave out any details. Tell them about all the times you felt most vulnerable (pro tip: everybody’s scared!) and don’t forget to share a lot of childhood memories because that shit is fucking killer.

Step 2: Shut up and listen. Listen to their stories. Listen to their jokes about siblings and complaints about the idiot they sit next to at work. Listen to the way they talk about their wonderful children and their not-so-wonderful parents, as well as their ex-holes and sundry friends. Listen to how the pitch of their voice changes when they share how they’ve been hurt in the past. Listen to their eyes. The slightly tricky part here is that you have to do all of this listening stuff with your heart.

Step 3: Tell the truth. Specifically about how great they are. Start off with how much you adore them because you don’t want to freak anyone out with the L word early on. Tell them how beautiful/smart/funny/sexy/cute/vulnerable/quirky/kind/adorable/honest/whatever else they are, and just keep telling them! Don’t worry, you really can’t say it too much because it comes straight from your heart and it’s almost impossible to shut that stupid motherfucker up. And it doesn’t matter if they don’t say these things back to you right away. Some people take more time expressing their feelings than others. It’s not always like it is in the movies (pro tip 2: watch a romantic movie together!) where two people fall head-over-heels in love before you’ve even finished your popcorn. Sometimes you have to wait for the closing credits.

Step 4: Open your eyes. This one is particularly important, so pay close attention. It’s about you seeing them for who they really are, and how that touches a place in your heart that has never been touched before, and how you can’t really explain it any more than that. And how it also frees you to be who you really are because you feel safe like you’re home and accepted by this person – you feel whole – and you know in your heart and bones that now that you’ve found this special someone, you will never let her go…

Step 5: Until she dumps you. One small piece of advice here: When it comes to love, never talk about how your luck is changing.