Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment

I'm experiencing some confusion over the issue of break-ups.

I don't wish to go into details of my most recent break-up as it is still rather fresh and I'm still, frankly, slightly drunk.

But you see, this is what bothers me. Every time - EVERY TIME - I've broken up with someone and it's been at their behest, they always tell me what a great guy I am and how wonderful I've been shortly before tearing my heart out, squeezing it slowly in their gnarled fist and allowing my blood to run down their elbow like kebab grease. I'm unsure as to how this whole thing really works. It usually goes something like this:

"Look Dan, you're a really nice guy, you're interesting and hilarious and a fantastic lover and I want to travel with you to Venice and sip outrageously expensive sanguineous wines under a peach sunset whilst gazing into your steely-blue eyes and imagining us in ten years time, married, with our two beautiful, flaxen-haired, apple-cheeked children entertaining us with a cello recital in the music room of our palatial mansion on the Surrey border. Having said that, I don't want to ever speak to you again. If you died tomorrow, I would barely notice. And if you attempt to contact me in any way, I will call the police and have you shot in the face. Now leave before I start screaming."

Why can't people be honest? Why the lies and subterfuge?

Isn't it strange that these people who are 'really not ready for a relationship at the moment' seem to get over it at frightening speed and find themselves mere minutes later inan intense and lurid sexual bond with a bouncer called Dave who has no neck to speak of and regularly shaves his forehead?
Or the ones who claim that they 'need some space' to deal with their personal issues. Invariably, the addressing of these issues then involves going to clubs every night of the week until 2 a.m. and, variously, dancing, smooching and sleeping with a procession of sparkly-shirted neanderthals whose idea of foreplay is to smash a glass onto their own head, grin and vomit noisily into the corner, wiping the bile from their chins with a balled-up chip wrapper.

The one thing that I'm starting to learn is - never, ever get involved with someone.
You WILL end up getting hurt.
You WILL end up drinking too much.
You WILL end up downloading way too much pornography.
And, finally, when the pain is a dull, non-specific ache somewhere in your chest, you WILL start chatting to someone in a pub and the whole horrible, pathetic, ultimately disappointing cycle will start again.

Remember: Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment. Don't be taken in.