In his column, Bad Advice, writer Collin Preciado will be giving you the worst advice you’ve ever heard.
Dear Collin,
My girlfriend and I have been together for 14 years, but I’m looking to call it quits. I’ve been very honest with her this whole time that I don’t want to start a family with her as she’s not really someone I want to have kids with. She said she wanted kids, but she likes to party pretty much every night and is not really mom material. Even if I did suddenly decide I wanted to have kids with her, she’s now past the age in which it seems wise to do so, so I really need to get out of this relationship for good so I can get on with starting my own family before I become too old myself. I’ve tried to give her lots of hints that it’s over by having her move all her stuff back into her apartment and changing the locks at my place so she can’t get in unless I’m at home. I’ve tried to initiate the break-up talk but by the time the conversation is over it doesn’t seem like we’re actually broken up. What’s the most effective way to get the point across to her that it’s over?
Sincerely,
Almost Single
Dear Almost Single,
Thank you so much for writing to me with your dilemma. As you know, this advice column is a safe space for any and all questions, and any problems submitted to me will be considered thoughtfully and without any judgment whatsoever.
With that being said, please know that you’re a horrible person. You’ve sat on the best years of this woman’s life and have potentially wasted her chance at starting a family of her own because you’re a selfish monster who lacks basic empathy and effective communication skills. If you were capable of starting a family in the past 14 years you would have already done so, but you didn’t and you almost certainly never will. I hope the rest of your life is filled with pain, misery and profound loneliness.
Now as far as your problem goes, I’m happy to help you solve this predicament. You really only have one option when it comes to cutting off the only person who will probably ever be capable of enduring you. You can’t break up with her in the normal way as you will rightfully just end up being an outcast among every single person you know. Your friends (if you have any, which is doubtful) and everyone they know will be as aware as I am of how selfish and idiotic you are for dumping this woman after wasting a decade and a half of her time, and they’ll never want to have anything to do with you ever again, so really your only move here is to fake your own death and start over in a completely different country where you will have no chance of ever being recognized.
I’ve found the best way to fake your own death is to make it appear like you’ve drowned. Last year, a guy in Wisconsin (allegedly) tried this approach when he decided he wanted to move to Uzbekistan to be with his internet girlfriend (who may or may not have actually ever existed). Surprisingly, this man is a bigger dong than you are because he had a wife and three kids that he was trying to abandon, and he almost had a near-perfect plan to do so. He paddled out to the middle of a lake, capsized his kayak, left his wallet and phone nearby so people would think he was dead in the water, and then took a bus to Canada, where he flew off on an airplane to Eastern Europe where I hope he found out he had been scammed.
The man almost got away with faking his own death, but he made a few mistakes that you’re not going to make. His biggest error was not fully wiping the evidence of his plan off his laptop and then leaving said laptop behind so the police could figure out exactly what he was doing. After searching his device, the police discovered he had moved a lot of money into a foreign account, possibly had a secret girlfriend overseas, and had purchased an airline gift card so he could buy a plane ticket he thought would be untraceable. Had he just destroyed his laptop, or even just brought it with him, his family likely would have been spared a ton of humiliation and also would have been the beneficiary of a nice life insurance payout. Instead, he ruined his life and is probably going to jail. While you should probably go to jail too for being such a massive loser, you can probably avoid this fate by just not leaving your laptop lying around.
As far as where you should start your new life over, you should probably move somewhere cold and miserable. Like Antarctica. Maybe you’ll be eaten by a polar bear. Good luck.
Send me your unsolvable problem at badadvice@citybeat.com. What’s the worst thing that could happen? I’ll be sure to let you know.
This story is featured in CityBeat’s March 5 print edition.
This article appears in Mar 5-18, 2025.
