"Cereal Heartbreak: Love Over Breakfast"

 Never trust calm conversations over coffee...

Dear Readers,

The words lingered in the air like a bad smell, the kind you can’t pinpoint but know is coming from somewhere serious. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard, though, deep down, part of me had been bracing for it like waiting for a leaky faucet to finally give up and flood the kitchen.

Sarah’s voice was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that either meant a relationship-ending conversation or someone had taken all the cookies without asking. And since the cookie jar was still intact, the writing was on the wall.

“I don’t love you,” she said again, this time with the precision of someone filing their taxes.

I blinked. my spoon, still loaded with soggy cereal, hovered mid-air. Was this really happening? Over breakfast? With soggy cereal? Surely, there was a more romantic time to destroy a man’s soul like during a candlelit dinner or at least after dessert.

The way Sarah said it was almost…professional. There was no anger, no tears just a calm, clinical efficiency, like she was breaking up with a phone contract, not a person. I could almost hear the imaginary hold music playing in the background.

For a moment, the room dissolved, and I found myself transported back through the greatest hits of their relationship. The way they used to toss "I love you" around like confetti: over text, mid-conversation, or right before falling asleep.

I remembered their early days, how "I love you" had been an all-access pass to laughter, hope, and the occasional awkward karaoke duet. Now, it was a relic of a simpler time, like flip phones or Sarah’s old obsession with scented candles.

But then the flashbacks turned sour. The long silences, the unanswered texts, the way she once asked, “Do you even know how to fold a fitted sheet?” as if that were a dealbreaker.

And now, here she was, saying “I don’t love you” with the same ease someone might use to ask for salt.

“When did we stop trying?” I asked, my voice breaking through the silence.

Sarah looked up from her coffee cup, her brow furrowing slightly like she hadn’t expected me to actually engage. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, when did we stop saying 'I love you'? When did it get so hard?”

Sarah sighed, a sound so weary it could have come with subtitles: You’re missing the point, J. “It’s not about stopping,” she said, stirring her coffee with unnecessary vigor. “It’s about realizing it’s just not there anymore. Why keep pretending?”

Her words hit me like a cold slap, and yet there was no anger in her tone just the detached resignation of someone returning a defective toaster.

“But we had something,” I insisted. “Ten years! You don’t just throw that away.”

She shrugged an infuriatingly casual gesture. “It’s not throwing it away. It’s…recycling. Giving myself another chance.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Recycling? Was their relationship now some kind of eco-friendly breakup initiative? Was she expecting me to compost my feelings, too?

I glanced at her, sitting there with her coffee cup, completely unbothered. It was clear she’d made her peace with this moment weeks ago. Meanwhile, I was still trying to figure out how I had gone from "soulmate" to "single" before I’d even finished my cereal.

As Sarah stood to leave, she delivered the ultimate kicker. “Don’t take this personally, J. It’s not like I stopped caring. I just…stopped loving you.”

“Right,” I muttered, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “And I’m sure you still care about the dishwasher too, but you never load that either.”

She paused her hand on the doorframe and shot him a look that could curdle milk. “Goodbye, J. Take care of yourself.”

And with that, she was gone.

The silence in the apartment was deafening. I sat at the table, staring at her abandoned coffee cup like it might hold the answers. Was it really over? Just like that?

I replayed the morning in my mind, trying to make sense of it. Was it the vacuum cleaner I’d given her for her birthday? The time I skipped Titanic night to watch football? Or was it simply the slow, painful erosion of effort?

As I sat there, the truth began to sink in. Love wasn’t just a word it was work. And while I’d been coasting, Sarah had been quietly checking out.

But I wasn’t ready to give up on love entirely. No, I’d learned an important lesson today: never trust calm conversations over coffee.

Because if love was a battlefield, then breakfast was where the sneak attacks happened.

God Bless Us All,

Jacob M