The Bachelor breakup tips: How Blake could have let Sam down gently

LISTEN UP, Blake Garvey - and all you other potential Bachelors or Bachelorettes. This is how you are supposed to deal with the delicate task of breaking someone’s heart.

LISTEN UP, Blake Garvey (and all you other potential Bachelors or Bachelorettes): this is how you break up with someone.

No, there’s no perfect way to do it, but there are far better tactics than those allegedly used by Australia’s former most eligible man.

MORE: Sam says Blake was ‘cowardly’ in breakup

MORE: What will Sam do with her ring?

The fallen reality TV hero apparently became distant with fiancee Sam Frost, and then waffled and dodged the issue until she forced him to get to the point.

The country’s biggest charmer really couldn’t have gone more wrong.

Even now, his jilted ex says she’s not precisely sure why they broke up, or why he proposed in the first place.

What Sam is describing is something we all recognise: a textbook Coward’s Breakup.

It’s one of many unsatisfactory breakup techniques employed by both men and women.

It’s never nice to have the relationship rug yoinked from under your feet, but it’s always preferable that your partner have the scrotal fortitude to give it to you straight (or gay, I don’t judge).

Blake and Sam’s love very quickly turned to animosity.

One might think that respect for the feelings of others should leave no need for a strict etiquette, but as someone who has broken up with one person the day before New Year’s Eve and another via an interstate phone call they were paying for, I can’t lay any claims to consistency.

Still, despite my imperfect track record, I’ve cobbled together a list of rules.

Here are the best and worst ways to ride the see-ya-later scooter to Splitsville.

Blake became quiet and distant, said former fiancee Sam.

DO: be honest. But not completely honest. If you’ve fallen out of love with the person, tell them you’ve fallen out of love with them.

It’ll hurt, but it’s much better than dishing out wishy-washy codswallop like “I feel we’re on different paths”, “I don’t think our Venn diagram overlaps enough”, or “I’ve walked a mile in your shoes and now I have blisters and foot odour”.

But don’t go too far. Phrases like “Your band sucks and you have a flatulence problem” or “I fantasise about burritos while we’re making love” are a little too honest.

Find the middle ground and, if necessary, either a psychologist or a Mexican restaurant for that burrito thing.

A humiliated Sam said she had to force the words out of The Bachelor.

DON’T: leave it too long. Rip it off like a Band-Aid, or something else quick and marginally less disgusting.

There are few things more soul-destroying, humiliating and confusing than not knowing what’s going on in a relationship.

Imagine going to the doctor to ask about constant headaches, and the doctor saying, look, it’s probably nothing, he’s just going through a weird thing where he’s not diagnosing stuff right now. Now you have headaches AND you feel like an idiot.

If the doctor kept saying that over and over, you’d be pretty sure that something was wrong, but you wouldn’t want to come across as paranoid or needy. Just tell them it’s not working, much as this doctor analogy isn’t.

The reality TV couple in happier times, during an on-screen date.

DO: break up in person. Maybe. While it shows some degree of effort and respect to break up with someone in person, it’s really, really hard, especially if you’re used to communicating via text messages, wordless physical contact and disgusting Snapchats.

It’s also a problem figuring out where to do it — if it’s in a restaurant, do you break up with them and then split the bill? If you’re at a bar, can you finish your drink AND your pretzels? Do you break up before or after bungy-jumping if you’ve already paid for it?

If you express yourself better with the written word, there’s a chance you’ll be much clearer and gentler in an email, which is borderline acceptable.

Avoid breaking up with people via text message, though. At least until they come up with a really good emoticon for it.

Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw was famously broken up with by post-it note.

DON’T: do it on holiday. Unless you want to completely ruin Port Douglas for someone, or enjoy sitting in awkward, moist-eyed silence for three days straight next to someone who will forever associate that particular sarong with heartbreak.

DO: avail yourself of cliches. Cliches are great because they help you express whole paragraphs in a single, recognisable phrase. “It’s not you, it’s me” is a classic for a good reason — it makes people feel a bit better about the fact that they’ve just been brutally binned.

Similarly, using “I hope we can still be friends” helps your soon-to-be ex-partner know that you are a massive, weak liar.

Nope, Carrie didn’t take it well either.

DON’T: Propose a few weeks before. Use a flash-mob. Write it in icing on a cake. Demonstrate with puppets. Introduce someone else as your partner’s “successor”. Watch Titanic together and then say “hey, you know how there wasn’t room for two of them on that raft?”. Write “YOU’RE DUMPED” in crayon on their bedroom wall. Point at your genitalia and shake your head. Be mean.

If you haven’t got it yet Blake (we know you’re reading this for tips), treat others as you would like to be treated. Nobody likes being broken up with, but basic human decency goes a fair way towards preventing your ex keying your car or setting fire to things like your couch or hair.

Mind you, I hope people I don’t know keep having bad breakups. Those stories are hilarious.