From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is KCRW's program of stories and original documentaries, and on this episode, two stories

about romantic relationships and specifically two possible paths a romance can take.

Because the journey of love is full of good times and bad,

thrills and heartbreak,

and at the end of one possible path,

the happy path, is a wedding with all your friends and family drinking and dancing sending you off crossing their fingers and hoping for a marriage that sticks

But down another path the gloomy and dark path, is the breakup. No happy announcements,

no ceremony, no party, oh there may be drinking, but not so much dancing, mainly just

weeping, nausea, complaining to your friends and spending time by yourself in a foggy depression that can last months.

But this first story from producers Sharon Mashiki and Rachel Simone James

is about a couple that Sharon knew who set out to change all that. From

KCRW.com, it's unfictional.

Somewhere between 50 and 80% of every relationship I have ever been in has existed in the phase I call

TTPU trying to break up. TTPU officially starts the first time someone in the

relationship says it's over and that initial

announcement is just the beginning of a very long and excruciating process. I'm so

used to a breakup taking twice as long as the actual relationship that I submit wholeheartedly

to the suffering.

And once you're stuck in this place, still bound but trying to break free, You can't help but wonder what

intarnation is going on. To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not

love, but then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love

...