Let’s face it: Get­ting dumped blows. It’s painful, mis­er­able, and some­times even bor­ing, but every so often, it inspires some great pieces of art. In fact, read­ing through Things I’ve Learned from Women Who’ve Dumped Me, a col­lec­tion of essays about being dumped by some of the fun­ni­est and bit­ter­est men in the world, and edit­ed by Ben Kar­lin (an eight time emmy-win­ning writer and exec­u­tive pro­duc­er who worked on The Dai­ly Show and The Col­bert Report among his many cred­its), one might actu­al­ly think get­ting dumped is a good thing. From A.J. Jacob’s essay about get­ting over bad girls; to Andy Selsberg’s rela­tion­ship trou­bles (best response to being told you’re loved as a per­son: ​“If you absolute­ly have to love me as some­thing, love me as a [delet­ed]”); to Stephen Colbert’s essay, bril­liant­ly edit­ed by his wife; to Sam Lipsyte’s expla­na­tion of dump­ing, dump­ing may actu­al­ly emerge as a rather genius-mak­ing phe­nom­e­non. So after set­ting out to write this book review, dry­ing the tears of laugh­ter from the cor­ner of my eyes, hours lat­er I found myself sob­bing in the cor­ner, a bot­tle of Jack Daniel’s clutched in my left hand, cry­ing to myself, ​“please God, don’t make me end up like Ben Karlin.”