Ah, breaking up. America’s favorite pastime. Whether your relationship ended abruptly, amicably or was “complicated” or “well we’re not together, but we’re still together” for way too long (cough EIGHT MONTHS cough) before it ended on horrible terms (totally hypothetical situation – definitely didn’t happen to me this weekend) breaking up fully blows.

But what if you could get back everything you gave? Well, monetarily at least.

Thanks to OutOfYourLife.com, women suffering from breaking-off-the-engagement can send back their rings when the douchebag peaces out and get back some serious cashola. Is there any better way to get over a breakup than to get a giant check in the mail? I think not.

But what about for the rest of us gals who didn’t bag a diamond? I made a hypothetical projected return rate on what most college girls get out of their exes if they’d been dating them for six months.  Let me know if I forgot anything…

Crappy tee shirt that you borrowed and never returned: $5

DVDs or CDs he’s left behind, given or lent you. Like I’d even want to watch “Four Brothers.” When was that cool? However, Tyrese is pretty delish.: $20

Gifts he considered “Birthday or Holiday worthy” (stuffed animals, non precious jewelry, trashy lingerie, etc…): $50

One smelly sock found jammed under your bed: $.05

Bill for therapy: -$300

6 months worth of birth control: -$180

One projected future year of gym membership bought to lose weight gained from said birth control: -$240

Any and all purchases made “for” him. Trashy lingerie. Outfits. You know, bedroom things. Ugh, I knew that seventy dollar lacy corset was a big mistake: -$300

Anytime he “forgot his wallet” or “didn’t have any cash” or “how about you just put this on your dad’s credit card?”: -$400

Reimbursement for wasting time: sports center, video games, etc… set your price at $10 an hour: -$2000

Relocation fees if you moved to get away from his sorry ass: -$1500

Costs of buying multiple pairs of flats because you couldn’t wear heels because he was an inch shorter than you. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just adds up: -$100

Cost of gallons of ice cream, sappy DVD rentals and Kleenex for a week: $15.73

Cost of your bar tab for the first weekend he broke up with you. Bottles to the face might be able to be written off as a subset of “therapy” for some: -$198.50 (WHAT? Don’t judge me).

So, if my calculations are correct (I’m no finance major), I’d get about -$5,159.18 back from this website. Awesome.

I get dumped by a d-bag and I end up $6k in the hole? Looks like the recession hasn’t affected breakups…

Melanie currently interning in NYC, taking full advantage of all margarita specials and those blonde summer boys. Stalk her on Twitter: @tinkermellie

Don’t get me wrong; I love Tough Love. Well, the show. I’m not quite sure I could handle someone pointing out my major flaws on national television (though I did attempt to audition for the next season…). Anyways, I think Steve Ward is great and knows his sh*t (and looks great in a pair of jeans) and really helped those women learn how to love themselves and be loved.

But don’t you think dating would be so much easier if we could all get some video feedback from the guys that we like? Wouldn’t it be magical if we didn’t have to spend hours decoding the emails/texts from the boys to figure out what they really mean? Maybe the fact that all those wonderful relationships blossomed in this fantasy land where the women knew exactly what their guys were thinking contributed to the fact that not one of them worked out in the real world…

But let’s take a step back and talk about the season finale!

There are only 6 girls left in boot camp and Steve decides to send them on overnight getaways. With boys. And they have to invite them. Most girls know who they are going to invite, but our drunk friend Natasha has no one to call. I thought for a moment that maybe she would luck out and get to take Steve on an overnight romantic getaway, but no – he set her up with someone else.

Taylor decided not to take the trip at all and to leave boot camp with a new love: herself. Awwww. Hopefully all that self love will translate into a new wardrobe that doesn’t consist of leopard dresses or turquoise bedazzled stilettos. What? I think I would love myself more if I wasn’t dressed like a tranny…

The rest of the girls take off on their adventures. All of the trips were super romantic, which left me feeling very uncomfortable watching. There were so many intimate moments that should be left to the lovebirds and the lovebirds only – like Abiola’s foot massage and Jessa’s hot tub experience – and I felt like a guy with a mustache and a white van peeping in through the window.

Or when Jody and Shane started making out on the strip and she basically ate his face. Awk.

When the girls finish their dream dates, they return to the mansion to say their goodbyes to Steve-o. He puts them all in the hot seat to talk about their experiences, but he did do a little grillin’ with Jacklyn and her love triangle. Now, I’ll never understand Jacklyn. I’ll never get why guys like such a moron, why she lines her eyes like that, or why she would ever (ever, ever, ever) choose anyone over Brock. Did you see that bangin’ body?

Steve tried to get her to choose the right guy and she made a pretty good case for herself that she would, but homegirl gets off the plane and takes the ring from her scrawny Southern ex. And loses Brock. She learned nothing from Steve and really was only obsessed with getting married – even to someone who said such hurtful things to her. I don’t know why she spent the entire dinner party last week explaining to her ex why he wasn’t right for her only to go back to him, but it doesn’t matter now. She made a crappy decision, and now Brock is out there for the taking.

Along with the rest of the Boot Camp Boys. Not one of those relationships panned out which means only one thing. No, not that Steve’s approach doesn’t work. It means that a trip to L.A. is in order.

I don’t really need Steve’s Tough Love; I just need all those leftovers.

Ms. Hudson is about to become Mrs. Jennifer Hudson Otunga! (She’s engaged, for everyone who missed that.)

There is nothing quite like being in love, so we are so happy for our pal, Jennifer. Her husband-to-be, David Otunga is hot, smart (a Harvard Law School grad) and has some fine taste in engagement rings. His previous taste in women is a tad questionable (I Love New York? Really?!), but he has clearly learned from his mistakes and traded up to the beautiful, talented Jennifer Hudson.

This woman proves that you can really have it all: looks, talent, a successful career and a worthwhile relationship (even if guy happened to be on one of the worst reality shows…ever).

You go girl.

It’s as vivid today as it was when it happened five years ago: Chris and I bodysurfing on an abandoned beach just outside of Acapulco and Stephanie looking at us with wonder from the shore. He and I would get slammed, and slammed again, then come up smiling from sand-filled ear to water-logged ear. Just before going in, we looked out into the vast horizon. The sky was clear blue. There were no clouds in sight. The ocean held us in its wake. Suddenly, we both gasped at the same time: a flying stingray briefly jumped out of the water just fifteen feet away.

“Did you see that?” he asked me.

“That was so cool,” I said.

Christopher Cady was my best friend’s boyfriend. He and Stephanie — like myself — had a real case of wanderlust. With no one else could I share my travel stories and feel completely understood. Only they understood why I would want to attend college in Maine, a continent and ocean away from my home in Hawaii: for the pure challenge and unpredictability.

Steph and I lived vicariously through each other, traversing the globe and telling each other tale after wondrous tale. Their travels brought them from Maine to Mexico to Taos to Central America to Boston, but culminated abruptly in Chamonix one fateful afternoon in January 2004. Chris had prepared an engagement ring before their trip. He didn’t get a chance to give it to her because, despite the storm that was brewing that late afternoon, he took an off-piste route and went missing.

Later that month, a memorial service was held in Boston — his body still not found. “Christopher,” Stephanie spoke in the eulogy, “I love you with everything that I am, and I can’t wait until the day I see you again.” Her chin lowered as she held back painful tears and backed away from the podium. Her black hourglass slinked back into the chair in the front row. Chris’s body wasn’t found until the snow thawed in May, but our suspicions were correct: he was killed in an avalanche.

Resilient, she is. Stephanie picked up the pieces so quickly that by the fall of the same year she met the man she was going to marry and by July 2005 she was pregnant. By November, she was married; by April 2006, with newborn son. And despite knowing she had dealt with a tremendous loss, I was dealing with my own. Steph had lost a lover and, now, after trading in her adventurous ways for a stable life with husband and child, I felt like I was losing a true confidante.

As Stephanie entered this new phase in her life, I discovered freedom in global exploration, traveling to India and Mediterranean Europe. It seems our lives have diverted in different directions. Fulfillment arrived in the form of new love and companionship for Steph; I found it through international travel.

Recently, when Steph found out I would be visiting Asia, she immediately put me in touch with Rick, her husband’s best friend from high school. Rick had been living in Vientiane (Laos) for nearly a decade and directing a village-focused NGO. I figured, if Stephanie can’t travel across the Pacific to meet her friend, then I will do it for her.

Rick and I met over lunch at his wife’s Full Moon Café. He taught me how to eat laap with sticky rice and told me about Colebrook, Stephanie’s new baby, whom I have yet to meet. When he described life as an ex-patriot, it resonated for me in a way that foretells my own direction in life. We talked about the ease of life outside America. There is a freshness to it experienced only when removed from the bubble. From my travels through Laos, I shared with Rick my observation of its growing popularity as a tourist destination. Vang Vieng, in particular, is trying to accommodate for its tourist boom by building guesthouses along its tubing route.

“Things aren’t like they used to be,” Rick told me. “What you see now is not how it will be tomorrow.”

Now, I’m thinking of Chris. Instead of reading an email about he and Steph’s adventure in South America I am reading descriptions of Colebrooks’s first words, first steps, or first Halloween costume (he was a lion). I don’t think it would have been better one way or the other, but somehow I have come to accept things the way they are. Yet, I’ve decided that when I return to Acapulco or Laos, I won’t go back to the same places. They just wouldn’t be the “same same” — they’d be different.

“You have to be careful of the undertow,” Chris had warned me before we both ventured into the Acapulco water. “The waves are stronger than you think.”

I dove through a 4-footer and popped out the other side. Chris and I waded a while just beyond the breaking waves, bobbing to water that seemed so alive–like a big belly breathing. We didn’t say anything for some time; we just took in the moment.

“I’m thinking,” I finally said as the ocean rose and exhaled, “can you be truly happy with life if you haven’t experienced something like this?”

“Or,” Chris said, “can you truly enjoy it if you don’t have someone to share it with?” He looked longingly to shore, where Stephanie was watching us from the shade of a thatched beach umbrella.

“Experiencing it… Sharing it… Which one’s more important?” I asked.

“Definitely a little bit of both.”

I am now experiencing and sharing life in ways I never would have — and, strange as it may seem, I credit Christopher Cady, by best friend’s boyfriend, for helping me understand life’s more profound mysteries. If it weren’t for Chris, I wouldn’t have bodysurfed in Acapulco. I wouldn’t have married Stephanie off to another man. I wouldn’t have met Rick in Vientiane. If it weren’t for Chris, I wouldn’t have experienced a lot of the things that have put the joy of life, heartbreak of death, and discovery of traveling into utterly ironic perspective.

Turns out the platinum bleached babes of The Hills aren’t the only fakes! Surprised? Of course you’re not. In case you missed the last episode (and all 762 reruns since), Spencer Brat –I mean Pratt– spends “big bucks” (attempted borrowed bucks from pal Brody Jenner) on an engagement ring for his uber-fake girlfriend Heidi. Turns out, fake ring for the fake lady!

The fugly pink diamond that Pratt claimed identical to J.Lo’s legendary rock, is actually a lavender, lemon amethyst.

Dun dun dunnnn.

Apparently, he only dropped $2,890 for the sucker, chump change for someone of his undeserved reality TV “fame”. Douchebaggery business a little slow these days, Pratty?

Wonder how Heidi’s taking the news? One would suspect terribly, but let’s not kid ourselves. This is all for the publicity, people!

Can’t wait for the blow-out breakup…that we’ll all pretend we didn’t see coming.