Answer this one honestly, ladies: When it comes to pulling the plug on a relationship, what's tougher... being the dumper, or the dumpee?

Harder to answer that than you thought?

Getting dumped is heinous for obvious reasons — the pain of rejection, the impending loss of physical affection, the bummer of not having somebody to hang out with on Sunday night — but cutting the cord is ugly, too. Knowing you're going to hurt someone is awful. Planning out what you're going to say is awful. Going home to an empty apartment after squishing his heart is awful.

Believe it or not, between our baseball debates, we men talk about stuff like this. And believe it or not, we have preferences on how we we'd like to be let down. So print out this article and have it handy for the next time you have to do some cord-cutting. Be sure to avoid the seven "don'ts" of dumping:

1. Don't beat around the bush
"You see, well... it's just that I feel like we're... you know... just not doing... I mean it's like..." Twenty minutes later: "This is really... I don't know how to... I'll always, um..." I believe it was the great 20th Century philosopher Jerry Seinfeld who said, "Do it like a Band-Aid — rip it right off!"

2. Don't give us prior warning
Calling us up and saying "we need to talk" is the biggest red flag imaginable. It's fair to say that when you tell someone "we need to talk," it's generally not to inform them you got tickets to the circus.

3. Don't do it via email
A real letter written on real paper with a real pen is okay — if the note is well-written, that's even classy and respectable. But doing a cyberdump is a cop-out.

4. Don't do it after we've taken you out for an expensive dinner
Need I say more?

5. Don't do it in public
If your soon-to-be-ex is a dramatic kind of dude, keep it in-house, if only to avoid having to pay for some random restaurant's broken plate-glass window.

6. Don't be passive/aggressive
It drives us nuts if you stop returning our phone calls, or stand us up, or ignore our instant and/or text messages. That'll create horrible karma — the kind of karma that'll assure the next time you're dumped, you'll get big-time passive/aggressive treatment yourself.

7. Don't tell us how swell we are
Prefacing the break-up with a litany of our alleged good qualities — "You're nice, and cute, and smart, and blah blah blah..." — doesn't make us feel any better. It just makes us think, "If I'm so nice, and cute, and smart, and blah blah blah, why am I being kicked to the curb?" Adding confusion to the dump mix is just... well, confusing.

This is between us...

If your going to dump one of us then just do it. The friends shouldn't be doing if for you, if you can kiss us then you can dump us. This is between the man and woman, the whole world doesn't need to know how he took it. Some guys are more emotional than others and they might cry, but that's okay. That doesn't show weakness - it shows the feelings he has for you. 

The one "do" — Do unto others...
In the end, the most important thing is to be respectful and honest — to treat your now-former-boyfriend the way you'd like to be treated.

On the other hand, if you caught him messing around with your best friend or your sister, then feel free to... 

Drop Him Like He's Hot!