This is probably a minority opinion, but speaking as one who’s been dropped cold or given the casual brush-off by several women during my hound-dog heyday (mid ’70s through late ’90s, not counting my four-year marriage from ’87 to ’91), it’s a bit more painful to dump than to get dumped.

I can think of eight or nine times when I suffered terrible heartache after getting the heave-ho. Bottom of the well, my life is over, “Can’t live if livin’ is without you,” etc.

I can recall at least two times when I was so devastated by “love lost at such a cost” that I succumbed to something close to clinical depression. One time in late ’79 I was so bummed that I slept in my West 4th Street apartment for a whole week straight, getting up only for meals or to watch an occasional TV show.

I gradually learned after suffering through these breakups that you can’t negotiate or plead or beg your way out of them. When you’ve been dumped by a woman of character or conviction, the game is over. Nothing you can say or do will change her mind.

The best you can hope for is to persuade her to agree to continue having sex while you both hunt around for the next romantic opportunity. But even that rarely happens because by the time she’s told you she wants to fly solo or see other people she’s probably already found a replacement.

In the spring of ’79 I was seeing a foxy West Village woman on an off-and-on basis. He or she who loves less always controls the relationship, so I guess I was the controller as my feelings for her were on the somewhat casual, come what may, comme ci comme ca side. Her feelings for me were more ardent, or so it seemed.

Then I met someone else who was prettier, hotter, sharper, classier — definitely a better catch. When the new thing began to happen I knew I had to tell the West Village lady. I wouldn’t dare try to two-time anyone. I wanted to play my cards honest and clean. No messing around.

Except when I visited the West Village, off-and-on apartment and lowered the boom, I felt awful. She began to cry a little bit and lament her awful luck with men, and all I could do was stand there and say “I’m really sorry.”

The difference between this and the terrible feeling of being dumped is that dumpees don’t feel guilty — all they have is the ache. But if you drop someone you feel guilty about having caused great emotional harm, or at the very least a bad bruise. You feel like a bad person.

Guess what? The woman I left her for dumped me six months later.

The only other time I felt like this was when a woman I’d been seeing on a fairly serious basis became aware of a little side dalliance with a married woman. (We’d met while performing in a community theatre play.) The serious relationship woman began to quake with weeping, and all of a sudden I felt like a beast who needed to be whipped. I’m sorry so sorry sorry…I’ll never do this again…please, forgive me…so sorry.

Boiled down, hurting someone feels much worse than being hurt.