Breaking Up? Not So Hard to Do

LONDON, Nov. 2, 2006— -- As anyone who has had a relationship knows, breaking up is hard to do. But for some, it just got easier.

If you live in Germany, have $25 to spare, and a partner you wish to be rid of, all you need to do is contact Bernd Dressler of the Separation Agency in Berlin.

For $25, he will call your ex and deliver the bad news. You can either opt for the sensitive "Let's just be friends" approach, or, if the thought of seeing him or her again is just too much to bear, select the somewhat harsher "Leave me alone" package.

For $40, Dressler will even pay a personal visit to deliver the message -- it's called a Personal Termination Call, in case you were wondering -- to the (usually) shocked dumpee.

And, for $65, you can get the full package, which includes having Dressler arrange for a list of your belongings to be picked up from the ex's apartment.

With the outsourcing of everything from tutoring to banking, perhaps it's no surprise to find that relationships too have joined the list. Speaking to ABCNEWS.com, Dressler mused that "the idea of a 'separation agency' is right for our time. Young people like easy living."

And easy loving, one imagines.

The "silliest request" to the Separation Agency came from a 16-year-old girl who asked Dressler to break up with her boyfriend because he was, in her words, "getting on my nerves."

Chuckling over the memory, Dressler said that he decided then to only accept requests containing "at least three reasonable reasons." The peeved teenager was told to go elsewhere for a solution to her problem.

One would imagine that such work would be emotionally exhausting, not to mention a touch nerve-racking, given history's long record of crazed jilted lovers. After all, who hasn't seen "Fatal Attraction," or any number of films with similar themes?

If such concerns trouble Dressler at all, he doesn't show it.

"Most of the time, my job is really unspectacular. Nothing much happens," he said.