Breaking up is hard to do

It was going to be tough, but Aleisha Hurley knew it had to be done.

She liked him -- they'd been together for about a year -- and she knew she'd miss him. But Hurley was moving from Park City, Utah, to Las Vegas and, well, long-distance relationships hardly ever work.

So, Hurley broke up with her personal trainer.

"I was so devastated that I'd have to tell this guy I worked out with that I was leaving, because we were such good friends," she recalls.

It happens, coming to the sad realization that it's just not working out anymore with a hairstylist, a barber, a dry cleaner, a massage therapist, or any of the service professionals we develop extra-professional relationships with.

And, when the day does come, breaking up can be as emotional as calling it quits with a romantic partner.

Michele Tell-Woodrow felt it when she decided to break up with her longtime hairstylist.

"I've lived here all my life," says Tell-Woodrow, 40, chief executive officer of Preferred Public Relations & Marketing. "This is the stylist who styled my hair from, literally, the time I was 10 until the time I was 37."

He did Tell-Woodrow's hair for her high school prom. He did her hair for her wedding. "This guy watched me grow up," she says, and ending it with him "was like a divorce."

He was, and is, "an amazing stylist," Tell-Woodrow adds. But "my life changed, and I just needed something different."

And when she finally started going to her new stylist? "It was like I was cheating on a husband," Tell-Woodrow says.

It's no coincidence that such breakups are described in a manner akin to romantic breakups. Las Vegas marriage and family therapist Adrienne O'Neal thinks it has something to do with the intimate bond we forge with the service people who come to know us in a way that rises above mere commerce.

Maids, for example, are "in your house, and they're doing all these things that are so intimate, and you spend so much time with them," O'Neal says.

Contrast that with, say, a pest control guy who "sprays around outside your house. If he's inside, he's inside the house for two minutes."

Tell-Woodrow notes that a relationship with, for example, a hairstylist is "a professional relationship that crosses over into personal space. You're talking about what makes you feel confident as a person. You're letting somebody in. You don't usually have that type of relationship with a different type of vendor."

Hurley, a personal trainer herself with Total Health & Fitness, has been both a breaker-upper and a break-upee. She suspects that such intense bonds are apt to develop when a client sees a service provider often for a long period of time.

A personal trainer's clients, she notes, "see us more than their hairdresser."

As with romantic relationships, a service provider breakup can be preceded by a client's playing the field and making flirtatious visits to other providers. And, as with romantic relationships, there can be a fear of being found out.

Hairstylists can "look at your hair and (see) a color that they didn't do," Hurley says. "It's lying. It's cheating on them, but they don't want to say anything."

The emotional fallout of a breakup can last long after the actual break, much like a romantic relationship that ends. Therapist O'Neal recalls running into a clerk at the dry cleaner's she previously had stopped seeing.

"I could hardly even look at the clerk," she says, laughing. "The clerk!"

Other times, both provider and ex-client can be adult about it. Tell-Woodrow happened to run into her former hairstylist at a market about a year ago and admits it was momentarily awkward.

"He said, 'How are you?' " she recalls. "I said, 'Fine.' And I just gave him a hug."

But, as in the real dating world, some suffer breakups less traumatically. Happily, even.

"I hate to say this," Tell-Woodrow says, "but my mother-in-law has no emotional commitment here.

"My mother-in-law is gorgeous and she changes her hair people all the time."

Absolutely true, says Patricia Woodrow, who likens her dalliances with hairstylists to dating.

"If it doesn't work out," she explains, "I move on to the next."

Woodrow moved to Las Vegas 12 years ago and continues to play the field in her search for the perfect hairstylist. She figures that, when she visits somebody new, "I'm giving them a chance to prove themselves to me, and if they can't be honorable on the first date, then I move on. I feel no loyalty."

Yet, Woodrow is more monogamous with her nail people. "The only time I switch around there is when I can't get in and, maybe, go someplace else," she says.

"I'm a committed person in areas where it counts," she adds, "but not in the area of hair."

Creepily enough, it doesn't take much to think of other parallels between romantic breakups and service provider breakups.

How it should be done, for example. "One of my clients broke up with me today," Hurley says. "She broke up over e-mail. That's rude."

There's the notion that some relationships never were meant to last forever. As a personal trainer, Hurley says, "my goal is to be able to break up with them so they can go out and use me just as necessary."

There's the unavoidable reality that everybody, at some time, breaks up and is broken up with. Hurley isn't averse to ending a relationship with a client who's not putting in the effort, because, she explains, "I'm a personal trainer, and if you're not looking any better, why would anyone come to me? You're ruining my business."

And, there's even the wistful thought that some breakups won't last forever. One of Hurley's clients recently broke up with her because she had lost her job. But, Hurley says, "I think she'll come back."

She laughs. "You always think you're going to get back together, right?"

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0280.