I share your feeling that breakups, and all things related, suck. And I like your idea of coming up with best practices for avoiding as much heartache as possible. But I'm unsure about the practicality here.

It is my experience that love involves high-level risk necessarily, and by it's nature.

I just saw a Terence Malick flim this past weekend (To the Wonder) and a quote from the movie comes to mind "The one who loves less is the one who is stronger".

My general thought is that this is opposed to everything of which LW is in favor. That is, love is not a rational move, since it (by a definion I'd accept) requires self-sacrifice for the good of another.

(Note: Not that LWers are selfish, per se. Only that love which chooses another person winning big while you open yourself up to lose hard is antithetical to most of the sentiment I see here.)