Breaking up: From Talking to Tweeting

The other day my friend "Jane"mentioned that a mutual friend "Don" (who she had been seeing) had broken off with her, via text, in favor of an old girlfriend.  My first thoughts contained words that are really not fit for print (in this venue anyway) but honestly, this is not the first time I’ve heard of this, nor I am sure, will it be the last.  As dismayed as I am by this heartless way of dismissing someone who has been at least important enough to swap bodily fluids with, it did bring to my attention the idea breaking ups and how the awkward (at best) situation has evolved in just my lifetime.

My personal history of dating, the Age I refer to as YES (young, experimental and single) lasted almost exactly twenty years.  I had my fair share of breakup scenarios.  Below are just a few examples that come to mind:

1.       In person is probably the oldest form of breaking up with someone (unless cave people used drawings to signify their intent).  In person, has always been the classiest (in my opinion) way to breakup with someone but has recently become a bit old fashioned what with all of the technology at our finger tips.  Why suffer the mortification, risking tears and a public scene when merely sitting at your computer and sending off a message might achieve the same goal?  How someone might breakup in person varies, of course.   There are several ways I can think of:

a)      The productive conversation.  The most grown up and decent way to dump someone.  The productive conversation involves being realistic, not unkind and not leaving the door open with “we should get together sometime.”  True closure.  This usually takes two mature people.  In my experience, this is a fairly uncommon practice

b)      The sprawling conversation.  You know the kind… a lot of rehashing history and back peddling are involved… as are tears.  A common phrase used in this particular method is “its not you; It’s me.”   It is painful but closure can be achieved.

c)       The screamfest which manifests when someone has done something so egregious (i.e. catching the person cheating red handed) that neither of the previously mentioned approaches are a consideration.  I once threw a beer in the face of someone (at a bar) who drunkenly admitted he cheated on me.  At the time, the bonus of this was that it was February in Boston and he didn’t have a coat with him.  Now, of course, I know he probably deserved it but wish I had just turned around and left, with him knowing I was the classier of the two of us.

2.       The “Dear John/Jane” Letter.   Before the advent of electricity and all of the technology that now allows us to breakup with someone via the click of a button, the Dear John/Jane letter was THE way to dump someone – especially if your guy was unlucky enough to be at war.  Nowadays I imagine that this mode of breakup has essentially gone out of style.  It may be primarily used by kids still in grade school.  My personal Dear Artemis letter was in the form of a note being passed hand to hand by classmates in my senior English class.  You know that every kid along the way read the note, adding humiliation to the mix. 

3.       The disappearing act.  This particular maneuver has been achieved in a number of ways. 

a)      The most common is when the guy never calls again.  You think he will call; you have no indication that he won’t and then he just doesn’t.  Back in the days before cell phones, it was particularly difficult, because if you liked the guy, you were sort of made a prisoner in your own home because God forbid you miss his call because you had to run to the store for an emergency toilet paper run or something.  These days, we have cell phones which make us seem a little less desperate (if only to ourselves).

b)      I’ve also been stood up a few times… okay, maybe more than a few times.  Most of us have experienced the humiliating stand up.  We agree to meet, spruce up nicely, go to the predetermined location and then wait… and wait… and wait.  They never show up and you are forced to make some completely lame excuse to the bartender or waiter about how you must have got the date or time wrong.  I’ve actually received a few pity drinks that way (and actually a date as well!).

c)       My favorite in the “disappearing act” category is leaving the country without telling me.  Yes, it’s happened… at least twice (not at the same time!).  Both men were foreign; so in fairness, they were returning to their mother countries, however, neither of them gave me any indication that they would be leaving anytime soon.  This particular breakup stung a bit because it seemed so premeditated.  There are a lot of logistics to moving, never mind moving out of the country, and yet neither "man" ever let on that they were relocating.   Both just carried on as usual and then suddenly there were no calls and some sorry roommate was answering their door telling me that Ian or Paddy had moved “back home.”

4.       The telephone call.  Using the telephone to breakup with someone, rather than face-to-face has, I’m guessing, been used since about ten minutes after Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone… maybe even by him.  Personally, I’ve been dumped via telephone more than any other way.

5.       The email.   I started using email regularly in 1994 while I worked at MIT.  I remember shortly after learning how to use it, I got my first breakup via email.  I was outraged!  How dare the guy email me instead of breakup with me in person or via telephone (the only two acceptable forms of communicating such personal news as far as I was then concerned).  Of course, two years later, it was me using email to send the bad news to a guy I was seeing.

Now that I am married, the likelihood of me being broken with via the disappearing act, the telephone call or the email, is highly unlikely, although I suppose not impossible.  Supposedly Britney Spears broke up with Kevin Federline via a text.   I’d like to give my husband Emmett more credit than that though should we ever be unlucky enough to face a breakup.  It’s more likely one of us would try the “it’s not you, it me,” line in a productive conversation.

Since getting married, I’ve heard dating nightmare stories from friends and family about people casually  breaking up in the most callous and removed ways possible.  Two such ways are:

6.       The text.   I imagine those who breakup via text normally conduct their relationship primarily over text (i.e. sexting).  I don’t know if that is true, it just seems to make sense.  Why else would someone just text you a breakup message when you can email, write a letter, disappear or call?  This seems like a very emotionally removed (and immature) way to breakup with someone…. Write a text and send the breakup message out into the universe.  Problem solved.  No conversation necessary.

7.       The Facebook/Twitter.  The meanest/most ruthless/most public way of dumping someone.  This way of breaking up has been written about ad-nauseam recently (Wired magazine has even published a “how to” article on it!).  People are posting  breakup notices on Facebook or alerting people to their intent by updating their profile to indicate that they are no longer in a relationship with so and so.  Facebook may be slightly less offensive than Twitter… but that would depend on how efficiently someone used their 140 character limit.

I have to wonder with Facebook and Twitter becoming a more common way to dump people, what will be next?  Will there be (or maybe there is already?) a smart phone application where you just hit a button and the dumpee is notified via a pop up that they are officially single once again?

Everyone knows that breaking up is hard to do; it is unbelievably awkward (but sometimes necessary) to have to tell someone that they are not welcome in your life any longer.  I do believe how you decide to breakup with someone is a testament to how mature and unselfish you are.  If you are able to put your own discomfort aside and productively discuss the situation, it speaks volumes to the kind of person you are.  If you decide to Twitter someone out of your life, well then that also speaks volumes (to everyone who follows you!) about what kind of an insensitive jackass you are.  The question is, when it comes to breakups are you a talker or a Twitterer?

Postscript:  Today that guy Don who broke up with my friend Jane told me that the relationship he had foresaken Jane for had fallen apart and he now felt bad about the way he had text-dumped her.  Ironic, no?

Story: Karma's an Itch

Years ago, when internet dating was still considered the realm of the “creepy and desperate,” I myself was desperate enough to join Match.com.   This was before most people knew how to upload photos and before most people knew to ask for photos.  There were only a handful of sites and Match.com was the most well-known, thus this was the site I selected for my trial run with internet dating.  I hoped to find a date but what I found was more like a karmic lesson.

I was very excited to try internet dating. What possibilities.  There was unlimited window shopping without commitment.  I could literally look at hundreds of profiles and read all about people who could possibly be “the one.”  How cool was this?  And, knowing how difficult it is to write an interesting profile, I loved to logon and see how these guys wrote under pressure.

One profile in particular did catch my eye.  Although “Steve” did not have a picture (which I now know was for a good reason), he seemed really interesting.  He was an engineer, well-traveled, liked to ride motorcycles and seemed pretty laid back.  I asked him for a picture and when he told me his scanner was down, I was naïve enough to believe him. 

Steve and I agreed to meet at a Pizzeria Uno’s.  As I sat at the bar watching the customers file in, I wondered if I would like him and what he looked like.  I got momentarily excited when I saw a gorgeous, young guy walk through the door and toward me.  He noticed me too, looking me up and down before walking right past me to a table where he was greeted by a young woman with a baby.  I was so busy watching the hot guy, that I didn’t notice Steve until he was upon me.

I heard his breathing before I saw him.  That is never a good sign.  I turned my head toward the heavy breathing.   A man with a full beard, not unlike a Taliban beard, short and heavy, not only in his breathing but in his stature, stood beside me.  Great; I should have asked for a picture.

I mentally shook off the fact that this guy was not all that I dreamed of and just hoped he would not be a nightmare.  I smiled welcomingly and invited him to sit on the stool beside me.  He hopped up on to the stool to my right, leaning his cane (which I just then noticed) up against the bar next to him.  Steve smiled big and said, “I hope you don’t mind that I’m sitting on this side of you but my left ear is my good one.  My right ear is only operating at 30%.”  I raised my eyebrows. “Really?  What happened?” I asked.  “Gulf War,” he responded.  “In fact,” he told me, “my right hand has only 60% use, my right knee cap was shattered in a motorcycle accident and I have Gulf War Syndrome.”

I was, of course, horrified for him.  The poor guy!  And, I couldn’t help but think that this is what I deserved for not being more discerning in my on-line interview process.  I was also very curious.  “What exactly is Gulf War Syndrome? I mean what are the effects?”  He was nice enough to answer even though he must have known that the answer would seal the fate on this ill-fated date.  “I get uncontrollably itchy as though bugs are crawling all over my skin.”  What?!  Gross.  I thought, “the poor guy.”

At the end of the date, we walked out to the cars and said our goodbyes.  I thanked him for an interesting time and wished him well.  I really thought that this man (who in my mind was relegated to “Mr. Itchy Scratchy”) would never cross my mind again.  How wrong I was.

Flash to a year later.  I am in Geneva, Switzerland and have just had the week of my life and probably one of the best dates of my life.  Let’s just say it involved Thai food and breaking into a private beach club at midnight to reenact the pivotal scene from “From Here to Eternity.”  Lake Geneva was fantastic but unfortunately, I developed a raging ear infection from the lake water.

I went to the local hospital where they prescribed amoxicillin.  Apparently neither the doctor nor I realized that I was allergic.  I went through the full course without incident only to find myself waking up, the day after I had stopped taking the drug, scratching my chest. 

Now I was in London visiting my friend Fiona.  In response to my single state, she had set me up on a blind date with the most eligible man she knew.  His name was Hugh and he was a Scottish Olympic downhill skier. Fiona promised me that although he wasn’t very tall, he was drop dead gorgeous.

 Fiona was going through a divorce at the time and was living her life vicariously through me.  She hoped I was going to have a really scandalous date – in the best way possible of course.

The morning of the blind date I woke up at Fiona’s house, scratching my chest.  I got up went to the bathroom only to observe that I had a rash that was not only on my chest but it was creeping up my neck and down to my belly.  Immediately I went to Fiona and showed her my rash.  “Well obviously we’ll have to cancel on Hugh” I told her.  “We can’t,” she said, “I don’t have his number…besides it really isn’t that bad and the bar will be dark.  He’ll never see the rash.”  I sighed in resignation and hoped that she was right.

As the day wore on, so did the rash.  It got to such a bad state that we went to a local pharmacy and asked the pharmacist what cream would help.  “My dear,” he said, “There is no rash cream that is going to help you with that.”  In a last ditch effort to hide the rash, we bought a lovely neck scarf.  That might have been okay normally but it was June and looked a bit ridiculous.  Still, Fiona insisted that I go on the date.  Her sister Wendy assured me that red wine is a natural antioxidant and that if I drank enough of it, the rash would go away.

I got to Tiger Tiger bar early to scout out a dark place to sit, drink some red wine and wait for Hugh.  I noticed when Hugh arrived and Fiona was right; he was really good looking.  Hugh took a turn around the bar and did not see me… probably because I was sitting in the dark.  Finally, when he looked in my direction, I waved a hello to him.  He raised his eyebrows in surprise and came over to meet me.

The date with Hugh was not very memorable for the most part. He was “nice.”  He was seemingly understanding of my raging rash and was even gallant enough to invite me to a Wimbledon party he was attending that evening.  I knew he wasn’t interested though as he made me pay for all of my drinks and flirted with other women in front of me.

Meanwhile, my rash was getting worse by the moment, creeping up to my face and down my legs.  Not helping matters much, I was getting increasingly drunk on red wine.  When were those antioxidants going to kick in?  I was so uncomfortable and drunk that I found myself rubbing up against anything and anyone to scratch my itch.  If I hadn’t been drunk, it would have been embarrassing.  Finally though, I conceded that I’d had enough.  I needed to get to a hospital.

I found Hugh and alerted him to the fact that I would be leaving and going to the hospital.  “Why?” He asked.  “What’s wrong?”  I know he was a blind date but he couldn’t be that blind.  “I normally don’t look like this Hugh.  Normally I’m rash free.  I think I’m allergic to something and I need to be treated.” 

At the hospital, I waited in the triage line with great trepidation.  I had heard about socialized medicine and I wondered how long it would be until I was treated.  A patient in front of me asked the triage nurse how long the wait was and she told him that it would be “forty five hours.”  What?!  “Forty five hours!” I exclaimed.  “You must be kidding!”  The nurse looked confused, “No dear… that would be four to five hours.” That was much better.

I checked in and sat amongst the other Tuesday night ER denizens.  I looked around.  The guy next to me had a nail through his foot and a guy across from me had a slash across his forehead (he told us his girlfriend had stabbed him).  I felt fortunate.  Itchy but fortunate.

Because I had an allergy, I was fast tracked and was admitted in less than two hours.  I found myself laid out on a gurney with a Benadryl IV attached to my right arm.  The nurse wheeled me to a curtained area where I lay waiting to see a doctor. 

As I laid there listening to some poor guy getting resuscitated in the room next to me, I had moment of clarity and started to laugh.  I really deserved this. I had judged some poor guy on the fact that he had an itch condition, and here I was a year later, on a first date (again) and I was the one who was uncontrollably itchy and being passed over for it.  I was the deserving victim of the karma from Mr. Itchy Scratchy and boy was karma an itch.

Me in Switzerland that summer