I’ve never been dumped by text or e-mail, but way back in 1976 before there were computers and cell phones, an old boyfriend once handed me a folded note. He asked me not to read it until he out of sight down the hill, then he walked away. I opened the note and it was a Dear Emily letter (as I suspected).
Dumped once by text, but at least that has the benefit of being immediate and you’re able to reply right then. In this case it was a long distance relationship, and I use the term ‘relationship’ loosely, and we never talked on the phone (or much by IM, hence the breaking up part) so it was really the most logical way to go.
Anyone who would do so via e-mail, however, is just chickenshit.
Except perhaps for the restraining order…
My first b/f broke up with me by email, from mexico, in a long convoluted process where we “broke up” because he was transferring colleges and leaving the state. Somewhere in mexico he had a crisis about whether to go out of state (where I later found out he was seeing some other girl) or whether to stay in my state. Every day I got another email that said, either, “I’m coming back” or “I’m going there”. This was during finals period, and I was a wreck.
When he told me he was probably going out of state, though, it was in person. I cried, so he couldn’t have enjoyed it too much.
It dawned on me in the wee hours of the morning that there have been times when I should have broken up with someone and I just couldn’t manage to do it face-to-face and so we continued dating.
I guess if the best you can come up with is a text message saying “It’s Over,” then sooner is better than later.
I suspect that I have even conflated huge, ugly, snarling issues out of everyday hassles in order to break up.
I doubt I would have learned any life lessons from it, but I think a cowardly text would have been an improvement.