Humanity is constantly changing and evolving, but I’m pretty sure breakups have always sucked. It’s pretty rare that people part ways amicably and on mutual terms. Instead, it’s nearly inevitable that one person is left hurt and picking up the broken pieces of their heart. With modern dating, things have gotten even harder. It’s not just technology that’s to blame, it’s the people we’ve become because of it. This is how we break up now and why it sucks:
- We don’t even bother to say it. We can’t even be decent enough to say it’s over to each other’s faces. We’d rather avoid the awkward conversation and ghost instead. We know it’s cowardly, but we just can’t help it. It’s easier to disappear than it is to explain.
- We refuse to use labels. We shy from labels and commitment and distance ourselves our feelings all the way through the relationship and after it’s done. We’re so jaded from living with the reminders of the pain we’ve tried to leave behind, so we run from anything that reminds us our pasts. We’ve committed to not committing. We’ve committed to an ending right from the start.
- We have no remorse. We’ve lost the ability to feel for another person. We’ve lost the ability to be thoughtful, mannered, polite. The exit is just a few taps away, a few typed sentences and no more. We feel nothing — freedom without guilt. We have no idea what’s happening on the other end, and we don’t care.
- We’re left with unanswered questions. When we’re the rejected, we rarely get an explanation as to why. We don’t get honesty, so we’re just left confused. We’re full of self-loathing and regret, and we question who we are and why it happened to us again. Even worse, we never get an answer.
- We hide from the consequences of our choices. We can fire off a text without true impact. We deflect the responses, the sadness, and the disappointment on the other end. We don’t know if the person is laughing or crying at our cowardly send off and we convince ourselves we don’t care, because it’s not our responsibility anymore.
- We’re chronically cryptic. We post song lyrics and quotes and we hide our pain in a hashtag. We share articles describing our struggles and pains in hopes to connect with someone, anyone, who feels the same as we do — someone who understands how much these breakups truly suck, and why lasting love and relationships seem to be like diamonds in the rough.
- We unfriend, delete, and unfollow. We have to erase the trail that lead us up to this point. We un-tag, we block and we delete everything that reminds us of when we were happy — when we were certain things were going well and we didn’t see the ending that didn’t feel like an ending at all.
- We’re divorced from reality. We’ve lost touch with the true meaning of connections, and what it means to break a bond, even if small. Our breakups are more haunting than ever before, because with them, new ghosts are created. This is how we break up now, and it seriously sucks.
