I thought that by the time I left my teenage years behind and officially entered adulthood, immature breakups would be a thing of the past. I quickly learned I was wrong when a guy I was dating dumped me via Snapchat.
- There were no warning signs. We’d been in a relationship for six months. I spent a week at his house looking after his new puppy and hanging out with him after work. I dropped him off at work, told him I loved him, and I’d see him next week. Little did I know that was the last time I’d ever see him again. Everything seemed fine; we were happy and didn’t have an argument or anything that would have led to a breakup or even hinted at one.
- Communication started to break down. I didn’t have Snapchat before we started dating but he convinced me to get it because that’s how he contacted most of his friends (that should have been a warning sign in itself). We texted and sent snaps every day but suddenly the conversations started to dry up and he wasn’t making as much of an effort to talk to me. Something was definitely up.
- He lied about his whereabouts. He lived a few hours away from me, so naturally, if he was in town, I was excited to see him and expected him to ask me to meet up seeing as we didn’t get to see each other often with work and the long distance between us. I had a few of his friends on Snapchat and one evening I saw that they were all at his apartment in my town and going on a night out. He didn’t want me to know he was nearby and didn’t invite me out with his friends, which I found very strange as I always hung out with them when I was visiting.
- He got his friends to delete me off Snapchat. I sent him a snap asking him if he was in town, which he opened and didn’t respond to. However, I couldn’t believe what happened next. On my Snapchat friends list, I saw that his friends had deleted me so that I couldn’t see their location and what they were doing. I couldn’t understand why he was doing this seeing as nothing had happened to make him behave this way. It was so hurtful to be completely shut out by him and his friend group, seeing as I’d just been socializing with them all the previous week.
- I eventually got a drunken response. I left it a few hours and sent him a text calmly saying that I thought what he was doing was hugely unfair and that I couldn’t understand why he was doing this to me out of the blue after six months of being together. He responded with a string of texts, starting by saying he was drunk and didn’t want to talk about it now… but proceeded to do so anyway. He said he didn’t want to be in a long-distance relationship anymore and it just wasn’t working out. He didn’t invite me out that night so he wouldn’t have to say it to my face.
- He refused to see me in person. I asked him if he could meet with me the following morning before he traveled home so we could talk about it, which I think was the least I deserved. I didn’t hear anything from him after that and days later he said he was too hungover to meet me to discuss the breakup and that he’d try and get a day off work to come and see me. Weeks went by and I heard nothing. I tried to call him one day to get some type of closure and to move on after weeks of crying. He’d blocked my number but still had me on Whatsapp so I asked him to call me.
- He had another girlfriend. He eventually called me and I said what I could manage between tears. I told him that I was in utter shock that he could do this to someone and that he’d completely broken my heart and hurt me more than anyone I’ve ever met. I said how cowardly it was to break up with me over Snapchat and asked if he would ever have a face to face conversation with me to explain his actions. He told me he had another girlfriend now, only two weeks after we’d broken up, and he’d try to get a day off work to see me at some point, which never happened.
- He posted about his new relationship all over social media. He updated his relationship status two weeks after our breakup, with a girl who’d started working with him. He posted photos of them together on Instagram and Snapchat. It was as if he was doing everything he could to show me he moved on. I’ll never understand how one week I was his girlfriend and we were in a happy relationship and two weeks later he had a new girlfriend. I soon deleted him off every social media platform and got rid of every memory of us.
- My mental health took a huge toll. I couldn’t sleep or eat for weeks and I spent most days crying my eyes out. I didn’t deserve to be treated this way, especially since I had nothing but respect for him when we were together. I was so happy with him and that ended with a few short texts. The hardest part was that there was no closure and no explanation. I was developing quite bad depression and couldn’t think of anything else but the breakup. I felt helpless and had no motivation to do anything.
- He came crawling back after a few months. I went traveling around Asia for two months shortly after the breakup because I needed to get away and move on with my life. I woke up one morning to a long message from him, saying how incredibly sorry he was, how terribly he acted, and how much I’ll always mean to him. He was desperate to save our relationship and told me how he loved every minute he spent with me. I checked his Facebook and not to my surprise, he’d broken up with the new girl he was with. I swiftly deleted the message and forgot about him completely.
