Like most women who’ve been dating for a while, I’ve been dumped a few times. However, one of my exes deciding to have his dad break up with me took the cake as the weirdest ending to a relationship ever.
- We met through mutual friends and he seemed normal. There were no warning signs that I could see in the beginning. We had friends in common and we used to hang out as a group pretty much every weekend. My girlfriends and I were all still in high school while the guys were in their first year of college, so our biggest worries consisted of wondering what to wear at the weekend and how not to get carded at our local bar. Ahh, a simpler time! He was the cool guy with wild, spikey hair that everyone wanted to date but he chose me and I felt really special. I was 17, give me a break!
- He kept the real reason for the breakup a secret. After eight months of dating bliss, it appeared overnight he had changed his mind. He suddenly went cold on me, blowing me off and canceling on our regular group hangouts at the weekend. I found out later that he had fallen for my friend and had been secretly texting her on the sly.
- We were young, but to me, that’s no excuse. Yes, we were young and new to the whole dating game but even then we all knew there were ways to break up with someone and ways not to do it. Face to face, good. A handwritten letter, not bad. A text, not cool. Letting your dad do it? Unheard of! He wasn’t an idiot so he knew what he was doing. Plus, so did his dad! He was a real adult, so shame on him—he should have known better.
- His timing wasn’t any better, to be honest. He and his dad chose to perform this dual breakup in the pub in front of our group of friends… on my birthday! His timing couldn’t have been any worse actually. It was almost like he was going out of his way to make this a massive public breakup with a willing audience.
- The dad used to hang out with us a lot. It seemed like his dad was more of a friend than a dad, to be honest. He would always join us at some point when we were out with friends so it didn’t seem odd that he was in the pub with us the night of the breakup. He was the kind of dad that we thought was really cool because he went drinking with us, bought us alcohol, and didn’t shout at us for smoking. I realize now how inappropriate that was. I can’t imagine I would ever be that kind of parent in the future.
- The speech was pathetic and embarrassing… for him! It was crunch time and my ex had been pretty much ignoring me all night even though it was my birthday. I kept trying to talk to him, to ask him what was wrong, but the next thing I knew, I was being cornered by his dad and given a lecture on our relationship. It was full of metaphors like, “You build walls, that’s why it’s not working.” I just kept thinking, “Dude, I’m 17, I couldn’t build a wall if I tried.” He kept skirting around the issue before eventually admitting that his son didn’t want to be in a relationship with me anymore and had fallen “in love” with someone else. Apparently it was my job as his friend to “let him fly.”
- Looks like I got out in time. What happened next was nothing short of a teenage drama. He ended up dating my friend that he’d apparently fallen for. We fought for a while as she broke the girl code but in the end, I just wanted her to be happy so I let it go. More fool her, as a year later he pulled the same trick on her, texting another one of our friends for secret meetups and exhibiting even more psychopathic behavior.
- His current girlfriend messages me even though I never speak to my ex. Over a decade later, my girlfriends and I can laugh about it all, but thanks to social media, he periodically keeps in touch with us. Going around the group, he messages all of us, bragging about how much money he’s making or asking for relationship advice. Most recently, his current girlfriend has been messaging me, asking if I know anything as she’s sure he’s lying about a lot of things and suspects he’s cheating on her. Seriously, it’s 12 years later—I can’t imagine ever texting my boyfriend’s ex from when he was 18, let alone asking her for advice!
- I hope he’s adapted his breakup technique for the sake of the world. I just hope he’s learned that getting your dad to break up with your girlfriend is so beyond ridiculous. It sounds like his current girlfriend might be on the receiving end of one of his notorious breakups unless she gets there first which, to be honest, I hope for her sake she does.
