It seems you can’t turn your back without another terrible dating trend sneaking up on you. The latest one is “zumping,” is exactly what you’d imagine it to be: getting dumped via Zoom. Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse, this comes along!
- It’s come up as a result of lockdown. Being forced to stay indoors as much as possible thanks to the global pandemic has led to more couples trying to stay connected via video chats because they can’t see each other in real life. So the thought of being dumped during one of these video chats is a horrible reality that you have to think about, especially if things aren’t going well in your relationship.
- It brings virtual breakups to light. “Zumping” is certainly not the first (or last) type of virtual breakup that’s been trending. What about Facebook breakups and those people who’ve been dumped via Facebook Messenger? It seems that when a shiny new platform arises for us to connect with each other, it also becomes the latest hotspot for a dating trend.
- It sucks just like text breakups. There’s no doubt about it: any breakup that isn’t happening face to face is a crappy one. It feels so impersonal and unfair and can be so much more stressful than being dumped in real life.
- Sometimes it can’t be helped, sadly. When you can ring up your partner and tell them you want to have an important chat face-to-face over coffee, choosing to dump them via text or online is especially cruel. But what are you supposed to do if you’re shut in your home and can’t socialize with anyone, not even your partner, but you want to end things with them?
- Are you supposed to drag it out? Are you supposed to wait until the pandemic is over or for your country to lift restrictions so that you can spend time with your partner and then drop the bullet that you’re not keen to continue dating them? Isn’t that worse, especially since we don’t know when we’ll go back to normal? Or, what if the person lives in another country? Are you supposed to wait for when next you’ll see them — it could be months! — before ending your relationship?
- Maybe your ex is not a total piece of trash. Look, maybe they realized they didn’t want to date you anymore and they wanted to tell you ASAP without making you feel like they were leading you on. At least they did that instead of faking their video chats with you or just ghosting you. Of course, how they end it with you via video chat is important here. They should still be decent and allow you to have a real conversation so you can both move on without feeling like the breakup made things worse. They owe you that much.
- A breakup is a breakup. Although the way you’re dumped can make a huge impact on how well you manage to move on, at the end of the day, a breakup is a breakup. The most important thing is to get it over with so that you can move on from that loser ex that you wasted so much time on!
- Let’s stop being afraid. Honestly, we’ve gone through so much. We’ve been ghosted, broken up with via text, out of all things; we’ve been told we weren’t being dumped only to be given the nasty slow-fade that strung us along. We have come out of all of those things so much stronger than we were before, so why wouldn’t we be able to deal with being “zumped”?
- We can regain control. The beauty of virtual breakups is that we can control them. You can’t cut the Wi-Fi connection when you’re on a real-life date and make your partner disappear right in front of your eyes, but you can when your video chat is going south, and just blame bad tech when really you’ve been dealt a bad boyfriend or girlfriend. In some ways, virtual breakups can actually have some benefits, like not requiring you to waste any more of your precious time on someone who just doesn’t deserve you.
