Recently, my daughter brought two of her best friends at college home for dinner. As I have known my daughter’s friends for a few years and know a bit about their personal lives, I casually asked one of them if she was still dating a man attending a different college in Vermont. The girls giggled a bit and my daughter’s friend told me that she had just told him that they were going on a “break.” Now I have been married for a very long time without any breaks at all but having had four children and seen them enter and exit relationships, I immediately knew that “going on a break” was not a good sign and that their relationship, as it currently existed was doomed. My daughter’s friend confirmed that as far as she was concerned they were no longer going out. When I asked how her former boyfriend was handling the news, she simply said that he was not happy. At least my daughter’s friend had broken up in person. As reported in The New York Times, there are now “apps” and web sites that will do the breaking up for you. there are now “apps” and web sites that will do the breaking up for you.
Simply enter the name of the person that you want to break up with, what type of media you would like to use to notify that person, how nice or mean you want to be (for example, one can send either cookies and a romantic movie of doomed love or a photo with your new paramour), pay a fee and with a press of the key, the relationship is over. There is even a new “breakup flow” on Facebook that allows the user to limit the connection with a former partner.
This automates such tasks as untagging photos and hiding past posts. I personally find it a bit odd that I would outsource such a task but some argue that as many relationships were formed in the digital world, ending them in the digital world only makes sense. As for my daughter’s friend, I admire her directness.
