Starting during my senior year of college when I had my first boyfriend, I have been in a series of 5 long-term relationships (defined for these purposes as exclusive and at least 6 months long). They can be pretty exhausting–by the end, inevitably you’ve fallen into a rut where you do the same activities over and over with the same person and hardly ever go out. So inbetween I like to shake things up a bit: I date a whole number of people at once and have a lot of fun. In college the substitute for this was the random hookup, since actual dating didn’t exist: you either randomly hooked up on the weekends and/or had FWB (friends with benefits) or you were in a serious, long-term relationship, a.k.a. a “marriage.”
In post-college life, I have been struck by the notion that you can actually just DATE people and get to know them (unlike with the random hookup) but not immediately jump into a serious, committed trap of a relationship (a.k.a. a “marriage.”) Dating is fun, silly, interesting, challenging, disappointing, frustrating, captivating, amazing, and sometimes plain dull. But it’s always different with each new encounter, and it’s surprisingly commitment-free.
That having been said, I have had this awful feeling lately that I am the worst dumper ever when it comes to people that I have casually dated or with whom I’ve hooked up. I mean, after going on a few dates with a guy, I have been known to send a lame email saying that it has been fun, but I am seeing someone else and want that to be exclusive. With my latest reconnection mistake, I sent out the word via text message. I have tried to justify these horrendously tactless splits to myself, saying we met via the internet, so it’s OK to email, or he always asked me out via email, so I can dump him via email, or he had a bad habit of not calling and then sending me passive-aggressive text messages, so I can dump him via text, and the sad thing is, in each individual situation I actually believe that what I did was OK. It’s when I lump them all together and take a long, hard look at the pattern that I am slightly horrified at my behavior.
But perhaps nothing can top the situation I successfully made the switch from one guy to his good friend, and the good friend had the honors of letting the first guy know of my change of heart. Yes, that feels as shitty as it sounds. And I’m not any better at ending real relationships with a normal, in-person conversation, I always seem to chicken out and end up dumping boyfriends using the worst cop-out moves in history. Even if it wasn’t meant to be, these guys deserved better treatment than the ones I’d only known for days or weeks.
Why is breaking up so hard to do? Am I a lost cause, or could I learn better methods?
Posted by virtuallysingle 
Virtually Single 