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You are here: Home Life in Lifestyle Breaking up in the time of Twitter

12/06/2009Breaking up in the time of Twitter

Relationships and breakups are difficult under the best of conditions. Add email, blogs and social networking platforms to the mix and you get a virtual nightmare, our writer discovers.

Today’s technological advances make the already complicated territory of dating war games a minefield of miscommunication. Do I text? Do I email? Do I message via Facebook? If technology has complicated a once straightforward process, imagine what it’s done to one of the most intricate and complex of rituals: breaking up.

Because after two decide to pair up, the virtual interdependence starts and grows exponentially, organically, without one even really noticing it – until the relationship ends. And that is where the cyber nightmare begins.

As recently as 2002, getting rid of “ex ephemera” was relatively easy. The broken hearted could sift through tangible memorabilia such as photos, cards and CDs and toss them all into a box for safekeeping or even throw them out. But a mere seven years later, forget it – it is just not that simple anymore.

When I parted ways with my Ex, I didn’t just move to a different city, I traversed an ocean. But thousands of miles and a new continent don’t mean anything when your Ex’s name and activities can be seen and followed online without even trying.

So in the age of technology, how do you let go? How do you move on, when your Ex is virtually everywhere?


Transatlantic distance


My Ex and I were extremely cyber connected in the course of our three-year relationship: Gmail chat, Twitter, Flickr, shared items on Google Reader, Facebook, YouTube, links on our blogs and, finally, Skype.

As a result, our relationship became an intricate, tangled web of virtual cables that needed to be undone. But, as I would learn, they could only be disconnected slowly and painfully, and sometimes with lots of shock since most of the wires were still live.

My first foray into untangling (I was not yet into cutting) some of the wires was email. I asked early on in our “mutual” breakup that we keep email to a bare minimum, just for emergencies. Yet, three months into our post-breakup relationship, I wondered, ‘why is he still emailing me even though I’m not responding?’

2 reactions to this article

Gary posted: 25-06-2009 | 12:20 PM

You, girl, are nuts.

Neil Warner posted: 26-08-2009 | 3:09 PM

This article is right to the point...if you have someone in your online environment creating strong negative feelings in you, better to disengage!
What happens if the other person, your beloved other, is building an online wall of silence around you?
How do you realize that it's happening without blaming technology? and, more importantly, what kind of love is it? Read more at:
http://creativeconflicts.com/2009/07/passive-aggressive-using-techie-toys/

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