I recently read an article written by Niki Marinis who claimed that if a man was to break up with her, he should do it by email or by phone call; it would be too painful to do it face-to-face, and she would prefer he spare her the trauma of the painful conversation in person and just do it by phone. Then he would not see her cry, see her fall apart in heartbreak. It was easier this way, Niki claimed. Here is her article:
“If You’re Going to Dump Me, Do It Over the Phone”
By Niki Marinis
It might be easier to break up over the telephone, as Marinis suggests, but that does not mean it is better, in my opinion. I will explain my further thinking on this in this essay. I read Niki’s article two weeks ago and have thought long about it.
Ms. Marinis was employing a coping mechanism in claiming to prefer a phone call to a face-to-face breakup. I get it. Niki is probably about thirty years old and in the middle of it all. She is in her prime courting years, hormones and fertility — youth, desire, confusion, bliss, heartbreak. It is hard. I get it. I have been married for 17 years and am fifty two-years old now, so much of the thrills and pains of the romantic chase are behind me, but I was completely in it as a younger man. I understand. The courtship drama can be full of amazing highs and devastating lows: a person in love shows exactly the same symptoms as a person suffering from manic depression. Love can be a sort of madness. A wonderful, horrible, exhausting, exhilarating roller-coaster ride in the tunnel of love.
And often — or sometimes? usually? always? — these powerful romantic relationships end. And usually the end is not pretty. I know.
Ms. Marinis would prefer to have the end of a relationship be quick and as painless as possible — like ripping the band-aid off painfully but quickly. No extended face-to-face painful conversation. Just do it and be gone. Don’t drag it out. Minimize it.
I have even heard of “ghosting” where a romantic partner would just disappear. No message of what is happening or why to their beloved — they just disappear. No communication at all. Just gone. You met through a dating app on your smartphone and communicated via text, and then they simply disappeared from that smartphone. They “ghosted” you. In the age of Internet dating, this can become a new normal.
Maybe it is a generational thing, but when I was single in the 1980s and 1990s I ended every single significant — and not-so-significant relationship — with a face-to-face meeting. (This is so far as I can remember them decades later.) The breakups might have been painful and the breakup conversation delicate, but it deserved to be done face-to-face. “Man up” and explain how you feel, etc. I would almost go so far and claim this is what makes a gentleman. It might have been painful, but I strongly suspect two decades later old girlfriends appreciated the candor and honesty.
I suspect they would not have appreciated it if I had “ghosted” them. If I had just cut off all communication and never gave them any sort of communication as to why I was ending it. But ghosting seems to be symptomatic of the technology-heavy vision of romance which smartphones and social media play a central role. You have people who are highly skilled at asynchronous digital communication, but not so good at face-to-face communication. People are meaner to each other over social media than they are in person (the “online disinhibition effect”), and they similarly find it easier to end relationships electronically rather than in person, too. It can be easier to just stop communicating. Or in her case of Niki Marinis, just phone me and give me the news quick — and then leave me alone to my grief.
This is what I have seen: if you cheat on a girlfriend and then lie about it and get caught — well, she will never forget it and most likely never forgive you. The relationship will be over and she will be like, “Fuck you AND fuck the horse you left town on!” But if you gather your courage and explain in person why it is not working and why you decided as you did, she might cry and be heartbroken. But she will respect what you did, especially later when the emotions of the moment have cooled. She probably won’t want to stab pins into a voodoo doll of you. But if you cheat on her and she finds out and you lie about it, it will be different. Ultimately the outcome might be the same but how a relationship ends is important. It comes down to the respect and consideration shown for the person.
I remember being in a complicated, long-term love affair with a woman seven years older than myself. We had been together for years and were living together, but for complicated reasons it was not working out. We loved each other deeply but it was approaching the time to part, and I was the one ending it. I remember that last week when my beloved could tell I was on my way out, and wow was she unpleasant. It was rough. Finally, I told her. Then I called a buddy to be ready to help me move the next morning and also reserved a moving van. I was gone by noon the next day. The whole process was hard on both of us, but I was communicating with her all throughout the process and explaining what I was doing and why. She was in the loop. That was why she was “such a bitch” to me (in her own later words) in those last few weeks: she knew I was leaving and why. Even in the end we cried together as our relationship ended.
And we remained friends. Almost 30 years later I look forward to having a long phone conversation with every other year or so. She is now semi-retired and lives with her husband in another state some 1,100 miles away. I hope the best for her, and I hear news about her family and extended friends (most of whom I know) with interest. We never turned our back on each other and claimed, “Good riddance!” If anything were to happen to her loved ones, I would feel it, too. I would do anything I could to help her, if I could.
This is the way I look at it: if you loved her in the beginning, if you were present when you fell in love and experienced romantic bliss, if you were two-in-one during the throes of sexual passion, then you should be present when the relationship is failing and when it ends. If you care about her in the good times, you should care enough about her towards the end — in the bad times. Maybe even care about her after it is over? Just leaving without any communication at all is a cop out. It might be easier for one of the people in the relationship — grab your things and run — but it is unkind to the other person. The more I think about it, the more it comes to resemble a profoundly deep form of betrayal.
So when I read about “ghosting” in online dating nowadays and am semi-horrified.
When I talk to 18-year old young men now, I tell them not to ask girls for a date by text message. “Do it face-to-face.” And if you are going to break up with a girlfriend, it is doubly so. Do it with as much honesty, kindness, and maturity as possible. And do it in person. I would hope to get as much with a woman breaking up with me, and I was lucky to get that.
I remember my first great love affair ending. I was a junior in college at the time and was crushed when she told me it was over. She explained that the timing was bad, now was not a good time, we want different things, etc. — this is all normal, and in time you can see the bigger picture. But she met me face-to-face and explained her decision. She held my hand as I cried. She did not simply kick me to the curb. I appreciated it. I do not blame her for breaking up with me, and with time I came to appreciate she was acting in good faith. I was learning an important life lesson in the joys and pains of romantic love.
What would I tell my younger self now? I would say this: that you won’t be heartbroken forever, this is part of growing up, hang in there, young man. I was in crisis; I was soul-sick. I withdrew that quarter from UCLA because of it. I learned to appreciate the lyrics from Fleetwood Mac’s “Gold Dust Woman” where the following questions are asked:
Make you break down
Shatter your illusions of love?
And is it over now, do you know how
Pickup the pieces and go home?
I might not have known at that time “how to pick up the pieces and go home.” But I learned.
Almost 25 years later I have no regrets over the matter. The highs and lows of my first great romantic relationship were part of the process. Both the lows as much as the highs were unavoidable. They instructed; they were my teachers. You can’t have the one without the other. It doesn’t work that way.
And my beloved was there for me both in the highs and lows. Months later we got back together, and then eventually I broke up with her: she was then as distraught as I was previously. Our on-and-off relationship lasted some seven years. We were perhaps not right for each other long-term, and we went on to marry other people and have families with them but I am still in periodic contact with her and enjoy seeing her and her family decades later. If something were to happen to her — or to her husband, or her children — I would be shaken. If she were in trouble, there are few things I would not do to help her, if I could. I was lucky to have had a beloved back in college who showed me respect and consideration. We did the best we could. We did not really know what we were doing; we often stumbled. We were essentially kids.
But our communication was face-to-face. All important sensitive interactions took place in person. We looked each other in the eye and talked.
You can’t do that well by text message or Instagram DM, in my opinion.
I occasionally talk with 18-year-old high school seniors about this. The man-boys listen to me when I urge them to ask out girls in person and not via text message, but I am not sure they are convinced. There seem to be less clear rules about dating protocol now.
But the same rules that applied then, in my opinion, should apply now.
The “easy route” is not always the best one. And if she cries when you break up with her, then that is part of the separating process. Be honest, be present, acknowledge the emotion, and then move on. If you care for her, you owe her this. The more you care for her — or at least cared for her in the past — the more you owe her it.
If you don’t care enough for her to do this, that also speaks volumes. As the old adage goes, what you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say. If you “ghost” her, it speaks to the weakness of your people skills — and even your integrity. Do you owe her an explanation?
If you have just dated once or twice, then maybe the answer is “no.”
But any sort of semi-serious or serious involvement deserves an explanation.
The mores of modern technology-mediated dating leave me scratching my head. I say to myself, “Thank God I am not single nowadays.”
And don’t even get me started on sexting. I have asked numerous young people why they would send naked photos of themselves to others via text, and they shrug and reply. “I do everything else by cellphone. Why not that?”
I don’t get it. Perhaps it is a generational thing.
Some things are better done in person, is my response.
And I read about these man-boys who have almost no romantic connections with the opposite sex — retreating into video games and porn — and I scratch my head. I read with surprise and alarm that almost 30% of American men between the ages of 18-30 hadn’t had sex last year. Wow! How sad. How pathetic.
These men in the prime of their lives are squandering their youth and not engaging the world — and the opposite sex — and all the wonderful things the world and the female sex has to offer. Romance, sex, family, children, companionship — planning a wedding, buying a house — painting the nursery in anticipation of a child. The locking of eyes during the Sturm und Drang of childbirth, the joys and pains of parenthood, the holding of hands during a walk in retirement, each taking care of the other as death approaches, etc. You are foregoing all that for what exactly? 30% of men aged 18 to 30 were celibate last year? Really?
But many men seem to have trouble asking out a woman, engaging in a romantic relationship, or learning to grow with her over a lifetime. Such men tend to have their electronic “soma”: videogames, YouTube, and online porn. It is their anodyne, the anesthesia of the lotus-eaters who prefer the online world to the real one. It is a poor substitute, in my opinion. It is the very definition of “failure to launch.”
On the other hand, there is the female side of this equation. These ladies who have good jobs and work long hours but struggle to find a lasting romantic connection. They engage in online dating via social media apps but mostly hate it, and they find themselves without a husband or any lasting path towards family and building a larger life together with a partner. They are equally missing out on so much of the richness life has to offer. But, hey, they have their nightstand vibrator instead. And dinner with their girlfriends on weekends. And yoga class.
At least the ladies in America seem to understand how much they are missing out on in their singledom, and often gnash their teeth, struggle with, and lament it. One does not have to look hard to find an article written by a woman in such a situation. Most seem to hope to have a family someday. Too many men just flail in their unhappiness without understanding why they are so lonely and unhappy. Play another video game. Some online porn and masturbatory relief. Another marijuana edible. Another alcoholic drink. Why not?
Why has it come to this? Why are marriage rates so low? Why are so many Americans having so little sex? Why do so many Americans live alone?
I suspect it is many factors acting in conjunction. But Americans have never had as much freedom as they do nowadays. To be gay or multiracial or single or to practice Wicca or have a pierced-nose or tattoos everywhere. Most Americans won’t judge or give much of a damn. But that is it: most people don’t give a damn about you. Americans are given much less support from their elders and from society on how to live happily. They have so many choices, it becomes hard to make the right choices which lead to happiness. It is almost as if Americans are drowning in their freedom while suffering from a lack of support and human connection. Too many Americans without strong and stable two-parent families, health insurance when they need it, or any real place in workaday society. The single parents and their kids living on one paycheck, the single people alone in their apartments, the elderly in retirement homes; the isolation, the loneliness of America. The depressives. The opioid addicts and alcoholics — the self-medication, the self-destruction — the “deaths of despair.” The anxiety. The angst. The anger.
One occasionally comes across a radical feminist who urges her sisters to “smash the patriarchy!” but in practice that just means typing furiously on Twitter. It’s just noise. Meanwhile, men and women alike seem mostly to “lead lives of quiet desperation.”
If I can think of one defining image of our lives now, it would be this: an American living alone and spending most of his/her time staring at a screen. This is happiness?
And this business of being “ghosted” by romantic partners?
It is a symptom of a larger problem, in my opinion. Too much electronic communication, too little face-to-face talking.
There is a reason Steve Jobs and the other technology titans don’t let their own children play with electronic devices, even as they make billions of dollars off their sale.
So, Ms. Kiki Marinis, I suspect your desire to be “dumped” by phone call rather than in a face-to-face conversation is a desire to minimize the sharp pain of romantic disappointment. That is understandable. But it is also a retreat from the emotional range of romance and a romantic relationship, both in the good and bad. It is a retreat from life, in all its fullness. It is hiding behind the digital device rather than having to look someone in the face during a difficult moment.
Maybe it comes down to this: my college girlfriend might have broken up with me, but she never “dumped” me. Similarly, I might have ended my relationship with the girlfriend older than myself, but I never “dumped” her. Far from it.
There is a difference.
