I know I’m definitely not making a new revelation here, but breakups suck.
Whether you’re the breaker or the one being dumped, there’s never an easy way to confront the end of a fling, full-blown relationship or hook-up. If you are the one instigating the ~end~ of things, navigating the etiquette of exactly how to break up can add a whole other layer of confusion.
This should come as no surprise, but people are opting for ways to avoid a face-to-face break up more so than ever before. In a recent study conducted by Telstra, 22% of young Aussies aged 18-34 have opted to break up with someone online, with a further 23% revealing they’ve been broken up with online.
The majority of our communication does occur over tech these days, so it makes sense that our intense love life-related conversations are happening like that too – but does that make it okay? 18% of 18-34-year-olds believe it’s okay to break up with someone over text, but what’s getting the other 78% so hesitant?
There’s a lot of etiquette around breaking up over text, and so many factors can determine whether it’s okay to do so – the length of the relationship, how intense it was, whether you actually dated or just texted etc. At the end of the day, as the breaker-upper, you do have a bit of responsibility to ensure you’re not completely sending the other person into chaos after you do it.
Since it’s such a burning topic that we’re all a little undecided on, here are 6 people who have done the breaking up over text and why they decided to end things with a DM.
“I broke up with my high school boyfriend over text because I kept trying to do it in person, and he kept crying, so I chickened out. We’d spoken on the phone and I was still giving him mixed messages, and then I finally sent a text being like, no, I actually don’t want to do this anymore, sorry. That was the end.” – Stacy
“I was dating this girl for about 4 months, and it was fun, but I started to get the feeling that she was getting a little too serious. I had also just started making heaps of new friends, and I didn’t want to get into a relationship. I had started fading away from answering her texts for a while, and then she came to my birthday party a few weeks later. She gave me a present and wrote a card saying she wanted to keep dating. I got freaked out and texted her the next day to call things off.” – Simon
“When I was in Year 9, I had a ‘boyfriend’ who I never spoke to on the phone or hung out with. We went to the same school but only ever texted – high school relationships are weird, anyway. I started to get bored, so I texted him, saying I wanted to break up. He said he didn’t want to, so I got my friend to pretend she was me and call him and break up with him – because I was too scared and we had never spoken on the phone, so he’d never heard my voice.” – Zoe
“I really liked this guy who I had started talking to from one of my Uni classes. We got along really well and had similar interests – it just felt good and cute. We went on a few dates, and it was around the time I had just met my current boyfriend (who I had a crush on and connected with as soon as we met) and we went to see Modern Baseball together. He told me he liked me a lot at the show, and I was flattered. However, the day after, I saw that my current boyfriend was also at the show via an IG post. There was something that just made things click at that moment, and I knew that he was probably going to be the one. The other guy and I continued talking, but I had started going out with my current boyfriend, and I knew I had to end things, so I opted for a text.” – Jo
“I ended things with my partner of two years over text. It was the coward move that I regret to this day. I didn’t have the heart to face my feelings at the time.” – Kevin
“I started seeing this girl who’d just moved to Australia from the UK. I have a huge thing for British accents, so I definitely fell hard after the first few dates. During our maybe 6th or 7th date, she said that she never thought she’d move to Australia, and I responded with a cringe joke about how it was to find me. She got really startled and started to back off. I ended up breaking up over text because I was just too embarrassed at it all.” – Paul
So, still on the fence about whether it’s ~okay~ to break up over text? At the end of the day, every relationship or fling is different, so it really is a matter of knowing how to read a situation and have the emotional intelligence to ensure we’re making the right decision. It’s all about being respectful, and while we can never be 100% perfect, we can at least try to do what’s right, even if it is hard.
