Ouch.

So there’s this blog I read, Nomen Est Numen. I’ve linked to it before. She’s really cool – a very heartfelt blogger, and she writes with great honesty about her recovery from a serious eating disorder. Recently, the guy she was seeing dumped her over email, and when she wrote back responding to his irrational break-up letter he informed her that he was blocking her address. Oh, but it’s all for her own good, he’s just being selfless. Good grief.

I was dumped over ICQ once, which is only a step above dumping via email. I agree with 2peculiar that breaking up any way but face to face is spineless. I mean, if you and the person live reallllly far apart, sure, breaking up over the phone might be acceptible, MAYBE. But via electronic communication? No. Wussy. Wimpy. NOT COOL.
I waas dropped over email by a guy I was friends with, too, come to think of it. We weren’t romantically involved but had a pretty intense friendship, and he ended it all with a letter in a Word attachment. I was heartbroken and it took literally months to recover.
Worse, both of these events took me completely by surprise. Neither of the guys in question had told me anything in advance to suggest that they were thinking about taking this step. Nothing. And I know it affected me, because it has taken me a long time to let myself believe (and I mean really believe, not just “believe” in an intellectual way) that there are guys out there who aren’t like that and who won’t blindside me in that kind of cowardly way.
That’s one definite down side to this conevenient electronic communication. It lets us inflict hurt casually and with little danger to ourselves, and while causing incredible emotional hurt in others. I love email as much as the next netaddict, but I worry about how easily it lets us tear each other to shreds. Surely when we build the mental walls that let us handle flames and online dumpings and all of that, our ability to connect with each other in a real way is lessened.