You know that episode of Sex and the City where Jack Berger breaks up with Carrie by leaving her a Post-It that said, “I’m sorry, I can’t. Don’t hate me,” and sneaking out in the middle of the night? Later the next day, when a furious Carrie runs into Berger’s friends at a bar, one of them insists “There really isn’t a good way to break up with someone,” setting off Carrie’s rant about how there is, in fact, a good way: you can be honest and upfront and do it with dignity. It’s true, break-ups suck no matter what. But Carrie makes a good point, you can at least give the other person a goodbye that is worthy of what you shared together.
Horrible break-ups happen all the time. Remember all that drama about Taylor Swift getting dumped by Joe Jonas on the phone? Between my friends and I, we have seen our share of bad break-ups – finding out through a changed relationship status on Facebook, being left for another person, and getting dumped while grieving the death of a grandparent, just to name a few.
About a year ago, I read an article on The Frisky (a site that I follow almost religiously) about the worst kinds of break-ups. The first is “ghosting” – that is, when you’re dating someone and one day, all of a sudden, they disappear. They just vanish, out of thin air. They stop texting you, calling you, answering your messages, everything. They might even have gone the extra mile and unfriended or blocked you on Facebook.
Ghosting comes in several forms and variations – another listed in the article is “The Stand Up”, which is a variation of ghosting that takes place when two people agree to have a conversation about breaking up, but one of them bails and doesn’t show up. A much more likely situation is called “The Slow Fade” (or “The Fade Away,” “The Fade Out). This is when the person you’re dating realizes that they aren’t that into the relationship anymore and starts pulling away – first taking a few hours, then days, then weeks to respond to your messages. They no longer initiate contact. Their responses are short with almost a hint of annoyance. Eventually, you take the hint and stop trying to contact them because the continuous feeling of rejection is just getting old. If the relationship was serious, these would be signs of an impending definite break-up – but if you’re just casually dating, you might not even get that satisfaction of a break-up.
In the past few weeks, I have been going through a slow fade. This is a first for me, and I’m glad that I had social media and the Internet to warn me ahead of time. It definitely would have been a lot harder if I hadn’t prepared myself once the signs started appearing. The whole “non-confrontational break up” has its pros and cons. On one hand, the slow fade might save the trouble of that horrible, awkward goodbye. And you never have to hear a lame excuse or explanation for why the relationship isn’t working anymore. But on the other hand, you walk around for weeks, confused and hurt – you don’t know what you did wrong, you aren’t sure when exactly they lost interest, and you’re still wondering if you’ll hear from them today. Or tomorrow. Or this weekend. Texting or calling them again would just be embarassing at this point. The not-knowing is killing you. And accepting the silence just feels sad.
I guess it really depends on the person. Maybe two non-confrontational people would prefer to skip the break-up and go straight to moving on. It also depends on the seriousness of the relationship – ghosting or fading out someone you’ve been dating for a year would just be wrong. That isn’t to say that it’s any better to ghost someone you’ve been dating casually – many people would argue that not knowing feels even worse than a goodbye.
Break-ups are sad, and messy, and difficult. And I don’t know whether there is or isn’t a “good” way to break up with someone, but for everyone else who’s also going through a slow fade right now, here’s a Buzzfeed post to make us all feel better.
Buzzfeed makes everything better.