Recently, someone I’d only gotten as far as talking on the phone with (partly because he was too far away) wanted to know why I “broke up” with him which made me wonder if it is possible to break up when you haven’t ever seen each other. Don’t you have to be dating to break up? And don’t you have to go out to be dating?
That’s when it occurred to me that online dating has some different methods of relationship dissolution that the old in-person model didn’t have. And by relationship I mean everything from a casual exchange via email to…well everything else.
1. The noncommittal email response…so that you aren’t sure if he was making a bad attempt at continuing/starting a conversation or if he was saying “no thanks”
Here’s an example of an exchange (which also illustrates why I rarely initiate conversations: when a guy is actually interested, he usually makes the first move.)
Me: Hi there. I liked your profile…particularly your snarky answers:-)
Snarky Guy: Well thank you. I enjoy treading the line of snarky and acceptability haha
Of course I noticed he did not say he also liked my profile. But maybe he just didn’t know what to say? I decided, having nothing to lose, to attempt to clarify.
Ha, well, you managed to do that. You also managed to respond in such a way that it is difficult to tell if you are starting or ending a conversation…
He responded by…not responding. Which brings me to…
2. Messages suddenly stop. Could be after a brief exchange, or emailing back and forth quite a bit, or even, once he’s asked you out and you’ve set up a date and he “had to reschedule”. Or it could happen after the first date and a few messages and you’re not sure if it’s because you’ve given him your google voice number which just doesn’t always work or you hinted or admitted to him you might want to be “just friends.”
Or you’ve been messaging pretty regularly, you’ve had more than three dates, and at some point it seems to have ended though you cannot figure out when. He’s even come over your house for dinner and seemed to be wanting to settle into a relationship . You weren’t not sure if that’s what you want so maybe you made that clear somehow. Perhaps you indicated you were still seeing other people. Or it was that moment when his spending the night came up and you sent him home instead. And now you rarely hear from him. You can tell you are no longer seeing each other, but you can’t put your finger on when or how exactly that happened. You also can’t figure out if you’re the one who dumped him or vice versa.
p.s. will you marry me? 