This Is How We Break Up Now

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Thought Catalog Flickr

The end of a relationship is only the beginning of something else. You say goodbye to touching their body whenever you feel like it, to being a plus one to their holiday work party, to writing cringeworthy romantic shit on their Facebook wall. You didn’t feel embarrassed about broadcasting your affection. Your relationship in the virtual world was just a spec of dust anyway. The Internet has never felt more insignificant than when you’re getting close to someone. Goodbye Instagram, Twitter, Facebook: what have you done for me lately? Certainly not give me an amazing blowjob at 5am in the morning and tell me you love me and give me the confidence to stand up to my asshole boss and hold my hand in the doctor’s office.

You say goodbye to all of the stuff that felt real and timeless and all you’re left with is the fake shit. You’re left with various social networks that serve as reminders that someone is outgrowing you more and more each day. Against your better judgement, you still go to bed with them sometimes. Clutching your phone before you go to sleep, looking at their Twitter, and seeing the thoughts that came to their brain after you’re gone. You think you’re insane, that you’re taking too long to grieve. Maybe you are but it’s not your fault. You have so many digital relics. Nudes, text messages, photo albums, comments on Instagram, profile pictures. You have more than you could ever want or need. You call your parents for guidance. They don’t understand. Your mother doesn’t even know where her first husband went. “We lost touch,” she says breezily into the phone. “Back then, you could remember or forget as much as you wanted.”

There is no such luxury today. People delete their Facebook. They make things private.  Too much temptation. Then we feel pathetic, and weak because we’re quitting the most addictive drug of all, which is, of course, love. Don’t be ashamed though . Technology fucked us in the heart. It’s made it impossible to really let go. It’s like being in breakup captivity. You’re a whale at Sea World swimming around in a small bathtub, going crazy and hitting your head against the walls because you were really meant to be out in the wild with tons of room to roam, fuck, and fall in love again. You weren’t supposed to have your past be so close to your present.

Breakups will never be what they once were. In order to really let go today and not spend two years getting over a six month relationship, you have to detach. You have to do away with social niceties and blow up the relationship graveyard. Blow it to smithereens and don’t bother giving anyone an explanation. They won’t ask anyway. Everyone knows that we do what we have to in order to feel okay again. TC Mark

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