Ending the relationship

Today I was able to catch up on 3 days of blogs. This is especially strange for me since I get them e-mailed within the hour after they are posted. But life has just been such that I've spent more time with family and working than I have checking blogs.

Interestingly most people must have been as busy as I am, since very few have been updated. Though there was one which kind of bothered me. When I say "kind of bothered" I mean it's really, really irritated me and continues to really bother me. This is pretty impressive since I do tend to get over things other people do (which don't directly affect me) pretty quickly, I'm much harder on myself.

Anyway, I pop on to see that one of the youth group members has essentially broken off their relationship through a blog post. This person mentions being torn between two people (one they are dating another they aren't currently dating) and ends it with "I think I know who I should be with, I just don't know if that person will accept me" (rewritten to remain as anonymous as possible). Sure enough, the person they are dating saw this and wrote a comment along the lines of "Obviously I'm not the person you want to be with, I hope it does work for you and the other person".

I don't know what other conversations have taken place between the writing of the blog entries (though I know some face-to-face conversations have occurred). So I can only hope and pray there's some real personal conversation going on to help this process. It is pretty clear that this person has essentially broken off the relationship through their blog entry.

Now, I've done some pretty crummy things to girlfriends.

One I cheated on. I went on a date with someone else and while I try to make myself feel better by saying the relationship was ending and she'd been cheating on me a few times as well, I still feel a little guilty.

Another one we'd been dating almost 2 years and I went to visit her and had a weekend long break-up discussion which ended with me telling her we could work it out, though on the drive home I realized we couldn't and called her to break it off.

Yet another I drove up to visit for dinner and broke up with her on her birthday! In my defense somehow I didn't know it was her birthday, I didn't say I wasn't an idiot.

There was one worse, not the breakup but how we treated each-other afterward. But I'm going to stop for now.

What gets me is this. I've heard of people breaking up through a letter and even by e-mail. Heck, I once talked to two youth as they were breaking up with each-other over IM. I have to say it is just too impersonal. I can't say I've seen a breakup in a blog yet, and it's a very good example that we do need to be careful what we write since everyone could be reading it (and who doesn't wish the whole world, or at least those we care about, read our blog)?

What has happened to us that we think it's okay to leave (and be left by) someone over a public blog? Do we see each-other so rarely that it's not important to see or at least hear the voice of the person breaking up with u? Are we so un-committed to relationships that ending one just isn't that important?

My wife and I go to football games, and see planes flying cute statements to the world "Erin, Will You Marry Me?", "Goodyear Tires Will Get You Home From The Game" (ok, you get the drift). Do you think this year I'll gaze up during the game and see "Tom, Sorry But I Love Someone Else"?

Have any of you done something similar? Has it happened to you? And do you think it's ok to handle relationships this way?

Peace.

posted by Tom at 1:05 PM