You thought you found your one true love online, but now you’ve been dumped by text or defriended on Facebook without a peep of explanation. Hours of bad TV in your bathrobe haven’t helped. Your friends are tired of your whining.
Forget a pampering makeover to help heal your broken heart this Valentine’s Day. Go for a “digital breakover” instead, using a growing number of tech tools to save you from yourself or to sob on a safe shoulder in the ether.
Online dating sites and apps for hooking up on the go are abundant. Only one of the Apple app store’s recent top 12 downloads for the iPhone was about something other than romantic love, but breakup tech hasn’t kept pace.
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Melissa McGlone, 46, in Alexandria, Va., turned to The Ex-App after a three-year relationship ended recently with an unceremonious text. After a weak moment or three of electronically stalking her dumper, she used the text, call and email blocker to hold his digits at bay until she could resist temptation on her own.
“I no longer humiliate myself by trying to contact him,” said McGlone, a divorced mother who was 18 years out of the dating scene when the two first met.
In New York, 28-year-old Amanda Green relied on the well-established Dear Old Love Tumblr blog after she was dumped on Independence Day 2009 a year into a relationship. The site for the lovelorn describes itself as an anonymous safe haven for “short notes to people we’ve loved (or at least liked). Requited or unrequited.” A selection of notes from the site was later turned into a book.
“There’s also CheaterVille.com, a site full of alleged cheaters complete with mugshot-like photos and sometimes lengthy explanations of love deceptions. While the culprits are identified by name and town, the posters are anonymous.
And NeverLikedItAnyway.com, where dumpees sell their engagement rings, wedding gowns and other gifts from exes.
Of those who are married, 36 percent said their attachment to an ex interferes with their current relationship.
“People are connected to their exes in a profound way and many used technology to find love in the first place,” Miller said, “yet there’s this paucity of technology to help you after a breakup. We’re saying get on with it, in our digital lives as well as ours hearts.”
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