Sample of My Non-commercial Writing

Splitting Up Today Means More than Just a Broken Heart –Add Total and Very Public Humiliation

If you are of the same generation as me – too old to be a credible virgin, too young for gray hairs– unless we married our childhood sweetheart, most of us have experienced that calamitousend-of-the-world moment when we discover that the love of our life doesn’t feel the same wayabout us,and a parting of the ways ensues. In a case of the biter bit, I have been both the giver and recipient of such stomach-churning news, and while both are wholly memorable occasions, albeit for different reasons, neither is a pleasant one.

However, breaking up also involved growing up. The “we need to talk” moment would, for many of us, be the first time we have had to take full responsibility for our actions. For a young man, this was the time to ‘grow a pair’ and extricate themselves from a situation as best they could, but with little or no past experience to call on and at best “It’s not you, it’s me” would come to the rescue like a knight astride an unruly white charger.For young women, being the harbinger of this particular type of bad news would reveal a new facet to their character, that of being a bitch. One way or another, this would be a less-than-life-defining rite of passage, but memorable and influential nonetheless, wherenobody comes out of it looking good.

For the ‘biter’, guilt would fleetingly enter the frame, but soon be evicted by heartfelt and frequently lustful thoughts pertaining to a new love of their life. For the ‘bit’, aside from the histrionics and period of self-loathing that usually ensues rejection of an extremely personal nature, much time would be spent alone, immersed in a world of self-pity and introspection at microscopic level. Emphasis here is on the word “alone”, as being able to grieve in private for the death of a relationship was critical to coping with all the associated angst.

Along the well-trodden path of relationship break-ups, there were only two other hurdles to overcome before you could get your life back on track. Seeing your ‘ex’ again and seeing your ‘ex’ with their new girlfriend or boyfriend. On both occasions, once you have experienced this newer and more profound sense of pain, you become equipped to handle pretty much anything else the world can throw at you other than the pain of childbirth. If you are a woman, then you may well know what I am talking about, if you are a man, then you will be reminded of this fact on innumerable occasions throughout your life.

Today’s break-ups tend to follow a different path where the younger generation is concerned, and for the ‘bit’, humiliation tends to play a very big part along the way.

The first sign that all is not well in paradise is when you gothrough the daily ritual of scouring your other half’s social media posts and profiles, only to discover that “In a relationship” has mysteriously changed to “I’m single”.Were this not bad enough, all your friends have also spotted this ‘anomaly’, and suddenly your personal humiliation becomes public humiliation. All messages you receive for the next few hours will begin with “OMG!”, “WTF?” and “ICYMI”, and any possible opportunities for your friends to display genuine sympathy will be heavily overshadowed by the ‘media frenzy’ they have stirred up when sharing the news of your change in relationship status among the 1,453 friends they have on Facebook. Do you really need to be trending on Twitter when your heart is breaking and the only place you can find sympathy is in a dictionary nestled somewhere betweenthe words “shit” and “syphilis”?

The humiliation continues as you text the ‘biter’ to find out what they are playing at – a strange concept when this is done using your phone and yet you both presumably have the power of speech – only to then spend the next three hours checking your phone every two minutes to see if they have replied, and they haven’t and probably won’t. In the meantime, you’ve tried to message them on Facebook, only to find youhave been subjected to the ritual humiliation of being‘unfriended’, an action that has also not gone unnoticed by all your friends too.

Of course, you won’t have to worry about that awful moment when you bump into your ex with their new partner, because with a day or two, as you wistfully check their social media posts in a form of masochistic punishment, the selfies begin to appear of the two of them together, new BBFs, and your ex’s status has once again reverted to “In a relationship”. 

And so, life goes on…

I fear for the next generation of kids who are growing up in a society where everything can be done ‘remotely’ and where those tough-to-face situations can be avoided thanks to social media and smartphones. This goes way beyond the break-up of relationships, but extends itself into the workplace, where more and more frequently employees are being made redundant via a text message than a face-to-face meeting.

As the size of men’s testicles and levels of women’s bitchiness diminish, replaced instead by a complicit willingness to allow modern technology to take their place when faced with an uncomfortable situation, I fear for the mental state of so many who will have to suffer the indignity and humiliation, whether personal or public, of being made to feel unworthy, worthless, or just too plain insignificantto merit a face-to-face conversation when trouble looms.