Status: Single.
Status: It’s complicated.
Status: Single again.

Do you know how many clients I talk to who have been broken up with via Facebook without even getting a phone call from their Facebook “ex”?
What is wrong with our society? We don’t even have closure anymore. We’re so afraid of actually having to face our partners when we’re ending a relationship that we resort to alternate, virtual ways to break up with them. Facebook. Email. Even texting! It’s ridiculous.

First, unless you’re married, real men do not post their relationship status on Facebook. Unless you’re married, it’s nobody else’s business.
And more importantly, real men do not break up over Facebook.

And real women do not post their relationship status on Facebook either. Your actual friends already know what your relationship status is.
Enough with the Facebook relationship announcements. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of constantly seeing so-and-so’s relationship status who I haven’t seen in 12 years, or so-and-so who I met at some party last summer.

I’m tired of all the bullshit.
If you’re going to break up with somebody, do it face-to-face.
At the very least, before you go out and publicly announce a relationship with someone over Facebook, have the courtesy to announce that relationship to your “significant other’s” face first so they don’t wake up one morning to their that surprise they’re suddenly in a relationship with you on Facebook—when all they thought was that you two were dating.

So you went out with somebody, you had a great time, maybe you slept together, maybe you didn’t, but now you’ve determined that this person just isn’t for you. Now when it comes to dating and relationships, most of us are complete chicken shit because there are a lot of feelings and emotions involved, and it’s a really intimate thing.

Most of us are not going to take a stand and break up with somebody properly who don’t really know that well. So instead, what we do is we perform the fade away.

What exactly is the fade away? You hung out with somebody maybe for a week, maybe a few weeks, maybe you had some sex, maybe you didn’t. Basically by now you’ve determined you are not really into anything serious with this person, or that person is just not for you. But instead of saying that to them, you just fade away.

Fade aways are usually paired up with one of two really bad excuses. One: you’re going out of town to visit family for a week, or you’re going away on business for a week, and you’ll call when you get back! Two: Hey, things are just really hectic over the next 10 days, you’ve got some deadlines at work, you’ve got some friends in town, you’re moving into a new apartment, whatever.

That’s when the fade away process slowly begins. Then, over the course of the next 10 days, you start fading away and hope you’re becoming a distant memory. Of course you never call him or her again, and you never intended to, but you start the fade away by saying that you will keep them in mind, that you’ll be in touch soon.

The Fade Away

You start the fade away with an excuse you pulled from your life so they don’t expect to hear from you for a short while. Then, after that time passes, they start scratching their head wondering if you are ever going to call them again.

Here’s the question: why is it so difficult to just be honest with each other? Instead of doing things like the fade away tactic, why can’t we look at each other and say, “Hey, you know, I really enjoyed hanging out with you, sleeping with you, whatever. It was great fun, I’m glad we met, but I just don’t see this going anywhere. I just don’t have that feeling, and I’m looking for something else. But I enjoyed the time we spent together, the few weeks we spent together, however long it might be.”

We’ve all had somebody perform the fade away on us. And the next time you’re thinking about doing a fade away yourself, it really comes down to thinking about how you felt the last time a person you were dating faded away on you? How did the fade away make you feel in that situation?

Practicing honesty and being up-front with people who you’re dating is an amazing thing to practice. When dealing with people in life, you have to think long term. Because when you see that person again, months or years later down the road, they will respect you a lot more if you’re completely honest with them, even if you hurt their feelings temporarily. But when you perform the fade away, that person doesn’t really want to see you, doesn’t want to waste their time having to deal with you either personally or professionally, and you become that asshole who only cared about himself or herself and faded away hoping you wouldn’t notice.

Have you ever thought that when you were in a relationship that came to an end? Have you ever been completely taken by surprise?

I don’t think there’s any truth to a statement like that. Nobody gets dumped just like that out of the blue. Nobody wakes up one morning, everything perfect in the relationship, and then gets dumped just like that out of the blue. Similarly, nobody in a wonderful relationship wakes up one morning and decides to dump their significant other out of the blue, just because they felt like it for no particular reason. It doesn’t work that way.

If you got dumped and it came out of nowhere, it is because you were oblivious to all the warning signs from your partner. Or you chose to ignore all the signs. You weren’t really paying attention to them. You ignored the conversations where she (or he) was trying to tell what was on their mind, you ignored the body language, the emotional disconnect, you’ve ignored or been oblivious to everything.

How To Dump Her

There are always warning signs in relationships. There are always signals that tell you when things are going well and things are going poorly. The successful relationships are those where both of you pay attention to each other’s signals, you work to please each other, to communicate, and work things out when you hit a rough patch. And when it comes down to being broken up with all of a sudden out of the blue, it’s because there was a breakdown in the communication, you did nothing to reach out to him or her, and you chose to ignore all the signs of a failing relationship.

You are never broken up with “out of the blue.” It just doesn’t exist. If you’re in a relationship, I want you guys to take some time and really open up to your partner, really make sure that you are communicating with them, and that you’re not turning a blind eye to their needs. I want you guys to think about that for today.

Via email?! They dated (and were inseparable) for over a year, and she breaks up with him via email?

She told him that it was too hard for her to sit down and break up with him face-to-face, and that she thought it would be easier for her to break up with him via email. She didn’t even go into detail in the email about it — it was a short three sentence email basically saying that the relationship wasn’t working for her anymore.

Another friend of mine was in a relationship with someone for nine months. They were in love, were intimate, spent night after night together, and vacationed together.

He broke up with her via a text message. That’s right, a text message!

Do you see a pattern here? What are the rules now a days — that you break up with someone via text message if you’re dating under a year, and you break up with someone via email if you’ve been dating longer than a year?

The text message that my friend sent said simply, “I don’t think this is working out, and I think we should stop seeing each other.” That was it.

How do you even respond to that? He didn’t even have the guts to pick up the phone and call this person he said that he loved. He just sent a text message.

I remember how bad I thought it was when the story broke a few years ago that Sylvester Stallone had broken up with someone via a letter he sent FedEx. He just had to break up with her overnight, and even sent it so that it would arrive by 10:00 am. Waking up to a breakup letter is something I’m sure she really needed.

What does it take these days to get a face-to-face breakup . . . or even a breakup via a live phone call?

Do you need to have been dating for more than two years to warrant this treatment? What do you have to do for someone to feel they “owe” you the courtesy of a face-to-face talk or at least a live phone call when they break up with you? What do you have to do to get the closure and the honesty that comes from a face-to-face breakup?

We have become so addicted to technology that we can’t even give each other the time of day anymore. So many people will not even pick up the phone anymore.

Most people text. A lot of people just email instead of picking up the phone.

When it comes down to breaking up — really discussing the relationship and the really important issues — you should never do it via email or text. What is wrong with our culture today that this has become at all acceptable?

When did we become so afraid? When did we become such wimps when it comes down to speaking with one another.

Breaking up via text or via email is disgraceful. You owe it to someone you’ve been dating (no matter for how long) to sit them down. You owe it to them to be 100% honest about how you’re feeling and where you’re at so that they can have closure.

I can’t imagine if something broke up with me via text. I don’t think I’d ever be able to talk to them again, or even look them in the eye. If you’re intimate enough to look someone in the eyes when you’re making love with them, then how dare you break up with them via text or email?

Technology is wonderful. When it comes down to intimacy and your relationship, however, you need to pick up the phone or meet face-to-face to tell someone how you feel if you’re going to break up with them. You need to do this no matter how hard you think it will be for you.

Breaking up is not easy to do. Breaking up using technology, though, is just plain sad.

I’d say about one hour. Yes, why not go out there an hour after breaking up — crying, tears running down your face, insecure and full of emotion — and start dating again.

Of course an hour is too soon. Honestly, though, the answer is that it’s a different time period for everyone.

It depends how long it took for you to break up. It depends on who did the breaking up. Most importantly, it depends on how long you need.

You need as long as it’s going to take for you to process everything. You need to get all the anger out, process what went wrong in the relationship, what you need to learn from the relationship, and what type of person you want going forward.

When you go through a break up with somebody, regardless of whether you’re the person being broken up with or whether you do the breaking up, you need to take time to process everything that went on before you move forward and even think about dating again.

I think it’s really important during that processing time to do things for yourself, to spend time with yourself, and to spend time with your friends. Doing these things is important because when you do start dating again, you need to be 100% open to what comes into your life.

If you’re still wounded, you’re just going to find another person who is equally as wounded. That’s not what you want. You want to really be the most positive, amazing version of yourself so that you can attract an equally positive and amazing person.

So take your time after a breakup. Take as much time as you need, however long that might be, before you start dating again.

Breaking up is tough. You could do it like Sylvester Stallone and break up with someone via FedEx.

You can also can sit someone down, look them in the eyes and be 100% honest with about how you feel. You can tell the person exactly how you feel about them — that you love them as a person but that you no longer romantically feeling them anymore. You can tell them that you’re great as friends but not great as lovers.

Honesty is really, really hard for certain people. By being honest, though, you are allowing someone not to live with any doubt or questions, and it allows them to move on. It will of course hurt in that moment, but then that person can start healing and move forward.

Too many people don’t allow someone to heal. By being honest with someone when breaking up, though, you are allowing them to start healing.

So share with me today some of the toughest times you had breaking up with people. I’d love to hear from you guys.

Also, why does housekeeping start so early even when you have the “f*^k off” sign on the door? You can hear them at the crack of dawn knocking on doors up and down the hallway.

I mean, if someone is out of their room at 7:00 am, I highly doubt there are coming back at 8:00 am. So I think the mandatory start time for housekeeping ought to be 9:00 am so the rest of us can get our money’s worth and our sleep!

I am writing this in a cafe called “Mommy World.” We are the only non-childbearing, non-pregnant, non-breast feeding people in here!

OK, I’m off to the streets of New York City, and leaving you with today’s blog…

So, you’ve got to break up with somebody.  Breaking up is hard to do.

I’ll tell you something – I was never a good breaking up person. I mean, it was one of the hardest things in the world for me to do. Through much of my adult life, I would work to get women to dislike me so the relationship could end.

Once a relationship was over, I just hated having to have “the talk.” I hated having to have that breakup talk.

The breakup talk is the worst talk in the entire world.  To sit down and to break somebody’s heart is awful. Then again, they may want to break up with you too — you just never know.

There are, however, rules about breaking up that everyone should follow. I really think breaking up is something that needs to be done face to face. Silvester Stallone is famous for breaking up via Fed Ex.

Other people will break up with someone via text message, which I think is cowardly. Never break up with somebody you’re dating via text message.

Never break up with someone via email. It think that is really tacky. Never stick a Post It® note on someone’s refrigerator or their pillow case right after you’ve had sex saying, “Sorry but I don’t think this is going to work out.”

Once you realize that you need to break up with somebody, you need to sit them down immediately.  The passive aggressive way of breaking up (of which I’ve been guilty in my past) wherein you try to get someone to break up with you by putting them through a year of torture to get them to hate you, is totally wrong.

Once you know you no longer want to be with someone, it needs to be you who initiates the breakup — now and face to face. When you know you need to break up with somebody, you need to sit them down and be honest about how you feel.

You shouldn’t be that passive aggressive person who stops returning someone’s phone calls to get the other person to be angry with you.

Think about it from their perspective. Here is this person who is getting to know you for a month or two, and then all of a sudden you stop taking their calls and stop calling them.

They’re going to be confused. They won’t know what’s going on with you. They will start to get really nervous. They’ll start having talks with their friends about it. They’ll start to wonder what they did to cause you do act this way.

You will be leaving things open-ended. Instead of causing all this upset and anxiety in the other person, all you really need to do is to tell them that you are no longer feeling that relationship. By doing that, you are giving them closure.

You don’t want to leave someone without closure in these situations. Why? Remember what that feels like when someone in the past has done this to you, and you will never do it to someone else again.

So, breakups are something that should be done immediately once you know you want to end things with someone. Don’t hesitate. Breakups should happen fast.

The minute you know you need to break up with someone, you need to figure out how to do it quickly and face to face. There should be some kind of 48 hour break up rule, wherein you must do it within 48 hours of deciding you need to do it.

For any of you who are wondering where the usual Wednesday podcast is, it is still going to be here every Wednesday EXCEPT for this week (when it will be making a special appearance on Friday). So be sure to check back here on Friday for a very special podcast and blog!