Breaking up with someone is almost as difficult as finding a date in the first place. So difficult that things like “ghosting” have become the easier (and least respectable) way to let a person know it’s over. While apps and online dating sites like Tinder and OKCupid are designed to help singles find dates — and sometimes mates for life — it is up to you to figure out the nicest way to let your mate know when you don’t want to be with him or her anymore.
Fortunately for those who just can’t deal with it themselves, services like The Breakup Shop, aim to handle the complexities of dumping your once-significant other. According to Motherboard’s Emanuel Maiberg, you can hire The Breakup Shop to handle the entire process for you. Breakup emails and texts are $10; a custom breakup letter is $30, and breakup phone calls start at $29. It would seem to be a rather inexpensive way to avoid the painful breakup process, except because the service is fairly new, there are some rough edges.
Services offering to electronically break up for you isn’t entirely new. Over the past couple years, others have attempted to find a way to handle the sometimes, ugliest part of a relationship, without making it clear that someone actually paid them to do their dirty work. The BreakupText app can send the text for you but was originally intended to be a joke. In fact, according to Business News Daily, the creators felt so bad about the app’s effect on people’s lives that they created the MakeupText.
Apps and services attempting to assist those who have been broken up with after the breakup are available as well. KillSwitch, for example, helps you deal with seeing your ex’s tagged photos and Facebook posts by identifying the ex and the types of photos and statuses you don’t want to see anymore and then going through and hiding everything. Numerous platforms provide opportunities to resell and dispose of gifts you don’t want to keep, and there are apps which prevent you from the embarrassing act of drunk dialing your ex and sobbing all over their voicemail.
Most of the breakup apps include features that still need some ironing out, especially when it comes to dealing with the emotions associated with breakups. . For example, The Breakup Shop’s phone call basically ends with an up sell to visit the site’s gift shop, “we have a really great gift shop for people who have just been dumped,” which may, quite possibly, be worse than any other breakup options available, including ghosting.
