NEW YORK — 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.
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.
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.
The free app took off last March with about 3,000 downloads in the first nine months. Unlike other blocking tools, The Ex-App also tracks the number of consecutive days spent NOT trying to ferret out a former love.
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.
“It’s a refuge for those of us who know our friends are getting tired of listening to us, or those of us who don’t have a confidante at all,” said Green. “It’s also a reminder of how universal these feelings are.”
There’s also CheaterVille.com, a site full of alleged cheaters complete with mugshot-like photos and sometimes lengthy explanations of love deceptions. The posters are anonymous.
And NeverLikedItAnyway.com, where dumpees sell off their engagement rings, wedding gowns and other gifts from exes. A recent bargain of the week featured an anonymous teacher’s lynx fur jacket with a real-world price of $12,000 but a breakup asking price of $7,995. Transactions are private via direct message through the site.
The latest entrant is WotWentWrong, brand new for dumpees in search of feedback from their formers.
Registered users fill out detailed questionnaires covering what information they’re after (was it my hair, the way I dressed?) and can customize a template letter to be sent through the site to an ex. The ex can respond with as much detail as he or she desires through the site, without contacting the sender directly.
The site owner, Audrey Melnik, came up with the idea after a first date she thought went well vanished without a word. The site received 28,000 unique visitors less than two weeks after it was launched Jan. 24, Melnik said.
Melnik and Andrea Miller, who runs the dating portal YourTango.com, are certainly tech savvy, but they’re both old fashioned when it comes to breaking up.
“It’s totally inappropriate to break up digitally,” Miller said. “You should have a conversation.”
Miller has declared Feb. 13 “break up with your ex day” for the second year, offering a range of “breakover” tips and advice on her site.
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