The New Age Dump

You know, I often wonder what courtship must be like back in the day. When men were interviewed by a girls' parents for purity of intention and women went out on chaperoned dates. The days when the notion of pre marital sex was diabolical and romance, ah sweet romance, ruled the day. Roles and rules were cleary demarcated with little room for mistake and misrepresentation. It must have been so much more...simple.

It's a sign of our times you know, that these days when you turn on the radio and song after song is a rendition of the same song, heart brokenly cried out by some female singer.

It's also a sign of our times when relationships, immersed in deep physical intimacy are in other aspects, ie. emotionally, fleeting and impersonal. We connect over vodka, flirt over SMS and fall into a relationship (of sorts) over sex. There are assumptions of affection from sweet nothings imbued into drunken slurs and promises of a future extracted from scrambled eggs the morning after. We find ourselves in 'a relationship of sorts', 'seeing' someone rather than 'going out' and in some cases not acknowledging it at all, except for the sex at the end of the night.

But these relationships, openly acknowledged or quietly carrying on in our minds, are very real. They are real interactions as opposed to the daydreams we have about Brad Pitt. Just because they are never openly admitted, nor discussed does not mean they don't exist. I call these 'grey relationships' because they don't fall into your usual, girl meets boy, they date, they marry etc. It's the relationship of the millenia, the SATC-type relationship.

In many cases, these relationships (unhealthy to begin with), inevitably draw to an end. Without air, it cannot breathe and slowly begins to stagnate. Mind you, there are no big fights, no cutting remarks. In this aspect, the 'grey relationship' breakup is a remarkably bitter-free event. Hints of withdrawal come from a subtle decline of phone calls, fewer texts and a general build up of "Wow, I have so much work!" excuses. It is amazingly courteous.

Problem is, you cannot openly dump someone if the relationship was never officially admitted. Again, it's a sign of our times and we live in an age of minimalism. Welcome to the age of self dumping. Meaning, you dump him in your mind. Meaning you tell yourself that you will no longer respond eagerly to his messages, you will go out with him only if it's with a group of people and you most certainly will not sleep with him ever again.

Self dumping is a very lonely break up indeed, because you can't unleash your frustrations on any act which the other party did or did not do, can't base it on an implied promise or any words that were never expressly communicated.

When everything is based on nuances and innuendos, there's really not alot you can go on.

I'm not quite sure when such casual relationships came into existence. Being a serial monogomist, I have always been in very openly expressive relationships and I suppose I have for many years, been shielded from this very strange phenomenom. I won't judge it however, but I must draw the conclusion that it's just a way of how people deal with their buildup of baggage, during a time when what they want and need the most is love, but they are yet are so afraid of receiving it.

Anyway, I just wanted to make a point about self-dumping. It is by far, the most painless dumping I have ever experienced.