Why breaking up over text is OK?

How to break up with someone over text after a casual relationship: It is a chore. An art form. A journey through the maze of your own fucked-up psychology! Let's begin. 

Faced with the prospect of rejecting another person, you are plunged into stunningly intimate circumstances. You've known them only for the duration of a few hard seltzers. You just didn't feel a connection. But sending a “For various reasons, I no longer want to see you ever again” text feels like taking the other person's ego and crushing it under your foot like a can. 

And so we ghost. “Ghosting is wrong because it’s not necessary unless safety is at risk,” says Justine Ang Fonte, MEd, MPH. “Especially in dating contexts, we are already so vulnerable, so we tend to think that if someone is so averse to communicating with us, there must be something wrong with us.” Our imaginations are huge and like to play the hits: “I repulsed her.” “I said one thing that made him hate me." “They thought I was too boring to see again.” 

We ghost because of misplaced compassion: We remember the visceral sting of rejection and we don't want to cause it. And we ghost because we get a little cowardly: We don't want pain to be our fault, and we don't want to do the hard work of direct communication. Why should I text them? we think. They’ll get the message in a day or two. It will be better for both of us this way. That's not true, of course. Ghosting is rejection by way of shunning. And inevitably, it feels bad for the ghoster too—you get left alone, but you end up holding your own cocktail of self-loathing. 

Fonte has worked for years as a sex educator, teaching in classrooms and advising educators about health and sexuality curriculums. During the pandemic she started a side gig, as a freelance breakup “ghostwriter.” Fonte takes requests from people who need to write a good breakup note—she crafts beautiful, appropriate templates based on the details that her followers share, and then invites them to revise it as they see fit. Her Instagram _good.byes_ is filled with real texts that she has written for her own dating life and for her followers. The concept is simple and brilliant. 

“First and foremost my goal was: I want to empower people with literal vocabulary and scripts to be able to communicate with other people in their life,” Fonte says. She got her start by writing clear, compassionate rejection texts in her own dating life—mostly for straight men. “Scripts of masculinity definitely include fragility, insecurity, and a sensitivity in their self-esteem when somebody says no to them,” she says. “And when they become adult men that I date, they still don’t know how to accept a no or embrace somebody’s boundary by honoring it.” These texts help her and her followers set boundaries. They're also the kind of texts that she prefers when she's on the receiving end. 

Women, especially, struggle with rejecting others. “We think, I’m supposed to care for this person, or take care of this person, I’m not supposed to hurt their feelings,” Fonte says. “So then I won’t hurt their feelings and therefore I’ll hurt my own by continuing on a third date when it should have ended on a first date, keep doing things I don’t want to do when I don’t want to do them.” She's branched out into other kinds of rejection and boundary setting—she writes notes to roommates, parents, friends, and more. She uses a pay-what-you-can model, asking followers to donate to Roots of Health, a reproductive health organization in the Philippines that offers free services to women and girls. (Fonte sits on the board.)

Let's be clear: Dating is signing up for rejection. That is why people don't like it—searching for a person to be with means finding many people who don't want to be with you. You can ghost if you want. You don't have to communicate. But removing another person from a state of profound uncertainty is an act of generosity. It tends to feel better, for both people. “I think the ultimate goal is that people are remembering the humanity in each other,” says Fonte. Here are her easy tips for writing a humane, direct breakup text. 

Is it ever okay to ghost?

“If you believe that your safety is eminently threatened physically or emotionally by being in contact with this person, that’s a perfectly valid reason to ghost them or to block them,” says Fonte. “If that is not the situation and you simply just don’t want to continue things for lack of chemistry or alignment in values, then I think it is almost a responsibility as a human being to say to another human being, compassionately yet assertively, ‘I just don’t think this is going to work out.’” 

When does it need to be a phone call or IRL? 

“I think it depends on the level of intimacy that you’ve already shared with somebody,” Fonte says, explaining that intimacy doesn't have to mean sex as much as a sense of connectedness. The golden rule, she says, is to ask yourself, “Would it feel rude for me to be rejected over text?” 

If you decide that a more personal breakup is appropriate, here are Fonte's steps: “Text and say, ‘Hey, I want to share something with you that I’ve been thinking about—when can we hop on a FaceTime?’ Or, ‘When can we meet up for a coffee?’” she says. “If they’re like, ‘Oh…what’s this all about?’ you can say, ‘I’d rather say it in person.’ The person might say, ’Let’s just do it over text.’ You could say, ‘I didn’t want to do it over text because I think I owe actual eye contact with you when I share this, but this isn’t working out for me anymore.’ That said, even if you’ve had 10 dates but you feel unsafe—send it over text!”

How do I craft the text? 

Fonte swears by the compliment-sandwich formula: “Hi [Name] here’s what was really great + Here’s the thing that I think was missing or the thing that I think we didn’t align on +  I wish you well because you are a good person.” 

If you're writing a text after one date, it could go something like this: “Hi Jared, it was so nice to finally meet you in person. I don't think we have enough in common to keep this going. But I was glad we met up, and I wish you well. Good luck out there.” 

“You have the good, the bad, the good, and then you pressed send,” says Fonte. 

But if you've been on three or more dates, she says, you might want to go into more detail in the “meat” of the sandwich: “I didn’t realize that you smoke cigarettes and that’s something that’s really contrary to my health values.” Or, “I didn’t realize that you hadn’t fully moved on from your ex yet.” For Fonte, the key is being clear. “Not saying you’re a bad person because you haven’t moved on from your ex; you’re just saying the timing doesn’t work out here in that you’re not healed, and I don’t want to be brought into this until you are healed.”

What if the other person really hurt me? 

You don't owe the other person a compliment. Consider something like Fonte's sadly widely applicable suggestion: “I was not prepared for us to have sex yet and it seemed like you were adamant about it happening, and at the time I felt really scared and guilty if I didn’t. But I’m now realizing that I’m not comfortable with someone who isn’t really willing to give me another choice that might be a no.”

Another clear option: “I really liked you but I told you that I didn’t want to do this one behavior in bed and it happened and I feel like my boundaries were really crossed and that really offended me. I will not be seeing you again.” 

Fonte recommends ending with a very clear conclusion. It doesn't have to be “I wish you well.” It can be “I’m expecting us to not be in contact after this.” Or, “I await your response for when we can talk about this more.” 

Why are these texts so damn hard to send? 

“We associate [dating rejection] with our self-worth because we were showing them our raw identities,” says Fonte. “People would rather not say anything at all because they’re afraid of how the person is going to react that will make the already sensitive situation even more fraught.” Being able to set a boundary or say goodbye in a compassionate way can be healing and bring closure to the sender, not just the recipient. Being kind to yourself and kind to others might actually be the most convenient option. 

Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter. 

Is it ever OK to break up with someone over text?

Is it better to break up over text or in person?

Is breaking up over a phone call okay?