The New Breakup

by Tobi Elkin

Patti Wood, a 49-year-old Atlanta-based body language expert, trainer and speaker, recently experienced a breakup over email after three dates that were interspersed with continuous phone contact and email. The man she’d been dating initiated the breakup by asking a few personal questions and apparently, she says, not liking the answers he received.

“I felt devastated and made to feel less than, or not worthy of a face-to-face interaction. We weren’t physical in any way, but it felt so cold and inappropriate to the level of self-disclosure and connection,” Wood explains.

Given her professional training, she was all the more surprised by the curveball. “It was a lesson learned for me in that I got pulled into that emailing relationship world for the first time as a major form of trying to communicate [with a potential partner] even with all of my knowledge.”

What a Tangled (World Wide) Web We Weave
Technology rules in the fictional world as well. In USA Network’s mini series The Starter Wife, Gracie Pollock is dumped by cell phone by her boy/man of a movie producer husband just before her 10th wedding anniversary.

Social network sites like DontDateHimGirl.com offer women a place to exchange information and compare notes about men they’re dating. The site started as a tell-all venue for women to wave red flags about their experiences with specific cads but is now a basic relationships and dating site.