5 Ways To Get Dumped

1. Be emotionally needy and take no responsibility for it

Some people have emotional demands that far exceed ‘normal’ on the emotional-needs spectrum, and it is these people who excel at getting dumped, fast. They’re especially effective when they take no responsibility for their emotional needs: “I’m sorry, what am I supposed to do! I know I have issues, I can’t help my issues! I can’t help if I have issues. You need to come home now or I swear to god I’m going to scream!!” Ah, yes, what a great way to keep a partner shackled tightly to your whiny soul, but alas, it soon becomes an even better way to fulfill all those abandonment prophecies (brought on by your Abandonment Issues) and get left high and dry at The Worst Possible Time. Bonus points for identifying every time you perceive your partner as having committed an injustice against you as The Worst Possible Time s/he “could have pulled this shit;” a gold star for threatening to kill yourself at the prospect of a break up.

2. Don’t be yourself

A surefire way to seriously alienate yourself from the one you’re dating is to simply create a set of limitations, value judgments and rules by which you behave. An important qualification here is that you never acknowledge this schema; in fact, you must deny it exists at all. Example: decide that your Real Self isn’t good enough and create an alter-ego that you assume whenever your partner’s around. Being derivative of your own self, but nevertheless a ‘program’ which can be turned on and off at will, your alter-ego will have certain behaviors, restrict conversation on certain topics (i.e. sex, vulnerabilities, expectations), and establish on a deep level roles it expects both of you to play. Keep this up long enough, and soon your partner will begin to sense the confines of the cage you’ve set up for the relationship to founder in. Naturally, s/he’ll want to talk about it, and naturally, you won’t be able to. One day, you’ll realize you’re immensely unsatisfied because you Can’t Be Yourself around him/her, and you’ll realize, in turn, that your partner feels the same way. Here is the beginning of the end for you; congratulations. Bonus points if your alter-ego is deeply connected to fear of abandonment, low self-esteem, a fickle definition of love, or ‘daddy issues.’

3. Be an ‘isolationist’

Demanding that you and your partner stay in every night, never see friends, and generally live a hermit-like existence with no real contact to the outside world is a great way to get dumped; there’s nothing like the complete and utter resistance to public interaction to make your partner feel torturously isolated and lonely (and being lonely in a relationship is the worst kind of lonely). Further, the resistance to a life outside the apartment doesn’t need to be malicious, especially if your partner has a large and well-established social circle in which s/he typically resided before meeting you. Rather, you can legitimately resist in fear – in feelings of intimidation and being under threat: “Let’s just stay in tonight, your friends are just so loud and they’re in college. They’re too young for me… I can’t go. You can go if you want but there’s no way I’ll go.” If you want to get dumped really fast, don’t stop there; reject all requests to have dinner out, get drinks out, or even sit in the park on a sunny day. Before you know it, you’ll have your partner squirming and stir-crazy, termination occurring shortly thereafter.

4. Refuse to recognize your partner’s emotions because they are “unreasonable”

Guaranteed to get you dumped, but only after a drawn out, difficult separation process, refusing to recognize your partner’s emotional issues because they “don’t make sense” is a great strategy. Like a dictatorial state, the goal here is basically to censor any expression of less-than-ideal emotions such that it appears, from the outside, as if your partner simply isn’t allowed to voice attitudes that convey the relationship is anything other than ideal. Upon receiving a complaint, language that can be employed includes: “That doesn’t make sense, you just said you were happy two hours ago and now you’re sad? That doesn’t make sense,” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” “What the hell are you talking about?” “Fuck that, I’m leaving,” “You’re not making any sense, come back to me when you’re making sense,” “I don’t get it,” and etc. Put simply, the overall strategy should be of constantly attempting to logically disprove the existence of your partner’s negative emotions. This will ensure that s/he begins to feel very isolated, unappreciated, and lonely, and will soon lead to the decision to leave you, suddenly remorseful and, understandably, feeling like an idiot.

5. Secretly, unknowingly want out of the relationship

Want to get dumped? Just don’t know you do. People use this strategy all the time, they just don’t figure it out until they’ve had some Time to Reflect. To get dumped by secretly, unknowingly wanting out of the relationship, simply avoid recognizing your gut instinct that there’s no way your relationship’s going to last any longer than a half a year, deny or deflect vague hints at your unsatisfaction, and focus almost solely on the fact that at least you’re getting a lot of sex. But how does one know that they don’t know that they secretly want out of the relationship? Perhaps you find yourself massively relieved at the prospect of nine straight hours of alone time while watching your significant other get ready for work, or maybe one night you feel unexpectedly, painfully refreshed by a conversation with a random, attractive stranger in a bar. Be on the lookout for situations like these – they may reveal your secret desire to flee. If you nurture this desire – and by that I mean “ignore it” – you will most likely begin vying for autonomly covertly, explaining your dissatisfaction by saying you Just Feel Off, perhaps committing a betrayal, or finding excuses to be away from your partner. Soon your partner will catch wind, the fighting will commence, and It’ll All Come Out. It’s only six months after you get dumped that you’ll have the predictable a-ha moment: “Oh yeah, that was completely unsustainable, and I totally knew it. Why the fuck was I even with that person? That was a confused time in my life.”