Ways of leaving

Is it acceptable to end a relationship by letter? I’ve called my column this week “Ways of leaving” which, while accurate, is a play on the title of a recent book by South African author Kevin Bloom. Bloom’s book, Ways of Staying, is a meditation (well more accurately a slap in the face it’s so challenging) on ways in which South Africans engage with staying or leaving their country because they have had brutal, dehumanising and traumatic experiences of crime. But ending a relationship with a partner, and leaving the country of your birth, have key similarities: issues of loyalty, belonging, betrayal, sadness, loss and ambivalence predominate.

In essence, Bloom’s long essay to longing and meaning is a way of making sense of whether staying in a country which is complicated and evokes such conflicted emotions is better than seeking a safe, but perhaps more disconnected and dull, existence elsewhere. This is so true of relationship dilemmas. Do you stay with your boyfriend of six months or six years because even though he’s not perfect (he squeezes the toothpaste in the middle, he’s asleep 30 seconds after sex, he watches mindless action movies) he is a good and kind person who really cares about you? Or do you forgo the safety and security of Mr Will Do for the danger and excitement of Mr Well Hung (even if this only gives you a temporary lift, pun intended)?

And when you’ve made the decision to leave, after you’ve consulted all your friends for their opinions, tried therapy, had your love horoscope plotted out and weighed up dinners for one versus endless get togethers with his extended family, how do you do this? Now all the text books on relationships and break ups will tell you that the proper thing to do is to sit down and have “the talk”. This is easier said than done. I don’t know about you but sitting someone down to tell them you don’t want a relationship anymore is damn hard – deliberately hurting someone is not my thing (though some ex friends will disagree!) and if your partner hasn’t been expecting this conversation watching their confidence and security dissolve is very unsettling.

I tried this once and the guy was just unable to hear what I was saying and proceeded to list the ways in which he was going to fight for “us”, leaving me flat footed and outmanoeuvred. Because while some guys have intuited that there are problems, many others, for complicated reasons, have not seen the writing on the wall (even though it is written in large pink letters with a lovely gold leaf accent). So when they’ve recovered from the shock they believe that the relationship can be saved with one or two key actions (ok I’ll squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom). And they don’t get that you just want out.

So if the face to face chat doesn’t always work, is it ok to write to a boyfriend – perhaps an old fashioned letter, maybe a lengthy and well constructed e-mail to their work e-mail address, or a terse note on the kitchen blackboard normally reserved for “buy toilet paper, remember Tuesday is recycling day” messages? Don’t laugh but I’ve heard stories of people using Facebook to alert their boyfriends to the relationship’s end when they’ve changed their status to “single”. Ouch. That seems a bit too cruel and public for me – and so narcissistic.

There is also the text message – what with twitter and other forms of virtual communication it’s almost old fashioned to type out a formal text from your cellphone! But texting language is so limiting, don’t you think? Just how do you convey your desire to be single when you are using words with almost no vowels? “Tx 4 the gd tme, gd luck wth nxt byfrnd” doesn’t quite convey the nuances you might be aiming for!

I guess there’s no easy way to end a relationship and definitely no right way to tell the guy he’s history. Whatever medium you use, I still think you should, within its limitations, try to be kind and sensitive. Try to think of it as playing to your strengths – if face to face communication is your forte then go for it but if a letter allows you to set things out clearly and fairly and stops you from getting too tongue tied and emotional, I think that’s acceptable. But always allow for some face time, it is the decent thing to do (and you do want to do this decently don’t you?).