Buzz
If you've ever been through a breakup—and found yourself on the receiving end of a flood of angry texts or calls—you might hesitate at the thought of ending a relationship when it's not working. To avoid the conversation altogether, some even resort to ghosting their dates instead.
If you're someone who finds confrontation or honesty tough during a breakup, you can rehearse your message using Quartz’s new chatbot—‘Breakup Trainer.’ With guidance from relationship professionals, the bot mimics a potential date (via text), without any real-world consequences. Here’s a sample message from ‘Yusuf’:
FOUR hours? That’s enough to make anyone consider ghosting! But for the sake of kindness, the chatbot offers a variety of responses to choose from.
Let’s pick option A! But wait...
In hindsight, the correct approach would have (pretty obviously) been choice B. Having run through a few different scenarios, yes, the correct answers are generally pretty easy, but there’s one key piece of insight you should take away from “correct” breakup lines, using the chatbot: Be kind, but not to your detriment.
In one “chat” I had, I used a nice breakup text, only to receive a text that my partner was still very interested; apparently, niceness can be misleading and Quartz’s expert recommends never leaving room for doubt.
“I encourage everyone to be as kind as possible,” Rachel DeAlto, a relationship coach, offered as advice in the chat. “But that opens the door to hope, and if you’re not really interested in the other person, that hope will eventually get crushed by reality.” In this instance, it would have been better to be upfront and not lead with patronizing compliments.
Let go of the ghosting habit and don’t feel guilty about why a potential new relationship isn’t working out. If you’re not compatible, it’s no one’s fault. The sooner you’re honest about it, the sooner both of you can move forward.
