Dumped over email, this is what I learned not to do after a breakup

Ten years ago, I was dumped by email. I joked at the time that I felt much better after correcting her spelling and punctuation… and changing the font. Yet in reality, I was devastated.

We had been together for five years and created our own secret world and language together, the way that annoying cutesy couples do. We were “married” in our minds even if the world didn’t allow that yet.

So what did I decide to do next? Eat ice cream? Reach out to friends? Get a dog? Take up meditation? Or swimming? Or yoga? Or go travelling?

No. In my heightened emotional and vulnerable state, I decided that setting up an online dating profile and getting into a serious new relationship immediately would surely be the route to healing and recovery. There is a certain twisted logic to it. As the old adage goes, “the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else”. In fact, I once heard Australian comedian Celia Paquola liken a newly-dumped person to a fire hose that has suddenly become detached from its hydrant. Flailing around, we leak this chaotic, cascading, desperate torrent of love over the first new recipient we can find.

My very wise friend advised that it was probably time for what she calls a “sorbet” fling, a sort of palate cleanser in between the more emotionally and sexually intense relationships. But I was determined to somehow replace the deep connection that I had lost. If only it were that simple.

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Fast forward a few years and I found myself in a complicated state of codependency with someone who I felt that I needed yet maybe had never fully loved in the way I had anticipated or wanted. I had been in a classic rebound relationship. Something had always felt a little broken in our connection, despite the companionship and support we had given to one another. It was time to move on, as amicably and respectfully as we could.

This wasn’t, however, the stupidest thing I’ve ever done after a heartbreak. In the aftermath of my first ever big breakup, I received a phone call out of the blue inviting me onto a reality TV dating show called Chained. I would live in a house for a week chained at the ankle to six other gay women. One of them, the “chooser”, had the power to evict a member of the chain each day. The producer sounded a little desperate and was clearly struggling for participants. My rational judgement impaired by my fresh and raw heartbreak, I decided that this all sounded absolutely like a perfectly fun distraction and said yes.

At night, the contestants all slept in a gigantic bed and then shuffled and stumbled around the flat together in the haze of morning, sitting just outside the bathroom as each member of the chain completed their daily ablutions. I proudly made it to the final three. This meant that I was one of two women who would take the “chooser” on a date. What I hadn’t quite got my head around was the fact that I would be chained to them while they had their date. I sat just to the side, with a blindfold and earplugs. It was the most awkward threesome ever. The whole thing was a rather bizarre and slightly sullying experience, not least because nobody really watched the TV show. Not even my ex, whose attention I was misguidedly trying to attract.