Jana Hocking, the rise of ‘delicate dumping’ and the texts that left her crying in the shower

I’ve seen some cheeky dumpings during my time, but this one takes the cake. It was drawn out, brutal, and dare I say it… cruel.

It left me crying in the shower at 7.30am on a Monday morning before work. Very uncalled for.

So common is this form of break up it’s even been given a name which is completely wrong. It’s called ‘delicate dumping’ and it involves subtly stepping back from a relationship without having the ol’ breakup conversation. 

It’s not quite ghosting, but tactics include replying to a partner slower, perhaps even taking days, before completely ignoring them. Oooft!

It happened to me recently by a guy I was seeing for a few weeks. As happens at the start of a relationship when you’re all horny and happy, things progressed quickly.

One date led to two, that led to three, all in one week. The texts were going day and night and we were making out in bars like teenagers. It was glorious!

A few weeks in it was becoming obvious that we were about to have the ‘what are we chat’. I had briefly mentioned it once or twice. What may have been subtle to me was probably very obvious to him, but nevertheless the signs were good. That’s when it happened… I got ‘delicate dumped’.

It started when I suggested we go away to his beach house for the weekend. Nothing unusual, we had done it a couple of times before. He responded with:

I know you’re cringing at how thirsty I was being right? Me too!

Anyway, I never heard back from him about the possibility of heading to the beach house on Tuesday or Wednesday. This was strange behaviour considering it had been all ‘ready set go’ on the relationship front before this text.

My ego had taken a slight hit so I decided to not follow up. Well, that was until I get restless a few days later and sent him another text…

Please note I sent that text on Sunday, and he didn’t respond until Tuesday. Brutal. I mean sure, we all get busy but three days is taking the piss. The part I didn’t include in this text (for identification reasons) was where he tells me what he has been up to and then doesn’t follow up with a question. Conversation over.

By now I’m feeling proper confused! Just days earlier we had been hot and heavy. Lots of good morning texts, sporadic trips up the coast, giving each other silly emoji love heart eyes, and all of a sudden I’m getting diddly squat!

Ego once again heavily bruised I give it another few days of no contact. My brain is sitting in a constant state of ‘WTF?!’ and I’m feeling pretty grim about the whole thing.

Then during a late-night Instagram scroll I came across one of those inspirational tiles that self-help gurus post. It directed me to make a smart decision in regard to my current conundrum. The meme said:

‘We only have one life. Keep it simple:

Missing someone – call

Wanna meet up – invite

Have questions – ask’

So that’s what I did. I put my ego to the side, I stopped playing games and I just asked the damn question.

Sadly, too great success because I got my answer… and it hurt like hell. So, despite deep down knowing that a text like that was coming, I found myself slightly in shock and sobbing in the shower.

I realised if I hadn’t just outright asked him what was going on, the ‘delicate dumping’ would have played on for lord knows how long.

So now that a couple of weeks have passed, I’m actually really proud of myself for putting my big girl pants on and just asking the question.

It’s made me look at him as slightly gutless. What was used as an avoidance method was actually just brutal and unintentionally cruel.

But I can’t be throwing out criticism and not taking on some myself because in the spirit of complete honestly, I’ve done it myself. I’ve lost interest in someone and slowly tried to phase them out.

Jana Hocking says it’s time to ditch ‘delicate dumping’ and embrace grown-up chats, even if they’re uncomfortable 

It wasn’t until I discovered how horrible it is to be on the other side of it that I’ve vowed to never do it again.

We need to start treating each other like the living, breathing humans that we are and, just like a band-aid, rip the darn thing off. Have that difficult conversation at the start of a breakup and you will avoid dragging out a horrible situation for longer than it actually needs to be.

So, I say BOO to delicate dumping, and HURRAH to having grown-up chats. Sure, they suck but they suck a lot less then being led on.