Life
6 Break-Up Services In Time For Valentine's Day
If your relationship is on the rocks, Valentine's Day can turn your life into something of a hellishly awkward dystopia strewn with chocolate candy wrappers and whispered fights over the remnants of a candlelit dinner. On the one hand, dumping someone on or before the most romantic day of the year could only lead to more awkwardness — but what if you could pay someone to do it for you? That's the premise behind Vift's Break-Up Kit, which promises to do all the dirty work of dumping someone while you're safely tucked away with Netflix, a $4 bottle of Chardonnay, and a body pillow shaped like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
This Valentine's Day, the video messaging service puts its talents to use by offering an "ultimate care package" for your significant other. Each package contains the same two basic components: A gift (or several) for the dumpee and a personalized video or text message created by the dumper. The cheapest option, "I'm Not Ready To Be In A Profile Picture With You," costs $50 and comes with a box of tissues and a 3-month Netflix subscription. The second, "We're Perfect... For Other People," costs $250 and includes tissues, a year-long Netflix subscription, a dozen roses, a box of chocolates, and a Snuggie — you know, for your now-ex to cuddle while they cry on the phone to their mom because their partner dumped them via video service.
If you have $3,200 to spend and a burning desire to make the break-up as final as possible, perhaps the final option, "I Want To Grow Old Without You," is your best bet. This package sends your partner on the week-long Princess Single Cruise around the coast of Alaska, where the waters are as icy cold as your heart.
Of course, Vift's service is hardly the only break-up service out there; each Valentine's Day seems to bring a slew of new ways to dump your partner from afar. Some are mean to be ironic, but others are totally serious — and judging by the way they stick around, more people use them than you'd think. After all, we're Millennials; incorporating technology into our dating lives is what we do best. Let's take a look at five other break-up services below.
1. The Break-Up Shop
Created last year, The Break-Up Shop is one of the most comprehensive options out there: Services range from the $10 break-up text to a full-on phone call, which lasts up to one minute and starts at $29. You can even select a "rush job" for break-ups within 24 hours of placing the order, although the service typically takes a few days to get everything in order.
2. Sorry It's Over
Break-up services aren't just an American domain; the Australian service Sorry It's Over has been dumping people by proxy in the Land Down Under since early 2015. Cheaper options include phone calls and texts, but the company will even send a representative to break up with your significant other for you in person, as long as you fork over $66.
3. Social Media Breakup Coordinator
Simultaneously an art project and an actual service, the Social Media Breakup Coordinator doesn't break up with someone for you, but it did help you get through the aftermath. Creator Caroline Sinders intended the service as a way to get through the tough manual processes after splitting up — unfriending them, untagging photos, and even deleting their contact information.
4. Binder
Although most other apps try to stick to the "it's not you, it's me," cliche, breakup app Binder maintains no such illusions. Designed to mimic Tinder, Binder sends your now-ex a snarky text or voicemail to break the news not-so-gently; choice message options include the lines, "I'd rather be lonely," and "It's like I'm living in some sort of unwakeable nightmare." According to the Huffington Post, the app was created ironically for Scottish beer brand Tennent's Lager, but that doesn't mean everyone was in on the joke.
5. BreakUpText
With the tagline, "It's just easier this way," the BreakUpText app lives up to its name: All you do is plug in your soon-to-be ex's name, phone number, choose the commitment level of your relationship, and select an option for why you think it should end. It's the quintessential impersonal break-up service — and that was exactly the point. Business News Daily reports that the app was intended as a joke, and the creators felt so bad about people using it seriously that they created a sister app, MakeupText. So... there's an app for apologizing for dumping someone via app. Don't you just love irony?
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