My ex dumped me by sending a voice note. It was painful and confusing.

The author (not pictured) received a voice note from her ex.

At the start of this year, I dated a guy for two months.

We met on Hinge. I loved spending time with him because he never made me question whether he was into me. He was always attentive and validated my feelings. He’d bring me flowers and ask me about my day.

We got into the habit of sending each other voice notes and keeping each other updated on our daily lives. Sometimes, I would rant to him if I had a bad day at work, and he was always there to listen and validate my emotions. He’d tell me about his family, his dog, and his friends.

But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine he would break up with me via voice note while I was on a work trip abroad.

We had gotten into a fight right before my trip

I expressed that I didn’t like it when he had no plan for our dates in advance. We started bickering about gender roles in relationships, and then our fight escalated.

I felt angry that we were bickering over something in texts that was supposed to be an in-person conversation and was only getting worse. But at no point did I think something so silly could lead us to call things off.

I thought it would be good to spend 10 days apart. I traveled to Tbilisi, Georgia, for work, which was a seven-hour flight away from him.

But five days later, during my trip, I decided to send a voice note, apologizing. I’m an only child, and as a kid, whenever my needs were unmet by my emotionally unavailable parents, my coping mechanism was to throw a tantrum to get them to notice my needs. Hence, when I felt like he wasn’t meeting my needs, I bull-dozed into complaining rather than healthily addressing it. He sent a voice note back, breaking up with me.

Of course, it was confusing and painful. I couldn’t believe it was real. I cried for two weeks straight after the breakup.

The pain still haunts me

Finding out I was single again via a voice note was hard. I understand that no one really owes anyone anything for just two months of dating, but I still feel like I deserved a face-to-face conversation. It felt like my feelings didn’t matter in this scenario.

But I’m proud of myself because I was vulnerable for the first time in a relationship, especially during those breakup voice note exchanges. Before that, I was always playing the chill, cool girl who just didn’t care because I wanted to hold the power. I am also proud that I didn’t try to get him to change his mind once he said that he wanted to break up. A previous version of me would have done that.

Plus, I definitely won’t be sending constant voice notes in the future when I have just started dating someone. I realized it builds a false sense of intimacy. We got into a pattern of constant voice notes because I was anxious that he would be dating other people, so I wanted to know what he was doing throughout the day. I can see that now — now that I’ve had some space from this experience.

Thankfully, I’ve learned to be more secure in my relationships. Moving forward, I plan to move important conversations about relationships out of the phone and prioritize connection via in-person experiences.