“I hear you saying that this isn’t what you are looking for.” Jess* looked at the message that popped up on her screen. After two days of silence, she asked her situationship for a gut check, and he’d been texting her ramblings like this ever since.
This all went down four years ago, but Jess, a 28-year-old who works in administration in Phoenix, Arizona, still remembers that frustrating conversation. “He sent me paragraphs, telling me that the time commitment of relationships was a ‘big problem,’” she says. “He repeated all the reasons why he couldn’t make it work, but then would say, ‘But if you don’t feel like we are on the same page and this isn’t for you, I can understand.’”
Still, she wanted him to be the one to officially pull the plug. “He was the one who checked out,” Jess says. “I wanted him to own it.” It didn’t work. She eventually stepped up to the plate to end things, and they never spoke again. Technically speaking, she was the dumper — but really, she was a victim of quiet dumping.
Quiet dumping (noun): a breakup method that involves one partner emotionally pulling away or acting out until their significant other ends the relationship.
In 2022, Gen Z popularized “quiet quitting” to describe a disengaged attitude toward work. At the office, it translates to putting in the bare minimum for as long as you can get away with it. But this emotionally detached approach also bleeds into romantic relationships. Even though the dumpees can see right through the behavior, these breakups are as frustrating as they are painful.
Asia, a 27-year-old who works in mental health in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, experienced a quiet dumping a few years ago. “My long-term ex and I became friends again and started up a situationship, doing all the classic relationship things without the title. He even mentioned getting back together and marriage,” Asia says. “But then he started making me pay for dates and taking a long time to respond to my texts or calls.”
He also resisted the idea of becoming exclusive again. After eight months, Asia got tired of it. “I told him that I was done waiting for him,” she says. That’s when he flipped the narrative — reframing it so that it was her idea to call it off. “He said, ‘I just want you to be happy. I support you if you want to find someone else.’” (Of course, when Asia did move on, he circled back and begged to see her.)
This summer, television — scripted and unscripted — even explored quiet dumping. In the first episode of The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3, Conrad used this concept to describe his breakup with Belly. “I was a sh*tty boyfriend,” Conrad told his friend, Agnes, about their Season 2 split. “Technically, she broke up with me, but yeah, I basically teed it up for her.”
You did that thing that guys do when they’re too chickensh*t to break up with a girl, so they act like a d*ck until she does it for him?
Agnes summed it up perfectly: “Seriously? Oh my God. You did that thing that guys do when they’re too chickensh*t to break up with a girl, so they act like a d*ck until she does it for him?”
Love Island USA Season 7 also featured a quiet dumping between Huda Mustafa and Chris Seeley. After a disagreement over PDA (and Huda giving Chris a countdown to speak to her before bed), viewers noticed he seemed to check out of their relationship entirely. But when Huda picked up on his shifting demeanor, he assured her that he still wanted to make it work.
Their relationship didn’t end until their final date when Huda called it off. Chris — despite insisting he still wanted to work on things — seemed very OK with her decision. (Later, he told the boys the relationship was totally over and “deep-fried.”) Fans picked up on the quiet dumping vibes. “This guy CLEARLY wasn’t into her and flipped it around. Made her believe it was her decision to ‘break up,’” one viewer reacted to the breakup on Facebook.
He basically told me that if we were to ever break up, it would come from me, never him.
Quiet dumpings don’t only affect situationships. Rachel, a 26-year-old publicist in New Jersey, went through a similar breakup with her long-term partner after eight years together. They even talked about getting engaged. But then her boyfriend started acting differently.
“I noticed he was being very distant and getting cranky when I’d ask to spend time together,” Rachel says. “I told him that it was OK if he lost feelings for me — even if it hurt. But he basically told me that if we were to ever break up, it would come from me, never him.”
Rachel tried ending it three times over nine months, but he always convinced her to stay. “He never wanted to go on dates, stopped putting in effort (even for my birthday), and never wanted to be around my family,” she says. “I felt like I wasn’t even dating anyone. I was doing everything by myself. That’s what made me leave.”
It’s easy to think every breakup has a good guy and a bad guy, but it’s rarely that simple — there’s a reason fans can’t seem to agree with who’s the villain of TSITP’s Season 2 split: Conrad or Belly. This gray area feels familiar to Asia and Rachel, too. Looking back, Asia wished she had listened to her gut. “I saw the signs, but held onto the idea,”she says. Rachel agrees it’s not worth fighting for someone who is already checked out: “Just because you built a foundation with someone doesn’t mean it’s worth fixing.”
*Name has been changed.
