So there you are in a time in your life when you’ve decided that the relationship you’re in just isn’t cutting it anymore and you want out, but the only problem is that you’re so chicken to break up with your not-so dearly beloved that you’d rather opt for non-face-to-face communication. Well, I guess this is nothing new because most of us have passed by douche bag boyfriend/girlfriend land where we learned over the phone that the relationship was over.

Aaaah… I remember that day clearly when I learned through a phone-call, which I had made just by the way because I was checking up on brother-man since I hadn’t heard from him all week, that the relationship has reached its end and we should go our separate ways because he feels that ‘I deserve better and someone out there could make me happy; he’s just not the one to do that’. Anyhu, in this day and age filled with many communication avenues, there’s no need to go the phone-call route when opting for the I-am-chicken break up method, mainly because it’s expense to call and you’ll have to go through the torture of hearing your ex-partner weep over the phone. So here are a couple of alternatives.

If you still want to keep it old school, send them a sms detailing to your soon-to-be-ex how awesome you think they are and the reasons why you feel like the relationship has reached its end. And to make it more irritating, use sms language that only you understand. Since we live in the era of emoticons, make use of the crying, sad and surprised emoticons, not that you need them, but merely for emphasis and sms decorating purposes.

Or even better, post your break-up message on their Facebook wall. That’s a sure to irritate the living daylights out of anyone. A girlfriend of mine once cried buck loads of tears when she learned that her man no longer wanted to be with her. So the guy (who, by the way, moved to another city because of a job offer) decided to post a message on my girl’s wall, stating that he’s breaking up with her because he’s fallen in love with another woman, who happened to be her best friend of ten years (she also happened to move to the same city for ‘work purposes’). But just a word of advice with this kind of break-up: at least be nice enough to inbox your partner the reasons for the break-up. It’s more tactful. In that way, she won’t be flooded with messages that are similar to condolences, wishing her a speedy recovery for her pain while cursing you at the same time.

But if you really want to grate someone’s teeth, tweet your break-up message. Everybody knows that at times, Twitter streets can be very cold with people tearing each other apart. And trust me, this break-up method is quite cold because you only have 14o characters, so you can’t beat around the bush trying to be nice; your message has to be precise. If you really want to be nice, send thousands of DM’s to your soon-to-be ex while keeping to the micro-blogging format. Don’t forget to include the hash tag #itsover so that you and your former beloved can trend, which will be awesome for your reputation as a chicken.

So there you have it folks- new age break-up methods for chickens; undoubtedly the worst people to fall in love with because you really get the big picture of their chicken-ness when the break-up comes along. But do not despair because the heartbreak, and worse still the embarrassment, will fade away with time, and you’ll get to the point where you’ll slap yourself in the face before forgiving yourself if you were the chicken, and if you were the recipient of the chicken break-up, you’ll simply shake your head at the ridiculous-ness of it all.