Need a love break? Find your 'Dear John' online

By Karen S. Peterson
USA Today

Delia Coleman says when she was in her 20s, it was the men who were doing the dumping: ending a romance. "The guys wanted to rack up the numbers" of women who had succumbed to their charms, says the 32-year-old Chicago single.

But now that she is in her early 30s, it is the women who dump men, she says. "Women are much quicker now to move on, to get impatient with the process. We have our friends, our lives to live, other things to do. If I am maybe two months into a relationship and I don't get that feeling that this might last, then that person gets moved out of the lover box into the friend box."

An interest in who dumps whom — and the etiquette, or lack thereof — is a pop-culture phenomenon. Dumping is a prevalent topic on the Internet. Pop the words "dumped" and "dating" into the search engine Google, and you get 46,700 Web sites.

Some sites will do your dumping for you by e-mail, including wasniceknowingyou.com. You don't have to actually eyeball your soon-to-be ex. If you are on the other end of the dumping experience, you can order a kit from dumpkit.com complete with a voodoo doll to stick it to him or her.

Internet sites offer endless stories of being dumped, coupled with suitably lame excuses. Did you hear the one about the guy who broke up with his girlfriend because her second toe was longer than her big one?

Dumping actually has drawn the attention of a prestigious polling organization.

Overall, the perception is that women and men dump each other with equal zeal, says the poll from Public Opinion Strategies:

• About 36 percent say women dump men more often.
• About 34 percent believe the reverse is true: Men dump women more often.
• About 40 percent see themselves as dumpers: They have dumped more often than they have been dumped.
• About 25 percent are usually dumpees, getting the heave-ho more often than not.

Overall, about a quarter of those polled (22 percent) say they have broken up with from six to 10 folks. And 46 percent say they have been the victim about two to three times in their lives.

The poll of 800 adults has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

The legions of the canned get together on the Net. Thea Newcomb runs soyouvebeendumped.com from Glasgow, Scotland. She has formed "a global support group" for the unceremoniously dumped. The pained reaction to a crime of the heart "is something universal, whether you are in England or Alaska, regardless of age, profession or sexuality," she says.

Some of the nastier breakup lines recorded on her Web site include:

• "I'm sorry. You are just too boring to be my girlfriend."
• "We are happy, but we are not very happy, so I think we should see other people."