Chixe

The break-up talk was, if anything, rather amicable: she said it was over, I asked if I could keep the plants. It would also have been fairly painless, had it not been for the unexpected horrors of social networking that were to follow.

First came the announcement online of my new 'Single' status. Deftly inserted into Facebook's running newsfeed, it informed everyone that both she and I knew that I had been dumped, in much the same way that Reuters proclaims the engagement of a minor Royal. There was no way of deleting it, so it sat there haunting me.

Next were the wall posts. If you are linked to someone on Facebook you are informed of interesting events in their lives. I got a dozen notices telling me that my now ex-girlfriend's friends had posted messages to her that read: "Congratulations!"

I thought things couldn't get worse, and they would soon tire of the news and move on. But then her status updates started to tell a story. Just three days after we broke up, she changed hers to: "2008, new job (check), new flat (check), new man (working on it)."