The Breakup

“I’m sorry,” I told her, “I’ve done my best to make this work, but it’s just not, I don’t think it ever will, and I think that on some level you know that I’m right. We’ve been telling each other that we’re in love, we’ve been telling ourselves we’re in love, but I think we both know we’ve both been kidding ourselves, and that I never loved you, and that you never loved me either. And moreover, I’m realizing that I never will. It’s not you, but it’s not me either, I think, you’re just… you’re not the droid I’m looking for.

And she just looked downward, at her feet, seeming sad. She was not sad, because she was not a living breathing person with an internal emotional life in the same way that I was, but she looked sad, because she had been programmed to look sad in the event that I broke up with her. Still, in spite of my knowledge that she was merely going through the motions, seeing her doing her best within the limits of her programming to express and then swallow sadness crushed me. We had had our share of good times, after all, simulated or not…

But, after a long, fake breath and a moment to appear to pull herself back together, she was able to look me in the eye once more.

“I understand,” she said, although she did not, “it is for the best. If you are not happy we should not be together.”

And then she closed her eyes, sank down into the chair in which she’d been sitting, and powered down once and for all.

And now I’m back on the market. Though after two years of living with a machine I’ll admit, I’m rusty when it comes to the dating scene. So, how about you? what brought you to OkCupid?