Fifty Rows Up

No one likes to receive a “Dear John” letter — the note that is written to inform you that the relationship you’re in is over. I admit that I have dealt them and I have received them, and neither end is pleasant.

We can probably agree that long-distance break-ups are poor form, but during World War II, a letter was about the only medium a soldier’s sweetheart back home could use to inform him that she was moving on. Allegedly, it was those terse, colder-than-usual notes that popularized both “Dear John” and “That’s all she wrote.” To illustrate:

1. Usual letter from sweetheart back home

My dearest Johnnie, [followed by lots and lots of sentences, endearments, bits of encouragement, and a spritz of sweet perfume.]

2. Dreaded break-up letter

Dear John, It’s over.

[And then when soldier John's buddies ask him what the letter said, he says, "'It's over.' ... and that's all she wrote."]

It is not that the ubiquity of phones, email, text messages, and video chatting renders Dear John letters obsolete; instead, all this media gives heartbreakers a whole arsenal of options for deploying their break-up message, least of which is doing it in-person. (Somehow I’m back to soldiers at the front, but remember that scene in the movie Jarhead when a bunch of Marines sit down to watch Deer Hunter, only to have the movie interrupted by a rather stark break-up message from one of the soldier’s wives? That was awful.) To evoke Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the message, so one would do well to choose wisely when delivering the bad news. That said, is breaking up over email really that much more sensitive than ending a relationship via text?

Related to the world of sports, I found LeBron James’s Dear John letter to the Cleveland Cavaliers not only ill-considered but remarkably postmodern. Instead of walking into the front office and telling his employers that he is going to accept an offer from the Miami Heat, James helps create and participates in a weird draft-day-esque selection show/”This Is Your Life” special to announce his next career move. Dear Cleveland: It’s over — except I’m going to tell an audience of millions instead of telling you first.

The only correspondence more wrenching than a Dear John letter is the reply from the jilted party. And boy did Cleveland Cavaliers majority owner Dan Gilbert reply. Instead of writing to James, he wrote an open letter to the Cleveland Cavs community, ripping James and making outlandish promises to the Cavs’ fan base.

I can understand why Gilbert was moved to write an angry reply, but the thing about angry reply letters (or emails or text messages) is that ideally, you don’t send ‘em. You set fire to the world with your prose, crumple the heck out of some first drafts, and then put the final copy in your desk drawer (or drafts folder) and walk away for a day. Or two. Then you review the letter and decide that you don’t actually want to send those words into the universe, but you keep the letter anyway, in a safe place, where The Plain Dealer or any other publication can’t run it but you can still refer to it when you’re feeling particularly righteous.

Recently, when asked if he would ever want to return to the Cavs, James acknowledged that Gilbert’s letter was likely written out of anger and that he (James) had made a mistake, too. Some call James’s comments a diplomatic move to assuage the scorned fans he will play in front of tonight in Cleveland, but I would like to believe that in two years, James has gained at least enough perspective to admit that he had a hand in the drama.

No matter how it happens, breaking up is hard to do, and a Dear John letter can make things harder. Just ask Harry: