Using instant messages and texts to end a personal relationship can be less viral than turning to Facebook or MySpace, though people can forward messages to a group in their BlackBerry or cell phone address book. According to the findings of a global study commissioned by Skype and Harris Interactive, 21% of the men ages 18-24 surveyed feel the new forms of communication encourage less honesty and openness. The study found that 81% of respondents said face-to-face communication is still the most acceptable way to end a relationship, while 7% said doing so via email was acceptable and 3% said via IM was acceptable.

Think it's just teenagers and young adults who are reeling from the new breakup modes? Think again.

Patti Wood, a 49-year-old Atlanta-based body language expert, trainer and speaker, recently experienced a breakup over email after three dates that were interspersed with continuous phone contact and email. The man she'd been dating initiated the breakup by asking a few personal questions and apparently, she says, not liking the answers he received.

"I felt devastated and made to feel less than, or not worthy of a face-to-face interaction. We weren't physical in any way, but it felt so cold and inappropriate to the level of self-disclosure and connection," Wood explains.

Given her professional training, she was all the more surprised by the curveball. "It was a lesson learned for me in that I got pulled into that emailing relationship world for the first time as a major form of trying to communicate [with a potential partner] even with all of my knowledge."

What a Tangled (World Wide) Web We Weave
Technology rules in the fictional world as well. In USA Network's mini series The Starter Wife, Gracie Pollock is dumped by cell phone by her boy/man of a movie producer husband just before her 10th wedding anniversary.

Social network sites like DontDateHimGirl.com offer women a place to exchange information and compare notes about men they're dating. The site started as a tell-all venue for women to wave red flags about their experiences with specific cads but is now a basic relationships and dating site.

The web, it seems, is being used for everything from trash-talking exes post-breakup to confirming a partner is cheating via computer software. There are even websites that create random phone numbers where you can send messages to your partner from a fake person to see if he or she is carrying on an affair. SpoofTel.com offers the ability to change your Caller ID information to show any phone number you want, change your voice to male or female, record the conversation or text message, and your real number won’t show up on the Caller ID screen. You can even capture a user name and password, then do a reverse phone lookup on the Web.

To monitor sites a partner visits, email, IM, and other online activities, Spectorsoft Internet monitoring software ($99) checks everything, including screen captures, about every two seconds and all keystrokes.