Breaking up is hard to do — unless you're willing to pay someone else to do it for you.
Yes, dumping your partner just got a lot less painful thanks to a pair of entrepreneurial Canadian brothers.
In early November, Evan and Mackenzie Keast launched The Breakup Shop, a website for a generation of online daters and Tinder aficionados.
"If there are services to allow to you get into a relationship so easily, why isn't there a similar service to allow to you get out?" Mackenzie Keast said.
'Maybe if you have, like, a Stage 5 clinger on you... because sometimes they don't always take the hint.' - Brit Dort, university student
For $5, they'll send your soon-to-be-ex a Snapchat on your behalf. For $10, they will end things by text or email.
If you want to splurge on a personalized phone call, for $30 you can hire one their Heartbreakers to do the deed for you.
Curious how that would sound? We asked Toronto-based Mackenzie Keast to break up with the CBC's Paul Karchut on behalf of a made-up girlfriend, Tina (because Paul is, in fact, happily married).
Here's how that conversation played out:
(Sound of phone ringing, several times, to convey tension.)
Paul: "Hello?"
Mackenzie: "Hi, is this Paul?"
Paul: "Yeah, speaking."
Mackenzie: "Hi Paul, this is McKenzie calling from The Breakup Shop. How are you doing today?"
Paul: "Pretty well. What's going on?"
Mackenzie: "Well Paul, we're actually sending you this message on behalf of Tina. Tina has requested a breakup through our services. So we do regret to inform you that Tina is breaking up with you. We understand that you probably had a great run together and shared some great memories along the way. But it is time to move on."
'Stage 5 clinger'
Keast says the key is to keep it quick — just one motion, like a Band-Aid — adding that they're not therapists.
"We kind of compare ourselves to a funeral business. It's a dirty job. You don't like to think that you're profiting from other people's pain but it's a business at the end of the day and it's a necessary service."
Keast says "purchasing a breakup" is great for shy people, those afraid of conflict, and anyone who has tried and failed to get out of a relationship.
Students at Calgary's Mount Royal University were receptive to the idea.
"Maybe if you have, like, a Stage 5 clinger on you... because sometimes they don't always take the hint very well," said Brit Dort.
Gifts for exes
If you're feeling a tad guilty about hiring a third party to pull the plug for you — you could always pay that third party more money to send your ex a little something special.
The Breakup Shop sells gifts for past lovers: a DVD of The Notebook, flowers, a Netflix gift card or a box of Chips Ahoy! Rainbow Cookies.
A sample of some of the gifts you can buy through The Breakup Shop website to send to your ex. (The Breakup Shop)
Should you be on the receiving end of one of these gifts, The Breakup Shop website suggests reusing the box that your gift arrived in: "All Breakup Shop gift boxes can be re-purposed as "memory ovens." Stuff the emptied box full of your exes photos, jewelry, underwear, or whatever and set it ablaze (in a safe location of course.)"
Service aimed at millennials
The Keast brothers say The Breakup Shop is targeted at millennials — the generation born between 1980 and 2000.
Rightly or wrongly, millennials get a lot of flak for being lazy and not willing to tackle issues head on. So, doesn't a service like this just further cement that stereotype?
"I say get off your high horse and try dating in the 21st century. Millennials are a generation who have grown up in the worst economy since the Great Depression. We have unstable jobs, we have student debt, we can't afford to buy homes," said Keast.
"There's kind of this quaint, antiquated of version of what dating and relationships should be and people attach the same kind of flak to Tinder and say, 'Why can't people just go out to a bar?' The reality is, we don't live our lives that way anymore."
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