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Anna Dale

After Anna Dale was dumped rather unceremoniously she decided to set up a group for people to share similar experiences. She thought it might help people to know that others were in the same boat. She thought people should know "that they’re not alone, that yes in some cases they have been badly treated and have a right to feel angry and upset about it, and that they don’t need to sweep it under the carpet".

Anna called her group the Society for the Protection of the Unreasonably Dumped. "Although it might sound like a joke, it isn’t one because they do need help". Especially, she says, those who have been ‘unreasonably’ dumped because they haven’t been given an explanation - if they’ve been given an explanation at least they’ve got something to work on. Anna herself discovered that her partner was still seeing an old girlfriend, and that she’d been told other lies too. Anna felt she didn’t want to just take all this lying down, and felt that she wanted to somehow ‘kick back’ against what had happened to her.

People who have been dumped, Anna believes, "face humiliation because they’ve been shown up among family and friends". They also have to cope with their misjudgement, and might feel insecure and find it hard to move on because the relationship that’s ended remains ‘unfinished business’.

Paul, who answered Anna’s ad for the group, explains that it was important for him after his wife of ten years left him, to talk to someone about what had happened. "I just thought that what Anna was saying was very astute. She was saying that she’d found talking to other people had helped her". Another potential member of Anna’s group recalls feeling "like a piece of rubbish that had been thrown away - discarded - it was like nobody cared about me".

Anna feels sad that people are not often supported when their relationships fail. "It doesn’t hurt to be kind to somebody. What is the harm in listening to somebody? Okay, they might go on abit, but so what? People do still have feelings, we’re not all robots".