How to keep technology from mocking your broken heart

After 16 years of marriage, the text from Lisa Arends’ husband read: “I’m sorry to be such a coward leaving you this way but I’m leaving you and leaving the state.”

She collapsed to the floor. And never received any communication from him again.

But their digital interactions haunted her in a way she never could have imagined. With linked email accounts, she saw in his junk email that he had failed to pay the tab on the cost of a band — for his recent wedding.

Arends’ extraordinary story is, of course, on the very extreme end of the digital heartbreak spectrum, but the technological echo of a past lover is something many people understand far too well. Read more...