A park bench is a prime location for a public breakup. Photo / Getty Images
A park bench is a prime location for a public breakup. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
It’s summertime. Perhaps the most popular time of year for couples to go walking around the park. Sometimes silent, sometimes in vigorous conversation. Sometimes holding hands, sometimes one person behind the other.
What you never consider about these couples is, amongst the sweet chirping birds and verdant green grass,some of them will be breaking up as you pass them by.
Ending a romantic relationship in a park is a phenomenon that has stood the test of time. You know how the Victorians were obsessed with painting themselves during their “leisure time” in parks?
Georges Seurat’s 1884 piece ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’ is a famous one you will recognise. Doesn’t everyone look happy? I beg to differ. If a picture tells 1000 words, I reckon a lot of them would be saying, “this relationship is over!”
There’s a park bench near my place, on the grounds of Auckland University. On it, someone has written the following tragic tale in permanent marker:
“I broke the love of my life’s heart at this bench. I want to destroy it with an axe, but I’ve already caused enough damage. Do better than me please.”
To which another stranger has taken out their Vivid and replied, “You’ve already done better than me. I destroyed the bench I broke the love of my life’s heart at …” clearly in reference to a different site that didn’t survive another breakup.
I’m sure countless Aucklanders have read these poetic words of graffiti and felt sorrow for the people who were broken up with on that bench.
Dozens have probably sat there on a beautiful sunny afternoon, one half of the couple thinking they were just going for a nice walk outside with their partner. And then their world crashed down upon them.
I call this particular spot at Auckland Uni “Heartbreak Bench”, because obviously there’s no desire for the groundskeepers to paint over the graffiti. It’s been there for at least a year, since I first noticed it. That bench is a symbol of emotional trauma that deserves to stay intact.
I too have been broken up with in a park. It was my first boyfriend, and I was completely blindsided by it – I thought we were going for a walk to work out our problems.
He had other ideas, and I was left in tears amongst 150-year-old oak trees.
A park bench at Auckland University has some words of warning written on it. Photo / Supplied
The park, and benches in it, serve as a neutral zone for breakups. They are nobody’s property. Unlike ending a relationship in someone’s home (where things could get so heated someone might break things), you can’t really do much harm in a park.
In other public spaces where you might end a relationship, such as a café, it can be easy to “cause a scene”.
We’ve all seen restaurant breakup scenes in movies – one character is taken there specifically so they don’t cause said scene, but the bad news gets the best of them. They end up in a rage without any care about what their fellow patrons think of them.
But in a park, you can actually make that scene if you want to. You can yell. You can cry. You can swear. And nobody passing by will interfere; they’ll leave you alone to handle your own business.
This is why the park, and the benches in it (as the only place to sit) are go-to locations for breakups. They are wide open spaces where you’re allowed to express yourself without fear of embarrassment. What’s more, when the relationship has ended, you can both literally walk away. No shattered plates or thrown pillows. The park is clean and contained.
If you do a Google image search for “park bench breakup” there are hundreds of stock photos of this sight in action. Couples of every age, orientation, and ethnicity are represented in these photos. Clearly, park benches are renowned the world over for heartbreak. There are even books about breakups with park bench illustrations on the cover. I’m not being dramatic here – breaking hearts in parks is real.
If your partner takes you to a park this summer – and doing that sort of thing is completely out-of-the-ordinary – you’ve been warned.
Parks are beautiful spaces that are perfect for conflict-free leisure time. But if a walk around the park isn’t something you’d normally do with your love, you might be wise to wonder if there’s a strategy behind taking you there.
