Jack Dorsey was once a boy in St. Louis, Mo., obsessed with city maps.

He’s now the reason why you’re single.

Dorsey launched Twitter in 2006. He wanted the site to be like a city map come to life, where tweeters, like taxi drivers over radios, could communicate information about themselves, adding a human element that ordinary maps lack.

Sounds like a far-fetched idea, but it wasn’t. Five years later, Dorsey’s site now boasts about 8 million users with an $8 billion net worth. Twitter has a priceless cultural value, too; many protesters coordinated their movements by tweeting in the Middle East earlier this year, proving that 140 characters can do more than sum up that awesome sandwich you ate for lunch.

But single people, more than anyone, are aware of Twitter’s pitfalls.

Last week, the Huffington Post ran a story about a survey proving that Twitter users, on average, have shorter relationships than “everyone else.”

Come on, I thought. Can Twitter really be blamed for our shortcomings? After all, it’s just Twitter. It’s all links and updates and “White Girl Problems,” hardly anything that could kill your love life.

But maybe I’m wrong.

With its 140-character limit and ever-active timeline, Twitter is a dream come true for people with attention spans shorter than a goldfish’s. We go from one thought to the next, never exploring or committing to one. We follow new faces every day and unfollow ones that bore us.

Maybe Twitter isn’t the culprit of our break-ups, but it’s a good metaphor for our dating habits. And to that I say: no wonder we’re alone.

But Twitter can be twisted into a less-than-innocent game of telephone, which is why it’s a danger to romance. While discussing this over break, my friends and I decided passive-aggressive tweets are kisses of death to relationships.

In the early stages of dating, indirect tweets are so tempting. Have a rough first date? A funny tweet here and there will be sure to entertain your followers. Realize that some song lyrics perfectly depict your head-over-heels feelings for someone? Making ’em public isn’t a crime — go for it.

Sure, that’s all fun and games in the beginning, but indirectly airing your dirty laundry once a relationship sours is just poor etiquette.

Take my friend, for example, who once had a summer love tweet something along the lines of “F U” a few days after they decided to stop seeing each other. Assuming the message was directed to her, she called her ex-suitor and asked why he’d do such a thing.

“What? That was about my boss,” he claimed.

Of course, this did nothing to quiet her suspicions. The message had to have been about her, she decided — why wouldn’t it have read, “F U, boss” if it wasn’t? Or, “I hate my boss. But just my boss. Not you.” Why so indirect? Why, why, why?

Sadly, there are plenty other types of maddeningly vague tweets that, by the end of our live-tweeted relationships, come all too naturally. With 140 characters drenched in passive aggression, we can say anything to the people from our pasts — without actually saying it to them. Then we can let them spend the rest of the afternoon pondering if they are vain, or if we are just jerks. Doesn’t that sound like time well spent?

I can’t even say if I have been the subject of such tweets because, well, how would I know? That’s the problem: all this indirect communication gives us no sturdy ground to stand on, no concept of reality.

So, you don’t have to trust me. If I were a relationship expert, I’d be able to keep one alive, right?

Well, I’m getting there. In the meantime, I remain an expert on what not to do, and although that doesn’t help me much, it could help you.

My advice? Don’t use Twitter. Too late? Use it wisely.

Remember that people do read it because, contrary to what you may think, they do care. So if you’ve got something worth saying, whether it be how happy you are to have someone, or how happy you are to be without someone, send that sentiment directly to them via anything but Twitter.

As for the rest of us, nobody is attracted to angry tweets or emo song lyrics. In fact, by telepathically communicating with people you used to date, you’re creating an entirely new audience: people who will never want to date you.

In other words, let’s not let Twitter become less than Dorsey meant for it to be: a place where we can communicate clearly and concisely, like cab drivers in an atlas page come to life.