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by Rachel Blackburn

Thea Newcomb has made a career out of being dumped. The three times loser in love turned the tables on her former partners by launching a website where casualties of romance can share their experiences. Thea's www.soyouvebeendumped.com is now receiving around one million hits per month and she's just celebrated the site's fourth birthday with an 80s party on Sunday July 4 - American Independence Day. The 36-year-old is also writing a movie script about her life and recently launched an anti-bigamy website in partnership with a bigamy victim who logged onto her site for support. She says: "The last four years have been an incredible rollercoaster ride. "When I came up with the idea for soyouvebeendumped.com I thought it would be a success but I didn't now just how successful it would be. I've ended up making a career out of being dumped." Thea readily admits she's been unlucky in love. In the past decade, her husband left her, her next lover ended up cheating on her and a third man appeared to be totally besotted until he told her he had decided to become a priest. The break-ups plunged Thea into a spiral of depression and despair before she decided to turn her heartache into something positive and the website was launched on July 4 2000. Now Thea, a Californian who lives in Glasgow, spends several hours a day online drawing on her personal experiences to advise the lovelorn how to deal with being dumped. She says: "I make sure that everyone who comes onto the site to talk about their experiences gets a reply either from me or from one of our members. "The number one issue on the site is the problem of contact with an ex and a lot of people struggle with that. "They don't want to lose a lover and a friend in one go so they try and keep in touch with their ex which is one of the worst things you can do. I advise people to cut contact altogether if they can and if they can't - because they have children together or work together for example - to make sure they set boundaries." "Another big issue is self punishment - people tend to put themselves down after a break-up and my advice is to treat yourself the way you'd treat and support your best friend if they were going through the same thing. "The whole ethos of the site is to try and make something positive out of the awful thing that's happened." The website includes areas such as ex-scape which suggests movies, books and movies to help dumped lovers get over the misery, a shop which sells T-shirts featuring empowering slogans and ex-files which offers financial and legal information. The most popular area is the members' forum ex-change where visitors from more than 50 countries chat, swap stories and help each other through the pain of a break-up. There's even a section called Revenge Corner where men and women who've been dumped log on to describe how they got their own back on a former lover. Thea says: "The most surreal part of the whole experience is knowing that my break-ups are helping people all over the world to get over theirs. "It's rewarding to know that some stranger in South Korea is visiting this place I've set up and getting help from it. "I get lots of messages from people saying the site has literally saved their life and that makes me proud." Thea describes the site as self-financing and says it's impossible to put a figure on what it's worth. soyouvebeendumped.com is free to members and financed through advertisements and donations from grateful chatroom visitors. Thea makes a living through a variety of entrepreneurial spin-offs from the site including her online shop and contracting web work. She stands to make much more if she lands a movie or a book deal while her fame and fortune has already seen her placed her on an annual list of Scotland's most eligible women. But four years after the romance disasters which inspired the site, Thea still hasn't found love. She says: "When I started getting the website off the ground - after everything that had happened - I decided to take a two year break from romance. That turned into four years and it's only recently that I've felt ready to start dating again." " I think that sharing the pain of everybody visiting the website and remembering my own pain made me wary about going through it all again. "The site also makes you realise just how badly some people treat each other." Thea's history of rocky relationships began in late 1991 when she became penpals with a man named Nick from Glasgow. A whirlwind romance followed and the couple were married in Nevada the following year. Thea moved to Glasgow where she and Nick began their new life together but their marriage soon ran into trouble. It was hard for Thea to adjust to life in a new country and there were numerous rows over her initial problems in finding a job. She says: "Soon after setting up home and living together for the first time, arguments started and large cracks in the marriage began to appear." The couple plodded along until when one day after three years of marriage, Nick decided enough was enough and dumped Thea. Although she knew the relationship had run its course, Thea was devastated by the split and turned to a colleague, Derick, at the internet company where she worked for comfort. Romance blossomed and Thea quickly fell in love with the man she thought was her true soulmate. She says: "The relationship was so much more fulfilling than the marriage ever was. I felt we had this amazing connection." The couple soon moved into together and Thea found herself happier than she had ever been in her life. She had no indication anything was wrong until Derick called her out of the blue and finished the relationship while she was visiting her father in California. She says: "I had been replaced by someone else and he couldn't wait for me to return home to tell me face to face - he just had to end it there and then. "I felt totally shell-shocked and abandoned and after I got that transatlantic call I cried non-stop for the first four or five days. "I couldn't believe this was happening to me." Thea was depressed for some time after Derick left but eventually her survival instinct kicked in and she got her life back together. She found it difficult adjusting to being a single woman though and it wasn't long before she met a new man - an accountant named Chris. Thea says: "He seemed totally smitten with me which was good for my ego. "Then one day he turned to me, signed and said: `I could totally fall in love with you … but I'm thinking of becoming a priest.' "I was totally blown away because I hadn't even known he was religious." At that point Thea decided she'd had her enough of relationships for a while. Then one day while joking with a friend that she must qualify for a PhD in being dumped, the idea for the website was born. Thea quit her job, teamed up with a pal who helped her design the site and launched soyouvebeendumped.com about a year after her relationship with Derick ended. She says: "I'm a great believer in success being the greatest form of revenge and launching the site was my way of turning my own painful experiences into something positive. I couldn't be happier with what I've achieved." Thea hopes the new website - www.stopbigamy.co.uk - which was launched on April 1 this year will take off. Launched with a one of SYBD's members, the site has been getting a couple of hundred hits a month. "I think the site will grow and our aim is to help and support people who've been victims of bigamy as well as raising awareness of the whole issue." On a personal level, Thea hasn't completely given up on love and while she's not desperate to rush down the aisle again she does hope to find someone special one day. She says: "I'm hopeful and I do think there's love out there and when it comes along, I'll enjoy it while I can."