Why Are We So Torn Up When Celebrities Split?

When Harry Styles and Taylor Russell broke up earlier this year, I remember feeling oddly disappointed. But I thought they were actually meant for each other! I remember thinking, despite the fact that I have never met either of these people, nor do I know anything substantial about their private lives at all. Still, I felt deflated, as if they were my favorite couple to hang out with. And then, when Channing Tatum and Zoë Kravitz called off their engagement earlier this month, I felt those same feelings. Even though—and I’ll be honest here—I hadn’t really given them a second thought otherwise. And don’t even get me started on Stormzy and Maya Jama—that one made me want to throw up.

The celebrity break-up has, for a long time, been the coup de maître of tabloid and internet gossip. “Shock split!” read the headlines, while a “source” reveals something about conflicting schedules or them being “at different stages in life” (as per Zoë and Channing, reportedly). We don’t just want to know who’s broken up, but we want to know why and exactly how they got to this juncture. Did someone cheat? Was it sudden, or had there been a slow and painful build-up? Has one of them moved on already, and if so, who with? If the couple were particularly beloved—see: Molly-Mae and Tommy Fury in England, J Lo and Ben Affleck everywhere—we might comb through prior months for clues.

It’s weird, how invested we are in celebrity break-ups. These are complete strangers, some of whom live thousands of miles away, and we’re mourning a relationship that we fundamentally did not know. But as with any parasocial dynamic, I think our preoccupation with the celeb break-up probably has much less to do with them, and a lot more to do with us—especially if you’re in a relationship yourself, or can in some way relate. You start thinking about whether your own engagement might break down over the course of several awards seasons, or if you, too, could be celebrating your anniversary one day, and then writing things on Instagram like, “Never in a million years did I think I’d ever have to write this” the next. Does everyone cheat eventually? You start to think. Or, do me and my three-month situationship “want different things”?

I do actually think that this fascination, this emotional investment, doesn’t begin and end with celebs. I’ve felt this way about people I only vaguely know, as well—friends of friends, or people I’ve been following on Instagram for years and don’t remember why. When I recently discovered that a couple I follow separately online—neither of whom I have ever physically met nor spoken to—had broken up (they both unfollowed each other and deleted all their couple pics), I found myself strangely unnerved. A bit sad, even. Why would they do this to me? I thought nonsensically as I tapped through one of their Stories documenting a post-break-up vacation in Lanzarote. When someone else’s life appears fragile, or subject to change, you start fearing for your own. I don’t want to go on a post-break-up vacation to Lanzarote, I started thinking, even though that wasn’t even slightly on the agenda.