Last month, when I found out Sydney Sweeney had called off her engagement to Jonathan Davino after seven years together, my first thought was “good.” My second thought was, “What the hell is my problem?” As someone who admittedly could be better at keeping up with celeb news, I didn’t even know Sydney Sweeney had a fiancé. Their breakup was the first I’d heard of the relationship, and yet I found myself instinctively rooting for its dissolution like a friend finally dumped the deadbeat boyfriend the rest of us all complain about in a separate group chat.
For better or worse, I didn’t seem to be alone. By and large, the internet appeared to be cheering for a single Sydney, rooting for her to ditch the significantly older man she’d settled down with at an early age, reveling in rumors of a rebound romance with Glen Powell (and begging him to intervene every time the exes are spotted out together threatening to rekindle the flame), and even attributing a spike in Spotify listens to Taylor Swift’s post-breakup anthem, “Fresh Out the Slammer” to Sydney’s split.
Meanwhile, this sentiment doesn’t seem to be Sydney-specific. In recent years, it seems there’s been a bit of a shift in the public’s response to celebrity relationships and their endings, in that we seem to be more critical of the former and less bereaved by the latter. A decade ago, in the millennial heyday of “#couplegoals,” it seemed nearly every celeb couple was, in fact, goals, and every high-profile split confirmation that love was, once again, dead.
These days, in what may be a more shrewd if also more cynical age of celebrity consumption, we seem to approach stars’ romantic lives with more skepticism, whether fairly or not. Take the criticism aimed at Selena Gomez’s relationship with Benny Blanco or the trolling Joe Alwyn received in the aftermath of his split from Taylor Swift, painting him as unsuccessful and “unworthy” of his famous ex.
This seems to be the through line in the celebrity ’ships we love to hate and the breakups we love to see—the idea that we’re cheering on a successful woman for no longer being tied down to a supposedly inferior man. It’s the embodiment of the iconic Britney Spears “Dump Him” shirt, which has a way of making this reaction seem not so much mean-spirited as it is feminist, progressive. But is it? When we find ourselves cheering for a newly single woman in the spotlight and sneering at her ex, is it because we’re happy for her, or because it makes us feel better about our own breakups and subsequent singlehood? Is it because we really believe she’s better off alone, or because we need to believe we are?
“People tend to project their own relationship experiences onto celebrities,” says Gary Brown, PhD, a couples therapist in Los Angeles who frequently works with celebrity clients. “This projection can serve as a coping mechanism so they can validate their own relationship challenges.”
And while public figures have always been ripe for projection, Brown attributes this shift in how high-profile breakups are received to the rise of social media and a cultural desire for authenticity it’s bred. Increased access to stars’ personal lives (or at least the appearance of it) online contributes to the parasocial bonds that make us feel closer to celebrities, which in turn makes us more eager to see our own lives and values reflected in their behavior. Following our favorite celebs on Instagram alongside our real-life friends makes us more likely to see (and judge) them as our peers. Feeling emboldened to eye their relationships more critically seems to have left us less likely than we were a decade ago to automatically accept a celebrity couple as a monument to romantic perfection and more eager to see them as flawed, not unlike our own relationships.
Meanwhile, I suspect these reactions I’ve observed (and personally experienced) may also be a reflection of a timely moment of cynicism towards romantic relationships in general and heterosexual ones in particular. With trends like boysobriety and the 4B movement encouraging women to de-center men and relationships from our lives—on top of the “men are trash” variety of heteropessimism that’s been popular on social media for years—it’s only natural that we’d find ourselves rooting for newly single stars, particularly when the women in recently defunct celebrity ’ships appear to have instigated or otherwise “won” their breakups.
Brown notes that there’s likely also a level of schadenfreude at play here. For those of us who’ve experienced our own share of heartbreak, there may be a feeling of validation in apparent evidence that even seemingly perfect celebrities aren’t immune from the romantic setbacks that plague us regulars. It’s not a particularly flattering aspect of human nature, but there’s often comfort in seeing someone else—especially someone who’s widely revered—suffer in the same way we have, even if it has a way of revealing our own insecurities.
Still, there’s a difference—if sometimes a fine line—between feeling seen by a shared misfortune playing out in the public eye and feeling vindicated by someone else’s downfall. Gayle S. Stever, PhD, professor of social and behavioral sciences at Empire State University of New York and author of The Psychology of Celebrity (who, for her part, doesn’t agree that there’s been a recent shift in public response to celebrity breakups, arguing that both grief à la “love is dead 💔” and derisive joy of the “dump him” variety have always existed) points to the longstanding trope that “celebrity relationships never last.” Stever attributes whatever validation the public may find in splits that seem to confirm that stereotype to an envy-rooted desire to believe that our non-celebrity relationships are somehow more valued and hard-earned than the ones celebs seem to dispose of so casually. “There might be some who cynically feel like famous people don’t invest enough in their relationships and sacrifice them to fame and fortune,” she suggests.
Ultimately, wherever this reaction I myself am guilty of comes from and however inevitable a part of human nature it may be, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s…not very nice!
“Living here in Los Angeles and having served the entertainment community for over 25 years, it should be noted that celebrities are not immune to the likes and dislikes of fans who follow them,” says Brown. “Public figure or not, they bleed the same color blood and experience psychological pain just like the rest of us.” Which is to say that whether you liked a celebrity’s ex-boyfriend or not, “they still deserve the same empathy we would be grateful for if it was us.”
Of course, the internet is not a very nice place, nor has it ever pretended to be. Still, if you, like me, appear to have had your brain chemistry altered by the cesspool that is social media to the point that you find yourself instinctively rooting for the downfall of a relationship between two people you’ve never met and know nothing about, I’d hazard that’s a sentiment we’d all be wise to simply keep to ourselves.
