Where’s the reality in these reality star breakups?

INSTEAD of giving a candid account of the reasons their relationships have broken down, these TV couples have put a filter on the pain of splitting up, writes Michelle Andrews.

HOW many of your exes do you love “more than ever”?

If your answer isn’t zero, I’ll safely assume you’re some sort of celebrity.

According to Instagram’s elite, splitting up with your significant other isn’t a soul-destroying, earth-shattering change. Instead, it’s all sunshine and rainbow emojis. “We’re not breaking up because we hate how each other breathes,” every saccharine caption insists, “we’re breaking up because we’re focusing on what fabulous friends we are!”

Gone are the days of petty retweets and transparent quotes — we’ve officially entered the era of the Instagram split, where sappy cliches and selfies reign supreme.

It took The Bachelorette’s Courtney Dober (from Georgia Love’s season) all of three days after announcing his breakup to post a snap of him sitting alongside his ex-girlfriend Lily McManus, who he met on US spin-off The Bachelor Winter Games, in a Chinese restaurant on a “mate date”.

Love Island’srunner-up couple, Erin Barnett and Eden Dally, also sung the same song on Sunday when they announced they’re splitting up but “remain best friends.”

Oh, then there’s reality TV’s Jake Ellis and Megan Marx (“I love her wholeheartedly”), The Wiggles ’ Lachy and Emma (“we are stronger than ever”), Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan (“absolutely nothing has changed”), and Jen Aniston and Justin Theroux (“we are two best friends”).

It’s all very, very lovely. And by that I mean very, very fictional.

Because here’s the thing: you don’t just wake up one day and decide to tear apart lives, families, possessions, and friendship groups unless you unquestionably need to for your own sanity.

Breakups suck. There’s no way around that fact. You can either delay the heartache by telling the world everything is just dandy, or admit that this was never in your plan and that you’ve veered off course without a road map.

Megan Marx and Jake Ellis: it was never going to last. (Pic: Annette Dew)

While beautiful Instagram breakups draw out the inevitable trauma, messy breakups — preferably coupled with copious sobbing, snot bubbles, and trans fats — are formative. With all that explosive ugliness (and acne-inducing food) comes a hell of a lot of clarity.

They might be excruciating for a moment, but messy breakups are metaphorical bandaids.

Crying on the phone. Typing out text messages that you could probably submit as a thesis. Debating consequent replies to your thesis in a group chat of concerned girlfriends. Demanding your ex returns your belongings via courier post. They’d opt for express shipping, obviously, if you ever meant anything to them at all. Soaking both sides of your pillow for a week. Wearing pyjamas for frankly unhygienic stretches of time. Considering any public place within a 10-kilometre radius of your ex’s house the “exclusion zone”. Abruptly weeping in work meetings. Painstakingly deleting their number from your phone, unfriending them on Facebook, and, yes, even unfollowing them on Instagram. None of it is pretty, or worthy of a double-tap. It’s just necessary.

Eden Dally and Erin Barnett from Love Island Australia announced their separation this week. (Pic: supplied)

Of course, it’s understandable that people in the public eye try to photoshop the bloodshot eyes away, and insist to the outside world that breaking up is actually what they wanted all along. But no matter how desperately you want to just “be best friends” with your ex, that’s not going to happen.

When you’re still in a haze of breakup sex, affixing the “best friends” label is easy. But how is that tag going to survive the litmus test of one of you deciding to date again? How are you going to feel about your best bud — the best bud you used to share a bed with — now sharing that same bed with someone else?

Hint: Not great.

The brutal, crappy reality is that you break up for a reason, and that reason rarely lends itself to a glorious friendship.

Perhaps, yes, with a few years of space and time you’ll find a mate in the person you once loved. But when the breakup is raw, and so too are your emotions, you need a dose of ugliness to know exactly where you each stand.

And for now? That should be apart.

Michelle Andrews is a freelance writer from Melbourne. Follow her on Instagram or

Facebook.