Modern breakups are like divorces. Who gets the cat, friends, Amazon Prime account?

Illustration by Sonali Dub

The separation period after a gut-wrenching breakup is no less chaotic than any millionaire divorce. In this day and age, if you get dumped by someone remotely remarkable, they also change the shared Netflix account’s password. Just like that, you are single, and your new Netflix account doesn’t know what you like. And this is just the pointy tip of the identity crisis iceberg. Before jetting off on a healing journey, jilted 20-somethings are refreshing their ex’s social profiles with a stock market analyst’s energy.

The modern breakup grief is spilled all over the Instagram explore page. This isn’t a laughing matter; poor youth are being broken up over texts and feeling relieved they weren’t just ghosted. Considering the barbaric swiftness of the ending, it should be easy to move on from one dating app-guaranteed relationship to another. It isn’t. Breakup coaches sell a ‘breakup to breakthrough’ plan. Therapists assign homework to make an events-in-the-relationship timeline, and a pros and cons list to de-romanticise the heartbreaker.

Self-styled emotional healers on Instagram charge over Rs 6,000 for post-breakup retreats. That’s a lot of money spent to chant “I am enough” on a mosquito-infested trek trail. If you think this was really the height of things, the wounds of a situationship are being cured with certified PTSD treatments. What’s next? A breakup vaccine? A memory-erasing treatment like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)? Nobody knows what would really work.

With nanoship, eyecontactship and other micro relationship waves, it’s really unfair how the getting-over period is still very, very long. The recovery used to follow a clear formula—one month of every year of the relationship. That was the set ratio. Now, the time of relationships is measured in 10,000 phases—talking stage, pre-pre-relationship, etc.—with no clear start or end. Feelings are mostly unsolved between sharing memes and reading old chats on WhatsApp. That’s why younglings can get over their five-year-old relationship in two months but cry through a year over a one-month-long situationship.

Exes don’t go out of sight

In the hip new world where reels are shared about toxic emotional codependency, exes are co-parenting pets. Or fighting for full custody. Broken-up live-in couples in Bengaluru aren’t able to move out because rent hurts more than heartbreak. Uttarakhand jodis are alien to this awkwardness—saved by the Uniform Civil Code. But really, are they? Exes don’t go out of sight anymore. You block them everywhere and they can still reach out to you on Google Pay, or worse, Gmail. Some relentless romantics just can’t move on. Real men used to go to war, now they subtweet after the breakup. Some expressionists record their yearning in 10-minute voice notes and beg their estranged lovers to play them at 2x speed. This would be a shade, but I am too guilty of podcasting my exes during the early separation period.

I wonder if “How to prioritise yourself” listicles could have fixed Meera’s reverential fixation. She definitely wasn’t balancing her sappy haiku tweets with glow-up selfies. That’s an us problem. The online performance of moving on also helps win the asset division round of pre-marital divorces—mutual friends. Those who once commented “cutest couple ever” are left to pick sides—whom to support, and whom to unfollow everywhere. Experts who manoeuvre this political crisis of sorts have a thumb rule—back whoever posts workout videos. That one has got to be the genuinely hurt party.

Of course, the gossip mill never stops churning. After two years of a lukewarm breakup, a 26-year-old in Delhi is still fact-checking rumours. Word on the street is that she smashed her ex’s camera in rage. Pure slander—he broke up on text and sent a Swiggy Genie delivery boy to pick up his belongings. It’s hardly her fault if some things fell out of the trash bag filled with his stuff on the way. Blame gravity. Or the gig economy.

Royal mess of breakup grief 

And what’s inevitable after a breakup? The rebound Olympics. Both separated parties are gunning to win it by posting thirst trap pictures on their timeline and fake flirting their way out of heartache. And if they can’t find anyone to date, YouTube has detailed tutorials on how to hold your own hand, buy yourself flowers, and still make it look like a mysterious new soft launch. The post-breakup business is all about optimising pain, never enduring it.

Then there’s the collateral damage. A 25-year-old cat lover was gifted a ginger kitten by her ex. He christened the cat, bought her litter box, and even saved her pictures as his phone’s wallpaper. No wonder when the relationship ended, the cat was going around the neighbourhood trying to smell every man—looking for the one who rescued her from the street. Like the neglected child of a loveless marriage, the cat ran off every few days and always came back pregnant. The annoyed ex-girlfriend later diagnosed the cat with severe daddy issues in her blogs. She was mostly talking about herself.

Turns out the royal mess of breakup grief is inevitable even for those “figuring out dating goals” on Hinge and “practising healthy boundaries” in status updates. Some of my friends believe in clutching at whatever perks you can get out of it. One of them is deliberately using her ex’s Amazon Prime account to order anything from a mattress, protection and books such as How to Date Men When You Hate Men. Call it a bold statement or a twisted coping mechanism, it’s just efficient.

Another popular cop-out of separation sadness is spiritual awakening. Tarot, palm reading, sage burning, voodoo playing—everything goes. Of course, there’s no guarantee how sane you come out the other way. Many ex-girlfriends and boyfriends are lost in Sadhguru’s Samyamas and Auroville’s utopian horror. Thank god I got into the heartbreak hustle instead—not feeling my feelings, and somehow celebrating the half-century of this column. What’s not healthy about it?

Views are personal.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)