Why We Tell Breakup Horror Stories

A study on man's ability to concoct insane breakup excuses, the web of women who share these stories, and what we learn from them.

When I was in the sixth grade, my middle school boyfriend of two weeks broke up with me. His reasoning? He needed to “find himself” before lacrosse season started. Even at the tender age of twelve, I could tell this was bogus. But I chalked it up to the boy disease of immaturity, listened to “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne several hundred times, and moved on. “High school will be better,” I told my friends, “That’s when boys start taking relationships seriously.” Oh, how naive I was to underestimate the audacity of men! If only I had known, the breakup excuses to come would only get more outrageous, inventive, and bizarre from here.

It is because of man’s infinite audacity that every woman on earth has heard through the grapevine of a breakup excuse horror story. At this very moment, somewhere across the world, on one of the few remote islands still untouched by modern civilization, there is a woman of an aboriginal tribe sitting in a yurt and saying, “He said WHAT?” And I know in my bones that her reaction is justified. 

Whenever a man breaks up with a woman, her girlfriends will surely hear of it. But when a man breaks up with a woman in an especially heinous fashion, every woman in the surrounding tristate area will hear of it. The story will be told and retold through a long chain of wine nights and brunches until finally it morphs into urban legend, just as the infamous voice memo sent to Daphne Allen during my sophomore year of college did. 

I didn’t know Daphne personally, but my best friend Gabby had a roommate named Valerie, and Valerie had a girlfriend who knew Daphne through a group project. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was standing half naked in Gabby’s living room for a recurring ritual we call “Gabby’s Tanning Salon.” Gabby was midway through smearing St. Tropez tanner over my butt when a catatonic looking Valerie emerged from her flex bedroom with big news. She then played for us the eight minute voice memo Daphne had just received from the boy she was casually seeing at the time. The keystone moment of this memo occurred about six minutes in, when he said,  “I don’t know if you thought I wanted a relationship, but I really can’t do that right now. Like, I’m in my Jack Kerouac era.” He would go on to reiterate this claim several times in the minutes that followed. To this day, I am still at a complete and utter loss as to what he possibly could have meant by, “Jack Kerouac era.” I’ve spent many a restless night tossing and turning, thinking, “Jack Kerouac era? But he worked in marketing?” Until finally I realized I didn’t want to know. 

If you plan on sharing that story, you can assure your listener that yours is a trusted source. “It happened to the girl-on-substack’s best friend's roommate's girlfriend’s group project partner,” you’ll say, “So I know it’s real.” No need to feel guilt or shame over retelling this story either. Breakup horror stories always fall into one of two categories, neither of which are gossip. 

The first category is that of the cautionary tale - a warning, wrapped in parable. The crux of the cautionary tale lies in the presentation of an avoidable danger - if you don’t lie for attention, people will believe you when you cry, “Wolf!” The story of Jack Kerouac Voice Memo presents a similar avoidable peril. Children who read Little Red Riding Hood are left with the moral: Be wary of those who find you alone, for creatures that devour often hide their true nature. Those who hear the tale of the The Jack Kerouac Voice Memo are left with: Be wary of those you meet on NYC Hinge, for freaks often appear perfectly normal at first. I used to think that all breakup horror stories fell into this category of cautionary tale. That is, until I heard the story of Owen Fareman breaking up with Grace Mulaney.

I got wind of this story last month at my childhood friend Frankie’s shark-themed birthday party. Also present was Frankie’s other best friend from childhood, Natalie. Not knowing anyone else there, Natalie and I stuck together and got very drunk and eventually got to talking about couples from high school. “Did you hear that Owen and Grace broke up?” She asked. This was intriguing news. Owen and Grace had been together since freshman year of high school - nine years total. I asked for details and Natalie paused, weighing whether or not it would be bad of her to tell me. “C’mon, who am I gonna tell?” I said. Looking back, I see the irony of this moment. 

Nevertheless, she started talking. It all started when Owen’s wealthy father fell ill and was given a year to live. For several months after, Grace played the role of dutiful girlfriend and emotionally supported Owen. Until one day, Owen sat her down and explained that he had to break up with her due to his incoming million dollar inheritance. Because, in his words, “I just feel like when I get this money… I’m probably going to cheat on you. And it wouldn’t be fair to stay with you while knowing that.” 

This story has stuck to my brain like no other. Perhaps it’s the sheer audacity of it all. Owen has one of those perpetually damp, puffy faces that makes it look as if he's just chugged an entire gallon of milk at any given point. Whereas Grace never looks like she’s just chugged milk and she never looks like someone’s planning to bake a sheet of cookies on her face later on. So how Owen got it in his head that there are other human women willing to sleep with him besides Grace is beyond me. Clearly, someone has lied to him!

Or perhaps the story hasn’t left me due to the marvel of Grace’s restraint. The fact that she hasn’t become The Joker makes her a kind of saint to me. Had I been broken up with this way, the FBI would’ve been forced to reopen Alcatraz, chain me up like a werewolf on the full moon, and throw away the key to keep my wrath contained. I was expecting to see Zodiac Killer letters and crazed manifestos when I opened Grace’s instagram. Imagine my pleasant surprise when instead I saw that she was traveling Europe on summer holiday. 

No, if I’m being honest, this story stuck with me because it terrified me, and it terrified me because it’s a story that could very well happen to me someday. People we know better than we know ourselves can change in an instant, people can fall out of love with you after many years of devotion, people can break your heart at any time. Whether these events happen or don’t happen to us is entirely out of our control. And my deepest fear is that one day I will find myself on the receiving end.

The first time I felt this kind of fear was when I was taught The Book of Job in second grade Catholic Sunday School. For those unfamiliar, The Book of Job is a biblical parable that follows the canonical best and most moral person alive as God puts him all you can eat buffet of suffering. So you can see why it’s such a hit in the Catholic Church. I remember that the story didn’t land well in class. I’m not sure if you remember, but children as a group are more concerned with the idea of fairness than the Supreme Court, so we felt rather strongly that Job had gotten a raw deal. We were a tough crowd that day, but we were tough because we were frightened. 

But now, as a very mature 24 year old woman, I am thankful that I was told The Book of Job at such a young age. The story taught me that life will often be unjust, that suffering will often be random and without meaning, that tragedy will often be unavoidable. You might think a child should be shielded from these hard truths, but without them, I wouldn’t have been able to see the true moral of the story. Which is that in whatever designless suffering awaits us, we will not be alone, and we will not be to blame, and we will still be loved and capable of loving. 

That’s why the story of Job is told and retold, passed on to each new generation. That’s why stories like Owen and Grace’s are told and retold, passed on to each new group of girlfriends. That’s why the next time a random, unpreventable agony befalls me, I will say to myself,  “The girls are going to die when they hear this.”