Why someone online almost always tells you to break up

When you take your relationship problem to Instagram, TikTok or a chat window, you are very likely to get some version of “you deserve better”. That isn’t down to your relationship. It is because this sentence is easy to share and the alternative isn’t.

I have been working with couples for years, and I have come across this advice so often that at some point I started thinking about where it actually comes from.

Three reasons, and none of them has to do with you

First: a breakup makes better content.

“Break up with him” is short, clear-cut and feels brave. It fits on a single post. It gets agreement in the comments.

“You are stuck in a dynamic neither of you chose, and it will take a few months to change it” is none of those things. It is long, it is unsexy, and nobody forwards it to her friend.

Platforms reward the one and ignore the other. Over the years, this creates a world in which a breakup is the normal answer and staying needs explaining.

Second: only one side is ever heard.

Whether it’s a comment section or a chat window, there is only ever one version of the story. Yours. And your version isn’t wrong, it is just incomplete, the same way his would be.

In my practice, I have never once seen one person’s account be the whole picture. Not a single time. And that isn’t a criticism of anyone, it is simply how it is.

Third: nobody lives with the consequences.

The person in the comments telling you to break up isn’t there the next morning. She isn’t sitting in the silent flat. She isn’t explaining it to the children. She isn’t working out how the rent is going to be paid.

Advice without consequences is always more radical than advice with consequences. That goes for AI too: a system that tells you to leave has no stake in whether things turn out well for you afterwards.

What this advice does to you

In my practice, I see two reactions, and both are a problem.

One: women leave too early. Not because the relationship was over, but because for months they have heard that a woman who stays doesn’t respect herself. At some point, they believe it.

The other, and it happens more often: women stay and are ashamed of it. They stop telling anyone anything, because they already know the answer. “Why do you put yourself through this.” Then they are alone with something they really ought to be talking about.

For me, the second is the worse one. The breakup reflex doesn’t just drive women out of relationships. It drives them out of conversations.

What I misunderstood myself for a long time

I am not against breaking up. I just used to be convinced that the choice was “stay or go”.

It isn’t. Between the two lies something that hardly anyone talks about: staying and changing something.

That is uncomfortable, because there is no clear moment when it’s over. There is no post, no announcement, no end of a chapter. There are only weeks in which you play the same scene a little differently than before.

That is why this option doesn’t appear in any reel. It can’t be turned into a story.

How to tell that the advice doesn’t fit you

A few signs that are fairly reliable:

• You feel worse after scrolling than before, not clearer.
• You go looking for content that proves you right.
• In your head, you argue with strangers from comment sections.
• You know twenty terms for his behaviour and not a single sentence you could say to him tonight.

The last point is the most important. Much of what is sold as education gives you vocabulary instead of actions. Vocabulary feels like progress. But it is only a description of the problem in nicer words.

What helps instead

If you are at the point right now where everything around you is saying “go”, ask yourself these three questions before you decide anything:

1. Which of the people advising me know both of us? If the answer is nobody, that doesn’t mean they are wrong. It means they are guessing.

2. What exactly would have to change for me to be able to stay? If you have no answer to that, the question of breaking up is still too early.

3. Have I ever said it out loud? A great many women leave a relationship in which they never said the crucial sentence.

Where this ends

There are situations in which “go” is the right advice, and right away. Violence, physical or verbal. Systematic contempt. Control. When you are kept away from the people close to you.

Then leaving is not giving up, it is protection. In Germany, you can reach the helpline for women affected by violence (Hilfetelefon Gewalt gegen Frauen) around the clock and free of charge on 116 016.

I write this in every text where it fits, because in these cases the sentence “stay and work on it” would be dangerous.

What I want you to take with you

You are allowed to leave. And you are allowed to stay.

What you shouldn’t do is decide either one to the rhythm of people who have never seen you and who will keep scrolling the next morning.

The decision is yours. It is allowed to take longer than the internet has patience for.