Getting dumped over text is the worst, but you know what sounds even more terrible? Getting dumped via tweet in front of your ex’s millions of followers.
Here are 13 celebs who had no idea their relationships were over until it made the news:
1.
In 2024, Zach Bryan announced the end of his year-long relationship with Brianna LaPaglia on his Instagram story, writing, “Addressing something: Brianna and me have broken up with [each other] and I respect and love her with every ounce of my heart. She has loved me unconditionally for a very long time and for that I’ll always thank her. I have had an incredibly hard year personally and struggled through some pretty severe things. I thought it would be beneficial for both of us to go our different ways. I am not perfect and never will be. Please respect Brianna’s privacy and space in this and if you have it in your heart, mine too. With everything I am and to anyone I let down, I am sorry. I try my best in everything. I failed people that love me and mostly myself.”
On her own Instagram story, Brianna shared, “Hey guys I’m feeling really blindsided right now. Gonna hop off social media for a while and attempt to heal privately, when I’m ready I’ll be back and ready to talk. I love you guys so much thank you for all of your kind words. Remember you are so loved and everything’s always gonna be okay.”
In a YouTube video she posted a few hours later, she said, “I just woke up to Zach posting on his Instagram that we broke up, and I had no idea that post was going up. He didn’t text me. He didn’t call me. I just woke up to a bunch of texts being like, ‘Are you okay?’ And I’m like, ‘Did my fucking dad die?’ …I’m, like, completely blindsided by that… I’m at the point where it’s like, how can you give someone everything and love them so unconditionally, like, through stuff that you shouldn’t because you just love them and you want them… like you see the good in them? …This is so embarrassing. I don’t give a fuck. How can you give every ounce of yourself to someone and then be discarded of in a few days? It’s really, really heartbreaking.”
Later, on an episode of her podcast BFFs, Brianna alleged that, in her relationship with Zach, she faced “narcissistic, emotional abuse.” She also alleged the singer and his team offered her a $12 million NDA for her to not publicly speak about their relationship.
Responding in another Instagram story post, Zach reportedly said that he was “so terrifying unphased by the fake shit people say about [him] online.” He added, “Coming for people I love and care for is my line and final straw. I’ve said what I needed to say. My chest is still out and heads are still held high.”
2.
Sophie Turner married Joe Jonas in 2019, but after a major argument on his birthday, they split in 2023. He allegedly filed for divorce without her knowledge. The court documents said, “The breakdown of the parties’ marriage happened very suddenly. The parties had had an argument on August 15, 2023. On or about September 1, 2023, the Father filed a divorce case against the Mother in Florida. On or about September 5, 2023, the Mother found out through the media that the Father had filed for divorce.”
However, Joe’s rep denied this, telling TMZ, “After multiple conversations with Sophie, Joe initiated divorce proceedings in Florida, as Florida is the appropriate jurisdiction for the case. Sophie was aware that Joe was going to file for divorce. The Florida Court has already entered an order that restricts both parents from relocating the children. Sophie was served with this order on September 6, 2023, more than two weeks ago.”
3.
In 2011, Kris Humphries and Kim Kardashian were infamously married for 72 days. He reportedly found out they were getting divorced from the media. After Kim released a statement announcing their split, Kris put out a statement of his own: “I love my wife and am devastated to learn she filed for divorce.”
He also filed for an annulment, alleging “fraud.” However, they ultimately went through with a divorce instead, which was finalized in 2013. In a 2019 essay for The Player’s Tribune, he wrote, “There’s definitely a lot about that world that is not entirely real. But our actual relationship was 100% real. When it was clear that it wasn’t working…what can I say? It sucked. It’s never easy to go through the embarrassment of something like that — with your friends, with your family… But when it plays out so publicly, in front of the world, it’s a whole other level. It was brutal.”
He continued, “I didn’t know how to handle it because I never thought I was going to be famous in that way. I remember having this moment when I was getting booed so hard in Philly, and I thought to myself, ‘Why exactly are they booing me, though? Is it just because I’m That Guy from TV? Do they think I was trying to be famous? Is it because they think I disrespected the game of basketball?’ The last one killed me because all I’ve ever wanted to be known for was basketball. My whole life, I was a really confident, happy person. But nothing can prepare you for the feeling of walking down the street, or being anywhere, really — the grocery store, the gas station — and having people literally running up on you and trying to film you, trying to grab you, saying God knows what.”
Kris said that he “dealt with a lot of anxiety” and was “in a dark place” for about a year. He said, “I didn’t want to be Kris Humphries. It’s the craziest feeling in the world, not wanting to be yourself. And I didn’t even want to say anything to defend myself because it felt like I couldn’t win. You can’t go up against the tabloids. You can’t go up against that machine. There’s no point. And even if I played that game, I felt like it would be disrespecting the game of basketball.”
4.
In 2020, Max Ehrich and Demi Lovato’s whirlwind engagement ended after just two months. On his Instagram stories, Max said, “Imagine finding out to the status of your relationship through a tabloid… While your in the middle of filming a biopic movie about a Pastor in a Christian Church whose intention of the film is to help people.”
However, a source refuted his version of events, telling People, “Demi made Max aware that the relationship was over and it was going to come out in the press.”
He responded with another Instagram story post, writing, “I was on the set of my new movie, SOUTHERN GOSPEL, with crew and cast members right next to me who literally watched me open my phone where I then opened a tabloid. This is the God’s honest truth of how I found out about the ending of the engagement and have people from my film who saw the whole thing go down and helped me get back into character to continue my job. I had cast and crew with families relying on me to do my job. That being said, please end this narrative and focus on other more important issues in the world. I love and forgive everyone involved. Let us be. Let us heal. God bless.”
5.
A few months after meeting on a blind date, Jennie Garth and Dave Abrams tied the knot in 2015. However, three years later, he filed for divorce. Jennie later told People, “I found out that he filed for divorce from TMZ. That was a big deal for me. So we used it in the show [BH90210], because why not use the things that hurt us most and then take the power out of them and make them funny… The possibility of a third divorce devastated me. I was in a bad mindset for five or six months. It wasn’t very comfortable. And it made accepting it so much harder. But when I finally did accept, like, we’re breaking up, I had to tell myself, Dave is not an option. And then, just when I felt whole again, we started hanging out.”
Ten months after separating, Jennie and Dave reconciled. They called off the divorce, and they remained together. She said, “We had to part ways completely. We needed that time to grow.”
6.
In 2020, Cara Santana allegedly had “no idea” that her three-years engagement (and 10+ year relationship) to Jesse Metcalfe had ended until she saw pictures of him getting cozy with two different women. A source told People, “She was wearing her ring yesterday. She had no idea things weren’t fine until she saw the photos online today. I promise they never broke up until today.”
At the time, a different source alleged that the couple had called things off three weeks ago. However, neither Cara nor Jesse publicly commented on their split.
7.
Laura Dern met Billy Bob Thornton in 1997, and within two years, they were engaged. However, while she was away from home shooting a new movie, he grew closer to his Pushing Tin costar Angelina Jolie. In 2000, Laura told Talk magazine, “I left our home to work on a movie, and while I was away, my boyfriend got married, and I’ve never heard from him again… It’s like a sudden death. For no one has there been any closure or clarity.”
8.
In 1998, Matt Damon publicly ended his year-long relationship with Minnie Driver by announcing he was single on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Afterward, Minnie told the LA Times, “Everything has to be made so mythic. There are these archetypes that everybody has to take apart. I had to be the victim. It’s horrendous breaking up with someone anyway, but to have it be so public and to be cast in a role that I would never play if they were paying me — this wronged woman! It’s unfortunate that Matt went on Oprah; it seemed like a good forum for him to announce to the world that we were no longer together, which I found fantastically inappropriate. Of course, he was busy declaring his love for me on David Letterman a month previously.”
Then, in her 2022 memoir Managing Expectations, she reflected on the surreal feeling of watching her breakup play out on tabloid covers in her local grocery store. She wrote, “It’s funny now, when I think about walking down the magazine aisle in my local supermarket at midnight with my best friend, we were like, ‘Are you seeing this? This is super weird.’ My friend, Alexandra, was like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening, like, I feel like we’re in a movie. I would totally watch this movie, even though I know you’re super heartbroken, but this is really weird.'”
The attention continued as she and Matt promoted Good Will Hunting through awards season. She said, “There’s a guy who’d been sent, the cameraman at the Academy Awards — he’d literally been told to, like, stay on me and, like, he was so in my grill, he was like a wildlife photographer waiting for the kill. He was just waiting for the moment that I was going to break, or something was going to happen, or I was going to get up and scream. He’d been told, ‘Stay on her, bud. Something’s gonna happen.'” However, her dad sat with her through the Oscars, making her feel protected. She said, “I look back, and it just feels really overly dramatic and kind of funny — brutal, but funny.”
9.
In 2014, Calvin Harris reportedly caught Rita Ora unaware when he announced the end of their year-long relationship on Twitter then barred her from performing “I Will Never Let You Down” — which he wrote and produced — at the Teen Choice Awards. His since-deleted breakup tweet said, “To address speculation – myself and Rita ended our relationship some time ago. She is a beautiful, talented woman & I wish her all the best.”
In 2015, Rita told Marie Claire, “There was a reason why I split up with him. And there was a reason why I’m at this point in my life where I feel like I have so much musical freedom, and I don’t have to explain myself to anybody… It was more of a thing where I was in awe. I was at that point in my relationship where I felt he could do no wrong. I thought he had my back and that he’d never steer me wrong. But then ‘I Will Never Let You Down’ came out, and everything started to go a bit weird. I don’t know if it was because business was mixed with personal or what.”
However, in 2022, Calvin denied messing with the release of her song, tweeting, “Entire thing is a myth, there is one unreleased song I worked on and it isn’t good.”
10.
The Real Housewives of Atlanta star Porsha Williams found out that her two-year marriage to Kordell Stewart was over on social media while they were both in the house. In 2013, she told ABC News, “I literally was lying in bed, and I looked at Twitter, and it was going crazy. I saw on Twitter that my husband has filed for divorce.”
Assuming it must be a terrible rumor, she tried to talk about it with Kordell, who was down the hall. She said, “It wasn’t a confrontation. It was me just simply asking my husband, ‘Had you filed?,’ which seemed crazy coming out of my mouth. He said he thought about it, and we’ll talk about it later, and he left for work. I had to call my attorney to find out… I feel heartbroken, and at times I feel ashamed. Because I put myself out there to the world as a wife, and I was proud to be married, and for it to end the way it did, it’s almost like a failure in a way. But I do know that God has more for me.”
11.
In 2016, shortly after breaking things off with her fiancé Nick Young, Iggy Azalea allegedly found out he was expecting a child with another woman from the press. She tweeted, “I have never even been told by nick that his baby mother is pregnant so if this is true I’m finding out via E news. I broke up with Nick because I found out he had brought other women into our home while I was away and caught them on the security footage. This is just like a second shot to the chest. And I feel like I don’t even know who the hell it is I’ve been loving all this time. People in this world really are f****d up.”
Seemingly in response, Nick tweeted, “If you perfect then be perfect I live in a world where ppl fuck up learn from it and move on …”
12.
In 2005, Sienna Miller performed in As You Like It on West End seven times a week while her then-fiancé Jude Law’s cheating scandal played out across the tabloids. In 2020, she told the Daily Beast, “That was one of the most challenging moments I hope I’ll ever have to experience. Because with that level of public heartbreak, to have to get out of a bed let alone stand in front of 800 people every night, it’s just the last thing you want to do. It was really hard.”
“And the other thing was, it was at the height of all that paparazzi madness, and in London where there was an epidemic of bad behavior. They knew where I would be every night,” she said. She also said that she was in such a state of “shock” that she can’t recall six weeks of that period of her life. However, she handled the situation by taking legal action.
Sienna continued, “I’m pretty resilient. There were moments where it came close to making me really feel crazy, and it was incredibly aggressive. The way I managed it was to get really litigious, start suing. I secretly recorded paparazzi on a lighter that was a camera and got a privacy act taken to a high court to get the law changed in England, which essentially means that if I’m anywhere or coming out of anywhere where I can expect privacy, they’re not allowed to take my photo. It was a long battle, and I think I was really paranoid. There was so much noise that it was hard to think straight and focus on my work, which I always took very seriously. It ate everything else. I look back on it and wonder how I did get through it — but I did.”
Jude was also frustrated by the intense media coverage and all the stories the tabloids wrote about him. In 2013, he told Shortlist magazine, “That period was horrible. It was just boring. Boring, shallow, and infuriating, because I couldn’t get my revenge. I was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the swamp, the mire. To me, it’s the shallowest form of judgment and analysis… I realized quickly I’d have to keep my head down and hope that the work would win out. It seems to have so far.”
13.
And finally, in 2015, rumors swirled that Blac Chyna was dating Future, and she got a tattoo of his name on her hand. However, he tweeted that he was “single & focusing on what makes me happy.” He also tweeted, “U kno I dnt f**k wit no rumors.”
Blac Chyna later covered up the tattoo with her daughter’s name.
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