At this point, I feel like every other piece of gossip is the same story: two people break up, and suddenly everyone has screenshots. It almost feels like this has become a whole genre of gossip: private messages, old fights, secrets, voice notes, things said at 2 a.m. – all dragged out for strangers to inspect.
I have always felt a little sad when people expose each other after a relationship ends.
To be close to someone is to know a fuller version of them than most people ever will. You know their kindness, their softness, their strange little habits, their fears and ambitions and inevitably, their jealousy, selfishness, anger, and weakness too. Isn’t that part of what intimacy is? You are trusted with a more complete human being. So I find it strange when love ends and that private knowledge is suddenly rearranged into evidence… Conversations become screenshots? Secrets become stories? A few ugly moments are pulled out and presented as if they explain the whole person.
They may all be real. People do lie, hurt each other, and behave badly. And of course, there are times when speaking out is necessary. But I still wonder why the end of love so often seems to turn intimacy into a kind of prosecution.
I just think that having once known someone so completely should leave behind a little tenderness, even when you no longer want to love them.