The Breakup Algorithm: Is It Harder Than Ever To Recover From Heartbreak?

When my seven-year relationship ended recently, there were certain rites of passage that I’d anticipated: a renewed interest in fitness, dissecting depressing Hinge profiles, and going on even more depressing Hinge dates, posting thinly veiled thirst trap photo dumps on Instagram that I’d later delete, writing unhinged entries in my Notes app that read like comedy. “It flares up like a virus or a storm — the feeling of missing you,” reads one particularly dramatic note. “I am a confused individual,” starts another. Needless to say, Dolly Alderton doesn’t have to worry about me coming for her genre.

One thing I wasn’t prepared for, though, was the avalanche of breakup content that would come my way. In the weeks and months following the split, I would fall down a rabbit hole of relationship coaches, breakup influencers and manifestation gurus providing instruction on how to “use no contact to win back an ex,” “heal your attachment style,” and “tap into divine feminine energy”. I had become stuck in an algorithmic prison of my own making.

“The wild west of online pseudo-psychotherapy” is how Dr. Gery Karantzas describes this digital landscape. Dr Karantzas is a researcher and couples therapist who currently heads up the Science of Adult Relationships Laboratory at Australia’s Deakin University. One obvious drawback of sharing relationship advice via a TikTok or Instagram reel, he says, is the brevity of the format.

“The ability to understand all of the complexities of human behavior that can play out in why people feel what they do is reduced to some really simple ideas and tips that often don't have much evidence that they work.” He’s referring to concepts like love languages, which he’s debunked elsewhere, but it’s also common to see everything from narcissistic personality disorder to childhood conditioning wrapped up in a 60-second TikTok.

Georgia Grace (aka @gspot._) agrees we should be wary of oversimplification on these platforms. “Often people are breaking down really complex areas into bite-sized pieces,” she says. “If people aren’t able to look at it as a snapshot, or a few quick ideas — and not necessarily an in-depth look into their very intimate and individual experience — they may be taking it verbatim without adding any kind of critical thought to it.”

Grace is an educator and certified sex coach who specializes in somatic sexology, embodied counseling (therapeutic approaches that focus on the body) and trauma-informed practices. As a practitioner who works to break down taboos, she is acutely aware of the importance of having access to information online. “The more we see it, and the more open people are about sex and sexuality and pleasure and relationships and bodies and mental health, the more normal it becomes,” she stresses.

The value of being able to tap into a community of people with shared experiences cannot be understated. For Lisa Scarborough, a 38-year-old woman from Sydney, online forums provided a safe space to seek advice after an abusive relationship ended. “Reddit forums, perhaps due to the anonymity of it all, made me feel supported in a big way as I wasn’t ready to divulge certain things with friends and family at certain points in time,” she tells Refinery29.

Online advice can also be beneficial for people who face financial or geographical barriers to accessing therapy, or who simply don’t feel they need it. “Not everyone wants individual therapy after a breakup, some people also aren’t ready,” Grace says. “Sometimes there are a few steps before that, that will help people get the individual support that they need.”

In the olden days, we used to rely on friends to prevent us from sending novella-length texts to our exes; now we have an army of online supporters to remind us of our self-worth. In moments of weakness, these practitioners can help us see the bigger picture and prioritize our post-relationship healing. After my breakup, Jillian Turecki became a voice of reason, offering direct advice from behind a pair of chic oversized spectacles.

“It’s not your job to try to convince someone to be different and it’s not your job to convince someone of your value and of your worth,” she asserts in a pinned Instagram post. The words hit hard, nudging me to accept that the fear of the unknown is better than staying in a relationship that isn’t working. Helpful thoughts like this are a big deal when you’re one bad day away from backsliding into your ex’s DMs. (Fun fact: Research has found similarities between brain activity after a breakup and during drug withdrawal, which is why resisting the urge to slip into old patterns can be so difficult.)

“I get a lot of messages saying ‘Because of you, I got over the worst heartbreak of my life’ or ‘Because of you, I finally walked away from a toxic situation and now I’m working on myself,’” Turecki tells Refinery29. The relationship coach, podcaster, writer and educator has built a career (and a significant following) on teachings that promote self-esteem and healthy relationship dynamics. In a nutshell, she wants “people to feel as though it’s better to be single than it is to be in the wrong relationship.” Her upcoming book, It Begins with You: The 9 Hard Truths About Love That Will Change Your Life, is a deep dive into this self-improvement approach to love.

The rising popularity of creators like Turecki is part of a wider social shift that’s seen psychological theory move into the mainstream: Therapy has entered the chat. We’re living in the digital era of self-help, only now it’s less “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” and more “what’s your attachment style?” and “please respect my boundaries.” In theory, our increased self-awareness around these concepts is a good thing but therapy speech can easily be weaponized.

“Just because someone can speak a bunch of therapy speech doesn’t actually mean that they are any more qualified to be in a healthy relationship than someone else,” Turecki says.

In her sessions with couples, Grace is also “noticing a lot of people saying they’re anxious or they’re avoidant, or they’re disorganized in their attachment style.” The flipside of this proclivity to self-diagnose is that we’re also quicker to diagnose others. “It can be very easy to put a label on someone else and blame them without getting into the nuances of what’s going on,” says Grace. And this is where things can start to go awry after a breakup.

When you’re focused on diagnosing an ex or seeking answers for why the relationship ended, it’s easy to lose sight of the legitimacy of the advice you’re absorbing and whether it’s actually helping you.

After a recent breakup, 29-year-old Londoner Miguel Urbina Tan went deep into breakup TikTok. The more he engaged with this content, the more his feed filled up with clips about attachment styles and astrological compatibility.

“A lot of the content was very much feeding into this whole ideology that you were the best thing that ever happened to them and they didn’t know that. And, you know, they’re never going to get better than you,” he recalls. “At first I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a really nice sentiment.’ But if you keep going down that rabbit hole, you’re eventually not going to be able to discern [between] delusional content that feeds the ego [and] content that actually helps with the healing.”

As with anything you see online, it’s important to think critically about what you’re consuming. Check the credentials of the practitioners you follow: What formal training or qualifications do they have? And remember that just because someone says they’re an expert, it doesn’t mean that the ideas they’re sharing are backed by evidence.

There are also conflicts of interest to consider. Breakup content is hugely popular and some creators are looking to cash in on your vulnerability. If you spend enough time lurking in this corner of the internet (guilty!), you’ll eventually come across breakup bros offering personalized services to help you win back your ex. You can even purchase a “text your ex back guide” for US$27 from this guy to access “video trainings teaching the psychology of why your ex may reach out and how to handle each possibility”.

I know what you’re thinking: Of course I can recognize the difference between a legitimate expert and an expert who’s wearing a fedora in their profile pic! But have you stopped to consider that the very act of scrolling through relationship content might be fuelling your anxiety?

“It’s really easy to get into that kind of perpetual motion where we’re seeing everything through this one track, this one lens, and so we keep being fed the same information, which reinforces the track that we’re actually trying to get out of,” Dr Karantzas warns. Ironically, this is a very accurate description of how social media algorithms work. 

“The apps are designed to keep us addicted and to keep us online,” Grace says. As an experiment, she suggests observing how you feel before, during and after you look at your phone, and setting some strong boundaries with your apps. This might mean physically limiting the time you spend on your device or muting and unfollowing specific accounts. 

As helpful as online advice can be, Grace emphasizes that it can’t replace individual therapy. This is due in part to something called co-regulation. “Co-regulation is the things that we do with other people to feel safe and grounded and co-regulated, and in therapy that’s what we do a lot,” she explains. “As social beings it’s undeniable: the impact that being in a room with others who really care for you, who see you, who want to support you — how healing that is for the individual.”

Friends can also help us co-regulate by offering an empathetic (yet realistic) ear. Dr Karantzas recommends reaching out to “stronger, wiser others” — you and I might refer to them as “the gals” — for perspective on your situation. Having access to a solid support network can be life-giving after a breakup but so can really simple things like journaling, spending time in nature and reclaiming small daily rituals like your morning coffee (none of which requires a phone).

“There’s many different paths to healing,” Turecki advises. “If you’re following someone and it’s helping you, that’s huge.” There’s no one-size-fits-all way to recover from heartbreak — ultimately, it comes down to what works for you. The same can be said for the advice we seek out online.