There’s no getting around it: breakups suck. And, while plenty of people slap on a smile and say they’re doing “great!” post break-up, others freely admit that they’re completely heartbroken.
Celebrities usually try to paint a rosy picture, but some have come totally clean about how rough breakups can be. Whether you’re struggling with a breakup of your own, or just feel like relating to a star, these celebrity quotes on heartbreak are so, so real.
Kim Kardashian
Kim faced a lot of public ridicule when she was married to Kris Humphries for just 72 days. But she said she needed to follow her heart. “I felt like I was on a fast roller coaster and couldn’t get off, when now I know I probably should have,” she said on her website, per E!. “I got so caught up with the hoopla and the filming of the TV show that when I probably should have ended my relationship, I didn’t know how to and didn’t want to disappoint a lot of people… It just didn’t turn out to be the fairy tale I had so badly hoped for.”
Bella Hadid
Bella and the Weeknd dated for a year before splitting, and she was super open about the fact that the breakup sucked. “It was my first breakup…and so public,” she told Teen Vogue. “As an outsider, you might think I handled it so well, but it’s always in your heart, and you always feel it very heavily. It’ll be hard for a while. Love hurts, but you have to pull through.”
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Emma Stone
Emma didn’t name names when she talked to Interview about her first heartbreak, but her description of what she went through was so raw. “I was crawling on the floor. I remember throwing up. Like, within the hour,” she said. “I have never felt anything quite like that. It was so visceral. It’s like someone has killed you and you have to live through it and watch it happen … It was awful.”
Rihanna
Rihanna and Chris Brown famously split in 2009 after he assaulted her at a Grammys pre-party, but the two had an off and on relationship for a while afterwards. Rihanna opened up about the breakup to Marie Claire UK in 2010. “I was very lost. I have to say I felt really confused.
I hate talking about it but it was really crazy because I felt so out of touch with myself and when that happens it’s scary because nothing you say or do feels like it’s you,” she said, per the New York Daily News.
“You just lose touch of everything that you love and everything that you would normally do; how you would dress or how you would say something … [But] once you’re back on your feet—if you ever make it back on your feet—that’s the ultimate achievement.
I remember I was in New York at the Trump Hotel and I woke up and I just knew I was over it. It was a different day. I felt different. I didn’t feel lonely. I felt like I wanted to get up and be in the world. That was a great, great feeling.”
Selena Gomez
Selena and Justin Bieber had an off-and-on relationship for years, and she told W magazine that it was tough to go through the heartbreak in public. “At first I didn’t care [about the tabloid scrutiny],” she said. “To me it was: I’m 18, I have a boyfriend, we look cute together, we like that. Then I got my heart broken and I cared. Because people had no idea what was going on, but everywhere it was a million different things.”
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Katy Perry
Katy and Russell Brand split in 2012 after 14 months of marriage, and Katy says she really struggled in the immediate aftermath. “There were two weeks of my life after I found out the truth of my marriage where I was like, ‘Okay. All right. I can’t feel this. This is too intense right now.’ I was, like, just eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and drinking, and that’s it,” she told Marie Claire. “There are two ways you can go: You can either nurture yourself or go destructive. I have gone down the destructive path before, and that didn’t work for me. You dig deep beyond those scars and find that soft tissue again, and you massage and nurture it and bring it to life, little by little, through serving yourself well. I did it through hikes and vitamins and therapy and prayer and good friends.”
Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer and Brad Pitt’s split happened ages ago, but tabloids rehashed the entire ordeal when Brad and Angelina Jolie broke up in 2016. At the time, Jennifer was pretty candid about how terrible the split was. “There are many stages of grief,” she told Vanity Fair. “It’s sad, something coming to an end. It cracks you open, in a way—cracks you open to feeling. When you try to avoid the pain, it creates greater pain.”
Miley Cyrus
Miley and Liam Hemsworth broke up in 2013, and she clearly took it hard at the time, even crying onstage when she sang the song “Wrecking Ball.” “When I went through a really intense breakup—you know, I was engaged—and when I was with [Liam] or when I was on Disney, the thing that gave me the most anxiety was not knowing what to do with myself when Disney wasn’t there to carry me anymore or if I didn’t have him,” she told Elle. “And now I’m free of both of those things, and I’m fine. Like, I lay in bed at night by myself and I’m totally okay, and that’s so much stronger than the person three years ago, who would have thought they would have died if they didn’t have a boyfriend.”
KORIN MILLER
Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Self, Glamour, and more. She has a master’s degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to own a teacup pig and taco truck one day.
