RELATIONSHIP
After being handcuffed together for 123 days to save their relationship, a Ukrainian couple breaks up.
A Ukrainian couple was handcuffed together for 123 days as a last-ditch effort to save their relationship.
It didn’t work. In May, bolt cutters were brought out, their handcuffs were cut, and Alexandr Kudlay and Viktoria Pustovitova officially split, Reuters reports.
The couple’s final breakup was aired on national television in Ukraine.
“Hooray,” shouted Pustovitova, 29, New York Post reports when the handcuffs were removed. “I am finally free.”
According to Reuters, the couple from the eastern city of Kharkiv had a cycle of breaking up and getting back together.
Kudlay, 33, came up with the handcuff idea. On Valentine’s Day, they officially started the experiment.
“I decided it will be an interesting experience for me,” Pustovitova told Reuters back in February.
In the three months the couple was handcuffed, they did everything together and documented the journey on Instagram. They showered together, took cigarette breaks together, and took turns using the bathroom.
The couple also worked together, which ultimately lead Pustovitova to quit her job as a beautician. As New York Post reports, clients weren’t comfortable with Kudlay present at appointments.
Instead of bonding them together, the experience ultimately tore them apart, Reuters reports.
The couple argued more often and longer, with arguments supposedly lasting four hours, according to The Daily Mirror.
The couple decided they weren’t compatible, and on May 19 they decided to end their relationship by breaking off the handcuffs.
“We are not on the same wavelength,” Kudlay told Reuters. “We are totally different.”
While Kudlay and Pustovitova do not have the title of boyfriend and girlfriend anymore, they did earn the world record for the most time a couple has ever spent chained together, a representative from a Ukrainian record book told the couple via Reuters.
To honor the achievement, the handcuff-breaking ceremony was broadcast on national television in front of the country’s Unity monument.
Today, both Kudlay and Pustovitova are single and living in different regions of Ukraine, according to the New York Post.
As Reuters reports, they plan to auction off the handcuffs and donate part of the money to charity.
“I think it will be a good lesson for us, for other Ukrainian couples, and couples abroad not to repeat what we have done,” Pustovitova told Reuters.
