Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury: The answer to your messy love life may be the ‘quiet breakup’

After you break up with someone, there’s a clear set of steps to take. First, you cry a lot. Then you complain about your ex to friends, family members, and strangers in bathrooms – nobody is exempt as a potential audience member to your relationship’s post-mortem soliloquy. Next up: a new haircut. Maybe some thirsty Instagram posts. Eventually, you start to reflect on all the reasons why the relationship wasn’t working and come to terms with the fact that you made the right decision. You feel proud at how secure, self-assured, and well-versed you are in Esther Perel lore. Your loved ones applaud you for being so strong.

But then, one night, in the middle of a 2am doom scroll, a moment of madness occurs and you wind up texting your ex. Uh oh: the feelings are still there. You decide you can’t let go. You get back together. Suddenly, you have a lot of explaining to do.

This is a routine I know well. Not just because I’ve done it – with spectacularly dramatic flair, might I add – but because plenty of friends of mine have, too. It’s also something we see celebrities do, as in this week with Molly-Mae Hague, whose breakup last year with fellow Love Islander Tommy Fury caused such a stir that people started comparing the reality stars to Charles and Diana. Now, rumours have started to swirl that the couple is getting back together, as Hague herself has alluded to in recent social media posts. Cue the excessive amount of explaining that I mentioned earlier.

For context, Hague and Fury, both 25, announced their split in August 2024. After meeting on ITV2’s Love Island in 2019, the pair became two of the most lucrative social media stars in the UK, landing million-pound clothing deals, product lines and more, with Hague often vlogging about it all along the way – to the delight of her legion of fans. Hague gave birth to the couple’s first child together, Bambi, back in 2023. When the pair broke up, both parties issued statements on their social media profiles.

“Never in a million years did I think I’d ever have to write this,” began Hague’s. “After five years of being together, I never imagined our story would end, especially not in this way. I am extremely upset to announce that mine and Tommy’s relationship has come to an end.” The influencer-turned-retail mogul went on to thank her fans for their support throughout this “journey”. She also asked for privacy.

Look, I get it. Hague is in the public eye – and perhaps issuing some sort of announcement is a necessary evil: something to quell inevitable speculation. In other words, it gets everybody off your back and gives you space to deal with what’s going on. But given the wording of the announcement – ambiguous, emotional, and highly suggestive (many suspected Fury cheated on Hague, which he denied) – it fuelled global headlines, think pieces, and viral online discussions. The breakup was also a central facet of Hague’s docuseries for Prime Video, Molly-Mae: Behind It All, one that was pored over and discussed at length. In other words, the noise around the breakup couldn’t have been more deafeningly loud.

Hence why Hague’s potential U-turn is going to be a lot harder to parse. Fans have been convinced the pair are rekindling for months, practically wagging their tongues all over the comments section in Hague’s recent Instagram posts. The couple fuelled speculation further after they were pictured on holiday together with Bambi in Dubai, prompting Hague to once again address her fans directly. “I don’t want you guys to think I’m not being honest about who went on the holiday to Dubai,” she said in a YouTube vlog published on Tuesday. “I did do a big talking section about Dubai and the fact that we were going with Tommy, but I didn’t put it in the last vlog because I was scared. I didn’t want the anxiety of it when we were going away.”

Hague went on. “I’ve seen things saying, ‘They aren’t talking about their relationship because they’re saving it for the last episode of the documentary where they are going to do a collab post and come out saying that they’re back together.’ That’s not the case at all.”

Frankly, I couldn’t care less if Hague and Fury are together or not. They aren’t my friends (nor, I suspect, are they yours). But I do think the brouhaha around their breakup and potential reconciliation tells us something about how we deal with relationships ending today, regardless of whether we’ve been on TV or not. Thanks to social media, all of us behave like the stars of our own reality show, sharing every aspect of our lives. This is particularly prescient when we break up with someone; we might not issue statements on Instagram, but we certainly feel compelled to shout about it.

I understand where that impulse comes from. Breakups are rough, particularly when they’re laced with any kind of ambiguity. Depending on the circumstances, we might feel unsure as to why or how it happened, or regret the decision if it was ours to make. Loud breakups, like Hague’s, might then be a coping mechanism in response to this. There’s something reassuring about leaning into the finality of it all: it’s done, we’re over, strike a line through it and move along. It gives us a sense of control where there is none.

But it also leaves no room for nuance, which seems odd when you consider just how complicated breaking up with someone is. Regardless of how certain you feel, chances are you’ll doubt your decision at least once or twice. Will anybody want to listen to you talking about those doubts when you’ve been quite so stringent? And if, like Hague, you do wind up considering a reconciliation, your former finality might make things difficult among your friendship circle, inviting judgement, criticism, and gossip.

The same goes for why you shouldn’t badmouth a partner after one bad argument. Friends cling on to the information you give them; it’s the only insight they have. Too much negativity will create a narrative you’ll find hard to rewrite.

Hence why I’m an advocate for quiet breakups. Nobody should be so quick, or so public, to talk about ending a relationship. Instead, perhaps all of us could benefit from dealing with them a little more privately. That might involve telling just a few close friends, and doing so with the kind of delicacy and authenticity that accurately reflects what has happened as opposed to issuing a press release on all your WhatsApp groups, writing an angry Instagram post, or creating a breakup playlist filled with Avril Lavigne songs (I did this once).

Regardless of whether you get back with an ex or not, breaking up a little more quietly will probably benefit all of us in the long run. Frankly, I wish I’d done it myself.