A woman said her ten-year relationship came to an end after her boyfriend accused her of breaking his trust over a single "like" she left on a mutual acquaintance's social media photograph, according to an account she posted on Reddit under the username Sodastereomp3.
The woman wrote that the relationship had been going well for a decade until a few months earlier, when her boyfriend discovered a private conversation between her and her best friend. In the messages, she had told her friend that she liked a man the couple both knew socially.
She said she apologised to her boyfriend as soon as he confronted her about the conversation. Nearly a week later, however, he told her he felt betrayed by what he had read. Following a lengthy argument, the couple broke up, a split she said her boyfriend initiated.
A conditional reconciliation
According to the woman, her boyfriend arrived at her home the very next day and asked to get back together, but only on one condition: she had to promise never to communicate with the man who had caused the falling out again.
She agreed, writing that she loved her partner deeply and wanted to save the relationship after a decade together. The couple then went without conflict, she said, until her boyfriend began checking the other man's social media accounts himself.
The like that ended it
The woman said her boyfriend found that she had liked a photograph the acquaintance had posted online. She said he told her the like made him uncomfortable, since the couple had agreed she would keep her distance from the man, and that he was no longer sure he could trust her.
She added that her boyfriend later told her he still loved her but was tired of being in a relationship that kept throwing up problems he had to work through. Unable to find a compromise, the couple separated for a second time, she wrote.
This time, the woman said, she does not intend to welcome her former partner back.
Reddit as a forum for relationship stories
Reddit is a United States-based social media platform organised into thousands of topic-specific forums known as subreddits, where members typically post under pseudonyms rather than their real names.
The site hosts numerous communities dedicated to relationships and personal advice, where users often post detailed accounts of disputes with partners or family members and invite other members to comment. Posts describing breakups, such as the one written by Sodastereomp3, regularly attract large numbers of responses from other users offering their own opinions on who was at fault.
Reddit is one of the most visited websites in the world, and many of its communities are built around users sharing personal experiences with strangers under anonymous or pseudonymous accounts.
