1 week Ago By Heather Saul
Actress Sydney Sweeney has apparently called time on her engagement to producer Jonathan Davino. Rumours started to swirl earlier this year when Sweeney started the ultimate Gen Z soft launch by deleting a picture of them kissing from a carousel of photos she had already shared on Instagram. The wedding has already been postponed, so the reports shouldn’t have come as much of a shock to even the most indulgent gossip monger, and one imagines the delay was probably a way to stagger the news that the pair had split so that it was less gossip worthy.
But despite what looks like careful, sensible handling of the break-up, it has been major news. Her name ranked on Google search across the entirety of the UK. The response to reports of Sweeney’s break-up has been surprisingly, and delightfully, refreshing.
Calling off an engagement is no joke, especially when you’ve been together for several years and own property together. if(window.adverts) { window.
adverts.addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }A handful of unpleasant people have said something predictable about women dying alone if they pick their careers over their men, but for the most part the coverage is deeply, consistently celebratory of a young woman getting out of a relationship she seemingly no longer wanted to be in. And that celebration matters.
I’d been engaged for 18 months when I first realised that my relationship with my ex-husband might have some fairly major cracks. But the ring was on my finger, we had told people that we were doing it and I was too embarrassed to even consider admitting that we might be making a mistake. I didn’t even tell my best friends that I was having second thoughts, I just plunged onwards, determined that I could fix anything in my way.
Six years later, when we started the divorce process, I knew that I could have avoided all of it if I’d just admitted defeat back then. #color-context-related-article-3463089 {--inews-color-primary: #3759B7;--inews-color-secondary: #EFF2FA;--inews-color-tertiary: #3759B7;} Read Next square REBECCA REID Two years and £10,000 – my divorce has put my life on holdRead MoreThat’s why I’m so delighted to see the outpouring of support for Sweeney. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this is all a bit fluffy, that Sweeney doesn’t care what strangers on the internet think about her break-up.
But from personal experience, when you do something as terrifying as ending a long-term relationship, positive reinforcement matters. Around the time I was in full swing splitting from my husband, I got an email from an editor at a publishing house. She wanted a quote on someone else’s book, about being single, which I was pleased to provide because I’d liked the book very much.
Ironically, I mentioned, I’m single now too – getting divorced. The editor responded with a message beginning: “Congratulations.”if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_mobile_l1"}); }if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }I was staggered.
She was the first – and the only – person who had offered me congratulations on this huge development. I was struck by how brave she was to have said something so out of kilter with the world order to a complete stranger, and I was deeply grateful. It was such a striking, generous thing to offer me, and it genuinely reframed how I was looking at the whole thing.
Since then I’ve really tried to do better when it comes to offering my congratulations to non traditional achievements, and I would invite you to do the same. Quitting a hated job, leaving a miserable relationship, jacking in a hobby that doesn’t bring joy or refusing a promotion that doesn’t suit you – all of these things are just as special and important and conducive to happiness as any of the other more traditional milestones we’re so good at recognising.There might not be a “Well Done For Leaving Your Nice But Boring Relationship” card in Scribbler, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less worthy of celebrating.
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