2025 has felt like the year equivalent of a bad breakup, so it’s perversely fitting that a remarkable number of celebrity couples didn’t survive it.
There was Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom, who appeared to implode somewhere in the upper atmosphere shortly after Perry’s much-mocked trip to space. Then came Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, quietly breaking the internet’s heart by announcing they were going their separate ways after nearly 19 years of marriage and two children.
Elsewhere, Sydney Sweeney ended her seven-year relationship with businessman Jonathan Davino. Dakota Johnson and Chris Martin reportedly decoupled after around eight years together.
Jacob Elordi and model Olivia Jade called it quits ‘for good,’ pop singer Tate McRae split from singer Kid Laroi, and not even influencers were spared: TikTok megastar Alix Earle parted ways with NFL player Braxton Berrios following her star-making turn on Dancing With the Stars.
At first glance, these breakups seem unrelated as they spanned pop stars, prestige actors, influencers, and long-established marriages. But look closer, and a clear pattern emerges.
Just before the split, one person in each couple became far more famous, more successful, or more culturally powerful than they were when the relationship began.
Take Sydney Sweeney: When she got together with Davino, she was a young, relatively unknown actor on the rise, while he was a highly successful businessman with millions of dollars. By the time they split, she was something else entirely: an A-list actress, a producer, a brand juggernaut, and a walking discourse generator for debates about sex, capitalism, and Hollywood hypocrisy.
It’s possible that the relationship, built on a very different power dynamic than the one that eventually manifested, couldn’t keep up.
A similar recalibration may have played out with Jacob Elordi and Olivia Jade. Elordi’s pivot from minor heartthrob to Serious Actor™ came fast, complete with auteur projects and awards-season credibility. As his cultural capital rose, maybe the relationship began to look like part of an older public narrative he was quietly shedding to make space for his new A-list status.
A more understated but equally revealing example can be found in Austin Butler and Kaia Gerber. When they got together, Butler was still shaking off years as a near-miss heartthrob and C-list actor.
Then came Elvis. Overnight, he received critical and fan praise, and a new seriousness in the roles he took on recalibrated how the public saw him.
Gerber, herself a notable model and actor, was suddenly the far less ‘successful’ half of the partnership.
In longer, more private partnerships, the imbalance was subtler but no less destabilising. Dakota Johnson’s career has undergone a careful but decisive reappraisal, repositioning her as a deliberate, interesting performer rather than a nepo footnote. Chris Martin, one of the most famous musicians on the planet, found himself in the unfamiliar position of being the less culturally ascendant partner.
Even Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, long held up as Hollywood’s gold-standard marriage, fit the pattern. Kidman’s late-career renaissance — prestige TV dominance, renewed awards traction, and growing cultural authority- placed her in a very different professional and symbolic phase from the one their marriage began in nearly two decades ago.
Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom offer a darker variation on the theme because here the imbalance came not from ascent, but from decline.
After a faltering reinvention and a string of widely mocked moments, Perry’s cultural standing took visible hits in 2025. She and Bloom remained equally famous in name recognition, but not in reputation: Perry increasingly became a punchline, while Bloom retained his status as a fan favourite actor known for classic roles like Legolas in Lord of the Rings.
What links all these breakups isn’t ego or scandal, but a sudden shift in the success gap, the power dynamic the relationship was initially built around.
Of course, in any of the above examples, it is possible that various behind-the-scenes factors were the reason for the breakups, not just changes in fame. Still, it’s certainly worth noting the undeniable pattern.
Psychotherapist and relationships author Lucy Beresford explains that these shifts can be profoundly destabilising. She told Metro: ‘Relationships work best when there is an ebb and flow to the dynamic, which can accommodate with stability different shifts in energy. If one member of the couple starts going off down a radically different path, which might include being more absorbed / successful / better remunerated through work, this can place pressure on a relationship.’
Beresford points to research from Ashley Madison in 2021 showing that when one partner feels ignored or abandoned by their partner becoming more career focused, resentment builds quickly, leaving them feeling unseen or unheard.
The specific nature of fame in 2025 only intensifies this phenomenon. Success no longer arrives gradually enough for relationships to recalibrate as power dynamics shift. One viral moment, one breakout role, one cultural coronation can tilt the balance almost overnight, rocking someone onto the A-list in the blink of an eye.
Beresford has previously spoken to Metro about ‘success gaps’ in relationships: ‘The biggest challenge is the belief that one’s contribution to the relationship is more valuable, more worthy, because the career consumes more time or makes more money.’
There’s also an undeniable gender dynamic at play here. When men rocket to fame, the cultural script often tells them they’re entitled to ‘trade up’ in the girlfriend or wife department.
When women succeed suddenly, that same success can feel threatening to male partners – or simply expose how little emotional labour the relationship was actually built on.
As Beresford explains: ‘The more women are in control of their careers, finances, and fertility, the more they prioritise getting their emotional needs met — and if that stops happening, they will check out. Whereas for men, external success can become a way of not engaging emotionally at all. If a man succeeds, he may feel he needs the relationship less; if a woman succeeds, the man may feel threatened.’
The influencer world offers the clearest example of this dynamic in fast-forward. Alix Earle and Braxton Berrios’ breakup followed her jump from influencer to mainstream celebrity, accelerated by Dancing With the Stars.
The original power balance, where his NFL career carried more cultural weight, flipped almost overnight. The relationship didn’t survive the reversal.
The same may be true of Tate McRae and Kid Laroi. McRae had an extraordinary year, cementing herself as a new pop superstar with a hit arena tour, chart-climbing singles, and a dramatic expansion of her audience. Kid Laroi’s career, by contrast, remained pretty stagnant.
The gap widened, and as a result, it’s possible the relationship gave way under the pressure.
In a year that already feels fractured and unmoored, these celebrity splits mirror a broader truth: intimacy struggles to survive when one person’s life accelerates while the other is still standing in the relationship as it once was.
In 2025, with fame moving at a faster pace than ever before, relationship power dynamics can shift too rapidly for partners to recalibrate.
Love needs time to adjust in order to survive sudden changes in a power dynamic or success gaps. And when success arrives too fast, too loud, or too unevenly, it can expose just how fragile the balance always was.
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