I originally had a different Substack post planned, but after being asked the same question roughly a hundred times while I was streaming today, I felt compelled to respond.
“Did you hear about the TenZ and Kyedae news?!”
Like everyone else in the VALORANT community, I woke up this morning and saw Kyedae’s post on Twitter. Unlike the majority of the VALORANT community, I’m actually acquainted with the people so many nonchalantly attack and gossip about at the drop of a hat. The sheer volume of drivel that’s flooded my timeline within twelve hours of her post is honestly ridiculous.
I understand there’s no policing the impertinent, hedonistic degenerates of the internet. But what gives total strangers the right to speculate, psychoanalyse, and drum up conspiracies about a person at their lowest? Opening a social media app today felt like getting buttonholed by a swarm of badly written fan fics about a breakup that random bystanders have absolutely no business narrating.
Kyedae@kyedae
2:30 AM · Feb 8, 2026 · 27.2M Views
4.99K Replies · 10.5K Reposts · 159K Likes
To no one’s surprise, I will not be sharing my non-existent “take” on two real-life, living, breathing human beings I know. Instead, I want to share a story of my own, as another living, breathing human being.
Boaster and I have been in a supportive, loving, though definitely not perfect, partnership for more than six years. I would be absolutely inconsolable if we were ever to separate, and I’d be even more horrified if people who don’t know us weaponised our relationship against us for sport.
A couple of months before I met Boaster (we were friends for a while), I went through two gut-wrenching breakups. Both fundamentally changed me - for better and for worse. I won’t go into detail about the second one, but with all the discourse floating around about “outgrowing someone,” I feel the urge to share what that actually looked like for me.
Maybe it’s the BPD, perhaps it’s childhood trauma, but I’ve always struggled to find partners who were nice to me. I can’t count the number of times my friends had to gently raise the possibility that I might be being mistreated by someone I was dating… until Oscar. (Not his real name. He deserves peace and privacy.)
Oscar was the epitome of poised. Soft-spoken, educated, unassuming, and quietly confident. We met at university. He wanted to become a doctor, while I was going out drinking six days a week. And still, somehow, we clicked immediately. The first night we met, funnily enough, at a house party, we talked about art, literature, and music until five in the morning.
I had an inkling we were drawn to each other for similar reasons. Even though he didn’t approve of my lifestyle, he was unmistakably curious. Captivated, even. And I wanted, so badly, to be intimate with someone who felt intellectually close to my level. From the moment we started talking, we couldn’t stop.
It helped that my friends adored him. He’d effortlessly banter about football with my best mate, then stay up all night playing League of Legends with my gaming friends and me. He was mild-mannered, but when something mattered to him, you could feel it, and he never took his eyes off the ball. He studied hard, he guided me towards things that were good for me, and he supported every ambition I had, even when I didn’t yet know how to support myself.
And we never argued.
Let me repeat that: we. never. argued.
For almost four years, not a single argument. Disagreements, sure, but they always ended with me getting my way. I didn’t realise it at the time, but once we moved in together after graduation and started building an actual adult life, he always chose the path of least resistance. We ate what I wanted. Watched what I wanted. Did what I wanted, day after day. My career was also slowly taking off, but I was exhausted, juggling three different jobs while it felt like I was running a small business at home.
To this day, I can’t pinpoint when or why it happened, but I will never forget the morning I woke up, rolled over, and looked at the person I loved more than anything in the world… and felt empty.
Oscar had been there through some of the highest and lowest points of my life. We’d done long-distance for a year and never wavered. He never treated me unkindly, not once. He worshipped me. He was my number one fan. So how could I possibly feel so vacant? What kind of wicked person feels indifferent towards someone who has never done them wrong?
But I had to put myself first.
I still struggle to forgive myself for the way I handled it, but something had to change. I sat him down and told him we should go on a break. Even though I felt like I’d outgrown the relationship, I didn’t want to end it, not yet. He listened intently like he always did and, without a single question, said yes.
I was shocked. I thought he’d be outraged. I thought he’d fight me on it. But he didn’t. Even at the eleventh hour, he wanted whatever I wanted, even if it harmed him.
From that point on, I acted like I had his blessing to explore other aspects of my life. And within two weeks, I knew there was no saving the relationship.
When it came time for the breakup, a part of me didn’t want to let go, but he never disputed my decision. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought it was mutual. I was angry and confused. Why was he letting this happen? If he loved me, why didn’t he fight? Why didn’t he scream or shout? Why was he being so understanding about something so messy and unfair?
It wasn’t until months later, after our pathetic attempts to stay friends inevitably failed, that he finally told me what he really thought: he resented me for everything I put him through. He didn’t want to break up. But he’d spent so many years prioritising my happiness that he’d forgotten how to take care of himself. The blasé way I ended things and moved on was cruel. And even though he didn’t fall out of love with me immediately, he needed to because that was the only way he could be happy again.
Even now, I feel like I was the villain in his story. And I think he deserved better than what he got.
Believe it or not, this is the TLDR version. It’s so much easier to tell people “we grew apart” because, in many ways, we did. Looking back, we had options. I could’ve tried harder to salvage it. He could’ve communicated better. But I also think it would’ve been futile, and we would’ve broken up eventually.
I am very fortunate I didn’t have an audience during that period of my life. I genuinely don’t think I would have survived strangers offering their unsolicited, unwarranted opinions on something so personal, so complicated, and so precious.
There are already enough movies, TV shows, books, songs, and content you can consume at your leisure. Real people’s heartbreak does not need to become one of them.
So let’s think before we scream into the void and judge people we’ve never even met. Because I promise you, you wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of it either.