Why We Obsess Over Celebrity Relationships and Break Ups

Have you ever wondered why we enjoy reading so much about celebrities, their lives, their relationships, their break ups and divorces, their court room wars, the statements they make in public, their houses, and so on and so forth? Many times we ignore the serious matters of life such as burning social issues and political and economic matters that have a direct bearing on our lives and, instead, show an obsessive interest in Brad Pitt’s break up with Jenifer Anston or in Angelina Jolie’s children.

Just like us, human behavior experts and psychologists have pondered over ordinary people’s interest in celebrities. We, the normal people of the real world do have certain reasons to waste our precious time over the activities, lives, relationships, and break ups of celebrities 

1. We want to escape from real life. 

We all get bored with the “ordinariness” of life. After all, our lives and relationships are not as glamorous as those of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. In addition, we are not as good-looking as Victoria Beckham, who regularly gets transformed into a stunning beauty by the combined efforts of several fashion designers and beauty specialists.  

We are ordinary people who want to identify with something extraordinary. So, we pick up a celebrity magazine or visit a celebrity website and spend a lot of time reading about their latest heart throbs and break ups, all the time wishing that we could lead such interesting, rich, and glamorous lives too.  

2. We love to gossip. 

None of us can deny the fact that we love to gossip. And we can’t gossip about our dear friends; we ought to loyal and loving toward them.  

But celebrities are different! They are not our friends, yet we feel we know them so well. Celebrities value their privacy more than we do; unfortunately, the more they try to hide from the public eye, the more mercilessly the media reveals juicy details of their private lives, much to the delight of their innumerable fans. So, we know our celebrities well, or at least, we think we do.  

And since, they aren’t our friends, we can talk as much as we like about them, grin when we hear that celebrity A broke up with celebrity B for the umpteenth time that year, or even sob in empathy, as many home makers did, when Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise had a painful break up. 

Yes, something deep within us is satisfied when we identify with our favorite celebrities, criticize them, poke fun at them, laugh when they make fools of themselves, talk about them, empathize with them, and even pray for them. 

3. We learn important life lessons from them. 

The loves and lives of our celebrities do teach us a lot of things. We feel sad when our favorite celebrity lets us down by outrageous statements in public—for example, Sharon Stone talking about karma or Jessica Simpson talking about poverty—and we vow never to behave like that.  

And when we see Kim and Alec fly at each other’s throat during a custody battle, we know what we must avoid in life. So, through their lives, our celebrities teach us what to do and what to avoid.  

Needless to say, celebrities take us into a delightful, magical world of biz and glamour, far from our dreary routines and ordinary living. Their very lives turn out to be entertaining, informative, and educative to a public that dotes on them.