He’s not your boyfriend. He’s just a rebound: the person you started dating (or simply hooking up with) in the aftermath of your most recent breakup. He could be anyone or several someones; a one-night stand or an extended fling; a fresh spark or an old flame. The mark of a good rebound isn’t how long it lasts or how serious the relationship actually is. It is the speed and force with which it overtakes you, like a tidal wave that scoops you up, heartbroken and adrift, and sends you tumbling back to dry land.
The rebound is a time-honored post-breakup ritual, and celebrities are definitely getting their fill summer. Kylie Jenner is spending the summer shacking up with Timothée Chalamet on the heels of her split from on-again, off-again boyfriend Travis Scott. In the wake of the Scandoval fallout, Vanderpump Rules breakout star Ariana Madix has been “very satisfied” by her time with the hunky Daniel Wai. Megan Thee Stallion is seemingly on the rebound with Belgian soccer player Romelu Lukaku amid a rumored breakup with boyfriend Pardison “Pardi” Fontaine. And Taylor Swift just brought her whirlwind romance with British bad boy Matty Healy to an abrupt end after a month of backlash and breathless media coverage. Per , the two “had fun together, but it was never serious.”
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Jenner and Chalamet are such an unexpected mash-up that it almost feels as if they’re trolling us every time they’re spotted together. But when the news about Swift and Healy broke, her global fanbase seemed to collectively breathe an audible sigh of relief. By the end of their month-long affair, public opinion had ebbed from tenuously positive to uniformly negative, with many criticizing Swift for racing directly from a six-year relationship with actor Joe Alwyn into the arms of someone so problematic and, in their words, unworthy. Online, some Swifties began strongly encouraging each other not to attend the Eras tour until Taylor and Matty parted ways.
“Taylor, this guy is gonna give you scabies,” rapper Azealia Banks wrote on her Instagram Stories days before the split. “He’s not on the level of powerful puss you worked HELLA Hard to build.”
The relationship with Healy may have been confusing, but Swift’s desire to date so soon after Alwyn shouldn’t be. We rebound because it works. Research published in the suggests rebound relationships can have marked psychological benefits. In certain areas—such as feeling more confident and desirable, and being less hung up on an ex—the study participants who recoupled more quickly fared better than those who waited longer. It flies in the face of the popular belief that moving on quickly impedes healing. “I call Vince my defibrillator,” Jennifer Aniston once told Vogue in 2008, of her brief post–Brad Pitt rebound with Vince Vaughn. “He literally brought me back to life.”
The self-help industrial complex loves to tell the freshly single to remain that way at least for a bit, ostensibly to process the breakup and reprioritize themselves and, well, buy more self-help books. But so much of society is set up to incentivize and valorize partnership. The legal freedoms, economic kickbacks, and cultural approval that can be gained through marriage are obvious examples—the end result of a process that begins with dating.
It creates a catch-22 for newly single women. Move on too quickly or relish it a little too much, and you might be shamed for indulging the romantic and sexual freedom that should rightfully accompany single status. Move on too slowly, and you may be pitied at first but can eventually be accused of wallowing and giving up. Stay single more than a year, and you’ll pass into premature spinsterhood. Choose to never marry, and you’ll be treated like a burden or labeled “damaged goods.” In effect, it is socially unacceptable to be single. Romantic relationships are only seen as a success if they last forever. And the fear of being single is something both single and partnered people experience.
We have a blatant discomfort with letting women exist in the interstitial space between one relationship and another. Beneath that is perhaps an unspoken fear of single financially independent women, and the existential threat they pose to the twin engines of patriarchy and capitalism.
That’s not to say rebounding is always the right way to move on. But the goal isn’t to do things perfectly. It’s to cope as best you can under the circumstances. Let women have—and more importantly, enjoy—transitory relationships. Reportedly, Taylor Swift is already rebounding from her rebound. As is her right! Isn’t impermanence the point of a rebound anyway?
