Robyn made me dump my toxic ex-boyfriend

When Robyn’s best album, Honey, came out in the fall of 2018, I’d ensnared myself in a messy homosexual web. My best friend, Sarah, was in a toxic lesbian relationship with my toxic boyfriend’s best friend. (Give that sentence another read—I know the details are confusing, but it will help to have them straight.) Sarah and I were 20-year-old university students, and neither of us had been part of a queer couple before. We thought our first gay relationships would be affirming and liberating. Instead, we got stuck with two immature Sagittarians whose commitment to making our lives as hellish as possible was so ferocious that I frequently considered re-entering the closet. 

Our queer journeys were still nascent, and Sarah and I were still coming to terms with the fact that we could survive as openly queer people and that our worlds wouldn’t stop if we had same-sex partners. I don’t think it occurred to either of us that relationships were supposed to be fulfilling or enjoyable. We were just grateful that somebody wanted us.

Robyn’s music was our only balm. Between fights with our partners, Sarah and I would find comfort in the Swedish pop star’s silky grooves and playful lyrics. Her signature blend of euphoria and sorrow helped us find joy through our pain. Sarah especially loved “Because It’s in the Music,” an underrated gem off Honey. Its opening riff, a five-note scale that culminates in a burst of glittering synths, would always send her squealing. For its four and a half minutes, we were outside of our lives and inside of Robyn’s mirror-ball world. 

One day, I got the inevitable call: Sarah had been dumped. She was sullen on the phone. I drove over right away.

Sarah sulked over to my car and stumbled into the front seat. “I want to hear everything that happened, and I want to tell you all the ways you are better than that demon you were dating and how much better your life is going to be without her,” I said. “But first, I think you need this.”

I cranked the car speakers to their highest volume and the plinking synths of “Because It’s in the Music” rang out. She didn’t squeal, but over four and a half precious minutes, impossibly, a smile spilled over Sarah’s face.

After Sarah’s breakup, I wondered if I ought to try out singledom myself. I was miserable in my relationship. My boyfriend and I were co-workers, and I’d go to work each day steeling myself for war. Most days, he yelled at me over our lunch break over perceived slights and he’d often pull me away from my desk to scold me for my tone or my energy level or for not getting his coffee the way he liked it. Any move I made could result in the explosion of one of his emotional landmines, and eventually I was cowed into stagnation, terrified of saying or doing something that would ignite his fury.

During one of our epic workplace fights in the foyer of our office building, I suggested breaking up. This sent him into a tailspin. He swiftly dismissed the notion that we could be apart, but the idea of leaving him nagged at me. Solitude scared me, but I was beginning to see that it would likely be better than staying with such a volatile and controlling partner.

Honey remained in heavy rotation. My favourite track was “Ever Again,” the album’s closer. “Never gonna be broken-hearted ever again,” Robyn sings over a laid-back bass guitar. By the song’s end, she flips the guitar into a cosmic synth line that made me feel like I was gliding on starlight. Robyn convinces herself that her heart won’t break again, and in that assertion she unearths a transcendental sense of glee and liberation. I craved that feeling of certainty she sang of; I wanted to be free from the fear of abandonment that kept me in my unhappy coupling. 

I went to Sarah, who was beginning to shake off her breakup, and promised her that if my boyfriend pulled one more stunt, I was through. I needed her to hold me accountable.

Sarah, my boyfriend and I made Halloween plans to watch the finale of The Haunting of Hill House together at my condo before catching a midnight screening of Rocky Horror. My boyfriend showed up two hours late, which meant we wouldn’t be able to get through the episode before making it to the movie theatre.

Upon learning that his own actions had made it impossible for him to do everything he wanted to do, he stormed out the front door of my apartment toward the lobby of my building. Sarah looked in my eyes, silently pleading with me to leave him to his misery, but I followed him and endured a final verbal beating from him. He blamed the situation on me, saying that he would have come earlier had I told him that the episode was an hour long. That was the same duration as all the other episodes we’d watched together, and he knew that. I sat there and took it, unwilling to put energy into debating him, knowing that it would go to waste. I knew then and there I’d be keeping the promise I made to myself and Sarah. 

The next day, I summoned him to our university campus and broke up with him. He employed his entire arsenal of emotional artillery; he cried and pleaded and accused and yelled. All of his arms failed. At last, I was seeing him clearly and, as a result, I turned to stone. Once he’d exhausted all his tactics, I bid him goodbye for the last time. I put in my earbuds and walked toward the bus, “Ever Again” filling me up. I looked down, and under my feet, amid the crunch of fallen leaves, I saw I was gliding.