Posted on 03/19/2026 3:08:52 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Why are men breaking up with—and abandoning—their girlfriends mid-hike?
Breakups tend to follow a few predictable scripts, whether it’s an ominous “we need to talk” in the living room, a tense phone call, or, if someone’s particularly terrible, a text. But apparently, some men take them to new heights (literally), ending relationships mid-hike on mountaintops, which reads like the plot to a true-crime series. Yes, this is happening in real life, and often enough to earn its own name: alpine divorce.
Despite the tongue-in-cheek branding, an “alpine divorce” is anything but playful. The name nods to a 19th-century short story about a man’s plot to murder his wife on the Swiss Alps. It entered the mainstream last month after a manslaughter trial involving a hiker accused of leaving his less-experienced girlfriend to freeze to death on Austria’s tallest mountain made international headlines. Since then, the internet has been flooded with less extreme but similarly unsettling stories: women describing how, during innocuous hikes, their boyfriends stormed ahead or outright broke up with them and disappeared, sometimes leaving them miles from help with no cell service or clear path back—forcing these women to navigate unfamiliar terrain while processing fear, shock, sadness, and betrayal alone.
“My ex dumped me…after he took me hiking at night, made comments to freak me out, and I had a panic attack,” one person posted on TikTok.
“I’m calling out to him, ‘I can’t keep up. Can you slow down?’ and he acted like he didn’t hear me. Walks even faster,” another woman shared in a different video. “That was one of the scariest moments of my life…. I’m crying, distraught, and he’s just sitting in the car.”
Anyone with a shred of empathy would have a hard time understanding why a person would ever do this. And yet it happens “all the time,” Mandy Neeble Diamond, PsyD, a clinical forensic psychologist based in Orange County, California, tells SELF. Though the phrase is relatively new, “I’ve had many patients describe similar experiences,” Dr. Diamond says. “Some were broken up with during a hike, or taken to a different town or city where they didn’t know anyone. Other times, their partners walked very fast ahead of them, leaving them behind.” The specifics vary, but the impact remains the same: feelings of sudden powerlessness, abandonment, disorientation, and humiliation. It’s not just being broken up with, but being discarded. Why would a man abandon his girlfriend on a hiking trail?
In many cases, perhaps to one’s surprise, it seems like these breakups aren’t premeditated. Instead, psychologists say the mountain environment might subconsciously make an already difficult decision “easier” for the one walking away.
“Outdoor settings can feel less confrontational than sitting face-to-face,” Shannon Chavez Qureshi, PsyD, AASECT-certified sex therapist and clinical psychologist based in Los Angeles, tells SELF. Ending a relationship with courtesy and grace requires sustained eye contact, on-the-spot explanation, and a general willingness to sit there while someone asks hard questions, gets hurt, and shows pain—things many people would rather avoid.
All of that becomes easier to sidestep in the great, expansive outdoors. On a hike, you’re not locked into face-to-face interaction. You can keep moving, look anywhere but at the person you’re hurting, and walk away from the responsibility, guilt, and emotional weight of the moment, Dr. Chavez says. (Which is convenient, sure, but also cruel and cowardly.)
That said, it’s not necessarily that this particular location creates such callous behavior, psychologists point out. Rather, it can enable existing red flags to thrive, Golee Abrishami, PhD, licensed psychologist and head of clinical care at Octave Therapy in San Francisco, tells SELF. Most Popular
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Put simply: The kind of boyfriend who already struggles with communication, impulse control, or withdraws when faced with any difficult conversation is the same one who might storm down a trail without looking back, or abruptly end a relationship without much thought or care for the other person’s safety and feelings.
“We’re not just talking about dramatic or explosive behavior,” Dr. Abrishami explains. “We’re talking about the everyday ability to pause between feeling something and acting on it, and those with poor emotional regulation skills will move quickly to relieve that discomfort.”
While the motivations for an alpine divorce, like any breakup, may vary, the “why” is besides the point, experts say. What demands our attention is its dangerously overlooked impact on women. “A normal breakup hurts enough,” Dr. Diamond says. “Already you’re heartbroken and sad. But an alpine divorce triggers so much more because you’re placed in a place of physical and emotional danger.”
Even in less extreme scenarios—say, your partner rushes ahead only for a few minutes or leaves you to sulk on an easy, flat trail—“the nervous system still perceives this as a loss of emotional safety,” Dr. Chavez explains. “You feel stranded, disoriented, or unable to process what happened because you’re also navigating getting back to the car, finishing the hike, or being physically far from support.”
So let’s call it what it is. At its core, the problems with alpine divorce go beyond the usual pain of a breakup. It’s a form of abandonment, every psychologist we spoke with agrees: one dressed up as poor pacing and bad communication.
What was that old story....A guy and his girl friend on a nature hike encounter a bear, the girl friend whispers “oh No!” then she said she had watched a wildlife video and she said that they probably could not out run the bear.
The boy friend thought for a moment and whispered back ‘That’s OK, I don’t have to out run the bear just you.....’
“One woman has apparently caught the same guy cheating about five different times.”
And that’s exactly why I added the ‘Oh, Brother!’ to the title.
Seriously? What kind of men are you getting involved with in the first place that would leave you alone on a mountaintop with no hope of survival? Or cheat on you as an extracurricular hobby?
C’mon, Ladies! You make ALL of us look stupid.
What ever happened to “I Break With Thee, I Break With Thee, I Break With Thee”, and then throwing dog poop on her shoes?
Yep. We’ve seen that story a number of times. Hard to believe they run out of crimes that different shows have to cover the same crime. ;)
LOL! Excellent. :)
Better than a Haitian divorce, I suppose.
No tears, and no hearts breaking, no remorse.
I actually knew Harold and the first wife. Horrible situation.
LOL! That’s another thing we do around here! So far neither of us has gotten past two, ‘I Break With Thee...’
We’re keeping the Gene Pool safe for everyone else on Earth...even though there is PLENTY of dog poop around here to make it ‘legal’ if we needed to.
And, You’re All Welcome! :)
Yikes! So, do you believe he did it? I’m pretty sure he was found guilty.
Can this be rewritten from the man’s point of view?
A 36-year-old Austrian man, Thomas P., was found guilty of gross negligent manslaughter after leaving his 33-year-old girlfriend, Kerstin G., to freeze to death on Austria's highest peak, the Grossglockner, in January 2025. He received a five-month suspended sentence for failing to provide aid after leaving her to seek help.
“My ex dumped me…after he took me hiking at night, made comments to freak me out, and I had a panic attack,” ..... “
It’s possible his sorry ass ex was having an affair. So many trashy women out there now that I am not so sure I could blame the man.
or as Paul Simon sang....
You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Oh, you hop on the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free
Actually, perhaps:
“How do you solve a problem like Maria”
might be more appropriate.
He killed both and was working on a third victim. It was hard to actually believe, but in the end he reminded me of Harold Holmes.
This is a new one on me.I’ve never heard of this.
So you take a woman hiking and then you walk quickly away from her, when you’re in an isolated spot? And this is how you break up with her?
So what do you tell her, when she calls you afterwards and says what the heck happened to you? Then, do you have to explain to her that this was your action of breaking up?
But then don’t you end up having the conversation you wanted to avoid.
Or is this so well known? And i’m just out of touch that this is the way to break up with a woman nowadays?
Does the woman know that’s what it means when she’s out on a hike with a man and he disappears?
Or what happene when her family and friends report her as a missing person? And then law enforcement will come looking for you, because you’re a key person who was probably the last one to see her alive. If the worst happened to her out on the trail, how are you going to explain yourself to law enforcement when they investigate?
Man’s point of view to breaking up? What, like “I liked you better before I knew you”? Or, the old reliable “i hate every bone in your body except mine”.
and I totally thought of that song and I think so did the author of the article.
What a great song. Steely Dan. Sigh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKMCz1b2RxE
(and what a great album cover).
“Women probably have their own version of this.”
Going out to dinner and a club, and then going home with someone else? At least I was still sober and had my car.
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