Why are couples breaking up after watching Daniel Sloss' 'Jigsaw'?

It starts like any other Netflix night: you're curled up on the couch with your partner, scrolling through endless stand-up specials, when a Scottish comic pops up on your screen. You press play, expecting a few laughs before bed. But what you don’t expect is to look at the person next to you an hour later and start wondering, "Are we even right for each other?"

That’s the dangerous magic of Daniel Sloss's Jigsaw. It's a stand-up show, so it's funny until, of course, it isn’t. Somewhere between Sloss’ dry humour, Scottish drawl, and razor-sharp truth bombs, the jokes start landing like emotional grenades. And once they go off, they don’t just end the laughter—they’ve ended relationships. Literally thousands of them.

Since Jigsaw premiered on Netflix in 2018, the special has earned a bizarre legacy: as of the last count, it’s credited with causing more than 250,000 breakups and at least 600 divorces. No, that’s not a punchline. Sloss himself has confirmed that he stopped keeping track after the breakup e-mails kept flooding in. Somewhere between “haha” and “damn, he’s right,” people everywhere started reassessing their relationships. The result? Mass heartbreak, one comedy show at a time.

But how did one man with a microphone cause a breakup epidemic? And why does a seven-year-old special still make couples nervous to stream it together?

In Jigsaw, Sloss builds his entire set around one big metaphor. Life, he says, is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. You have your own pieces—your career, family, friends, dreams—and somewhere out there, you imagine a missing piece that’s meant to “complete” you, aka your romantic partner. But here’s where he twists the knife. Most people, he argues, are so desperate to finish their puzzle that they’ll grab the first piece that kind of fits and jam it in, shaving off their own edges, ignoring the mismatch, and convincing themselves that it’s perfect. In other words, we settle.

We settle out of fear of being alone, out of societal pressure, out of comfort. We convince ourselves that being with someone is always better than being by ourselves. And when the puzzle doesn’t look right, we blame the picture instead of the piece.

It’s a brutal analogy, and it’s delivered with equal parts charm and cynicism. Sloss isn’t telling people to dump their partners; he is daring them to look at their lives honestly. “I would rather be happy alone than miserable with someone else,” he says in the special. For some viewers, that line feels like freedom. For others, it’s the beginning of an existential crisis.

The breakup shows effect

What makes Jigsaw different from every other truth-telling comedy special is how deep it cuts. It doesn’t just joke about relationships; it dismantles the very idea of them as life’s ultimate goal. And when you’re watching with your partner, that message hits differently.

Couples have described finishing the special and sitting in silence, both thinking the same thing but too scared to say it out loud. Some have confessed that they realised mid-show that they weren’t in love anymore. Others said it exposed all the small compromises they had been pretending not to notice.

For many, Jigsaw simply gives permission to leave, to question, or to stop pretending. And for a generation that already treats emotional honesty as self-care, Sloss’ dark humour feels oddly liberating.

The numbers are part fact, part legend at this point. Early on, Sloss claimed that over 34,000 couples had written to him saying they broke up after watching the show. Then the count jumped to 50,000, then 120,000. By 2023, the figure floating around the internet was more than 2,50,000 breakups and 600 divorces. Sloss himself stopped verifying the stats years ago, mostly because the breakup confessions never stopped coming.

Whether the exact number is real or not almost doesn’t matter. What Jigsaw proved is how many people are quietly unhappy, staying in relationships because it’s easier than facing themselves. It turned a comedy show into a cultural mirror: one that made millions realise how much of their “love” was actually habit.

Why Gen Z still can’t stop talking about it

If you go on TikTok or Reddit today, Jigsaw is still a viral topic every few months. Gen Z couples post videos captioned, “Watched Daniel Sloss’ Jigsaw with my boyfriend...wish me luck,” followed by a breakup update days later. For a generation that values self-worth over staying power, Jigsaw feels almost prophetic. It’s not anti-love; it’s anti-settling.

So, should you watch it with your partner?

Maybe. But don’t press play unless you are ready for an honest conversation after. Jigsaw doesn’t end relationships; it just turns on the lights. If your connection can’t survive that brightness, maybe it’s better to know now than later.

As Sloss puts it, love shouldn’t “complete” you—it should complement you. And sometimes, realising that is the most romantic thing you can do for yourself.

Lead image: Netflix, IMDb 

Also read: Is there really a ‘happy couple’ checklist?

Also read: Can AI actually improve your chances of finding love in 2025?