Four people tell us what happened to their Netflix account after their break ups

You’ve wined and dined, Netflixed and chilled, puckered your mouths to suspend a single strand of spaghetti between your faces, synchronously swaddled your faces in hyaluronic acid sheet masks and made a shortlist of names for your future cat, etc., etc. Love: it truly is the best, until it's the worst.

Try to name anything worse than a breakup and you’ll immediately start dipping into dark territory. But, as sad as lost love is, life must go on, and the logistics of uncoupling must be confronted. And in this modern world, what’s more common to navigate than a shared Netflix account around which so much of your love bloomed — and eventually faded?

You may be single, but you’re not alone — at least when it comes to this issue. Today, we’re here to offer solidarity by rounding up some of the most representative stories of how people have re-distributed a Netflix subscription that was once shared. How you tackle the issue is reflective of your relationship and the degree of respect you still hold for the other person. But, it just as well reflects your ingenuity.

Cut ‘em off (especially if they cut you out) (Dan, age 31)

“[My girlfriend and I] were living together and decided to amalgamate our Netflix viewing, so she cancelled her membership.

“A handful of months later (eight? ten?) we broke up and I drove back home to Toronto from Edmonton, and a few days later updated my password to deny her access to my account.

“She never confronted me about it because what could she say? She broke up with me anyway.”

Friends with (streaming) benefits? (Gordon, age 31)

“I used my ex's Netflix for awhile after we broke up because we still remained friends.

“But when we stopped talking, I didn't feel comfortable using it anymore so I got my own subscription.”

When in doubt, just... guess (Jessica, age 27)

“I was watching Netflix [using my ex-boyfriend’s account] and it just cut out, so I tried using the password I always used, and it didn’t work,” Jessica says.

She tried several other possible passwords, but none of them were right. Then, she was hit by inspiration.

“I just thought about the meanest thing he could say. And it was ‘jessicaisabitch’.”

The password worked, but Jessica wasn’t fazed.

“I laughed and continued to watch my show,” she said.   

“It’s a new password again so I stopped guessing, and just use my sister’s netflix account [now].”

Getting closure (for any shows you’re watching) (Colin, age 29) 

“While [my ex and I] were dating, we shared a Netflix account. We broke up, and then we didn’t see each other for a while — maybe a couple of months? We didn’t really talk much in that time.

“When I saw her, she mentioned that she had changed the Netflix password, and that she had waited a while in case I needed to finish up any shows or anything I was watching.

“But I hadn’t tried to watch any of the shows,” he added, a little defensively.