VERY few Love Island couples make it IRL, let's be honest. Keeping a regular relationship going strong is tough enough, but our poor Islanders have to deal with being thrown into the industry, endless parties, hundreds of thousands of followers (many of them VERY thirsty), freebies galore and a jet-setting lifestyle, too. It sounds stunning on paper, but trying to keep a new relationship grounded and wholesome while riding that wild ride is TOUGH. Just look at last summer's series Love Island – only Whitney Adebayo and Lochan Nowacki are still together (and arguably that's down to the fact that they tend to keep themselves to themselves), with the likes of Molly Marsh and Zach Noble and Ella Thomas and Tyrique Hyde allegedly calling it quits in recent weeks.
(MAJOR LOVE ISLAND GAMES SPOILERS AHEAD – IF YOU CHOOSE TO READ ON, DON'T COME FOR US. THANK U).
Now add all that to the fact that you're living your uber-boujie showbiz lifestyles on opposite ends of the Atlantic Ocean and, well, the Love Island curse is eventually going to do its thing.
Yep, the Love Island universe has lost another couple this week; Love Island series 4 star/man of our dreams and waking life Jack Fowler and Love Island USA series 2 star Justine Ndiba – the winners of the very first Love Island Games – have decided to call it quits (sort of - bear with).
Anyway, apparently the winning couple did at least try to make a go of it long-distance in the months since filming ended, with Jack revealing that they FaceTimed every day, but in the end it just wasn't meant to be.
Jack took to his Instagram story over the weekend to share the news with his 1.1M followers, writing, "BIG love to everyone who supported me and Justine in Love Island Games. Winning together was actually mental. Feels like ages ago now lol but just wanted to say we are keeping it as friends."
As it turns out the couple never made the relationship official official soon after winning the series, Justine told msn.com that their "current relationship status is 'doing our best.' I feel like we live so far away from each other, so right now we're just 100 percent doing our best."
We have to say, while we feel for these two gorgeous humans right now, we're struggling to shed a tear for either one of them as Love Island Games has only just been made available to UK viewers on ITVX, despite it airing in America late last year. In fact, where we're at, Jack and Joy (which we're realising now sounds like a kids' book) aren't even officially together, so expect some tears from us in a few weeks time when we eventually catch up. Also, remember those boujie lifestyles we mentioned above? Well, they haven't gone anywhere.
Love Island Games was a spin-off series of Love Island, one that saw former Islanders from Love Island UK, USA, Australia, France, Sweden and Germany fly out to Fiji in a bid to 'snatch the crown', while taking a second stab at finding love on the telly (again), with returning UK Islanders such as Liberty Poole, Eyal Booker and Georgia Steel joining the competition. The series arrived on Peacock (in the States) on 1 November 2023 and us lot over in Blighty had to wait MONTHS to watch it in the UK, which was, quite frankly, bat sh*t.
Apologies if we sounded a little on the bitter side in this story, we were; we're still not over the fact that we found out Justine and Jack had won this show on social media before ever watching a single episode.