What is an Alpine divorce? The dangerous trend making women rethink dating

In the current dating landscape, one can find more reasons to leave a partner than to keep dating them. However, if your partner takes you out on an extravagant date in the mountains only to leave you alone, then you cannot be blamed for wanting to throw them off the cliff.

Currently, women exploring the dating world have been left helpless and hopeless by a dangerous trend taking relationships by storm: Alpine Divorce. Unlike other dating trends whose meaning lies far away from their names, this one is quite literal. It involves leaving your partner alone in the peaks and plains to fend for themselves.

A mysterious case of missing

On social media, women describe alpine divorce as going on a hike, climb or any outdoor adventure with a male partner only to be abandoned or left behind. This is often followed by a breakup, understandably so. In a TikTok that went viral with more than 4.2M likes, a woman bawled while climbing down a rock formation, exclaiming, "He left me by myself, I should have never come with him." Many others supported her with their own instances of having been served an alpine divorce. One woman described a 12-hour journey out of the Grand Canyon after her boyfriend ditched her, during which she was assisted by a “very nice man from Norway” who carried her backpack. Another described getting lost in the woods after a man left her behind, and immediately blocking his number once she got home.

Not just breakups, in some cases alpine divorces have turned out to be fatal. One instance that brought the term back into the zeitgeist was just that. In February 2026, amateur mountaineer Thomas Plamberger was convicted by an Austrian court of gross negligence manslaughter as he left his girlfriend, Kerstin Gurtner on the Grossglockner mountain to die of hypothermia. He received a five-month sentence along with a €9,400 fine for abandoning Gurtner in freezing environments in January 2025.

What truly is an Alpine divorce?

The term 'Alpine Divorce' originates from a short story titled 'The Alpine Divorce' written by Robert Barr in 1893. It involves an unhappy couple going on one final hike where the husband plans to murder his wife, whom he despises.

However, that is where the connection ends. As in the story, she pulls a 'Gone Girl' move and ends up killing herself to leave her husband in a controversy. But IRL, it's the man who dons the invisible cloak and disappears, leaving the woman stranded to an unimaginable fate.

Alpine divorce is “a modern term for abandoning a partner in a remote or physically vulnerable setting in a way that symbolically or literally ends the relationship,” said relationship expert Thais Gibson, PhD, founder of the Personal Development School to Cosmopolitan.

In the current context, the term has broadened to include potentially less drastic situations that don't necessarily take place in the woods. The common element uniting these stories is the act of being stranded in an unusual position by a male.

Why is Alpine divorce trending?

Well, miscommunication or avoidance takes the bait. In the original story, Alpine divorce includes a murder for the sake of ending a relationship because a man is unable to tell his wife that he wants a divorce. Similarly, an alpine divorce in modern dating is a breakup without having the need to say so, akin to ghosting in real life.

This behaviour reflects a lack of emotional regulation, where the offending partner chooses avoidance over direct communication. These abandonment behaviours, "whether dramatic or subtle, usually stem from a combination of insecure attachment patterns, poor conflict skills, emotional immaturity, and sometimes abusive tendencies,” added Gibson.

However, these tactics aren't always aimed at riddance. Sometimes, they are conducted to test a person in order to make them reveal their supposed flaws or shortcomings. In this case, abandoning a partner on a hike is not about finally weaselling out of talking to them, but finding out how they fare on their own in such situations, if they remain calm or get agitated. In long-term relationships, this initial “test” may become an active, ongoing form of abuse. “A dynamic where someone exerts control, isolates, gaslights, or creates fear fits into larger patterns we see in abusive relationships,” says Gibson.

Thus, over the past couple of months, women have been enjoying an alpine vacation alone, rather than going on one only to be divorced.