Curse of the Love Island winners – why temptation, drug scandals & serial cheat sexts plague victors after the villa

WINNING Love Island may guarantee a paycheck of £50,000 for the lucky couple - but it doesn’t always guarantee a happy ending.

Just four of the 11 winning couples have lasted the test of time.

Molly Smith and Tom Clare from the All Stars series are still going strong, as well as series nine winners Kai Fagan and Sanam Harrinanan, who recently got engaged.

Even winning couples Millie Court and Liam Reardon and Cara De La Hoyde and Nathan Massey split up before getting back together.

And most of the romances end in public and vicious spats - but why?

Psychologist Jo Hemmings tells us: “All the couples in there want to win and they're in a bubble, there's no outside influences. Once they see the finishing post in sight, they get really loved up with each other and any grievances that they have are softened over.

“When they get outside their friends and family will have plenty to say, there's the whole world of paps and media waiting for them, they'll be able to see all the footage they weren't shown when they were in there, looking at social media, what's been said about your partner, what's been said about you. That might have some influence over them as a couple.

“Also, in the villa, they're all pretty equal because of the situation and environment they're in. But the minute they come out into the real world, one of them might be stratospheric in their career and one just might be feeding along the bottom of celebrity and not getting anywhere.

"So all those things when you're back, released into the real world, have a huge impact on the stability and the long-term nature of any of those relationships.”

Jo, who’s worked as an after-care psychologist on Love Island, adds: “Very often, couples break up when someone else has come out of the woodwork and said something about them cheating. It starts to get public because all the other people that know them start making accusations. 

“They are flooded with DMs of other people wanting to meet them. Temptation is extraordinary when you're outside the villa at this point, so I think it gets a bit bitter and acrimonious.”

We look at some of the worst breakups the winning Love Island couples have been hit by…

Jessica Hayes and Max Morley

All the way back in series one, Jessica Hayes and Max Morley won the £50,000 prize.

However, they split just 40 days later, having been spotted having a blazing row a week after landing back in the UK. 

Max was even romantically linked to Towie star Jess Wright during the weeks that followed the Love Island final.

Last year, Jess exclusively told The Sun why she thinks Love Island winners often break up.

“It was so tough,” she said.  “I feel like you're so young when you go in there. And, I'm not gonna lie, the boys just want to be boys.

“I'm not saying that girls are any different but the boys want to go out and do their thing.

"They’ll go to loads of PAs [public appearances], tours of nightclubs, and go together with the other boys while girls are throwing themselves at them.

“It gives you major anxiety and the trust wasn't there for me.” 

Jess and Max are now both parents, but have both suffered heartache when it comes to their children.

Jess suffered a miscarriage in 2020 when she and her then-fiance Dan Lawry lost their unborn son Teddy at 19 weeks, but she went on to have son Presley, now four with him.

The couple broke up, and she got engaged to property developer fiance Zeb in 2023, welcoming a daughter together earlier this year.

Meanwhile, in March 2022, Max revealed he was finally able to bring his newborn son home from the hospital after almost four months.

Amber Davies and Kem Cetinay

Amber Davies and Kem Cetinay seemed like love’s young dream when they won Love Island in 2017.

However, four months later, they split up after a series of “furious” rows, which led to them  even blocking each other on Instagram and Twitter.

A source close to the couple told The Sun at the time: “They have been arguing a lot recently and things finally came to a head on Saturday.

“Amber was out with some of the girls from Love Island - Olivia Attwood and Georgia Harrison - so blocked Kem on social media to try and enjoy a stress free evening. 

“It was just a silly argument - Kem even sent Amber some flowers to make things right again between them.”

However, they announced their breakup soon after.

Dani Dyer and Jack Fincham

Series four winners Dani Dyer and Jack Fincham really did try and give things a go after their victory, even moving in together and buying a puppy.

But six months later, it was over.

Dani went back to her ex Sammy Kimmence quite soon after their split, and fell pregnant with their first child.

However, in 2020, he was arrested for scamming two OAPs out of more than £33,000.

He was jailed for three-and-a-half years, and Dani split with him, giving birth to their son Santiago in March 2021, raising him alone.

She went on to welcome twin daughters, Star and Summer, with West Ham footballer fiance Jarrod Bowen, in May 2023.

Meanwhile, around the same time, Jack was arrested for drug driving.

Dani’s dad Danny Dyer publicly called Jack a “f**king t**t” when he heard the news of this.

And in a now-deleted post, Jack called him “pathetic,” writing: “A t**t? I've never ate a leg of lamb at your house. 

“If you have something to say about me, you know how to get hold of me, so don't say things without expecting consequences because we know what happened last time don't we Danny Dyer.”

Jack has since told The Sun: "That was such a silly thing. I just had the hump that he called me a t*** and I reacted like an idiot.

"I regret saying that now and that's why I deleted it. I thought 'oh Jack you absolute idiot'."

Amber Gill and Greg O’Shea

Amber Gill and Greg O’Shea’s split was the quickest of all, with her claiming he dumped her via text, just days after the finale.

Then, a year after winning, they had another public spat when she shared a fan’s video, captioned: “Happy one year anniversary of being the first solo winner of Love Island my sis,” and wrote: “Can you believe it’s been one whole year since I won Love Island?”

Greg then replied: “Congrats.”

Then, when a fan wrote how “gas” Greg’s response was, Amber replied: “Is gas pathetic? Cos yeh same xx.”

However, Greg has since said Amber lied about what happened - and he thought about killing himself due to death threats he was getting from her fans.

Rugby player Greg told the Daily Mail: “I have screenshots, I can release a statement with screenshots to show people the truth’ but it was only going to add fuel to the fire and so I took the brunt of it. It was hard to bite my tongue but that's just the way it played out.

“We did the whole after the show thing and then it got to us speaking to each other away from the cameras and she asked ‘are we going to be boyfriend and girlfriend? Are we going to be a proper couple?’

“I said to her ‘Realistically, I don't know how this is going to work, you're in England and everyone wants a bit of you, you have your clothing deals and I'm going back to Ireland and going to try and do the Olympics.’

“I said ‘can we see how it plays out for the next while?’ But she didn't really like that and got upset that I didn't want to automatically be girlfriend and boyfriend – this was all on FaceTime. She said ‘I don't really want to be with someone who isn't sure they want to be with me’ and we left it at that.”

He continued: “The next day she got onto me again and she calmed down and agreed with me. I told her 'I can't make you happy as much as you deserve, I can't be there for you, maybe we should go with what you said last night and part ways now and be realistic about the situation.'

“I think she expected me to fight for it but I had to be realistic and look at it as a proper relationship and not the Love Island winners. This was all on FaceTime, then I had to go to training, so I put my phone down and I came back after an hour and my phone was blowing up, an article was released ‘Greg breaks up with Amber over text’ – I couldn't believe it.”

Paige Turley and Finn Tapp

Series six winners Paige Turley and Finn Tapp really seemed like the real deal, moving in together, spending all of lockdown together, and then staying together for three years.

But in 2023, they announced their split in a statement.

A few months later, they were reunited on Ex On The Beach, and got very close to giving things another go.

But Paige then discovered that, on the night before the show launch, Finn slept with their co-star Tamara Joy, leaving her feeling “betrayed”.

Speaking to Scott McGlynn on his Celebrity Skin Talk podcast, Paige said: "I am single, I don’t know about Finn. We’re amicable.

"It’s a shame that it didn’t work out but I wish him all the best. Unfortunately sometimes things just happen. 

"I’ll always have love and respect for him. Coming from the show that we did, you’re always going to have that tie to each other."

Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu and Davide Saclimenti

Ekin-Su and Davide’s love story has been just as turbulent outside of the villa as it was inside.

After winning the show, they split up quite quickly, as rumours of Davide’s infidelity swirled, but they managed to work things out and even had a TV show together, called Ekin-Su & Davide: Homecomings.

However, in April 2023, the pair had a make or break holiday to Amsterdam after Ekin-Su found messages from two OnlyFans models on his phone.

Ekin later told The Sun: “Did he actually cheat on me? Yeah. I have messages from one girl who told me that she had hooked up with him when we were together.

“Another time he left his laptop open. I saw messages, quite explicit messages, sexual ones, between him and the girl I’d met on New Year’s Eve.

“The messages talked about how much fun they’d had together the other night. Seeing those messages, confirming my worst fears, it broke something in me”.

Ekin-Su actually got in touch with one of the girls, Harriet Wilson, and fired off an F-word rant to the love rival. 

She also posted a series of cryptic messages online and appeared to mock Harriet’s Instagram photos.

One tweet, which was later deleted, read: “No man will ever take u seriously with just half naked pictures of u in a bikini and lingerie.”

She also liked two posts from another user hinting at “disrespect” and the need for ­“distance”. 

One read: “People be turning out to be exactly who they said they wasn’t.”

Ekin-Su also shared a quote on Instagram reading: “A girl can be just as sexy without showing some skin.”

Davide and Ekin-Su split soon after, and Davide was said to be “fuming” she went on to star in Celebrity Big Brother and The Traitors US.

However, her CBB stint didn't quite go to plan, and Ekin-Su said she should never have hone on the ITV reality show, as she was so broken from Davide’s endless deceit.

Sammy Root and Jess Harding

Due to the fact Sammy Root never really seemed to like Jess Harding in the villa, it came as no surprise when they broke up about a month after winning Love Island.

It was actually more surprising they beat fan favourites Whitney Adebayo and Lochan Nowacki, who came second and are still together.

When it was announced in the media, Sammy took to Instagram to snarkily write:  "Yes we had a private conversation regarding our relationship but this was left up in the air as Jess is still away and we haven't had a chance to speak in person. 

“For me to then see today via the media that we had officially broken up came as a total shock."