What happened between Tyler Stanaland and Brittany Snow? A look inside the split

What happened between Tyler Stanaland and Brittany Snow that caused their relationship to crumble? 

Ahead of Selling the OC, Tyler Stanaland received plenty of attention, not necessarily for his participation on the show, but for his famous counterpart, a.k.a. Pitch Perfect royalty Brittany Snow. Once the Netflix series dropped, viewers turned their attention toward the surfer and relator for other reasons: his flirty behavior. 

Read Tyler Stanaland and Brittany Snow's statement

Although the announcements about their September 2022 separation were vague and neither party has publicly commented on what caused them to part ways, fans have made plenty of speculations since the news broke last year.

"After time and consideration, Tyler and I have made the difficult decision to separate," Snow's statement read. "This decision was made with love and mutual respect for one another. We have realized we need to take some time and make sure we are each living our most fulfilling and authentic lives." 

What happened between Tyler Stanaland and Brittany Snow?

Viewers (and O Group staffers) were up in arms about Tyler's almost-kiss with Kayla Cardona on the debut season of the show. According to Stanaland, the incident did not come between him and Snow at the time, and Cardona apologized for the almost-kiss. 

For her part, Cardona has claimed that she is not the only one who deserves the scrutiny.

"Everyone else wants to put all the blame on me. No one else is innocent, I'll make that real clear," she told Netflix Tudum. "I think they reacted from a place of guilt and they wanted to put all that heat on me because they know they're guilty themselves. I haven't done half of the s*** that they've done. And I'm also talking about off-camera."

While no one knows specifically what she was alluding to, some believe Tyler and Alex's Hall flirty friendship--which paps and onlookers caught glimpses of when the cameras stopped rolling in fall 2022--is the culprit. 

At the time, Hall told People, "His close friends know a little bit more about his personal life than the audience knows. So anybody in their right mind, I mean, who do you call when you're going through issues? You call your friends. I think people really want to hold onto that idea that there's something there between Tyler and [I]. I mean, at this point, we're just friends, so there's nothing more to it."

Whatever the reason, and regardless of the agent, it appears that the split was a heartbreaking ordeal. In a May 2023 interview with Bustle, Snow opened up about the struggles she went through, without naming her ex-husband directly, and said that her Pitch Perfect family helped nurse her back to health after the turbulent time. 

"In the past year I went through probably the hardest mental health challenge I've ever faced," she told the outlet. "In one day, in a matter of hours, my life turned completely upside down. I was blindsided and everything I thought I knew, held sacred and truly trusted in my life was completely different."

This is certainly not the ending we expected from the pair, who first crossed paths via Instagram DMs in 2018.

"I knew of Britt for obvious reasons, but she was my unattainable crush forever," Stanaland told The Knot in March 2020. "As a man, I used to watch Pitch Perfect with friends and [thought] 'Brittany Snow. One day.' But never thinking it would ever happen. I sent a direct message with the most embarrassing pickup line. A dad joke."

From there the two were inseparable and embarked on puppy parenthood before tying the knot in 2020. Before Stanaland entered her life, Snow kept quiet about personal matters.

"I'm very public about [my relationship] for the first time in my life and that's very strange to me," she told US Weekly. "I keep things very to myself because I feel like the magic gets lost if you promote it too much, but I don't know! When you're in love..."

Selling the OC season 2 is available to stream on Netflix beginning Friday, September 8.