Stop posting about your shitty boyfriend (unless you’re gonna dump him)
The famed ‘relationship storytime’ video genre is at a crossroads: when the storyteller has no intention of leaving their unhappy relationship, social media commentators are increasingly asking why they’re being pulled into it at all.
I was doing my regular end-of-day scrolling when I happened upon a familiar scene. A woman sat directly in front of the camera, telling the internet that her partner had done something egregious. In this specific incident, it was five days post-Christmas, and a TikTok user by the name of Jasmine wanted to let us know that even though she’d lovingly bought her fiancé an Xbox for Christmas, all she’d received in return was a butter dish. Mind you, not even a vintage one, or even some Le Creuset find — just a plain white butter dish. The offence was clear.
As somewhat of a TikTok comment section enthusiast, I thought I could predict exactly what the discussion underneath would look like. There were a few expected ‘dump him’s, a couple of ‘you deserve better’s, and even some sympathetic ‘men never understand’. But surprisingly, I was also met with an overwhelming amount of dismissals. It seemed many commentators stood in agreement: ‘I know you’re gonna stay, so I don’t wanna hear it.’ ‘My sister, if you’re not gonna do anything about it, don’t bring it to us.’ There was even a blunt: ‘If you’re not leaving him, then I don’t care.’
This is the sort of fatigue I’d expect from a close confidante who’s grown tired of their close friend complaining about a partner they’ll never leave. It’s not what I’d anticipate from social media users with no emotional investment in the matter, casually scrolling past the situation.
I was even more surprised to find similar sentiments under a video from a woman who’d recorded her husband ‘jokingly’ trying to break one of her £500 perfumes. After many expressed concern that her husband’s behaviour was overly aggressive and should be considered a red flag, she posted a follow-up in which she stated: “[People are] projecting [their] misery and anger that you have, making up your own stories, because you’re over here acting like my husband’s a serial murderer.”
The comments under that video reflected some butter-dish-esque fatigue: ‘I don’t understand why y’all do this… like why post the video to begin with.’ In reference to the woman’s defensive follow-up explainer, in which she emphasises that her relationship is fine and everyone telling her to leave her husband was taking her video out of context. To this, one user noted": ‘It’s like they’re following a script [at this point].’
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This spectator weariness seems to be a symptom of the late-stage relationship TikTok economy. The first half of the decade saw no shortage of bad boyfriend testimonies, from 2024’s 50-part ‘Who TF did I marry’ saga to the more recent viral ‘Danish Deception’ tale, in which a former Bachelor contestant recounts being scammed by an ex... and seems to make excuses for some of his actions up until the very last chapter. No matter the scale of the offence, users have come to expect that, usually, where a bitter complaint about a partner’s ineptitude stands, a frantic, over-explanatory video attempting to absolve them of blame will follow.
And so, it seems many weary scrollers have decided to give up entirely — to reject providing sage advice or even words of comfort for the women seeking community in these videos, and to keep moving on with their lives. The same attitude women have adopted toward friends who come to them for counsel about the same problems over and over now seems to apply to strangers on the internet as well: if they won’t leave, why bother?
What inspires someone to post about an unwanted butter dish, or some other annoyance they have with their partner, rather than turn to their group chat? Particularly someone who is allegedly happy in their relationship (as many boyfriend complainers claim to be), and who’s well aware that online, people are quick to make assumptions based on limited information. It’s easy to suppose that these videos are a bid for community they might not have in real life. Maybe they have no group chat to confide in, or no empathetic listening ear to turn to at work. But if they aren’t just lonely, this sort of posting might reveal a bit about the community they do have.
“[These] women come from a culture where they complain about the men, and all of the other ladies [laugh about it], and that’s it,” TikTok user Jane Fox proposed. “They don’t hear. You should leave. This is really shitty behaviour. [So] they weren’t expecting you to say that. They’re expecting you to say, ‘Mine’s annoying too, I get it’. There’s a disconnect there.”
Relationship therapist Lisa Chen suggests that exasperated viewers who make the ‘leave us out of it’ comments aren’t tired of the juicy drama relationship storytimes provide, but instead of watching people attempt to normalise it. “These videos generally follow the same script,” she says. “A partner does something glaringly disrespectful, and the creator frames it as, Can you believe this?”
“We, the viewers, are expected to validate and react in rage alongside them, despite knowing this person will not leave the relationship,” she notes. “At a certain point, it starts feeling like we’re being recruited into someone else’s denial. That’s why comments like, ‘If you’re not leaving him, leave us out of it’, are becoming popular. It’s about boundaries, not about being mean. Viewers are basically saying, ‘I can’t keep enabling and approving your coping behaviour’.”
Not to handhold you through the definition of a ‘story’, but the very concept implies that the main character will evolve or end up in a different place than where they started. Exasperated ‘leave us out of this’ comments are the consequence of unsatisfied viewers, who’ve grown tired of story after story that provide no character development or reflection. “Viewers aren’t reacting with frustration to the storyteller’s vulnerability, but rather to the emotional nausea experienced when faced with the same repetitive content,” notes Dr. Sabrina Romanoff, a clinical psychologist. “These videos tend to capitalise on repeating the same dynamics over and over again, where the storyteller is the victim and the other person is completely in the wrong, leaving little room for nuance or a balanced perspective.”
It’ll be interesting to see what the next era of relationship storytimes looks like if this fatigue persists, or whether the genre will cease to exist altogether. If there’s a gradually waning amount of empathy to be found in comment sections, and if people dismiss the desperate follow-ups that defend the partner mere moments after calling attention to their wrongdoing, perhaps creators may begin to see no algorithmic or emotional value in posting about their woes at all.
Credit: Cosmopolitan