Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing?

What a TikTok trend reveals about patriarchy, polarities and the mess of modern love.

Maybe the embarrassing boyfriend trend isn’t about him at all.

There’s been a lot of chatter online, debating on whether having a boyfriend is embarrassing now. I read the Chante Joseph’s viral piece in British Vogue that started it all and, as a therapist, I had some thoughts.

It’s tempting to dismiss this as another silly internet fad. But field phenomena always tell a deeper story. Trends are the psyche of the collective speaking out loud, and this one, I think, says something about the tension between old patriarchal power structures, emerging feminine voices pushing back, and the desire for acceptance and security. It’s easy to call this discourse frivolous, silly, and unnecessary, but why? Could it be because this is a conversation for women, being led by women? Probably. Do we live in an age where conversations and discourse online serve as a mirror to real world phenomena? Definitely. But as a therapist, I think it’s important to get to the bottom of why the words “boyfriend” and “embarrassing” are on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

When Patriarchy Meets the Algorithm

Let’s start with the first part: if we look at the state of society and culture, especially in the West, we see a few trends emerge. We’re reaching the zenith of conservative backlash; “alpha male” podcasters, tradwives, toxic masculinity and the so-called soft feminine. Like I said, this is all a backlash to the feminism and progressive culture of the 2010s.

The culture is encouraging women to “submit”, be “soft”, and make a man, marriage, and family their main goal in life. The issue is that many women have already woken up to the reality that it’s not smart to devote your life to a man. Some have even learnt that lesson from their own mothers and grandmothers, and are taking those cautionary tales in stride, making promises to never lose themselves in a relationship. A bad relationship can be more than just “embarrassment” among friends and followers. It can cost you your money, your community, your autonomy, and even your life.

With that in mind, it’s easy to understand why women are having this conversation now. As a collective, women are tired of the narrative society pushes on them, that not having a man who chooses you, and having a perfect family and home to match, means that you’re a failure. As Joseph writes:

“Being partnered doesn’t affirm your womanhood anymore; it is no longer considered an achievement and, if anything, it’s become more of a flex to pronounce yourself single. As straight women, we’re confronting something that every other sexuality has had to contend with: a politicisation of our identity.”

It seems like calling women childless cat ladies as a scare tactic has backfired, hasn’t it?

The Private Embarrassment Comes First

But it’s more than that. I can’t recall the number of women who have sat on my couch, sifting through both current and past relationships, realising the ways they’ve been mistreated by a man. The embarrassment is often private long before it is public.

Maisa writes for her Substack:

“And then there’s the obvious: men as a whole are embarrassing. Times are hard. The bar is subterranean. The probability of a man humiliating you publicly, digitally, or spiritually is dangerously high. They will cheat, fumble, like a thirst trap, or worse, start a podcast. And when that happens, you go from “iconic” to “unfortunate” in record time.”

As they heal from the breakup, many women also realise why they let a man treat them like that in the first place. They begin to understand their childhood wounds  - the disparaging comment from a family member, the chiding comment from someone in the playground - and realise how deep their issues lie. I’ve watched women in real time realise and remember their worth, then do the mental and emotional work of building themselves back up, to stay strong in the face of outdated narratives and childhood wounds. Watching them go from feeling “unfortunate” to “iconic” will never get old, and it’s clear why they don’t want to undo all of that work.

Decentering Men — or Just Rebranding the Same Game?

Even as women have further conversations about “decentering men” and finding genuine empowerment in defining themselves without men, it’s also natural to desire partnership. This conversation isn’t just about how men are embarrassing; it’s about women being shamed for desiring and seeking out that partnership.

For female influencers who debut their boyfriends on their accounts, their followership is likely to drop. We’re quick to assume that it is women unfollowing them, quietly declaring that the girl’s party is over, but who’s to say that those unfollows aren’t also coming from men who have built parasocial relationships with these women? Whether it’s OnlyFans or Instagram, men often build fantasies (realistic or not… more often not) based on what women present online. Presenting a boyfriend can ruin that.

But there’s also something else to keep in mind, maybe the thing that all of these think pieces are leaving out.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

In Gestalt, we often discuss the idea of creative indifference, which is the ability to hold two polarities without fully moving into either. In other words, there are two opposing ideologies we need to balance here.

The first is the matriarchal/patriarchal. Culture is shifting, vacillating between two extremes. On one side is the manosphere, full of embarrassing men, who are telling women that their place is in the home, that women should strive for partnership and will be nothing without it. On the other are women - some who champion independence and knowing your self-worth, yes. But there are others who surveil, and judge other women based on the men they are in relationship with. In that way, they aren’t much different from men at the other pole, upholding impossible patriarchal standards.

The Online/Offline Polarity

Then there’s another polarity, the one between online and offline. Ironically, my own timeline has been recommending “how to quit social media” guides. Essays about why “your phone is the reason you don’t feel sexy” have been going viral, and even content creators are challenging themselves to go offline. But it’s not just the creator economy; new research suggests that average users are spending less and less time on social media platforms. In a few short years, we’ve gone from posting pictures of brunch and fun days out with friends on the grid, to becoming “lurkers”, to now, getting off social media altogether.

It’s not just embarrassing to post a partner, but to post online in general. Perhaps our high surveillance culture, one where we voluntarily open our lives up to be scrutinised and to scrutinise others, has become unappetising. Furthermore, many psychological studies have pointed to the unhealthy effects social media has, especially on women, and even more especially on teen girls. This is because of the patriarchal, misogynistic culture I mentioned above. Everyone is scrutinised on the internet, but for female users, that scrutiny can be particularly severe. It’s difficult to unlearn and heal from misogynistic culture if you are constantly subjecting yourself to it.

So, what is the solution?

Holding the Tension

In Gestalt terms, we are seeing the polarity sharpening, becoming more figural. Women who were once expected to admire and idealise male partners are now finding and creating new, healthier narratives for themselves. Creative indifference asks us to hold both poles without collapsing into either; culturally we are nowhere near that balance. Yet the swing itself is necessary. It reveals the contours of the field, the ways power, gender, desire, and expectation continue to shape how we meet one another.

So, perhaps the task ahead is not to shame the swing, nor to rush ourselves out of it, but to imagine what a middle ground could feel like. Gestalt invites us to envision a field where the masculine and feminine can meet without eclipsing one another, where humour lands with heart instead of ridicule, and curiosity has room to breathe. Not everything needs to be defined, dissected, or destroyed at once, including your soft launch on Instagram.

In Gestalt terms, healing never happens at the pole. It happens in the meeting. So soft launch, hard launch, whatever is best for you! But afterwards, log off. Remember who you are, where you’re at in your own journey to self-love, what it’s taken you to get this far. At the end of the day, your decisions, your life shouldn’t be dictated by your boyfriend or your Instagram followers. 

The Awkward Beauty of Growth

As a collective, we need to spend more time with discomfort and ambiguity, including in our online time.  It’s not healthy to spend so much time eagerly examining the social media accounts of people we have parasocial relationships with— not just celebrities, but also that girl you went to school with and haven’t spoken to in 16 years, or that micro influencer you follow for good soup recipes.

If Gestalt has taught me anything, it’s that embarrassment is just the feeling that comes before contact. Gestalt psychotherapist and writer Joseph Zinker calls embarrassment “curdled joy”. So perhaps the trick is not to post it, but to stay with it, at least long enough to see what wants to emerge. Perhaps the embarrassing boyfriend discourse isn’t about ‘him’ at all. Perhaps it’s about our collective embarrassment — at how far we’ve come, how far we haven’t, and how awkward it feels to grow in public. But it’s important to remember that growth is what you make it. So, reclaim it, make it your own.

If this piece resonated with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Do you think the “embarrassing boyfriend” trend says something deeper about our relationships — or is it just another internet fad?

Leave a comment or share your reflections on social media — and don’t forget to tag me so I can join the conversation.