You’ve finally found the one. Someone who you genuinely feel connected to, your other half, the peanut butter to your jelly. So much so, that you have probably started imagining your wedding two weeks into meeting them. Your friends call you crazy, however, this time it feels different. Your usual over the top, romantic delusions feel like they could turn into reality. Until you decide to open the TikTok app and see a random video of someone ranting about their recent split with their significant other,which sends you into a spiral of endless doom scrolling, totally convincing yourself that your partner is going to break up with you soon. But, why is it that one little video can change your entire outlook on relationships?
If you happen to be living under a rock, TikTok is a popular, arguably addictive, social media app that allows you to watch short video content. The videos you interact with the most help TikTok create a personalized feed that you can scroll through.
With that information, many fall into the trap of stumbling upon the relationship advice side of TikTok. With the abundance of videos on the app itself, so many people have the ability to share their own opinions on relationships, many of those opinions being negative outweighing the positives. For example, there are many videos encouraging others to use their partners for their money and gifts while offering them nothing in return. As well as, videos making jokes about cheating on significant others or even being violent towards them. Constantly consuming media like this can easily warp your perception of what a healthy relationship looks like compared to an unhealthy one.
Content Creators on TikTok have even gone as far as creating new phrases to further change how the audience perceives relationships. One of the main phrases that are seen a lot is, “If he wanted to he would”, a self-explanatory statement claiming that if a guy is not taking the time to meet your expectations, then he is just not interested in you. Another being the “three-month rule”, meaning you should wait three months before entering a relationship with the person you are dating to get to know them so you don’t fall in love with the wrong person. And, the most notorious term happens to be the word “Situationship”, coined to describe two people who do everything that consists of being in a relationship without any labels.
These phrases have seemingly increased hysteria around getting into relationships,Forcing consumers to constantly have those terms running through their minds can completely turn them off from the dating scene altogether.
All in all, keeping your relationship and the internet’s opinions separate is a great way to avoid falling into the trap of listening to advice from TikTokers,especially ones that know nothing about you and your partner. At the end of the day, they are just strangers on the internet. Your relationship is yours for a reason, so stop comparing it to others and projecting that ridiculous TikTok advice you saw onto it. Applying that simple rule can not only be beneficial to yourself but your relationship as well!
