‘If he wanted to he would’: The problem with TikTok dating advice

“If he wanted to he would”. Look under the comments of any TikTok video about dating and you’ll see it repeated over and over again; it’s a promise of clarity, an explanation, a definitive answer to any and all problems that could arise in a relationship. But relationships aren’t that simple. With the rise of TikTok, and the generic, algorithm-driven dating advice that comes with it, we are continually encouraged to seek a one-size-fits-all answer to our problems. As more of us turn to an app rather than our partners or friends for advice, we risk reducing complex dynamics into 30-second videos that assume the worst, and ask for the impossible. TikTok has no shortage of “dating experts”, and their advice offers a bleak and overwhelmingly negative outlook on our relationships.

Today, I opened TikTok to see a video entitled “At the end of the day, dump him”, in which the creator listed a number of ‘flaws’ deemed worthy of a breakup. Among them, the simple act of questioning if your boyfriend has cheated on you: “at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether or not he was actually cheating on you, the fact is you’re questioning [it]”. Now, in some cases, this might be a valid point  – yes, of course your boyfriend shouldn’t be making you feel like he has cheated on you. But I can’t help but wonder about the effects that this sort of content has on relationships where this isn’t the case. Or relationships where one party is naturally prone to doubts, and is convinced by someone they’ve never met to dump a boyfriend who is “trying his best”, because – as this TikTok put it – “his best ain’t it”. Every relationship is different, and when we simplify all problems down to one issue with the exact same solution, we strip away the nuance that real-life situations often require.

These TikToks, along with offering an overwhelmingly negative outlook, encourage unrealistic standards for our dating lives. Entering this side of TikTok, you are met with a barrage of content centred around communication.We’re not meant to be reachable 24/7, but by telling us to expect this, these “dating experts” are only setting us up for failure. Creators often make assertions about how long it should take to receive a reply to a text message (their answers all differ), but also about how often you should see one another (on which they also can’t agree). Their advice is the same for developing relationships; I have seen countless Tiktoks claiming that if someone is interested in you, they will make the effort to seek you out. But the reality is that this kind of constant open communication isn’t natural. If your partner is working, busy, or even just in need of an hour to themselves, not texting back  does not mean that they don’t care about you, and TikTok should not tell us that it does. 

This kind of advice doesn’t just set unrealistic expectations, but actively discourages real communication. Instead of having a conversation with our partners, we are encouraged to analyse, dissect, interpret, and ultimately to assume the worst. Even where there were no issues in the relationship, this ensures that they can be easily created. Tiktok constructs a paranoia, whereby taking time to reply to a message suddenly represents a lack of interest, spending too much time with friends becomes a sign that they don’t care. We begin to hold our partners to unrealistic standards, quietly “testing” them to see if they will fail, rather than being honest with them about what we need. But relationships aren’t built on mind-reading. A simple conversation would suffice to fix most of the issues that these TikToks claim to resolve. But that wouldn’t generate enough views. And therein lies the problem. 

The people making these videos know exactly what will work to gain more clicks, more likes, more followers. They know that the more dramatic they are, the more likely their viewers are to continue watching, and this in turn ensures that the TikTok algorithm suggests similarly outlandish videos. And so the cycle continues; we see a video telling us that something our partner did is breakup-worthy (like when they took too long to reply to a text the other day), and we watch it until the end. This ensures that we are shown similar content. We then begin to overthink (how long will it take them to reply to this text?), and draw the worst possible conclusions when we don’t get the desired outcome. All the while the comments section continues to whisper “if he wanted to he would”. And so we continue to doubt our relationship, watching more videos for an explanation – and the one provided is ultimately generic and hollow. 

At this point, the problem isn’t necessarily the relationship at all. It’s the way that we’re being told to interpret it. These videos, through capitalising on an insecurity, manage to create problems even where there were none, so that their creators can then offer a solution. These TikTok “dating experts” may offer us a quick fix to our problems, but relationships don’t need generic answers or universal solutions – they need communication. So, if we want a relationship, maybe we should look away from our screens and towards the person that we want to build it with.