For many people my age, social media has become a center for relationships and emotional life. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram have slowly evolved into digital self-help spaces, filled with snippets of advice, pop psychology, “hope core” and catchy one-liners about relationships.
Among them is a trendy phrase: “If he wanted to, he would.”
At first glance, the line seems empowering. It tells young women to stop settling, to stop rationalizing poor treatment and to walk away from people who fail to meet their commitment needs in a relationship. However, while “If he wanted to, he would” once functioned as a tool for boundary-setting, its current use in our hyper-digital attention economy reframes love into a performance. It shifts emotional ownership away from oneself and onto another person’s behavior.
I’ll preface my argument by acknowledging that saying to yourself, “If he wanted to, he would” in the context of a current relationship where your boundaries are consistently disrespected and your communication is regularly disregarded can be extremely helpful. In a society where women are repeatedly faced with placating and rationalizing poor treatment, phrases like these can serve as a clean-cut way to move on from someone who has proved they are not worth one’s time or energy.
However, the way social media has begun framing this phrase alongside other suggestions on dating advice may be encouraging women to value performative effort over genuine care. While similar messages are perpetuated in queer dating spaces and across genders, social media disproportionately markets this specific relationship advice to women in heterosexual contexts, where algorithmic dating tips have been drawing on traditional gender scripts around masculinity and femininity.
These messages and videos seem to be feeding on sentiments regarding the death of chivalry and the trend of bringing back “manly men,” with videos featuring captions saying, “Men used to go to war.” In this context, “If he wanted to, he would” becomes less about encouraging healthy relationship boundaries and more about reviving exaggerated, performative ideals of masculinity, where love is proven through visible sacrifice and effort rather than communication or mutual understanding.
Platforms like TikTok and Instagram reward content that simplifies emotional complexity into easily shareable rules, making phrases like “If he wanted to, he would” more likely to circulate than messages that require more nuance. The phrase’s logic is simple: if he cared, he’d call; if he valued you, he’d text back; if he loved you, he’d show it. While social media did not invent anxiety, ambiguity or performance in dating, it has certainly accelerated them.
Viral videos captioned with the phrase often include images of men at war writing letters to their loved ones back home, or infamous clips from rom coms like The Notebook showing extreme, over-the-top expressions of love, displaying how a man should act in the context of a romantic relationship. These clips and images in and of themselves are not necessarily damaging. The true danger lies in what follows and can be seen through the translation of these covert expressions of love into our digital world.
In a world where Snap scores are tracked, locations constantly monitored and access to information about another person is always within grasp, phrases like “If he wanted to, he would” have promoted obsessive compulsion, manifested in a desire to constantly monitor another person’s activity as a means to gauge interest rather than communicating directly.
In 2021, more than 50% of couples in the United States reported that they met online. This is an extreme increase from only 2% of couples reporting having met online in 1995. Early phases of relationships, therefore, are increasingly occurring online, with the “talking stage” turning into a continuous performance review. Response times, online activity and engagement are treated as evidence of care, as proof of the statement “If he wanted to, he would.” Rather than evaluating a potential partner based on their personality, values, interests or compatibility, the evaluation becomes based on performance. The result is not clarity or security, but a compulsive interpretation of “signs” that could mean something but could also mean nothing.
I think most people would agree that actions often speak louder than words. Consistency, responsiveness and planning are all meaningful expressions of care in a relationship. However, issues arise when these behaviors are detached from context and intention and are instead evaluated as standalone proof of worth. When relationships become valuable only through visibility, they stop operating as a means for connection and begin functioning purely transactionally.
In a world rapidly shifting toward an attention economy, this consistent need for performative attention and validation allows relationships to become commodified. As author Mark Manson wrote in “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck,” “The quality of that attention doesn’t matter. What matters is the attention. That attention is an asset, the most valuable asset in the new economy.” The quality of the attention, or in this case, the relationship, becomes obsolete as low-effort digital responsiveness becomes interchangeable with meaningful emotional investment.
This argument is not advocating for women lowering their standards or expectations in relationships, nor is it saying we should return to some pre-digital ideal of dating, which was hardly more transparent or equitable. However, it would be naive to ignore the degree to which uncertainty in relationships is now quantified, tracked and endlessly interpreted. Social media’s overuse of simplified frameworks for eliciting relationship advice discourages communication on both sides and strengthens an increasingly isolated culture obsessed with attention and image.
This is not a call for women to do more emotional labor in regards to communication. Rather, women should be encouraged to spend less time trying to decode the men’s performance in relationships and more time evaluating their own needs and emotions. Individuals should be encouraging each other to stop the endless questions bent on evaluating male behavior and instead ask questions that pertain to them as a person. What traits does this person have that make them admirable? What aspects of their personality might inspire you to be a better person? Promoting advice that pertains to personhood, rather than performance, may let women move beyond relationships as vehicles for validation and toward meaningful partnerships that allow them to thrive.