"is having a boyfriend embarrassing now?" yes, and that’s why we’re hiding them

they’re not a secret, they're a liability

If you’re anywhere online, you’ve probably seen the question: is having a boyfriend embarrassing now? I saw it on TikTok, naturally, the birthplace of all modern existential crises. It stuck with me because, yeah, being in a relationship does feel a little cringey these days. Like wearing matching hoodies in public or using baby talk at a restaurant. It’s not even that we hate love, it’s that being visibly in it feels like social suicide.

So I did what any reasonable person does when faced with a cultural dilemma. I took it to the besties group chat and then to my finsta stories for peer review. After multiple rounds of qualitative data collection and post-analysis voice notes, I finally read the Vogue article everyone kept referencing, the Chanté Joseph one. It didn’t really hit for me. It was smart, it was good, but it didn’t quite explain the pit in my stomach that forms whenever I see a hard launch.

So I decided to write my own. You’re welcome.

Having a boyfriend really does seem embarrassing when you look at the rise in soft launches and the trend of keeping it “lowkey”. No one’s flaunting boyfriends like accessories anymore. Maybe it’s because we’ve finally learned that men are not something to boast about.

Where I’m from, we have this saying: “o que ninguém sabe, ninguém estraga,” which translates to “what no one knows, no one ruins.” Maybe that’s the root of it. Maybe women are keeping things private because visibility has become a liability. Maybe it’s because public love has started to feel like a setup.

But if having a boyfriend is so embarrassing, how come everyone has one? All my friends are in relationships. Every influencer I follow is either in love, moving in with a man, or getting engaged. We claim it’s cringe, but we’re all posting male hands on steering wheels and shadows behind plates at restaurants. We’re not rejecting romance, we’re just rebranding it.

The only thing I’m currently sure of is that somewhere between the soft launch era and the rise of situationships, the value of having a boyfriend has plummeted.

Somewhere along the way, public love became a liability. It’s not that we’re ashamed of romance, we’re just painfully aware that men are statistically likely to humiliate you. And who wants to go from “it girl” to “poor girl” in a single news cycle?

We’ve seen it happen too many times. The girl who posts her boyfriend like he’s a soft launch rebrand, only for him to cheat, comment something weird, or reveal a questionable opinion. Suddenly she’s the fool, the meme, the “couldn’t be me” quote tweet. We don’t even mock the man anymore, we mock the woman who trusted him.

You post him once and suddenly everyone’s a market analyst for your romantic stock. One bad outfit, one questionable like, and you’re publicly reevaluating your judgment. The internet has made the girlfriend experience feel like brand alignment and some of us aren’t sure our partners are PR-safe.

That’s the horror of modern romance. You can curate your entire life, but one bad boyfriend can ruin your public image faster than a viral thread. It’s not even about heartbreak anymore, it’s about damage control. Women are hyper-aware of the optics, of the way love can instantly become content. So we’ve learned to minimize risk. Keep it on the low. Encrypt our affection.

It’s not shame, it’s survival. The soft launch isn’t mystery, it’s insurance.

And then there’s the quieter fear, not of being embarrassed, but of being absorbed. You spend years building a sense of self, becoming the main character of your own feed, and suddenly you’re someone’s girlfriend. The camera pans out. You’re no longer the story, you’re part of one.

It’s not vanity, it’s self-preservation. The moment you go public, you stop being a person and start being a plus-one. Your selfies turn into “relationship goals.” Your jokes become “his muse.” The algorithm stops reading you as an individual and starts tagging you as part of a set.

There’s a reason so many women soft launch with a plate across the table or a blurry arm in the frame, it’s intimacy without identity. Proof of love without surrendering authorship. It’s not secrecy, it’s strategy, a quiet refusal to let romance flatten your character arc. To dim your light. Neutralize your spice.

We’ve all seen it happen, a woman gets a man and suddenly her entire feed, her conversations, her existence start orbiting him. He’s not an accessory, he’s the centerpiece. And because of that, there’s a collective disdain for that girl, the one who disappears into her relationship like it’s quicksand. We mock her devotion, her naivety, her inability to post anything solo.

And maybe that’s why so many of us are now allergic to saying “I have a boyfriend” out loud. We want to distance ourselves from that archetype as much as possible. The one who made a man her personality. The one who lost her plot. So we hide our relationships not just from others, but from the fear of becoming her.

But there’s also something deeper at play, a kind of emotional risk management that goes beyond pride. Privacy has become the last luxury. Keeping a relationship off the grid isn’t about being mysterious anymore, it’s about keeping what’s real away from what’s hungry.

Put a hand up if you’ve never seen a girl comment “is your boyfriend single?” (I see no hands). Exactly. It’s funny, I get the gag, but there really are monitoring spirits out there, people who want what you have simply because it’s you who has it. I’m not saying men are some sacred prize to be protected, or that they even get “taken” (God knows they willfully go), but envy is a quiet motivator. The easiest way to guard what’s yours is to keep it unseen.

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.

So women learned to prevent the PR crisis. Keep it quiet, manage the narrative. If it implodes, it implodes privately. No tagged photos to scrub, no captions to delete, no comments to disable. Just heartbreak, unarchived.

It sounds clinical, but that’s the reality of modern romance: love is tender, but it’s also a risk assessment.

So yes, having a boyfriend is embarrassing. That’s why we’re keeping it private.

But don’t let them fool you. Everyone and their mother is cuffed up. No one’s bed is empty, no one’s DMs are dry, and no late night FaceTimes go unanswered. We’re still very much in the trenches, boo’d up, negotiating weekend plans and sharing playlists like it’s 2016 again.

We haven’t given up on love, we’ve just gotten better at PR. We’re protecting our public image from secondhand humiliation, preserving the illusion of composure. Because love might still be beautiful, but being publicly clowned? Never again.

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