How to Stay Single — Keep Listening To TikTok Advice
Looking around, pretty much the only thing I did right was choosing the right partner. And that was just by chance. We’ve managed to stay together for over 14 years and are now at a stage where we just assume we’ll be together until we die. How romantic, I know.
And yet I wonder, if we had met now and not 15 years earlier, whether we would still be together.
Or whether I would have dumped him because he wouldn’t peel an orange for me? Or whether he’d dumped me because I couldn’t clean up a ketchup stain properly?
On TikTok, the hashtag #orangepeeltheory gathered millions of views. [Mostly] women ask their male partners to peel an orange for them. If they do, it’s to show that they love you and you keep them.
The ketchup challenge follows a similar pattern: [usually] a woman spills ketchup on the counter and asks her partner to wipe it up. If he does, he’s a loyal loving boyfriend. If he doesn’t or cannot, he’s a slob or, worse, is using weaponised incompetence and should be ditched.
Both of these have sparked debates of whether this is a right gauge for a relationship.