I was on the sofa last Tuesday with a lukewarm takeaway on my lap and the telly on mute when the first one popped up. A girl I used to work with, standing on a beach in matching white linen with her bloke, the sun setting behind them like it had been booked in advance. Caption said “forever starts here.” I looked down at my foil tray of chicken and chips and felt the familiar little drop in my stomach. Not jealousy exactly. Just the quiet sense that my Tuesday had lost a fight it did not know it was in.
I started asking the women I know how often they do the same thing. Compare the actual evening they are having to the version someone else posted. The answers came back fast and a bit ashamed. One of the Coven girls said she does it most nights. She will be sitting there in her pyjamas, eating leftovers, and then a video of a proposal with fireworks and a string quartet appears and suddenly her own living room looks like a waiting room. She said she knows it is not real. She still feels it.
Another woman, thirty, told me she muted half her friends last year because she could not take another coordinated holiday photo. Matching swimsuits, the same pose on every balcony, the caption about “our little bubble.” She said her own relationship is fine. They argue about whose turn it is to put the bins out and they eat on the sofa more nights than they sit at the table. She said that used to feel normal. Now it feels like she is failing a test nobody told her she was sitting.
The content itself is everywhere. Proposals that look like film sets. Anniversaries with matching outfits and a photographer hiding in the bushes. Sunday mornings that somehow always include fresh flowers and perfect lighting. None of it is new. People have always shown the best version. The difference now is the volume and the speed. You cannot scroll for five minutes without seeing someone else’s highlight reel and measuring your Tuesday against it.
I spoke to a woman who has been with her partner eight years. She said they have a good life. They laugh a lot. They also have weeks where they barely speak because work is brutal and the flat is too small. She said she used to think that was just what long relationships look like. Then she started seeing the other versions and wondered if she had settled. She knows she has not. The feeling still arrives anyway.
My mum does not understand the problem. I tried explaining it last Sunday. She said in her day you just got on with it and did not need to see what everyone else was doing. I told her we cannot not see it. It is on the phone, in the kitchen, in bed, on the bus. She shook her head and asked if I wanted more stuffing. Some things do not translate.
I caught myself doing it again last week. A friend from school posted a video of her bloke cooking dinner, candles, the whole thing. I looked at the pasta I had just thrown together and felt the same small defeat. I know her. I know they had a massive row the week before because he forgot her birthday. None of that made the video. The video still won.
The women I talk to are not stupid. They know the arguments happen off camera. They know the matching outfits get taken off and left on the floor. They know the proposal that looked effortless took six months of planning and a small fortune. Knowing it does not stop the comparison. The brain still does the maths. My Tuesday night takeaway versus their filtered forever. It is not a fair fight. It still feels like one.
One girl told me she has started posting the opposite on purpose. The messy kitchen. The argument face. The takeaway on the sofa. It gets a fraction of the likes. She said she does it anyway because she is tired of feeling like her actual life is the rough draft.
I asked another woman how often she compares. She said every single day. Not in a dramatic way. Just a quick glance at someone else’s Sunday and then a look around her own living room. She said it is like being shown a finished painting while you are still mixing the colours. You know yours will look different. You still wish it looked more like theirs.
The platforms love this stuff because it keeps people watching. A perfect couple video holds attention longer than a video of two people eating in silence. The algorithm does not care that the silence is often the honest bit. It cares that the fireworks get more loops.
I see it in the Coven chat too. Someone will post a screenshot of a friend’s anniversary post and write “I cannot compete with this.” Nobody tells her she should not be competing. We all just send the same tired emoji and change the subject. We know the feeling. We just do not have a better answer for it.
Last night I put the phone in the other room and ate my chips in peace. The living room stayed ordinary. No string quartet. No matching linen. Just me and the telly and the foil tray. It did not feel broken. It just felt like Tuesday. Some of us are trying to remember that Tuesday was never supposed to look like a film. The films are still winning most nights. The takeaway is still here in the morning.