Woman Finds Out that Boyfriend Has Been Using Her Struggles to Grow His ‘Self-Help’ Social Media Page

Relationships can grow stronger when partners support each other through hard times, but they can also be tested by how each person deals with vulnerability.

In this case, a woman facing burnout turned to the person she trusted most, only to discover her lowest moments had become content for his social media.

During a period of severe exhaustion from her healthcare job, one Reddit user revealed she had “a full on burnout,” with “panic attacks, no energy, crying in the shower at 6am before my shift, the whole thing.”

The 27-year-old explained that she has been dating her boyfriend for three years. At first, she felt supported when he would step up in practical, loving ways by making her dinner, picking her up from work and reminding her to drink water.

However, around that same time, he launched a small mental health TikTok account. At first, the videos were simple and sweet, like motivational quotes alongside images of their cat. But things changed one night when she heard her own words.

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“He had clipped something I said during a really low week about feeling like ‘a used up phone battery that never fully charges again’ and turned it into an inspirational voiceover,” she explained in the post. “The caption was ‘my girlfriend taught me this and it changed my life.’ ”

After that, he began asking deeper questions while she was clearly struggling, and later she would hear those same phrases on TikTok. Although he never used her name, friends started to notice as the videos went viral.

A coworker even pulled the Reddit user aside to ask if she was okay because “that TikTok sounded exactly like you.”

When she confronted her boyfriend about feeling “exposed,” he insisted she should feel proud to be helping others and claimed she was overreacting.

Still, the user confessed that it made her feel like she couldn’t “vent to my own partner” without fearing her pain would become part of his next round of content.

The whole situation left the Reddit user questioning if this was “something we can fix with boundaries” or if his “using my worst moments as material [is] already a dealbreaker?”

Most commenters encouraged the woman to end their relationship, noting that “it’s messy when his success is tied to your suffering.”

“At the end of the day, your personal health and struggles are just that, personal. You have every right to want them personal,” one user wrote. “I would struggle trusting someone with my most inner deepest thoughts, knowing that it’s highly likely that they will be putting it out on their public social platforms.”