Can your relationship survive the so-called ‘swag gap’?

There’s one thing I’d bet money any self-assured person was told by their mum if someone didn’t like them at school: “They’re just jealous.” The phrase immediately bolsters confidence and short circuits insecurity by letting the person needing validation know that actually, they’re better than everyone who treats them poorly. The social media theory equivalent to this? Swag gap relationships. A ridiculous phrase — but those who’ve suffered them say the dynamic is something to beware of.

The term, which has rapidly grown in popularity on TikTok in recent weeks, with Julia Fox, model and former girlfriend of Kanye West, among adopters, denotes when a friend or date doesn’t reach the same levels of cool as you (whether that’s in terms of confidence, wardrobe, or career) and ultimately burns down the relationship by lashing out in envy or deploying insecure imitation. “You can’t date or be friends if there’s a swag gap because they’ll end up being jealous and psycho trying to become you,” preaches a girl in one video, now with over 142,000 likes of agreement. “Never again,” swear those affected in the comments.

Swag, short for swagger, was popularised over the last two decades by rappers like Jay-Z, Lil B, Soulja Boy and Gucci Mane, and later by Justin Bieber, who sparked a resurgence of the term among Gen Z with the release of his seventh studio album Swag in July. Nevertheless, even Bieber himself has been accused of having a “swag gap” with his wife Hailey Bieber recently, due to her dressing in a chic strapless red mini dress for an event in New York, while the singer trailed behind in a grey hoodie and matching jersey shorts. Before the release of his new music, Bieber appeared to be on a career hiatus, while Hailey landed a $1bn (£743m) deal for her beauty brand, Rhode.

Kanye West

Claiming you have a “swag gap” with someone and therefore can’t be friends or romantically involved because they’ll get jealous, initially, does sound outrageously self-absorbed. As a general rule, thinking you’re better than those around you usually means you’re obnoxious and lucky to have people in your life at all. But the true issue is not how cool a partner or friend presents to the outside world, but if they perceive themselves as failing in comparison to those around them and how that makes them treat others. Inferiority complexes can jump out in ugly ways. In fact, research found that men actively feel worse about themselves when their female partners succeed. Think of Andy’s boyfriend in the Devil Wears Prada. Or, Ross Geller to Rachel Green when she lands her dream job at Ralph Lauren after years of slogging it as a waitress in Friends.

As 26-year-old Aaliyah’s burgeoning journalism career took off, the guy she was dating seemed stuck at the bottom of the career ladder. “He was very insecure about what I was doing, events I was attending, the social circles I was in,” she says. “He couldn’t match up to that — and I wasn’t expecting him to. It’s just, the things I liked to do created this wedge between us. It ended up fizzling out because I felt like he was taking out his career frustrations on me,” she adds. “It was actually quite sad... I was seeing if I could build a life with this person but he just started to resent (me).”

Issy, a 25-year-old lawyer, can relate. She met her boyfriend when she was 16 — but in the time it took her to graduate from university with first class honours, complete a master’s degree and land her first job with a firm in London, he had done little to advance himself. “You cannot have a relationship with someone in a different league to you,” she says. “I did for eight-and-a-half years and it dragged me back for eight-and-a-half years.