If someone so much as says “my boyf–” on social media, they’re muted. There’s nothing I hate more than following someone for fun, only for their content to become “my boyfriend”-ified suddenly. This is probably because, for so long, it felt like we were living in what one of my favorite Substackers calls Boyfriend Land: a world where women’s online identities centered around the lives of their partners, a situation rarely seen reversed. Women were rewarded for their ability to find and keep a man, with elevated social status and praise. It became even more suffocating when this could be leveraged on social media for engagement and, if you were serious enough, financial gain.

However, more recently, there’s been a pronounced shift in the way people showcase their relationships online: far from fully hard-launching romantic partners, straight women are opting for subtler signs—a hand on a steering wheel, clinking glasses at dinner, or the back of someone’s head. On the more confusing end, you have faces blurred out of wedding pictures, or entire professionally edited videos with the fiancé conveniently cropped out of all shots. Women are obscuring their partner’s face when they post, as if they want to erase the fact they exist without actually not posting them.

So, what gives? Are people embarrassed by their boyfriends now? Or is something more complicated going on? To me, it feels like the result of women wanting to straddle two worlds: one where they can receive the social benefits of having a partner, but also not appear so boyfriend-obsessed that they come across as quite culturally loser-ish. “They want the prize and celebration of partnership, but understand the norminess of it,” says Zoé Samudzi, writer and activist. In other words, in an era of widespread heterofatalism, women don’t want to be seen as being all about their man, but they also want the clout that comes with being partnered.

But it’s not all about image. When I did a callout on Instagram, plenty of women told me that they were, in fact, superstitious. Some feared the “evil eye,” a belief that their happy relationships would spark a jealousy so strong in other people that it could end the relationship. Others were concerned about their relationship ending, and then being stuck with the posts. “I was in a relationship for 12 years and never once posted him or talked about him online. We broke up recently, and I don’t think I will ever post a man,” says Nikki, 38. “Even though I am a romantic, I still feel like men will embarrass you even 12 years in, so claiming them feels so lame.”