We don’t really know these people.
Yet when reports that social media influencers Desmond and Kristy Scott were divorcing after a decade of marriage, with allegations of infidelity surfacing in court documents, thousands of strangers felt personally betrayed.
Social media erupted with hot takes, conspiracy theories, and impassioned defenses of people they’d never met. Comment sections became battlegrounds where fans dissected every old post, every smile that now seemed fake, every moment that might have been a red flag they missed.
This is the parasocial relationship at its peak. An intense, one-sided emotional investment in people whose real lives remain fundamentally unknowable to us.
We consume their content, follow their stories, defend them in arguments, and genuinely believe we understand their relationships because we’ve seen their Instagram stories. We’re fully invested and ready to fight tooth and nail over bits and pieces of a story we will never see in full context.
For Black celebrity couples, this phenomenon carries additional weight. “Relationship goals” come with added expectation and adoration. Hollywood marriages are notoriously short-lived, but when we see Black couples thriving publicly, they become symbols of something larger than themselves. #RelationshipGoals is another way to see Black people shine in an industry that attempts to dim their light at every turn.
These Black couples become everything to project hopes, dreams, and unrealistic aspirations onto because they are the exceptions, the chosen few representing Black love when seeing two Black people in love is still so rare onscreen.
Kandi Burruss and Todd Tucker have navigated marriage under the harsh glare of reality television cameras. Teyana Taylor and Iman Shumpert’s split shocked fans who’d watched them build what appeared to be an unshakeable partnership, only to see Taylor move on with actor Aaron Pierre, who later ended up in reports of a breakup as well. Young Thug and Mariah the Scientist’s relationship has weathered legal troubles and public scrutiny, playing out across social media posts and song lyrics that fans analyze like sacred texts.
We celebrate these couples. We root for them. And when they struggle or separate, we mourn as if we’ve lost something personal. We shouldn’t set standards for our own lives on the unattainable facade of celebrity, ever, especially not when we’re basing them on couples who have access to endless therapy and money, which is, ironically, the leading cause of romantic splits for regular people.
Here are some lessons to take from these experiences.
1: The Performance isn’t the relationship
What we see on social media is content, not reality. When influencers like the Scotts post a couple of photos, morning routines, or romantic gestures, they’re building a brand. That brand has monetary value through sponsorships, followers, and opportunities. In some cases, the incentive to maintain the illusion of perfection is financial. Behind every picture-perfect post could be an argument that happened five minutes before or after the camera clicked. We’re comparing our unfiltered reality to their edited highlight reel, and that’s a game we can never win.
2: Black love deserves to be human
The pressure we place on Black celebrity couples to be perfect is unfair and unsustainable. When we elevate them to “relationship goals” status, we strip them of their humanity. They become symbols rather than people, representatives of Black love who must carry the weight of our collective longing to see ourselves reflected positively. But real relationships are messy, complicated, and imperfect.
3: Privacy protects intimacy
The couples who seem most stable are often those who share the least. Kandi and Todd’s relationship struggles have been Reality TV fodder, every disagreement dissected by viewers who feel entitled to weigh in. That kind of exposure makes genuine vulnerability nearly impossible. How do you have difficult conversations knowing they might become next week’s episode?
4: Your Relationship doesn’t need an audience
If your partnership requires public affirmation to feel real, it might be worth examining why external approval has become more important than internal connection.
The Scotts’ divorce is ultimately their business, not ours. Whatever happened between them, infidelity or otherwise, belongs to them to process privately, if they can find any privacy after building a public brand on their marriage. Our obsession with their story says more about us than about them. It reveals our hunger for connection, our desire to believe lasting love is possible, and our willingness to invest emotionally in strangers rather than focusing that energy on our own relationships.
