Please stop dating men who don't actually like you.

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We need to talk about your boyfriend, the one you keep making excuses for.

He's the one who can't celebrate your wins. The one who's strangely jealous of your success. The one who never makes the effort with your friends. The one who constantly belittles you in public to land a "funny" joke.

He's the one who — and this is a very real story — ate all your carefully packed snacks while you were running a marathon (aka a whopping 42.2km), despite knowing you needed them to stay fuelled.

He's also the one who — again, very real — packed dog food in a bag as a "joke" when you asked him to bring you lunch at work.

But he's just kidding! I love him! He's not always like this! You don't know him like I do!

Sure. It's definitely just a coincidence that every single story about him and interaction with him paints the exact same picture. Right.

Listen to Mamamia Out Loud discuss the new high-status boyfriend doing the rounds. Post continues below.

We either all know this relationship or have lived it. And there's an uncomfortable truth to address here.

You're not dealing with a partner with "bad timing" or a "dark sense of humour". It's something worse: he doesn't actually like you. He's subtly sabotaging you.

You might not think these little things are that deep. But they're not random incidents; they're a pattern.

They're part of a bigger issue: the subtly threatened man who undermines his partner's success, happiness or potential. It's veiled resentment disguised as "love" or "a joke".

We all know Andy's unsupportive boyfriend Nate was the real villain in The Devil Wears Prada. Nate wasn't mad that Andy was busy; he was mad that she was successful without him. His unsupportiveness wasn't about missing her; it was about resenting the fact her ambition had outgrown his safe, comfortable world.

For years, women have been unknowingly trained to "manage his ego."

We dress down our wins, downplay our promotions, and laugh off the belittling jokes, because deep down, we're more concerned with his comfort than with our own deserved pride. We are, in effect, dimming our own light to keep him from feeling small.

It's not that these men are monsters; they're often casualties of a patriarchy that taught them their value is tied to being the "biggest", the "best", or the "breadwinner". When you excel, it doesn't just challenge you — it threatens their core sense of self. And that insecurity turns toxic.

By subtly sabotaging you, he's whittling down your self-confidence until you're a duller version of yourself, unaware that you deserve better.

Watch: Woman's husband packs dog food for her lunch. Post continues below.

But if your friends weren't enough, the age of social media has thousands of strangers ready to call out the behaviour for you.

So, when women shared supposedly funny videos about their husbands online, we weren't laughing.

"It's sabotage. He was jealous and wanted her to fail," one person wrote on TikTok.

"Oh, he hates her and her accomplishments," another added.

One comment struck me at my core: "Some women are literally sleeping next to their biggest haters and they don't even know it."

And she's right. The truth is, your boyfriend doesn't see you as an equal.

He might say he's rooting for you, but he doesn't actually want you to be faster than him, make more money than him, have a busier social circle than him, or flourish without him.

And frankly, I am so over it. I'm over hearing about women settling, devoting their time and energy to a man who doesn't see them as an equal. Because we all deserve more.

Stop making excuses for people who are showing you they don't care about you.

Because these men don't deserve to be defended over and over again.

Real love is support. It's not just "I'm proud of you." It's making space for her success, anticipating your needs and becoming your biggest hype-man — not dimming your light.

It's sure as hell not subtle sabotage.

A man who truly loves you will clear the path for your wins, not eat your snacks on the sidelines.

Feature image: 20th Century Fox.