Originally coined by TikTok user @itsalmondmilkhunni, the term “swag-gap relationship” was used to describe her reasons for not wanting to be with a partner who doesn’t have as much swag as her. “Have me showing up somewhere in public, looking swagged out, looking fly. I have a cool outfit, and then my partner just looks like an effing mess behind me," she says in the video. But notably, she mentions it's not just about clothes: "It’s an aura and an energy.” At its core, “swag” isn’t just how you dress—it’s a blend of cultural fluency, confidence, taste, and social power. Which raises a question: can you maintain a relationship with someone who holds less swag than you?
When I posed this question to my Instagram audience, the general consensus was that swag-gap relationships don’t work. One commenter told me she felt like a “victim” of a swag-gap relationship she was in last summer. “He had an endless array of spiritually disturbing graphic tees but was constantly criticizing my looks,” she explained. “He told me my vintage Balenciaga City Pom Pom bag looked like a ball sack.” She eventually broke up with him. “I actually didn’t care about his lack of swag,” she shared, “but his lack of swag made it difficult for him to understand my swag.”
On the contrary, another commenter reflected on his experience as the “non-swag” person in the relationship, and broke up with his ex-partner perhaps because of it. “People call it a swag gap, but I don’t see it that way. She was always elsewhere — work, events, and whatever,” he says. “I needed someone who showed up. We just valued different things and at some point, you have to pick consistency over everything else.”
In one of my past relationships, the swag gap didn’t show up immediately on the outside. What emerged instead was judgment. He was often critical of my taste: how I dressed, how I moved socially, what I valued culturally, and how I expressed myself. He remained committed to wearing the same T-shirts and trousers throughout our three-and-a-half years together, and over time, it became clear that we weren’t simply different—we were misaligned.
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To move beyond anecdotes, I spoke with relationship experts. Moe Ari, a certified LMFT and Hinge’s Love and Connection Expert, takes a notably optimistic view. He’s clear that while “swag cannot be transferred from one person to another,” it doesn’t automatically destabilize relationships. According to Ari, swag only becomes an issue under specific conditions.
While the ideal version of a swag-gap relationship assumes total security on both sides, in reality, insecurity is often what activates the imbalance in the first place. “Relationships tend to fail because of differences in emotional capacity, repair skills, and mutual respect,” Ari says. When one partner feels threatened by difference rather than curious about it, it becomes a point of comparison—eventually resulting in the difficulties of a “swag-gap” relationship.
According to Ari, outward “swag” isn’t the problem, unless it intersects with insecurity, comparison, or control. And in my experience, those conditions are not rare. George Rawlings, Co-Founder of the dating app Thursday, was more direct about the social mechanics at play. “The person with more swag usually controls the social rhythm,” he told me. “They decide where you go, who you hang with, how you show up. It’s rarely intentional, but it’s real.”
That imbalance, Rawlings argues, explains why swag-gap relationships often feel electric at first but unbalanced over time. “Excitement without safety never lasts. If one person is always chasing and the other is always choosing, it eventually becomes unstable.”
Crucially, Rawlings pointed to how these dynamics affect confidence over time, “It all comes down to whether the relationship feels supportive or like you’re constantly being compared,” he says. “One builds you up. The other chips away at you.” That observation mirrors both my own experience and the Instagram commenter who didn’t mind her partner’s lack of swag—until it became clear he resented hers.
There’s also a paradox at play. The partner who lacks swag often appears to gain the most from the relationship, socially and culturally. Yet that same imbalance can trigger insecurity, which is often what leads to its collapse. As relationship counsellor and global relationship science expert Paul Carrick Brunson explains, “Repeated social comparison has been linked to lower self-esteem and increased self-consciousness,” he says. “Over time, people either shrink and become quieter or overcompensate by performing and competing. Neither response supports long-term emotional closeness.”
Brunson grounds this in attachment research. “Emotional safety comes from mutuality, not hierarchy,” he says.
Ultimately, swag-gap relationships demand constant emotional regulation to keep the gap from festering into insecurity and resentment.. That doesn’t mean they always fail—but it does mean they’re “fragile by default,” explains Brunson. Swag-gap relationships therefore require intentional effort: “The partner [with more ‘swag’] must actively de-center their power, and the other partner must build confidence independent of the relationship.” Easier said than done.
