Kylie Jenner slid into the Page Six TikTok comments to thirst over her own boyfriend. Publicly. With emojis.
Timothée Chalamet, the man she finally walked a red carpet with in May, got a flirty little drop of public affection from Kylie in front of, oh, the entire internet. And the internet did what the internet does. Eye-rolls. “PR stunt.” “Cringe.” “She’s trying too hard.”
Put the judgment down for a second.
Because if you read that comment through the lens of how human attachment actually works, you are not watching a tabloid stunt. You are watching a nervous system publicly declare it has found its person. That is a much bigger deal than the algorithm wants you to think it is.
The Digital Moonwalk
In my opinion, we are an interdependent species. We are born to need connection, and we are born to need a primary person to be emotionally bonded to, from the cradle to the grave.
When two people are falling for each other, the nervous system is doing an ancient little dance to lock the bond in. I joke about this in my office. You see someone across the room, you break dance a little. They moonwalk back. Someone could complement my great break dancing skills with their moonwalking.
That flirty TikTok comment from Kylie? That’s a digital moonwalk. That’s the nervous system publicly signaling, this is the one I’m hoping my emotional love needs will be met by.
But there’s a compounding factor with someone like Kylie. She lives in a goldfish bowl. Every move is seen by the village. Both villages. Watched, screenshot, archived, saved, shared.
When you grow up inside that level of exposure, where every relationship is public content, you develop a protector part just to survive the vulnerability of it. I know this from my own life before I met my wife, Teale. I became The Seducer. My worth in love was determined entirely by whether I could be seductive. Whether someone wanted me. Whether I could perform the version of myself I believed I needed to be to be chosen.
When we watch a celebrity “thirst” online, that protector part is at play. Desirability becomes a shield. Public affection becomes proof of bond. And underneath the shiny, flirty performance, the limbic system is asking the only two questions that ever actually matter: Are you there for me? Am I enough for you?
What The Honeymoon Phase Is Actually Doing
I see this exact dynamic every Tuesday on the couch in my San Francisco office. High-achieving founders, executives, creatives. People who built their entire early relationship on intoxicating, seductive validation.
Here’s what nobody tells you about the thirsty phase. The brain is flooded with dopamine. You feel chosen. You feel safe. You feel like a miracle is happening.
Then it ends. Your sexy self met your partner. Now your vulnerable self has to make love to them.
When the constant validation fades, when he doesn’t text back in three minutes, when she’s too tired to flirt, the nervous system that built its safety on being desired goes into absolute panic. The absence of desire registers as an existential threat. Curious where you fall on that spectrum? You can find out your relationship pattern in about three minutes.
The same person who left thirsty comments is suddenly furious about the dishwasher. Everybody comes into my office at first as the world-renowned expert in the problems of their partner. I tell them, if I was gonna hold a conference next week on the problems of your partner, it’s the other spouse that would be the keynote speaker.
They think they’re fighting about Instagram likes, working late, who texted whom. I call all of it the who-did-what-when bucket. The actual root is always the same grief: the person I chose as my safe harbor suddenly feels like a source of danger.
That’s where the honeymoon goes to die. Or transform.
Stop Pathologizing People For Falling In Love
The algorithm is going to want you to label Kylie as “trying too hard.” Diagnose them as codependent. Performative. Doomed. The algorithm is a fiat mother. She gives you sugar when you need protein. She mines your nervous system for engagement.
Diagnosis gives a kind of certainty when a bond feels threatened. It turns pain into a story with a villain. And it’s a trap. I see a related version of it in the science behind unrequited love, where people would rather pathologize the longing than feel it.
I will not hear you call yourself codependent. I won’t hear it. You’re two people that love each other because love is primary.
Kylie thirsting over Timothée in a public comment section is not a pathology. It’s an attachment adaptation. Underneath it I hear the same wound I hear in everyone. I want to be chosen. I want to feel safe. I want to build a life with someone.
In a culture that constantly makes you feel like you’re falling behind, like you’re not enough, finding someone you genuinely want to thirst over is a small miracle. It doesn’t matter how grown up you are. When it comes to love you’re still a little baby.
That TikTok comment isn’t cringe to me. It’s a human being brave enough to say, I want you. Go to the grocery store, buy a cheap bottle of champagne, and celebrate the fact that we’re so important to each other.
What I’d Say To Them On My Couch
If Kylie and Timothée were on my couch right now, glowing in the early high, I’d validate the absolute hell out of it first. Drink the champagne. Make the comment. Let your nervous system have its moment.
Then I’d say the thing they don’t want to hear yet.
Don’t waste your energy trying to make sure you never fight, because you’re going to. Right now you’re running on the fuel of being chosen. Real love, the kind that survives the goldfish bowl, requires a different kind of proof of work. The kind I dug into in the science behind ai relationship coach.
One of you will feel misunderstood. One of you will pull away. The other will panic. That moment is not the end of love. That’s where actual love starts.
The Line Worth Screenshotting
We watch celebrities and forget they have nervous systems too. Underneath the red carpets and the followers and the brand deals, they’re two little kids inside, reaching out, hoping against hope that this time, they won’t be dropped.
That’s all any of us are doing.
The flirty comment isn’t the story. The courage to want someone in public is.
________________________________________________________________________________
Figs O’Sullivan and his wife, Teale, are couples therapists in San Francisco, relationship experts to the Stars and Silicon Valley, founders of Empathi, and built the Figlet platform, an AI relationship coach trained on their clinical work.
