Most of my girlfriends want a golden retriever boyfriend. One who is always happy, always by their side, vibrating with enthusiasm at the mere fact that their queen exists. It sounds quite lovely. I, however, am partial to Rottweiler energy. Tough, stoic, a complete teddy bear when nobody is looking. Maybe it is daddy issues. Maybe it is a preference for emotional complexity over perpetual sunshine. Who knows. But I have come to accept that every anthropomorphic rationalization of a man's personality comes with its own set of red flags, some just more visible than others. With a Rottweiler, the flags are obvious. With a golden retriever, they are hidden behind an ever-present smile and a frankly irresistible amount of enthusiasm. Carrie Bradshaw had Aidan, and we all decided this was the pinnacle of romantic achievement. The devoted man. The uncomplicated man. The man who showed up, loved openly, and never played games. And then the show put both him and Big to the test, and both of them failed in their own spectacular ways, because the golden retriever archetype, for all its warmth, carries its own brand of dysfunction. It just takes longer to find it beneath the wagging. Around 45% of surveyed singles say they are looking for a golden-retriever-type partner, according to Tinder data. The longing is real, and it makes complete sense in the context of a dating landscape that has spent several years being colonized by men who think expressing affection makes them a simp. Against that backdrop, a man who dances with you under the Eiffel Tower, flies across the world to spend two days with you, or refuses to walk a red carpet until his wife has had her moment first, is not just appealing. He is revolutionary. He is also, potentially, a lot. Turns out psychologists have a name for it, and it's not flattering. ai-generated image The celebrity golden retrievers have done considerable work in establishing the archetype. Tom Holland beams on red carpets the moment Zendaya appears, as though she is the sun and he has been waiting in the dark. He reportedly stepped back from walking alongside her at a premiere, explaining: "It's not my moment, it's her moment. If we go together, it's about us." You may now swoon. Callum Turner flew repeatedly across the world to spend brief stretches of time with Dua Lipa during filming, and when asked whether it was worth it, said: "It's worth it." Let's not think about his carbon footprint for a second. Travis Kelce has won over the Taylor Swift fandom, an extraordinary feat that requires a complete absence of ego that most men could not sustain for a single press cycle, let alone a multi-year relationship conducted almost entirely in public. These men appear sincere. And a landmark survey of over 64,000 women across 180 countries, conducted by the University of Göttingen in 2019, found that almost 90% of women rated kindness as their top priority when selecting a long-term partner. The golden retriever trend has data behind it, not just a wagging tail. zendaya Dr. Sabrina Romanoff, a licensed clinical psychologist and professor at Yeshiva University, identifies a central irony of the golden retriever boyfriend. "The exact same traits that can make them so great and easygoing tend to be the essence of complaints among their partners." The qualities that make a golden retriever boyfriend wonderful are the same qualities that, taken to their natural conclusion, become a different problem entirely. Dr. Christie Ferrari, a clinical psychologist, told Real Simple that the payoff is real. "When someone is consistently warm, responsive, and affectionate, the relationship tends to feel more secure, making it easier for both people to feel satisfied." The problem, as Romanoff notes, is that the comfort can become a dependency. If your nervous system has outsourced its regulation to someone else's perpetual good mood, you are not emotionally safe. You are emotionally reliant, which is a different arrangement and one that does not hold up well under pressure. Chermiti Mohamed/Unsplash (not the actual photo) The positivity is lovely until it becomes a management strategy. Brianna Paruolo, a licensed mental health therapist and founder of On Par Therapy, notes that avoidance has a price. "Unaddressed feelings and issues don't just disappear. Instead, they can fester and lead to resentment." Conflict, in other words, is a feature of a working relationship rather than a bug. A golden retriever boyfriend who defaults to playfulness when you are trying to have a serious conversation, who deflects with humor when you raise a concern, who would rather go play fetch than sit with something uncomfortable, is not avoiding conflict because he is happy. He is avoiding conflict because he does not know how to have it. These are different problems with the same face. ai-generated image The most significant red flag embedded in the golden retriever archetype is the one that looks most like a virtue: the eagerness to please. "If someone is constantly trying to make their partner happy or avoid upsetting them, they may start ignoring their own needs or opinions. In the long run, this can lead to frustration or resentment," warns Dr. Ferrari. A person who has suppressed their own preferences for the entirety of a relationship does not remain serene forever. They eventually become either a doormat or a grenade, and the transition is often surprising to everyone. Romanoff adds that "someone who uses the defense of people-pleasing may have difficulty with emotional regulation and rely on others to feel safe and good about themselves." The golden retriever boyfriend who lives on constant reassurance, who visibly deflates without praise, and who needs your approval to feel valuable is projecting confidence through cheerfulness. Underneath that performance is someone who is dependent on external validation, and you will eventually have to give it constantly or watch him struggle. Julia Childs Heyl, a therapist who has watched the golden retriever boyfriend trend circulate through TikTok, has concerns of her own. "If your partner relies only on you for social connection, isolation can occur." The golden retriever is not expressing love when he never wants to be away from you or when he needs to be involved in every plan and present for every outing. He is expressing a social dependency that will eventually compress your world. If he begins to feel guilty when you see friends without him, or frames your independent time as a form of abandonment, the tail is wagging over something much less adorable. Josh Hild/Unsplash (not the actual photo) The golden retriever boyfriend was celebrated so comprehensively and so quickly that the backlash arrived almost before the trend had finished establishing itself. A TikTok video with close to 160,000 likes connected golden retriever attributes with weaponized incompetence, the pattern where someone performs helplessness to avoid responsibility while maintaining the emotional benefit of appearing sweet and well-meaning. "Golden retriever men paint themselves as fragile so they always get the benefit of the doubt," argues Beca (@becamichie), to the enthusiastic agreement of her comment section. She does come across as a little scorned, so most likely a GR man (you can slot the abbreviation into your dictionary now) got on her bad side. Relationship coach Greta Bereisaite told The Independent that people-pleasing, codependency, and disregard for personal boundaries are the red flags most commonly associated with this personality type. "This can get overwhelming over time, while in the beginning it seems loving and cute," she said. "Unless you love someone being glued to you, the man is not for you." taylorswift Some women have pivoted entirely to a different breed. The Doberman boyfriend (intelligent, fiercely loyal, and capable of being left alone without separation anxiety) has been gaining traction as an alternative ideal. The common thread across both archetypes, and the one the University of Göttingen data points toward, is that what women are actually looking for is sincerity and warmth, not a specific breed of emotional performance. Dr. Lalitaa Suglani, a relationship expert at eHarmony, introduces a variable the trend tends to overlook: individual compatibility. "What makes it trickier if you're more of an independent dater type, preferring to have a bit more space to yourself, is having a partner that's overly attached to you." eHarmony's research found that many singles over 40 are actively prioritizing independence alongside connection, reflecting a desire for both support and personal autonomy. A golden retriever boyfriend who cannot give you space is not being loving. He is being anxious, and that is a different thing to sign up for. Vitaly Gariev/Pexels (not the actual photo) Childs Heyl says there is danger in idealizing relationships we know nothing about. "Idealization is when we focus solely on the positive attributes of someone or something, leading us to minimize any negative qualities. This can become problematic because nothing is all good nor all bad, and insisting a relationship only has good qualities means we're overlooking the reality of the connection." Tom Holland beaming on a red carpet is a photograph. Travis Kelce cheering in the stands is a clip. Callum Turner dancing under the Eiffel Tower is a moment. These are the curated surfaces of relationships that contain everything a relationship contains: difficulty, negotiation, private frustration, the moments that do not make it to social media because they are not the version anyone wants to share. Using them as the template for what a relationship should look like is like using a highlight reel as a training manual. The highlight reel does not contain the footage of what happened before and after. "A partner who challenges you in a healthy, respectful way can help you grow as a person. Being with someone who encourages growth or reflection and brings new perspectives helps you avoid falling into old habits," says Suglani. A partner who never challenges you, agrees with everything, and smooths over every tension with enthusiasm and affection is comfortable. He is not necessarily helping you become more than you already are. Stephen Andrews/Unsplash (not the actual photo) The golden retriever boyfriend is a response to something real. The manosphere's insistence that emotional availability is weakness has created a generation of women who are deeply grateful for a man who shows up and means it, and the gratitude is understandable. Kindness is not a low bar. It is a foundational requirement, and the fact that it feels remarkable when present says something uncomfortable about how often it has been absent. But kindness without self-awareness is not a relationship. It is a performance of one, and it eventually exacts a cost from the person receiving it. If a golden retriever boyfriend has never developed his own opinions and cannot hold a difficult conversation, he is only the first draft of a dream. The best version of the golden retriever boyfriend is a person who is secure enough to be warm without being dependent, generous without being self-erasing, devoted without being suffocating. That is not a breed. That is just emotional maturity, which comes in every color, every size, and yes, occasionally in a Rottweiler.
