Feeling salty? We’re finally being honest with our mates about their sh**ty dates

Although she’s more straightforward with other friends when it comes to their dating lives — gently but firmly steering them away from rationalising shitty behaviour — Robyn* has become a habitual sugarcoater with her friend Lola*. Over the past few months, Lola has been dating again after a bad break-up. According to Robyn, though, she’s still "smarting from the previous relationship" and is bringing "quite toxic fixations" into new romantic situations. But if Robyn or other close girlfriends try to challenge Lola’s behaviour or unpack these dynamics, "you’d better expect the silent treatment".

Yet, lately, Robyn has noticed something unusual happening. "Lola has started turning to one of our straight male friends for advice, who’s able to be much more honest and sometimes even quite brutal in his response," reveals Robyn. "She’s more receptive to his on-the-nose statements, whereas if they came from me, it would send our friendship to the rocks. There is a fine line I walk that our straight male friends don’t have to; I don’t fully understand why."

While Robyn’s situation may be unique, the concept of heterosexual women turning to men for their ruthless takes about the guys they’re dating isn’t anything new. I mean, hello, remember when Sex and the City ’s Miranda turned to Carrie’s boyfriend Berger to analyse her date’s behaviour, leading to the immortal words, ‘He’s just not that into you’? Miranda found the phrase completely liberating. It also became the inspiration behind a 2004 self-help book and subsequent 2009 romcom of the same name. All pointed towards the same conclusion, neatly summarised by Justin Long’s character in the film: "Trust me when I say if a guy is treating you like he doesn’t give a shit, he genuinely doesn’t give a shit."

Over a decade later and, while we’ve thankfully moved away from a lot of the gender essentialism promoted in the movie, it seems women who date men are still looking to men for merciless candour. In fact, as per its 2025 dating trend predictions, Bumble noticed that an increasing number of single women (31%) are being more open with their male friends than they used to be about their dating lives, with 54% asking them to help explain other men’s dating behaviour and 22% of them enlisting men to filter potential dates. (The jury’s still out on whether this actually yields helpful results.)

The phenomenon even became a TikTok trend, with viral videos showing male frankness in action, with men getting painfully real with women about what their hook-ups’ behaviour really means. One TikToker made a series out of it, filming her boyfriend giving her single best friend often-savage dating advice.

That’s not to say women aren’t candid with their friends, nor that men are always brutally honest — but men do have more of a reputation for being what we’re dubbing ‘saltcoaters’. A ‘saltcoater’ is someone (of any gender) who’ll call out a friend’s love interest, or even a friend, for red flag behaviour; who’ll — hopefully delicately — tell their friend when it seems like someone just isn’t that into them; essentially, someone who isn’t afraid to give a little tough love.

But, while TikTokers are taking brutal advice on the chin, is there such a thing as too much honesty in a friendship? Should you sometimes nurture your friends’ delulu-ness? Or is it better to be blunt and save them potentially months and even years of romantic angst?

Cruel to be kind

According to a 2018 study by WISERD Education about what young people want from their friendships, 67% of respondents said they value honesty — the most popular trait after humour (82%) and, interestingly, even more valued than kindness (61%). This is especially true in dating, with Tinder reporting that 60% of surveyed singles turned to their friends for dating advice in 2024, while nearly 50% are relying on their friends to help them navigate the dating world this year, too.

And yet for some, this fine line can be difficult to get to grips with. Often, it’s only once you’ve experienced the negative effects of sugarcoating that you might learn to become more of a saltcoater yourself. At least, this is exactly what happened to 23-year-old Lauren, whose trio friendship group consists of a saltcoater, a sugarcoater, and her. "There was a period when I stopped telling the saltcoater friend things because I didn’t want to hear the truth, and so confided in the sugarcoater more," she explains. "But I ended up putting myself in stupid situations and practically became a doormat because the advice I was getting reinforced my behaviour and the toxic situation I was in. After one conversation with the saltcoater, I was dragged back to reality, which is 100% what I needed."

"When my sugarcoater friend started going through something similar, I’d brutally tell her the truth about her love life and that she didn’t deserve what she was going through,’ Lauren continues, "unknowingly becoming the saltcoater and realising that it’s best for everyone. It’s not so you can say, ‘I told you so’ but more so you can give warning to someone who might be seeing things through rose-tinted glasses — which I understand because I’ve been there!"

Dr Chris Haywood, a reader in critical masculinity studies at Newcastle University, says that men might be more likely to saltcoat their advice to straight/bi women friends because "often they’ve done [particular dating behaviours] before or played up to romantic expectations, so can spot another man’s façade a mile off". He adds: "They know exactly what ‘game’ is being played and what the end result tends to look like."

The same, though, could be said about women offering advice to their straight male friends or about queer people offering advice to other queer people. It’s less an innate gender difference and more, shall we say, understanding a teammate. Plus, if women or gender non-conforming people are more likely to sugarcoat, it’s likely because we’ve been socialised to feel responsible for, as Alva Gotby puts it in her book They Call It Love: The Politics Of Emotional Life, ‘creating good feeling’. "Not only do women experience shame when relationships have issues, but they also worry about the effect of their opinion on the relationship with a friend who’s confiding in them," says sex and relationships therapist Cate Campbell.

The dynamic of the friendship surely comes into play, too. "We’re conditioned to compare ourselves, to be competitive and to cast a timeline for things like relationships and careers," says Robyn. "Dating is fatiguing, frustrating, and hard as hell. Would I really want my friends in relationships giving me a stern talking-to when they aren’t in the trenches with me? I think there could be some resentment."

An olive branch?

Anxiety about being at different life stages may be even more pertinent right now, at a time when the dating landscape is allegedly bleaker than ever, and as our timelines are flooded with contradictory (usually unhelpful) dating advice. Overwhelmed with a minefield of apps, dead-end conversations, and perpetual first dates, more and more young women are opting for celibacy, embracing ‘boy sobriety’, or even expressing interest in South Korea’s political 4B movement (which sees women swear off dating, sex, marriage, and babies with men in protest at gender inequality). At the same time, some men, in the absence of positive male role models, are turning to the far-right manosphere for guidance and blaming feminism for all their dating woes.

It could be this confusing backdrop that’s leading more of us to seek straightforward advice that cuts through the noise. "In a world littered with catfishing, deepfakes, and [buzzword bad behaviours], developing scepticism in a relationship is one way in which we may begin to protect ourselves," says Dr Haywood.

And, as per gender stereotypes, women in particular may believe they’re more likely to get this much-needed dose of scepticism from men. To be fair, Campbell does suggest that "men are more likely to say what they see — even more so now that men’s toxic behaviour is being called out and they don’t want to appear to condone bad behaviour".

Whether there’s any truth to this is still up for debate — but, in a way, it doesn’t really matter. In fact, when the political and social divide between young men and women feels bigger than ever, it can only be a positive thing if we’re communicating in a healthy way and becoming a more significant part of one another’s support networks (yep, even if it begins in satirical, self-aware TikTok trends). It sounds cheesy, but if we can understand various behaviours from the other gender’s perspective, maybe we can begin to close the chasm between us. And if it takes a little saltcoating to get there, then so be it.

"In a world that feels increasingly unsafe, saltcoating lets us normalise our fears and the world’s imperfections," says Campbell. "If we accept that relationships aren’t perfect and that we aren’t perfect, either, we stand more chance of negotiating solutions and being more compassionate towards ourselves and others."

Ultimately, though, says Robyn, we should trust that our friends (of whatever gender) know what’s best for themselves — and that they’re going to do whatever they want, whether we sugar- or salt-coat it or not. "If I can be a support, a shoulder to cry on, or someone to yap to about anything but dating, then that’s enough."

Whether we’re driving ourselves mad with this level of analysis, meanwhile, is a topic for another day.