Olivia Wilde, like many of us, was happy to hear that A$AP Rocky thought his pregnant girlfriend Rihanna killed it at the Super Bowl. But by doing that, Wilde hurt some people’s feelings.
“If I thought he was hot before, this really pushed me over the edge,” she wrote in a now-deleted Instagram story of A$AP Rocky filming Rihanna. She also tagged both of them. One person on social media asked, “Why does she post like this about someone else’s man?”
Later, Olivia Wilde posted the video again and wrote, “For anyone who got it wrong, it’s hot to respect your partner.”
Therapists warn that there is no golden rule when it comes to complimenting someone else’s significant other. Instead, it all depends on the relationship and how far you want to go.
“Context is important,” says licenced clinical social worker Kimberly Vered Shashoua. “So is the person receiving the compliment.” “We have different ways of understanding the same words.”
When a regular person has a strong reaction to something a celebrity does, it’s usually more about the regular person than about the celebrity.
Benjamin Goldman, a licenced mental health counsellor, says that when people who aren’t celebrities get upset about something that happens to a celebrity, it’s likely because they’re upset about something important in their own lives.
People think a woman is “sexually aggressive” when she acts this way. “When women show they want something, they are seen as uncomfortable, desperate, or thirsty,” says Vered Shashoua. “People think Olivia Wilde isn’t just saying what’s on his mind; they think he’s trying to get with someone else’s partner.”
In her next post, she talked about that and reminded everyone that what people think is not always what is true.
