What Happens When Your Boyfriend Is Red-Pilled?

The term “red-pilled” comes from the Wachowskis’ mind-bending 1999 hit, The Matrix.

In what is arguably the film’s most famous scene, Morpheus (played by the formidable Laurence Fishburne) sits in a starchy leather coat, eyeing down Neo (a fresh-faced Keanu Reeves) through iconic rimless black shades.

“Do you want to know what it is?”

Neo nods. 

“The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us… It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

Then, Neo is offered a choice. Morpheus extends his hands, a small capsule resting in each palm. Neo can take the blue pill and remain in delulu land, safely nestled in the comfortable illusion of the Matrix. Or, he can take the red pill and wake up. He can leave the simulated world and learn the sobering truth about life. 

Today, you’re more likely to see a very different man with sunglasses promising to help you “awaken.” This time, it’s to the claim that society is dominated by women and men are the real victims. Welcome to the manosphere, where taking the “red pill” has become its own movement, fueled by algorithms. 

This ideological shift is not relegated to a fiery comment section skirmish or a podcast debate. It infiltrates relationships too.

When Algorithms Come Home

For Claudia Giblin, a woman living in New York, the red pill didn't come packaged in leather coats or cyberpunk strangers with white rabbit tatts.

“I just didn’t think those people existed in real life,” she said. “You see it online. You think it’s bots. I never thought it would be my boyfriend.”

At first, everything was going great. Her ex was kind, thoughtful and charismatic. All her friends adored him. “I genuinely thought he was the nicest guy. You just wouldn’t picture him as someone vulnerable to this.”

Not Just the Dude in the Basement

When we talk about men who’ve been “red-pilled,” there’s a dangerous tendency to default to the “incel in his basement” trope. Think chronically online, socially isolated kid jacked up on 1L of Mountain Dew. That builds the illusion that this ideology belongs to a small, discrete group.

Claudia’s experience offers a different story: red-pill content appeals to social, high-achieving men too. “There’s a crazy pipeline. It starts with, like, gym videos, someone who's got muscles or something. Or wanting to be the best version of yourself. Then it’s a slippery slope. I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, these people are actually, like, real, real.’”

A lot of manosphere content is deliberately packaged as self-help. It talks about discipline. Productivity. Leadership. Financial freedom. On the surface, and in isolation, these are relatively sound ideals. Your partner starts reading books? Going to the gym? Bravo. Dolled-up as ambition, it’s pretty hard for the person consuming this content (and the people who love them) to recognise when something more corrosive has taken root.

Language Matters: Purity Culture Repackaged 

The first jolt came when Claudia’s ex was scrolling through Instagram reels one night and declared, “I’m a high-value man.” She laughed it off. He had to be joking, right? Surely it was just an ironic internet-brained bit? 

Claudia’s ex first saw her on the exclusive dating app, Raya. From there, they connected over Instagram. He didn’t know she’d previously been using Hinge, which is free for anyone to join. One day over a conversation with friends, the topic of dating apps came up and Claudia’s ex found out she used Hinge before they started dating. He got mad because it didn’t measure up to his standards for a “high-value woman.”

Later, he read her private diary. She came home one night to find him sitting up, perched over the notebook. He slid it across the table, “I don’t want to be thinking about how you’re just a low-value f*** from Hinge.” Apart from invading Claudia’s privacy, he was also shaming her for her dating life and previous sexual relationships. 

This is where red-pill ideology repackages something way older: purity culture. Women who have exercised sexual agency, had past partners or are too “accessible” are “low-value.” The “high-value” woman is demure, pure and modest. She hasn’t been “ran through” (a term that’s all over the internet at the moment to describe someone with a “high” body count). Red-pill culture tries to “protect” men from “low-value” women by claiming that they are more likely to cheat on you. 

There’s another irony here: sexual history does not categorically predict loyalty in relationships. Emotional maturity, shared values, and the quality of the partnership itself are crucial. Just because someone’s body count is “high”, it doesn’t mean they’re going to cheat on you. One of the only safeguards for monogamy available to us is making our partners feel safe, respected and satisfied. 

Blame Dressed Up as Concern

Imagine you’re at a bar in New York. It’s hot, it’s packed, the music is thumping, and people are there to have fun. Claudia and her ex were on a night out when he began critiquing some women at the bar who were having a good time. One fell on the floor. “He brought it up like, five times, clearly implying they were low-value.” Then he began to argue that women “had it coming for them” based on their actions and what they wore. 

This is textbook victim-blaming, implying that women’s behavior or clothing determines whether they deserve respect and safety. The logic rests on the rape myth that assault is invited by women’s choices, rather than the person who chooses to assault. It shifts responsibility away from perpetrators onto victims.

Claudia stormed out of the venue. “That was the breaking point. I was like, ‘You’re out.’” He doubled down, following up with a stream of texts:

“You walked away from me in the middle of a conversation, right in the middle of a restaurant. Do you have any idea how disrespectful that is? What do you think that says about how I see you?”

“I said this before, when someone dresses in a way that draws attention and puts themselves out there, especially in vulnerable environments, it increases risk.”

“I don't want to be in a relationship where I'm constantly worried about you walking home or getting caught in a bad situation. If dressing that way makes you feel empowered, that's your choice. But from my perspective, if something happens, you made yourself a target, and that's not something I'm comfortable with in a partner.”

Later, he sent her a reel of Sadia Kahn (a creator who sells a “90-day High Value Man” program) discussing the concept of being accessible: “If she is the most beautiful girl in the world, but she is available and accessible to lots of men, and she’s disloyal to you, she loses her value because she makes you look like an idiot and she makes herself look accessible… Loyalty doesn't just mean she’s not sleeping with other men, loyalty also means she’s not exposing herself to other men.”

Red-pill rhetoric frames this kind of policing as protection, but it’s a way to consolidate control through the guise of care. After Claudia broke up with her ex, he reached out to her family and friends. He said he was sorry. He wanted to get back together. He was going to treat her like a princess. Her aunt responded, “I don’t want Claudia to be treated like a princess. I want her to be treated like an equal.” 

Breaking the Pipeline and Spotting the Signs

Social media algorithms are designed to feed us more of what we engage with. If you linger on content about masculinity, you’ll be served more. Over time, the content becomes more extreme because that’s what drives engagement. 

Culturally, we have to reckon with the systems amplifying this content: regulating social media algorithms that reward extremity would be a start. Red-pill rhetoric harms everyone, from women like Claudia who face abuse, to the men who adopt these views. For Claudia’s ex, red-pill content shrunk his world, his relationships and crucially, his capacity for connection.

If you think red-pill ideology may be creeping into your friendships, relationships, or even into the thoughts of your children, here are some things to look out for:

• Pay attention to language shifts. Watch out for terms and phrases like: 
  
  • “High value” or “low value”
  • “Body count”
  • “Submissive, traditional women”
  • “Pair bonding”
  • “SMV” (sexual marketplace value)
  • “Hypergamy” (the idea that women only date up)
  • “80% of women only date the top 20% of men”
    
    
• Watch how they talk about women. Do they regularly mock, dehumanise or blame them for violence or harassment?
  
• Notice if “self-improvement” becomes superiority. Working out, setting goals and being ambitious is great, but framing women as inferior is not.
  
• Look for protection that feels like restriction. Are they discouraging certain clothes, friendships, or social settings for a girl or woman’s “safety”? This may be their girlfriend, or even their sister. 

The red pill no longer lives in a movie from 1999. It’s in our feeds, DMs and relationships. In The Matrix, taking the red pill meant escaping control. Today, being red-pilled is often the entry point to enforcing it. Claudia still holds empathy for her ex; she says he was often lonely and didn’t have many close friends. As the saying goes, hurt people hurt people, but acknowledging his pain doesn’t mean we have to accept the harm he caused. Empathy and accountability can coexist, and perhaps the real “awakening” begins when we refuse to equate control with care.