Couples online are sharing how an ‘invisible string’ tied them together before they ever met

Before Georgia Harris met her boyfriend, he had appeared in the background of her photos at an event they both attended years ago. Now, she’s approaching her second anniversary with the man who sneaked into her camera roll before she ever knew he existed.

When she posted about her love story on TikTok, people flooded the comments section suggesting their relationship proves the “invisible string theory,” or the idea that the universe covertly connects people who are destined to meet one day. The centuries-old concept is gaining renewed traction on TikTok as young people like Harris share how they and their partners’ lives intersected multiple times before they finally met.

“It is an absolute crazy coincidence — but I think the timing for us was absolutely right, and what’s meant to be will be,” said Harris, 25, who lives in Perth, Australia.

In the comments on Harris’ video, a TikTok user claimed her husband was in the background of her childhood best friend’s home video. Another wrote that she and her husband appeared in the background of each other’s photos when she was at her ex’s college formal. And yet another said she and her husband attended the same wedding 12 years before they met.

The hashtag #invisiblestringtheory spiked last week, accruing more than a million views in the last seven days.

Many on TikTok are using audio from Taylor Swift’s song “invisible string” — which professes that “all along there was some invisible string tying you to me” — to share their love stories. The song alludes to East Asian folklore around the “red thread of fate” that ties together lovers who are ultimately destined for each other.

Isabelle Whitlock, 21, lived less than five minutes away from her now-boyfriend all her life. They grew up in the same small town, went to the same schools and even appeared in the same yearbook photos together — but the two never met until they matched on a dating app in summer 2022.

“I believe a lot in the universe, like whatever happens, it happens for a reason,” Whitlock said. “And I think it was true for us: We met at the perfect time. If we’d met earlier, we wouldn’t have been ready for each other.”

Having experienced a string of what she described as toxic relationships, Whitlock said she could have pushed her partner, who she now believes is “the one,” away had she met him too early in life.

In her TikTok video participating in the trend, she wrote that although she doesn’t know how they went so long without meeting, they both needed to forge their own paths before their lives converged.

Whitlock and her boyfriend, Aidan Squires, who now live in Manchester, England, said they were shocked by just how widespread the phenomenon seemed to be among couples around the world.

“Now that we have a platform where you can share these sorts of things and it can be seen by pretty much anyone anywhere in the world, it makes these stories expand a lot quicker,” said Squires, 23. “It’s definitely not something we would have thought about before, but as soon as [this trend] came up, we were like, oh, my God.”