Layne Berthoud, an occupational therapist who lives in Los Angeles, did not expect her recent TikTok post to rack up nearly 5 million views in five days.

“I saw a bird today,” Ms. Berthoud, 30, tells her husband, Alexandre Berthoud, in the video. Mr. Berthoud pauses, briefly puzzled by the update.

“Oh yeah?” he asks.

In that moment, Mr. Berthoud, 30, unknowingly aced social media's latest viral relationship test: The bird theory.

The setup is simple. One partner points out a bird to the other - or in a common variation, recounts a fake bird encounter from earlier in the day - and awaits a response. A partner who responds with curiosity passes the test. A partner who doesn't fails.

The test is intended to measure a partner's willingness to respond to what therapists call“bids for connection,” a concept popularised by the marriage researcher John Gottman.

Dr Gottman, who works with his wife, Julie, has long argued that the happiest couples readily and regularly acknowledge, or“turn towards,” the many hundreds of bids each person offers the other throughout the day. A classic study of his concluded that couples who stay married turn toward each other's bids around 86 percent of the time; those who split do so only 33 percent of the time. But is the bird theory really a meaningful measure of a couple's connectedness?

“I have some mixed feelings about it,” said Carrie Cole, who - as the director of research at the Gottman Institute - would certainly know.“We want couples to turn toward one another, and one way to do that is by making these little bids that are really about nothing: 'Cool bird!' 'Look at that boat!' 'Nice car!'”

What concerns Dr Cole is the idea of testing your mate with a contrived scenario, then putting too much stock in the results.

“What if your partner fails?” she asked.“Because we're not perfect. Happily married couples are not perfect. What then?”

'ARE WE OK?'

The bird test is social media's relationship yardstick du jour, but it's hardly the only one to take off.

In a recent example, many TikTok users - often women - flocked to the“orange peel theory.” (Ask your partner to do something you can easily do yourself, like peel an orange. If your partner does it, green flag! If not, red flag!) Several months later, the“princess treatment” debate kicked off.

Alexandra Solomon, a clinical psychologist and host of the“Reimagining Love” podcast, said those kinds of social media tests or conversations were reminiscent of the relationship quizzes that used to appear in teen and women's magazines. (Bird theory videos are dominated by women testing their male partners.)

“One of the questions we carry into and throughout our intimate relationships is: 'Are we OK? How are we doing?'” she said, adding that she has a“ton of compassion” for why these types of tests take off.

The sheer number of recent bird theory videos, and the millions of views they get, says something about our collective thirst to know what makes intimate relationships fail or thrive, Dr Solomon said. And these tests can offer a sense of validation.

“There's a little bit of a flex if your partner passes a test,” Dr Solomon said. Posting a failed bird test may offer a kind of camaraderie, she said, playing into the hapless male trope that's currently so popular.

The videos are signaling a“collective eye roll about what we have to put up with,” Dr Solomon noted.

'AN OPPORTUNITY FOR A DEEPER CONVERSATION'

Despite the popularity of TikTok tests, relationship experts say they typically do not offer much meaningful information about the health of a relationship - and can obviously backfire.

“If they fail the test, I hope that people don't take that as a sign that the relationship is doomed,” Dr Cole said.“I hope they would see it as an opportunity for a deeper conversation about getting their needs met.”

Ms Berthoud is happily married, so she had a hunch her husband would pass the test, even though many TikTokers' partners have“failed” - becoming dismissive or offering a tepid response.

Mr Berthoud doesn't have TikTok and wasn't even aware of the video until his wife called to tell him it was starting to go viral. He has gotten a kick out of the comments, he said, most of which have been positive.

“People debating other people's life on a 30-second video - and all the assumptions people make - it's just funny,” he said.“It's like a total study in humanity.”

But the pair say they never test each other in any meaningful way, and work hard to show up for their relationship every day: washing dishes when they don't feel like it, buying each other thoughtful gifts and, yes, turning toward each other's small overtures for connection.

“If I really had deep relationship questions, I probably wouldn't record it,” Ms Berthoud said,“And I definitely wouldn't post it.”

The article originally appeared in The New York Timse.

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