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To everyone who is still sending me messages about Sam and SB’s situationship, this post is for you. I know I’m repeating myself, but I’m doing it one last time because some things still don’t seem to be getting through.

As far as she's concerned, my conclusion hasn’t changed. Based entirely on what she has chosen to present publicly over the past year, she projects an almost entirely one-dimensional identity. Her public presence revolves around one role above all others: being Sam Heughan’s partner. Beyond that, I see remarkably little substance. Instead, the same themes repeat over and over again: recycled pseudo-spiritual quotes, carefully curated imagery, animals, vague wellness messaging, and a social media presence that, to me, never develops into anything with real depth or individuality.

Could there be more to her than that? Perhaps, but I don’t believe it at all. After reviewing years of the public image she has chosen to create, I simply haven’t seen anything that would lead me to a different conclusion. That's why, for me, there's nothing left to analyse. I’ve reached my conclusion, and I don’t expect it to change unless what she chooses to present changes as well.

As for Sam, I've already written what I think as well. I don’t believe he's being manipulated into something against his will. I believe he's making choices because, in one way or another, those choices currently serve a purpose for him. Whether that purpose is companionship, convenience, stability, image, avoiding loneliness, regular sex or something else entirely, only he knows. It's his life and it's not ours to live.

As for the situationship itself, my conclusion hasn’t changed either. I don’t see two people building a shared future together. I see two people who, for very different reasons, appear to be getting something they currently want or need from the arrangement. To me, they aren’t pulling in the same direction. They’re each pulling on the relationship for their own reasons. That doesn’t necessarily make it fake. It simply means I don’t see it as a partnership built around the same goal. Whether that continues for another six months or another six years is something only they can answer. For me, though, there's nothing left to analyse.

What concerns me far more is something else. If the current trajectory continues, I believe the greatest price will ultimately be paid by Sam himself. Not because of one particular situationship, but because audiences quietly drift away when they stop recognising the person who once inspired them. People rarely announce that they’re leaving. They simply lose interest. We’ve already begun to see that happen. There's less excitement, less conversation, less curiosity and less emotional investment. That isn’t something I can change. And honestly, I don’t think endlessly analysing every geotag, every IG story or every breadcrumb changes anything either. If anything, it keeps feeding the very cycle so many people say they want to escape.

I also know that some people worry they’ll miss something if they stop following certain accounts, or if one day those accounts become private. My question would simply be: what exactly do you think you’re going to miss? We already know they’re spending time together. We already know they’re in each other’s lives. Beyond that, what meaningful piece of information do you honestly expect to find?

And perhaps an even more important question: Why are those accounts public in the first place? Public accounts exist because the person behind them wants to be seen. Every view, click and discussion gives that public presence a little more relevance. If you’ve reached the point where following those accounts brings you more frustration than value, you’re under no obligation to keep contributing your attention.

Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is simply step away because your attention is valuable, and you get to decide where you invest it.

That’s exactly what I’m choosing to do. If something genuinely changes the bigger picture, I’ll write about it. Until then, I’ve said everything I have to say.

Perhaps the most surprising realisation for me is that, these days, I don’t feel angry with Sam anymore. If anything, I feel sad for him.

When I look at the paths taken by people like Caitríona Balfe, Tobias Menzies, Richard Rankin, Laura Donnelly or Lauren Lyle, I see careers that seem to have grown steadily, each in their own way. They all appear to have found a direction that suits who they are.

Sometimes I wonder whether OL gave Sam the very thing that ultimately became his greatest burden. He became the face of the series. He had the biggest platform, the greatest visibility and, arguably, the greatest opportunities. Looking back now, I sometimes find myself wondering whether carrying that weight was ever really the right fit for someone like him.

Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth games opening - Sam and Nessie

Where Exactly Is the Ordinary Time?

Relationships are funny things. We tend to remember the big moments: the holidays, the big occasions, photos everyone shares afterwards. But when I think about relationships that actually last, I don’t think about any of those things. I think about the in-between days. The lazy Sunday mornings, evenings spent cooking dinner together, the supermarket run nobody photographs. The moments that never make it onto Instagram because, frankly, there’s nothing particularly interesting to post. Those are the moments where people slowly build a life together.

That thought came back to me while watching the recent Mallorca timeline unfold around Sam and what appears to be his current relationship. It wasn't any one particular moment that caught my attention, it was the pattern that gradually began to emerge. And it made me look back over the past year and ask a much broader question:

Where, exactly, has the ordinary time been?

Because relationships aren’t really built on premieres, theatre performances, work events or family celebrations. Those are milestones. They’re memorable, of course, but they aren’t everyday life. Everyday life happens in between.

Looking back over roughly the past year, that’s the part I find surprisingly difficult to identify. On paper, there seems to have been quite a bit of time together. Distillery opening, Macbeth, Christmas, OL premiere, Tartan parade, Easter, Ride Galloway. Weekend visits and public appearances. It almost sounds like a full calendar of shared experiences.

But timelines have a curious habit: they can look very different once you stop looking at individual events and start looking at the spaces between them.

Many of those occasions revolve around work. Others happen within larger family gatherings. Some appear to be little more than brief windows squeezed in between professional commitments. And the more I followed that timeline, the more I realised I kept asking myself the same question:

When did they simply get to share ordinary life together?

Mallorca actually caught my attention for exactly that reason. At first glance, it looked like one of the few occasions that might allow for a longer stretch of ordinary time together. Just ten days or so on an island, away from everything else.. But then the second half of the holiday no longer appeared to be just the three of them after Sam’s nephew joined them. Shortly afterwards, the publicly visible timeline separated once again. Her own stories placed her back in Ireland for her Reiki training, while Sam was in London spending time with friends.

Again, none of those individual moments struck me as unusual. Family is normal, friends are normal, work is normal. What struck me was something else entirely.

The more I looked at the timeline, the less I found myself asking what happened during those moments, and the more I found myself asking where the ordinary moments actually were. Could there be countless quiet days that simply never become public? Of course. None of us lives our entire life on IG.

But Sam’s professional timeline is unusually easy to follow. Theatre runs, film productions, interviews, cons, promotional work and travel all leave footprints, and over time those footprints create a surprisingly complete outline of where large parts of his year have been spent. Not every private moment, obviously. Nobody could honestly claim that. But enough for patterns to begin emerging.

None of those moments proves anything on its own. But when they’re all placed back onto the same timeline, they begin to tell a story that feels noticeably different from earlier periods of Sam’s private life.

What feels different isn’t simply that he’s with someone. If anything, it’s the contrast with earlier situationships, which seemed far less defined yet often appeared to allow for longer stretches of uninterrupted ordinary time together. This publicly visible timeline follows a noticeably different pattern.

And that’s something I think people sometimes misunderstand. Patterns don’t emerge because we know everything. They emerge because, over time, the visible pieces begin to form a consistent picture. And that’s exactly where I’ve arrived.

Based on the publicly observable timeline, I personally struggle to describe this as a relationship in the usual sense of the word. What the timeline reveals is a series of short, often work-centred encounters, public appearances, family occasions and brief windows of time that rarely seem to develop into the kind of ordinary, uninterrupted life where relationships are usually built.

Perhaps the private reality is completely different. None of us can know that. But if I’m analysing only what is publicly visible, then my conclusion is actually quite simple:

Looking back, I think many of us focused on the wrong thing at first. Naturally, everyone was interested in the woman who suddenly appeared beside him. That was the obvious story. But over time, I’ve become less interested in Steph herself and much more interested in what her arrival appears to have coincided with.

For me, the biggest story isn’t Steph, it’s the shift in how Sam's perceived today compared with a few years ago. I don’t think it’s possible to separate those two stories completely. Since she entered the picture, we’ve watched a remarkably different version of Sam emerge. Not just in his appearance, but in his behaviour, priorities, public image and, increasingly, the choices he makes professionally.

Whether she actively shaped that change, reinforced parts of his personality that were already there, or whether he simply changed during that period, none of us can know because we can only observe what's visible. But I also don’t think it’s realistic to pretend there’s no connection at all. The timing is simply too consistent, and the patterns are too difficult to ignore.

What I keep seeing isn’t people saying he seems happier, more relaxed or more authentic. It's quite the opposite. More and more people describe him as distant, restless, increasingly image-conscious and oddly dissatisfied. Professionally, he also seems to be saying yes to almost everything that comes his way: rugby campaigns, ambassador roles, erotic audiobook one minute, children’s audiobook the next, collaborations with content creators who originally emerged from his own fandom. It often feels less like a clear long-term strategy and more like someone grasping at every opportunity that comes along in an increasingly desperate attempt to stay relevant.

The same applies to the public persona he seems to be leaning into. The cocktail videos, the increasingly laddish humour, the innuendos, the carefully curated “cheeky” image ......… perhaps that’s genuinely who he is. If so, fair enough but to me, it feels surprisingly forced and oddly out of step with the version of Sam many of us came to know over the years.

And then there’s Outlander. Even now, he doesn’t seem able to let it go. Instead of gradually stepping into a new phase of his career, he still appears to be reaching back for it whenever he can. To me, that doesn’t look like confidence. It looks increasingly like someone struggling to move on.

Of course, we don’t know what's actually going on in his mind or what his long-term plan is. There are still people who genuinely like this version of him, and that’s perfectly fine. Everyone responds differently. But I’ve yet to come across someone who says they believe he’s become a happier, more grounded or more authentic person over the past year.

So, looking back, I don’t think Steph was ever the real story. She was just the catalyst that made many people stop and ask a much bigger question:

What happened to Sam?

OUTLANDER Couples Therapy Bloopers!

Oh Dear my isn't he just beautiful? I do so love that man.

The Loyalty Reflex

I received an anon earlier telling me, essentially, that none of us really know who Sam is. Which is true, we don’t.

But here is the funny part: neither do the people who use that sentence as a shield. Because “you don’t know him” only seems to apply when someone questions the narrative. It never seems to apply when someone insists he is humble, grounded, kind, authentic, respectful, misunderstood, private, generous, shy, simple, noble and quietly perfect.

Apparently we don’t know him well enough to analyse public behaviour. But some people know him well enough to defend his soul.

Interesting system, isn't it?

And that's really what this is about: not Sam himself, but the kind of fan who needs every single thing he does to be interpreted positively.

If he goes somewhere luxurious, he deserves it.

If he turns up in a very ordinary tourist attraction, it proves how grounded he is.

If he doesn’t post SB, he’s protecting her.

If he does post SB, he’s showing commitment.

If he posts her in a disappearing story, he’s private.

If he ever posts her permanently, that will be love.

If he stays vague, he owes nobody anything.

If he feeds the narrative, people should simply be happy for him.

There is no version of events that damages the image, because the image has become more important than the behaviour being observed.

That's not analysis, that's interpretative loyalty. And I think this kind of loyalty often has very little to do with the actual person being defended. It has much more to do with the fan’s own emotional investment.

Some fans have spent years building a relationship with a public image. They’ve bought the books, the whisky, the gin, the vodka, the tequila, the con tickets, the merch, the gala tickets, the MPC subscriptions, every limited edition of the same products, and the fantasy of proximity.

They’ve defended the brand, promoted the projects, corrected the sceptics, attacked the critics and performed loyalty as if it were a moral category. At some point, that’s no longer casual fandom. It’s an identity structure.

So when someone says, “This behaviour looks odd”, they don’t hear a public observation. They hear: “Your judgement may have been wrong.”

And that's much harder to tolerate. Because if Sam isn’t quite the grounded, noble, emotionally coherent figure they’ve defended for years, then the uncomfortable question becomes: What exactly have I been defending? And perhaps even worse: Why did I need to defend it so badly?

That's why the critic becomes the problem.

Not the contradiction. Not the strange public choices. Not the awkward ambiguity. Not the increasingly commercial ecosystem. Not the private and public breadcrumbing.

No. The problem becomes the observer. Any observer. The observer is jealous. Bitter. Ignorant. A hater. A bad fan. Someone who doesn’t know him.

Which, again, is technically true. But the point of observation is not to claim private knowledge. It's to look at what is publicly visible and ask why it lands the way it does. That's the difference.

Observation says: this feels inconsistent. Loyalty says: how can I explain this so the image stays intact?

And SB fits very neatly into this system too. A lot of these fans don’t seem especially interested in her as a person. They’re interested in her as a Sam-adjacent access point.

Following her, praising her, flattering her, cheering her on, sending her affection, treating her like a doorway into his orbit: that's not necessarily support in the pure sense. Sometimes it's parasocial strategy dressed as kindness.

If SB notices them, they feel closer to Sam. If she likes or reposts something, responds to something, or simply remains visible, they receive a tiny hit of imagined proximity.

And that's powerful. And it's also useful. Because these fans do two things at once: they pay, and they defend. They fund the machine and protect the narrative around it. They buy the products and then explain why nobody should question the product. They support the public figure financially and then do unpaid emotional PR for the brand.

Honestly, as a business model, it's efficient. But as a feedback system, it's disastrous. Because once loyalty becomes the main currency, reality has to queue outside. And that's where the problem begins.

A healthy fandom can say: I like him, but this is strange. The loyalty reflex says: if it looks strange, you’re looking at it wrong.

A healthy fandom can say: I enjoy the work, but this choice isn’t landing. The loyalty reflex says: how dare you question him?

A healthy fandom can separate public image from actual person. The loyalty reflex fuses them together and then calls that respect.

But it's not respect to turn a human being into a fragile little shrine that must never be touched by criticism. It's projection with security guards.

And the irony is that these fans often claim to be protecting him, when what they are really protecting is the version of him that keeps their own investment emotionally safe.

That doesn’t mean they’re stupid. I don’t think that’s the right reading. Many of them are probably sincere and emotionally attached. Many have built friendships, routines and a sense of belonging around this fandom. For some, defending him may feel like defending years of their own life.

But that's exactly why they can become analytically blind. Not because they cannot see, but because seeing clearly would cost them something. And that's why every contradiction must be softened. Every oddity must be rebranded. Every public misstep must become proof of humility, privacy, generosity, authenticity or victimhood. The image must survive. Even if the behaviour becomes harder and harder to explain.

I wrote about part of this already in The Mommy Bubble, mostly from the angle of how that ultra-loyal fan ecosystem keeps him afloat while quietly weakening the feedback loop around him. This is the other side of the same mechanism.

So to the fans who rush in every time to explain, defend, soften, reframe and rescue the image: Maybe ask yourselves why he always needs so much rescuing. Because if the image were really that stable, it wouldn't require a defence team under every post. And if your loyalty cannot survive one uncomfortable observation, then perhaps it isn't loyalty. Perhaps it's fear.

And one last thing, just as a small practical note. When you send me messages like that, please understand that they usually tell me far more about you than they tell me about Sam. I can read the reflex very quickly. The panic, the defence, the need to correct, the need to rescue the image.