Is dating therapy?

Is therapy for dating?

Welcome to part one of Love Language, a week-long series that explores the worst (best?) cliches of modern dating TV, and their broader cultural and political ramifications. You can read the introduction to the series here. If you want some fun memes to go along with all this, come find me on my Instagram.

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The Bachelor franchise’s moral world has since its inception in 2002 sat closely next to the Right’s political rhetoric around dating, marriage and divorce. The show is rooted in white purity culture, and though the franchise has in recent years tried to save face and reinvent itself, it’s mostly failed. The series has nevertheless feigned political relevance, from Katie Thurston’s platform on consent, to the show’s attempts to counter its own racism starting with Matt James’ season. The series has also attempted to diversify its poor representation by bringing on Black bachelors and bachelorettes, and this season’s Jenn Tran is the first Asian American Bachelorette (it only took 21 seasons!). They’ve also recently started bringing on “golden” men and women under the guise of combating ageism—but basically everything remains the same.

In particular, the foundational idea that a lasting marriage as THE fairy tale ending has stayed consistent, and the show has fleshed out this story over the years by replaying predictable cliches— the ones we witness contestants exchange every season, as if by clockwork. These cliches, of course, have trickled down not only into other dating shows, but into ordinary people’s lives and relationships. They’re lodged in our subconscious, and even if we now think they’re dumb, we have probably been affected by their logic at some point in our romantic lives.

This language of love, of course, emerges from political and social beliefs and/or feeds into what we think we are fighting for or against in heated election cycles like the one we’re currently in. And so, over the years, I have always found these shows to be a good litmus test for where we are collectively in terms of our shared (if strained!) fantasies about relationships, sex, dating, and marriage.

Today, the language of love also traffics heavily in the language of mental health. As the wellness and self-care industries have fused with political ideology around individualism, therapy has become a bit of a flex on these sorts of shows— a kind of necessary gauntlet one must go through to be “ready for love.”

There is a clear moralism, though, to this idea that it is inherently good to “put yourself out there” and “open up,” rather than “put up walls”—phrases you hear every single season on the Bachelor, but also on many other dating shows and in everyday conversations. But we have to consider what else is implied here about the inherent goodness— and healthfulness— of “letting oneself be vulnerable” in order to find a spouse.

First, such phrases suggest that people who cannot “open up” or tear down their walls or be their true selves on a television show “for love” (love as exemplified by the great achievement of heterosexual marriage), are emotionally stunted, immature, possibly even just terrible people. Obviously, there is no room for neurodiversity in this thinking.

There is also a kind of Brene-Brown-inspired vulnerability Olympics at play in this the idea that being your “authentic” self (we’re going to be using a lot of scare quotes this week!) means pouring your heart out and, increasingly and importantly, sharing your trauma and fast. (Later this week, we will get to how on dating shows today this trauma is often rooted in one’s “broken family” and the need to fix that with a good marriage.) If a contestant (or IRL lover) keeps anything close to the vest, then they are “behind,” and more importantly, incapable of the full range of human experience.

On the one hand, okay. Putting aside my impulse to make an early-2000s critique of authenticity, what we’re circling here is merely the belief that finding ways to be emotionally honest with others, flaws and all— rather than coming off as performative or surface-level or just lacking depth— is a way of being with others that leads to deeper human connection. In the most general sense, again, okay.

But in dating shows, where the explicit goal is marriage (or finding “your person” aka soul mate as one reader pointed out in the comments yesterday!), contestants perceived as “not ready” for marriage are always the villains, regardless of their gender. And not only that, they are perceived as young, inexperienced, and childish people who have not yet evolved emotionally.

All of this, of course, implies that marriage is the emotionally mature and healthy thing to do and that the only healthy progression of a relationship is a linear one, ending with a nuclear family.

Ergo, monogamy, we might even say heterosexuality, all appear as the pinnacle of adulthood. But where does this leave those who do not want to marry or leave their marriages for any reason or find human connection and love in any other way? How does this thinking support attacks on “childless cat ladies” and single women, ever-understood as emotionally unstable?

The way this vulnerability Olympics plays out for men is also curious. In an effort to stay relevant, men on dating shows now seem to over-perform their emotional vulnerability, presumably to counter dominant norms of masculinity. But we rarely (if ever? any examples out there?) see meaningful discussion of white male masculinity on these shows. That brand of masculinity—arguably the biggest thorn in modern dating’s side—is treated as a kind of neutral norm.

Clearly, given the disgusting hypermasculine reactions of major public figures on the Right to Tim Walz’s son’s heartwarming display of emotion at the DNC, there are many who still believe that men shouldn’t have feelings in public. But until now, the representation of male emotional vulnerability has largely come to us through dating shows and other romance storylines in TV and film. As a result, there is often a utilitarian component associated with men’s expression of emotions.

As in the idea that men should work toward emotional fluency and vulnerability not because they are collectively experiencing a crisis of loneliness and alienation, not because it might be good for them or their families or their communities, but to increase their chances of getting laid or securing a wife—a wife who then, let’s be honest, is likely to take over the project of managing her husband’s emotions.

Jenny Holzer

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Okay, that’s all I have for now on the link between therapyspeak and dating shows. Discuss!

And please be kind to each other about your beliefs and observations about love and mental health— this stuff touches nerves. Open yourself up and don’t put up walls, but also make sure everyone feels seen and heard!

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about “falling” in love. Subscribe now so you don’t miss it.