I went through a bad breakup at the end of 2019, and before I even had time to heal, we were in COVID lockdown. I’ve seen a lot of pandemic meet-cute stories that started with Zoom dates and masked walks in the park, but for me, not being able to breathe the same air because one or both of you might die put a damper on my libido.
The pandemic also had the effect of suspending us in a moment of uncertain waiting, and the temporal “Hold, please” also seemed to slow down and extend the process of getting over my breakup. As a result, I didn’t feel ready to start dipping my toe back into the dating world until last year.
It didn’t help that I’m not a fan of dating apps, which open you up to a stunning variety of micro-aggressions and generally bad behaviour in a space where you’re supposed to be “vulnerable.” I can’t tolerate the experience for longer than a month or two, and I deactivate frequently. When I start wanting to yell at every person who messages me, I know it’s time for a mental health break.
Even after my extended hiatus from the online dating world ― and the influence of a world-altering historical event ― things seemed to be pretty much as I left them on the apps. Guys were still looking for a “partner in crime” and listing their height because “apparently that matters.”
But there was one new trend I immediately noticed that hadn’t been “a thing” the last time I had swiped faces. Suddenly every man was putting “in therapy” on his dating profile. I don’t mean one or two ― it was ubiquitous enough to join the ranks of the most common dating ad clichés, like posing with a giant fish. Was being in therapy the new giant fish? I wondered.
Back then, I reached out to Michael Kaye, global head of communications at OkCupid, who confirmed the trend.
“One of the biggest online dating trends we’ve been seeing is more conversation and transparency around mental health and therapy. This year, there was a 21% increase in mentions of ‘mental health’ and ‘therapy’ on OkCupid profiles between February and July, and a 4% increase in August 2022 compared to August 2021,” Kaye said.
Around the same time, “Bachelorette” contestant Zach Shallcross (who would become the following season’s “Bachelor”) gained kudos for promoting therapy on the dating show. During his first one-on-one date with Bachelorette Rachel Recchia, he opened up about his mental health journey, saying, “The main thing that really helped me in all this, and I’m a huge proponent of it, is therapy.”
“I could not agree more, and I’m very, like, excited that you said that,” Recchia responded before giving him the rose that signalled he would move on to the next stage of the competition.
On the surface, all of this is great news, especially when the idea that men should attend therapy is infiltrating the “Bachelor” franchise, an often turbo-charged, gender-and-heteronormative fantasy of dating and romance.
As the fight for gender equality has opened up new options for us socially, professionally, financially and otherwise, women who date men are increasingly less willing to settle for those who are not willing to address what a viral Psychology Today article on “the rise of lonely, single men” calls their “skill deficits.” These include things like communication skills and the ability to engage in emotional intimacy.
Therapy is an obvious solution to tackling these issues and working to meet the needs of potential partners in a relationship.
And yet... every time I saw “in therapy” prominently displayed on a man’s dating profile, I couldn’t help but feel a little... suspicious. Were guys really evolving on this issue, or was the trend a lot of empty virtue-signalling from guys who had learned what women want to hear?
Because here are some more statistics Michael Kaye shared with me:
“In response to an in-app matching question that reads, ‘How do you feel about discussing mental health with your partner?’ 72% of men said it’s important and they’re open to it... And men who said ‘It’s important and I’m open to it’ received 494% more matches and 74% more likes than men who said ‘It’s not important and I won’t.’”
He added, “Over the past 90 days in the United States, men on OkCupid who believe therapy is good for people or necessary received 86% more likes and 49% more matches compared to men who said it’s not for them. They also received 100% more likes than men who don’t believe in therapy.”
All those likes and matches could be an unexpected side effect of this therapy boom! Or it could be that straight men are fully aware of the fact that saying they’re in therapy or simply that they value the concept raises their odds of successfully attracting women online.
I didn’t want to draw conclusions without investigation, so I started looking for men who mentioned their therapy status on their dating profiles who were willing to be interviewed. I made this request repeatedly to my sizeable social media followings and asked other well-followed social media accounts to reshare, a tactic that usually proved journalistically fruitful.
But I got... :: crickets ::
I doubled back, promising anonymity and assuring potential interviewees that my angle would be neutral and that I wasn’t trying to make fun of anyone or make them look bad.
:: Silence ::
I chased down friends of friends and got ghosted. I talked to PR people like Michael who worked at various dating apps and ostensibly had access to many users to connect me with. Everyone came up empty. The therapy men absolutely would not talk to me.
With nobody willing to talk, I eventually had to kill the story, and I’d mostly forgotten about it until Jonah Hill’s ex-girlfriend Sarah Brady recently released texts she says he sent her when they were dating and which ignited a firestorm of conversations about men and the way they talk about therapy.
In the texts, a person Brady claims is Hill, who made a documentary in 2022 about how his therapist has changed his life, misuses some common therapy concepts. Most notably, the messages characterise his controlling demands about what his then-partner could wear, who she could be friends with and what she could post online as “his boundaries.” Many mental health professionals have since explained why that’s an inaccurate use of the term, and many women have come forward with stories of male partners similarly weaponising therapy-speak against them in relationships.
I remembered then who I did hear from when I was trying to report my own story: the women who had dated the “in therapy” guys. And many had horror stories about the men behind the profiles.
That doesn’t mean anything statistically; naturally, someone who is pissed about a bad experience is more likely to respond to my query than someone who is just like, “I met him and he was nice and we had a good time.” But it did confirm my hunch that at least some of these dudes were using “in therapy” performatively, without having much to show for it.
One woman who reached out, Julie, put “must be in therapy” as a requirement on her own dating profile because she saw it as a good filter for finding people who were “at least exploring themselves and interested in personal growth and better relationships.”
She says she had countless bad experiences and attracted mostly men who weren’t ready to date, men who ghosted and men straight out of relationships who hadn’t worked through it yet, all claiming to be in therapy. She ultimately deleted the app.
“I thought it was a sign that they were ‘doing the work,’” she said. “But I’ve found that it’s not.”
Laura Caruso, a relationship therapist and dating coach in New York City, posted a Twitter thread in light of the Jonah Hill conversations reporting “what she’s seeing” regarding men and the use of therapy-speak.
“In the last year, more men have initiated deeper conversations about mental health, trauma, anxiety, and depression within the first few dates; however, many of these men are ‘talking the talk’ without actually ‘walking the walk,’ she writes.
Later in the thread, she concludes, “Throwing out buzz words like ‘mental health,’ ‘boundaries,’ and ‘communication’ is becoming a popular tactic to whoo women — men are learning that women WANT to talk about these things.”
I do believe there are men out there who are sincere about working on their mental health and sharing that information in a dating space ― for once I actually mean it when I say #notallmen.
The one straight man who actually was willing to answer my questions was a longtime friend who I’ve actually watched become a better person as a result of working on his issues in therapy over the years. He’s put “in therapy” on his profiles when he started dating again in 2019, and he says he hopes it weeds out those who don’t believe in therapy or mental health care in general, as well as bringing him matches who are also in therapy.
“Accountability is really important to me,” he says. “We’re all flawed humans that fuck up and make bad choices. I’ve found that most people don’t own their actions and blame others for their own shitty behaviour. I can’t get with that.”
There’s no way of knowing at first glance which men are sharing that they’re in therapy with good intentions and which men have simply learned what women in the year 2023 want to hear. None of this necessarily means these men aren’t in therapy ― although I have no doubt that some are not being honest about it. But it’s also fully possible to be technically “in therapy” while not really making any progress on yourself or while misunderstanding (or wilfully misusing) the information you learn there. Just look at the texts Hill allegedly sent.
And, of course, true change can take many years, and growth continues over a lifetime. A discerning dater is probably best served by taking these claims at face value, asking more specific questions and paying attention to whether his behaviour aligns with his proclaimed values.
Julie says, “At this point, if I ever go back, which is unlikely, I’d look for contextual clues in the rest of his profile ― does he seem like he has healthy relationships? But also I’d probably ask ― ‘what kind of therapy are we talking, why, and how long?’ Because showing up to a therapist’s office once in your life does not give you a pass to treat women however you want.”