Have You Been Therapy-Baited?
Franny’s being careful after her last breakup. She’s not jumping into bed with anyone. She’s not oversharing childhood trauma on the second date. She’s actually trying to date like a functional adult.
Enter Jason, who courts her with handwritten letters. Handwritten letters! In 2025! But we’ve been so beaten down by lovers who communicate exclusively through GIFs that sentences feel romantic.
This guy speaks fluent therapy. He’s dropping “attachment styles” and “emotional availability” on the first coffee date like he’s ordering coffee. Week two, Franny asks what he’s looking for, and this man basically reads her therapy notes back to her. He knows she wants intellectual connection. He knows she values independence. M
She sleeps with him because he’s hot and when was the last time a man said “I’ll come in next time, we have plenty of time” instead of trying to Netflix his way into your home within forty-eight hours?
Three days later: dead relationship.
“I’m really bad at relationships when work is busy. I can’t make you go through that. I just want peace.”
Oh, he wants peace. Here I thought relationships were about two people navigating life together, but apparently they’re supposed to be as conflict-free as a meditation app.
As it turned out, Jason was running an emotional con game, targeting women who’d done their therapy homework and using their own healing language against them.
This is therapy-baiting. Jason wasn’t emotionally intelligent, he was just manipulative with better vocabulary.
We made emotional intelligence so sexy that every manipulator learned the buzzwords. They memorized therapy-speak without doing any actual work. Now they’re all talking about boundaries and healing journeys like they’re hobbies.
The red flags have been rebranded as green flags, which is exhausting for those of us who remember when assholes just looked like assholes. “I’m working on myself” used to mean someone was unavailable. Now it sounds like they’re taking a mindfulness class.
Dating apps have become therapy vocabulary competitions. Emotional intelligence became a performance instead of actually being emotionally intelligent.
The people falling for this are the ones who actually did the therapy homework. They hear psychological language and assume good intent. It’s like thinking someone’s fluent in French because they can pronounce “Aurevoir” correctly.