'Well my therapist thinks you're the abusive one,' and other ways abusers weaponize therapy (paid subscriber bonus)

Men weaponize individual and couples counseling to buy time and excuse their own behavior.

Men are weaponizing therapy. To those of us who understand misogyny, or who work with women in destructive relationships with men, it’s completely unsurprising. Because men in a patriarchy will weaponize any and everything they can if they’re not committed to radical feminist change.

Here’s what that might sound like:

• “My therapist says I’ll never be able to satisfy your demands.”

• “My therapist thinks you have borderline personality disorder.”

• “Actually, my therapist thinks you’re the abusive one.”

• “My therapist says I need to get better at enforcing my boundaries.” (a la famed misogynist Jonah Hill)

In couples therapy, men may weaponize the notion that both parties are responsible for conflict as a way to blame you for abuse, or pretend that if you have more demands than he does (because he’s doing less than you), this is evidence that your demands are inherently unreasonable. The therapist might go along with him, or tell you bullshit like that you need to meet his need for sex before he can meet your need to be treated like a human being.

It’s exhausting, and adds to the avalanche of victim-blaming that is so many women’s lives in a misogynistic society.

As social media trends toward encouraging men to do The Work (where what The Work is is never specified), and relationship gurus increasingly tell women to only date men who have been to therapy, something completely predictable has begun to happen: men use going to therapy, talking about their feelings, and their “self-growth journeys” as proxies for actually being decent fucking people. It’s a lot easier to mumble some mealy mouthed bullshit about childhood trauma than it is to do the dishes every day and honor your partner after she has given birth. Going to therapy takes just an hour a week. Not treating your partner like a servant is a lifetime of work each and every day.

No wonder so many men pretend to care about feelings and emotions and growth. This offers them a convenient escape from any real accountability.