Sarah Brady, the ex-partner of Hollywood actor Jonah Hill, released a cache of text messages she claims Hill sent, causing a short, sharp intake of collective breath from the internet.
But it wasn’t the usual, gleeful hand-rubbing people tend to adopt when getting their noses into someone’s relationship woes being aired in public. This was not the equivalent of turning down earphones but still leaving them in to surreptitiously listen to a couple have a fight on the bus, in an attempt to find out what it’s all about and where it went wrong.
The texts Brady released purportedly from Hill weren’t mean-spirited break-up texts. The kind sent out of redundant desperation and heartbreak at 2am like, “my mam never liked you anyway” and “your stir-frys were shite”.
These messages were polite, they used punctuation and there was no name calling.
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I feel like I’ve hit the lottery with my partner: I make the money, he makes me lunches
My exam marks or a fancy university didn’t get me into the career I love
Hill reportedly said if Brady “needed” to do certain things then he was not the “right partner” for her.
These included “surfing with men, boundaryless inappropriate friendships with men, to model, to post pictures of yourself in a bathing suit, to post sexual pictures, friendships with women who are in unstable places and from your wild recent past beyond getting lunch or coffee or something respectful”.
Brady, a professional surfer and surf instructor, unsurprisingly spent a lot of time in the ocean, which unfortunately in this situation has not banned men from entering it. Yet.
Her popular Instagram page with more than 150,000 followers featured videos and photos of her at work on the waves, wearing exactly what you think someone would wear when they go swimming – a bathing suit.
It should be noted that Brady (now 26) was 24 when she first started dating Hill, which is a peak time in any woman’s life for enjoying friendships with “women who are in unstable places” beyond “respectful” lunches, ie going out for a girls night with a recently dumped friend to cheer her up.
Her age and occupation were known to her partner before the relationship started, but here she was being asked to change things about herself to make him feel more comfortable.
“These are my boundaries in a romantic relationship,” the actor allegedly texted.
The word “boundaries” is scattered through the screenshotted text exchange, notably when Brady said she reportedly texted Hill to show “all the posts I removed from my page”.
A disagreement broke out over a remaining post on her Instagram, a clip of her in action on her board.
She pleaded to keep what she described as her “best surfing video”, and in an act of placation, offered to change the display still image.
A text shot back: “yes, one that isn’t of your ass in a thong”.
These nicely phrased requests using mental health terms are actually more like nasty red flags of emotional abuse
For context, Brady was wearing a one-piece swimming costume – the sensible black kind you might wear to aqua aerobics or a waterpark to avoid any wardrobe malfunctions while supervising children.
“You don’t seem to get it ... I’ve made my boundaries clear,” Hill allegedly texted.
But the “boundaries” communicated here ask a partner not to hang out with certain people, engage in activities they enjoy and dictate what they can and can’t wear in photos. These nicely phrased requests using mental health terms are actually more like nasty red flags of emotional abuse.
If your partner is isolating you from friends, monitoring online activity and demanding control over aspects of your daily life “such as where you can go, who you can see, what to wear”, you should seek help according to the Women’s Aid website. The coercive control page encourages women experiencing ANY, not all, not a combination, but ANY of the 10 signs listed to ring the helpline.
The application of the term boundary in the context of the texts has people worried. It is another exhibit in the case currently being tried in think-pieces and social media – is therapy-speak ruining everything? The New York Times noted the rise of therapy-speak as we made our way out under the traumatising blanket of the pandemic in 2021. But it was Rebecca Fishbein in Bustle who asked, “Is Therapy-Speak Making Us Selfish?” Her essay examined how phrases such as “self-care”, “boundary-setting” and “hold space” can be deployed as a complete cop-out in relationships instead of making us accountable for our actions.
Any decent therapist will tell you a boundary is something someone sets for themselves. A boundary cannot be set with the intention of making someone else do something. It’s usually a limit of what you won’t do. For example, a boundary isn’t telling a co-worker they can’t sign clients in different time zones because it means you will have to work extra hours at night. A boundary is telling them you won’t work unpaid overtime in the evenings.
Therapy and therapy-speak are not to blame, but we need to be vigilant about how it can become a niggling sign of something more sinister
In a relationship context, it isn’t controlling who your partner sees or what they wear and threatening to leave if they don’t comply. It is simply leaving the relationship if these things make you unhappy, instead of deploying different tactics to try to get your own way.
Hill has yet to make a statement, and while there is shock that the affable comedian could have made those demands, the loudest noises seem to be grim “mmhmmms” of recognition. Many of us have received texts like this from a partner – male and female. About how we need to change things for them to make them happier. More loving. Things that they seemed to like before you got together, but then became a problem. So you make the changes – wear less make-up, go out less with friends, hand your phone over for inspection to quell their insecurities. But then it’s another thing, then another to change. It doesn’t stop.
Insecure partners are the most dangerous to date, particularly for women. Many domestic violence homicide cases note the offender’s paranoia that the victim was cheating on them or planning to leave them. Attempts to stop this are often prefaced by making rules about how they should dress, who they should hang out with and what they post online.
Therapy-speak unfortunately has long been used by people seeking to exert control. In scenes reminiscent of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park learning to open door handles, the tools we came up with to keep emotional abuse out of relationships has been weaponised by perpetrators to get in.
While some people learn just enough about therapy to use it to hurt others, there are people who use it to challenge themselves into becoming better to themselves and the world around them.
Therapy and therapy-speak are not to blame, but we need to be vigilant about how it can become a niggling sign of something more sinister. And we need to show young people how to spot it, like a rip tide in the surf.