The Ultimatum Has Too Much Therapy Speak (and Not Enough Therapy)

I had a 15-hour travel day on Monday, so naturally, I binge-watched the last few episodes of the most recent season of The Ultimatum, and DAMN.

For anyone who hasn't fallen down this particular rabbit hole: it's the show where couples who can't agree on marriage split up, date other people in the cast for three weeks, then decide whether to get engaged to their original partner (or someone new entirely). High stakes, messy execution, and apparently, a whole lot of therapy speak with maybe not a lot of actual therapy happening.

Take Ashley, Killian, Blake, and Hayley's hours-long changeover conversation, for example: boundaries, accountability, manipulation, all of it spoken fluently and none of it actually saying anything productive.

I mean, I get it; I do. "I need to protect my peace" is a much better sentence than "I'm scared and I don't want to talk about this," even though the second one is much closer to the truth. But when Hayley told Blake she was feeling "unheard" because he wasn't performing all five love languages while simultaneously cursing him out, it felt less emotionally intelligent and more unhinged.

I should note: I didn't have any of this language in my early 20s. I didn't know what a trauma response was; I definitely didn't know what boundaries were, and I learned a bunch of life lessons the hard way — so I do give them props for having the right words. But I've also started to wonder if "protecting your peace" can be its own kind of avoidance, albeit a more sophisticated one.

If you're reciting the terms instead of doing the work they're supposed to describe, does that even count as personal growth?

It's probably not a coincidence that the couples who came out okay in the end weren't the ones speaking the most fluent therapy-speak. They just respected each other.