After mulling on this for a few days i feel like elaborating and delving further into the general propagation of this attitude in dating scenes (esp in more 'left' leaning environments).
Many people more eloquence and intelligent than i have discussed this before, but the idea of the perpetually and perfectly healed individual looms large in general liberalism. This idea that one can pick up the baggage and burden of the self as it exists under capitalism and CBT their way to perfect health is deeply liberalistic in mind. It goes so far as to recognise that for most people growing up and living within capitalism (and the hetero-patriarchy that is required to sustain it) is trauma inducing in itself. Especially when it intersects with anti-blackness, racism, misogyny, classism, etc. But, they do not see this as a sign that the environment which is making the individual sick needs to be changed, but that the individual bears full and complete responsibility to 'fix' themselves via the mythical pure force of 'therapy' (1). In this individualistic framework not only is perfect health and behaviour able to be sustainably achieved by individuals, it is their divine responsibility to reach these standards in order to be worthy of receiving love.
Naturally, for this framework to prosper one must believe that therapy in itself is always a force for 'good' that will always result in proportional improvement in ones life to the effort placed into it. This is of course absolute nonsense. Therapists function within the capitalist medical system as a way of mediating the illness often caused or exacerbated by the system in order to get the worker well enough to work again. Its focus and goal as a discipline under capitalism is no more than that, no matter how much individual therapists may 'want' to genuinely help their patients, their role as a class is not orientated to that goal (2).
To move back to the dating scene we see just how nefarious these attitudes are when fully manifested in the complex system of human interaction. To enter these spaces with the idea that one must be perpetually healed for love places an almost unachievable threshold that has to be met in order to receive a basic need: human interaction and affection. One is constantly expected to be going through the motions and performance of 'self improvement' via systems that are quite frankly as we saw not built for this! And of course the end result is complete frustration and isolation for those who suffer most under capitalism and intersecting vectors of oppression. Those who via the luck of their existence are most likely to be made 'sick' (3) via the environment that these systems of oppression have created! Is it any wonder that we see the people most harmed by these narratives being people with mental illness, with disability, the figure of the 'hysterical woman' etc. Who are made most to bear this burden far more than your mildly sexist man. Mental health language in the dating scene becomes also another way to enforce the same old biases and deprivation of care for the vulnerable, especially in self proclaimed 'leftist' spaces.
To try to gather all this together into an end point: The expectation of the perfectly healed individual is frankly unachievable, especially so in our current capitalist system and the modes of therapy and medical care it provides. The placement of the expectation of healed-ness into the dating scene (as well as the friendship scene more generally) often reinforces previous biases and leaves those who are already most vulnerable even more scrutinised and isolated. It is an idealistic notion devoid of any recognition of material reality and forces (as most liberalism is no shocker there ofc) and to put it elegantly: Fucking sucks.
(1) this attitude is perhaps best represented in the notion that everyone should be in or have been in therapy, which is often espoused in these spaces.
(2) anti-psychiatry people and resources have discussed this in far more depth than i have space here, do check out those writings for more info.
(3) sick here is being used in a general sense that lines up with these pro-therapy no matter what narratives. It is not my intention to imply that anger, fear, and wariness caused by abuse, racism, sexism etc. is a form of sickness.
