The Jonah Hill texts shouldn’t surprise us – men have been doing this for years

Countless times I’ve picked up the phone to a friend needing a sanity-check on their reactions to a romantic partner playing power games with them. I’ve made these calls too.

There have been even more times that a group of my friends have served as counsellors to whatever hell one of us is being put through. “He needs to go to therapy!” we all demand of the crap partner.

But what if the emotional abuser does just that? What if they then begin co-opting therapy terminology as a weapon against you? That’s the most worrying thing about reading Jonah Hill’s texts to his ex, which went viral this weekend: this does not seem like a one-off.

Sarah Brady, a professional surf instructor, took to her Instagram stories to publicly accuse Hill of being an “emotional abuser”, showing screenshots in which the Superbad actor appeared to ask her to take down photographs of herself in bathing suits, and outlined his “boundaries” for their relationship.

There’s something immediately unsettling reading the Hill texts. Something about them rings so true for many of us: the barrage of messages; the fawning to the abuser’s demands; the monitoring of her every action.

This policing of women’s behaviour has existed through the centuries: from the Salem witch trials to the proliferation of revenge porn in recent years. And usually, men have gotten away with it – but the tides are changing.

Last year, Love Island star Georgia Harrison won a landmark case against ex-partner Stephen Bear. Like Hill, Bear tried to use the language of therapy as an out to avoid accountability when he spoke of faking a mental health crisis.

Women are no longer letting this behaviour stand. So, I’m with Sarah Brady on this: silence is violence. Air abusers’ bad behaviour.

If you were waking up from a coma, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the sensibilities of the 1950s were still alive and well. Hill has a lot to say about Brady’s work, which he deems as a personal affront to him. He attached images of her in a swimsuit riding a wave – that is to say, her doing her job. A swimsuit is her work uniform.

Hill presents this controlling behaviour as him setting his “boundaries” – a term gifted by therapists to their clients to ensure that uncomfortable mentally damaging situations are kept at bay. But it’s here that he, and other abusers, take this language and use it as a defence for their harmful actions.

The misogyny stretches further: do not work with men, he tells her. He texts through a list of demands – sorry, boundaries – that Brady must adhere to if she is to respect his happiness. Hill puts the onus on Brady, he tells her he has been “vulnerable”, employing the language of mental health crises, as if he is reaching out for help to some debilitating struggle.

“Take some accountability and operate with respect,” he tells her. He wants her to only hang out with women, as long as they are stable and, if not, then only in “respectful” situations like lunch or coffee. This is all to say, he wants to limit the opportunities for her seeking her “sanity-check” on the situation from her friends.

Therapy sometimes gives people the tools to justify their bad behaviour, rather than changing it for the better. The expectation is that therapy can only improve, but manipulators go through this process and emerge with an elevated sense of self-importance.

Equipped with his new superiority complex, Hill condescends Brady: “Good start. But you don’t seem to get it. But it’s not my place to teach you.” This echoes the experiences of countless abusive relationships: a smidge of praise followed by being left on your own to work out what the abuser wants next, and what will be sufficient for them to be happy in this relationship.

And here’s the kicker: they never will be. For the abuser, there isn’t an end goal in sight. The power of exerting control is the goal.

Last year Hill released Stutz, a documentary on the life and career of his psychiatrist, Dr Phil Stutz. “OK, entertain me,” Dr Stutz jokes at one point in the film. Hopefully for Brady, and for countless women like her, shining a light on these kinds of actions will ensure that she gets the last laugh.

Aimée Walsh is a writer from Belfast. Her first novel Exile is forthcoming in spring 2024